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DOPE THIEF
DOPE THIEF
Dennis Tafoya
MINOTAUR BOOKS
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
dope thief. Copyright © 2009 by Dennis Tafoya. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tafoya, Dennis.
Dope thief / Dennis Tafoya.'1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53115-7
ISBN-10: 0-312-53115-X
1. Crime'Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.A33D67 2009
813'.6---dc22
2008045665
First Edition: May 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Cori
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK OWES its existence to a chain of remarkable and generous people: Cori Stern, who found me wandering and set me on the right road; the invaluable Laurie Webb, whose insight made the work better and stronger; my manager, the wise and endlessly patient Brooke Ehrlich; and Alex Glass, my literary agent and brilliant advocate, who not only found my work a home, but made crucial suggestions about the shape of the book. My editor, Kelley Ragland, and her assistant Matt Martz were incredibly kind and patient with a neophyte during the pro cess. My family, Jill, Elena, David, and Rachel Tafoya provided love, support, and infinite tolerance. I also have to thank Dick, Karen, Caroline, Lucy, Olivia, August, the Rebel Writers workshop, Jonathan Maberry and the Liars Club, and all the other friends, teachers, and writers who helped me learn and kept me going.
ONE
August
RAY SAT IN a van on Jefferson Avenue in Bristol in the rain, watching people come and go from the white corner house with blue shutters and a cast-iron bird feeder in the yard. A kid in his late teens sat on the stoop eating candy from a bag and talking to the people moving in and out. Sometimes they handed the kid something; sometimes he just waved them up the steps to the door. Nobody stayed more than a few minutes. Ray's partner, Manny, climbed from the passenger seat into the back and pulled binoculars out of a gym bag. He sat on the rear seat away from view and watched the kid and the front door, then moved the glasses along the street. Looking for open windows, young lookout kids watching the traffic, anyone that might signal the long-limbed teenaged boy on the stoop that there was trouble coming.
Ray took the glasses back for one last look. The people coming up the steps were black and white and brown, young and old. The only thing they had in common was that nearly all of them looked like shit. Hair uncombed. Lined faces the color of ashes. It reminded him of that movie where the dead are walking, coming to beat their way into this little farm house in the country. Only instead of breaking down the doors, the zombies stood quiet on the porch until there was an exchange through the door, and then the zombies went away.
Ray combed his mustache with his fingers and shrugged. "What do you think?"
He handed the glasses back to Manny, who stashed them under the seat and brought out a blue windbreaker with DEA spelled out on the back in bright yellow letters. He pulled it on while Ray slid over to the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment, taking out a black semiautomatic pistol, a big, ugly Glock with an extra-capacity magazine. Manny heaved himself into the driver's seat and Ray climbed around him and put his own windbreaker on, crouching in the cramped space by the side door of the van.
"Wait for a break in the traffic." They watched two young girls on the stoop, one of them doing that little nervous dance of waiting for dope, like bees Ray had seen in a documentary, vibrating with some kind of insect ecstasy of anticipation. When they were away down the street, Ray touched Manny's arm.
Manny put the van into gear and drove down the block, stopping at the corner and making a right onto the side street next to the house with the blue shutters. Manny reached into an oversized gym bag and handed Ray a pair of fifteen-inch bolt cutters and then took out a short-barreled Remington shotgun. He pulled his badge out of his clothes and let it dangle at the end of a chain over his shirt.
It was August, and it had rained every day for a week. Ray thought the bad weather was making everyone edgy, tense. Stuck indoors when they wanted to be out. Maybe it was just him. He looked up and down the side street from the side window, fingering the badge on his chest, then jumped out and ducked behind the house and pressed himself against the wall next to the basement door. He put the bolt cutters on the chain holding the padlock on the door and looked at his watch and counted in his head.
Manny ran up the street to the front of the house and swung over the fence without a sound. He put his shotgun against the side of Candy Kid's face and spoke quietly. "What's your name?"
The kid stopped eating and clamped his mouth shut. "Jerome."
"What you eating, Jerome?"
"Jolly Ranchers." The bag began to shake slightly in the kid's hands.
Manny looked at his watch without taking his hands off the gun. "Is there enough for everyone?" Jerome swallowed and tried to see the barrel of the gun out of the corner of his eye. "Let's go inside and share our Jolly Ranchers, okay?" Jerome stood up and turned awkwardly around, the gun glued to the side of his face. He was tall standing up, taller than Manny, who was more than six feet, and he bent slightly at the waist. They walked slowly to the front door; Manny stayed off to the left and moved the gun down to Jerome's side, keeping out of view of the peephole cut in the door. He looked at his watch and whispered to Jerome. "Okay, let's not make any mistakes. Knock twice and wait. Tell them you gotta use the can."
Jerome lifted his arm and banged the door twice.
AT THE BACK door Ray lowered his watch and cut the chain. He hit the door hard with his body and it gave slightly, so he backed off and put his shoulder into it and the door popped open, banging against the wall. He was in a basement, the only light coming down the stairs from the first floor, where Manny was inside now doing his thing, yelling, "Down, down, down, federal agents!"
Ray hit the stairs in time for a teenaged girl with her shirt tied at her waist to appear at the top step, moving fast. Ray lifted the big, squared-off Glock with both hands and pointed it at her head. "Federal agents! Back up the stairs, now! Hands on your head!"
She shrieked and fell back into the kitchen, knocking over a bulked-up kid with a diamond earring who was right behind her with his arms full of small plastic bags. The kid was wearing an oversized black Sixers jersey with iverson on the back. Ray reached down with one hand and pulled them apart and pushed them out of the kitchen toward the front of the house. He heard Manny telling someone named Jerome to lie flat. They came out to the living room, where Manny had two tall kids stretched out on the floor, the sprawl of their long legs eating up all the space.
Ray pointed down. There was a small metal box on the floor near the front door next to an ancient double-barreled shotgun with the stock cut down. "You two, on the floor right now."
The boy and girl lay flat, between a bright green couch and a glass-topped coffee table supported on the backs of metallic gold elephants. The living room was neat, with photos of a smiling kid in a cap and gown from Ray guessed thirty years ago on the wall near the stairs. There were doilies under the knickknacks on the end tables.
Manny pointed to one of the kids near the front door. The kid was impossibly long stretched out on the floor, wearing faded jeans and a hoodie with a stenciled picture of a fist clutching a pistol. "This is Jerome."
Ray stood over him. "Jerome, who else is in the house?"
"No one."
"Don't lie to me, Jerome."
"I ain't lying."
" 'Cause if I go looking and I find someone upstairs I'm going to be pissed off, you understand me?" Ray opened his jacket and pulled a half-dozen sets of plastic flex cuffs out and began restr ain ing the kids on the floor.
Manny moved the pump gun in a slow arc, covering each one in turn. "I'm gonna go look now, okay? What am I gonna find?"
The girl murmured something under her breath.
"What was that? What did she say?"
"She said maybe Ronald upstairs."
"Ronald, now? How come she's helping the police and you're not helping the police, Jerome? I'm about done with you, son. Who else is in this house?"
"Maybe Ronald."
"Maybe Ronald." Ray sighed theatrically. "Jerome, when you are standing tall before the judge I am going to be your only friend, do you understand that? What am I going to tell the judge, Jerome? That you lied to the police and made them go looking for Maybe Ronald, or that you helped resolve this situation?"
"I don't know." The kid's voice was muffled by the carpet.
"What?"
"I don't know."
"You can be a hero, Jerome. You can be the one makes sure no one gets hurt, that the police get the money and the drugs off the street. Believe me, Jerome, you want me to tell the judge you were a hero and not an uncooperative dirtbag. You know the difference?"
There was a long silence.
"I don't know."
The kid with the Iverson shirt said, "Heroes get a beatdown."
Ray looked at him. "Shut up. Heroes get to finish high school, and dirtbags go to jail." He finished cuffing the kids on the floor and straightened up.
Manny took a hand off the gun and yanked Jerome awkwardly to his feet. "Talk to Ronald, tell him to come down here with nothing in his hands." He walked Jerome to the foot of the stairs.
Jerome leaned against the wall, unbalanced with his hands cuffed behind him. He called up the stairs. "Ronald!"
Ray waggled his eyebrows at Manny, who put a cupped hand to the side of his mouth.
"Ronald! Come on down here with your hands up." Manny kept Jerome between himself and the stairs, lowering his body to use the tall kid as a shield. "Ronald!"
"What?" The voice was high-pitched, quavering.
Manny slapped the wall. "Don't 'what' me, you pain in the ass. You get down here on the ground right now. You want to get shot?"
"No, I don't."
"Then come on down." There was another silence. Ray trained his pistol on the stairs and waited.
"How I know you won't shoot me?"
Manny said, "We're the police, Ronald. The police don't just shoot people."
The kid with the Iverson shirt said, "Bullshit, they don't."
After a long minute, brilliant white Jordans appeared at the top of the stairs; then Ronald slowly walked down, looking all of about twelve in an oversized red jeans jacket and gold chains. When he reached the bottom step, Manny stepped from behind Jerome and laid Ronald down next to his friends, and Ray took another pair of flex cuffs out of his jacket.
Iverson said, "Punk," under his breath.
Ray flicked the back of his head with the plastic cuffs. "Shut your mouth." He ratcheted the cuffs around the smaller kid's skinny arms. "Maybe Ronald is my hero."
Manny stayed in the living room, his long, thin frame bent over the shotgun like a pool hall sharper draped over a cue. Ray went back into the kitchen. He opened a few cabinets until he found a roll of big plastic trash bags, jammed his pistol into his belt, and pulled a bag off the end of the roll. He dropped to his knees and began scooping the dropped Baggies off the floor into the green trash bag. He held up one and inspected it'tiny vials, each one with a few rocks of blue-white crystal'and then shoved it into the trash bag. He opened the freezer, the oven, the dishwasher. In a drawer near the back door he found a pistol, an Italian .32 with rust on the handle, and he pocketed it and went out to the front room.
Manny was going through their pockets, turning out rolls of bills and tossing them over by the stairs. Ray grabbed them up and shoved them in the bag. He went to the front door and retrieved the metal cash box, open and showing stacks of fives and tens. Ray upended it, spilling the money in with the vials. He picked up the old shotgun and broke it open, throwing the shells into a corner, and tucking the gun awkwardly under one arm.
His eyes kept going to the picture on the wall. A light-skinned black woman in a yellow cap and gown, cheeks wide with her smile. Even white teeth and almond-shaped eyes with a kind of fierce intelligence that made Ray feel uneasy. Guilty. For standing in her house, maybe, for waving a gun. Probably at one of her children or grandchildren.
Ray leaned over the kids. "Jerome, where's the rest of the money and the stash?" The big kid was silent. The kid with the Iverson jersey shifted, glaring at Jerome. Ray snapped his fingers. "Don't look at Iverson, look at me. Where's the rest?"
"I don't know."
"You do know. Don't look at him. Is he going to do your time?
Is he going to take care of your mom while you do ten years up
state? Is he going to talk to the judge for you and get you home
to night in time to watch The Gilmore Girls?"
"No."
"No is right." Manny pulled Jerome to his feet by his cuffed hands and propelled him into the kitchen. Ray followed, keeping the pistol where the others could see it. Ray stood in the doorway and saw Manny put his head close to Jerome's and whisper. Jerome looked over his shoulder toward the room where his friends were laid out, then whispered something back. Manny grinned, then stood back and banged his hand on the kitchen table hard. "Goddammit, tell me something." He smiled wider and Jerome shyly smiled back at Manny's game.
Manny ducked into a bathroom off the kitchen while Ray made a show of marching Jerome over to his friends and laying him down on the floor. "Looks like Jerome don't want to help the police. I guess he's going away upstate for a while. See his uncles out at Camp Hill." Ray picked up the trash bag from the floor and threw it over his shoulder like a pistol-toting Santa. "Nobody move, now."
He backed into the kitchen. Manny was holding up two wet plastic bags, one filled with vials, the other with cash. Ray pulled the bag from his shoulder and handed it to Manny, who moved silently down the stairs. Ray stuck his head into the doorway to the front room and looked over the prone bodies. He heard the girl ask Jerome how Ray knew his uncle was at Camp Hill and Jerome telling her to please shut the fuck up.
"Keep your heads down and be still. Since Jerome isn't telling us what we need to know, we're searching the rest of the house. I'm leaving Maybe Ronald in charge." He ducked back into the kitchen and followed Manny down the stairs, through the basement and out to the street. Manny was starting the engine on the van, the side door open. Ray threw the double-barreled gun under the seat, jumped in, and slammed the door.
They drove in silence for a minute, Manny keeping it at the speed limit and making quick turns, Ray spinning in his seat to look behind them. After a couple of blocks, Ray opened a gym bag and dropped the pistol in; he reached over and took the badge from around Manny's neck. He leaned forward awkwardly in the seat and took off his windbreaker and stuffed it into the bag with the guns and badges and a couple of leftover pairs of flex cuffs. They turned out onto Route 13, and he reached over and grabbed the wheel and held it straight while Manny took off his jacket.
Ray thought about the kids lying in the front room, whispering to each other. He wondered how long it would take them to begin to move around, get up, tiptoe into the kitchen, their heads cocked for the slightest sound. He imagined Jerome peering down the cellar steps, his hands still cuffed, and realizing they weren't coming back. He rifled in the green trash bag for a minute, then held his hand out to Manny.
"Jolly Rancher?"
RAY WATCHED THE cars around them as they drove west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. "That was a nice house. Whose house do you think that was?"
"Someone's grandma, I'd bet." Manny clicked the radio on, low. "Maybe Ronald's."
"Didn't stink, it was all kept up. It was like Crack House Lite." Ray picked up the trash bag and set it on his lap, running his fingers through the loose cash and vials. He stuck a finger through the plastic bag of cash from the toilet tank and made a hole, thumbing the bills, looking at denominations.
Manny looked over. "How did we do?"
"We? Who did all the work?"
"Get the fuck out of here. Who got Jerome to spill?"
Ray waved his hand. "Oh, like I wouldn't have lifted the lid on the toilet. Doper kids like that only know two places to hide shit, and I already looked in the fridge."
"I have to admit I got a kick out of that 'help the police' stuff. How many times the cops tried to play me and my friends like that."
Ray shrugged. "They call it the command voice. It's a gift some people have. Your problem is you don't watch enough TV. One or two episodes of Cops'll tell you anything you want to know about managing the criminal element."
"Please, the criminal element. They were all like fifteen. An episode of Sesame Street could have told you anything you needed to know about managing that bunch." Manny rummaged in his pockets and brought out a cigarette. He pointed with his chin. "Seriously, what did we get?"
Ray didn't answer. He kept thinking about the house, and the picture of the girl in the cap and gown. Someone's mother, or grandmother. One of the doper kids her son or grandson. The kids now stumbling around the house, their wrists still cinched by the flex cuffs. It made him unaccountably tense, wondering how they'd get out. They had cell phones, he knew; he had seen them when Manny turned out their pockets. Ray thought about whoever was supplying them. Conjured a hulking gangbanger with big shoulders from the joint, a shaved head. Would there be trouble when they came up short? He saw a big man stalking around the house with a baseball bat, Jerome and Maybe Ronald talking fast, trying to make him see how they got took by two guys said they were cops. Had guns and badges, looked like cops, sounded like cops.
Ray noticed one of those little roadside shrines that families build where someone has been killed in a wreck. Saw the shattered plastic flowers and rotted wooden cross, a tiny, faded photograph flashing by too fast to register. He began to feel a tightness in his chest, a hitch in his breath that felt like panic.
The girl in the picture reminded him of someone. The girl in the cap and gown. The name came back to him, and the accident, and a terrible pulse in his head that made him sick. Marletta. A girl he'd loved, who'd loved him. The brilliant girl with the open smile.
He got her back for an instant sitting in the front seat of a car on the day she graduated high school. The day he would have graduated but for Juvie and the time lost. Marletta sitting beside him in her cap and gown, looking like the girl in the picture in the house on Jefferson Avenue.
He stretched, turned on the radio. KYW came on, the an nouncer talking about Allen Iverson and his bad attitude. Ray snapped off the radio, opened the window, let the rain spatter his eyes, his cheeks, his open mouth. Manny watched the road, the traffic, occasionally looked his way. When they reached the exit, Ray cranked the window back up and ran his hands over his face. He caught sight of himself in the mirror on the visor, and it looked like he'd been crying.
"Ray, man?"
But Ray was staring, now. His hands empty in his lap, his brain twisting in his head. "All good things," he said.
TWO
THE NEXT DAY, the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Ray pulled his Camaro up outside his father's house in Hatboro, hunched his shoulders against the rain, and ran to the open garage. He stood and watched the sky for a minute, the clouds low and dark as smoke. There was a faint sound of thunder, like cloth being torn, and a weak green light in the clouds. He could smell the wet asphalt and the cut grass caked on the old mower in the corner, the dust and oil and gas. The houses were shaded by leaning maples and oaks that muted the constant low roar from the turnpike but that darkened the streets and yards so that even outside Ray felt like he was behind walls. He walked through and opened the door to the house.
Theresa, who had raised him after his mother left and stayed with him when his father went upstate, was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and watching the small TV he had gotten her for Christmas, squinting through a thin trail of blue smoke. In front of her were a cup of coffee and a game of solitaire. She waved her small yellow hand at him, leaving a smoke circle in the air.
"The prodigal." At her feet a white dog watched him, moving only his eyes as Ray moved into the kitchen.
"Hey, Ma. How's the reception?"
She shrugged. "Good enough."
He looked in her refrigerator and walked into the living room. "You fixed for everything? Eating right?"
"I got no appetite."
"Yeah? What's the doctor say?"
"He says I'm an old bag and I'm gonna die soon." She moved cards on the table.
Ray patted her on the head. "That sounds about right."
"Fuck you, too, chum."
He held up his hands as if to spar, and she flicked ashes at him, smiling a yellow nicotine smile. "You and what army, boyo?"
"My ma, toughest kid on the block." He walked through the narrow, paneled rooms into his childhood bedroom. He shook his head at the trophies topped with small gold batters with unreadable expressions that somehow frightened him when he was a kid and woke with night terrors. He got down on his hands and knees and pulled an olive drab duffel from underneath his bed.
Theresa called from the kitchen. "Raymond, you want coffee?"
He unzipped the bag and opened it, showing stacks of bills, some with the bank bands on and some ringed by grimy rubber bands. He took rubber-banded rolls of tens and twenties out of his jacket, his shirt, his pants and dropped them in the bag, then rummaged around under the cash.
"Nah, Ma, thanks. You stay put." He pulled out a Colt .45, a scuffed 1911A1 he had bought at a gun show in North Carolina, and laid it on the rug. He fished around in the bag and came out with two empty clips and laid them next to the Colt. He sat and did math for a minute, figuring the rent, the money he owed, food, gas, the money he'd have to front Manny until the next thing happened. He grabbed a stack of twenties, snapped off the rubber band and counted bills from one hand to the other, then zipped the bag and pushed it back under the bed, leaving a track in the dust.
"You working today, Raymond?"
He picked up the pistol and quietly worked the slide, then stuck it inside his jacket and pocketed the clips. "Yeah, Manny and this guy Rick Staley are picking me up."
"The degenerate Manny I know. Who's the other degenerate?"
He walked back out and laid money on the table, then went to the sink and washed his hands. The glasses in the cabinets rattled, and Ray ducked his head to see a pair of A-10s coasting into the naval airbase up the road above Maple Avenue. He had grown up to that sound, lain awake nights listening to the jets come and go and found it comforting.
"You don't need anything? Coffee, milk?"
She shook her head. "Walk Shermie for me." He watched her for a minute as if trying to fix her in his mind. "Shush, it's my numbers." She grabbed a pencil and two lottery tickets from the table.
"What you got, Ma, the Powerball?"
She screwed up her face in concentration. "Will you shut it?"
He pulled the leash from a peg on the wall near the door and grabbed a plastic bag from a coffee can. The dog sighed like an old man and rose stiffly, stopping to scratch himself. Ray watched Theresa leaning toward the TV, her eyes flicking back and forth from the screen to the tickets, the lenses in her glasses blue with the reflection. For a minute she seemed otherworldly, alien. Her tongue curled around her upper lip, flicking. Finally she threw down the pencil. "Not one goddamned number."
"Anytime today, Sherm. This fucking dog. You should put it to sleep."
"Who's going to keep me company, you?" He zipped up his jacket and led the dog outside. He heard her through the door. "Don't forget to pick up the shit! I'll put you to sleep."
He stood in the rain with an unlit cigarette while the dog sat in the shelter of a scrawny dogwood in the backyard. In the corner was a half-built brick barbecue; really just a hole in the ground covered with a piece of rotting plywood and a pile of bricks, a few stuck together with cement.
He remembered his father standing in the yard, a cigarette working in the corner of his face, a beer bottle in his fist. Picking up a brick and fingering it, putting it back in the pile. The next day he went off to court to answer a robbery beef and never came back. Ray was eleven, already unmoored from childhood by the disappearance of his mother the year before. That night, when he woke up (a nightmare about a dog coming for him), Theresa was sitting in the dark, smoking a cigarette. She sat on the edge of the bed, her breath sweet with his father's whiskey. She kissed him on the forehead and sat silently with him until he fell asleep.
Now the dog looked at him, and Ray said, "What?" and led him out to the front yard through a teetering gate. The place was falling down, and Ray felt guilty again about the long list of things Theresa needed done. Shit that Ray promised he'd do but never got around to. He had lived in the house for a while after getting out of prison for his first fall as an adult. Driving a stolen car and getting into an accident.
Manny rolled up the street in his vintage Mustang, the old 390 making a drumming sound he could feel in his chest. Ray hooked the leash onto a low branch of an apple tree that overlooked a statue of the Virgin Mary and walked over to lean into the car, smelling Armor All and cigarettes. He shook Rick's hand and waved at Manny, who pointed at Rick, a muscular guy with long hair and a tattoo of a clock on his bicep.
"This is Rick Staley. He did a bit with Harlan Maximuck at Graterford." Rick was built up in his arms and shoulders the way some guys get inside. He had lank brown hair and licked his lips ner vously. Manny was lean, tall, and stoop-shouldered, even behind the wheel of a car. His mouth was framed by a black goatee, and he wore sunglasses with blue lenses despite the sunless day.
Ray leaned in the window. "Harlan the Hillbilly. I haven't thought about him in, Christ." He felt a pang, thinking of big Harlan keeping him pure inside. Keeping the skells away from Ray, when he was in for the first time and just a kid. And Ray getting out and away and never looking back. He could have done something, looked in on Harlan's family, sent him some money.
"What's up with Harlan? Is he out?"
Manny frowned, shook his head. "He tried to burn some guy in segregation."
"Jesus."
Rick Staley's voice was low, and he looked up and down the street while he talked. "Yeah, he got shorted on some kind of deal, Christ only knows what. He got some cellie to smuggle gas in from where they keep it locked up for the lawn mower. Gets into Segregation, where they're keeping the guy, sprays gas through the bean chute, and was trying to light him up when the CO came up. So Harlan, being Harlan, tries to light up the CO, too. He got Buck Rogers time for that shit."
Rick laughed. "I told him, bro, you got to look on the bright side. By the time you get out there'll be flying cars and robot whores and shit." Rick scratched a dope bruise on the inside of his elbow.
Manny caught Ray's eyes and shrugged. "Fucking Harlan."
Ray had known some guys inside who had been killed or maimed that way. The bean chute was what the cellies called the slot in the door where the dinner trays were slipped through in places like Segregation, where the guys were in protection or were too crazy to be let out to eat with everyone else. The correc tions officers, the COs, were a mixed bunch. Some were okay; some were humps who never missed a chance to smack you down. There were all kinds, holy rollers, drunks. He remembered one time when he was inside at Bucks County, awaiting trial on a car theft (dismissed). A skinny crackhead ran away from a work assignment and climbed up into the raf ters of the ware house and dangled his legs over into space, threatening to jump if he didn't get a he li copter. The CO that time, a morose diabetic named Happ, stood there for a minute banging his clipboard against his leg, looked up at the kid, and said, "Jump, pussy. I got problems of my own." Then he sent everyone back to work, and eventually the kid climbed down and they sent him to Segregation for a while.
Manny pointed to the door, where Ray's mother was standing at the door with a scowl on her face, lifted his hand, and smiled.
"How you doing, Mrs. D?"
"Just peachy, shitbird." She pointed with her cigarette. "Bring Shermie in before he gets away."
"Okay, Ma."
"Did you pick up the shit, Raymond?" She walked away from the door.
Ray shook his head. Manny laughed until he started coughing. "Yeah, Raymond, did you pick up the shit?"
He took the dog back in and took one last look around. Theresa opened her purse, releasing a smell of cheap perfume and tobacco that took Ray back to summers waiting for her to pick through her change for quarters for him to take out to the ice cream man while he hopped from foot to foot, whining for her to hurry up and come across.
She came out with an envelope and handed it to him. "Did you think I forgot?"
He smiled and took it, shaking his head. "You didn't have to do that, Ma."
"Who's going to do it if I don't?"
It was a good question. "Well, thanks."
"You seeing anyone?"
He shrugged. "Not really." Not unless you counted the girls at the Osaka Spa, a Korean massage parlor behind a pool hall off Old Easton Road. The woman in the picture jumped into his head again, and he almost said something, made up a story about a woman with a hopeful smile and fierce brown eyes. Something dropped in his stomach, a lead ball moving down through him and pulling everything with it. He felt every minute of the life that had gone by. He felt like he could begin crying, and that if he did start he wouldn't be able to stop. The old house creaked like a ship going down.
Theresa tapped her cheek and he kissed her.
"Happy birthday, Raymond."
He nodded, couldn't get anything out. He could smell her, stale Arpège and Marlboros; and the house, something fried from last night, wet dog and dust and Lysol. The smell of home. He thought about staying there, sitting with Theresa while she watched her stories, playing poker for the pennies she kept in a glass piggy bank on the counter. Drinking the peppermint schnapps she liked, a beer from the fridge.
He wanted to ask, did she remember Marletta? Ray had brought her to the house, but maybe only when Theresa was gone, so they could be alone. If he brought it up, he knew, it would be a bad memory for Theresa, bound up with him going to jail and all these lost years since. He felt something slipping away, couldn't give it a name. He turned away, waved from the door, and was gone.
THEY DROVE OVER to Horsham and dropped Rick off at his car at the Best Buy in Willow Grove. Rick, it turned out, had done some dealing, some B and E, passed some checks. He'd never done strong-arm but was willing to learn and didn't come across as an asshole with something to prove. On the way over they talked about people they knew in common, some locked up, some dead, some still hanging around getting high, and some just gone. More signs for Ray that he was getting older and had nothing to show for it.
Ray got lost in his head the way he did sometimes, thinking about prison and Harlan and feeling guilty he'd never visited him or really done anything for him since he'd been out and wondering what Harlan would think about that. Especially as Ray got older and knew better what it meant for a young kid to be inside with no one to look out for him the way Harlan had stepped up for him. Staring down the old lags who came for him, and half the time Ray too young and dumb to know what was going on until it was over.
Later Manny and Ray sat at a booth at a diner in Willow Grove across from the air base. A-10s dropped out of the sky, touched the runway, and took off again, the roar making things clatter slightly on the table. Out at the curb Ray watched two kids walking up 611 with their thumbs out. One kid was short and one tall and black-haired, and Ray smiled, seeing him and Manny. The short kid wore a surplus army jacket, and the tall, skinny kid had a black leather jacket with duct tape over one elbow. A car went by at speed, and the big kid flipped it off, screaming something Ray couldn't hear.
Manny covered his mouth with his hand and leaned toward Ray. "What do you think?" He put sugar in his coffee and stirred.
Ray kept his head down, talked to the table in a low voice. "About Rick? I think I don't know anything about him except he's got a jones."
Manny said, "Or a bruise on his arm, supposed to make us think he's a hype. I could try to see Harlan, see what he says."
"Yeah, maybe, but if Harlan is jammed up he'll just lie. What does he have to lose?" The waitress came over and poured more coffee. They watched her go. Ray shrugged. "We need the third guy on this one. The thing is I'd rather have a junkie than a cowboy, if that's my only choice."
Manny nodded. "Some idiot who's shooting just to hear the gun. Scaring the shit out of the citizens."
"For a junkie it's a straight line. Money'" Ray drew a line in the air with his forefinger. "'Dope. The cops come, he runs away. What do you want, some guy's going to make a stand, shoot it out with the bulls? Get his name in the paper?"
"Fuck that."
"Yeah . . ." Ray said, but thinking: What am I, then? Not a junkie, not quite, or not yet. Not a cowboy. He used the gun, but didn't love it. He thought of himself sometimes as a professional. Or as acting like a professional, if there was a difference.
He and Manny had been robbing dealers for about a year. Had been in the life for a long time before that, of course. Stole cars, broke into houses. They had met in Juvie, a place called Lima, out in Delaware County. Taking off dealers wasn't something you could do if you didn't know who was who, what to look for. You had to score dope to know dope dealers, or know people who did. Where to go, what to watch for. Manny had been in rehab and knew people who were out copping every day.
They were careful, in their way. They would watch the houses they picked out for a few days or, if they were really hungry, a few hours. Watch the traffic, get a feel for how many people were in the place, who might be carrying. The trick was to go in strong but not crazy. Take control of the situation. Ray had found them the windbreakers with DEA in yellow letters on the back at a flea market in Jersey. They bought badges at an army surplus store in Connecticut and hung them on chains around their necks. It calmed the dealers down. No one wanted to get tagged, but only a stone retard was going to throw down on a Fed. Only when they were down on the floor, their wrists bound with plastic wire wraps, would they begin to get it. Who they really were, Manny and Ray. Why they were there.
At least the older or more experienced ones would get it. Then they would curse, spit, roll around, put on a little theater for their girlfriends, but it was over already by then. Manny would have the pump gun pointed at their heads, and Ray would be looking under the toilet lids and in the freezer.
The dealers made Ray feel like he had his life together. Dealers had their wives and mothers and girlfriends and kids in the houses with them holding dope and cash. He would tell them they were lucky he wasn't some crazy Dominican there to cut throats. They'd be cooking meth and poisoning their own fucking brats in the next room, the air full of charcoal smoke and acetone mist. Speed cookers, small-time Mexican coke dealers with Scarface posters on the wall. Hillbilly tweakers with wide eyes and bad teeth, what they called now meth mouth. Big crosses around their necks, smoking dope to calm their racing hearts. When they were in the cuffs, they'd sing hymns and cry and call down Jesus Fire. It made Ray want to laugh'conjuring up a Tweaker Jesus in his head, a Jesus with gray teeth and unwashed hair, tattoos reading born to lose and born to die.
MANNY WALKED RAY to his car, looking at the dark sky. "More rain?"
Ray went into the glove compartment and pulled out a short stack of twenties and put it in an envelope. He made a show of licking the gum and sealing it. Manny laughed and shook his head, let his long frame settle against Ray's car, leather jacket flapping open. With his arms folded he looked even more like some great bird poised to erupt into the sky in a blast of lost feathers and rushing sound.
"Fuck you." Manny put the money in his jacket. "Ever since you gave up smoking you fucking delight in being a hump. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about holding the money."
Ray held up his hands. "Hey, anytime you want it . . ."
Manny looked at his hands. "The thing is, I asked Sherry to move in."
"No shit. Huh." Ray raised his eyebrows.
Manny stuck his hands in his pockets, awkward. "You think I'm making a mistake."
"No. No I don't. I like Sherry, she's a good kid."
"But?"
"Just, does she know, you know. Where the money's coming from."
Manny smiled. "She knows I ain't a house painter." A dig at Ray, who in a moment of panic once told this dumb-ass lie to Theresa, who then spent hours on the phone digging up painting jobs around the neighborhood. "She knows I got money and don't work. She's been around the block. Shit, we met in rehab. Anyway, she knows not to ask too many questions."
"Great, then. She can dole out the money, get the rent paid and keep you from getting your legs broken by Dickie Lagrossa when the Sixers tank. What you owe him now, about twenty grand?"
"Oh, stop. It's a couple thousand. Anyway, I got a system."
"Yeah, how's that working?"
Manny pulled a medal from inside his shirt and kissed it. "And I got Saint Bernadine on my side."
Ray said, "You and Arnold Rothstein." He squinted through the smoke from Manny's cigarette. "You're the one asked me to dole out the money. Hey, though, you got to love that there's a patron saint for gambling degenerates."
Manny waved his arm expansively. "There's a saint for every fucking thing. My ex-wife's cousin, Deborah?"
"The good-looking one."
"She says there's a patron saint for meth cookers."
Ray held a palm up as if to stop the flow of bullshit. "Get the fuck out."
Manny held his hand across his chest, cigarette out. "I swear to Christ. Saint Cosmas, she says. He's like the patron saint of people who work with chemicals. She was dating that guy, you know the one. Jacques or Jocko or some shit."
"I remember. He's in Graterford now, right?"
"When she moves in and finds out he's dealing, she goes to the priest and asks what does she do. You can imagine that conversation."
Ray smiled. "He's cooking in the house, the kid's there . . ."
"But deep down he's a good guy."
"A sweet girl, not a smart one."
"No. But the priest comes up with Saint Cosmas. And of course that she should dime Jocko."
"Which she does."
Manny gave a half-shrug. "Of course, the asshole is also beating her and her kid, so . . ."
"Well, wherever he is, I'm sure Saint Cosmas is looking after him."
They stood in the lot for a minute. Ray watched tiny waves cross a coffee-colored puddle. "So . . . the Rick question."
"You really think the cops would get onto us and try to put a guy inside?"
"Don't seem likely, huh?"
"What are we, the Dillinger gang? I think we run into trouble, it ain't going to be that kind. I don't see nobody calling the cops."
They both thought about that. You could only do this shit so long. Someone was going to recognize them, or follow them, or just do something brainless when they came in the door. They wore the cop jackets and badges and they moved with purpose and told themselves they were smart, but there was only so much luck and then it was gone. At the end of the day they were as doomed as the goofy bastards they were ripping off. Manny and Ray would do lines in the truck before they went in, getting their edges sharp, making their minds fast. It couldn't go on forever. Everyone was high. Everyone was stupid. Everyone had guns.
THREE
AT TWO O'CLOCK in the morning Ray sat upright in bed, his heart racing. He wiped at his eyes and found them wet. He put a palm on his chest, tried by force of will to slow his breathing, fumbled for the TV remote. He clicked through the channels, found an old movie about a man and a woman, carnival sharpshooters who end up robbing banks in cowboy outfits. He didn't recognize anyone in it, but it was good enough to keep him occupied. He liked how they were with each other, high in love the way you could sometime be, but he didn't get the cowboy outfits. Of course they were doomed, that was the movies, but he couldn't think of a lot of bank robber stories that ended up with they live happily ever after. Not a lot of any kind of stories. He wanted a drink but couldn't see getting up to get it, and he knew it wouldn't help him sleep or stop the nightmares. He wanted a cigarette, too, and thought how it was great you could tell yourself you were becoming a better person by staying in bed and doing nothing.
He tried to remember the dream that woke him up. There was something about a house floating on a lake and somehow the house turned upside down. Someone he loved was in the house and he was screaming, or trying to scream. The place was familiar, like some place he knew or had seen, but not the same. That's how it was in his dreams. The places were put together from bits and pieces of real life but reassembled in a crazy way that made him uneasy.
He couldn't think who would have been in the house. All he could bring back from the dream was that feeling of being helpless and desperate, but there was no one he'd feel that way about in his waking life. It made him jealous of his dream self, this other him with this other, richer life of strong connection and the kind of love that made you frantic.
After the movie ended (they killed each other, but it was the only way out), another movie came on, something with Danny Kaye. He muted the sound and drifted off.
He was standing up on the bleachers, after gym and Mr. Hughes blowing that fucking whistle to make them all deaf. Him and Pete Quirk and Pete's little brother Davey, who everyone said was re tarded, but not to his face because he went six-two in ninth grade. They were high, drinking Mr. Pibb, which sucked but was the soda they had at the Indian's store, the only place they could get to and then back before fourth period, and now they were standing up on the bleachers and watching the girls come out of the locker room in their black and white leotards. Pete said, what the fuck lame school has black and white colors, and Davey snorted his Mr. Pibb out of his nose, and they all laughed even more at that. Davey and Pete jumped off the bleachers and walked out, enjoying the loud, echoing bang of their feet hitting the boards and the girls all watching them go, butRay slouched back on the bleachers and watched one of the girls pull herself up onto the balance beam into a handstand. She was small, dark, her eyes clear and focused, and she held herself straight, her back like the blade of a knife under the green lights of the gym. Ray moved down crablike over the bleachers until he was just a few feet away from the beam as the girl rolled over to stand upright, the muscles in her legs standing out, taut as wires, her hands frosted with chalk. Her body turned in flat circles, described fluent arcs that in Ray's eyes, half-closed by dope, seemed smeared against the bright blue of the mats.
She launched herself off the beam, and he held his breath when she came down, pulled into himself in a sympathetic motion when her feet hit the mat. She held her hands up over her head then but looked down at her own feet while her friends clapped and one of them, the tall red-haired girl he knew was Claudia, whistled and smiled and called out to her. Go, Marletta. Ray smiled, full of expansive good humor fueled by Pete Quirks hash, and he wished she'd look up and see him so he could say it, too. Go, Marletta. But when she did look up, finally, her smile wide and her feline eyes flicking over his and then away, he couldn't get anything out. His dry lips worked, clicking, but she was gone that fast, head down, dark hair hiding her profile, and he sat a long time and looked at the small white handprints she'd left on the beam, and he repeated her name to himself, the way her friend had said it. Marletta.
The next day Ray drove up 611, through Doylestown and up into the country, following a map Manny had drawn on the back of an unpaid electric bill. The rain had slowed. He passed an ice cream stand with a woman smoking a cigarette under the shelter of the awning, talking animatedly into a cell phone, and it made him unaccountably lonely. He glanced at his own cell phone as if he expected it to ring. Someone calling just to say hello. It brought back that feeling he had had in Theresa's kitchen, that weight in his stomach, emptiness and a feeling of tears forming just behind his eyes. He put on the radio and found the college station from Princeton, drifting in and out with the effort of carrying all the way from Jersey. It was something he had never heard; a guitar drifting and echoing in a way that made him think of someone alone in an immense and empty space in the middle of the night.
Above Ottsville he followed a forking exit onto smaller roads lined with farms being cut up into developments. Patches of trees, their branches moving in the rain. He slowed, found a rusted mailbox and a gravel drive leading off over a low hill, and kept moving around a slow curve. There was a turnoff into the field, and he pulled off and stopped.
He grabbed his bag and got out, stretching as if he had come a long way, though he had only been in the car about forty-five minutes. The quiet, the unfamiliar greenness of things, made him feel he had made a long trip to a strange place. In the distance there were long fence lines and horse barns. A country of people whose lives he couldn't imagine. Getting up early, to do what? Feed the fucking horses. Tinker with farm equipment, maybe. The engine ticked, and water dripped from the trees. He looked up and down the empty road and then walked off into the field, up the hill along a line of trees.
He kept to the left of a screen of maples, moving quietly and staying aware of his position, ears straining. He began to sweat immediately, his legs getting wet from the high grass. There was nothing to see except the trees and the fields on either side of him. He looked at his watch and back down the way he had come to where his car was just barely visible now and began to hear a dog bark somewhere.
Near the crest of the hill he stopped and swung the knapsack off his back and kneeled down to rummage in it. He lifted the pistol out and quietly racked the slide, putting a round in the chamber and then putting it back in the bag. He took out a pair of binoculars and picked up the bag, moving slowly up the hill. Finally on his right a farm house came into view, partially obscured by pines. A dog was tied up outside to a stake in the ground, barking itself hoarse at nothing. There was a Ford pickup collapsing in on itself by the side of the drive and a kids' swing set with just the chains hanging, the swings long gone, the chains pinging off the rusted poles. There was a black barn with the doors rotting in.
Ray squatted by a tree and put the glasses to his eyes. The lenses fogged up, and he wiped them with the tail of his T-shirt. The wind picked up, and rainwater ran out of the leaves over his head, soaking his back. A man with a black T-shirt, a leather vest, and a ponytail came out of the house with a beer can in his hand. He threw the can at the dog and lit a cigarette. The dog sat and watched the man expectantly, his ears back. There was a blue van in the driveway and a motorcycle next to the rotting porch. One of the windows upstairs was broken, and a curtain hung through where the glass was gone. After a minute a woman with wild hair and thick hips came out wearing a green T-shirt and shorts and carrying two bottles of water. The guy with the ponytail took one and dumped it over his head and into his eyes, and the woman smoothed back his hair with her hands.
Ray ran the glasses over the house, the van, the yard. He could hear thunder far away, and the rain began to pick up again. He went into his bag and came out with a thin plastic parka and put it on and then settled onto a tree stump and picked up the glasses again. He smelled the faint, acrid odor of charcoal burning. The rain on the parka made popping noises close to his ears. He let his mind drift, thinking about de cades ago when the house was new and someone brought a young girl here to show her where she was going to live. Someone thinking this was the place they would get old and die and maybe being okay with that. Christ, but he was getting strange in his old age.
After a while he walked back down the hill and along the road, back past the driveway and along a fence that bordered the other edge of the property. The ground was more exposed, open to view from the neighbors, and he walked just to the crest of the hill. He sat down in the wet grass and made sketches of the layout: the house, the barn, the dog, the tree line. This side of the hill had a view of a valley dotted with houses, stands of trees. Six or seven cows stood together on a hillside a hundred yards away. Horse -flies found him and began to bite him through his jeans. He retreated down the hill, swatting at his legs.
LATER, RAY DROVE back down through the hills into Doyle stown and parked on a side street. It was a Sunday afternoon, the day quiet and the air thick with humidity. He put a baseball cap over his wet hair and walked the main drag, stopping at a bookstore to get a paper. He stood near the door, feeling his wet clothes cool and holding his paper. There was a circular rack with ten-dollar DVDs near the register, and he stood and pushed it around. One of the faces looked familiar, and he picked up the case, finding it to be the movie he'd watched the night before. Gun Crazy.
A woman stood at the register holding her glasses up to the light, and then she breathed on them and wiped them with the tail of her shirt. She put them on and took them off again while Ray watched her. She swore under her breath, then noticed him standing there.
"Sorry about that." Her smile was crooked, and she looked down. "We're not supposed to, you know, swear in front of the customers." He smiled back and shrugged to show he didn't mind.
She pointed at his hand. "Ring that up?" she said, and he handed her the box, his mind blank. He felt his face coloring.
"This is a good one."
"I watched it last night. On TV. You know, not the DVD. Or why would I be getting it now?" Jesus Christ. "I never saw them before, the couple in it, but I liked it."
"John Dall, he never really did anything else that was, you know, famous. The girl, Peggy Cummins, she was in Night of the Demon."
"A horror thing?" He was conscious of the way he talked, the words forming in his mouth. Of not cursing, trying to seem okay. She had a small mole near her mouth, and her smell was sweet and faint, like an apple smelled when you held it to your face.
"Oh, yeah, a great one, with Dana Andrews. Directed by Tourneur. Great stuff, very . . ." She waggled her fingers and widened her eyes in mock terror. "You don't get nightmares, do you?"
Ray thought she must be in her midtwenties, maybe thirty? Younger than him, he thought, but he was no good at ages. She came around from behind the register and went to another display and flipped through some more cases. She bit her lip and pulled her glasses off her face to use like a magnifying glass. Her hair was dark, and she wore it in a braid, something that always caught his eye. He thought of her in a room somewhere braiding her hair in front of a mirror. Putting on makeup, those little pencils and liners a whole branch of knowledge he knew nothing about. Not that she wore much makeup.
"Shit. Sorry. These things aren't worth a goddamn. Sorry. Doesn't look like we have it." She was tall, maybe taller than him, with a slim build under loose clothes. A gauzy skirt, one of those sweaters that looks like it has thread pulls all over it. Dark colors, like he wore. Browns and blacks and dark blues. Did that mean something?
He wanted to keep talking, had nothing to say. He nodded.
"Thanks for looking. I'll keep an eye out." He spent a long time looking through his pockets for the right change. "Night of the Demons."
"Demon, right." She smiled at him. There were lines by her eyes that made her seem like someone who would be nice to people. Ray looked down. He held up his bag, smiled, and waved on his way to the door, and she watched him go.
He sat in the car a while. The sun wanted to come out, he thought, but then fat drops started hitting the windshield and the roof, loud as pistol shots. It began to hail. Chunks of ice pounded the car, making a muffled roar that was somehow pleasant. He liked being inside and watching it come down. People ran by: two young girls, holding hands; a fat man with a bent umbrella. He opened his paper, closed it again. He was drawn to those women who wore long clothes and dark colors. He thought it meant something, dressing like that. It seemed to him they were protecting themselves against some possible danger, and he thought it wise to be onto the world, to know things could go wrong.
He wondered if he asked her out, how long it would take for her to get on his nerves, or how long until she got bored with him. Isn't that what happened? She seemed a lot smarter than he was. There were people he met who seemed to have a whole language he didn't know. He wasn't stupid, but what he knew was what he had taught himself. He haunted the bookswaps, buying paper bags full of Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey. Books about World War II, black holes. He had opened a book of short stories by a woman named Amy Hempel and couldn't stop reading it. Bought it for ninety cents and went to the library in Warrington to get more. Something in it made him wish he'd finished school, could somehow get to know smart women who knew there was a terrible joke inside of everything that happened to you.
He could only see clearly the end of the arc of wanting someone. He could feel gears turning inside him when he saw certain women, fell in love two or three times a week with women in shops or at bars or just stopped alongside him at intersections, but it was like he skipped too much in his head and got caught up in how the end played out. The screaming and cocked fists and broken glass. He had a vision of his mother carrying him into the bathroom and locking the door, holding him in the bathtub while his father screamed like a gutshot animal and smashed things in the kitchen.
THAT NIGHT HE lifted the lid on the toilet tank and pulled out a plastic ziplock bag with a foil package in it. He went into the kitchen and made a pipe out of a straw and aluminum foil and dumped a tiny hit of brownish, clotted heroin into the bowl. He sat on his old couch and fired it up and waited. His apartment was tiny, white walls and three rooms over a garage owned by an ancient Ukrainian widow who only left her house for funerals and bingo.
He had put on an album he liked, the sound track to the Bruce Willis movie where he finds out he's a superhero. The music was quiet but built to a point. Ray liked to think it suggested powerful things happening that were invisible to the eye. He put the pipe down and poured himself a Jameson. He became aware of a pound ing in his blood, a repeating signal that spread warmth and light through his head and down along his arms. He lay back on the couch and let his eyes almost close, so the lamplight filtered or ange through his lashes. Currents moved in his blood, and he thought of chemicals being conveyed through his system to his brain, like people in another time passing buckets full of water hand to hand to throw into a house on fire. He sipped at the shot, and the burning in his throat was like something being cleaned out of him. The woman from the store came into his head wearing blue and black, and he closed his eyes, trying to conjure the sensation of her fingers touching his forehead. Light, in the way some women's hands were light on your skin. He touched his own dry lips and felt his heart beating in the pulses in his fingers. His head moved with the low drumming of his heart, small lateral movements as if there were water under him. He drifted, drifted, waiting for the fire to go out.
"Hey, counter lady."
"Hey, you."
"How much is this hat?"
"You want that hat?"
"I don't know. Yeah."
"That is a ridiculous hat."
"It's cool."
"Take that off, it's making me laugh."
"I make you laugh?"
"Yes, you're laughable."
"Well, I like to make you laugh."
"I know you."
"Yeah. I know you, too."
"You're in Mrs. Haddad's fourth period En glish."
"I was. Fatass Haddad."
"You used to make us all laugh in there."
"Not Fatass."
"No. You're Ray."
" Yeah."
"You know my name?"
" Yeah, I know your name."
"You're a liar. You don't remember me."
"I remember you. You're Carole Quirk's friend."
"But you don't know my name."
"Carole's friend."
"I knew it. You don't know. Hey, what happened to you?"
"Ah, nothing. I got kicked out."
"I know that, everyone knows that. What for?"
"Ah, I boosted some stuff."
" Yeah?"
" Yeah, it was stupid. I don't know."
"Claudia Shaeffer said your dad . . ."
" Yeah."
"Is that true? Is he in jail?"
" Yeah, he's an asshole."
"Why is he in jail?"
"For being an asshole."
"They don't put you in jail for that. Half the world would be in jail if they did that."
"You don't say that."
"What?"
"Asshole."
"So?"
"I don't know. I just knew that about you. You don't say . . ."
"Swears."
"No."
"Well, it doesn't make me a bad person."
"No."
"I wasn't raised like that."
"You're from, like, the South, right?"
"Kentucky."
"Yeah. Isn't your dad like a cop or something?"
"A state trooper."
"Oh, man."
"You don't like policemen."
"No, I don't know. My old man sure hates them. One thing."
"I guess he would.'
"One thing, they always call you by your whole name. Raymond."
"Yeah, that's my dad."
"Raymond, is this any way to get ahead in life? And shit like that."
"Well, it's not."
"But you're laughing."
"I can't help it, you make me laugh."
"Good, I like to make you laugh."
"You going to pay for that candy bar?"
"No, I'm going to put it back."
"You already ate like half of it."
"Well, then it should be half price."
"Oh, you think you're super bad, huh?"
"I would be if I had this hat."
"You'd be super retarded. Anyway, Mr. Rufe just put in a camera over in the corner, so he can see when you juveniles steal from him." "You think I care?"
"You should. He'll call my dad and my dad'll put you in jail."
"Like I'm scared."
"You should be."
"Maybe you should be scared of me."
"Why?"
"I was in jail."
" Yeah, but I'm not scared."
"Not even when I'm close up like this? In the middle of the night and you're all alone at the counter?"
"Not even then. Anyway it's like seven thirty at night. It's not even dark."
"What about now?"
"No."
"I think you should come for a ride with me."
"My shift is almost over."
"That's good, then come for a ride."
"I have to go home."
"Just for one ride?"
"You don't even know my name."
"I know it."
"You don't. Say it."
"Marletta."
"Say it again."
"Marletta."
"So you know my name."
"I know about you."
"What do you know?"
"I know you do gymnastics. I know you're smart. I know you like Carole Quirk but not her other friend, Amy."
"Everyone knows that."
"No, I know. I see you. I know your mom is black and your dad is white and that's why you moved up here."
"Who told you that? You think that's funny?"
"No."
"You better watch what you say."
"No, I know that's why you're so good-looking."
"I'm not."
"No, you are. I thought so the first time I ever saw you."
"No. No one says that"
"They're all dipshits."
"You think I am? Good-looking?"
"You are."
"Why did you do that?"
"Kiss you? I wanted to."
"You shouldn't."
"I can't help it. I'm a juvenile."
"You'll help it when my dad sees you."
"He protects you, huh?"
"Something like that. He gets pissed. And then he calls me by my whole name."
"What does he call you when he's not pissed?"
"You'll laugh."
"I won't. I swear."
"Like the swear of a juvenile is worth anything."
"What does he call you?" "Mars." 'Uh-huh."
"You said you wouldn't laugh." "I'm not."
" Yeah, you kind ofare."
"You're laughing, too. Look at my arm and your arm." "You're so pale."
"And you're like, I don't know. Honey or something." " Watch the hands, mister." " Your skin is soft , that's all."
"You shouldn't be back here. Mr. Rufe would be super pissed." "I'm just keeping you company." "Are you coming to junior prom?" "No, probably not. When are you done?" "Soon. I have to go home." "Nah, you don't." "You shouldn't do that." "Kiss you?" "No, you shouldn't." "I can't help it." "No?"
"No. I have to." "You have to?"
"I see you and I just . . . have to."
"Well, if you have to."
"I do. Do you like it?"
"Yes. Say my name."
"Marletta."
"You like me?"
"I like you."
"I like you, too. Ray."
On Tuesday he drove south through Philly, down 95 past the airport and the Burn Center. At Providence Avenue he got off and made his way to SCI Chester, the front looking like a factory or a school or something, if you didn't notice the coils of razor wire.
He filled out the forms using his own name, figuring if they didn't want him there they could kick him out. He wasn't sure he wanted to be there either, but the big bull with the gray flattop behind the Plexiglas just took his name and buzzed him through. He emptied his pockets and stood for a wand, and in about fifteen minutes he was sitting in the visiting room that stank of disinfectant and cigarettes, watching men in yellow jumpsuits trying to act casual with their wives and kids. He sat and watched the kids get tokens out of the change machines for sodas and candy, the same thing he had done the one time he had visited his father upstate all those years before.
He thought about riding the chain the first time, the way he did every time he saw coils of wire. When they sent him out to Camp Hill, his arms were busted, and he sat stiffly in the bus with his arms in the rigid casts while a guy with a lazy eye looked his way and moved his tongue over his lips in a pantomime of hunger.
He could remember little bits of the trial, but it was like he'd seen it on TV. The prosecutor looking pissed all the time and telling the judge how he had stolen a car from his drug buddy Perry March and racked it up with Marletta next to him, but the trial went by in a rush, like ten minutes of bullshit before they locked him up. None of what the guy said was right, but Marletta was dead and he didn't care what came next.
It was like his life had run backward, the parts before Marletta died real and true and clear, and everything after just a long twilight, a half-life where none of his vague wishes or worst fears materialized and it was hard to come fully awake, to open his eyes and see things as they were. Harder still to sleep, with no one he trusted there to stand watch.
HE PICKED THROUGH different pictures in his head. His father, short but wide through the shoulders; jet black hair in short spikes, holding a can of beer at a ball game. His mother sitting at the kitchen table, her cigarette in the ashtray stained with her lipstick, looking as if it had been dipped in blood. Her blank, defeated look, her eyes fixed somewhere else. His father in handcuffs in the kitchen in the middle of the night, the cops looking embarrassed on his mother's behalf, their eyes down.
Now his father shuffled into the visiting room in a bathrobe, and Ray wasn't ready for the sight of him. His hair was sparse, gray and patchy, and his lips were sucked into his mouth like he was tasting something bitter. He leaned heavily on the long table as he sat, and Ray saw his hands shaking. His father smelled like cigarettes and sour sweat, the wave of it taking Ray back to his own time upstate.
"So," said his father, in a petulant rasp Ray wouldn't have recognized. "I thought you was dead."
Ray opened a pack of cigarettes and shook one out, and his fa-ther picked it up with fingers gone orange at the tips.
"Gimme some credit, Bart. I'm violating my parole to be here." He bared his teeth in a mirthless smile and lit his cigarette. He couldn't look directly at his father's face, like it was a too-bright light. "I'm not supposed to associate with criminals. Not even the ones that raised me."
The old man nodded as if Ray had made a valid point. "Ever hear from your mother?"
"I thought I saw her once at the Pathmark in Warminster. Just wishful thinking. What's with the robe, old man? Playing sick?"
Bart shrugged, looked him up and down, everywhere but in the eye. "Cancer. In the stomach. Drinking that shit they make in here, the raisin jack."
Ray looked away, not ready for any of this, and his father looked down, talked to the tabletop.
"The guys put all kinds of shit in it, trying to make it taste like something."
"Shit, Bart. What do they say?"
The old man shrugged. "Six months, a year. Over and out."
"Did you talk to your lawyer? Maybe you can, you know . . ."
His father snorted, made a motion like throwing something over his shoulder. "Can what? Go where? It might as well be here as anywhere. Like you give a shit."
Ray let that hang. He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. His father grabbed the pack and tried to pinch one between his shaking fingers. Ray watched him for a minute, then took the pack and shook one out. Across the room, a man reached over to tousle the hair of a little girl, who slid away down the bench.
"What about Theresa? Does she know?"
Bart shrugged. "What do you think? She better off with me there, or here?"
Ray shook his head, things moving in this unaccountable direction. Why had he come? What did he need from the old man now?
"I keep remembering this thing," he finally said. The old man looked at Ray, and he pulled his lighter out and fired up his cigarette for his father. "We're in the old house on County Line, remember?"
His father nodded, looked at the tip of his cigarette.
"Anyway, I'm like seven or eight, I don't know. It's the middle of the night and I'm half asleep, but you got me down the kitchen in my pajamas. You been beating the old lady, showing her the errors of her ways. She's crying, but what the hell. I don't remember her doing nothing else. I'm out of it, and slow on the uptake anyway, like you used to point out. But after a while I get that I'm supposed to take a swing at her. You know, get in the habit. Learn how it's done. Take a lesson."
"Yeah, it was all me. I was the one ruined your life."
"Did that happen, really? Like I remember it? Would you even admit it now, you old fuck?"
The old man's breathing was shallow, his face red, the busted veins standing out on his cheeks. "She'd have ruined you."
"Yeah, I was lucky you straightened me out. You straightened me out so good I live alone like a fucking animal in a cave. Scared if I even bring a woman home I'll start beating the shit out of her." His hands were shaking, and he stared at the table a long time.
He heard a rasping sound like laughter and looked up, but the old man was crying, his hand spread across his face and the tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes.
"Don't hate me no more. It was the drink, Ray, the drink. I wanted to be good, but I was weak. I couldn't handle it. Working at that fucking quarry and breathing that shit all day and coming home to the water heater's shot and the bills and you sick all the time. And her wanting me to be something I couldn't. I couldn't." He put his hand across the table and touched Ray's arm. The old man's flesh was hot, and Ray wanted to pull away. "Do you think this is what I wanted? You think I didn't want to be going home at night? I was weak. I was weak. You can't be better than you are."
"Yeah." Ray lined up the cigarette packs in front of him and pulled back from the table. Nodding as if Bart had said something wise. "That's what I was afraid of."
RAY DROVE BACK up 95, his head on fire. He had felt driven to see his father again, to try to sort out what was him and what his old man and the way he'd been raised. He had come up to the edge of something standing in the store with that girl with the glasses, and he wanted to know would he always come up to that edge and look out and away at something he'd never really get to, never live out. Now Bart was going to die, and he didn't know if that mattered, if it meant he'd be free or stuck forever.
He remembered guys upstate drinking raisin jack, only the guys he knew called it chalk. Older guys, mostly, who'd been in for a de cade and more or were back for their third or fourth jolts. He remembered a guy named Long John keeping a plastic bag full of rotting fruit and dinner rolls under his bunk. He'd had a drink of thin, milky liquid from a glass jar and thought it tasted like orange-scented gasoline. He didn't get the point, with weed and meth around most of the time.
He'd hated every second of prison but saw guys at home there. Guys who'd get out with the couple of bucks they gave you, what the old cellies called shotgun money because that was all it was enough to buy. They'd blow the money in a couple of days, stick up a 7-Eleven or a gas station and be back inside. Get in bar fights still wearing the Kmart jackets they got when they were gated out. They'd talk like it was bad luck or people on the outside fucking with them that brought them back, but the truth was they couldn't make it outside.
One day upstate they took him off the laundry and sent him and a big convict named Merce outside to bury two guys who'd died within a couple of hours of each other in the infirmary. One from AIDS and one from old age. Merce spent the whole time telling him about the beef that got him locked up, killing a friend in the dope business.
"I went out to get my scratch tickets, I come back, the motherfucker's drinking my last can of soda. You believe that shit?"
"Uh-huh." They were standing in a field in the snow, watching a trusty scratch a trough in the frozen ground with a green backhoe. Ray kept his hands in the pockets of his thin jacket, and Merce smoked a cigarette, stabbing at Ray with the red end to make his points. Ray's arms ached where they had been broken.
"That wasn't Coke or Sprite, neither. That was Guarana, what my baby drinks."
"It was what?"
"Guarana. It's from Brazil. You can't get that shit at the Wawa. You got to go to a Brazilian store like all the way the fuck up in Norristown. I said, you did not just drink my last soda."
"Huh." The trusty was taking his time, smacking the ground over and over to break up the frozen clay. Ray felt the ground under him shudder every time the bucket on the backhoe hit the ground.
"He said you just go to the store. I said, bullshit you go to the store. I went to the closet, got my crossbow."
Ray looked at him, eyebrows up.
"You heard me. My baby didn't like guns in the house."
"Good compromise."
Merce gave him convict eyes, his head lowered, smoke from his Newport streaming from his nose. Then he gave a snort and started a deep laugh that shook his frame and started him coughing and made his eyes tear. "Yeah, I guess you got to laugh now."
There was a grinding snap, and the backhoe stuck fast in the frozen ground. The engine died, and they heard the trusty swear. Ray watched a thin film of frost materialize on the plywood coffins. Thought about it forming on the dead men inside the boxes. Merce's eyes fixed on the middle distance.
Ray said, "Lesson learned, huh?"
"Yeah." Merce bent to the stacked coffins, throwing the cigarette away in an arc of smoke like a plane going down in a war movie. "If only my baby had bought more soda, I wouldn't be in this fix."
FOUR
THE NIGHT MANNY picked him up it was raining, and they went for Rick, splashing through black streams covering the roads at every low intersection. Ray held the thickened bones in his arms, and under the dark clouds they sang to him, an eddying ache that made him wince and sigh. The van slewed in the water, and Manny cursed. "Christ, look at this. And it's still a thousand degrees out, how is that possible?"
"I figure it's good for us. Keeps the civilians indoors, watching TV."
They slowed in front of a white house in Horsham fronted with crumbling asbestos tiles. Rick limped out under a sheet of newspaper and climbed in. "Look at that rain. I thought maybe you'd call it off."
Ray shook his head. "Nah, neither rain nor dark of night. What happened to your leg?"
"Ah, I went around to my ex's to get my fucking stereo back, and her asshole boyfriend was there. Like to take my fucking knee off with a monkey wrench."
Manny put the van in gear. "Been there. You notice they always trade up for somebody with bigger shoulders than you?"
Ray watched Rick rubbing the knee. "You take something for that?"
"Ah, you know. I handled it." Manny looked over at Ray and shook his head.
"Rick, you high right now?"
"No, man. Just took the edge off, you know."
"If you aren't a hundred percent it's better you tell us now."
"No, no way. I'm cool, really. It was hours ago, and I'm in the pink."
Ray watched Rick, who looked out the window. He did seem all right. When he turned and saw Ray considering him, he smiled, held up his hands.
The car in front of them stopped short, and Manny stood on the brakes, the back of the van fishtailing. They all cursed, and Ray put a hand out to the dash. Rick slid forward and hit the back of Manny's seat; he screwed up his face and grabbed his knee. "Mother . . . fuck." He gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut.
After a minute they began to inch forward. Ray saw a cop, waving a flashlight, and a traffic barrier three cars ahead. They were being waved onto a side road. Far ahead a tree lay across the road, green leaves splayed out in the rain, pink shards of wood broken over the road looking like wet bone. Ray grabbed a map from the floor and began to try to orient himself.
Rick pointed at a road sign. "Left or right?"
"Left. No, right."
They turned onto a smaller side street. Dark water streamed in a ditch by the road, and lightning illuminated low clouds that looked to be a few feet above the trees. Ray called the turns. Once they ended up in a cul-de- sac and had to backtrack. Eventually they came out on the right road a few miles beyond the tweaker farm and pulled over.
Manny and Ray climbed into the rear, and Ray pulled a duffel bag out of the back and put it on the rear seat. He opened it and pulled out the DEA windbreakers and Manny's pump gun and handed them over. Next came a box of shells and a big Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. He held the gun out to Rick, opening the cylinder and spinning it to show him it was loaded. He pulled out three folded parkas and handed them around and then brought out two walkie-talkies and three heavy police flashlights. He flicked on one of the lights and pointed it at the walkie-talkies each in turn, tuning the dials to the same channel and then clicking them on. He adjusted the volume on both and handed one to Rick and clipped the other to his belt. He rummaged in the bag for a minute, pulling out items to show Rick and Manny and then dropping them back in the bag. Tape, the heavy wire wraps that they used as cuffs, a folding knife, a half pound of ground meat, bottles of water.
He took out his map and laid it on the seat and put the light on it.
"This side is me. I'm moving up from the street along these trees. You're on this side, and we're both moving parallel to the driveway in the middle. You two come to the side door here, I'm going to the front door. I'll take care of the dog, if it's out. Fucking thing barks nonstop anyway as far as I can tell, so it's not a big deal." He drew an arrow on the map.
"When you get to the side door here, key the button a couple of times. Don't fucking say anything, just key the button." He clicked it so they could hear the corresponding click and hiss on the other walkie-talkie. "I key you back and we go in." Manny, loading the shotgun, nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.
Ray pointed at Rick. "Just take it fucking easy. If you're clear when you get to the door, take off the parka so they can see the DEA jacket. They'll piss and moan, maybe they'll try to hide, but no one's going to draw down on a Fed unless he's fucking insane, and then we got a bigger problem."
Manny smiled. "Which is how to get the hell out fast."
"If they shoot, run. This'" Ray pointed at the Python in Rick's hands. "This is for show. You're not a Fed, you just play one on TV, get it? This ain't worth nobody getting a bullet in the brainpan. Not even those shitbirds up the hill. Plus the whole fucking place is liable to burn like a furnace you shoot off a gun in there. They're meth cookers. The fucking place is full of acetone and ether and Christ knows what-all."
Manny laid the shotgun down on the floor and went into his pocket for a glass vial. He pulled an old piece of rearview mirror out from under the seat and shook out three rocky lines of off-white powder. He took a flat piece of cardboard out of his pocket and pulled a single-edged razor blade out of it. He chopped the three lines into six. He rolled up a twenty and handed it to Rick.
"Oh, man, thanks." He did two lines and passed the twenty to Ray, who did the lines and then opened one of the water bottles and poured a little out into his palm and then snorted the water out of his hand.
"That is some nasty biker crank."
When they were set, Ray got behind the wheel and drove slowly past the property, pointing up the tree line he'd be walking. "I'll be heading straight up this way." He drove past the driveway to the fence on the other side of the property and stopped. Manny and Rick got out, guns out of sight under their parkas. They slammed the doors, and Ray angled the van over to turn around, awkwardly jockeying it back and forth until it was headed back up the road.
He parked again in the little turnoff and looked at his watch. Eleven o'clock. Grabbing the bag, he turned off the ignition and dropped the keys under the seat. After a minute of running through things in his head, he took a deep breath and stepped out of the van. He stuck the Colt in his windbreaker pocket and made his way up the hill, moving slowly in the black.
HE KEPT SLIPPING in the grass. He walked for what felt like forever and didn't seem to be moving far from the van. The night and rain turned him around, and he had to keep looking back down the hill to get his bearings. The line of trees seemed wider somehow and the ground more uneven than he remembered it. In a couple of minutes he was struggling, his own breath roaring in his ears under the parka and sweat pouring down his back. The bag weighed a ton, and he looped the strap over his shoulder.
After what seemed like an hour, he crested the hill and saw the lights of the house. He couldn't see the dog and thought that a good sign. He was panting now and dropped to one knee to catch his breath. There were lights in the house and one on upstairs in the barn, which he didn't expect. He had thought the building was a padlocked wreck and hadn't paid much attention to it. He took the binoculars out and put them on the barn window, but the dark made them about useless.
He put the binoculars away and moved toward the house along the driveway, then crouched behind the blue van, breathing hard. He felt exposed, the lights in the barn were throwing him off. His shaking hands were slick with sweat and rainwater and he kept sticking them under his parka and wiping them on his jeans. He moved around the van and then walked fast to the barn, keeping to the side away from the house. Now that he was close he could see the caved-in doors were open, and he swore to himself.
The black, empty doorway felt like a mouth waiting to close on him. He slowly crossed in front of the sagging doors and then edged around the building, stopping once to pull the Colt out of his pocket. When he came to stairs leading up inside the barn, he stood for a long time, listening, but heard nothing from inside. There was a hiss-click, loud in his ears from the walkie-talkie, and he jumped and almost pulled the trigger on the pistol.
He put his hand on his chest and willed his heart to stop racing, then moved quickly across the driveway to the side of the house away from Manny and Rick. He inched across the front, keeping low, ducking under a dark window to reach the porch. He pulled the parka off over his head and threw it behind him. He pulled the walkie-talkie out his bag, dropped the bag on the porch, and pointed the big Colt at the door. He keyed the mike twice and threw the walkie-talkie down and kicked the door in with a steel-toed boot.
THE HALLWAY WAS dark. There was a stink of ammonia and acetone and charcoal, the wet, catpiss reek of meth labs that made his eyes water. He heard Manny shouting that they were federal agents and did the same. He moved into the open space, wheeling left and right with the pistol. Somewhere in the house the dog barked, crazy to be let out. There were two dark and empty rooms on either side of the hallway and stairs leading up. He ran down the hallway screaming, "Down on the ground; get down!"
At the end of the hallway he turned right and saw Manny standing over Ponytail, who was on his knees with his hands behind his head.
Ray pointed at Rick with his empty hand. "Cuff him."
Rick stuck his pistol into his jeans and pulled a wire wrap from his belt. He pushed Ponytail onto the floor face first and jerked his hands up behind him, fumbling with the wire wrap. He rubbed his knee and winced. "Hold still, you dumb Piney fuck."
Ponytail screamed into the floor. "You got to read me my rights. You like to broke my nose."
Rick pulled the pistol out of his belt and smacked the barrel against the back of the prone tweaker's skull. "Shut the fuck up, hillbilly, or I'll break your head."
There was a piercing scream from the doorway, and the thick-waisted woman stood there in a yellow T-shirt and cutoffs pointing a long-barreled shotgun. Rick jumped up as Manny and Ray aimed their guns at her. The dog was going insane behind a door somewhere, the barking like a scream over and over.
"Drop the gun!"
"Federal agents!"
She swiveled the gun at Ray and Manny in turn, her eyes wild and full of tears.
"You leave him be!"
Ray pointed his pistol at the floor and held one hand out. "Calm down, for Christ's sake. No one's hurting anyone."
Ponytail tried to raise his head. "Charlene, go get my cell phone and call my brother!"
Ray bared his teeth, trying to smile. "Don't move, Charlene."
Ponytail's voice was hoarse, lisping through rotted teeth. "It's the Zionist occupying army. They come to put them chips in us."
"Chips? What?" Ray heard a loud metallic click and turned to see Rick pulling back the hammer on the big revolver, the gun at Ponytail's temple.
"Drop that'" was as far as Rick got before Charlene's shotgun went off, deafening Ray. The blast spattered Rick and Ponytail and a yellow refrigerator with buckshot. Ray dropped his pistol, and Manny pulled the trigger on his scattergun, knocking the woman back into the hallway. Rick howled on the floor, rolling in blood and brains from Ponytail's shattered head and what looked like milk leaking from a half-dozen holes in the refrigerator.
Ray felt like his skull was cracked, his ears ringing. He took two
steps into the hallway to see Charlene's staring eyes and caved-in chest. Manny stepped to the side door and vomited into the rain. Ray picked up his cold pistol and stuffed it into his belt. "Everyone be calm," he said to no one.
Rick moaned and turned in circles on the slick floor, trying to stand up. The air was full of blue smoke. Ray smelled burned gun-powder and the meaty tang of blood. He pulled a chair onto its feet and sat down in it. "Everyone just stay put." He felt insane.
There was a cracking somewhere and a rush of feet and the dog was in the room. Ray jerked at the pistol at his waist, but the animal careened through the kitchen and out the side door, knocking Manny off his feet and leaving a trail of bloody paw prints.
Rick sat back on his haunches, bleeding from his arms and his chest. "Jesus, my arm's broke." His eyes rolled back white and he fainted, falling into the corner against a pie safe. Urine splashed out of his pant leg as he breathed one last terrible, gargling breath, a sound like water emptying from a copper pipe. The dog's barking dwindled as it disappeared into the storm.
Manny lurched back into the room, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Ray shook his head, not believing any of it. He said, "We gotta go."
"Fuck that. I'm not doing this for free." Manny stepped across the kitchen, trying to avoid the mess on the floor.
Ray held his hand up. "I'll look. Let me look. Find something to get rid of this mess with." He looked around at the blood on the walls. "Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck happened?"
They stood there for a minute, and then Manny put the shotgun on his shoulder and walked out into the rain. Ray got up and walked back out through the hallway, trying not to look at the woman and to stay out of the widening pool of blood. Neither plan worked. He saw that her T-shirt was a uniform red now. He forced himself to keep moving, scraping his shoes on the linoleum to get the blood off. At the end of the hallway he turned left and came back out to the landing. He went out to the porch and rummaged in the bag for his flashlight. When he got back inside he pushed the broken door back into place and pointed the light into the corners of the front room. He could see the cooker with its tubes and wires, dark and cold, and thanked the Tweaker Jesus for this little bit of mercy. There were Mason jars and empty two-liter soda bottles on a long table, a stack of coffee filters, a pile of charcoal briquettes. In the corner of the room was a yard-high pile of empty charcoal bags and ripped packages for cold medicine.
He made his way upstairs, forcing himself to move fast and trust that there was no one left in the house. He kept replaying the scene in the kitchen over and over, trying to make it happen right. He moved from room to room down the narrow hallway, finding each one empty. A wet, reeking bathroom, the tiles peeled from the wall; empty bedrooms, old bedsteads furred with black dust. In what had been the master bedroom there were clothes on the floor, bottles of water, and a box of surgical masks. Under the mattress on the floor was a paper bag with a few hundred bucks in it, and he picked it up. He rolled it tight and jammed it into the pocket of the windbreaker. He pushed open the closet doors, pointing the flashlight beam at stacks of wood, a pile of newspapers with headlines about Reagan.
Off the master bedroom was a padlocked room, and he lifted his leg and kicked the door twice hard with the sole of his boot. The cleats gave way in the rotted wood, and the door swung back with a banshee howl from the rusted hinges. He found a light switch on the wall and pushed it up with a hand covered by the sleeve of his parka.
A faint orange light set in a lamp shaped like a rocking horse showed a child's room, a room for a girl: white furniture, a pink plaid ruffle around a sagging bed. Everything was sunken in gray dust unmarked by fingerprints. A brush with a red handle was sitting on a white vanity, a Mariah Carey poster hung bowed out and sagging. Ray thought there was something wrong about his going into the padlocked room, and standing in the doorway he wished he hadn't forced the door. The closet stood open, empty, and he half-heartedly opened a couple of drawers, releasing a shower of dust onto his boots. He turned off the light and backed out.
He came back downstairs and pulled open more closets. Kicked over a low desk and dumped out the drawers. Retraced his steps back down the hallway and turned left. A door hung on its hinges, the edges clawed. They must have locked the dog in here. He stepped in and covered his nose with his hands and tried to breathe through his mouth. There were piles of shit on the floor, a rubber replica of a rolled-up newspaper with holes chewed in it, a dented metal bowl. There was a cracked window and deep claw marks on the sill. On a table was a stack of plastic bags. He picked one up and dumped it out, and a dozen smaller bags of powder rolled out onto the table and the floor. He swept them back in and looked around for something to carry them in. On the floor was a duffel, and he pulled it open and saw bundles of cash, tens and twenties and hundreds held together with rubber bands. There were more plastic bags jammed with foil packages. He stuck his pistol into his belt and swept the bags from the table messily into the duffel and then hefted the bag with both hands and hustled it out the door. He dragged it out the front door and dropped it on the porch.
Manny appeared near the porch carrying a can of acetone. He and Ray went back into the kitchen and began dragging the bodies down the hallway and into the front room by the cooker.
Ray pointed down the hill. "Get the van, I'll finish this."
Manny ran off the porch and down the drive. There was a flash of lightning that lit the whole world, and for one fraction of a second Ray saw everything in a flare of blue white light and black shadow: Manny halfway down the drive, running flat out, the dead man and woman and their horror-movie wounds, the tracks of blood and fluid leading out to the hallway, the footprints, the money, the discarded shotgun, and his own terrible face in an antique mirror over the fireplace. His eyes were huge and white, his hair matted, his mouth open as if he were screaming. Then it was dark again.
He went back into the kitchen and bent down over Rick. Ray put a finger on Rick's neck but wasn't sure what he should find. He felt nothing but cold skin, and Rick's staring eyes were dry and black. Ray looked into the dead and empty pupils, inches from his own but staring through him, as if reading something written on the wall behind Ray's head. He almost turned to look.
Finally he grabbed Rick's jacket and pulled him slowly toward the door. The body twisted and began to come out of the jacket, and Ray struggled to get a purchase with bloody hands. He began to be conscious of the stink of shit and blood and piss, and he started to gag. How long had they been here? An hour? Three? Would it be light soon? He braced himself against the door jamb and pulled and got some momentum. He pumped his legs hard and didn't stop until he collapsed by the front door. Good enough.
He stepped out to the porch. He heard the van coming up the drive and grabbed Manny's shotgun off the bag and ran to take a position behind the ruined pickup in the grass. When Manny opened the door and jumped out, Ray stepped from behind the truck and showed himself.
Manny jumped. "Christ, you scared the shit out of me."
"Sorry. I was standing there listening to you come, and it just hit me that it might not really be you." He handed Manny the gun and ran to the porch and dragged the duffel, bumping, down the stairs.
Manny left the side door of the van open and came over to help him heft it. "Christ, is that all cash? How much is in here?"
"What ever it is, it's not enough."
They policed up the house and the yard, doing a quick look for anything they had forgotten or dropped in the excitement. Finally Manny went to the van and Ray went back into the front room. He picked up the acetone and uncapped it, splashing it on the bodies and the floor and backing out to the door, choking on the stink. He spat into the grass and then dumped the last bit of the fluid on a snapped-off piece of dowel rod he found on the porch and lit it. He tossed the can underhand into the house and threw the lit stick in after it. There was a rush of air and a thump, and the front room glowed blue for a few seconds and then flashed over white and orange and the front windows blew out.
He stood back and watched it burn for a moment, then ran over and jumped in the passenger side of the van. Manny gunned the engine, throwing gravel and splashing through ruts filled with water.
AS THEY CRESTED the hill there was a flash of lightning, and they both saw a car turning into the driveway in front of them.
Manny jammed on the brakes. "Oh, Jesus Christ. You have got to be fucking kidding."
"Swing right, up on the grass. Go." Manny spun the wheel and the van skidded and slid, the back end fishtailing around. Ray tried to see behind them, but what ever was going on at the house was still out of sight behind the hill.
"Calm the fuck down." The car moved slowly toward them up the driveway, something long and wide across the ass'a Dodge Charger, an old one. Dark blue, maybe, or black. Manny hooked around them, and Ray caught a brief glimpse of a young guy be hind the wheel, long hair and a neat goatee, smiling, and a dark figure beside him. Manny punched the gas and the wheels spun in place, burning a hole in the wet grass. The other car disappeared over the rise toward the house. Ray, breathing hard, put a hand on his chest and felt his heart hammering. Manny smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and stomped on the gas. The back end of the van slid down the hill and the tires caught. The van popped forward about three feet and the engine stalled. Ray put his hands up and caught himself. Manny hit the steering wheel hard with his chest. "Motherfucking motherfucker."
There was a couple of seconds of silence in the van, and Ray could swear he heard shouting from somewhere. Manny grabbed the key and twisted. Ray's mind went completely blank, and he just watched Manny cranking the engine over and over. There was a glow over the rise behind them, and Ray began to see red light reflected on the tops of the wet trees. The starter growled and finally caught, and Manny hit the gas and spun the wheel to straighten them out. He got the van moving down the driveway and picked up speed as they moved down the last of the hill and thumped down onto the street. Manny twisted the wheel and the tires spun and whined, trying to find a grip on the wet asphalt. They shot down the road as the Charger's headlights disappeared over the rise, where now Ray could see flames cresting the hill.
"Oh, Jesus, get moving." They were almost out of sight of the driveway when the Dodge shot back down the driveway and took the corner. Ray could see it fishtailing, and it almost kept going across the road into the trees, but the driver got it under control and gunned it. Smoke formed around the rear wheels as the car gained traction and shot forward after them. They lost sight of it as the van rounded a corner and began to climb.
THEY WERE LOST, and Manny was moving too fast for them to get their bearings. Ray tried to keep him moving east toward the Delaware, and Manny made turns when he figured the van could make it without catapulting them across an intersection and into the trees that lined the dark country lanes. Ray climbed across the seats and tried to hold himself at the rear window with the shotgun. He jacked more shells into the breech and held on to a seat belt strap as the van banked from side to side. Manny jammed on the brakes to make a turn, and Ray smacked his head against the door. The car would be faster and handle better on the wet roads, but once they had made a couple of turns it didn't seem likely that the men following them would know where they were.
Ray climbed awkwardly into the front and dropped into the passenger seat, sweating and cursing under his breath. There were no lights and not many signs, and none of them meant anything to Ray. They passed farms and small developments with a few houses and crossed a creek swollen and black in the moonlight.
There was a hissing, clicking noise, and Ray jumped in his seat.
A voice, close by, said, "Ten-four, good buddy."
Ray looked at Manny, who looked at Ray's waist. The walkie-talkie. Christ, they must have dropped the other one in the yard. The cheap thing only carried a few miles, so that meant the Charger was still behind them and moving fast to stay close.
"Man, you guys know how to party." Ray unclipped the radio from his belt and held it up. "Come on, let's talk for a minute."
Manny shook his head. "Throw that thing the fuck out the window."
Ray held up his hand. There was something about the voice. Ray wondered if it was the young guy he had seen at the wheel of the Charger. It was deep, confident. Amused, maybe, at how fast things could get fucked up.
"Say something. I figured you left this one behind 'cause you
wanted to talk things over, figure out how to resolve this thing."
The guy had a soft accent, a New En gland burr that slightly opened the vowels with r's and twisted others, like the way he said "resolve" with a throaty "aw" sound.
Ray clicked the handset twice, then, after a beat, twice again. Manny slowed at a five-way intersection, headed vaguely left.
The voice said, "Okay, that's better." There was a long pause. "I'm just trying to understand this. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Old Randy was a crazy man. Maybe things just got out of hand? You were just going over there to cop and Charlene came on to you, shows you her stuff. Randy flips out, starts in with the black he li cop ters or some shit? Something like that?" The voice was calm, but in the background they could hear the Charger's engine racing, trying to catch up with them.
Manny shook his head, glaring. "Will you throw that fucking thing away? Suppose they can home in on the fucking thing or something."
"They're not the CIA, man. It's just a pissed-off dealer, and maybe he tells us something we can use to stay the fuck out of his way."
The voice said, "I guess there are two problems with that scenario, where it's all just a big misunderstanding. One is this here radio. Which I can't figure unless you were police, or miscreants, and this little dime store thing is not police issue. The other thing'and this is where things get real complicated'the other thing is you stole my fucking money and my dope." The voice had an edge now. "Now, I know you might think I want to avenge the deaths of those two hillbillies or some shit. I tell you sincerely I am only thinking about the money." The voice was fading, static building on the line.
"So here's a way out for everyone. You just tell me where you are, you drop the bag out the door and drive away. Then this becomes a funny story about how you almost ended up getting tortured to death for no good reason, instead of a sad story about two headless corpses found in the river." Riv-ah, the way the guy said it. Ray tried to think if the guy at the farm house, Randy, had an accent, or the woman. Rick had called him a Piney, and that's what Ray remembered, a backwoods kind of accent tinged with Philly.
They came to a stop sign, and Manny turned right. The road climbed and twisted, and the van slowed with the effort. The voice got louder and clearer. Ray stared into the rear window, eyes burning with the strain of trying to pick something meaningful out of the wet dark behind the van. "What do you think, that you'd be that tough to find? A couple of white guys ripping off dealers in a brown van? This walkie-talkie tells me you've been doing this a while. And that means there are a bunch of people out there who want me to catch you and put a bullet in your eye."
There was lightning, and the walkie-talkie hissed and popped with static. "You should think about this. You can still make it all go away. The fire, that'll probably keep the cops out of it. I love a good fire, it's like the fuckup's friend." Ahead, two yellow eyes appeared in the road, and Manny stood on the brakes. The van jerked and swiveled in the water, and Manny fought to hold the road. The van spun until it was sliding broadside down the road. Ray was thrown against the door, trying to grab at the dash, the seat, anything. The eyes in the road got huge, like some kind of monster bearing down on them. Finally the van stopped with a scream of rubber. They sat for a moment, watching the deer move daintily into the trees. Manny let a breath out like air escap-ing from a tire and cranked the wheel until the van pointed back down the road.
The voice said, "Don't make me do all the talking, pal. I'm patient, but you gotta start dealing with this situation or there are going to be serious fucking repercussions." There was hissing and a harsh click timed with a flash of lightning. "I need that fucking money, you hear me?"
Manny hit the roof of the van with his fist. "That's enough of that shit." He grabbed the radio out of Ray's hand and sailed it out the window into the trees.
Ray nodded. "Yeah, fuck it. Just go." But he had wanted to hear more. He wasn't learning anything, not really, and he probably wouldn't have. It would have been impossible to say why he wanted to keep hearing the deep voice, telling him he was going to be caught and die, but he did. He would have sat there all night with the walkie-talkie listening to the terrible shit that was going to happen, if Manny hadn't grabbed the thing and thrown it away.
THEY MADE A right and then a quick left again and passed an old Victorian house with a bed-and- breakfast sign and then came to a dead end.
Manny yelled at Ray, "Where am I going?"
Ray took in the yellow sign marked with arrows pointing north and south. "This is River Road. Turn right and haul ass."
Ray stowed the shotgun under the first row of passenger seats and covered it with a parka and then climbed into the passenger seat again. The road was narrow, and they began to see traffic going the other way. Ray stiffened every time a car passed them, thinking they were going to get a face full of windshield if it was the Charger.
What could they know? So they had gotten that there were two of them in a brown van. The guys in the Charger had been at the house for like five minutes before they came out after Ray and Manny. If they had looked at their faces, what could they have seen? Ray had barely registered the driver of the Charger, and it seemed to Ray that the guy had been staring straight ahead.
"Assume the worst, right?" He looked over at Manny, whose face was dripping, as if the rain were coming directly at them into the van.
"I'm way out ahead on that. I'm thinking they're already at my house with a blowtorch."
"I mean, how much trouble could we be in? What could they even find out?" Ray's mind raced and his head throbbed. "They saw the van, so what? The plates are from the junkyard, and we dump the thing tomorrow somewhere." He wanted a cigarette. "They ID Rick? Can they tie him to us? And why would they? Who knows our business?"
"Hoe Down." Hoe Down was Ho Dinh, a Viet nam ese in Philly they downed drugs to from the dealers they took off. Ho was the one they ran all their scores by, the guy connected to the bikers and the organized guys running speed. They talked with Ho about everything they did, and Ho would warn them off dealers or cookers who were protected.
It made what they did a kind of public service for the established guys. Cleaning the little operations off the street, keeping things quiet and running smooth in ways Ray didn't even get. What Manny called agita, Philly Italian for heartburn, aggravation.
Ray said, "Yeah, but doesn't Ho have as much to lose as we do? If word got out he was taking the stuff we took off other dealers and putting it back out on the street?"
"Dude, some biker sticks a gun in his mouth he's only got one thing to lose."
"Yeah, I guess." Ray liked Ho, didn't like to think of the moment they couldn't trust him anymore.
"Then? At that minute? He's not thinking long term."
AFTER A FEW minutes they came to a bridge and crossed into Frenchtown on the Jersey side of the river. The houses were dark and nothing was open. When the road dead-ended again they turned south on 29, following the black coil of the river and passing through crossroad towns, most of them too small to have names. When they hit Lambertville, Ray told Manny to get off 29, and they drove through the town. Ray saw his first human being on the street, an old man walking a dog on George Street. As they passed under a streetlight Ray angled his watch and looked at the time. Twelve thirty-five. Everything had happened so fast. He tried to think about each thing but it all just unspooled in his head in a rush. The noise and fire and the stink of blood and ether and smoke. And those guys, those fucking guys in the Charger. At the south end of town they kept going, headed toward 95.
FIVE
THEY WERE TOO freaked to go home, so they rented a room at a no-name motel in Bordentown. Ray paid for the room, and Manny took the van off the street and parked it behind the hotel. When Ray got to the room, Manny was dragging the duffel bag up the curb. Ray unlocked the room and went back out and got the shotgun and wrapped it in his windbreaker and carried it in, locking the door behind him. He pulled the curtains tight, and Manny began dumping the contents of the bag out and sorting the plastic bags of dope from the cash. A fat black spider fell out of the bag, and Manny made a disgusted noise and stomped on it. Ray opened his knife and began cutting the rubber bands off the bundles of money and dumping more cash out of plastic bags. Manny found the remote and put the TV on, something to make noise and cover their conversation. The bag stank of dogshit, so when it was empty Ray took it outside and stuffed it in a trash can near the ice machine.
They developed a system, Manny making stacks of ones, five, and tens, and Ray organizing the twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Ray fished in a drawer and came out with a pad and a green pen. After a while Manny went out and got them Cokes from the machine. Around two Manny stripped off his clothes and took a shower. When he came back Ray leaned back against the bed and shook his head.
"I can't fucking count any more. I'm fried."
"Where are we?"
"Right now, I'm at'" He added a column of figures on the pad. "One hundred and twenty seven thousand, six hundred, give or take. Not counting the dope. And there's still all this shit over here." He picked up a pile of loose bills and let it drop.
"Jesus Christ." Manny sat on the bed wrapped in a towel. "How do you figure Ma and Pa Kettle put together that much money? That's a shitload of eightballs."
"Unless it's not theirs."
"The guys in the Charger?"
Ray shrugged. The most they had taken off anyone had been twenty-two thousand, from a Salvadoran crack dealer in a hous ing project in Bensalem, and that had been dumb luck. The Salvadoran's crew of jugglers'underage kids who stood on the street and serviced the rockheads walking or driving by'had been sitting at the kitchen table emptying their pockets at the end of the day. One of them, who looked about nine, had actually started to cry when Ray and Manny came in with guns up, shout ing. The kid had put his head on the table and started sobbing, yelling, "No me mate," with his eyes clamped shut. Don't kill me. Which was a pretty useless thing to say, but Ray guessed you had to say something when the guns came out, and that was as good as anything.
RAY WALKED OVER to the sink and ran the water, dumping it over his head with his hands. Manny put his dirty clothes back on and sat on the edge of the bed, paralyzed by the pile of cash and drugs.
"Seriously, man, what the fuck do we do next?" Manny asked. "Do we just clean the fuck out and run? This is too much fucking money for these guys to be the kind of assholes Ho lets us take off. These guys are going to come after us to get this back."
"We could run. Between this and the shit we got stashed, we could stay gone awhile."
"But?"
"But I don't know. You and me can run, but what about Sherry, or her mom, or Theresa? It seems like all they have to do is get ahold of someone we know and go to work. So unless we're taking everyone we know and moving away, we have to figure out a way to deal with this."
Manny kept his voice low. "Deal with what? Are you fucking nuts? That was the most fucked-up situation I ever been in, and I don't want to get in another one like it. We're not shooters, Ray. What we mostly do is take candy from babies, like that kiddy crew last week."
Ray adjusted the curtains to cut down on the light coming through and snapped off the light. He walked over and threw himself on one of the beds and put his hands over his eyes. "I gotta sleep for an hour. Get my head straight, so I can think. The guy wasn't from around here. Did you hear his voice?"
"Where was he from?"
"New En gland somewhere. He had that 'pahk the cah' voice."
"So?"
"So I don't know, maybe it means something. If he's in a club from up north and he's going up against one of the local clubs or something?"
Ray heard Manny light a cigarette, blow the smoke out. He turned to see Manny pointing at him with it, the end glowing red.
Manny said, "Or working with them, so he's that much more plugged in. Or he moved here twenty years ago and the accent don't make a fucking difference."
Ray shook his head. "Yeah, maybe. But if anyone knew him down here, Ho would have told us to back the fuck off."
Manny jumped up and picked up a pistol from the low chest of drawers and stuck it under the pillow on the other bed, then stretched out again. He put the cigarette on the edge of the nightstand between the beds. "Man, what happened back there'"
"Yeah, I don't want to think about that for a while."
"Think about this, though, okay?" He held the cigarette in his hand without lighting it, then dropped it back on the table. "I know shit happens and you can only plan so much. It wasn't anybody's fault except maybe Rick, and he paid for it." They could hear cars hissing by on the wet highway. "But here's the thing, okay? Next time someone shoots at us? Fucking shoot back."
HE LAY IN bed a long time before drifting into a thin sleep broken by sounds from the highway and the low, resonant rumble of thunder that seemed to come from the ground beneath him as much as the sky.
He's sixteen and standing in a dark living room in Abington in De-cember. It's late, maybe two in the morning, and Manny is climbing over the sill in the window behind him and trying not to laugh. The house is big, full of massive furniture looming in the dark rooms and throwing crazy shadows from the lights on the Christmas tree, the headlights of passing cars. Manny gets his boot caught in the curtains and goes over, jamming his hand in his teeth to keep from laughing out loud while Ray grabs his shoulders and drags him onto the carpet. He shakes his head at Manny, who finally pulls himself up and makes his way out to the kitchen, pulling sweat socks onto his long hands like gloves. The room is full of Christmas shit. Little houses with lights inside them. Holly wreaths set out on the tables.
Ray wanders down a hallway off the living room, passes a bathroom lit blue by a humming nightlight, pushes a door standing ajar with one elbow and finds himself in the master bedroom. A man and a woman are sleeping, two humped shapes under blankets. The room is darker than the rest of the house, and he stands a long time, his eyes adjusting. The woman is snoring slightly, her mouth open, blue-gray hair splayed out over the pillow, and the man is curled beside her, one slack white arm over hers. On a low dresser are pictures of kids he can barely make out. Grown kids and little ones that must be grandkids. On the table are the woman' s glasses and a picture of a man and woman that Ray picks up and turns in his hands till he can see it's the woman and he guesses the man, too, only they're young and skinny and the man wears a white jacket that's too big for himand the woman is wearing dark lipstick and has a flower in a thing on her wrist like the girls wear to prom.
He wants to go get Marletta and bring her here. He has the crazy thought that she could explain it to him, act as a guide somehow to the kind of life where people get old together and have kids and grandkids. He reaches into his thin coat and brings out a pint of 151 and quietly unscrews the cap and takes a small sip and makes a face. Something about the way the man's arm touches the woman's arm makes him think he could wake them up and ask them if him and Marletta could live here until she graduates and he turns eighteen and can get a job somewhere.
Finally he walks back out, passing Manny standing on a chair trying to get the star off the tree, fishing drunkenly with a fireplace poker and making a tinny musical clinking noise every time he hits one of the ornaments. Ray doesn't say anything, just goes back to the window and is climbing out when Manny sees him caught in the yellow glare of headlights, and as Ray lets himself down onto a dead azalea bush, he can hear his friend whisper, "Man, what's wrong?"
Manny dropped him back at his house at about five. Ray jumped out of the van and kept his hand stuck in his pocket, the Colt rat tling in his shaking fist. He tried not to run to the house, but he had an itch between his shoulder blades and couldn't keep him self from looking up and down the street over and over as he closed the distance to the door of his apartment. There was a bad moment when he realized his keys were in the gym bag over his arm and had to dig around in the bag while trying to look over his shoulder every other second. Finally he got the door open, jumped inside, and slammed it behind him, turning the lock and dropping the bag on the landing. He ran up the stairs and pulled the pistol out of his pocket, pointing it into every corner of the living room. He checked the bedroom, the closets, and behind the couch, finally closing the curtains and sitting in the darkened room for a minute, waiting for his heart to slow.
He picked up the remote and turned on the stereo, clicking through the CDs in the changer until he settled on old Stan Ridgway. After a while he got a chair from the dining room and took it down the stairs to the front door. He wedged it under the doorknob and checked the dead bolt and chain, then carried the bag upstairs. He went into the closet, reached up, and knocked back a trapdoor in the ceiling. Balancing on a Rubbermaid storage box full of stuff from his father's house, he reached through the hole in the ceiling and brought down a shotgun wrapped in rags and a box of double-aught shells. The gun was dusty and smelled of oil and old metal, and he sat down on the bed and wiped it clean, then loaded it and racked the slide. Stan Ridgway was singing about a lonely town, and Ray wished he could get high and let the rest of the day go by. Instead he stripped off his clothes and threw them in the trash can in the kitchen and pulled out the bag and left it on the kitchen floor.
The shower felt good, and he kept making it hotter and hotter, standing under the nozzle and letting the water pulse on his head while he tried to figure angles and means and whether it was possible to run or if he had to stay and slug it out with whoever was out there wanting him dead. He had to fucking calm down, is what he had to do. No matter how bad the guy in the Charger wanted them, it would take days for him to get to someone who could give him their names. They could make some kind of rational decision about what to do and where to go and how long they could stay there with the money they had.
He couldn't help thinking, though, how did he think this was going to play out, anyway? Even before they fucked up at the farm house, where was it going? How did shit like this ever end? Either they stopped or they got killed or they got locked up. Upstate he had known guys who were stone thieves, and they had all of them spent more of their lives behind bars than on the street. Ray was thirty, and he felt like he had come to the end of the life he'd been leading. He just didn't know if that meant he was going to change or if he was going to die.
He got takeout from the Golden Palace on 611 and sat in the dark listening to music. He ran through his Stan Ridgway CDs, grabbed by the strange mood of songs about loners drifting on western highways and people on the run from big trouble or fucked over by the ones they loved. He wanted to get into the last of the heroin, but he had things to do, so he loaded up the one-hitter with some coke Ho had given him the last time he had been at the big stone house in Chestnut Hill where he lived with his wife, Tina, and three kids. Ray had brought coconut rum and pineapple juice, something they were drinking that summer, and Ho and Tina kept bringing dishes out of the kitchen that smelled of tamarind and lotus and laughing gently at Ray's attempt to pronounce them.
Manny pulled up in front of the house at about midnight. Ray was already in his car and blinked the headlights when Manny pulled up. He followed Manny up 611 and then north on 202 into Jersey. The night out here was black except for the lights of farmhouses and little developments far away. There was lightning in the clouds but no rain, and Ray put the window down and smelled wet grass and asphalt, the smell of country roads.
It reminded Ray of riding the back roads with Manny when they were kids. Alternating long sips of vodka from the bottle with swigs of orange soda. A girl with a black eye they had picked up in Bristol. White-blond hair and Kmart perfume. They had pulled into a turf farm somewhere off Swamp Road and run around, drunk and high, screaming and rolling in the grass. Manny turned the radio up, and they lay on the cooling hood of the car and passed a beer-can bong back and forth and talked about running away to California. He remembered that he couldn't stop looking at the girl's small hands, fixed on them moving white in the dark, in that way that you sometimes did when you were high.
Now they pulled off the road into a soybean field. Ray stopped just off the road, and Manny pulled the van about fifty yards in and got out. Ray killed the lights and waited, and after a couple of minutes he could see Manny's silhouette against the orange haze in the sky from the cities to the north. There was a yellow glow visible through the rear window of the Ford that grew until it filled the back of the van. As they backed onto the road, Ray saw the windows blow out. They headed back down 202. Halfway across the bridge, Manny cranked down the window and sailed the plates out over the Delaware.
They stopped at a diner in New Hope and had a cup of coffee. They sat in silence, and Ray watched the young waitress come and go. She had a big ring on her left hand.
"Tell me about the guy who put you onto the house."
"Yeah, I been thinking about that. Danny Mullen, from down in Charlestown, over near Valley Forge. I saw him about three weeks ago down at the Neshaminy. He put us on the place in Marcus Hook, remember?"
"I remember. What did he say this time?"
Manny lifted his shoulders, spread his hands. "I don't know. He said he knew this place up north, a meth lab where some buddies of his had copped, and did I want it."
"Nothing weird?"
"He did say the guy was crazy, but I figured what the fuck did that mean? Who's in that business, you know? Sane people?" They watched the waitresses carrying plates of pie to a table of giggling teenagers at the front of the diner.
Ray tapped the table twice with his index finger, tried to look decisive. "Okay, we see Ho and we see Danny. Try to figure out if there's a way to know who we're dealing with. Did you talk to Sherry?"
"Yeah, I told her stay with her ma a few days. She was pissed, but she'll get over it."
"I figure I'll try to get Theresa out of town for a while."
"Yeah, good luck with that. When was the last time she was out of town?"
"She likes Atlantic City. She goes down on the bus with her
girlfriends. I could stick her in a hotel down there for a couple
days, I guess."
"How long do we do this? When is this, you know, over?" Ray shrugged and looked out the window, trying to keep the feeling like he had a plan and it was going to lead somewhere. He kept dancing around the end of it in his mind. Could they talk to the guy? Scare the shit out of him? Get something on him that made it more of a pain in the ass to come after them than it was worth? It was like a chess game where all the other guy's pieces were invisible while his own sat out in plain sight, waiting to get taken off the board.
The deal with Ho was supposed to keep this kind of shit from happening. Some crazy fucker might blow up at them, but mostly they were closing down people who would slink away and never be heard from again, or pull up stakes for some place where any tweaker with some ambition and a few charcoal briquettes could go into business.
THE NEXT MORNING was Sunday, and Ray got up early, restless and fidgety. He took a shower and went out to his car and pulled out, not knowing where he was heading until he found himself on 611 going north toward Doylestown. He cranked the window down, and the warm air felt good after all the rain of the days before. When he reached the town he parked and sat for a minute. As soon as he stopped the car, the air inside began to heat up and he began to sweat. He thought about putting on his jacket anyway, the better to carry the little .32 he had with him, but in the end he just left the pistol in the jacket and the jacket in the car. He walked by the bookstore again, but the dark-haired girl wasn't there. He prowled around the aisles for a while and bought himself a book on classic horror films, the kind of movie he hadn't been able to stay away from when he was a kid, even though thoughts of the monsters kept him awake at night.
He took his book and walked up the street, stopping at a Starbucks and buying a cup of coffee and then walking aimlessly past craft shops and jewelry stores. He liked the town. There were gaslights on the street and nice old buildings with a little character in the details. He walked and sipped at the coffee and sweated till he came to a bench in the shade of a tree and sat down and paged through the book. He was trying to find a reference to the movie the girl had recommended when he looked up and there she was. She was walking along with a paper cup of coffee and stopped to sip out of it, wearing a blue oxford shirt with long sleeves and what he thought of as a peasant skirt that hung almost to her ankles, some kind of reddish-brown print from India or someplace. He smiled and watched her walk toward him and almost didn't say anything as she got closer, until she was right beside him, looking distracted.
"Hey," he said, and held a hand up. She looked at him for a minute with a frown, and he began to feel nervous and maybe a little disreputable, and then her faced changed and she cocked her head and gave him that crooked smile again.
"Hey, Night of the Demon." She laughed and shook her head. "I'm sorry! I don't remember your name."
"No, I've been called worse. Anyway, I don't think I ever said it."
"No, but still. I could have said the cute guy who was looking
for a movie, or something." Her teeth were white and even, and he felt the levers moving in him again, wheels spinning and metal balls dropping and rolling through the hollow pipes inside him.
"I'm Ray."
"Michelle." She shook her head. "This is wild. Do you live nearby?" She looked away, and then back at him.
"No, actually down near Willow Grove. This is the second time I've been here, and I've seen you both times. Are you like the mayor or something?"
"The official greeter. How are you enjoying your stay in our little town?"
"Swell. You should have a sash and a top hat for a job like that." He should have been nervous and distracted, with his head on a swivel for trouble and unfamiliar faces, but he was relaxed and warm inside, and he let himself focus on the girl. On Michelle. She laughed and sat down next to him, and he moved over to make room. She reached over and put her hand in the book, took glimpses of him out of the corner of her eye. He could smell that sweet, fruity smell again.
"Horror movies, I love it."
"Not just any horror movies." He opened the page to show her the entry he had been reading, on Night of the Demon. "Also called Curse of the Demon, 1957. Dana Andrews."
"I'm impressed. You know your stuff."
"Ah, that's all I know, and I just read it. Anyway, everyone looks smart holding a book. I should carry one around all the time." She looked directly into his eyes, and he made himself look back. It was like looking at the sun, and he had to get used to it. "So, you must live around here, then."
She pointed up the street. "Right around the corner, on Mary Street. I was just on my way to Meeting."
"A meeting? For work?"
"Not a meeting, just Meeting. Quaker Meeting, the Society of Friends?"
"Oh, right." He had known a few Quakers. One of his social workers had been a Quaker, and one of his public defender lawyers, and there were plenty of old meeting houses around the county, but he didn't really know anything about what it meant to be a Quaker. It was a religion, he got that, but what they believed or what went on inside the meeting houses, he couldn't say.
"I'm not a member, just an attender." She said it like it had capital letters. "I'm not really religious, that's not my thing. It's just, I don't know. It's just nice. There's no priest or minister or anything. You just sit in silence, and if someone wants to say something, they do. Sometimes the whole hour goes by and nobody says anything, but usually someone'll say something about, you know, the war or how they're trying to work something out for themselves. It's like antichurch, you know? Church without all the bullshit."
He laughed a little. "That would be something to see. I grew up Catholic. All my friends are Catholic. I stopped going when I was eight. I had an argument with the nuns about pagan babies going to hell."
"Me, too! I love it." He picked up that this was something she
said, that she loved things. Of all the ways you could go through
life, was looking for things to love all that bad?
She shook her head. "They'd make these ridiculous sweeping statements about who was going to hell, which was pretty much everybody, and I'd sit there thinking about special circumstances where it didn't make any sense to me to send somebody to hell just because they were gay or had an abortion or were mad at God or had just never gotten the word about Catholicism before they, you know. Shuffled off this mortal coil." She moved her arms when she talked, making arcs and swoops in the air with her hands.
Ray said, "I never got the religion thing at all, to be honest. I've been, you know, around some pretty bad guys, and everyone always talks about God, or has to have some special diet or something because of their religion and meanwhile they're fucking everyone over for'" He almost said for a pack of cigarettes. Why not just roll up his sleeves and start showing her the tats? "For a nickel."
He had to be careful, but he didn't want to be. "Being in a church seems like, I don't know. Like just painting everything a certain color. You're still a, you know, a jerk, you do what ever the hell you want, because everyone does. But if you're a Catholic you paint everything red, if you're a Jew everything gets a coat of yellow, if you're Muslim it's something else. Does that make sense?"
"I think so. Like the fact of being in a religion means something more than it really does. Like you don't have to do the right thing or help anyone or think about your actions. As long as you say the right prayer."
He nodded but then shook his head. "Like I know shit from Shinola. Like I'm in the deep thinking business."
"I have to ask." He braced himself, waiting for the just-what-is-your- business question, and his mind raced for the right thing to say. "I've heard that expression a million times, but what the hell is Shinola, anyway?"
He breathed out. "Shoe polish."
She looked up at the sky, waggled her head. "Okay, I can buy that. But I think you do."
"I do?"
"Know shit from Shinola." She got up. "And with that, she headed off to church."
"Have dinner with me." He didn't know where that had come from. He felt like he was in some twilight zone, off from his real life, and he could go back and forth between the world where girls wore peasant dresses and he sat on the street drinking coffee and the world where he was being hunted for money and dope. Was he out of his fucking mind?
"I can't do dinner, but how about coffee? Tomorrow night, like seven?"
"Okay." He smiled. "At Starbucks?" He pointed back up the street.
She lowered her voice. "Fuck no. I hate their coffee. There's a little place around the corner, Coffee and Cream. They have great homemade ice cream, too."
"Tomorrow night." He stuck out his hand, and she took it. Her fingers were long and cool to the touch.
"Seven." And she moved away, waving over her shoulder.
He thought, if I still have my head.
AT TWO HE woke himself up trying to scream. A man with a misshapen head had been standing over him, staring down at him, eyes dark and hard. He opened his mouth and couldn't force anything out. No sound, no breath. When he opened his eyes he forced out a croak and started coughing. He got up and moved around the apartment with the Colt in his hand checking locks. Put the TV on and fell asleep to muted infomercials about no-money- down real estate.
SIX
MANNY PICKED HIM up the next morning in a black Toyota 4Runner he had picked up in Trenton, and they headed down 309 toward Chestnut Hill and Ho Dinh's. Ray had met Ho upstate when Ho was doing six months on a stolen merchandise beef and Ray was in for boosting cars, taking them down to a guy in Aston who moved them overseas in a complex deal that seemed like more work than work. Ho told him he could do better, and when Ray'd gotten out he began to move the cars through him and got a couple more points. Plus, Ho was easy to deal with, and Ray just liked the guy. Manny would always make jokes about eating cats and shit, and Ho just grinned and shook his head, as he had when the Rockview yardbirds began calling him Hoe Down about ten minutes after he got there.
When he had first told Ho what he and Manny were onto, taking down small-time dealers, Ho told him he'd help them when he could. Keep them from stumbling into something bigger than they could handle. Warn them off dealers and labs run by guys who were connected to the local clubs or gangs Ho did business with. Nothing was guaranteed, but up till now nothing had gone wrong and no one had come after them. Of course, they hadn't stolen a hundred thousand bucks off anyone before, either.
The meth business around Philly was run mostly by biker gangs, and they fought and jostled each other for territory. They'd rent farm houses in rural counties and cook up for a few weeks, then shut them down and move on. Once in a while a club from some other part of the country would come into the area and get beaten back, or some small-timer would appear and begin to get noticed, and he'd get smacked down or warned off, or they'd let Ray put him out of business, at least for a while.
Manny had a baseball cap jammed on his head and sunglasses on. They pulled to the curb in front of Ho's gray stone house in a quiet residential neighborhood off of Germantown Avenue. Ray got out with a gym bag, and Manny took a pistol from beneath the seat and stuck it under his thigh.
Ray moved up the walk. In a second-floor window he saw a man with binoculars around his neck and wraparound sunglasses that made his face unreadable. It was Ho's cousin, Bao, a wordless, stone-faced killer as broad and muscular as Ho was thin and frail. Bao had done serious time for killing two Chinese guys in some kind of scrape over the massage parlor business. Ray had seen him working out in Ho's yard, massive shoulders painted with stalking tigers and smiling demons. Now he nodded to Bao, and Bao nodded back and pointed to the door.
Ray knocked, and Ho's wife, Tina, let him in. There were three kids sitting at the breakfast table and an old woman stand ing at the kitchen counter and some kind of wild exchange going on. The smallest girl had a cereal bowl on her head and was banging it with a spoon. The old woman was making angry faces and talking a mile a minute in Vietnamese. Ray guessed it had something to do with how kids should act at the table. Tina led him out into an enclosed porch looking out at a neatly trimmed lawn. She pointed outside to where Ho stood over an older man Ray took to be Ho's father, kneeling in a patch of garden.
"There he is, arguing with his father about bitter melon." Ray shrugged and smiled. Tina threw her hands up. "Don't ask." She gestured to a recliner. "Want some coffee, Ray?"
"No, I'm good, Tina, thanks." She went back inside.
Ho was short and rail thin, with glasses that gave him a studious look. He nodded his head toward Ray and smiled. He exchanged some more words with the man in the garden and came around to the outside door of the porch. He waved to Ray to follow him, and they walked back to the kitchen, where there was now a high-pitched argument about breakfast foods going on. Ray figured Grandma was pushing for something healthy, holding a heavy frying pan and pointing it at the kids, who were pouring cereal with a wild abandon. Two dogs scrambled to get the cereal that hit the floor. Ray thought it was funny how much you could get without knowing the words at all.
Ho let Ray go ahead of him down the stairs and locked the door behind them. He clicked on the light, and Ray settled on a leather couch. The room was furnished tastefully, with a slate bar and dark furniture, muted prints of Chester County on the walls. There was a massive safe on one side of the room and a locked metal gun cabinet next to it. Ray figured this was the safest room in Philly and felt some tension go out of the muscles in his shoulder. He put the bag on the table and waited for Ho, who grabbed a bottled water from a minibar and offered Ray one.
Ho pointed to the bag with his bottle. "How's business?"
Ray raised his eyebrows. "That's an interesting question. I'm hoping you can help there."
Ho sat down and opened the bag. His eyes got wide. "Christ." Ho had been in the country since he was two and had only the ghost of an accent that surfaced in clipped consonants when he was agitated.
"Yeah, wow is right. Plus a nice haul of cash."
"But?"
"But, there was a mess, and someone put their eyes on me and Manny."
"This was that thing in Upper Bucks, right? It was on the news."
"Somebody with an interest in the place shows up just as we're leaving. We see him, he sees us. Plus, he finds a walkie-talkie we left on the ground, starts talking to us. Telling us how easy it's going to be to find us. Two guys ripping off dealers."
"He got a good look?"
Ray shook his head. "I don't think so. It was dark, it was raining. But man . . ."
Ho took the bag off the table and knelt by the safe.
"He said something?"
"He was just so fucking sure of himself. Like it was a matter of time."
"That's our game, though, isn't it?" Ho turned the dial on the safe with small, precise movements, then pulled the steel handle and opened it. He took a canvas sack out of the safe and began transferring the dope from the bag Ray had brought to the sack. "What we do, how we make money. In what I do, in what you do. It's the image you project. You play a role, right? It's what keeps people from doing something stupid, at least most of the time." He put the canvas sack in the safe next to some neat stacks of currency from different countries. "But it's all an illusion. The illusion of reputation, the illusion of control." He pulled a colorful bill from the stack and put it on the table between them. "Even this, when you think about it."
Ray bent over and looked at the bill closely. It was beautiful in the way foreign money was often beautiful next to the monochromatic green of U.S. bills. He picked it up and turned it over. One side was a subtle pink and showed some kind of government building and had "1000" printed on it, the only thing Ray understood. The other side, a soft blue, showed men riding elephants.
"Where's it from? Looks like Asia?"
Ho smiled ruefully. "Vietnam. Actually South Vietnam, about 1975." Ray held it out to Ho, who waved it away. "Keep it."
"What's it worth?"
"About five bucks, to a collector. Which is my point. Even money is just a note from the government saying, 'We promise this piece of paper is worth something.' It's just a bet, right? On that illusion, or projection or what ever it is." Ray folded the note and put it carefully in his shirt pocket. Ho pointed back up the stairs. "My old man left South Vietnam with a couple million dong. That's what the note is, it's a thousand South Viet nam ese dong. By the time he got to the States the money wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. He talked to a guy from the State Department and the guy told him to wipe his ass with it."
"But he kept it."
"I guess it's a reminder. At the end of the day you can't depend on anything. Everything changes, everything ends. All you got is what you got up here." He pointed to his head. The sound of high voices in argument bled through the ceiling. Ho smiled. "And family."
Ray knew how Ho felt about family. He remembered Ho telling him about his parents taking him out of Vietnam right after the war, when he was barely a year old, his mother and father carrying him in their arms in a leaky boat across the China Sea. His father had been a colonel in the army, and they were on a boat with about fifty people who wanted him dead. The army and navy dissolved, and deserters were cruising around in stolen patrol boats and one of them attacked the boat and machine-gunned everyone. Ho's parents hid with him among the dead. They drifted around the ocean for days with no water until a Taiwanese trawler picked them up.
Ray tried to picture the ferocity of that kind of love, and he thought about his father and mother and about how maybe family could be one of those things that just ends. Maybe it was all six kinds of bullshit, and you just made a choice about what illusion to believe.
RAY ASKED IF Ho had any idea who the guys were, running a dope lab in a farm house in Bucks County. Ho shook his head.
"I have two guys I ask about that shit. It's not an exact science, I just ask them what you ask me, if you go to a certain cor-ner on a certain street, does anyone have a problem with that? They tell me no, or yes, and if it happens I down some of the money I take off you to them. Usually, they're happy to have less competition." Ray described what he had seen of the guy and the car, the New En gland accent. Ho nodded and said he'd quietly ask around.
Ray put his hand up. "For Christ's sake don't let this get back to you. Maybe it was all talk, but this guy sounded crazy. All I need is enough information to get to this guy before he can get to me and Manny."
"You need anything? Guns, ammunition?"
"Guns I got. My old man used to say you didn't need more guns than you got hands, and I got more than that."
Ho looked thoughtful for a minute, then held a finger in the air. He went to a closet with a steel door and pulled a ring of keys out of his pockets. After a second he found the right one and snapped open the door, stepped inside, and was gone for a minute. When he came out he had what looked like two dark blue sleeveless sweaters, each wrapped in plastic. He handed them to Ray, and he felt how heavy they were. Bulletproof vests.
"Yikes. I don't know, man. If it comes to this . . ."
"If you're not going to run, then you're going to find him or he's going to find you. What else could it come to?"
RAY WENT OUT to the 4Runner and put the vests in the back and covered them with a gray blanket. Manny was smoking and keeping his eyes on the street.
"Ho will pull the money together in a few days. If he moves it first there's more for us than if he has to front it."
"Is that Kevlar vests?" Ray nodded, and Manny sighed. "Great. Well, at least we know Ho's on our side. That's something."
"He's going to ask around, see if he can find anything out about these guys."
"Where to now?"
"Let's swing by and see Theresa and keep trying to get ahold of Danny, or someone who knows him."
Manny started up the car, and they moved down the street. Manny looked at Ray and then back at the street.
Ray watched him. "What?"
"He had a black eye."
"Who?"
"Danny. He had a black eye when I saw him. It just came into my head. I didn't think of it before."
Ray looked away, thinking. "So maybe . . ."
"Maybe he had a beef with the guys he put us onto. Maybe he thought why not make a few bucks putting me onto them 'cause he was in some kind of scrape with them. They ripped him off and threw him a beating or something. Or they just pushed him around 'cause he's kind of a punk, Danny."
Ray put his hands over his eyes, suddenly tired. "Maybe. Or maybe he just fell down 'cause he's a stone junkie and a thoroughgoing dipshit."
"Maybe." Manny laughed and shook his head. "You know, I'm
starting to have more respect for the police. This is some Sherlock Holmes shit."
THERESA WAS SITTING in the living room talking on the phone when Ray came in carrying a plastic bag under his arm. Manny was sitting in the backseat of the 4Runner, trying on the vest and watching the street.
"How long will that take?" she was saying, making notes on a yellow pad. She had a cigarette going and had the phone book open and papers spread out on the coffee table. When she noticed him come in, she waved and made a motion with her hand, opening and closing like a mouth flapping. "And how much will that cost?" She made more notes and shook her head. After another minute of listening she hung up the phone.
"What gives, Ma? Looks like big business."
"The fucking government and fucking lawyers." She picked up her cigarette and squinted at him through the smoke. "I'm about ready to unscrew somebody's head."
"What is it? You got tax problems?" She made a small motion with her head, like she didn't want to talk about it. "You need more money, Ma? You just gotta ask."
"Well, yeah, I'm going to need more money, but it's not for me."
His face darkened. "I can see where this is going, and I won't fucking have it." He stood up.
"Raymond, hon." He stood at the stairs with his back to her.
"Theresa, there's nothing I don't owe you. For you, what ever you need, you know you got it. For that prick, I got nothing. He can die right where he is."
She said, "He told me you went to see him." Ray nodded and went into the kitchen, rummaged around in the fridge. "Then you know," she called from the living room. "You know he's got just a couple good months left." She got up and moved into the kitchen and stood over him. He took out a beer and sat down at the table, and she sat across from him. He looked at the bottle, taking a dollop of foam off the mouth of the bottle with his tongue.
She spoke quietly, with no force in her voice. It was tougher to take than if she had been screaming. "The first time you got locked up, who was there for you?"
"You."
"Me. And the second time, when you went to Lima, and the time after that when you went to the penitentiary. I never asked nothing from you and I never will. Not for myself."
Ray took a long pull on the beer and then played with the label, peeling a corner up and plastering it back down. The dog sighed under the table. Ray put his hand over his face, talked through his splayed fingers. "You know, for a long time I just figured he killed her, my mother. One day she was gone, and he said she ran off, but I just figured he got so juiced and crazy he split her skull and dumped her in a ditch. Then that postcard came, and at least I knew she was alive somewhere."
"He loved your mother, and he loved you. He still does."
"Maybe. I don't know. But what the fuck good did it ever do any of us? Even you?"
"It's not about what people do for you or to you. This is what I think: You just never give up. That's what family means. He's your family and I'm your family, and you're ours. And that's that." Theresa went to the cabinet and got out a glass. She took the bottle from Ray and poured the beer into it. "I'm not stupid, Ray. You got a duffel bag full of money and no job. You and that dopehead Manny are stealing or dealing drugs or something'"
"Ma'"
She held up a hand. "Don't even start." She sat across from him at the table and picked up her lighter. "Just grit your teeth and give it up."
Ray blew out a long breath and held his hands against his temples. It was like every cell of his brain was firing at once. Too many wants and fears were crowding each other in his head, and he couldn't sort them out or figure which were the important ones. He couldn't pick anything new up without dropping something. He felt like he had run a hundred miles in the last few days and he hadn't gotten anywhere, had no idea what direction to move. He had the feeling again that he wanted to cry but that if he did he would lose control of himself completely. His eyes burned.
"Okay, I'll make you a deal." He combed his fingers through his mustache and made calculations in his head. "I'll finance the great escape if you go down the shore for a few days, on me." Her eyes narrowed, and she chewed her lip thoughtfully. He held up his hands. "Don't blow a head pipe trying to figure my angle. Just do what I say and we all get what we want. Though from what Bart said when I seen him inside, I don't know that he wants what you want here."
"Okay, okay, but I got calls in to the lawyer and the DOC. I'm at the shore they won't be able to get me."
Ray opened the plastic bag and pulled out a throwaway cell phone. He grabbed a pair of scissors off the counter and cut the package open. He booted up the phone and waited for a signal, pulling a pen and a pad of Post-its from a caddy near the wall phone. "I got you covered." He watched the readout and scribbled down some numbers, then handed her the phone and the Post-it. "For the next few days this is your phone number. Call everybody back and give them this number. Keep it with you all the time, and I'll check in with you every day or so. After you talk to the lawyer and whoever, pack a bag and I'll take you down to the limo."
"You're in some kind of trouble, Raymond. Don't think after all these years I can't read you like a comic book, you little pissant."
He dialed his own cell phone number, and the phone in his pocket buzzed. "Nah, I'm trying to stay out of trouble, and I'm trying to keep you out of trouble, too. So do what I say for once in your life. I'm taking you out of here in half an hour. So do what you have to do."
"I'm an old lady, Raymond, it takes me a while to'"
He held up his hands. "Ma. Don't talk, pack."
"What about Shermie?"
Christ, the fucking dog. "I'll get him to that kennel up on County Line."
While Theresa got her things together and kept a running com plaint going about being rushed out of her own goddamn house, Ray went back into his bedroom and pulled the duffel out from un der the bed. He had to assume at some point they'd be here, and he didn't want to leave anything for them to find. The bag was heavy, so he hefted it in two hands and lugged it out to the Toyota and set it on the open hatchback. He took out money in short stacks and put two in his pockets, handed two to Manny, and held two aside for Theresa. Down the street, two kids crept around their yard with water pistols, angling for position from behind bushes and skinny trees and then popping out to squirt each other, shrieking. He went back into his room and stood on the bed, pushing aside a ceiling tile and bringing down a tape-wrapped square of bills and throwing it on the bed and then reaching up for a short-barreled police-issue shotgun and a box of shells. He wrapped the money and the gun in his bedspread and carried it to the car.
He kept hearing a voice in his head telling him to leave it all, the money and the guns and the whole thing, and just get in the car and drive away. Was it Marletta's voice? Maybe it was, trying to propel him away from the terrible things he had done and the terrible things he might do now. Was he really trying to get to some kind of safety or just so far down this road he couldn't see any other place to go? He had been thinking so much he'd like to talk to her again, to ask what he should do. To explain he wasn't trying to hurt anyone, not really. He'd just fucked up so many times that every move seemed wrong, every way he could go seemed to lead down into a hole.
Manny was dialing the cell again, and he snapped his fingers to get Ray's attention. Ray looked up, and Manny mouthed Danny and handed the phone to Ray.
"Hello?" The voice sounded whiny, young. Something else, agitated.
"Danny?"
"Who is this?" Fear. That was the something else he heard. There was a tremor in Danny's voice, and Ray heard him breathing hard.
"Danny, it's Ray. Manny and Ray."
"You fucking guys, what did you do?"
"We did what you told us to do, Danny."
"No, no way. I never told you to kill nobody. You fucking guys." Whining, like a kid, Ray thought. Jesus, and this junkie dipshit knew who they were.
"Danny, don't be an idiot. We're on a cell phone."
"You think that fucking matters now? You fucking guys, honest to Christ."
"Tell me what's going on."
"What's going on? They know me, that's what's going on. You got to get me money and I mean right fucking now today, got me?"
"Danny, what did you get us into?"
"What did I get you into? Are you high? Manny never told me nothing about killing nobody."
"What do you mean, they know you?"
"These guys from New Hampshire. They stayed at my fucking house, they know where I live."
"Jesus Christ, Danny, why would you put us on to something that could get back to you?"
"I need money. I got bills and shit. I got a dependency problem and I owe people and I had no idea you two fuckups would get somebody killed."
"Danny, they don't care about that, which you should please stop saying on the fucking phone. They want their money back."
"I need my money. You come here and gimme my money so I can get gone."
"Why did they for Christ's sake stay at your house?"
"My cousin, Ronnie, he knows these guys from being inside up there."
"Jesus, Danny."
"And they gave me money and I got dependency problems. I seen they were trying to get established down here. And I thought you guys weren't going to fuck this up so bad. Ronnie called me."
"Danny."
"You better fucking hurry up. Those fuckers come back I am giving you two assholes up, you hear me?" There was a click and the line went dead. Ray tried calling back, kept hitting the send button, but Danny never picked up again.
Manny raised his eyebrows at him, and Ray shook his head. He couldn't believe he had given his life to a junkie for safekeeping.
THEY WENT TO Theresa's bank, and Ray gave her money to pay lawyers and what ever expenses she thought might come up, then dropped her at a hotel in Willow Grove where she could meet a limo to take her to Atlantic City.
He went into the lobby and got a ticket for the limo and a schedule while Manny took her little paisley suitcase out and extended the handle. When Ray handed her the tickets she held him close and kissed his cheek.
"I know you're pissed. I know it. But I did the same for you and I have to do this for him."
He held up his hands in surrender and shook his head, smiling, and backed up toward the car. Out of her kitchen she looked tiny, frail, but her chin was up and her eyes bright.
She said, "Family's got to come for you when no one else will."
He took out his cell phone and waved it at her to remind her to keep it near her and on, and Manny put the Toyota in gear and they drove up to the Wal-Mart at Jacksonville Road. Manny pulled the Toyota up to the door when Ray came out, and he piled the things he had bought in the back. Manny drove up to a U-Store- It around the corner. They rented a narrow, cinder-block storage unit for a couple of months and paid a hundred and eighty bucks.
They drove down the long, empty rows of doors and found the unit they had rented, number 181. They angled the car in and got out, and Manny mouthed the number to himself. Ray laughed, and Manny said, "What?"
"You're going to play that number?"
Manny said fuck you and laughed and hauled the door open and went inside. Ray took some flashlights and batteries out of a plastic bag. They closed the door and turned on the flashlights and sat on the cement floor with the bags, the guns, and the money. Ray sorted out his cash from the money he'd been holding for Manny and the money they owed Danny, splitting everything between two imitation leather suitcases with the tags from the Wal-Mart still on them. Manny loaded and checked their guns and put them into the olive duffel. Ray had bought them some bottles of water, a couple of Tshirts, and candy bars, and Manny put them into a new knapsack.
When they were done they shared a bottle of water, their faces lined with sweat. Manny opened the door a crack to let some air in.
Ray put one of the flashlights up against his chin and made a moaning noise like a ghost in an old radio program. "It is later than you think."
Manny made a face. "What's that?"
"Something my old man used to do."
"Christ, what, to help you sleep?"
Ray turned the light on the floor. "Yeah, he was a charmer. It was something from an old TV show. Used to scare the shit out of me."
Manny lit a cigarette, waved the match out.
Ray said, "Guess we can't stay here forever."
"Nah. It's too fucking hot, for one thing."
"We had it sewed for a while there, huh? Set 'em up and knock 'em down. How did things get so fucked up?"
Manny flexed his skinny biceps, his tattoos sliding and puckering on his arms. "Things are what they are. The thing I don't get is why you think they should be any different."
"We had it under control before. If it wasn't for that fucking Rick, or that moron Danny . . ."
"Oh, will you please? If it wasn't those two it would have been one of the tweakers. Somebody was going to go for a gun eventually. Somebody was going to dime us to the cops or just come to our houses in the middle of the night." He stabbed the air with his cigarette. "You think, what? Shit can't go wrong cause you're smarter than they are? Cause you got a plan?"
"I used to think that. I used to be one smart motherfucker." He watched a bee hover in the light from under the door, jinking back and forth, looking for an angle on something it wanted. "Now I don't know shit." He took the keys to the padlock out of his pocket and gave one to Manny.
"Listen, I got to say this out loud. You think there's any point in giving the money back?"
"Only if you want to be standing still when they kill you."
"Yeah."
"You heard that fucking guy's voice. What do you think he's going to do? Say thanks and no hard feelings?"
Ray shook his head. He couldn't say he saw it any different. He shifted on the cement. "If anything happens, we . . . split up or you don't know what happened to me, just leave my bag here for a month and then come back and give the rest to Theresa."
"You don't have to say it."
"I know. See, I'm making the possibility that you could lose track of me but I could still be alive. Just by saying it out loud."
"You think that's how it works?" Manny smiled and shook his head. "So, we go into this fucking hornet's nest and I don't come out. And if I don't come back and get my hundred and fifty thousand dollars, it's not because someone stuck a gun in my mouth and punched my ticket."
"No, not necessarily. You could've just gotten real busy doing
something else and the money just slipped your mind."
"I think you slipped your mind. Look, Ray, we're just a couple of lowlifes. Guys like us, we make our run and we go out. We get locked up, we get killed." Kilt, the way Manny said it. "We knew it going in."
"Did we? I don't remember going in, is the thing. It was like I was born in."
"Yeah, well, I never got what you were doing anyway." Manny scratched his neck. "I mean, you were smart enough not to get caught up in this shit."
"I was? Why didn't someone tell me before?"
Manny tipped a bottle of water over his hair and shook his head like a dog coming in out of the rain. "I don't know. I figure it's some kind of fuck-you to your old man. Something like that."
"Maybe."
"Anyway, you were always good company, and who wants to do this shit alone?"
SEVEN
AN HOUR AND a half later they were coming off of 202 in Malvern. The sky was full of clouds, white and dark blue moving across the sun. Things could go either way, more rain or more sun. There was a breeze, but it was just hot air moving. Ray kept trying Danny's cell phone number but got nothing. It didn't mean much. Danny used, and he could've lost the phone or had his service turned off or just been bingeing on dope and ignoring the ring. They turned onto a narrow country lane, and Ray began looking at the numbers on mailboxes. Finally they turned into a driveway that wasn't much more than a trail into the woods.
The house where Danny lived with his mother was speckled with green'some kind of mold or fungus that made it seem as if the house were being reclaimed by the forest. There was a washing machine rusting in the yard and cracked and rotted asbestos tiles on the walls. A pickup truck sat in the carport with blue plastic covering a missing passenger side window. Manny turned off the engine, and they sat for a minute, watching the house. Somewhere far away a dog barked and birds moved in the trees. Ray began to open the door, and Manny put a hand on his arm and reached into the backseat for the vests. They struggled into them, sweat pouring down their backs, and then stretched and shrugged, trying to get used to the bulk. Manny lifted a hip and awkwardly dug a one-hitter out of his jeans, and they both did jolts of brown meth. Ray smacked his forehead while the dope burned in his sinuses like he'd fired a flare gun into his head.
They both got out and left the doors of the 4Runner open. Ray held up his hand for Manny to stay at the car. He nodded to Ray and pulled his shotgun from under the seat and stood with the open door between him and the house. Ray reached over the seat and got his Colt semiauto and worked the slide, putting a round in the chamber. Maybe it was all for nothing, maybe Danny was okay and they could give him some money and send him packing, but the house sat there closed and quiet in the woods, and Manny and Ray looked at each other, feeling wrong.
Manny wiped sweat from his face with the heel of his hand. He flexed his shoulders and whispered, "Christ, I can barely move in this thing. I feel like a fucking astronaut."
Ray held the Colt behind his leg and walked to the front door. He looked back at Manny and then knocked on the door with his fist. "Danny!"
They stood for a minute. Ray blotted at the sweat at his temple with the back of his free hand. He knocked again, this time banging the butt of the pistol against the door. After a minute he tried the door and found it unlocked. He looked back at Manny, who put the shotgun sight on the door. Ray stood clear and pushed the door open, flattening himself against the outside wall. There was no sound except the door creaking as it opened. Manny shook his head.
Ray moved inside, pointing the gun into the hallway ahead of him. He called Danny's name again and waited. After a minute with no sound but the birds in the trees and the faraway dog, he moved down the hallway into the kitchen. He circled through the first floor, checking the empty rooms. The place was a mess, and there was a stink of unemptied garbage and mildew. In the living room there was a big new flat-screen TV standing next to the box it came in. This was Danny spending his end of the score he had put Manny and Ray onto before he even got his hands on it. In the living room a few steps from the front door, a suitcase was open on the floor. Clothes were pulled out and heaped on the dirty carpet.
He went to the front door and shrugged at Manny, who came out from behind the car door and moved around the back of the house. Ray went up the stairs, and the garbage smell got stronger. All the doors were open except one, and Ray moved to it and stood in front of it for a moment, adjusting the pistol in his sweaty hand. Finally he pushed the door open and looked for a minute before stepping away and breathing through his mouth, gasping and spitting to keep from throwing up.
He forced himself to look again. An old woman was in the tub. There was blood and vomit on her chin and down the front of her robe. One eye stared, a milky blue. There was a hole in her chest and her throat was open. There were flies walking in the blood on her mouth and a terrible buzzing noise that filled the small room. Ray used the sleeve of his coat to grab the door handle and pulled it closed, wiping it again after it was shut. He didn't want to see what might be in the other rooms and ran down the stairs and out the front door. He heard Manny calling his name as he wiped the doorknob and pulled the door shut.
He moved cautiously around the house, the gun out and pointing down. He came around the corner into a junk-strewn backyard. Manny passed him going the other way, back out to the car. In the back a Plymouth Fury was up on blocks, the exposed wheels rusted through. There was a woodpile with spiderwebs running down one side and an ancient deflated football stuck in the mud. There was a clothesline strung from the house to a pole stuck in cracked cement. And there was Danny, staring at the sky. Thinning red hair showing white scalp, pale blue eyes. His right arm was broken over a flat tree stump, and there was an axe separating his right hand from his fingers.
Ray heard the car starting and looked around the yard, rubbing his own right arm. He looked everywhere but at Danny. After a minute, he went back to the front of the house.
Manny was on the cell phone when he got in the car. Manny started it up and began to back the car around, pointing the nose down the driveway.
"Sherry? Yeah, hon, it's me. How you doing?"
Ray looked in the glove compartment, thinking there must be something to drink in this fucking car.
"Good. That's good." Manny stopped the car and reached into
a green sport bag. He pulled out a pint of something wrapped in a
paper bag and handed it to Ray. "Nothing, just wanted to hear your voice." Ray took a long drink of what he thought was some kind of sickly sweet schnapps. "Listen, Sherry? I want you to take your mom and drive to Atlantic City. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, I know but just do it right now. Don't pack, don't fuck around or call anyone. Just go." Ray could hear a shrill voice on the other end, but not the words. "Don't worry about money or anything. Sherry, you can scream at me later. You can scream at me all night long, I promise. Sherry. Sherry. Just hang up the fucking phone and get your fucking mother into a car and go to the Trop. Use the card I gave you for emergencies and get a nice room and take a bath." Manny put the car back in gear. "I'm hanging up now, Sherry. I love you. I know. I'll see you in a few hours." The voice on the other end was still going when Manny folded the phone and dropped it on the floor.
"Will she go?"
"She'll go. She's a pain in the ass, but she's not stupid."
Ray looked back at the house. His hands were shaking, and he watched Manny's head swivel, looking around them into the trees. "Why did they do that?"
"Who knows?"
"I mean, you know he gave us up the second they walked through the door."
"I know."
"So why do that?"
"They're animals."
The windshield shattered with the first gunshot, then a man stepped from the trees with a shotgun raised and the glass went white and blew in. Ray felt shards of glass hit his face and upraised arms. Manny pushed his door open and jumped out with the Remington in his hands, screaming something unintelligible, the 4Runner still moving. Ray threw himself over the backseat, wondering how bad he was cut. They moved fast, amped by the crank and adrenaline, and Ray was more afraid than he could ever remember being in his life.
There was a loud pop and more glass breaking. He flattened himself in the bed of the trunk, yanking the pistol out of his waistband and shooting wildly toward the front of the car at nothing he could see. The SUV smacked into a thin tree trunk and stopped moving, and he cracked his head against the wall. Ray heard the heavy bang of Manny's pump gun and the cracking sound of the slide working, and he flailed at the hatchback door handle. He pushed it open and let himself fall out onto the driveway. More shots rang off the metal and starred the glass over his head.
He could hear Manny racking the shotgun and firing and the hollow plastic chime of the expended shells hitting the ground. He stuck his head under the car and saw two sets of legs in front of the car, one moving left and one right. He put the front sights of the pistol on the set of legs on the right and pulled the trigger twice while Manny screamed something, burning off the fear and dope. The recoil of the gun stung his hand, and the shells ejected up and pinged off the tailpipe of the 4Runner. Someone screamed, and a guy wearing a black leather jacket fell heavily onto the driveway, grabbing his ankle. Ray fired again and hit the front tire on the right side.
Ray pulled himself out from under the car as it lowered on the flattening tire. He pointed the gun to his left, waiting for the other one to come out into view. The barrel of a long gun appeared at the left, and Ray tried not to breathe, wondering how many shots were left in the pistol. He held himself rigid and watched more of the gun barrel appear as the shooter slowly made his way down the side of the Toyota. Finally the guy made a quick move into the open, raising the shotgun and swiveling to put the front sight on Ray. He was wearing black leather, like the big man down in the driveway, and wraparound sunglasses. Ray could see tattoos on his hands and spiking up his neck from inside his shirt. There was a bang that Ray felt in his chest, and the guy folded up, blood haloing his head. Ray pulled the trigger involuntarily, and the shot pushed the biker onto his back, his eyes open. Ray could hear the other, bigger guy down in the driveway moaning and calling them motherfuckers.
Manny moved out of the woods to the left. He gestured with the shotgun toward the front of the car, and Ray wheeled and pointed the pistol down the passenger side of the 4Runner. The big guy was pulling himself along the driveway, leaving a trail of blood in the wet grass and gravel. Ray ran to the front of the car and pulled the door open. He thumbed the magazine catch, dropping the clip. He pulled another clip from the sport bag and pushed it into the Colt and racked the slide, his hands shaking and blood dripping from his face onto his hands. He closed the door as the big biker pushed himself to his feet and began to limp down the driveway.
Manny said, "Hey!" and the big man pointed the gun clumsily behind him as he tried to hobble faster down the trail. Ray pulled the trigger, holding the gun low, and the biker's legs went out from under him and he screamed again. He dropped his pistol and kept moving, crawling hand over hand and moaning into the dirt.
Ray ran over and kicked the guy hard in the ribs. The guy put one arm around his stomach and puked into the grass. Ray dropped onto his hands and knees and smacked the guy in the head with the butt of the pistol again and again. He saw the dead woman in the bathroom and Danny's staring eyes. He was aware of an animal sound, a snarling wail that was coming out of his own throat but that he had no more control over than if it had been coming from someone else. Manny grabbed him under the arms and pulled him off the guy and threw him into the grass, and Ray lay there, breathing like he'd run a mile. He lifted his pistol and saw that his hands were bathed in red and there was blood and matted hairs on the butt of the gun. He could feel a pounding in his ears and blood ran into his eyes.
He flipped over onto his stomach and put the pistol down. He could hear Manny rummaging around in the car and then his footsteps coming closer. Somewhere insects started a reedy hymn, one note rising and falling.
"Hold out your hands."
He did as he was told and he felt tepid water being poured over his bloody fingers. He splashed the water into his eyes and blinked, and gradually his vision cleared and he sat back on his haunches. He took the bottle from Manny and poured more of it over his head before he gave it back. Manny upended the bottle and fin ished the last of it, then threw the bottle back into the open door of the Toyota. Somewhere crows made terrible noises, like someone coughing out a last few choking breaths. Ray looked over at the biker, who was staring at something in the grass, his pupils black.
He was wearing colors, a black vest with the name of a club Ray didn't know and FRANCONIA, NH embroidered on it in red, and blood in, blood out. There were skulls and lightning bolts tattooed on his neck and the exposed parts of his arms. On the back of one hand was a spidery jail house tat of the words lights
out.
"Look in his pockets." Manny called over his shoulder as he went around the Toyota to the other body. Ray got up stiffly and went over the big man, turning out the pockets. He pulled a clip for the pistol, a lighter, a lock knife, a pack of cigarettes, and a set of keys out of the leather jacket and threw them into a pile in the grass. In a back pocket of the greasy black jeans he found an envelope with names scrawled on the back. Danny Mullen, Hoe Down, Manny's name, and his. His name was underlined.
When he came back around the SUV, Ray saw now that Manny was moving stiffly and he watched as Manny painfully shucked off the vest. He held it up to Ray, and Ray could see a dull slug stuck to the jacket on the right side of the chest. Manny slowly pulled his shirt open, and there was a red welt over his rib cage. He shook his head in a gesture that might have meant anything.
The Toyota started, and Manny pointed it off the road into the trees. He threw their bags and as many of the spent shells from Ray's gun as he could find out onto the grass and then stuffed everything into one of the bags. Ray got a shoulder under the smaller of the two bodies and pushed him into the back and slammed the door. They each grabbed an arm of the bigger biker and dragged him to the passenger door of the front seat and clumsily dumped him in. He looked at their faces one last time. Neither of them was the young guy with a black goatee. Which meant he was still out there, still looking for them. Ray got behind the wheel of the SUV and began to pull forward again into the trees, leaning forward to look through the hole smashed through the cracked windshield.
He drove as far as he could away from the rutted track and into the woods, maneuvering around trees and over stumps and rocks that crunched against the undercarriage, occasionally stopping to wipe sweat and blood out of his eyes. Finally he got out and went around wiping down surfaces in the car with the gray blanket from the trunk. He took the flask out of his pocket and stuffed one end of the blanket into the gas tank and dumped some of the schnapps onto it. He dumped the rest over the bodies, stinking of shit and meat already starting to turn in the heat.
Christ, when things happened they moved fast. Both events, the farm house and now in the woods with the bikers'it was like they were over before they began. Before he could make rational decisions or some kind of plan. Standing there looking at two dead men in a wrecked car, he tried to think how long it had all taken. Three minutes, five? He played things over and over in his head, but all he got was a kind of faulty instant replay that came out different every time.
In the movies they showed gunplay in slow motion, but that wasn't it, really. It was more like everything was speeded up except you. Everyone was moving fast, coming at you with deliberation and purpose, and you couldn't finish a thought or get ready for the next thing. He thought maybe it was like being in a hurricane or a tornado, something fast and out of control.
He flicked the lighter he had taken from the biker and lit up the blanket and walked away through the trees. When he reached the drive again, Manny was waiting with a bag over his shoulder and the other one in his hands. He was looking down the rutted trail toward the house and chewing on his lip. His face was stained with dirt cut by lines of sweat from his hairline, and there were bits of broken glass on his shirt and in his hair. Ray turned and looked into the woods, but he couldn't see the SUV anymore.
"Did it catch?"
"I don't know. It did or it didn't and either way we got to go."
"You have keys?"
Ray held up the set of keys he took off the biker and jangled them. Somewhere nearby was another car. There was a distant smell of smoke, and somewhere the dog started up again, a remote, impotent sound of rage. Ray thought that if there was a God, that was his voice, just a distant complaint that didn't make anything come out any different.
Flies buzzed, and a fat black bee made a machinelike rumble as it passed by his head. He stumbled down the drive toward the road and thought about the flies in the bathroom and the man he had just killed, his head open in the dirt. He realized this was what he had been waiting for his whole life. All of the beatings he took, every night his father had lunged at his mother or stood at the bottom of the stairs smacking a leather belt into his hand. All the times in Juvie when some hulking lump of shit smacked him down or some guard in a county jail popped him across the knuckles with a stick because he could, because Ray was inside a cage and the guard was outside and he just fucking could. Ray had taken it and stored it up like a battery, all of it, every fucking thing. All for this day, when it would come pouring out of his heart and into his hands. It was something electric, something that gave off an ozone smell and made him dizzy and blind, like being electrocuted by crossed wires in his own brain.
THEY HEADED NORTH again in a black van they found parked in the woods near the end of the drive.
When they got in, Manny handed Ray a cell phone. "I took it off the little guy."
Ray thumbed through the memory, looking at calls that had come in and gone out and stored numbers. One of these, Ray thought, was probably the guy in the Charger.
They stopped at a pharmacy in Malvern, and Ray stayed in the car while Manny went in and bought a bunch of bottled water, alcohol, and Band-Aids. Ray looked at the cut on his forehead, glued over with dried blood and bits of grass and dirt. When Manny came back they drove to a remote corner of a shopping center parking lot, and Ray sat on the edge of the seat, pouring water over the cut to get the dried blood and dirt off and then dabbing at it with the alcohol. Cleaned up, it wasn't that bad. Deep, but not wide. He put a Band-Aid on and smoothed it down clumsily, looking into the side mirror. With his hair pushed forward it was pretty much invisible. Manny had torn his jeans and had a scrape on one elbow where the shirt was ripped away. Ray dabbed at it with alcohol, and Manny made a fist and swore. He kept touching the tender place on his rib cage and pulling his shirt back to look at the welt.
The cell phone rang. They both looked at it on the seat for a minute, then Ray picked it up and held it a few inches from his face.
"Yeah," he said, trying to sound indistinct.
"What happened? You said you were going to call or come back in an hour." The voice was different than the young guy in the Charger. The voice on the phone was another New En glander, but he sounded older and rougher-edged than the young guy from the car at the farm house.
Ray moved the phone away from his mouth again to talk, trying out an imitation of the accent. "I'm all turned around out here. How do I get back there?"
"Did they show up?"
"No, but we can't stay here."
"Well, the man here needs his money. You come back here and get cleaned up, you're going right back out to work, got it?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Tell the truth, I don't know where the good Christ I am down here either." There was a hoarse laugh, a sound like someone gargling stones. "Let me ask Scott." Scawt. There was shouting and calls for Scott and music in the background. A bar, maybe, or a party going on. He heard the older guy saying that the knuckleheads were lost and needed directions back, and then the noise of the phone being passed around, and then the Voice. The guy from the Charger.
"Which one is this?" Ray was about to speak when he heard the question answered at the other end of the line. It's Eldon, the older guy said, and called him Knucklehead One.
"Eldon?"
"Yeah," Ray said, trying to keep it quiet.
"Can you find 202?"
"Yeah."
"Just come up 202 to 422, keep going north." Nahth. Ray was making mental notes in case he was called on to say more. The young guy gave them directions to a place in the woods between Kulpsville and Lansdale. A place with a long driveway, probably another farm house meth lab.
"Got it, knucklehead?" said the Voice, and laughed.
"Fuck off. Later." He hung up.
MANNY DROPPED RAY off at his apartment. He showered, put his clothes in a plastic bag and threw them away, and then opened the new things he had bought himself at Wal-Mart. He was still alert, unsure, kept jumping up at every slammed door on the street and looking out the window at the traffic. He looked around and realized he'd have to stop coming back here, find some other place to be. When he looked at the clock he realized it was almost seven, and he sat on his bed in his underwear and thought for a minute if it was smart to put everything on hold while he went to meet Michelle. Thinking of her name knocked it over in his mind, and he quickly got dressed. He pulled the dirty Band-Aid off his head and put on a smaller one, a round dot that was almost covered by his hair.
Outside, the sky ran from bright blue in the east to dark clouds and flashes of lightning in the west, but he couldn't tell if things were going to get better or worse. Going north toward Doyle -stown he felt weirdly relaxed again, his guard down, as if it were possible to take a time-out from his game and just be a normal human being. He put the radio on and found a station playing a Matt Pond PA song, upbeat music that reminded him of old Moody Blues. The wind picked up, trying to pull the car out his hands and rolling leaves and bits of paper across 611.
It was almost seven twenty when he reached the little coffee shop. He stood outside and watched her through the glass, sitting at a small table, reading a newspaper with a mug of coffee in front of her. The shop was tiny, just a few tables, a counter with ice cream. It looked cool and quiet, and he wanted to go inside, but he just stood and watched her. He could see the lines by her eyes. What could he have been thinking, coming here? Maybe it was just that she looked a little like Marletta. Some quality in her face. The same honey-colored skin, familiar brown and sympathetic eyes. But who was she? He was falling from the top of a building, and she was someone who looked out a window, catching a glimpse of him on his way to the sidewalk.
He put his hands up in front of him. They were mottled with bruises and traced with old scars. He stuck them in his pockets, but he could still feel them, swollen from what he had done. He watched her for a long time. She sipped at the coffee and looked at her watch, but she never looked up. There was something about the way she looked around her, something he recognized. Stealing glances at people and avoiding eye contact. He had taken it for flirtatiousness, but it was something else. He became conscious of the sun going down, of the street darkening. He willed her to look up and wave to him, wave him in so he could go inside and sit down, but she kept her eyes on the paper.
A couple with a baby sat down at the table next to her in a shower of pastel-colored toys and diaper bags, and she turned to look at the back of the baby's white head. Michelle's eyes were blank and unreadable, and Ray got that she was seeing things that weren't in the room.
He looked up the street to his left, and when he swung his head right there was a young guy wearing sunglasses just past his elbow. He had one of those complicated-looking goatees with skinny lines of hair running alongside his mouth and down along his jaw. Ray could see a pimple under the kid's ear and could smell his breath, fruity and sour from what ever he'd been drinking. The guy was smiling, his head cocked, and he had a jacket on and his hand in his pocket. Ray stepped back, away from the window, hoping that now wasn't the moment Michelle would finally look up. The guy leaned into him and shook his head, and Ray turned toward him. He sensed someone move behind him, then felt a big hand on his left shoulder and heard breathing close to his ear. The kid raised his eyebrows and nodded as if Ray had asked a question.
"I seen a lot of stupid people, but you're right up there." The kid looked up and down the street and kept his voice low. "Man, you walk around like you got no cares. Are you really brave, is that it?" The kid moved the bulge in his jacket where his right hand lay and nodded toward the street. "You Bruce Willis, is that the thing?" The hand on his shoulder squeezed, and Ray flinched. They got closer to the curb, and Sunglasses put a hand up and gestured to someone down the street. Ray heard a throaty engine. He watched a van creep along the curb toward them.
Ray looked up and down the street. There were people around, but no one was closer than a half block away, and it was almost dark. He saw a young couple standing in front of the movie theater, the boy with curly brown hair, the girl gesturing toward a poster. They began to sort money out in front of the ticket booth, and Ray thought that by the time they got out of the movie he'd be in a hole in the woods somewhere and this kid would be kicking dirt and leaves over his face.
"You're like a goldfish in a bowl, you know it?" The kid shook his head at Ray. "You don't even hide from us? Come right back to your house, drive around in your own car?" The van pulled up, and Sunglasses put his free hand on Ray's arm. He was conscious of the big man behind him moving, and then the guy stepped into view, reaching for the sliding side door of the van. He was big across the shoulders and had a shaved head, a black T-shirt, a shelf of gut over his jeans. The kid was still talking. "Eldon called me, told me your name, I figured we'd never see you again." He started to laugh and swung his head up and down the street. "Is this, like, your job? Nine to five you're a scumbag thief, then what? You like, punch out, go home, go see a movie?"
The big guy was turned to the door, standing in a gap between two parked cars. The kid was crowding Ray into the gap, trying to jab him with the gun hidden in his coat. There was a buzzing noise and the streetlights came on. The kid reached up and grabbed his sunglasses and began to lift them off his eyes. Ray dropped almost to his knees and then snapped up straight, cracking the top of his head against the kid's chin and knocking him off balance. The big guy with the bald head was still turned to the van, and Ray pushed with both hands against the kid's head, smacking it against the hood of the car behind him. The sunglasses rattled onto the car's hood, the kid blinking, stunned.
Then he ran. He didn't turn to look behind him, he just took off running as fast as he could down the street, past the theater. He heard the kid's high voice, yelling something, a low grumble from someone else, and then the squealing of the van's tires as the driver gunned the engine. He felt like his back was a target a mile wide under the lights. He saw the faces of people down the street and wanted to call to them, signal them somehow, but his throat was frozen and he couldn't force any sound out of it.
He saw a gap between the stores on his right that resolved into an alley as he got closer, and he pivoted as he reached it and poured on as much speed as he could as he made the corner. He was a few steps down the alley when the van screeched its brakes and stopped on the street behind him. Then he could hear it bumping over the curb, trying to jockey into the alley. He could hear the footsteps, too, the kid's lighter ones and the heavy clomp of the big guy's boots farther back.
Ahead of him the alley emptied into a small parking lot with meters. Past the lot the town was dark and he tried to move faster. He was about five yards from a white Lexus SUV trying to make up his mind which way to break at the end of the alley, the van's engine getting louder, when he heard a popping sound and the side window of the Lexus blew in. Two more shots smacked into the car, leaving black holes the size of quarters, and he involuntarily jumped left, away from the shots, and cut between a Mercedes and another SUV, a Lincoln Navigator big enough to give him some cover as he kept going, the air burning in his mouth and lungs.
He heard a roar behind him, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see the van two feet behind him hit the massive Lincoln dead on the rear end with a popping noise of breaking glass and grinding metal. The Navigator rocked on its springs, and Ray dropped and clawed his way under the Mercedes. He could smell oil and metal and fried food from the kitchens of restaurants. There was shouting now and the sound of feet scraping along the asphalt, a civilian getting into it with whoever was driving the van.
"What the fuck?" he heard a raspy voice say, a man, maybe in his fifties. "That's my fucking car." Ray shimmied back and forth, trying to see what he could from under the Mercedes. It was a tight squeeze. His hair caught on something; flecks of rust drizzled into his eyes. The older man was loud, and his voice echoed from different points around the small, boxed-in lot.
"What the fuck are you doing?" To his right he saw oily black boots and then a pair of white bucks, probably the guy with the raspy voice. He heard someone hitting the buttons on a cell phone. "Don't go anywhere," he heard the guy say. He heard two low voices conferring, then a pop and a scuffling noise. The white bucks tilted, and a face slapped the ground, inches away from his, and Ray almost shouted. It was a man with white hair slicked back from his face. The face was tan, freckled, the eyes blue. The features were empty and slack, and a red arc of blood poured out of his temple and hit the ground. Ray had to cover his mouth with his hands to keep from making some kind of sound.
"Dumb fuck!" He heard a young voice, out of breath, probably the kid with the sunglasses. "You are the dumbest dumb fuck I ever saw." There was more of the other voice, low, and then running steps and the van engine roared. He saw the van tires backing up and heard a sound of tearing metal and plastic, and the rear bumper of the Navigator hit the ground. There were sirens now and more running feet and screaming somewhere away to his left.
He could see the van tires arcing away to his right, and then it vanished from view. He began shimmying again, pushing with his feet against the tires of the Mercedes and slowly extracting himself from under the car on the driver's side, away from the body of the man with white hair and his terrible blank eyes. He got free and lay there for a second, his chest scraped raw, his heart hammering.
There was a guy in a white apron holding a meat cleaver standing a few feet away who jumped a little when he saw Ray trying to pull himself upright. "Jesus Christ, are you all right?"
Ray made a dismissive wave with his right hand. "Okay," he finally got out.
"Did you see them shoot that guy? Jesus Christ. They just shot him."
"I, uh." Ray was suddenly dizzy, out of breath, the words hanging somewhere in his brain he couldn't get to. "I just . . ." He made a diving motion with his hand: himself crawling under the car. "When I heard the shots."
"No shit." The cook nodded; he'd have done the same thing. "Who needs that shit? That big fuck must be crazy." A crowd was starting to form, people coming out of a restaurant, a bar, a candy store and taking tentative steps toward what ever was going on in the lot.
Ray moved toward them, bending over, trying to look as stricken as possible. "I have to . . ." He pointed vaguely toward the bar door he could see open.
"Sure," the guy in the apron said. He waved with the knife. "The cops are on their way. Fucking shot, over a fender bender. Christ."
Ray walked through the crowd. The first few people he passed looked at his face, but farther back in the crowd people were just trying to see past him, craning their necks, moving around him. He picked up the pace as he reached a sidewalk, a path between some shops that led toward the street. He walked faster, then began to jog. Where was his car?
He moved north along a tree-lined street, looking for a way to cut back toward where he had left the Camaro. He walked a long block and turned left and there was a police car, its lights on, stopped at the curb. Ray's breath caught in his throat. A young kid with long hair was bent over, hands in his pockets, talking to the cops through the open window. Ray tried not to react, walking purposefully, trying to look as interested as any passerby would be in a cop car with its lights on, slowly blowing through his nose to keep his breathing under control. The block was short, and he kept moving up a hill as if he knew where he was going. He kept his eyes straight ahead and resisted the urge to turn and look at the cops. He passed a low building, some kind of club or lodge or something. One of those places that Ray imagined was full of dark paneling and leather chairs where men smoked cigars and talked about business. Past that he came to where another small alley opened out to the street. He turned left and saw the cop car coming out of a three-point turn and then heading up the hill toward him. No siren, but the lights going; blue, red, white.
When he was out of sight of the cops Ray began to run, his steps echoing between the close-set houses, and he looked for a place to disappear. He passed two low stone houses and jogged left and pushed through a waist-high wood gate and followed a cement path green with mildew into the dark behind a three-story Victorian haunted house, the windows dark and empty. He stopped and listened but didn't hear the cop car or see its lights. They might not even be looking for him, might not know he was involved in what had happened in the parking lot. He stood for a while in the dark, listening to faint sounds from other parts of town. Sirens, kids shouting, music from a house somewhere nearby. A party maybe. He took his time threading his way through an abandoned garden of flattened tomato plants, gray and dead in the heat. He stepped over a low fence of iron bars and came out into a small space between two massive hedges. It was full dark, the street in front of him lit orange-white by a streetlight.
He was standing in the shadow, trying to orient himself to the street he had parked on, when Michelle appeared two feet away. She was walking uphill, a book under her arm. Her head was down, and she looked lost in thought, her lips moving silently. He put his hand out but didn't touch her or speak, just watched her pass slowly, inches away. If she had raised her eyes, turned her head, anything. If he had made a sound, cleared his throat, moved suddenly . . .
Then she was past, and he stepped out. He watched her move up the street and turn a corner, the light catching in her hair, her face in silhouette for a moment. Then she was gone.
EIGHT
RAY SLIPPED OUT from the darkness and moved back down to the busy street where he had parked. There were cops out on the sidewalks, an ambulance at the head of the alley where the bikers had shot the man with white hair. He could hear voices from police radios, and he struggled to stay calm and look like he belonged. He got his keys out and held them in his fist, tried to keep them from rattling. He passed the ambulance crew, young kids in blue jumpsuits carrying metal clipboards and leaning against a parked car, and a cop carrying a shotgun at port arms who looked at Ray hard when he passed.
Back in the Camaro, he cranked the ignition with shaking hands and felt around on the seat for his cell phone, grabbed it, and started to dial before realizing it was the one they had taken off the dead biker out in Delaware County. He tossed it away and snapped open the glove compartment, pulled the black automatic, and sat for a minute, looking compulsively up and down the street and breathing fast. Finally he decided it was better to be in motion, and he put his car in gear and pulled down the street, turned south, and picked up speed.
He dialed Manny and told him what had happened. The telling was out of order, distorted by his fear and adrenaline. He kept touching his chest and feeling his heart beat, touching his temple reflexively at the place where the hole had been in the man's head. That man, someone's father or grandfather was dead, and wasn't it his fault? He hadn't wanted any of it to happen, but if it wasn't his doing, whose fault was it? Was everything that had happened just his fucked-up life spilling out over everyone he came across?
"How the fuck?" Manny wanted to know. "Did they follow you, or what?"
"They picked me up at my house. One of them said. Those guys at Danny's must have called them." He kept checking the rearview, looking for the van or anyone trying to get to close to his bumper. So taking the piece of paper with their names on it hadn't stopped anything. How stupid, how fucking stupid could he be? The guys had called Scott, and everyone knew who they were. And who was everyone? Were there ten guys, twenty, a hundred? He was sweating but felt cold. "Fucking motherfuckers."
It came to him that it could have been Michelle standing with him when they pulled the guns, and that put more terrible pictures in his head that crowded his thinking and made his heart race. He pulled over to the side of the road, and it dawned on him they knew his car, had in fact followed him to Doylestown. The kid had said it. Jesus. He wasn't thinking, wasn't planning. He needed to slow down, get right in his head. He was on 611, near a big shop ping center at Street Road, and he pulled in and told Manny to get away from his own car, find another one, and come for him.
He cruised through the lot, pulling behind a Genuardi's and nosing toward a Dumpster. He switched off the car and looked around him, grabbing his small duffel and checking the Colt. He pulled the slide back to put a round in the chamber, then slowly let the hammer down and stuck it into his belt, an awkward move sitting down.
On the dark floor, something flashed green. He stopped and watched. After maybe thirty seconds, he saw it flash again. He leaned toward the pool of darkness in front of the passenger seat and put his hand on the dead biker's cell. He flipped it open and looked at it. The display had bars for battery life, a little graph for signal strength. There was a symbol, a 1 and an X, which meant nothing to him, but then he noticed a flashing letter G in the lower left hand corner. Was that for GPS? Did that matter? Did these guys have some kind of software that could track the cell phone or something? Were they right now boxing him in again?
He jumped out of the car and looked around. Two kids in green aprons sat smoking on overturned milk crates. One of them, a big kid with red hair, waved with his cigarette. Behind the car, Ray saw a slight grassy rise, a driveway leading away toward an exit; across the driveway the ground sloped down to what looked like a creek, a black line in the dark sketched through a stand of trees. He took two steps and fired the cell phone hard over the road and down toward the creek.
The kid with red hair pumped his cigarette hand in the air. "Fuck, yah."
The other kid laughed, nodding his head. "Toss that bitch."
Ray jumped back into the car and sat with his head in his hand for a minute, thinking.
The red-haired kid took a few steps closer, eyeing the Camaro and Ray. "Nice ride," the boy said, and the silent one sitting on the crate shook his head in agreement. "Want to get wasted?"
"Yes," said Ray and put the car in gear.
HE LEFT HIS car in another shopping center farther east down County Line, by a dark and empty Dunkin' Donuts. He got out and locked the car under feeble lights that left the parking lot the dull green of a lake bottom. He called Ho and told him what had happened while he walked across the dark lot to stand in the shadow of a Sunoco station. It had all happened fast, he told Ho, and chances were the guys they killed hadn't told Scott about Ho, but he should take what ever steps he thought were right. Ho thanked him and hung up, and Ray watched the street and kept his hand in his pocket, on his pistol, clicking the safety off and on, off and on.
He thought about Ho's kids, and Tina, and that made it tougher to think straight, but Jesus, was everything bad that could happen his fault? Ho was in the life, ran massage parlors and dope houses, and had a cousin who sat at an upstairs window with an AK, so there was already the possibility hanging out there for Ho, and Ho knew it. But Ray knew even as he had those thoughts that it didn't get him off the hook. This shit had gotten away from him, and he had to make it right somehow.
Manny took him by his own place, and Ray took Sherry's old Honda and drove it slowly home, taking a long route around Warminster and through Horsham. Later he sat in the dark car by his building and watched the traffic go by, the headlights throwing twisted silhouettes of trees onto the fronts of the houses, tangles of shadow that moved and broke apart into nothing.
He tried to see into the cars going past, caught glimpses of dark figures going home, going out. He thought about regular life, tried to think of people he knew who just went to work and came home, went to sleep, got up, and did it again. Just about everybody he knew was in the life except Theresa and her retired friends from the neighborhood who got together at the Ukrainian church to play Bingo on Wednesdays. Tough old broads who had raised kids and buried husbands, worked at Acme or the post office or Warminster General.
He had worked straight jobs, but never for very long. He had worked in pizza joints when he was a kid, liked the smell of the dough and flirting with the waitresses and the girls who came in for a slice and a Coke. But then he'd just blow it off; he'd go get high with his friends, and the next thing he knew, he'd be driving someone else's car to the Oxford Mall, or sneaking around a dark house, high, drunk, banging into things and trying not to laugh, or running through black yards at night with a pillowcase full of cheap costume jewelry he took off someone's bureau while Manny took cold cuts from the fridge.
Could he stop being who he was? He thought about Marletta, about the last time he saw her. What had they said? She wanted a normal life for him. If things had gone different with her, would that have been his way out? She was in his thoughts more and more now, working on his head. The way she loved him and thought he could be more. Gone all this time until that picture brought her back, the picture in the house on Jefferson Avenue of the young girl in the cap and gown.
Marletta had died, and they'd sent him up for it, and he'd let them. He'd picked her up from graduation and they'd driven around, went to a park, gone to his house and made love, and when he was driving her home a drunk had crossed the center line and she'd been killed. Thrown from the car into a field full of tiny white flowers whose name he couldn't remember. Her old man was a state trooper, and he'd hated Ray even before that day. They'd taken Ray to St. Mary's with a concussion, and her old man would sit in the parking lot in his car. Every time Ray had gone to the window, her old man would be there. At night, he'd see his cigarette going in the dark, a slow red pulse as her father breathed.
Her old man had pushed the case about the stolen car, and they'd locked him up. He sat in Juvie for months, waiting, and one night her old man came for him and took him out and beat him with a tire iron and took him back with a thin story about Ray falling in the dark. So when they finally convicted him, sent him upstate as an adult, he'd had two busted arms. Ray had let it happen, let it all come, and none of it, no matter how bad it got, was as bad as he thought he deserved for losing Marletta.
After a few minutes he gave up the idea of going back for his shit. Instead he drove west to Montgomeryville to get more clothes, toiletries, and a couple of CDs to calm him down and help him think. It was late when he finally pulled into a motel on 611 near the turnpike. Standing in the bright lobby by the highway brought his paranoia on hard again, and he drummed his fingers and hunched his shoulders waiting for the sleepy clerk to appear from the back. He checked in, then drove around the back of the place, twitching with fear. He ran upstairs, his insides turning to water, and then sat in the dark with the pistol in his lap.
What would Marletta think of him now? What would she say? He was so far from the things he had let himself want when they were together, but he felt like he wanted something like a normal life now more than ever. Was it just that things were so fucked up? That he was afraid and looking for a way out?
He rummaged in his bag and pulled out some CDs and threw them on the bed, then chose one and put in the CD player on the bed table. Henryk Górecki. Classical music. What he called it, anyway. It had been playing when he walked into a Tower Rec ords in King of Prussia, and he asked the girl behind the counter what it was, and she pointed to a stack of CDs near the counter.
He had looked up the music online and knew that the words were from a prayer, and they sounded that way. Someone pleading or crying, he guessed in Polish. He thought all pleading was the same in what ever language. Help me. Forgive me. Don't leave me. Don't kill me. He thought about the white-haired man and the terrible red arc streaming out of him, and Rick Staley slipping around in his own blood on the floor of the dope lab in Ottsville. He wanted to let himself go, start screaming and breaking things. He wanted to get high. After a while, he fell asleep.
HE GOT UP at eight and had coffee in front of the window, watching the street. A woman jogged by; a man in one of those spandex outfits he didn't get rode by on an expensive-looking bike. He got awkwardly to the floor of the room and did a few sit-ups and wanted to puke. He thought about being in Juvie, where he met Manny, and work details hauling trash and clearing brush.
They had been tough little fuckers then, tanned and fit, ready for anything. They got out six days apart and started boosting cars and stereos together. They shaved their heads, and Manny gave Ray his first tattoo, SS lightning bolts on his right arm done with a homemade gun with the motor from an electric razor and a guitar string. They'd split the money from stealing and get high and go to the movies. They watched Predator, he remembered, over and over, doing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura to each other, capping bad guys in the jungle. "If it bleeds, we can kill it." How different was his life now, when you broke it down? He had stopped spending money on candy and soda but still bought movies and CDs and books compulsively. Didn't understand savings plans or IRAs, hadn't worked forty hours in years. The year before, he had gotten his last tattoo, dope thief in heavy black Germanic letters high on his left arm. At the time maybe committing himself, or maybe just letting go of every wish he ever had for a normal life.
Ho Dinh called Ray around ten, told him to come by. He took a shower, got dressed, and put on a sweatshirt and a sport coat to help hide the automatic. He spent a last ten minutes watching the street, his face tight, before he finally jogged to Sherry's Honda and took off.
WHEN RAY PULLED up, Ho came out of the house and jumped in alongside him.
"Keep going, down to Green Street."
"Where we headed?"
"West. We're going to see a guy I know about your problem."
"What's he know?"
"So far, nothing. And we should talk about what you're going to tell him. He doesn't have to know your business, just the part about the guys from New Hampshire." Ho took a piece of paper from his pocket and called the turns. They made their way along Kelly Drive, slaloming along the edge of Fairmount Park toward the Schuylkill River. Ho wore a light jacket even though it was in the eighties and expensive-looking sunglasses that he pushed up on his head whenever he consulted the paper.
Ray asked him if the guy they were going to see was with one of the clubs that controlled the meth business in the Delaware Valley.
Ho waggled his head back and forth. "I don't know that he's with any of the biker clubs, exactly, but he knows them and does business with them. They have some kind of deal together. I think he cooks for them and they distribute his product." Ho took his glasses and cleaned them, which made him look momentarily even younger. "So if we've got guys from up north pushing into his area, he might care enough about that to make your fight his fight."
"You think?"
Ho looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "You got a gun with you?"
"Under the seat. And in the glove compartment. I got more in the trunk, it comes to that. We going to need them?"
"I hope not. This guy's a little nuts, is all I know. You can't hang around that shit as much as he does and not be a little cooked yourself." Ho opened the glove compartment and pulled out the Colt. He worked the slide to see that it was loaded and put it at his feet.
THEY CROSSED THE river and made their way down Route 1 for a while, finally turning off and heading north. Ray stopped recognizing things as soon as they were out of Philly. The houses got more spread out, the yards big and green. He saw a sign for Blue Hill, and they made some more turns and came to a dirt road. When they pulled in, Ho told Ray to stop and handed him the pistol. He wedged it in his belt and pulled his sweatshirt over it.
He put the car in gear again and rolled down the rutted track that led to what looked like an abandoned shack. There was a new-looking red pickup truck pulled in next to the house and a big guy with a shaved head sitting in the bed. He had wraparound shades, and his hands were under a blanket that covered his lap. He worked a toothpick in his mouth and stared at them as they turned the car off and sat, listening to the engine tick.
Ray raised his eyebrows at Ho. "Should I have worn the vest?"
"Think bulletproof thoughts."
Ray shook his head.
Ho looked at the big guy in the pickup. "Tell me, what's with the shaved heads? Too much to look tough and comb your hair, too?"
"I did it once. Me and Manny, when we were young."
"Remember why?"
"No. If I had a nickel for every stupid thing we did when we were kids." He considered this for a minute. "Wait, I probably do."
Ho sighed and opened the door. He kept his hands in plain sight and nodded to the guy in the truck, who inclined his head toward the open door of the house, his own hands still under the blanket.
Ho disappeared into the house for a minute, then came back to the front door and waved to Ray. He slowly pulled himself out of the car and stretched, Pickup Truck Man watching him intently. Ray wished he had a toothpick to push around in his mouth; it would keep his mind off wanting to scratch himself and causing an accidental bloodbath.
It took a long time to reach the door, but eventually Ray closed the distance and made his way in past Ho and let his eyes adjust to the darkened interior for a minute. It was hot inside, airless, as if the house had stood empty a long time. Ray took in yellowed wallpaper, a dusty coffee table, a crumbling piano, keys going brown with age.
There was a tall, thin guy folded into a chair at the table and wearing a leather jacket. He had wiry gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his eyes looked cloudy to Ray, like the eyes of something that lived underground. His face was long and thin, and he had his hands flat on the table. The left hand was scarred, mottled with pink lines, and his left ear looked slightly melted. A woman stood behind him cradling a Remington pump gun. She was tall, too, and probably had been beautiful once. She had tattoos on her hands, yellow sun and bright clouds on one hand, stars and a smiling blue moon on the other. There were deeply etched lines running back from her hooded eyes, which were a brilliant green. The guy outside might be paid help, Ray thought, but this one was here for love. She was the one to watch if things got weird.
Ho moved a hand between Ray and the table. "This is Cyrus." The man nodded at Ray, who nodded back. There was one chair, and Ray stepped forward and sat in it.
Cyrus tilted his head at the wall. "My grandfather built this place in the thirties. He built it himself from plans he saw in a Sears, Roebuck catalog. In them days you could order a house from Sears and they'd build it for you." Cyrus had a deep, cracked voice to go with the lined face. Years of breathing chemicals.
"It's real nice."
"It's all beat to shit now, but it was a good house to grow up in. My pop got killed in some rice paddy in 1963." He nodded at Ho. "Probably by your uncle." He put his eyes back on Ray, tilted his head. "Where'd you do your time?"
Ray thought for a minute about how much to say to someone he didn't know. "Rockwood. Some other places."
"I figured you for a yardbird. That where you met Luke the Gook here?" Ho chuckled and shook his head. Cyrus was quiet and intense, and Ray was on edge. He couldn't figure whether the guy was going to blow up or if this was just how he was.
Ray shook his head. "You been inside?"
"Nope. I figure that's what separates me from you retards. I'm ready to die to stay free."
"That's one way to go."
"You should die proud when you can't live proud."
"Nietz sche. You're into Nietzsche, you'd love the joint. It's all psychos who figure they got permission from a dead German to skip on their child support and shoot their girlfriend's dog. I don't get it myself. I figure you want to rob a fucking gas station, go nuts. Why do you need quotes from Twilight of the Idols to make it cool?" Ray looked at Ho.
"Cyrus, my friend has a story to tell we thought you'd want to know."
"I'm all ears."
Well, Ray thought, an ear and a half, but he let it go. "There's a guy cooking dope in farm houses in Bucks County and Montgomery County." Suddenly, Ray wasn't sure what he wanted from this guy.
"There's a lot of guys cooking dope around there. What, you want a cookie?" Cyrus stood up, his left eye twitching, and Ray put his hands on the arms of the chair, closer to the pistol. "This is costing me money, parlaying with some yardbird thinks he knows shit."
Ho said, "This guy's got people from New En gland clubs with him."
Cyrus was still and his face went slack. "And?"
Ray held up a hand, but Ho went on. "He's got guys down here from Massachusetts and New Hampshire."
"Who's moving his shit?"
"That we don't know."
Cyrus sighed and looked up like they were exhausting his infinite patience.
Ho pushed his glasses up on his sweat-slick forehead. "Tell him the last bit, Ray."
"I don't know. I want to think about this." Things were moving fast, and he couldn't think. What did it mean to tell this guy everything?
Ho looked at him but kept going. "We can draw you a map."
"You can fucking take me there."
"Yeah, screw that." Ray made a wiping gesture with his left hand. He was having trouble keeping it together, the guy's hard stare working on his head. "I already seen enough of these fuckers to last me a lifetime."
"So you want me to take care of some shit for you. You owe these guys money?"
Ray sat up straight. "That's none of your business, Merlin."
Cyrus slapped the table with his hand. The woman behind him pulled the shotgun down from port arms, ready to go to work.
Ho put his hands up. "Okay, let's all take a breath." After a long moment, Ray and Cyrus sank back into their chairs. Ho looked at Ray, who nodded. "We'll take you there. You can look things over, see what you think."
Cyrus breathed through his mouth. Was thinking, maybe, or just short of breath. "I'll call you in a day or two." Ray stood up slowly. Cyrus raised a finger. "You're fucking with me, or you get me hung up or waste my time, you're going to find your way to a deep hole in the dirt."
ON THE WAY back Ho looked at him. "Man, what the fuck was that?"
"Ah. I just can't stand that shit. Guys like that who think they're in charge of shit and like to lay down the law." Like his old man, he almost said.
"Shit, Ray."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry." He had almost lost control of things, pushed the crazy fucker too hard and made something bad happen. Something was happening to him, he could feel it. Old feelings and resentments were just beneath the surface of his skin, like barbs he couldn't get out.
Ho looked over at him. "Ray, this guy might be our ticket out of this thing."
Ray thought about that, about the fact that Ho's name was on the paper he had taken off the dead biker and what that might mean. He thought about Tina and the kids and got a sick feeling. He knew there was no ticket out, but a chance, maybe, and he'd have to take it or other people would pay for his stupidity.
He decided that what ever happened, he'd try to keep Ho and Manny at a distance. As they drove, he and Ho talked about what Cyrus might do and about other characters they had known in their business, most of them locked up or dead. Ho told Ray about his cousins who lived in Thailand and worked protection for Thai warlords moving meth from Burma.
Ray frowned. "Meth? Really? I think of opium or heroin coming out of there."
"Who knew? Turns out they can make it and move it here and it's still cheaper than the stuff made by those hillbillies you take off."
"The invisible hand, huh? I guess if it works for sneakers and Tshirts it works for dope."
Ho said, "Still, it's kind of depressing, isn't it? Another line of work for high school dropouts closed off by foreign competition." They laughed.
"It's the same everywhere, isn't it? You've been overseas."
"Yeah, I guess in most places it's only worse. It's a crappy deal for people with nothing no matter where you are."
Ray looked up as they got back into the city, and he saw a row of tired-looking people waiting for a SEPTA bus on Roosevelt Boulevard. He thought about how the fact that he was outside of the law and straight life didn't control his reaction to the way the world worked. His father had started off a working man, and Ray still thought of himself as working class, distrusted the rich, still thought there was something worse about Enron and country club crime than what he did.
He tried to put it into words, couldn't get it straight in his head, but said, "I mean, you got thousands of years of human history, people thinking about how to get organized, how to distribute work and money, and what? This is it? This is the best we can do?"
He made a gesture that took in everything around them. The Korean dry cleaners and the Mexican kids standing outside the car wash, the lined and anxious faces of the women at the bus stop. Maybe the fix he was in, too.
"Every man for himself?"
"Worse. Worse than that." What his mother had always said, bent over the unpaid bills like a galley slave over an oar, her face bruised with worry: "Dog eat dog."
NINE
FOR TWO NIGHTS Ray stayed in a motel in Marlton across the river in Jersey. Clean, but the towels were like sandpaper and the bed sagged in the middle. He called Theresa on the cell phone the first morning. She'd won eight hundred dollars playing nickel slots.
"Christ, Ma, that's like sixteen thousand nickels. What do they bring, a wheelbarrow?"
"They pay in cash, smart-ass."
"Keep it somewhere safe, that's all."
"Don't worry about my money, dope fiend. I'm saving it to spend on my grandchildren."
"Okay, I can see where this is going. I'll check in later."
"I talked to the lawyer about your father."
"That's great. I'll talk to you later."
She started to tell him something else, and he hung up.
AT NIGHT HE cruised up and down 73 in Sherry's Honda. He'd stop and get a drink at an empty bar, then get antsy and leave. He ordered from the drive-through at the Taco Bell. He felt like a shark circling in black water. Moving up and down from Marlton to Berlin, restless, jumpy, watching his rearview mirror and not knowing what to expect. The stations on Sherry's radio were tuned to Jesus and teenage-girl pop, and he dialed around until he found a black gospel station promising hell but offering full-throated music against the Day of Judgment. He went around the circle at 70 and followed it west. He passed dark industrial parks and convenience stores, finally pulled in at a strip joint in Pennsauken that billed itself as an International Gentlemen's Club. He sat in the car and pulled a one-hitter from under the seat and filled his nostrils with coke. He felt his pulse begin to race and his gums went numb. The car began to get hot, and when he opened the door he could smell the tar from the parking lot and the exhaust from passing trucks.
He sat at the bar and ordered a vodka and tonic and then turned to watch a short, wiry girl in a half-T move languorously up and down along the pole, her back arched. Her hair was a sooty, unnat ural black, and all he could think about was how different she was from Michelle. Her eyes were half-closed, her movements as slow as if she were a sleepwalker, or moving against a current in a dark sea. Waitresses with hair tortured blond moved from table to table under dim red and blue spotlights that made it look as if they were being alternately frozen and then roasted alive. He finished the first drink fast and took another to a table in a corner. There was a black light overhead that made his shirt an unnatural white. He had more drinks and went to the men's room to do more blow, navigating the tables of gray-haired businessmen and kids with baseball caps doing a frantic pantomime of desire for their friends.
The girl from the stage came down and stood by him, her teeth brilliant in the ultraviolet light. He leaned into her, and she whispered to him. He took money out and gave it to her. She stood closer to him, and he felt heat in his face and along his arms. She smelled like perfume, something sharp and astringent, and beneath that sweat and cigarettes. She moved between his legs and breathed into his neck and somehow kept from touching him. Ray moved his hand along her leg, and she smiled and moved back a few inches. He held out a twenty, and she rolled a hip toward him so that he could put it beneath the band of the G-string.
"I know the rules," he said.
"Do you?"
"I just don't want to follow them." He opened his fist and began counting off hundred-dollar bills. She closed her hand over his and told him she'd be done at eleven thirty.
HE WALKED OUT, crouching to hide his insistent erection until he reached the car. He did another hit and rubbed his cramping jaw, blinking under the lights, which now looked ringed with purple motes from the dope in his blood. He drove back out to 73 and went into a package store. He walked up and down the aisles, conscious of being high. The aisles tilted away from him; the labels were too small to read. He walked up and down with a basket, eventually getting the layout. In the end he took a bottle of vodka and two bottles of tonic to the front and also bought pretzels and a handful of lottery tickets to give to Theresa, who saw tickets from another state as exotic: unfamiliar fruit from another continent.
Back out on the road, he drifted again, killing time. At the last minute he caught the sign for a used-book store and cut the wheel fast to catch the driveway. He killed the engine and took a pull from the bottle and washed it down with a long swig from the tonic water, which fizzed hot in his mouth and dribbled down his shirt. He wiped his hand over his mouth and blotted at his beard.
Inside it was quiet. A young woman with her lip and nose pierced stood at the counter talking on a red cell phone. He walked up and down the aisles, hunched over and trying to read the flaked and broken spines of westerns, mysteries with culinary themes, horror novels with titles that seemed to leak blood. He settled on Louis L'Amour, one of the Sackett books he knew but hadn't read in a while.
Next to the counter was a stand of cheap DVDs like the one in the store where Michelle worked. While the girl rang him up, the cell phone stuck between her ear and her raised shoulder, he flipped through the movies, looking for something he knew.
"Do you have Night of the Demon?"
She held out his change, shook her head, turned her back to finish her call. He felt the chemical thunderbolt of the cocaine in his blood and a flash of loneliness and shame that made his shoulders cave in on themselves, and he went to the car and pawed around for the vodka.
He went back to the club and waited for the black-haired dancer, who came out with a bouncer and turned and said a few words to him before he went back inside. He waited, then got out and gave a nervous half-wave, and she pointed to her car. He pulled out, and she followed in a black Jetta.
IN HIS ROOM, she said she didn't have much time; her mother was watching her son and expected her home at midnight.
"He's nine." She held up a cigarette and raised her black eyebrows, and he nodded. She fished in her purse and brought out a Zippo and a scuffed photo of a tiny kid with a mass of black curls in an oversized football jersey and shoulder pads. He smiled at the picture, and she looked at it, and when she put it away Ray could see her hands were shaking. He watched her light the cigarette, her full lips pursed and her eyes watching his.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and she came over and sat in his lap fully clothed. He put one arm around her but thought of a small, black-haired kid in a messy living room watching TV, the grandmother asleep in the blue wash of light, mouth open, dentures loose. A smell of unwashed laundry and old cigarette smoke.
He could feel a tremor in her arm across his chest. At the club he had wanted her with an ache that seemed to run through him, carried in his blood. Under the yellow light from the cheap bed-table lamp, it all fell out of him and he could see she was afraid that he might be a cop, that he might beat her. She wanted him to know about her son. She wanted the money for her rent, or maybe to get high. He had always known this about the massage parlor women, the strippers he had briefly dated or just fucked for money. Something about killing a man with his hands, or almost getting killed himself, or turning thirty, or talking to his father had changed the way he saw things. The way he saw himself, moving through the world. Maybe it had just been the house on Jefferson Avenue, the picture of the girl in her cap and gown looking so much like Marletta, and her voice in his head again. The way she had looked at him and the things he had let himself want when he held her.
People were weak and stupid, and he had used that knowledge to get over on them. The things they needed, the people they loved, made them vulnerable. This special knowledge he had spent his lifetime accumulating he realized now was absolutely obvious to anyone alive in the world, and it made him ashamed to see it so plain. Anyone who wasn't crazy or greedy or stupid knew it. He shifted to get his hand in his pocket and took out his money and handed it to the girl. He lifted his head and told her to go home, and she unfolded herself from his lap and got up and was gone in a few seconds. He had wished for a moment that she would stay and talk to him. The smell of cigarette smoke and perfume hung in the air for a minute. He had wanted to tell her something, but what ever he had to say she already knew it.
When he closed his eyes he could get glimpses of Marletta, and of Michelle, the two of them sometimes getting mixed up in his head. They were like two lights on a dark horizon, and if he could stay fixed on them, move toward them, he thought he could get away from all of this. Not just out from under this trouble but away from everything he knew, be something different, do some thing with his life, maybe. He stayed up through the night, drinking vodka and tonic to bring himself down off the coke and reading the book he'd bought. He thought, not for the first time, about the land in the westerns he read, the way the men in the stories found their way by the col-ors and shapes of rocks and canyons. Everywhere he had been in ten years had looked the same to him. The Philly suburbs were hills rolling out monotonously, every inch covered with weedy industrial lots, Wal-Marts and Kmarts and malls, and you couldn't fix yourself in them. The stars were lost in a milky sky lit orange by sodium lamps. Sometimes he dreamed of himself on a horse in the desert, navigating dry wash canyons by the color of the sand and riding in the blue shadows of massive rock formations like pyramids grown from the earth.
He lay with Marletta in his small bed, naked on the covers, heads close. He pulled a pillow from the floor and put it under her head, and she smiled at him. She was larger somehow out of her clothes, the fact of her working on his head, his need for her moving in the muscles of his arms and legs. Her eyes were shining and wide as if desire were a drug moving in her blood.
She touched him, and he closed his eyes, moving his hips against her hand, and she kissed him and rolled onto her back. She caught his hand and guided his fingers to her, and he felt where she was wet and his breath came harder and he moved over her and balanced there.
She put her hands on the small of his back and, lifting herself, drew him down onto her. He watched her eyes close, and fat tears rolled from the corners and she bared her teeth, and he stopped moving. Her eyes opened, and she saw there was something frantic and afraid in his face and put her hand on his cheek.
"I don't want to."
"No," she said. "It's okay."
"I don't want to hurt you. I can't hurt you."
"No, I love you."
"I don't know what to do." His voice was horse.
She drew his head down and put her lips to his ear. "I need you to be with me. I love you. Everything beautifu l is on the other side of this. Everything is coming for us."
At dusk the next evening Ray went to a small strip mall in Trooper and waited for Cyrus. He got out of the Honda and paced, drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee and wanting a cigarette. At eight thirty it was still hot, and he wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The phone buzzed in his pocket, and he looked at it. Manny again, wanting him to relent and let him be there to watch Ray's back. He turned it off.
He watched people go in and out of a convenience store, watched a man with tattoos and one wandering eye come out of a thrift store carrying an armload of scuffed toys. Moths and mosquitoes came out of the dark and thrashed against the green lights overhead. The man got into a worn El Camino and two small girls lunged at him, clutching at the toys with wide smiles.
Cyrus showed in the huge red pickup, the kid with the shaved head riding shotgun. Ray made eye contact with Cyrus, and the older man took his hand off the wheel and pointed down the road. Ray got back in the Honda and headed out. They snaked over low hills, the pickup hanging back. Ray kept it slow, keeping them in his rearview. After a few turns he noticed there were more cars behind them and Cyrus was talking into a cell phone as they made the turns, his big head silhouetted against the slewing lights of trucks and SUVs.
On Forty Foot Road Ray slowed and then pulled over. He got out and walked back to the pickup, kicking gravel and empty plastic soda bottles.
The skinhead jumped out and moved out front. He had big, wired-looking eyes and thick rings on his knuckles. "What's up?"
"What is this? I thought I was taking him to look it over."
"Mister, you and me just do what we're told." He stepped back, pointing ahead.
"You don't need me. To look it over."
"You're the one called this deal. You're done when he says you're done." The big skinhead pointed back at the cab, where Cyrus cocked his head and pointed his red hand down the road.
Ray shook his head but got back in the car and started away. Two vans and another pickup stayed close behind Cyrus. He turned down a long dirt road leading around a hill and watched the moon slide between clouds. At the bend he stopped. The road led into a copse of trees, and ahead he could see the lights on the pointed roof of a tall old farm house and the blank side of a white barn. He opened his window and heard music and a loud, rough laugh. Cyrus pulled up and got out, and Ray watched as the two vans and the truck pulled into the grass. A dark Taurus made the turn from the road and parked behind the other cars. Ray went under the passenger seat and retrieved the Colt and put it under his jacket at the small of his back. His breath was coming harder, and he put a hand on his chest. He got out of the car but left it running.
To the north he could see heat lightning flash soundlessly. There was a din of crickets; a hot wind pulled at his shirt and hair, and sweat began to run on his neck and chest. Men came out of the vans wearing embroidered colors. They crowded around the trunk of the Taurus and talked to each other in low voices. Ray wanted to jump back in the car and get out.
Cyrus moved over and put his ruined hand on Ray's back, moved him forward away from the car. He closed the door and reached in through the open window and pulled the keys out of the ignition and pushed them into Ray's hand. "Let's go see what's going on." He nodded down the road toward the farm house.
Ray looked behind him and got a glimpse of men carrying long guns and someone hefting a cardboard box. "This isn't what I thought." He made a gesture at the crowd of men filling the road now, kicking up dust that looked blue in the moonlight.
"What did you think?" Cyrus leaned into him in the dark, and Ray backed up.
"I thought you were just . . ." Ray licked his lips.
"Bullshit." In the dark, Ray could only see the liquid whites of the older man's eyes. "You knew exactly what I was going to do." Ray shook his head, and Cyrus pushed him hard against the car door with a rigid arm that compressed Ray's chest and stopped his breathing. "Don't lie to me, yardbird. You knew. You knew the minute you looked in my eyes." The other men crowded around them, their eyes reflecting the blue glow of a distant light pole.
Ray's voice was thin and breathless. "I can pay them the money."
Cyrus reached into the skinhead's jacket and came out with a pistol, a fast move like a magic trick in the half-light. He stuck the gun under Ray's chin. He saw the skinhead wince a little, as if he were expecting to hear the flat, detonating pop and to see Ray's head come apart. After a long moment, Cyrus pulled Ray off the car by his shirt and pushed him down the road.
"Now fucking move."
Ray began to walk, pulling weakly at his clothing to recover himself, keeping the low hill on his left, between him and the house and barn. He left the gravel road and went into the grass, followed by Cyrus, the rest strung out in a line leading back to the cars. It was impossible to know how many there were in the dark. As they moved around the hill the music got fainter. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could begin to make out junked farm equipment shrouded by tall grass, broken bottles catching the flashes of lightning. A pile of tires loomed and then retreated, and then they were walking through the trees.
The music and party noise grew clearer as they made their way past the hill and into another stand of trees closer to the house. The men with Cyrus spread out as they came to the edge of the overgrown lawn, and everyone slowed. Ray dropped to his knees next to a scarred dogwood that bowed over to almost touch the ground. There was a clink of glass behind him, but when he turned all he could see was Cyrus carrying a double-barreled shotgun and some indistinct shapes of men among the trees. Ray's own harsh breathing filled his head, and his heart hammered.
Ahead was the house, and beyond that the white barn. Men were sitting on the steps of the house and wandering in and out of the barn. There was a row of parked bikes, a white pickup. He could see more cars out on the other side of the barn and tried to pick out the Charger. The inside of the barn was bright with lights, and the music threw clattering echoes off the house and trees. A song about skinheads. Women danced in cut-off shirts that showed pouched bellies and waved plastic cups in thick hands studded with rings. A man threw a bottle out into the darkness, and it broke against the trees nearby. There was a fire in a barrel, and a shirtless man staggered out of the barn and fell hard in the gravel. Someone kicked him and he rolled. Ray could smell dope and wood smoke and gasoline.
Ray turned his head and caught Cyrus striding out of the woods to stand in the sharp white glare from the floodlights on the side of the barn. The old man laid the shotgun down and stripped off his leather jacket and a dark T-shirt and bared his wiry torso, crossed with ropy veins and vivid tattoos: crossed swords, a helmeted Viking with a battle-ax, pit bulls on chains, and the words CRY HAVOC, inked liked a headline across his narrow chest. He picked up the shotgun, broke it open and checked the loads, and then stood unnoticed in the wash of sound and light from the party.
No sign of anyone who might be Scott. A man came out of the barn, turned his back to Ray, and sat on a bike. He had long gray hair and wore colors. Ray looked right and saw Cyrus turn to call something to the men in the trees. One of the other men was pointing off into the dark near the house and cradling what looked like an AK-47. A fat, sweating man hunched in the shadows and reached into the cardboard box Ray had seen earlier. He pulled out a bottle and handed it to someone behind him.
Ray was breathing hard, his mouth dry. He thought about Ho and Tina and Manny and the man who wanted him dead. Who might right now be one of the indistinct figures moving in the barn, obscured by the haze from cigarettes and dope.
The man on the bike stood on the starter, and the engine bucked and roared. At that instant a bottle arced from behind Ray, a flaming rag tied around the neck. Everyone looked up, the bikers, the dancers, the man on the ground, his mouth bleeding. The bottle seemed to hang in the air a long time and then hit the barn and broke over the wide doors, showering flame on two men drinking beer in the open doorway. The man on the bike tried to get off, the bike toppling and taking him down with it, pinning his right leg. Another bottle broke on the side of the barn, there were screams inside, and Ray turned to see Cyrus shoulder the shotgun and unload both barrels toward the men on the steps of the house.
There were more shots from the trees, and men and women were screaming and running. A Molotov hit the porch, and a man in a black T-shirt was engulfed in flames and ran out into the night. Someone in the barn began to fire a big revolver wildly into the trees, and the slugs splattered against the bark. Cyrus was pounding his chest and bellowing, his cracked voice rumbling and breaking, screaming that all these fuckers had to get out of his yard, his voice sometimes lost under the screaming of women, the ragged popping of the guns, and the strangled cough of motorcycle starters.
Ray dropped low and began to claw his way back toward the hill. He heard two more booming shots from the shotgun, answering fire from the barn and the house. When he reached a wide oak he stood in the lee of the massive trunk and looked back at the farm house. The men Cyrus had brought stood behind trees and along the side of the house. One of them threw something at an open window, and it broke open against the sill, dumping flaming liquid inside and outside of the house. The barn was already burning hard, and the guy with the AK was firing into the flames. Even hidden back in the trees, Ray could feel on his face the heat from the fire.
Cyrus was standing out in the clearing over the guy pinned under the bike. The meth cooker's eyes reflected the yellow light from the burning barn as he brought the butt of the gun down on the man's head hard and fast while the trapped biker feebly tried to protect himself with one curled arm. Some of the people from the barn had reached the cars, and Ray heard more engines cranking and the guttural blat of motorcycles firing up. He hadn't seen the Charger yet, but he wanted to get away. There was a terrible, shattered screaming from somewhere inside the house and sobs echoing from the dark. He saw pale figures disappearing into the darkness on the far side of the barn. The music was still playing somehow inside the barn, a wailing solo guitar that sounded as if a blowtorch had been turned on it.
He ran bent over, as if through rain. The moon had come out of the clouds, and he could see the grass as a dim blue and the black lines of trees. The sounds of the shots and the fire and screaming faded, and for a while all he could hear was his breathing and the sounds of his boots in the grass. When he broke out of the trees he turned to look behind him, and the low mass of the hill blocked his view. The sky was bright with firelight as if the hill were a volcano erupting, bleeding fire and smoke into the night sky.
He heard something moving through the grass and lifted his head just in time for a massive body to collide with him. The air was knocked from his lungs, and he tumbled over onto his side and scraped his arm open against a stiff bush bristling with thorns. The other man was sobbing, his eyes black and unreadable in the darkness. Ray lurched up onto his knees, and the man swung at him with a knife that caught the blue light of the moon so that Ray fell back again trying to stay out of his way. The other man had silver hair and a long face, and he pushed off a tree stump to stand over Ray with the knife. He feinted as Ray held an arm up, making short stabbing motions like a man looking for an opening to harpoon a fish. Ray fell back again, trying to work his arm behind him to free his pistol from his waistband, but the man stepped on his leg, and Ray cried out with the pain and pulled forward with an involuntary jerk.
"Hey!"
They both turned to see Cyrus, his gun leveled. Ray let himself drop back, and the old double-barrel lit up the clearing for an instant so that Ray could see the man, the trees standing spaced like pickets in the dark, the broken stump and the bush he was tangled in, each leaf standing out for a millisecond before the it was dark again and Ray was night-blind. He could feel blood and flesh hit his chest and arms, and the biker with the silver hair fell back, his legs jerking.
Cyrus walked over, breaking open the gun and jacking the spent rounds out, the brass ends catching the moonlight. He pulled two more rounds out of his jeans and snapped the gun together and stuck the barrel in Ray's ribs and leaned on the stock. The pain shot across Ray's stomach and down his legs and made him sick to his stomach.
"Run away." Cyrus leaned down. "And don't think about telling nobody what you seen here. You called this deal, and you and your gook buddy got just as much to lose as we do." He straightened up and walked back toward the house, disappearing into the dark.
What was all this for? he kept thinking. How much money was in it? There must be millions somewhere, right? Was all of this about the kind of money stuffed in the duffel bag? It wasn't enough. Not for all this. There wasn't even enough money to buy a decent house.
Laying there spattered with blood under the white moon like a hull of bone, he saw that there was almost nothing in it and that all around him were the dogs that slinked under the table and chewed each other's throats for scraps. These men, Scott and Cyrus, and him, too. Ray and Manny and their friends. Ripping at each other with teeth and black claws and the whole time dying themselves, worn thin and bleeding. Wandering away to die alone or killed for their weakness.
Ray pulled himself up painfully and ran without looking back. He could see men back by the line of cars, some carrying guns. He made for the Honda and had just reached it when the dark Charger rocketed up the drive and spun off the driveway at the turn, throwing gravel. Two men who had stayed back with the cars started firing shotguns at the long car as it missed the turn. Ray could hear the hard crack of glass shattering as whoever was inside stomped the accelerator and the big Dodge fishtailed and the tires whined and spun uselessly in the wet grass.
A third man ran close and threw one of the firebombs hard against the rear windshield. Already starred from the shotgun pellets, the glass bowed in, and the interior of the car filled with yellow light as the gasoline spilled across the rear seats. More shots hit the front windshield, and the wheels stopped spinning. Ray stood, transfixed by the sight of the car burning. It was blue, he could see now. Dark blue, midnight blue. The men who had been firing the shotguns ran back to the Taurus and slammed the doors. They pulled out, and the third man jumped into the rear seat while the car was still moving. It shot down the driveway, gravel spitting from under the wheels and clattering against the other cars.
Ray could hear sirens now and far away could see the red and white lights of fire trucks making their way up Forty Foot Road. There were distant pops and cracks from the direction of the farmhouse. Ray finally started jogging back toward the car, pulling his keys out of his pocket. When he got the Honda moving down the driveway, picking up speed, he kept looking back toward the Charger. The inside of the car filled with flame, and smoke spi-raled out from under the hood. The doors never opened, and no one got out.
TEN
RAY CALLED MANNY and started telling him everything that happened, his hands vibrating like broken machines. Manny stopped him, told him to meet him at the place where he was staying, in a room over a bar where they sometimes hung out in Warrington, a place owned by a guy who'd sold them guns a couple of times.
Ray parked in the dark reaches of the parking lot and walked across the asphalt, feeling a bass beat from inside that resonated in his chest before he even opened the door. Inside, the noise was deafening, the place packed with kids. Young guys with ball caps on at angles and gold chains around their necks, shoulders hunched, going for some kind of effect that eluded Ray. Did they think, with their freckled skin and wide eyes, to be taken for dangerous? He elbowed his way to the bar and asked for a beer and a shot. He downed the shot and carried the beer back out to the entrance to get to the stairs, waved to the bouncer, a friend of Harlan Maximuck named Edgy.
At the top of the stairs he knocked, and Manny let him in with his right hand held behind him, poking his head through the door and looking up and down the hall. When Ray went by him Manny threw a baseball bat onto a mattress on the floor and dropped down beside it. The floor vibrated with the pulse of the beat from downstairs. Ray could feel it through his boots.
The place was a mess, a big empty space with extra tables for the bar, chairs stacked, cardboard cutouts of girls in swimsuits and cartoon pirates selling rum and beer. There was a little plastic fan sitting on the floor pointed at Manny, the box it had come in put into service as an end table holding Manny's works, a bottle of peppermint schnapps, a package of bright orange peanut butter crackers. There was scattered trash, empty bags from Yum Yum Donuts down the street, empty green beer bottles, an ashtray and a pack of Marlboros.
Ray told as much of what had happened as he could remember, though he knew things were already getting confused, his memory distorted by intensity and his own fear. "They went fucking crazy. They burned the fucking place down, shot people. I never saw anything like that."
Manny's head bobbed. "Good. I hope they killed that fucker and his dog. I hope they killed everyone who ever met him or knew his name." He scratched at a sore in the crook of his arm.
Ray said, "You're high."
"Fucking A, I am high." He went to the peanut butter crackers, took one out with exaggerated care, and made large, approximate movements of his arm to get it to his mouth. "Why are they orange? 'Cause of the cheese?"
"Fuck, man."
"I mean, is cheese really orange? Isn't it white, or blue or something? I mean, it's basically moldy milk."
"Manny."
"I'm just saying, why orange? I can't have an opinion about orange?"
Ray squatted by the box and picked up the bottle of schnapps and swigged it.
"That is some nasty shit."
"It's sweet. I got a sweet tooth."
"You got like three teeth, and you're going to be losing them soon." Ray went to the window and looked out through a hole in the shades. The lights in the parking lot glinted from pickup trucks and SUVs. He watched a boy kissing a girl sitting on the hood of a parked car. She was wearing a white top that stopped a few inches from her jeans.
"Where did you score?"
"Monk on Bristol Road. You going to give me shit about that, too?" Manny got to his feet, swaying. He pulled the bat off the bed and swung it wildly, losing his balance and backing into a wall, leaving a dimple in the wallboard where his elbow connected.
Ray waved his hand in front of his face. "Oh, fuck off. I just want to keep a low profile." He shook his head. "Like I give a shit if you get high."
"I know, I just. . ." Manny bobbed his head. "I can't handle this shit. Sitting around. I'd rather get out in it than sit and wait."
"Well, what the hell? Aren't I out there trying to handle it? Rolling around in the fucking tumbleweeds with these hillbillies?"
"Okay."
"I don't need shit from you."
"Okay, okay." Manny held up his long arms and dropped his head, making peace, then went back to pacing, swinging the bat at flies. "Life goes on," he said, his voice low. "A man becomes preeminent; he's expected to have . . . enthusiasms." This was a favorite of Manny's, The Untouchables. De Niro a hulking animal in a gray suit. "Enthusiasms. Enthusiasms. What is that which gives me joy?"
"Smack?"
Manny dropped the bat and it bounced and knocked over some empty green beer bottles. "Not just that." He looked around as if seeing the place new and rubbed his eyes with both hands, like a child. "Stealing shit. Money. Sherry." He stared into the middle distance. "I gotta sleep."
"Go ahead, man. I'll keep an eye out."
Manny dropped to his knees and crawled to the mattress and dropped onto it, his black hair splayed around his head, his body long and white but for the tattoos aging green. Frankenstein on his right arm, Al Pacino as Scarface on his left. His junkie mother, from a photograph he used to keep with him all the time, across the small of his back. Blond hair in curls and a shy smile. She was long dead, cut to pieces and left in garbage bags by the side of the road in Bristol Township.
Manny didn't lift his head. "So, did we win?"
Ray thought about that. "I don't know. Maybe."
"When will we know?" Manny's voice was muffled by the mattress.
Ray shrugged, realized Manny couldn't see it but figured he took the meaning from his silence.
AT NINE THE next morning Manny was still asleep, so Ray left a note and went down to pick up a paper and took it to the Yum Yum Donuts at County Line and sat on a stool bolted to the floor. He hadn't slept, and his eyes were cinders in his head. He skimmed through the accounts of what had happened at the barn. Two dead, names unreleased, with three more in critical condition, a dozen more treated and released. The cops knew it was bikers fighting over turf, and there were sidebars on the motorcycle clubs, the Pagans and the Outlaws, and the meth trade. He would have to look at later editions to see the names of the dead.
He was edgy and his mind skittered from one thing to the next. He took out his cell a few times and looked at it, finally shoved it in his pocket and went to the car. His arms and legs twitched from lack of sleep, and a kind of strange electricity pulsed in him. When he got back to the bar he took the stairs two at a time, shouldered in the door to grab Manny's works, and then tied himself off using the cord from the fan. Manny was a freak about not sharing needles and kept spares still in their cellophane and paper covers. The noise of unwrapping them woke Manny, who sat up and watched him cook the heroin in his blackened spoon and bang his arm to bring up the vein.
Ray let the blood back up in the needle and shot it into his arm.
"Christ, Ray." Manny licked his lips. "When was the last time you fired up?" Ray untied the cord from his arm and smiled, but Manny shook his head. "Dude, I know you been chipping, but shit."
"So bill me."
"Fuck you, I don't care about the money." Ray put a finger to his lips. "Don't talk. Go get more dope." A wasp was buzzing, hitting the glass of the window with a rhythmic tick. Ray lay back and the buzzing filled his head. The hot light from the morning sun hammered his skin, and sweat rolled from his hair and into the hollows of his eyes. The bed was a raft on a sea of lava, and the air wrinkled with heat and fire. He heard Manny go through the door, but the sound was distant, tinny, as if it were on the radio in another room. Someone downstairs started up the sound system, and there was a resonant hum he could feel in his jaw and then long guitar notes. The room vibrated, and the beer bottles rolled, throwing green light onto the walls. The wasp hung in the air over his head. He focused on it, a perfect engine of rage beating the air with tiny wings in a relentless semaphore he could not follow.
ray jerked awake. Manny was sitting on the floor, flexing his arm to bang up the vein and holding the needle. The sun was lower in the sky, and there was noise from downstairs communicated by vibration through the floor. They couldn't stay in this room much longer.
He'd had a dream about the accident that sent him away, when Marletta died. He was standing in the road with blood coming out of his hair and looking at a man asleep in the road, only of course he wasn't really asleep, and there were tracks leading off into the weeds where the car Ray had been driving was on its side, and he couldn't find Marletta anywhere. It was the most he had remembered about the accident that had sent him to prison. The most that he had let himself see, maybe. He knew there was more. It was like reading a terrible book and not wanting to turn more pages because you knew the story just got worse.
Ray got up and started policing up the mess into the plastic bag from the donut shop. He could smell himself, a rank tang of smoke and dope sweat and dust. He heard doors slamming and went to the window and watched guys come in from their trucks. Guys getting a beer after a day of work, three guys in jeans and Tshirts with a logo he couldn't make out. Landscapers or delivery men or ware house guys. Something where they hauled shit or built shit or something that you got a righteous thirst from and at the end of the day you had a beer and bitched about, and then the married guys went home and the single guys stayed and chatted up the girls who would come in later. A life he didn't know, that he felt a million miles away from. Like the Plimsouls said, he was on the wrong end of the looking glass.
Ray had sat in bars with guys and listened to them talk, and when the subject came up he just said he worked for a painting crew, but things broke down when somebody knew somebody in the business, and his lies would become tenuous and elaborate, which gave him a bad feeling, like he was pretending to be tall by balancing on stilts. He would get tense and defiant, and the people around him would slip away.
He went around the room and began picking up Manny's clothes and stuffing them into his bag, impatient to be on the move. Manny himself lay back, his eyes rolling, and Ray knew it was going to be a little while before he could get him out of the room and into the car. He dug through his jacket and found the one-hitter and gave himself a jolt so he could focus, formulate a plan of action. He wanted his car back, wanted to go home and get a shower and listen to his own music.
Loaded up with bags and bits of clothing, he moved down to the car, edging past drinkers in the dim bar and pushing out into the sunlight slanting through the trees behind the crumbling asphalt lot. Outside he became aware of his clothes, stiff and foul-smelling, and he caught sight of himself in the long side mirror of a pickup. His hair was wild, his face streaked, and there were dark stains on his clothing and he remembered where they were from and he shuddered and had to resist the urge to crawl out of his clothes right there in the parking lot. He looked and felt like someone who had been living rough in the open and thought if he had seen a guy looking like this in a parking lot he'd have figured him for a guy on the bum. He dumped everything in the back of Sherry's car and got in and drove up to County Line and cut left toward the Dunkin' Donuts. When he got there he drove to where his Camaro had been and found an empty square of blackened asphalt surrounded by yellow tape.
Ray parked and got out and stood looking down at the place where someone had burned his car. There were greasy stripes of black where the tires had been and pools of melted plastic set with bits of broken glass fogged white. He tried to think about the sequence of events and tried to dope out if it had been before or after the barn, which was two nights ago. Maybe. His head hurt and his thinking was furred and had a lot of broken lines and gaps. He felt like he had been in the room getting high for a week, but that was junk for you.
He got back in the car and drove back down Easton Road. When he got to his street he slowed and began looking into each parked car for someone who didn't look like he belonged there. Not that he would know. From half a block away he could make out the broad back and white-blond head of his landlord, Mrs. Gawelko, and a tall kid in his early twenties with big shoulders and a buzz cut. She was pacing and making broad motions with her arms, acting out some kind of opera for the kid, who Ray thought was her son.
He considered just driving on and coming back to deal with what ever it was later, but the urge to find out what was going on won out over what he felt was the more commonsense plan of action, to just keep going down to 611, get on the turnpike, and drive west until he saw red rocks and tumbleweeds. He parked the car and walked slowly across the lawn, flashes of muscle pain lighting up his arms and legs, bright spots and clouds in his eyes.
When she saw him crossing to her, she started shaking her head and pointing at him and then the door of the little apartment over her garage. "Men came for you. I told them no."
"It's okay, Mrs. G."
"No, it's not okay. These men are big, they have . . ." She brushed her hand down her arms. Tattoos. Yeah, he thought. I bet they had tattoos.
"I thought police, but they're not police. I can't have this." She turned and gave a stream of Ukrainian to her son, who nodded and looked sage, not wanting a part of this now that he had gotten a closer look at Ray. She paced and ranted while Ray smiled and edged closer to the door, his hands up.
"I know, Mrs. G. They won't be back."
"No! It's you. You won't be back." Then there was more Ukrainian and she poked her kid hard in the stomach and pointed at Ray.
"Okay, Ma. Okay. Jesus," the kid said. She wandered off muttering, and Ray stood looking at the kid, who shrugged. "You see how it is? She wants you gone."
"I see it."
"Whoever those guys were, they scared the shit out of her."
"Ah, just some . . . friends. It's nothing."
"Yeah, but she's an old lady."
Ray said, "Let me just get some shit and I'll get out of here." He moved up the short flight of stairs and turned around. "Tell Mrs. G," he said, but then shook his head. There it was again, his face burning, his breath coming short, not enough air to inflate his lungs. He put his hand on his chest, and the bits of light through the trees danced in his head. He watched the big kid cock his head.
"Man, you okay?"
Ray grabbed the banister, held up a hand. "I'm fine. Just tell your mom I'm sorry, and thanks for putting up with . . . You know."
He turned back up the stairs and saw boot prints on the door,
but the lock had held, and he let himself in. Everything looked the same, all his stuff was untouched, but it all looked shabby and unfamiliar in the hard sunlight. He stood for a while, then went into the bedroom and got his duffel and threw it onto the bed. He packed his clothes and looked around. What did he want? His music, some DVDs. On the wall were movie posters he had gotten from the mall. Nothing he couldn't replace in ten minutes. There was nothing of him here. He flashed on standing in a cell upstate on the day they were gating him out, a CO watching him while he looked at a couple of pictures stuck to the wall with the tacky bits of putty they made you use.
There was almost no one who would look for him here and no one who would realize he was gone. His money and his guns were all he had, and that was in the car or locked away. He threw a handful of CDs and movies in with the jeans and underwear and Tshirts and left quickly, without looking back.
He drove aimlessly around for a few hours. Over to the river, down to Oxford Valley. Across the bridge at Trenton and back up 29. Looking for a place to be.
AT DUSK HE collected Manny, and they went back to Monk's and got more junk. They spent the night in another motel, this one in Lahaska. In another room somewhere a man and woman made lovemaking sounds that were like a terrible anguish. They paid for three days in advance and stayed high as much of the time as they could, breaking the fall off the heroin with coconut rum and hash. Ray would do coke out of the one-hitter to get straight enough for runs to a Wawa to get Tastykakes and soda and hoagies they'd pick at and then throw away.
It reminded Ray of when they were young and boosting cars and they'd get four or five hundred bucks for a car and blow it all in a few days on CDs and movies and dope and clothes and buying girls drinks. Seeing the same movie over and over. Terminator 2 and Predator 2 and a long list of crap they watched back to back for the explosions and the guns, the sounds echoing around inside their dope-hollowed brains.
But events kept going, even if the two of them were stuck in a groove. Sherry and Theresa came home from the shore. Sherry needed her car, so Ray told Manny to buy her something and take it out of the money at the U-Store It place in Warrington and he kept the Honda. One of the bikers burned at the barn died, and the story faded off the news. No one seemed to be looking for them. What ever it was that had happened didn't seem to be ongoing.
On the fourth day Manny went home to Sherry's, and Ray called Ho Dinh.
"Man, how the hell are you doing?" How da hell. Ho's accent was more pronounced when he was agitated, and his words were clipped short now.
"I'm good, you know. I'm cool."
"Yeah? We were worried. Tina showed me the paper, all that shit that happened up there."
"Yeah, I'm good."
"You sound high."
"Well, good and high."
"Well."
"No, man, I wanted to say thanks."
"I didn't do anything."
"For hooking me up with, you know."
"I thought maybe you had a problem, Ray."
"No, no. I guess it all worked out."
"Man, are you all right?"
"Really, I'm good. Really, Ho."
There was a long pause on Ho's end. "If you say so."
Ray wanted to tell him the truth, but what point was there? He wanted to say his head was full of death and fire and he couldn't close his eyes without being drunk or high and he wanted to start screaming and never stop. He wanted to tell him that one night while Manny was fixing in the bathroom he'd taken out the old army Colt and dry-fired it into his mouth. But there would be something in there that Ho might see as aimed at him for setting him up with Cyrus. He didn't want that. What ever Ho had done had been to help him out and protect Tina and the kids.
"No, I'm just taking a little vacation, really. I'll call you in a few days."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I'll come over, bring some wine. Tell Tina."
"Okay." Ho didn't hang up. "Just so, you know."
"Thanks, man. I owe you big on all of this."
"Ray."
"Really, man. I'll talk to you soon."
AFTER MANNY WENT home Ray moved to a cheaper motel, one of those places that used to be a real motor hotel back in the forties, with little cabins set apart down a short drive. He was stuck somewhere. He sat and watched the tiny TV in the room, flipping through dozens of programs about life on another planet. He would go to the car, stand there juggling his keys, not knowing where to go.
Ray called Manny's guy Monk again for dope, but he said he was short and gave him a name in Fairless Hills. Ray drove down around dusk into a neighborhood of close-set houses, pickups and cars showing Bondo and rust. Sprawling neighborhoods of postwar homes elbowing each other for a little sun, a little air. He sat outside, watching the house while it grew dark. There were kids' toys in the yard and a blue plastic turtle filled with sand and empty beer bottles. After a while he walked up and knocked. An older guy with prison-yard eyes answered and stood holding the door between them. Ray had the feeling he had something in his hands behind the door.
"What?"
"Monk gave me your name."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Was he wrong?"
"Monk is always wrong. He's a punk."
"I don't want to get into anything, man. I just want to get what I'm looking for."
The guy shook his head and slammed the door. Ray had started walking back up the cracked walk when the door popped open again. A small woman in shorts was standing there showing tattoos snaking up under a tube top. Her hair was a colorless brown, and there were lines etched around her mouth, but she seemed hopeful.
"Come on, get off the street."
He stood for a minute, thinking it wasn't a great idea, then finally walked back in. The yardbird was in a seat watching a Phillies game, a green bottle clenched in his fist as if he expected somebody to make a grab for it. There were more toys around, which Ray tried to see as a good sign. Though he knew better. The house stank of mold and stale beer and cigarette smoke.
The woman smiled at him and nodded, like a helpful clerk in a pharmacy. "What you need, doll?"
"I'll take what you got. Black tar, china, what ever."
"Okay, hon. How much?"
"A gram, two."
"You make small talk with Heston. I'll be right back."
The man, Heston, looked over his shoulder at him, then back at the TV. "You get your shit and keep moving, got it?" On the walls Ray saw swords, throwing stars, and pictures that looked like they had been cut out of magazines of women tied with ropes. Somewhere a baby started crying. Heston moved in his chair and turned up the sound on the game with a remote. Ray saw that what looked like a heap of wool blankets on a couch was a young obese woman with a black eye and a fixed stare. The noise from the baby was a resonant whine that pried at Ray's head like somebody was trying to get it open with a screwdriver. Heston banged on the arm of his chair.
"Goddammit, Rina."
The woman came back in carrying the baby, a wet rag of a kid with brown stains on its jumper, its face contorted in a now silent howl. Ray dug at his jeans and pulled money out, his body jerking with the need to get out and on the road. He saw Heston turn and throw the remote hard at the woman on the couch. She made no move to block the throw, and the remote hit her in the temple with a hard clatter.
The woman with the baby scooted Ray outside with her body, his hand with the money still extended. Her eyes were wild and full of something Ray couldn't imagine, fear or hate or something, so amped that it became something else, a wounded animal vulnerability leaking out of her eyes.
She held the baby out to him. "Take her."
"What? Do what?"
"Take this baby. You got to."
"Lady, what? I'm, uh, I use dope. I can't'"
"Take this baby and get her away from here. Give her away, do something. He don't let me out of his sight, and she's going to end up dead or in the hospital. Mister, these people are crazy."
Ray held his hands up and shook his head. "I don't understand." The woman shrieked and shook, and he retreated another step, waving the money like a flag of surrender.
The woman hit herself on the forehead with an open palm. "Oh, for Christ's sake, won't nobody help me?" She turned the baby to stare into its startled eyes and it was silent, and for a long and terrible moment Ray thought she was going to throw it away from her onto the walk. Finally she lowered the child back to her chest, where it folded itself against her. She turned away, her eyes unfocused, and slowly moved back inside and shut the door.
ELEVEN
RAY DROVE AWAY and got lost in Fairless Hills in the new dark, the endless developments leading one to the other, and he kept making aimless turns to try to find Route 1. He thought about the woman and the baby, and his heart knocked in his chest. He felt a hot hand on his neck, his conscience working on him in some way he couldn't understand. He couldn't take the baby. It couldn't be wrong to turn the woman down, but he did get a flash of himself as he often did, heading west on the turnpike, the dying sun filling his windshield and maps of the western states fanned out on the seat. Only this time there was a bundle beside him on the seat and he wasn't alone, and couldn't there be something good in that?
When he was back heading north, the moon was just beginning to show. His cell rang, and he picked it up.
"Raymond?"
"Hey, Ma."
"I'm home."
"Good, did you have fun?"
Theresa's voice got quiet. "You sound tired."
His eyes clouded over, and his breath hitched in his chest like it was caught on the bones of his ribs. "I am, Ma. I'm so tired."
"Why are you out?"
"I was just, I don't know."
"Come home. Come on home for a night and just rest, hon."
"I want to."
"Ray, I have to tell you something."
"What? Is something wrong?"
"No. No, nothing's wrong. Your father's here."
Ray didn't know what to say. The rage he had felt for so long was as burned out of him as everything else.
"He's sick, Ray, and he's just lying down. He wants to see you."
"Yeah."
"You know he's going to be gone soon."
"Yeah."
"Listen, just come over and have a meal with me and you can sleep in your room. He's all doped up anyway, and you don't have to see him until you want to."
"I, uh. I don't know."
"You don't have to see him if you don't want to."
"I'll see."
"Okay, hon. I love you. He loves you, too."
"Don't. Don't say that."
"Okay."
HE STOPPED AT a CVS on Old York Road and bought himself a toothbrush and toothpaste and a bottle of seltzer, and he brushed his teeth sitting half out of his car in the lot behind the store. He spat and swigged from the bottle and threw it back onto the seat and got out to throw away the toothbrush. He stood for a minute, looking at the traffic going by on York and rattling the change in his pocket, and finally went back into the store and bought a box of candy and a tiny spray of flowers and threw them onto the seat. The clerk was a young girl, maybe Spanish, and her skin was caramel colored and smooth. Ray smiled at her when she gave him his change, and she smiled, too.
When he finally pulled up to the house it was full dark, and for the first time since the spring he could feel the slightest cooling when he got out. Ray did math in his head, trying to remember the date. He got out and started to close the door but then remembered and reached back in for the flowers and candy. He wanted a cigarette for the first time in a while. He stood and looked at the house and listened to the motor on the Honda ticking and heard dogs barking up the street and then Shermie started up inside. The sky was full of stars and roaming clouds and the blinking lights of airplanes. Ray walked up the sidewalk. The cell he had left in the car began to ring again and he turned to see if it would keep ringing and should he get it or just let it go and a shape unfolded itself from the dark yew at the border of the yard and stepped into Ray and stuck a knife in him and he went down.
FROM A DISTANCE it must have looked like they were in an embrace. Old friends finally meeting. The man leaning into him and Ray clutching at the moving arms. Ray made a sound, something like a scream, and then he couldn't catch his breath. He had a flash of the face, the goatee and long hair, and he knew it was the guy from the midnight blue Charger, and the guy was saying something but Ray couldn't make it out. It wasn't important. Ray had heard it all before, about how he had it coming and that he needed to pay, and he had heard it and he had said it even about himself and now it was prophecy coming to pass.
The pain was like a note so high it passed out of hearing. The only thing that hurt after the first seconds was his left leg, though that didn't make sense. The guy must be swinging wild with that knife, he thought. He heard Shermie, louder now, and the door opened and there he was, the old dog moving faster than Ray had ever seen before. Shermie tore into the guy and Ray wanted to laugh but he couldn't make sounds anymore and then there was Theresa and she began to scream and stuck her hand into her mouth and there was more he couldn't follow, but the guy stopped to look at her. Scott, that was his name, he wanted to say it. They were both looking back at the door, at Theresa, and Ray wanted to tell her to go back inside, to get away, and the young guy had hold of Ray's shirt with one hand and when he turned he turned Ray, too, and he saw Theresa take a step back and say something about the police and then look back into the house.
And here was Bart. His old man, looking tired and small and weird in one of Ray's Tshirts and pants turned up at the cuff. The old man, out of prison a day, maybe, and he came through the door and the glass in the door broke and Theresa gave a little shout again from the fright of it. Bart moved right over to where Ray was on the ground and Scott crouched over him, turning back to raise the knife when Bart jerked back the kid's head by the hair and raised Theresa's cast-iron frying pan and brought it down hard with a hollow noise like two rocks cracking against each other. Ray dropped back and lost sight of the kid but saw Bart's arm going up and down twice more with a harsh energy like Ray'd seen him use to kill a spider in the basement once when Ray was young.
A car door slammed, and Manny ran up. Come to see the show. He was tall and gaunt as always, and he had his shades on even though it was full dark because that was Manny, man, he lived the part every minute of the day. He was cursing, and Ray saw Manny and Bart pull the kid by his feet into the garage and close the door, looking both ways down the street to see if anyone was out, doing that heads-up check that he had done himself a thousand felonious times, nothing to see here, nothing at all.
Manny was pulling him to his feet now and that was when it was bad, the blood gone from his head and he was fainting and waking up again while the three shouted in whispers to each other and Theresa kept putting her hand out to the house and saying ambulance and Manny was saying no and that's when Ray got what it was all about and said what he could say, maybe his last chance to weigh in on things.
"No ambulance. Get inside."
Bart got it and knew it was the right thing even as he wanted to come with them and balled his hands and cried at the sight of Manny half-carrying Ray to the car and screamed a sound of rage that made Ray smile and try to lift his hand and wave. The last he saw of them was Theresa folding her arms around his old man and moving back into the house. Flowers, he wanted to say, and chocolates. Lottery tickets for everyone.
IT WAS a long ride to the emergency room, hours and days of watching the streetlights flash by like flying saucers tethered to wires, each radiating an orange sodium glare that felt like sand in his eyes. Manny was babbling and kept pushing Ray's arms down onto his stomach and telling him to hold things together, but Ray didn't want to feel the ragged edges of himself under his hands, he wanted to feel the wind cooling his hot, wet arms and watch the lights. Manny was telling him a story about Scott coming to his house, but he was busy in his head and couldn't follow things. There was so much to say and no point in saying it. No one to hear. Manny knew all about it, knew all his secrets.
At the hospital Manny went in shouting and they got him onto a gurney and people with serious expressions gathered around him and he caught Manny's eyes and tried to wave him off and however it happened Manny was gone and Ray could relax, fi nally, and let go. It was bright and there were people everywhere, and he was tired but didn't sleep. There were people he knew, he thought. There were bikers with long hair and their hands on fire, Rick Staley looking apologetic, shaking his head like don't blame me, man. Danny Mullen with his one hand and Danny's mom with a bandage on her throat, and they all looked very concerned. There were other people that he felt he should know, guys from prison and cops, and it made him feel guilty that he couldn't remember their names. And there was the girl from the picture, in her cap and gown, only it wasn't the girl from the dealer house, it wasn't a stranger from Bristol. It was another girl, one he did know. A girl he had loved. Who loved him.
"HE'S DYING?" an older guy's voice, clipped and precise. A cop. They all sounded military nowadays.
"Yeah, Gene." A young woman. A doctor, a low voice in case Ray was listening.
"Does he know it?"
"That I can't tell you. He's lost a lot of blood? He's got major organs compromised?" Her voice making questions out of statements. Meaning she didn't really know what to tell the cop.
"If he knows he's dying he can give us the name and we can use it in court."
"I don't know his mental state."
"Can I talk to him?" There was an insistent beeping and electronic whirring noises, nurses conferring and someone being sent for an X-ray cart.
"You can try."
"Raymond?"
"Yeah." His own voice, strange and hoarse.
"Raymond, do you understand you're dying?" The older guy, the cop, his voice raised over the murmur of patients and nurses and machines hissing. Someone was talking loudly into a phone, spelling Ray's name.
"I got shot at."
"Did he get shot?"
"No, he was stabbed, according to that kid who dumped him here. Erin, were there gunshot wounds?" There was a sound of paper flipping, a metal clipboard clattering on a desk.
"No, Doctor. Just the penetrating stab wounds, abdomen, left thigh, medial, right arm, left arm. We have . . . heroin on a tox screen. Cocaine. Methamphetamine. Blood alcohol, negative."
"Christ."
"No GSW."
The raised voice again. "Raymond, you were stabbed, do you remember?"
"Shermie's out." He was trying to help, but he couldn't see anything under the bright lights. He wanted to shield his eyes but couldn't lift his arms.
"Shermie?"
"Shermie, he's out! Tell Theresa. I call her Mom."
"Raymond, did Shermie stab you?" Quieter, "Do we know who he's talking about? Do we have known associates?"
Another voice, deeper, another cop. More paper flipping. "I don't have a Theresa. Mother's name is . . . Caroline. According to the fax we got from Lower Makefield. Father's name Bartram."
"Tell her to get Shermie."
"What did Shermie do, Raymond?"
"He was biting."
"He bit you?"
"No, he's too old." There was a long pause, paper rustling, machines going, and the lights so bright it was like a humming in his head. Near his ear a nurse complained that the veins were all blown.
"Doc?"
"He's going. It's just . . . random connections, synapses firing. His blood pressure's down. The surgeon's on his way, but..."
"Shit."
There was a beeping, loud and close. A woman said, "Oh, there we go."
"Yeah, this is going nowhere. Who's on call for anesthesia?"
"Raymond, can you hear me?"
"What's her name? That girl. Look in the car. I knew her name. Marletta."
"He's out."
"That's V-fib."
"Yeah, he's . . ."
"Lidocaine? Ringer's lactate?"
"Is anesthesia here?"
"There he goes."
"Doc?"
"Start compressions."
"Doc?"
"Sorry, Dectective. He's going. He's got too many holes."
"So that's that?"
"That's it."
He pulled off County Line Road in Perry March's Lincoln, the lot packed, cars pulled up on the lawns of houses for graduation. He remembered how hot it was and the radio full of Nirvana because of Kurt Cobain.
Through his open windows he could hear a voice through a loudspeaker and distant cheering, and already people were leaving,moving in small knots clustered around beaming kids in black and white caps and gowns. And he did feel something, a pang in his chest seeing kids he knew, their arms around each other or being squeezed by parents and grandparents.
He drove slowly, looking at faces, a tall girl he'd had a crush on in junior high whose name he couldn't remember now; a kid he'd had English with who'd always said "president" during roll call. Then there she was coming across the lot from the gym, her gown lifted and showing jeans on her short, muscular legs as she ran toward the street and her cap under her arm. A smile stretched to the point of breaking, waving over her shoulder at friends, hitting the curb and juking right to run alongside his car. He slowed and she yanked the car door open and they were gone down Centennial Road like a bank heist.
She looked at him a long time without saying anything, and he'd steal glances at her until she smiled and hit his arm.
He said, "Put the cap on, I need the whole effect."
She did, and moved over to the door to pose, her hand under her cheek. He shook his head.
"So, how was graduation?"
"Fun. How was Juvie?"
"Oh, you know. There was one boy who I liked, but I couldn't tell if he liked me back."
"Jesus, Ray," but smiling when she shook her head. " You kill me."
"I could always make you laugh."
"Really, how was it?"
"Oh, it was fine. I cleared some brush, cleaned up some litter off
611." She made a move toward him, bringing in her hand like shewas socking him in the jaw, touched his cheek instead.
"I couldn't sleep, thinking about you in there."
"Mars, it was fine, really. There are always some retards, but I just give them the eyes and they keep moving."
"The eyes?"
They pulled up at the stop sign at County Line, and he turned toward her and lowered his head, his eyes hooded and empty, and she turned her head.
"Great. There's a skill. Honest to God, you scare me sometimes."
"I don't want to fight, Marletta." He put his hand on her leg. She kept looking away but covered his hand with hers.
He said, "I would never hurt you, you know that."
"Oh, stop. I'm not frightened of you, I'm frightened for you, dipshit."
"Well, listen to the mouth on Stanard Hicks's daughter."
" Yeah, well, my boyfriend is a bad influence."
They drove for a while, the windows open, music low. There was a blare of horns and Ray swerved, fought for a second to hold the road.
"Shit!" A car loomed on the left , shot past. They heard the kids inside shriek; saw the soap on the windows. GOOD LUCK! CLASS OF 1994. He lifted his fist. "Goddamn kids today."
"Careful, hon. You just stole this car you and don't want to crack it up already."
He shook his head. " You think you're superbad?"
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, shook her head.
"So," he said, "Cornell, full ride?"
" Yes, and you know who got me in?"
" You got you in. You worked hard for that."
"I did, but it was Farah Haddad who wrote this absolutely incredible letter for me."
"Huh."
"I know you didn't think much of her, Ray, but she really stuck it out for me."
"Well, that's good. Not that you didn't deserve it."
"You know, she also told me she thought you were the brightest boy she had in years."
He made a noise. "Really? A C or something would have been a good way to show it. She failed me."
" 'Cause you didn't give a shit, pardon my French."
" Yeah, well, what the fuck."
"Exactly." She shook her head. "And you practically wrote that paper for me on Vonnegut. Out of your head."
"It was easy."
"Not for everyone, Ray, for you. Because you're smart. You think. All I did was add punctuation to what you told me and I got an A off McGlone. And he doesn't give A's."
"Then why are you mad at me?"
"It should have been yours! You should have kept it together and stayed in school and gotten your own damn A's."
"Hon, we can't just fight when we're together. All we got is what? A month or two and you'll be off to school?"
"And then what? For you, I mean? What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. A buddy of my dad's said he might be able to get me something down the quarry."
They came to a light, and she moved across the wide seat of the Lincoln and put his arm over her shoulder and laid her head against him.
"You can be more, Ray. Everyone knows it."
"No, no one knows it. I'll be okay. And you'll be off to see the world. Get that degree, man, there'll be no stopping you."
"Why don't you come with me?"
"Is there a quarry in Ithaca?"
"Raymond, will you please?"
"Oh, Marletta, this is the way it is. Guys like me knock around, get work at the filling station or a factory shop. And the brilliant girls they fall for go off to Cornell and become doctors and lawyers."
"Oh, I am leaving. Do you know why?" She lifted her head and poked him hard under the ribs.
"Shit! That hurt. Anyway, why wouldn't you?"
"I would stay for you, Ray. I love you, you . . . dumb-ass."
"Now you sound like Bart. The dumb-ass part, not the love part."
"Is that who screwed you up so bad?" She watched his eyes. "Was it Bart beating you and your mom, or going to jail? Or your mom leaving?"
"Now you sound like the social worker at the Youth Authority."
"Well? What did you say to the social worker?"
"I don't know, Mars, I'm not the kind likes to dwell on the past. You know me, I'm more of an accentuate-the- positive sort of guy."
"Yeah, that's you all over."
"What? I do nothing but smile when I'm with you. I think sometimes I must look like I'm retarded."
"You say that, but what good does it do, Ray?"
"It does me all the good in the world."
"Really? 'Cause to me it looks like a waste of time." She slid across the seat and put her hand on the door.
He sat up and his voice was low in his throat. "A waste?"
They turned into the parking lot at Lake Galena, and he had barely pulled into a spot when she got out and slammed the door. She walked down the short hill without looking back, and he got out and closed the door and trailed after her, his hands stuffed in his jeans.
He got close to where she was picking stones out of the dirt and trying to skim them, the loose sleeves of the gown flapping. The first one shot in at a hard angle and splashed her. He sat on the grass a few yards behind her. " You got to lean, hon. Get your arm parallel to the water."
"I know how to skim rocks, thanks. I need to know how to steal a car you'll be the first one I call."
"Mars."
The next rock she threw hard, and it arced out over the lake, a long high course that ended with a small splash. "You told me you thought I was beautiful."
"You are. The most beautifu l girl I've ever seen."
She turned to him and sighed. "See? You say that and I am beautiful. I feel beautiful." She lifted her arms. "And smart and capable and all the things you ever said to me, they . . ." She shrugged. "They helped me to be all those things. They made me see myself differently."
"I did that."
"Not just you. Farah Haddad, too. And Mrs. Cross, from the
gym. Even Stanard Hicks, in his way." She sat down facing him in
the grass. "But when I say what I see in you, when I tell you that you
can do things, can be things, it's just, I don't know. Wasted breath."
"It's not'"
"Yeah, it is." She dropped her head. "I tell you you're smart, you break into a house and nearly get shot. I tell you I love you and you steal a car and get sent away for three months."
"That's not your fault, Mars. You can't think that."
"I know it's not, Ray. It's something in you. I don't know how it got there, though God knows enough crappy stuff happened to you."
"Oh, my life isn't that bad."
Her eyes flashed and she smacked the ground with her hand. "Will you stop! Will you please for one blessed minute stop and listen to me?"
She stood up and stomped over to him, and he thought for a minute she was going to slug him for real, her fists balled and her face taut and red.
"You're throwing your life away so fast I can't. . . I can't even keep up with it. I tell you I love you, I love you so much it takes my breath away, and it's just nothing, it makes nothing happen. You can't stop screwing yourself up, can't give yourself a break. Can't finish school or just stay around for me."
He reached up and touched her hand, but she shook her head and turned away. She let herself drop down facing the water again.
He said, "It's not a waste." He picked up a short length of stick and touched her back, trying to tickle her neck.
"Oh, please."
"No, you have to think of it that you're the only one who keeps me going at all. The only one who has anything good for me. I know I screw up, but without you it's just worse. You're the only one who cares whether I live or die."
"That's some fun for me."
"You say you don't matter, I'm telling you you're the only one who does."
"I can't do that alone, Ray. That's too much for me to take on by myself."
"Who else is there?" He sounded lost, and she turned and looked at him and her eyes were red.
"There's you, Ray. You have to care about yourself. I mean at least a little. Enough to stay out of prison and not, I don't know. Not mess with other people all the time. There has to be some small part of you that I could count on to keep on track."
They sat for a while, listening to the almost imperceptible sound of the water's edge, tiny breaking waves slapping at the rocks. Across the water a family poured out of vans and SUVs and set up a picnic in one of the pavilions. The low sounds of adult chatter and the high voices of children carried across the lake. One of the smaller kids made a beeline for the water, and a man who was maybe his father grabbed him at the water's edge and scooped him up into a giant whirling arc, the boy screaming. It took Ray a minute to hear that there was excitement in the whoop from the boy, not fear, and he heard the word "again" from the boy so that the man was forced to swing him out over the water again and again while the boy shrieked in mock terror and clutched at him. Ray looked down at his clenched hands.
After a minute he got up and walked the few yards to where Marletta sat and dropped down beside her, his arm brushing hers. She dug under her gown, brought a tissue out of the pocket of her jeans, and blew her nose.
"I love you, Marletta."
"I know you do."
"I'm sorry."
"You are. About the sorriest boy I ever knew." She shook her head at him.
"I knew I could make you smile."
"You always could, from the first time I ever saw you." She leaned over slowly and let her head settle on his shoulder. "Ray."
"I like to hear you say my name. You're the only one I want to hear say it." He kissed her, and she leaned into him and put her arms tight around him and breathed into his mouth; peppermint and strawberry lip balm. After a minute he said, "You're going to ruin that gown."
"You can always steal me a new one." She fitted herself against him, and he grew hard and pushed his face into her neck, opening his mouth and tasting the salt on her skin. She put her hand on his face and he closed his eyes.
"Take me somewhere, Ray."
"No one's home at Theresa's."
"Good. Take me there." He got a flash of her then in his darkened room the month before he got sent up, naked in his bed, her small, dark body next to his long pale one, her brown nipples hardening under his hand. Her lips parted as he moved with her, her fingers on his arm, grasping.
"Where does your dad think you are?" His voice husky, his breath ragged.
"At Carole s. There's a party there later." Her fingers brushed lightly over the hardness in his jeans.
"I don't know if I can wait till I get you home."
She put her mouth against his ear, her cheek grazing his. "All good things," she said.
TWELVE
"THERE HE IS. You awake, hon?" A nurse, big shoulders in green scrubs, a mask but kind-looking eyes under blue eye shadow. She turned to the door. "He's awake."
"Ray, how you doing?" Another nurse, this one small with blond hair framing the mask.
"I don't know." His eyes were leaking water. Fat tears that made him ashamed.
"You're in the hospital. Do you remember?"
"I don't."
"That's okay. We need to pull this tube out."
He blinked and tried to raise his arm. It was tethered to the bed with a soft strap. "I can't get my arm."
"Sorry about that, hon, you were pulling at the IV." The big nurse unwrapped his hand and it lifted, stiff and weightless as if reduced to denuded bone, and he brought it up to touch his face and felt stubble, then wiped at the gum in the corners of his eyes.
He wanted a drink, and they gave him ice chips. He felt like he was wrapped in someone else's flesh, a great swollen mass obscuring him, and he felt a distance between himself and his own wounded body. His arms were wrapped in gauze, and tubes ran under his blankets. He could smell himself, a rank smell of sweat and blood. In his leg he felt a sharp and constant stabbing as if there were still a knife blade in his thigh.
"I really hurt."
The nurse patted his hand and told him they had orders for him to get pain meds.
"I, uh, I have to go."
"You've got a colostomy, Ray. Do you know what I mean?"
"Christ."
"It's only for a while."
A third nurse, this one with red hair, came in, flicking a needle.
"No. I don't want that."
"It's okay, Ray. It's for the pain."
"No, it's okay."
"Is he, are you confused about what's going on?"
"No. It's okay, really."
"Well, if you don't feel you need it."
He turned his head to look at nothing. "I'm, uh. I have a problem with medication."
"Oh."
He heard them stop, all three, and felt them looking at him and each other.
"I can't. I shouldn't have anything like that." He could feel
something, a wall going up. Something hardening in the air be
tween them.
"Okay, Ray."
"Can you make a note or something? I just don't want them to ask me."
"I understand."
" 'Cause I'll say yes. Right now I can say no, so please don't let them ask me again."
"We'll get someone in to talk to you about it."
HE FELL ASLEEP again and awoke, this time the pain sharp and clear and insistent, fingers poking his ribs, his belly, his arms and his leg clamped in a vise. He woke breathing hard, his head full of webs and haze. Bart and Theresa were there, sitting on two chairs pulled close together. Theresa was looking through her purse, and his father was dozing, his breath a raspy whisper. Ray watched them and tried to control his breathing. He held on to the bed rails with a shaking hand.
Theresa looked up, jumping from her chair when she caught his eyes. "Ray"
His father started awake and stood up, rubbing his face. They looked down at him, and he stared back, shaking and wracked.
"So," he said, his lips cracking, "who's watching the dog?"
Theresa put a hand to her eyes and choked, and Bart put his hand on her shoulder and patted her, the gesture clumsy and stiff.
"Look at you. Your heart stopped."
She couldn't say any more, and Bart helped her into her seat. He came back to look down at Ray, and they stared at each other a long time. Ray put his shuddering, dry hand on his father's arm. Bart looked down at his son's hand and then raised his head, and Ray saw him smile. It had been so long since he had seen his father smile it was almost disconcerting, as if he had become someone else for a moment, but in another moment Ray was smiling, too. He shook his head and he raised his eyebrows at his old man, at what they knew about each other. Ray grabbed the skinny rope of muscle over Bart's forearm, touching him where a heart was etched that had once been bright red but was slowly going green and black. It said caroline.
His father shook his head and said, "So that's done, then?"
Ray nodded.
"You're kicking now?"
"I figure they got me strapped down anyway."
Bart nodded back, and his mouth opened and closed a few times like he wanted to say something else, but he just patted Ray's hand.
"I know," said Ray.
Bart held a hand out and took it back, then reached out again and touched Ray's head, patting him with a big hand of rough skin and loose bones. "We'll come back, and I'll keep her from cooking for you for a couple days."
"Yeah, that's good."
Theresa blew her nose, a long honk that echoed off the hard walls. "What's wrong with my cooking?"
"Nothing, girl," said Bart. "It's just the boy can't eat for a while."
"I'm not an idiot, Bart. I know that."
The shaking got worse, and Ray stuck his hands back under the sheet, sweat standing out on his forehead. Theresa stood up and held his cheek, and then they went out, Bart stooped and round-shouldered. Ray lay back and stared at the ceiling and bit his lips to keep from yelling out. After a few minutes of breathing through his mouth a nurse came in.
"How's it going?"
He just looked at her, his eyes wild, and she nodded and lifted his gown to check his dressing. For the first time he saw the crisscrossed lines of sutures and dark blood that reminded him of barbed wire, as if an army had fought a battle ranging across the white expanse of his abdomen and left fortifications abandoned in the field. There was a red tube that he realized was blood draining from one of the wounds and a flaccid plastic bag taped over a hole in his gut.
The nurse went to the sink and wet a washcloth and put it across his forehead. He nodded thanks at her, not trusting himself to say anything. He put his hand in his mouth and bit the fleshy part and growled, praying to pass out. The nurse told him things looked good. She said there was still a risk of infection but everything really did look good. He nodded without speaking, and she shook her head and left. It was more than he could stand, and he wanted to scream.
HE WOKE UP again and it was night. He had a sense of days going by, but nothing changed except the light, so he wasn't sure. He sat in the dark for a while getting used to himself, listening to the murmur of voices from the nurses' station, and then a dark shape filled the doorway and Manny came in and stood over him.
"Hey, man."
"Hey."
"How you making it?'
"Not good. Not good."
"Yeah, they giving you anything?"
"They wanted to. I told them no."
Manny shook his head violently. "What the fuck, Ray? You're missing your big chance here, man."
"I'm trying to kick."
"You're what? Are you kidding?"
"No, I figure I can get straightened out."
"Ah, bullshit." Manny stepped close, his voice a tense whisper.
"What? I've been high for two weeks. I want to get clean."
"You're not an addict, Ray."
"The fuck."
Manny got closer, pulled a chair up, and folded himself into it, his shoulders hunched. In the dark Ray could see pinpoints of light in the lenses of his sunglasses. "I'm an addict. I been in and out of rehab like six times. I'm a fucking dope addict. My mom was a dope addict. You . . ." He looked over his shoulder at the bright hallway and figures going by. "You're just, I don't know. Fucking with yourself."
Ray let out a long sigh and let his eyes close.
"You think you need to pay for something. Man, you paid. You went to jail for nothing, and your whole life was fucked."
"A lot of people are dead."
"Yeah, that's fucked up." He leaned in close, his voice dropping. "But you didn't kill anyone wasn't trying to kill you."
"My head is full of it. All this shit I done. I can't close my eyes."
Manny watched him and then turned his head to look out into the bright hallway for a while. "Listen to me." He turned back to look at Ray. "Listen to me. You ain't like me. Or Harlan. Or Cyrus or any of 'em. You can get clear of this and get a life. That guy you killed'"
Ray shook his head no, but Manny kept going.
"That guy you killed, he cut an old woman's throat and did worse for Danny. That doesn't mean you give up being a human being. Shit, if a cop had been there he'd have done the same."
"I threw it away."
"No, see, the fact you even think this way? That means something. Man, I never had two minutes worrying about any of the things I did. I say fuck 'em all and I mean it. You got all messed up with your dad going up and then the accident and that girl dying and then you came out of jail all fucked up. This money we got? I'm just gonna burn through it. In a couple of months it'll just be gone and I'll be broke again with nothing to show for it."
"What about Sherry?"
"I love Sherry, but she's as fucked as I am. She talks about kicking, having a kid, about buying a house, but at the end of the day she'd rather get high and watch TV and eat takeout food. We don't need that money. It's just going to kill us faster."
"What do I do?"
"Take the fucking money and go somewhere and do something. What do you do I have no fucking idea. I never been nothing but a convict or a thief. What ever you coulda been you better start being it now. Fuck, man, your heart stopped. Twice, Theresa said. And here you are, breathing and talking and shit. That means something."
Ray shook his head. "It can't be that simple."
"It don't have to be complicated. You're thinking of the debt you owe? Then, I don't know, own it. Do something good for somebody. That money had blood on it long before we walked into that house. You want to help somebody, that's not wrong, but you got to help yourself. You got to want to. I remember enough of that crap from rehab to know you got to at least think you got a right to be alive, to get through the day. You did things wrong, do what you can to make things right."
Ray sat and listened, his head cocked. It was the most Manny had said in years that wasn't about wanting dope or girls or money, or getting dope or girls or money.
Manny grabbed Ray's upper arm and squeezed it tight. "Somebody's got to make it. We can't all die off. Somebody's got to get their shit together and get right." He let go of Ray's arm and grabbed his hand. "I got to go, I'm turning back into a pumpkin." He squeezed Ray's hand and got up, looming in the dark.
"Wait," Ray whispered. "What happened to our friend? From up north?"
Manny looked over his shoulder to check for anyone nearby in the hall, then turned back showing his teeth. "Bart finished the barbecue."
Ray flashed on the hole in the backyard, the pile of crumbling bricks.
"That thing's got the deepest foundation of any barbecue in the county. He's motivated, your old man works fast."
MORNING, AND A feeling of being hollowed out, a husk around air and bones. There were two men in the room, behind the nurses as they worked checking the IVs and drains and patting his hand. Ray watched the men, one tall, long limbs folded into a chair, black hair and a knowing smile like an assistant principal who figures you were the one who took a dump in the faculty lounge and he's just angling to prove it. He had a thick sheaf of papers and files in his lap.
The other one was short, gray-haired, moving around the back of the room with a dark energy, touching the pitiful bouquet from downstairs that Theresa had left, a card left thumb-tacked to a board for somebody's grandma who had been in the room before Ray. The nurses left, and he sat and looked at them.
The younger one spoke. "Raymond!"
Cops.
"How are you, buddy? We thought we lost you there."
"Ah, you know. Making it, Officer."
"I'm Detective Nelson. This is Burt Grace, special investigator from the district attorney's office."
Ray nodded, and the gray-haired older man just looked at him.
"You know we're police officers."
Ray shrugged. Cheap sport coats and fraying collars, did anyone else dress like that?
"We wanted to talk to you about what happened."
"I don't really remember."
The older one shook his head, snorted. "Right."
"Well," said Nelson, acting the reasonable public servant. "What do you remember?"
"I was coming back to my apartment in Willow Grove, this guy jumped out of the bushes and stabbed me."
"You were home?"
"I guess. It's all pretty hazy."
"Did you know the man with the knife?"
"No, I didn't really see him."
"Lemme guess." The older cop again, Burt Grace. "It was a big black guy you never saw before."
"I didn't say that."
Grace turned to Nelson. "This is a waste of time." He pointed at Ray without looking at him. "This piece of shit is in the dope business, and he got stuck by some other piece of shit in the dope business."
Ray breathed through his nose, his body starting to hum with pain. "So is there something we have to talk about, or is this something you do for everybody gets stabbed in the county?"
Nelson leafed through the papers in front of him. "You've had quite a time, Raymond."
"You got my life story there, do you?"
"Three juvenile arrests, sent to Lima. Two arrests as an adult, both involving stolen cars. Sent up twice." He flipped pages. "You got a lot of interesting friends, Raymond. Emanuel Marchetti . . ."
Grace made a noise with his lips. "Manny Marchetti? That scumbag? Isn't he the one his mother was a junkie retard got cut up in Bristol?"
Ray cocked his head. "Yeah, and you all did shit about that. It's been ten years. Any leads on that, Kojak?"
"Shut your mouth."
"Burt?" Nelson held up his hands.
"What?" Grace made a gesture of throwing something away. But he went to stand by the window.
"He's got anger management problems?"
"Detective Grace is a good cop."
"I never heard a cop say another cop was anything else."
Nelson was still paging through the files. "Harlan Maximuck. Jesus. Is he still alive?"
"Last I heard."
"Is that story they tell true? About the guy's head in his trunk?"
"I sure wasn't going to ask."
"Vietnamese organized crime figures. You get around."
He went in the folder, held something up to his eyes. A picture. Turned it to face Ray and there she was. Marletta Hicks, in her cap and gown. He wasn't prepared and turned his head.
"Pretty girl."
"Why are you here?" His eyes down, boring holes in the floor.
"Stole a car, smashed it up with the daughter of a state trooper in the passenger seat. Man, here's another one." He held up a picture of Ray, much younger with his eyes blackened, his arms in casts. "Off to adult prison that time, the first time. With your arms broken from the accident. That must have been fun. Of course, worse for the Hicks family."
Grace walked over and stood closer to Ray, and he thought the old man was going to take a swing at him. "You piece of shit. I knew I knew that name. You're the one killed Stan Hicks's kid. Jesus."
"That's what it says."
Nelson lifted his head. "You say different."
"Why would I?"
Grace said, "Oh, what the fuck. If this asshole is going to start lying again I'm going downstairs." He looked at Ray. "They should have punched your ticket ten years ago, shitbird." His footsteps moving away were like gunshots in the hall.
Nelson had a smile fixed on his face, waving pages from the file as if inviting him to continue. "You got something to say about all'this'I'm all ears. I never knew a convict who didn't like to spin a yarn."
"Okay, just be on your way." Ray's stomach cramped, and he gritted his teeth.
Nelson nodded and got up, pulling his card from his pocket. When he laid it on the bed table, Ray looked up, out of breath. "You got the file?"
Nelson held up the pile of papers. "Pretty much everything."
"Okay." Ray looked off, then back, breathing like he'd run a mile, spikes driven into him everywhere. "Okay, then." He grimaced and sucked in air. "You know it all."
"You got something to say about that?"
"Why would I?"
"Now's your chance." The cramp eased and Ray panted, open mouthed.
"No, my chance passed a long time ago. Just ask Stanard Hicks."
"Marletta's father? I know Stan Hicks."
"Yeah?"
"Why would I care about any of this?"
Ray shrugged. "No reason. I mean, you got the file, so you got the story."
"Raymond, you are a piece of work. Look at you." He went into the file, came out with the picture again, and laid it on the table. Marletta smiling in her cap and gown, her brown skin glowing. "What ever else is true, Raymond, you're alive, still. You know, in my religion, they tell me everything happens with some kind of purpose. You're alive, and this beautiful girl is dead. I don't know, Ray. I can't see the purpose in that." He turned, but Ray grabbed his arm, hard.
Nelson looked at the white hand on his arm and then into Ray's eyes. "What do you want from me?"
"Not that. Forget all that."
"What?"
"There's a kid, down in Falls Township." Nelson nodded, got out a pen.
ALONE AGAIN, PAIN threading through his limbs and abdomen like hot wires, Ray just stared off into space and drifted. He was back in a car on a hot day in June when he was a kid with his arm around a girl in a bathing suit, he was lying in a black road starred like the night sky with broken glass, he was in prison with his back against a green tile wall and his broken arms held out like clubs, he was in the front yard of his father's house, watching the moon stab through the clouds and waiting to sleep.
THEY REPAIRED HIS gut, closed the hole from the colostomy, and discharged him quick, Theresa shouting after the clerk who came to tell him about his limited options. With no insurance, no job, no place to go, he found himself at the curb with a metal cane across the arms of his wheelchair, noticing trees across the parking lot starting to show bits of red. Theresa pulled up, and Bart waved from the passenger seat. They got out, and the orderly who had wheeled him to curb helped him into the backseat, where he sighed and fell in on himself like a derelict house. Bart pulled the seat belt across him, and he nodded thanks and let his head loll back. Bart stood back and pursed his lips, looked about to say something, but just nodded his head and closed the door gently.
At home Ray limped to the couch, still not comfortable on the cane, and Bart helped him down. The dog came and sat by his feet and watched him, and he leaned awkwardly down to pat the ancient head. His boots felt huge and stiff on his feet, and he swam in his clothes, gathering the empty expanse of his shirt in his hands. He watched Theresa empty his kit bag out, lining up his pill bottles on the TV while Bart got a pillow from the bedroom and brought it out and put it behind him.
"How's that, old man?"
"Good." Ray forced a smile, wished he was alone. "Thanks." Couldn't bring himself to call his father by any name and didn't know where to put his hands.
He wished for a book, a cigarette, a drink. Theresa put on the TV and brought him the remote, a scepter for the new king of the living room. He was afraid they'd sit down, but their work done, they drifted to the kitchen while Ray flipped through the channels with the volume off. He heard the rattle of pans and smelled coffee and something sweet baking. Warm and yeasty smells after the antiseptic tang of the hospital.
He clicked through shows about decorating houses and planning weddings, watched men stumble around pitched decks in a storm, cops standing over a humped sheet, one naked hand open in the street. A broad red plain under a yellow sun, and jackals tearing at a carcass, the dead thing jerking with a simulation of life.
Thirty years and a month. It sounded like a sentence, something he'd been handed by a tough judge in a bad court. Well, he'd served it and what? Was he out and free? Was he marking time and dreaming of tunnels under the wall? He became aware of Theresa standing in the kitchen doorway, watching him. She was smiling.
"What do I do now, Ma?"
She stood and looked ahead, out the picture window at the lawn and the street and the trees and two jets from the base moving together through the darkening sky, a kind of arcing steel pantomime of love. Her eyes were lined and she looked tired, and he felt a pang of guilt. Theresa had buried a husband when she was young, been a knockaround girl who met Bart when she was a dancer and he was stealing heavy equipment and stood by him through arrest and years of jail and tried to raise Ray, an angry kid who became a thief and hadn't told the plain truth to anyone about anything since he was eighteen.
She said, "How about some coffee?"
He laughed but said, "Sure, Ma."
She stopped at the doorway to the kitchen. "I know you're feeling bad, hon. I know. But it's good to have you home with us."
"Is it?"
"Yes, Ray."
THIRTEEN
LOST WEEKS OF watching television. Sometimes with Bart, sometimes with Theresa. Nature shows. Muscular cats stalking in a rage through long grass. Travel shows, small, neat women walking along brick streets in walled cities in Tuscany, taking dainty bites of mushroom and boar sausage under trees that looked like gauzy green spearheads. Ray got into a rhythm; reading the paper every day, eating little, his stomach cramping and sometimes blood in his shorts at the end of the day.
He woke up in the middle of the night tangled in his sheets and trying to explain himself to someone in uniform. Hot cramps knifed his thigh, and he threw the covers off and stood up, massaging his leg and leaning heavily on the night table. He walked stiff-legged into the bathroom and snapped on the light, taking stock in the mirror. His beard was streaked with white now, and his long face had the angular, distracted features he had seen in photographs of Civil War veterans staring into the middle distance of daguerreotypes, one pinned sleeve empty.
Anyway, he thought, they came home and went to work. Plowed fields and raised families and counted themselves lucky, no doubt, though they walked nightly over the dead bodies of friends and enemies and felt somehow apart from everyone who hadn't been where they'd been and done what they'd done. Still they got on with it.
He sat down in the living room in his underwear, clicked on the TV, and turned down the volume. He was watching the news without seeing it when he saw a familiar face and turned up the volume. It was an older woman, mousy brown hair. It took him a minute to remember. The house in Fairless Hills. The woman was in handcuffs. There were shots of evidence tape, a policewoman holding a blanket-wrapped bundle. Pictures of the yardbird Heston that looked like old arrest photos, shots of the police knee deep in fresh holes in the yard. Digging something up.
RAY WENT OUT the front door and blinked, leaning heavily on the cane. The street was empty; the sun was high and hot. Ray stretched and tried to enjoy moving more than the few steps from the bedroom to the kitchen to the living room. He tried to find a rhythm with the cane, popping the bottom out and then leaning into it, but he broke out in a sweat before he reached the sidewalk. September was winding down and it still felt like August. He made his way around to the car and opened the door, burning his hands on the hot metal of the door of Theresa's beat-up old Dodge. When he dropped into the seat he was panting like a dog and bathed in sweat.
He drove up 611, not knowing where to go. He passed school buses and saw one tree with leaves the red of clotted blood in astand of oaks and maples on Street Road. The air conditioner gave a sigh and stopped with an exhalation of white mist, so Ray cranked the window down and breathed in the smell of road dust and exhaust and fried food from the Wendy's at 363. He was halfway to Doylestown before he realized that was where he was heading.
At Main and Court he turned right and made a slow loop on side streets, passing the court house, brick row homes converted to law offices, Victorian houses set back from the street. There were people out'men in business suits on cell phones, kids on cell phones, harried-looking moms pushing strollers and talking on cell phones. He realized he was looking more at the young mothers than at the girls preening in front of the Gap and thought of it as a sign of maturity. The street he was on ended, and he turned right and then left and wound up at the end of Pine Street. There the remains of the old county prison had been turned into an art center overlooking the local library. He parked and then tapped his way to the library door, his leg on fire.
Inside was a cool, quiet space filled with light, and the sweat dried on his arms as he moved slowly from shelf to shelf, canting his head and looking at titles. He worked his way through the westerns, finding a collection of Elmore Leonard novels he'd been wanting to read, working on the mechanics of carrying the books he was collecting while still using the cane at least some of the time.
He sat at a table with a stack of newspapers and made his way through them, starting with the day he and Manny went to the farm. There were pictures of fire engines and yellow evidence tape strung from trees, articles about biker clubs like the Pagans and the Angels and the dope business. He found more articles about the shooting and fire out in Kulpsville, and finally he sat and read about the man with white hair who had been shot by the men trying to take him on the street in Doylestown. The town hadn't seen violence like that in de cades, and the story played over days on the front page. When he thought it had run its course, the articles getting thinner and the police having less to report due to the random nature of the act, there was a different kind of story about the man who had died.
His name had been Edward Gray, and he'd been a lawyer. In the days after he died, articles began to run about money missing from accounts and clients who had beefed to the local bar. There were increasingly confused quotes from his daughter, apparently his only surviving family; a spiky indignation in the early days smearing into anger and obvious shame. There was a picture that caught her getting out of a car and looking exhausted and empty, dark lines under her eyes.
He read other things, too. Announcements of weddings and obituaries, a kid getting a scholarship for football. He had a sense of life going by, a stream running while he sat on the bank and watched. He read the classifieds, then closed the paper and went back to the car and drove downtown.
There was a bookstore on State Street, half of a Victorian, and he sat in the car at the curb and looked at the window at a sign: for sale.
The next day he went for the first time to the storage place in Willow Grove and angled the car in front of the door and picked through the keys on his ring, feeling the heat against his back. He found the key to the lock and snapped it open with a metallic ping and clumsily dropped to a knee to pry the door up. He had to put his back into the effort, his legs shaking and blood pulsing at his temples. The door groaned and lifted, and he lowered himself on a cracking knee to look inside.
Empty.
Or not quite. On the floor a pen or something, beyond the hard boundary of sunlight reaching under the open door. He bent closer, reached for it. A needle.
Manny.
RAY DROVE UP Street Road, letting the car take him, not sure what to think or feel. He crossed 263 and almost sideswiped a van that cut him off making a left into the diner, so he pulled into the parking lot of the bowling alley and went inside to think, figuring it was one place he wouldn't know anybody.
Inside it was bright and loud. He went into the small bar and sat at a chipped Formica table and let a Miller Lite go flat while he watched some kids clustered in one of the lanes. Two boys stood close to each other, knuckle-punching each other's arms and grimacing while a girl with braces shook her head and called them retards.
He knew he should feel angry, cheated, but that wasn't in him now. He'd wanted not the money but the freedom it might bring, but he knew in losing it he'd been relieved of a burden, and he'd never have been able to spend it on himself anyway. Part of him wanted to take it off Manny, not to keep it, but to keep Manny from killing himself with it. Yet he knew he wouldn't do that, either. What ever Ray was doing, wherever he'd end up, he knew Manny wouldn't be there, that he was as gone as the money, as what ever he'd been feeling when he racked the slide on his Colt and kicked in the door of the dope house in Ottsville. What they were to each other had a shape bordered by dope and guns, being desperate and hopeless and going down swinging, and none of that was in Ray anymore.
He imagined calling his friend, telling him something that might matter, but couldn't think what it would be. Don't fuck up, or think about this, or something, but they weren't things they could say to each other. The only way to get the money back would be to point a gun, and he wouldn't do that, either. In the end, he sat in the bar and watched the two boys through the smoked glass. One tripped the other, who dropped his ball with a detonating crack that made the girl with braces scream, and the boys laughed and gave each other hard high fives like they'd won a prize.
After that he would go and sit on the street and look at the bookstore and wait for the for sale sign to disappear. Twice he went in, walked the stacks, bought a handful of paperbacks, and couldn't work up the nerve to ask the woman behind the counter about selling the store. One night during a commercial he said something to Theresa, who smacked her hands together and said, "Finally." She snapped off the TV and went back into her room. The Sanctuary. Off-limits to teenage boys and their dopehead friends. He couldn't remember the last time he was in there.
She came out with a bankbook and pressed it into his hand. He lifted it toward her, unopened.
"I don't want this."
"Open it."
"No."
"Is everyone in this family a hardhead every minute of every hour? Honest to Christ."
"Theresa."
"What?"
"Use it for yourself. Take a trip. Go on that Niagara Falls trip the Shrine is doing."
"Oh, that bunch of old ladies? I'd cut my throat." She took the book back but opened it in front of his eyes.
"Jesus, Theresa."
"That's my grandchildren money."
"So why spend it on this?"
"I'll tell you why. Because how the hell do I get grandchildren by you sitting on your ass watching Jeopardy?"
IT TOOK LESS time than he thought, and by the middle of November he was standing in the shop, jingling the keys to the front door and looking through the front window at people walking the street, now in jackets, and leaves blowing along the curbs.
Bart and Theresa stood in the little space near the cash register. Theresa was beaming and Bart looking shriveled in a sport coat two sizes too large, his hands in his pockets. Theresa's name was on the paper for the store, and she'd work the register. Ray walked down the aisles, already stocked with books the last owner had picked out and displayed. He was thinking about paint and some simple carpentry. The shelves were actually a mismatched bunch of secondhand bookcases and unpainted planks roughly nailed into the naked walls, sagging in their middles. There were small windows that looked into an alley and bluish fluorescent lights that gave off a low buzz.
On a whim, he went to the door and flipped the sign over, Theresa clapping and miming delight and Bart clumsily snapping a picture with the little digital camera she'd gotten for the occasion. Ray raised his eyebrows and shrugged, no idea what to do next except get to work. He looked at the street again. Clouds moved and their blue shadows pushed along the street, dividing the world into dark and light.
He was in the storeroom in the back sorting through unlabeled boxes of books when the little bell over the door rang and Theresa called to him, an edge of panic in her voice, to come out. He stood up, his bones cracking, and pulled himself out to the front where he had left his cane and found Theresa eyeing an even smaller, older woman with a baseball cap crusted with glass beads and a cast on one arm. Their first customer. The woman raised her eyebrows, looking from panicked Theresa to Ray with sweat standing out on his forehead and dust striping his work shirt to Bart, his lips pursed like he was expecting her to grab something and run.
The moment passed, and Theresa finally shook her head as if waking up and asked if they could help her.
Janet Evanovich, the woman said, and Ray waved her back to the mysteries, where she began to paw through the stock. She prattled on about her niece who had recommended the books and said she had one of them and wanted the next one and wasn't it great they took place in Trenton?
When she came to the register, Bart stepped behind the counter and opened a paper bag. Theresa opened the register, which was empty, and then the three of them patted their pockets until Theresa went into her purse and counted out the change. Bart took the woman's ten and stuck it in a small frame and balanced it on the windowsill, and Theresa took a picture. The woman with the cap got into the spirit of the thing and waved the book at them from the door.
The woman left, and the three of them stood in the silence afterward and shrugged at each other. How hard could it be? The bell over the door clanged again, but it was the woman, scowling. She held up the book.
"I read this one."
Ray shook his head. Theresa opened her hands helplessly. Bart grabbed the frame from the sill and smacked it open on the counter with a chime of thin glass breaking, then handed the woman back her ten.
WEEKS WENT BY and the days were dark and cold. Ray worked alone in the empty store, ripped the shelving out and replaced it in pieces, creating painted built-in shelves with finished edges and molding and painted a creamy white. He spent hours looking at track lighting at the Home Depot and finally settled on small, blue-shaded spots that he tied to a bank of dimmers near the register. He got up early each morning, made lists of tasks for himself on the backs of envelopes, and started noticing how the stores he visited were laid out and the merchandise displayed.
Bart got sicker, and Theresa stayed away more and more to stay with him. Ray would open later and close earlier. He sat for hours in the back of the shop and heard people come by the front doors, sometimes rattling the handle. He took the books off the shelves and then restacked them, lining them up with soldierly precision and making lists of his stock. The woman who had sold him the store, a long, bent woman with a lesbian vibe named Elizabeth, had given him pages with long lists of contacts for book resellers who bought up stock from closing stores and libraries, a constant reminder that there was nothing guaranteed in what he had begun. With the shop closed he spent hours calling people, looking for more of the westerns and crime novels he loved, and every day brought cardboard boxes from Scottsdale or Presque Isle or Waukegan that smelled of ink and old paper and mold. But the store was open less and less.
In January Bart stopped getting out of bed, and Ray put a small sign in the window, help wanted. Theresa had talked with him about a decent wage, and he added a few bucks to it in his head and the next Monday he sat in the store and tapped his cane against his boot and read Hombre for the ninth time, looking up occasionally to watch people moving down streets lashed by rain, their heads tucked into their chests.
He had just nodded off when the bell rang and he jerked upright and Michelle came in, shaking the rain off of a plastic kerchief and smiling at him as if this were the date they'd set up months before. He stood slowly, putting weight on his hands until he could get steady on the cane, and took one long step out from behind the counter.
She looked around and nodded her head. "Wow. It looks great."
"Oh," he said and raised one hand dismissively, "a little carpentry, new rugs."
"No, it looks wonderful. Liz would never spend any money on the place."
"You know her?"
"Oh, yeah. I worked here. Before the other place."
"So you know the operation."
"Sure. Well, the way Liz did things, anyway."
He nodded his head, keeping his hands down to resist the impulse to reach out and touch her.
She pointed to the sign in the window. "You need help?"
He let his smile get away from him, the muscles in his face stretching in unfamiliar ways until he brought a hand up and massaged his cheek. He did move, then. Leaned into the cane and reached past her and took down the sign. Waved it and threw it behind the counter.
He closed early that night, anxious for the time to pass and for Michelle to start. Couldn't bring himself to stop hoping, playing out different ways it could go. In the moment he'd stood on the sagging wooden porch watching her go up the street, head tucked against the rain, he let himself know he'd taken Theresa's money, bought the store, put up the sign, all of it hoping she'd walk in off the street. Let himself run a hundred changes in his mind, let himself feel stupid and impatient and something else that might be happiness at just breathing.
He stood on the street, looked back up at the store one last time to make sure the lights were off, and was nearly knocked off his unsteady feet by Edward Gray's daughter coming down the sidewalk, listing to one side and paddling at the air with one stiff arm. He searched his mind for her name. She held up her hands and spoke with deliberation.
"I'm so sorry." Adrienne, that was her name. She smelled like sour fruit and was underdressed for the weather in a sweater and scuffed jeans. She said, "A little dark out here to night," and smiled. Drunk, he realized. Her eyes were shadowed pits in her head.
"My fault," he said and meant it. "Standing around in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking traffic."
She patted hair the color of foam on a lifeless pond. "Not at all. Not at all."
She kept moving along the street, downhill to wherever she lived, he hoped. He watched her go.
HE HAD AN open house in February and invited Manny, who didn't come, and Ho and Tina, who did. Theresa was there, and Bart, skin the color of mustard and sitting in a wheelchair, though he smiled and held a glass of white wine and snapped pictures with Theresa's little digital camera. Ray showed Ho the Web site Michelle had put together for the store and her brochures for the children's parties she wanted to host, letting the kids make books of their own. Ho looked from the computer to Ray and then at Michelle where she sat on the floor, her ankles tucked under her as she guided Ho's five-year- old, Ly, through an Alexandra Day book where a black dog danced with a smiling infant. Ho shook his head and smiled, and Ray opened his hands.
"What?"
"Nothing, nothing at all."
"Oh, you know? Don't start."
"Did I say a word?"
"I get this enough from Theresa." He inclined his head and dropped his voice, a hand held out as if to signal stop. "She doesn't know. Anything."
"So?"
"So I don't want to go down that road."
"Don't lie."
"I don't want to lie. I don't want to get into anything."
"You think what, she's here for six bucks an hour?"
"Fourteen. I can't dump my life on some kid from Ohio who works in a bookstore. That life? Where I've been and what I've done?"
"Then don't." Ho poured more wine into his glass, waved at his daughters. "But you got this far, man. You going to spend the next fifty years dating massage parlor girls?"
Ray dropped onto the sill of the window behind the counter, massaging his thigh and grimacing, and Ho stood with his back to the room.
"I'm just saying think about what you're going to say. You don't have to sign a full confession to tell someone you've been in trouble and aren't anymore. If you think you got to say anything except you own a bookstore in Doylestown."
Ray looked across at her, and she turned her head and smiled and then looked down, and he felt the floor dropping away and a thudding in his head.
Ho motioned him out to the porch and looked up and down the street, then told him Cyrus was dead.
"The guys from New En gland?"
"No. That's over."
"Over?"
"That guy, Scott? He was making this move on his own, took some of the guys from the Outlaws and came down here on his own. With his end of an armed robbery at an Indian casino. That's what the cash was."
"How do you know this?"
"A friend showed me some transcripts."
"Transcripts?"
Ho looked around again and lowered his head. "Federal wiretaps."
"Jesus."
"It was everything he had, his own money."
Ray nodded. It explained the way things played out. He shook his head. "How did it show up on wiretaps?"
"The FBI was on him up there. They scooped up everybody on the New Hampshire end of it."
"Then who got Cyrus?"
"That wasn't business." Ho smiled. "He was screwing around
and his old lady caught him." Ray saw the woman at the aban
doned house. Tattoos of the sun and moon on her hands and ice---
blue eyes.
Ho turned to go back inside, shivering and pulling in his shoulders.
"Does this mean it's over?"
Ho shrugged but smiled. "There's no one left."
"How do we know?"
Ho looked at him. "The only people you got to worry about chasing you are all up here." He reached out and tapped Ray's forehead.
LATER HE WAS alone with Michelle, and he moved along the table they had set out, throwing empty plastic wineglasses into a plastic bag. Michelle fiddled at the CD player she had set up, and the gentle electronic music she liked started up. Quiet voices and lush sounds that were like being wrapped in something soft. It wasn't what he would have chosen, but he was getting used to it, starting even to depend on it. Like her sweet perfume and the quotes she put up on the board near the door every day. Admonitions to be brave and alive. Rilke and Emerson and Rumi. That made him secretly siphon off books and try to parse out the meaning of the poems she loved.
He became aware of her behind him and stopped. He turned and she took the plastic bag from his hand and dropped it on the floor and moved into his arms and they were dancing. He was stiff and moved slightly to the beat, and she rested her head on his shoulder, and after a minute he lost the sense of the music and just swayed with her. He tried out different things in his head. Telling her where he had been and what he had done. Wondering what she needed to know to know him.
She finally said, "What happened?"
"What?"
"In August?" She kept her head tucked against him, her breath warm on his chest. "Was it the accident?"
He had been waiting for this question since they day she had come in about the job but still wasn't ready for it. "Yes. No." He shook his head. "I was in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" She picked her head up, and suddenly it was much more difficult and there was something guarded in her eyes.
His eyes flicked over her face and he looked down again. "I've made some mistakes in my life."
She stopped moving, and then he did, a beat too late.
"Tell me." But her face was different, harder, and it was an interrogation and his mind was blank.
The door chimed and they both looked up, Michelle pulling away and moving to the stacks, collecting paper plates left by Ho's kids. He looked after her, his hands still in the air, then turned to the door to see two kids, thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. One short and blond, the other long, with black hair hanging lank over his eyes. They moved to the counter and dropped a pillowcase on it, spilling hardback books, and Ray pawed through them while the short kid fidgeted and the tall kid stared hard at him. The tall one wore a thin black jacket with duct tape on the elbow, and Ray remembered he'd seen them before, by the side of the road in Warrington. The tall kid had a runny nose, and they both had red cheeks from the cold. The short one was just getting fuzz on his chin and had spots of something purple and sticky-looking on his army coat.
There were some old books that looked like they were worth something. Jack London, The Iron Heel and Call of the Wild. Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. Some others he didn't recognize. Some of them in plastic covers. First editions or something. He took more out of the pillowcase and found two candlesticks and a bell that looked to be real silver.
The short kid flicked the bell with his finger, miming plea sure at the bright sound. "Gimme a hundred bucks. And you can keep all that shit."
Ray looked them up and down and smiled.
"Yeah? That ain't much for all this swag."
"No, it's like a deal."
Ray put sunglasses on the tall kid in his head and laughed. Manny and Ray, a month out of Lima, scoring from empty houses near the Willow Grove mall and trying to dump the stuff in the pawnshops along 611.
The blond kid snapped his fingers under Ray's nose and pointed. "Fitzgerald, you know him?" He looked into the corner of the room as if something were painted there. " 'All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath.' " He pantomimed laughing, like a dog panting, and looked over his shoulder at his friend, who smiled and nodded as if the blond kid had done a card trick he'd seen before.
The tall one looked at Michelle, who had stopped what she was doing and stood listening. His face changed and he looked hard at Ray. "Don't fuck with us, man. Just pay us or let us be on our way."
Ray nodded slowly. "Where did you get this stuff?"
The blond kid snorted, but the tall one reached over and started snapping the books back into the case. "We're out of here, Lynch."
Ray held up a hand. "Wait a minute, okay?"
The tall kid moved toward the door, wiping at his nose with his free hand, and Ray snapped the register open and he stopped. The shorter kid stood up and angled his head to see. Ray came out with two twenties and held them out to the kids. Michelle sighed and disappeared into the back of the store. The blond kid, Lynch, pointed at his friend and the pillowcase. For the first time, Ray noticed a bruise on the tall kid's face, the shape of a hand etched in faint and fading blue.
The blond kid said, "What? This shit is worth like ten times that."
"I don't want it."
"Then what?"
"Take the money."
The kids looked at each other, then reached for the money. Ray held out another two twenties, but when the kids reached for them, he jerked the bills back and held them high.
"This is to buy books with."
The kids looked at each other again, the blond one, Lynch, shrugging.
"Buy," Ray said again. He picked up the day's paper and dropped it where they could see he had circled half a dozen ads in red. "These are garage sales. Go by these places and buy what-ever books you find. Don't pay more than a buck a book, and don't bring me CDs or DVDs or games or any other shit. Just books."
The tall kid shrugged and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.
Ray said, "Get receipts."
He let the blond one take the money and watched it disappear into his coat and handed the tall one the newspaper. "Take that shit back where you found it and go buy me some books. Every book you bring me I'll pay you another buck. So drive hard bargains."
Ray watched them walk to the dark street through the front windows, heads together, talking and laughing. He saw a young blond girl come out from behind a column on the porch as if she'd been hiding there. She fell in beside the boys, and Lynch took her arm. When she turned one last time to look at the store, he saw a ring of livid purple around her right eye.
He turned to see Michelle in her coat. Her head was down.
"Okay, see you," she said.
"Wait."
"What?"
She looked at him and then away, and he had that feeling again of recognition he had had before on the street in August.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Are you, you know. Coming back?"
"Why is Theresa's name on the store?"
"I told you I was . . . in trouble."
"Are you in trouble now?"
"No. I don't think so."
"Why do you pay me under the table?"
"What's going on? Isn't that better for you?" He looked around as if there were someone else he could bring into the conversation.
"Is it? Those kids stole that stuff."
"Yeah, but'"
"You thought it was funny or cute or something."
He smiled, saw at once that was the wrong thing. "They're kids, Michelle."
"Kids like you?"
"Once, yeah."
She was shaking her head and moving to the door. "So you're what? The cool guy who buys stolen stuff and maybe sells you some weed?"
"Where is this coming from?"
"I see you when there are policemen on the street."
"You see me?" He wanted to say, I see you, too, but wasn't sure what it was he saw.
"You get this look. And you move away from the window. One time that cop went next door and you hid in the stockroom."
"I didn't hide. I had shit to do." But he didn't believe himself, either. He was getting angry, felt something twisting out of his hands, the desire to restrain it somehow propelling it away.
"Yeah, okay. I'll see you, Ray."
He grabbed his cane and started after her, but she was through the door and down the street faster than he could cross the room. He stumped out to the top of the stairs, the cold gripping at him. Watched her moving under the lights away up the street toward Main. It began to snow, white flakes sticking to his hair and his shirt like nature trying to erase him from the scene.
FOURTEEN
SHE DIDN'T COME back the next day, or the next. He called her over the next three days, stammering vague messages to her voice mail and hanging up. He sat in the store and stared, reading the last quote she had put up over and over. "I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other." Rilke, one of her favorites. He got out Letters to a Young Poet when he was alone in the store and scoured it for traces of her, all the time willing himself to be smarter and more patient. When the store closed he sat in the light from the street and touched the pages and held it up to his face, hoping her scent would have lingered on the book.
STRANGE WEATHER MOVED in. Hot, damp days in which the sun furiously melted the last of the snow and kids built slick gray snowmen in their shirtsleeves. Bart moved into the hospital, and Ray would go there at the end the day, so Theresa could take a break. He'd bring his father crime novels. Elmore Leonard and Donald E. Westlake and John D. MacDonald. Bart loved anything with guys fighting over a briefcase full of money. Faithless women and smoking pistols. At first Ray would drop them on the nightstand and take the old ones, but after a week he noticed they were untouched and started reading them aloud. Bart would close his eyes and fall asleep, and Ray would stick a tongue depressor in the book and leave it on the nightstand.
One night, in the middle of The Hunted, during a long chase across the Negev, Bart put his hand on Ray's arm and held it there. Ray closed the book and waited, feeling the papery skin and the rocklike bones beneath.
"I always wanted to see the desert." Bart's voice was like something rimed with salt, gritty and brittle.
"Me, too."
"You should go."
"Maybe."
"Nah, just go. Take that girl from the store."
Ray thought about that, and about what to say. "That would be good."
"I never did nothing in my whole life."
Ray looked at him, but Bart was dry-eyed, just staring as if struck by the wonder of it.
"Nothing that was worth a damn to another living soul." Bart patted Ray's hand. "I can't tell you what to do. I ain't got that right anymore." Then his father smiled, that alien arrangement of muscles that made him unrecognizable. "But, maybe, take a lesson."
THE NEXT SATURDAY the kids came back, Lynch and the tall kid, who Ray found out was named Stevie. They were excited, dumping the books they'd found out on the counter, pushing them forward, Lynch talking about the ones he'd read, thumbing them open to show Ray passages he liked and that, eerily, he'd obviously memorized just by glancing at them. They shifted the books into piles, claiming finds and smacking the table and saying, pay me, bitch.
The blond girl, Andrea, came up and hovered at the door this time, and Lynch would look over at her as if he were making sure she was still there or checking to see if she was okay. She was tiny, lost in a parka that looked three sizes too large, her yellow hair seeping from under a hood and curling on her red cheeks. The bruise on her face had faded, but she was silent and looked off into the corners of the room, her hands in her pockets.
Ray caught her eye and, trying to look harmless, smiled and pointed back into the store. She dropped her head and moved down the aisles fast, as if she had been slapped.
Lynch watched her go, then called to her. "Hey, he's got some of those books, Andy."
Ray counted money out onto the counter. "What books?"
Stevie shook his head. He dropped his head and talked into his coat. "What a fucking loser."
"What books?"
Lynch smacked Stevie on the elbow. "Aw, man, you know. About babies and being pregnant and that shit."
Ray lost count. "Dude, what?"
"She's knocked up."
Ray picked up the small pile of money, feeling ridiculous. He had been thinking about two kids getting a couple of bucks for junk food and movies. "Jesus, man. Is she . . ." He shook his head. "I mean, where is she living? Do her parents know? I mean, where the fuck do you two live, anyway?"
Smiling, Stevie snatched the money from Ray. "We're covered, man." Lynch went into the back and came back with Andrea, who Ray could see now was pregnant, her small belly pressing against the inside of the parka. She had two books, What to Expect When You're Expecting and something called Ten Little Fingers with a cartoon of a baby with arms outstretched and an outsized, egglike head that made Ray wince with its fragility.
He gave them the books, gave them more money, couldn't stop himself from shaking his head every couple of seconds. He finally made them promise to take Andy to Lilly's, the sandwich shop around the corner, to get her something healthy to eat. On the porch Lynch turned and gave an apologetic shrug while Stevie fanned the air with dollar bills.
THE NEXT SUNDAY morning Ray couldn't bring himself to drive up and open the store, and instead he put a sport coat on and went to the low brick meeting house on Oakland Avenue. It was still hot, the street steaming and the lawns looking like wilted salad revealed by the melting snow.
He got there late, let himself in as quietly as he could, and sat near the door on an ancient, scarred bench half-covered with pamphlets about Darfur, capital punishment, and something called Peace Camp. It was quiet; the only sounds were passing traffic and the occasional sigh or sneeze. The room itself was plain, painted a sleep-inducing cream color and smelling faintly of wet ash, as if a fire had been put out just before he arrived. There was a mix of ages in the room, but Ray thought everyone had something indefinable in common. Expressed in uncombed hair and wrinkled clothes, maybe. Natural fibers and, he was guessing, nontoxic dyes.
In front of him two black-haired kids fidgeted next to their mother, who wore jeans and a peasant blouse. Ray realized he wore the only jacket in the room. He scanned faces but couldn't find Michelle in the crowd at first. Finally he spotted her between a large woman in a dress that looked like it was made from pink bedsheets and a small man with a bald head who kept clicking his dentures in his sleep. Michelle's eyes were closed.
He kept waiting for the service to begin, but it never seemed to. There would be a rustle of movement or an exhalation that he expected to signal the start of a prayer or a song, but it resolved itself into some small readjustment in the humid room. A tiny fan at the window blew a lank, tepid breeze past his face without cooling the air. A woman stood up, two rows away from him. She had short gray hair and a thickset body, and beside her sat Liz, who had sold Theresa the store and whom he hadn't seen since the closing. The woman who stood said she had sat on her porch and watched a spider build a web, working diligently and skillfully to make this delicately beautiful thing that would last only the day and then have to be rebuilt, and that there was some kind of message in that and she was trying to be open to it. She said her friend had given up something vitally important to her that she had worked a long time to get and very hard to keep, and wasn't there value in making something intricate and lovely, even if you knew it wasn't going to last? That there would only be more work at the end of it?
After her question, she just shrugged and sat down. Liz, whom Ray had never seen smile, beamed and squeezed the woman's hand, her eyes wet. Ray thought for a minute someone in authority would get up and answer her question, but there was just more silence leavened only by shifting and Quakers pinching at their damp clothes.
After another few minutes, he saw a tall gray-haired man turn and shake the hand of the person next to him, and then there was a sort of collective exhalation and everyone in the room turned and shook the hands of the people around them. The woman with the fidgety kids turned around to face him and offered him a damp red hand, and he smiled shyly and shook her fingers and nodded his head, wondering if there was some password he should know to say.
The man who had shaken the first hand stood and went to a table in the gap in the center of the room. He read some announcements. Someone named Betsy in the hospital who could use a visit, bulletins from various committees about an upcoming peace fair, a walk to protest the war, buses to a rally for Tibet.
The crowd drifted slowly toward the door. More handshaking, hugging. People catching up and remarking on the strange weather, stopping to eat gingersnaps and sip from tiny cups of cider from a table by the door. Michelle sat, not moving, her head down, though people touched her shoulder and whispered to her. Ray forced himself up and across the room and finally sat on the same bench at what he hoped was a respectful distance. When he was settled in she lifted her head but turned to watch people knotted at the door. She gave a shy wave to an older woman with a broad smile who might have been Filipino.
"Hello, Ray."
She didn't look at him. Her voice was low, and he moved closer and she didn't shift away. He looked down at her knees, conscious of his own quickened pulse. She had on a long skirt and the brown sweater he had seen her in when they met. They let a minute go by as the room emptied.
She said, "I worked in a lawyer's office in Massillon. You know where that is?" She kept her eyes on the door. "No. Anyway." The last people drifted out the door and they were alone.
"I fell in love with one of the associates. I was twenty-two." Empty, the room echoed with her voice. She lifted her hands and looked at them. Maybe seeing something that told her how long ago twenty-two was. "He was overwhelming. Smart, so smart. Funny and fun to be around. He took me places." Now her eyes went down. "We did a lot of coke. At first it was just fun, made us sharper and funnier and I thought more passionate. What it looked like at the time."
Ray was conscious of holding himself still, regulating his breathing. He waited, and she pulled her sweater around her.
"Then it became about the coke. Somehow. Everything turned on our getting high. We needed it to be together. He began to neglect everything else. Court dates, meetings. They were going to fire him." She shook her head, smiling at the wonder of it. "Me, too. My mom got sick. Cancer. It didn't even register. Everything sort of shrank to this point." She made an open circle with her hands, closed it.
" We were full of this self-righteous anger, you know, just pumped up by the blow. How could they treat him this way, and how stupid and slow they all were. Life was so unfair. So when he told me about these accounts, and how he knew how to get access to them . . . Anyway, I stole sixty-eight thousand dollars." The smile again, a joke at her own expense. "And it was gone in, like, moments. It seems like so much money when you think of it in a pile. What you could do with it. In Massillon? But it came and went. Most of it. And it took them about a month to figure out what happened." Her voice got flatter now. Someone else's story. Ray took off the coat and threw it across the seat behind him, sweat in a line down his back.
"So, I'm twenty-two and stupid and he's thirty-five and a lawyer. So . . ." Now she finally turned to Ray. "Sixteen months at Trumbull Correctional Camp. My mom died while I was in there." Her voice broke, the sound catching somewhere in her chest. She cleared her throat, pushed up her sleeve, and showed him a tattoo, a cherry with a stem, crudely drawn and going blue now with age. "That was Cherry, a girl at the camp. I can't . . . I can't even describe that relationship now. She kept me from getting hurt. Hurting myself." Her eyes flicked to his. "But you don't need my prison stories, do you, Ray?"
"No."
" 'Cause you have your own."
"Yes." He tried to keep her eyes with him, but she turned her head. He kept going. "And not just prison. Juvie before that. Stu-pid things, stealing cars. Before it got more serious." He sat back, and she kept her hands flat in her lap, sitting straight upright as if waiting to be called to another room. "I wanted money, I can't even tell you why. It just sat there. My partner stole most of it, and I have to tell you I was . . ." He searched for the word. "Relieved. Like I was free of something. I wish to God I'd never seen it. Never wanted it."
They sat for a minute, and she looked into a far corner of the room.
"So," she finally said. "Are you another story that ends with 'she should have known better'? Or are you the one who sees me and knows who I am? Where I've been and what it means?"
He wondered where the girl he met in the street had gone, the bright-smiling girl who had looked him in the eye, and it cut him inside to think he was the reason she sat slumped next to him, her eyes empty and her head full of the banging echoes of cell doors and the thousand daily humiliations of being locked up.
He thought for a while, listened to cars moving in the street and the sounds of kids somewhere. "I know some things. Not a lot, maybe not enough."
"Tell me."
"I know I don't want any of it anymore. I know I want to sleep without the nightmares. Really rest, you know?"
She began to lean forward, her head lowering slowly. She put her hands on her face. He wanted to touch her but kept his hands in his lap though they twitched like wires. He kept going. "I wake up exhausted somehow. Like I never slept."
She looked down but nodded and shut her eyes tight, listening.
"I have these nightmares," he said. "Terrible things I can't control, people in trouble I can't help. And the terrible things are something I caused. Something I brought."
Michelle put her hand over her eyes.
"I know that you're ashamed. All the time."
She turned her head away and began to sob, a terrible strangled noise, her shoulders heaving.
"I know it because I am, too."
His eyes were dry, and he put his arms on her back and lowered his head to her hair. She gave a moan of pain that was dreadful to hear, a low, animal sound of loss, but clutched at his hand.
"You tell yourself all this . . . shit. Wrong place, wrong time. Not your fault. You were beat, or lied to, or hurt. But you know it doesn't matter and the things you did that were wrong were in you to do. Part of you. And you let them out and they destroyed every fucking thing you might have been. Wanted to be. Everyone who cared about you. Like you set this fire to burn down your own life."
She sat up and wrapped her arms around him, and he kissed her cheek and felt her tears soak into his shirt.
"I want to say it's going to be okay, but that's one of the things I don't know." Her breathing began to slow, to ease, and he kissed her cheek again, and she turned to him and covered his mouth with her own. Then they were quiet for a while.
They went back to her apartment, actually one big room over
a garage. The first time he'd seen it. Candles and a warm vanilla
smell of baking from the house next door. A miniature kitchen, a bank of small windows letting in the light and air. A photograph, torn from a magazine, of rolling green hills and a red stone house that made him think of Italy. More quotes from Rilke in her hand-writing. Fat loops and swirls, like the way she moved her hands when she spoke and was animated.
They kissed in the doorway, their mouths open, and pulled at each other's clothing. She stood back and shucked off her sweater and then undid the buttons on his shirt as they moved to the bed. He put his hand on hers and stopped her from opening his shirt but hiked her skirt and pushed his hand inside the waistband of her pants. She moved under him, opening, and when he entered her, her eyes were still wet from crying. His breath hitched in his chest and she made a low noise in her throat and feeling the length of the space inside her for the first time he came, his teeth bared and her hands gripping his shoulders. He settled into her, breaking into pieces like a ship coming to rest in the sand at the bottom of the sea.
Later she opened his shirt. He stared at the ceiling when she put her cool fingers in the furrows left by the knife. He began to tell her, then. Everything that had happened, from when his mother left and Bart had gotten locked up. He told her about Marletta and the accident and how he couldn't get it all back. Bits and pieces would come to him but he couldn't hold it all his head at once. He told her how angry and stupid he'd been coming out of prison. About Harlan and Manny and Ho. About how it was all burned out or carved out by the things that had happened in August. Edward Gray dying, and the fire at the barn. He talked until it was dark and he was hoarse and his eyes burned, as if he'd been screaming instead of whispering.
When he woke in the night, his eyes wild, she was there with him and touched his head, and he fell asleep again, folded against her and smelling the warm bread scent of her skin and saying her name.
IT GOT COLDER again, and rainy. Wind tunneled down State Street in front of the store and kept the foot traffic lower than they would have liked. Michelle brought people in with kids' parties, and open mike night for bad poetry and white wine. A kid from the neighborhood noodling on a guitar while his black-haired girlfriend watched adoringly. People started to recognize them on the street. Ray began to stay most nights with Michelle in her room on Mary Street.
Bart died in April, and they buried him in a plot in Whitemarsh on a cool day when the shadows of clouds moving were sharp on the ground. They sat on folding chairs that sank into the spongy turf, and Michelle put her hand in his lap while he tried to fit everything that his father had been into his head. When the priest finished his generic prayers, Ray looked up and saw Manny, wearing his wraparound shades and a black jacket over jeans and standing back near his car. His face was whiter than Ray remembered. Something, a tremor, maybe, shifted his thin shoulders. Ray lifted his hand, and Manny nodded and turned away. When Ray held Theresa's arm to steady her on the marshy ground, he felt how thin and brittle she had become. He hadn't noticed against Bart's rapid dwindling, but soon she would be gone, too.
When he got to the store the next day the kids were there. Lynch and Stevie and Andy. Michelle called the boys Burke and Hare and teased them, and Stevie had begun to fall in love with her. Ray let them in, and they brought shopping bags in full of paperbacks and dropped their satisfying weight onto the floor by the register. Michelle took Andy into the storeroom to make coffee and ask her about the baby and came back with Entenmanns's cookies and a couple of paper plates. The boys were fighting over the last one, Stevie hanging back with feinted jabs and Lynch giving him dead eyes and saying, 'Don't even bother, dipshit,' when Ray's cell rang and it was Theresa.
"Someone's been here."
HE KNELT IN the entryway and could smell the bag. Cigarette smoke and hash oil and dog piss and air freshener and Lysol fighting, almost enough to make him gag. He picked it up and took it back to the bedroom while Theresa made coffee. When he was alone he unzipped it and dumped it out. Bundles of bills in rubber bands. He did a quick count and a lot of it was gone. There was about eighty thousand left.
He took money out, enough to cover what Theresa had spent on the store and then some, and tucked it into his pants. He closed the bag and took it to the front door and dropped it and went into Theresa's room and stuck the money from his pants in her top drawer. He saw the money now as a problem to be solved, but his life was getting crowded with people who needed help, and he'd think of some way to get rid of the rest of it.
Then he sat and had coffee and listened to Theresa talk about her latest trip to AC and her friend Evelyn who won six hundred dollars on a Wheel of Fortune machine. He made his eyes go wide. A lot of money.
FIFTEEN
RAY AND MICHELLE drove up Holicong Road while he tried to get his bearings against the low hump of Buckingham Mountain starting to go green again. There were a few crocuses showing livid purple in the lawns they passed. The clouds moved fast in a wind that Ray could feel pulling at the car. The sky would show, blue-white between the clouds, then disappear again. He made two more turns, glancing down at a piece of paper Michelle had printed out for him.
She had been tense, watching the sheets print out, her shoulders drawn in, her eyes flicking over his. She shook her head. "If I said I didn't want you to do this, would it matter?"
"Nothing will happen." He smiled at her, or tried to, showed his teeth, but thought, how do I know that? "Anyway," he said. "Anyway, I have to go."
"Okay." She looked down. "Okay, but I'm driving you."
"No, it's okay."
"Fuck that. You're pretending you're handling shit. I get that. But I'm not sitting here and you go off and I never see you again."
He saw she was close to crying and thought about it for a minute and finally nodded. "Sure. Nothing is going to happen, but it's cool you come with me." He kissed the top of her head, and she held his arms.
NOW THEY WENT slowly by neat houses, looking at numbers painted on mailboxes. They came to a brick house with a lot of windows, nicer than he thought it would be, the lawn trimmed. Flower beds, hard rectangles of turned soil expecting something that was coming.
He didn't know exactly what he had expected. Dust and cracked windows, he guessed. Things rusting on a lawn. While they sat at the curb, the garage door lifted and there he was. Moving purposefully out across the driveway with a rake. Attacking a small pile of winter-dead leaves and pushing it into a black plastic bag.
He was still erect, and he matched the squared-away house. His hair was white etched with a few solid black lines, and his shoulders were broad. He looked like what he was, a state trooper. A cop. Retired, older, but still a cop.
Michelle opened her mouth, but Ray opened the door and pushed himself out, straightening slowly and then reaching back for the cane. She watched his face, showed him the cell phone. He winked.
He covered most of the distance to where Stan Hicks stood over the shrinking pile of leaves before the older man turned and faced him holding the rake loosely at his side. The eyes were pale gray and clear, focused. Ray wondered how old he was, comparing him mentally to the shriveled old man his father had been when they had finally let him out.
"I wondered if you'd ever come here."
Ray nodded, thought about putting his hand out. He felt Stan Hicks look him over, taking in the cane, the thin frame. When Hicks looked back at the car, Ray followed his eyes to see Michelle sitting in the open door, watching tensely, working the cell phone in her hands like a rosary.
"That's a pretty girl."
"Yessir."
"She looks a little like my girl."
Ray nodded; there was no denying it. Ray allowed himself to see it, and he did have to look at Michelle again. He smiled at her.
"Why did you come here, son?"
"I don't know."
"You bring a gun? Going to make me pay for something?" He didn't seem particularly worried about that possibility, and of the two of them seemed more able to defend himself.
"No, I thought maybe you already paid what ever you had to pay for."
"And what would that be?" He looked Ray in the eye. "You think I ruined your life?"
"No."
"You did that on your own."
"No, my life wasn't ruined." Ray stuck his hands in his pockets. "Took me a long time to see that. I'd have said it was, you asked me not long ago. But it wasn't." They both looked down at the wet pile of jagged leaf fragments at their feet.
"Why didn't you say what I did to you?"
"I wanted the same thing you wanted."
"I kept expecting they'd come. I was ready for it. When you told somebody what I did." He held the rake in his hands as if he were going to snap it. The way he'd snapped Ray's arms.
Ray could almost feel it again. Stan Hicks pushing him down on the cold asphalt, the rage spilling out of the older man in a torrent of screamed curses and spit. The metal bar falling once, twice on each arm.
Ray cocked his head. "What was that? That bar you used on me?"
"The tire iron from my patrol car. I was ready to account for it. I think I wanted to. I broke your arms. I lied, I made that dope addict Perry March say you stole his car. I was ready to tell it. I was proud of what I did. But no one ever came."
"No."
"You killed my girl."
"I loved her. A drunk driver killed her."
"You don't say that." His eyes were full of tears and his mouth worked. "You don't get to say that."
"No, Stan. I think that's why I went to prison. So I could say it. I think that's why I let everything come. The beating and the lies you told."
Stan Hicks sat on the ground and put his head in his hands. Ray got down slowly on one knee, the cold water from the grass soaking through his pants. He turned, to see Michelle standing now, watching intently, her eyes wet.
Stan Hicks spoke, his eyes hidden. "She'd have hated it. What I did."
"Yes. But she'd have wanted me to help you."
"I don't deserve it."
"No." Ray reached over and put his hand on the older man's arm. "That's why I had to do it. Come here and say it was okay. That it worked out okay. It's the same thing she did for me. Loved me. Wanted good things for me that I didn't deserve. She would have hated what you did. But she would have kept on loving you."
Ray got awkwardly to his feet, Michelle running across the lawn to help him. Together they helped Stan Hicks get up, and they went with him inside. The house was bright and empty, and there were pictures of Marletta and her mother. Michelle stood in the entryway and looked at them, and then at Stan Hicks and Ray standing in the kitchen. Ray got a glass from a cabinet and ran the water, filled it, and handed it to the older man.
Ray leaned back against the counter. "My mother always did that."
"Mine, too." Stan Hicks wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
"It always helped."
They both looked at Michelle. For the first time, the older man smiled. "Just like my girl."
HE WAS IN the store late on a Wednesday night, unpacking boxes and thinking about locking the door, when one of the detectives from the hospital came in. The tall one, good cop, the one named Nelson. The detective looked around and rocked on his heels. Ray waved from where he was kneeling in the space between the register and a display table, motioning him further in.
"Nice place, Raymond."
"Ray. Everyone calls me Ray, Detective." He stuck out his hand.
"Right. Ray."
Ray pointed down the stacks. "Take a look around. Help yourself to anything catches your eye."
Nelson scratched his ear, smiled.
Ray said, "If that's not a problem. Graft or something."
Nelson pulled out his note pad and gestured at a table and two chairs up against the far wall. "You got a second?"
Ray hesitated half a beat, then pointed to the chair nearest the door. "Sure. You want some coffee?"
Nelson said yes, and Ray went back to the storeroom, returning with two cups. Nelson had wedged his tall frame into the seat, and his notebook was open on the table. But Ray's eye was drawn by the paper-wrapped bottle that sat next to it. Green glass and a red cap that Nelson unscrewed. He poured a small dollop of the brown liquid into his coffee and held it out to Ray, who wagged his head for a second indecisively before saying sure, what the hell. Nelson sipped at his coffee, and they sat for a minute.
"You're seeing someone."
"You been keeping tabs."
Nelson laughed, holding up his hands to make peace. "No, really. Just saw you in the coffee shop with a woman."
"Michelle. She's usually here, but she's taking a writing class at Bucks."
Nelson nodded. "Nice. She seems like a nice lady, Ray." He looked sheepish. "Not doing so hot in that area myself."
Ray sipped at the coffee, made a face. "Forgot how bitter it is."
"Only at first." They sat in silence, Nelson tapping his pen on his cup.
"I gotta ask."
"Why am I here?"
"Well, yeah. Is it about the kid in the house in Falls Township?"
Nelson shook his head. "No, but thanks for that. They got the kid out."
"Good. I saw the news."
"They took two bodies out of the yard. Young girls who disappeared. At least we can tell the families something."
"That's good, I guess. And you got the kid out?"
"Yeah, into family services. I didn't think you'd want your name in it."
"No."
"But that's not why I came."
Ray raised his eyebrows. "Okay."
"I've been asking around. About what happened the year you went upstate." Ray stopped smiling, and waited. "I talked to Perry March's mother."
"His mother?"
"He's dead." Ray shook his head. Nelson tapped the notebook. "Overdose, two years ago. She told me some interesting things."
"Yeah?"
"She said Perry would get high and talk about Stan Hicks and you and the car. She said her son was afraid of Stan and that Perry told her he lied about you taking the car because he was jammed up on a possession thing." Ray put his coffee cup down and looked at his hands. "I looked at the records from the accident. And I looked at the medical records from the County Youth Authority the night you got your arms broken."
Ray rubbed his arms then, an old reflex. Feeling the thickened bones that ached when it was cold.
Nelson said, "I talked to Stan Hicks."
Ray looked up now. "How did that go?"
"He told me you'd been there. He told me everything."
"I guess he's ready to tell it."
"He laid it all out. How he pressured Perry March with the possession beef and got him to say you stole his car. The guy who hit you and Marletta? The guy who was killed? He was a drunk. Blood alcohol well over the line. Your blood screen was clean. Stan pressured the DA, made her life hell until she made you a priority. Then he took you out of County in the middle of the night and broke your arms with something, I can't figure out what. You went to prison with busted arms at seventeen. Stayed for two years for something you didn't do."
Ray was quiet. "The jack from his car. He said. It was dark. He told the Youth Authority I ran away from him in the dark and fell off a loading dock. I said, sure, what ever. I didn't care."
"So, what do you want to do?"
"Do?"
"About Stan Hicks. What do you want to do?"
Ray shook his head, surprised. "Nothing." He picked up the coffee again. "I really forgot. It does kind of grow on you."
"You might be able to press charges, I don't know. Maybe sue, collect some money."
"No, I'm not doing that." Ray looked into the cup.
Nelson looked at him and rocked a little in his chair. "Okay, so . . ."
"You never knew her?"
"Marletta? No."
Ray looked at his pale hand. "She was, I don't know the words. There was a light inside her. Ever know anyone like that? She glowed." He smiled and closed his eyes. "She was one of those people. You just liked her. And she was the only one who cared about me."
"You feel guilty?"
"I was driving. I can't remember now, but I know what I was like then. Looking at her and not the road? I can't remember, and I don't want to anymore. Anyway, I can imagine what it was like for him. If she was my family? And then to lose her like that? I was Stan Hicks I would have done the same." His eyes clouded over. "Worse."
"You got hit by a drunk driver, Ray. You can't think she'd have wanted you to go to jail."
"No, she'd have hated that."
"How did you make it? With broken arms?"
"Harlan Maximuck." Nelson shook his head, not getting it. Ray said, "Harlan had a younger brother died in prison in Maine." He conjured Harlan then, tall and lopsided, walking with a hitched step, a staccato lope from where a statie had tagged him with shotgun pellets in the thighs when he and an even crazier friend had robbed a pawnshop and killed two people. Broad across the chest and wild brown hair that he'd stab at with oddly delicate hands, trying to keep it out of his eyes.
"So he, what? Adopted you?"
Ray pursed his lips. "Guys like you? Like anyone I guess hasn't been sent up. You see Harlan as a scumbag. As, I don't know. Evil, I guess."
"And you think, what? He was misunderstood?"
"No. No." Ray looked at the books on the shelves and tried to stretch for the words. "He kept me alive. He didn't have to. He didn't take anything off me. Except what he took off everybody." Ray smiled at a memory. "He'd be talking to you and, like, going through your pockets. Looking for cigarettes, what ever. I even saw him start to do it to a CO once." Nelson picked up the bottle again and offered it to Ray, who waved him off. "But he was crazy. I mean he was crazy. I saw him, well . . . One time this guy flicked cigarette ash in his oatmeal? Harlan shanked him with a fucking pork chop bone."
"Jesus."
"Yeah. So it's not like I don't know who he is. Would he rat me
out if that was in his best interest? Yes. Would he fuck me over in
a deal? Yes, if by some tragic fucking wheel of fortune miscalcu
lation he ever gets out again." Ray leaned in. "But he also did this.
He's also this." Made a circle in the air to include himself, the
body saved. "Guys like Harlan? And Manny? Me, too? We're more and we're less than you think. Worse and better. And the thing is, all you people are, too."
"So what does a cop do about that?"
Ray smiled wide. "Lock us up. What the hell else can you do? But maybe know, too. You lock up the good and the bad and sometimes both in the same person."
Nelson squinted, not entirely convinced. "Maybe."
"You think a person is defined by the worst thing he ever did? The most desperate, the most terrible day in his life?" He got a glimpse of himself in the farm house in Ottsville, the smoke hanging in the air, the milk and blood pooled on the floor and his head on fire.
"That's how the law sees it."
"What about Stan Hicks? He probably locked up a lot of guys who broke the law, bad guys who hurt people. You're willing to send him away, too?"
"It's the law, Ray. Without the law, what do we have?"
Ray lifted his shoulders. "I don't know. Just a lot of fucked-up people trying to get through a day."
ADRIENNE GRAY STAGGEREd home at two o'clock on a Saturday morning, and Ray was sitting on her steps in a bright cone of light. She started when she saw him and stepped back, holding her keys out. Her eyes were wide but red and bleary.
"Adrienne."
"Is that you, Ray?"
"Yes, it's me." She put a hand on her heart.
"Jesus Christ. You scared the crap out of me."
"Sorry." He thumped the cold stair next to him. "Come sit and talk to me."
She lifted her shoulders, patted her arms. "It's cold out, hon. Can't we talk tomorrow? I'll come by the store."
"No. Come here." She made a gesture of giving up with her spread arms and slowly navigated the step and parked herself on the step below him, holding her arms in her thin coat. Ray took off his parka and put it over her shoulders, and she smiled at him and pulled the sleeves together.
They had started talking, Ray finding her coming out of Kelly's or Chambers and walking her home. Trying to pull her into the store instead of letting her go back up the hill to the bars. Bringing her books she didn't read.
"Adrienne."
"What can I do for you, hon? You lonely?"
"No. Adrienne, you need help."
She stood up slowly and turned to look down at him. "And you're going to help me?"
"I'll do what I can." He lifted a shoulder, not sure how this should go.
In the cold light he saw her face close up, a subtle shift in her muscles, the way a closed hand becomes a fist. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Nobody. But you need a friend."
"I got all the fucking friends I need. The bars are full of them." She shucked the coat and threw it down at his feet.
"I don't think those are your friends, Adrienne."
"What the hell do you know about it? What the hell do you want from me anyway?"
He jammed up, not ready for her to be so amped up, ready to fight. "Don't you want to get right? Get clean?"
"So I can be what, like you? Your life's a picnic and I'm invited?"
"No, man. I don't know."
"You don't know is right." She stalked up the steps, her small, hard shins banging his bad leg. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about. You don't know me."
"Adrienne."
She took a couple of steps back down toward him, and he retreated, almost losing the rail.
"I lost my father. One day he's a lawyer and he's got money and respect and he takes care of me and the next day he's dead, and his name gets dragged through the mud, and now he's a shitbag who stole money, and how do I even know what's true? Everyone knows but me. Everyone knows he's a shitbag. And me? I'm the shitbag's daughter. You going to make that go away? Are you?"
"No."
"And how do you even know my name? Where did you come from?"
"I'm nobody. I just thought. . ."
"Yeah, you just thought."
"I'm sorry."
"Go home, Ray."
"Adrienne. Goddammit." "Go home."
TWO O'CLOCK IN the morning and Ray's cell rang at the apartment on Mary Street. He looked at the number and didn't recognize it.
He whispered, "Hello?" Michelle sat up, widening her eyes to clear the sleep, her hair rucked to one side from sleeping on it. He kissed her and winked while he listened. Then his face changed and he started nodding.
HE HADN'T BEEN inside Manny's in almost a year. It was a narrow apartment fronting 611, quiet now at three in the morning. He looked right and left moving through the dark parking lot, the careful habits of his old life slow to desert him.
Sherry met him at the door, small and pale under unwashed black hair, speed-rapping about how she couldn't get him up and he was just so lazy and she thought about an ambulance but who was paying for that? He put her in a chair in front of the tele vi -sion, noticing the scattered potato chip wrappers, the empty beer cans on the table, the smell. The same smell he'd got off the bag Manny'd left at Theresa's. Sherry chewed her nail and watched an infomercial with couples in Hawaii wearing flower print shirts and looking painted into the scenery, tapped her feet on the table, blinking.
He made his way back to the bedroom where Manny was stretched out, blue and still. The orange sodium lamps on the street half lit the room, a salvage diver's light illuminating a tiny wedge of a wreck in black water. He was facing up, naked to the waist, and Ray sat down next to him and touched an arm like cold putty. He got out his cell, called an ambulance, and waited. Heard Sherry muttering to herself about getting a dog, about money she was owed by her sister in Kutztown.
Manny's mom had died when they were in Juvie. Abducted from some bar in Bristol, left in plastic bags by the side of the road. When he heard the CO say it, Manny slugged him in the face and ran for the fence. Three guards brought him down, got him in a choke hold and threw him into Isolation, and Ray went that night, one of the female guards taking him back to the door to try to calm Manny down. Ray banged on the door, called out, and looked through the tiny, smudged window, seeing nothing. Finally he slid open the chute and stuck his arm through and grabbed Manny around his skinny bicep and just held on, feeling the muscle vibrate and hearing his friend's ragged breath.
On the nightstand he found Manny's sunglasses and put them over his eyes, smoothed the hair away from his face. Fit his hand around Manny's bicep and squeezed.
HE STAYED UP all night, first emptying dope and guns out of the apartment and Manny's car before the cops came through, then finding Sherry's sister and getting her to come down to pick her up at the hospital where they took Manny. When he left Abington Memorial it was nearly dawn, so he drove up to the Eagle and got a cup of coffee and some toast. When he paid, he went outside and the sky was just starting to go blue at the edges.
He'd have to get Sherry into rehab, have to watch her and take care of her, and it would probably all be for nothing, but that's how it would go and there wasn't anything to be done about it. He was starting to see an outline of the life in front of him. It was different than the one behind, harder to dope out, but he had to think it would be better. He had to believe in it, the way Theresa believed that prayers to St. Jude had brought him home safe from prison. Even if what he did never worked, if he was no good at it.
It would be where the money went, where his days got used up. Taking care of all the fucked-up people around him. Maybe because he'd been given this other chance he never earned. Because somebody loved him and he never understood why. Because the alternative was endless black night and dope dreams and there wasn't anything else he could do.
AT DAWN HE took a bag into the garage at Theresa's house. He went through Bart's scarred wood worktable, pulling tools out of the drawers and laying them quietly on the floor. A hammer, a punch gone black with age. A speckled boning knife, still carry -ing a faint, vinegary tang.
He dumped a dozen guns out on the floor, then knelt slowly, the cold from the cement grabbing at the bones in his knees. He looked at the guns a long time, picking up each one and putting it down. He held up the Colt, ejected the clip, worked the slide to spit a dull brass shell onto the floor. He worked methodically, re moving the barrel, the slide. Working the firing pin out with the punch, his fingers feeling thick and slow in the weak blue light from the window.
He separated the parts into two piles, then centered each part in front of him in turn and covered it with a decaying terrycloth rag. He raised the hammer and smacked each piece a few times, denting the barrel, snapping the magazine spring with his fingers. He had to get up periodically and work his knees, flex at the hips to keep from getting locked up. As the sun came up he began to sweat, and his hands got slick and black with old gun oil and grit.
He finally walked into the house and went into Theresa's linen closet and got a bunch of pillowcases for his bed, moving quietly in the dark house.
She called from the kitchen. "What are you going to do with those guns?"
He jumped and banged the cane against the doorjamb. "Jesus Christ, don't you sleep?"
"Not anymore." She came to the hallway and handed him a mug of coffee.
He shook his head. "I'm getting rid of them. I smashed them up, so no one can find them and get hurt."
"Come in when you're done, sit down like a person and have some coffee." She reached into the closet, straightened the mess he'd made. "Sneaking around the house in the middle of the night. You're lucky Idon't have a gun."
"Old habits." He smiled, and she rolled her eyes.
THREE WEEKS AFTER Manny's funeral, Ray stood at the store's counter, sorting through invoices. Michelle sat cross-legged on the floor in a storm of packing material and bright paper, her new laptop open. She had them selling books online. It more than doubled their income but meant shipping and tracking and dealing with people over the phone, which Ray left to her. He loved her openness to the new world but felt he couldn't be much help and just admired the work from a distance. He told her they had gotten far out of his commercial comfort zone, which was sticking a gun in someone's face and demanding money.
The shop was doing good, she said, and he trusted her to be right. He felt himself being drawn forward into life, and some days that was good and some days he'd pull back against it. He'd smell dope on Stevie and instead of giving him crap about it, he'd want to get high. Or a customer would get in his shit and he'd have to leave the store, drive around and listen to music and let the tide in his blood shift until he was drawn home again to find Michelle waiting for him, and when he tried to apologize or explain she'd shake her head and hold him and he'd believe in it again.
Theresa crouched in the back pawing the new romances before they went out onto the shelves, pulling each one to her face to squint at the covers, thumbing them open and mouthing a few words.
Michelle smiled. "Finding everything, Theresa?"
"I'm an old lady, hearts and flowers don't do it for me. I like the ones where they get laid."
Ray said, " We should get you some little stars to put on the ones where they get their cookies. We won't be able to keep them on the shelves. The little old ladies who come down from the shrine after mass'll clean us out." He looked outside, saw Andy launching herself up the stairs, one hand around her belly. She pushed through the door hard, the noise scaring Michelle, who ran to the front.
The girl was sobbing. "Has Lynch been here? Is he here?" Michelle put her arm around the girl, but she slid away to stand in the corner, her head swiveling. "Get him out here."
"He's not here, Andy." Ray held up his hands. "What's going on?" The girl was hugely pregnant now, her belly projecting over the small hand she kept on the waistband of the oversized jeans Michelle had helped her pick out. They had been trying to figure out her living situation, which seemed to be on-and off-again at home and occasionally in the basements of friends. They had even tried to get her into a cheap rental, but Lynch just waved them off and shrugged, and the girl volunteered nothing, though the bruises that occasionally appeared on her face made Michelle drop her eyes and shake her head.
They were standing there, Ray at the counter, Michelle hovering in the empty space between the door and the register, her arms outstretched as if Andy were a cat she was trying to coax off the windowsill, when Lynch ran up the street and into the store, Stevie a few steps behind him, the two of them out of breath.
The door banged on the wall, and Theresa got up and slapped the stack of books with an open hand. "Jesus Christ, can't anyone open and close a door?"
Stevie bent over, wheezing, and hit his knees with his fist. Lynch put his arms around Andy, his back to the room, and she stood still and white. Ray could see the boy's hands were shaking.
"What's going on?" Ray looked from one to the other. Michelle touched Stevie's arm and he jumped, his eyes moving wild in his head.
Theresa said, "Is it the baby? We need to call an ambulance?"
Stevie shook his head, pointed at his friend. "Man."
Lynch turned, and they saw he was crying and there was a fine spray of blood across his eyes. Michelle sucked in a breath and stood up straight. They were all still for a moment. There were muted traffic sounds and a distant siren, and Andy, quiet now, turned to look at the street.
Lynch made a motion with his upper body, flexing his arms as if the sleeves of his thin jacket were too small. He smeared at his face with his hand, looked into his palm, but the blood had dried to rust. "I told that fucker. I told him he fucked with Andy again . . ."
Stevie spoke to the floor. "You told him. But man, Lynch."
"No, I told him, he touched her again."
Michelle pulled her arms around her as if she were cold. "You have to tell us what happened. Andy, what happened?"
The young girl moved closer to the window, breathed on it. She traced something no one else could see onto the window in the fine mist from her breath, watched it evaporate. Ray thought it might have been a heart.
Stevie said, "Andy's old man was wailing on her again. He kicked her in the stomach."
"Jesus." Ray covered his face with his hands and spat out the words. "Jesus."
He heard a rustling, and when he opened his eyes Lynch had produced a pistol from his oversized thrift store parka. It was comically large, a long barrel like something from a western.
Michelle said, "Bradley." It was the boy's first name, and Ray had never heard her say it out loud before. Lynch turned to her and his eyes were dull. "Honey, put that away."
Ray came from around the counter. Theresa was standing, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. He moved deliberately, slowly, imagining each terrible way this could play out. He put himself in front of Michelle and backed up, moving her into the aisles and toward the rear of the store. Then he stepped forward, one arm extended.
Michelle's eyes filled with tears and she grabbed at a bookshelf, her knuckles showing up white against her dark skin. She said, "Andrea, honey, come stand by me," but her voice was strange, rounded and hoarse.
"Lynch, man, you are among friends." He turned to Michelle, who reached past him and grabbed Stevie by the sleeve and pulled him and Theresa toward the back door. "Think, kid, you don't want a gun around Andy or the baby."
Lynch turned and looked at Andy, who sighed as if she were bored by an argument she had heard before and stared out at the street.
She said, "Lynch, we have to go."
"We need money." He lifted the pistol and pointed it at Ray, who put up his hands. Behind him he heard Michelle stifle a scream, clapping her hand over her mouth. He turned and smiled at her, or thought he did, watching through the rear window at Theresa stumbling across the parking lot toward the borough hall and the sign that said police.
"I know, man, you can have what ever you need, we just have to talk about what's going to happen, and you need for Christ's sake to put away the gun."
The pistol went off then, always a different sound than Ray expected, not that resonant bang they dub into the movies but a concussive pop that slapped at his head and made his ears ring. The bullet cracked a display case behind him that showered glass onto the floor. Michelle jumped forward into the room, scuffling with Stevie, who was panting and trying to pull her back out to the parking lot.
Andy sighed again, and Lynch said, "I shot her old man. I told him and told him, but he was such a dumb-ass. You can't keep beating on people. You can't."
Ray dropped his head. "Lynch."
"Don't fuck with us. Just give us some money and we'll get out of here."
"You don't have to do this. Tell me what happened."
"I just fucking told you."
"No, I mean everything, everything, the whole story. He was hitting her, right?" Ray had only glimpses of their lives, Stevie and Lynch and Andrea. Drug abuse and alcoholism, suicide and abandonment and rage that chased the kids into the street to live in alleys and abandoned cars, camp in the woods, or cling to each other in wet sleeping bags in half-built houses and vanish into the forest like deer when the Mexican and Guatemalan construction crews came to work in the morning.
"I don't have time to tell you no story. Me and Andy are going to Idaho. We're going to do comics. Andy can draw. Man, she draws everything, and no one knows it but me."
Ray's head snapped up as Nelson appeared on the porch, and he turned behind him to see another cop, this one in a uniform, muscle past Michelle in the rear of the store and stand rigid. He saw Nel-son, Glock in hand, take up a position just outside the front door. He heard the cop behind him draw his gun, the creak of the leather holster. Through the window he could see people on the street. A couple stopped in front of the building, pulling apart a soft pretzel from the place across the street, the man feeding the woman the soft white flesh with the tips of his fingers while she laughed.
"Lynch, man, listen to me."
"Drop your weapon, son." The cop in uniform edged forward, his arms locked, the pistol a few feet from Ray's head.
Ray circled, his arms wide. "Wait a minute, will you fucking please?" He watched the door swing slowly behind Lynch, Nelson holding his blocky automatic, his face transfixed, hard. Ray shook his head, held his hand out, palm up, at first the boy, then the cops each in turn.
"It's all okay, right? This is just okay, all right?" He swallowed, his brain firing and his sinuses full of a strange ozone smell as his heart hammered and sweat began to form in a line on his back. "There's a story here. You have to know the story. It's not, you know. This is not," he said, but Lynch raised the pistol and Michelle screamed and Ray didn't know what to do and he was launching himself at the boy, his arms wide, crossing the floor without being conscious of moving his legs as if he were pulled on a wire.
There were shots, pop, pop, pop, loud, and glass breaking, and later Ray could never be sure of the order of things as he gathered Bradley Lynch in his arms and they went over together, everything happening at once, blood pouring onto the floor, following the cracks in the hardwood, eddying in hollow scuff marks. Michelle screaming, and Stevie yelling his friend's name, and Andy giving one long banshee shriek that sounded like she had been saving it her whole life. Ray's cheek was against the floor, and he saw the blood as a dark tide that came to carry him away to drown. When he lifted his head, his face was dripping, and he looked down at Lynch, his coat open and his T-shirt wound around his thin chest, and saw the boy's white flank torn open, shattered like glass.
The room around him exploded into more screaming and shout ed orders, and he saw movement and lights out of the corners of his eyes. He looked over at Andy. She was hunched in the corner, her mouth working soundlessly, her arms around her belly and her jeans stained with dark water and flecked with foam.
He put his hands over the wound in Lynch's side and pressed, put his blood-painted face inches from the boy's and tried to hold his gaze, and he was screaming something but he never knew what it was, holding the boy's eyes with his and willing him to stay in the room, stay connected, pushing hard on Lynch's frail chest, as if he could hold his life in by force, hold him together, keep him alive.
August
It was a long drive into the hills, out past Valley Forge and through quiet towns where no one stirred on the street, and when they finally got out of the van everyone stretched and squinted, pulling at themselves in the heat like athletes before a long run. They started across a long stretch of grass, and small insects opened white wings and vaulted ahead of them.
It took a while to get them all in, Ray and Michelle taking turns holding the baby while Andy and Stevie signed the visitation forms and passing each other the mealy, lopsided bread that Andy had made herself the day before and an unwieldy bowl of peppery chicken salad. Theresa's offering, though she herself was down with a cold and propped up in bed with a stack of romances, some DVDs of a cop show she liked, and a carton of cigarettes, which she claimed were necessary to keep her throat clear.
They put everything out on a long table in the visiting room, shyly watching the other families. They were black and white and other colors and nationalities that Ray couldn't guess, clustered in knots, heads together, voices quiet except for the occasional murmuring cry from a baby or screech from two kids roughhous-ing in front of the vending machines.
Lynch was buzzed into the visiting room in his blue DOC jumpsuit, his arms out for his son, and they clustered around him and touched his shoulders, which were getting broad. Andy fingered his thin growth of beard while Lynch held his head up, his teeth showing and his bright eyes flicking back and forth between Andy and the baby, who observed everything with a wry and satisfied look. He reached for his father's bright lapel and worked it in the minute and impossible fingers Ray could never stop looking at.
Michelle, hovering, organized plates of food and went into the diaper bag for a bottle. Ray caught Stevie checking out her ass and gave him yard eyes that had mellowed sufficiently to make the boy lift one shoulder and smile. The room was hot and close with bodies, but through the long windows they could see bright grass divided by rolling coils of wire and beyond that the Pennsylvania hills. They sat to eat, Lynch holding the baby across his lap and watching his son work his mouth and blink his eyes.
Ray knelt near him and kept his voice low. "How you making it?"
Lynch never took his eyes off the baby but nodded. "I read a lot, write letters. Stay in my house, out of the shit on the tiers. It's okay."
"No, it's not, it's fucked every minute, but it's twenty-four months. Not even. We can do twenty-four months." He balled some of the loose material of the jumpsuit and put his lips inches from the boy's pale ear. "Listen to me. Never think any of this shit is okay. Never think it's what you got coming."
Lynch shrugged, and Ray put a hand on his arm. "No, man. Twenty-four months and out, no fucking around in here, no ganging up, none of that slopbucket meth. Seven hundred and thirty days and you're home with your boy and Andy and this is all behind you."
"Yeah, it's less time than middle school, huh?" Ray nodded, lifted one brown hand and touched Lynch at his temple, and was almost overcome. He cleared his throat and rubbed at his reddened eyes, trying to think of the light sentence as lucky for nearly killing Andy's father, who had lived through the bullet in his back but who would never leave a wheelchair.
WHILE STEVIE AND Lynch walked around the visiting room and talked about TV shows and movies, DVDs that Stevie was putting aside for his friend to watch when he was out, Michelle sat by Ray and massaged his tense shoulders, swiveling her head to watch for the guards.
She put her head down into the back of his neck and whispered into his hair. "Fuck, I hate this."
"You and me both." They watched Stevie lift his T-shirt, show Lynch a new tattoo: barbed wire encircling his arm. Lynch rolled his eyes and slapped his friend lightly on the forehead.
Michelle said, "I keep expecting a couple of guards to cut me out of the herd and take me back to my cell." She shivered, and Ray covered her hand with his and then lifted it to his lips. "How's he doing, Ray?"
"He'll be okay. If he was fucking up, we'd know it." He looked to the gate, saw the COs checking clipboards and counting heads. He watched through the smeared glass as the shadows of clouds moved over the low hills and the towers and gauzy rolls of wire, painting them with a dark wash like ink dissolved in water.
Michelle slid onto the bench beside him and pressed against his hip, and they watched Andy feed the baby, the mother making small sympathetic movements of her lips as she held the minute spoon to the boy's puckered mouth. While they watched, Michelle took Ray's hand and pressed it against her, low on her stomach inside her jeans, and he felt the heat in her belly and the palms of her hands.
She said, "Do you want that, Ray? Do you want that for us?"
"I don't know."
He watched a man in a blue jumpsuit serving tuna salad to his family from a foil pan, his brow thick with scar tissue. A heavy woman with blond hair like a suspended wave watched him, her eyes wary, and when the plastic spoon snapped in his hands she winced and grabbed involuntarily at the frail, pink-eyed girl in her lap.
Michelle waited, and he finally said, "I just don't." He made a movement with his free hand that took in the room. "Trust that things will be okay. That they'll be good."
"They won't, always." She smiled. Lifted one hand and touched the baby's white hair. "But we'll do the best we can, and we'll have a good life."
"Do I deserve that?"
She pressed against him, and Ray could feel pain in his arm from where he'd had his tattoo burned, the laser turning the heavy black letters into an oblique scar so that he'd shaken his head, laughed at himself for wasting the money. He'd marked himself; he'd always be marked.
He said, "Who am I now?" but there was a change in the room, a collective sighing and pauses in conversation, and it was time to go, and Michelle hadn't heard what he'd said.
They packed up, Andy clinging for a long moment to Lynch, their eyes closed, swaying in the heat as if at one of the high school dances they'd all missed, though it was Stevie who teared up and had to go stand in front of a vending machine and pretend to pick out orange soda, working quarters in his red fist.
Ray walked Lynch back to the door and handed him two car tons of cigarettes. Hugged him hard, feeling the knot of scar tissue at his side through the jumpsuit, then stood while the boy went through the gate to stand patiently with his arms out to be wanded by a short woman with wide hips who laughed at something the boy said.
While Ray was watching, an older man came down the hall from the tiers in the brown jumpsuit of a lifer, his shoulders riding in a lopsided wave and one long hand pushing at a mass of graying hair. When the man got to Lynch the younger man turned, smiled, and said something lost to Ray behind the glass. He patted the older man's mountainous shoulder and pointed through at Ray, shaking his head, mouthed a word that might have been "bad-ass." When the door nearest him was buzzed open, Ray could hear the distant shouting and banging of the tiers.
Ray lifted a hand and waved at Harlan and Lynch as they turned to go back. Harlan went into Lynch's pockets while they walked, pulled a cigarette out, and stuck it behind his ear. He turned and nodded at Ray, made a scooting motion to send him on his way.
Ray knew he couldn't fix everything, couldn't stop every bad thing just by his love for Michelle or these broken kids. He'd failed with Adrienne Gray, and he'd let Manny slide away into the dark. The rest of the money had all gone to legal bills for Lynch and medical bills for Andy and rehab for Sherry, and he saw they'd always struggle to stay ahead. But there were good, clear days, too, and sometimes he came home tired and slept without dreams.
Ray knew Lynch would come out with tattoos and scars, but Michelle had said it would be a map only of where he had been, not where he was headed. Ray hoped it was true, though he sometimes saw her staring into the middle distance and knew she saw her mother's untended grave in the flat Ohio earth, a boy she had loved in high school walking down a tree-lined street with his children.
Ray turned to the rest of his pickup family, clutching bags and blankets as they clustered by the door, and looked out into the daylight with the hooded and set-upon eyes of refugees. In the parking lot he had to keep himself from running, and Michelle laced her fingers through his and kissed his cheek.
In Phoenixville they stopped at a Dairy Queen, and he bought sodas for the kids and soft serve for the baby. The clouds had piled up overhead into a hard ceiling threaded with black and softening the light to a muted blue. He stood at the eroded curb and watched them all, Stevie draped over the seats and flipping through the CDs, Andy furiously texting one of her girlfriends from work, Michelle cradling the baby and smiling at him with her crooked smile.
They looked okay, and he let himself believe they would be. They looked hungry and tired. They looked like any family by the side of the road, and he had the thought that if they locked him up again this would be the image he'd remember. At night on his bunk, when the lights would go out, this moment, these few quiet seconds, would be the thing he'd hold on to to keep himself sane.
There was a low, drumming rumble behind him, and he turned as a motorcycle appeared on the street and drifted to a stop at the light. The noise grew louder, bouncing and echoing off the buildings around him, and then there were a dozen more bikes strung out along the road. Ray stood silent, watching them come. Men in leather jackets, some wearing chromed helmets, most with nothing on their heads but bandannas or long hair in matted plaits.
At the back of the line, a young guy with black hair and a goatee turned and looked at Ray, his face shadowed and unreadable. Ray felt naked, exposed, blinking away the sweat from his eyes. His heart worked faster, but he stood up straight, put his chin out. Thought to himself, take what comes. The bike coasted; the man leaned forward, reached a hand behind him. Touched a small form there. A boy, pressed against his back, wearing goggles and an oversized helmet the blue of a robin's egg. White-blond hair framing a heart-shaped face. The boy held a hand up and gave Ray a quick, shy wave. Then the light changed, and they were gone.
|
BLUE MARS
Kim Stanley Robinson
Bantam Books by Kim Stanley Robinson
FICTION
The Mars Trilogy
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
A Short, Sharp Shock
Antarctica
The Martians
Look for
The Years of Rice and Salt
Available now in hardcover
Blue Mars
A Bantam Spectra Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published July 1996
Bantam paperback edition / July 1997
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed "s" are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-46700.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN 0-553-89829-9
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.
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v 1.0
for Lisa and David and Timothy
Map
The Martian Calendar
Year 1 (2027 AD)
24 months =
3 months (every eighth) at 27 days)
Peacock Mountain
Prologue
Mars is free now. We're on our own. No one tells us what to do.
Ann stood at the front of the train as she said this.
But it's so easy to backslide into old patterns of behavior. Break one hierarchy and another springs up to take its place. We will have to be on guard for that, because there will always be people trying to make another Earth. The areophany will have to be ceaseless, an eternal struggle. We will have to think harder than ever before what it means to be Martian.
Her listeners sat slumped in chairs, looking out the windows at the terrain flowing by. They were tired, their eyes were scoured. Red-eyed Reds. In the harsh dawn light everything looked new, the windswept land outside bare except for a khaki scree of lichen and scrub. They had kicked all Earthly power off Mars, it had been a long campaign, capped by a burst of furious action following the great flood on Terra; and they were tired.
We came from Earth to Mars, and in that passage there was a certain purification. Things were easier to see, there was a freedom of action that we had not had before. A chance to express the best part of ourselves. So we acted. We are making a better way to live.
This was the myth, they had all grown up with it. Now as Ann told it to them again, the young Martians stared through her. They had engineered the revolution, they had fought all over Mars, and pushed the Terran police into Burroughs; then they had drowned Burroughs, and chased the Terrans up to Sheffield, on Pavonis Mons. They still had to force the enemy out of Sheffield, up the space cable and back to Terra; there was work still to be done. But in the successful evacuation of Burroughs they had won a great victory, and some of the blank faces staring at Ann or out the window seemed to want a break, a moment for triumph. They were all exhausted.
Hiroko will help us, a young man said, breaking the silence of the train's levitation over the land.
Ann shook her head. Hiroko is a green, she said, the original green.
Hiroko invented the areophany, the young native countered. That's her first concern: Mars. She will help us, I know. I met her. She told me.
Except she's dead, someone else said.
Another silence. The world flowed under them.
Finally a tall young woman stood up and walked down the aisle, and gave Ann a hug. The spell was broken; words were abandoned; they got to their feet and clustered in the open space at the front of the train, around Ann, and hugged her, or shook her hand--- or simply touched her, Ann Clayborne, the one who had taught them to love Mars for itself, who had led them in the struggle for its independence from Earth. And though her bloodshot eyes were still fixed, gazing through them at the rocky battered expanse of the Tyrrhena massif, she was smiling. She hugged them back, she shook their hands, she reached up to touch their faces. It will be all right, she said. We will make Mars free. And they said yes, and congratulated each other. On to Sheffield, they said. Finish the job. Mars will show us how.
Except she's not dead, the young man objected. I saw her last month in Arcadia. She'll show up again. She'll show up somewhere.
At a certain moment before dawn the sky always glowed the same bands of pink as in the beginning, pale and clear in the east, rich and starry in the west. Ann watched for this moment as her companions drove them west, toward a mass of black land rearing into the sky--- the Tharsis Bulge, punctuated by the broad cone of Pavonis Mons. As they rolled uphill from Noctis Labyrinthus they rose above most of the new atmosphere; the air pressure at the foot of Pavonis was only 180 millibars, and then as they drove up the eastern flank of the great shield volcano it dropped under 100 millibars, and continued to fall. Slowly they ascended above all visible foliage, crunching over dirty patches of wind-carved snow; then they ascended above even the snow, until there was nothing but rock, and the ceaseless thin cold winds of the jet stream. The bare land looked just as it had in the prehuman years, as if they were driving back up into the past.
It wasn't so. But something fundamental in Ann Clayborne warmed at the sight of this ferric world, stone on rock in the perpetual wind, and as the Red cars rolled up the mountain all their occupants grew as rapt as Ann, the cabins falling silent as the sun cracked the distant horizon behind them.
Then the slope they ascended grew less steep, in a perfect sine curve, until they were on the flat land of the round summit plateau. Here they saw tent towns ringing the edge of the giant caldera, clustered in particular around the foot of the space elevator, some thirty kilometers to the south of them.
PAVONIS MONS CALDERA
They stopped their cars. The silence in the cabins had shifted from reverent to grim. Ann stood at one upper-cabin window, looking south toward Sheffield, that child of the space elevator: built because of the elevator, smashed flat when the elevator fell, built again with the elevator's replacement. This was the city she had come to destroy, as thoroughly as Rome had Carthage; for she meant to bring down the replacement cable too, just as they had the first one in 2061. When they did that, much of Sheffield would again be flattened. What remained would be located uselessly on the peak of a high volcano, above most of the atmosphere; as time passed the surviving structures would be abandoned and dismantled for salvage, leaving only the tent foundations, and perhaps a weather station, and, eventually, the long sunny silence of a mountain summit. The salt was already in the ground.
• • •
A cheerful Tharsis Red named Irishka joined them in a small rover, and led them through the maze of warehouses and small tents surrounding the intersection of the equatorial piste with the one circling the rim. As they followed her she described for them the local situation. Most of Sheffield and the rest of the Pavonis rim settlements were already in the hands of the Martian revolutionaries. But the space elevator and the neighborhood surrounding its base complex were not, and there lay the difficulty. The revolutionary forces on Pavonis were mostly poorly equipped militias, and they did not necessarily share the same agenda. That they had succeeded as far as they had was due to many factors: surprise, the control of Martian space, several strategic victories, the support of the great majority of the Martian population, and the unwillingness of the United Nations Transitional Authority to fire on civilians, even when they were making mass demonstrations in the streets. As a result the UNTA security forces had retreated from all over Mars to regroup in Sheffield, and now most of them were in elevator cars, going up to Clarke, the ballast asteroid and space station at the top of the elevator; the rest were jammed into the neighborhood surrounding the elevator's massive base complex, called the Socket. This district consisted of elevator support facilities, industrial warehouses, and the hostels, dormitories, and restaurants needed to house and feed the port's workforce. "Those are coming in useful now," Irishka said, "because even so they're squeezed in like trash in a compactor, and if there hadn't been food and shelter they would probably have tried a breakout. As it is, things are still tense, but at least they can live."
It somewhat resembled the situation just resolved in Burroughs, Ann thought. Which had turned out fine. It only took someone willing to act and the thing would be done--- UNTA evacuated to Earth, the cable brought down, Mars's link to Earth truly broken. And any attempt to erect a new cable could be balked sometime in the ten years of orbital construction that it took to build one.
So Irishka led them through the jumble that was east Pavonis, and their little caravan came to the rim of the caldera, where they parked their rovers. To the south on the western edge of Sheffield they could just make out the elevator cable, a line that was barely visible, and then only for a few kilometers out of its 24,000. Nearly invisible, in fact, and yet its existence dominated every move they made, every discussion--- every thought they had, almost, speared and strung out on that black thread connecting them to Earth.
• • •
When they were settled in their camp Ann called her son Peter on the wrist. He was one of the leaders of the revolution on Tharsis, and had directed the campaign against UNTA that had left its forces contained in the Socket and its immediate neighborhood. A qualified victory at best, but it made Peter one of the heroes of the previous month.
Now he answered the call and his face appeared on her wrist. He looked quite like her, which she found disconcerting. He was absorbed, she saw, concentrating on something other than her call.
"Any news?" she asked.
"No. We appear to be at something of an impasse. We're allowing all of them caught outside free passage into the elevator district, so they've got control of the train station and the south rim airport, and the subway lines from those to the Socket."
"Did the planes that evacuated them from Burroughs come here?"
"Yes. Apparently most of them are leaving for Earth. It's very crowded in there."
"Are they going back to Earth, or into Mars orbit?"
"Back to Earth. I don't think they trust orbit anymore."
He smiled at that. He had done a lot in space, aiding Sax's efforts and so on. Her son the spaceman, the Green. For many years they had scarcely spoken to each other.
Ann said, "So what are you going to do now?"
"I don't know. I don't see that we can take the elevator, or the Socket either. It just wouldn't work. Even if it did, they could always bring the elevator down."
"So?"
"Well---" He looked suddenly concerned. "I don't think that would be a good thing. Do you?"
"I think it should come down."
Now he looked annoyed. "Better stay out of the fall line then."
"I will."
"I don't want anyone bringing it down without a full discussion," he told her sharply. "This is important. It should be a decision made by the whole Martian community. I think we need the elevator, myself."
"Except we have no way to take possession of it."
"That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it's not something for you to take into your own hands. I heard what happened in Burroughs, but it's different here, you understand? We decide strategy together. It needs to be discussed."
"It's a group that's very good at that," Ann said bitterly. Everything was always thoroughly discussed and then always she lost. It was past time for that. Someone had to act. But again Peter looked as if he were being taken from his real work. He thought he would be making the decisions about the elevator, she could see that. Part of a more general feeling of ownership of the planet, no doubt, the birthright of the nisei, displacing the First Hundred and all the rest of the issei. If John had lived that would not have been easy, but the king was dead, long live the king--- her son, king of the nisei, the first true Martians.
But king or not, there was a Red army now converging on Pavonis Mons. They were the strongest military operation left on the planet, and they intended to complete the work begun when Earth had been hit by its great flood. They did not believe in consensus or compromise, and for them, knocking down the cable was killing two birds with one stone: it would destroy the last police stronghold, and it would also sever easy contact between Earth and Mars, a primary Red goal. No, knocking down the cable was the obvious thing to do.
But Peter did not seem to know this. Or perhaps he did not care. Ann tried to tell him, but he just nodded, muttering "Yeah yeah, yeah yeah." So arrogant, like all the greens, so blithe and stupid with all their prevaricating, their dealing with Earth, as if you could ever get anything from such a leviathan. No. It was going to take direct action, as in the drowning of Burroughs, as in all the acts of sabotage that had set the stage for the revolution. Without those the revolution wouldn't even have begun, or if it had it would have been crushed immediately, as in 2061.
"Yeah yeah. We'd better call a meeting then," Peter said, looking as annoyed at her as she felt at him.
"Yeah yeah," Ann said heavily. Meetings. But they had their uses; people could assume they meant something, while the real work went on elsewhere.
"I'll try to set one up," Peter said. She had gotten his attention at last, she saw; but there was an unpleasant look on his face, as if he had been threatened. "Before things get out of hand."
"Things are already out of hand," she told him, and cut the connection.
• • •
She checked the news on the various channels, Mangalavid, the Reds' private nets, the Terran summaries. Though Pavonis and the elevator were now the focus of everyone on Mars, the physical convergence on the volcano was only partial. It appeared to her that there were more Red guerrilla units on Pavonis than the green units of Free Mars and their allies; but it was hard to be sure. Kasei and the most radical wing of the Reds, called the Kakaze ("fire wind"), had recently occupied the north rim of Pavonis, taking over the train station and tent at Lastflow. The Reds Ann had traveled with, most of them from the old Red mainstream, discussed moving around the rim and joining the Kakaze, but decided in the end to stay in east Pavonis. Ann observed this discussion silently but was glad at the result, as she wanted to keep her distance from Kasei and Dao and their crowd. She was pleased to stay in east Pavonis.
Many Free Mars troops were staying there as well, moving out of their cars into the abandoned warehouses. East Pavonis was becoming a major concentration of revolutionary groups of all kinds; and a couple days after her arrival, Ann went in and walked over compacted regolith to one of the biggest warehouses in the tent, to take part in a general strategy session.
The meeting went about as she expected. Nadia was at the center of the discussion, and it was useless talking to Nadia now. Ann just sat on a chair against the back wall, watching the rest of them circle the situation. They did not want to say what Peter had already admitted to her in private: there was no way to get UNTA off the space elevator. Before they conceded that they were going to try to talk the problem out of existence.
Late in the meeting, Sax Russell came over to sit by her side.
"A space elevator," he said. "It could be . . . used."
Ann was not the least bit comfortable talking to Sax. She knew that he had suffered brain damage at the hands of UNTA security, and had taken a treatment that had changed his personality; but somehow this had not helped at all. It only made things very strange, in that sometimes he seemed to her to be the same old Sax, as familiar as a much-hated brother; while at other times he did indeed seem like a completely different person, inhabiting Sax's body. These two contrary impressions oscillated rapidly, even sometimes coexisted; just before joining her, as he had talked with Nadia and Art, he had looked like a stranger, a dapper old man with a piercing glare, talking in Sax's voice and Sax's old style. Now as he sat next to her, she could see that the changes to his face were utterly superficial. But though he looked familiar the stranger was now inside him--- for here was a man who halted and jerked as he delved painfully after what he was trying to say, and then as often as not came out with something scarcely coherent.
"The elevator is a, a device. For . . . raising up. A . . . a tool."
"Not if we don't control it," Ann said to him carefully, as if instructing a child.
"Control . . ." Sax said, thinking over the concept as if it were entirely new to him. "Influence? If the elevator can be brought down by anyone who really wants to, then . . ." He trailed away, lost in his thoughts.
"Then what?" Ann prompted.
"Then it's controlled by all. Consensual existence. It's obvious?"
It was as if he were translating from a foreign language. This was not Sax; Ann could only shake her head, and try gently to explain. The elevator was the conduit for the metanationals to reach Mars, she told him. It was in the possession of the metanats now, and the revolutionaries had no means to kick their police forces off of it. Clearly the thing to do in such a situation was to bring it down. Warn people, give them a schedule, and then do it. "Loss of life would be minimal, and what there was would be pretty much the fault of anyone so stupid as to stay on the cable, or the equator."
Unfortunately Nadia heard this from the middle of the room, and she shook her head so violently that her cropped gray locks flew out like a clown's ruff. She was still very angry with Ann over Burroughs, for no good reason at all, and so Ann glared at her as she walked over to them and said curtly, "We need the elevator. It's our conduit to Terra just as much as it's their conduit to Mars."
"But we don't need a conduit to Terra," Ann said. "It's not a physical relationship for us, don't you see? I'm not saying we don't need to have an influence on Terra, I'm not an isolationist like Kasei or Coyote. I agree we need to try to work on them. But it's not a physical thing, don't you see? It's a matter of ideas, of talk, and perhaps a few emissaries. It's an information exchange. At least it is when it's going right. It's when it gets into a physical thing--- a resource exchange, or mass emigration, or police control--- that's when the elevator becomes useful, even necessary. So if we took it down we would be saying, we will deal with you on our terms, and not yours."
It was so obvious. But Nadia shook her head, at what Ann couldn't imagine.
Sax cleared his throat, and in his old periodic-table style said, "If we can bring it down, then in effect it is as if it already were down," blinking and everything. Like a ghost suddenly there at her side, the voice of the terraforming, the enemy she had lost to time and time again--- Saxifrage Russell his own self, same as ever. And all she could do was make the same arguments she always had, the losing arguments, feeling the words' inadequacy right in her mouth.
Still she tried. "People act on what's there, Sax. The metanat directors and the UN and the governments will look up and see what's there, and act accordingly. If the cable's gone they just don't have the resources or the time to mess with us right now. If the cable's here, then they'll want us. They'll think, well, we could do it. And there'll be people screaming to try."
"They can always come. The cable is only a fuel saver."
"A fuel saver which makes mass transfers possible."
But now Sax was distracted, and turning back into a stranger. No one would pay attention to her for long enough. Nadia was going on about control of orbit and safe-conduct passes and the like.
The strange Sax interrupted Nadia, having never heard her, and said, "We've promised to . . . help them out."
"By sending them more metals?" Ann said. "Do they really need those?"
"We could . . . take people. It might help."
Ann shook her head. "We could never take enough."
He frowned. Nadia saw they weren't listening to her, returned to the table. Sax and Ann fell into silence.
Always they argued. Neither conceded anything, no compromises were made, nothing was ever accomplished. They argued using the same words to mean different things, and scarcely even spoke to one another. Once it had been different, very long ago, when they had argued in the same language, and understood each other. But that had been so long ago she couldn't even remember when exactly it was. In Antarctica? Somewhere. But not on Mars.
"You know," Sax said in a conversational tone, again very un-Sax-like but in a different way, "it wasn't the Red militia that caused the Transitional Authority to evacuate Burroughs and the rest of the planet. If guerrillas had been the only factor then the Terrans would have gone after us, and they might well have succeeded. But those mass demonstrations in the tents made it clear that almost everyone on the planet was against them. That's what governments fear the most; mass protests in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of people going into the streets to reject the current system. That's what Nirgal means when he says political power comes out of the look in people's eye. And not out of the end of a gun."
"And so?" Ann said.
Sax gestured at the people in the warehouse. "They're all greens."
The others continued debating. Sax watched her like a bird.
Ann got up and walked out of the meeting, into the strangely unbusy streets of east Pavonis. Here and there militia bands held posts on street corners, keeping an eye to the south, toward Sheffield and the cable terminal. Happy, hopeful, serious young natives. There on one corner a group was in an animated discussion, and as Ann passed them a young woman, her face utterly intent, flushed with passionate conviction, cried out "You can't just do what you want!"
Ann walked on. As she walked she felt more and more uneasy, without knowing why. This is how people change--- in little quantum jumps when struck by outer events--- no intention, no plan. Someone says "the look in people's eye," and the phrase is suddenly conjoined with an image: a face glowing with passionate conviction, another phrase: you can't just do what you want! And so it occurred to her (the look on that young woman's face!) that it was not just the cable's fate they were deciding--- not just "should the cable come down," but "how do we decide things?" That was the critical postrevolutionary question, perhaps more important than any single issue being debated, even the fate of the cable. Up until now, most people in the underground had operated by a working method which said if we don't agree with you we will fight you. That attitude was what had gotten people into the underground in the first place, Ann included. And once used to that method, it was hard to get away from it. After all, they had just proved that it worked. And so there was the inclination to continue to use it. She felt that herself.
But political power . . . say it did come out of the look in people's eye. You could fight forever, but if people weren't behind you. . . .
• • •
Ann continued to think about that as she drove down into Sheffield, having decided to skip the farce of the afternoon strategy session in east Pavonis. She wanted to have a look at the seat of the action.
It was curious how little seemed to have changed in the day-to-day life of Sheffield. People still went to work, ate in restaurants, talked on the grass of the parks, gathered in the public spaces in this most crowded of tent towns. The shops and restaurants were jammed. Most businesses in Sheffield had belonged to the metanats, and now people read on their screens long arguments over what to do--- what the employees' new relationship to their old owners should be--- where they should buy their raw materials, where they should sell--- whose regulations they ought to obey, whose taxes they ought to pay. All very confusing, as the screen debates and the nightly news vids and the wrist nets indicated.
The plaza devoted to the food market, however, looked as it always had. Most food was grown and distributed by co-ops; ag networks were in place, the greenhouses on Pavonis were still producing, and so in the market things ran as usual, goods paid for with UNTA dollars or with credit. Except once or twice Ann saw sellers in their aprons shouting red-faced at customers, who shouted right back, arguing over some point of government policy. As Ann passed by one of these arguments, which were no different than those going on among the leaders in east Pavonis, the disputants all stopped and stared at her. She had been recognized. The vegetable seller said loudly, "If you Reds would lay off they would just go away!"
"Ah come on," someone retorted. "It isn't her doing it."
So true, Ann thought as she walked on.
A crowd stood waiting for a tram to come. The transport systems were still running, ready for autonomy. The tent itself was functioning, which was not something to be taken for granted, though clearly most people did; but every tent's operators had their task obvious before them. They mined their raw materials themselves, mostly out of the air; their solar collectors and nuclear reactors were all the power they needed. So the tents were physically fragile, but if left alone, they could very well become politically autonomous; there was no reason for them to be owned, no justification for it.
So the necessities were served. Daily life plodded on, barely perturbed by revolution.
Or so it seemed at first glance. But there in the streets also were armed groups, young natives in threes and fours and fives, standing on street corners. Revolutionary militias around their missile launchers and remote sensing dishes--- green or red, it didn't matter, though they were almost certainly greens. People eyed them as they walked by, or stopped to chat and find out what they were doing. Keeping an eye on the Socket, the armed natives said. Though Ann could see that they were functioning as police as well. Part of the scene, accepted, supported. People grinned as they chatted; these were their police, they were fellow Martians, here to protect them, to guard Sheffield for them. People wanted them there, that was clear. If they hadn't, then every approaching questioner would have been a threat, every glance of resentment an attack; which eventually would have forced the militias from the street corners into some safer place. People's faces, staring in concert; this ran the world.
• • •
So Ann brooded over the next few days. And even more so after she took a rim train in the direction opposite to Sheffield, counterclockwise to the north arc of the rim. There Kasei and Dao and the Kakaze were occupying apartments in the little tent at Lastflow. Apparently they had forcibly evicted some noncombatant residents, who naturally had trained down to Sheffield in fury, demanding to be reinstated in their homes, and reporting to Peter and the rest of the green leaders that the Reds had set up truck-drawn rocket launchers on the north rim, with the rockets aimed at the elevator and Sheffield more generally.
So Ann walked out into Lastflow's little station in a bad mood, angry at the Kakaze's arrogance, as stupid in its way as the greens'. They had done well in the Burroughs campaign, seizing the dike very visibly to give everyone a warning, then taking it on themselves to breach the dike after all the other revolutionary factions had gathered on the heights to the south, ready to rescue the city's civilian population while the metanat security were forced to retreat. The Kakaze had seen what had been needed and they had done it, without getting bogged down in debate. Without their decisiveness everyone would still be gathered around Burroughs, and the metanats no doubt organizing a Terran expeditionary force to relieve it. It had been a perfectly delivered coup.
Now it seemed that success had gone to their head.
Lastflow had been named after the depression it occupied, a fan-shaped lava flow extending more than a hundred kilometers down the northeast flank of the mountain. It was the only blemish in what was otherwise a flawlessly circular summit cone and caldera, and clearly it had come very late in the volcano's history of eruptions. Standing down in the depression, one's view of the rest of the summit was cut off--- it was like being in a shallow hanging valley, with little visible in any direction--- until one walked out to the drop-off at rim's edge, and saw the huge cylinder of the caldera coring the planet, and on the far rim the skyline of Sheffield, looking like a tiny Manhattan over forty kilometers away.
The curtailed view perhaps explained why the depression had been one of the last parts of the rim to be developed. But now it was filled by a fair-sized tent, six kilometers in diameter and a hundred meters high, heavily reinforced as all tents up here had to be. The settlement had been home mostly to commuter laborers in the rim's many industries. Now the rimfront district had been taken over by the Kakaze, and just outside the tent stood a fleet of large rovers, no doubt the ones that had caused the rumors about rocket launchers.
As Ann was led to the restaurant that Kasei had made his headquarters, she was assured by her guides that this was indeed the case; the rovers did haul rocket launchers, which were ready to flatten UNTA's last refuge on Mars. Her guides were obviously happy about this, and happy also to be able to tell her about it, happy to meet her and guide her around. A varied bunch--- mostly natives, with some Terran newcomers and old-timers, of all ethnic backgrounds. Among them were a few faces Ann recognized: Etsu Okakura, al-Khan, Yussuf. A lot of young natives unknown to her stopped them at the restaurant door to shake her hand, grinning enthusiastically. The Kakaze: they were, she had to admit to herself, the wing of the Reds for which she felt the least sympathy. Angry ex-Terrans or idealistic young natives from the tents, their stone eyeteeth dark in their smiles, their eyes glittering as they got this chance to meet her, as they spoke of kami, the need for purity, the intrinsic value of rock, the rights of the planet, and so on. In short, fanatics. She shook their hands and nodded, trying not to let her discomfort show.
Inside the restaurant Kasei and Dao were sitting by a window, drinking dark beer. Everything in the room stopped on Ann's entrance, and it took a while for people to be introduced, for Kasei and Dao to welcome her with hugs, for meals and conversations to resume. They got her something to eat from the kitchen. The restaurant workers came out to meet her; they were Kakaze as well. Ann waited until they were gone and people had gone back to their tables, feeling impatient and awkward. These were her spiritual children, the media always were saying; she was the original Red; but in truth they made her uncomfortable.
Kasei, in excellent spirits, as he had been ever since the revolution began, said "We're going to bring down the cable in about a week."
"Oh you are!" Ann said. "Why wait so long?"
Dao missed her sarcasm. "It's a matter of warning people, so they have time to get off the equator." Though normally a sour man, today he was as cheery as Kasei.
"And off the cable too?"
"If they feel like it. But even if they evacuate it and give it to us, it's still coming down."
"How? Are those really rocket launchers out there?"
"Yes. But those are there in case they come down and try to retake Sheffield. As for bringing down the cable, breaking it here at the base isn't the way to do it."
"The control rockets might be able to adjust to disruptions at the bottom," Kasei explained. "Hard to say what would happen, really. But a break just above the areosynchronous point would decrease damage to the equator, and keep New Clarke from flying off as fast as the first one did. We want to minimize the drama of this, you know, avoid any martyrs we can. Just the demolition of a building, you know. Like a building past its usefulness."
"Yes," Ann said, relieved at this sign of good sense. But it was curious how hearing her idea expressed as someone else's plan disturbed her. She located the main source of her concern: "What about the others--- the greens? What if they object?"
"They won't," Dao said.
"They are!" Ann said sharply.
Dao shook his head. "I've been talking to Jackie. It may be that some of the greens are truly opposed to it, but her group is just saying that for public consumption, so that they look moderate to the Terrans, and can blame the dangerous stuff on radicals out of their control."
"On us," Ann said.
They both nodded. "Just like with Burroughs," Kasei said with a smile.
Ann considered it. No doubt it was true. "But some of them are genuinely opposed. I've been arguing with them about it, and it's no publicity stunt."
"Uh-huh," Kasei said slowly.
Both he and Dao watched her.
"So you'll do it anyway," she said at last.
They continued to watch her. She saw all of a sudden that they would no more do what she told them to do than would boys ordered about by a senile grandmother. They were humoring her. Figuring out how they could best put her to use.
"We have to," Kasei said. "It's in the best interest of Mars. Not just for Reds, but all of us. We need some distance between us and Terra, and the gravity well reestablishes that distance. Without it we'll be sucked down into the maelstrom."
It was Ann's argument, it was just what she had been saying in the meetings in east Pavonis. "But what if they try to stop you?"
"I don't think they can," Kasei said.
"But if they try?"
The two men glanced at each other. Dao shrugged.
So, Ann thought, watching them. They were willing to start a civil war.
• • •
People were still coming up the slopes of Pavonis to the summit, filling up Sheffield, east Pavonis, Lastflow and the other rim tents. Among them were Michel, Spencer, Vlad, Marina, and Ursula; Mikhail and a whole brigade of Bogdanovists; Coyote, on his own; a group from Praxis; a large train of Swiss; rover caravans of Arabs, both Sufi and secular; natives from other towns and settlements on Mars. All coming up for the endgame. Everywhere else on Mars, the natives had consolidated their control; all the physical plants were being operated by local teams, in cooperation with Séparation de l'Atmosphère. There were some small pockets of metanat resistance, of course, and there were some Kakaze out there systematically destroying terraforming projects; but Pavonis was clearly the crux of the remaining problem--- either the endgame of the revolution or, as Ann was beginning to fear, the opening moves of a civil war. Or both. It would not be the first time.
So she went to the meetings, and slept poorly at night, waking from troubled sleep, or from naps in the transit between one meeting and the next. The meetings were beginning to blur: all contentious, all pointless. She was getting tired, and the broken sleep did not help. She was nearly 150 years old, after all, and had not had a gerontological treatment in 25 years, and she felt weary all through, all the time. So she watched from a well of growing indifference as the others chewed over the situation. Earth was still in disarray; the great flood caused by the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet was indeed proving to be the ideal trigger mechanism for which General Sax had waited. Sax felt no remorse for taking advantage of Earth's trouble, Ann could see; he never thought once about the many deaths the flood had caused down there. She could read his face thought by thought as he talked about it--- what would be the point of remorse? The flood was an accident, a geological catastrophe like an ice age or a meteor impact. No one should waste time feeling remorse for it, not even if they were taking advantage of it for their own purposes. Best to take what good one possibly could from the chaos and disorder, and not worry. All this was right on Sax's face as he discussed what they should do next vis-à-vis Earth. Send a delegation, he suggested. Diplomatic mission, personal appearance, something about throwing things together; incoherent on the surface, but she could read him like a brother, this old enemy! Well, Sax--- the old Sax anyway--- was nothing if not rational. Therefore easy to read. Easier than the young fanatics of the Kakaze, now that she thought of it.
And one could only meet him on his own ground, speak to him on his own terms. So she sat across from him in the meetings and tried to concentrate, even though her mind seemed to be hardening somehow, petrifying right inside her head. Round and round the arguments went: what to do on Pavonis? Pavonis Mons, Peacock Mountain. Who would ascend the Peacock Throne? There were potential shahs everywhere--- Peter, Nirgal, Jackie, Zeyk, Kasei, Maya, Nadia, Mikhail, Ariadne, the invisible Hiroko. . . .
Now someone was invoking the Dorsa Brevia conference as the framework for discussion they should use. All very well, but without Hiroko among them the moral center was gone, the one person in all Martian history, aside from John Boone, to whom everyone would defer. But Hiroko and John were gone, along with Arkady, and Frank, who would have come in useful now, if he had been on her side, which he wouldn't have been. All gone. And they were left with anarchy. Curious how at a crowded table those absent could be more visible than those present. Hiroko, for instance; people referred to her frequently; and no doubt she was somewhere in the outback, deserting them as usual in their hour of need. Pissing them out of the nest.
Curious too how the only child of their lost heroes, Kasei the son of John and Hiroko, should be the most radical leader there, a disquieting man even though he was on her side. There he sat, shaking his gray head at Art, a small smile twisting his mouth. He was nothing like either John or Hiroko--- well, he had some of Hiroko's arrogance, some of John's simplicity. The worst of both. And yet he was a power, he did what he wanted, and a lot of people followed him. But he was not like his parents had been.
And Peter, sitting just two seats away from Kasei, was nothing like her or Simon. It was hard to see what blood relationships meant; nothing, obviously. Though it did twist her heart to hear Peter speak, as he argued with Kasei and opposed the Reds at every point, making a case for some kind of interplanetary collaborationism. And never in these sessions addressing her, or even looking at her. It was perhaps intended as some kind of courtesy--- I will not argue with you in public. But it looked like a slight--- I will not argue with you because you don't matter.
He continued to argue for keeping the cable, and agreed with Art about the Dorsa Brevia document, naturally, given the green majority that had existed then and persisted now. Using Dorsa Brevia as a guide would assure the cable's survival. Meaning the continued presence of the United Nations Transitional Authority. And indeed some of them around Peter were talking about "semiautonomy" in relation to Terra, instead of independence, and Peter went along with that; it made her sick. And all without meeting her eye. It was Simon-like, somehow, a kind of silence. It made her angry.
"We have no reason to talk about longterm plans until we have solved the cable problem," she said, interrupting him and earning a very black look indeed, as if she had broken an understanding; but there was no understanding, and why should they not argue, when they had no real relationship--- nothing but biology . . . ?
Art claimed that the UN was now saying that it would be willing to agree to Martian semiautonomy, as long as Mars remained in "close consultation" with Earth, and an active aid in Earth's crisis. Nadia said she was in communication with Derek Hastings, who was now up in New Clarke. Hastings had abandoned Burroughs without a bloody battle, it was true, and now she claimed he was willing to compromise. No doubt; his next retreat would not be so easy, nor would it take him to a very pleasant place, for despite all the emergency action, Earth was now a world of famine, plague, looting--- breakdown of the social contract, which was so fragile after all. It could happen here too; she had to remember that fragility when she got angry enough, as now, to want to tell Kasei and Dao to abandon the discussions and fire away. If she did that it very likely would happen; a strange sensation of her own power came over her then, as she looked around the table at the anxious angry, unhappy faces. She could tip the balance; she could knock this table right over.
Speakers were taking five-minute turns to make their case one way or the other. More were in favor of cutting the cable than Ann would have guessed, not just Reds, but representatives of cultures or movements that felt most threatened by the metanat order, or by mass emigration from Earth: Bedouins, the Polynesians, the Dorsa Brevia locals, some of the cannier natives. Still, they were in the minority. Not a tiny minority, but a minority. Isolationist versus interactive; yet another fracture to add to all the others rending the Martian independence movement.
Jackie Boone stood up and spoke for fifteen minutes in favor of keeping the cable, threatening anyone who wanted to bring it down with expulsion from Martian society. It was a disgusting performance, but popular, and afterward Peter stood and spoke in the same way, only slightly more subtle. It made Ann so angry that she stood up immediately after he had finished, to argue for bringing the cable down. This got her another poisonous look from Peter, but it scarcely registered--- she talked in a white heat, forgetting all about the five-minute limit. No one tried to cut her off, and she went on and on, though she had no idea what she was going to say next, and no memory of what she had already said. Perhaps her subconscious had organized it all like a lawyer's brief--- hopefully so--- on the other hand, a part of her thought as her mouth ran on, perhaps she was just saying the word Mars over and over again, or babbling, and the audience simply humoring her, or else miraculously comprehending her in a moment of glossolalic grace, invisible flames on their heads like caps of jewels--- and indeed their hair looked to Ann like spun metal, the old men's bald pates like chunks of jasper, inside which all languages dead and living were understood equally; and for a moment they appeared all caught up together with her, all inside an epiphany of red Mars, free of Earth, living on the primal planet that had been and could be again.
She sat down. This time it was not Sax who rose to debate her, as it had been so many times before. In fact he was cross-eyed with concentration, looking at her open-mouthed, in an amazement that she could not interpret. They stared at each other, the two of them, eyes locked; but what he was thinking she had no idea. She only knew she had gotten his attention at last.
This time it was Nadia who rebutted her, Nadia her sister, arguing slowly and calmly for interaction with Earth, for intervention in the Terran situation. Despite the great flood, Earth's nations and metanationals were still incredibly powerful, and in some ways the crisis of the flood had drawn them together, making them even more powerful. So Nadia spoke of the need to compromise, the need to engage, influence, transform. It was deeply contradictory, Ann thought; because they were weak, Nadia was saying, they could not afford to offend, and therefore they must change all Terran social reality.
"But how!" Ann cried. "When you have no fulcrum you can't move a world! No fulcrum, no lever, no force---"
"It isn't just Earth," Nadia replied. "There are going to be other settlements in the solar system. Mercury, Luna, the big outer moons, the asteroids. We've got to be part of all that. As the original settlement, we're the natural leader. An unbridged gravity well is just an obstruction to all that--- a reduction in our ability to act, a reduction in our power."
"Getting in the way of progress," Ann said bitterly. "Think what Arkady would have said to that. No, look. We had a chance here to make something different. That was the whole point. We still have that chance. Everything that increases the space within which we can create a new society is a good thing. Everything that reduces our space is a bad thing. Think about it!"
Perhaps they did. But it made no difference. Any number of elements on Earth were sending up their arguments for the cable--- arguments, threats, entreaties. They needed help down there. Any help. Art Randolph continued energetically lobbying for the cable on behalf of Praxis, which was looking to Ann like it would become the next transitional authority, metanationalism in its latest manifestation or disguise.
But the natives were being slowly won over by them, intrigued by the possibility of "conquering Earth," unaware of how impossible this was, incapable of imagining Earth's vastness and immobility. One could tell them and tell them, but they would never be able to imagine it.
Finally it came time for an informal vote. It was representative voting, they had decided, one vote for each of the signatory groups to the Dorsa Brevia document, one vote also to all the interested parties that had arisen since then--- new settlements in the outback, new political parties, associations, labs, companies, guerrilla bands, the several red splinter groups. Before they started some generous naive soul even offered the First Hundred a vote, and everyone there laughed at the idea that the First Hundred might be able to vote the same way on anything. The generous soul, a young woman from Dorsa Brevia, then proposed that each of the First Hundred be given an individual vote, but this was turned down as endangering the tenuous grasp they had on representative governance. It would have made no difference anyway.
So they voted to allow the space elevator to remain standing, for the time being--- and in the possession of UNTA, down to and including the Socket, without contestation. It was like King Canute deciding to declare the tide legal after all, but no one laughed except Ann. The other Reds were furious. Ownership of the Socket was still being actively contested, Dao objected loudly, the neighborhood around it was vulnerable and could be taken, there was no reason to back off like this, they were only trying to sweep a problem under the rug because it was hard! But the majority were in agreement. The cable should remain.
• • •
Ann felt the old urge: escape. Tents and trains, people, the little Manhattan skyline of Sheffield against the south rim, the summit basalt all torn and flattened and paved over . . . There was a piste all the way around the rim, but the western side of the caldera was very nearly uninhabited. So Ann got in one of the smallest Red rovers, and drove around the rim counterclockwise, just inside the piste, until she came to a little meteorological station, where she parked the rover and went out through its lock, moving stiffly in a walker that was much like the ones they had gone out in during the first years.
She was a kilometer or two away from the rim's edge. She walked slowly east toward it, stumbling once or twice before she started to pay proper attention. The old lava on the flat expanse of the broad rim was smooth and dark in some places, rough and lighter in others. By the time she approached the edge she was in full areologist mode, doing a boulder ballet she could sustain all day, attuned to every knob and crack underfoot. And this was a good thing, because near the rim's drop-off the land collapsed in a series of narrow curving ledges, the drops sometimes a step, sometimes taller than she was. And always the growing sense of empty air ahead, as the far side of the caldera and the rest of the great circle became visible. And then she was climbing down onto the last ledge, a bench only some five meters wide, with a curved back wall, shoulder-high: and below her dropped the great round chasm of Pavonis.
This caldera was one of the geological marvels of the solar system, a hole forty-five kilometers across and a full five kilometers deep, and almost perfectly regular in every way--- circular, flat-floored, almost vertically walled--- a perfect cylinder of space, cut into the volcano like a rock sampler's coring. None of the other three big calderas even approached this simplicity of form; Ascraeus and Olympus were complicated palimpsests of overlapping rings, while the very broad shallow caldera of Arsia was roughly circular, but shattered in every way. Pavonis alone was a regular cylinder: the Platonic ideal of a volcanic caldera.
Of course from this wonderful vantage point she now had, the horizontal stratification of the interior walls added a lot of irregular detail, rust and black and chocolate and umber bands indicating variations in the composition of the lava deposits; and some bands were harder than those above and below, so that there were many arcuate balconies lining the wall at different elevations--- isolated curving benches, perched on the side of the immense rock throat, most never visited. And the floor so flat. The subsidence of the volcano's magma chamber, located some 160 kilometers below the mountain, had to have been unusually consistent; it had dropped in the same place every time. Ann wondered if it had been determined yet why that had been; if the magma chamber had been younger than the other big volcanoes, or smaller, or the lava more homogenous. . . . Probably someone had investigated the phenomenon; no doubt she could look it up on the wrist. She tapped out the code for the Journal of Areological Studies, typed in Pavonis: "Evidence of Strombolian Explosive Activity Found in West Tharsis Clasts." "Radial Ridges in Caldera and Concentric Graben Outside the Rim Suggest Late Subsidence of the Summit." She had just crossed some of those graben. "Release of Juvenile Volatiles into Atmosphere Calculated by Radiometric Dating of Lastflow Mafics."
She clicked off the wristpad. She no longer kept up with all the latest areology, she hadn't for years. Even reading the abstracts would have taken far more time than she had. And of course a lot of areology had been badly compromised by the terraforming project. Scientists working for the metanats had concentrated on resource exploration and evaluation, and had found signs of ancient oceans, of the early warm wet atmosphere, possibly even of ancient life; on the other hand radical Red scientists had warned of increased seismic activity, rapid subsidence, mass wasting, and the disappearance of even a single surface sample left in its primal condition. Political stress had skewed nearly everything written about Mars in the past hundred years. The Journal was the only publication Ann knew of which tried to publish papers delimiting their inquiries very strictly to reporting areology in the pure sense, concentrating on what had happened in the five billion years of solitude; it was the only publication Ann still read, or at least glanced at, looking through the titles and some of the abstracts, and the editorial material at the front; once or twice she had even sent in a letter concerning some detail or other, which they had printed without fanfare. Published by the university in Sabishii, the Journal was peer-reviewed by like-minded areologists, and the articles were rigorous, well researched, and with no obvious political point to their conclusions; they were simply science. The Journal's editorials advocated what had to be called a Red position, but only in the most limited sense, in that they argued for the preservation of the primal landscape so that studies could be carried on without having to deal with gross contaminations. This had been Ann's position from the very start, and it was still where she felt most comfortable; she had moved from that scientific position into political activism only because it had been forced on her by the situation. This was true for a lot of areologists now supporting the Reds. They were her natural peer group, really--- the people she understood, and with whom she sympathized.
But they were few; she could almost name them individually. The regular contributors to the Journal, more or less. As for the rest of the Reds, the Kakaze and the other radicals, what they advocated was a kind of metaphysical position, a cult--- they were religious fanatics, the equivalent of Hiroko's greens, members of some kind of rock-worshiping sect. Ann had very little in common with them, when it came down to it; they formulated their redness from a completely different worldview.
And given that there was that kind of fractionization among the Reds themselves, what then could one say about the Martian independence movement as a whole? Well. They were going to fall out. It was happening already.
Ann sat down carefully on the edge of the final bench. A good view. It appeared there was a station of some kind down there on the caldera floor, though from five thousand meters up, it was hard to be sure. Even the ruins of old Sheffield were scarcely visible--- ah--- there they were, on the floor under the new town, a tiny pile of rubble with some straight lines and plane surfaces in it. Faint vertical scorings on the wall above might have been caused by fall of the city in '61. It was hard to say.
The tented settlements still on the rim were like toy villages in paperweights. Sheffield with its skyline, the low warehouses across from her to the east, Lastflow, the various smaller tents all around the rim . . . many of them had merged, to become a kind of greater Sheffield, covering almost 180 degrees of the rim, from Lastflow around to the southwest, where pistes followed the fallen cable down the long slope of west Tharsis to Amazonis Planitia. All the towns and stations would always be tented, because at twenty-seven kilometers high the air would always be a tenth as thick as it was at the datum--- or sea level, one could now call it. Meaning the atmosphere up here was still only thirty or forty millibars thick.
Tent cities forever; but with the cable (she could not see it) spearing Sheffield, development would certainly continue, until they had built a tent city entirely ringing the caldera, looking down into it. No doubt they would then tent the caldera itself, and occupy the round floor--- add about 1,500 square kilometers to the city, though it was a question who would want to live at the bottom of such a hole, like living at the bottom of a mohole, rock walls rising up around you as if you were in some circular roofless cathedral . . . perhaps it would appeal to some. The Bogdanovists had lived in moholes for years, after all. Grow forests, build climber's huts or rather millionaires' penthouses on the arcuate balcony ledges, cut staircases into the sides of the rock, install glass elevators that took all day to go up or down . . . rooftops, row houses, skyscrapers reaching up toward the rim, heliports on their flat round roofs, pistes, flying freeways . . . oh yes, the whole summit of Pavonis Mons, caldera and all, could be covered by the great world city, which was always growing, growing like a fungus over every rock in the solar system. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of people, all as close to immortal as they could make themselves. . . .
She shook her head, in a great confusion of spirits. The radicals in Lastflow were not her people, not really, but unless they succeeded, the summit of Pavonis and everywhere else on Mars would become part of the great world city. She tried to concentrate on the view, she tried to feel it, the awe of the symmetrical formation, the love of rock hard under her bottom. Her feet hung over the edge of the bench, she kicked her heels against basalt; she could throw a pebble and it would fall five thousand meters. But she couldn't concentrate. She couldn't feel it. Petrification. So numb, for so long. . . . She sniffed, shook her head, pulled her feet in over the edge. Walked back up to her rover.
She dreamed of the long run-out. The landslide was rolling across the floor of Melas Chasma, about to strike her. Everything visible with surreal clarity. Again she remembered Simon, again she groaned and got off the little dike, going through the motions, appeasing a dead man inside her, feeling awful. The ground was vibrating---
She woke, by her own volition she thought--- escaping, running away--- but there was a hand, pulling hard on her arm.
"Ann, Ann, Ann."
It was Nadia. Another surprise. Ann struggled up, disoriented. "Where are we?"
"Pavonis, Ann. The revolution. I came over and woke you because a fight has broken out between Kasei's Reds and the greens in Sheffield."
The present rolled over her like the landslide in her dream. She jerked out of Nadia's grasp, groped for her shirt. "Wasn't my rover locked?"
"I broke in."
"Ah." Ann stood up, still foggy, getting more annoyed the more she understood the situation. "Now what happened?"
"They launched missiles at the cable."
"They did!" Another jolt, further clearing away the fog. "And?"
"It didn't work. The cable's defense systems shot them down. They've got a lot of hardware up there now, and they're happy to be able to use it at last. But now the Reds are moving into Sheffield from the west, firing more rockets, and the UN forces on Clarke are bombing the first launch sites, over on Ascraeus, and they're threatening to bomb every armed force down here. This is just what they wanted. And the Reds think it's going to be like Burroughs, obviously, they're trying to force the action. So I came to you. Look, Ann, I know we've been fighting a lot, I haven't been very, you know, patient, but look, this is just too much. Everything could fall apart at the last minute--- the UN could decide the situation here is anarchy, and come up from Earth and try to take over again."
"Where are they?" Ann croaked. She pulled on pants, went to the bathroom. Nadia followed her right in. This too was a surprise; in Underhill it might have been normal between them, but it had been a long long time since Nadia had followed her into a bathroom talking obsessively while Ann washed her face and sat down and peed. "They're still based in Lastflow, but now they've cut the rim piste and the one to Cairo, and they're fighting in west Sheffield, and around the Socket. Reds fighting greens."
"Yes yes."
"So will you talk to the Reds, will you stop them?"
A sudden fury swept through Ann. "You drove them to this," she shouted in Nadia's face, causing Nadia to crash back into the door. Ann got up and took a step toward Nadia and yanked her pants up, shouting still: "You and your smug stupid terraforming, it's all green green green green, with never a hint of compromise! It's just as much your fault as theirs, since they have no hope!"
"Maybe so," Nadia said mulishly. Clearly she didn't care about that, it was the past and didn't matter; she waved it aside and would not be swerved from her point: "But will you try?"
Ann stared at her stubborn old friend, at this moment almost youthful with fear, utterly focused and alive.
"I'll do what I can," Ann said grimly. "But from what you say, it's already too late."
• • •
It was indeed too late. The rover camp Ann had been staying in was deserted, and when she got on the wrist and called around, she got no answers. So she left Nadia and the rest of them stewing in the east Pavonis warehouse complex, and drove her rover around to Lastflow, hoping to find some of the Red leaders based there. But Lastflow had been abandoned by the Reds, and none of the locals knew where they had gone. People were watching TVs in the stations and café windows, but when Ann looked too she saw no news of the fighting, not even on Mangalavid. A feeling of desperation began to seep into her grim mood; she wanted to do something but did not know how. She tried her wristpad again, and to her surprise Kasei answered on their private band. His face in the little image looked shockingly like John Boone's, so much so that in her confusion Ann didn't at first hear what he said. He looked so happy, it was John to the life!
". . . had to do it," he was telling her. Ann wondered if she had asked him about that. "If we don't do something they'll tear this world apart. They'll garden it right to the tops of the big four."
This echoed Ann's thoughts on the ledge enough to shock her again, but she collected herself and said, "We've got to work within the framework of the discussions, Kasei, or else we'll start a civil war."
"We're a minority, Ann. The framework doesn't care about minorities."
"I'm not so sure. That's what we have to work on. And even if we do decide on active resistance, it doesn't have to be here and now. It doesn't have to be Martians killing Martians."
"They're not Martian." There was a glint in his eye, his expression was Hiroko-like in its distance from the ordinary world. In that sense he was not like John at all. The worst of both parents; and so they had another prophet, speaking a new language.
"Where are you now?"
"West Sheffield."
"What are you going to do?"
"Take the Socket, and then bring down the cable. We're the ones with the weapons and the experience. I don't think we'll have much trouble."
"You didn't bring it down first try."
"Too fancy. We'll just chop it down this time."
"I thought that wasn't the way to do it."
"It'll work."
"Kasei, I think we need to negotiate with the greens."
He shook his head, impatient with her, disgusted that she had lost her nerve when push came to shove. "After the cable is down we'll negotiate. Look Ann, I've gotta go. Stay out of the fall line."
"Kasei!"
But he was gone. No one listened to her--- not her enemies, not her friends, not her family--- though she would have to call Peter. She would have to try Kasei again. She needed to be there in person, to get his attention as she had Nadia's--- yes, it had come to that: to get their attention she had to shout right in their faces.
• • •
The possibility of getting blocked around east Pavonis kept her going west from Lastflow, circling counterclockwise as she had the day before, to come on the Red force from its rear, no doubt the best approach anyway. It was about a 150-kilometer drive from Lastflow to the western edge of Sheffield, and as she sped around the summit, just outside the piste, she spent the time trying to call the various forces on the mountain, with no success. Explosive static marked the fight for Sheffield, and memories of '61 erupted with these brutal bursts of white noise, frightening her; she drove the rover as fast as it would go, keeping it on the piste's narrow outside apron to make the ride smoother and faster--- a hundred kilometers per hour, then faster--- racing, really, to try to stave off the disaster of a civil war--- there was a terrible dreamlike quality to it. And especially in that it was too late, too late. In moments like these she was always too late. In the sky over the caldera, starred clouds appeared instantaneously--- explosions, without a doubt missiles fired at the cable and shot down in midflight, in white puffs like incompetent fireworks, clustered over Sheffield and peaking in the region of the cable, but puffing into existence all over the vast summit, then drifting off east on the jet stream. Some of those rockets were getting nailed a long way from their target.
Looking up at the battle overhead she almost drove into the first tent of west Sheffield, which was already punctured. As the town had grown westward new tents had attached to the previous ones like lobes of pillow lava; now the construction moraines outside the latest tent were littered with bits of framework, like shards of glass, and the tent fabric was missing in the remaining soccer-ball shapes. Her rover bounced wildly over a mound of basalt rubble; she braked, drove slowly up to the wall. The vehicle lock doors were stuck shut. She put on her suit and helmet, ducked into the rover's own lock, left the car. Heart pounding hard, she walked up to the city wall and climbed over it into Sheffield.
The streets were deserted. Glass and bricks and bamboo shards and twisted magnesium beams lay scattered on the streetgrass. At this elevation, tent failure caused flawed buildings to pop like balloons; windows gaped empty and dark, and here and there complete rectangles of unbroken windows lay scattered, like great clear shields. And there was a body, face frosted or dusted. There would be a lot of dead, people weren't used to thinking about decompression anymore, it was an old settlers' worry. But not today.
Ann kept walking east. "Look for Kasei or Dao or Marion or Peter," she said to her wrist again and again. But no one replied.
She followed a narrow street just inside the southern wall of the tent. Harsh sunlight, sharp-edged black shadows. Some buildings had held, their windows in place, their lights on inside. No one to be seen in them, of course. Ahead the cable was just visible, a black vertical stroke rising into the sky out of east Sheffield, like a geometric line become visible in their reality.
The Red emergency band was a signal transmitted in a rapidly varying wavelength, synchronized for everyone who had the current encryption. This system cut through some kinds of radio jamming very well; nevertheless Ann was surprised when a crow voice cawed from her wrist, "Ann, it's Dao. Up here."
He was actually in sight, waving at her from a doorway into a building's little emergency lock. He and a group of some twenty people were working with a trio of mobile rocket launchers out in the street. Ann ran over to them, ducked into the doorway beside Dao. "This has to stop!" she cried.
Dao looked surprised. "We've almost got the Socket."
"But what then?"
"Talk to Kasei about that. He's up ahead, going for Arsiaview."
One of their rockets whooshed away, its noise faint in the thin air. Dao was back at it. Ann ran forward up the street, keeping as close as she could to the buildings siding it. It was obviously dangerous, but at that moment she didn't care if she was killed or not, so she had no fear. Peter was somewhere in Sheffield, in command of the green revolutionaries who had been there from the beginning. These people had been efficient enough to keep the UNTA security forces trapped on the cable and up on Clarke, so they were by no means the hapless pacifistic young native street demonstrators that Kasei and Dao seemed to have assumed they were. Her spiritual children, mounting an attack on her only actual child, in complete confidence that they had her blessing. As once they had. But now---
She struggled to keep running, her breath hard and ragged, the sweat beginning to flood through all over her skin. She hurried to the south tent wall, where she came on a little fleet of Red boulder cars, Turtle Rocks from the Acheron car manufactory. But no one inside them answered her calls, and when she looked closer she saw that their rock roofs were punctured by holes at their fronts, where the windshields would have been, underneath the rock overhang. Anyone inside them was dead. She ran on eastward, staying against the tent wall, heedless of debris underfoot, feeling a rising panic. She was aware that a single shot from anyone could kill her, but she had to find Kasei. She tried again over the wrist.
While she was at it, a call came in to her. It was Sax.
"It isn't logical to connect the fate of the elevator with terraforming goals," he was saying, as if he was speaking to more people than just her. "The cable could be tethered to quite a cold planet."
It was the usual Sax, the all-too-Sax: but then he must have noticed she was on, because he stared owlishly into his wrist's little camera and said, "Listen Ann, we can take history by the arm and break it---make it. Make it new."
Her old Sax would never have said that. Nor chattered on at her, clearly distraught, pleading, visibly nerve-racked; one of the most frightening sights she had ever seen, actually: "They love you, Ann. It's that that can save us. Emotional histories are the true histories. Watersheds of desire and devolution---devotion. You're the--- the personification of certain values--- for the natives. You can't escape that. You have to act with that. I did it in Da Vinci, and it proved--- helpful. Now it's your turn. You must. You must--- Ann--- just this once you must join us all. Hang together or hang separately. Use your iconic value."
So strange to hear such stuff from Saxifrage Russell. But then he shifted again, he seemed to pull himself together. ". . . logical procedure is to establish some kind of equation for conflicting interests." Just like his old self.
Then there was a beep from her wrist and she cut Sax off, and answered the incoming call. It was Peter, there on the Red coded frequency, a black expression on his face that she had never seen before.
"Ann!" He stared intently at his own wristpad. "Listen, Mother--- I want you to stop these people!"
"Don't you Mother me," she snapped. "I'm trying. Can you tell me where they are?"
"I sure as hell can. They've just broken into the Arsiaview tent. Moving through--- it looks like they're trying to come up on the Socket from the south." Grimly he took a message from someone off-camera. "Right." He looked back at her. "Ann, can I patch you into Hastings up on Clarke? If you tell him you're trying to stop the Red attack, then he may believe that it's only a few extremists, and stay out of it. He's going to do what he has to to keep the cable up, and I'm afraid he's about to kill us all."
"I'll talk to him."
And there he was, a face from the deep past, a time lost to Ann she would have said; and yet he was instantly familiar, a thin-faced man, harried, angry, on the edge of snapping. Could anyone have sustained such enormous pressures for the past hundred years? No. It was just that kind of time, come back again.
"I'm Ann Clayborne," she said, and as his face twisted even further, she added, "I want you to know that the fighting going on down here does not represent Red party policy."
Her stomach clamped as she said this, and she tasted chyme at the back of her throat. But she went on: "It's the work of a splinter group, called the Kakaze. They're the ones who broke the Burroughs dike. We're trying to shut them down, and expect to succeed by the end of the day."
It was the most awful string of lies she had ever said. She felt like Frank Chalmers had come down and taken over her mouth, she couldn't stand the sensation of such words on her tongue. She cut the connection before her face betrayed what falsehoods she was vomiting. Hastings disappeared without having said a word, and his face was replaced by Peter's, who did not know she was back on-line; she could hear him but his wristpad was facing a wall, "If they don't stop on their own we'll have to do it ourselves, or else UNTA will and it'll all go to hell. Get everything ready for a counterattack, I'll give the word."
"Peter!" she said without thinking.
The picture on the little screen swung around, came onto his face.
"You deal with Hastings," she choked out, barely able to look at him, traitor that he was. "I'm going for Kasei."
• • •
Arsiaview was the southernmost tent, filled now with smoke, which snaked overhead in long amorphous lines that revealed the tent's ventilation patterns. Alarms were ringing everywhere, loud in the still-thick air, and shards of clear framework plastic were scattered on the green grass of the street. Ann stumbled past a body curled just like the figures modeled in ash in Pompeii. Arsiaview was narrow but long, and it was not obvious where she should go. The whoosh of rocket launchers led her eastward toward the Socket, the magnet of the madness--- like a monopole, discharging Earth's insanity onto them.
There might be a plan revealed here; the cable's defenses seemed to be capable of handling the Reds' lightweight missiles, but if the attackers thoroughly destroyed Sheffield and the Socket, then there would be nothing for UNTA to come down to, and so it would not matter if the cable remained swinging overhead. It was a plan that mirrored the one used to deal with Burroughs.
But it was a bad plan. Burroughs was down in the lowlands, where there was an atmosphere, where people could live outside, at least for a while. Sheffield was high, and so they were back in the past, back in '61 when a broken tent meant the end for everyone in it exposed to the elements. At the same time most of Sheffield was underground, in many stacked floors against the wall of the caldera. Undoubtedly most of the population had retreated down there, and if the fighting tried to follow them it would be impossible, a nightmare. But up on the surface where fighting was possible, people were exposed to fire from the cable above. No, it wouldn't work. It wasn't even possible to see what was happening. There were more explosions near the Socket, static over the intercom, isolated words as the receiver caught bits of other coded frequencies cycling through: "--- taken Arsiaview pkkkkkk---" "We need the AI back but I'd say x-axis three two two, y-axis eightpkkkkk---"
Then another barrage of missiles must have been launched at the cable, for overhead Ann caught sight of an ascending line of brilliant explosions of light, no sound to them at all; but after that, big black fragments rained down on the tents around her, crashing through the invisible fabrics or smashing onto the invisible framework, then falling the last distance onto the buildings like the dropped masses of wrecked vehicles, loud despite the thin air and the intervening tents, the ground vibrating and jerking under her feet. It went on for minutes, with the fragments falling farther outward all the time, and any second in all those minutes could have brought death down on her. She stood looking up at the dark sky, and waited it out.
Things stopped falling. She had been holding her breath, and she breathed. Peter had the Red code, and so she called his number and tapped in a patch attempt, heard only static. But as she was turning down the volume in her earphones, she caught some garbled half phrases--- Peter, describing Red movements to green forces, or perhaps even to UNTA. Who could then fire rockets from the cable defense systems down onto them. Yes, that was Peter's voice, bits of it all cut with static. Calling the shots. Then it was only static.
At the base of the elevator brief flashes of explosive light transformed the lower part of the cable from black to silver, then back to black again. Every alarm inside Arsiaview began ringing or howling. All the smoke whipped away toward the east end of the tent. Ann got into a north-south alley and leaned back against the east wall of a building, flat against concrete. No windows on the alley. Booms, crashes, wind. Then the silence of near airlessness.
She got up and wandered through the tent. Where did one go when people were being killed? Find your friends if you can. If you can tell who they are.
She collected herself and continued looking for Kasei's group, going to where Dao had said they would be, and then trying to think where they would go next. Outside the city was a possibility; but having come inside they might try for the next tent to the east, try to take them one by one, decompress them, force everyone below and then move on. She stayed on the street paralleling the tent wall, jogging along as fast as she could. She was in good shape but this was ridiculous, she couldn't catch her breath, and she was soaking the inside of her suit with sweat. The street was deserted, eerily silent and still, so that it was hard to believe she was in the middle of a battle, and impossible to believe she would ever find the group for which she was looking.
But there they were. Up ahead, in the streets around one of the triangular parks--- figures in helmets and suits, carrying automatic weapons and mobile missile launchers, firing at unseen opponents in a building fronted with chert. The red circles on their arms, Reds---
A blinding flash and she was knocked down. Her ears roared. She was at the foot of a building, pressed against its polished stone side. Jaspilite: red jasper and iron oxide, in alternating bands. Pretty. Her back and bottom and shoulder hurt, and her elbow. But nothing was agonizing. She could move. She crawled around, looked back to the triangle park. Things were burning in the wind, the flames little oxygen-starved orange spurts, going out already. The figures there were cast about like broken dolls, limbs akimbo, in positions no bones could hold. She got up and ran to the nearest knot of them, drawn by a familiar gray-haired head that had come free of its helmet. That was Kasei, only son of John Boone and Hiroko Ai, one side of his jaw bloody, his eyes open and sightless. He had taken her too seriously. And his opponents not seriously enough. His pink stone eyetooth lay there exposed by his wound, and seeing it Ann choked and turned away. The waste. All three of them dead now.
She turned back and crouched, unclipped Kasei's wristpad. It was likely that he had a direct access band to the Kakaze, and when she was back in the shelter of an obsidian building marred by great white shatterstars, she tapped in the general call code, and said, "This is Ann Clayborne, calling all Reds. All Reds. Listen, this is Ann Clayborne. The attack on Sheffield has failed. Kasei is dead, along with a lot of others. More attacks here won't work. They'll cause the full UNTA security force to come back down onto the planet again." She wanted to say how stupid the plan had been in the first place, but she choked back the words. "Those of you who can, get off the mountain. Everyone in Sheffield, get back to the west and get out of the city, and off the mountain. This is Ann Clayborne."
Several acknowledgments came in, and she half listened to them as she walked west, back through Arsiaview toward her rover. She made no attempt to hide; if she was killed she was killed, but now she didn't believe it would happen; she walked under the wings of some dark covering angel, who kept her from death no matter what happened, forcing her to witness the deaths of all the people she knew and all the planet she loved. Her fate. Yes; there was Dao and his crew, all dead right where she had left them, lying in pools of their own blood. She must have just missed it.
And there, down a broad boulevard with a line of linden trees in its center, was another knot of bodies--- not Reds--- they wore green headbands, and one of them looked like Peter, it was his back--- she walked over weak-kneed, under a compulsion, as in a nightmare, and stood over the body and finally circled it. But it was not Peter. Some tall young native with shoulders like Peter's, poor thing. A man who would have lived a thousand years.
She moved on carelessly. She came to her little rover without incident, got in and drove to the train terminal at the west end of Sheffield. There a piste ran down the south slope of Pavonis, into the saddle between Pavonis and Arsia. Seeing it she conceived a plan, very simple and basic, but workable because of that. She got on the Kakaze band and made her recommendations as though they were orders. Run away, disappear. Go down into South Saddle, then around Arsia on the western slope above the snowline, there to slip into the upper end of Aganippe Fossa, a long straight canyon that contained a hidden Red refuge, a cliff dwelling in the northern wall. There they could hide and hide and start another long underground campaign, against the new masters of the planet. UNOMA, UNTA, metanat, Dorsa Brevia--- they were all green.
She tried calling Coyote, and was somewhat surprised when he answered. He was somewhere in Sheffield as well, she could tell; lucky to be alive no doubt, a bitter furious expression on his cracked face.
Ann told him her plan; he nodded.
"After a time they'll need to get farther away," he said.
Ann couldn't help it: "It was stupid to attack the cable!"
"I know," Coyote said wearily.
"Didn't you try to talk them out of it?"
"I did." His expression grew blacker. "Kasei's dead?"
"Yes."
Coyote's face twisted with grief. "Ah, God. Those bastards."
Ann had nothing to say. She had not known Kasei well, or liked him much. Coyote on the other hand had known him from birth, back in Hiroko's hidden colony, and from boyhood had taken him along on his furtive expeditions all over Mars. Now tears coursed down the deep wrinkles on Coyote's cheeks, and Ann clenched her teeth.
"Can you get them down to Aganippe?" she asked. "I'll stay and deal with the people in east Pavonis."
Coyote nodded. "I'll get them down as fast as I can. Meet at west station."
"I'll tell them that."
"The greens will be mad at you."
"Fuck the greens."
• • •
Some part of the Kakaze snuck into the west terminal of Sheffield, in the light of a smoky dull sunset: small groups wearing blackened dirty walkers, their faces white and frightened, angry, disoriented, in shock. Wasted. Eventually there were three or four hundred of them, sharing the day's bad news. When Coyote slipped in the back, Ann rose and spoke in a voice just loud enough to carry to all of them, aware as she never had been in her life of her position as the first Red; of what that meant, now. These people had taken her seriously and here they were, beaten and lucky to be alive, with dead friends everywhere in the town east of them.
"A direct assault was a bad idea," she said, unable to help herself. "It worked in Burroughs, but that was a different kind of situation. Here it failed. People who might have lived a thousand years are dead. The cable wasn't worth that. We're going to go into hiding and wait for our next chance, our next real chance."
There were hoarse objections to this, angry shouts: "No! No! Never! Bring down the cable!"
Ann waited them out. Finally she raised a hand, and slowly they went silent again.
"It could backfire all too easily if we fight the greens now. It could give the metanats an excuse to come in again. That would be far worse than dealing with a native government. With Martians we can at least talk. The environmental part of the Dorsa Brevia agreement gives us some leverage. We'll just have to keep working as best we can. Start somewhere else. Do you understand?"
This morning they wouldn't have. Now they still didn't want to. She waited out the protesting voices, stared them down. The intense, cross-eyed glare of Ann Clayborne. . . . A lot of them had joined the fight because of her, back in the days when the enemy was the enemy, and the underground an actual working alliance, loose and fractured but with all its elements more or less on the same side. . . .
They bowed their heads, reluctantly accepting that if Clayborne was against them, their moral leadership was gone. And without that--- without Kasei, without Dao--- with the bulk of the natives green, and firmly behind the leadership of Nirgal and Jackie, and Peter the traitor. . . .
"Coyote will get you off Tharsis," Ann said, feeling sick. She left the room, walked through the terminal and out the lock, back into her rover. Kasei's wristpad lay on the car's dashboard, and she threw it across the compartment, sobbed. She sat in the driver's seat and composed herself, and then started the car and went looking for Nadia and Sax and all the rest.
• • •
Eventually she found herself back in east Pavonis, and there they were, all still in the warehouse complex; when she walked in the door they stared at her as if the attack on the cable had been her idea, as if she was personally responsible for everything bad that had happened, both on that day and throughout the revolution--- just as they had stared at her after Burroughs, in fact. Peter was actually there, the traitor, and she veered away from him, and ignored the rest, or tried to, Irishka frightened, Jackie red-eyed and furious, her father killed this day after all, and though she was in Peter's camp and so partly responsible for the crushing response to the Red offensive, you could see with one look at her that someone would pay--- but Ann ignored all that, and walked across the room to Sax--- who was in his nook in the far corner of the big central room, sitting before a screen reading long columns of figures, muttering things to his AI. Ann waved a hand between his face and his screen and he looked up, startled.
Strangely, he was the only one of the whole crowd who did not appear to blame her. Indeed he regarded her with his head tilted to the side, with a birdlike curiosity that almost resembled sympathy.
"Bad news about Kasei," he said. "Kasei and all the rest. I'm glad that you and Desmond survived."
She ignored that, and told him in a rapid undertone where the Reds were going, and what she had told them to do. "I think I can keep them from trying any more direct attacks on the cable," she said. "And from most acts of violence, at least in the short term."
"Good," Sax said.
"But I want something for it," she said. "I want it and if I don't get it, I'll set them on you forever."
"The soletta?" Sax asked.
She stared at him. He must have listened to her more often than she had thought. "Yes."
His eyebrows came together as he thought it over. "It could cause a kind of ice age," he said.
"Good."
He stared at her as he thought about it. She could see him doing it, in quick flashes or bursts: ice age--- thinner atmosphere--- terraforming slowed--- new ecosystems destroyed--- perhaps compensate--- greenhouse gases. And so on and so forth. It was almost funny how she could read this stranger's face, this hated brother looking for a way out. He would look and look, but heat was the main driver of terraforming, and with the huge orbiting array of mirrors in the soletta gone, they would be at least restricted to Mars's normal level of sunlight, thus slowed to a more "natural" pace. It was possible that the inherent stability of that approach even appealed to Sax's conservatism, such as it was.
"Okay," he said.
"You can speak for these people?" she said, waving disdainfully at the crowd behind them, as if all her oldest companions were not among them, as if they were UNTA technocrats or metanat functionaries. . . .
"No," he said. "I only speak for me. But I can get rid of the soletta."
"You'd do it against their wishes?"
He frowned. "I think I can talk them into it. If not, I know I can talk the Da Vinci team into it. They like challenges."
"Okay."
It was the best she could get from him, after all. She straightened up, still nonplussed. She hadn't expected him to agree. And now that he had, she discovered that she was still angry, still sick at heart. This concession--- now that she had it, it meant nothing. They would figure out other ways to heat things. Sax would make his argument using that point, no doubt. Give the soletta to Ann, he would say, as a way of buying off the Reds. Then forge on.
She walked out of the big room without a glance at the others. Out of the warehouses to her rover.
For a while she drove blindly, without any sense of where she was going. Just get away, just escape. Thus by accident she headed westward, and in short order she had to stop or run over the rim's edge.
Abruptly she braked the car.
In a daze she looked out the windshield. Bitter taste in her mouth, guts all knotted, every muscle tense and aching. The great encircling rim of the caldera was smoking at several points, chiefly from Sheffield and Lastflow, but also from a dozen other places as well. No sight of the cable over Sheffield--- but it was still there, marked by a concentration of smoke around its base, lofting east on the thin hard wind. Another peak banner, blown on the endless jet stream. Time was a wind sweeping them away. The plumes of smoke marred the dark sky, obscuring some of the many stars that shone in the hour before sunset. It looked like the old volcano was waking again, rousing from its long dormancy and preparing to erupt. Through the thin smoke the sun was a dark red glowing ball, looking much like an early molten planet must have looked, its color staining the shreds of smoke maroon and rust and crimson. Red Mars.
But red Mars was gone, and gone for good. Soletta or not, ice age or not, the biosphere would grow and spread until it covered everything, with an ocean in the north, and lakes in the south, and streams, forests, prairies, cities and roads, oh she saw it all; white clouds raining mud on the ancient highlands while the uncaring masses built their cities as fast as they could, the long run-out of civilization burying her world.
Prologue
To Sax it looked like that least rational of conflicts, civil war. Two parts of a group shared many more interests than disagreements, but fought anyway. Unfortunately it was not possible to force people to study cost-benefit analysis. Nothing to be done. Or--- possibly one could identify a crux issue causing one or both sides to resort to violence. After that, try to defuse that issue.
Clearly in this case a crux issue was terraforming. A matter with which Sax was closely identified. This could be viewed as a disadvantage, as a mediator ought ideally to be neutral. On the other hand, his actions might speak symbolically for the terraforming effort itself. He might accomplish more with a symbolic gesture than anyone else. What was needed was a concession to the Reds, a real concession, the reality of which would increase its symbolic value by some hidden exponential factor. Symbolic value: it was a concept Sax was trying very hard to understand. Words of all kinds gave him trouble now, so much so that he had taken to etymology to try to understand them better. A glance at the wrist: symbol, "something that stands for something else," from the Latin symbolum, adopted from a Greek word meaning "throw together." Exactly. It was alien to his understanding, this throwing together, a thing emotional and even unreal, and yet vitally important.
The afternoon of the battle for Sheffield, he called Ann on the wrist and got her briefly, and tried to talk to her, and failed. So he drove to the edge of the city's wreckage, not knowing what else to do, looking for her. It was very disturbing to see how much damage a few hours' fighting could do. Many years of work lay in smoking shambles, the smoke not fire ash particulates for the most part but merely disturbed fines, old volcanic ash blown up and then torn east on the jet stream. The cable stuck out of the ruins like a black line of carbon nanotube fibers.
There was no sign of any further Red resistance. Thus no way of locating Ann. She was not answering her phone. So Sax returned to the warehouse complex in east Pavonis, feeling balked. He went back inside.
And then there she was, in the vast warehouse walking through the others toward him as if about to plunge a knife in his heart. He sank in his seat unhappily, remembering an overlong sequence of unpleasant interviews between them. Most recently they had argued on the train ride out of Libya Station. He recalled her saying something about removing the soletta and the annular mirror; which would be a very powerful symbolic statement indeed. And he had never been comfortable with such a major element of the terraforming's heat input being so fragile.
So when she said "I want something for it," he thought he knew what she meant, and suggested removing the mirrors before she could. This surprised her. It slowed her down, it took the edge off her terrible anger. Leaving something very much deeper, however--- grief, despair--- he could not be sure. Certainly a lot of Reds had died that day, and Red hopes as well. "I'm sorry about Kasei," he said.
She ignored that, and made him promise to remove the space mirrors. He did, meanwhile calculating the loss of light that would result, then trying to keep a wince off his face. Insolation would drop by about twenty percent, a very substantial amount indeed. "It will start an ice age," he muttered.
"Good," she said.
But she was not satisfied. And as she left the room, he could see by the set of her shoulders that his concession had done little if anything to comfort her. One could only hope her cohorts were more easily pleased. In any case it would have to be done. It might stop a civil war. Of course a great number of plants would die, mostly at the higher elevations, though it would affect every ecosystem to some extent. An ice age, no doubt about it. Unless they reacted very effectively. But it would be worth it, if it stopped the fighting.
It would have been easy to just cut the great band of the annular mirror and let it fly away into space, right out of the plane of the ecliptic. Same with the soletta: fire a few of its positioning rockets and it would spin away like a Catherine wheel.
But that would be a waste of processed aluminum silicate, which Sax did not like to see. He decided to investigate the possibility of using the mirrors' directional rockets, and their reflectivity, to propel them elsewhere in the solar system. The soletta could be located in front of Venus, and its mirrors realigned so that the structure became a huge parasol, shading the hot planet and starting the process of freezing out its atmosphere; this was something that had been discussed in the literature for a long time, and no matter what the various plans for terraforming Venus included, this was the standard first step. Then having done that, the annular mirror would have to be placed in the corresponding polar orbit around Venus, as its reflected light helped to hold the soletta/parasol in its position against the push of solar radiation. So the two would still be put to use, and it would also be a gesture, another symbolic gesture, saying Look here--- this big world might be terraformable too. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible. Thus some of the psychic pressure on Mars, "the only other possible Earth," might be relieved. This was not logical, but it didn't matter; history was strange, people were not rational systems, and in the peculiar symbolic logic of the limbic system, it would be a sign to the people on Earth, a portent, a scattering of psychic seed, a throwing together. Look there! Go there! And leave Mars alone.
So he talked it over with the Da Vinci space scientists, who had effectively taken over control of the mirrors. The lab rats, people called them behind their backs, and his (though he heard anyway); the lab rats, or the saxaclones. Serious young native Martian scientists, in fact, with just the same variations of temperament as grad students and postdocs in any lab anywhere, anytime; but the facts didn't matter. They worked with him and so they were the saxaclones. Somehow he had become the very model of the modern Martian scientist; first as white-coated lab rat, then as full-blown mad scientist, with a crater-castle full of eager Igors, mad-eyed but measured in manner, little Mr. Spocks, the men as skinny and awkward as cranes on the ground, the women drab in their protective noncoloration, their neuter devotion to Science. Sax was very fond of them. He liked their devotion to science, it made sense to him--- an urge to understand things, to be able to express them mathematically. It was a sensible desire. In fact it often seemed to him that if everyone were a physicist then they would be very much better off. "Ah, no, people like the idea of a flat universe because they find negatively curved space difficult to deal with." Well, perhaps not. In any case the young natives at Da Vinci Crater were a powerful group, strange or not. At this point Da Vinci was in charge of a lot of the underground's technological base, and with Spencer fully engaged there, their production capability was staggering. They had engineered the revolution, if the truth were told, and were now in de facto control of Martian orbital space.
This was one reason why many of them looked displeased or at least nonplussed when Sax first told them about the removal of the soletta and annular mirror. He did it in a screen meeting, and their faces squinched into expressions of alarm: Captain, it is not logical. But neither was civil war. And the one was better than the other.
"Won't people object?" Aonia asked. "The greens?"
"No doubt," Sax said. "But right now we exist in, in anarchy. The group in east Pavonis is a kind of proto-government, perhaps. But we in Da Vinci control Mars space. And no matter the objections, this might avert civil war."
He explained as best he could. They got absorbed in the technical challenge, in the problem pure and simple, and quickly forgot their shock at the idea. In fact giving them a technical challenge of that sort was like giving a dog a bone. They went away gnawing at the tough parts of the problem, and just a few days later they were down to the smooth polished gleam of procedure. Mostly a matter of instructions to AIs, as usual. It was getting to the point where having conceived a clear idea of what one wanted to do, one could just say to an AI, "please do thus and such"--- please spin the soletta and annular mirror into Venusian orbit, and adjust the slats of the soletta so that it becomes a parasol shielding the planet from all of its incoming insolation; and the AIs would calculate the trajectories and the rocket firings and the mirror angles necessary, and it would be done.
People were becoming too powerful, perhaps. Michel always went on about their godlike new powers, and Hiroko in her actions had implied that there should be no limit to what they tried with these new powers, ignoring all tradition. Sax himself had a healthy respect for tradition, as a kind of default survival behavior. But the techs in Da Vinci cared no more for tradition than Hiroko had. They were in an open moment in history, accountable to no one. And so they did it.
• • •
Then Sax went to Michel. "I'm worried about Ann."
They were in a corner of the big warehouse on east Pavonis, and the movement and clangor of the crowd created a kind of privacy. But after a look around Michel said, "Let's go outside."
They suited up and went out. East Pavonis was a maze of tents, warehouses, manufactories, pistes, parking lots, pipelines, holding tanks, holding yards; also junkyards and scrap heaps, their mechanical detritus scattered about like volcanic ejecta. But Michel led Sax westward through the mess, and they came quickly to the caldera rim, where the human clutter was put into a new and larger context, a logarithmic shift that left the pharaonic collection of artifacts suddenly looking like a patch of bacterial growth.
At the very edge of the rim, the blackish speckled basalt cracked down in several concentric ledges, each lower than the last. A set of staircases led down these terraces, and the lowest was railed. Michel led Sax down to this terrace, where they could look over the side into the caldera. Straight down for five kilometers. The caldera's large diameter made it seem less deep than that; still it was an entire round country down there, far far below. And when Sax remembered how small the caldera was proportional to the volcano entire, Pavonis itself seemed to bulk under them like a conical continent, rearing right up out of the planet's atmosphere into low space. Indeed the sky was only purple around the horizon, and blackish overhead, with the sun a hard gold coin in the west, casting clean slantwise shadows. They could see it all. The fines thrown up by the explosions were gone, everything returned to its normal telescopic clarity. Stone and sky and nothing more--- except for the thread of buildings cast around the rim. Stone and sky and sun. Ann's Mars. Except for the buildings. And on Ascraeus and Arsia and Elysium, and even on Olympus, the buildings would not be there.
"We could easily declare everything above about eight kilometers a primal wilderness zone," Sax said. "Keep it like this forever."
"Bacteria?" Michel asked. "Lichen?"
"Probably. But do they matter?"
"To Ann they do."
"But why, Michel? Why is she like that?"
Michel shrugged.
After a long pause he said, "No doubt it is complex. But I think it is a denial of life. A turning to rock as something she could trust. She was mistreated as a girl, did you know that?"
Sax shook his head. He tried to imagine what that meant.
Michel said, "Her father died: Her mother married her stepfather when she was eight. From then on he mistreated her, until she was sixteen, when she moved to the mother's sister. I've asked her what the mistreatment consisted of, but she says she doesn't want to talk about it. Abuse is abuse, she said. She doesn't remember much anyway, she says."
"I believe that."
Michel waggled a gloved hand. "We remember more than we think we do. More than we want to, sometimes."
They stood there looking into the caldera.
"It's hard to believe," Sax said.
Michel looked glum. "Is it? There were fifty women in the First Hundred. Odds are more than one of them were abused by men in their lives. More like ten or fifteen, if the statistics are to be believed. Sexually violated, struck, mistreated . . . that's just the way it was."
"It's hard to believe."
"Yes."
Sax recalled hitting Phyllis in the jaw, knocking her senseless with a single blow. There had been a certain satisfaction in that. He had needed to do it, though. Or so it had felt at the time.
"Everyone has their reasons," Michel said, startling him. "Or so they think." He tried to explain--- tried, in his usual Michel fashion, to make it something other than plain evil. "At the base of human culture," he said as he looked down into the country of the caldera, "is a neurotic response to people's earliest psychic wounds. Before birth and during infancy people exist in a narcissistic oceanic bliss, in which the individual is the universe. Then sometime in late infancy we come to the awareness that we are separate individuals, different from our mother and everyone else. This is a blow from which we never completely recover. There are several neurotic strategies used to try to deal with it. First, merging back into the mother. Then denying the mother, and shifting our ego ideal to the father--- this strategy often lasts forever, and the people of that culture worship their king and their father god, and so on. Or the ego ideal might shift again, to abstract ideas, or to the brotherhood of men. There are names and full descriptions for all these complexes--- the Dionysian, the Persean, the Apollonian, the Heraclean. They all exist, and they are all neurotic, in that they all lead to misogyny, except for the Dionysian complex."
"This is one of your semantic rectangles?" Sax asked apprehensively.
"Yes. The Apollonian and the Heraclean complexes might describe Terran industrial societies. The Persean its earlier cultures, with strong remnants of course right up to this day. And they are all three patriarchal. They all denied the maternal, which was connected in patriarchy with the body and with nature. The feminine was instinct, the body, and nature; while the masculine was reason, mind, and law. And the law ruled."
Sax, fascinated by so much throwing together, said only, "And on Mars?"
"Well, on Mars it may be that the ego ideal is shifting back to the maternal. To the Dionysian again, or to some kind of postoedipal reintegration with nature, which we are still in the process of inventing. Some new complex that would not be so subject to neurotic overinvestment."
Sax shook his head. It was amazing how floridly elaborated a pseudoscience could get. A compensation technique, perhaps; a desperate attempt to be more like physics. But what they did not understand was that physics, while admittedly complicated, was always trying very hard to become simpler.
Michel, however, was continuing to elaborate. Correlated to patriarchy was capitalism, he was saying, a hierarchical system in which most men had been exploited economically, also treated like animals, poisoned, betrayed, shoved around, shot. And even in the best of circumstances under constant threat of being tossed aside, out of a job, poor, unable to provide for loved dependents, hungry, humiliated. Some trapped in this unfortunate system took out their rage at their plight on whomever they could, even if that turned out to be their loved ones, the people most likely to give them comfort. It was illogical, and even stupid. Brutal and stupid. Yes. Michel shrugged; he didn't like where this train of reasoning had led him. It sounded to Sax like the implication was that many men's actions indicated that they were, alas, fairly stupid. And the limbic array got all twisted in some minds, Michel was going on, trying to veer away from that, to make a decent explanation. Adrenaline and testosterone were always pushing for a fight-or-flight response, and in some dismal situations a satisfaction circuit got established in the get hurt/hurt back axis, and then the men involved were lost, not only to fellow feeling but to rational self-interest. Sick, in fact.
Sax felt a little sick himself. Michel had explained away male evil in several different ways in no more than a quarter of an hour, and still the men of Earth had a lot to answer for. Marsmen were different. Although there had been torturers in Kasei Vallis, as he well knew. But they had been settlers from Earth. Sick. Yes, he felt sick. The young natives were not like that, were they? A Marsman who hit a woman or molested a child would be ostracized, excoriated, perhaps beaten up, he would lose his home, he would be exiled to the asteroids and never allowed back. Wouldn't he?
Something to look into.
Now he thought again of Ann. Of how she was: her manner, so obdurate; her focus on science, on rock. A kind of Apollonian response, perhaps. Concentration on the abstract, denial of the body and therefore of all its pain. Perhaps.
"What would help Ann now, do you think?" Sax said.
Michel shrugged again. "I have wondered that for years. I think Mars has helped her. I think Simon helped her, and Peter. But they have all been at some kind of distance. They don't change that fundamental no in her."
"But she--- she loves all this," Sax said, waving at the caldera. "She truly does." He thought over Michel's analysis. "It's not just a no. There's a yes in there as well. A love of Mars."
"But if you love stones and not people," Michel said, "it's somehow a little . . . unbalanced? Or displaced? Ann is a great mind, you know---"
"I know---"
"--- and she has achieved a great deal. But she does not seem content with it."
"She doesn't like what's happening to her world."
"No. But is that what she truly dislikes? Or dislikes the most? I'm not so sure. It seems displaced to me, again. Both the love and the hate."
Sax shook his head. Astounding, really, that Michel could consider psychology any kind of science at all. So much of it consisted of throwing together. Of thinking of the mind as a steam engine, the mechanical analogy most ready to hand during the birth of modern psychology. People had always done that when they thought about the mind: clockwork for Descartes, geological changes for the early Victorians, computers or holography for the twentieth century, AIs for the twenty-first . . . and for the Freudian traditionalists, steam engines. Application of heat, pressure buildup, pressure displacement, venting, all shifted into repression, sublimation, the return of the repressed. Sax thought it unlikely steam engines were an adequate model for the human mind. The mind was more like--- what?--- an ecology--- a fellfield--- or else a jungle, populated by all manner of strange beasts. Or a universe, filled with stars and quasars and black holes. Well--- a bit grandiose, that--- really it was more like a complex collection of synapses and axons, chemical energies surging hither and yon, like weather in an atmosphere. That was better--- weather--- storm fronts of thought, high-pressure zones, low-pressure cells, hurricanes--- the jet streams of biological desires, always making their swift powerful rounds . . . life in the wind. Well. Throwing together. In fact the mind was poorly understood.
"What are you thinking?" Michel asked.
"Sometimes I worry," Sax admitted, "about the theoretical basis of these diagnoses of yours."
"Oh no, they are very well supported empirically, they are very precise, very accurate."
"Both precise and accurate?"
"Well, what, they're the same, no?"
"No. In estimates of a value, accuracy means how far away you are from the true value. Precision refers to the window size of the estimate. A hundred plus or minus fifty isn't very precise. But if your estimate is a hundred plus or minus fifty, and the true value is a hundred and one, it's quite accurate, while still being not very precise. Often true values aren't really determinable, of course."
Michel had a curious expression on his face. "You're a very accurate person, Sax."
"It's just statistics," Sax said defensively. "Every once in a while language allows you to say things precisely."
"And accurately."
"Sometimes."
They looked down into the country of the caldera.
"I want to help her," Sax said.
Michel nodded. "You said that. I said I didn't know how. For her, you are the terraforming. If you are to help her, then terraforming has to help her. Do you think you can find a way that terraforming helps her?"
Sax thought about it for a while. "It could get her outdoors. Outdoors without helmets, eventually without even masks."
"You think she wants that?"
"I think everyone wants that, at some level. In the cerebellum. The animal, you know. It feels right."
"I don't know if Ann is very well attuned to her animal feelings."
Sax considered it.
Then the whole landscape darkened.
They looked up. The sun was black. Stars shone in the sky around it. There was a faint glow around the black disk, perhaps the sun's corona.
Then a sudden crescent of fire forced them to look away. That was the corona; what they had seen before had probably been the lit exosphere.
The darkened landscape lightened again, as the artificial eclipse came to an end. But the whole sun that returned was distinctly smaller than what had shone just moments before. The old bronze button of the Martian sun! It was like a friend come back for a visit. The world was dimmer, all the colors of the caldera one shade darker, as if invisible clouds obscured the sunlight. A very familiar sight, in fact--- Mars's natural light, shining on them again for the first time in twenty-eight years.
"I hope Ann saw that," Sax said. He felt chilled, although he knew there had not been enough time for the air to have cooled, and he was suited up in any case. But there would be a chill. He thought grimly of the fellfields scattered all over the planet, up at the four-or five-kilometer elevation, and lower in the mid and high latitudes. Up at the edge of the possible, whole ecosystems would now start dying. Twenty percent drop in insolation: it was worse than any Terran ice age, more like the darkness after the great extinction events--- the KT event, the Ordovician, the Devonian, or the worst one of all, the Permian event 250 million years ago, which killed up to ninety-five percent of all the species alive at the time. Punctuated equilibrium; and very few species survived the punctuations. The ones that did were tough, or just lucky.
Michel said, "I doubt it will satisfy her."
This Sax fully believed. But for the moment he was distracted by thinking how best to compensate for the loss of the soletta's light. It would be better not to have any biomes suffering great losses. If he had his way, those fellfields were just something Ann was going to have to get used to.
• • •
It was Ls 123, right in the middle of the northern summer/southern winter, near aphelion, which along with higher elevation caused the south's winter to be much colder than the north's; temperatures regularly dipped to 230 K, not much warmer than the primal colds that had existed before their arrival. Now, with the soletta and annular mirror gone, temperatures would drop further still. No doubt the southern highlands were headed for a record winterkill.
On the other hand, a lot of snow had already fallen in the south, and Sax had gained a great respect for snow's ability to protect living things from cold and wind. The subnivean environment was quite stable. It could be that a drop in light, and subsequently in surface temperature, would not do that much harm to snowed-over plants, already shut down by their winter hardening. It was hard to say. He wanted to get into the field and see for himself. Of course it would be months or perhaps years before any difference would be quantifiable. Except in the weather itself, perhaps. And weather could be tracked merely by watching the meteorological data, which he was already doing, spending many hours in front of satellite pictures and weather maps, watching for signs. It made for a useful diversion when people came by to remonstrate with him for removing the mirrors, an event so common in the week following the event that it became tiresome.
Unfortunately weather on Mars was so variable that it was difficult to tell if the removal of the big mirrors was affecting it or not. A very sad admission of the state of their understanding of the atmosphere, in Sax's opinion. But there it was. Martian weather was a violent semichaotic system. In some ways it resembled Earth's, not surprising given that it was a matter of air and water moving around the surface of a spinning sphere: Coriolis forces were the same everywhere, and so here as on Earth there were tropical easterlies, temperate westerlies, polar easterlies, jet-stream anchor points and so on; but that was almost all one could say for sure about Martian weather. Well--- you could say that it was colder and drier in the south than in the north. That there were rain shadows downwind of high volcanoes or mountain chains. That it was warmer near the equator, colder at the poles. But this sort of obvious generalization was all that they could assert with confidence, except for some local patterns, although most of those were subject to lots of variation--- more a matter of highly analyzed statistics than lived experience. And with only fifty-two m-years on record, with the atmosphere thickening radically all the while, with water being pumped onto the surface, etc., etc., it was actually fairly difficult to say what normal or average conditions might be.
Meanwhile, Sax found it hard to concentrate there on east Pavonis. People kept interrupting him to complain about the mirrors, and the volatile political situation lurched along in storms as unpredictable as the weather's. Already it was clear that removing the mirrors had not placated all the Reds; there were sabotages of terraforming projects almost every day, and sometimes violent fights in defense of these projects. And reports from Earth, which Sax forced himself to watch for an hour a day, made it clear that some forces there were trying to keep things the way they had been before the flood, in sharp conflict with other groups trying to take advantage of the flood in the same way the Martian revolutionaries had, using it as a break point in history and a springboard to some new order, some fresh start. But the metanationals were not going to give up easily, and on Earth they were entrenched, the order of the day; they were in command of vast resources, and no mere seven-meter rise in sea level was going to push them off stage.
Sax switched off his screen after one such depressing hour, and joined Michel for supper out in his rover.
"There's no such thing as a fresh start," he said as he put water on to boil.
"The Big Bang?" Michel suggested.
"As I understand it, there are theories suggesting that the--- the clumpiness of the early universe was caused by the earlier--- clumpiness of the previous universe, collapsing down into its Big Crunch."
"I would have thought that would crush all irregularities."
"Singularities are strange--- outside their event horizons, quantum effects allow some particles to appear. Then the cosmic inflation blasting those particles out apparently caused small clumps to start and become big ones." Sax frowned; he was sounding like the Da Vinci theory group. "But I was referring to the flood on Earth. Which is not as complete an alteration of conditions as a singularity, by any means. In fact there must be people down there who don't think of it as a break at all."
"True." For some reason Michel was laughing. "We should go there and see, eh?"
As they finished eating their spaghetti Sax said, "I want to get out in the field. I want to see if there are any visible effects of the mirrors going away."
"You already saw one. That dimming of the light, when we were out on the rim. . . ." Michel shuddered.
"Yes, but that only makes me more curious."
"Well--- we'll hold down the fort for you."
As if one had to physically occupy any given space in order to be there. "The cerebellum never gives up," Sax said.
Michel grinned. "Which is why you want to go out and see it in person."
Sax frowned.
Before he left, he called Ann.
"Would you like to, to accompany me, on a trip to south Tharsis, to, to, to examine the upper boundary of the areobiosphere, together?"
She was startled. Her head was shaking back and forth as she thought it over--- the cerebellum's answer, some six or seven seconds ahead of her conscious verbal response: "No." And then she cut the connection, looking somewhat frightened.
Sax shrugged. He felt bad. He saw that one of his reasons for going into the field had to do with getting Ann out there, showing her the rocky first biomes of the fellfields himself. Showing her how beautiful they were. Talking to her. Something like that. His mental image of what he would say to her if he actually got her out there was fuzzy at best. Just show her. Make her see it.
Well, one couldn't make people see things.
He went to say good-bye to Michel. Michel's entire job was to make people see things. This was no doubt the cause of the frustration in him when he talked about Ann. She had been one of his patients for over a century now and still she hadn't changed, or even told him very much about herself. It made Sax smile a little to think of it. Though clearly it was vexing for Michel, who obviously loved Ann. As he did all his old friends and patients, including Sax. It was in the nature of a professional responsibility, as Michel saw it--- to fall in love with all the objects of his "scientific study." Every astronomer loves the stars. Well, who knew.
Sax reached out and clasped Michel's upper arm, who smiled happily at this un-Sax-like behavior, this "change in thinking." Love, yes; and how much more so when the object of study consisted of women known for years and years, studied with the intensity of pure science--- yes, that would be a feeling. A great intimacy, whether they cooperated in the study or not. In fact they might even be more beguiling if they didn't cooperate, if they refused to answer any questions at all. After all if Michel wanted questions answered, answered at great length even when they weren't asked, he always had Maya, Maya the all-too-human, who led Michel on a hard steeplechase across the limbic array, including throwing things at him, if Spencer was to be believed. After that kind of symbolism, the silence of Ann might prove to be very endearing. "Be careful," Michel said: the happy scientist, with one of his areas of study standing before him, loved like a brother.
Sax took a solo rover and drove it down the steep bare southern slope of Pavonis Mons, then across the saddle between Pavonis and Arsia Mons. He contoured around the great cone of Arsia Mons on its dry eastern side. After that he drove down the southern flank of Arsia, and of the Tharsis Bulge itself, until he was on the broken highlands of Daedalia Planitia. This plain was the remnant of a giant ancient impact basin, now almost entirely erased by the uptilt of Tharsis, by lava from Arsia Mons, and by the ceaseless winds, until nothing was left of the impact basin except for a collection of areologists' observations and deductions, faint radial arrays of ejecta scrapes and the like, visible on maps but not in the landscape.
To the eye as one traveled over it, it looked like much of the rest of the southern highlands: rugged bumpy pitted cracked land. A wild rockscape. The old lava flows were visible as smooth lobate curves of dark rock, like tidal swells fanning out and down. Wind streaks both light and dark marked the land, indicating dust of different weights and consistencies: there were light long triangles on the southeast sides of craters and boulders, dark chevrons to the northwest of them, and dark splotches inside the many rimless craters. The next big dust storm would redesign all these patterns.
Sax drove over the low stone waves with great pleasure, down down up, down down up, reading the sand paintings of the dust streaks like a wind chart. He was traveling not in a boulder car, with its low dark room and its cockroach scurry from one hiding place to the next, but rather in a big boxy areologist's camper, with windows on all four sides of the third-story driver's compartment. It was a very great pleasure indeed to roll along up there in the thin bright daylight, down and up, down and up, down and up over the sand-streaked plain, the horizons very distant for Mars. There was no one to hide from; no one hunting for him. He was a free man on a free planet, and if he wanted to he could drive this car right around the world. Or anywhere he pleased.
The full impact of this feeling took him about two days' drive to realize. Even then he was not sure that he comprehended it. It was a sensation of lightness, a strange lightness that caused little smiles to stretch his mouth repeatedly for no obvious reason. He had not been consciously aware, before, of any sense of oppression or fear--- but it seemed it had been there--- since 2061, perhaps, or the years right before it. Sixty-six years of fear, ignored and forgotten but always there--- a kind of tension in the musculature, a small hidden dread at the core of things. "Sixty-six bottles of fear on the wall, sixty-six bottles of fear! Take one down, pass it around, sixty-five bottles of fear on the wall!"
Now gone. He was free, his world was free. He was driving down the wind-etched tilted plain, and earlier that day snow had begun to appear in the cracks, gleaming aquatically in a way dust never did; and then lichen; he was driving down into the atmosphere. And no reason, now, why his life ought not to continue this way, puttering about freely every day in his own world lab, and everybody else just as free as that!
It was quite a feeling.
Oh they could argue on Pavonis, and they most certainly would. Everywhere in fact. A most extraordinarily contentious lot they were. What was the sociology that would explain that? Hard to say. And in any case they had cooperated despite their bickering; it might have been only a temporary confluence of interests, but everything was temporary now--- with so many traditions broken or vanished, it left what John used to call the necessity of creation; and creation was hard. Not everyone was as good at creation as they were at complaining.
But they had certain capabilities now as a group, as a--- a civilization. The accumulated body of scientific knowledge was growing vast indeed, and that knowledge was giving them an array of powers that could scarcely be comprehended, even in outline, by any single individual. But powers they were, understood or not. Godlike powers, as Michel called them, though it was not necessary to exaggerate them or confuse the issue--- they were powers in the material world, real but constrained by reality. Which nevertheless might allow--- it looked to Sax as if these powers could--- if rightly applied--- make a decent human civilization after all. After all the many centuries of trying. And why not? Why not? Why not pitch the whole enterprise at the highest level possible? They could provide for everyone in an equitable way, they could cure disease, they could delay senescence until they lived for a thousand years, they could understand the universe from the Planck distance to the cosmic distance, from the Big Bang to the eskaton--- all this was possible, it was technically achievable. And as for those who felt that humanity needed the spur of suffering to make it great, well they could go out and find anew the tragedies that Sax was sure would never go away, things like lost love, betrayal by friends, death, bad results in the lab. Meanwhile the rest of them could continue the work of making a decent civilization. They could do it! It was amazing, really. They had reached that moment in history when one could say it was possible. Very hard to believe, actually; it made Sax suspicious; in physics one became immediately dubious when a situation appeared to be somehow extraordinary or unique. The odds were against that, it suggested that it was an artifact of perspective, one had to assume that things were more or less constant and that one lived in average times--- the so-called principle of mediocrity. Never a particularly attractive principle, Sax had thought; perhaps it only meant that justice had always been achievable; in any case, there it was, an extraordinary moment, right there outside his four windows, burnished under the light touch of the natural sun. Mars and its humans, free and powerful.
It was too much to grasp. It kept slipping out of his mind, then reoccurring to him, and surprised by joy he would exclaim, "Ha! Ha!" The taste of tomato soup and bread; "Ha!" The dusky purple of the twilight sky; "Ha!" The spectacle of the dashboard instrumentation, glowing faintly, reflected in the black windows; "Ha! Ha! Ha! My-oh-my." He could drive anywhere he wanted to. No one told them what to do. He said that aloud to his darkened AI screen: "No one tells us what to do!" It was almost frightening. Vertiginous. Ka, the yonsei would say. Ka, supposedly the little red people's name for Mars, from the Japanese ka, meaning fire. The same word existed in several other early languages as well, including proto-Indo-European; or so the linguists said.
Carefully he got in the big bed at the back of the compartment, in the hum of the rover's heating and electrical system, and he lay humming to himself under the thick coverlet that caught up his body's heat so fast, and put his head on the pillow and looked out at the stars.
• • •
The next morning a high-pressure system came in from the northwest, and the temperature rose to 262 K. He had driven down to five kilometers above the datum, and the exterior air pressure was 230 millibars. Not quite enough to breathe freely, so he pulled on one of the heated surface suits, then slipped a small air tank over his shoulders, and put its mask over his nose and mouth, and a pair of goggles over his eyes.
Even so, when he climbed out of the outer-lock door and down the steps to the sand, the intense cold caused him to sniffle and tear up, to the point of impeding his vision. The whistle of the wind was loud, though his ears were inside the hood of his suit. The suit's heater was up to the task, however, and with the rest of him warm, his face slowly got used to it.
He tightened the hood's drawstring and walked over the land. He stepped from flat stone to flat stone; here they were everywhere. He crouched often to inspect cracks, finding lichen and widely scattered specimens of other life: mosses, little tufts of sedge, grass. It was very windy. Exceptionally hard gusts slapped him four or five times a minute, with a steady gale between. This was a windy place much of the time, no doubt, with the atmosphere sliding south around the bulk of Tharsis in massed quantities. High-pressure cells would dump a lot of their moisture at the start of this rise, on the western side; indeed at this moment the horizon to the west was obscured by a flat sea of cloud, merging with the land in the far distance, out there two or three kilometers lower in elevation, and perhaps sixty kilometers away.
Underfoot there were only bits of snow, filling some of the shaded crack systems and hollows. These snowbanks were so hard that he could jump up and down on them without leaving a mark. Windslab, partially melted and then refrozen. One scalloped slab cracked under his boots, and he found it was several centimeters thick. Under that it was powder, or granules. His fingers were cold, despite his heated gloves.
He stood again and wandered, mapless over the rock. Some of the deeper hollows contained ice pools. Around midday he descended into one of these and ate his lunch by the ice pool, lifting the air mask to take bites out of a grain-and-honey bar. Elevation 4.5 kilometers above the datum; air pressure 267 millibars. A high-pressure system indeed. The sun was low in the northern sky, a bright dot surrounded by pewter.
The ice of the pool was clear in places, like little windows giving him a view of the black bottom. Elsewhere it was bubbled or cracked, or white with rime. The bank he sat on was a curve of gravel, with patches of brown soil and black dead vegetation lying on it in a miniature berm--- the high-water mark of the pond, apparently, a soil shore above the gravel one. The whole beach was no more than four meters long, one wide. The fine gravel was an umber color, piebald umber or. . . . He would have to consult a color chart. But not now.
The soil berm was dotted by pale green rosettes of tiny grass blades. Longer blades stood in clumps here and there. Most of the taller blades were dead, and light gray. Right next to the pond were patches of dark green succulent leaves, dark red at their edges. Where the green shaded into red was a color he couldn't name, a dark lustrous brown stuffed somehow with both its constituent colors. He would have to call up a color chart soon, it seemed; lately when looking around outdoors he found that a color chart came in handy about once a minute. Waxy almost-white flowers were tucked under some of these bicolored leaves. Farther on lay some tangles, red-stalked, green-needled, like beached seaweed in miniature. Again that intermixture of red and green, right there in nature staring at him.
A distant wind-washed hum; perhaps the harping rocks, perhaps the buzz of insects. Black midges, bees . . . in this air they would only have to sustain about thirty millibars of CO2, because there was so little partial pressure driving it into them, and at some point internal saturation was enough to hold any more out. For mammals that might not work so well. But they might be able to sustain twenty millibars, and with plant life flourishing all over the planet's lower elevations, CO2 levels might drop to twenty millibars fairly soon; and then they could dispense with the air tanks and the face masks. Set loose animals on Mars.
In the faint hum of the air he seemed to hear their voices, immanent or emergent, coming in the next great surge of viriditas. The hum of distant voices; the wind; the peace of this little pool on its rocky moor; the Nirgalish pleasure he took in the sharp cold. . . . "Ann should see this," he murmured.
Then again, with the space mirrors gone, presumably everything he saw here was doomed. This was the upper limit of the biosphere, and surely with the loss of light and heat the upper limit would drop, at least temporarily, perhaps for good. He didn't like that; and it seemed possible there might be ways to compensate for the lost light. After all, the terraforming had been doing quite well before the mirrors' arrival; they hadn't been necessary. And it was good not to depend on something so fragile, and better to be rid of it now rather than later, when large animal populations might have died in the setback along with the plants.
Even so it was a shame. But the dead plant matter would only be more fertilizer in the end, and without the same kind of suffering as animals. At least so he assumed. Who knew how plants felt? When you looked closely at them, glowing in all their detailed articulation like complex crystals, they were as mysterious as any other life. And now their presence here made the entire plain, everything he could see, into one great fellfield, spreading in a slow tapestry over the rock; breaking down the weathered minerals, melding with them to make the first soils. A very slow process. There was a vast complexity in every pinch of soil; and the look of this fellfield was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.
• • •
To weather. This whole world was weathering. The first printed use of the word with that meaning had appeared in a book on Stonehenge, appropriately enough, in 1665. "The weathering of so many Centuries of Years." On this stone world. Weathering. Language as the first science, exact yet vague, or multivalent. Throwing things together. The mind as weather. Or being weathered.
There were clouds coming up over the nearby hillocks to the west, their bottoms resting on a thermal layer as levelly as if pressing down on glass. Streamers like spun wool led the way east.
Sax stood up and climbed out of the pool's depression. Out of the shelter of the hole, the wind was shockingly strong--- in it the cold intensified as if an ice age had struck full force that very second. Windchill factor, of course; if the temperature was 262 K, and the wind was blowing at about seventy kilometers an hour, with gusts much stronger, then the windchill factor would create a temperature equivalent of about 250 K. Was that right? That was very cold indeed to be out without a helmet. And in fact his hands were going numb. His feet as well. And his face was already without feeling, like a thick mask at the front of his head. He was shivering, and his blinks tended to stick together; his tears were freezing. He needed to get back to his car.
He plodded over the rockscape, amazed at the power of the wind to intensify cold. He had not experienced windchill like this since childhood, if then, and had forgotten how frigid one became. Staggering in the blasts, he climbed onto a low swell of the ancient lava and looked upslope. There was his rover--- big, vivid green, gleaming like a spaceship--- about two kilometers up the slope. A very welcome sight.
But now snow began to fly horizontally past him, giving a dramatic demonstration of the wind's great speed. Little granular pellets clicked against his goggles. He took off toward the rover, keeping his head down and watching the snow swirl over the rocks. There was so much snow in the air that he thought his goggles were fogging up, but after a painfully cold operation to wipe the insides, it became clear that the condensation was actually out in the air. Fine snow, mist, dust, it was hard to tell.
He plodded on. The next time he looked up, the air was so thick with snow that he couldn't see all the way to the rover. Nothing to do but press on. It was lucky the suit was well insulated and sewn through with heating elements, because even with the heat on at its highest power, the cold was cutting against his left side as if he were naked to the blast. Visibility extended now something like twenty meters, shifting rapidly depending on how much snow was passing by at the moment; he was in an amorphously expanding and contracting bubble of whiteness, which itself was shot through with flying snow, and what appeared to be a kind of frozen fog or mist. It seemed likely he was in the storm cloud itself. His legs were stiff. He wrapped his arms around his torso, his gloved hands trapped in his armpits. There was no obvious way of telling if he was still walking in the right direction. It seemed like he was on the same course he had been when visibility had collapsed, but it also seemed like he had gone a long way toward the rover.
There were no compasses on Mars; there were, however, APS systems in his wristpad and back in the car. He could call up a detailed map on his wristpad and then locate himself and his car on it; then walk for a while and track his positions; then make his way directly toward the car. That seemed like a great deal of work--- which brought it to him that his thinking, like his body, was being affected by the cold. It wasn't that much work, after all.
So he crouched down in the lee of a boulder and tried the method. The theory behind it was obviously sound, but the instrumentation left something to be desired; the wristpad's screen was only five centimeters across, so small that he couldn't see the dots on it at all well. Finally he spotted them, walked awhile, and took another fix. But unfortunately his results indicated that he should be hiking at about a right angle to the direction he had been going.
This was unnerving to the point of paralysis. His body insisted that it had been going the right way; his mind (part of it, anyway) was pretty certain that it was better to trust the results on the wristpad, and assume that he had gotten off course somewhere. But it didn't feel that way; the ground was still at a slope that supported the feeling in his body. The contradiction was so intense that he suffered a wave of nausea, the internal torque twisting him until it actually hurt to stand, as if every cell in his body was twisting to the side against the pressure of what the wristpad was telling him--- the physiological effects of a purely cognitive dissonance, it was amazing. It almost made one believe in the existence of an internal magnet in the body, as in the pineal glands of migrating birds--- but there was no magnetic field to speak of. Perhaps his skin was sensitive to solar radiation to the point of being able to pinpoint the sun's location, even when the sky was a thick dark gray everywhere. It had to be something like that, because the feeling that he was properly oriented was so strong!
Eventually the nausea of the disorientation passed, and in the end he stood and took off in the direction suggested by the wristpad, feeling horrible about it, listing a little uphill just to try to make himself feel better. But one had to trust instruments over instincts, that was science. And so he plodded on, traversing the slope, shading somewhat uphill, clumsier than ever. His nearly insensible feet ran into rocks that he did not see, even though they were directly beneath him; he stumbled time after time. It was surprising how thoroughly snow could obscure the vision.
After a while he stopped, and tried again to locate the rover by APS; and his wristpad map suggested an entirely new direction, behind him and to the left.
It was possible he had walked past the car. Was it? He did not want to walk back into the wind. But now that was the way to the rover, apparently. So he ducked his head down into the biting cold and persevered. His skin was in an odd state, itching under the heating elements crisscrossing his suit, numb everywhere else. His feet were numb. It was hard to walk. There was no feeling in his face; clearly frostbite was in the offing. He needed shelter.
He had a new idea. He called up Aonia, on Pavonis, and got her almost instantly.
"Sax! Where are you?"
"That's what I'm calling about!" he said. "I'm in a storm on Daedalia! And I can't find my car! I was wondering if you would look at my APS and my rover's! And see if you can tell me which direction I should go!"
He put the wristpad right against his ear. "Ka wow, Sax." It sounded like Aonia was shouting too, bless her. Her voice was an odd addition to the scene. "Just a second, let me check! . . . Okay! There you are! And your car too! What are you doing so far south? I don't think anyone can get to you very quickly! Especially if there's a storm!"
"There is a storm," Sax said. "That's why I called."
"Okay! You're about three hundred and fifty meters to the west of your car."
"Directly west?"
"--- and a little south! But how will you orient yourself?"
Sax considered it. Mars's lack of a magnetic field had never struck him as such a problem before, but there it was. He could assume the wind was directly out of the west, but that was just an assumption. "Can you check the nearest weather stations and tell me what direction the wind is coming from?" he said.
"Sure, but it won't be much good for local variations! Here, just a second, I'm getting some help here from the others."
A few long icy moments passed.
"The wind is coming from west northwest, Sax! So you need to walk with the wind at your back and a touch to your left!"
"I know. Be quiet now, until you see what course I'm making, and then correct it."
He walked again, fortunately almost downwind. After five or six painful minutes his wrist beeped.
Aonia said, "You're right on course!"
This was encouraging, and he carried on with a bit more speed, though the wind was penetrating through his ribs right to his core.
"Okay, Sax! Sax?"
"Yes!"
"You and your car are right on the same spot!"
But there was no car in view.
His heart thudded in his chest. Visibility was still some twenty meters; but no car. He had to get shelter fast. "Walk in an ever-increasing spiral from where you are," the little voice on the wrist was suggesting. A good idea in theory, but he couldn't bear to execute it; he couldn't face the wind. He stared dully at his black plastic wristpad console. No more help to be had there.
For a moment he could make out snowbanks, off to his left. He shuffled over to investigate, and found that the snow rested in the lee of a shoulder-high escarpment, a feature he did not remember seeing before, but there were some radial breaks in the rock caused by the Tharsis rise, and this must be one of them, protecting a snowbank. Snow was a tremendous insulator. Though it had little intrinsic appeal as shelter. But Sax knew mountaineers often dug into it to survive nights out. It got one out of the wind.
He stepped to the bottom of the snowbank, and kicked it with one numb foot. It felt like kicking rock. Digging a snow cave seemed out of the question. But the effort itself would warm him a bit. And it was less windy at the foot of the bank. So he kicked and kicked, and found that underneath a thick cake of windslab there was the usual powder. A snow cave might be possible after all. He dug away at it.
"Sax, Sax!" cried the voice from his wrist. "What are you doing!"
"Making a snow cave," he said. "A bivouac."
"Oh Sax--- we're flying in help! We'll be able to get in next morning no matter what, so hang on! We'll keep talking to you!"
"Fine."
He kicked and dug. On his knees he scooped out hard granular snow, tossing it into the swirling flakes flying over him. It was hard to move, hard to think. He bitterly regretted walking so far from the rover, then getting so absorbed in the landscape around that ice pond. It was a shame to get killed when things were getting so interesting. Free but dead. There was a little hollow in the snow now, through an oblong hole in the windslab. Wearily he sat down and wedged himself back into the space, lying on his side and pushing back with his boots. The snow felt solid against the back of his suit, and warmer than the ferocious wind. He welcomed the shivering in his torso, felt a vague fear when it ceased. Being too cold to shiver was a bad sign.
Very weary, very cold. He looked at his wristpad. It was four P.M. He had been walking in the storm for just over three hours. He would have to survive another fifteen or twenty hours before he could expect to be rescued. Or perhaps in the morning the storm would have abated, and the location of the rover become obvious. One way or another he had to survive the night by huddling in a snow cave. Or else venture out again and find the rover. Surely it couldn't be far away. But until the wind lessened, he could not bear to be out looking for it.
He had to wait in the snow cave. Theoretically he could survive a night out, though at the moment he was so cold it was hard to believe that. Night temperatures on Mars still plummeted drastically. Perhaps the storm might lessen in the next hour, so that he could find the rover and get to it before dark.
He told Aonia and the others where he was. They sounded very concerned, but there was nothing they could do. He felt irritation at their voices.
It seemed many minutes before he had another thought. When one was chilled, blood flow was greatly reduced to the limbs--- perhaps that was true for the cortex as well, the blood going preferentially to the cerebellum where the necessary work would continue right to the end.
More time passed. Near dark, it appeared. Should call out again. He was too cold--- something seemed wrong. Advanced age, altitude, CO2 levels--- some factor or combination of factors was making it worse than it should be. He could die of exposure in a single night. Appeared in fact to be doing just that. Such a storm! Loss of the mirrors, perhaps. Instant ice age. Extinction event.
The wind was making odd noises, like shouts. Powerful gusts no doubt. Like faint shouts, howling "Sax! Sax! Sax!"
Had they flown someone in? He peered out into the dark storm, the snowflakes somehow catching the late light and tearing overhead like dim white static.
Then between his ice-crusted eyelashes he saw a figure emerge out of the darkness. Short, round, helmeted. "Sax!" The sound was distorted, it was coming from a loudspeaker in the figure's helmet. Those Da Vinci techs were very resourceful people. Sax tried to respond, and found he was too cold to speak. Just moving his boots out of the hole was a stupendous effort. But it appeared to catch this figure's eye, because it turned and strode purposefully through the wind, moving like a skillful sailor on a bouncing deck, weaving this way and that through the slaps of the gusts. The figure reached him and bent down and grabbed Sax by the wrist, and he saw its face through the faceplate, as clear as through a window. It was Hiroko.
She smiled her brief smile and hauled him up out of his cave, pulling so hard on his left wrist that his bones creaked painfully.
"Ow!" he said.
Out in the wind the cold was like death itself. Hiroko pulled his left arm over her shoulder, and, still holding hard to his wrist just above the wristpad, she led him past the low escarpment and right into the teeth of the gale.
"My rover is near," he mumbled, leaning hard on her and trying to move his legs fast enough to make steady plants of the foot. So good to see her again. A solid little person, very powerful as always.
"It's over here," she said through her loudspeaker. "You were pretty close."
"How did you find me?"
"We were tracking you as you came down Arsia. Then today when the storm hit I checked you out, and saw you were out of your rover. After that I came out to see how you were doing."
"Thanks."
"You have to be careful in storms."
Then they were standing before his rover. She let go of his wrist, and it throbbed painfully. She bonked her faceplate against his goggles. "Go on in," she said.
He climbed carefully up the steps to the rover's lock door; opened it; fell inside. He turned clumsily to make room for Hiroko, but she wasn't in the door. He leaned back out into the wind, looked around. No sight of her. It was dusk; the snow now looked black. "Hiroko!" he cried.
No answer.
He closed the lock door, suddenly frightened. Oxygen deprivation--- He pumped the lock, fell through the inside door into the little changing room. It was shockingly warm, the air a steamy blast. He plucked ineffectively at his clothes, made no progress. He went at it more methodically. Goggles and face mask off. They were coated with ice. Ah--- possibly his air supply had been restricted by ice in the tube between tank and mask. He sucked in several deep breaths, then sat still through another bout of nausea. Pulled off his hood, unzipped the suit. It was almost more than he could do to get his boots off. Then the suit. His underclothes were cold and clammy. His hands were burning as if on fire. It was a good sign, proof that he was not substantially frostbitten; nevertheless it was agony.
His whole skin began to buzz with the same inflamed pain. What caused that, return of blood to capillaries? Return of sensation to chilled nerves? Whatever it was, it hurt almost unbearably. "Ow!"
He was in excellent spirits. It was not just that he had been spared from death, which was nice; but that Hiroko was alive. Hiroko was alive! It was incredibly good news. Many of his friends had assumed all along that she and her group had slipped away from the assault on Sabishii, moving through that town's mound maze back out into their system of hidden refuges; but Sax had never been sure. There was no evidence to support the idea. And there were elements in the security forces perfectly capable of murdering a group of dissidents and disposing of their bodies. This, Sax had thought, was probably what had happened. But he had kept this opinion to himself, and reserved judgment. There had been no way of knowing for sure.
But now he knew. He had stumbled into Hiroko's path, and she had rescued him from death by freezing, or asphyxiation, whichever came first. The sight of her cheery, somehow impersonal face--- her brown eyes--- the feel of her body supporting him--- her hand clamped over his wrist . . . he would have a bruise because of that. Perhaps even a sprain. He flexed his hand, and the pain in his wrist brought tears to his eyes, it made him laugh. Hiroko!
After a time the fiery return of sensation to his skin banked down. Though his hands felt bloated and raw, and he did not have proper control of his muscles, or his thoughts, he was basically getting back to normal. Or something like normal.
"Sax! Sax! Where are you? Answer us, Sax!"
"Ah. Hello there. I'm back in my car."
"You found it? You left your snow cave?"
"Yes. I--- I saw my car, in the distance, through a break in the snow."
They were happy to hear it.
He sat there, barely listening to them babble, wondering why he had spontaneously lied. Somehow he was not comfortable telling them about Hiroko. He assumed that she would want to stay concealed; perhaps that was it. Covering for her. . . .
He assured his associates that he was all right, and got off the phone. He pulled a chair into the kitchen and sat on it. Warmed soup and drank it in loud slurps, scalding his tongue. Frostbitten, scalded, shaky--- slightly nauseous--- once weeping--- mostly stunned--- despite all this, he was very, very happy. Sobered by the close call, of course, and embarrassed or even ashamed at his ineptitude, staying out, getting lost and so on--- all very sobering indeed--- and yet still he was happy. He had survived, and even better, so had Hiroko. Meaning no doubt that all of her group had survived with her, including the half dozen of the First Hundred who had been with her from the beginning, Iwao, Gene, Rya, Raul, Ellen, Evgenia. . . . Sax ran a bath and sat in the warm water, adding hotter water slowly as his body core warmed; and he kept returning to that wonderful realization. A miracle--- well not a miracle of course--- but it had that quality, of unexpected and undeserved joy.
When he found himself falling asleep in the bath he got out, dried off, limped on sensitive feet to his bed, crawled under the coverlet, and fell asleep, thinking of Hiroko. Of making love with her in the baths in Zygote, in the warm relaxed lubriciousness of their bathhouse trysts, late at night when everyone else was asleep. Of her hand clamped on his wrist, pulling him up. His left wrist was very sore. And that made him happy.
The next day he drove back up the great southern slope of Arsia, now covered with clean white snow to an amazingly high altitude, 10.4 kilometers above the datum to be exact. He felt a strange mix of emotions, unprecedented in their strength and flux, although they somewhat resembled the powerful emotions he had felt during the synaptic stimulus treatment he had taken after his stroke--- as if sections of his brain were actively growing--- the limbic system, perhaps, the home of the emotions, linking up with the cerebral cortex at last. He was alive, Hiroko was alive, Mars was alive; in the face of these joyous facts the possibility of an ice age was as nothing, a momentary swing in a general warming pattern, something like the almost-forgotten Great Storm. Although he did want to do what he could to mitigate it.
Meanwhile, in the human world there were still fierce conflicts going on everywhere, on both worlds. But it seemed to Sax that the crisis had somehow gotten beyond war. Flood, ice age, population boom, social chaos, revolution; perhaps things had gotten so bad that humanity had shifted into some kind of universal catastrophe rescue operation, or, in other words, the first phase of the postcapitalist era.
Or maybe he was just getting overconfident, buoyed by the events on Daedalia Planitia. His Da Vinci associates were certainly very worried, they spent hours onscreen telling him every little thing about the arguments ongoing in east Pavonis. But he had no patience for that. Pavonis was going to become a standing wave of argument, it was obvious. And the Da Vinci crowd, worrying so--- that was simply them. At Da Vinci if someone even raised his voice two decibels people worried that things were getting out of control. No. After his experience on Daedalia, these things simply weren't interesting enough to engage him. Despite the encounter with the storm, or perhaps because of it, he only wanted to get back out into the country. He wanted to see as much of it as he could--- to observe the changes wrought by the removal of the mirrors--- to talk to various terraforming teams about how to compensate for it. He called Nanao in Sabishii, and asked him if he could come visit and talk it over with the university crowd. Nanao was agreeable.
"Can I bring some of my associates?" Sax asked.
Nanao was agreeable.
And all of a sudden Sax found he had plans, like little Athenas jumping out of his head. What would Hiroko do about this possible ice age? That he couldn't guess. But he had a large group of associates in the labs at Da Vinci who had spent the last decades working on the problem of independence, building weapons and transport and shelters and the like. Now that was a problem solved, and there they were, and an ice age was coming. Many of them had come to Da Vinci from his earlier terraforming effort, and could be talked into returning to it, no doubt. But what to do? Well, Sabishii was four kilometers above the datum, and the Tyrrhena massif went up to five. The scientists there were the best in the world at high-altitude ecology. So: a conference. Another little utopia enacted. It was obvious.
That afternoon Sax stopped his rover in the saddle between Pavonis and Arsia, at the spot called Four Mountain View--- a sublime place, with two of the continent-volcanoes filling the horizons to north and south, and then the distant bump of Olympus Mons off to the northwest, and on clear days (this one was too hazy) a glimpse of Ascraeus, in the distance just to the right of Pavonis. In this spacious sere highland he ate his lunch, then turned east, and drove down toward Nicosia, to catch a flight to Da Vinci, and then on to Sabishii.
He had to spend a lot of screen time with the Da Vinci team and many other people on Pavonis, trying to explain this move, reconciling them to his departure from the warehouse meetings. "I am in the warehouse in every sense that matters," he said, but they wouldn't accept that. Their cerebellums wanted him there in the flesh, a touching thought in a way. "Touching"--- a symbolic statement that was nevertheless quite literal. He laughed, but Nadia came on and said irritably, "Come on, Sax, you can't give up just because things are getting sticky, in fact that's exactly when you're needed, you're General Sax now, you're the great scientist, you have to stay in the game."
But Hiroko showed just how present an absent person could be. And he wanted to go to Sabishii.
"But what should we do?" Nirgal asked him, and others too in less direct ways.
The situation with the cable was at an impasse; on Earth there was chaos; on Mars there were still pockets of metanational resistance, and other areas in Red control, where they were systematically tearing out all terraforming projects, and much of the infrastructure as well. There were also a variety of small revolutionary splinter movements that were taking this opportunity to assert their independence, sometimes over areas as small as a tent or a weather station.
"Well," Sax said, thinking about all this as much as he could bear to, "whoever controls the life-support system is in charge."
Social structure as life-support system--- infrastructure, mode of production, maintenance . . . he really ought to speak to the folks at Séparation de l'Atmosphère, and to the tentmakers. Many of whom had a close relation to Da Vinci. Meaning that in certain senses he himself was as much in charge as anyone. A bad thought.
"But what do you suggest we do?" Maya demanded; something in her voice made it clear she was repeating the question.
By now Sax was closing in on Nicosia, and impatiently he said, "Send a delegation to Earth? Or convene a constitutional congress, and formulate a first approximation constitution, a working draft."
Maya shook her head. "That won't be easy, with this crowd."
"Take the constitutions of the twenty or thirty most successful Terran countries," Sax suggested, thinking out loud, "and see how they work. Have an AI compile a composite document, perhaps, and see what it says."
"How would you define most successful?" Art asked.
"Country Futures Index, Real Values Gauge, Costa Rica Comparisons--- even Gross Domestic Product, why not." Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before. But what the hell---"Use several different sets of criteria, human welfare, ecologic success, what have you."
"But Sax," Coyote complained, "the very concept of the nation-state is a bad one. That idea by itself will poison all those old constitutions."
"Could be," Sax said. "But as a starting point."
"All this is just sidestepping the problem of the cable," Jackie said.
It was strange how certain elements of the greens were as obsessed by total independence as the radical Reds. Sax said, "In physics I often bracket the problems I can't solve, and try to work around them and see if they don't get solved retroactively, so to speak. To me the cable looks like that kind of problem. Think of it as a reminder that Earth isn't going to go away."
But they ignored that, arguing as they were over what to do about the cable, what they might do about a new government, what to do about the Reds who had apparently abandoned the discussion, and so on and so forth, ignoring all his suggestions and getting back to their ongoing wrangles. So much for General Sax in the postrevolutionary world.
• • •
Nicosia's airport was almost shut down, and yet Sax did not want to go into the town; he ended up flying to Da Vinci with some friends of Spencer's from Dawes's Forked Bay, flying a big new ultralight they had built just before the revolt, in anticipation of the freedom from the need for stealth. As the AI pilot floated the big silver-winged craft over the great maze of Noctis Labyrinthus, the five passengers sat in a chamber on the bottom of the fuselage which had a large clear floor, so that they could look over the arms of their chairs at the view below; in this case, the immense linked network of troughs which was the Chandelier. Sax stared down at the smooth plateaus that stood between the canyons, often islanded; they looked like nice places to live, somewhat like Cairo, there on the north rim, looking like a model town in a glass bottle.
The plane's crew started talking about Séparation de l'Atmosphère, and Sax listened closely. Although these people had been concerned with the revolution's armaments and with basic materials research, while "Sep" as they called it had dealt with the more mundane world of mesocosm management, they still had a healthy respect for it. Designing strong tents and keeping them functioning was a task with very severe consequences for failure, as one of them said. Criticalities everywhere, and every day a potential adventure.
Sep was associated with Praxis, apparently, and each tent or covered canyon was run by a separate organization. They pooled information and shared roving consultants and construction teams. Since they deemed themselves necessary services, they ran on a cooperative basis--- on the Mondragon plan, one said, nonprofit version--- though they made sure to provide their members with very nice living situations and lots of free time. "They think they deserve it, too. Because when something goes wrong they have to act fast or else." Many of the covered canyons had had close calls, sometimes the result of meteor strike or other drama, other times more ordinary mechanical failures. The usual format for covered canyons had the physical plant consolidated at the higher end of the canyon, and this plant sucked in the appropriate amounts of nitrogen, oxygen and trace gases from the surface winds. The proportions of gases and the pressure range they were kept at varied from mesocosm to mesocosm, but they averaged around five hundred millibars, which gave some lift to the tent roofs, and was pretty much the norm for indoor spaces on Mars, in a kind of invocation of the eventual goal for the surface at the datum. On sunny days, however, the expansion of air inside the tents was very significant, and the standard procedures for dealing with it included simply releasing air back into the atmosphere, or else saving it by compressing it into huge container chambers hollowed out of the canyon cliffs. "So one time I was in Dao Vallis," one of the techs said, "and the excess air chamber blew up, shattering the plateau and causing a big landslide that fell down onto Reullgate and tore open the tent roof. Pressures dropped to the local ambient, which was about two hundred and sixty, and everything started to freeze, and they had the old emergency bulkheads," which were clear curtains only a few molecules thick but very strong, as Sax recalled, "and when they deployed automatically around the break, this one woman got pinned to the ground by the supersticky at the bottom of the bulkhead, with her head on the wrong side! We ran over to her and did some quick cut and paste and got her loose, but she almost died."
Sax shivered, thinking of his own recent brush with cold; and 260 millibars was the pressure one would find on the peak of Everest. The others were already talking about other famous blowouts, including the time Hiranyagarba's dome had fallen in its entirety under an ice rain, despite which no one had died.
Then they were descending over the great cratered high plain of Xanthe, coming down on the Da Vinci crater floor's big sandy runway, which they had just started using during the revolution. The whole community had been preparing for years for the day when stealthing would become unnecessary, and now a big curve of copper-mirrored windows had been installed in the arc of the southern crater rim. There was a layer of snow in the bottom of the crater, which the central knob broke out of quite dramatically. It was possible they could arrange for a lake in the crater floor, with a central knob island, which would have as its horizon the circling cliffy hills of the crater rim. A circular canal could be built just under the rim cliffs, with radial canals connecting it to the inner lake; the resulting alternation of circular water and land would resemble Plato's description of Atlantis. In this configuration Da Vinci could support, in near self-sufficiency, some twenty or thirty thousand people, Sax guessed; and there were scores of craters like Da Vinci. A commune of communes, each crater a city-state of sorts, its polis fully capable of supporting itself, of deciding what kind of culture it might have; and then with a vote in a global council of some kind. . . . No regional association larger than the level of the town, except for arrangements of local interchange . . . might it work?
Da Vinci made it seem like it might. The south arc of the rim was alive with arcades and wedge-shaped pavilions and the like, now all shot through with sunlight. Sax toured the whole complex one morning, visiting one lab after the next, and congratulating the occupants on the success of their preparations for a smooth removal of UNTA from Mars. Some political power came out of the end of a gun, after all, and some out of the look in the eye; and the look in the eye changed depending on whether a gun was pointed at it or not. They had spiked the guns, these people the saxaclones, and so they were in high spirits--- happy to see him, and already looking for different work--- back to basic research, or figuring out uses for the new materials that Spencer's alchemists were constantly churning out; or studying the terraforming problem.
They were also paying attention to what was going on in space and on Earth. A fast shuttle from Earth, contents unknown, had contacted them requesting permission to make an orbital insertion without a keg of nails being thrown in its way. So a Da Vinci team was now nervously working out security protocols, in heavy consultation with the Swiss embassy, which had taken an office in a suite of apartments at the northwest end of the arc. From rebels to administrators; it was an awkward transition.
"What political parties do we support?" Sax asked.
"I don't know. The usual array I guess."
"No party gets much support. Whatever works, you know."
Sax knew. That was the old tech position, held ever since scientists had become a class in society, a priest caste almost, intervening between the people and their power. They were apolitical, supposedly, like civil servants--- empiricists, who only wanted things managed in a rational scientific style, the greatest good for the greatest number, which ought to be fairly simple to arrange, if people were not so trapped in emotions, religions, governments, and other mass delusional systems of that sort.
The standard scientist politics, in other words. Sax had once tried to explain this outlook to Desmond, causing his friend for some reason to laugh prodigiously, even though it made perfect sense. Well, it was a bit naive, therefore a bit comical, he supposed; and like a lot of funny things, it could be that it was hilarious right up to the moment it turned horrible. Because it was an attitude that had kept scientists from going at politics in any useful way for centuries now; and dismal centuries they had been.
But now they were on a planet where political power came out of the end of a mesocosm aerating fan. And the people in charge of that great gun (holding the elements at bay) were at least partly in charge. If they cared to exercise the power.
Gently Sax reminded people of this when he visited them in their labs; and then to ease their discomfort with the idea of politics, he talked to them about the terraforming problem. And when he finally got ready to leave for Sabishii, about sixty of them were willing to come with him, to see how things were going down there. "Sax's alternative to Pavonis," he heard one of the lab techs describe the trip. Which was not a bad thought.
• • •
Sabishii was located on the western side of a five-kilometer-high prominence called the Tyrrhena massif; south of Jarry-Desloges Crater, in the ancient highlands between Isidis and Hellas, centered at longitude 275 degrees, latitude 15 degrees south. A reasonable choice for a tent-town site, as it had long views to the west, and low hills backing it to the east, like moors. But when it came to living in the open air, or growing plants out in the rocky countryside, it was a bit high; in fact it was, if you excluded the very much larger bulges of Tharsis and Elysium, the highest region on Mars, a kind of bioregion island, which the Sabishiians had been cultivating for decades.
They proved to be severely disappointed by the loss of the big mirrors, one might even say thrown into emergency mode, an all-out effort to do what they could to protect the plants of the biome; but it was precious little. Sax's old colleague Nanao Nakayama shook his head. "Winterkill will be very bad. Like ice age."
"I'm hoping we can compensate for the loss of light," Sax said. "Thicken the atmosphere, add greenhouse gases--- it's possible we could do some of that with more bacteria and suralpine plants, right?"
"Some," Nanao said dubiously. "A lot of niches are already full. The niches are quite small."
They settled in over a meal to talk about it. All the techs from Da Vinci were there in the big dining hall of The Claw, and many Sabishiians were there to greet them. It was a long, interesting, friendly talk. The Sabishiians were living in the mound maze of their mohole, behind one talon of the dragon figure it made, so that they didn't have to look at the burned ruins of their city when they weren't working on it. The rebuilding was much reduced now, as most of them were out dealing with the results of the mirror loss. Nanao said to Tariki, in what was clearly the continuation of a long-standing argument, "It makes no sense to rebuild it as a tent city anyway. We might as well wait, and build it in open air."
"That may be a long wait," Tariki said, glancing at Sax. "We're near the top of the viability atmosphere named in the Dorsa Brevia document."
Nanao looked at Sax. "We want Sabishii under any limit that is set."
Sax nodded, shrugged; he didn't know what to say. The Reds would not like it. But if the viable altitude limit was raised a kilometer or so, it would give the Sabishiians this massif, and make little difference on the larger bulges--- so it seemed to make sense. But who knew what they would decide on Pavonis? He said, "Maybe we should focus now on trying to keep atmospheric pressures from dropping."
They looked somber.
Sax said, "You'll take us out and show us the massif?"
They cheered up. "Most happy."
• • •
The land of the Tyrrhena massif was what the areologists in the early years had called the "dissected unit" of the southern highlands, which was much the same as the "cratered unit," but further broken by small channel networks. The lower and more typical highlands surrounding the massif also contained areas of "ridged unit" and "hilly unit." In fact, as quickly became obvious the morning they drove out onto the land, all aspects of the rough terrain of the southern highlands were on view, often all at once: cratered, broken, uneven, ridged, dissected, and hilly land, the quintessential Noachian landscape. Sax and Nanao and Tariki sat on the observation deck of one of the Sabishii University rovers; they could see other cars carrying other colleagues, and there were teams out walking ahead of them. On the last hills before the horizon to the east, a few energetic people were fell-running. The hollows of the land were all lightly dusted with dirty snow. The massif was centered fifteen degrees south of the equator, and they got a fair bit of precipitation around Sabishii, Nanao said. The southeast side of the massif was drier, but here, the cloud masses pushed south over the ice in Isidis Planitia and climbed the slope and dropped their loads.
Indeed, as they drove uphill great waves of dark cloud rolled in from the northwest, pouring over them as if chasing the fell-runners. Sax shuddered, remembering his recent exposure to the elements; he was happy to be in a rover, and felt he would need only short walks away from it to be satisfied.
Eventually, however, they stopped on a high point in a low old ridge, and got out. They made their way over a surface littered with boulders and knobs, cracks, sand drifts, very small craters, breadloafed bedrock, scarps and alases, and the old shallow channels that gave the dissected unit its name. In truth there were deformational features of every kind to be seen, for the land here was four billion years old. A lot had happened to it, but nothing had ever happened to destroy it completely and clean the slate, so all four billion years were still there to be seen, in a veritable museum of rockscapes. It had been thoroughly pulverized in the Noachian, leaving regolith several kilometers deep, and craters and deformities that no aeolian stripping could remove. And during this early period the other side of the planet had had its lithosphere to a depth of six kilometers blasted into space by the so-called Big Hit; a fair amount of that ejecta had eventually landed in the south. That was the explanation for the Great Escarpment, and the lack of ancient highlands in the north; and one more factor in the extremely disordered look of this land.
Then also, at the end of the Hesperian had come the brief warm wet period, when water had occasionally run on the surface. These days most areologists thought that this period had been quite wet but not really very warm, annual averages of well under 273Âdeg; Kelvin still allowing for surface water sometimes, replenished by hydrothermal convection rather than precipitation. This period had lasted for only a hundred million years or so, according to current estimates, and it had been followed by billions of years of winds, in the arid cold Amazonian Age, which had lasted right up to the point of their arrival. "Is there a name for the age starting with m-1?" Sax asked.
"The Holocene."
And then lastly, everything had been scoured by two billion years of ceaseless wind, scoured so hard that the older craters were completely rimless, everything stripped at by the relentless winds strata by strata, leaving behind a wilderness of rock. Not chaos, technically speaking, but wild, speaking its unimaginable age in polyglot profusion, in rimless craters and etched mesas, dips, hummocks, escarpments, and oh so many blocky pitted rocks.
Often they stopped the rover and walked around. Even small mesas seemed to tower over them. Sax found himself staying near their rover, but nevertheless he came upon all kinds of interesting features. Once he discovered a rover-shaped rock, cracked vertically all the way through. To the left of the block, off to the west, he had a view to a distant horizon, the rocky land out there a smooth yellow glaze. To the right, the waist-high wall of some old fault, pocked as if by cuneiform. Then a sand drift bordered by ankle-high rocks, some of them pyramidal dark basaltic ventifacts, others lighter pitted granulated rocks. There a balanced shattercone, big as any dolmen. There a sand tail. There a crude circle of ejecta, like an almost completely weathered Stonehenge. There a deep snake-shaped hollow--- the fragment of a watercourse, perhaps--- behind it another gentle rise--- then a distant prominence like a lion's head. The prominence next to it was like the lion's body.
In the midst of all this stone and sand, plant life was unobtrusive. At least at first. One had to look for it, to pay close attention to color, above all else to green, green in all its shades, but especially its desert shades--- sage, olive, khaki, and so on. Nanao and Tariki kept pointing out specimens he hadn't seen. Closer he looked, and closer again. Once attuned to the pale living colors, which blended so well with the ferric land, they began to jump out from the rust and brown and umber and ocher and black of the rockscape. Hollows and cracks were likely places to see them, and near the shaded patches of snow. The closer he looked, the more he saw; and then, in one high basin, it seemed there were plants tucked everywhere. In that moment he understood; it was all fellfield, the whole Tyrrhena massif.
Then, coating entire rockfaces, or covering the inside areas of drip catchments, were the dayglow greens of certain lichens, and the emerald or dark velvet greens of the mosses. Wet fur.
The diversicolored palette of the lichen array; the dark green of pine needles. Bunched sprays of Hokkaido pines, foxtail pines, Sierra junipers. Life's colors. It was somewhat like walking from one great roofless room to another, over ruined walls of stone. A small plaza; a kind of winding gallery; a vast ballroom; a number of tiny interlocked chambers; a sitting room. Some rooms held krummholz bansei against their low walls, the trees no higher than their nooks, gnarled by wind, cut along the top at the snow level. Each branch, each plant, each open room, as shaped as any bonsai--- and yet effortless.
Actually, Nanao told him, most of the basins were intensively cultivated. "This basin was planted by Abraham." Each little region was the responsibility of a certain gardener or gardening group.
"Ah!" Sax said. "And fertilized, then?"
Tariki laughed. "In a manner of speaking. The soil itself has been imported, for the most part."
"I see."
This explained the diversity of plants. A little bit of cultivation, he knew, had been done around Arena Glacier, where he had first encountered the fellfields. But here they had gone far beyond those early steps. Labs in Sabishii, Tariki told him, were trying their best to manufacture topsoil. A good idea; soil in fellfields appeared naturally at a rate of only a few centimeters a century. But there were reasons for this, and manufacturing soil was proving to be extremely difficult.
Still, "We pick up a few million years at the start," Nanao said. "Evolve from there." They hand-planted many of their specimens, it seemed, then for the most part left them to their fate, and watched what developed.
"I see," Sax said.
He looked more closely yet. The clear dim light: it was true that each great open room displayed a slightly different array of species. "These are gardens, then."
"Yes . . . or things like that. Depends."
Some of the gardeners, Nanao said, worked according to the precepts of Muso Soseki, others according to other Japanese Zen masters; others still to Fu Hsi, the legendary inventor of the Chinese system of geomancy called-feng shui; others to Persian gardening gurus, including Omar Khayyam; or to Leopold or Jackson, or other early American ecologists, like the nearly forgotten biologist Oskar Schnelling; and so on.
These were influences only, Tariki added. As they did the work, they developed visions of their own. They followed the inclination of the land, as they saw that some plants prospered, and others died. Coevolution, a kind of epigenetic development.
"Nice," Sax said, looking around. For the adepts, the walk from Sabishii up onto the massif must have been an aesthetic journey, filled with allusions and subtle variants of tradition that were invisible to him. Hiroko would have called it areoformation, or the areophany. "I'd like to visit your soil labs."
"Of course."
They returned to the rover, drove on. Late in the day, under dark threatening clouds, they came to the very top of the massif, which turned out to be a kind of broad undulating moor. Small ravines were filled with pine needles, sheered off by winds so that they looked like the blades of grass on a well-mowed yard. Sax and Tariki and Nanao again got out of the car, walked around. The wind cut through their suits, and the late-afternoon sun broke out from under the dark cloud cover, casting their shadows all the way out to the horizon. Up here on the moors there were many big masses of smooth bare bedrock; looking around, the landscape had the red primal look Sax remembered from the earliest years; but then they would walk to the edge of a small ravine, and suddenly be looking down into green.
Tariki and Nanao talked about ecopoesis, which for them was terraforming redefined, subtilized, localized. Transmuted into something like Hiroko's areoformation. No longer powered by heavy industrial global methods, but by the slow, steady, and intensely local process of working on individual patches of land. "Mars is all a garden. Earth too for that matter. This is what humans have become. So we have to think about gardening, about that level of responsibility to the land. A human-Mars interface that does justice to both."
Sax waggled a hand uncertainly. "I'm used to thinking of Mars as a kind of wilderness," he said, as he looked up the etymology of the word garden. French, Teutonic, Old Norse, gard, enclosure. Seemed to share origins with guard, or keeping. But who knew what the supposedly equivalent word in Japanese meant. Etymology was hard enough without translation thrown into the mix. "You know--- get things started, let loose the seeds, then watch it all develop on its own. Self-organizing ecologies, you know."
"Yes," Tariki said, "but wilderness too is a garden now. A kind of garden. That's what it means to be what we are." He shrugged, his forehead wrinkled; he believed the idea was true, but did not seem to like it. "Anyway, ecopoesis is closer to your vision of wilderness than industrial terraforming ever was."
"Maybe," Sax said. "Maybe they're just two stages of a process. Both necessary."
Tariki nodded, willing to consider it. "And now?"
"It depends on how we want to deal with the possibility of an ice age," Sax said. "If it's bad enough, kills off enough plants, then ecopoesis won't have a chance. The atmosphere could freeze back onto the surface, the whole process crash. Without the mirrors, I'm not confident that the biosphere is robust enough to continue growing. That's why I want to see those soil labs you have. It may be that industrial work on the atmosphere remains to be done. We'll have to try some modeling and see."
Tariki nodded, and Nanao too. Their ecologies were being snowed under, right before their eyes; flakes drifted down through the transient bronze sunlight at this very moment, tumbling in the wind. They were open to suggestion.
Meanwhile, as throughout these drives, their young associates from Da Vinci and Sabishii were running over the massif together, and returning to Sabishii's mound maze babbling through the night about geomancy and areomancy, ecopoetics, heat exchange, the five elements, greenhouse gases, and so on. A creative ferment that looked to Sax very promising. "Michel should be here," he said to Nanao. "John should be here. How he would love a group like this."
And then it occurred to him: "Ann should be here."
So he went back to Pavonis, leaving the group in Sabishii talking things over.
Back on Pavonis everything was the same. More and more people, spurred on by Art Randolph, were proposing that they hold a constitutional congress. Write an at least provisional constitution, hold a vote on it, then establish the government described.
"Good idea," Sax said. "Perhaps a delegation to Earth as well."
Casting seeds. It was just like on the moors; some would sprout, others wouldn't.
He went looking for Ann, but found she had left Pavonis--- gone, people said, to a Red outpost in Tempe Terra, north of Tharsis. No one went there but Reds, they said.
After some thought Sax asked for Steve's help, and looked up the outpost's location. Then he borrowed a little plane from the Bogdanovists and flew north, past Ascraeus Mons on his left, then down Echus Chasma, and past his old headquarters at Echus Overlook, on top of the huge wall to his right.
Ann too had no doubt flown this route, and thus gone by the first headquarters of the terraforming effort. Terraforming . . . there was evolution in everything, even in ideas. Had Ann noticed Echus Overlook, had she even remembered that small beginning? No way of telling. That was how humans knew each other. Tiny fractions of their lives intersected or were known in any way to anybody else. It was much like living alone in the universe. Which was strange. A justification for living with friends, for marrying, for sharing rooms and lives as much as possible. Not that this made people truly intimate; but it reduced the sensation of solitude. So that one was still sailing solo through the oceans of the world, as in Mary Shelley's The Last Man, a book that had much impressed Sax as a youth, in which the eponymous hero at the conclusion occasionally saw a sail, joined another ship, anchored against a shore, shared a meal--- then voyaged on, alone and solitary. An image of their lives; for every world was as empty as the one Mary Shelley had imagined, as empty as Mars had been in the beginning.
He flew past the blackened curve of Kasei Vallis without noting it at all.
• • •
The Reds had long ago hollowed out a rock the size of a city block, in a promontory that served as the last dividing wedge in the intersection of two of the Tempe Fossa, just south of Perepelkin Crater. Windows under overhangs gave them a view over both of the bare straight canyons, and the larger canyon they made after their confluence. Now all these fossae cut down what had become a coastal plateau; Mareotis and Tempe together formed a huge peninsula of ancient highlands, sticking far into the new ice sea.
Sax landed his little plane on the sandy strip on top of the promontory. From here the ice plains were not visible; nor could he spot any vegetation--- not a tree, not a flower, not even a patch of lichen. He wondered if they had somehow sterilized the canyons. Just primal rock, with a dusting of frost. And nothing they could do about frost, unless they wanted to tent these canyons, to keep air out rather than in. "Hmm," Sax said, startled at the idea.
Two Reds let him in the lock door on the top of the promontory, and he descended stairs with them. The shelter appeared to be nearly empty. Just as well. It was nice only to have to withstand the cold gazes of two young women leading him through the rough-hewn rock galleries of the refuge, rather than a whole gang. Interesting to see Red aesthetics. Very spare, as might be expected--- not a plant to be seen--- just different textures of rock: rough walls, rougher ceilings, contrasted to a polished basalt floor, and the glistening windows overlooking the canyons.
They came to a cliffside gallery that looked like a natural cave, no straighter than the nearly Euclidean lines of the canyon below. There were mosaics inlaid into the back wall, made of bits of colored stone, polished and set against each other without gaps, forming abstract patterns that seemed almost to represent something, if only he could focus properly on them. The floor was a stone parquet of onyx and alabaster, serpentine and bloodstone. The gallery went on and on--- big, dusty--- the whole complex somewhat disused, perhaps. Reds preferred their rovers, and places like this no doubt had been seen as unfortunate necessities. Hidden refuge; with windows shuttered, one could have walked down the canyons right past the place and not known it was there; and Sax felt that this was not just to avoid the notice of the UNTA, but also to be unobtrusive before the land itself, to melt into it.
As Ann seemed to be trying to do, there in a stone window seat. Sax stopped abruptly; lost in his thoughts, he had almost run into her, just as an ignorant traveler might have run into the shelter. A chunk of rock, sitting there. He looked at her closely. She looked ill. One didn't see that much anymore, and the longer Sax looked at her, the more alarmed he became. She had told him, once, that she was no longer taking the longevity treatment. That had been some years before. And during the revolution she had burned like a flame. Now, with the Red rebellion quelled, she was ash. Gray flesh. It was an awful sight. She was somewhere around 150 years old, like all the First Hundred left alive, and without the treatments . . . she would soon die.
Well. Strictly speaking, she was at the physiological equivalent of being seventy or so, depending on when she had last had the treatments. So not that bad. Perhaps Peter would know. But the longer one went between treatments, he had heard, the more problems cropped up, statistically speaking. It made sense. It was only wise to be prudent.
But he couldn't say that to her. In fact, it was hard to think what he could say to her.
Eventually her gaze lifted. She recognized him and shuddered, her lip lifting like a trapped animal's. Then she looked away from him, grim, stone-faced. Beyond anger, beyond hope.
"I wanted to show you some of the Tyrrhena massif," he said lamely.
She got up like a statue rising, and left the room.
Sax, feeling his joints creak with the pseudo-arthritic pain that so often accompanied his dealings with Ann, followed her.
He was trailed in his turn by the two stern-looking young women. "I don't think she wants to talk to you," the taller one informed him.
"Very astute of you," Sax said.
Far down the gallery, Ann was standing before another window: spellbound, or else too exhausted to move. Or part of her did want to talk.
Sax stopped before her.
"I want to get your impressions of it," he said. "Your suggestions for what we might do next. And I have some, some, some areological questions. Of course it could be that strictly scientific questions aren't of interest to you anymore---"
She took a step toward him and struck him on the side of the face. He found himself slumped against the gallery wall, sitting on his butt. Ann was nowhere to be seen. He was being helped to his feet by the two young women, who clearly didn't know whether to cheer or groan. His whole body hurt, more even than his face, and his eyes were very hot, stinging slightly. It seemed he might cry before these two young idiots, who by trailing him were complicating everything enormously; with them around he could not yell or plead, he could not go on his knees and say Ann, please, forgive me. He couldn't.
"Where did she go?" he managed to say.
"She really, really doesn't want to talk to you," the tall one declared.
"Maybe you should wait and try later," the other advised.
"Oh shut up!" Sax said, suddenly feeling an irritation so vehement that it was like rage. "I suppose you would just let her stop taking the treatment and kill herself!"
"It's her right," the tall one pontificated.
"Of course it is. I wasn't speaking of rights. I was speaking of how a friend should behave when someone is suicidal. Not a subject you are likely to know anything about. Now help me find her."
"You're no friend of hers."
"I most certainly am." He was on his feet. He staggered a little as he tried to walk in the direction he thought she had gone. One of the young women tried to take his elbow. He avoided the help and went on. There Ann was, in the distance, collapsed in a chair, in some kind of dining chamber, it seemed. He approached her, slowing like Apollo in Zeno's paradox.
She swiveled and glared at him.
"It's you who abandoned science, right from the start," she snarled. "So don't you give me that shit about not being interested in science!"
"True," Sax said. "It's true." He held out both hands. "But now I need advice. Scientific advice. I want to learn. And I want to show you some things as well."
But after a moment's consideration she was up and off again, right past him, so that he flinched despite himself. He hurried after her; her gait was much longer than his, and she was moving fast, so that he had to almost jog. His bones hurt.
"Perhaps we could go out here," Sax suggested. "It doesn't matter where we go out."
"Because the whole planet is wrecked," she muttered.
"You must still go out for sunsets occasionally," Sax persisted. "I could join you for that, perhaps."
"No."
"Please, Ann." She was a fast walker, and enough taller than him that it was hard to keep up with her and talk as well. He was huffing and puffing, and his cheek still hurt. "Please, Ann."
She did not answer, she did not slow down. Now they were walking down a hall between suites of living quarters, and Ann sped up to go through a doorway and slam the door behind her. Sax tried it; it was locked.
Not, on the whole, a promising beginning.
Hound and hind. Somehow he had to change things so that it was not a hunt, a pursuit. Nevertheless: "I huff, I puff, I blow your house down," he muttered. He blew at the door. But then the two young women were there, staring hard at him.
• • •
One evening later that week, near sunset, he went down to the changing room and suited up. When Ann came in he jumped several centimeters. "I was just going out?" he stammered. "Is that okay with you?"
"It's a free country," she said heavily.
And they went out the lock together, into the land. The young women would have been amazed.
• • •
He had to be very careful. Naturally, although he was out there with her to show to her the beauty of the new biosphere, it would not do to mention plants, or snow, or clouds. One had to let things speak for themselves. This was perhaps true of all phenomena. Nothing could be spoken for. One could only walk over the land, and let it speak for itself.
Ann was not gregarious. She barely spoke to him. It was her usual route, he suspected as he followed her. He was being allowed to come along.
It was perhaps permissible to ask questions: this was science. And Ann stopped often enough, to look at rock formations up close. It made sense at those times to crouch beside her, and with a gesture or a word ask what she was finding. They wore suits and helmets, even though the altitude was low enough to have allowed breathing with only the aid of a CO2 filter mask. Thus conversations consisted of voices in the ear, as of old. Asking questions.
So he asked. And Ann would answer, sometimes in some detail. Tempe Terra was indeed the Land of Time, its basement material a surviving piece of the southern highlands, one of those lobes of it that stuck far into the northern plains--- a survivor of the Big Hit. Then later Tempe had fractured extensively, as the lithosphere was pushed up from below by the Tharsis Bulge to the south. These fractures included both the Mareotis Fossae and the Tempe Fossa surrounding them now.
The spreading land had cracked enough to allow some latecomer volcanoes to emerge, spilling over the canyons. From one high ridge they saw a distant volcano like a black cone dropped from the sky; then another, looking just like a meteor crater as far as Sax could see. Ann shook her head at this observation, and pointed out lava flows and vents, features all visible once they were pointed out, but not at all obvious under a scree of later ejecta rubble and (one had to admit it) a dusting of dirty snow, collecting like sand drifts in wind shelters, turning sand-colored in the sunset light.
To see the landscape in its history, to read it like a text, written by its own long past; that was Ann's vision, achieved by a century's close observation and study, and by her own native gift, her love for it. Something to behold, really--- something to marvel at. A kind of resource, or treasure--- a love beyond science, or something into the realm of Michel's mystical science. Alchemy. But alchemists wanted to change things. A kind of oracle, rather. A visionary, with a vision just as powerful as Hiroko's, really. Less obviously visionary, perhaps, less spectacular, less active; an acceptance of what was there; love of rock, for rock's sake. For Mars's sake. The primal planet, in all its sublime glory, red and rust, still as death; dead; altered through the years only by matter's chemical permutations, the immense slow life of geophysics. It was an odd concept--- abiologic life--- but there it was, if one cared to see it, a kind of living, out there spinning, moving through the stars that burned, moving through the universe in its great systolic/diastolic movement, its one big breath, one might say. Sunset somehow made it easier to see that.
Trying to see things Ann's way. Glancing furtively at his wristpad, behind her back. Stone, from Old English stán, cognates everywhere, back to proto-Indo-European sti, a pebble. Rock, from medieval Latin rocca, origin unknown; a mass of stone. Sax abandoned the wristpad and fell away into a kind of rock reverie, open and blank. Tabula rasa, to the point where apparently he did not hear what Ann herself was saying to him; for she snorted and walked on. Abashed, he followed, and steeled himself to ignore her displeasure, and ask more questions.
There seemed to be a lot of displeasure in Ann. In a way this was reassuring; lack of affect would have been a very bad sign; but she still seemed quite emotional. At least most of the time. Sometimes she focused on the rock so intently it was almost like watching her obsessed enthusiasm of old, and he was encouraged; other times it seemed she was just going through the motions, doing areology in a desperate attempt to stave off the present moment; stave off history; or despair; or all of that. In those moments she was aimless, and did not stop to look at obviously interesting features they passed, and did not answer his questions about same. The little Sax had read about depression alarmed him; not much could be done, one needed drugs to combat it, and even then nothing was sure. But to suggest antidepressants was more or less the same as suggesting the treatment itself; and so he could not speak of it. And besides, was despair the same as depression?
Happily, in this context, plants were pitifully few. Tempe was not like Tyrrhena, or even the banks of the Arena Glacier. Without active gardening, this was what one got. The world was still mostly rock.
On the other hand, Tempe was low in altitude, and humid, with the ice ocean just a few kilometers to the north and west. And various Johnny Appleseed flights had passed over the entire southern shoreline of the new sea--- part of Biotique's efforts, begun some decades ago, when Sax had been in Burroughs. So there was some lichen to be seen, if you looked hard. And small patches of fellfield. And a few krummholz trees, half-buried in snow. All these plants were in trouble in this northern summer-turned-winter, except for the lichen of course. There was a fair bit of miniaturized fall color already, there in the tiny leaves of the ground-hugging koenigia, and pygmy buttercup, and icegrass, and, yes, arctic saxifrage. The reddening leaves served as a kind of camouflage in the ambient redrock; often Sax didn't see plants until he was about to step on them. And of course he didn't want to draw Ann's attention to them anyway, so when he did stumble on one, he gave it a quick evaluative glance and walked on.
They climbed a prominent knoll overlooking the canyon west of the refuge, and there it was: the great ice sea, all orange and brass in the late light. It filled the lowland in a great sweep and formed its own smooth horizon, from southwest to northeast. Mesas of the fretted terrain now stuck out of the ice like sea stacks or cliffsided islands. In truth this part of Tempe was going to be one of the most dramatic coastlines on Mars, with the lower ends of some fossae filling to become long fjords or lochs. And one coastal crater was right at sea level, and had a break in its sea side, making it a perfect round bay some fifteen kilometers across, with an entry channel about two kilometers across. Farther south, the fretted terrain at the foot of the Great Escarpment would create a veritable Hebrides of an archipelago, many of the islands visible from the cliffs of the mainland. Yes, a dramatic coastline. As one could see already, looking at the broken sheets of sunset ice.
But of course this was not to be noted. No mention at all of the ice, the jagged bergs jumbled on the new shoreline. The bergs had been formed by some process Sax wasn't aware of, though he was curious--- but it could not be discussed. One could only stand in silence, as if having stumbled into a cemetery.
Embarrassed, Sax knelt to look at a specimen of Tibetan rhubarb he had almost stepped on. Little red leaves, in a floret from a central red bulb.
Ann was looking over his shoulder. "Is it dead?"
"No." He pulled off a few dead leaves from the exterior of the floret, showed her the brighter ones beneath. "It's hardening for the winter already. Fooled by the drop in light." Then Sax went on, as if to himself: "A lot of the plants will die, though. The thermal overturn," which was when air temperatures turned colder than the ground temperatures, "came more or less overnight. There won't be much chance for hardening. Thus lots of winterkill. Plants are better at handling it than animals would have been. And insects are surprisingly good, considering they're little containers of liquid. They have supercooling cryoprotectants. They can stand whatever happens, I think."
Ann was still inspecting the plant, and so Sax shut up. It's alive, he wanted to say. Insofar as the members of a biosphere depend on each other for existence, it is part of your body. How can you hate it?
But then again, she wasn't taking the treatment.
The ice sea was a shattered blaze of bronze and coral. The sun was setting, they would have to get back. Ann straightened and walked away, a black silhouette, silent. He could speak in her ear, even now when she was a hundred meters away, then two hundred, a small black figure in the great sweep of the world. He did not; it would have been an invasion of her privacy, almost of her thoughts. But how he wondered what those thoughts were. How he longed to say Ann, Ann, what are you thinking? Talk to me, Ann. Share your thoughts.
The intense desire to talk with someone, sharp as any pain; this was what people meant when they talked about love. Or rather; this was what Sax would acknowledge to be love. Just the super-heightened desire to share thoughts. That alone. Oh Ann, please talk to me.
• • •
But she did not talk to him. On her the plants seemed not to have had the effect they had had on him. She seemed truly to abominate them, these little emblems of her body, as if viriditas were no more than a cancer that the rock must suffer. Even though in the growing piles of wind-drifted snow, plants were scarcely visible anymore. It was getting dark, another storm was sweeping in, low over the black-and-copper sea. A pad of moss, a lichened rockface; mostly it was rock alone, just as it had ever been. Nevertheless.
Then as they were getting back into the refuge lock, Ann fell in a faint. On the way down she hit her head on the doorjamb. Sax caught her body as she was landing on a bench against the inner wall. She was unconscious, and Sax half carried her, half dragged her all the way into the lock. Then he pulled the outer door shut, and when the lock was pumped, pulled her through the inner door into the changing room. He must have been shouting over the common band, because by the time he got her helmet off, five or six Reds were there in the room, more than he had seen in the refuge so far. One of the young women who had so impeded him, the short one, turned out to be the medical person of the station, and when they got Ann up onto a rolling table that could be used as a gurney, this woman led the way to the refuge's medical clinic, and there took over. Sax helped where he could, getting Ann's walker boots off her long feet with shaking hands. His pulse rate--- he checked his wristpad--- was 145 beats a minute--- and he felt hot, even lightheaded.
"Has she had a stroke?" he said. "Has she had a stroke?"
The short woman looked surprised. "I don't think so. She fainted. Then struck her head."
"But why did she faint?"
"I don't know."
She looked at the tall young woman, who sat next to the door. Sax understood that they were the senior authorities in the refuge. "Ann left instructions for us not to put her on any kind of life-support mechanism, if she were ever incapacitated like this."
"No," Sax said.
"Very explicit instructions. She forbade it. She wrote it down."
"You put her on whatever it takes to keep her alive," Sax said, his voice harsh with strain. Everything he had said since Ann's collapse had been a surprise to him; he was a witness to his actions just as much as they were. He heard himself say, "It doesn't mean you have to keep her on it, if she doesn't come around. It's just a reasonable minimum, to make sure she doesn't go for nothing."
The doctor rolled her eyes at this distinction, but the tall woman sitting in the doorway looked thoughtful.
Sax heard himself go on: "I was on life support for some four days, as I understand it, and I'm glad no one decided to turn it off. It's her decision, not yours. Anyone who wants to die can do it without having to make a doctor compromise her Hippocratic oath."
The doctor rolled her eyes even more disgustedly than before. But with a glance at her colleague, she began to pull Ann onto the life-support bed; Sax helped her; and then she was turning on the medical AI, and getting Ann out of her walker. A rangy old woman, now breathing with an oxygen mask over her face. The tall woman stood and began to help the doctor, and Sax went and sat down. His own physiological symptoms were amazingly severe, marked chiefly by heat all through him, and a kind of incompetent hyperventilation; and an ache that made him want to cry.
After a time the doctor came over. Ann had fallen into a coma, she said. It looked like a small heart-rhythm abnormality had caused her to faint in the first place. She was stable at the moment.
Sax sat in the room. Much later the doctor returned. Ann's wristpad had recorded an episode of rapid irregular heartbeat, at the time she fainted. Now there was still a small arrhythmia. And apparently anoxia, or the blow to the head, or both, had initiated a coma.
Sax asked what exactly a coma was, and felt a sinking feeling when the doctor shrugged. It was a catchall term, apparently, for unconscious states of a certain kind. Pupils fixed, body insensitive, and sometimes locked into decorticate postures. Ann's left arm and leg were twisted. And unconsciousness of course. Sometimes odd vestiges of responsiveness, clenching hands and the like. Duration of coma varied widely. Some people never came out of them.
Sax looked at his hands until the doctor left him alone. He sat in the room until everyone else was gone. Then he got up and stood at Ann's side, looking down at her masked face. Nothing to be done. He held her hand; it did not clench. He held her head, as he had been told Nirgal had held his when he was unconscious. It felt like a useless gesture.
He went to the AI screen, and called up the diagnostic program. He called up Ann's medical data, and ran back the heart monitor data from the incident in the lock. A small arrhythmia, yes; rapid, irregular pattern. He fed the data into the diagnostic program, and looked up heart arrhythmia on his own. There were a lot of aberrant cardiac rhythm patterns, but it appeared that Ann might have a genetic predisposition to suffer from a disorder called long QT syndrome, named for a characteristic abnormal long wave in the electrocardiogram. He called up Ann's genome, and instructed the AI to run a search in the relevant regions of chromosomes 3, 7, and 11. In the gene called HERG, in her chromosome 7, the AI identified a small mutation: one reversal of adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine. Small, but HERG contained instructions for the assembly of a protein that served as a potassium ion channel in the surface of heart cells, and these ion channels acted as a switch to turn off contracting heart cells. Without this brake the heart could go arrhythmic, and beat too fast to pump blood effectively.
Ann also appeared to have another problem, with a gene on chromosome 3 called SCN5A. This gene encoded a different regulatory protein, which provided a sodium ion channel on the surface of heart cells. This channel functioned as an accelerator, and mutations here could add to the problem of rapid heartbeat. Ann had a CG bit missing.
These genetic conditions were rare, but for the diagnostic AI that was not an issue. It contained a symptomology for all known problems, no matter how rare. It seemed to consider Ann's case to be fairly straightforward, and it listed the treatments that existed to counteract the problems presented by the condition. There were a lot of them.
One of the treatments suggested was the recoding of the problem genes, in the course of the standard gerontological treatments. Persistent gene recodings through several longevity treatments should erase the cause of the problem right at the root, or rather in the seed. It seemed strange that this hadn't been done already, but then Sax saw that the recommendation was only about two decades old; it came from a period after the last time Ann had taken the treatments.
For a long time Sax sat there, staring at the screen. Much later he got up. He began to inspect the Reds' medical clinic, instrument by instrument, room by room. The nursing attendants let him wander; they thought he was distraught.
This was a major Red refuge, and it seemed likely to him that one of the rooms might contain the equipment necessary to administer the gerontological treatments. Indeed it was so. A small room at the back of the clinic appeared to be devoted to the process. It didn't take much: a bulky AI, a small lab, the stock proteins and chemicals, the incubators, the MRIs, the IV equipment. Amazing, when you considered what it did. But that had always been true. Life itself was amazing: simple protein sequences only, at the start, and yet here they were.
So. The main AI had Ann's genome record. But if he ordered this lab to start synthesizing her DNA strands for her (adding the recodings of HERG and SCN5A) the people here would surely notice. And then there would be trouble.
He went back to his tiny room to make a coded call to Da Vinci. He asked his associates there to start the synthesis, and they agreed without any questions beyond the technical ones. Sometimes he loved those saxaclones with all his heart.
After that it was back to waiting. Hours passed; more hours; more hours. Eventually several days had passed, with no change in Ann. The doctor's expression grew blacker and blacker, though she said nothing more about unhooking Ann. But it was in her eye. Sax took to sleeping on the floor in Ann's room. He grew to know the rhythm of her breathing. He spent a lot of time with a hand cradling her head, as Michel had told him Nirgal had done with him. He very much doubted that this had ever cured anybody of anything, but he did it anyway. Sitting for so long in such a posture, he had occasion to think about the brain plasticity treatments that Vlad and Ursula had administered to him after his stroke. Of course a stroke was a very different thing than a coma. But a change of mind was not necessarily a bad thing, if one's mind was in pain.
More days passed without a change, each day slower and blanker and more fearful than the one before. The incubators in the Da Vinci labs had long since cooked up a full set of corrected Ann-specific DNA strands, and antisense reinforcers, and glue-ons--- the whole gerontological package, in its latest configuration.
So one night he called up Ursula, and had a long consultation with her. She answered his questions calmly, even as she struggled with the idea of what he wanted to do. "The synaptic stimulus package we gave you would produce too much synaptic growth in undamaged brains," she said firmly. "It would alter personality to no set pattern." Creating madmen like Sax, her alarmed look said.
Sax decided to skip the synaptic supplements. Saving Ann's life was one thing, changing her mind another. Random change was not the goal anyway. Acceptance was. Happiness--- Ann's true happiness, whatever that might be--- now so far away, so hard to imagine. He ached to think of it. It was extraordinary how much physical pain could be generated by thought alone--- the limbic system a whole universe in itself, suffused with pain, like the dark matter that suffused everything in the universe.
"Have you talked to Michel?" Ursula asked.
"No. Good idea."
He called Michel, explained what had happened, and what he had in mind to do. "My God, Sax," Michel said, looking shocked. But in only a few moments he was promising to come. He would get Desmond to fly him to Da Vinci to pick up the treatment supplies, and then fly on up to the refuge.
So Sax sat in Ann's room, a hand to her head. A bumpy skull; no doubt a phrenologist would have had a field day.
Then Michel and Desmond were there, his brothers, standing beside him. The doctor was there too, escorting them, and the tall woman and others as well; so everything had to be communicated by looks, or the absence of looks. Nevertheless everything was perfectly clear. Desmond's face was if anything too clear. They had Ann's longevity package with them. They only had to wait their chance.
Which came quite soon; with Ann settled into her coma, the situation in the little hospital was routine. The effects of the longevity treatment on a coma, however, were not fully known; Michel had scanned the literature, and the data were sparse. It had been tried as an experimental treatment in a few unresponsive comas before, and had been successful in rousing victims almost half the time. Because of that Michel now thought it was a good idea.
And so, soon after their arrival, the three of them got up in the middle of the night, and tiptoed past the sleeping attendant in the medical center's anteroom. Medical training had had its usual effect, and the attendant was sound asleep, though awkwardly propped in her chair. Sax and Michel hooked Ann up to the IVs, and stuck the needles in the veins on the backs of her hands, working slowly, carefully, precisely. Quietly. Soon she was hooked up, the IVs were flowing, the new protein strands were in her bloodstream. Her breathing grew irregular, and Sax felt hot with fear. He groaned silently. It was comforting to have Michel and Desmond here, each holding an arm as if supporting him, keeping him from falling; but he wished desperately for Hiroko. This was what she would have done, he was certain of it. Which made him feel better. Hiroko was one of the reasons he was doing this. Still he longed for her support, her physical presence, he wished she would show up to help him like she had on Daedalia Planitia. To help Ann. She was the expert at this kind of radically irresponsible human experimentation, this would have been small potatoes to her. . . .
When the operation was finished, they took out the IV needles and put the equipment away. The attendant slept on, mouth open, looking like the girl she was. Ann was still unconscious, but breathing easier, Sax felt. More strongly.
The three men stood looking down at Ann together. Then they slipped out, and tiptoed back down the hall to their rooms. Desmond was dancing on his toes like a fool, and the other two shushed him. They got back in their beds but couldn't sleep; and couldn't talk; and so lay there silently, like brothers in a big house, late at night, after a successful expedition out into the nocturnal world.
The next morning the doctor came in. "Her vital signs are better."
The three men expressed their pleasure at this.
Later, down in the dining hall, Sax had a strong urge to tell Michel and Desmond about his encounter with Hiroko. The news would mean more to these two than anyone else. But something in him was afraid to do it. He was afraid of seeming overwrought, perhaps even delusional. That moment when Hiroko had left him at the rover, and walked off into the storm--- he didn't know what to think of that. In his long hours with Ann he had done some thinking, and some research, and he knew now that Terran climbers alone at high altitude, suffering from oxygen loss, not infrequently hallucinated companion climbers. Some kind of doppelgänger figure. Rescue by anima. And his air tube had been partially clogged.
He said, "I thought this was what Hiroko would have done."
Michel nodded. "It's bold, I'll hand you that. It has her style. No, don't misunderstand me--- I'm glad you did it."
"About fucking time, if you ask me," said Desmond. "Someone should have tied her down and made her take the treatment years ago. Oh my Sax, my Sax---" He laughed happily. "I only hope she doesn't come to as crazy as you did."
"But Sax had a stroke," Michel said.
"Well," Sax said, concerned to set the record straight, "actually I was somewhat eccentric before."
His two friends nodded, mouths pursed. They were in high spirits, though the situation was still unresolved. Then the tall doctor came in; Ann had come out of her coma.
Sax felt that his stomach was still too contracted by tension to take in food, but he noted that he was disposing of a pile of buttered toast quite handily. Wolfing it down, in fact.
"But she's going to be very angry at you," Michel said.
Sax nodded. It was, alas, probable. Likely, even. A bad thought. He did not want to be struck by her again. Or worse, denied her company.
"You should come with us to Earth," Michel suggested. "Maya and I are going with the delegation, and Nirgal."
"There's a delegation going to Earth?"
"Yes, someone suggested it, and it seems like a good idea. We need to have some representatives right there on Earth talking to them. And by the time we get back from that, Ann will have had time to think it over."
"Interesting," Sax said, relieved at the mere suggestion of an escape from the situation. In fact it was almost frightening how quickly he could think of ten good reasons for going to Earth. "But what about Pavonis, and this conference they're talking about?"
"We can stay part of that by video."
"True." It was just what he had always maintained.
The plan was attractive. He did not want to be there when Ann woke up. Or rather, when she found out what he had done. Cowardice, of course. But still. "Desmond, are you going?"
"Not a fucking chance."
"But you say Maya is going too?" Sax asked Michel.
"Yes."
"Good. The last time I, I, I tried to save a woman's life, Maya killed her."
"What? What--- Phyllis? You saved Phyllis's life?"
"Well--- no. That is to say, I did, but I was also the one who put her in danger in the first place. So I don't think it counts." He tried to explain what had happened that night in Burroughs, with little success. It was fuzzy in his own mind, except for certain vivid horrible moments. "Never mind. It was just a thought. I shouldn't have spoken. I'm. . . ."
"You're tired," Michel said. "But don't worry. Maya will be away from the scene here, and safely under our eye."
Sax nodded. It was sounding better all the time. Give Ann some time to cool off; think it over; understand. Hopefully. And it would be very interesting of course to see conditions on Earth firsthand. Extremely interesting. So interesting that no rational person could pass up the opportunity.
A New Constitution
Prologue
Ants came to Mars as part of the soil project, and soon they were everywhere, as is their way. And so the little red people encountered ants, and they were amazed. These creatures were just the right size to ride, it was like the Native Americans meeting the horse. Tame the things and they would run wild.
Domesticating the ant was no easy matter. The little red scientists had not even believed such creatures were possible, because of surface area-to-volume constraints, but there they were, clumping around like intelligent robots, so the little red scientists had to explain them. To get some help they climbed up into the humans' reference books, and read up on ants. They learned about the ants' pheromones, and they synthesized the ones they needed to control the soldier ants of a particularly small docile red species, and after that, they were in business. Little red cavalry. They charged around everywhere on antback, having a fine old time, twenty or thirty of them on each ant, like pashas on elephants. Look close at enough ants and you'll see them, right there on top.
But the little red scientists continued to read the texts, and learned about human pheromones. They went back to the rest of the little red people, awestruck and appalled. Now we know why these humans are such trouble, they reported. Humans have no more will than these ants we are riding around on. They are giant meat ants.
The little red people tried to comprehend such a travesty of life.
Then a voice said No they're not, to all of them at once. The little red people talk to each other telepathically, you see, and this was like a telepathic loudspeaker announcement. Humans are spiritual beings, this voice insisted.
How do you know? the little red people asked telepathically. Who are you? Are you the ghost of John Boone?
I am the Gyatso Rimpoche, the voice answered. The eighteenth reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. I am traveling the Bardo in search of my next reincarnation. I've looked everywhere on Earth, but I've had no luck, and I decided to look somewhere new. Tibet is still under the thumb of the Chinese, and they show no signs of letting up. The Chinese, although I love them dearly, are hard bastards. And the other governments of the world long ago turned their backs on Tibet. So no one will challenge the Chinese. Something needs to be done. So I came to Mars.
Good idea, the little red people said.
Yes, the Dalai Lama agreed, but I must admit I am having a hard time finding a new body to inhabit. For one thing there are very few children anywhere. Then also it does not look like anyone is interested. I looked in Sheffield but everyone was too busy talking. I went to Sabishii but everyone there had their heads stuck in the dirt. I went to Elysium but everyone had assumed the lotus position and could not be roused. I went to Christianopolis but everyone there had other plans. I went to Hiranyagarba but everyone there said we've already done enough for Tibet. I've gone everywhere on Mars, to every tent and station, and everywhere people are just too busy. No one wants to be the nineteenth Dalai Lama. And the Bardo is getting colder and colder.
Good luck, the little red people said. We've been looking ever since John died and we haven't even found anyone worth talking to, much less living inside. These big people are all messed up.
The Dalai Lama was discouraged by this response. He was getting very tired, and could not last much longer in the Bardo. So he said, What about one of you?
Well, sure, the little red people said. We'd be honored. Only it will have to be all of us at once. We do everything like that together.
Why not? said the Dalai Lama, and he transmigrated into one of the little red specks, and that same instant he was there in all of them, all over Mars. The little red people looked up at the humans crashing around above them, a sight which before they had tended to regard as some kind of bad wide-screen movie, and now they found they were filled with all the compassion and wisdom of the eighteen previous lives of the Dalai Lama. They said to each other, Ka wow, these people really are messed up. We thought it was bad before, but look at that, it's even worse than we thought. They're lucky they can't read each other's minds or they'd kill each other. That must be why they're killing each other--- they know what they're thinking themselves, and so they suspect all the others. How ugly. How sad.
They need your help, the Dalai Lama said inside them all. Maybe you can help them.
Maybe, the little red people said. They were dubious, to tell the truth. They had been trying to help humans ever since John Boone died, they had set up whole towns in the porches of every ear on the planet, and talked continuously ever since, sounding very much like John had, trying to get people to wake up and act decent, and never with any effect at all, except to send a lot of people to ear nose and throat specialists. Lots of people on Mars thought they had tinnitus, but no one ever understood their little red people. It was enough to discourage anyone.
But now the little red people had the compassionate spirit of the Dalai Lama infusing them, and so they decided to try one more time. Perhaps it will take more than whispering in their ears, the Dalai Lama pointed out, and they all agreed. We'll have to get their attention some other way.
Have you tried your telepathy on them? the Dalai Lama asked.
Oh no, they said. No way. Too scary. The ugliness might kill us on the spot. Or at least make us real sick.
Maybe not, the Dalai Lama said. Maybe if you blocked off your reception of what they thought, and just beamed your thoughts at them, it would be all right. Just send lots of good thoughts, like an advice beam. Compassion, love, agreeableness, wisdom, even a little common sense.
We'll give it a try, the little red people said. But we're all going to have to shout at the top of our telepathic voices, all in chorus, because these folks just aren't listening.
I've faced that for nine centuries now, the Dalai Lama said. You get used to it. And you little ones have the advantage of numbers. So give it a try.
And so all the little red people all over Mars looked up and took a deep breath.
Art Randolph was having the time of his life.
Not during the battle for Sheffield, of course--- that had been a disaster, a breakdown of diplomacy, the failure of everything Art had been trying to do--- a miserable few days, in fact, during which he had run around sleeplessly trying to meet with every group he thought might help defuse the crisis, and always with the feeling that it was somehow his fault, that if he had done things right it would not have happened. The fight went right to the brink of torching Mars, as in 2061; for a few hours on the afternoon of the Red assault, it had teetered.
But fallen back. Something--- diplomacy, or the realities of battle (a defensive victory for those on the cable), common sense, sheer chance--- something had tipped things back from the edge.
And with that nightmare interval past, people had returned to east Pavonis in a thoughtful mood. The consequences of failure had been made clear. They needed to agree on a plan. Many of the radical Reds were dead, or escaped into the outback, and the moderate Reds left in east Pavonis, while angry, were at least there. It was a very uncomfortable and uncertain period. But there they were.
So once again Art began flogging the idea of a constitutional congress. He ran around under the big tent through warrens of industrial warehouses and storage zones and concrete dormitories, down broad streets crowded with a museum's worth of heavy vehicles, and everywhere he urged the same thing: constitution. He talked to Nadia, Nirgal, Jackie, Zeyk, Maya, Peter, Ariadne, Rashid, Tariki, Nanao, Sung, and H.
X. Borazjani. He talked to Vlad and Ursula and Marina, and to the Coyote. He talked to a few-score young natives he had never met before, all major players in the recent unrest; there were so many of them it began to seem like a textbook demonstration of the polycephalous nature of mass social movements. And to every head of this new hydra Art made the same case: "A constitution would legitimate us to Earth, and it would give us a framework for settling disputes among ourselves. And we're all gathered here, we could start right away. Some people have plans ready to look at." And with the events of the past week fresh in their minds, people would nod and say "Maybe so," and wander off thinking about it.
Art called up William Fort and told him what he was doing, and got an answer back later the same day. The old man was at a new refugee town in Costa Rica, looking just as distracted as always. "Sounds good," he said. And after that Praxis people were checking with Art daily to see what they could do to help organize things. Art became busier than he had ever been, doing what the Japanese there called nema-washi, the preparations for an event: starting strategy sessions for an organizing group, revisiting everyone he had spoken to before, trying, in effect, to talk to every individual on Pavonis Mons. "The John Boone method," Coyote commented with his cracked laugh. "Good luck!"
Sax, packing his few belongings for the diplomatic mission to Earth, said, "You should invite the, the United Nations."
Sax's adventure in the storm had knocked him back a bit; he tended to stare around at things, as if stunned by a blow to the head. Art said gently, "Sax, we just went to a lot of trouble to kick their butts off this planet."
"Yes," Sax said, staring at the ceiling. "But now co-opt them."
"Co-opt the UN!" Art considered it. Co-opt the United Nations: it had a certain ring to it. It would be a challenge, diplomatically speaking.
• • •
Just before the ambassadors left for Earth, Nirgal came by the Praxis offices to say good-bye. Embracing his young friend, Art was seized with a sudden irrational fear. Off to Earth!
Nirgal was as blithe as ever, his dark brown eyes alight with anticipation. After saying good-bye to the others in the outer office, he sat with Art in an empty corner room of the warehouse.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Art asked.
"Very sure. I want to see Earth."
Art waggled a hand, uncertain what to say.
"Besides," Nirgal added, "someone has to go down there and show them who we are."
"None better for that than you, my friend. But you'll have to watch out for the metanats. Who knows what they'll be up to. And for bad food--- those areas affected by the flood are sure to have problems with sanitation. And disease vectors. And you'll have to be careful about sunstroke, you'll be very susceptible---"
Jackie Boone walked in. Art stopped his travel advisory; Nirgal was no longer listening in any case, but watching Jackie with a suddenly blank expression, as if he had put on a Nirgal mask. And of course no mask could do justice to Nirgal, because the mobility of his face was its essential characteristic; so he did not look like himself at all.
Jackie, of course, saw this instantly. Shut off from her old partner . . . naturally she glared at him. Something had gone awry, Art saw. Both of them had forgotten Art, who would have slipped out of the room if he could have, feeling like he was holding a lightning rod in a storm. But Jackie was still standing in the doorway, and Art did not care to disturb her at that moment.
"So you're leaving us," she said to Nirgal.
"It's just a visit."
"But why? Why now? Earth means nothing to us now."
"It's where we came from."
"It is not. We came from Zygote."
Nirgal shook his head. "Earth is the home planet. We're an extension of it, here. We have to deal with it."
Jackie waved a hand in disgust, or bafflement: "You're leaving just when you're needed here the most!"
"Think of it as an opportunity."
"I will," she snapped. He had made her angry. "And you won't like it."
"But you'll have what you want."
Fiercely she said, "You don't know what I want!"
The hair on the back of Art's neck had raised; lightning was about to strike. He would have said he was an eavesdropper by nature, almost a voyeur in fact; but standing right there in the room was not the same, and he found now there were some things he did not care to witness. He cleared his throat. The other two were startled by his noise. With a waggle of the hand he sidled past Jackie and out the door. Behind him the voices went on--- bitter, accusatory, filled with pain and baffled fury.
• • •
Coyote stared gravely out the windshield as he drove the ambassadors to Earth south to the elevator, with Art sitting beside him. They rolled slowly through the battered neighborhoods that bordered the Socket, in the southwest part of Sheffield where the streets had been designed to handle enormous freight-container gantries, so that things had an ominous Speeresque quality to them, inhuman and gigantic. Sax was explaining once again to Coyote that the trip to Earth would not remove the travelers from the constitutional congress, that they would contribute by vid, that they would not end up like Thomas Jefferson in Paris, missing the whole thing. "We'll be on Pavonis," Sax said, "in all the senses that matter."
"Then everyone will be on Pavonis," Coyote said ominously. He didn't like this trip to Earth for Sax and Maya and Michel and Nirgal; he didn't seem to like the constitutional congress; nothing these days pleased him, he was jumpy, uneasy, irritable. "We're not out of the woods yet," he would mutter, "you mark my words."
Then the Socket stood before them, the cable emerging black and glossy from the great mass of concrete, like a harpoon plunged into Mars by Earthly powers, holding it fast. After identifying themselves the travelers drove right into the complex, down a big straight passageway to the enormous chamber at the center, where the cable came down through the socket's collar, and hovered over a network of pistes crisscrossing the floor. The cable was so exquisitely balanced in its orbit that it never touched Mars at all, but merely hung there with its ten-meter diameter end floating in the middle of the room, the collar in the roof doing no more than stabilizing it; for the rest, its positioning was up to the rockets installed up and down the cable, and, more importantly, to the balance between centrifugal force and gravity which kept it in its areosynchronous orbit.
A row of elevator cars floated in the air like the cable itself, though for a different reason, as they were electromagnetically suspended. One of them levitated over a piste to the cable, and latched onto the track inlaid in the cable's west side, and rose up soundlessly through a valve door in the collar.
The travelers and their escorts got out of their car. Nirgal was withdrawn, already on his way; Maya and Michel excited; Sax his usual self. One by one they hugged Art and Coyote, stretching up to Art, leaning down to Desmond. For a time they all talked at once, staring at each other, trying to comprehend the moment; it was just a trip, but it felt like more than that. Then the four travelers crossed the floor, and disappeared into a jetway leading up into the next elevator car.
After that Coyote and Art stood there, and watched the car float over to the cable and rise through the valve door and disappear. Coyote's asymmetrical face clenched into a most uncharacteristic expression of worry, even fear. That was his son, of course, and three of his closest friends, going to a very dangerous place. Well, it was just Earth; but it felt dangerous, Art had to admit. "They'll be okay," Art said, giving the little man a squeeze on the shoulder. "They'll be stars down there. It'll go fine." No doubt true. In fact he felt better himself at his own reassurances. It was the home planet, after all. Humans were made for it. They would be fine. It was the home planet. But still. . . .
Back in east Pavonis the congress had begun.
It was Nadia's doing, really. She simply started working in the main warehouse on draft passages, and people started joining her, and things snowballed. Once the meetings were going people had to attend or risk losing a say. Nadia shrugged if anyone complained that they weren't ready, that things had to be regularized, that they needed to know more, etc.; "Come on," she said impatiently. "Here we are, we might as well get to it."
So a fluctuating group of about three hundred people began meeting daily in the industrial complex of east Pavonis. The main warehouse, designed to hold piste parts and train cars, was huge, and scores of mobile-walled offices were set up against its walls, leaving the central space open, and available for a roughly circular collection of mismatched tables. "Ah," Art said when he saw it, "the table of tables."
Of course there were people who wanted a list of delegates, so that they knew who could vote, who could speak, and so on. Nadia, who was quickly taking on the role of chairperson, suggested they accept all requests to become a delegation from any Martian group, as long as the group had had some tangible existence before the conference began. "We might as well be inclusive."
The constitutional scholars from Dorsa Brevia agreed that the congress should be conducted by members of voting delegations, and the final result then voted on by the populace at large. Charlotte, who had helped to draft the Dorsa Brevia document twelve m-years before, had led a group since then in working up plans for a government, in anticipation of a successful revolution. They were not the only ones to have done this; schools in South Fossa and at the university in Sabishii had taught courses in the matter, and many of the young natives in the warehouse were well versed in the issues they were tackling. "It's kind of scary," Art remarked to Nadia. "Win a revolution and a bunch of lawyers pop out of the woodwork."
"Always."
Charlotte's group had made a list of potential delegates to a constitutional congress, including all Martian settlements with populations over five hundred. Quite a few people would therefore be represented twice, Nadia pointed out, once by location and again by political affiliation. The few groups not on the list complained to a new committee, which allowed almost all petitioners to join. And Art made a call to Derek Hastings, and extended an invitation to UNTA to join as a delegation as well; the surprised Hastings got back to them a few days later, with a positive response. He would come down the cable himself.
And so after about a week's jockeying, with many other matters being worked on at the same time, they had enough agreement to call for a vote of approval of the delegate list; and because it had been so inclusive, it passed almost unanimously. And suddenly they had a real congress. It was made up of the following delegations, with anywhere from one to ten people in each delegation:
Towns:
Acheron
Nicosia
Cairo
Odessa
Harmakhis Vallis
Sabishii
Christianopolis
Bogdanov Vishniac
Hiranyagarba
Mauss Hyde
New Clarke
Bradbury Point
Sergei Korolyov
DuMartheray Crater
South Station
Sheffield
Senzeni Na
Echus Overlook
Dorsa Brevia
Dao Vallis
South Fossa
Rumi
New Vanuatu
Prometheus
Gramsci
Mareotis
Burroughs refugees organization
Libya Station
Tharsis Tholus
Overhangs
Reull Vallis
southern caravanserai
Nuova Bologna
Nirgal Vallis
Montepulciano
Margaritifer Plinth
Great Escarpment caravanserai
Da Vinci
The Elysian League
Hell's Gate
Political Parties and Other Organizations:
Booneans
Reds
Bogdanovists
Schnellingistas
Marsfirst
Free Mars
The Ka
Praxis
Qahiran Mahjari League
Green Mars
United Nations Transitional Authority
Kakaze
Editorial Board of The Journal of Areological Studies
Space Elevator Authority
Christian Democrats
The Metanational Economic Activity Coordination Committee
Bolognan Neomarxists
Friends of the Earth
Biotique
Séparation de l'Atmosphère
General meetings began in the morning around the table of tables, then moved out in many small working groups to offices in the warehouse, or buildings nearby. Every morning Art showed up early and brewed great pots of coffee, kava, and kavajava, his favorite. It perhaps was not much of a job, given the significance of the enterprise, but Art was happy doing it. Every day he was surprised to see a congress convening at all; and observing the size of it, he felt that helping to get it started was probably going to be his principal contribution. He was not a scholar, and he had few ideas about what a Martian constitution ought to include. Getting people together was what he was good at, and he had done that. Or rather he and Nadia had, for Nadia had stepped in and taken the lead just when they had needed her. She was the only one of the First Hundred on hand who had everyones trust; this gave her a bit of genuine natural authority. Now, without any fuss, without seeming to notice she was doing it, she was exerting that power.
And so now it was Art's great pleasure to become, in effect, Nadia's personal assistant. He arranged her days, and did everything he could to make sure they ran smoothly. This included making a good pot of kavajava first thing every morning, for Nadia was one of many of them fond of that initial jolt toward alertness and general goodwill. Yes, Art thought, personal assistant and drug dispenser, that was his destiny at this point in history. And he was happy. Just watching people look at Nadia was a pleasure in itself. And the way she looked back: interested, sympathetic, skeptical, an edge developing quickly if she thought someone was wasting her time, a warmth kindling if she was impressed by their contribution. And people knew this, they wanted to please her. They tried to keep to the point, to make a contribution. They wanted that particular warm look in her eye. Very strange eyes they were, really, when you looked close: hazel, basically, but flecked with innumerable tiny patches of other colors, yellow, black, green, blue. A mesmerizing quality to them. Nadia focused her full attention on people--- she was willing to believe you, to take your side, to make sure your case didn't get lost in the shuffle; even the Reds, who knew she had been fighting with Ann, trusted her to make sure they were heard. So the work coalesced around her; and all Art really had to do was watch her at work, and enjoy it, and help where he could.
And so the debates began.
• • •
In the first week many arguments concerned simply what a constitution was, what form it should take, and whether they should have one at all. Charlotte called this the metaconflict, the argument about what the argument was about--- a very important matter, she said when she saw Nadia squint unhappily, "because in settling it, we set the limits on what we can decide. If we decide to include economic and social issues in the constitution, for instance, then this is a very different kind of thing than if we stick to purely political or legal matters, or to a very general statement of principles."
To help structure even this debate, she and the Dorsa Brevia scholars had come with a number of different "blank constitutions," which blocked out different kinds of constitutions without actually filling in their contents. These blanks did little, however, to stop the objections of those who maintained that most aspects of social and economic life ought not to be regulated at all. Support for such a "minimal state" came from a variety of viewpoints that otherwise made strange bedfellows: anarchists, libertarians, neotraditional capitalists, certain greens, and so on. To the most extreme of these antistatists, writing up any government at all was a kind of defeat, and they conceived of their role in the congress as making the new government as small as possible.
Sax heard about this argument in one of the nightly calls from Nadia and Art, and he was as willing to think about it seriously as he was anything else. "It's been found that a few simple rules can regulate very complex behavior. There's a classic computer model for flocking birds, for instance, which only has three rules--- keep an equal distance from everyone around you--- don't change speed too fast--- avoid stationary objects. Those will model the flight of a flock quite nicely."
"A computer flock maybe," Nadia scoffed. "Have you ever seen chimney swifts at dusk?"
After a moment Sax's reply arrived: "No."
"Well, take a look when you get to Earth. Meanwhile we can't be having a constitution that says only 'don't change speed too fast.' "
Art thought this was funny, but Nadia was not amused. In general she had little patience for the minimalist arguments. "Isn't it the equivalent of letting the metanats run things?" she would say. "Letting might be right?"
"No, no," Mikhail would protest. "That's not what we mean at all!"
"It seems very like what you are saying. And for some it's obviously a kind of cover--- a pretend principle that is really about keeping the rules that protect their property and privileges, and letting the rest go to hell."
"No, not at all."
"Then you must prove it at the table. Everything that government might involve itself in, you have to make the case against. You have to argue it point by point."
And she was so insistent about this, not scolding like Maya would have but simply adamant, that they had to agree: everything was at least on the table for discussion. Therefore the various blank constitutions made sense, as starting points; and therefore they should get on with it. A vote on it was taken, and the majority agreed to give it a try.
And so there they were, the first hurdle jumped. Everyone had agreed to work according to the same plan. It was amazing, Art thought, zooming from meeting to meeting, filled with admiration for Nadia. She was not your ordinary diplomat, she by no means followed the empty vessel model that Art aspired to; but things got done nevertheless. She had the charisma of the sensible. He hugged her every time he passed her, he kissed the top of her head; he loved her. He ran around with that wealth of good feeling, and dropped in on all the sessions he could, watching to see how he could help keep things going. Often it was just a matter of supplying people with food and drink, so that they could continue through the day without getting irritable.
At all hours the table of tables was crowded; fresh-faced young Valkyries towering over sunbaked old vets; all races, all types; this was Mars, m-year 52, a kind of de facto united nations all on its own. With all the potential fractiousness of that notoriously fractious body; so that sometimes, looking at all their disparate faces and listening to the melange of languages, English augmented by Babel, Art was nearly overwhelmed by their variety. "Ka, Nadia," he said as they sat eating sandwiches and going over their notes for the day, "we're trying to write a constitution that every Terran culture could agree to!"
She waved the problem away, swallowed. "About time," she said.
• • •
Charlotte suggested that the Dorsa Brevia declaration made a logical starting point for discussing the content that would fill the constitutional forms. This suggestion caused more trouble than even the blanks had, for the Reds and several other delegations disliked various points of the old declaration, and they argued that using it was a way of pisting the congress from the start.
"So what?" Nadia said. "We can change every word of it if we want, but we have to start with something."
This view was popular among most of the old underground groups, many of whom had been at Dorsa Brevia in m-39. The declaration that had resulted remained the underground's best effort to write down what they had agreed on back when they were out of power, so it made sense to start with it; it gave them some precedent, some historical continuity.
When they pulled it out and looked at it, however, they found that the old declaration had become frighteningly radical. No private property? No appropriation of surplus value? Had they really said such things? How were things supposed to work? People pored over the bare uncompromising sentences, shaking their heads. The declaration had not bothered to say how its lofty goals were to be enacted, it had only stated them. "The stone-tablet routine," as Art characterized it. But now the revolution had succeeded, and the time had come to do something in the real world. Could they really stick to concepts as radical as those in the Dorsa Brevia declaration?
Hard to say. "At least the points are there to discuss," Nadia said. And along with them, on everyone's screen, were the blank constitutions with their section headings, suggesting all by themselves the many problems they were going to have to come to grips with: "Structure of Government, Executive; Structure of Government, Legislative; Structure of Government, Judicial; Rights of Citizens; Military and Police; Taxation; Election Procedures; Property Law; Economic Systems; Environmental Law; Amendment Procedures," and so on, in some blanks for pages on end--- all being juggled on everyone's screens, scrambled, formatted, endlessly debated. "Just filling in the blanks," as Art sang one night, looking over Nadia's shoulder at one particularly forbidding flowchart pattern, like something out of Michel's alchemical combinatoires. And Nadia laughed.
The working groups focused on different parts of government as outlined in a new composite blank constitution, now being called the blank of blanks. Political parties and interest groups gravitated to the issues that most concerned them, and the many tent-town delegations chose or were assigned to remaining areas. After that it was a matter of work.
For the moment, the Da Vinci Crater technical group was in control of Martian space. They were keeping all space shuttles from docking at Clarke, or aerobraking into Martian orbit. No one believed that this alone made them truly free, but it did give them a certain amount of physical and psychic space to work in--- this was the gift of the revolution. They were also driven by the memory of the battle for Sheffield; the fear of civil war was strong among them. Ann was in exile with the Kakaze, and sabotage in the outback was a daily occurrence. There were also tents that had declared independence from anyone, and a few metanat holdouts; there was turmoil generally, and a sense of barely contained confusion. They were in a bubble in history, a moment only; it could collapse anytime, and if they didn't act soon, it would collapse. It was, simply put, time to act.
This was the one thing everyone agreed on, but it was a very important thing. As the days passed a core group of workers slowly emerged, people who recognized each other for their willingness to get the job done, for their desire to finish paragraphs rather than posture. Inside all the rest of the debate these people went at it, guided by Nadia, who was very quick to recognize such people and give them all the help she could.
Art meanwhile ran around in his usual manner. Up early, supply drinks and food, and information concerning the work ongoing in other rooms. It seemed to him that things were going pretty well. Most of the subgroups took the responsibility to fill in their blank seriously, writing and rewriting drafts, hammering them out concept by concept, phrase by phrase. They were happy to see Art when he came by in the course of the day, as he represented a break, some food, some jokes. One judicial group tacked foam wings on his shoes, and sent him with a caustic message along to an executive group with whom they were fighting. Pleased, Art kept the wings on; why not? What they were doing had a kind of ludicrous majesty, or majestic ludicrousness--- they were rewriting the rules, he was flying around like Hermes or Puck, it was perfectly appropriate. And so he flew, through the long hours into the night, every night. And after all the sessions had closed down for the evening, he went back to the Praxis offices he shared with Nadia, and they would eat, and talk over the day's progress, and make a call to the travelers to Earth, and talk with Nirgal and Sax and Maya and Michel. And after that Nadia would go back to work at her screens, usually falling asleep there in her chair. Then Art would often go back out into the warehouse, and the buildings and rovers clustered around it. Because they were holding the congress in a warehouse tent, there was not the same party scene that had existed after hours in Dorsa Brevia; but the delegates often stayed up, sitting on the floors of their rooms drinking and talking about the day's work, or the revolution just past. Many of the people there had never met before, and they were getting to know each other. Relationships were forming, romances, friendships, feuds. It was a good time to talk, and learn more about what was going on during the daytime congress; it was the underside of the congress, the social hour, out there scattered in concrete rooms. Art enjoyed it. And then the moment would come when he would suddenly hit the wall, a wave of sleepiness would roll over him and sometimes he wouldn't even have time to stagger back to his offices, to the couch next to Nadia's; he would simply roll over on the floor and sleep there, waking cold and stiff to hurry off to their bathroom, a shower, and back to the kitchens to start up that day's kava and java. Round and round, his days a blur; it was glorious.
• • •
In sessions on many different subjects people were having to grapple with questions of scale. Without any nations, without any natural or traditional political units, who governed what? And how were they to balance the local against the global, and past versus future--- the many ancestral cultures against the one Martian culture?
Sax, observing this recurring problem from the rocket ship to Earth, sent back a message proposing that the tent towns and covered canyons become the principal political units: city-states, basically, with no larger political units except for the global government itself, which would regulate only truly global concerns. Thus there would be local and global, but no nation-states in between.
The reaction to this proposal was fairly positive. For one thing it had the advantage of conforming to the situation that already existed. Mikhail, leader of the Bogdanovist party, noted that it was a variant of the old commune of communes, and because Sax had been the source of the suggestion, this quickly got it called the "lab of labs" plan. But the underlying problem still remained, as Nadia quickly pointed out; all Sax had done was define their particular local and global. They still had to decide just how much power the proposed global confederation was going to have over the proposed semiautonomous city-states. Too much, and it was back to a big centralized state, Mars itself as a nation, a thought which many delegations abhorred. "But too little," Jackie said emphatically in the human-rights workshop, "and there could be tents out there deciding slavery is okay, or female genital mutilation is okay, or any other crime based on some Terran barbarism is okay, excused in the name of 'cultural values.' And that is just not acceptable."
"Jackie is right," Nadia said, which was unusual enough to get people's attention. "People claiming that some fundamental right is foreign to their culture--- that stinks no matter who says it, fundamentalists, patriarchs, Leninists, metanats, I don't care who. They aren't going to get away with it here, not if I can help it."
Art noticed more than a few delegates frowning at this sentiment, which no doubt struck them as a version of Western secular relativism, or perhaps John Boone's hyperamericanism. Opposition to the metanats had included many people trying to hold on to older cultures, and these often had their hierarchies pretty well intact; the ones at the top end of the hierarchies liked them that way, and so did a surprisingly large number of people farther down the ladder.
The young Martian natives, however, looked surprised that this was even considered an issue. To them the fundamental rights were innate and irrevocable, and any challenge to that struck them as just one more of the many emotional scars that the issei were always revealing, as a result of their traumatic dysfunctional Terran upbringings. Ariadne, one of the most prominent of the young natives, stood up to say that the Dorsa Brevia group had studied many Terran human-rights documents, and had written a comprehensive list of their own. The new master list of fundamental individual rights was available for discussion and, she implied, adoption wholesale. Some argued about one point or another; but it was generally agreed that a global bill of rights of some kind should be on the table. So Martian values as they existed in m-year 52 were about to be codified, and made a principal component of the constitution.
The exact nature of these rights was still a matter of controversy. The so-called political rights were generally agreed to be "self-evident"--- things citizens were free to do, things governments were forbidden to do--- habeus corpus, freedom of movement, of speech, of association, of religion, a ban on weapons--- all these were approved by a vast majority of Martian natives, though there were some issei from places like Singapore, Cuba, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and so on, who looked askance at so much emphasis on individual liberty. Other delegates had reservations about a different kind of right, the so-called social or economic rights, such as the right to housing, health care, education, employment, a share of the value generated by natural-resource use, etc. Many issei delegates with actual experience in Terran government were quite worried about these, pointing out that it was dangerous to enshrine such things in the constitution; it had been done on Earth, they said, and then when it was found impossible to meet such promises, the constitution guaranteeing them was seen as a propaganda device, and flouted in other areas as well, until it became a bad joke.
"Even so," Mikhail said sharply, "if you can't afford housing, then it is your right to vote that is the bad joke."
The young natives agreed, as did many others there. So economic or social rights were on the table too, and arguments over how actually to guarantee these rights in practice continued through many a long session. "Political, social, it's all one," Nadia said. "Let's make all the rights work."
• • •
So the work went on, both around the big table and in the offices where the subgroups were meeting. Even the UN was there, in the person of UNTA chief Derek Hastings himself, who had come down the elevator and was participating vigorously in the debates, his opinion always carrying a peculiar kind of weight. He even began to exhibit symptoms of hostage syndrome, Art thought, becoming more and more sympathetic the more he stood around in the warehouse arguing with people. And this might affect his superiors on Earth as well.
Comments and suggestions were also pouring in from all over Mars, and from Earth as well, filling several screens covering one wall of the big room. Interest in the congress was high everywhere, rivaling even Earth's great flood in the public's attention. "The soap opera of the moment," Art said to Nadia. Every night the two of them met in their little office suite, and put in their call to Nirgal and the rest. The delays in the travelers' responses got longer and longer, but Art and Nadia didn't really mind; there was a lot to think about while waiting for Sax and the others' part of the conversation to arrive.
"This global versus local problem is going to be hard," Art said one night. "It's a real contradiction, I think. I mean it's not just the result of confused thinking. We truly want some global control, and yet we want freedom for the tents as well. Two of our most essential values are in contradiction."
"Maybe the Swiss system," Nirgal suggested a few minutes later. "That's what John Boone always used to say."
But the Swiss on Pavonis were not encouraging about this idea. "A countermodel rather," Jurgen said, making a face. "The reason I'm on Mars is the Swiss federal government. It stifles everything. You need a license to breathe."
"And the cantons have no power anymore," Priska said. "The federal government took it away."
"In some of the cantons," Jurgen added, "this was a good thing."
Priska said, "More interesting than Berne might be the Graubunden. That means Gray League. They were a loose confederation of towns in southeast Switzerland, for hundreds of years. A very successful organization."
"Could you call up whatever you can get on that?" Art said.
The next night he and Nadia looked over descriptions of the Graubunden that Priska had sent over. Well . . . there was a certain simplicity to affairs during the Renaissance, Art thought. Maybe that was wrong, but somehow the extremely loose agreements of the little Swiss mountain towns did not seem to translate well to the densely interpenetrated economies of the Martian settlements. The Graubunden hadn't had to worry about generating unwanted changes in atmospheric pressure, for instance. No--- the truth was, they were in a new situation. There was no historical analogy that would be much help to them now.
"Speaking of global versus local," Irishka said, "what about the land outside the tents and covered canyons?" She was emerging as the leading Red remaining on Pavonis, a moderate who could speak for almost all wings of the Red movement, therefore becoming quite a power as the weeks passed. "That's most of the land on Mars, and all we said at Dorsa Brevia is that no individual can own it, that we are all stewards of it together. That's good as far as it goes, but as the population rises and new towns are built, it's going to be more and more of a problem figuring out who controls it."
Art sighed. This was true, but too difficult to be welcome. Recently he had made a resolution to devote the bulk of his daily efforts to attacking what he and Nadia judged to be the worst outstanding problem they were facing, and so in theory he was happy to recognize them. But sometimes they were just too hard.
As in this case. Land use, the Red objection: more aspects of the global-local problem, but distinctively Martian. Again there was no precedent. Still, as it was probably the worst outstanding problem. . . .
Art went to the Reds. The three who met with him were Marion, Irishka, and Tiu, one of Nirgal and Jackie's crèche mates from Zygote. They took Art out to their rover camp, which made him happy; it meant that despite his Praxis background he was now seen as a neutral or impartial figure, as he wanted to be. A big empty vessel, stuffed with messages and passed along.
The Reds' encampment was west of the warehouses, on the rim of the caldera. They sat down with Art in one of their big upper-level compartments, in the glare of a late-afternoon sun, talking and looking down into the giant silhouetted country of the caldera.
"So what would you like to see in this constitution?" Art said.
He sipped the tea they had given him. His hosts looked at each other, somewhat taken aback. "Ideally," Marion said after a while, "we'd like to be living on the primal planet, in caves and cliff dwellings, or excavated crater rings. No big cities, no terraforming."
"You'd have to stay suited all the time."
"That's right. We don't mind that."
"Well." Art thought it over. "Okay, but let's start from now. Given the situation at this moment, what would you like to see happen next?"
"No further terraforming."
"The cable gone, and no more immigration."
"In fact it would be nice if some people went back to Earth."
They stopped speaking, stared at him. Art tried not to let his consternation show.
He said, "Isn't the biosphere likely to grow on its own at this point?"
"It's not clear," Tiu said. "But if you stopped the industrial pumping, any further growth would certainly be very slow. It might even lose ground, as with this ice age that's starting."
"Isn't that what some people call ecopoesis?"
"No. The ecopoets just use biological methods to create changes in the atmosphere and on the surface, but they're very intensive with them. We think they all should stop, ecopoets or industrialists or whatever."
"But especially the heavy industrial methods," Marion said. "And most especially the inundation of the north. That's simply criminal. We'll blow up those stations no matter what happens here, if they don't stop."
Art gestured out at the huge stony caldera. "The higher elevations look pretty much the same, right?"
They weren't willing to admit that. Irishka said, "Even the high ground shows ice deposition and plant life. The atmosphere lofts high here, remember. No place escapes when the winds are strong."
"What if we tented the four big calderas?" Art said. "Kept them sterile underneath, with the original atmospheric pressure and mix? Those would be huge wilderness parks, preserved in the true primal state."
"Parks are just what they would be."
"I know. But we have to work with what we have now, right? We can't go back to m-1 and rerun the whole thing. And given the current situation, it might be good to preserve three or four big places in the original state, or close to it."
"It would be nice to have some canyons protected as well," Tiu said tentatively. Clearly they had not considered this kind of possibility before; and it was not really satisfactory to them, Art could see. But the current situation could not be wished away, they had to start from there.
"Or Argyre Basin."
"At the very least, keep Argyre dry."
Art nodded encouragingly. "Combine that kind of preservation with the atmosphere limits set in the Dorsa Brevia document. That's a five-kilometer breathable ceiling, and there's a hell of a lot of land above five kilometers that would remain relatively pristine. It won't take the northern ocean away, but nothing's going to do that now. Some form of slow ecopoesis is about the best you can hope for at this point, right?"
Perhaps that was putting it too baldly. The Reds stared down into Pavonis caldera unhappily, thinking their own thoughts.
• • •
"Say the Reds come on board," Art said to Nadia. "What do you think the next worst problem is?"
"What?" She had been nearly asleep, listening to some tinny old jazz from her AI. "Ah. Art." Her voice was low and quiet, the Russian accent light but distinct. She sat slumped on the couch. A pile of paper balls lay around her feet, like pieces of some structure she was putting together. The Martian way of life. Her face was oval under a cap of straight white hair, the wrinkles of her skin somehow wearing away, as if she were a pebble in the stream of years. She opened her flecked eyes, luminous and arresting under their Cossack eyelids. A beautiful face, looking now at Art perfectly relaxed. "The next worst problem."
"Yes."
She smiled. Where did that calmness come from, that relaxed smile? She wasn't worried about anything these days. Art found it surprising, given the political high-wire act they were performing. But then again it was politics, not war. And just as Nadia had been terribly frightened during the revolution, always tense, always expecting disaster, she was now always relatively calm. As if to say, nothing that happens here matters all that much--- tinker with the details all you want--- my friends are safe, the war is over, this that remains is a kind of game, or work like construction work, full of pleasures.
Art moved around to the back of the couch, massaged her shoulders. "Ah," she said. "Problems. Well, there are a lot of problems that are about equally sticky."
"Like what?"
"Like, I wonder if the Mahjaris will be able to adapt to democracy. I wonder if everyone will accept Vlad and Marina's eco-economics. I wonder if we can make a decent police. I wonder if Jackie will try to create a system with a strong president, and use the natives' numerical superiority to become queen." She looked over her shoulder, laughed at Art's expression. "I wonder about a lot of things. Should I go on?"
"Maybe not."
She laughed. "You go on. That feels good. These problems--- they aren't so hard. We'll just keep going to the table and pounding away at them. Maybe you could talk to Zeyk."
"Okay."
"But now do my neck."
• • •
Art went to talk to Zeyk and Nazik that very night, after Nadia had fallen asleep. "So what's the Mahjari view of all this?" he asked.
Zeyk growled. "Please don't ask stupid questions," he said. "Sunnis are fighting Shiites--- Lebanon is devastated--- the oil-rich states are hated by the oil-poor states--- the North African countries are a metanat--- Syria and Iraq hate each other--- Iraq and Egypt hate each other--- we all hate the Iranians, except for the Shiites--- and we all hate Israel of course, and the Palestinians too--- and even though I am from Egypt I am actually Bedouin, and we despise the Nile Egyptians, and in fact we don't get along well with the Bedouin from Jordan. And everyone hates the Saudis, who are as corrupt as you can get. So when you ask me what is the Arab view, what can I say to you?" He shook his head darkly.
"I guess you say it's a stupid question," Art said. "Sorry. Thinking in constituencies, it's a bad habit. How about this--- what do you think of it?"
Nazik laughed. "You could ask him what the rest of the Qahiran Mahjaris think. He knows them only too well."
"Too well," Zeyk repeated.
"Do you think the human-rights section will go with them?"
Zeyk frowned. "No doubt we will sign the constitution."
"But these rights . . . I thought there were no Arab democracies still?"
"What do you mean? There's Palestine, Egypt. . . . Anyway it's Mars we are concerned with. And here every caravan has been its own state since the very beginning."
"Strong leaders, hereditary leaders?"
"Not hereditary. Strong leaders, yes. We don't think the new constitution will end that, not anywhere. Why should it? You are a strong leader yourself, yes?"
Art laughed uncomfortably. "I'm just a messenger."
Zeyk shook his head. "Tell that to Antar. Now there is where you should go, if you want to know what the Qahirans think. He is our king now."
He looked as if he had bit into something sour, and Art said, "So what does he want, do you think?"
"He is Jackie's creature," Zeyk muttered, "nothing more."
"I should think that would be a strike against him."
Zeyk shrugged.
"It depends who you talk to," Nazik said. "For the older Muslim immigrants, it is a bad association, because although Jackie is very powerful, she has had more than one consort, and so Antar looks. . . ."
"Compromised," Art suggested, forestalling some other word from the glowering Zeyk.
"Yes," Nazik said. "But on the other hand, Jackie is powerful. And all of the people now leading the Free Mars party are in a position to become even more powerful in the new state. And the young Arabs like that. They are more native than Arab, I think. It's Mars that matters to them more than Islam. From that point of view, a close association with the Zygote ectogenes is a good thing. The ectogenes are seen as the natural leaders of the new Mars--- especially Nirgal, of course, but with him off to Earth, there's a certain transfer of his influence to Jackie and the rest of her crowd. And thus to Antar."
"I don't like him," Zeyk said.
Nazik smiled at her husband. "You don't like how many of the native Muslims are following him rather than you. But we are old, Zeyk. It could be time for retirement."
"I don't see why," Zeyk objected. "If we're going to live a thousand years, then what difference does a hundred make?"
Art and Nazik laughed at him, and briefly Zeyk smiled. It was the first time Art had ever seen him smile.
• • •
In fact, age didn't matter. People wandered around, old or young or somewhere in between, talking and arguing, and it would have been an odd thing for the length of someone's lifetime to become a factor in such discussions.
And youth or age was not what the native movement was about anyway. If you were born on Mars your outlook was simply different, areocentric in a way that no Terran could even imagine--- not just because of the whole complex of areorealities they had known from birth, but also because of what they didn't know. Terrans knew just how vast Earth was, while for the Martian-born, that cultural and biological vastness was simply unimaginable. They had seen the screen images, but that wasn't enough to allow them to grasp it. This was one reason Art was glad Nirgal had chosen to join the diplomatic mission to Earth; he would learn what they were up against.
But most of the natives wouldn't. And the revolution had gone to their heads. Despite their cleverness at the table in working the constitution toward a form that would privilege them, they were in some basic sense naive; they had no idea how unlikely their independence was, nor how possible it was for it to be taken away from them again. And so they were pressing things to the limit--- led by Jackie, who floated through the warehouse just as beautiful and enthusiastic as ever, her drive to power concealed behind her love of Mars, and her devotion to her grandfather's ideals, and her essential goodwill, even innocence; the college girl who wanted passionately for the world to be just.
Or so it seemed. But she and her Free Mars colleagues certainly seemed to want to be in control as well. There were twelve million people on Mars now, and seven million of those had been born there; and almost every single one of these natives could be counted on to support the native political parties, usually Free Mars.
"It's dangerous," Charlotte said when Art brought this matter up in the nightly meeting with Nadia. "When you have a country formed out of a lot of groups that don't trust each other, with one a clear majority, then you get what they call 'census voting,' where politicians represent their groups, and get their votes, and election results are always just a reflection of population numbers. In that situation the same thing happens every time, so the majority group has a monopoly on power, and the minorities feel hopeless, and eventually rebel. Some of the worst civil wars in history began in those circumstances."
"So what can we do?" Nadia asked.
"Well, some of it we're doing already, designing structures that spread the power around, and diminish the dangers of majoritarianism. Decentralization is important, because it creates a lot of small local majorities. Another strategy is to set up an array of Madisonian checks and balances, so that the government's a kind of cat's cradle of competing forces. This is called polyarchy, spreading power around to as many groups as you can."
"Maybe we're a bit too polyarchic right now," Art said.
"Perhaps. Another tactic is to deprofessionalize governing. You make some big part of the government a public obligation, like jury duty, and then draft ordinary citizens in a lottery, to serve for a short time. They get professional staff help, but make the decisions themselves."
"I've never heard of that one," Nadia said.
"No. It's been often proposed, but seldom enacted. But I think it's really worth considering. It tends to make power as much a burden as an advantage. You get a letter in the mail; oh no; you're drafted to do two years in congress. It's a drag, but on the other hand it's a kind of distinction too, a chance to add something to the public discourse. Citizen government."
"I like that," Nadia said.
"Another method to reduce majoritarianism is voting by some version of the Australian ballot, where voters vote for two or more candidates in ranked fashion, first choice, second choice, third choice. Candidates get some points for being second or third choice, so to win elections they have to appeal outside their own group. It tends to push politicians toward moderation, and in the long run it can create trust among groups where none existed before."
"Interesting," Nadia exclaimed. "Like trusses in a wall."
"Yes." Charlotte mentioned some examples of Terran "fractured societies" that had healed their rifts by a clever governmental structure: Azania, Cambodia, Armenia . . . as she described them Art's heart sank a bit; these had been bloody, bloody lands.
"It seems like political structures can only do so much," he said.
"True," Nadia said, "but we don't have all those old hatreds to deal with yet. Here the worst we have is the Reds, and they've been marginalized by the terraforming that's already happened. I bet these methods could be used to pull even them into the process."
Clearly she was encouraged by the options Charlotte had described; they were structures, after all. Engineering of an imaginary sort, which nevertheless resembled real engineering. So Nadia was tapping away at her screen, sketching out designs as if working on a building, a small smile tugging the corners of her mouth.
"You're happy," Art said.
She didn't hear him. But that night in their radio talk with the travelers, she said to Sax, "It was so nice to find that political science had abstracted something useful in all these years."
Eight minutes later his reply came in. "I never understood why they call it that."
Nadia laughed, and the sound filled Art with happiness. Nadia Cherneshevsky, laughing in delight! Suddenly Art was sure that they were going to pull it off.
So he went back to the big table, ready to tackle the next-worst problem. That brought him back to earth again. There were a hundred next-worst problems, all small until you actually took them on, at which point they became insoluble. In all the squabbling it was very hard to see any signs of growing accord. In some areas, in fact, it seemed to be getting worse. The middle points of the Dorsa Brevia document were causing trouble; the more people considered them, the more radical they became. Many around the table clearly believed that Vlad and Marina's eco-economic system, while it had worked for the underground, was not something that should be codified in the constitution. Some complained because it impinged on local autonomy, others because they had more faith in traditional capitalist economics than in any new system. Antar spoke often for this last group, with Jackie sitting right next to him, obviously in support. This along with his ties to the Arab community gave his statements a kind of double weight, and people listened. "This new economy that's being proposed," he declared one day at the table of tables, repeating his theme, "is a radical and unprecedented intrusion of government into business."
Suddenly Vlad Taneev stood up. Startled, Antar stopped speaking and looked over.
Vlad glared at him. Stooped, massive-headed, shaggy-eyebrowed, Vlad rarely if ever spoke in public; he hadn't said a thing in the congress so far. Slowly the greater part of the warehouse went silent, watching him. Art felt a quiver of anticipation; of all the brilliant minds of the First Hundred, Vlad was perhaps the most brilliant--- and, except for Hiroko, the most enigmatic. Old when they had left Earth, intensely private, Vlad had built the Acheron labs early on and stayed there as much as possible thereafter, living in seclusion with Ursula Kohl and Marina Tokareva, two more of the great first ones. No one knew anything for certain about the three of them, they were a limit-case illustration of the insular nature of other people's relationships; but this of course did not stop gossip, on the contrary, people talked about them all the time, saying that Marina and Ursula were the real couple, that Vlad was a kind of friend, or pet; or that Ursula had done most of the work on the longevity treatment, and Marina most of the work on eco-economics; or that they were a perfectly balanced equilateral triangle, collaborating on all that emerged from Acheron; or that Vlad was a bigamist of sorts who used two wives as fronts for his work in the separate fields of biology and economics. But no one knew for sure, for none of the three ever said a word about it.
Watching him stand there at the table, however, one had to suspect that the theory about him being just a front man was wrong. He was looking around in a fiercely intent, slow glare, capturing them all before he turned his eye again on Antar.
"What you said about government and business is absurd," he stated coldly. It was a tone of voice that had not been heard much at the congress so far, contemptuous and dismissive. "Governments always regulate the kinds of business they allow. Economics is a legal matter, a system of laws. So far, we have been saying in the Martian underground that as a matter of law, democracy and self-government are the innate rights of every person, and that these rights are not to be suspended when a person goes to work. You"--- he waved a hand to indicate he did not know Antar's name---"do you believe in democracy and self-rule?"
"Yes!" Antar said defensively.
"Do you believe in democracy and self-rule as the fundamental values that government ought to encourage?"
"Yes!" Antar repeated, looking more and more annoyed.
"Very well. If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue--- control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is--- a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work."
"Business leaders work," Antar said sharply. "And they take the financial risks---"
"The so-called risk of the capitalist is merely one of the privileges of capital."
"Management---"
"Yes yes. Don't interrupt me. Management is a real thing, a technical matter. But it can be controlled by labor just as well as by capital. Capital itself is simply the useful residue of the work of past laborers, and it could belong to everyone as well as to a few. There is no reason why a tiny nobility should own the capital, and everyone else therefore be in service to them. There is no reason they should give us a living wage and take all the rest that we produce. No! The system called capitalist democracy was not really democratic at all. That is why it was able to turn so quickly into the metanational system, in which democracy grew ever weaker and capitalism ever stronger. In which one percent of the population owned half of the wealth, and five percent of the population owned ninety-five percent of the wealth. History has shown which values were real in that system. And the sad thing is that the injustice and suffering caused by it were not at all necessary, in that the technical means have existed since the eighteenth century to provide the basics of life to all.
"So. We must change. It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including in the workplace where we spend so much of our lives. That was what was said in point four of the Dorsa Brevia agreement. It says everyone's work is their own, and the worth of it cannot be taken away. It says that the various modes of production belong to those who created them, and to the common good of the future generations. It says that the world is something we all steward together. That is what it says. And in our years on Mars, we have developed an economic system that can keep all those promises. That has been our work these last fifty years. In the system we have developed, all economic enterprises are to be small cooperatives, owned by their workers and by no one else. They hire their management, or manage themselves. Industry guilds and co-op associations will form the larger structures necessary to regulate trade and the market, share capital, and create credit."
Antar said scornfully, "These are nothing but ideas. It is utopianism and nothing more."
"Not at all." Again Vlad waved him away. "The system is based on models from Terran history, and its various parts have all been tested on both worlds, and have succeeded very well. You don't know about this partly because you are ignorant, and partly because metanationalism itself steadfastly ignored and denied all alternatives to it. But most of our microeconomy has been in successful operation for centuries in the Mondragon region of Spain. The different parts of the macroeconomy have been used in the pseudometanat Praxis, in Switzerland, in India's state of Kerala, in Bhutan, in Bologna Italy, and in many other places, including the Martian underground itself. These organizations were the precursors to our economy, which will be democratic in a way capitalism never even tried to be."
A synthesis of systems. And Vladimir Taneev was a very great synthesist; it was said that all the components of the longevity treatment had already been there, for instance, and that Vlad and Ursula had simply put them together. Now in his economic work with Marina he was claiming to have done the same kind of thing. And although he had not mentioned the longevity treatment in this discussion, nevertheless it lay there like the table itself, a big cobbled-together achievement, part of everyone's lives. Art looked around and thought he could see people thinking, well, he did it once in biology and it worked; could economics be more difficult?
Against this unspoken thought, this unthought feeling, Antar's objections did not seem like much. Metanational capitalism's track record at this point did little to support it; in the last century it had precipitated a massive war, chewed up the Earth, and torn its societies apart. Why should they not try something new, given that record?
Someone from Hiranyagarba stood and made an objection from the opposite direction, noting that they seemed to be abandoning the gift economy by which the Mars underground had lived.
Vlad shook his head impatiently. "I believe in the underground economy, I assure you, but it has always been a mixed economy. Pure gift exchange coexisted with a monetary exchange, in which neoclassical market rationality, that is to say the profit mechanism, was bracketed and contained by society to direct it to serve higher values, such as justice and freedom. Economic rationality is simply not the highest value. It is a tool to calculate costs and benefits, only one part of a larger equation concerning human welfare. The larger equation is called a mixed economy, and that is what we are constructing here. We are proposing a complex system, with public and private spheres of economic activity. It may be that we ask people to give, throughout their lives, about a year of their work to the public good, as in Switzerland's national service. That labor pool, plus taxes on private co-ops for use of the land and its resources, will enable us to guarantee the so-called social rights we have been discussing--- housing, health care, food, education--- things that should not be at the mercy of market rationality. Because la salute non si paga, as the Italian workers used to say. Health is not for sale!"
This was especially important to Vlad, Art could see. Which made sense--- for in the metanational order, health most certainly had been for sale, not only medical care and food and housing, but preeminently the longevity treatment itself, which so far had been going only to those who could afford it. Vlad's greatest invention, in other words, had become the property of the privileged, the ultimate class distinction--- long life or early death--- a physicalization of class that almost resembled divergent species. No wonder he was angry; no wonder he had turned all his efforts to devising an economic system that would transform the longevity treatment from a catastrophic possession to a blessing available to all.
"So nothing will be left to the market," Antar said.
"No no no," Vlad said, waving at Antar more irritably than ever. "The market will always exist. It is the mechanism by which things and services are exchanged. Competition to provide the best product at the best price, this is inevitable and healthy. But on Mars it will be directed by society in a more active way. There will be not-for-profit status to vital life-support matters, and then the freest part of the market will be directed away from the basics of existence toward nonessentials, where venture enterprises can be undertaken by worker-owned co-ops, who will be free to try what they like. When the basics are secured and when the workers own their own businesses, why not? It is the process of creation we are talking about."
Jackie, looking annoyed at Vlad's dismissals of Antar, and perhaps intending to divert the old man, or trip him up, said, "What about the ecological aspects of this economy that you used to emphasize?"
"They are fundamental," Vlad said. "Point three of Dorsa Brevia states that the land, air, and water of Mars belong to no one, that we are the stewards of it for all the future generations. This stewardship will be everyone's responsibility, but in case of conflicts we propose strong environmental courts, perhaps as part of the constitutional court, which will estimate the real and complete environmental costs of economic activities, and help to coordinate plans that impact the environment."
"But this is simply a planned economy!" Antar cried.
"Economies are plans. Capitalism planned just as much as this, and metanationalism tried to plan everything. No, an economy is a plan."
Antar, frustrated and angry, said, "It's simply socialism returned."
Vlad shrugged. "Mars is a new totality. Names from earlier totalities are deceptive. They become little more than theological terms. There are elements one could call socialist in this system, of course. How else remove injustice from economy? But private enterprises will be owned by their workers rather than being nationalized, and this is not socialism, at least not socialism as it was usually attempted on Earth. And all the co-ops are businesses--- small democracies devoted to some work or other, all needing capital. There will be a market, there will be capital. But in our system workers will hire capital rather than the other way around. It's more democratic that way, more just. Understand me--- we have tried to evaluate each feature of this economy by how well it aids us to reach the goals of more justice and more freedom. And justice and freedom do not contradict each other as much as has been claimed, because freedom in an injust system is no freedom at all. They both emerge together. And so it is not so impossible, really. It is only a matter of enacting a better system, by combining elements that have been tested and shown to work. This is the moment for that. We have been preparing for this opportunity for seventy years. And now that the chance has come, I see no reason to back off just because someone is afraid of some old words. If you have any specific suggestions for improvements, we'll be happy to hear them."
He stared long and hard at Antar. But Antar did not speak; he had no specific suggestions.
The room was filled with a charged silence. It was the first and only time in the congress that one of the issei had stood up and trounced one of the nisei in public debate. Most of the issei liked to take a more subtle line. But now one of the ancient radicals had gotten mad and risen up to smite one of the neoconservative young power mongers--- who now looked like they were advocating a new version of an old hierarchy, for purposes of their own. A thought which was conveyed very well indeed by Vlad's long look across the table at Antar, full of disgust at his reactionary selfishness, his cowardice in the face of change. Vlad sat down; Antar was dismissed.
But still they argued. Conflict, metaconflict, details, fundamentals; everything was on the table, including a magnesium kitchen sink that someone had placed on one segment of the table of tables, some three weeks into the process.
And really the delegates in the warehouse were only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible part of a gigantic two-world debate. Live transmission of every minute of the conference was available everywhere on Mars and in most places on Earth, and although the actual realtime tape had a certain documentary tediousness to it, Mangalavid concocted a daily highlights film that was shown during the timeslip every night, and sent to Earth for very wide distribution. It became "the greatest show on Earth" as one American program rather oddly dubbed it. "Maybe people are tired of the same old crap on TV," Art said to Nadia one night as they watched a brief, weirdly distorted account of the day's negotiations on American TV.
"Or in the world."
"Yeah true. They want something else to think about."
"Or else they're thinking about what they might do," Nadia suggested. "So that we're a small-scale model. Easier to understand."
"Maybe so."
In any case the two worlds watched, and the congress became, along with everything else that it was, a daily soap opera--- a soap opera which however held an extra attraction for its viewers, somehow, as if in some strange way it held the very key to their lives. And perhaps as a result, thousands of spectators did more than watch--- comments and suggestions were pouring in, and though it seemed unlikely to most people on Pavonis that something mailed in would contain a startling truth they hadn't thought of, still all messages were read by groups of volunteers in Sheffield and South Fossa, who passed some proposals "up to the table." Some people even advocated including all these suggestions in the final constitution; they objected to a "statist legal document," they wanted it to be a larger thing, a collaborative philosophical or even spiritual statement, expressing their values, goals, dreams, reflections. "That's not a constitution," Nadia objected, "that's a culture. We're not the damn library here." But included or not, long communiqués continued to come in, from the tents and canyons and the drowned coastlines of Earth, signed by individuals, committees, entire town populations.
Discussions in the warehouse were just as wide-ranging as in the mail. A Chinese delegate approached Art and spoke in Mandarin to him, and when he paused for a while, his AI began to speak, in a lovely Scottish accent. "To tell the truth I've begun to doubt that you've sufficiently consulted Adam Smith's important book Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations."
"You may be right," Art said, and referred the man to Charlotte.
Many people in the warehouse were speaking languages other than English, and relying on translation AIs to communicate with the rest. At any given moment there were conversations in a dozen different languages, and AI translators were heavily used. Art still found them a little distracting. He wished it were possible to know all these languages, even though the latest generations of AI translators were really pretty good: voices well modulated, vocabularies large and accurate, grammar excellent, phrasing almost free of the errors that had made earlier translation programs such a great party game. The new ones had gotten so good that it seemed possible that the English-language dominance that had created an almost monoglot Martian culture might begin to recede. The issei had of course brought all languages with them, but English had been their lingua franca; the nisei had therefore used English to communicate among themselves, while their "primary" languages were used only to speak to their parents; and so, for a while, English had become the natives' native tongue. But now with the new AIs, and a continuing stream of new immigrants speaking the full array of Terran languages, it looked like things might broaden back out again, as new nisei stayed with their primary languages and used AIs as their lingua franca instead of English.
This linguistic matter illustrated to Art a complexity in the native population that he hadn't noticed before. Some natives were yonsei, fourth generation or younger, and very definitely children of Mars; but other natives the very same age were the nisei children of recent issei immigrants, tending to have closer ties with the Terran cultures they had come from, with all the conservatism that implied. So that there were new native "conservatives," and old settler-family native "radicals," one might say. And this split only occasionally correlated with ethnicity or nationality, when these still mattered to them at all. One night Art was talking with a couple of them, one a global government advocate, the other an anarchist backing all local autonomy proposals, and he asked them about their origins. The globalist's father was half-Japanese, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Tanzanian; her mother had a Greek mother and a father with parents Colombian and Australian. The anarchist had a Nigerian father and a mother who was from Hawaii, and thus had a mixed ancestry of Filipino, Japanese, Polynesian and Portuguese. Art stared at them: if one were to think in terms of ethnic voting blocks, how would one categorize these people? One couldn't. They were Martian natives. Nisei, sansei, yonsei--- whatever generation, they had been formed in large part by their Martian experience--- areoformed, just as Hiroko had always foretold. Many had married within their own national or ethnic background, but many more had not. And no matter what their ancestry, their political opinions tended to reflect not that background (just what would the Graeco-Colombian-Australian position be? Art wondered), but their own experience. This itself had been quite varied: some had grown up in the underground, others had been born in the UNcontrolled big cities, and only come to an awareness of the underground later in life, or even at the moment of the revolution itself. These differences tended to affect them much more than where their Terran ancestors had happened to live.
Art nodded as the natives explained these things to him, in the long kava-buzzed parties running deep into the night. People at these parties were in increasingly high spirits, as the congress was, they felt, going well. They did not take the debates among the issei very seriously; they were confident that their core beliefs would prevail. Mars would be independent, it would be run by Martians, what Earth wanted did not matter; beyond that, it was detail. Thus they went about their work in the committees without much attention paid to the philosophical arguments around the table of tables. "The old dogs keep growling," said one message on the big message board; this seemed to express a general native opinion. And the work in the committees went on.
The big message board was a pretty good indicator of the mood of the congress. Art read it the way he read fortune cookies, and indeed one day there was one message that said, "You like Chinese food." Usually the messages were more political than that. Often they were things said in the previous days of the conference: "No tent is an island." "If you can't afford housing then the right to vote is a bad joke." "Keep your distance, don't change speed, don't run into anything." "La salute non si paga." Then there were things that had not been said: "Do unto others." "The Reds have green roots." "The Greatest Show on Earth." "No Kings No Presidents." "Big Man Hates Politics." "However: We Are the Little Red People."
• • •
So Art was no longer surprised when he was approached by people who spoke in Arabic or Hindi or some language he did not recognize, then looked him in the eye while their AI spoke in English with an accent from the BBC or Middle America or the New Delhi civil service, expressing some kind of unpredictable political sentiment. It was encouraging, really--- not the translation AIs, which were just another kind of distancing, less extreme than teleparticipation but still not quite "talking face-to-face"--- but the political melange, the impossibility of block voting, or of even thinking in the normal constituencies.
It was a strange congregation, really. But it went on, and eventually everyone got used to it; it took on that always-already quality that extended events often gain over their duration. But once, very late at night, after a long bizarre translated conversation in which the AI on the wrist of the young woman he was talking to spoke in rhymed couplets (and he never knew what language she was speaking to start with), Art wandered back through the warehouse toward his office suite, around the table of tables, where work was still going even though it was after the timeslip, and he stopped to say hi to one group; and then, momentum lost, slumped back against a side wall, half watching, half drowsing, his kavajava buzz nearly overwhelmed by exhaustion. And the strangeness came back, all at once. It was a kind of hypnagogic vision. There were shadows in the corners, innumerable flickering shadows; and eyes in the shadows. Shapes, like insubstantial bodies: all the dead, it suddenly seemed, and all the unborn all there in the warehouse with them, to witness this moment. As if history were a tapestry, and the congress the loom where everything was coming together, the present moment with its miraculous thereness, its potential right in their own atoms, their own voices. Looking back at the past, able to see it all, a single long braided tapestry of events; looking forward at the future, able to see none of it, though presumably it branched out in an explosion of threads of potentiality, and could become anything: they were two different kinds of unreachable immensity. And all of them traveling together, from the one into the other, through that great loom the present, the now. Now was their chance, for all of them together in this present--- the ghosts could watch, from before and after, but this was the moment when what wisdom they could muster had to be woven together, to be passed on to all the future generations.
They could do anything. That, however, was part of what made it difficult to bring the congress to a close. Infinite possibility was going to collapse, in the act of choosing, to the single world line of history. The future becoming the past: there was something disappointing in this passage through the loom, this so-sudden diminution from infinity to one, the collapse from potentiality to reality which was the action of time itself. The potential was so delicious--- the way they could have, potentially, all the best parts of all good governments of all time, combined magically into some superb, as-yet-unseen synthesis--- or throw all that aside, and finally strike a new path to the heart of just government. . . .To go from that to the mundane problematic of the constitution as written was an inevitable letdown, and instinctively people put it off.
On the other hand, it would certainly be a good thing if their diplomatic team were to arrive on Earth with a completed document to present to the UN and the people of Earth. Really, there was no avoiding it; they needed to finish; not just to present to Earth the united front of an established government, but also to start living their postcrisis life, whatever it might be.
Nadia felt this strongly, and so she began to exert herself. "Time to drop the keystone in the arch," she said to Art one morning. And from then on she was indefatigable, meeting with all the delegations and committees, insisting that they finish whatever they were working on, insisting they get it on the table for a final vote on inclusion. This inexorable insistence of hers revealed something that had not been clear before, which was that most of the issues had been resolved to the satisfaction of most of the delegations. They had concocted something workable, most agreed, or at least worth trying, with amendment procedures prominent in the structure so that they could alter aspects of the system as they went along. The young natives in particular seemed happy--- proud of their work, and pleased that they had managed to keep an emphasis on local semiautonomy, institutionalizing the way most of them had lived under the Transitional Authority.
Thus the many checks against majoritarian rule did not bother them, even though they themselves were the current majority. In order not to look defeated by this development, Jackie and her circle had to pretend they had never argued for a strong presidency and central government in the first place; indeed they claimed that an executive council, elected by the legislature in the Swiss manner, had been their idea all along. A lot of that kind of thing was going on, and Art was happy to agree with all such claims: "Yes, I remember, we were wondering what to do about that the night when we stayed up to see the sunrise, it was a good thought you had."
Good ideas everywhere. And they began to spiral down toward closure.
The global government as they had designed it was to be a confederation, led by an executive council of seven members, elected by a two-housed legislature. One legislative branch, the duma, was composed of a large group of representatives drafted from the populace; the other, the senate, a smaller group elected one from each town or village group larger than five hundred people. The legislature was all in all fairly weak; it elected the executive council and helped select justices of the courts, and left to the towns most legislative duties. The judicial branch was more powerful; it included not only criminal courts, but also a kind of double supreme court, one half a constitutional court, and the other half an environmental court, with members to both appointed, elected, and drawn by lottery. The environmental court would rule on disputes concerning terraforming and other environmental changes, while the constitutional court would rule on the constitutionality of all other issues, including challenged town laws. One arm of the environmental court would be a land commission, charged with overseeing the stewardship of the land, which was to belong to all Martians together, in keeping with point three of the Dorsa Brevia agreement; there would not be private property as such, but there would be various tenure rights established in leasing contracts, and the land commission was to work these matters out. A corresponding economic commission would function under the constitutional court, and would be partly composed of representatives from guild cooperatives which would be established for the various professions and industries. This commission was to oversee the establishment of a version of the underground's eco-economics, including both not-for-profit enterprises concentrating on the public sphere, and taxed for-profit enterprises which had legal size limits, and were by law employee-owned.
This expansion of the judiciary satisfied what desire they had for a strong global government, without giving an executive body much power; it was also a response to the heroic role played by Earth's World Court in the previous century, when almost every other Terran institution had been bought or otherwise collapsed under metanational pressures; only the World Court had held firm, issuing ruling after ruling on behalf of the disenfranchised and the land, in a mostly ignored rearguard and indeed symbolic action against the metanats' depredations; a moral force, which if it had had more teeth, might have done more good. But from the Martian underground they had seen the battle fought, and now they remembered.
Thus the Martian global government. The constitution then also included a long list of human rights, including social rights; guidelines for the land commission and the economics commission; an Australian ballot election system for the elective offices; a system for amendments; and so on. Lastly, to the main text of the constitution they appended the huge collection of materials that had accumulated in the process, calling it Working Notes and Commentary. This was to be used to help the courts interpret the main document, and included everything the delegations had said at the table of tables, or written on the warehouse screens, or received in the mail.
• • •
So most of the sticky issues had been resolved, or at least swept under the rug; the biggest outstanding dispute was the Red objection. Art went into action here, orchestrating several late concessions to the Reds, including many early appointments to the environmental courts; these concessions were later termed the "Grand Gesture." In return Irishka, speaking for all the Reds still involved in the political process, agreed that the cable would stay, that UNTA would have a presence in Sheffield, that Terrans would still be able to immigrate, subject to restrictions; and lastly, that terraforming would continue, in slow nondisruptive forms, until the atmospheric pressure at six kilometers above the datum was 350 millibars, this figure to be reviewed every five years. And so the Red impasse was broken, or at least finessed.
Coyote shook his head at the way things had developed. "After every revolution there is an interregnum, in which communities run themselves and all is well, and then the new regime comes in and screws things up. I think what you should do now is go out to the tents and canyons, and ask them very humbly how they have been running things these past two months, and then throw this fancy constitution away and say, continue."
"But that's what the constitution does say," Art joked.
Coyote would not kid about this. "You must be very scrupulous not to gather power in to the center just because you can do it. Power corrupts, that's the basic law of politics. Maybe the only law."
As for UNTA, it was harder to tell what they thought, because opinions back on Earth were divided, with a loud faction calling for the retaking of Mars by force, everyone on Pavonis to be jailed or hanged. Most Terrans were more accommodating, and all of them were still distracted by the ongoing crisis at home. And at the moment, they didn't matter as much as the Reds; that was the space the revolution had given the Martians. Now they were about to fill it.
• • •
Every night of the final week, Art went to bed incoherent with cavils and kava, and though exhausted he would wake fairly often during the night, and roll under the force of some seemingly lucid thought that in the morning would be gone, or revealed as lunatic. Nadia slept just as poorly on the couch next to his, or in her chair. Sometimes they would fall asleep talking over some point or other, and wake up dressed but entangled, holding on to each other like children in a thunderstorm. The warmth of another body was a comfort like nothing else. And once in the dim predawn ultraviolet light they both woke up, and talked for hours in the cold silence of the building, in a little cocoon of warmth and companionship. Another mind to talk to. From colleagues to friends; from there to lovers, maybe; or something like lovers; Nadia did not seem inclined to romanticism of any kind. But Art was in love, no doubt about it, and there twinkled in Nadia's flecked eyes a new fondness for him, he thought. So that at the end of the long final days of the congress, they lay on their couches and talked, and she would knead his shoulders, or him hers, and then they would fall comatose, pounded by exhaustion. There was more pressure to ushering in this document than either one of them wanted to admit, except in these moments, huddling together against the cold big world. A new love: Art, despite Nadia's unsentimentality, found no other way to put it. He was happy.
And he was amused, but not surprised, when they got up one morning and she said, "Let's put it to a vote."
• • •
So Art talked to the Swiss and the Dorsa Brevia scholars, and the Swiss proposed to the congress that they vote on the version of the constitution currently on the table, voting point by point as they had promised in the beginning. Immediately there was a spasm of vote trading that made Terran stock exchanges look subtle and slow. Meanwhile the Swiss set up a voting sequence, and over the course of three days they ran through it, allowing one vote to each group on each numbered paragraph of the draft constitution. All eighty-nine paragraphs passed, and the massive collection of "explanatory material" was officially appended to the main text.
After that it was time to put it to the people of Mars for approval. So on Ls 158, 1 October 11th, m-year 52 (on Earth, February 27, 2128), the general populace of Mars, including everyone over five m-years old, voted by wrist on the resulting document. Over ninety-five percent of the population voted, and the constitution passed seventy-eight percent to twenty-two percent, garnering just over nine million votes. They had a government.
Green Earth
Prologue
On Earth, meanwhile, the great flood dominated everything.
The flood had been caused by a cluster of violent volcanic eruptions under the west Antarctic ice sheet. The land underneath the ice sheet, resembling North America's basin and range country, had been depressed by the weight of the ice until it lay below sea level. So when the eruptions began the lava and gases had melted the ice over the volcanoes, causing vast slippages overhead; at the same time, ocean water had started to pour in under the ice, at various points around the swiftly eroding grounding line. Destabilized and shattering, enormous islands of ice had broken off all around the edges of the Ross Sea and the Ronne Sea. As these islands of ice floated away on the ocean currents, the breakup continued to move inland, and the turbulence caused the process to accelerate. In the months following the first big breaks, the Antarctic Sea filled with immense tabular icebergs, which displaced so much water that sea level all over the world rose. Water continued to rush into the depressed basin in west Antarctica that the ice had once filled, floating out the rest of it berg by berg, until the ice sheet was entirely gone, replaced by a shallow new sea roiled by the continuing underwater eruptions, which were being compared in their severity to the Deccan Traps eruptions of the late Cretaceous.
And so, a year after the eruptions began, Antarctica was only a bit over half as big as it had been--- east Antarctic like a half-moon, the Antarctic peninsula like an iced-over New Zealand--- in between them, a berg-clotted bubbling shallow sea. And around the rest of the world, sea level was seven meters higher than it had been before.
Not since the last ice age, ten thousand years before, had humanity experienced a natural catastrophe of such magnitude. And this time it affected not just a few million hunter-gatherers in nomadic tribes, but fifteen billion civilized citizens, living atop a precarious sociotechnological edifice which had already been in great danger of collapse. All the big coastal cities were inundated, whole countries like Bangladesh and Holland and Belize were awash. Most of the unfortunates who lived in such lowlying regions had time to move to higher ground, for the surge was more like a tide than a tidal wave; and then there they all were, somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of the world's population--- refugees.
It goes without saying that human society was not equipped to handle such a situation. Even in the best of times it would not have been easy, and the early twenty-second century had not been the best of times. Populations were still rising, resources were more and more depleted, conflicts between rich and poor, governments and metanats, had been sharpening everywhere: the catastrophe had struck in the midst of a crisis.
To a certain extent, the catastrophe canceled the crisis. In the face of worldwide desperation, power struggles of all kinds were recontextualized, many rendered phantasmagorical; there were whole populations in need, and legalities of ownership and profit paled in comparison to the problem. The United Nations rose like some aquatic phoenix out of the chaos, and became the clearinghouse for the vast number of emergency relief efforts: migrations inland across national borders, construction of emergency accommodations, distribution of emergency food and supplies. Because of the nature of this work, with its emphasis on rescue and relief, Switzerland and Praxis were in the forefront of helping the UN. UNESCO returned from the dead, along with the World Health Organization. India and China, as the largest of the badly devastated countries, were also extremely influential in the current situation, because how they chose to cope made a big difference everywhere. They made alliances with each other, and with the UN and its new allies; they refused all help from the Group of Eleven, and the metanationals that were now fully intertwined into the affairs of most of the G11 governments.
In other ways, however, the catastrophe only exacerbated the crisis. The metanationals themselves were cast into a very curious position by the flood. Before its onset they had been absorbed in what commentators had been calling the metanatricide, fighting among themselves for final control of the world economy. A few big metanational superclusters had been jockeying for ultimate control of the largest industrial countries, and attempting to subsume the few entities still out of their control: Switzerland, India, China, Praxis, the so-called World Court countries, and so on. Now, with much of the population of Earth occupied in dealing with the flood, the metanats were mostly struggling to regain what control they had had of affairs. In the popular mind they were often linked to the flood, as cause, or as punished sinners--- a very convenient bit of magical thinking for Mars and the other antimetanational forces, all of whom were doing their best to seize this chance to beat the metanats to pieces while they were down. The Group of Eleven and the other industrial governments previously associated with the metanats were scrambling to keep their own populations alive, and so could spare little effort to help the great conglomerates. And people everywhere were abandoning their previous jobs to join the various relief efforts; Praxis-style employee-owned enterprises were gaining in popularity as they took on the emergency, at the same time offering all their members the longevity treatment. Some of the metanats held on to their workforce by reconfiguring along these same lines. And so the struggle for power continued on many levels, but everywhere rearranged by the catastrophe.
In that context, Mars to most Terrans was completely irrelevant. Oh it made for an interesting story, of course, and many cursed the Martians as ungrateful children, abandoning their parents in the parents' hour of need; it was one example among many of bad responses to the flood, to be contrasted to the equally plentiful good responses. There were heroes and villains all over these days, and most regarded the Martians as villains, rats escaping a sinking ship. Others regarded them as potential saviors, in some ill-defined way: another bit of magical thinking, by and large; but there was something hopeful in the notion of a new society forming on the next world out.
Meanwhile, no matter what happened on Mars, the people of Earth struggled to cope with the flood. The damage now began to include rapid climactic changes: more cloud cover, reflecting more sunlight and causing temperatures to drop, also creating torrential rainstorms, which often wrecked much-needed crops, and sometimes fell where rain had seldom fallen before, in the Sahara, the Mojave, northern Chile--- bringing the great flood far inland, in effect, bringing its impact everywhere. And with agriculture hammered by these new severe storms, hunger itself became an issue; any general sense of cooperation was therefore threatened, as it seemed that perhaps not everyone could be fed, and the cowardly spoke of triage. And so every part of Terra was in turmoil, like an anthill stirred by a stick.
So that was Earth in the summer of 2128: an unprecedented catastrophe, an ongoing universal crisis. The antediluvian world already seemed like no more than a bad dream from which they had all been rudely awakened, cast into an even more dangerous reality. From the frying pan into the fire, yes; and some people tried to get them back into the frying pan, while others struggled to get them off the stove; and no one could say what would happen next.
An invisible vise clamped down on Nirgal, each day more crushing than the last. Maya moaned and groaned about it, Michel and Sax did not seem to care; Michel was very happy to be making this trip, and Sax was absorbed in watching reports from the congress on Pavonis Mons. They lived in the rotating chamber of the spaceship Atlantis, and over the five months of the trip the chamber would accelerate until the centrifugal force shifted from Mars equivalent to Earth equivalent, remaining there for almost half the voyage. This was a method that had been worked out over the years, to accommodate emigrants who decided they wanted to return home, diplomats traveling back and forth, and the few Martian natives who had made the voyage to Earth. For everyone it was hard. Quite a few of the natives had gotten sick on Earth; some had died. It was important to stay in the gravity chamber, do one's exercises, take one's inoculations.
Sax and Michel worked out on exercise machines; Nirgal and Maya sat in the blessed baths, commiserating. Of course Maya enjoyed her misery, as she seemed to enjoy all her emotions, including rage and melancholy; while Nirgal was truly miserable, spacetime bending him in an ever more tortuous torque, until every cell of him cried out with the pain of it. It frightened him--- the effort it took just to breathe, the idea of a planet so massive. Hard to believe!
He tried to talk to Michel about it, but Michel was distracted by his anticipation, his preparation. Sax by the events on Mars. Nirgal didn't care about the meeting back on Pavonis, it would not matter much in the long run, he judged. The natives in the outback had lived the way they wanted to under UNTA, and they would do the same under the new government. Jackie might succeed in making a presidency for herself, and that would be too bad; but no matter what happened, their relationship had gone strange, become a kind of telepathy which sometimes resembled the old passionate love affair but just as often felt like a vicious sibling rivalry, or even the internal arguments of a schizoid self. Perhaps they were twins, who knew what kind of alchemy Hiroko had performed in the ectogene tanks--- but no--- Jackie had been born of Esther. He knew that. If it proved anything. For to his dismay, she felt like his other self; he did not want that, he did not want the sudden speeding of his heart whenever he saw her. It was one of the reasons he had decided to join the expedition to Earth. And now he was getting away from her at the rate of fifty thousand kilometers an hour, but there she still was on the screen, happy at the ongoing work of the congress, and her part in it. And she would be one of the seven on the new executive council, no doubt about it.
"She is counting on history to take its usual course," Maya said as they sat in the baths watching the news. "Power is like matter, it has gravity, it clumps and then starts to draw more into itself. This local power, spread out through the tents---" She shrugged cynically.
"Perhaps it's a nova," Nirgal suggested.
She laughed. "Yes, perhaps. But then it starts clumping again. That's the gravity of history--- power drawn into centers, until there is an occasional nova. Then a new drawing in. We'll see it on Mars too, you mark my words. And Jackie will be right at the middle of it---" She stopped before adding the bitch, in respect for Nirgal's feelings. Regarding him with a curious hooded gaze, as if wondering what she might do with Nirgal that would advance her never-ending war with Jackie. Little novas of the heart.
The last weeks of one g passed, and never did Nirgal begin to feel comfortable. It was frightening to feel the clamping pressure on his breath and his thinking. His joints hurt. On the screens he saw images of the little blue-and-white marble that was the Earth, with the bone button of Luna looking peculiarly flat and dead beside it. But they were just more screen images, they meant nothing to him compared to his sore feet, his beating heart. Then the blue world suddenly blossomed and filled the screens entirely, its curved limb a white line, the blue water all patterned by white cloud swirls, the continents peaking out from cloud patterns like little rebuses of half-remembered myth: Asia. Africa. Europe. America.
For the final descent and aerobraking the gravity chamber's rotation was stopped. Nirgal, floating, feeling disembodied and balloonlike, pulled to a window to see it all with his own eyes. Despite the window glass and the thousands of kilometers of distance, the detail was startling in its sharp-edged clarity. "The eye has such power," he said to Sax.
"Hmm," Sax said, and came to the window to look.
They watched the Earth, blue before them.
"Are you ever afraid?" Nirgal asked.
"Afraid?"
"You know." Sax on this voyage had not been in one of his more coherent phases; many things had to be explained to him. "Fear. Apprehension. Fright."
"Yes. I think so. I was afraid, yes. Recently. When I found I was . . . disoriented."
"I'm afraid now."
Sax looked at him curiously. Then he floated over and put a hand to Nirgal's arm, in a gentle gesture quite unlike him. "We're here," he said.
• • •
Dropping dropping. There were ten space elevators stranding out from Earth now. Several of them were what they called split cables, dividing into two branching strands that touched down north and south of the equator, which was woefully short of decent socket locations. One split cable Y-ed down to Virac in the Philippines and Oobagooma in western Australia, another to Cairo and Durban. The one they were descending split some ten thousand kilometers above the Earth, the north line touching down near Port of Spain, Trinidad, while the southern one dropped into Brazil near Aripuana, a boomtown on a tributary of the Amazon called the Theodore Roosevelt River.
They were taking the north fork, down to Trinidad. From their elevator car they looked down on most of the Western Hemisphere, centered over the Amazon basin, where brown water veined through the green lungs of Earth. Down and down; in the five days of their descent the world approached until it eventually filled everything below them, and the crushing gravity of the previous month and a half once again slowly took them in its grasp and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed. What little tolerance Nirgal had developed for the weight seemed to have disappeared during the brief return to microgravity, and now he gasped. Every breath an effort. Standing foursquare before the windows, hands clenched to the rails, he looked down through clouds on the brilliant blue of the Caribbean, the intense greens of Venezuela. The Orinoco's discharge into the sea was a leafy stain. The limb of the sky was composed of curved bands of white and turquoise, with the black of space above. All so glossy. The clouds were the same as on Mars but thicker, whiter, more stuffed with themselves. The intense gravity was perhaps exerting an extra pressure on his retina or optic nerve, to make the colors push and pulse so hard. Sounds were noisier.
In the elevator with them were UN diplomats, Praxis aides, media representatives, all hoping for the Martians to give them some time, to talk to them. Nirgal found it difficult to focus on them, to listen to them. Everyone seemed so strangely unaware of their position in space, there five hundred kilometers over the surface of the Earth, and falling fast.
A long last day. Then they were in the atmosphere, and then the cable led their car down onto the green square of Trinidad, into a huge socket complex next to an abandoned airport, its runways like gray runes. The elevator car slid down into the concrete mass. It decelerated; it came to a stop.
Nirgal detached his hands from the rail, and walked carefully after all the others, plod, plod, the weight all through him, plod, plod. They plodded down a jetway. He stepped onto the floor of a building on Earth. The interior of the socket resembled the one on Pavonis Mons, an incongruous familiarity, for the air was salty, thick, hot, clangorous, heavy. Nirgal hurried as much as he could through the halls, wanting to get outside and see things at last. A whole crowd trailed him, surrounded him, but the Praxis aides understood, they made a way for him through a growing crowd. The building was huge, apparently he had missed a chance to take a subway out of it. But there was a doorway glowing with light. Slightly dizzy with the effort, he walked out into a blinding glare. Pure whiteness. It reeked of salt, fish, leaves, tar, shit, spices: like a greenhouse gone mad.
Now his eyes were adjusting. The sky was blue, a turquoise blue like the middle band of the limb as seen from space, but lighter; whiter over the hills, magnesium around the sun. Black spots swam this way and that. The cable threaded up into the sky. It was too bright to look up. Green hills in the distance.
He stumbled as they led him to an open car--- an antique, small and rounded, with rubber tires. A convertible. He stood up in the backseat between Sax and Maya, just to see better. In the glare of light there were hundreds of people, thousands, dressed in astonishing costumes, neon silks, pink purple teal gold aquamarine, jewels, feathers, headdresses---"Carnival," someone in the front seat of the car said up to him, "we dress in costumes for Carnival, also for Discovery Day, when Columbus arrived on the island. That was just a week ago, so we've continued the festival for your arrival too."
"What's the date?" Sax asked.
"Nirgal day! August eleven."
They drove slowly, down streets lined with cheering people. One group was dressed like the natives before the Europeans arrived, shouting wildly. Mouths pink and white in brown faces. Voices like music, everyone singing. The people in the car sounded like Coyote. There were people in the crowd wearing Coyote masks, Desmond Hawkins's cracked face twisted into rubbery expressions beyond what even he could achieve. And words--- Nirgal had thought that on Mars he had encountered every possible distortion of English, but it was hard to follow what the Trinidadians said: accent, diction, intonation, he couldn't tell why. He was sweating freely but still felt hot.
The car, bumpy and slow, ran between the walls of people to a short bluff. Beyond it lay a harbor district, now immersed in shallow water. Buildings swamped in the water stood in patches of dirty foam, rocking on unseen waves. A whole neighborhood now a tide pool, the houses giant exposed mussels, some broken open, water sloshing in and out their windows, rowboats bobbing between them. Bigger boats were tied to streetlights and power-line poles out where the buildings stopped. Farther out sailboats tilted on the sun-beaten blue, each boat with two or three taut fore-and-aft sails. Green hills rising to the right, forming a big open bay. "Fishing boats still coming in through the streets, but the big ships use the bauxite docks down at Point T, see out there?"
Fifty different shades of green on the hills. Palm trees in the shallows were dead, their fronds drooping yellow. These marked the tidal zone; above it green burst out everywhere. Streets and buildings were hacked out of a vegetable world. Green and white, as in his childhood vision, but here the two primal colors were separated out, held in a blue egg of sea and sky. They were just above the waves and yet the horizon was so far away! Instant evidence of the size of this world. No wonder they had thought the Earth was flat. The white water sloshing through the streets below made a continuous krrrrr sound, as loud as the cheers of the crowd.
The rank stench was suddenly cut by the smell of tar on the wind. "Pitch Lake down by La Brea all dug out and shipped away, nothing left but a black hole in the ground, and a little pond we use locally. See that's what you smell, new road here by the water." Asphalt road, sweating mirages. People jammed the black roadside; they all had black hair. A young woman climbed the car to put a necklace of flowers around his neck. Their sweet scent clashed with the stinging salt haze. Perfume and incense, chased by the hot vegetable wind, tarred and spiced. Steel drums, so familiar in all the hard noise, pinging and panging, they played Martian music here! The rooftops in the drowned district to their left now supported ramshackle patios. The stench was of a greenhouse gone bad, things rotting, a hot wet press of air and everything blazing in a talcum of light. Sweat ran freely down his skin. People cheered from the flooded rooftops, from boats, the water coated with flowers floating up and down on the foam. Black hair gleaming like chitin or jewels. A floating wood dock piled with several bands, playing different tunes all at once. Fish scales and flower petals strewn underfoot, silver and red and black dots swimming. Flung flowers flashed by on the wind, streaks of pure color, yellow pink and red. The driver of their car turned around to talk, ignoring the road, "Hear the duglas play soaka music, pan music, listen that cuttin contest, the best five bands in Port a Spain."
They passed through an old neighborhood, visibly ancient, the buildings made of small crumbling bricks, capped by corrugated metal roofs, or even thatch--- all ancient, tiny, the people tiny too, brown-skinned, "The countryside Hindu, the cities black. T 'n T mix them, that's dugla." Grass covered the ground, burst out of every crack in the walls, out of roofs, out of potholes, out of everything not recently paved by tarry asphalt--- an explosive surge of green, pouring out of every surface of the world. The thick air reeked!
Then they emerged from the ancient district onto a broad asphalt boulevard, flanked by big trees and large marble buildings. "Metanat grabhighs, looked big when they first built, but nothing grab as high as the cable." Sour sweat, sweet smoke, everything blazing green, he had to shut his eyes so that he wouldn't be sick. "You okay?" Insects whirred, the air was so hot he couldn't guess its temperature, it had gone off his personal scale. He sat down heavily between Maya and Sax.
The car stopped. He stood again, with an effort, and got out, and had trouble walking; he almost fell, everything was swinging around. Maya held his arm hard. He gripped his temples, breathed through his mouth. "Are you okay?" she asked sharply.
"Yes," Nirgal said, and tried to nod.
They were in a complex of raw new buildings. Unpainted wood, concrete, bare dirt now covered with crushed flower petals. People everywhere, almost all in Carnival costume. The singe of the sun in his eyes wouldn't go away. He was led to a wooden dais, above a throng of people cheering madly.
A beautiful black-haired woman in a green sari, with a white sash belting it, introduced the four Martians to the crowd. The hills behind bent like green flames in a strong western wind; it was cooler than before, and less smelly. Maya stood before the microphones and cameras, and the years fell away from her; she spoke crisp isolated sentences that were cheered antiphonally, call and response, call and response. A media star with the whole world watching, comfortably charismatic, laying out what sounded to Nirgal like her speech in Burroughs at the crux point of the revolution, when she had rallied and focused the crowd in Princess Park. Something like that.
Michel and Sax declined to speak, they waved Nirgal up there to face the crowd and the green hills holding them up to the sun. For a time as he stood there he could not hear himself think. White noise of cheers, thick sound in the thicker air.
"Mars is a mirror," he said in the microphone, "in which Terra sees its own essence. The move to Mars was a purifying voyage, stripping away all but the most important things. What arrived in the end was Terran through and through. And what has happened since there has been an expression of Terran thought and Terran genes. And so, more than any material aid in scarce metals or new genetic strains, we can most help the home planet by serving as a way for you to see yourselves. As a way to map out an unimaginable immensity. Thus in our small way we do our part to create the great civilization that trembles on the brink of becoming. We are the primitives of an unknown civilization."
Loud cheers.
"That's what it looks like to us on Mars, anyway--- a long evolution through the centuries, toward justice and peace. As people learn more, they understand better their dependence on each other and on their world. On Mars we have seen that the best way to express this interdependence is to live for giving, in a culture of compassion. Every person free and equal in the sight of all, working together for the good of all. It's that work that makes us most free. No hierarchy is worth acknowledging but this one: the more we give, the greater we become. Now in the midst of a great flood, spurred by the great flood, we see the flowering of this culture of compassion, emerging on both the two worlds at once."
• • •
He sat in a blaze of noise. Then the speeches were over and they had shifted into some kind of public press conference, responding to questions asked by the beautiful woman in the green sari. Nirgal responded with questions of his own, asking her about the new compound of buildings surrounding them, and about the situation on the island; and she answered over a chatter of commentary and laughter from the appreciative crowd, still looking on from behind the wall of reporters and cameras. The woman turned out to be the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. The little two-island nation had been unwillingly dominated by the metanat Armscor for most of the previous century, the woman explained, and only since the flood had they severed that association, "and every colonial bond at last." How the crowd cheered! And her smile, so full of a whole society's pleasure. She was dugla, he saw, and amazingly beautiful.
The compound they were in, she explained, was one of scores of relief hospitals that had been built on the two islands since the flood. Their construction had been the major project of the islanders in response to their new freedom; they had created relief centers that aided flood victims, giving them all at once housing, work, and medical care, including the longevity treatment.
"Everyone gets the treatment?" Nirgal asked.
"Yes," the woman said.
"Good!" Nirgal said, surprised; he had heard it was a rare thing on Earth.
"You think so!" the prime minister said. "People are saying it will create all kinds of problems."
"Yes. It will, in fact. But I think we should do it anyway. Give everyone the treatment and then figure out what to do."
It was a minute or two before anything more could be heard over the cheering of the crowd. The prime minister was trying to quiet them, but a short man dressed in a fashionable brown suit came out of the group behind the prime minister and proclaimed into the mike, to an uproar of cheers at every sentence, "This Marsman Nirgal is a son of Trinidad! His papa, Desmond Hawkins the Stowaway, the Coyote of Mars, is from Port of Spain, and he still has a lot of people there! That Armscor bought the oil company and they tried to buy the island too, but they picked the wrong island to try! Your Coyote didn't get his spirit from out of the air, Maestro Nirgal, he got it from T and T! He's been wandering around up there teaching everyone the T and T way, and they're all up there dugla anyway, they understand the dugla way, and they have taken over all Mars with it! Mars is one great big Trinidad Tobago!"
The crowd went into transports at this, and impulsively Nirgal walked over to the man and hugged him, such a smile, then found the stairs and got down and walked out into the crowd, which clumped around him. A miasma of fragrances. Too loud to think. He touched people, shook hands. People touched him. The look in their eyes! Everyone was shorter than he was, they laughed at that; and every face was an entire world. Black dots swam in his vision, things went darker very abruptly--- he looked around, startled--- a bank of clouds had massed over a dark strip of sea to the west, and the lead edge had cut off the sun. Now as he continued to mingle the cloud bank came rolling over the island. The crowd broke up as people moved under the shelter of trees, or verandas, or a big tin-roofed bus stop. Maya and Sax and Michel were lost in their own crowds. The clouds were dark gray at their bases, rearing up in white roils as solid as rock but mutable, flowing continuously. A cool wind struck hard, and then big raindrops starred the dirt, and the four Martians were hustled under an open pavilion roof, where room was made for them.
Then the rain poured down like nothing Nirgal had ever seen--- rain sheeting down, roaring, slamming into sudden broad rivering puddles, all starred with a million white droplet explosions, the whole world outside the pavilion blurred by falling water into patches of color, green and brown all mixed in a wash. Maya was grinning: "It's like the ocean is falling on us!"
"So much water!" Nirgal said.
The prime minister shrugged. "It happens every day during monsoon. It's more rain than before, and we already got a lot."
Nirgal shook his head and felt a stabbing at his temples. The pain of breathing in wet air. Half drowning.
The prime minister was explaining something to them, but Nirgal could barely follow, his head hurt so. Anyone in the independence movement could join a Praxis affiliate, and during their first year's work they were building relief centers like this one. The longevity treatment was an automatic part of every person's joining, administered in the newly built centers. Birth-control implants could be had at the same time, reversible but permanent if left in; many took them as their contribution to the cause. "Babies later, we say. There will be time." People wanted to join anyway, almost everyone had. Armscor had been forced to match the Praxis arrangement to keep some of their people, and so it made little difference now what organization one was part of, on Trinidad they were all much the same. The newly treated went on to build more housing, or work in agriculture, or make more hospital equipment. Trinidad had been fairly prosperous before the flood, the combined result of vast oil reserves and metanat investment in the cable socket. There had been a progressive tradition which had formed the basis of the resistance, in the years after the unwelcome metanat arrival. Now there was a growing infrastructure dedicated to the longevity project. It was a promising situation. Every camp was a waiting list for the treatment, working on its own construction. Of course people were absolutely firm in the defense of such places. Even if Armscor had wanted to, it would be very difficult for its security forces to take over the camps. And if they did they would find nothing of value to them anyway; they already had the treatment. So they could try genocide if they wanted to, but other than that, they had few options for taking back control of the situation.
"The island just walked away from them," the prime minister concluded. "No army can stop that. It is an end to economic caste, caste of all kind. This is something new, a new dugla thing in history, like you said in your speech. Like a little Mars. So to have you here to see us, you a grandchild of the island, you who have taught us so much in your beautiful new world--- oh, it is a special thing. A festival for real." That radiant smile.
"Who was the man who spoke?"
"Oh that was James."
Abruptly the rain let up. The sun broke through, and the world steamed. Sweat poured down Nirgal in the white air. He could not catch his breath. White air, black spots swimming.
"I think I need to lie down."
"Oh yes, yes, of course. You must be exhausted, overwhelmed. Come with us."
They took him to a small outbuilding of the compound, into a bright room walled with bamboo strips, empty except for a mattress on the floor.
"I'm afraid the mattress is not long enough for you."
"It doesn't matter."
He was left alone. Something about the room reminded him of the interior of Hiroko's cottage, in the grove on the far side of the lake in Zygote. Not just the bamboo, but the room's size and shape--- and something elusive, the green light streaming in perhaps. The sensation of Hiroko's presence was so strong and so unexpected that when the others had left the room, Nirgal threw himself down the mattress, his feet hanging far off the bottom edge, and cried. A complete confusion of feeling. His whole body hurt, but especially his head. He stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep.
He woke in a small black chamber. It smelled green. He couldn't remember where he was. He rolled onto his back and it came to him: Earth. Whispers--- he sat up, frightened. A muffled laugh. Hands caught at him and pressed him down, but they were friendly hands, he could feel that immediately. "Shh," someone said, and then kissed him. Someone else was fumbling at his belt, his buttons. Women, two, three, no two, scented overpoweringly with jasmine and something else, two strands of perfume, both warm. Sweaty skin, so slick. The arteries in his head pounded. This kind of thing had happened to him once or twice when he was younger, when the newly tented canyons were like new worlds, with new young women who wanted to get pregnant or just have fun. After the celibate months of the voyage it felt like heaven to squeeze women's bodies, to kiss and be kissed, and his initial fright melted away in a rush of hands and mouths, breasts and tangled legs. "Sister Earth," he gasped. There was music coming from somewhere far away, piano and steel drums and tablas, almost washed out by the sound of the wind in the bamboo. One of the women was on top of him, pressed down on him, and the feel of her ribs sliding under his hands would stay with him forever. He came inside her, kept on kissing. But his head still pounded painfully.
• • •
The next time he woke he was damp and naked on the mattress. It was still dark. He dressed and went out of the room, down a dim hallway to an enclosed porch. It was dusk; he had slept through a day. Maya and Michel and Sax were sitting down to a meal with a large group. Nirgal assured them he was fine, ravenous in fact.
He sat among them. Out in the clearing, in the middle of the raw wet compound, a crowd was gathered around an outdoor kitchen. Beyond them a bonfire blazed yellow in the dusk; its flames limned the dark faces and reflected in the bright liquid whites of their eyes, their teeth. The people at the inside table all looked at him. Several of the young women smiled, their jet hair like caps of jewels, and for a second Nirgal was afraid he smelled of sex and perfume; but the smoke from the bonfire, and the steamy scents of the spiced dishes on the table, made such a thing irrelevant--- in such an explosion of smells, nothing could be traced to its origin--- and anyway one's olfactory system was blasted by the food, hot with spices, curry and cayenne, chunks of fish on rice, with a vegetable that seared his mouth and throat, so that he spent the next half hour blinking and sniffing and drinking glasses of water, his head burning. Someone gave him a slice of candied orange, which cooled his mouth somewhat. He ate several slices of bittersweet candied orange.
When the meal was over they all cleared the tables together, as in Zygote or Hiranyagarba. Outside dancers began to circle the bonfire, dressed in their surreal carnival costumes, with masks of beasts and demons over their heads, as during Fassnacht in Nicosia, although the masks were heavier and stranger: demons with multiple eyes and big teeth, elephants, goddesses. The trees were black against the blurry black of the sky, the stars all fat and swinging around, the fronds and leaves up there green black black green, and then fire-colored as the flames leaped higher, seeming to provide the rhythm of the dance. A small young woman with six arms, all moving together to the dance, stepped behind Nirgal and Maya. "This is the dance of Ramayana," she told them. "It is as old as civilization, and in it they speak of Mangala."
She gave Nirgal a familiar squeeze on the shoulder, and suddenly he recognized her jasmine scent. Without smiling she went back out to the bonfire. The tabla drums were following the leaping flames to a crescendo, and the dancers cried out. Nirgal's head throbbed at every beat, and despite the candied orange his eyes were still watering from the burning pepper. And his lids were heavy. "I know it's strange," he said, "but I think I have to sleep again."
• • •
He woke before dawn, and went out on a veranda to watch the sky lighten in a quite Martian sequence, black to purple to rose to pink, before turning the startling cyanic blue of a tropical Terran morning. His head was still sore, as if stuffed, but he felt rested at last, and ready to take on the world again. After a breakfast of green-brown bananas, he and Sax joined some of their hosts for a drive around the island.
Everywhere they went there were always several hundred people in his field of vision. The people were all small: brown-skinned like him in the countryside, darker in the towns. There were big vans that moved around together, providing mobile shops to villages too small to have them. Nirgal was surprised to see how lean people were, their limbs wiry with labor or else as thin as reeds. In this context the curves of the young women were like the blooms of flowers, not long for this world.
When people saw who he was they rushed up to greet him and shake his hand. Sax shook his head at the sight of Nirgal among them. "Bimodal distribution," he said. "Not speciation exactly--- but perhaps if enough time passed. Island divergence, it's very Darwinian."
"I'm a Martian," Nirgal agreed.
Their buildings were placed in holes hacked into the green jungle, which then tried to take the space back. The older buildings were all made of mud bricks black with age, melting back into the earth. Rice fields were terraced so finely that the hills looked farther away than they really were. The light green of rice shoots was a color never seen on Mars. In general the greens were brilliant and glowing beyond anything Nirgal could recall seeing; they pressed on him, so various and intense, the sun plating his back: "It's because of the sky's color," Sax said when Nirgal mentioned it. "The reds in the Martian sky mute the greens just a bit."
The air was thick, wet, rancid. The shimmering sea settled on a distant horizon. Nirgal coughed, breathed through his mouth, struggled to ignore his throbbing temples and forehead.
"You have low-altitude sickness," Sax speculated. "I've read claims that it happens to Himalayans and Andeans who come down to sea level. Acidity levels in the blood. We ought to have landed you someplace higher."
"Why didn't we?"
"They wanted you here because Desmond came from here. This is your homeland. Actually there seems to be a bit of conflict over who should host us next."
"Even here?"
"More here than on Mars, I should think."
Nirgal groaned. The weight of the world, the stifling air---"I'm going running," he said, and took off.
At first it was its usual release; the habitual motions and responses poured through him, reminding him that he was still himself. But as he thumped along he did not ascend into that lung-gom-pa zone where running was like breathing, something he could do indefinitely; instead he began to feel the press of the thick air in his lungs, and the pressure of eyes from the little people he passed, and most of all the pressure of his own weight, hurting his joints. He weighed more than twice what he was used to, and it was like carrying an invisible person on his back, except no--- the weight was inside him. As if his bones had turned to lead inside him. His lungs burned and drowned at the same time, and no cough would get them clear. There were taller people in Western clothes behind him now, on little three-wheeled bicycles that splashed through every puddle. But locals were stepping into the road behind him, crowds of them blocking off the tricyclers, their eyes and teeth gleaming in their dark faces as they talked and laughed. The men on the tricycles had blank faces, and they were looking at Nirgal. But they did not challenge the crowd. Nirgal headed back toward the camp, turning down a new road. Now the green hills were blazing to his right. The road jarred up through his legs with every step, until his legs were like tree trunks aflame. That running should hurt! And his head was like a giant balloon. All the wet green plants seemed to be reaching out for him, a hundred shades of green flame melding to one dominant color band, pouring into the world. Black dots swimming. "Hiroko," he gasped, and ran on with the tears streaming down his face; no one would be able to tell them from sweat. Hiroko, it isn't like you said it would be!
He stumbled into the ochre dirt of the compound, and scores of people followed him to Maya. Soaking as he was, he still threw his arms around her and put his head down on her shoulder, sobbing.
"We should get to Europe," Maya said angrily to someone over his back. "This is stupid, to bring him right to the tropics like this."
Nirgal shifted to look back. It was the prime minister. "This is how we always live," she said, and pierced Nirgal with a resentful proud look.
But Maya was unimpressed. "We have to go to Bern," she said.
• • •
They flew to Switzerland in a small space plane provided by Praxis. As they traveled, they looked down on the Earth from thirty thousand meters: the blue Atlantic, the rugged mountains of Spain, somewhat like the Hellespontus Montes; then France; then the white wall of the Alps, unlike any mountains he had ever seen. The cool ventilation of the space plane felt like home to Nirgal, and he was chagrined to think that he could not tolerate the open air of Earth.
"You'll do better in Europe," Maya told him.
Nirgal thought about the reception they had gotten. "They love you here," he said. Overwhelmed as he had been, he had still noticed that the welcome of the duglas had been as enthusiastic for the other three ambassadors as for him; and Maya had been particularly cherished.
"They're happy we survived," Maya said, dismissing it. "We came back from the dead as far as they're concerned, like magic. They thought we were dead, do you see? From sixty-one until just last year, they thought all the First Hundred were dead. Sixty-seven years! And all that time part of them was dead too. To have us come back like we have, and in this flood, with everything changing--- yes. It's like a myth. The return from underground."
"But not all of you."
"No." She almost smiled. "They still have to sort that out. They think Frank is alive, and Arkady--- and John too, even though John was killed years before sixty-one, and everyone knew it! For a while, anyway. But people are forgetting things. That was a long time ago. And so much has happened since. And people want John Boone to be alive. And so they forget Nicosia, and say that he is part of the underground still." She laughed shortly, unsettled by this.
"Like with Hiroko," Nirgal said, feeling his throat constrict. A wave of sadness like the one in Trinidad washed through him, leaving him bleached and aching. He believed, he had always believed, that Hiroko was alive, and hiding with her people somewhere in the southern highlands. This was how he had coped with the shock of the news of her disappearance--- by being quite certain that she had slipped out of Sabishii, and would show up again when she felt the time was right. He had been sure of it. Now, for some reason he could not tell, he was no longer sure.
In the seat on the other side of Maya, Michel sat with a pinched expression on his face. Suddenly Nirgal felt like he was looking in a mirror; he knew his face held the same expression, he could feel it in his muscles. He and Michel both had doubts--- perhaps about Hiroko, perhaps about other things. No way of telling. Michel did not seem inclined to speak.
And from across the plane Sax watched them both, with his usual birdlike gaze.
• • •
They dropped out of the sky paralleling the great north wall of the Alps, and landed on a runway among green fields. They were escorted through a cool Marslike building, downstairs and onto a train, which slid metallically up and out of the building, and across green fields; and in an hour they were in Bern.
In Bern the streets were mobbed by diplomats and reporters, everyone with an ID badge on their chest, everyone with a mission to speak to them. The city was small and pristine and rock solid: the feeling of gathered power was palpable. Narrow stone-flagged streets were flanked by thickly arcaded stone buildings, everything as permanent as a mountain, with the swift river Aare S-ing through it, holding the main part of town in one big oxbow. The people crowding that quarter were mostly Europeans: meticulous-looking white people, not as short as most Terrans, milling around absorbed in their talk, and always a good number of them clustering around the Martians and their escorts, who now were blue-uniformed Swiss military police.
Nirgal and Sax and Michel and Maya were given rooms in the Praxis headquarters, in a small stone building just above the Aare River. It amazed Nirgal how close to water the Swiss were willing to build; a rise in the river of even two meters would spell disaster, but they did not care; apparently they had the river under control that tight, even though it came out of the steepest mountain range Nirgal had ever seen! Terraforming, indeed; it was no wonder the Swiss were good on Mars.
The Praxis building was just a few streets from the old center of the city. The World Court occupied a scattering of offices next to the Swiss federal buildings, near the middle of the peninsula. So every morning they walked down the cobbled main street, the Kramgasse, which was incredibly clean, bare and underpopulated compared with any street in Port of Spain. They passed under the medieval clock tower, with its ornate face and mechanical figures, like one of Michel's alchemical diagrams made into a three-dimensional object; then into the World Court offices, where they talked to group after group about the situations on Mars and Earth: UN officials, national government representatives, metanational executives, relief organizations, media groups. Everyone wanted to know what was happening on Mars, what Mars planned to do next, what they thought of the situation on Earth, what Mars could offer Earth in the way of help. Nirgal found most of the people he was introduced to fairly easy to talk with; they seemed to understand the respective situations on the two worlds, they were not unrealistic about Mars's ability to somehow "save Earth"; they did not seem to expect to control Mars ever again, nor did they expect the metanational world order of the antediluvian years to return.
It was likely, however, that the Martians were being screened from people who had a more hostile attitude toward them. Maya was quite certain this was the case. She pointed out how often the negotiators and interviewers revealed what she called their "terracentricity." Nothing mattered to them, really, but things Earthly; Mars was interesting in some ways, but not actually important. Once this attitude was pointed out to Nirgal, he saw it again and again. And in fact he found it comforting. The corresponding attitude existed on Mars, certainly, as the natives were inevitably areocentric; and it made sense, it was a kind of realism.
Indeed it began to seem to him that it was precisely the Terrans who showed an intense interest in Mars who were the most troubling to contemplate: certain metanat executives whose corporations had invested heavily in Martian terraformation; also certain national representatives from heavily populated countries, who would no doubt be very happy to have a place to send large numbers of their people. So he sat in meetings with people from Armscor, Subarashii, China, Indonesia, Ammex, India, Japan, and the Japanese metanat council; and he listened most carefully, and did his best to ask questions rather than talk overmuch; and he saw that some of their staunchest allies up to that point, especially India and China, were likely in the new dispensation to become their most serious problem. Maya nodded emphatically when he made this observation to her, her face grim. "We can only hope that sheer distance will save us," she said. "How lucky we are that it takes space travel to reach us. That should be a bottleneck for emigration no matter how advanced transport methods become. But we will have to keep our guard up, forever. In fact, don't speak much of these things here. Don't speak much at all."
• • •
During lunch breaks Nirgal asked his escort group--- a dozen or more Swiss who stayed with him every waking hour--- to walk with him over to the cathedral, which someone told Nirgal was called in Swiss the monster. It had a tower at one end, containing a tight spiral staircase one could ascend, and almost every day Nirgal took several deep breaths and then pushed on up this staircase, gasping and sweating as he neared the top. On clear days, which were not frequent, he could see out the open arches of the top room to the distant abrupt wall of the Alps, a wall he had learned to call the Berner Oberland. This jagged white wall ran from horizon to horizon, like one of the great Martian escarpments, only covered everywhere with snow, everywhere except for on triangular north faces of exposed rock, rock of a light gray color, unlike anything on Mars: granite. Granite mountains, raised by tectonic-plate collision. And the violence of these origins showed.
Between this majestic white range and Bern lay a number of lower ranges of green hills, the grassy alps similar to the greens in Trinidad, the conifer forests a darker green. So much green--- again Nirgal was astounded by how much of Earth was covered with plant life, the lithosphere smothered in a thick ancient blanket of biosphere. "Yes," Michel said, along one day to view the prospect with him. "The biosphere at this point has even formed a great deal of the upper layer of rock. Everywhere life teems, it teems."
Michel was dying to get to Provence. They were near it, an hour's flight or a night's train; and everything that was going on in Berne seemed to Michel only the endless wrangling of politics. "Flood or revolution or the sun going nova, it will still go on! You and Sax can deal with it, you can do what needs doing better than I."
"And Maya even more so."
"Well, yes. But I want her to come with me. She has to see it, or she won't understand."
Maya, however, was absorbed in the negotiations with the UN, which were getting serious now that the Martians back home had approved the new constitution. The UN was turning out to still be very much a metanat mouthpiece, just as the World Court continued to support the new "co-op democracies"; and so the arguments in the various meeting rooms, and via video transmission, were vigorous, volatile, sometimes hostile. Important, in a word, and Maya went out to do battle every day; so she had no patience at all for the idea of Provence. She had visited the south of France in her youth, she said, and was not greatly interested in seeing it again, even with Michel. "She says the beaches are all gone!" Michel complained. "As if the beaches were what mattered to Provence!"
In any case, she wouldn't go. Finally, after a few weeks had passed, Michel shrugged and gave up, unhappily, and decided to visit Provence on his own.
On the day he left, Nirgal walked him down to the train station at the end of the main street, and stood waving at the slowly accelerating train as it left the station. At the last moment Michel stuck his head out a window, waving back at Nirgal with a huge grin. Nirgal was shocked to see this unprecedented expression, so quickly replacing the discouragement at Maya's absence; then he felt happy for his friend; then he felt a flash of envy. There was no place that would make him feel so good to be going to, not anywhere in the two worlds.
After the train disappeared, Nirgal walked back down Kramgasse in the usual cloud of escorts and media eyes, and hauled his two and a half bodies up the 254 spiral stairs of the Monster, to stare south at the wall of the Berner Oberland. He was spending a lot of time up there; sometimes he missed early-afternoon meetings, let Sax and Maya take care of it. The Swiss were running things in their usual businesslike fashion. The meetings had agendas, and started on time, and if they didn't get through the agenda, it wasn't because of the Swiss in the room. They were just like the Swiss on Mars, like Jurgen and Max and Priska and Sibilla, with their sense of order, of appropriate action well performed, with a tough unsentimental love of comfort, of predictable decency. It was an attitude that Coyote laughed at, or disdained as life-threatening; but seeing the results in the elegant stone city below him, overflowing with flowers and people as prosperous as flowers, Nirgal thought there must be something to be said for it. He had been homeless for so long. Michel had his Provence to go to, but for Nirgal no place endured. His hometown was crushed under a polar cap, his mother had disappeared without a trace, and every place since then had been just a place, and everything everywhere always changing. Mutability was his home. And looking over Switzerland, it was a hard thing to realize. He wanted a home place that had something like these tile roofs, these stone walls, here and solid these last thousand years.
He tried to focus on the meetings in the World Court, and in the Swiss Bundeshaus. Praxis was still leading the way in the response to the flood, it was good at working without plans, and it had already been a cooperative concentrating on the production of basic goods and services, including the longevity treatment. So it only had to accelerate that process to take the lead in showing what could be done in the emergency. The four travelers had seen the results in Trinidad; local movements did most of it, but Praxis was helping projects like that all over the world. William Fort was said to have been critical in leading the fluid response of the "collective transnat," as he called Praxis. And his mutant metanational was only one of hundreds of service agencies that had come to the fore. All over the world they were taking on the problem of relocating the coastal populations, and building or relocating a new coastal infrastructure on higher ground.
This loose network of reconstruction efforts, however, was running into some resistance from the metanats, who complained that a good deal of their infrastructure, capital and labor were being nationalized, localized, appropriated, salvaged, or stolen outright. Fighting was not infrequent, especially where fights had already been ongoing; the flood, after all, had arrived right in the middle of one of the world's paroxysms of breakdown and reordering, and although it had altered everything, that struggle was often still happening, sometimes under the cover of the relief efforts.
Sax Russell was particularly aware of this context, convinced as he was that the global wars of 2061 had never resolved the basic inequities of the Terran economic system. In his own peculiar fashion he was insistent on this point in the meetings, and over time it seemed to Nirgal that he was managing to convince the skeptical listeners of the UN and the metanats that they all needed to pursue something like the Praxis method if they wanted themselves and civilization to survive. It did not matter much which of the two they really cared about, he said to Nirgal in private, themselves or civilization; it didn't matter if they only instituted some Machiavellian simulacrum of the Praxis program; the effect would be much the same in the short term, and everyone needed that grace period of peaceful cooperation.
So in every meeting he was painfully focused, and fairly coherent and engaged, especially compared to his deep abstraction during the voyage to Earth. And Sax Russell was after all The Terraformer Of Mars, the current living avatar of The Great Scientist, a very powerful position in Terran culture, Nirgal thought--- something like the Dalai Lama of science, a continuing reincarnation of the embodiment of the spirit of science, created for a culture that only seemed to be able to handle one scientist at a time. Also, to the metanats Sax was the principal creator of the biggest new market in history--- not an inconsiderable part of his aura. And, as Maya had pointed out, he was one of that group that had returned from the dead, one of the leaders of the First Hundred.
As all these things, his odd halting style actually helped to build the Terrans' image of him. Simple verbal difficulty turned him into a kind of oracle; the Terrans seemed to believe that he thought on such a lofty plane that he could only speak in riddles. This was what they wanted, perhaps. This was what science meant to them--- after all, current physical theory spoke of ultimate reality as ultramicroscopic loops of string, moving supersymmetrically in ten dimensions. That kind of thing had inured people to strangeness from physicists. And the increasing use of translation AIs was getting everyone used to odd locutions of all types; almost everyone Nirgal met spoke English, but they were all slightly different Englishes, so that Earth seemed to Nirgal an explosion of idiolects, no two persons employing the same tongue.
In that context, Sax was listened to with the utmost seriousness. "The flood marks a break point in history," he said one morning, to a large general meeting in the Bundeshaus's National Council Chamber. "It was a natural revolution. Weather on Earth is changed, also the land, the sea's currents. The distribution of human and animal populations. There is no reason, in this situation, to try to reinstate the antediluvian world. It's not possible. And there are many reasons to institute an improved social order. The old one was--- flawed. Resulting in bloodshed, hunger, servitude, and war. Suffering. Unnecessary death. There will always be death. But it should come for every person as late as possible. At the end of a good life. This is the goal of any rational social order. So we see the flood as an opportunity--- here as it was on Mars--- to--- break the mold."
The UN officials and the metanat advisers frowned at this, but they listened. And the whole world was watching; so that what a cadre of leaders in a European city thought was not as important, Nirgal judged, as the people in their villages, watching the man from Mars on the vid. And as Praxis and the Swiss and their allies worldwide had thrown all their resources into refugee aid and the longevity treatments, people everywhere were joining up. If you could make a living while saving the world--- if it represented your best chance for stability and long life and your children's chances--- then why not? Why not? What did most people have to lose? The late metanational period had benefited some, but billions had been left out, in an ever-worsening situation.
So the metanats were losing their workers en masse. They couldn't imprison them; it was getting hard to scare them; the only way they could keep them was to institute the same sorts of programs that Praxis had started. And this they were doing, or so they said. Maya was sure they were instituting superficial changes meant to resemble Praxis's only in order to keep their workers and their profits too. But it was possible that Sax was right, and that they would be unable to keep control of the situation, and would usher in a new order despite themselves.
Which is what Nirgal decided to say, during one of his chances to speak, in a press conference in a big side room of the Bundeshaus. Standing at the podium, looking out at a room full of reporters and delegates--- so unlike the improvised table in the Pavonis warehouse, so unlike the compound hacked out of the jungle in Trinidad, so unlike the stage in the sea of people during that wild night in Burroughs--- Nirgal saw suddenly that his role was to be the young Martian, the voice of the new world. He could leave being reasonable to Maya and Sax, and provide the alien point of view.
"It's going to be all right," he said, looking at as many of them as he could. "Every moment in history contains a mix of archaic elements, things from all over the past, right back into prehistory itself. The present is always a melange of these variously archaic elements. There are still knights coming through on horseback and taking the crops of peasants. There are still guilds, and tribes. Now we see so many people leaving their jobs to work in the flood-relief efforts. That's a new thing, but it's also a pilgrimage. They want to be pilgrims, they want to have a spiritual purpose, they want to do real work--- meaningful work. They won't tolerate being stolen from anymore. Those of you here who represent the aristocracy look worried. Perhaps you will have to work for yourselves, and live off that. Live at the same level as anyone else. And it's true--- that will happen. But it's going to be all right, even for you. Enough is as good as a feast. And it's when everyone is equal that your kids are safest. This universal distribution of the longevity treatment that we are now seeing is the ultimate meaning of the democratic movement. It's the physical manifestation of democracy, here at last. Health for all. And when that happens the explosion of positive human energy is going to transform the Earth in just a matter of years."
Someone in the crowd stood and asked him about the possibility of a population explosion, and he nodded. "Yes of course. This is a real problem. You don't have to be a demographer to see that if new ones continue being born while the elderly are not dying, population will quickly soar to incredible levels. Unsustainable levels, until there will be a crash. So. This has to be faced now. The birth rate simply has to be cut, at least for a while. It isn't a situation that has to last forever. The longevity treatments are not immortality treatments. Eventually the first generations given the treatment will die. And therein lies the solution to the problem. Say the current population on the two worlds is fifteen billion. That means we're already starting from a bad spot. Given the severity of the problem, as long as you get to be a parent at all, there is no reason to complain; it's your own longevity causing the problem after all, and parenthood is parenthood, one child or ten. So say that each person partners, and the two parents have only a single child, so that there is one child for every two people in the previous generation. Say that means seven and a half billion children out of this present generation. And they are all given the longevity treatment too, of course, and cosseted until they are no doubt the insufferable royalty of the world. And they go on to have four billion children, the new royalty, and that generation has two, and so on. All of them are alive at once, and the population is rising all the time, but at a lower rate as time passes. And then at some point, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a thousand years from now, that first generation will die. It may happen over a fairly short period of time, but fast or slow, when the process is done, the overall population will be almost halved. At that point people can look at the situation, the infrastructure, the environments of the two worlds--- the carrying capacity of the entire solar system, whatever that might be. After the biggest generations are gone, people can start having two children each, perhaps, so that there is replacement, and a steady state. Or whatever. When they have that kind of choice, the population crisis will be over. It could take a thousand years."
Nirgal stopped to look outside of himself, to stare around at the audience; people watching him rapt, silent. He gestured with a hand, to draw them all together. "In the meantime, we have to help each other. We have to regulate ourselves, we have to take care of the land. And it's here, in this part of the project, that Mars can help Earth. First, we are an experiment in taking care of the land. Everyone learns from that, and some lessons can be applied here. Then, more importantly, though most of the population will always be located here on Earth, a goodly fraction of it can move to Mars. It will help ease the situation, and we'll be happy to take them. We have an obligation to take on as many people as we possibly can, because we on Mars are Terrans still, and we are all in this together. Earth and Mars--- and there are other habitable worlds in the solar system as well, none as big as our two, but there are a lot of them. And by using them all, and cooperating, we can get through the populated years. And walk out into a golden age."
• • •
That day's talk made quite an impression, as far as one could tell from within the eye of the media storm. Nirgal conversed for hours every day after that, with group after group, elaborating the ideas he had first expressed in that meeting. It was exhausting work, and after a few weeks of it without any letup, he looked out his bedroom window one cloudless morning, and went out and talked to his escort about making an expedition. And the escort agreed to tell the people in Bern he was touring privately; and they took a train up into the Alps.
The train ran south from Bern, past a long blue lake called the Thuner See, which was flanked by steep grassy alps, and ramparts and spires of gray granite. The lakeside towns were topped by slate roof tiles, dominated by ancient trees and an occasional castle, everything in perfect repair. The vast green pastures between the towns were dotted by big wooden farmhouses, with red carnations in flower boxes at every window and balcony. It was a style that had not changed in five hundred years, the escorts told him. Settling into the land, as if natural to it. The green alps had been cleared of trees and stones--- in their original state they had been forests. So they were terraformed spaces, huge hilly lawns that had been created to provide forage for cattle. Such an agriculture had not made economic sense as capitalism defined it, but the Swiss had supported the high farms anyway, because they thought it was important, or beautiful, or both at once. It was Swiss. "There are values higher than economic values," Vlad had insisted back in the congress on Mars, and Nirgal saw now how there were people on Earth who had always believed that, at least in part. Werteswandel, they were saying down in Bern, mutation of values; but it could as well be evolution of values, return of values; gradual change, rather than punctuated equilibrium; benevolent residual archaisms, which endured and endured, until slowly these high isolated mountain valleys had taught the world how to live, their big farmhouses floating by on green waves. A shaft of yellow sun split the clouds and struck the hill behind one such farm, and the alp gleamed in an emerald mass, so intensely green that Nirgal felt disoriented, then actually dizzy; it was hard to focus on such a radiant green!
The heraldic hill disappeared. Others appeared in the window, wave after green wave, luminous with their own reality. At the town of Interlaken the train turned and began to ascend a valley so steep that in places the tracks entered tunnels into the rocky sides of the valley, and spiraled a full 360 degrees inside the mountain before coming back out into the sun, the head of the train right above the tail. The train ran on tracks rather than pistes because the Swiss had not been convinced that the new technology was enough of an improvement to justify replacing what they already had. And so the train vibrated, and even rocked side to side, as it rumbled and squealed uphill, steel on steel.
They stopped in Grindelwald, and in the station Nirgal followed his escort onto a much smaller train, which led them up and under the immense north wall of the Eiger. Underneath this wall of stone it appeared only a few hundred meters tall; Nirgal had gotten a better sense of its great height fifty kilometers away, in Bern's Monster. Now, here, he waited patiently as the little train hummed into a tunnel in the mountain itself, and began to make its spirals and switchbacks in the darkness, punctuated only by the interior lights of the train, and the brief light from a single side tunnel. His escort, about ten men strong, spoke among themselves in low guttural Swiss German.
When they emerged into the light again they were in a little station called the Jungfraujoch, "the highest train station in Europe" as a sign in six languages said--- and no wonder, as it was located in an icy pass between the two great peaks the Monch and the Jungfrau, at 3,454 meters above sea level, with no point or destination but its own.
Nirgal got off the train, trailed by his escort, and went out of the station onto a narrow terrace outside the building. The air was thin, clean, crisp, about 270 K--- the best air Nirgal had breathed since he left Mars, it brought tears to his eyes it felt so familiar! Ah, now this was a place!
Even with sunglasses on the light was extremely bright. The sky was a dark cobalt. Snow covere d most of the mountainsides, but granite thrust through the snow everywhere, especially on the north sides of the great masses, where the cliffs were too steep to hold snow. Up here the Alps no longer resembled an escarpment at all; each mass of rock had its own look and presence, separated from the rest by deep expanses of empty air, including glacial valleys that were enormously deep U gaps. To the north these macrotrenches were very far below, and green, or even filled with lakes. To the south, however, they were high, and filled only with snow and ice and rock. On this day the wind was pouring up from this south side, bringing the chill of the ice with it.
Down the ice valley directly south of the pass, Nirgal could see a huge crumpled white plateau, where glaciers poured in from the surrounding high basins to meet in a great confluence. This was Concordiaplatz, they told him. Four big glaciers met, then poured south in the Grosser Aletschgletscher, the longest glacier in Switzerland.
Nirgal moved down the terrace to its end, to see farther into this wilderness of ice. At the far end he found that there was a staircase trail, hacked into the hard snow of the south wall where it rose to the pass. It was a path down to the glacier below them, and from there to Concordiaplatz.
Nirgal asked his escorts to stay in the station and wait for him; he wanted to hike alone. They protested, but the glacier in summer was free of snow, the crevasses all obvious, and the trail well clear of them. And no one else was down there on this cold summer day. Nevertheless the members of the escort were uncertain, and two insisted on coming with him, at least part way, and at a distance behind---"just in case."
Finally Nirgal nodded at the compromise, and pulled on his hood, and hiked down the ice stairs, thumping down painfully until he was on the flatter expanse of the Jungfraufirn. The ridges that walled this snow valley ran south from the Jungfrau and the Monch respectively, then after a few high kilometers dropped abruptly to Concordiaplatz. From the trail their rock looked black, perhaps in contrast to the whiteness of the snow. Here and there were patches of faint pinkness in the white snow--- algae. Life even here--- but barely. It was for the most part a pure expanse of white and black, and the overarching dome of Prussian blue, with a cold wind funneling up the canyon from Concordiaplatz. He wanted to make it down to Concordiaplatz and have a look around, but he couldn't tell whether the day would give him enough time or not; it was very difficult to judge how far away things were, it could easily have been farther than it looked. But he could go until the sun was halfway to the western horizon, and then turn back; and so he hiked swiftly downhill over the firn, from orange wand to orange wand, feeling the extra person inside him, feeling also the two members of the escort who were tagging along some two hundred meters behind.
For a long time he just walked. It wasn't so hard. The crenellated ice surface crunched under his brown boots. The sun had softened the top layer, despite the cool wind. The surface was too bright to see properly, even with sunglasses; the ice joggled as he walked, and glowed blackly.
The ridges to left and right began their drop. He came out into Concordiaplatz. He could see up glaciers into other high canyons, as if up ice fingers of a hand held up to the sun. The wrist ran down to the south, the Grosser Aletschgletscher. He was standing in the white palm, offered to the sun, next to a lifeline of rubble. The ice out here was pitted and gnarly and bluish in tone.
A wind picked at him, and swirled through his heart; he turned around slowly, like a little planet, like a top about to fall, trying to take it in, to face it. So big, so bright, so windy and vast, so crushingly heavy--- the sheer mass of the white world!--- and yet with a kind of darkness behind it, as of space's vacuum, there visible behind the sky. He took off his sunglasses to see what it really looked like, and the glare was so immediate and violent that he had to close his eyes, to cover his face in the crook of his arm; still great white bars pulsed in his vision, and even the afterimage hurt in its blinding intensity. "Wow!" he shouted, and laughed, determined to try it again as soon as the afterimages lessened, but before his pupils had again expanded. So he did, but the second attempt was as bad as the first. How dare you try to look on me as I really am! the world shouted silently. "My God." With feeling. "Ka wow."
He put his sunglasses back on his closed eyes, looked out through the bounding afterimages; gradually the primeval landscape of ice and rock restabilized out of the pulsing bars of black and white and neon green. The white and the green; and this was the white. The blank world of the inanimate universe. This place had precisely the same import as the primal Martian landscape. Just as big as it was on Mars, yes, and even bigger, because of the distant horizons, and the crushing gravity; and steeper; and whiter; and windier, ka, it pierced so chill through his parka, even windier, even colder--- ah God, like a wind lancing through his heart: the sudden knowledge that Earth was so vast that in its variety it had regions that even out-Marsed Mars itself--- that among all the ways that it was greater, it was greater even at being Martian.
He was brought still by this thought. He only stood and stared, tried to face it. The wind died for the moment. The world too was still. No movement, no sound.
When he noticed the silence he began paying attention to it, listening for something, hearing nothing, so that the silence itself somehow became more and more palpable. It was unlike anything he had ever heard before. He thought about it; on Mars he had always been in tents or in suits--- always in machinery, except for during the rare walks on the surface he had made in recent years. But then there had always been the wind, or machines nearby. Or he simply hadn't noticed. Now there was only the great silence, the silence of the universe itself. No dream could imagine it.
And then he began to hear sounds again. The blood in his ears. His breath in his nose. The quiet whir of his thinking--- it seemed to have a sound. His own support system this time, his body, with its organic pumps and ventilators and generators. The mechanisms were all still there, provided inside him, making their noises. But now he was free of anything more, in a great silence where he could actually hear himself quite well, just himself on this world alone, a free body standing on its mother earth, free in the rock and ice where it had all begun. Mother Earth--- he thought of Hiroko--- and this time without the tearing grief that he had felt in Trinidad. When he returned to Mars, he could live like this. He could walk out in the silence a free being, live outdoors in the wind, in something like this pure vast lifeless whiteness, with something like this dark blue dome overhead, the blue a visible exhalation of life itself--- oxygen, life's own color. Up there doming the whiteness. A sign, somehow. The white and the green, except here the green was blue.
With shadows. Among the faint lingering afterimages lay long shadows, running from the west. He was a long way from Jungfraujoch, and considerably lower as well. He turned and began hiking up the Jungfraufirn. In the distance, up the trail, his two companions nodded and turned uphill themselves, hiking fast.
Soon enough they were in the shadow of the ridge to the west, the sun now out of sight for good on this day, and the wind swirling over his back, helping on. Cold indeed. But it was his kind of temperature, after all, and his kind of air, just a nice touch of extra thickness to it; and so despite the weight inside him he began to trudge on up the crunchy hardpack in a little jog, leaning into it, feeling his thigh muscles respond to the challenge, fall into their old lung-gom-pa rhythm, with his lungs pumping hard and his heart as well, to handle the extra weight. But he was strong, strong, and this was one of Earth's little high regions of Marsness; and so he crunched up the firn feeling stronger by the minute, also appalled, exhilarated--- awed--- it was a most astonishing planet, that could have so much of the white and so much of the green as well, its orbit so exquisitely situated that at sea level the green burst out and at three thousand meters the white blanketed it utterly--- the natural zone of life just that three thousand meters wide, more or less. And Earth rolled right in the middle of that filmy bubble biosphere, in the right few thousand meters out of an orbit 150 million kilometers wide. It was too lucky to be believed.
His skin began to tingle with the effort, he was warm all over, even his toes. Beginning to sweat. The cold air was deliciously invigorating, he felt he was in a pace that he could sustain for hours; but alas, he would not need to; ahead and a bit above lay the snow staircase, with its rope-and-stanchion railing. His guides were making good time ahead of him, hurrying up the final slope. Soon he too would be there, in the little train station/space station. These Swiss, what they thought to build! To be able to visit the stupendous Concordiaplatz, on a day trip from the nation's capital! No wonder they were so sympathetic to Mars--- they were Earth's closest thing to Martians, truly--- builders, terraformers, inhabitants of the thin cold air.
So he was feeling very benevolent toward them when he stepped onto the terrace and then burst into the station, where he began immediately steaming; and when he walked over to his group of escorts and the other passengers who were waiting next to the little train, he was beaming so completely, he was so high, that the impatient frowns of the group (he saw that they had been kept waiting) cracked, and they looked at each other and laughed, shaking their heads as if to say to each other, What can you do? You could only grin and let it happen--- they had all been young in the high Alps for the first time, one sunny summer day, and had felt that same enthusiasm--- they remembered what it was like. And so they shook his hand, they embraced him--- they led him onto the little train and got going, for no matter the event, it was not good to keep a train waiting--- and once under way they remarked on his hot hands and face, and asked him where he had gone, and told him how many kilometers that was, and how many vertical meters. They passed him a little hip flask of schnapps. And then as the train went by the little side tunnel that ran out onto the north face of the Eiger, they told him the story of the failed rescue attempt of the doomed Nazi climbers, excited, moved that he was so impressed. And after that they settled into the lit compartments of the train, squealing down through its rough granite tunnel.
Nirgal stood at the end of one car, looking out at the dynamited rock as it flashed past, and then as they burst back into sunlight, up at the looming wall of the Eiger overhead. A passenger walked by him on the way to the next car, then stopped and stared: "Amazing to see you here, I must say." He had a British accent of some kind. "I just ran into your mother last week."
Confused, Nirgal said, "My mother?"
"Yes, Hiroko Ai. Isn't that right? She was in England, working with people at the mouth of the Thames. I saw her on my way here. Quite a coincidence running into you too, I must say. Makes me think I'll start seeing little red men any second now."
The man laughed at the thought, began to move on into the next car.
"Hey!" Nirgal called. "Wait!"
But the man only paused---"No no," he said over his shoulder, "didn't want to intrude--- all I know, anyhow. You'll have to look her up--- in Sheerness perhaps---"
And then the train was squealing into the station at Klein Scheidegg, and the man hopped out an opening door in the next car, and as Nirgal went to follow him other people got in the way, and his escorts came to explain to him that he needed to descend to Grindelwald immediately if he wanted to get home that night. Nirgal couldn't deny them. But looking out the window as they rolled out of the station, he saw the British man who had spoken to him, walking briskly down a trail into the dusky valley below.
He landed at a big airport in southern England, and was driven north and east to a town the escorts called Faversham, beyond which the roads and bridges were flooded. He had arranged to come unannounced, and his escort here was a police team that reminded him more of UNTA security units back home than of his Swiss escort: eight men and two women, silent, staring, full of themselves. When they had heard what he wanted to do, they had wanted to hunt for Hiroko by bringing people in to ask about her; Nirgal was sure that would put her in hiding, and he insisted on going out without fanfare to look for her. Eventually he convinced them.
They drove in a gray dawn, down to a new seafront, right there among buildings: in some places there were lines of stacked sandbags between soggy walls, in other places just wet streets, running off under dark water that spread for as far as he could see. Some planks were thrown here and there over mud and puddles.
Then on the far side of one line of sandbags was brown water without any buildings beyond, and a number of rowboats tied to a grille covering a window half awash in dirty foam. Nirgal followed one of the escorts into one big rowboat, and greeted a wiry red-faced man, wearing a dirty cap pulled low over his forehead. A kind of water policeman, apparently. The man shook his hand limply and then they were off, rowing over opaque water, followed by three more boats containing the rest of Nirgal's worried-looking guards. Nirgal's oarsman said something, and Nirgal had to ask him to repeat it; it was as if the man only had half his tongue. "Is that Cockney, your dialect?"
"Cockney." The man laughed.
Nirgal laughed too, shrugged. It was a word he remembered from a book, he didn't know what it meant really. He had heard a thousand different kinds of English before, but this was the real thing, presumably, and he could hardly understand it. The man spoke more slowly, which didn't help. He was describing the neighborhood they were rowing away from, pointing; the buildings were inundated nearly to their rooflines. "Brents," he said several times, pointing with his oar tips.
They came to a floating dock, tied to what looked like a highway sign, saying "OARE." Several larger boats were tied to the dock, or swinging from anchor ropes nearby. The water policeman rowed to one of these boats, and indicated the metal ladder welded to its rusty side. "Go on."
Nirgal climbed the side of the boat. On the deck stood a man so short he had to reach up to shake Nirgal's hand, which he did with a crushing grip. "So you're a Martian," he said, in a voice that lilted like the oarsman's, but was somehow much easier to understand. "Welcome aboard our little research vessel. Come to hunt for the old Asian lady, I hear?"
"Yes," Nirgal said, his pulse quickening. "She's Japanese."
"Hmm." The man frowned. "I only saw her the once, but I would have said she was Asian, Bangladeshi maybe. They're everywhere since the flood. But who can tell, eh?"
Four of Nirgal's escorts climbed aboard, and the boat's owner pushed a button that started an engine, then spun the wheel in the wheelhouse, and watched forward closely as the boat's rear pushed down in the water, and they vibrated, then moved away from the drowned line of buildings. It was overcast, the clouds very low, sea and sky both a brownish gray.
"We'll go out over the wharf," the little captain said.
Nirgal nodded. "What's your name?"
"Bly's the name. B-L-Y."
"I'm Nirgal."
The man nodded once.
"So this used to be the docks?" Nirgal asked.
"This was Faversham. Out here were the marshes--- Ham, Magden--- it was mostly marsh, all the way to the Isle of Sheppey. The Swale, this was. More fen than flow, if you know what I mean. Now you get out here on a windy day and it's like the North Sea itself. And Sheppey is no more than that hill you see out there. A proper island now."
"And that's where you saw. . . ." He didn't know what to call her.
"Your Asian grandma came in on the ferry from Vlissingen to Sheerness, other side of that island. Sheerness and Minster have the Thames for streets these days, and at high tide they have it for their roofs too. We're over Magden Marsh now. We'll go out around Shell Ness, the Swale's too clotted."
The mud-colored water around them sloshed this way and that. It was lined by long curving trails of yellowing foam. On the horizon the water grayed. Bly spun the wheel and they slapped over short steep waves. The boat rocked, and in its entirety moved up and down, up and down. Nirgal had never been in one before. Gray clouds hung over them, there was only a wedge of air between the cloud bottoms and the choppy water. The boat jostled this way and that, bobbing corklike. A liquid world.
"It's a lot shorter around than it used to be," Captain Bly said from the wheel. "If the water were clearer you could see Sayes Court, underneath us."
"How deep is it?" Nirgal asked.
"Depends on the tide. This whole island was about an inch above sea level before the flood, so however much sea level has gone up, that's how deep it is. What are they saying now, twenty-five feet? More than this old girl needs, that's sure. She's got a very shallow draft."
He spun the wheel left, and the swells hit the boat from the side, so that it rolled in quick uneven jerks. He pointed at one gauge: "There, five meters. Harty Marsh. See that potato patch, the rough water there? That'll come up at midtide, looks like a drowned giant buried in the mud."
"What's the tide now?"
"Near full. It'll turn in half an hour."
"It's hard to believe Luna can pull the ocean around that much."
"What, you don't believe in gravity?"
"Oh, I believe in it--- it's crushing me right now. It's just hard to believe something so far away has that much pull."
"Hmm," the captain said, looking out into a bank of mist blocking the view ahead. "I'll tell you what's hard to believe, it's hard to believe that a bunch of icebergs can displace so much water that all the oceans of the world have gone up this far."
"That is hard to believe."
"It's amazing it is. But the proof's right here floating us. Ah, the mist has arrived."
"Do you get more bad weather than you used to?"
The captain laughed. "That'd be comparing absolutes, I'd say."
The mist blew past them in wet long veils, and the choppy waves smoked and hissed. It was dim. Suddenly Nirgal felt happy, despite the unease in his stomach during the deceleration at the bottom of every wave trough. He was boating on a water world, and the light was at a tolerable level at last. He could stop squinting for the first time since he had arrived on Earth.
The captain spun his big wheel again, and they ran with the waves directly behind them, northwest into the mouth of the Thames. Off to their left a brownish-green ridge emerged wetly out of greenish-brown water, buildings crowding its slope. "That's Minster, or what's left of it. It was the only high ground on the island. Sheerness is over there, you can see where the water is all shattered over it."
Under the low ceiling of streaming mist Nirgal saw what looked like a reef of foaming white water, sloshing in every direction at once, black under the white foam. "That's Sheerness?"
"Yeah."
"Did they all move to Minster?"
"Or somewhere. Most of them. There's some very stubborn people in Sheerness."
Then the captain was absorbed in bringing the boat in through the drowned seafront of Minster. Where the line of rooftops emerged from the waves, a large building had had its roof and sea-facing wall removed, and now it functioned as a little marina, its three remaining walls sheltering a patch of water and the upper floors at the back serving as dock. Three other fishing boats were moored there, and as they coasted in, some men on them looked up and waved.
"Who's this?" one of them said as Bly nosed his boat into the dock.
"One of the Martians. We're trying to find the Asian lady who was helping in Sheerness the other week, have you seen her?"
"Not lately. Couple of months actually. I heard she crossed to Southend. They'll know down in the sub."
Bly nodded. "Do you want to see Minster?" he said to Nirgal.
Nirgal frowned. "I'd rather see the people who might know where she is."
"Yeah." Bly backed the boat out of the gap, turned it around; Nirgal looked in at boarded windows, stained plaster, the shelves of an office wall, some notes tacked to a beam. As they motored over the drowned portion of Minster, Bly picked up a radio microphone on a corkscrewed cord, and punched buttons. He had a number of short conversations very hard for Nirgal to follow---"ah jack!" and the like, with all the answers emerging from explosive static.
"We'll try Sheerness then. Tide's right."
And so they motored right into the white water and foam sloshing over the submerged town, following streets very slowly. In the center of the foam the water was calmer. Chimneys and telephone poles stuck out of the gray liquid, and Nirgal caught occasional glimpses of the houses and buildings below, but the water was so foamy on top, and so murky below, that very little was visible--- the slope of a roof, a glimpse down into a street, the blind window of a house.
On the far side of the town was a floating dock, anchored to a concrete pillar sticking out of the surf. "This is the old ferry dock. They cut off one section and floated it, and now they've pumped out the ferry offices down below and reoccupied them."
"Reoccupied them?"
"You'll see."
Bly hopped from the rocking gunwale to the dock, and held out a hand to help Nirgal across; nevertheless Nirgal crashed to one knee when he hit.
"Come on, Spiderman. Down we go."
The concrete pillar anchoring the dock stood chest-high; it turned out to be hollow, and a metal ladder had been bolted down its inner side. Electric bulbs hung from sockets on a rubber-coated wire, twisted around one post of the ladder. The concrete cylinder ended some three meters down, but the ladder continued, down into a big chamber, warm, humid, fishy, and humming with the noise of several generators in another room or building. The building's walls, the floor, the ceilings and windows were all covered by what appeared to be a sheet of clear plastic. They were inside a bubble of some kind of clear material; outside the windows was water, murky and brown, bubbling like dishwater in a sink.
Nirgal's face no doubt revealed his surprise; Bly, smiling briefly at the sight, said, "It was a good strong building. The what-you-might-call sheetrock is something like the tent fabrics you use on Mars, only it hardens. People have been reoccupying quite a few buildings like this, if they're the right size and depth. Set a tube and poof, it's like blowing glass. So a lot of Sheerness folk are moving back out here, and sailing off the dock or off their roof. Tide people we call them. They figure it's better than begging for charity in England, eh?"
"What do they do for work?"
"Fish, like they always have. And salvage. Eh Karna! Here's my Martian, say hello. He's short where he comes from, eh? Call him Spiderman."
"But it's Nirgal, innit? I'll be fucked if I call Nirgal Spiderman when I got him visiting in me home." And the man, black-haired and dark-skinned, an "Asian" in appearance if not accent, shook Nirgal's right hand gently.
The room was brightly lit by a pair of giant spotlights pointed at the ceiling. The shiny floor was crowded: tables, benches, machinery in all stages of assembly: boat engines, pumps, generators, reels, things Nirgal didn't recognize. The working generators were down a hall, though they didn't seem any quieter for that. Nirgal went to one wall to inspect the bubble material. It was only a few molecules thick, Bly's friends told him, and yet would hold thousands of pounds of pressure. Nirgal thought of each pound as a blow with a fist, thousands all at once. "These bubbles will be here when the concrete's worn away."
Nirgal asked about Hiroko. Karna shrugged. "I never knew her name. I thought she was a Tamil, from the south of India. She's gone over to Southend I hear."
"She helped to set this up?"
"Yeah. She brought the bubbles in from Vlissingen, her and a bunch like her. Great what they did here, we were groveling in High Halstow before they came."
"Why did they come?"
"Don't know. Some kind of coastal support group, no doubt." He laughed. "Though they didn't come on like that. Just moving around the coasts, building stuff out of the wreckage for the fun of it, what it looked like. Intertidal civilization, they called it. Joking as usual."
"Eh Karnasingh, eh Bly. Lovely day out innit?"
"Yeah."
"Care for some scrod?"
The next big room was a kitchen, and a dining area jammed with tables and benches. Perhaps fifty people had sat down to eat, and Karna cried "Hey!" and loudly introduced Nirgal. Indistinct murmurs greeted him. People were busy eating: big bowls of fish stew, ladled out of enormous black pots that looked like they had been in use continuously for centuries. Nirgal sat to eat; the stew was good. The bread was as hard as the tabletop. The faces were rough, pocked, salted, reddened when not brown; Nirgal had never seen such vivid ugly countenances, banged and pulled by the harsh existence in Earth's heavy drag. Loud chatter, waves of laughter, shouts; the generators could scarcely be heard. Afterward people came up to shake his hand and look at him. Several had met the Asian woman and her friends, and they described her enthusiastically. She hadn't ever given them a name. Her English was good, slow and clear. "I thought she were Paki. Her eyes dint look quite Oriental if you know what I mean. Not like yours, you know, no little fold in there next the nose."
"Epicanthic fold, you ignorant bugger."
Nirgal felt his heart beating hard. It was hot in the room, hot and steamy and heavy. "What about the people with her?"
Some of those had been Oriental. Asians, except for one or two whites.
"Any tall ones?" Nirgal asked. "Like me?"
None. Still . . . if Hiroko's group had come back to Earth, it seemed possible the younger ones would have stayed behind. Even Hiroko couldn't have talked all of them into such a move. Would Frantz leave Mars, would Nanedi? Nirgal doubted it. Return to Earth in its hour of need . . . the older ones would go. Yes, it sounded like Hiroko; he could imagine her doing it, sailing the new coasts of Terra, organizing a reinhabitation. . . .
"They went over to Southend. They were going to work their way up the coast."
Nirgal looked at Bly, who nodded; they could cross too.
But Nirgal's escorts wanted to check on things first. They wanted a day to arrange things. Meanwhile Bly and his friends were talking about underwater salvage projects, and when Bly heard about the bodyguards' proposed delay, he asked Nirgal if he wanted to see one such operation, taking place the next morning---"though it's not a pretty business of course." Nirgal agreed; the escorts didn't object, as long as some of them came along. They agreed to do it.
So they spent the evening in the clammy noisy submarine warehouse, Bly and his friends rummaging for equipment Nirgal could use. And spent the night on short narrow beds in Bly's boat, rocking as if in a big clumsy cradle.
• • •
The next morning they puttered through a light mist the color of Mars, pinks and oranges floating this way and that over slack glassy mauve water. The tide was near ebb, and the salvage crew and three of Nirgal's escorts followed Bly's larger craft in a trio of small open motorboats, maneuvering between chimney tops and traffic signs and power-line poles, conferring frequently. Bly had gotten out a tattered book of maps, and he called out the street names of Sheerness, navigating to specific warehouses or shops. Many of the warehouses in the wharf area had already been salvaged, apparently, but there were more warehouses and shops scattered through the blocks of flats behind the seafront, and one of these was their morning's target: "Here we go; Two Carleton Lane." It had been a jewelry store, next to a small market. "We'll try for jewels and canned food, a good balance you might say."
They moored to the top of a billboard and stopped their engines. Bly threw a small object on a cord overboard, and he and three of the other men gathered around a small AI screen set on Bly's bridge dash. A thin cable paid out over the side, its reel creaking woefully. On the screen, the murky color image changed from brown to black to brown.
"How do you know what you're seeing ?" Nirgal asked.
"We don't."
"But look, there's a door, see?"
"No."
Bly tapped at a small keypad under the screen. "In you go, thing. There. Now we're inside. This should be the market."
"Didn't they have time to get their things out?" Nirgal asked.
"Not entirely. Everyone on the east coast of England had to move at once, almost, so there wasn't enough transport to take more than what you could carry in your car. If that. A lot of people left their homes intact. So we pull the stuff worth pulling."
"What about the owners?"
"Oh there's a register. We contact the register and find people when we can, and charge them a salvage fee if they want the stuff. If they're not on the register, we sell it on the island. People are wanting furniture and such. Here, look--- we'll see what that is."
He pushed a key, and the screen got brighter. "Ah yeah. Refrigerator. We could use it, but it's hell getting it up."
"What about the house?"
"Oh we blow that up. Clean shot if we set the charges right. But not this morning. We'll tag this and move on."
They puttered away. Bly and another man continued to watch the screen, arguing mildly about where to go next. "This town wasn't much even before the flood," Bly explained to Nirgal. "Falling into the drink for a couple hundred years, ever since the empire ended."
"Since the end of sail you mean," the other man said.
"Same thing. The old Thames was used less and less after that, and all the little ports on the estuary began to go seedy. And that was a long time ago."
Finally Bly killed the engine, looked at the others. In their whiskery faces Nirgal saw a curious mix of grim resignation and happy anticipation. "There then."
The other men started getting out underwater gear:full wet suits, tanks, face masks, some full helmets. "We thought Eric's'd fit you," Bly said. "He was a giant." He pulled a long black wet suit out of the crowded locker, one without feet or gloves, and only a hood and face mask rather than a complete helmet. "There's booties of his too."
"Let me try them on."
So he and two of the men took off their clothes and pulled on the wet suits, sweating and puffing as they yanked the fabrics on and zipped up the tight collars. Nirgal's wet suit turned out to have a triangular rip across the left side of the torso, which was lucky, as otherwise it might not have fit; it was very tight around the chest, though loose on his legs. One of the other divers, named Kev, taped up the V split with duct tape. "That'll be all right then, for one dive anyway. But you see what happened to Eric, eh?" Tapping him on the side. "See you don't get caught up in any of our cable."
"I will."
Nirgal felt his flesh crawl under the taped rip, which suddenly felt huge. Caught on a moving cable, pulled into concrete or metal, ka, what an agony--- a fatal blow--- how long would he have stayed conscious after that, a minute, two? Rolling in agony, in the dark. . . .
He pulled himself out of an intense recreation of Eric's end, feeling shaken. They got a breathing rig attached to his upper arm and face mask, and abruptly he was breathing cold dry air, pure oxygen they said. Bly asked again about going down, as Nirgal was shivering slightly. "No no," said Nirgal. "I'm good with cold, this water isn't that cold. Besides I've already filled the suit with sweat."
The other divers nodded, sweating themselves. Getting ready was hard work. The actual swimming was easier; down a ladder and, ah, yes, out of the crush of the g, into something very like Martian g, or lighter still; such a relief! Nirgal breathed in the cold bottled oxygen happily, almost weeping at the sudden freedom of his body, floating down through a comfortable dimness. Ah yes--- his world on Earth was underwater.
Down deeper, things were as dark and amorphous as they had been on the screen, except for within the cones of light emanating from the other two men's headlamps, which were obviously very strong. Nirgal followed above and behind them, getting the best view of all. The estuary water was cool, about 285 K Nirgal judged, but very little of it seeped in at the wrists and around the hood, and the water trapped inside the suit was soon so hot with his exertions that his cold hands and face (and left ribs) actually served to keep him from overheating.
The two cones of light shot this way and that as the two divers looked around. They were swimming along a narrow street. Seeing the buildings and the curbs, the sidewalks and streets, made the murky gray water look uncannily like the mist up on the surface.
Then they were floating before a three-story brick building, filling a narrow triangular space that pointed into an angled intersection of streets. Kev gestured for Nirgal to stay outside, and Nirgal was happy to oblige. The other diver had been holding a cable so thin it was scarcely visible, and now he swam into a doorway, pulling it behind him. He went to work attaching a small pulley to the doorway, and lining the cable through it. Time passed; Nirgal swam slowly around the wedge-shaped building, looking in second-story windows at offices, empty rooms, flats. Some furniture floated against the ceilings. A movement inside one of these rooms caused him to jerk away; he was afraid of the cable; but it was on the other side of the building. Some water seeped into his mouthpiece, and he swallowed it to get it out of the way. It tasted of salt and mud and plant life, and something unpleasant. He swam on.
Back at the doorway Kev and the other man were helping a small metal safe through the doorway. When it was clear they kicked upright, in place, waiting, until the cable rose almost directly overhead. Then they swam around the intersection like a clumsy ballet team, and the safe floated up to the surface and disappeared. Kev swam back inside, and came out kicking hard, holding two small bags. Nirgal kicked over and took one, and with big luxurious kicks pulsed up toward the boat. He surfaced into the bright light of the mist. He would have loved to go back down, but Bly did not want them in any longer, and so Nirgal threw his fins in the boat and climbed the ladder over the side. He was sweating as he sat on one bench, and it was a relief to strip the hood off his head, despite the way his hair was yanked back. The clammy air felt good against his skin as they helped him peel the wet suit off.
"Look at his chest will you, he's like a greyhound."
"Breathing vapors all his life."
The mist almost cleared, dissipating to reveal a white sky, the sun a brighter white swath across it. The weight had come back into him, and he breathed deeply a few times to get his body back into that work rhythm. His stomach was queasy, and his lungs hurt a little at the peak of each inhalation. Things rocked a bit more than the slosh of the ocean surface would account for. The sky turned to zinc, the sun's quadrant a harsh blinding glare. Nirgal stayed sitting, breathed faster and shallower.
"Did you like it?"
"Yes!" he said. "I wish it felt like that everywhere."
They laughed at the thought. "Here have a cup."
• • •
Perhaps going underwater had been a mistake. After that the g never felt right again. It was hard to breathe. The air down in the warehouse was so wet that he felt he could clench a fist and drink water from his hand. His throat hurt, and his lungs. He drank cup after cup of tea, and still he was thirsty. The gleaming walls dripped, and nothing the people said was comprehensible, it was all ay and eh and lor and da, nothing like Martian English. A different language. Now they all spoke different languages. Shakespeare's plays had not prepared him for it.
He slept again in the little bed on Bly's boat. The next day the escort gave the okay, and they motored out of Sheerness, and north across the Thames estuary, in a pink mist even thicker than the day before.
Out in the estuary there was nothing visible but mist and the sea. Nirgal had been in clouds before, especially on the west slope of Tharsis, where fronts ran up the rise of the bulge; but never of course while on water. And every time before the temperatures had been well below freezing, the clouds a kind of flying snow, very white and dry and fine, rolling over the land and coating it with white dust. Nothing at all like this liquid world, where there was very little difference between the choppy water and the mist gusting over it, the liquid and the gaseous phasing back and forth endlessly. The boat rocked in a violent irregular rhythm. Dark objects appeared in the margins of the mist, but Bly paid them no attention, keeping a sharp eye ahead through a window beaded with water to the point of opacity, and also watching a number of screens under the window.
Suddenly Bly killed the engine, and the boat's rocking changed to a vicious side-to-side yaw. Nirgal held the side of the cabin and peered through the watery window, trying to see what had caused Bly to stop. "That's a big ship for Southend," Bly remarked, motoring on very slowly.
"Where?"
"Port beam." He pointed to a screen, then off to the left. Nirgal saw nothing.
Bly brought them into a long low pier, with many boats moored to it on both sides. The pier ran north through the mist to the town of Southend-on-Sea, which ran up and disappeared in the mist covering a slope of buildings.
A number of men greeted Bly---"Lovely day eh?" "Brilliant"--- and began to unload boxes from his hold.
Bly inquired about the Asian woman from Vlissingen, but the men shook their heads. "The Jap? She ain't here, mate."
"They're saying in Sheerness she and her group came to Southend."
"Why would they say that?"
"Because that's what they think happened."
"That's what you get listening to people who live underwater."
"The Paki grandma?" they said at the diesel fuel pump on the other side of the pier. "She went over to Shoeburyness, sometime back."
Bly glanced at Nirgal. "It's just a few miles east. If she were here, these men would know."
"Let's try it then," Nirgal said.
So after refueling they left the pier, and puttered east through the mist. From time to time the building-covered hillside was visible to their left. They rounded a point, turned north. Bly brought them in to another floating dock, with many fewer boats than had been moored at Southend pier.
"That Chinese gang?" a toothless old man cried. "Gone up to Pig's Bay they have! Gave us a greenhouse! Some kind of church."
"Pig's Bay's just the next pier," Bly said, looking thoughtful as he wheeled them away from the dock.
So they motored north. The coastline here was entirely composed of drowned buildings. They had built so close to the sea! Clearly there had been no reason to fear any change in sea level. And then it had happened; and now this strange amphibious zone, an intertidal civilization, wet and rocking in the mist.
A cluster of buildings gleamed at their windows. They had been filled by the clear bubble material, pumped out and occupied, their upstairs just above the foamy waves, their downstairs just below. Bly brought the boat in to a set of linked floating docks, greeted a group of women in smocks and yellow rain slickers mending a big black net. He cut his engine: "Has the Asian lady been to see you too then?"
"Oh yeah. She's down inside, there in the building at the end."
Nirgal felt his pulse jarring through him. His balance had left him, he had to hold on to the rail. Over the side, onto the dock. Down to the last building, a seafront boardinghouse or something like, now much broken up and glimmering in all the cracks; air inside; filled by a bubble. Green plants, vague and blurry seen through sloshing gray water. He had a hand on Bly's shoulder. The little man led him in a door and down narrow stairs, into a room with one whole wall exposed to the sea, like a dirty aquarium.
A diminutive woman in a rust-colored jumpsuit came through the far door. White-haired, black-eyed, quick and precise; birdlike. Not Hiroko. She stared at them.
"Are you the one came over from Vlissingen?" Bly asked, after glancing up at Nirgal. "The one that's been building these submariners?"
"Yes," the woman said. "May I help you?" She had a high voice, a British accent. She stared at Nirgal without expression. There were other people in the room, more coming in. She looked like the face he had seen in the cliffside, in Medusa Vallis. Perhaps there was another Hiroko, a different one, wandering the two planets building things. . . .
Nirgal shook his head. The air was like a greenhouse gone bad. The light, so dim. He could barely get back up the stairs. Bly had made their farewells. Back into the bright mist. Back onto the boat. Chasing wisps. A ruse, to get him out of Bern. Or an honest mistake. Or a simple fool's errand.
Bly sat him down in the boat's cabin, next to a rail. "Ah well."
Pitching and yawing, through the mist, which closed back down. Dark dim day on the water, sloshing through the phase change where water and mist turned into each other, sandwiched between them. Nirgal got a little drowsy. No doubt she was back on Mars. Doing her work there in her usual secrecy, yes. It had been absurd to think otherwise. When he got back he would find her. Yes: it was a goal, a task he gave himself. He would find her and make her come back out into the open. Make sure she had survived. It was the only way to be sure, the only way to remove this horrible weight from his heart. Yes: he would find her.
Then as they motored on over the choppy water, the mist lifted. Low gray clouds rushed overhead, dropping swirls of rain into the waves. The tide was ebbing now, and as they crossed the great estuary the flow of the Thames was released full force. The gray-brown surface of the water was broken to mush, waves coming from all directions at once, a wild bouncing surface of foamy dark water, all carried rapidly east, out into the North Sea. And then the wind turned and poured over the tide, and all the waves were suddenly rushing out to sea together. Among the long cakes of foam were floating objects of all kinds: boxes, furniture, roofs, entire houses, capsized boats, pieces of wood. Flotsam and jetsam. Bly's crew stood on the deck, leaning over the rails with grapnels and binoculars, calling back to him to avoid things or to try to approach them. They were absorbed in the work. "What is all of this stuff?" Nirgal asked Bly.
"It's London," Bly said. "It's fucking London, washing out to sea."
The cloud bottoms rushed east over their heads. Looking around Nirgal saw many other small boats on the tossing water of the great rivermouth, salvaging the flotsam or just fishing. Bly waved to some as they passed through, tooted at others. Horn blasts floated on the wind over the gray-speckled estuary, apparently signaling messages, as Bly's crews commented on each.
Then Kev exclaimed, "Hey what's that now!" pointing upstream.
Out of a fog bank covering the mouth of the Thames had emerged a ship with sails, many sails, sails square-rigged on three masts in the archetypal configuration, deeply familiar to Nirgal even though he had never seen it before. A chorus of horn blasts greeted this apparition--- mad toots, long sustained blasts, all joining together and sustaining longer and longer, like a neighborhood of dogs roused and baying at night, warming to their task. Above them exploded the sharp penetrating blast of Bly's air horn, joining the chorus--- Nirgal had never heard such a shattering sound, it hurt his ears! Thicker air, denser sound--- Bly was grinning, his fist shoved against the air-horn button--- the men of the crew all standing at the rail or on it, Nirgal's escorts as well, screaming soundlessly at the sudden vision.
Finally Bly let off. "What is it?" Nirgal shouted.
"It's the Cutty Sark!" Bly said, and threw his head back and laughed. "It was bolted down in Greenwich! Stuck in a park! Some mad bastards must have liberated it. What a brilliant idea. They must have towed it around the flood barrier. Look at her sail!"
The old clipper ship had four or five sails unfurled on each of the three masts, and a few triangular ones between the masts as well, and extending forward to the bowsprit. It was sailing in the midst of the ebb flow, and there was a strong wind behind it, so that it sliced through the foam and flotsam, splitting water away from its sharp bow in a quick succession of white waves. There were men standing in its rigging, Nirgal saw, most of them out leaning over the yardarms, waving one-armed at the ragged flotilla of motorboats as they passed through it. Pennants extended from the mast tops, a big blue flag with red crosses--- when it came abreast of Bly's boat, Bly hit the air-horn trigger again and again, and the men roared. A sailor out at the end of the Cutty Sark's mainsail yard waved at them with both hands, leaning his chest forward against the big polished cylinder of wood. Then he lost his balance, they all saw it happen, as if in slow motion; and with his mouth a round little O the sailor fell backward, dropping into the white water that foamed away from the ship's side. The men on Bly's boat shouted all together: "NO!" Bly cursed loudly and gunned his engine, which was suddenly loud in the absence of the air horn. The rear of the boat dug deep into the water, and then they were grumbling toward the man overboard, now one black dot among the rest, a raised arm waving frantically.
Boats everywhere were tooting, honking, blasting their horns; but the Cutty Sark never slowed. It sailed away at full speed, sails all taut-bellied when seen from behind, a beautiful sight. By the time they reached the fallen sailor, the stern of the clipper was low on the water to the east, its masts a cluster of white sail and black rigging, until it disappeared abruptly into another wall of mist.
"What a glorious sight," one of the men was still repeating. "What a glorious sight."
"Yeah yeah, glorious, here fish this poor bastard in."
Bly threw the engine in reverse, then idled. They threw a ladder over the side, leaned over to help the wet sailor up the steps. Finally he made it over the rail, stood bent over in his soaking clothes, holding on to the rail, shivering. "Ah thanks," he said between retches over the side. Kev and the other crew members got his wet clothes off him, wrapped him in thick dirty blankets.
"You're a stupid fucking idiot," Bly shouted down from the wheelhouse. "There you were about to sail the world on the Cutty Sark, and now here you are on The Bride of Faversham. You're a stupid fucking idiot."
"I know," the man said between retches.
The men threw jackets over his back, laughing. "Silly fool, waving at us like that!" All the way back to Sheerness they proclaimed his ineptitude, while getting the bereft man dried and into the wind protection of the wheelhouse, dressed in spare clothes much too small for him. He laughed with them, cursed his luck, described the fall, reenacted coming loose. Back in Sheerness they helped him down into the submerged warehouse, and fed him hot stew, and pint after pint of bitter beer, meanwhile telling the people inside, and everyone who came down the ladder, all about his fall from grace. "Look here, this silly wanker fell off the Cutty Sark this afternoon, the clumsy bastard, when it was running down the tide under full sail to Tahiti!"
"To Pitcairn," Bly corrected.
The sailor himself, extremely drunk, told his tale as often as his rescuers. "Just took me hands off for a second, and it gave a little lurch and I was flying. Flying in space. Didn't think it would matter, I didn't. Took me hands off all the time up the Thames. Oh one mo here, 'scuse me, I've got to go spew."
"Ah God she was a glorious sight she was, brilliant, really. More sail than they needed of course, it was just to go out in style, but God bless 'em for that. Such a sight."
Nirgal felt dizzy and bleak. The whole big room had gone a glossy dark, except in the exact spots where there were streaks of bright glare. Everything a chiaroscuro of jumbled objects, Brueghel in black-and-white, and so loud. "I remember the spring flood of thirteen, the North Sea in me living room---" "Ah no, not the flood of thirteen again, will you not go on about that again!"
He went to a partitioned room at one corner of the chamber, the men's room, thinking he would feel better if he relieved himself. Inside the rescued sailor was on the floor of one of the stalls, retching violently. Nirgal retreated, sat down on the nearest bench to wait. A young woman passed him by, and reached out to touch him on the top of the head. "You're hot!"
Nirgal held a palm to his forehead, tried to think about it. "Three hundred ten K," he ventured. "Shit."
"You've caught a fever," she said.
One of his bodyguards sat beside him. Nirgal told him about his temperature, and the man said, "Will you ask your wristpad?"
Nirgal nodded, asked for a readout. 309 K. "Shit."
"How do you feel?"
"Hot. Heavy."
"We'd better get you to see someone."
Nirgal shook his head, but a wave of dizziness came over him as he did. He watched the bodyguards calling to make arrangements. Bly came over, and they asked him questions.
"At night?" Bly said. More quiet talk. Bly shrugged; not a good idea, the shrug said, but possible. The bodyguards went on, and Bly tossed down the last of his pint and stood. His head was still at the same level as Nirgal's, although Nirgal had slid down to rest his back against the table. A different species, a squat powerful amphibian. Had they known that, before the flood? Did they know it now?
People said good-bye, crushed or coddled his hand. Climbing the conning-tower ladder was painful work. Then they were out in the cool wet night, fog shrouding everything. Without a word Bly led them onto his boat, and he remained silent as he started the engines and unmoored the boat. Off they puttered over a low swell. For the first time the rocking over the waves made Nirgal really queasy. Nausea was worse than pain. He sat down beside Bly on a stool, and watched the gray cone of illuminated water and fog before their bow. When dark objects loomed out of the fog Bly would slow, even shove the engines into reverse. Once he hissed. This went on for a long time. By the time they docked in the streets of Faversham, Nirgal was too sick to say good-bye properly; he could only grasp Bly's hand and look down briefly into the man's blue eyes. Such faces. You could see people's souls right there in their faces. Had they known that before? Then Bly was gone and they were in a car, humming through the night. Nirgal's weight was increasing as it had during the descent in the elevator. Onto a plane, ascending in darkness, descending in darkness, ears popping painfully, nausea; they were in Berne and Sax was there by his side, a great comfort.
He was in a bed, very hot, his breathing wet and painful. Out one window, the Alps. The white breaking up out of the green, like death itself rearing up out of life, crashing through to remind him that viriditas was a green fuse that would someday explode back into nova whiteness, returning to the same array of elements it had been before the pattern dust devil had picked it up. The white and the green; it felt like the Jungfrau was shoving up his throat. He wanted to sleep, to get away from that feeling.
Sax sat at his side, holding his hand. "I think he needs to be in Martian gravity," he was saying to someone who did not seem to be in the room. "It could be a form of altitude sickness. Or a disease vector. Or allergies. A systemic response. Edema, anyway. Let's take him up immediately in a ground-to-space plane, and get him into a g ring at Martian g. If I'm right it will help, if not it won't hurt."
Nirgal tried to speak, but couldn't catch his breath. This world had infected him--- crushed him--- cooked him in steam and bacteria. A blow to the ribs: he was allergic to Earth. He squeezed Sax's hand, pulled in a breath like a knife to the heart. "Yes," he gasped, and saw Sax squint. "Home, yes."
Home at Last
Prologue
An old man sitting at sickbed. Hospital rooms are all the same. Clean, white, cool, humming, fluorescent. On the sickbed lies a man, tall, dark-skinned, thick black eyebrows. Sleeping fitfully. The old man is hunched at his head. One finger touches the skull behind the ear. Under his breath the old man is muttering. "If it's an allergic response, then your own immune system has to be convinced that the allergen isn't really a problem. They haven't identified an allergen. Pulmonary edema is usually high-altitude sickness, but maybe the mix of gases caused it, or maybe it was low-altitude sickness. You need to get water out of your lungs. They've done pretty well with that. The fever and chills might be amenable to biofeedback. A really high fever is dangerous, you must remember that. I remember the time you came into the baths after falling into the lake. You were blue. Jackie jumped right in--- no, maybe she stopped to watch. You held Hiroko and me by the arms, and we all saw you warm up. Nonshivering thermogenesis, everyone does it, but you did it voluntarily, and very powerfully as well. I've never seen anything like it. I still don't know how you did it. You were a wonderful boy. People can shiver at will if they want, so maybe it's like that, only inside. It doesn't really matter, you don't need to know how, you just need to do it. If you can do it in the other direction. Bring your temperature down. Give it a try. Give it a try. You were such a wonderful boy."
The old man reaches out and grabs the young man by the wrist. He holds it and squeezes.
"You used to ask questions. You were very curious, very good-natured. You would say Why, Sax, why? Why, Sax, why? It was fun to try to keep answering. The world is like a tree, from every leaf you can work back to the roots. I'm sure Hiroko felt that way, she probably was the one who first told me that. Listen, it wasn't a bad thing to go looking for Hiroko. I've done the same thing myself. And I will again. Because I saw her once, on Daedalia. She helped me when I got caught out in a storm. She held my wrist. Just like this. She's alive, Nirgal. Hiroko is alive. She's out there. You'll find her someday. Put that internal thermostat to work, get that temperature down, and someday you'll find her. . . ."
The old man lets go of the wrist. He slumps over, half-asleep, muttering still. "You would say Why, Sax, why?"
If the mistral hadn't been blowing he might have cried, for nothing looked the same, nothing. He came into a Marseilles train station that hadn't existed when he left, next to a little new town that hadn't existed when he left, and all of it built according to a dripping bulbous Gaudi architecture which also had a kind of Bogdanovist circularity to it, so that Michel was reminded of Christianopolis or Hiranyagarba, if they had melted. No, nothing looked familiar in the slightest. The land was strangely flattened, green, deprived of its rock, deprived of that je ne sais quoi that had made it Provence. He had been gone 102 years.
But blowing over all this unfamiliar landscape was the mistral, pouring down off the Massif Centrale--- cold, dry, musty and electric, flushed with negative ions or whatever it was that gave it its characteristic katabatic exhilaration. The mistral! No matter what it looked like, it had to be Provence.
Praxis locals spoke French to him, and he could barely understand them. He had to listen hard, hoping his native tongue would come back to him, that the franglaisation and frarabisation he had heard about had not changed things too much; it was shocking to fumble in his native tongue, shocking too that the French Academy had not done its job and kept the language frozen in the seventeenth century like it was supposed to. A young woman leading the Praxis aides seemed to be saying that they could take a drive around and see the region, go down to the new coast and so on.
"Fine," Michel said.
Already he was understanding them better. It was possibly just a matter of Provençal accents. He followed them around through the concentric circles of the buildings, then out into a parking lot like all other parking lots. The young woman aide helped him into the passenger seat of a little car, then she got in on the other side, behind the steering wheel. Her name was Sylvie; she was small, attractive, stylish, and smelled nice, so that her strange French continuously surprised Michel. She started the car and drove them out of the airport. And then they were running noisily over a black road across a flat landscape, green with grass and trees. No, there were some hills in the distance; so small! And the horizon so far away!
Sylvie drove to the nearest coast. From a hilltop turnout they could see far over the Mediterranean, on this day mottled brown and gray, gleaming in the sun.
After a few minutes' silent observation, Sylvie drove on, cutting inland over flat land again. Then they were stopped on a levee, and looking over the Camargue, she said. Michel would not have recognized it. The delta of the Rhone River had been a broad triangular fan of many thousands of hectares, filled by salt marshes and grass; now it was part of the Mediterranean again. The water was brown, and dotted with buildings, but it was water nevertheless, the flow of the Rhone a bluish line out there crossing the middle of it. Arles, Sylvie said, up at the tip of the fan, was a functioning seaport again. Although they were still securing the channel. Everything in the delta south of Arles, Sylvie said proudly, from Martiques in the east to Aigue-Mortes in the west, was covered by water. Aigues-Mortes was dead indeed, its industrial buildings drowned. Its port facilities, Sylvie said, were being floated and moved to Arles, or Marseilles. They were working hard to make safe navigational routes for ships; both the Carmargue and the Plaine de la Crau, farther east, had been littered with structures of all kinds, many still sticking out of the water, but not all; and the water was too opaque with silt to see into. "See, there's the rail station--- you can see the graineries, but not the outbuildings. And there's one of the levee-banked canals. The levees are like reefs now. See the line of gray water? The levees are still breaking, when the current from the Rhone runs over them."
"Lucky the tides aren't big," Michel said.
"True. If they were it would be too treacherous for ships to reach Arles."
In the Mediterranean tides were negligible, and fishermen and coastal freighters were discovering day by day what could be safely negotiated; attempts were being made to resecure the Rhone's main channel through the new lagoon, and to reestablish the flanking canals as well, so that boats wouldn't have to challenge the flow of the Rhone when returning upstream. Sylvie pointed out at features Michel couldn't see, and told him of sudden shifts of the Rhone's channel, of ships' groundings, loose buoys, ripped hulls, rescues by night, oil spills, confusing new lighthouses--- false lighthouses, set by moonlighters for the unwary--- even ordinary piracy on the high seas. Life sounded exciting at the new mouth of the Rhone.
After a while they got back in the little car, and Sylvie drove them south and east, until they hit the coast, the true coast, between Marseilles and Cassis. This part of the Mediterranean littoral, like the Côte d'Azur farther east, consisted of a range of steep hills dropping abruptly into the sea. The hills still stood well above the water, of course, and at first glance it seemed to Michel that this section of the coast had changed much less than the drowned Camargue. But after a few minutes of silent observation, he changed his mind. The Camargue had always been a delta, and now it was a delta still, and so nothing essential had changed. Here, however: "The beaches are gone."
"Yes."
It was only to be expected. But the beaches had been the essence of this coast, the beaches with their long tawny summers all jammed with sun-worshiping naked human animals, with swimmers and sailboats and carnival colors, and long warm thrilling nights. All that had vanished. "They'll never come back."
Sylvie nodded. "It's the same everywhere," she said matter-of-factly.
Michel looked eastward; hills dropped into the brown sea all the way to a distant horizon; it looked like he might be seeing as far as Cap Sicié. Beyond that were all the big resorts, Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Antibes, Nice, his own little Villefranche-sur-mer, and all the fashionable beach resorts in between, big and small, all drowned like the stretch under them: the sea mud brown, lapping against a fringe of pale broken rock and dead yellow trees, with the beach roads dipping into dirty white surf. Dirty surf, washing up into the streets of deserted towns.
Green trees above the new sealine tossed over whitish rock. Michel had not remembered how white the rock was. The foliage was low and dusty, deforestation had been a problem in recent years, Sylvie said, as people had cut trees for firewood. But Michel barely heard her; he was staring down at the drowned beaches, trying to recall their sandy hot erotic beauty. Gone. And he found, as he stared at the dirty surf, that in his mind he couldn't remember them very well--- nor his days on them, the many lazy days now blurs, as of a dead friend's face. He couldn't remember.
• • •
Marseilles however had of course survived--- the only part of the coast one could not care about, the ugliest part, the city. Of course. Its docks were inundated, and the neighborhoods immediately behind them; but the land rose quickly here, and the higher neighborhoods had gone on living their tough sordid existence, big ships still anchored in the harbor, long floating docks maneuvered out to them to empty their holds, while their sailors flooded the town and went mad in time-honored fashion. Sylvie said that Marseilles was where she had heard most of the hair-raising tales of adventure from the mouth of the Rhone and elsewhere around the Med, where the charts meant nothing anymore: houses of the dead between Malta and Tunisia, attacks by Barbary corsairs . . . "Marseilles is more itself than it has been for centuries," she said, and grinned, and Michel got a sudden sense of her nightlife, wild and perhaps a bit dangerous. She liked Marseilles. The car lurched in one of the road's many potholes and it felt like his pulse, he and the mistral rushing around ugly old Marseilles, stricken by the thought of a wild young woman.
More itself than it had been for centuries. Perhaps that was true of the entire coast. There were no tourists anymore; with the beaches gone, the whole concept of tourism had taken a knife to the heart. The big pastel hotels and apartment buildings now stood in the surf half-drowned, like children's blocks left at low tide. As they drove out of Marseilles, Michel noted that many of these buildings appeared to have been reoccupied in their upper stories, by fishermen Sylvie said; no doubt they kept their boats in rooms downstairs, like the Lake People of prehistoric Europe. The old ways, returning.
So Michel kept looking out the window, trying to rethink the new Provence, doing his best to deal with the shock of so much change. Certainly it was all very interesting, even if it was not as he remembered it. New beaches would eventually form, he reassured himself, as the waves cut away at the foots of sea cliffs, and the charged rivers and streams carried soil downstream. It was possible they might even appear fairly quickly, although they would be dirt or stones, at first. That tawny sand--- well, currents might bring some of the drowned sand up onto the new strand, who knew? But surely most of it was gone for good.
Sylvie brought the car to another windy turnout overlooking the sea. It was brown right to the horizon, the offshore wind causing them to be looking at the back sides of waves moving away from the strand, an odd effect. Michel tried to recall the old sun-beaten blue. There had been varieties of Mediterranean blue, the clear purity of the Adriatic, the Aegean with its Homeric touch of wine . . . now all brown. Brown sea, beachless sea cliffs, the pale hills rocky, desertlike, deserted. A wasteland. No, nothing was the same, nothing.
Eventually Sylvie noticed his silence. She drove him west to Arles, to a small hotel in the heart of the town. Michel had never lived in Arles, or had much to do there, but there were Praxis offices next to this hotel, and he had no other compelling idea concerning where to stay. They got out; the g felt heavy. Sylvie waited downstairs while he took his bag up; and there he was, standing uncertainly in a small hotel room, his bag thrown on the bed, his body tense with the desire to find his land, to return to his home. This wasn't it.
He went downstairs and then next door, where Sylvie was tending to other business.
"I have a place I want to see," he said to her.
"Anywhere you like."
"It's near Vallabrix. North of Uzès."
She said she knew where that was.
• • •
It was late afternoon by the time they reached the place: a clearing by the side of a narrow old road, next to an olive grove on a slope, with the mistral raking over it. Michel asked Sylvie to stay at the car, and got out in the wind and walked up the slope between the trees, alone with the past.
His old mas had been set at the north end of the grove, on the edge of a tableland overlooking a ravine. The olive trees were gnarled with age. The mas itself was nothing but a shell of masonry, almost buried under long tangled thorny blackberry vines growing against the outer walls.
Looking down into the ruin, Michel found he could just remember its interior. Or parts of it. There had been a kitchen and dining table near the door, and then, after passing under a massive roof beam, a living room with couches and a low coffee table, and a door back to the bedroom. He had lived there for two or three years, with a woman named Eve. He hadn't thought of the place in over a century. He would have said it was all gone from his mind. But with the ruins before him, fragments of that time leaped to the eye, ruins of another kind: a blue lamp had stood in that corner now filled with broken plaster. A Van Gogh print had been tacked to that wall, where now there was only blocks of masonry, roof tiles, drifts of leaves. The massive roof beam was gone, its supports in the walls gone as well. Someone must have hauled it out; hard to believe anyone would make the effort, it had to have weighed hundreds of kilos. Strange what people would do. Then again, deforestation; there were few trees left big enough to provide a beam that large. The centuries people had lived on this land.
Eventually deforestation might cease to be a problem. During the drive Sylvie had spoken of the violent flood winter, rains, wind; this mistral had lasted a month. Some said it would never end. Looking into the ruined house, Michel was not sorry. He needed the wind to orient himself. It was strange how the memory worked, or didn't. He stepped up onto the broken wall of the mas, tried to remember more of the place, of his life here with Eve. Deliberate recall, a hunt for the past. . . . Instead scenes came to him of the life he had shared with Maya in Odessa, with Spencer down the hall. Probably the two lives had shared enough aspects to create the confusion. Eve had been hot-tempered like Maya, and as for the rest, la vie quotidienne was la vie quotidienne, in all times and all places, especially for a specific individual no doubt, settling into his habits as if into furniture, taken along from one place to the next. Perhaps.
The inside walls of this house had been clean beige plaster, tacked with prints. Now the patches of plaster left were rough and discolored, like the exterior walls of an old church. Eve had worked in the kitchen like a dancer in a routine, her back and legs long and powerful. Looking over her shoulder at him to laugh, her chestnut hair tossing with every turn. Yes, he remembered that repeated moment. An image without context. He had been in love. Although he had made her angry. Eventually she had left him for someone else, ah yes, a teacher in Uzès. What pain! He remembered it, but it meant nothing to him now, he felt not a pinch of it. A previous life. These ruins could not make him feel it. They scarcely brought back even the images. It was frightening--- as if reincarnation were real, and had happened to him, so that he was experiencing minute flashbacks of a life separated from him by several subsequent deaths. How odd it would be if such reincarnation were real, speaking in languages one did not know, like Bridey Murphy; feeling the swirl of the past through the mind, feeling previous existences . . . well. It would feel just like this, in fact. But to reexperience nothing of those past feelings, to feel nothing except the sensation that one was not feeling. . . .
He left the ruins, and walked back among the old olive trees.
• • •
It looked like the grove was still being worked by someone. The branches overhead were all cut to a certain level, and the ground underfoot was smooth and covered by short dry pale grass, growing between thousands of old gray olive pits. The trees were in ranks and files but looked natural anyway, as if they had simply grown at that distance from each other. The wind blew its lightly percussive shoosh in the leaves. Standing midgrove, where he could see little but olive trees and sky, he noticed again how the leaves' two colors flashed back and forth in the wind, green then gray, gray then green. . . .
He reached up to pull down a twig and inspect the leaves close up. He remembered; up close the two sides of an olive leaf weren't all that different in color; a flat medium green, a pale khaki. But a hillside full of them, flailing in the wind, had those two distinct colors, in moonlight shifting to black and silver. If one were looking toward the sun at them it became more a matter of texture, flat or shiny.
He walked up to a tree, put his hands on its trunk. It felt like an olive tree's bark: rough broken rectangles. A gray-green color, somewhat like the undersides of the leaves, but darker, and often covered by yet another green, the yellow green of lichen, yellow green or battleship gray. There were hardly any olive trees on Mars; no Mediterraneans yet. No, it felt like he was on Earth. About ten years old. Carrying that heavy child inside himself. Some of the rectangles of bark were peeling down. The fissures between the rectangles were shallow. The true color of the bark, clean of all lichen, appeared to be a pale woody beige. There was so little of it that it was hard to tell. Trees coated in lichen; Michel had not realized that before. The branches above his head were smoother, the fissures flesh-colored lines only, the lichen smoother as well, like green dust on the branches and twigs.
The roots were big and strong. The trunks spread outward as they approached the ground, spreading in fingerlike protrusions with holes and gaps between, like knobby fists thrust into the ground. No mistral would ever uproot these trees. Not even a Martian wind could knock one down.
The ground was covered with old olive pits, and shriveled black olives on the way to becoming pits. He picked up one with its black skin still smooth, ripped away the skin with his thumb and fingernails. The purple juice stained his skin, and when he licked it, the taste was not like cured olives at all. Sour. He bit into the flesh, which resembled plum flesh, and the taste of it, sour and bitter, unolivelike except for a hint of the oily aftertaste, bolted through his mind--- like Maya's déjà vu--- he had done this before! As a child they had tried it often, always hoping the taste would come round to the table taste, and so give them food in their play field, manna in their own little wilderness. But the olive flesh (paler the further one cut in toward the pit) stubbornly remained as unpalatable as ever--- the taste as embedded in his mind as any person, bitter and sour. Now pleasant, because of the memory evoked. Perhaps he had been cured.
The leaves flailed in the gusty north wind. Smell of dust. A haze of brown light, the western sky brassy. The branches rose to twice or three times his height; the underbranches drooped down where they could brush his face. Human scale. The Mediterranean tree, the tree of the Greeks, who had seen so many things so clearly, seen things in their proper proportion, everything in a gauge symmetry to the human scale--- the trees, the towns, their whole physical world, the rocky islands in the Aegean, the rocky hills of the Peloponnese--- a universe you could walk across in a few days. Perhaps home was the place of human scale, wherever it was. Usually childhood.
Each tree was like an animal holding its plumage up into the wind, its knobby legs thrust into the ground. A hillside of plumage flashing under the wind's onslaught, under its fluctuating gusts and knocks and unexpected stillnesses, all perfectly revealed by the feathering leaves. This was Provence, the heart of Provence; his whole underbrain seemed to be humming at the edge of every moment of his childhood, a vast presque vu filling him up and brimming over, a life in a landscape, humming with its own weight and balance. He no longer felt heavy. The sky's blue itself was a voice from that previous incarnation, saying Provence, Provence.
But out over the ravine a flock of black crows swirled, crying Ka, ka, ka!
Ka. Who had made up that story, of the little red people and their name for Mars? No way of telling. No beginnings to such stories. In Mediterranean antiquity the Ka had been a weird or double of a pharaoh, pictured as descending on the pharaoh in the form of a hawk or a dove, or a crow.
Now the Ka of Mars was descending on him, here in Provence. Black crows--- on Mars under the clear tents these same birds flew, just as carelessly powerful in the aerators' blasts as in the mistral. They didn't care that they were on Mars, it was home to them, their world as much as any other, and the people below what they always had been, dangerous ground animals who would kill you or take you on strange voyages. But no bird on Mars remembered the voyage there, or Earth either. Nothing bridged the two worlds but the human mind. The birds only flew and searched for food, and cawed, on Earth or Mars, as they always had and always would. They were at home anywhere, wheeling in the hard gusts of the wind, coping with the mistral and calling to each other Mars, Mars, Mars! But Michel Duval, ah, Michel--- a mind residing in two worlds at once, or lost in the nowhere between them. The noosphere was so huge. Where was he, who was he? How was he to live?
Olive grove. Wind. Bright sun in a brass sky. The weight of his body, the sour taste in his mouth: he felt himself root right into the ground. This was his home, this and no other. It had changed and yet it would never change--- not this grove, not he himself. Home at last. Home at last. He could live on Mars for ten thousand years and still this place would be his home.
Back in the hotel room in Arles, he called up Maya. "Please come down, Maya. I want you to see this."
"I'm working on the agreement, Michel. The UN-Mars agreement."
"I know."
"It's important!"
"I know."
"Well. It's why I came here, and I'm part of it, in the middle of it. I can't just go off on vacation."
"Okay, okay. But look, that work will never end. Politics will never end. You can take a vacation, and then come back to it, and it will still be going. But this--- this is my home, Maya. I want you to see it. Don't you want to show me Moscow, don't you want to go there?"
"Not if it was the last place above the flood."
Michel sighed. "Well, it's different for me. Please, come see what I mean."
"Maybe in a while, when we've finished this stage of the negotiations. This is a critical time, Michel! Really it's you who ought to be here, not me who ought to be there."
"I can watch on the wrist. There's no reason to be there in person. Please, Maya."
She paused, caught finally by something in his tone of voice. "Okay, I'll try. It won't be for a while though, no matter what."
"As long as you come."
• • •
After that he spent his days waiting for Maya, though he tried not to think of it like that. He occupied every waking moment traveling about in a rented car, sometimes with Sylvie, sometimes on his own. Despite the evocative moment in the olive grove, perhaps because of it too, he felt deeply dislocated. He was drawn to the new coastline for some reason, fascinated by the adjustment to the new sea level that the local people were making. He drove down to it often, following back roads that led to abrupt cliffs, to sudden valley marshes. Many of the coastal fishing people had Algerian ancestry. The fishing wasn't going well, they said. The Camargue was polluted by drowned industrial sites, and in the Med the fish were for the most part staying outside the brown water, out in the blue which was a good morning's voyage away, with many dangers en route.
Hearing and speaking French, even this strange new French, was like touching an electrode to parts of his brain that hadn't been visited in over a century. Coelacanths exploded regularly: memories of women's kindnesses to him, his cruelties to them. Perhaps that was why he had gone to Mars--- to escape himself, an unpleasant fellow it seemed.
Well, if escaping himself had been his desire, he had succeeded. Now he was someone else. And a helpful man, a sympathetic man; he could look in a mirror. He could return home and face it, face what he had been, because of what he had become. Mars had done that, anyway.
It was so strange how the memory worked. The fragments were so small and sharp, they were like those furry minute cactus needles that hurt far out of proportion to their minuscule size. What he remembered best was his life on Mars. Odessa, Burroughs, the underground shelters in the south, the hidden outposts in the chaos. Even Underhill.
If he had returned to Earth during the Underhill years, he would have been swamped with media crowds. But he had been out of contact since disappearing with Hiroko, and though he had not attempted to conceal himself since the revolution, few in France seemed to have noticed his reappearance. The enormity of recent events on Earth had included a partial fracturing of the media culture--- or perhaps it was simply the passage of time; most of the population of France had been born after his disappearance, and the First Hundred were ancient history to them--- not ancient enough, however, to be truly interesting. If Voltaire or Louis XIV or Charlemagne had appeared, there might be a bit of attention--- perhaps--- but a psychologist of the previous century who had emigrated to Mars, which was a sort of America when all was said and done? No, that was of very little interest to anyone. He got some calls, some people came by the Arlesian hotel to interview him down in the lobby or the courtyard, and after that one or two of the Paris shows came down as well; but they all were much more interested in what he could tell them about Nirgal than in anything about he himself. Nirgal was the one people were fascinated by, he was their charismatic.
No doubt it was better that way. Although as Michel sat in cafés eating his meals, feeling as alone as if he were in a solo rover in the far outback of the southern highlands, it was a bit disappointing to be entirely ignored--- just one vieux among all the rest, another one of those whose unnaturally long life was creating more logistical problems than le fleuve blanc, if the truth were told. . . .
It was better this way. He could stop in little villages around Vallabrix, like Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, or Saint-Victor-des-Quies, or Saint-Hippolyte-de-Montaigu, and chat with the shopkeepers, who looked identical to the ones who had been running the shops when he had left, and were probably their descendants, or even possibly the same people; they spoke in an older more stable French, careless of him, absorbed in their own conversations, their own lives. He was nothing to them, and so he could see them clearly. It was the same out in the narrow streets, where many people looked like gypsies--- North African blood no doubt, spreading into the populace as it had after the Saracen invasion a thousand years before. Africans pouring in every thousand years or so; this too was Provence. The young women were beautiful: gracefully flowing through the streets in gangs, their black tresses still glossy and bright in the dust of the mistral. These had been his villages. Dusty plastic signs, everything tattered and run-down. . . .
Back and forth he oscillated, between familiarity and alienation, memory and forgetfulness. But ever more lonely. In one café he ordered cassis, and at the first sip he remembered sitting in that very same café, at that very same table. Across from Eve. Proust had been perfectly correct to identify taste as the principal agent of involuntary memory, for one's longterm memories settled or at least were organized in the amygdala, just over the area in the brain concerned with taste and smell--- and so smells were intensely intertwined with memories, and also with the emotional network of the limbic system, twisting through both areas; thus the neurological sequence, smell triggering memory triggering nostalgia. Nostalgia, the intense ache for one's past, desire for one's past--- not because it had been so wonderful but simply because it had been, and now was gone. He recalled Eve's face, talking in this crowded room across from him. But not what she had said, or why they were there. Of course not. Simply an isolated moment, a cactus needle, an image seen as if by lightning bolt, then gone; and no knowing the rest of it, no matter how hard he tried to recollect. And they were all like that, his memories; that was what memories were when they got old enough, flashes in the dark, incoherent, almost meaningless, and yet sometimes filled with a vague ache.
He stumbled out of the café from his past to his car, and drove home, through Vallabrix, under the big plane trees of Grand Planas, out to the ruined mas, all without thinking; and he walked out to it again helplessly, as if the house might have sprung back into being. But it was still the same dusty ruin by the olive grove. And he sat on the wall, feeling blank.
That Michel Duval was gone. This one would go too. He would live into yet further incarnations and forget this moment, yes even this sharp painful moment, just as he had forgotten all the moments that had passed here the first time. Flashes, images--- a man sitting on a broken wall, no feeling involved. Nothing more than that. So this Michel too would go.
The olive trees waved their arms, gray green, green gray. Good-bye, good-bye. They were no help this time, they gave him no euphoric connection with lost time; that moment too was past.
In a flickering gray green he drove back to Arles. The clerk in the hotel's lobby was telling someone that the mistral would never stop. "Yes it will," Michel said as he passed.
He went up to his room and called Maya again. Please, he said. Please come soon. It was making him angry that he was reduced to such begging. Soon, she kept saying. A few more days and they would have an agreement hammered out, a bona fide written agreement between the UN and an independent Martian government. History in the making. After that she would see about coming.
Michel did not care about history in the making. He walked around Arles, waiting for her. He went back to his room to wait. He went out to walk again.
• • •
The Romans had used Arles for a port as much as they had Marseilles--- in fact Caesar had razed Marseilles for backing Pompey, and had given Arles his favor as the local capital. Three strategic Roman roads had been constructed to meet at the town, all used for hundreds of years after the Romans had gone, and so for those centuries it had been lively, prosperous, important. But the Rhone had silted its lagoons, and the Camargue had become a pestilential swamp, and the roads had fallen into disuse. The town dwindled. The Camargue's windswept salt grasses and their famous herds of wild white horses were eventually joined by oil refineries, nuclear power plants, chemical works.
Now with the flood the lagoons were back, and flushing clean. Arles was again a seaport. Michel continued to wait for Maya there precisely because he had never lived there before. It did not remind him of anything but the moment; and he spent his days watching the people of the moment live their lives. In this new foreign country.
• • •
He received a call at the hotel, from a Francis Duval. Sylvie had contacted the man. He was Michel's nephew, Michel's dead brother's son, still alive and living on Rue du 4 Septembre, just north of the Roman arena, a few blocks from the swollen Rhone, a few blocks from Michel's hotel. He invited Michel to come over.
After a moment's hesitation, Michel agreed. By the time he had walked across town, stopping briefly to peer into the Roman theater and arena, his nephew appeared to have convened the entire quartier: an instant celebration, champagne corks popping like strings of firecrackers as Michel was pulled in the door and embraced by everyone there, three kisses to the cheeks, in the ProvenÃsect;al manner. It took him a while to get to Francis, who hugged him long and hard, talking all the while as people's camera fibers pointed at them. "You look just like my father!" Francis said.
"So do you!" said Michel, trying to remember if it were true or not, trying to remember his brother's face. Francis was elderly, Michel had never seen his brother that old. It was hard to say.
But all the faces were familiar, somehow, and the language comprehensible, mostly, the phrases sparking image after image in him; the smells of cheese and wine sparking more, the taste of the wine yet more again. Francis it turned out was a connoisseur, and happily he uncorked a number of dusty bottles, Châteauneuf du Pape, then a century-old sauternes from Château d'Yquem, and his speciality, red premier cru from Bordeaux called Pauillac, two each from Châteaux Latour and Lafitte, and a 2064 Château Mouton-Rothschild with a label by Pougnadoresse. These aged wonders had metamorphosed over the years into something more than mere wine, tastes thick with overtones and harmonics. They spilled down Michel's throat like his own youth.
It could have been a party for some popular town politician, say; and though Michel concluded that Francis did not much resemble Michel's brother, he sounded exactly like him. Michel had forgotten that voice, he would have said, but it was absolutely clear in his mind, shockingly so. The way Francis drawled "normalement," in this case meaning the way things had been before the flood, whereas for Michel's brother it had meant that hypothetical state of smooth operation that never occurred in the real Provence--- but exactly the same lilt and drawl, normalement. . . .
Everyone wanted to speak with Michel, or at least to hear him, and so he stood with a glass in his hand and gave a quick speech in the style of a town politician, complimenting the women on their beauty, managing to make it clear how pleased he was to be in their company without getting sentimental, or revealing just how disoriented he was feeling: a slick competent performance, which was just what the sophisticates of Provence liked, their rhetoric quick and humorous like the local bullfighting. "And how is Mars? What is it like? What will you do now? Are there Jacobins yet?"
"Mars is Mars," Michel said, dismissing it. "The ground is the color of Arlesian roof tiles. You know."
They partied right through the afternoon, and then called in a feast. Innumerable women kissed his cheeks, he was drunk on their perfume and skin and hair, their smiling liquid dark eyes, looking at him with friendly curiosity. Native Martian girls one always had to look up to, inspecting their chins and necks and the insides of their nostrils. Such a pleasure to look down on a straight part in glossy black hair.
In the late evening people dispersed. Francis walked with Michel over to the Roman arena, and they climbed the bowed stone steps of the medieval towers that had fortified the arena. From the little stone chamber at the top of the stairs they looked out small windows at the tile roofs, and the treeless streets, and the Rhone. Out the south windows they could see a portion of the speckled sheet of water which was the Camargue.
"Back on the Med," Francis said, deeply satisfied. "The flood may have been a disaster for most places, but for Arles it has been a veritable coup. The rice farmers are all coming into town ready to fish, or take any work they can get. And many of the boats that survived have been docked right here in town. They've been bringing fruit in from Corsica and Mallorca, trade with Barcelona and Sicily. We've taken a good bit of Marseilles's business, although they're recovering quickly, it has to be said. But what life has come back! Before, you know, Aix had the university, Marseilles had the sea, and we had only these ruins, and the tourists who came for a day to see them. And tourism is an ugly business, it's not fit work for human beings. It's hosting parasites. But now we're living again!" He was a little bit drunk. "Here, you must come out on the boat with me and see the lagoon."
"I'd like that."
That night Michel called Maya again. "You must come. I've found my nephew, my family."
Maya wasn't impressed. "Nirgal went to England looking for Hiroko," she said sharply. "Someone told him she was there, and he left just like that."
"What's this?" Michel exclaimed, shocked by the sudden intrusion of the idea of Hiroko.
"Oh Michel. You know it can't be true. Someone said it to Nirgal, that's all it was. It can't be true, but he ran right off."
"As would I!"
"Please, Michel, don't be stupid. One fool is enough. If Hiroko is alive at all, then she's on Mars. Someone just said this to Nirgal to get him away from the negotiations. I only hope it was for nothing worse. He was having too much of an effect on people. And he wasn't watching his tongue. You should call him and tell him to come back. Maybe he would listen to you."
"I wouldn't if I were him."
Michel was lost in thought, trying to crush the sudden hope that Hiroko was alive. And in England of all places. Alive anywhere. Hiroko and therefore Iwao, Gene, Rya--- the whole group--- his family. His real family. He shuddered, hard; and when he tried to tell the impatient Maya about his family in Arles, the words stuck in his throat. His real family had all disappeared four years before, and that was the truth. Finally, sick at heart, he could only say, "Please, Maya. Please come."
"Soon. I've told Sax I'll go as soon as we're finished here. That will leave all the rest of it to him, and he can barely talk. It's ridiculous." She was exaggerating, they had a full diplomatic team there, and Sax was perfectly competent, in his way. "But okay, okay, I'm going to do it. So stop pestering me."
She came the next week.
Michel drove to the new train station and met her, feeling nervous. He had lived with Maya, in Odessa and Burroughs, for almost thirty years; but now, driving her to Avignon, she seemed like a stranger sitting there beside him, an ancient beauty with hooded eyes and an expression hard to read, speaking English in harsh rapid sentences, telling him everything that had happened in Bern. They had a treaty with the UN, which had agreed to their independence. In return they were to allow some emigration, but no more than ten percent of the Martian population per year; some transfer of mineral resources; some consultation on diplomatic issues. "That's good, really good." Michel tried to concentrate on her news, but it was hard. Occasionally as she spoke she glanced at the buildings shooting past their car, but in the dusty windy sunlight they looked tawdry enough in all truth. She did not seem impressed.
With a sinking feeling Michel drove as close as he could to the pope's palace in Avignon, parked, and took her for a walk along the swollen river, past the bridge that did not reach to the other side, then to the wide promenade leading south from the palace, where sidewalk cafés nestled in the shade of the ancient plane trees. There they ate lunch, and Michel tasted the olive oil and the cassis, running them luxuriously over his tongue as he watched his companion relax into her metal chair like a cat. "This is nice," she said, and he smiled. It was nice: cool, relaxed, civilized, the food and drink very fine. But for him the taste of cassis was unleashing its flood of memories, emotions from previous incarnations blended with the emotions he felt now, heightening everything, colors, textures, the feel of metal chairs and wind. While for Maya cassis was just a tart berry drink.
It occurred to him as he watched her that fate had led him to a companion even more attractive than the beautiful Frenchwomen he had consorted with in that earlier life. A woman somehow greater. In that too he had done well on Mars. He had taken on a bigger life. This feeling and his nostalgia clashed in his heart, and all the while Maya swallowed mouthfuls of cassoulet, wine, cheeses, cassis, coffee, oblivious to the interference pattern of his lives, moving in and out of phase inside him.
They talked desultorily. Maya was relaxed, enjoying herself. Happy at her accomplishment in Bern. In no hurry to go anywhere. Michel felt a glow like omegandorph all through him. Watching her he was slowly becoming happy himself; simply happy. Past, future--- neither was ever real. Just lunch under plane trees, in Avignon. No need to think of anything but that. "So civilized," Maya said. "I haven't felt so calm in years. I can see why you like it." And then she was laughing at him, and he could feel an idiot grin plastering his face.
"Would you not like to see Moscow again?" he asked curiously.
"Ah no. I would not."
She dismissed the idea as an intrusion on the moment. He wondered what she felt about this return to Earth. Surely one could not be completely without feelings about such a thing?
But to some people home was home, a complex of feeling far beyond rationality, a sort of grid or gravitational field in which the personality itself took its geometrical shape. While for others, a place was just a place, and the self free of all that, the same no matter where it was. One kind lived in the Einsteinian curved space of home, the other in the Newtonian absolute space of the free self. And while he was one of the former type, Maya was one of the latter. And there was no use struggling against that fact. Nevertheless he wanted her to like Provence. Or at least to see why he loved it.
And so, when they were done eating, he drove her south through Saint-Rémy, to Les Baux.
She slept during the drive, and he was not displeased; between Avignon and Les Baux the landscape consisted mostly of ugly industrial buildings, scattered on a dusty plain. She woke up at just the right time, when he was negotiating the narrow twisting road that wandered up a crease in the Alpilles to the old hilltop village. One parked in a parking lot, then walked up into the town; it was clearly a tourist arrangement, but the single curving street of the little settlement was now very quiet indeed, as if abandoned; and very picturesque. The village was shuttered for the afternoon, asleep. On the last turn to the hill's top, one crossed open ground like a rough tilted plaza, and beyond that were the limestone knobs of the hilltop, every knob hollowed out by some eremite of the ancient hermitage, tucked above Saracens and all the other dangers of the medieval world. To the south the Mediterranean gleamed like gold plate. The rock itself was yellowish, and as a thin veil of bronzed cloud lay in the western sky, the light everywhere took on a metallic amber cast, as if they walked in a gel of years.
They clambered from one tiny chamber to the next, marveling at how small they were. "It's like a prairie-dog nest," Maya said, peering down into one squared-out little cave. "It's like our trailer park in Underhill."
Back on the tilted plaza, littered with limestone blocks, they stopped to watch the Mediterranean shine. Michel pointed out the lighter sheen of the Camargue. "You used to see only a bit of water." The light deepened to a dark apricot, and the hill seemed a fortress above the oh-so-spacious world, above time itself. Maya put an arm around his waist and hugged him, shivering. "It's beautiful. But I couldn't live up here like they did, it's too exposed somehow."
They went back to Arles. As it was a Saturday night, the town center had become a kind of gypsy or North African festival, the alleys crowded with food and drink stands, many of them tucked into the arches of the Roman arena, which was open to all, with a band playing inside it. Maya and Michel walked around arm in arm, bathed in the smells of frying food and Arabic spices. Voices around them spoke in two or three different languages. "It reminds me of Odessa," Maya said as they made their promenade around the Roman arena, "only the people are so little. It's nice not to feel dwarfed for once."
They danced in the arena center, drank at a table under the blurry stars. One star was red, and Michel had his suspicions, but did not voice them. They went back to his hotel room and made love on the narrow bed, and at some point it seemed to Michel that there were several people in him, all coming at once; he cried out at the strange rapture of that sensation. . . . Maya fell asleep and he lay beside her awake, in a tristesse reverberating somewhere outside time, drinking in the familiar smell of her hair and listening to the slowly diminishing cacophony of the town. Home at last.
• • •
In the days that followed, he introduced her to his nephew and to the rest of his relatives, rounded up by Francis. That whole gang took her in, and through the use of translation AIs asked her scores of questions. They also tried to tell her everything about themselves. It happened so often, Michel thought; people wanted to seize the famous stranger whose story they knew (or thought they knew), and give them their story in return, to redress the balance of the relationship. Some kind of witnessing, or confessional. The reciprocal sharing of stories. And people were naturally drawn to Maya anyway. She listened to their stories, and laughed, and asked questions--- utterly there. Time after time they told her how the flood had come, drowning their homes, their livings, throwing them out into the world, to friends and family they hadn't seen in years, forcing them into new patterns and reliances, breaking the mold of their lives and thrusting them out into the mistral. They had been exalted by this process, Michel saw, they were proud of their response, of how people had pulled together--- also very indignant at any counterexamples of gouging or callousness, blots on an otherwise heroic affair: "Can you believe it? And it did no good, he was jumped one night in the street and all that money gone."
"It woke us up, do you see, do you see? It woke us up when we had been asleep forever."
They would say these things to Michel in French, watch him nod, and then watch Maya for her response as the AIs told their tale in English to her. And she would nod as well, absorbed as she had been in the young natives around Hellas Basin, focusing their stories by the look on her face, by her interest. Ah, she and Nirgal, they were two of a kind, they were charismatics--- because of the way they focused on others, the way they exalted people's stories. Perhaps that was what charisma was, a kind of mirror quality.
Some of Michel's relatives took them out on their boats, and Maya marveled at the rampaging Rhone as they ran down it, at the strangely cluttered lagoon of the Camargue, and the efforts people were making to rechannelize it. Then out onto the brown water of the Med, and farther still, onto the blue water--- the sun-beaten blue, the little boat bouncing over the whitecaps whipped up by the mistral. All the way out of the sight of land, on a blue sun-beaten plate of water: amazing. Michel stripped and jumped over the side, into cold water, where he sloshed the salt down and drank some of it too, savoring the amniotic taste of his old beach swims.
Back on land they went out on drives. Once they went out to see the Pont du Gard, and there it was, same as ever, the Romans' greatest work of art--- an aqueduct: three tiers of stone, the thick lower arches foursquare in the river, proud of their two thousand years' resistance to running water; lighter taller arches above, then the smallest on top of them. Form following function right into the heart of the beautiful--- using stone to take water over water. The stone now pitted and honey blond, very Martian in every respect--- it looked like Nadia's Underhill arcade, standing there in the dusty green and limestone gorge of the Gard, in Provence; but now, to Michel, almost more Mars than France.
Maya loved its elegance. "See how human it is, Michel. This is what our Martian structures lack, they are too big. But this--- this was built by human hands, with tools anyone could construct and use. Block and tackle and human math, and perhaps some horses. And not our teleoperated machines and their weird materials, doing things no one can understand or even see."
"Yes."
"I wonder if we could build things by hand. Nadia should see this, she would love it."
"That's what I thought."
Michel was happy. They ate a picnic there. They visited the fountains of Aix-en-Provence. Went out to an overlook above the Grand Canyon of the Gard. Nosed around the street docks of Marseilles. Visited the Roman sites in Orange, and Nîmes. Drove past the drowned resorts of the Côte d'Azur. Walked out one evening to Michel's ruined mas, and into the middle of the old olive grove.
And every night of these few precious days they returned to Arles, and ate in the hotel restaurant, or if it was warm out, under the plane trees in the sidewalk cafés; and then went up to their room and made love; and at dawn woke and made love again, or went down directly for fresh croissants and coffee. "It's lovely," Maya said, standing one blue evening in the tower of the arena, looking over the tile roofs of the town; she meant all of it, all of Provence. And Michel was happy.
But a call came on the wrist. Nirgal was sick, very sick; Sax, sounding shaken, had already gotten him off Earth, back into Martian g and a sterile environment, inside a ship in Terran orbit. "I'm afraid his immune system isn't up to it, and the g doesn't help. He's got an infection, pulmonary edema, a very bad fever."
"Allergic to Earth," Maya said, her face grim. She made plans and ended the call with curt instructions to Sax to stay calm, then went to the room's little closet and began to throw her clothes out onto the bed.
"Come on!" she cried when she saw Michel standing there. "We have to go!"
"We do?"
She waved him off, burrowed into the closet. "I'm going." She threw handfuls of underwear into her suitcase, gave him a look. "It's time to go anyway."
"It is?"
She didn't reply. She was tapping at her wristpad, asking the local Praxis team to arrange transport into space. There they would rendezvous with Sax and Nirgal. Her voice was cold, tense, businesslike. She had already forgotten Provence.
When she saw Michel still standing motionless, she exploded---"Oh come on, don't be so theatrical about it! Just because we have to leave now doesn't mean we won't ever come back! We're going to live a thousand years, you can come back all the time if you want, a hundred times, my God! Besides how is this place so much better than Mars? It looks just like Odessa to me, and you were happy there, weren't you?"
Michel ignored that. He stumbled by her suitcases to the window. Outside, an ordinary Arlesian street, blue in the twilight: pastel stucco walls, cobblestones. Cypress trees. Tiles on the roof across the street were broken. Mars-colored. Voices below shouted in French, angry about something.
"Well?" Maya exclaimed. "Are you coming?"
"Yes."
Ann in the Outback
Prologue
Look, not choosing to take the longevity treatment is suicide.
So?
Well. Suicide is usually considered to be a sign of psychological dysfunction.
Usually.
I think you'll find it's true more often than not. You're unhappy at least.
At least.
And yet why? What now is lacking?
The world.
Every day you still walk out to see the sunset.
Habit.
You claim the destruction of the primal Mars is the source of your depression. I think the philosophical reasons cited by people suffering depression are masks protecting them from harder, more personal hurts.
It can all be real.
You mean all the reasons?
Yes. What did you accuse Sax of? Monocausotaxophilia?
Touché. But there's usually a start to these things, among all the real reasons--- the first one that started you down your road. Often you have to go back to that point in your journey in order to start off in a new way.
Time is not space. The metaphor of space lies about what is really possible in time. You can never go back.
No no. You can go back, metaphorically. In your mental traveling you can journey back into the past, retrace your steps, see where you turned and why, then proceed onward in a direction that is different because it includes these loops of understanding. Increased understanding increases meaning. When you continue to insist that it is the fate of Mars that concerns you most, I think it is a displacement so strong that it has confused you. It too is a metaphor. Perhaps a true one, yes. But both terms of the metaphor should be recognized.
I see what I see.
But the way it is, you are not even seeing. There is so much of red Mars that remains. You should go out and look! Go out and empty your mind and just see what is out there. Go out at low altitude and walk free in the air, a simple dust mask only. It would be good for you, good at the physiological level. Also it would be reaping a benefit of the terraforming. To experience the freedom it gives us, the bond with this world--- that we can walk on its surface naked and survive. It's amazing! It makes us part of an ecology. It deserves to be rethought, this process. You should go out to consider it, to study the process as areoformation.
That's just a word. We took this planet and plowed it under. It's melting under our feet.
Melting in native water. Not imported from Saturn or the like, it's been there from the beginning, part of the original accretion, right? Outgassed from the first lump that was Mars. Now part of our bodies. Our very bodies are patterns in Martian water. Without the trace minerals we would be transparent. We are Martian water. And water that has been on the surface of Mars before, yes? Rupturing out in artesian apocalypse. Those channels are so big!
It was permafrost for two billion years.
Then we helped it back onto the surface. The majesty of the great outbreak floods. We were there, we saw one with our own eyes, we nearly died in it---
Yes yes---
You felt the car as that water swept it away, you were driving---
Yes! But it swept Frank away instead.
Yes.
It swept the world away. And left us on the beach.
The world is still here. You could go out and see.
I don't want to see. I've seen it already!
Not you. Some previous you. Now you're the you living now. Yes yes.
I think you're afraid. Afraid of attempting a transmutation--- a metamorphosis into something new. The alembic stands out there, all around you. The fire is hot. You'll be melted, you'll be reborn, who knows if you'll still be there afterward?
I don't want to change.
You don't want to stop loving Mars.
Yes. No.
You will never stop loving Mars. After metamorphosis the rock still exists. It's usually harder than the parent rock, yes? You will always love Mars. Your task becomes seeing the Mars that always endures, under thick or thin, hot or cold, wet or dry. Those are ephemeral, but Mars endures. These floods happened before, isn't it true?
Yes.
Mars's own water. All these volatiles are Mars's own volatiles.
Except the nitrogen from Titan.
Yes yes. You sound like Sax.
Come on.
You two are more alike than you think. And all we volatiles are Mars's own.
But the destruction of the surface. It's wrecked. Everything's changed.
That's areology. Or the areophany.
It's destruction. We should have tried living here as it was.
But we didn't. And so now being red means working to keep conditions as much like the primal conditions as possible, within the framework of the areophany--- the project of biosphere creation that allows humans the freedom of the surface, below a certain altitude. That's all being a Red can mean now. And there are a lot of Reds like that. I think you worry that if you ever change in even the slightest degree, then that will be the end of redness everywhere. But redness is bigger than you. You helped start it and define it, but you were never the only one. If you had been no one would ever have listened to you.
They didn't!
Some did. Many did. Redness will go on no matter what you do. You could retire, you could become someone entirely different, you could become lime green, and redness would always go on. It might even become something more red than you ever imagined.
I've imagined it as red as it can get.
All those alternatives. We'll live one of them and then go on. The process of coadaptation with this planet will go on for thousands of years. But here we are now. At every moment you should ask, what now is lacking? and work at some acceptance of your current reality. This is sanity, this is life. You have to imagine your life from here on out.
I can't. I've tried and I can't.
You should go have a look around, really. A walkabout. Look very closely. Take a look even at the ice seas, a close look. But not just that. That is in the nature of a confrontation. Confrontation is not necessarily bad, but first just a look, eh? A recognition. Then you should think about going up into the hills. Tharsis, Elysium. A rise in altitude is a voyage into the past. Your task is to find the Mars that endures through all. It's wonderful, really. So many people don't have such a wonderful task as that, you can't imagine. You're lucky to have it.
And you?
What?
What is your task?
My task?
Yes. Your task
. . . I 'm not sure. I told you, I envy you having that. My tasks are . . . confused. To help Maya, and me. And the rest of us. Reconciliation . . . I would like to find Hiroko . . .
You've been our shrink for a long time.
Yes.
Over a hundred years.
Yes.
And never any results at all.
Well. I like to think I have helped a little.
But it doesn't come naturally to you.
Perhaps not.
Do you think people get interested in studying psychology because they're troubled in the mind?
It's a common theory.
But no one has ever been shrink to you.
Oh I've had my therapists.
Helpful?
Yes! Quite helpful. Fairly helpful. I mean--- they did what they could.
But you don't know your task.
No. Or, I . . . I want to go home.
What home?
That's the problem. Hard when you don't know where home is, eh?
Yes. I thought you would stay in Provence.
No no. I mean, Provence is my home, but . . .
But now you're on your way back to Mars.
Yes.
You decided to come back.
. . .Yes.
You don't know what you're doing, do you?
No. But you do. You know where your home is. You have that, and it's precious! You should remember that, you shouldn't be throwing away such a gift, or thinking it's a burden! You're a fool to think that! It's a gift, damn you, a precious precious gift, do you understand me?
I'll have to think about that.
She left the refuge in a meteorological rover from the previous century, a high square thing with a luxurious window-box driver's compartment up top. It was not unlike the front half of the expedition rover in which she had first traveled to the North Pole, with Nadia and Phyllis and Edmund and George. And because she had spent thousands of days since then in such machines, she at first had the impression that what she was doing was ordinary, contiguous with the rest of her life.
But she drove northeast, downcanyon, until she was in the bed of the little unnamed channel at sixty degrees longitude, fifty-three degrees north. This valley had been carved by a small aquifer outbreak during the late Amazonian, running in an earlier graben fault, down the lower slopes of the Great Escarpment. The scoring effects of the flood were still visible on the rims of the canyon walls, and in the lenticular islands of bedrock on the floor of the channel.
Which now ran north into a sea of ice.
• • •
She got out of the car wearing a fiberfilled windsuit, a CO2 mask, goggles, and heated boots. The air was thin and cold, though it was spring now in the north--- Ls 10, m-53. Cold and windy, ragged lines of low puffy clouds racing east. It was either going to be an ice age or, if the greens' manipulations forestalled it, then a year-without-summer, like 1810 on Earth, when the explosion of the volcano Tambori had chilled the world.
TEMPE TERRA
She walked the shore of the new sea. It was at the foot of the Great Escarpment, in Tempe Terra, a lobe of ancient highlands extending into the north. Tempe had probably escaped the general stripping of the northern hemisphere by being roughly opposite the impact point of the Big Hit, which most areologists now agreed had struck near Hrad Vallis, above Elysium. So; battered hills, overlooking an ice-covered sea. The rock looked like a red sea's surface in a wild cross chop; the ice looked like a prairie in the depths of winter. Native water, as Michel had said--- there from the beginning, on the surface before. It was a hard thing to grasp. Her thoughts were scattered and confused, darting this way and that, all at the same time--- it was like madness, but not. She knew the difference. The hum and keen of the wind did not speak to her in the tones of the MIT lecturer; she suffered no choking sensations when she tried to breathe. It was not like that. Rather her thinking was accelerated, fractured, unpredictable--- like that flock of birds over the ice, zigzagging across the sky in a hard wind from the west. Ah the feel of that same wind against her body, shoving at it, the new thick air like a great animal paw. . . .
The birds struggled in it with reckless skill. She stood for a while and watched: they were skuas, out hunting over dark streaks of open water. These polynyas were just the surface signs of immense pods of liquid water under the ice; she had heard that a continuous channel of under-ice water now wrapped the globe, winding east over old Vastitas, tearing frequent polynyas in the surface, gaps which then stayed liquid for an hour or a week. Even with the air so cold, the underwater temperatures were warmed by the drowned Vastitas moholes, and rising heat from the thousands of thermonuclear explosions set off by the metanats around the turn of the century. These bombs had been placed deep enough in the megaregolith to trap their radioactive fallout, supposedly, but not their heat, which rose in a thermal pulse through the rock, a pulse that would continue for years and years. No; Michel could talk about it being Mars's water, but there was little else that was natural about this new sea.
Ann hiked up a ridge to get a wider view. There it lay: ice, mostly flat, sometimes shattered. All as still as a butterfly on a twig, as if the whiteness might suddenly lift off and fly away. The birds' wheeling and the clouds' scudding showed how hard the wind blew, everything in the air pouring east; but the ice remained still. The wind's voice was deep and huge, scraping over a billion cold edges. A strip of gray water was striated by windchop, the strength of each gust precisely registered by the flayed cat's paws, each brush of harder wind feathering the larger waves with exquisite sensitivity. Water. And below that brushed surface, plankton, krill, fish, squid; she had heard they were producing in hatcheries all the creatures of the extremely short Antarctic food chain, and then releasing them to the sea. Teeming water.
The skuas wheeled overhead. One cloud of them whirlpooled down onto something along on the shore, behind some rocks. Ann hiked toward them. Suddenly she saw the birds' target, lying in a cleft at the edge of the ice: the mostly eaten remains of a seal. Seals! The corpse lay on tundra grass, in the lee of a patch of sand dunes, sheltered by another rocky ridge running down into the ice. The white skeleton emerged from dark red flesh, ringed by white blubber, black fur. All torn open to the sky. Eyes pecked out.
She hiked on past the corpse, up another little ridge. The ridge made a kind of cape extending into the ice, and beyond it was a bay. A round bay--- a crater, infilled by ice. It had happened to lie at sea level, had happened to have a breach in its rim on its seaward side, so that water and ice had poured in and filled it. Now a round bay, perfect for a harbor. One day it would be a harbor. About three kilometers across.
Ann sat down on a boulder on the cape, and looked out at the new bay. Her breath heaved in and out of her in an involuntary motion, her rib cage moving violently, as during labor contractions. Sobs, yes. She pulled aside her face mask, blew her nose using her finger, wiped her eyes, all the while still weeping furiously. This was her body. She recalled the first time she had stumbled onto the flooding of Vastitas, in a solo trip ages ago. That time she had not cried, but Michel had said that was only shock, the numbness of shock, as in any injury--- withdrawal from her body and her feelings. Michel would call this response healthier, no doubt, but why? It hurt--- her body, spasming in a seismic trembling. But when it was over, Michel would say, she would feel better. Drained. A tension gone--- the tectonics of the limbic system--- she scorned such simplistic analogies as Michel offered, the woman as planet, it was absurd. Nevertheless there she sat, sniffling, looking out at the ice bay under scudding clouds, feeling drained.
• • •
Nothing moved except for clouds overhead, and cat's paws on a patch of open water, gust after gust, shimmering gray, mauve, gray. Water moved but the land was still.
Finally Ann stood and walked down a rib of hard old shishovite, now forming a narrow divide between two long beaches. To tell the truth, above the ice there was not that much that had changed from the primal state. Down at the waterline it was a different story. Here the daily trade winds over the open water of the summer bay had created waves large enough to break the remaining chunks of ice into what they called brash ice. Lines of this flotsam were now beached above the current ice level, like ice sculptures depicting driftwood. But in the summer this ice had helped to rip up the sand of the new beaches, tearing it into a slurry of ice and mud and sand, now frozen in place like brown cake frosting.
Ann walked slowly across this mess. Beyond it there was a little inlet, crowded with ice boulders that had grounded in the shallows and then been frozen into the sea surface. Exposure to sun and wind had rendered these boulders into baroque fantasias of clear blue ice and opaque red ice, like aggregates of sapphire and bloodstone. The south sides of the blocks had melted preferentially, the meltwater frozen in icicles, ice beards, ice sheets, ice columns.
Looking back at the shore she saw again how the sand was furrowed and torn; the damage was terrific, the gouges sometimes two meters deep--- incredible force, to plow such trenches! The sand drifts must have been loess, made of loose light aeolian deposits. Now a no-man's-land of frozen mud and dirty ice, as if bombs had devastated some sad army's trenches.
She continued outward, stepping on opaque ice. On the surface of the bay. Like a world covered in semen. Once the ice cracked under her boot.
When she was well out on the bay she stopped and had a look around. Tight horizons indeed; she climbed a flat-topped berg, which gave her a larger view over the expanse of ice, out to the circle of the crater rim, just under the running clouds. Though cracked and jumbled and lined by pressure ridges, the ice nevertheless clearly conveyed the flatness of the water beneath it. To the north the gap to the sea was obvious. Tabular bergs stuck out from the ice like deformed castles. A white waste.
After struggling to come to grips with the scene, and failing, she clambered off the berg and hiked back to the shore, then back toward her car. As she was crossing the little ridge cape, movement down at the edge of the ice caught her eye. A white thing moved--- a person in a white walker, on all fours--- no. A bear. A polar bear. Walking along the edge of the ice.
It spotted the dust devil of skuas over the dead seal. Ann crouched behind a boulder, went prone on a patch of frosty sand. Cold all along the front of her body. She looked over the boulder.
The bear's ivory fur yellowed on its flanks and legs. It raised a heavy head, sniffed like a dog, looked around curiously. It shambled to the corpse of the seal, ignoring the column of squealing birds. It ate from the seal like a dog from a bowl. It raised its head, muzzle dark red. Ann's heart pounded. The bear sat on its haunches and licked a paw, rubbed its face until it was clean, catlike in its fastidiousness. Then without warning it dropped to all fours and started up the slope of rock and sand, toward Ann's hiding place behind the boulder. It trotted, moving both the legs on one side of its body in the same motion, left, right, left.
Ann rolled down the other side of the little cape and got up and ran up the trough of a shallow fracture, leading her southwest. Her rover was almost directly west of her, she reckoned, but the bear was coming from the northwest. She clambered up the short steep side of the southwest-trending canyon, ran over a strip of high ground to another little fracture canyon, trending a bit more to the west than the previous one. Up again, onto the next strip of high ground between these shallow fossae. She looked back. Already she was panting, and her rover was still at least two kilometers away, to the west and a little south. It was still out of sight, behind ragged hillocks. The bear was north and east of her; if it made directly for the rover it would be almost as close to it now as she was. Did it hunt by sight or by smell? Could it plot the course of its prey, and move to cut it off?
No doubt it could. She was sweating inside her windsuit. She hustled down into the next canyon and ran in it for a while, west southwest. Then she saw an easy ramp and ran up to the next intercanyon strip, a kind of wide high road between the shallow canyons on both sides. Looking back she found herself staring at the polar bear. It stood on all fours, behind and two canyons over, looking like a very big dog, or a cross between a dog and a person, draped in straw-white fur. It amazed her to see such a creature out there, the food chain couldn't possibly support such a large predator, could it? They must surely be feeding it at feed stations. Hopefully so, or else it would be very hungry. Now it dropped into the canyon two over, out of sight, and Ann started to run down the strip toward her rover. Despite her running around, and the tight rugged horizon, she was confident of her sense of the car's location.
She kept to a pace she thought she could sustain for the whole distance. It was hard not to let loose and sprint at full speed, but no, no, that would lead to a collapse eventually. Pace yourself, she thought, gasping in short pants. Get down off the high ground into a graben so you're out of sight. Keep oriented, are you passing south of the rover? Back up to the higher ground, for just a moment to look. There behind that low flat-topped hill, which was a small crater, with a hump on the south end of the rim--- she was certain--- though the rover was still out of sight, and the jumbled land was easy to get confused in. A thousand times she had gotten briefly semilost, unsure of her exact location in relation to some fixed point, usually her parked rover--- not a big deal usually, as her wrist's APS could always lead her back. As it could now too, but she was sure it was over there behind that bump of a crater.
The cold air burned in her lungs. She recalled the emergency face mask in her backpack, and stopped and yanked off the backpack and dug, pulled off the CO2 mask and put on the air mask; it contained a short supply of compressed oxygen in its frame, and with it pulled over her mouth and nose and turned on, she was suddenly stronger, faster, could hold a better pace. She ran along a strip of high ground between canyons, hoping to get a sighting of the rover round the slope of the crater apron. Ah, there it was! Panting triumphantly she sucked down the cool oxygen; it tasted lovely, but was not enough to stop her gasping. If she went down into the trough to her right it looked like it would run straight to the rover.
She glanced back and saw the polar bear running too, legs now in a shambling kind of gallop--- lumbering--- but it ate up the ground with that run, and the shallow canyon walls seemed no impediment to it, it flowed over them like a white nightmare, a thing beautiful and terrifying, the liquid flow of its muscles loose under thick yellow-tipped white fur. All this she saw in a single moment of the utmost clarity, everything in her field of vision distinct and acute and luminous, as if lit from within. Even running as hard as she could, focusing on the ground to make sure she didn't trip over anything, she still saw the bear flowing over the red slope, like an afterimage. Pounding, running hard, boulder ballet; the bear was fast and the terrain nothing to it, but she too was an animal, she too had spent years in the back country of Mars, many more years in fact than this young bear, and she could run like an ibex over the terrain, from bedrock to boulder to sand to rubble, pushing hard but perfectly balanced, in control of the dash and running for her life. And besides the rover was near. Just up one last canyon side, and the slope of the apron, and there it was, she almost ran into it, stopped, reared up and pounded the curved metal side with a hard triumphant wham, as if it were the bear's snout, and then with a second more controlled punch to the lock door console she was inside, inside, and the outer-lock door closed behind her.
She hurried upstairs to the driver's aerie to look back. Through the glass she saw the polar bear below, inspecting her vehicle from a respectful distance. Out of dart-gun range, sniffing thoughtfully. Ann was sweating hard, still gasping hard for air, in and out, in and out--- what violent paroxysms the rib cage could go through! And there she was, sitting safe in the driver's seat! She only had to close her eyes and she saw again that heraldic image of the bear flowing over the rock; but open them and there the dashboard gleamed, bright and artificial and familiar. Ah so strange!
• • •
She was still in a kind of shock a couple of days later, able to see the polar bear if she closed her eyes and thought about it; distracted. By night the ice in the bay boomed and groaned, sometimes cracked explosively, so that she dreamed of the assault on Sheffield, groaning herself. By day she drove so carelessly that she had to put the rover on automatic pilot, instructing it to make its way along the shore of the crater bay.
While it rolled she wandered around the driver's compartment, her mind racing. Out of control. Nothing to be done but laugh and endure it. Strike the walls, stare out the windows. The bear was gone but it wasn't. She looked it up: Ursus maritimus, ocean bear; the Inuit called it Tôrnâssuk, "the one who gives power." It was like the landslide that had almost caught her in Melas Chasma, now a part of her life forever. Facing the landslide she had not moved a muscle; this time she had run like hell. Mars could kill her, no doubt it would kill her, but no big zoo creature from Earth was going to kill her, not if she could help it. Not that she was so enamored of life, far from it; but one should be free to choose one's death. As she had chosen in the past, twice at least. But Simon and then Sax--- like little brown bears--- had snatched her death away from her. She still didn't know what to make of that, how to feel about it. Her mind was racing so fast. She held on to the back of the driver's seat. Finally she reached forward and punched Sax's old First Hundred number on the rover's screen keyboard, XY23, and waited for the AI to route the call to the shuttle returning Sax and the others to Mars; and after a while there he was, with his new face, staring into a screen.
"Why did you do it?" she shouted. "It's my death to choose as I please!"
She waited for the message to reach him. Then it did and he jumped, the image of him jiggled. "Because---" he said, and stopped.
Ann felt a chill. That was just what Simon had said, after he had pulled her back in out of the chaos. They never had a reason, only life's idiot because.
Sax went on: "I didn't want--- it seemed like such a waste--- what a surprise to hear from you. I'm glad."
"To hell with that," Ann said.
She was about to cut the connection when he started speaking again--- they were in simultaneous transmission now, alternating messages, "It was so I could talk to you, Ann. I mean it was for myself--- I didn't want to be missing you. I wanted you to forgive me. I wanted to argue with you more and--- and make you see why I've done what I've done."
His chatter stopped as abruptly as it had started, and then he looked confused, even frightened. Perhaps he had just heard "To hell with that." She could scare him, no doubt of that.
"What crap," she said.
After a while: "Yes. Um--- how are you doing? You look. . . ."
She cut the connection. I just outran a polar bear! she shouted in her mind. I was almost eaten by your stupid games!
No. She wouldn't tell him. The meddler. He had needed a good referee for his submissions to The Metajournal of Martian History, that was what it came down to. Making sure his science was properly peer-reviewed--- for that he would crash around in a person's most inward desires, in her essential freedom to choose life or death, to be a free human being!
At least he hadn't tried to lie about it.
And--- well--- here she was. Rage; remorse without cause; inexplicable anguish; a strangely painful exhilaration: all this filled her at once. The limbic system, vibrating madly, spiking every thought with contradictory wild emotions, disconnected from the thoughts' content: Sax had saved her, she hated him, she felt a fierce joy, Kasei was dead, Peter wasn't, no bear could kill her, etc.--- on and on and on. Oh so strange!
• • •
She spotted a little green rover, perched on a bluff over the ice bay. Impulsively she took over the wheel and drove up to it. A little face peered out at her; she waved through the windshields at it. Black eyes--- spectacles--- bald. Like her stepfather. She parked her rover next to his. The man gestured for her to come over, holding up a wooden spoon. He looked vague, only half pulled out of his own thoughts.
Ann put on a down jacket and went through the lock doors and walked between the cars, feeling the shock of the frigid air like a dousing in cold water. It was nice to be able to walk between one rover and another without suiting up, or, to get to the crux of the matter, risking death. Amazing that more people hadn't been killed by carelessness or lock malfunction. Some had been, of course. Scores, probably, if you added them all up. Now it was just a dash of cold air.
The bald man opened his inner-lock door. "Hello," he said, and offered a hand.
"Hello," Ann said, and shook it. "I'm Ann."
"I'm Harry. Harry Whitebook."
"Ah. I've heard of you. You design animals."
He smiled gently. "Yes." No shame; no defensiveness.
"I was just chased by one of your polar bears."
"Were you!" His eyes opened round. "Those are fast!"
"So they are. But they're not just polar bears, are they."
"They've got some grizzly genes, for altitude. But mostly it's just Ursus maritimus. They're very tough creatures."
"A lot of creatures are."
"Yes, isn't it marvelous? Oh excuse me, have you eaten? Would you like some soup? I was just making soup, leek soup, I guess it must be obvious."
It was. "Sure," Ann said.
• • •
Over soup and bread she asked him questions about the polar bear. "Surely there can't be a whole food chain here for something that huge?"
"Oh yes. In this area there is. It's well-known for that--- the first bioregion robust enough for bears. The bay is liquid to the bottom, you see. The Ap mohole is at the center of the crater, so it's like a bottomless lake. Iced over in winter of course, but the bears are used to that from the Arctic."
"The winters are long."
"Yes. The female bears make dens in the snow, near some caves in dike outcroppings to the west. They don't truly hibernate, their body temperatures drop just a few degrees, and they can wake up in a minute or two, if they need to adjust the den for heat. So they den for as much of the winters as they can, then live in there and forage out till spring. Then in spring we tow some of the ice plates through the mouth of the bay out to sea, and things develop from there, bottom to top. The basic chains are Antarctic in the water, Arctic on the land. Plankton, krill, fish and squid, Weddell seals, and on land rabbits and hares, lemmings, marmots, mice, lynx, bobcat. And the bears. We're trying with caribou and reindeer and wolves, but there isn't the forage for ungulates yet. The bears have been out just a few years, the air pressure hasn't been adequate until recently. But it's a four-thousand-meter equivalent here now, and the bears do very well with that, we find. They adapt very quickly."
"Humans too."
"Well, we haven't seen too much at the four-thousand-meter level yet." He meant four thousand meters above sea level on Earth. Higher than any permanent human settlement, as she recalled.
He was going on: " . . .eventually see thoracic-cavity expansion, bound to happen. . . ." A man who talked to himself. Big, bulky; white fur in a fringe around his bald pate. Black eyes swimming behind round spectacles.
"Did you ever meet Hiroko?" she said.
"Hiroko Ai? I did, once. Lovely woman. I hear she's gone back to Earth, to help them adapt to the flood. Did you know her?"
"Yes. I'm Ann Clayborne."
"I thought so. Peter Clayborne's mother, isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"He's been in Boone recently."
"Boone?"
"That's the little station across the bay. This is Botany Bay, and the station is Boone Harbor. A kind of joke. Apparently there was a similar pairing in Australia."
"Indeed." She shook her head. John would be with them forever. And by no means the worst of the ghosts haunting them.
As for instance this man, the famous animal designer. He clattered about the kitchen, pawing at things shortsightedly. He put the soup before her and she ate, watching him furtively as she did. He knew who she was, but he did not seem uncomfortable. He did not try to justify himself. She was a red areologist, he designed new Martian animals. They worked on the same planet. But that did not mean they were enemies, not to him. He would eat with her without malice. There was something chilling in that, overbearing despite his gentle manner. Obliviousness was so brutal. And yet she liked him; that dispassionate power, vagueness--- something. He bumbled around his kitchen, sat and ate with her, quickly and noisily, his muzzle wet with the clear soup stock. Afterward they broke pieces of bread from a long loaf. Ann asked questions about Boone Harbor.
"It has a good bakery," Whitebook said, indicating the loaf. "And a good lab. The rest is just an ordinary outpost. But we took the tent down last year, and now it is very cold, especially in the winter. Only forty-six degrees latitude, but we feel it as a northern place. So much so that there is some talk of putting the tent back up, in winter at least. And there are people who say we should leave it on until things warm up."
"Till the ice age is over?"
"I don't think there will be an ice age. This first year without the soletta was bad, of course, but various compensations ought to be possible. A cold couple of years, that's all it will be."
He waggled a paw: it could go either way. Ann almost threw her chunk of bread at him. But best not to startle him. She controlled herself with a shudder.
"Is Peter still in Boone?" she asked.
"I think so. He was a few days ago."
They talked some more about the Botany Bay ecosystem. Without a fuller array of plant life, animal designers were sharply limited; it was still more like the Antarctic than the Arctic in that respect. Possibly new soil-enhancement methods could speed the arrival of higher plants. Right now it was a land of lichen, for the most part. The tundra plants would follow.
"But this displeases you," he observed.
"I liked it the way it was before. All Vastitas Borealis was barchan dunes, made of black garnet sand."
"Won't some remain, up next to the polar cap?"
"The ice cap will go right down to the sea line in most places. As you say, kind of like Antarctica. No, the dunes and the laminate terrain will be underwater, one way or another. The whole northern hemisphere will be gone."
"This is the northern hemisphere."
"A highland peninsula. And it's gone too, in a way. Botany Bay was Arcadia Crater Ap."
He looked at her through the spectacles, peering. "Perhaps if you lived at high altitude, it might seem like the old days. The old days, with air."
"Perhaps," she said cautiously. He was circling the chamber, shambling about with heavy steps, cleaning big kitchen knifes at the sink. His fingers ended in short blunt claws; even clipped they made it hard for him to work with small objects.
She stood up carefully. "Thanks for dinner," she said, backing toward the lock door. She grabbed her jacket on the way out and slammed the door on his look of surprise. Out into the hard cold slap of the night, into her jacket. Never run away from a predator. She walked back to her car and climbed in without looking back.
The ancient highland of Tempe Terra was dotted by a number of small volcanoes, so there were lava plains and channels everywhere; also viscous creep features caused by ground ice, and the occasional small outflow channel that had run down the side of the Great Escarpment; all this along with the usual collection of Noachian impact and deformational features, so that on the areological maps Tempe looked like an artist's palette, colors splashed everywhere to indicate the different aspects of the region's long history. Too many colors, in Ann's opinion; for her the smallest divisions into different areological units were artificial, remnants of sky areology, attempting to distinguish between regions that were more cratered or more dissected or more etched than the rest, when in the field it was all one, with all of the signature features visible everywhere. It was simply rough country--- the Noachian landscape, none rougher.
Even the floors of the long straight canyons called the Tempe Fossa were too broken to drive over, so Ann made her way indirectly, on higher land. The most recent lava flows (a billion years old) were harder than the disaggregated ejecta they had run over, and now they stood on the land as long dikes or berms. On the softer land between there were a lot of splosh craters, their aprons clearly the remnants of liquid flow, like drip castles at the beach. Occasional islands of worn bedrock stuck up out of all this debris, but by and large it was regolith, with signs everywhere of water in the land, of the permafrost underfoot, causing slow slumps and creeps. And now, with the increase in temperatures, and perhaps the heat coming up from the Vastitas underground explosions, all that creep had speeded up. There were new landslides all over the place: a well-known Red trail had been wiped out when a ramp into Tempe 12 had been buried; the walls of Tempe 18 had collapsed on both sides, making a U-shaped canyon into a V-shaped one; Tempe 21 was gone, covered by the collapse of its high west wall. Everywhere the land was melting. She even saw some taliks, which were liquified zones on top of permafrost, basically icy swamps. And many of the oval pits of the great alases were filled with ponds, which melted by day and froze by night, an action that tore the land apart even faster.
She passed the lobate apron of Timushenko Crater, buried on its northern flank by the southernmost waves of lava from Coriolanus Volcano, the largest of the many little volcanoes in Tempe. Here the land was extensively pitted, and snow had fallen, melted and then refrozen in myriad catchment basins. The land was slumping in all the characteristic permafrost patterns: polygonal pebble ridges, concentric crater fill, pingos, solifluction ridges on hillsides. In every depression an ice-choked pond or puddle. The land was melting.
On sunny south-facing slopes, wherever there was a bit of protection from the wind, trees were growing, over understories of moss and grass and shrub. In the sun-filled hollows were krummholz dwarf trees, gnarled over their matted needles; in the shaded hollows, dirty snow and firn. The ruination of so much land. Broken land, empty but not empty, rock and ice and boggy meadow all lined by shattered low ridges. Clouds puffed out of nothing in the afternoon heat, and their shadows were another set of patches on things, a crazy quilt of red and black, green and white. No one would ever complain of homogeneity on Tempe Terra. Everything perfectly still under the rapidly moving shadows of the clouds. And yet there, one evening in the dusk, a white bulk slipping behind a boulder. Her heart jumped, but there was nothing further to see.
But she had seen something; because just before full darkness, there was a knocking at the door. Her heart shuddered like the rover on its shock absorbers, she ran to a window, looked out. Figures the color of the rock, waving hands. Human beings.
It was a little group of Red ecoteurs. They had recognized her rover, they said after she let them inside, from the description given by the people at the Tempe refuge. They had been hoping they might run into her, and so they were happy; laughing, chattering, moving around the cabin to touch her, young tall natives with stone eyeteeth and gleaming young eyes, some of them Orientals, some white, some black. All happy. She recognized them from Pavonis Mons, not individually, but as a group; the young fanatics. Again she felt a chill.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To Botany Bay," a young woman replied. "We're going to take out the Whitebook labs."
"And Boone Station," another added.
"Ah no," Ann said.
They went still, looked at her carefully. Like Kasei and Dao in Lastflow.
"What do you mean?" the young woman said.
Ann took a breath, tried to figure that out. They were watching her closely.
"Were you there in Sheffield?" she asked.
They nodded; they knew what she meant.
"Then you should know already," she said slowly. "It's pointless to achieve a red Mars by pouring blood over the planet. We have to find another way. We can't do it by killing people. Not even by killing animals or plants, or blowing up machines. It won't work. It's destructive. It doesn't appeal to people, do you understand? No one is won over. In fact they're put off. The more we do things like that, the more green they become. So we defeat our purpose. If we know that and do it anyway, then we're betraying the purpose. Do you understand? We aren't doing it for anything but our own feelings. Because we're angry. Or for thrills. We have to find another way."
They stared at her, uncomprehending, annoyed, shocked, contemptuous. But riveted. This was Ann Clayborne, after all.
"I don't know for sure what that other way is," she went on. "I can't tell you that. I think . . . that's what I think we have to start working on. It has to be something like a red areophany. The areophany has always been understood as a green thing, right from the start. I suppose because of Hiroko, because she took the lead in defining it. And in bringing it into being. So the areophany has always been mixed up with viriditas. But there's no reason that should be. We have to change that, or we'll never accomplish anything. There has to be a red worship of this place that people can learn to feel. The redness of the primal planet has to become a counterforce to viriditas. We have to stain that green until it turns some other color. Some color like you see in certain stones, like jasper, or ferric serpentine. You see what I mean. It will mean taking people out onto the land, maybe, up into the highlands, so they can see what it is. It will mean moving there, all over the place, and establishing tenure and stewardship rights, so that we can speak for the land and they will have to listen. Wanderers' rights as well, areologists' rights, nomads' rights. That's what areoformation might mean. Do you understand?"
She stopped. The young natives were still attentive, now looking perhaps concerned for her, or concerned at what she had said.
"We've talked about this kind of thing before," one young man said. "And there are people doing it. Sometimes we do it. But we think an active resistance is a necessary part of the struggle. Otherwise we'll just get steamrolled. They'll green everything."
"Not if we stain it all. Right from the inside, right from their hearts too. But sabotage, murder; it's green that springs out of all that, believe me I've seen it. I've been fighting just as long as you and I've seen it. You stomp on life and it just comes back stronger."
The young man wasn't convinced. "They gave us the six-kilometer limit because they were scared of us, because we were the driving force behind the revolution. If it weren't for us fighting, the metanats would still rule everything here."
"That was a different opponent. When we fought the Terrans, then the Martian greens were impressed. When we fight the Martian greens they're not impressed, they're angry. And they get more green than ever."
The group sat in silence, thoughtful, perhaps disheartened.
"But what do we do?" a gray-haired woman said.
"Go to some land that's endangered," Ann suggested. She gestured out the window. "Right here wouldn't be bad. Or somewhere near the six-k border. Settle, incorporate a town, make it a primal refuge, make it a wonderful place. We'll creep back down from the highlands."
They considered this glumly.
"Or go into the cities and start a tour group, and a legal fund. Show people the land. Sue every change they propose."
"Shit," the young man said, shaking his head. "That sounds awful."
"Yes it does," Ann said. "There's ugly work to be done. But we have to get them from the inside too. And that's where they live."
Long faces. They sat around and talked about it some more; the way they lived now, the way they wanted to live. What they might do to get from one to the other. The impossibility of the guerrilla life after the war was over. And so on. There were lots of big sighs, some tears, recriminations, encouragements.
"Come with me tomorrow and take a straight look at this ice sea," Ann suggested.
• • •
The next day the guerrilla group traveled south with her along the sixtieth longitude, kilometer by difficult kilometer. Khala, the Arabs called it; the empty land. On the one hand it was beautiful, a Noachian desolation of rockscapes, and their hearts were full. On the other hand the ecoteurs were quiet, subdued, as if on a pilgrimage in some uncertain funereal mode. Together they came to the big canyon called Nilokeras Scopulus, and dropped into it on a broad rough natural ramp. To the east lay Chryse Planitia, covered by ice: another arm of the northern sea. They had not escaped it. Ahead to the south lay the Nilokeras Fossae, the terminal end of a canyon complex that began far to the south, in the enormous pit of Hebes Chasma. Hebes Chasma had no exit, but its subsidence was now understood to have been caused by the aquifer outbreak just to the west, at the top of Echus Chasma. A very great amount of water had gushed down Echus against the hard western side of Lunae Planum, carving the steep high cliff at Echus Overlook; then it had come to a break in that stupendous cliff, and had rushed down and through, tearing the big bend of Kasei Vallis, and cutting a deep channel out onto the lowlands of Chryse. It had been one of the biggest aquifer outbreaks in Martian history.
Now the northern sea had flowed back into Chryse, and water was filling back into the lower end of Nilokeras and Kasei. The flat-topped hill that was Sharanov Crater stood like a giant castle keep on the high promontory over the mouth of this new fjord. Out in the middle of the fjord lay a long narrow island, one of the lemniscate islands of the ancient flood, now islanded again, stubbornly red in the sea of white ice. Eventually this fjord would make an even better harbor than Botany Bay: it was steep-walled, but there were benches tucked here and there that could become harbor towns. There would of course be the west wind funneling down Kasei to worry about, katabatic onslaughts holding the sailing ships out in the Chryse Gulf. . . .
So strange. She led the group of silent Reds to a ramp that got them down onto a broad bench to the west of the ice fjord. By then it was evening, and she led them out of the rovers and down to the shore for a sunset walk.
At the moment of sunset itself, they found themselves standing in a tight unhappy cluster before a solitary ice block some four meters tall, its melted convexities as smooth as muscle. They stood so that the sun was behind the ice block and shining through it. To both sides of the block brilliant light gleamed off the glassy wet sand. An admonition of light. Undeniable, blazingly real; what were they to make of it? They stood and stared in silence.
When the sun blinked out over the black horizon, Ann walked away from the group and went alone up to her rover. She looked back down the slope; the Reds were still there by the beached iceberg. It looked like a white god among them, tinted orange like the crumpled white sheet of the ice bay. White god, bear, bay, a dolmen of Martian ice: the ocean would be there with them forever, as real as the rock.
The next day she drove up Hasei Vallis to the west, toward Echus Chasma. Up and up she drove, on broad bench after bench, making easy progress, until she came to where Kasei curved left and up onto the floor of Echus. The curve was one of the biggest, most obvious water-carved features on the planet. But now she found that the flat arroyo floor was covered by dwarf trees, so small they were almost shrubs: black-barked, thorny, the dark green leaves as glossy and razor-edged as holly leaves. Moss blanketed the ground underneath these black trees, but very little else; it was a single-species forest, covering Kasei Vallis from canyon wall to canyon wall, filling the great curve like some oversized smut.
By necessity Ann drove right over top of the low forest, and the rover tilted this way and that as the branches, tough as manzanita, stubbornly gave under its wheels and then whipped back into place when they were freed. It would be nearly impossible to walk through this canyon anymore, Ann thought, this deep-walled canyon so narrow and rounded, a kind of Utah of the imagination--- or so it had been--- now like the black forest of a fairy tale, inescapable, filled with flying black things, and a white shape seen scuttling in the dusk. . . . There was no sign of the UNTA security complex that had once occupied the turn of the valley. A curse on your house to the seventh generation, a curse on the innocent land as well. Sax had been tortured here, and so he had sown fireseed in the ground and torched the place, causing a thorn forest to sprout and cover it. And they called scientists rational creatures! A curse on their house too, Ann thought with teeth clenched, to the seventh generation and seven after that.
She hissed and drove on, up Echus, toward the steep volcanic cone of Tharsis Tholis. There was a town there, tucked on the side of the volcano where the slope leveled off. The bear had told her Peter was headed there, and so she avoided it. Peter; the land drowned; Sax, the land burned. Once he had been hers. On this rock I will build. Peter Tempe Terra, the Rock of the Land of Time. The new man, Homo martial. Who had betrayed them. Remember.
On she drove south, up the slope of the Tharsis Bulge, until the cone of Ascraeus hove into view. A mountain continent, puncturing the horizon. Pavonis had been infested and overgrown because of its equatorial position, and the little advantage that that gave the elevator cable. But Ascraeus, just five hundred kilometers northeast of Pavonis, had been left alone. No one lived there; very few people had ever even ascended it. Just a few areologists now and then, to study its lava and occasional pyroclastic ash flows, which were both colored the red nearest black.
She drove onto its lower slopes, gentle and wavy. Ascraeus had been one of the classic albedo feature names, as it was a mountain so big it was easily visible from Earth. Ascraeus Lacus. This was during the canal mania, and so they had decided it was a lake. Pavonis in that era had been called Phoenicus Lacus, Phoenix Lake. Ascra, she read, was the birthplace of Hesiod, "situated on the right of Mount Helicon, on a high and rugged place." So though they had thought it a lake, they had named it after a mountain place. Perhaps their subconscious minds had understood the telescope images after all. Ascraeus was in general a poetic name for the pastoral, Helicon being the Boetian mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Hesiod had looked up from his plow one day and seen the mountain, and found he had a story to tell. Strange the birth of myths, strange the old names that they lived among and ignored, while they continued to tell the old stories over and over again with their lives.
It was the steepest of the big four volcanoes, but there was no encircling escarpment, as around Olympus Mons; so she could put the rover in low gear and grind on up, as if taking off into space, in slow motion. Lean back in her seat and take a nap. Head on the headrest; relax. Wake up on arrival, up at twenty-seven kilometers above sea level, the same height as all the other three big ones; that was as high as a mountain could get on Mars, basically, it was the isostatic limit, at which point the lithosphere began to sag under the weight of all that rock; all of the big four had maxed out, they could grow no higher. A sign of their size and their great age.
Very old, yes, but at the same time the surface lava of Ascraeus was among the youngest igneous rock on Mars, weathered only slightly by wind and sun. As the lava sheets had cooled they had stiffened in their descent, leaving low curved bulges to ascend or bypass. A distinct trail of rover tracks zigzagged up the slope, avoiding steep sections at the bottoms of these flows, taking advantage of a big loose network of ramps and flowbacks. In any permanent shade, spindrift had settled into banks of dirty hardpacked snow; shadows were now a filmy blackened white, as if she drove through a photographic negative, her spirits plummeting inexplicably as she drove ever higher. Behind her she could see more and more of the conical northern flank of the volcano, and north Tharsis beyond that, all the way to the Echus wall, a low line over a hundred kilometers away. Much of what she could see was patchy with snowdrifts, windslab, firn. Freckled white. The shady sides of volcanic cones often became heavily glaciated.
• • •
There on a rockface, bright emerald moss. Everything was turning green.
• • •
But as she continued to ascend, day after day, up and up beyond all imagining, the snow patches became thinner, less frequent. Eventually she was twenty kilometers above the datum--- twenty-one above sea level--- nearly seventy thousand feet above the ice!--- more than twice as high as Everest was above Earth's oceans; and still the cone of the volcano rose above her, a full seven thousand meters more!Right up into the darkening sky, right up into space.
Far below scrolled a smooth flat layer of cloud, obscuring Tharsis. As if the white sea were chasing her up the slope. Up at this level there were no clouds, at least on this day; sometimes thunderheads would tower up beside the mountain, other days cirrus clouds could be seen overhead, slashing the sky with a dozen thin sickles. Today the sky above was a clear purple indigo suffused with black, pricked with a few daytime stars at the zenith, Orion standing faint and alone. Out to the east of the volcano's summit streamed a thin cloud, a peak banner, so faint she could see the dark sky through it. There wasn't much moisture up here, nor much atmosphere either. There would always be a tenfold difference between the air pressure at sea level and up here on the big volcanoes; pressure up here must therefore be about thirty-five millibars, very little more than what had existed when they had arrived.
Nevertheless she spotted tiny flecks of lichen in hollows on the tops of rocks, in pits that caught some snow and then a lot of sun. They were almost too small to see. Lichen: a symbiotic team of algae and fungus, working together to survive, even in thirty millibars. It was hard to believe what life would endure. So strange.
So strange, in fact, that she suited up and went out to look at them. Up here one had to employ all the old careful habits: secure walker, lock doors; out into the bright glare of low space.
The rocks that harbored the lichen were the kind of flat sunporches on which marmots would have sunbathed, if they could have lived so high. Instead, only little pinheads of yellow green, or battleship gray. Flake lichen, the wristpad guide said. Bits of it torn away in storms, blown up here, falling on rocks, sticking like little vegetable limpets. The kind of thing only Hiroko could explain.
Living things. Michel had said that she loved stones and not men because she had been mistreated, her mind damaged. Hippocampus significantly smaller, strong startle reaction, a tendency toward dissociation. And so she had found a man as much like a stone as she could. Michel too had loved that quality in Simon, he told her--- such a relief in the Underhill years to have even one such charge, a man you could trust, quiet and solid, that you could heft in your hand and feel the weight of.
But Simon wasn't the only one in the world like that, Michel had pointed out. That quality rested in the others as well, intermixed and less pure, but still there. Why could she not love that quality of obdurate endurance in other people, in every living thing? They were only trying to exist, like any rock or planet. There was a mineral stubbornness in all of them.
Wind keened past her helmet and over the shards of lava, humming in her air hose, drowning out the sound of her breath. The sky more black than indigo here, except low on the horizon, where it was a hazy purple violet, topped by a band of clear dark blue . . . oh who could believe it would ever change, up here on the slope of Ascraeus Mons, why hadn't they settled up here to remind themselves of what they had come to, of what they had been given by Mars and then so profligately thrown away.
Back to the rover. She continued on up.
• • •
She was above silver cirrus clouds, just west of the volcano's diaphanous summit banner. In the lee of the jet stream. To ascend was to travel into the past, above all lichen and bacteria. Though she had no doubt they were still there, hiding inside the first layers of the rock. Chasmoendolithic life, like the mythic little red people, the microscopic gods who had spoken to John Boone, their own local Hesiod. So people said.
Life everywhere. The world was turning green. But if you couldn't see the greenness--- if it made no difference to the land--- surely it was welcome to the task? Living creatures. Michel had said to her, you love stones because of the stony quality that life has! It all comes back to life. Simon, Peter; on this rock I will build my church. Why could she not love that stony quality in every thing?
The rover rolled up the last concentric terraces of lava, working less strenuously now as it curved over the asymptotic flattening of the broad circular rim. Only slightly uphill, and less so every meter; and then onto the rim itself. Then to the inner edge of the rim.
Overlooking the caldera. She got out of the car, her thoughts flicking about like skuas.
Ascraeus's nested caldera complex consisted of eight overlapping craters, the newer ones collapsing down across the circumferences of the older ones. The largest and youngest caldera lay out near the center of the complex, and the older higher-floored calderas embayed its circumference like the petals of a flower design. Each caldera floor was at a slightly different elevation, and marked by a pattern of circular fractures. Walking along the rim changed perspective so that distances shifted, and the floors' heights seemed to change, as if they were floating in a dream. Taken all in all, a beautiful thing to witness. And eighty kilometers across.
Like a lesson in volcano throat mechanics. Eruptions down on the outer flanks of the volcano had emptied the magma from the active throat of the caldera, and so the caldera floor had slumped; thus all the circular shapes, as the active throat moved around over the eons. Arcing cliffs: few places on Mars exhibited such vertical slopes, they were almost true verticals. Basalt ring worlds. It should have been a climbers' mecca, but as far as she knew it was not. Someday they would come.
The complexity of Ascraeus was so unlike the single great hole of Pavonis. Why had Pavonis's caldera collapsed in the same circumference every time? Could its last drop have erased and leveled all the other rings? Had its magma chamber been smaller, or vented to the sides less? Had Ascraeus's throat wandered more? She picked up loose rocks on the rim's edge, stared at them. Lava bombs, late meteor ejecta, ventifacts in the ceaseless winds. . . . These were all questions that could still be studied. Nothing they did would ever disturb the vulcanology up here, not enough to impede the study. Indeed the Journal of Areological Studies published many articles on these topics, as she had seen and still occasionally saw. It was as Michel had said to her; the high places would look like this forever. Climbing the great slopes would be like travel into the prehuman past, into pure areology, into the areophany itself perhaps, with Hiroko or not. With the lichen or not. People had talked of securing a dome or a tent over these calderas, to keep them completely sterile; but that would only make them zoos, wilderness parks, garden spaces with their walls and their roofs. Empty greenhouses. No. She straightened up, looked out over the vast round landscape, held up and offering itself to space. To the chasmoendolithic life that might be struggling up here, she waved a hand. Live, thing. She said the word and it sounded odd: "Live."
Mars forever, stony in the sunlight. But then she glimpsed the white bear in the corner of her eye, slipping behind a jagged rim boulder. She jumped; nothing there. She returned to the rover, feeling that she needed its protection. She climbed inside; but then all afternoon on the screen of the rover's AI, the vague spectacled eyes seemed to be looking out at her, about to call any second. A kind bear of a man, though he would eat her if he could catch her. If he could catch her--- but then none of them could catch her, she could hide in these high rock fastnesses forever--- free she was and free she would be, to be or not to be if she chose that, for as long as this rock held. But there again, right at the lock door, that white flash in the corner of her eye. Ah so hard.
Making Things Work
Prologue
An ice-choked sea now covered much of the north. Vastitas Borealis had lain a kilometer or two below the datum, in some places three; now with sea level stabilizing at the minus-one contour, most of it was underwater. If an ocean of similar shape had existed on Earth, it would have been a bigger Arctic Ocean, covering most of Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Scandinavia, and then making two deeper incursions farther south, narrow seas that extended all the way to the equator; on Earth these would have made for a narrow North Atlantic, and a North Pacific occupied in its center by a big squarish island.
This Oceanus Borealis was dotted by several large icy islands, and a long low peninsula that broke its circumnavigation of the globe, connecting the mainland north of Syrtis with the tail of a polar island. The north pole was actually on the ice of Olympia Gulf, some kilometers offshore from this polar island.
And that was it. On Mars there would be no equivalent of the South Pacific or the South Atlantic, or the Indian Ocean, or the Antarctic Ocean. In its south there was only desert, except for the Hellas Sea, a circular body of water about the size of the Caribbean. So while ocean covered seventy percent of the Earth, it covered about twenty-five percent of Mars.
In the year 2130, most of Oceanus Borealis was covered by ice. There were large pods of liquid water under the surface, however, and in the summer, melt lakes scattered on top of the surface; there were also many polynyaps, leads and cracks. Because most of the water had been pumped or otherwise driven out of the permafrost, it had deep groundwater's purity, meaning it was nearly distilled: the Borealis was a freshwater ocean. It was expected to become salty fairly soon, however, as rivers ran through the very salty regolith and carried their loads into the sea, then evaporated, precipitated, and repeated the process--- moving salts from the regolith into the water until a balance was reached--- a process which had the oceanographers transfixed with interest, for the saltiness of Earth's oceans, stable for many millions of years, was not well understood.
The coastlines were wild. The polar island, formally nameless, was called variously the polar peninsula, or the polar island, or the Seahorse, for its shape on maps. In actuality its coastline was still overrun in many places by the ice of the old polar cap, and everywhere it was blanketed by snow, blown into patterns of giant sastrugi. This corrugated white surface extended out over the sea for many kilometers, until underwater currents fractured it and one came on a "coastline" of leads and pressure ridges and the chaotic edges of big tabular bergs, as well as larger and larger stretches of open water. Several large volcanic or meteoric islands rose up out of the shatter of this ice coast, including a few pedestal craters, sticking up out of the whiteness like great black tabular bergs.
The southern shores of the Borealis were much more exposed and various. Where the ice lapped against the foot of the Great Escarpment there were several mensae and colles regions that had become offshore archipelagoes, and these, as well as the mainland coastline proper, sported many beetling sea cliffs, bluffs, crater bays, fossa fjords, and long stretches of low smooth strand. The water in the two big southern gulfs was extensively melted below the surface, and, in the summers, on the surface as well. Chryse Gulf had perhaps the most dramatic coastline of all: eight big outbreak channels dropping into Chryse had partly filled with ice, and as it melted they were becoming steep-sided fjords. At the southern end of the gulf four of these fjords braided, weaving together several big cliff-walled islands to make the most spectacular seascapes of all.
Over all this water great flocks of birds flew daily. Clouds bloomed in the air and rushed off on the wind, dappling the white and red with their shadows. Icebergs floated across the melted seas, and crashed against the shore. Storms dropped off the Great Escarpment with terrifying force, dashing hail and lightning onto the rock. There were now approximately forty thousand kilometers of coastline on Mars. And in the rapid freeze and thaw of the days and the seasons, under the brush of the constant wind, every part of it was coming alive.
When the congress ended Nadia made plans to get off Pavonis Mons immediately. She was sick of the bickering in the warehouse, of arguments, of politics; sick of violence and the threat of violence; sick of revolution, sabotage, the constitution, the elevator, Earth, and the threat of war. Earth and death, that was Pavonis Mons--- Peacock Mountain, with all the peacocks preening and strutting and crying Me Me Me. It was the last place on Mars Nadia wanted to be.
She wanted to get off the mountain and breathe the open air. She wanted to work on tangible things; she wanted to build, with her nine fingers and her back and her mind, build anything and everything, not just structures, although those would be wonderful of course, but also things like air or dirt, parts of a construction project new to her, which was simply terraforming itself. Ever since her first walk in the open air down at DuMartheray Crater, free of everything but a little CO2 filter mask, Sax's obsession had finally made sense to her. She was ready to join him and the rest of them in that project, and more than ever now, as the removal of the orbiting mirrors had kicked off a long winter and threatened a full ice age. Build air, build dirt, move water, introduce plants and animals: all that kind of work sounded fascinating to her now. And of course the more conventional construction projects beckoned as well. When the new North Sea melted and its shoreline stabilized, there would be harbor towns to be inlaid everywhere, scores of them no doubt, each with jetties and seafronts, channels, wharves and docks, and the towns behind them rising into the hills. At the higher altitudes there would be more tent towns to be erected, and covered canyons. There was even talk of covering some of the big calderas, and of running cable cars between the three prince volcanoes, or bridging the narrows south of Elysium; there was talk of inhabiting the polar island continent; there were new concepts in biohousing, plans to grow homes and buildings directly out of engineered trees, as Hiroko has used bamboo, but on a bigger scale. Yes, a builder ready to learn some of the latest techniques had a thousand years of lovely projects ahead of her. It was a dream come true.
• • •
Then a small group came to her and said they were exploring possibilities for the first executive council of the new global government.
Nadia stared at them. She could see their import like a big slow-moving trap, and she tried her best to run out of it before it snapped shut. "There are lots of possibilities," she said. "About ten times more good people than council positions."
Yes, they said, looking thoughtful. But we were wondering if you had ever thought about it.
"No," she said.
Art was grinning, and seeing that she began to get worried. "I plan to build things," she said firmly.
"You could do that too," Art said. "The council is a part-time job."
"The hell it is."
"No, really."
It was true that the concept of citizen government was written everywhere into the new constitution, from the global legislature to the courts to the tents. People would presumably do a good deal of this work part-time. Nadia was quite sure, however, that the executive council was not going to be in that category. "Don't executive council members have to be elected out of the legislature?" she asked.
Elected by the legislature, they told her happily. Usually fellow legislators would be elected, but not necessarily. "Well there's a mistake in the constitution for you!" Nadia said. "Good thing that you caught it so soon. Restrict it to elected legislators and you'll cut your pool way down---"
Way down---
"And still have lots of good people," she backpedaled.
But they were persistent. They kept coming back, in different combinations, and Nadia kept running toward that narrowing gap between the teeth of the trap. In the end they begged. A whole little delegation of them. This was the crucial time for the new government, they needed an executive council trusted by all, it would be the one to get things started, etc. etc. The senate had been elected, the duma had been drafted. Now the two houses were electing the seven executive council members. People mentioned as candidates included Mikhail, Zeyk, Peter, Marina, Etsu, Nanao, Ariadne, Marion, Irishka, Antar, Rashid, Jackie, Charlotte, the four ambassadors to Earth, and several others Nadia had first met in the warehouse. "Lots of good people," Nadia reminded them. This was the polycephalous revolution.
But people were uneasy at the list, they told Nadia repeatedly. They had become used to her providing a balanced center, both during the congress and during the revolution, and before that at Dorsa Brevia, and for that matter throughout the underground years, and right back to the beginning. People wanted her on the council as a moderating influence, a calm head, a neutral party, etc. etc.
"Get out," she said, suddenly angry, though she did not know why. They were concerned to see her anger, upset by it. "I'll think about it," she said as she shooed them out, to keep them moving.
Eventually only Charlotte and Art were left, looking serious, looking as if they had not conspired to bring all this about.
"They seem to want you on the executive council," Art said.
"Oh shut up."
"But they do. They want someone they can trust."
"They want someone they're not afraid of, you mean. They want an old babushka who won't try to do anything, so they can keep their opponents off the council and pursue their own agendas."
Art frowned; he had not considered this, he was too naive.
"You know a constitution is kind of like a blueprint," Charlotte said thoughtfully. "Getting a real working government out of it is the true act of construction."
"Out," Nadia said.
• • •
But in the end she agreed to stand. They were relentless, there were a surprisingly large number of them, and they would not give up. She didn't want to seem like a shirker. And so she let the trap close down on her leg.
The legislatures met, the ballots were cast. Nadia was elected one of the seven, along with Zeyk, Ariadne, Marion, Peter, Mikhail, and Jackie. That same day Irishka was elected the first chief justice of the Global Environmental Court, a real coup for her personally and the Reds generally; this was part of the "grand gesture" Art had brokered at the congress's end, to gain the Reds' support. About half the new justices were Reds of one shade or another, making for a gesture just a bit too grand, in Nadia's opinion.
Immediately after these elections another delegation came to her, led this time by her fellow councillors. She had gotten the highest ballot total in the two houses, they told her, and so the others wanted to elect her president of the council.
"Oh no," she said.
They nodded gravely. The president was just another member of the council, they told her, one among equals. A ceremonial position only. This arm of the government was modeled on Switzerland's, and the Swiss didn't usually even know who their president was. And so on. Though of course they would need her permission (Jackie's eyes glittered slightly at this), her acceptance of the post.
"Out," she said.
After they had left Nadia sat slumped in her chair, feeling stunned.
"You're the only one on Mars that everyone trusts," Art said gently. He shrugged, as if to say he hadn't been involved, which she knew was a lie. "What can you do?" he said, rolling his eyes with a child's exaggerated theatricality. "Give it three years and then things'll be on track, and you can say you did your part and retire. Besides, the first president of Mars! How could you resist?"
"Easy."
Art waited. Nadia glared at him.
Finally he said, "But you'll do it anyway, right?"
"You'll help me?"
"Oh yes." He put a hand on her clenched fist. "All you want. I mean--- I'm at your disposal."
"Is that an official Praxis position?"
"Why yes, I'm sure it could be. Praxis adviser to the Martian president? You bet."
So possibly she could make him do it.
She heaved a big sigh. Tried to feel less tight in her stomach. She could take the job, and then turn most of the work over to Art, and to whatever staff they gave her. She wouldn't be the first president to do that, nor the last.
"Praxis adviser to the Martian president," Art was announcing, looking pleased.
"Oh shut up!" she said.
"Of course."
He left her alone to get used to it, came back with a steaming pot of kava and two little cups. He poured; she took one from him, and sipped the bitter fluid.
He said, "Anyway I'm yours, Nadia. You know that."
"Mm-hmm."
She regarded him as he slurped his kava. He meant it more than politically, she knew. He was fond of her. All that time working together, living together, traveling together; sharing space. And she liked him. A bear of a man, graceful on his feet, full of high spirits. Fond of kava, as was obvious in his slurping, in his squinched face. He had carried the whole congress, she felt, on the strength of those high spirits, spreading like an epidemic--- the feeling that there was nothing so fun as writing a constitution--- absurd! But it had worked. And during the congress they had become a kind of couple. Yes, she had to admit it.
But she was now 159 years old. Another absurdity, but it was true. And Art was, she wasn't sure, somewhere in his seventies or eighties, although he looked fifty, as they often did when they got the treatment early. "I'm old enough to be your great-grandmother," she said.
Art shrugged, embarrassed. He knew what she was talking about. "I'm old enough to be that woman's great-grandfather," he said, pointing at a tall native girl passing by their office door. "And she's old enough to have kids. So, you know. At some point it just doesn't matter."
"Maybe not to you."
"Well, yeah. But that's half of the opinions that count."
Nadia said nothing.
"Look," Art said, "we're going to live a long time. At some point the numbers have to stop mattering. I mean, I wasn't with you in the first years, but we've been together a long time now, and gone through a lot."
"I know." Nadia looked down at the table, remembering some of those times. There was the stump of her long-lost finger. All that life was gone. Now she was president of Mars. "Shit."
Art slurped his kava, watched her sympathetically. He liked her, she liked him. They were already a kind of couple. "You help me with this damned council stuff!" she said, feeling bleak as all her technofantasies slipped away.
"Oh I will."
"And then, well. We'll see."
"We'll see," he said, and smiled.
• • •
So there she was, stuck on Pavonis Mons. The new government was assembling up there, moving from the warehouses into Sheffield proper, occupying the blocky polished stone-faced buildings abandoned by the metanats; there was an argument of course over whether they were going to be compensated for these buildings and the rest of their infrastructure, or whether it had all been "globalized" or "co-opted" by independence and the new order. "Compensate them," Nadia growled at Charlotte, glowering. But it did not appear that the presidency of Mars was the kind of presidency that caused people to jump at her word.
In any case the government was moving in, Sheffield becoming, if not the capital, then at least the temporary seat of the global government. With Burroughs drowned and Sabishii burned, there was no other obvious place to put it, and in truth it didn't look to Nadia like any of the other tent towns wanted to have it. People spoke of building a new capital city, but that would take time, and meanwhile they had to meet somewhere. So around the piste to Sheffield they retired, inside its tent, under its dark sky. In the shadow of the elevator cable, rising from its eastern neighborhood straight and black, like a flaw in reality.
Nadia found an apartment in the westernmost tent, behind the rim park, up on the fourth floor where she had a fine view down into Pavonis's awesome caldera. Art took an apartment in the ground floor of the same building, at the back; apparently the caldera gave him vertigo. But there he was, and the Praxis office was in a nearby office building, a cube of polished jasper as big as a city block, lined with chrome blue windows.
Fine. She was there. Time to take a deep breath and do the work asked of her. It was like a bad dream in which the constitutional congress had suddenly been extended for three years, three m-years.
She began with the intention of getting off the mountain occasionally and joining some construction project or other. Of course she would perform her duties on the council, but working on an increase in greenhouse gas output, for instance, looked good, combining as it did technical problems and the politics of conforming to the new environmental regulatory regime. It would get her out into the back country, where a lot of the feedstocks for the greenhouse gases were located. From there she could do her council business over the wrist.
But events conspired to keep her in Sheffield. It was one thing after another--- nothing particularly important or interesting, compared to the congress itself, but the details necessary to get things rolling. It was somewhat as Charlotte had said; after the design phase, the endless minutiae of construction. Detail after detail.
She had to expect this, she had to be patient. She would work through the first rush and then get away. In the meantime, along with the start-up process, the media wanted her, the new UN Martian Office wanted her, very interested in the new immigration policies and procedures; the other council members wanted her. Where would the council meet? How often? What were its rules of operation? Nadia convinced the other six councillors to hire Charlotte to be council secretary and protocol chief, and after that Charlotte hired a big crew of assistants from Dorsa Brevia. So they had the start of a staff. And Mikhail also had a great fund of practical experience in government from Bogdanov Vishniac. So there were people better suited than Nadia to do this work; but still she was called in a million times a day to confer, discuss, decide, appoint, adjudicate, arbitrate, administrate. It was endless.
And then when Nadia did clear time for herself, forcibly, it turned out that being president made it very difficult to join any particular project. Everything going on was now part of a tent or a co-op; very often they were commercial enterprises, involved in transactions that were part nonprofit public works, part competitive market. So to have the president of Mars join any given co-op would be a sign of official patronage, and couldn't be allowed if one wanted to be fair. It was a conflict of interest.
"Shit!" she said to Art, accusingly.
He shrugged, tried to pretend he hadn't known.
But there was no way out. She was a prisoner of power. She had to study the situation as if it were an engineering problem, like trying to exert force in some difficult medium. Say she wanted to build greenhouse-gas factories. She was constrained from joining any factory co-op in particular. Therefore she had to do it some other way. Emergence at a higher level: she could perhaps coordinate co-ops.
There seemed to her good reasons to promote the building of greenhouse-gas factories. The Year Without Summer had extended to include a series of violent storms that had dropped off the Great Escarpment into the north, and most meteorologists agreed these "Hadley cross-equatorial storms" had been caused by the orbital mirrors' removal, and the resulting sudden drop in insolation. A full ice age was deemed a distinct possibility; and pumping up greenhouse gases seemed to be one of the best ways to counter it. So Nadia asked Charlotte to initiate a conference to come back with recommendations for forestalling an ice age. Charlotte contacted people in Da Vinci and Sabishii and elsewhere, and soon she had a conference scheduled to take place in Sabishii, named, by some Da Vinci saxaclone no doubt, the "Insolation Loss Effects Abatement Meeting M-53."
Nadia, however, never made it to this conference. She got caught up by affairs in Sheffield instead, mostly instituting the new economic system, which she thought important enough to keep her there. The legislature was passing the laws of eco-economics, fleshing out the bones drawn up in the constitution. They directed co-ops that had existed before the revolution to help the newly independent metanat local subsidiaries to transform themselves into similar cooperative organizations. This process, called horizontalization, had very wide support, especially from the young natives, and so it was proceeding fairly smoothly. Every Martian business now had to be owned by its employees only. No co-op could exceed one thousand people; larger enterprises had to be made of co-op associations, working together. For their internal structures most of the firms chose variants of the Bogdanovist models, which themselves were based on the cooperative Basque community of Mondragon, Spain. In these firms all employees were co-owners, and they bought into their positions by paying the equivalent of about a year's wages to the firm's equity fund, wages earned in apprentice programs of various kinds at the end of schooling. This buy-in fee became the starter of their share in the firm, which grew every year they stayed, until it was given back to them as pension or departure payment. Councils elected from the workforce hired management, usually from outside, and this management then had the power to make executive decisions, but was subject to a yearly review by the councils. Credit and capital were obtained from central cooperative banks, or the global government's start-up fund, or helper organizations such as Praxis and the Swiss. On the next level up, co-ops in the same industries or services were associating for larger projects, and also sending representatives to industry guilds, which established professional practice boards, arbitration and mediation centers, and trade associations.
The economic commission was also establishing a Martian currency, for internal use and for exchanges with Terran currencies. The commission wanted a currency that was resistant to Terran speculation, but in the absence of a Martian stock market, the full force of Terran investment tended to fall on the currency itself, as the only investment game being offered. This tended to inflate the value of the Martian sequin in Terran money markets, and in the old days it would probably have blown the sequin's value right through the roof, to Mars's disadvantage in trade balances; but as the fracturing metanats continued to struggle against cooperativization back on Earth, Terran finance remained in some disarray, and did not have its old house-on-fire intensity. So the sequin ended up strong on Earth, but not too strong; and on Mars it was just money. Praxis was very helpful in this process, as they became a kind of federal bank for the new economy, providing interest-free loans and serving as a mediated exchange with Terran currencies.
• • •
So given all this, the executive council was meeting for long hours every day to discuss legislation and other government programs. It was so time-consuming that Nadia almost forgot there was a conference she had initiated going on at the same time in Sabishii. On good nights, however, she spent a last hour or two onscreen with friends in Sabishii, and it looked like things were going fairly well there too. Many of Mars's environmental scientists were on hand, and they were in agreement that massively increasing greenhouse-gas emissions would ease the effects of the mirror loss. Of course CO2 was the easiest greenhouse gas to emit, but even without using it--- as they were still trying to reduce it in the atmosphere to breathable levels--- the consensus was that the more complex and powerful gases could be created and released in the quantities needed. And at first they did not think this would be a problem, politically; the constitution legislated an atmosphere no thicker than 350 millibars at the six-kilometer contour, but said nothing about what gases could be used to create this pressure. If the halocarbons and other greenhouse gases in the Russell cocktail were pumped out until they formed one hundred parts per million of the atmosphere, rather than the twenty-seven parts per million that were currently up there, then heat retention would rise by several degrees K, they calculated, and an ice age would be forestalled, or at least greatly shortened. So the plan called for production and release of tons of carbon tetrafluoride, hexafluoroethane, sulfur hexafluoride, methane, nitrous oxide, and trace elements of other chemicals which helped to decrease the rate at which UV radiation destroyed these halocarbons.
Completing the melting of the North Sea ice was the other obvious abatement strategy most often mentioned at the conference. Until it was all liquid, the albedo of the ice was bouncing a lot of energy back into space, and a truly lively water cycle was somewhat capped off. If they could get a liquid ocean, or, given how far north it was, a summer-liquid ocean, then any ice age would be done for, and terraformation essentially complete: they would have robust currents, waves, evaporation, clouds, precipitation, melting, streams, rivers, deltas--- the full hydrological cycle. This was a primary goal, and so there was a variety of methods being proposed to speed the melting of the ice: feeding nuclear-power-plant exhaust heat into the ocean, scattering black algae on the ice, deploying microwave and ultrasound transmitters as heaters, even sailing big icebreakers through the shallow pack to aid the breakup.
Of course the increased greenhouse gases would help here as well; the ocean's surface ice would melt on its own, after all, as soon as the air stayed regularly above 273 K. But as the conference proceeded, more and more problems with the greenhouse-gas plan were being pointed out. It entailed another huge industrial effort, almost the equal of the metanat monster projects, like the nitrogen shipments from Titan, or the soletta itself. And it was not a onetime thing; the gases were constantly destroyed by UV radiation in the upper atmosphere, so they had to overproduce to reach the desired levels, and then continue producing for as long as they wanted the gases up there. Thus mining the raw materials, and constructing the factories to turn those materials into the desired gases, were enormous projects, and necessarily a largely robotic effort, with self-guided and replicating miners, self-building and regulating factories, upper-atmosphere sampler drones--- an entire machine enterprise.
The technical challenge of this was not the issue; as Nadia pointed out to her friends at the conference, Martian technology had been highly robotic from the very beginning. In this case, thousands of small robotic cars would wander Mars on their own, looking for good deposits of carbon, sulfur, or fluorite, migrating from source to source like the old Arab mining caravans on the Great Escarpment; then when new feedstocks were found in high concentrations, the robots could settle down and construct little processing plants out of clay, iron, magnesium, and trace metals, providing the parts that could not be constructed on-site, and then assembling the whole. Fleets of automated diggers and carts would be manufactured to haul the processed material in to centralized factories, where the material would be gassified and released from tall mobile stacks. It wasn't that different from the earlier mining for atmospheric gases; just a larger effort.
But the most obvious deposits had already been mined, as people were now pointing out. And surface mining couldn't be done the way it used to be; there were plants growing almost everywhere now, and in many places a kind of desert pavement was developing on the surface, as a result of hydration, bacterial action, and chemical reactions in the clays. This crust helped greatly to cut down on dust storms, which were still a constant problem; so ripping it up to get to underlying deposits of feedstock materials was no longer acceptable, either ecologically or politically. Red members of the legislature were calling for a ban on just this kind of robotic surface mining, and for good reasons, even in terraforming terms.
It was hard, Nadia thought one night as she shut down her screen, to be faced with all the competing effects of their actions. The environmental issues were so tightly intertwined that it was hard to tease them out and decide what to do. And it was also hard to stay constrained by their own rules; individual organizations could no longer act unilaterally, because so many of their actions had global ramifications. Thus the necessity for environmental regulation, and for the global environmental court, already faced with a caseload running out of control. Eventually it would have to rule on any plans coming out of this conference as well. The days of unconstrained terraforming were gone.
And as a member of the executive council, Nadia was restricted to saying that she thought increased greenhouse gases were a good idea. Other than that she had to stay out, or appear to be impinging on the environmental court's territory; which Irishka was defending very vigorously. So Nadia spent time visiting onscreen with a group designing new robot miners that would minimally disrupt the surface, or talking to a group working on dust fixatives that might be sprayed or grown over the surface, "thin fast pavements" as they called them; but they were proving to be a knotty problem.
• • •
And that was the extent of Nadia's participation in the Sabishii conference that she herself had initiated. And since all its technical problems were enmeshed in political considerations anyway, it might have been said that she hadn't missed it at all. Not a bit of real work had been done there, by her or anyone else. Meanwhile, back in Sheffield, the council was facing any number of problems of its own: unforeseen difficulties in instituting the eco-economy; complaints that the GEC was overstepping its authority; complaints about the new police, and the criminal justice system; unruly and stupid behavior in both houses of the legislature; Red and other types of resistance in the outback; and so on. The issues were endless, and spanned the gamut from the profoundly important to the incredibly petty, until Nadia began to lose all sense of where on that continuum any individual problem lay.
For instance, she spent a good deal of her time involved in the council's own internal struggles, which she considered trivial, but couldn't avoid. Most of these struggles involved resisting Jackie's efforts to put together a majority that would vote with Jackie every time, so that Jackie could use the council as a rubber stamp for the Free Mars party line, or in other words for Jackie herself. This meant getting to know the rest of the councillors better, and figuring out how to work with them. Zeyk was an old acquaintance; Nadia liked him, and he was a power among the Arabs, their current representative to the general culture, having defeated Antar for that position; gracious, smart, kind, he was in agreement with Nadia on many issues, including the core ones, and this made it an easy relationship, even a growing friendship. Ariadne was one of the goddesses of the Dorsa Brevian matriarchy, and acted the part to a tee: imperious and rigid in her principles, she was an ideologue, probably the only thing that kept her from being a serious challenge to Jackie's prominence among the natives. Marion was the Red councillor, an ideologue also, but much changed from her early radical days, although still a long-winded arguer, not easily beaten. Peter, Ann's little boy, had grown up to be a power in several different parts of Martian society, including the space crew at Da Vinci, the green underground, the cable crowd, and to an extent, because of Ann, the more moderate Reds. This versatility was part of his nature, and Nadia had a hard time getting a fix on him; he was private, like his parents, and seemed wary of Nadia and the rest of the First Hundred; he wanted a distance from them, he was nisei through and through. Mikhail Yangel was one of the earliest issei to follow the First Hundred to Mars, and had worked with Arkady from very early on. He had helped to start the revolt of 2061, and Nadia's impression was that he had been one of the most extreme Reds at that time--- which fact sometimes made her angry at him still, which was silly, and impeded her ability to talk to him--- but there it was, despite the fact that he too was much changed, a Bogdanovist willing to compromise. His presence on the council was a surprise to Nadia--- a gesture toward Arkady, one might say, which she found touching.
And then there was Jackie, very possibly the most popular and powerful politician on Mars. At least until Nirgal got back.
And so Nadia dealt with these six every day, learning their ways as they made their way through item after item on their daily agendas. From the important to the trivial, the abstract to the personal--- everything seemed to Nadia part of a fabric, where everything connected to everything. Not only was the council not part-time work, it ate up the entirety of every waking day. It consumed her life. And yet at this point she had only gotten through two months of a three-m-year term.
• • •
Art could see that it was getting to her, and he did what he could to help. He came up to her apartment every morning with breakfast, like room service. Often he had cooked it himself, and always it was good. As he came in, platter held aloft, he called up jazz on her Al to serve as the soundtrack of their morning together--- not just Nadia's beloved Louis, though he sought out odd recordings by Satch to amuse her, things like "Give Peace a Chance" or "Stardust Memories"--- but also later styles of jazz that she had never liked before, because they were so frenetic; but that seemed to be the tempo of these days. Whatever the reason, Charlie Parker now skittered and zoomed around most impressively, she thought, and Charles Mingus made his big band sound like Duke Ellington's on pandorph, which was just what Ellington and all the rest of swing needed, in her opinion--- very funny, lovely music. And best of all, on many mornings Art called up Clifford Brown, a discovery Art had made during his investigations on her behalf, one he was very proud of, and advocated constantly to her as the logical successor to Armstrong--- a vibrant trumpet sound joyous and positive and melodic like Satch, and also brilliantly fast and clever and difficult--- like Parker, only happy. It was the perfect soundtrack for these wild times, driving and intense but as positive as one could be.
So Art would bring in breakfasts, singing "All of Me" in a pretty good voice, and with Satchmo's basic insight that American song lyrics could only be treated as silly jokes: "All of me, why not take all of me, Can't you see, I'm no good without you." And call up some music, and sit with his back to the window; and the mornings were fun.
But no matter how well the days began, the council was eating her life. Nadia got more and more sick of it--- the bickering, negotiating, compromising, conciliating--- the dealing with people, minute after minute. She was beginning to hate it.
Art saw this, of course, and began to look worried. And one day after work he brought over Ursula and Vlad. The four of them had dinner together in her apartment, Art cooking. Nadia enjoyed her old friends' company; they were in town on business, but getting them over for dinner there had been Art's idea, and a good one. He was a sweet man, Nadia thought as she watched him moving about the kitchen. Canny diplomat as guileless simpleton, or vice versa. Like a benign Frank. Or a mix of Frank's skill and Arkady's happiness. She laughed at herself, always thinking of people in terms of the First Hundred--- as if everyone was somehow a recombination of the traits of that original family. It was a bad habit of hers.
Vlad and Art were talking about Ann. Sax had apparently called Vlad from the shuttle rocket on its return to Mars, shaken by a conversation with Ann. He was wondering if Vlad and Ursula would consider offering Ann the same brain plasticity treatment that they had given him after his stroke.
"Ann would never do it," Ursula said.
"I'm glad she won't," Vlad said. "That would be too much. Her brain wasn't injured. We don't know what that treatment would do in a healthy brain. And you should only undertake what you can understand, unless you are desperate."
"Maybe Ann is desperate," Nadia said.
"No. Sax is desperate." Vlad smiled briefly. "He wants a different Ann before he gets back."
Ursula said to him, "You didn't want Sax to try that treatment either."
"It's true. I wouldn't have done it to myself. But Sax is a bold man. An impulsive man." Now Vlad looked at Nadia: "We should stick to things like your finger, Nadia. Now that we can fix."
Surprised, Nadia said, "What's wrong with it?"
They laughed at her. "The one that's missing!" Ursula said. "We could grow it back, if you wanted."
"Ka," Nadia exclaimed. She sat back, looked at her thin left hand, the stump of the missing little finger. "Well. I don't need it, really."
They laughed again. "You could have fooled us," Ursula said. "You're always complaining about it when you're working."
"I am?"
They all nodded.
"It'll help your swimming," Ursula said.
"I don't swim much anymore."
"Maybe you stopped because of your hand."
Nadia stared at it again. "Ka. I don't know what to say. Are you sure it will work?"
"It might grow into an entire other hand," Art suggested. "Then into another Nadia. You'll be a Siamese twin."
Nadia pushed him sideways in his chair. Ursula was shaking her head. "No no. We've done it for some other amputees already, and a great number of experimental animals. Hands, arms, legs. We learned it from frogs. Quite wonderful, really. The cells differentiate just like the first time the finger grew."
"A very literal demonstration of emergence theory," Vlad said with a small smile. Nadia saw by that smile that he had been instrumental in designing the procedure.
"It works?" she asked him directly.
"It works. We make what is in effect a new finger bud over your stump. It's a combination of embryonic stem cells with some cells from the base of your other little finger. The combination functions as the equivalent of the homeobox genes you had when you were a fetus. So you've got the developmental determiners there to make the new stem cells differentiate properly. Then you ultrasonically inject a weekly dose of fibroblast growth factor, plus a few cells from the knuckle and the nail, at the appropriate times . . . and it works."
As he explained Nadia felt a little glow of interest spread through her. A whole person. Art was watching her with his friendly curiosity.
"Well, sure," she said at last. "Why not."
So in the following week they took some biopsies from her remaining little finger, and gave her some ultrasonic shots in the stump of the missing finger, and in her arm, and gave her some pills; and that was it. After that it was only a matter of weekly shots, and waiting.
• • •
Then she forgot about it, because Charlotte called with a problem; Cairo was ignoring a GEC order concerning water pumping. "You'd better come check it out in person. I think the Cairenes are testing the court, for a faction of Free Mars that wants to challenge the global government."
"Jackie?" Nadia said.
"I think so."
Cairo stood on its plateau edge, overlooking the northwestern-most U-valley of Noctis Labyrinthus. Nadia walked out of the train station with Art onto a plaza flanked by tall palm trees. She glared at the scene; some of the worst moments of her life had occurred in this city, during the assault on it in 2061. Sasha had been killed, among many others, and Nadia had blown up Phobos, she herself!--- and all just a few days after finding Arkady's burned remains. She had never returned; she hated this town.
Now she saw that it had been damaged again in the recent unrest. Parts of the tent had been blown, and the physical plant heavily damaged. It was being rebuilt, and new tent segments were being tacked onto the old town, extending west and east far along the plateau's edge. It looked like a boomtown, which Nadia found peculiar given its altitude, ten kilometers above the datum. They would never be able to take down the tents, or go outside without walkers on, and so Nadia had assumed it would therefore go into decline. But it lay at the intersection of the equatorial piste and the Tharsis piste running north and south, the last place one could cross the equator between here and the chaoses, a full quarter of the planet away. So unless a Transmarineris bridge were built somewhere, Cairo would always be at a strategic crossroads.
And crossroads or not, they wanted more water. The Compton Aquifer, underlying lower Noctis and upper Marineris, had been breached in '61, and its water had poured down the entire length of the Marineris canyons. This was the flood that had almost killed Nadia and her companions during the flight down the canyons, after Cairo was taken. Most of the floodwater had either frozen in the canyons, creating a long irregular glacier, or had pooled and frozen in the chaoses at the bottom of Marineris. And some water had of course remained in the aquifer. In the years since, the water in the aquifer had been pumped out for use in cities all over east Tharsis. And the Marineris Glacier had slowly dropped downcanyon, receding at its upper end where there was no source to replenish it, leaving behind only devastated land and a string of very shallow ice lakes. Cairo was therefore running out of a ready supply of water. Its hydrology office had responded by laying a pipeline to the northern sea's big southern arm in the Chryse depression, and pumping water up to Cairo. So far, no problem; every tent town got its water from somewhere. But the Cairenes had lately started pouring water into a reservoir in the Noctis canyon under them, and letting a stream out from this reservoir to run down into Ius Chasma, where eventually it pooled behind the upper end of the Marineris Glacier, or ran by it. Essentially they had created a new river running right down the big canyon system, far away from their town; and now they were establishing a number of riverside settlements and farming communities downstream from the city. A Red legal group had gone to the Global Environmental Court to challenge this action, asserting that Valles Marineris had legal consideration as a natural wonder, being the largest canyon in the solar system; if left alone the breakout glacier would eventually have slid down into the chaos, leaving the canyons again open-floored. This was what they thought should happen, and the GEC had agreed with them, and issued an order (Charlotte called this a "gecko") against Cairo, requiring them to halt the release of water out of the town reservoir. Cairo had refused to desist, claiming that the global government had no jurisdiction over what they called "vital town life-support issues." Meanwhile building new downstream settlements as fast as they could.
Clearly it was a provocation, a challenge to the new system. "This is a test," Art muttered as they walked across the plaza, "this is only a test. If this were a true constitutional crisis, you would hear a beep all over the planet."
A test; exactly the kind of thing for which Nadia had lost all patience. So she crossed the city in a foul mood. No doubt it did not help that the awful days of '61 were called back so vividly to mind by the plaza, the boulevards, the city wall at the canyon rim, all just as they had been back then. They said one's memory was weakest from one's middle years, but she would have lost those memories happily if she could have; fear and rage, however, seemed to function as some kind of nightmare fixative. For it was all still there--- Frank tapping madly away at his monitors, Sasha eating pizza, Maya shouting angrily at something or other, the fraught hours of waiting to see if they would be passed over by the falling pieces of Phobos. Seeing Sasha's body, bloody at the ears. Clicking over the transmitter that had brought Phobos down.
• • •
Thus it was very hard to keep her irritation in check as she went into the first meeting with the Cairenes, and found Jackie there among them, supporting their position. Jackie was pregnant now as well, and had been for some time; she was flushed, glossy, beautiful. No one knew who the father was, it was something she was doing on her own. A Dorsa Brevia tradition, by way of Hiroko--- and just one more irritant to Nadia.
The meeting took place in a building next to the city wall, overlooking the U-shaped canyon below, called Nilus Noctis. The water in dispute was actually visible downcanyon, a broad ice-sheeted reservoir stopped by a dam not visible from up here, stopped just before the Illyrian Gate and the new chaos of the Compton Break.
Charlotte stood with her back to the window, asking the Cairene officials just the questions Nadia would have asked, but without the slightest trace of Nadia's annoyance. "You will always be in a tent. Opportunities for growth will be limited. Why flood Marineris when you won't benefit from it?"
No one seemed to care to answer this. Finally Jackie said, "The people living down there will benefit, and they're part of greater Cairo. Water in any form is a resource at these altitudes."
"Water running freely down Marineris is no resource at all," Charlotte said.
The Cairenes argued for the utility of water in Marineris. There were also representatives of the downstream settlers, many of them Egyptians, claiming that they had been in Marineris for generations, that it was their right to live there, that it was the best farming land on Mars, that they would fight before they would leave, and so on. Sometimes the Cairenes and Jackie seemed to be defending these neighbors, at other times their own right to use Marineris as a reservoir. Mostly they seemed to be defending their right to do whatever they wanted. Slowly Nadia got angrier and angrier.
"The court made its judgment," she said. "We're not here to argue it again. We're here to see it enacted." And she left the meeting before she said anything inexcusable.
That night she sat with Charlotte and Art, so irritated that she could not focus on a delicious Ethiopian meal in the train-station restaurant. "What do they want?" she asked Charlotte.
Charlotte shrugged, mouth full. After swallowing: "Have you been noticing that being president of Mars is not a particularly powerful position?"
"Hell yes. It would be hard to miss."
"Yes. Well, the whole executive council is the same, of course. It's looking like the real power in this government is in the environmental court. Irishka was put in charge there as part of the grand gesture, and she's done a lot to legitimate moderate redness by staking out a middle ground. It allows for a lot of development under the six-k limit, but above that, they're very strict. That's all backed by the constitution, so they've been able to make everything stand--- the legislature is laying off, they haven't overturned any judgments yet. So it's been an impressive first session for Irishka and that whole group of justices."
"So Jackie is jealous," Nadia said.
Charlotte shrugged. "It's possible."
"More than possible," Nadia said grimly.
"And then there's the matter of the council itself. Jackie may think this is something she can get three of the others to back her on, and then the council becomes that much more hers. Cairo is an arena where she might hope that Zeyk will vote with her because of the Arab part of town. Then only two more. And both Mikhail and Ariadne are strong localists."
"But the council can't overturn court decisions," Nadia said, "only the legislature, right? By legislating new laws."
"Right, but if Cairo continues to defy the court, then it would be up to the council to order the police to go down there and physically stop them. That's what the executive branch is supposed to do. If the council didn't do that, then the court would be undermined, and Jackie would take effective control of the council. Two birds with one stone."
Nadia threw down her bit of spongy bread. "I'll be damned if that happens," she said.
They sat in silence.
"I hate this stuff," Nadia said.
Charlotte said, "In a few years there will be a body of practices, institutions, laws, amendments to the constitution, all that. Things that the constitution never addressed, which translate it into action. Like the proper role of political parties. Right now we're in the process of working all these things out."
"Maybe so, but I still hate it."
"Think of it as meta-architecture. Building the culture that allows architecture to exist. Then it'll be less frustrating for you."
Nadia snorted.
"This one should be a clear case," Charlotte said. "The judgment has been made, they only have to abide by it."
"What if they don't?"
"Time for the police."
"Civil war, in other words!"
"They won't push it that far. They signed the constitution just like everyone else, and if everyone else is abiding by it, then they become outlaws, like the Red ecoteurs. I don't think they'll go that far. They're just testing the limits."
She did not seem annoyed by this. That was the way people were, her expression seemed to say. She did not blame anyone, she was not frustrated. A very calm woman, this Charlotte--- relaxed, confident, capable. With her coordinating it, the executive council's work had so far been well organized, if not easy. If that competence was what growing up in a matriarchy like Dorsa Brevia did for you, Nadia thought, then more power to them. She couldn't help but compare Charlotte to Maya, with all Maya's mood shifts, her angst and self-dramatization. Well, it was probably an individual thing in any culture. But it was going to be interesting to have more Dorsa Brevia women around to take on these jobs.
At the next morning's meeting Nadia stood and said, "An order against dumping water in Marineris has been issued already. If you persist in the dumping, the new police powers of the global community will be exerted. I don't think anyone wants that."
"I don't think you can speak for the executive council," Jackie said.
"I can," Nadia said shortly.
"No you can't," Jackie said. "You're only one of seven. And this isn't a council matter anyway."
"We'll see about that," Nadia said.
The meeting dragged on. The Cairenes were stonewalling. The more Nadia understood what they were doing the less she liked it. Their leaders were important in Free Mars; and even if this challenge failed, it might result in concessions to Free Mars in other areas; so the party would have gained more power. Charlotte agreed that this could be their ultimate motive. The cynicism of this disgusted Nadia, and she found it very hard to be civil to Jackie when Jackie spoke to her, with her easy cheerfulness, the pregnant queen cruising around among her minions like a battleship among rowboats: "Aunt Nadia, so sorry you felt you needed to take time for such a thing as this. . . ."
That night Nadia said to Charlotte, "I want a ruling where Free Mars gets nothing at all out of this."
Charlotte laughed briefly. "Been talking to Jackie, have you?"
"Yes. Why is she so popular? I don't understand it, but she is!"
"She's nice to a lot of people. She thinks she's nice to everyone."
"She reminds me of Phyllis," Nadia said. The First Hundred again. . . . "Maybe not. Anyway, isn't there some sort of penalty we can invoke against frivolous suits and challenges?"
"Court costs, in some cases."
"See if you can lay that on her then."
"First let's see if we can win."
The meetings went on for another week. Nadia left the talking to Charlotte and Art. She spent the meetings looking out the windows at the canyon below, and in rubbing the stump of her finger, which now had a noticeable new bump on it. So strange; despite paying close attention, she could not recall when the bump had first appeared. It was warm and pink, a delicate pink, like a child's lips. There seemed to be a bone in the middle of it; she was afraid to squeeze it very hard. Surely lobsters didn't pinch their returning limbs. All that cell proliferation was disturbing--- like a cancer, only controlled, directed--- the miracle of DNA's instructional abilities made manifest. Life itself, flourishing in all its emergent complexity. And a little finger was nothing compared to an eye, or an embryo. It was a strange business.
With that going on, the political meetings looked really dreadful. Nadia walked out of one having heard almost none of it, though she was sure nothing significant had happened, and she went for a long walk, out to an overlook bulging out of the western end of the tent wall. She called Sax. The four travelers were getting closer to Mars; transmission delays were down to a few minutes. Nirgal appeared to be healthy again. He was in good spirits. Michel actually looked more drained than Nirgal; it seemed that the visit to Earth had been hard on him. Nadia held up her finger to the screen to cheer him up, and it worked.
"A pinky, don't they call it that?"
"I guess so."
"You don't seem to believe it's going to work."
"No. I guess I don't."
"We're in a transitional period, I think," Michel said. "At our age we can't really believe that we're still alive, so we act as if it will end at any minute."
"Which it could." Thinking of Simon. Or Tatiana Durova. Or Arkady.
"Of course. But then again it might go on for decades more, or even centuries. After a while we'll have to start believing in it." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. "You'll look at your whole hand and then you'll believe it. And that will be very interesting."
Nadia wiggled the pink nub at the end of her hand. No fingerprint yet in the fresh translucent skin. No doubt when it came it would be the same fingerprint as the one on the other little finger. Very strange.
Art came back from one meeting looking concerned. "I've been asking around about this," he said, "trying to figure out why they're doing it. I put some Praxis operatives on the case, down in the canyon and back on Earth, and inside the Free Mars leadership."
Spies, Nadia thought. Now we have spies.
"--- appears that they are making private arrangements with Terran governments concerning immigration. Building settlements and giving places to people from Egypt, definitely, and probably China too. It's got to be a quid pro quo, but we don't know what they're getting in return from these countries. Money, possibly."
Nadia growled.
In the next couple of days she met onscreen or in person with all the other members of the executive council. Marion was of course against pumping any more water into Marineris, and so Nadia needed only two more votes. But Mikhail and Ariadne and Peter were unwilling to bring the police to bear if it could be avoided in any other way; and Nadia suspected they were not much happier than Jackie at the relative weakness of the council. They seemed willing to make concessions, to avoid an awkward enforcement of a court judgment they weren't adamantly behind.
Zeyk clearly wanted to vote against Jackie, but felt constrained by the Arab constituency in Cairo, and the eyes of the Arab community on him; control of land and water were both important to them. But the Bedouin were nomadic, and besides, Zeyk was a strong supporter of the constitution. Nadia thought he would support her. That left one more to be convinced.
The relationship with Mikhail had never improved, it was as if he wanted to be closer to Arkady's memory than she was. Peter she didn't feel she understood. Ariadne she didn't like, but in a way that made it easier; and Ariadne had come to Cairo as well. So Nadia decided to work on her first.
Ariadne was as committed to the constitution as most of the Dorsa Brevians, but they were localists as well, and were no doubt thinking about keeping some independence of their own from the global government. And they too were far from any water supply. So Ariadne had been wavering.
"Look," Nadia said to her in a little room across the plaza from the city offices, "You've got to forget about Dorsa Brevia and think about Mars."
"I am, of course."
She was irritated that this meeting was taking place; she would rather have dismissed Nadia out of hand. The merits of the case weren't what mattered to her, it was just a matter of precedence, of not having to listen to any issei. It was power politics and hierarchy to these people now, they had forgotten the real issues involved. And in this damned city; suddenly Nadia lost her patience, and she almost shouted, "You're not! You're not thinking at all! This is the first challenge to the constitution, and you're looking around for what you can get out of it! I won't have it!" She waved a finger under Ariadne's surprised face: "If you don't vote to enforce the court ruling, then the next time something you really want comes up for a council vote you'll see reprisals, from me. Do you understand?"
Ariadne's eyes were like billboards: first shocked, then a moment of pure fear. Then anger. She said, "I never said I wasn't going to vote for enforcement! What are you going ballistic for?"
Nadia returned to a more ordinary argument mode, although still hard and tense and unrelenting. Finally Ariadne threw up her hands: "It's what most of the Dorsa Brevia council wants to do, I was going to vote for it anyway. You don't have to be so frantic about it." And she hurried out of the room, very upset.
First Nadia felt a surge of triumph. But that look of fear in the young woman's eyes--- it stuck with her, until she began to feel slightly sick to her stomach. She remembered Coyote on Pavonis, saying "Power corrupts." That was the sick feeling--- that first hit of power used, or misused.
Much later that night she was still sick with repulsion, and almost weeping, she told Art about the confrontation. "That sounds bad," he said gravely. "That sounds like a mistake. You still have to deal with her. When that's the case, you have to just tweak people."
"I know I know. God I hate this," she said. "I want to get away, I want to do something real."
He nodded heavily, patted her shoulder.
Before the next meeting, Nadia went over to Jackie and told her quietly that she had the council votes to put police down at the dam to stop any further release of water. Then in the meeting itself, she reminded everyone in an offhand remark that Nirgal would be back among them very soon, along with Maya and Sax and Michel. This caused several of the Free Mars group on hand to look thoughtful, though Jackie of course showed no reaction. As they nattered on after that, Nadia rubbed her finger, distracted, still upset with herself about the meeting with Ariadne.
The next day the Cairenes agreed to accept the judgment of the Global Environmental Court. They would cease releasing water from their reservoir, and the settlements downcanyon would have to exist on piped water, which would certainly pinch their growth.
"Good," Nadia said, still bitter. "All that just to obey the law."
"They're going to appeal," Art pointed out.
"I don't care. They're done for. And even if they aren't, they've submitted to the process. Hell, they can win for all I care. It's the process that counts, so we win no matter what."
Art smiled to hear this. A step in her political education, no doubt, a step Art and Charlotte seemed to have taken long ago. What mattered to them was not the result of any single disagreement, but the successful use of the process. If Free Mars represented the majority now--- and apparently it did, as it had the allegiance of almost all the natives, young fools that they were--- then submitting to the constitution meant that they could not simply push around minority groups by force of numbers. So when Free Mars won something, it would have to be on the merits of the case, judged by the full array of court justices, who came from all factions. That was quite satisfying, actually; like seeing a wall made of delicate materials bear more weight than it looked like it could, because of a cleverly built framework.
But she had used threats to shore up one beam, and so the whole thing left a bad taste in her mouth. "I want to do something real."
"Like plumbing?"
She nodded, not even close to a smile. "Yes. Hydrology."
"Can I come along?"
"Be a plumber's helper?"
He laughed. "I've done it before."
Nadia regarded him. He was making her feel better. It was peculiar, old-fashioned: to go somewhere just to be with someone. It didn't happen much anymore. People went where they needed to go, and hung out with whatever friends they found there, or made new friends. It was the Martian way. Or maybe just the First Hundred's way. Or her way.
Anyway, it was clear that doing this, traveling together, was more than just a friendship, more even perhaps than an affair. But that was not so bad, she decided. In fact not bad at all. Something to get used to, perhaps. But there was always something to get used to.
A new finger, for instance. Art was holding her hand, lightly massaging the new digit. "Does it hurt? Can you bend it?"
It did hurt, a little; and she could bend it, a little. They had injected some knuckle zone cells, and now it was just longer than the first joint of her other little finger, the skin still baby pink, unmarred by callus or scar. Every day a little bigger.
Art squeezed the tip of it ever so gently, feeling the bone inside. His eyes were round. "You can feel that?"
"Oh yes. It's like the other fingers, only a bit more sensitive maybe."
"Because it's new."
"I suppose."
Only the old lost finger was implicated, somehow; the ghost was calling again, now that there were signals coming from that end of the hand. The finger in the brain, Art called it. And no doubt there really was a cluster of brain cells devoted to that finger, which had been the ghost all along. It had faded over the years from lack of stimulus, but now it too was growing back, or being restimulated or reinforced; Vlad's explanations of the phenomenon were complex. But these days when she felt the finger, it sometimes felt just as large as the one on the other hand, even when she was looking right at it. Like feeling an invisible shell over the new one. Other times she felt the little thing at its proper size, short and skinny and weak. She could bend it at the hand knuckle, and just a little at the middle knuckle. The last kuckle, behind the fingernail, wasn't there yet. But it was on its way. Growing. Again Nadia joked about it growing on and on, though it was a creepy thought. "That would be good," Art said. "You'd have to get a dog."
But now she felt confident that wouldn't happen. The finger seemed to know what it was doing. It would be all right. It looked normal. Art was fascinated by it. But not just by it. He massaged her hand, which was a bit sore, and then her arm and shoulders too. He would massage all of her if she let him. And judging by how her finger and arm and shoulders felt, she certainly ought to. He was so relaxed. Life for him was still a daily adventure, full of marvels and hilarity. People made him laugh every day; that was a great gift. Big, round-faced, round-bodied, somewhat like Nadia herself in certain aspects of appearance; balding, unpretentious, graceful on his feet. Her friend.
Well, she loved Art, of course. She had since Dorsa Brevia at least. Something like her feeling for Nirgal, who was a most beloved nephew or student or godchild or grandchild or child; and Art, therefore, one of her child's friends. Actually he was a bit older than Nirgal, but still, those two were like brothers. That was the problem. But all these calculations were being progressively thrown off by their increasing longevity. When he was only five percent younger than her, would it matter anymore? When they had gone through thirty years of intense experience together, as they already had, as equals and collaborators, architects of a proclamation, a constitution, and a government; close friends, confidants, helpers, massage partners; did it matter, the different number of years past their youths they were? No it did not. It was obvious, one only had to think about it. And then try to feel it too.
They didn't need her in Cairo anymore, they didn't need her in Sheffield right that second. Nirgal would be back soon, and he would help to keep Jackie in check; not a fun job, but that was his problem, no one could help him there. It was hard when you fixed all your love on one person. As she had with Arkady, for so many years, even though he had been dead for most of them. It made no sense; but she missed him. And she still got angry at him. He had not even lived long enough to realize how much he had missed. The happy fool. Art was happy too, but he was no fool. Or not much. To Nadia all happy people were a bit foolish by definition, otherwise how could they be so happy? But she liked them anyway, she needed them. They were like her beloved Satchmo's music; and given the world, and all that it held, that happiness was a very courageous way to live--- not a set of circumstances, but a set of attitudes. "Yes, come plumbing with me," she said to Art, and hugged him hard, hard, as if you could capture happiness by squeezing it hard enough. She pulled back and he was bug-eyed with surprise, as when holding her little finger.
But she was still president of the executive council, and despite her resolve, every day they bound her to the job a little more tightly, with "developments" of all kinds. German immigrants wanted to build a new harbor town called Blochs Hoffnung on the peninsula that cut the North Sea in half, and then dig a broad canal through the peninsula. Red ecoteurs objected to this plan, and blew up the piste running down the peninsula. They blew up the piste leading to the top of Biblis Patera as well, to indicate they objected to that as well. Ecopoets in Amazonia wanted to start massive forest fires. Other ecopoets in Kasei wanted to remove the fire-dependent forest that Sax had planted in the great curve of the valley (this petition was the first to receive unanimous approval from the GEC). Reds living around White Rock, an eighteen-kilometer-wide pure white mesa, wanted it declared a "kami site" forbidden to human access. A Sabishii design team was recommending that they build a new capital city on the North-Sea coast at 0 longitude, where there was a deep bay. New Clarke was getting crowded with what looked suspiciously like metanat security snoopertroopers. The Da Vinci techs wanted to give control of Martian space over to an agency of the global government that didn't exist. Senzeni Na wanted to fill their mohole. The Chinese were requesting permission to build an entirely new space elevator tethered near Schiaparelli Crater, to accommodate their own emigration, and contract out to others. Immigration was growing every month.
Nadia dealt with all these issues in half-hour increments scheduled by Art, and so the days passed in a blur. It got very difficult to stay aware that some of these matters were much more important than others. The Chinese, for instance, would flood Mars with immigrants if they got half a chance . . . and the Red ecoteurs were getting more outrageous; there had even been death threats made against Nadia herself. She now had escorts when she left her apartment, and the apartment was discreetly guarded. Nadia ignored that, and continued to work on the issues, and to work the council to keep a majority on her side in the votes that mattered to her. She established good working relations with Zeyk and Mikhail, and even with Marion. Things never went quite right with Ariadne again, however, which was a lesson learned twice; but learned well because of that.
So she did the job. But all the time she wanted off Pavonis. Art saw her patience get shorter by the day; she knew by his look that she was becoming crochety, crabby, dictatorial; she knew it, but could not help it. After meetings with frivolous or obstructionist people she often unleashed a torrent of vicious abuse, in a steady low cursing voice that Art obviously found unnerving. Delegations would come in demanding an end to the death penalty, or the right to build in the Olympus Mons caldera, or a free eighth spot on the executive council, and as soon as the door closed Nadia would say, "Well there's a bunch of fucking idiots for you, stupid fools never even thought about tie votes, never occurred to them that taking someone else's life abrogates your own right to live," and so on. The new police captured a group of Red ecoteurs who had tried to blow up the Socket again, and in the process killed a security guard out of his position, and she was the hardest judge they had: "Execute them!" she exclaimed. "Look, you kill someone, you lose your right to live. Execute them or else exile them from Mars for life--- make them pay in a way that really gets the rest of the Reds' attention."
"Well," Art said uneasily. "Well, after all." But on she raged. She couldn't stop until she felt less angry. And Art could see that it was getting harder every time.
Flailing a bit himself, he recommended she start another conference, like the one in Sabishii she had missed; and make sure she made this one. Organizing the efforts of different organizations for a single cause; this was not really building, Nadia thought, but it looked like it would have to do.
The fight in Cairo had gotten her thinking about the hydrological cycle, and what would happen when the ice began to melt. If they could set up some kind of plan for a water cycle, even only an approximation, then it might go far toward reducing conflicts over water. So she decided to see what could be done.
As often happened these days when she thought about global issues, she found herself wanting to talk to Sax about it. The travelers to Earth were almost back now, close enough that transmission delay was insignificant, it was almost like having a normal wrist conversation. So Nadia spent evenings talking with Sax about terraforming. More than once he surprised her utterly; he did not hold the opinions she had imagined he would hold, he seemed always to be changing. "I want to keep things wild," he said one night.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
His face took on the puzzled expression it wore when he was thinking hard. It was considerably longer than the transmission delay before he replied: "Many things. It's a complicated word. But--- I mean--- I want to maintain the primal landscape, as much as possible."
Nadia could censor out her laughter at this; but still Sax said, "What do you find amusing?"
"Oh nothing. It's just you sound like, I don't know, like some of the Reds. Or the people in Christianopolis, they're not Reds, but they said almost the same thing to me, last week. They want to keep the primal landscape of the far south preserved. I've helped them to set up a conference to talk about southern watersheds."
"I thought you were working on greenhouse gases?"
"They won't let me work, I have to be president. But I am going to go to this conference."
"Good idea."
• • •
The Japanese settlers in Messhi Hoko (which meant "self-sacrifice for the sake of the group") came to the council to demand that more land and water be dedicated to their tent high on south Tharsis. Nadia walked out on them, and flew with Art down to Christianopolis, in the far south.
The little town (and it seemed very little after Sheffield and Cairo) was set in Phillips Rim Crater Four, at latitude sixty-seven degrees south. During the Year Without Summer the far south had experienced many severe storms, dropping about four meters of new snow, an unprecedented amount; the previous record for a year had been less than one. Now it was Ls 281, just after perihelion, and high summer in the south. And the various abatement strategies for avoiding an ice age seemed to be working well; most of the new snow had melted in a hot spring, and now there were round lakes on every crater floor. The pond in the center of Christianopolis was about three meters deep, and three hundred meters across; this was fine with the Christians, as it gave them a nice park pond. But if the same thing happened every winter--- and the meteorologists believed that the coming winters would drop even more snow, and the coming summers get ever warmer--- then their town would quickly be inundated by snowmelt, and Phillips Rim Crater Four become a lake full to the brim. And this was true for craters all over Mars.
The conference in Christianopolis had been convened to discuss strategies to deal with this situation. Nadia had done what she could to get influential people down to it, including meteorologists, hydrologists, and engineers, and the possibility of Sax, whose return was imminent. The problem of crater flooding was to be only the initial point of discussion for the whole question of watersheds, and the planetary hydrological cycle itself.
The crater problem specifically was to be solved as Nadia had predicted: plumbing. They would treat the craters like bathtubs, and drill drains to empty them. The brecciated pans under the dusty crater floors were extremely hard, but they could be tunneled through robotically; then install pumps and filters and pump the water out, keeping a central pond or lake if one wanted, or draining it dry.
But what were they going to do with the water they pumped out? The southern highlands were everywhere lumpy, shattered, pocked, cracked, hillocky, scarped, slumped, fissured, and fractured; when analyzed as potential watersheds, they were hopeless. Nothing led anywhere; there was no downhill for long. The entire south was a plateau three to four kilometers above the old datum, with only local bumps and dips. Never had Nadia seen more clearly the difference between this highland and any continent on Earth. On Earth, tectonic movement had pushed up mountains every few-score million years, and then water had run down these fresh slopes, following the paths of least resistance back to the sea, carving the fractal vein patterns of watersheds everywhere. Even the dry basin regions on Earth were seamed with arroyos and dotted with playas. In the Martian south, however, the meteoric bombardment of the Noachian had hammered the land ferociously, leaving craters and ejecta everywhere; and then the battered irregular wasteland had lain there for two billion years under the ceaseless scouring of the dusty winds, tearing at every flaw. If they poured water onto this pummeled land they would end up with a crazy quilt of short streams, running down local inclines to the nearest rimless crater. Hardly any streams would make it to the sea in the north, or even into the Hellas or Argyre basins, both of which were ringed by mountain ranges of their own ejecta.
There were, however, a few exceptions to this situation. The Noachian Age had been followed by a brief "warm wet period" in the late Hesperian, a period perhaps as short as a hundred million years, when a thick warm CO2 atmosphere had allowed liquid water to run on the surface, carving some river channels down the gentle tilts of the plateau, between crater aprons diverting them this way and that. And these watercourses had of course remained after the atmosphere had frozen out, empty arroyos gradually widened by the wind. These fossil riverbeds, like Nirgal Vallis, Warrego Valles, Protva Valles, Patana Valles, or Oltis Vallis, were narrow sinuous canyons, true riverine canyons rather than grabens or fossae. Some of them even had immature tributary systems. So efforts to design a macro-watershed system for the south naturally used these canyons as primary watercourses, with water pumped to the head of every tributary. Then there were also a number of old lava channels that could easily become rivers, as the lava, like the water, had tended to follow the path of least resistance downhill. And there were a number of tilted graben fractures and fissures, as at the foot of the Eridania Scopulus, that could likewise be turned to use.
In the conference, big globes of Mars were marked up daily to display different water regimes. There were also rooms full of 3-D topo maps, with groups standing around different watershed systems, arguing their advantages and disadvantages, or simply contemplating them, or fiddling with the controls to change them, restlessly, from one pattern to another. Nadia wandered the rooms looking at these hydrographies, learning much about the southern hemisphere that she had never known. There was a six-kilometer-high mountain near Richardson Crater, in the far south. The south polar cap itself was quite high. Dorsa Brevia, on the other hand, crossed a depression that looked like a ray cut out from the Hellas impact, a valley so deep that it ought to become a lake, an idea that the Dorsa Brevians naturally did not like. And certainly the area could be drained if they cared to do it. There were scores of variant plans, and every single system was strange looking to Nadia. Never had she seen so clearly how different a gravity-driven fractal was from impact randomness. In the inchoate meteoric landscape, almost anything was possible, because nothing was obvious--- nothing except for the fact that in any possible system, some canals and tunnels would have to be built. Her new finger itched with the desire to get out there and run a bulldozer or a tunnel borer.
Gradually the most efficient, or logical, or aesthetically pleasing plans began to emerge from the proposals, the best for each region being patched together, in a kind of mosaic. In the eastern quadrant of the deep south, streams would tend to run toward Hellas Basin and through a couple of gorges into the Hellas Sea, which was fine. Dorsa Brevia accepted a plan to have their town's lava tunnel ridge become a kind of dam, crossing a watershed transversely so that there was a lake above it and a river below it, coursing down to Hellas. Around the south polar cap, snowfall would remain frozen, but most of the meteorologists predicted that when things stabilized there wouldn't be much snowfall on the pole, that it would become a cold desert like Antarctica. Eventually of course they would end up with a largish ice cap, and then part of it would pool down into the huge depression under the Promethei Rupes, another partially erased old impact basin. If they didn't want too large of a southern ice cap, they would have to melt and pump some of the water back north, into the Hellas Sea perhaps. They would have to do some similar pumping in Argyre Basin, if they decided to keep Argyre dry. A group of moderate Red lawyers was even now insisting on this before the GEC, arguing that one of the two great dune-filled impact basins on the planet ought to be preserved. It seemed certain this claim would receive a favorable judgment from the court, and so all the watersheds around Argyre had to take this into account.
Sax had designed his own southern watershed plan, which he sent to the conference from their rocket as it aerobraked into orbital insertion, to be considered with all the rest. It minimized surface water, emptied most craters, used tunnels extensively, and channelized almost all drained water into the fossil river canyons. In his plan vast areas of the south would stay arid desert, making for a hemisphere of dry tableland, cut deeply by a few narrow river-bottomed canyons. "Water is returned north," he explained to Nadia in a call, "and if you stay up on the plateaus, it will look like it always did, almost."
So that Ann would like it, he was saying.
"Good idea," Nadia said.
And indeed Sax's plan was not that much different than the consensus being hammered out by the conference. Wet north, dry south; one more dualism to add to the great dichotomy. And to have the old river canyons running with water again was satisfying. A good-looking plan, given the terrain.
But the days were long gone when Sax or anyone else could choose a terraforming project and then go out and do it. Nadia could see that Sax hadn't fully understood this. Ever since the beginning, when he had slipped algae-filled windmills into the field without the knowledge or approval of anyone but his accomplices, he had been working on his own. It was an ingrained habit of mind, and now he seemed to forget the review process that any watershed plan was going to have to go through in the environmental courts. But the process was there, inescapable now, and because of the grand gesture, half the fifty GEC justices were Reds of one shade or another. Any watershed proposal from a conference including Sax Russell, even as a teleparticipant, was going to get close and suspicious scrutiny.
But it seemed to Nadia that if the Red justices looked carefully at the proposal, they would have to be amazed at Sax's approach. Indeed it represented a kind of road-to-Damascus conversion--- inexplicable, given Sax's history. Unless you knew all of it. But Nadia understood: he was trying to please Ann. Nadia doubted that was possible, but she liked to see Sax try. "A man full of surprises," she remarked to Art.
"Brain trauma will do that."
In any case, when the conference was done they had designed an entire hydrography, designating all the future major lakes and rivers and streams of the southern hemisphere. The plan would eventually have to be integrated with similar plans for the northern hemisphere, which were in considerable disarray by comparison, because of the uncertainty about just how big the northern sea was going to be. Water was no longer being actively pumped up out of permafrost and aquifers--- indeed many of the pumping stations had been blown up in the last year by Red ecoteurs--- but some water was still rising, under the weight put on the land by the water already pumped. And summer runoff was flowing into Vastitas, more every year, both from the northern polar cap and the Great Escarpment; Vastitas was the catchment basin for huge watersheds on all sides. So a lot of water was going to pour into it every summer. On the other hand, a lot of water was always being stripped off by the arid winds, eventually precipitating elsewhere. And water would evaporate much faster than the ice currently there was subliming. So calculating how much was leaving and how much coming back was a modeler's field day, and estimates were still all over the map, literally so in that differences in prediction led to putative shorelines that were in some cases hundreds of kilometers apart.
That uncertainty would delay any GECO on the south, Nadia thought; in essence the court had to try to correlate all the current data, and evaluate the models, and then prescribe a sea level, and approve all watersheds accordingly. The fate of Argyre Basin in particular seemed impossible to decide at this point, before there was a northern plan; some plans called for pumping water up into Argyre from the northern sea if the northern sea got too full, to avoid flooding the Marineris canyons, South Fossa, and the new harbor towns being built. Radical Reds were already threatening to build "west-bank settlements" all over Argyre to forestall any such move.
So the GEC had yet another big issue to solve. Clearly it was becoming the most important political body on Mars; with the constitution and its own previous rulings to guide it, it was ruling on almost every aspect of their future. Nadia thought that was probably as it should be; or at least that there was nothing wrong with it. They needed decisions with global ramifications reviewed globally, that was what it came down to.
But come what may in the courts, a provisional plan for the southern hemisphere had at least been formulated. And to everyone's surprise, the GEC gave the plan a positive preliminary judgment very soon after it was submitted--- because, their ruling said, it could be activated in stages as water fell on the south, and it proceeded in much the same fashion through its first stages no matter what the eventual sea level in the north became. So there was no reason to delay beginning.
Art came in beaming with the news. "We can begin plumbing," he said.
• • •
But of course Nadia couldn't. There were meetings in Sheffield to go back to, decisions to be made, people to be convinced or coerced. Doggedly she did that work, stubbornly doing her duty whether she liked it or not, and as time passed she got better and better at it. She saw how she could subtly pressure other people to get her way; saw how people would do her bidding if she asked or suggested in certain ways. The constant stream of decisions honed some of her views; she found that it helped to have at least some consciously held political principles, rather than judging each case by instinct. It also helped to have reliable allies, on the council and elsewhere, rather than being a supposedly neutral and independent person. And so by degrees she found herself joining the Bogdanovists, who, to her surprise, conformed more closely to her political philosophy than anything else on Mars. Of course her reading of Bogdanovism was relatively simple: things should be just, Arkady had insisted, and everyone free and equal; the past didn't matter; they needed to invent new forms whenever the old ones looked unfair or impractical, which was often; Mars was the only reality that counted, at least to them. Using these as her guiding principles, she found it easier to make up her mind about things, to see a course and cut for it directly.
Also she became more and more ruthless. From time to time she felt freshly how power could corrupt, felt it as a slight nausea within her. But she was getting habituated. She clashed often with Ariadne, and when she recalled the remorse she had felt after her first wrangle with the young Minoan, it seemed to her ridiculously overfastidious; she was far tougher than that every day now on people who crossed her, she showed the knives in meeting after meeting, in calculated microbursts of brutality that put people in line very effectively indeed. In fact the more she allowed herself to release little outbursts of fury and scorn, the more certainly she could control them and put them to some use. She was a power; and people knew it; and power was corrosive. Power was powerful, in more ways than one. And now Nadia felt very little remorse about that; they deserved a pop on the nose, generally; they had thought they were going to get a harmless old babushka to sit in the big chair while they worked their games on each other, but the big chair was the power seat, and she was damned if she was going to go through all this shit and not use some of that power to try to get what she wanted.
And so less and less often did she feel how ugly it was. Once when she did, after a particularly hard-nosed day, she thumped down in a chair and almost cried, sick with disgust. Only seven months of her three m-years had passed. What would she become by the time her stint was done? Already she was used to power; by then she might even like it.
Art, worried by all this, squinted at her over their breakfast table. "Well," he said once, after she explained what was bothering her, "power is power." He was thinking hard. "You're the first president of Mars. So in a way you define the office. Maybe you should declare you're only going to work the one month and not the two months, and delegate the two months to your staff. Something like that."
She stared at him, mouth full of toast.
Later that week she abandoned Sheffield and went south again, joining a caravan of people working their way from crater to crater, installing drainage systems. Every crater had variations, but essentially it was a matter of picking the right angle to emerge from the crater apron, and then setting the robots to work. Von Karman, Du Toit, Schmidt, Agassiz, Heaviside, Bianchini, Lau, Chamberlin, Stoney, Dokuchaev, Trumpler, Keeler, Charlier, Suess . . . they plumbed all of those craters, and many more unnamed ones, although the craters were taking on names even faster than they drilled them: 85 South, Too Dark, Fool's Hope, Shanghai, Hiroko Slept Here, Fourier, Cole, Proudhon, Bellamy, Hudson, Kaif, 47 Ronin, Makoto, Kino Doku, Ka Ko, Mondragon. The migration from one crater to the next reminded Nadia of her trips around the south polar cap during the underground years; except now everything was out in the open, and through the nearly nightless midsummer days the team luxuriated in the sun, in the glary light off the crater lakes. They traveled across rough frozen bogs brilliant with sunny meltwater and meadow grass, and always of course they crossed the rust-and-black rockscape breaking out into the light, ring after ring, ridge after ridge. They plumbed craters and laid watershed pipes, and attached greenhouse-gas factories to the excavators whenever the rock had any gas feedstocks in it.
But hardly any of that turned out to be work in the sense Nadia meant. She missed the old days. Of course operating a bulldozer had not been hand labor, but one's touch with the blade had been a very physical skill, and the repeated gearshifts physically taxing; and it was all around a higher level of engagement than this "work," which consisted of talking to AIs and then walking around and watching humming and buzzing teams of waist-high robot diggers, city-block-sized mobile factory units, tunnel moles with diamond teeth that grew back like sharks' teeth--- everything made of bioceramic/metallic alloys stronger than the elevator cable, all of it out there doing it all by itself. It just wasn't what she had in mind.
Try again. She went through another cycle; return to Sheffield, engagement in the council work, increasing disgust, merging with despair; look around for anything to get her out of it; notice some likely project and seize on it. Run off to check it out. Like Art had said, she could call her own shots. There was that in power too.
The next time out it was soil that drew her. "Air, water, earth," Art said. "Next it'll be forest fires, eh?"
But she had heard that there were scientists in Bogdanov Vishniac trying to manufacture soil, and this interested her. So off she went, flying south to Vishniac, where she had not been for years. Art accompanied her. "It'll be interesting to see how the old underground cities adapt, now that there's no need to hide."
"I don't see why anyone stays down here, to tell you the truth," Nadia said as they flew down into the rugged southern polar region. "They're so far south their winters last forever. Six months with no sun at all. Who would stay?"
"Siberians."
"No Siberian in his right mind would move here. They know better."
"Laplanders, then. Inuit. People who like the poles."
"I suppose."
As it turned out, no one in Bogdanov Vishniac seemed to mind the winters. They had redistributed their mohole mound in a ring around the mohole itself, creating an immense circular amphitheater facing down into the hole. This terraced amphitheater was to be the surface Vishniac. In the summers it would be a green oasis, and in the dark winters a white oasis; they planned to illuminate it with hundreds of brilliant streetlights, giving themselves a stage set day, in a town contemplating itself across a round gap in things, or from the upper wall looking out at the frosted chaos of the polar highlands. No, they were going to stay, no question of it. It was their place.
Nadia was greeted at the airport as a special guest, as always when she stayed with Bogdanovists. Before joining them this had struck her as ridiculous, and even a bit offensive: girlfriend of The Founder! But now she accepted their offer of a guest suite located on the lip of the mohole, with a slightly overhanging window that gave one a view straight down for eighteen kilometers. The lights on the mohole's bottom looked like stars seen through the planet.
Art was petrified, not at the sight but at the very thought of the sight, and he would not go near that half of the room. Nadia laughed at him, and then when she was done looking, closed the drapes.
The next day she went out to visit the soil scientists, who were happy at her interest. They wanted to be able to feed themselves, and as more and more settlers moved south, this was going to be impossible without more soil. But they were finding that manufacturing soil was one of the most difficult technical feats they had ever undertaken. Nadia was surprised to hear this--- these were the Vishniac labs, after all, world leaders in technologically supported ecologies, having lived for decades hidden in a mohole. And topsoil was, well, soil. Dirt with additives, presumably, and additives one could add.
No doubt she conveyed some of this impression to the soil scientists, and the man named Arne leading her around told her with some exasperation that soil was in fact very complex. About five percent of it by weight was made of living things, and this critical five percent consisted of dense populations of nematodes, worms, mollusks, arthropods, insects, arachnids, small mammals, fungi, protozoa, algae, and bacteria. The bacteria alone included several thousand different species, and could number as high as a hundred million individuals per gram of soil. And the other members of the microcommunity were almost as plentiful, in both number and variety.
Such complex ecologies could not be manufactured in the way Nadia had been imagining, which was basically to grow the ingredients separately and then mix them in a hopper, like a cake. But they didn't know all the ingredients, and they couldn't grow some of the ingredients, and some that they could grow died on mixing. "Worms in particular are sensitive. Nematodes have trouble too. The whole system tends to crash, leaving us with minerals and dead organic material. That's called humus. We're very good at making humus. Topsoil, however, has to grow."
"Which is what happens naturally?"
"Right. We can only try to grow it faster than it grows in nature. We can't assemble it, or manufacture it in bulk. And many of the living components grow best in soil itself, so there's a problem providing feedstock organisms at any faster rate than natural soil formation would provide them."
"Hmm," Nadia said.
Arne took her through their labs and greenhouses, which were filled with hundreds of pedons, tall cylindrical vats or tubes, in racks, all holding soil or its components. This was experimental agronomy, and from her experience with Hiroko Nadia was prepared to understand very little of it. The esoterica of science could go right off her scale. But she did understand that they were doing factorial trials, altering the conditions in each pedon and tracking what happened. There was a simple formula Arne showed her to describe the most general aspects of the problem:
S = f(PM,C,R,B,T),
meaning that any soil property S was a factor (f) of the semi-independent variables, parent material (PM), climate (C), topography or relief (R), biota (B), and time (T). Time, of course, was the factor they were trying to speed up; and the parent material in most of their trials was the ubiquitous Martian surface clay. Climate and topography were altered in some trials, to imitate various field conditions; but mostly they were altering the biotic and organic elements. This meant microecology of the most sophisticated kind, and the more Nadia learned about it the more difficult their task seemed--- not so much construction as alchemy. Many elements had to cycle through soil to make it a growth medium for plants, and each element had its own particular cycle, driven by a different collection of agents. There were the macronutrients--- carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, calcium, and magnesium--- then the micronutrients, including iron, manganese, zinc, copper, molybdenum, boron, and chlorine. None of these nutrient cycles was closed, as there were losses due to leaching, erosion, harvesting, and outgassing; inputs were just as various, including absorption, weathering, microbial action, and application of fertilizers. The conditions that allowed the cycling of all these elements to proceed were varied enough that different soils encouraged or discouraged each cycle to different degrees; each kind of soil had particular pH levels, salinities, compaction, and so forth; thus there were hundreds of named soils in these labs alone, and thousands more back on Earth.
Naturally in the Vishniac labs the Martian parent material formed the basis for most of the experiments. Eons of dust storms had recycled this material all over the planet, until it had everywhere much the same content: the typical Martian soil unit was made up of fine particles of mostly silicon and iron. At its top it was often loose drift. Below that, varying degrees of interparticle cementation had produced crusty cloddy material, becoming blocky the lower one dug.
Clays, in other words; smectite clays, similar to Terra's montmorillonite and nontronite, with the addition of materials like talc, quartz, hematite, anhydrite, dieserite, clacite, beidellite, rutile, gypsum, maghemite and magnetite. And everything had been coated by amorphous iron oxyhydroxides, and other more crystallized iron oxides, which accounted for the reddish colors.
So this was their universal parent material: iron-rich smectite clay. Its loosely packed and porous structure meant it would support roots while still giving them room to grow. But there were no living things in it, and too many salts, and too little nitrogen. So in essence their task was to gather parent material, and leach out salt and aluminum, while introducing nitrogen and the biotic community, all as fast as possible. Simple, when put like that; but that phrase biotic community masked a whole world of troubles. "My God, it's like trying to get this government to work," Nadia exclaimed to Art one evening. "They're in big trouble!"
Out in the countryside people were simply introducing bacteria to the clay, and then algae and other microorganisms, then lichen, and then halophyllic plants. Then they had waited for these biocommunities to transform the clay into soils, through many generations of living and dying in it. This worked, and was working even now, all over the planet; but it was very slow. A group in Sabishii had estimated that when averaged over the planet's surface, about a centimeter of topsoil was being generated every century. And this had been achieved using genetically engineered populations designed to maximize speed.
In the greenhouse farms, on the other hand, the soils used had been heavily amended by nutrients and fertilizers and inoculants of all kinds; the result was something like what these scientists were trying for, but the quantity of soil in greenhouses was minuscule compared to what they wanted to put out on the surface. Mass producing soil was their goal. But they had gotten into something deeper than they had expected, Nadia could tell; they had the vexed absorbed air of a dog gnawing on a bone too big for its mouth.
The biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and ecology involved in these problems were far beyond Nadia's expertise, and there was nothing she could do to make suggestions there. In many cases she couldn't even understand the processes involved. It was not construction, nor even an analog of construction.
But they did have to incorporate some construction into whatever production methods they tried, and there Nadia was at least able to understand the issues. She began to concentrate on that aspect of things, looking at the mechanical design of the pedons, and also the holding tanks for the living constituents of the soil. She also studied the molecular structure of the parent clays, to see if it suggested anything to her about working with them. Martian smectites were aluminosilicates, she found, meaning each unit of the clay had a sheet of aluminum octahedrals sandwiched between two sheets of silicon tetrahedrals; the different kinds of smectites had different amounts of variation in this general pattern, and the more variation there was, the easier it was for water to seep into the interlayer surfaces. The most common smectite clay on Mars, montmorillonite, had a lot of variety, and so was very open to water, expanding when wet, and shrinking when dry to the point of cracking.
Nadia found this interesting. "Look," she said to Arne, "what about a pedon filled with a matrix of feeder veins, which would introduce the biota all through the parent material." Take a batch of parent material, she went on, and get it wet, then let it dry. Insert into the crack systems the feeder vein matrix. Then pour in whatever important bacteria and other constitutents they could grow. Then if the bacteria and other creatures could eat their way out of their feeder veins, digesting that material as they emerged, they would all suddenly be there together in the clay, interacting. That would be a tricky time, no doubt many trials would be necessary to calibrate the initial amounts of the various biota needed to avoid population booms and crashes--- but if they could get them to settle into their usual communities, then they would suddenly have living soil. "There are feeder-vein systems like this used for certain quick-setting construction materials, and now I hear that doctors feed apatite paste into broken bones the same way. The feeder veins are made of protein gels appropriate to whatever substance they're going to contain, molded into the appropriate tubular structures."
A matrix for growth. Worth looking into, Arne said. Which made Nadia smile. She went around that afternoon feeling happy, and that evening when she joined Art she said, "Hey! I did some work today."
"Well!" Art said. "Let's go out and celebrate."
• • •
Easy to do, in Bogdanov Vishniac. It was a Bogdanovist city, all right, as buoyant as Arkady himself. A party every night. They had often joined the evening promenade, and Nadia loved walking along the railing of the highest terrace, feeling that Arkady was somehow there, had somehow persisted. And never more so than on this night, celebrating a bit of work done. She held Art's hand, looked down and across at the crowded lower terraces and their crops, orchards, pools, sports fields, lines of trees, arcuate plazas occupied by cafés, bars, dance pavilions--- bands battling for sonic space, the crowds chugging around them, some dancing but many more simply making the night's promenade, like Nadia herself. All this still under a tent, with tenting that they hoped to remove someday; meanwhile it was warm, and the young natives wore an outlandish array of pantaloons, headdresses, sashes, vests, necklaces, so that Nadia was reminded of the video footage of Nirgal and Maya's reception in Trinidad. Was this coincidence, or was there some supraplanetary culture coming into being among the young? And if there was, did that mean that their Coyote, the Trinidadian, had invisibly conquered the two worlds? Or her Arkady, posthumously? Arkady and Coyote, culture kings. It made her grin to think of it, and she took sips of Art's cup of scalding kavajava, the drink of choice in this cold town, and watched all the young people moving like angels, always dancing no matter what they did, flowing in graceful arcs from terrace to terrace. "What a great little town," Art said.
Then they came upon an old photo of Arkady himself, framed and hung on a wall next to a door. Nadia stopped and clutched Art's arm: "That's him! That's him to the life!"
The photo had caught him talking with someone, standing just inside a tent wall and gesturing, his hair and beard lofting away from his head and blending into a landscape exactly the color of his wild curls. A face coming out of a hillside, it seemed, blue eyes squinting in the glare of all that red glee. "I've never seen a photo that looked so much like him. If he saw a camera pointed at him he didn't like it, and the picture came out wrong."
She stared at the photo, feeling flushed, and strangely happy; such a lifelike encounter! Like running into someone again after years of not seeing them. "You're like him, in some ways, I think. But more relaxed."
"It looks like it would be hard to get much more relaxed than that," Art said, peering closely at the photo.
Nadia smiled. "It was easy for him. He was always sure he was right."
"None of the rest of us have that problem."
She laughed. "You're cheerful like he was."
"And why not."
They walked on. Nadia kept thinking of her old companion, seeing the photo in her mind's eye. There was still so much she remembered. The feelings connected to the memories were fading, however, the pain blunted--- the fixative leached out, all that flesh and trauma now only a pattern of a certain kind, like a fossil. And very unlike the present moment, which, looking around, feeling her hand in Art's, was real, vivid, brief, perpetually changing--- alive. Anything could happen, everything was felt.
"Shall we go back to our room?"
• • •
The four travelers to Earth returned at last, coming down the cable to Sheffield. Nirgal and Maya and Michel went their ways, but Sax flew down and joined Nadia and Art in the south, a move which pleased Nadia no end. She had come to have the feeling that wherever Sax went was the heart of the action.
He looked just as he had before the trip to Earth, and was if anything even more silent and enigmatic. He wanted to see the labs, he said. They took him through them.
"Interesting, yes," he said. Then after a while: "But I'm wondering what else we might do."
"To terraform?" Art asked.
"Well . . ."
To please Ann, Nadia thought. That was what he meant. She gave him a hug, which surprised him, and she kept her hand on his bony shoulder as they talked. So good to have him there in the flesh! When had she gotten so fond of Sax Russell, when had she come to rely on him so much?
Art too had figured out what he meant. He said, "You've done quite a bit already, haven't you? I mean, at this point you've dismantled all the metanats' monster methods, right? The hydrogen bombs under the permafrost, the soletta and aerial lens, the nitrogen shuttles from Titan---"
"Those are still coming," Sax said. "I don't even know how we could stop them. Shoot them down I guess. But we can always use nitrogen. I'm not sure I'd be happy if they were stopped."
"But Ann?" Nadia said. "What would Ann like?"
Sax squinted again. When uncertainty squinched his face, it reverted to precisely its old ratlike expression.
"What would you both like?" Art rephrased it.
"Hard to say." And his face twisted into a grimace of uncertainty, indecision, split motives.
"You want wilderness," Art suggested.
"Wilderness is a, an idea. Or an ethical position. It can't be everywhere, it's not that kind of idea. But . . ." Sax waggled a hand, fell back into his own thoughts. For the first time in the century she had known him, Nadia had the sense that Sax did not know what to do. He solved the problem by sitting down before a screen and typing instructions into it. He appeared to forget their presence.
Nadia squeezed Art's arm. He enfolded her hand, and squeezed the little finger gently. It was almost three quarters size now, but slowing down as it got closer to full size. A nail had been started, and on the pad, the delicate whorled ridges of a fingerprint. It felt good when it was squeezed. She met Art's eye briefly, then looked down. He squeezed her whole hand before letting go. After a while, when it was clear Sax was fully distracted, and going to be off in his own world for a long time, they tiptoed off to their room, to the bed.
• • •
They worked by day, went out at night. Sax was blinking around as in his lab-rat days, anxious because there was no news of Ann. Nadia and Art comforted him as best they could, which wasn't much. In the evenings they went out and joined the promenade. There was a park where parents congregated with their kids, and people walked by as if passing a little open zoo enclosure, grinning at the sight of the little primates at play. Sax spent hours in this park talking to kids and parents, and then he would wander off to the dance floors, where he danced by himself for hours. Art and Nadia held hands. Her finger got stronger. It was almost full size now, and given that it was the littlest finger anyway, it looked full grown unless she held it against its opposite number. Art nibbled it gently sometimes when they were making love, and the sensation drove her wild. "You'd better not tell people about this effect," he muttered, "else it could get grisly--- people hacking off body parts to grow them back, you know, more sensitive."
"Sicko."
"You know how people are. Anything for a thrill."
"Don't even talk about it."
"Okay."
• • •
But then it was time to get back to a council meeting. Sax left, to find Ann or hide from her, they couldn't be sure; they flew back up to Sheffield, and then Nadia was back into it again, every day parsed into its thirty-minute units of trivia. Except some of it was important. The Chinese application for another space elevator near Schiaparelli had come up for action, and it was only one of many immigration issues that were facing them. The UN-Mars agreement worked out in Bern stated explicitly that Mars was to take at least ten percent of its population in immigrants every year, with the hope expressed that they would take even more--- as many as possible--- for as long as the hypermalthusian conditions obtained. Nirgal had made this a kind of promise, had spoken very enthusiastically (and Nadia felt unrealistically) about Mars coming to the rescue, saving Earth from overpopulation with the gift of empty land. But how many people could Mars really hold, when they couldn't even manufacture topsoil? What was the carrying capacity of Mars, anyway?
No one knew, and there was no good way to calculate it scientifically. Estimates of Terra's human carrying capacity had ranged from one hundred million to two hundred trillion, and even the seriously defensible estimates ranged from two to thirty billion. In truth carrying capacity was a very fuzzy abstract concept, depending on an entire recombinant host of complexities such as soil biochemistry, ecology, human culture. So it was almost impossible to say how many people Mars could handle. Meanwhile Earth's population was over fifteen billion, while Mars, with almost as much land surface, had a population a thousand times as small, at right around fifteen million. The disparity was clear. Something would have to be done.
Mass transfer of people from Earth to Mars was certainly one possibility; but the speed of the transfer was limited by the size of the transport system, and the ability of Mars to absorb the immigrants. Now the Chinese, and indeed the UN generally, were arguing that as a beginning step in a process of intensified immigration, they could build up the transport system very substantially. A second space elevator on Mars would be the first step in this multistage project.
Reaction on Mars to this plan was mostly negative. The Reds of course opposed further immigration, and while conceding that some would have to happen, they opposed any specific development of the transfer system just to try to keep the process slowed down as much as possible. That position fit their overall philosphy, and made sense to Nadia. The Free Mars position, however, while more important, was not so clear. Nirgal had come out of Free Mars, and had gone to Earth and issued a general invitation to Terrans to shift as many people over as they could. And historically Free Mars had always argued for strong ties with Earth, to attempt the so-called tail-wagging-dog strategy. The current party leadership, however, no longer seemed very fond of this position. And Jackie was in the middle of this new group. They had been shifting toward a more isolationist stance even during the constitutional congress, Nadia recalled, arguing always for more independence from Earth. On the other hand, they had been apparently cutting deals in private with certain Terran countries. So the Free Mars position was ambiguous, perhaps hypocritical; and seemed designed mainly to increase its own power on the Martian scene.
Even setting aside Free Mars, though, there was a lot of isolationist sentiment out there besides the Reds--- anarchists, some Bogdanovists, the Dorsa Brevian matriarchs, the MarsFirsters--- all tended to side with the Reds on this issue. If millions and millions of Terrans began to pour up onto Mars, they all argued, what then of Mars--- not just of the landscape itself, but of the Martian culture that had been forming over the m-years? Wouldn't that be drowned in the old ways brought up by the new influx, which might quickly outnumber the native population? Birth rates were dropping everywhere, after all, and childlessness and one-child families were as common on Mars as on Earth--- so there wouldn't be any great multiplication in the native population to look forward to. They would soon be overwhelmed.
So Jackie argued, at least in public, and the Dorsa Brevians and many others agreed with her. Nirgal, just back from Earth, seemed not to be having much effect on that stance. And while Nadia could see the point of her opponents' arguments, she also felt that given the situation on Earth, they were being unrealistic to think they could close Mars down. Mars could not save Earth, as Nirgal had sometimes seemed to say during his visit there; but an agreement with the UN had been made and ratified, and they were committed to letting up at least as many Terrans as the treaty specified. So the bridge between the worlds had to be expanded if they were to meet that obligation, and keep the treaty viable. If they didn't stick to the treaty, Nadia thought, anything might happen.
So in the debate over allowing a second cable, Nadia argued for it. It increased the capacity of the transport system, as they had promised to do, if only indirectly. And it would also take some of the pressure off the towns on Tharsis, and that side of Mars generally; population density maps showed that Pavonis was like the bull's-eye of a target, with people radiating outward from it and settling as near to it as was convenient. Having a cable on the other side of the world would help to equalize things.
But this was a dubious value to the cable's opponents. They wanted the population localized, contained, slowed. The treaty didn't matter to them. So when it came to a council vote, which was only an advisory to the legislature in any case, only Zeyk voted with Nadia. It was Jackie's biggest victory so far, and put her in a temporary alliance with Irishka and the rest of the environmental courts, which were on principle resistant to all forms of swift development.
Nadia went home to her apartment that day, discouraged and worried. "We've promised Earth we'll take lots of immigrants, then pulled up the drawbridge. It's going to lead to trouble."
Art nodded. "We'll have to work something out."
Nadia blew out her breath in disgust. "Work. We won't work anything out. Work isn't the word for it. We will bicker and dicker and argue and natter." She sighed a big sigh. "It will go on and on. I thought Nirgal being back would help, but it won't if he doesn't join in."
"He doesn't have a position," Art said.
"He could if he wanted one, though."
"True."
Nadia thought about it, her mind wandering as her spirits dropped. "You know I've only gotten through ten months of my term. There's over two and a half m-years to go."
"I know."
"M-years are so damned long."
"Yes. But the months are short."
She made a noise at him. Stared out the window of her apartment, down into Pavonis caldera. "The trouble is that work isn't work anymore. You know, we go out there and join these projects, and the work on them still isn't work. I mean I never get to go out and do things. I remember when I was young, in Siberia, work was really work."
"You might be romanticizing that a bit."
"Yeah, sure, but even on Mars. I remember putting together Underhill. That was really fun. And one day on our trip to the north pole, installing a permafrost gallery. . . ." She sighed. "What I wouldn't give for work like that again."
"There's still a lot of construction going on," Art pointed out.
"By robots."
"Maybe you could go back to something more human. Build something yourself. A house in the country, or a development. Or one of the new harbor towns, hand-built to try out different things, designs, methods, whatever. It would slow the construction process down, the GEC would go for that."
"Maybe. After my term is over, you mean."
"Or even before. On breaks, like these other trips. They've all been analogs to construction, they haven't been construction itself. Building actual things. You have to try that, then go back and forth between the two."
"Conflict of interest."
"Not if it was a public-works project. What about that proposal to build a global capital down at sea level?"
"Hmm," Nadia said. She got out a map, and they pored over it. At the zero-longitude line, the south shore of the northern sea bent out in a little round peninsula, with a crater bay at its center. It was about halfway between Tharsis and Elysium. "We'll have to go take a look."
"Yes. Here, come to bed. We'll talk about it more later. Right now I have another idea."
Some months later they were flying back from Bradbury Point to Sheffield, and Nadia remembered that conversation with Art. She asked the pilot to land at a little station north of Sklodowska Crater, on the slope of Crater Zm, called Zoom. As they descended on the airstrip they saw to the east a big bay, now covered with ice. Across the bay was the rough mountainous country of Mamers Vallis, and the Deuteronilus Mensae. The bay was an incursion into the Great Escarpment, which was here fairly gentle. Longitude zero. Latitude forty-six degrees north, fairly far north; but the northern winters were mild compared to the south. They could see a lot of the icy sea, lying off a long shoreline. The rounded peninsula surrounding Zoom was high and smooth. The little station on the shore was home to about five hundred people, who were out there building with bulldozer and cranes and dredges and draglines. Nadia and Art got out and sent the plane on, and took a boardinghouse room and spent about a week with the people there, talking about the new settlement. The locals had heard of the proposal to build a new capital city here on the bay; some of them liked the idea, some didn't. They had thought of calling their settlement Greenwich because of its longitude, but they had heard the British didn't pronounce it "Green Witch," and they didn't know how they felt about spelling the town to sound that way and then calling it "Grenich." Maybe just London, they said. We'll think of something, they said. The bay itself, they said, had long been called Chalmers Bay.
"Really?" Nadia exclaimed. She laughed. "How perfect."
She was already very attracted to the landscape: Zoom's smooth conic apron, the incurve of the big bay; red rock over white ice, and presumably over blue sea, someday. On the days of their visit clouds flowed by constantly, riding the west wind and dappling both land and ice with their shadows--- sometimes puffy white cumulus clouds, like galleons, other times scrolled herringbone patterns unrolling overhead, defining the dark dome of sky above them, and the curving rocky land under them. It could be a small handsome city, encircling a bay like San Francisco or Sydney, as beautiful as those two but smaller, human scale--- Bogdanovist architecture--- hand-built. Well, not exactly hand-built, of course. But they could design it at a human scale. And work on it as a kind of work of art. Walking with Art on the shores of the ice bay, Nadia talked through her CO2 mask about these ideas, while watching the parade of clouds gallop by in the low-rushing air.
"Sure," Art said. "It would work. It's going to be a city anyway, that's the important thing. It's one of the best bays on this stretch of the coast, so it's bound to be used as a harbor. So you wouldn't get the kind of capital city that just sits in the middle of nowhere, like Canberra or Brasilia, or Washington, D.C. It'll have a whole other life as a seaport."
"That's right. That would be great." Nadia walked on, excited as she thought about it, feeling better than she had in months. The movement to establish a capital somewhere else than Sheffield was strong, supported by almost every party up there. This bay had already been proposed as a site by the Sabishiians, so it would be a matter of supporting an already-existing idea, rather than forcing a new one on people. The support would be there. And as a public-works project, building it would be something she could take full part in. Part of the gift economy. She might even be able to have an influence on the plan of it. The more she thought about it, the more pleased she got.
They had walked far down the shore of the bay; they turned around and began to walk back to the little settlement. Clouds tumbled over them on a stiff wind. The curve of red land made its greeting to the sea. Just under the cloud layer, a ragged V of honking geese fletched the wind, heading north.
• • •
Later that day, as they flew back to Sheffield, Art picked up her hand and held it, inspecting her new finger. He said slowly, "You know, building a family would also be a very hands-on kind of construction."
"What?"
"And they've got reproduction pretty much figured out."
"What?"
"I said, as long as you're alive, you can pretty much have children, one way or another."
"What?"
"That's what they say. If you wanted to, you could do it."
"No."
"That's what they say."
"No."
"It's a good idea."
"No."
"Well, you know, even building . . . it's great, sure, but you can only go on plumbing for so long. Plumbing, hammering nails, bulldozing--- it's all interesting enough, of course, I guess, but still. We have a lot of time to fill. And the only work really interesting enough to pursue over the long haul would be raising a kid, don't you think?"
"No I do not!"
"But did you ever have a kid?"
"No."
"Well there you go."
"Oh God."
Her ghost finger was tingling. But now it was really there.
The Green and the White
Prologue
Cadres came to the town Xiazha, in Guangzhou, and said, For the good of China we need you to recreate this village on Moon Plateau, Mars. You'll go there together, the whole village. You'll have your family and your friends and neighbors with you. Ten thousand of you all together. In ten years if you decide you want to come back, you can, and replacements will be sent to the new Xiazha. We think you will like it. It's a few kilometers north of the harbor town of Nilokeras, near the Maumee River delta. The land is fertile. There are other Chinese villages already in that region, and Chinese sections in all the big cities. There are many hectares of empty land. The trip can begin in a month--- train to Hong Kong, ferry to Manila, and then up the space elevator into orbit. Six months crossing the space between here and Mars, down their elevator to Pavonis Mons, a party train to Moon Plateau. What do you say? Let's have a unanimous vote and start things off on the right foot.
Later a clerk in the town called up the Praxis office in Hong Kong, and told an operator there what had happened. Praxis Hong Kong sent the information along to Praxis's demographic study group in Costa Rica. A planner there named Amy added the report to a long list of similar reports, and sat thinking for a morning. That afternoon she made a call to Praxis chairman emeritus William Fort, who was surfing a new reef in El Salvador. She described the situation to him. "The blue world is full," he said, "the red world is empty. There's going to be problems. Let's talk about them."
The demographics group and part of the Praxis policy team, including many of the Eighteen Immortals, gathered in Fort's hillside surf camp. The demographers laid out the situation. "Everyone is getting the longevity treatment now," Amy said. "We are fully into the hypermalthusian age."
It was a demographically explosive situation. Naturally emigration to Mars was often seen by Terran government planners as one solution to the problem. Even with its new ocean, Mars still had almost as much land area as Earth, and hardly any people. The really populous nations, Amy told the group, were already sending up as many people as they could. Often the emigrants were members of ethnic or religious minorities who were dissatified with their lack of autonomy in their home countries, and so were happy to leave. In India the elevator cars of the cable that touched down at Suvadiva Atoll, south of the Maldives, were constantly at capacity, full of emigrants all day every day, a stream of Sikhs and Kashmiris and Muslims and also Hindus, ascending into space and moving to Mars. There were Zulus from South Africa. Palestinians from Israel. Kurds from Turkey. Native Americans from the United States. "In that sense," Amy said, "Mars is becoming the new America."
"And like the old America," a woman named Elizabeth added, "there's a native population already there to be impacted. Think about the numbers for a while. If every day the cars of all the space elevators on Earth are full, then that's a hundred people per car, therefore twenty-four hundred per day per elevator taking off, and a different twenty-four hundred leaving the cars at the top of each elevator, and transferring into shuttles. There are ten elevators, so that's twenty-four thousand people a day. Therefore eight million seven hundred and sixty thousand people every year."
"Call it ten million a year," Amy said. "That's a lot, but at that rate it will still take a century to transfer just one of Earth's sixteen billions to Mars. Which won't make any difference here to speak of. So it doesn't really make sense! No major relocation is possible. We can never move a significant fraction of the Terran population to Mars. We have to keep our attention on solving Earth's problems at home. Mars's presence can only help as a kind of psychological vent. In essence, we're on our own."
William Fort said, "It doesn't have to make sense."
"That's right," said Elizabeth. "Lots of Terran governments are trying it, whether it makes sense or not. China, India, Indonesia, Brazil--- they're all going for it, and if they keep emigration at the system's capacity, Mars's population will double in about two years. So nothing changes on Earth, but Mars is totally inundated."
One of the Immortals noted that an emigration surge of a similar scale had helped to cause the first Martian revolution.
"What about the Earth--- Mars treaty," someone else asked. "I thought it specifically forbade such overwhelming influxes."
"It does," Elizabeth said. "It specifies no more than ten percent of the Martian population to be added every Terran year. But it also states that Mars should take more if they can."
"Besides," Amy said, "since when have treaties ever stopped governments from doing what they wanted to do?"
William Fort said, "We'll have to send them somewhere else."
The others looked at him.
"Where?" said Amy.
No one replied. Fort waved a hand vaguely.
"We'd better think of somewhere," Elizabeth said grimly. "The Chinese and Indians have been good allies of the Martians, so far, and even they aren't paying much attention to the treaty. I was sent a tape recording of an Indian policy meeting about this, and they spoke about running their program at capacity for a couple of centuries, and then seeing where they stand."
The elevator car descended and Mars grew huge beneath their feet. Finally they slowed down, low over Sheffield, and everything felt normal, Martian gravity again, without the Coriolis force pulling reality to the side. And then they were in the Socket, and back home.
Friends, reporters, delegations, Mangalavid. In Sheffield itself people hurried about their business. Occasionally Nirgal was recognized, and waved at happily; some even stopped to shake his hand, or give him a hug, inquiring about his trip or his health. "We're glad you're back!"
Still, in most people's eyes . . . Illness was so rare. Quite a few looked away. Magical thinking: Nirgal saw suddenly that for many people the longevity treatments equaled immortality. They did not want to think otherwise; they looked away.
But Nirgal had seen Simon die even though Simon's bones had been stuffed with Nirgal's young marrow. He had felt his body unravel, felt the pain in his lungs, in every cell of him. He knew death was real. Immortality had not come to them, and never would. Delayed senescence, Sax called it. Delayed senescence, that was all it was; Nirgal knew that. And people saw that knowledge in him, and recoiled. He was unclean, and they looked away. It made him angry.
• • •
He took the train down to Cairo, looking out at the vast tilted desert of east Tharsis, so dry and ferric, the Ur landscape of red Mars: his land. His eyes felt it. His brain and body glowed with that recognition. Home.
But the faces on the train, looking at him and then looking away. He was the man who had not been able to adjust to Earth. The home world had nearly killed him. He was an alpine flower, unable to withstand the true world, an exotic to whom Earth was like Venus. This is what their eyes were saying with their darting glances. Eternal exile.
Well, that was the Martian condition. One out of every five hundred Martian natives who visited Earth died; it was one of the most dangerous things a Martian could do, more dangerous than cliff flying, visiting the outer solar system, childbirth. A kind of Russian roulette, with lots of empty chambers in the gun to be sure, but the full one was full.
And he had dodged it. Not by much, but he had dodged it. He was alive, he was home! These faces in the train, what did they know? They thought he had been defeated by Earth; but they also thought he was Nirgal the Hero, who had never been defeated before--- they thought he was a story, an idea only. They didn't know about Simon or Jackie or Dao, or Hiroko. They didn't know anything about him. He was twenty-six m-years old now, a middle-aged man who had suffered all that any middle-aged man might suffer--- death of parents, death of love, betrayal of friends, betrayal by friends. These things happen to everyone. But that wasn't the Nirgal that people wanted.
The train skirted the first curved head walls of the Labyrinth of Night's sapped canyons, and soon it floated into Cairo's old station. Nirgal walked out into the tented town, looking around curiously. It had been a metanat stronghold, and he had never been in it before; interesting to see the little old buildings. The physical plant had been damaged by the Red Army in the revolution, and was still marked by broken black walls. People waved at him as he walked down the broad central boulevard to the city offices.
And there she was, in the concourse of the town hall, by the window walls overlooking the U of Nilus Noctis. Nirgal stopped, breath short. She had not yet seen him. Her face was rounder but otherwise she was as tall and sleek as ever, dressed in a green silk blouse and a darker green skirt of some coarser material, her black hair a shiny mane spilling down her back. He could not stop looking at her.
Then she saw him, and flinched ever so slightly. Perhaps the wrist images had not been enough to tell her how much the Terran illness had hurt him. Her hands extended on their own recognizance, and then she followed them, hands still out even while her eyes were calculating, her grimace at his appearance carefully rearranged for the cameras that were always around her. But he loved her for those hands. He could feel the warmth of his face, blushing as they kissed, cheek to cheek like friendly diplomats. Up close she still looked fifteen m-years old, just past the unblemished bloom of youth--- at that point that is even more beautiful than youth. People said she had taken the treatment from the age of ten.
"It's true then," she said, "Earth almost killed you."
"A virus, actually."
She laughed, but her eyes kept their calculating look. She took him by the arm, led him back to her entourage like a blind man. Though he knew several of them she made introductions anyway, just to emphasize how much the inner circle of the party had changed since he had left. But of course he could not notice that, and so he was busy being cheerful when the proceedings were interrupted by a great wail. There was a baby among them.
"Ah," Jackie said, checking her wrist. "She's hungry. Come meet my daughter." She walked over to a woman holding a swaddled babe. The girl was a few months old, fat-jowled, darker-skinned than Jackie, her whole face bright with squalling. Jackie took her from the woman and carried her off into an adjacent room.
Nirgal, left standing there, saw Tiu and Rachel and Frantz next to the window. He went over to them, glanced in Jackie's direction; they rolled their eyes, shrugged. Jackie wasn't saying who the father was, Rachel said in a quick undertone. It was not unique behavior; many women from Dorsa Brevia had done the same.
The woman who had been holding the girl came out and told Nirgal that Jackie would like to speak with him. He followed the woman into the next room.
The room had a picture window overlooking Nilus Noctis. Jackie was seated in a window seat, nursing the child and looking at the view. The child was hungry; eyes closed, latched on, sucking hard, squeaking. Tiny fists clenched in some kind of arboreal remnant behavior, clutching to branch or fur. That was all culture, right there in that clutch.
Jackie was issuing instructions, to aides both in the room and on her wrist. "No matter what they say in Bern, we need to have the flexibility to dampen the quotas if we need to. The Indians and Chinese will just have to get used to it."
Some things began to clarify for Nirgal. Jackie was on the executive council, but the council was not particularly powerful. She was also still one of the leaders of the Free Mars party; and although Free Mars might have less influence on the planet, as power shifted out into the tents, in Earth--- Mars relations it had the potential to become a determining body. Even if it only coordinated policy, it would gain all the power that a coordinator could command, which was considerable--- it was all the power Nirgal had ever had, after all. In many situations such coordination could be the equivalent of making Mars's Terran policy, as all the local governments attended to their local concerns, and the global legislature was more and more dominated by a Free Mars--- led supermajority. And of course there was a sense in which the Earth--- Mars relationship had the potential to dwarf everything else. So that Jackie might be on the way to becoming an interplanetary power. . . .
Nirgal's attention returned to the baby at her breast. The princess of Mars. "Have a seat," Jackie said, indicating the bench beside her with her head. "You look tired."
"I'm fine," Nirgal said, but sat. Jackie looked up at one of the aides and jerked her head to the side, and very soon they were alone in the room with the infant.
"The Chinese and Indians are thinking of this as empty new land," Jackie said. "You can see it in everything they say. They're too damned friendly."
"Maybe they like us," Nirgal said. Jackie smiled, but he went on: "We helped them get the metanats off their backs. And they can't be thinking of moving their excess population here. There's just too many of them for emigration to make any difference."
"Maybe so, but they can dream. And with space elevators they can send a steady stream. It adds up quicker than you would think."
Nirgal shook his head. "It'll never be enough."
"How do you know? You didn't go to either place."
"A billion is a big number, Jackie. Too big a number for us to properly imagine. And Earth has got seventeen billion. They can't send a significant fraction of that number here, there aren't the shuttles to do it."
"They might try anyway. The Chinese flooded Tibet with Han Chinese, and it didn't do a thing to relieve their population problems, but they kept doing it anyway."
Nirgal shrugged. "Tibet is right there. We'll keep our distance."
"Yes," Jackie said impatiently, "but that's not going to be easy when there is no we. If they go out to Margaritifer, and cut a deal with the Arab caravans out there, who's going to stop it from happening?"
"The environmental courts?"
Jackie blew air between her lips, and the baby pulled off and whimpered. Jackie shifted the infant to the other breast. Blue-veined olive curve. "Antar doesn't think the environmental courts will be able to function for long. We had a fight with them while you were gone, and we only went along with them to give the process a chance, but they made no sense and they had no teeth. And everything everyone does has an environmental impact, so supposedly they should be judging everything. But tents are coming down in the lower elevations and not one in a hundred is going to the courts to ask permission for what they do once their town is part of the outside. Why should they? Everyone is an ecopoet now. No. The court system isn't going to work."
"You can't be sure," Nirgal said. "So is Antar the father, then?"
Jackie shrugged.
Anyone could be the father--- Antar, Dao, Nirgal himself, hell John Boone could be, if any sample of his sperm had happened to be still in storage. That would be like Jackie; except she would have told everyone. She shifted the infant's head toward her.
"Do you really think it's all right to raise a fatherless child?"
"That's how you were raised, right? And I had no mother. We were all one-parent children."
"But was that good?"
"Who knows?"
There was a look on Jackie's face that Nirgal could not read, her mouth just slightly tight with resentment, defiance . . . impossible to say. She knew who both her parents were, but only one had stuck around, and Kasei had not been much around at that. And killed in Sheffield, in part because of the brutal response to the Red assault that Jackie herself had advocated.
She said, "You didn't know about Coyote until you were six or seven, isn't that right?"
"True, but not right."
"What?"
"It wasn't right." And he looked her in the eye.
But she looked away, down at the baby. "Better than having your parents tearing each other up in front of you."
"Is that what you would do with the father?"
"Who knows?"
"So it's safer this way."
"Maybe it is. Certainly there's a lot of women doing it this way."
"In Dorsa Brevia."
"Everywhere. The biological family isn't really a Martian institution, is it."
"I don't know." Nirgal considered it. "Actually, I saw a lot of families in the canyons. We come from an unusual group in that respect."
"In many respects."
Her child pulled away, and Jackie tucked her breast in her bra and let down her shirt. "Marie?" she called, and her assistant entered. "I think her diaper needs changing." And she handed the infant up to the woman, who left without a word.
"Servants now?" Nirgal said.
Jackie's mouth went tight again, and she stood, calling "Mem?"
Another woman came in, and Jackie said, "Mem, we're going to have to meet with those environmental court people about this Chinese request. It could be that we can use it as leverage to get the Cairo water allotment reconsidered."
Mem nodded and left the room.
"You just make the decisions?" Nirgal said.
Jackie dismissed him with a wave of the hand. "Nice to have you back, Nirgal, but try to catch up, all right?"
• • •
Catch up. Free Mars was now a political party, the biggest on Mars. It had not always been that way; it had begun as something more like a network of friends, or the part of the underground that lived in the demimonde. Mostly ex-students of the university in Sabishii, or, later, the members of a very loose association of communities in the tented canyons, and in clandestine clubs in the cities, and so forth. A kind of vague umbrella term for those sympathetic to the underground, but not followers of any more specific political movement or philosophy. Just something they said, in fact---"free Mars."
In many ways it had been Nirgal's creation. So many of the natives had been interested in autonomy, and the various issei parties, based on the thoughts of one early settler or another, did not appeal to them; they had wanted something new. And so Nirgal had traveled around the planet, and stayed with people who organized meetings or discussions, and this had gone on for so long that eventually people wanted a name. People wanted names for things.
And so, Free Mars. And in the revolution it had become a rallying point for the natives, rising up out of society as a kind of emergent phenomenon, with many more people declaring themselves members than one would have guessed possible. Millions. The native majority. The very definition of the revolution, in fact; the main reason for its success. Free Mars as a sentence, an imperative; and they had done it.
But then Nirgal had left for Earth, determined to make their case there. And while he was gone, during the constitutional congress, Free Mars had gone from a movement to an organization. That was fine, it was the normal course of events, a necessary part of institutionalizing their independence. No one could complain about it, or moan for the good old days, without revealing nostalgia for a heroic age that had not actually been heroic--- or, along with heroic, had been also suppressed, limited, inconvenient and dangerous. No, Nirgal had no desire for nostalgia--- the meaning of life lay not in the past but in the present, not in resistance but in expression. No--- he did not want it to be like it had been before. He was happy they were in control (at least partially) of their fate. That wasn't the problem. Nor was he bothered by the tremendous growth in the numbers of supporters Free Mars had. The party seemed on the edge of becoming a supermajority, with three of the seven executive councillors coming from the party leadership, and most other global positions filled by other members. And now a fair percentage of new emigrants were joining the party--- and old emigrants as well--- and natives who had supported smaller parties before the revolution--- and, last but not least, quite a few people who had supported the UNTA regime, and were now looking for the new power to follow. All in all, it made for a huge group. And in the first years of a new socioeconomic order, this massing of political power, of opinion and belief, had some advantages, no doubt about it. They could get things done.
But Nirgal wasn't sure he wanted to be part of it.
• • •
One day walking the city wall, looking out through the tenting, he watched a group of people standing on a launchpad at the edge of the cliff, west of town. There were a number of different kinds of single-flier craft: gliders and ultralites that were shot out of a slingshot launcher, and rose inside the thermals that formed in the mornings; smaller hang gliders; and then a variety of new one-person aircraft, which looked like small gliders connected to the undersides of small blimps. These fliers were only a bit longer than the people who climbed into the slings or seats under the glider's wings. Clearly they were made of ultralight materials; some were transparent and nearly invisible, so that once in the sky it appeared that prone or seated people were floating around on their own. Other machines had been colored, and were visible from kilometers away as strokes of green or blue in the air. The stubby wings had small ultralight jets attached to them, so that the pilots had control of direction and altitude; they were like planes in that respect, but with the added loft of a blimp to make them safer and more versatile; their pilots landed them almost anywhere, and it looked impossible to dive them--- to crash, in other words.
The hang gliders, on the other hand, looked as dangerous as ever. The people who used those were the rowdiest members of the flying crowd, Nirgal could see when he went out there--- thrill seekers who ran off the edge of the cliff shouting in an adrenalated exhilaration that crackled over the intercoms--- they were running off a cliff, after all, and no matter what rig they were strapped to, their bodies still saw what was happening. No wonder their shouts had that special ring!
Nirgal got on the subway and went out to the launchpad, drawn by some quality of the sight. All those people, free in the sky. . . . He was recognized, of course, he shook hands; and accepted an invitation from a group of fliers to go up and see what it was like. The hang gliders offered to teach him to fly, but he laughed and said he would try the little blimpgliders first. There was a two-person blimpglider tethered there, slightly larger than the rest, and a woman named Monica invited him up, fueled the thing, and sat him beside her; and up the launch mast they went, to be released with a jerk into the strong downslope afternoon winds and over the city, now revealed as a small tent filled with greenery, perched on the edge of the northwestern-most of the network of canyons etching the slope of Tharsis.
Flying over Noctis Labyrinthus! The wind keened over the blimp's taut transparent material, and they bounced unpredictably up and down on the wind, while also rotating horizontally in what seemed an uncontrolled spin; but then Monica laughed and began manipulating the controls before her, and quickly they were proceeding south across the labyrinth, over canyon after canyon making their irregular X intersections. Then over the Compton Chaos, and the torn land of the Illyrian Gate, where it dropped into the upper end of the Marineris Glacier.
"These things' jets are much more powerful than they need to be," Monica told him through their headphones. "You can make headway into the wind until it reaches something like two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, although you wouldn't want to try that. You also use the jets to counteract the blimp's loft, to get us back down. Here, try it. That's left jet throttle, that's right, and here are the stabilizers. The jets are dead easy, it's using the stabilizer that needs some practicing."
In front of Nirgal was a complete second set of controls. He put his hands on the jet throttles, gave them pushes. The blimp veered right, then left. "Wow."
"It's fly by wire, so if you tell it to do something disastrous, it'll just cut out."
"How many hours flying time do you need to learn this?"
"You're doing it already, right?" She laughed. "No, it takes a hundred hours or so. Depends on what you mean by knowing how to do it. There's the death mesa between a hundred hours and a thousand hours, after people have relaxed and before they're really good, so that they get into trouble. But that's mostly hang gliders anyway. With these, the simulators are just like the real thing, so you can put in your hours on those, and then when you're actually up here you'll have it wired even though you haven't officially reached the flying time limit."
"Interesting!"
And it was. The intersecting sapped canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, lying under them like an enormous maze; the sudden lifts and drops as the winds tossed them; the loud keening of the wind over their partially enclosed gondola seats. . . . "It's like becoming a bird!"
"Exactly."
And some part of him saw it was going to be all right. The heart is pleased by one thing after another.
• • •
After that he spent time in a flight simulator in the city, and several times a week he made a date with Monica or one of her friends, and went out to the cliff's edge for another lesson. It was not a complicated business, and soon he felt that he could try a flight on his own. They cautioned him to be patient. He kept at it. The simulators felt very much like the real thing; if you tested them by doing something foolish, the seat would tilt and bounce very convincingly. More than once he was told the story of the person who had taken an ultralite into such a disastrous death spiral that the simulator had torn off its mountings and crashed through the glass wall next to it, cutting some bystanders and breaking the flier's arm.
Nirgal avoided that kind of error, and most others as well. He went to Free Mars meetings in the city offices almost every morning, and flew every afternoon. As the days passed he discovered that he was dreading the morning meetings; he only wanted to fly. He had not founded Free Mars, no matter what they said. Whatever he had been doing in those years, it was not politics, not like this. Maybe it had had a political element to it, but mostly he had been living his life, and talking to people in the demimonde and the surface cities about how to live theirs and still have some freedoms, some pleasures. Okay, it had been political, everything was; but it seemed he was not really interested in politics. Or perhaps it was government.
It was particularly uninteresting, of course, when dominated by Jackie and her crew. That was politics of a different kind. He had seen from his first moment back that for Jackie's inner circle, his return from Earth was no welcome thing. He had been gone for most of an m-year, and during that time a whole new group had risen to the fore, vaulted by the revolution. Nirgal to them was a threat to Jackie's control of the party, and to their influence on Jackie. They were firmly if subtly against him. No. For a time he had been the natives' leader, the charismatic of the tribe made up of the indigenous people of Mars--- son of Hiroko and Coyote, a very potent mythic parentage--- very hard to oppose. But that time had passed. Now Jackie was in control; and against him she had her own mythic parentage, her descent from John Boone, as well as their shared Zygote beginnings, and also the (partial) backing of the Minoan cult in Dorsa Brevia.
Not to mention her direct power over him, in their own intense dynamic. But her advisers could not understand that, or even fully be aware of it. To them he was a threatening power, by no means finished because of his Terran illness. A threat forever to their native queen.
So he sat through morning meetings in the city offices, trying to ignore their little maneuverings, trying to focus on the issues coming in from all over the planet, many of them having to do with land problems or wrangles. Many tent towns wanted to take down their tents when air pressures made it possible, and hardly any of them were willing to concede that this was an operation in which the environmental courts had a say. Some areas were arid enough that water was the critical issue, and their requests for a water allotment were pouring in, until it seemed that the northern sea could be drawn down a kilometer merely by pumping it out to thirsty cities in the south. These and a thousand more matters tested the constitution's many networks for connecting local autonomy to global considerations; the debates would go on forever.
Nirgal, while fundamentally uninterested in most of these wrangles, found them yet preferable to the party politics he saw going on in Cairo. He had come back from Earth without any official position in the new government or the old party, and one thing he saw going on these days was the struggle to place him--- to give him a job with limited power, or, for his backers (or rather Jackie's opponents) to put him in a position with some real power to it. Some friends advised him to wait and run for the senate when the next elections came, others mentioned the executive council, others party positions, others a post on the GEC. All these jobs sounded awful to Nirgal in one way or another, and when he talked to Nadia on the screens, he could see that he would find them a burden; though she seemed to be hammering away stolidly enough, it was obvious the executive council was distasteful to her. But he kept a straight face and listened closely as people offered their advice.
Jackie herself kept her own council. In meetings where people suggested that Nirgal become a kind of minister-without-portfolio, she regarded him more blankly than usual, which led Nirgal to think that she liked that possibility least of all. She wanted him pinned into some position, which given her current post could not help but be inferior to hers. But if he stayed outside the system entirely. . . .
There she sat, the infant in her arms. It could be his child. And Antar watched her with the same expression, the same thought. No doubt Dao would have as well, if he were still alive. Nirgal was suddenly shaken by a spasm of grief for his half brother, his tormentor, his friend--- he and Dao had fought for as far back as he could remember, but they had been brothers for all that.
Jackie had apparently forgotten Dao already, and Kasei as well. As she would forget Nirgal, if he should happen to get killed. She had been among the greens who had ordered the crushing of the Red assault on Sheffield, she had advocated the strong response. Perhaps she had to forget the dead.
The infant cried. Face rounded by fat, it was impossible to see any resemblance to any adult. The mouth looked like Jackie's. Other than that . . . it was frightening, this power created by anonymous parenting. Of course a man could do the same, obtain an egg, grow it by ectogenesis, raise it himself. No doubt it would begin to happen, especially if many women took Jackie's route. A world without parents. Well, friends were the real family; but he shuddered nevertheless at what Hiroko had done, what Jackie was doing.
He went flying to clear his mind of all that. One night after a glorious flight in the clouds, sitting in the launchpad pub, the conversation turned and someone mentioned Hiroko's name. "I hear she's on Elysium," someone said, "working on a new commune of communes up there."
"How did you hear?" Nirgal demanded of the woman, somewhat sharply no doubt.
Surprised, she said, "You know those fliers who dropped in last week who are flying around the world? They were on Elysium last month, and they said they saw her there." She shrugged. "That's all I know. Not much by way of confirmation, I know."
Nirgal sat back in his seat. Always thirdhand information. Some of the stories, however, seemed so like Hiroko; and a few, too Hiroko-like to have been made up. Nirgal did not know what to think. Very few people seemed to think she was dead. Sightings of the rest of her group were reported as well.
"They just wish she were here," Jackie said when Nirgal mentioned it the next day.
"Don't you wish it?"
"Of course"---(though she didn't)---"but not enough to make up stories about it."
"You really think they're all made up? I mean, who would do that? What would they be telling themselves when they did it? It doesn't make sense."
"People don't make sense, Nirgal. You have to learn that. People see an elderly Japanese woman somewhere, they think, that looks like Hiroko. That night they tell their roommates, I think I saw Hiroko today. She was down in the marketplace buying plums. The roommate goes to his construction site, says my roommate saw Hiroko yesterday, buying plums!"
Nirgal nodded. It was no doubt true, at least for most of the stories. For the rest, though, the few that didn't fit that pattern. . . .
"Meanwhile, you have to make a decision about this environmental-court position," Jackie said. It was a province court, one below the global court. "We can arrange it so that Mem gets a position in the party that will actually be more influential, or you could take that one if you wanted, or both, I suppose. But we have to know."
"Yeah yeah."
People came in wanting to talk about something else, and Nirgal withdrew to the window, near the nurse and the infant. He was not interested in what they were doing, not any of it--- it was both ugly and abstract, a continuous manipulation of people devoid of any of the tangible rewards that so much work had. That's politics, Jackie would say. And it was clear she enjoyed it. But Nirgal did not. It was strange; he had worked all his life for this situation, ostensibly, and now that it was here, he did not like it.
Very possibly he could learn enough to do the work. He would have to overcome the hostility of the people who didn't want him back in the party, he would have to build his own power base, meaning collecting a group of people who would help him in their official positions; do them favors; curry their favor; play them off against each other, so that each would do his bidding in order to establish preeminence over the others. . . . He could see all these processes at work right there in this very room, as Jackie met with one adviser after the next, discussing whatever issue happened to be their bailiwick, then working them to establish more firmly their allegiance to her. Of course, she would say if he pointed out this process. That was politics; they were in control of Mars now, and this work had to be done if they were to create the new world they had hoped for. One couldn't be overfastidious, one had to be realistic, you held your nose and did it. It had a certain nobility to it, really. It was the necessary work.
Nirgal didn't know if those justifications were true or not. Had they really worked all their lives to overthrow Terran domination of Mars, only in order to put in place their own local version of the same thing? Could politics ever be anything but politics, practical, cynical, compromised, ugly?
He did not know. He sat in the window seat, looking down at Jackie's daughter's face, sleeping. Across the room Jackie was intimidating the Free Mars delegates from Elysium. Now that Elysium was an island surrounded by the northern sea, they were more determined than ever to take control of their fate, including immigration limits that would keep the massif from developing much past its current state. "All very well," Jackie was saying, "but it's a very large island now, a continent really, surrounded by water so that it will be especially humid, with a coastline of thousands of kilometers, lots of fine harbor sites, fishing harbors no doubt. I can sympathize with your desire to keep a hand on development, we all feel that, but the Chinese have expressed a particular interest in developing some of these sites, and what am I supposed to say to them? That the Elysian locals don't like Chinese? That we'll take their help in a crisis, but we don't want them moving into the neighborhood?"
"It's not that they're Chinese!" the delegate said.
"I understand. Really I do. Tell you what--- you go back to South Fossa and explain the difficulties we face here, and I'll do everything I can here to help you. I can't guarantee results, but I'll do what I can."
"Thanks," the delegate said, and left.
Jackie turned to her assistant. "Idiot. Who's next. Ah, naturally; the Chinese ambassador. Well, let him in."
The Chinese, a woman, was quite tall. She spoke in Mandarin, and her AI translated into a clear British English. After an exchange of pleasantries, the woman asked about establishing some Chinese settlements, preferably somewhere in the equatorial provinces.
Nirgal stared, fascinated. This was how settlements had been started from the very beginning; groups of Terran nationals had come up, and built a tent town or a cliff dwelling, or domed a crater. . . . Now, however, Jackie looked polite and said, "It's possible. Everything of course will have to be referred to the environmental courts for judgment. However, there is a great deal of empty land on the Elysium massif. Perhaps something could be arranged there, especially if China was willing to contribute to infrastructure and mitigation and the like."
They discussed details. After a while the ambassador left.
Jackie turned to look at Nirgal. "Nirgal, could you get Rachel in here? And try to decide what you're going to do soon, please?"
Nirgal walked out of the building, through the city to his room. He packed his little collection of clothes and toiletries, and took the subway out to the launching pad, and asked Monica for the use of one of the single-person blimpgliders. He was ready for soloing, he had put in enough hours in simulators and with teachers. There was another flight school down in Marineris, on Candor Mensa. He talked to the school officials on the launchpad; they were willing to let him take the blimpglider down there, and have it returned by another flier later.
It was midday. The Tharsis downslope winds had started, and would only get stronger as the afternoon progressed. Nirgal suited up, got into the pilot's seat. The little blimpglider slid up the launching mast, held by the nose; and was let free.
He rose over Noctis Labyrinthus, turned east. He flew east over the maze of interlocking canyons. A land split open by stress from below. Flight out of the labyrinth. An Icarus who had flown too close to the sun, gotten burned, survived the fall--- and now flew again, this time down, down, down, ever down. Taking advantage of a hard tailwind. Riding a gale, shooting down over the shattered dirty ice field that marked Compton Chaos, where the great channel outbreak had begun in 2061. That immense flood had run down Ius Chasma; but Nirgal angled north, away from the glacier's flow, and then flew east again, down into the head of Tithonium Chasma, which paralleled Ius Chasma just to the north.
Tithonium was one of the deepest and narrowest of the Marineris canyons--- four kilometers deep, ten wide. He could fly well below the level of the plateau rims and still be thousands of meters over the canyon floor. Tithonium was higher than Ius, wilder, untouched by human hands, seldom traveled in, because it was a dead end to the east, where it narrowed and became rough-floored as it got shallower, then abruptly stopped. Nirgal spotted the road that switchbacked up the eastern head wall, a road he had traveled a few times in his youth, when all the planet had been his home.
The afternoon sun dipped behind him. The shadows on the land lengthened. The wind continued to blow strong, thrumming over the blimpglider, whining and whooshing and keening. It blew him over the caprock of the rim plateau again, as Tithonium became a string of oval depressions, pocking the plateau one after the next: the Tithonia Catena, each dip a giant bowl-shaped depression in the land.
And then suddenly the world dropped away again, and he flew out over the immense open canyon of Candor Chasma, Shining Canyon, the ramparts of its eastern wall in fact shining at that very moment, amber and bronze in the sunset's light. To the north was the deep entrance to Ophir Chasma, to the south the spectacular buttress-walled opening down to Melas Chasma, the central giant of the Marineris system. It was Mars's version of Concordiaplatz, he saw, but much bigger than Earth's, wilder, looking untouched, primal, gigantic beyond all human scale, as if he had flown back two centuries into the past, or two eons, to a time before the anthropogenesis. Red Mars!
And there out in the middle of broad Candor was a tall diamond mesa, a caprock island standing nearly two kilometers above the canyon floor. And in the sunset's hazy gloom Nirgal could make out a nest of lights, a tent town, at the southernmost point of the diamond. Voices welcomed him over the common band on his intercom, then guided him in to the town's landing pad. The sun was winking out over the cliffs to the west as he brought the blimpglider around and descended slowly into the wind, putting it down right on the figure of Kokopelli painted as a target on the landing pad.
Shining Mesa had a large top, more a kite shape than a diamond proper, thirty kilometers long and ten wide, standing in the middle of Candor Chasma like a Monument Valley mesa writ large. The tent town occupied only a small rise on the southern point of the kite. The mesa was just what it appeared to be, a detached fragment of the plateau that the Marineris canyons had split. It was a tremendous vantage point for viewing the great walls of Candor, with views through the deep, steep gaps into Ophir Chasma to the north and Melas Chasma to the south.
Naturally such a spectacular prospect had attracted people over the years, and the main tent was surrounded by new smaller ones. At five kilometers above the datum, the town was still tented, though there was talk of removing it. The floor of Candor Chasma, only three kilometers above the datum, was patched with growing dark green forests. Many of the people who lived on Shining Mesa flew down into the canyons every morning to farm or botanize, floating back up to the mesa's top in the late afternoons. A few of these flying foresters were old underground acquaintances of Nirgal's, and they were pleased to take him along and show him the canyons, and what they did in them.
The Marineris canyon floors generally run down west to east. In Candor, they curved around the great central mesa, then fell precipitously south into Melas. Snow lay on the higher parts of the floor, especially under the western walls where shadows lay in the afternoon. Meltwater from this snow ran down in a faint tracery of new watersheds, made up of sandy braided streambeds that ran together into a few shallow muddy red rivers, which collected at a confluence just above the Candor Gap, and poured down in a wild foaming rapids to the floor of Melas Chasma, where it pooled against the remnant of the 61 glacier, running redly against its northern flank.
On the banks of all these opaque red streams, forest galleries were springing up. They consisted in most places of cold-hardened balsas and other very rapidly growing tropical trees, creating new canopies over older krummholz. These days it was warm on the canyon floor, which was like a big sun-reflecting bowl, protected from the wind. The balsa canopies were allowing a great number of plant and animal species to flourish underneath them; Nirgal's acquaintances said it was the most diverse biotic community on Mars. They had to carry sedative dart guns now when they landed and walked around, because of bears, snow leopards, and other predators. Walking through some of the galleries was becoming difficult because of thickets of snow bamboo and aspen.
All this growth had been aided by huge deposits of sodium nitrate that had been lying in Candor and Ophir canyons--- great white bench terraces made of extremely water-soluble caliche blanco. These mineral deposits were now melting over the canyon floors and running down the streams, providing the new soils with lots of nitrogen. Unfortunately some of the biggest nitrate deposits were being buried under landslides--- the water that was dissolving the sodium nitrate was also hydrating the canyon walls, destabilizing them in a radical acceleration of the mass wasting that went on all the time. No one went near the foot of the canyon walls anymore, the fliers said: too dangerous. And as they soared around in their blimpgliders, Nirgal saw the scars of landslides everywhere. Several high talus plant slopes had been buried, and wall-fixing methods were one of the many topics of conversation in the mesa evenings, after the omegandorph got into the blood; in fact there was little they could do. If chunks of a ten-thousand-foot-high wall of rock wanted to give way, nothing was going to stop them. So from time to time, about once a week or so, everyone on Shining Mesa would feel the ground quiver, watch the tent shimmer, and hear in the pit of the stomach the low rumble of a collapse. Often it was possible to spot the slide, rolling across the canyon floor ahead of a sienna billow of dust. Fliers in the air nearby would come back shaken and silent, or voluble with tales of being slapped across the sky by earsplitting roars. One day Nirgal was about halfway down to the floor when he felt one himself: it was like a sonic boom that went on for many seconds, the air quivering like a gel. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Mostly he explored on his own, sometimes he flew with his old acquaintances. Blimpgliders were perfect for the canyon, slow and steady, easy to steer. More loft than was needed, more power . . . the one he had rented (using money from Coyote) allowed him to drift down in the mornings to help botanize in the forests, or walk by the streams; then float back up through the afternoons, up and up and up and up. This was when one got a true sense of just how tall Candor Mesa was, and the even taller canyon walls--- up up and up and up, to the tent and its long meals, its party nights. Day after day Nirgal followed this routine, exploring the various regions of the canyons below, watching the exuberant nightlife in the tent; but seeing everything as if through the wrong end of a telescope, a telescope consisting of the question Is this the life I want to lead? This distancing and somehow miniaturizing question kept returning to him, spurring him by day as he banked in the sunlight, haunting him at night in sleepless hours between the timeslip and dawn. What was he to do? The success of the revolution had left him without a task. All his life he had wandered Mars talking to people about a free Mars, about inhabitation rather than colonization, about becoming indigenous to the land. Now that task was ended, the land was theirs to live on as they chose. But in this new situation he found he did not know his part. He had to think very specifically about how to go on in this new world, no longer as the voice of the collective, but as an individual in his own private life.
He had discovered that he did not want to continue working on the collective; it was good that some people wanted to do it, but he wasn't one of them. In fact he could not think about Cairo without a stab of anger at Jackie, and of simple pain as well--- pain at the loss of that public world, that whole way of life. It was hard to give up being a revolutionary. Nothing seemed to follow from it, either logically or emotionally. But something had to be done. That life was past. In the midst of a banking slow dive in his blimpglider, he suddenly understood Maya and her obsessive talk about incarnations. He was twenty-seven m-years old now, he had crisscrossed all Mars, he had been to Earth, he had returned to a free world. Time for the next metempsychosis.
So he flew around the immensities of Candor, looking for some image of himself. The fractured, layered, scarred canyon walls were so many stupendous mineral mirrors; and indeed he saw clearly that he was a tiny creature, smaller than a gnat in a cathedral. Flying around studying each great palimpsest of facets, he scried two very strong impulses in himself, distinct and mutually exclusive, yet infolded, like the green and the white. On the one hand he wanted to stay a wanderer, to fly and walk and sail over all the world, a nomad forever, wandering ceaselessly until he knew Mars better than anyone else. Ah yes; it was a familiar euphoria. On the other hand it was familiar, he had done that all his life. It would be the form of his previous life, without the content. And he knew already the loneliness of that life, the rootlessness that made him feel so detached, that gave him this wrong-end-of-the-telescope vision. Coming from everywhere he came from nowhere. He had no home. And so now he wanted that home, as much as the freedom or more. A home. He wanted to settle into a full human life, to pick a place and stay there, to learn it completely, in all its seasons, to grow his food, make his house and his tools, become part of a community of friends.
Both these desires existed, strongly and together--- or, to be more exact, in a subtle rapid oscillation, which jangled his emotions, and left him insomniac and restless. He could see no way to reconcile the two. They were mutually exclusive. No one he talked to had any useful suggestions as to how to resolve the difficulty. Coyote was dubious about setting down roots--- but then he was a nomad, and didn't know. Art considered the wandering life impossible; but he was fond of his places now.
Nirgal's nonpolitical training was in mesocosm engineering, but he found that little help to his thinking. At the higher elevations they were always going to be in tents, and mesocosm engineering would be needed; but it was becoming more of a science than an art, and with increasing experience solving the problems would be more and more routinized. Besides, did he want to pursue a tented profession, when so much of the lower planet was becoming land they could walk on?
No. He wanted to live in the open air. To learn a patch of land, its soil and plants and animals and weather and skies, and everything else . . . he wanted that. Part of him. Part of the time.
He began to feel, however, that whatever he chose, Candor Chasma was not the place for the kind of settlement he was thinking of. Its huge vistas made it a hard place to see as home--- it was too vast, too inhuman. The canyon floors were designed and designated as wilderness, and every spring the streams surging with snowmelt would jump their banks, tear new channels, be buried under enormous landslides. Fascinating, all of it. But not home. The locals were going to stay up on Shining Mesa, and only visit the canyon floors during the day. The mesa would be their true home. It was a good plan. But the mesa--- it was an island in the sky, a great tourist destination, a place for flying vacations, for partying through the nights, for expensive hotels, for the young and the in-love . . . all that was fine, wonderful. But crowded, perhaps even overrun--- or else always battling the influx of visitors, and newly settled residents enchanted by the sublime views, people who would arrive like Nirgal himself, dropping in at some dusk in their life and never going away, while the old residents looked on helplessly and grumbled about the good old days when the world had been new, and unoccupied.
No--- that was not the kind of home he had in mind. Although he loved the way dawn flushed the fluted west walls of Candor, flaring all across the Martian spectrum, the sky turning indigo or mauve, or a startling earthly cerulean . . . a beautiful place, so beautiful that on some days as he flew about he felt it would be worth it to stand on Shining Mesa and hold his ground, to try to preserve it, to swoop down and learn the gnarly wilderness floor, float back up every afternoon to dinner. Would that work, make him feel at home? And if wilderness was what he wanted, weren't there other places less spectacular but more remote, thus more wild?
Back and forth he went, back and forth. One day, flying over the foaming opaque series of waterfalls and rapids in the Candor Gap, he remembered that John Boone had been through this area, in a solo rover just after the Transmarineris Highway had been built. What would that master equivocator have said about this amazing region?
Nirgal called up Boone's AI, Pauline, and asked for Candor, and found a voice diary made during a drive through the canyon in 2046. Nirgal let the tape run as he looked down on the land from above, listening to the hoarse voice with the friendly American accent, a voice unselfconscious about talking to an AI. Listening to the voice made Nirgal wish he could really talk to the man. Some people said Nirgal had filled John Boone's empty shoes, that Nirgal had done the work John would have done had he lived. If that were so, what would John have done afterward? How would he have lived?
"This is the most unbelievable country I've ever seen. Really, it's what you think of when you think of Valles Marineris. Back in Melas the canyon was so wide that out in the middle you couldn't see the walls at all, they were under the horizon! This small-planet curvature is producing effects no one ever imagined. All the old simulations lied so bad, the verticals exaggerated by factors of five or ten, as I recall, which made it look like you were down in a slot. It's not a slot. Wow, there's a rock column just like a woman in a toga, Lot's wife I guess that would be. I wonder if it is salt, it's white, but I guess that doesn't mean much. Have to ask Ann. I wonder what those Swiss road builders made of all this when they built this road, it's not very alpine. Kind of like an anti-Alps, down instead of up, red instead of green, basalt instead of granite. Well, but they seemed to like it anyway. Of course they're anti-Swiss Swiss, so it makes a kind of sense. Whoa, pothole country here, the rover is bouncing around. Might try that bench there, it looks smoother than here. Yep, there we go, just like a road. Oh--- it is the road. I guess I got off it a bit, I'm driving manually for the fun of it, but it's hard to keep an eye out for the transponders when there's so much else to look at. The transponders are made more for automatic pilot than the human eye. Hey, there's the break into Ophir Chasma, what a gap! That wall must be, I don't know--- twenty thousand feet tall. My Lord. Since the last one was called Candor Gap, this one should be called Ophir Gap, right? Ophir Gate would be nicer. Let's check the map. Hmm, the promontory on the west side of the gap is called Candor Labes, that's lips, isn't it? Candor Throat. Or, hmm. I don't think so. It's one hell of an opening though. Steep cliffs on both sides, and twenty thousand feet tall. That's about six or seven times as tall as the cliffs in Yosemite. Sheeee-it. They don't look that much taller, to tell the truth. Foreshortening no doubt. They look about twice as tall, or--- who knows. I can't remember what Yosemite really looked like, in terms of size anyway. This is the most amazing canyon you could ever even imagine. Ah, there's Candor Mensa, on my left. This is the first time I could see that it isn't part of the Candor Labes wall. I'll bet that mesa top has one hell of a view. Put a fly-in hotel up there, sure. I wish I could get up there and see it! This would be a fun place to fly around in. Dangerous though. I see dust devils every now and then, vicious little things, real tight and dark. There's a shaft of sunlight there hitting the mesa through the dust. Like a bar of butter hanging in the air. Ah, God, what a beautiful world!"
Nirgal could only agree. It made him laugh to hear the man's voice, and surprised him to hear John talk about flying above. It made him understand a little bit the way the issei talked about Boone, the hurt in them that never went away. How much better it would be to have John here than just these recordings in an AI, what a great adventure it would have been to watch John Boone negotiate Mars's wild history! Saving Nirgal the burden of that role, among other things. As it was, however, they only had that friendly happy voice. And that did not solve his problem.
• • •
Back up on Candor Mesa, the fliers met at night in a ring of pubs and restaurants placed on the high southern arc of their tent wall, where on terraces just inside the tent they could sit and look out at the long views, over the forested world of their domain. Nirgal sat among these people, eating and drinking, listening, sometimes talking, thinking his own thoughts among them, comfortably; they did not care what had happened to him on Earth, they did not care that he was there among them. This was good, as often he was distracted to the point of being oblivious to his surroundings; he would fall into reveries and come out of them, and realize that once again he had been in the steamy streets of Port of Spain, or in the refugee compound in the torrential monsoon. How often he found himself there again; everything that had happened since was so pale by comparison!
But one night he came to from a reverie, having heard some voice say "Hiroko."
"What's that?" he said.
"Hiroko. We met her flying around Elysium, up on its north slope."
It was a young woman speaking, her face innocent of any knowledge of who he was.
"You saw her yourself?" he said sharply.
"Yes. She's not hiding or anything. She said she liked my flier."
"I don't know," an older man said. A Mars vet, an issei immigrant from the early years, his face battered by wind and cosmic rays until it looked like leather. Voice hoarse: "I heard she was down in the chaos where the first hidden colony used to be, working on the new harbors in the south bay."
Other voices cut in: Hiroko had been seen here, had been seen there, had been confirmed dead, had gone to Earth; Nirgal had seen her there on Earth---
"This here's Nirgal," one said to the last comment, pointing and grinning. "He should be able to confirm or deny that one!"
Nirgal, taken aback, nodded. "I didn't see her on Earth," he said. "There were rumors only."
"Same as here, then."
Nirgal shrugged.
The young woman, flushed now that she knew who Nirgal was, insisted she had met Hiroko herself. Nirgal watched her closely. This was different; no one had ever made such a direct claim to him (except in Switzerland). She looked worried, defensive, but was holding her ground. "I talked with her, I say!"
Why lie about something like that? And how would it be possible for someone to get fooled about it? Impersonators? But why do that?
Despite himself Nirgal's pulse had quickened, and he was warmer. The thing was, it was possible Hiroko would do something like this; hide but not hide; live somewhere without bothering to contact the family left behind. There was no obvious motive for it, it would be weird, inhumane, inhuman; and perfectly within Hiroko's range of possibilities. His mother was a kind of insane person, he had understood that for years--- a charismatic who led people effortlessly, but was mad. Capable of almost anything.
If she was alive.
He did not want to hope again. He did not want to go chasing off after the mere mention of her name! But he was watching this girl's face as if he could read the truth from it, as if he could catch the very image of Hiroko still there in her pupils! Others were asking the questions he would have asked, so he could stay silent and listen, he did not have to make her overselfconscious. Slowly she told the whole story; she and some friends had been flying clockwise around Elysium, and when they stopped for the night up on the new peninsula made by the Phlegra Montes, they had walked down to the icy edge of the North Sea where they had spotted a new settlement, and there in the crowd of construction workers was Hiroko; and several of the construction crew were her old associates, Gene, and Rya, and Iwao, and the rest of the First Hundred who had followed Hiroko ever since the days of the lost colony. The flying group had been amazed, but the lost colonists had been faintly perplexed at their amazement. "No one hides anymore," Hiroko had told the young woman, after complimenting her flier. "We spend most of our time near Dorsa Brevia, but we've been up here for months now."
And there it was. The woman seemed perfectly sincere, there was no reason to believe she were lying, or subject to hallucination.
Nirgal didn't want to have to think about this. But he had been considering leaving Shining Mesa anyway, and having a look around at other places. So he could. And--- well--- he was going to have to at least have a look. Shigata ga nai!
• • •
The next day the conversation seemed much less compelling. Nirgal didn't know what to think. He called Sax on the wrist, told him what he had heard. "Is it possible, Sax? Is it possible?"
A strange look passed over Sax's face. "It's possible," he said. "Yes, of course. I told you--- when you were sick, and unconscious--- that she. . . ." He was picking his words, as he so often did, with a squint of concentration. "--- that I saw her myself. In that storm I was caught out in. She led me to my car."
Nirgal stared at the little blinking image. "I don't remember that."
"Ah. I'm not surprised."
"So you . . . you think she escaped from Sabishii."
"Yes."
"But how likely was that?"
"I don't know the--- the likelihood. That would be difficult to judge."
"But could they have slipped away?"
"The Sabishii mohole mound is a maze."
"So you think they escaped."
Sax hesitated. "I saw her. She--- she grabbed my wrist. I have to believe." Suddenly his face twisted. "Yes, she's out there! She's out there! I have no doubt! No doubt! No doubt she's expecting us to come to her."
And Nirgal knew he had to look.
He left Candor Mesa without a good-bye to anyone. His acquaintances there would understand; they often flew away themselves for a time. They would all be back someday, to soar over the canyons and then spend their evenings together on Shining Mesa. And so he left. Down into the immensity of Melas Chasma, then downcanyon again, east into Coprates. For many hours he floated in that world, over the 61 glacier, past embayment after embayment, buttress after buttress, until he was through the Dover Gate and out over the broadening divergence of Capri and Eos chasmas. Then above the ice-filled chaoses, the crackled ice smoother by far than the drowned land below it had been. Then across the rough jumble of Margaritifer Terra, and north, following the piste toward Burroughs; then, as the piste approached Libya Station, he banked off to the northeast, toward Elysium.
The Elysium massif was now a continent in the northern sea. The narrow strait separating it from the southern mainland was a flat stretch of black water and white tabular bergs, punctuated by the stack islands which had been the Aeolis Mensa. The North Sea hydrologists wanted this strait liquid, so that currents could make their way through it from Isidis Bay to Amazonis Bay. To help achieve this liquidity they had placed a nuclear-reactor complex at the west end of the strait, and pumped most of its energy into the water there, creating an artificial polynya where the surface stayed liquid year-round, and a temperate mesoclimate on the slopes on each side of the strait. The reactors' steam plumes were visible to Nirgal from far up the Great Escarpment, and as he floated down the slope he crossed over thickening forests of fir and ginkgo. There was a cable across the western entrance to the strait, emplaced to snag icebergs floating in on the current. He flew directly over the bergjam west of the cable, and looked down on chunks of ice like floating driftglass. Then over the black open water of the strait--- the biggest stretch of open water he had ever seen on Mars. For twenty kilometers he floated over the open water, exclaiming out loud at the sight. Then ahead an immense airy bridge arced over the strait. The black-violet plate of water below it was dotted with sailboats, ferries, long barges, all trailing the white Vs of their wakes. Nirgal floated over them, circling the bridge twice to marvel at the sight--- like nothing he had ever seen on Mars before: water, the sea, a whole future world.
NORTH SEA POLAR PROJECTION
• • •
He continued north, rising over the plains of Cerberus, past the volcano Albor Tholus, a steep ash cone on the side of Elysium Mons. The much bigger Elysium Mons was steep as well, with a Fuji-esque profile that served as the label illustration for many agricultural co-ops in the region. Sprawled over the plain under the volcano were farms, mostly ragged at the edges, often terraced, and usually divided by strips or patches of forest. Young immature orchards dotted the higher parts of the plain, each tree in a pot; closer to the sea were great fields of wheat and corn, cut by windbreaks of olive and eucalyptus. Just ten degrees north of the equator, blessed with rainy mild winters, and then lots of hot sunny days: the people there called it the Mediterranean of Mars.
Farther north Nirgal followed the west coast as it rose up out of a line of foundered icebergs embroidering the edge of the ice sea. As he looked down at the expanse of land below, he had to agree with the general wisdom: Elysium was beautiful. This western coastal strip was the most populated region, he had heard. The coast was fractured by a number of fossae, and square harbors were being built where these canyons plunged into the ice--- Tyre, Sidon, Pyriphlegethon, Hertzka, Morris. Often stone breakwaters stopped the ice, and marinas were in place behind the breakwaters, filled with fleets of small boats, all waiting for open passage.
At Hertzka Nirgal turned east and inland, and flew up the gentle slope of the Elysian massif, passing over garden belts banding the land. Here the majority of Elysium's thousands lived, in intensively cultivated agricultural-residential zones, sloping up into the higher country between Elysium Mons and its northern spur cone, Hecates Tholus. Between the great volcano and its daughter peak, Nirgal flew through the bare rock saddle of the pass, flung like a little cloud by the pass wind.
Elysium's east slope looked nothing like the west; it was bare rough torn rock, heavily sand-drifted, maintained in nearly its primordial condition by the rain shadow of the massif. Only near the eastern coast did Nirgal see greenery below him again, no doubt nourished by trade winds and winter fogs. The towns on the east side were like oases, strung on the thread of an island-circling piste.
At the far northeast end of the island, the ragged old hills of the Phlegra Montes ran far out into the ice, forming a spiny peninsula. Somewhere around here was where that young woman had seen Hiroko. As Nirgal flew up the western side of the Phlegras, it struck him as a likely place to find her; it was a wild and Martian place. The Phlegras, like many of the great mountain ranges of Mars, was the only remaining arc of an ancient impact basin's rim. Every other aspect of that basin had long since disappeared. But the Phlegras still stood as witness to a minute of inconceivable violence--- impact of a hundred-kilometer asteroid, big pieces of the lithosphere melted and shoved sideways, other pieces tossed into the air to fall in concentric rings around the impact point, with much of the rock metamorphosed instantly into minerals much harder than their originals. After that trauma the wind had cut away at things, leaving behind only these hard hills.
There were settlements out here, of course, as there were everywhere, in the sinkholes and dead-end valleys and on the passes overlooking the sea. Isolated farms, villages of ten or twenty or a hundred. It looked like Iceland. There were always people who liked such remote land. One village perched on a flat knob a hundred meters over the sea was called Nuannaarpoq, which was Inuit for "taking extravagant pleasure in being alive." These villagers and all the others in the Phlegras could float to the rest of Elysium on blimps, or walk down to the circum-Elysian piste and catch a ride. For this coast in particular, the nearest town would be a shapely harbor called Firewater, on the west side of the Phlegras where they first became a peninsula. The town stood on a bench at the end of a squarish bay, and when Nirgal spotted it, he descended onto the tiny airstrip at the upper end of town, and then checked into a boardinghouse on the main square, behind the docks standing over the ice-sheeted marina.
In the days that followed, he flew out along the coast in both directions, visiting farm after farm. He met a lot of interesting people, but none of them was Hiroko, or anyone from the Zygote crowd--- not even any of their associates. It was even a little suspicious; a fair number of issei lived in the region, but every one of them denied ever having met Hiroko or any of her group. Yet all of them were farming with great success, in rocky wilderness that did not look easy to farm--- cultivating exquisite little oases of agricultural productivity--- living the lives of believers in viriditas--- but no, never met her. Barely remembered who she was. One ancient geezer of an American laughed in his face. "Whachall think, we got a guru? We gonna lead ya to our guru?"
After three weeks Nirgal had found no sign of her at all. He had to give up on the Phlegra Montes. There was no other choice.
• • •
Ceaseless wandering. It did not make sense to search for a single person over the vast surface of a world. It was an impossible project. But in some villages there were rumors, and sometimes sightings. Always one more rumor, sometimes one good sighting. She was everywhere and nowhere. Many descriptions but never a photo, many stories but never a wrist message. Sax was convinced she was out there, Coyote was sure she wasn't. It didn't matter; if she was out there, she was hiding. Or leading him on a wild-goose chase. It made him angry when he thought of it that way. He would not search for her.
Yet he could not stop moving. If he stayed in one place for more than a week, he began to feel nervous and fretful in a way he had never felt in his life. It was like an illness, with tension everywhere in his muscles, but concentrated in his stomach; an elevated temperature; inability to focus on his thoughts; an urge to fly. And so he would fly, from village to town to station to caravanserai. Some days he let the wind carry him where it would. He had always been a nomad, no reason to stop now. A change in the form of government, why should that make a difference in the way he lived? The winds of Mars were amazing. Strong, irregular, loud, ceaseless live beings, at play.
Sometimes the wind carried him out over the northern sea, and he flew all day and never saw anything but ice and water, as if Mars were an ocean planet. That was Vastitas Borealis--- the Vast North, now ice. The ice was in some places flat, in others shattered; sometimes white, sometimes discolored; the red of dust, or the black of snow algae, or the jade of ice algae, or the warm blue of clear ice. In some places big dust storms had stalled and dropped their loads, and then the wind had carved the detritus so that little dune fields were created, looking just like old Vastitas. In some places ice carried on currents had crashed over crater-rim reefs, making circular pressure ridges; in other places ice from different currents had crashed together, creating straight pressure ridges, like dragon backs.
Open water was black, or the various purples of the sky. There was a lot of it--- polynyas, leads, cracks, patches--- perhaps a third of the sea's surface now. Even more common were melt lakes lying on the surface of the ice, their water white and sky-colored both, which at times looked a brilliant light violet but other times separated out into the two colors; yes, it was another version of the green and the white, the infolded world, two in one. As always he found the sight of a double color disturbing, fascinating. The secret of the world.
Many of the big drilling platforms in Vastitas had been seized by Reds and blown up: black wreckage scattered over white ice. Other platforms were defended by greens, and being used now to melt the ice: large polynyas stretched to the east of these platforms, and the open water steamed, as if clouds were pouring up out of a submarine sky.
In the clouds, in the wind. The southern shore of the northern sea was a succession of gulfs and headlands, bays and peninsulas, fjords and capes, seastacks and low archipelagoes. Nirgal followed it for day after day, landing in the late afternoons at little new seaside settlements. He saw crater islands with interiors lower than the ice and water outside the rim. He saw some places where the ice seemed to be receding, so that bordering the ice were black strands, raked by parallel lines running down to ragged drift errata of jumbled rock and ice. Would these strands flood again, or would they grow wider still? No one in these seaside towns knew. No one knew where the coastline would stabilize. The settlements here were made to be moved. Diked polders showed that some people were apparently testing the newly exposed land's fertility. Fringing the white ice, green crop rows.
North of Utopia he passed over a low peninsula that extended from the Great Escarpment all the way to the north polar island, the only break in the world-wrapping ocean. A big settlement on this low land, called Boone's Neck, was half-tented and half in the open. The settlement's occupants were engaged in cutting a canal through the peninsula.
A wind blew north and Nirgal followed it. The winds hummed, whooshed, keened. On some days they shrieked. Live beings, at war. In the sea on both sides of the long low peninsula were tabular ice shelfs. Tall mountains of jade ice broke through these white sheets. No one lived up here, but Nirgal was not searching anymore--- he had given up, very near despair, and was just floating, letting the winds take him like a dandelion seed: over the ice sea, shattered white; over open purple water, lined by sun-bright waves. Then the peninsula widened to become the polar island, a white bumpy land in the sea ice. No sign of the primeval swirl pattern of melt valleys. That world was gone.
Over the other side of the world and the North Sea, over Orcas Island on the east flank of Elysium, down over Cimmeria again. Floating like a seed. Some days the world went black and white: icebergs on the sea, looking into the sun; tundra swans against black cliffs; black guillemots flying over the ice; snow geese. And nothing else in all the day.
Ceaseless wandering. He flew around the northern parts of the world two or three times, looking down at the land and the ice, at all the changes taking place everywhere, at all the little settlements huddling in their tents, or out braving the cold winds. But all the looking in the world couldn't make the sorrow go away.
• • •
One day he came on a new harbor town at the entry to the long skinny fjord of Marwth Vallis, and found his Zygote crèche mates Rachel and Tiu had moved there. Nirgal hugged them, and over a dinner and afterward he stared at their oh-so-familiar faces with intense pleasure. Hiroko was gone but his brothers and sisters remained, and that was something; proof that his childhood was real. And despite all the years they looked just like they had when they were children; there was no real difference. Rachel and he had been friends, she had had a crush on him in the early years, and they had kissed in the baths; he recalled with a little shiver a time when she had kissed him in one ear, Jackie in the other. And, though he had almost forgotten it, he had lost his virginity with Rachel, one afternoon in the baths, shortly before Jackie had taken him out into the dunes by the lake. Yes, one afternoon, almost accidentally, when their kissing had suddenly become urgent and exploratory, a matter of their bodies moving outside their own volition.
Now she regarded him fondly--- a woman his age, her face a map of laugh lines, cheery and bold. She may have recalled their early encounter as little as he did--- hard to say what his siblings remembered of their shared bizarre childhood--- but she looked like she remembered. She had always been friendly, and she was again now. He told her about his flights around the world, carried by the ceaseless winds, diving slowly against the blimp's buoyancy down to one little habitation after another, asking after Hiroko.
Rachel shook her head, smiling ironically. "If she's out there, she's out there. But you could look forever and never find her."
Nirgal heaved a troubled sigh, and she laughed and tousled his hair.
"Don't look for her."
That evening he walked along the strand, just uphill from the devastated berg-strewn shoreline of the northern sea. He felt in his body that he needed to walk, to run. Flying was too easy, it was a dissociation from the world--- things were small and distant--- again, it was the wrong end of the telescope. He needed to walk.
Still he flew. As he flew, however, he looked more closely at the land. Heath, moor, streamside meadows. A creek falling directly into the sea over a short drop, another one crossing a beach. Salt creeks into a fresh ocean. In some places they had planted forests, to try to cut down on dust storms that originated in this area. There were still dust storms, but the trees of the forest were saplings still. Hiroko might be able to sort it out. Don't look for her. Look at the land.
• • •
He flew back to Sabishii. There was still a lot of work to be done there, clearing away burned buildings and then building new ones. Some construction co-ops were still accepting new members. One was doing reconstruction but was also building blimps and other fliers, including some experimental birdsuits. He talked with them about joining.
He left his blimpglider in town with them, and took long runs out onto the high moors east of Sabishii. He had run these uplands during his student years. A lot of the ridge runs were familiar still; beyond them, new ground. A high land, with its moorish life. Big kami boulders stood here and there on the rumpled land, like sentinels.
One afternoon, running an unfamiliar ridge, he looked down into a small high basin like a shallow bowl, with a break opening to lower land to the west. Like a glacial cirque, though more likely it was an eroded crater with a break in its rim, making a horseshoe ridge. About a kilometer across--- quite shallow. Just a rumple among the many rumples on the Tyrrhena massif. From the encircling ridge the horizons were far away, the land below lumpy and irregular.
It seemed familiar. Possibly he had visited it on an overnighter in his student years. He hiked slowly down into the basin, and still felt like he was on top of the massif; something about the dark clean indigo of the sky, the spacious long view out the gap to the west. Clouds rolled overhead like great rounded icebergs, dropping dry granular snow, which was chased into cracks or out of the basin entirely by the hard wind. On the circling ridge, near the northwest point of the horseshoe, there was a boulder sitting like a stone hut. It stood on four points on the ridge, a dolmen worn to the smoothness of an old tooth. The sky over it lapis lazuli.
Nirgal walked back down to Sabishii and looked into the matter. The basin was untended, according to the maps and records of the Tyrrhena Massif Areography and Ecopoesis Council. They were pleased he was interested. "The high basins are hard," they told him. "Very little grows. It's a long project."
"Good."
"You'll have to grow most of your food in greenhouses. Potatoes, however--- once you get enough soil, of course---"
Nirgal nodded.
They asked him to drop by the village of Dingboche, the one nearest the basin, and make sure no one there had plans for it.
So he drove back up, in a little caravan with Tariki and Rachel and Tiu and some other friends who had gathered to help. They drove over a low ridge and found Dingboche, set on a little wadi that was now being farmed, mostly in hardscrabble potato fields. There had been a snowstorm, and all the fields were white rectangles, divided by low black walls of stacked stones. A number of long low stone houses, with plate-rock roofs and thick square chimneys, were scattered among the fields, with several more clustered at the village's upper end. The longest building in this cluster was a two-storied teahouse, with a big mattress-filled room to accommodate visitors.
In Dingboche as in much of the southern highlands the gift economy still predominated, and Nirgal and his companions had to endure a near potlatching when they stayed for the night. The locals were very happy when he inquired about the high basin, which they called variously the little horseshoe, or the upper hand. "It needs looking after." They offered to help him get started.
So they went up to the high cirque in a little caravan, and dumped a load of gear on the ridge near the house boulder, and stuck around long enough to clear a first little field of stones, walling it with what they cleared. A couple of them experienced in construction helped him to make the first incisions into the ridge boulder. During this noisy drilling some of the Dingboche locals cut away at the exterior of the rock, carving in Sanskrit lettering Om Mani Padme Hum, as seen on innumerable mani stones in the Himalayas, and now all over the southern highlands. The locals chipped away the rock between the fat cursive letters, so that the letters stood out in raised relief against a rougher, lighter background. As for the boulder house itself, eventually he would have four rooms hacked out of the boulder, with triple-paned windows, solar panels for heat and power, water from a snowmelt pumped up to a tank placed higher on the ridge, and a composting toilet and graywater facility.
Then they were off. Nirgal had the basin to himself.
He walked around on it for many days without doing anything but looking. Only the tiniest part of the basin would be his farm--- just some small fields inside low stone walls, and a greenhouse for vegetables. And a cottage industry, he wasn't sure what. It wouldn't be self-sufficient, but it would be settling in. A project.
And then there was the basin itself. A small channel already ran down the opening out to the west, as if to suggest a watershed. The cupped hand of rock was already a micro-climate, tilted to the sun, slightly sheltered from the winds. He would be an ecopoet.
First he had to learn the land. With that as his project it was amazing how busy every day became, there was an endless number of things to do; but no structure, no schedule, no rush; no one to consult; and every day, in the last hours of summer light, he would walk around the ridge, and inspect the basin in the failing light. It was already colonized by lichen and the other first settlers; fellfields filled the hollows, and there were small mosaics of arctic ground cover in the sunny exposures, mounds of green moss humped on red soil less than a centimeter thick. Snowmelt coursed down a number of rivulet channels, pooling and dropping through any number of potential meadow terraces, little diatom oases, falling down the basin to meet in the gravel wadi at the gate to the land below, a flat meadow-to-be behind the residual rim. Ribs higher in the basin were natural dams, and after some consideration, Nirgal carried some ventifacts to these low ribs, and assembled them with their facets touching so that the ribs were heightened by just one or two rocks' height. Snowmelt would collect in meadow ponds, banked by moss. The moors just east of Sabishii resembled what he had in mind, and he called up ecopoets who lived on those moors, and asked about species compatibility, growth rates, soil amendment and the like. In his mind developed a vision of the basin; then in second March the autumn came, the year heading toward aphelion, and he began to see how much of the landscaping would be done by wind and winter. He would have to wait and see.
He spread seeds and spores by hand, casting them away from bags or growth media dishes latched to his belt, feeling like a figure from Van Gogh or the Old Testament; it was a peculiar sensation of mixed power and helplessness, action and fate. He arranged for loads of topsoil to be trucked up and dumped on some of the little fields, and then he spread it out by hand, thinly. He brought in worms from the university farm at Sabishii. Worms in a bottle, Coyote had always called people in cities; observing the writhing mass of moist naked tubules, Nirgal shuddered. He released the worms onto his new little plots. Go, little worm, prosper on the land. He himself, walking around on the sunny mornings after a shower, was no more than moist linked naked tubules. Sentient worms, that's what they were, in bottles or on the land.
After the worms it would be moles and voles. Then mice. Then snow rabbits, and ermine, and marmots; perhaps then some of the snow cats wandering the moors would drop by. Foxes. The basin was high, but the pressure they were hoping for at this altitude was four hundred millibars, with forty percent of that oxygen; they were already most of the way there. Conditions were somewhat as in the Himalayas. Presumably all of Earth's high-altitude flora and fauna would be viable here, and all the new engineered variants; and with so many ecopoets stewarding small patches of the upland, the problem would be mostly a matter of prepping the ground, introducing the basic ecosystem desired, and then supporting it, and watching what came in on the wind, or walked in, or flew. These arrivals could be problematic of course, and there was a lot of talk on the wrist about invasion biology, and integrated microcline management; figuring out one's locality's connections to the larger region was a big part of the ongoing work of ecopoesis.
Nirgal got even more interested in this matter of dispersal the next spring, in first November when the snows melted, and poking out of the late slush on the flat terraces of the northern side of the basin were sprigs of snow alumroot. He hadn't planted them, he had never heard of them, indeed he wasn't even sure of his identification, until his neighbor Yoshi dropped by one week and confirmed it: Heuchera nivalis. Blown in on the wind, Yoshi said. There was a lot of it in Escalante Crater to the north. Not much of it in between; but that was jump dispersal for you.
Jump dispersal, spread dispersal, stream dispersal: all three were common on Mars. Mosses and bacteria were spread dispersing; hydrophilic plants were stream-dispersing along the sides of glaciers, and the new coastlines; and lichen and any number of other plants were jump-dispersing on the strong winds. Human dispersion showed all three patterns, Yoshi remarked as they wandered over the basin discussing the concept--- spreading through Europe and Asia and Africa, streaming down the Americas and along the Australian coasts, jumping out to the Pacific Islands (or to Mars). It was common to see all three methods used by highly adaptable species. And the Tyrrhena massif was up in the wind, catching the westerlies and also the summer trade winds, so that both sides of the massif got precipitation; nowhere more than twenty centimeters a year, which would have made it desert on Earth, but in the southern hemisphere of Mars, that was a precipitation island. In that way too a dispersion catchment, and so very invasible.
So. High barren rocky land, dusted with snow wherever shade predominated, so that the shadows tended to be white. Little sign of life except in basins, where the ecopoets helped along their little collections. Clouds surged in from west in the winter, east in the summer. The southern hemisphere had the seasons reinforced by the perihelion-aphelion cycle, so that they really meant something. On Tyrrhena the winters were hard.
Nirgal wandered the basin after storms, looking to see what had blown in. Usually it was only a load of icy dust, but once he found an unplanted clutch of pale blue Jacob's ladders, tucked between the splits in a breadloaf rock. Check the botanicals to see how it might interact with what was already there. Ten percent of introduced species survived, then ten percent of those became pests; that was invasion biology's ten-ten rule, Yoshi said, almost the first rule of the discipline. "Ten meaning five to twenty, of course." Once Nirgal weeded out a springtime arrival of common streetgrass, fearing it would take over everything. Same with tundra thistle. Another time a heavy dust load fell on an autumn wind. These dust storms were small compared to the old global southern-summer storms, but occasionally a hard wind would tear up the desert pavement somewhere and send the dust below flying. The atmosphere was thickening rapidly these days, fifteen millibars a year on average. Each year the winds had more force, and so thicker areas of pavement were at risk of being torn away. The dust that fell was usually a very thin layer, however, and often high in nitrates; so it was like a fertilizer, to be washed into the soil by the next rain.
Nirgal bought a position in the Sabishii construction coop he had looked into. He went in often to work on the town's buildings. Up in the basin he did some assembly and testing of solo blimpgliders. His work cottage was a small building made of stone-stacked walls, with plates of sandstone for shingles. Between that work and the farming in the greenhouse and his potato patch, and the ecopoesis in the basin, his days were full.
He flew the completed blimpgliders down to Sabishii, and stayed in a little studio above in his old teacher Tariki's rebuilt house in the old city, living there among ancient issei who looked and sounded very much like Hiroko. Art and Nadia lived there too, raising their daughter Nikki. Also in town were Vijjika, and Reull, and Annette, all old friends from his student days--- and there was the university itself, no longer called the University of Mars, but simply Sabishii College--- a small school that still ran in the amorphous style of the demimonde years, so that the more ambitious students went to Elysium or Sheffield or Cairo; those who came to Sabishii were those fascinated by the mystique of the demimonde years, or interested in the work of one of the issei professors.
All these people and activities made Nirgal feel strangely, even uncomfortably, at home. He put in long days as a plasterer and general laborer on various construction jobs his co-op had around town. He ate in rice bars and pubs. He slept in the loft in Tariki's garage, and looked forward to the days he returned to the basin.
One night he was walking home late from a pub, asleep on his feet, when he passed a small man sleeping on a park bench: Coyote.
Nirgal stopped short. He walked over to the bench. He stared and stared. Some nights he heard coyotes howling up in the basin. This was his father. He remembered all those days hunting for Hiroko, without a clue where to look. But here his father slept on a city park bench. Nirgal could call him anytime, and always that bright cracked grin, Trinidad itself. Tears started to his eyes; he shook his head, composed himself. Old man lying on a park bench. One saw it fairly frequently. A lot of the issei had gotten here and gone off somehow, into the back country for good, so that when they came into a city they slept in the parks.
Nirgal went over and sat on the end of the bench, just beyond his father's head. Gray tatty dreadlocks. Like a drunk. Nirgal just sat with him, looking at the undersides of the linden trees around the bench. It was a quiet night. Stars ticked through the leaves.
Coyote stirred, twisted his head and glanced up. "Who dat."
"Hey," Nirgal said.
"Hey!" Coyote said, and sat up. He rubbed at his eyes. "Nirgal, man. You startle me there."
"Sorry. I was walking by and saw you. What are you doing?"
"Sleeping."
"Ha-ha."
"Well, I was. Far as I know that was all I was doing."
"Coyote, don't you have a home?"
"Why no."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"No." Coyote bleared a grin at him. "I'm like that awful vid program. The world is my home."
Nirgal only shook his head. Coyote squinted as he saw that Nirgal was not amused. He stared at him for a long time from under half-mast eyelids, breathing deeply. "My boy," he said at last, dreamily. The whole city was quiet. Coyote muttered as if falling asleep. "What does the hero do when the tale is over? Swim over the waterfall. Drift out on the tide."
"What?"
Coyote opened his eyes fully, leaned toward Nirgal. "Do you remember when we brought Sax into Tharsis Tholus and you sat with him, and afterward they said you brought him back to life? That kind of thing--- think about that." He shook his head, leaned back on the bench. "It's not right. It's just a story. Why worry about that story when it's not yours anyway. What you're doing right now is better. You can walk away from that kind of story. Sit in a park at night like any ordinary person. Go anywhere you please."
Nirgal nodded, uncertain.
"What I like to do," Coyote said sleepily, "is go to a sidewalk café and toss down some kava and watch all the faces. Go for a walk around the streets and look at people's faces. I like to look at women's faces. So beautiful. And some of them so . . . so something. I don't know. I love them." He was falling asleep again. "You'll find your way to live."
• • •
Guests who occasionally visited him in the basin included Sax, Coyote, Art and Nadia and Nikki, who got taller every year; she was taller than Nadia already, and seemed to regard Nadia like a nanny or a great-grandmother--- much as Nirgal himself had regarded her, in Zygote. Nikki had inherited Art's sense of fun, and Art himself encouraged this, egging her on, conspiring with her against Nadia, watching her with the most radiant pleasure Nirgal had ever seen on an adult face. Once Nirgal saw the three of them sitting on the stone wall by his potato patch, laughing helplessly at something Art had said, and he felt a pang even as he too laughed; his old friends were now married, with a kid. Living in that most ancient pattern. Faced with that, his life on the land did not seem so substantial after all. But what could he do? Only a few people in this world were lucky enough to run into their true partners--- it took outrageous luck for it to happen, then the sense to recognize it, and the courage to act. Few could be expected to have all that, and then to have things go well. The rest had to make do.
• • •
So he lived in his high basin, grew some of his food, worked on co-op projects to pay for the rest. He flew down to Sabishii once a month in a new aircraft, enjoyed his stay of a week or two, and went back home. Art and Nadia and Sax came up frequently, and much less often he hosted Maya and Michel, or Spencer, all of whom lived in Odessa--- or Zeyk and Nazik, who brought news of Cairo and Mangala that he tried not to hear. When they left he went out onto the arcing ridge and sat on one of his sitting boulders, and looked at the meadows stringing through the talus, concentrating on what he had, on this world of the senses, rock and lichen and moss campion.
The basin was evolving. There were moles in the meadows, marmots in the talus. At the end of the long winters the marmots came out of hibernation early, nearly starving, their internal clocks still set to Earth. Nirgal set out food for them in the snow, and watched from his house's upper windows as they ate it. They needed help to get through the long winters to spring. They regarded his house as a source of food and warmth, and two marmot families lived in the rocks under it, whistling their warning whistle when anyone approached. Once they warned him of people from the Tyrrhena committee on the introduction of new species, asking him for a species list, and a rough census; they were beginning to formulate a local "native inhabitant" list, which, once formed, would allow them to make judgments on any subsequent introductions of fast-spreading species. Nirgal was happy to join this effort, and apparently so was everyone else doing ecopoesis on the massif; as a precipitation island, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest others, they were developing their own mix of high-altitude fauna and flora, and there was a growing sentiment to regard this mix as "natural" to Tyrrhena, to be altered only by consensus.
The group from the committee left, and Nirgal sat with the house marmots, feeling odd. "Well," he said to them, "now we're indigenous."
• • •
He was happy in his basin, above the world and its concerns. In the spring new plants appreared from nowhere, and some he greeted with a trowel of compost, others he plucked out and turned into compost. The greens of spring were unlike any other greens--- light electric jades and limes of bud and leaf, new blades of emerald grass, blue nettles, red leaves. And then later the flowers, that tremendous expense of a plant's energy, the push beyond survival, the reproductive urge all around him . . . sometimes when Nadia and Nikki came back from their walks holding miniature bouquets in their big hands, it seemed to Nirgal that the world made sense. He would eye them, and think about children, and feel some wild edge in him that was not usually there.
It was a feeling generally shared, apparently. Spring lasted 143 days in the southern hemisphere, coming all the way back from the harsh aphelion winter. More plants bloomed as the spring months passed, first early ones like promise-of-spring and snow liverwort, then later ones such as phlox and heather, then saxifrage and Tibetan rhubarb, moss campion and alpine nailwort, cornflowers and edelweiss, on and on until every patch of green carpet in the rocky palm of the basin was touched with brilliant dots of cyanic blue, dark pink, yellow, white, each color waving in a layer at the characteristic height of the plant holding it, all of them glowing in the dusk like drips of light, welling out into the world from nowhere--- a pointillist Mars, the ribbiness of the seamed basin etched in the air by this scree of color. He stood in a cupped rock hand which tilted its snowmelt down a lifeline crease in the palm, down into the wide world so far below, a vast shadowy world that loomed to the west under the sun, all hazy and low. The last light of day seemed to shine slightly upward.
One clear morning Jackie appeared on his house AI screen, and announced she was on the piste from Odessa to Libya, and wanted to drop by. Nirgal agreed before he had time to think.
He went down to the path by the outlet stream to greet her. Little high basin . . . there were a million craters like it in the south. Little old impact. Nothing the slightest bit distinguished about it. He remembered Shining Mesa, the stupendous yellow view at dawn.
They came up in three cars, bouncing wildly over the terrain, like kids. Jackie was driving the first car, Antar the second. They were laughing hard as they got out. Antar didn't seem to mind losing the race. They had a whole group of young Arabs with them. Jackie and Antar looked young themselves, amazingly so; it had been a long time since Nirgal had seen them, but they had not changed at all. The treatments; current folk wisdom was to get it done early and often, ensuring perpetual youth and balking any of the rare diseases that still killed people from time to time. Balking death entirely, perhaps. Early, often. They still looked like they were fifteen m-years old. But Jackie was a year older than Nirgal, and he was almost thirty-three m-years old now, and feeling older. Looking at their laughing faces, he thought, I'll have to get the treatment myself someday.
So they wandered around, stepping on the grass and oohing and ahhing at the flowers, and the basin seemed smaller and smaller with every exclamation they made. Near the end of their visit Jackie took him to one side, looking serious.
She said, "We're having trouble holding off the Terrans, Nirgal. They're sending up almost a million a year, just like you said they never could. And these new arrivals aren't joining Free Mars like they used to. They're still supporting their home governments. Mars isn't changing them fast enough. If this goes on, then the whole idea of a free Mars will be a joke. I sometimes wonder if it was a mistake to leave the cable up."
She frowned and twenty years jumped onto her face all at once. Nirgal suppressed a little shudder.
"It would help if you weren't hiding here," she exclaimed with sudden anger, dismissing the basin with a wave of her hand. "We need everyone we can get to help. People still remember you now, but in a few years. . . ."
So he only had to wait a few more years, he thought. He watched her. She was beautiful, yes. But beauty was a matter of the spirit, of intelligence, vivacity, empathy. So that while Jackie grew ever more beautiful, at the same time she grew less beautiful. Another mysterious infolding. And Nirgal was not pleased by this internal loss in Jackie, not in any way; it was only one more note in the chord of his Jackie pain, really. He didn't want it to be true.
"We can't really help them by taking more immigrants," she said. "That was wrong, when you said that on Earth. They know it too. They can see it better than we can, no doubt. But they send people anyway. And you know why? You know why? Just to wreck things here. Just to make sure there isn't someplace where people are doing it right. That's their only reason."
Nirgal shrugged. He didn't know what to say; probably there was some truth to what she had said, but it was just one of a million different reasons for people to come; there was no reason to fix on it.
"So you won't come back," she said at last. "You don't care."
Nirgal shook his head. How to say to her that she was not worried about Mars, but about her own power? He wasn't the one who could tell her that. She wouldn't believe him. And maybe it was only true to him anyway.
Abruptly she stopped trying to reach him. A regal glance at Antar, and Antar did the work of gathering their coterie into the cars. A final questioning look; a kiss, full on the mouth, no doubt to bother Antar, or him, or both of them; like an electric shock to the soul; and she was off.
• • •
He spent the afternoon and the next day wandering, sitting on flat rocks and watching the little rivulets bounce downstream. Once he remembered how fast water had fallen on Earth. Unnatural. No. But this was his place, known and loved, every dyad and every clump of campion, even the speed of water as it lofted off stone and plashed down in its smooth silver shapes. The way moss felt under the finger pads. His visitors were people for whom Mars was forever an idea, a nascent state, a political situation. They lived in the tents and they might as well have been in a city anywhere, and their devotion, while real, was given to some cause or idea, some Mars of the mind. Which was fine. But for Nirgal now it was the land that mattered, the places where water arrived just so, trickling over the billion-year-old rock onto pads of new moss. Leave politics to the young, he had done his part. He didn't want to do anymore. Or at least he wanted to wait until Jackie was gone. Power was like Hiroko, after all--- it always slipped away. Didn't it? Meanwhile, the cirque like an open hand.
• • •
But then one morning when he went out for a dawn walk, there was something different. The sky was clear, its purest morning purple, but a juniper's needles had a yellowish tinge to them, and so did the moss, and the potato leaves on their mounds.
He plucked the yellowest samples of needles and sprigs and leaves, and took them back to the workbench in his greenhouse. Two hours' work with microscope and AI did not find any problem, and he went back out and pulled up some root samples, and bagged some more needles and leaves and blades and flowers. Much of the grass had a wilted look, though it wasn't a hot day.
Heart thudding, stomach taut, he worked all day and into the night. He could discover nothing. No insects, no pathogens. But the potato leaves in particular looked yellow. That night he called Sax and explained the situation. By coincidence Sax was visiting the university in Sabishii, and he drove up the next morning in a little rover, the latest from Spencer's co-op.
"Nice," Sax said as he got out and looked around. He checked Nirgal's samples in the greenhouse. "Hmm," he said. "I wonder."
He had brought some instruments in his car, and they lugged them into the boulder and he went to work. At the end of a long day he said, "I can't find anything. We'll have to take some samples down to Sabishii."
"You can't find anything?"
"No pathogen. No bacteria, no virus." He shrugged. "Let's take several potatoes."
They went out and dug potatoes from the field. Some of them were gnarled, elongated, cracked. "What is it?" Nirgal exclaimed.
Sax was frowning a little. "Looks like spindle tuber disease."
"What causes it?"
"A viroid."
"What's that?"
"A bare RNA fragment. Smallest known infectious agent. Strange."
"Ka." Nirgal felt his stomach clamping inward. "How did it get here?"
"On a parasite, probably. This kind seems to be infecting grass. We need to find out."
So they gathered samples, and drove back down to Sabishii.
Nirgal sat on a futon on the floor of Tariki's living room, feeling sick. Tariki and Sax talked long after dinner, discussing the situation. Other viroids had been appearing in a rapid dispersal from Tharsis; apparently they had made it across the cordon sanitaire of space, arriving on a world that had been previously innocent of them. They were smaller than viruses, much smaller, and quite a bit simpler. Nothing but strands of RNA, Tariki said, about fifty nanometers long. Individuals had a molecular weight of about 130,000, while the smallest known viruses had molecular weights of over a million. They were so small that they had to be centrifuged at over 100,000 g in order to be pulled out of suspension.
The potato-spindle-tuber viroid was well understood, Tariki told them, tapping around on his screen and pointing at the schematics called up. A chain of merely 359 nucleotides, lined out in a closed single strand with short double-strand regions braiding it. Viroids like this one caused several plant diseases, including pale cucumber disease, chrysanthemum stunt, chlorotic mottle, cadang-cadang, citrus exocortis. Viroids had also been confirmed as the agent in some animal brain diseases, like scrapie, and kuru, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The viroids used host enzymes to reproduce, and then were taken to be regulatory molecules in the nuclei of infected cells, disturbing growth-hormone production in particular.
The particular viroid in Nirgal's basin, Tariki said, had mutated from potato spindle tuber. They were still identifying it in the labs at the university, but the sick grass made him sure they were going to find something different, something new.
Nirgal felt sick. The names of the diseases alone were enough to do it. He stared at his hands, which had been plunged thick in infected plants. Through the skin, into the brain, some kind of spongiform encephalopathy, mushroom growths of brain blooming everywhere.
"Is there anything we can do to fight it?" he said.
Sax and Tariki looked at him.
"First," Sax said, "we have to find out what it is."
• • •
That turned out to be no simple matter. After a few days, Nirgal returned to his basin. There he could at least do something; Sax had suggested removing all the potatoes from the potato fields. This was a long dirty task, a kind of negative treasure hunt, as he turned up diseased tuber after tuber. Presumably the soil itself would still hold the viroid. It was possible he would have to abandon the field, or even the basin. At best, plant something else. No one yet understood how viroids reproduced; and the word from Sabishii was that this might not even be a viroid as previously understood.
"It's a shorter strand than usual," Sax said. "Either a new viroid, or something like a viroid but smaller still." In the Sabishii labs they were calling it "the virid."
A long week later, Sax came back up to the basin. "We can try to remove it physically," he said over dinner. "Then plant different species, ones that are resistant to viroids. That's the best we can do."
"But will that work?"
"The plants susceptible to infection are fairly specific. You got hit by a new one, but if you change grasses, and types of potatoes--- perhaps cycle out some of your potato-patch soil. . . ." Sax shrugged.
Nirgal ate with more appetite than he had had for the previous week. Even the suggestion of a possible solution was a great relief. He drank some wine, felt better and better. "These things are strange, eh?" he said over an after-dinner brandy. "What life will come up with!"
"If you call it life."
"Well, of course."
Sax didn't reply.
"I've been looking at the news on the net," Nirgal said. "There are a lot of infestations. I had never noticed before. Parasites, viruses. . . ."
"Yes. Sometimes I worry about a global plague. Something we can't stop."
"Ka! Could that happen?"
"There's all kinds of invasions going on. Population surges, sudden die-offs. All over. Things in disequilibrium. Upsetting balances we didn't even know existed. Things we don't understand." As always this thought made Sax unhappy.
"Biomes will eventually come into equilibrium," Nirgal suggested.
"I'm not sure there is such a thing."
"As equilibrium?"
"Yes. It may be a matter of. . . ." He waved his hands about like gulls. "Punctuated equilibrium, without the equilibrium."
"Punctuated change?"
"Perpetual change. Braided change--- sometimes surging change---"
"Like cascading recombinance?"
"Perhaps."
"I've heard that's a mathematics only a dozen people can really understand."
Sax looked surprised. "That's never true. Or else, true of every math. Depends on what you mean by understand. But I know a bit of that one. You can use it to model some of this stuff. But not predict. And I don't know how to use it to suggest any--- reactions on our part. I'm not sure it can be used that way." He talked for a while about Vlad's notion of holons, which were organic units that had subunits and also were subunits of greater holons, each level combining to create the next one up in emergent fashion, all the way up and down the great chain of being. Vlad had worked out mathematical descriptions of these emergences, which turned out to come in more than one kind, with different families of properties for each kind; so if they could get enough information about the behavior of a level of holons and the next level up, they could try to fit them into these mathematical formulae, and see what kind of emergence they had; then perhaps find ways to disrupt it. "That's the best approach we can take for things this little."
The next day they called up greenhouses in Xanthe, to ask for shipments of new starts, and flats of a new strain of Himalayan-based grass. By the time they arrived, Nirgal had pulled out all the grass in the basin, and much of the moss. The work made him sick, he couldn't help it; once, seeing a concerned marmot patriarch chattering at him, he sat down and burst into tears. Sax had retreated into his customary silence, which only made things worse, as it always reminded Nirgal of Simon, and of death generally. He needed Maya or some other courageous expressive speaker of the inner life, of anguish and fortitude; but here was Sax, lost in thoughts that seemed to happen in some kind of foreign language, in a private idiolect he was now unwilling to translate.
They went to work planting new starts of Himalayan grasses throughout the basin, concentrating on the stream banks and their veinlike tracery under the trickles and ice. A hard freeze actually helped, as it killed the infected plants faster than the ones free of infection. They incinerated the infected plants in a kiln down the massif. People came from the surrounding basins to help, bringing replacement starts for planting later.
Two months passed, and the invasion surge weakened. The plants that remained seemed to be more resistant. Newly planted plants did not get infected or die. The basin looked like it was autumn, though it was midsummer; but the dying had stopped. The marmots looked thin, and more concerned than ever; they were a worrying species. And Nirgal could see their point. The basin looked ravaged. But it seemed the biome would survive. The viroid was subsiding, eventually they could hardly even find it, no matter how hard and long they centrifuged samples. It seemed to have left the basin, as mysterious in departure as in arrival.
Sax shook his head. "If the viroids that infect animals ever get more robust. . . ." He sighed. "I wish I could talk to Hiroko about it."
"I've heard them say she's at the north pole," Nirgal said sourly.
"Yes."
"But?"
"I don't think she's there. And--- I don't think she wants to talk to me. But I'm still . . . I'm waiting."
"For her to call?" Nirgal said sarcastically.
Sax nodded.
They stared into Nirgal's lamp flame glumly. Hiroko--- mother, lover--- she had abandoned them both.
But the basin would live. When Sax went to his rover to leave, Nirgal gave him a bear hug, lifting him and twirling him. "Thanks."
"My pleasure," Sax said. "Very interesting."
"What will you do now?"
"I think I will talk to Ann. Try to talk to Ann."
"Ah! Good luck."
Sax nodded, as if to say he would need it. Then he drove off, waving once before putting both hands on the wheel. In a minute he was over the rib and gone.
• • •
So Nirgal went at the hard work of restoring the basin, doing what he could to give it more pathogen resistance. More diversity, more of an indigenous parasite load. From the chasmoendolithic rock dwellers to the insects and microbial fliers hovering in the air. A fuller, tougher biome. He seldom went into Sabishii. He replaced all the soil in the potato patch, planted a different kind of potato.
Sax and Spencer had come back to visit him, when a big dust storm began in the Claritas region near Senzeni Na--- at their latitude, but all the way around the world. They heard about it over the news, and then tracked it over the next couple of days on the satellite weather photos. It came east, kept coming east; kept coming; looked like it was going to pass to the south of them; but at the last minute it veered north.
They sat in the living room of his boulder house looking south. And there it came, a dark mass filling the sky. Dread filled Nirgal like the static electricity causing Spencer to yelp when he touched things. The dread didn't make sense, they had passed under a score of dust storms before. It was only residual dread from the viroid blight. And they had weathered that.
But this time the light of day browned and dimmed until it might as well have been night--- a chocolate night, howling over the boulder and rattling the outer window. "The winds have gotten so strong," Sax remarked pensively. Then the howl lessened, while it was still dark out. Nirgal felt more and more sick the less the wind howled--- until the air was still, and he was so nauseated he could scarcely stand at the window. Global dust storms sometimes did this; they ended abruptly when the wind ran into a counterwind, or a particular landform. And then the storm dropped its load of dust and fines. It was raining dust now, in fact, the boulder's windows a dirty gray. As if ash were settling over the world. In the old days, Sax was muttering uneasily, even the biggest dust storms would only have dropped a few millimeters of fines at the end of their runs. But with the atmosphere so much thicker, and the winds so much more powerful, great quantities of dust and sand were thrown aloft; and if they came down all at once, as sometimes happened, the drifts could be much deeper than a few millimeters.
As near suspension as some fines were, in an hour all but the very finest had fallen out of the air and onto them. After that it was only a hazy afternoon, windless, the air filled with something like a thin smoke, so that they could see the whole of the basin; which was covered with a lumpy blanket of dust.
Nirgal went out with his mask on as always, and dug desperately with a shovel, then with his bare hands. Sax came out, staggering through the soft drifts, to put a hand to Nirgal's shoulder. "I don't believe there's anything that can be done." The layer of dust was about a meter deep, or deeper.
In time, other winds would blow some of this dust away. Snow would fall on the rest of it, and when the snow melted, the resulting mud would run over the spillways, and a new leaf-vein system of channels would cut a new fractal pattern, much like the old one. Water would carry the dust and fines away, down the massif and into the world. But by the time that happened, every plant and animal in the basin would be dead.
Natural History
Prologue
Afterward Nirgal went with Sax up to Da Vinci, and stayed with the old man in his apartment. One night Coyote dropped by, after the timeslip when no one else would have thought to visit.
Briefly Nirgal told him what had happened to the high basin.
"Yeah, so?" Coyote said.
Nirgal looked away.
Coyote went to the kitchen and started scrabbling through Sax's refrigerator, shouting back into the living room through a full mouth. "What did you expect on a windy hillside like that? This world is not a garden, man. Some of it going to get buried every year, that's just the way it is. Another wind come in a year or ten and blow all that dust off your hill."
"Everything will be dead by then."
"That's life. Now it's time to do something else. What were you doing before you set in there?"
"Looking for Hiroko."
"Shit." Coyote appeared in the doorway, pointing a big kitchen knife right at Nirgal. "Not you too."
"Yes me too."
"Oh come on. When you going to grow up. Hiroko is dead. You might as well get used to it."
Sax came in from his office, blinking hard. "Hiroko is alive," he said.
"Not you too!" Coyote cried. "You two are like children!"
"I saw her on the south flank of Arsia Mons, in a storm."
"Join the fucking party, man."
Sax blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
"Fuck."
Coyote went back into the kitchen.
"There have been other sightings," Nirgal said to Sax. "Reports are fairly common."
"I know that---"
"Reports are daily!" Coyote shouted from the kitchen. He charged back into the living room. "People see her every day! There's a spot on the wrist to report sightings! Last week I see she appeared in two different places on the same night, in Noachis and on Olympus! Opposite sides of the world!"
"I don't see that that proves anything," Sax said stubbornly. "They say the same sort of thing about you, and I see you're still alive."
Coyote shook his head violently. "No. I am the exception that proves the rule. Anyone else, when they are reported in two places at once, that means they are dead. A sure sign." He made a stop thrust to forestall Sax's next remark, shouted "She's dead! Face it! She died in the attack on Sabishii! Those UNTA storm troopers caught her and Iwao and Gene and Rya and all the rest of them, and they took them to some room and sucked the air or pulled the trigger. That's what happens! Do you think it never happens? Do you think that secret police haven't killed dissidents and then disappeared the bodies so that no one ever finds out? It happens! Fuck yes it happens, even on your precious Mars it happens, yes and more than once! You know it's true! It happened. That's how people are. They'll do anything, they'll kill people and figure they're just earning their keep or feeding their children or making the world safe. And that's what happened. They killed Hiroko and all the rest of them too."
Nirgal and Sax stared. Coyote was quivering, he looked like he was going to stab the wall.
Sax cleared his throat. "Desmond--- what makes you so sure?"
"Because I looked! I looked. I looked like no one else could look. She's not in any of her places. She's not anywhere. She didn't get out. No one has really seen her since Sabishii. That's why you've never heard from her. She's not so inhuman she would let us go all this time without ever letting us know."
"But I saw her," Sax insisted.
"In a storm, you said. In a bit of trouble, I suppose. Saw her for a little while, just long enough to get you out of trouble. Then gone for good."
Sax blinked.
Coyote laughed harshly. "So I thought. No, that's fine. Dream about her all you want. Just don't get that confused with reality. Hiroko is dead."
Nirgal looked back and forth between the two silent men. "I've looked for her too," he said. And then, seeing the blasted look on Sax's face: "Anything's possible."
Coyote shook his head. He went back into the kitchen, muttering to himself. Sax looked at Nirgal, stared right through him.
"Maybe I'll try looking for her again," Nirgal told him.
Sax nodded.
"Beats farming," Coyote said from the kitchen.
Recently Harry Whitebook had found a method for increasing animal tolerance to CO2, by introducing into mammals a gene which coded for certain characteristics of crocodile hemoglobin. Crocodiles could hold their breath for a very long time underwater, and the CO2 that should have built up in their blood actually dissolved there into bicarbonate ions, bound to amino acids in the hemoglobin, in a complex that caused the hemoglobin to release oxygen molecules. High CO2 tolerance was thus combined with increased oxygenation efficiency, a very elegant adaptation, and as it turned out fairly easy (once Whitebook showed the way) to introduce into mammals by utilizing the latest trait transcription technology: designed strands of the DNA repair enzyme photolyase were assembled, and these would patch the descriptions for the trait into the genome during the gerontological treatments, changing slightly the hemoglobin properties of the subject.
Sax was one of the first people to have this trait administered to him. He liked the idea because it would obviate the need for a face mask in the outdoors, and he was spending a lot of his time outdoors. Carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere were still at about 40 millibars of the 500 total at sea level, the rest consisting of 260 millibars nitrogen, 170 millibars oxygen, and 30 of miscellaneous noble gases. So there was still too much CO2 for humans to tolerate without filter masks. But after trait transcription he could walk free in the air, observing the wide array of animals with similar trait transcriptions already out there. All of them monsters together, settling into their ecological niches, in a very confusing flux of surges, die-offs, invasions and retreats--- everything vainly seeking a balance that could not, given the changing climate, exist. No different than life on Earth had ever been, in other words; but here all happening at a much faster rate, pushed by the human-driven changes, modifications, introductions, transcriptions, translations--- the interventions that worked, the interventions that backfired--- the effects unintended, unforeseen, unnoticed--- to the point where many thoughtful scientists were giving up any pretense of control. "Let happen what may," as Spencer would say when he was in his cups. This offended Michel's sense of meaning, but there was nothing to be done about that, except to alter Michel's sense of what was meaningful. Contingency, the flux of life: in a word, evolution. From the Latin, meaning the unrolling of a book. And not directed evolution either, not by a long shot. Influenced evolution perhaps, accelerated evolution certainly (in some aspects, anyway). But not managed, nor directed. They didn't know what they were doing. It took some getting used to.
CHRYSE GULF
• • •
So Sax wandered around on Da Vinci Peninsula, a rectangular chunk of land surrounding the round rim hill of Da Vinci Crater, and bounded by the Simud, Shalbatana, and Ravi fjords, all of which debouched onto the southern end of Chryse Gulf. Two islands, Copernicus and Galileo, lay to the west, in the mouths of the Ares and Tiu fjords. A very rich braiding of sea and land, perfect for the burgeoning of life--- the Da Vinci lab techs could not have chosen a better site, although Sax was quite sure they had had no sense at all of their surroundings when they chose the crater for the underground's hidden aerospace labs. The crater had had a thick rim and was located a good distance from Burroughs and Sabishii, and that had been that. Stumbled into paradise. More than a lifetime's observations to be made, without ever leaving home.
Hydrology, invasion biology, areology, ecology, materials science, particle physics, cosmology: all these fields interested Sax extremely, but most of his daily work in these years concerned the weather. Da Vinci Peninsula got a lot of dramatic weather; wet storms swept south down the gulf, dry katabatic winds dropped off the southern highland and out the fjord canyons, initiating big northward waves at sea. Because they were so close to the equator, the perihelion-aphelion cycle affected them much more than the ordinary inclination seasons. Aphelion brought cold weather twenty degrees north of the equator at least, while perihelion cooked the equator as much as the south. In the Januaries and Februaries, sun-warmed southern air lofted into the stratosphere, turned east at the tropopause and joined the jet streams in their circumnavigations. The jet streams were difluent around the Tharsis Bulge; the southern stream carried moisture from Amazonis Bay, and dumped it on Daedalia and Icaria, sometimes even on the western wall of the Argyre Basin mountains, where glaciers were forming. The northern jet stream ran over the Tempe-Mareotis highlands, then blew over the North Sea, picking up the moisture for storm after storm. North of that, over the polar cap, air cooled and fell on the rotating planet, causing surface winds from the northeast. These cold dry winds sometimes shot underneath the warmer wetter air of the temperate westerlies, causing fronts of huge thunderheads to rise over the North Sea, thunderheads twenty kilometers high.
The southern hemisphere, being more uniform than the north, had winds that followed even more clearly the physics of air over a rotating sphere: southeast trades from the equator to latitude thirty; prevailing westerlies from latitude thirty down to latitude sixty; polar easterlies from there to the pole. There were vast deserts in the south, especially between latitude fifteen and thirty, where the air that rose at the equator sank again, causing high air pressure and hot air that held a lot of water vapor without condensing; it hardly ever rained in this band, which included the hyperarid provinces of Solis, Noachis, and Hesperia. In these regions the winds picked up dust off the dry land, and the dust storms, while more localized than before, were also thicker, as Sax had witnessed himself, unfortunately, while up on Tyrrhena with Nirgal.
Those were the major patterns in Martian weather: violent around aphelion, gentle during the helionequinoxes; the south the hemisphere of extremes, the north of moderation. Or so some models suggested. Sax liked generating the simulations that created such models, but he was aware that their match with reality was approximate at best; every year on record was an exception of some kind, with conditions changing at each stage of the terraforming. And the future of their climate was impossible to predict, even if one froze the variables and pretended terraformation had stabilized, which it certainly had not. Over and over Sax watched a thousand years of weather, altering variables in the models, and every time a completely different millennium flitted past. Fascinating. The light gravity and the resulting scale height of the atmosphere, the vast vertical relief of the surface, the presence of the North Sea that might or might not ice over, the thickening air, the perihelion-aphelion cycle, which was an eccentricity that was slowly precessing through the inclination seasons; these had predictable effects, perhaps, but in combination they made Martian weather a very hard thing to understand, and the more he watched, the less Sax felt they knew. But it was fascinating, and he could watch the iterations play out all day long.
• • •
Or else just sit out on Simshal Point, watching clouds flow across hyacinth skies. Kasei Fjord, off to the northwest, was a wind tunnel for the strongest katabatic blows on the planet, winds pouring out of it onto Chryse Gulf at speeds that occasionally reached five hundred kilometers an hour. When these howlers struck Sax could see the cinnamon clouds marking them, over the horizon to the north. Ten or twelve hours later big swells would roll in from the north, and rise up and hammer the sea cliffs, fifty-meter-high wedges of water blasting to spray against the rock, until the air all over the peninsula was a thick white mist. It was dangerous to be at sea during a howler, as he had found out once while sailing the coastal waters of the southern gulf, in a little catamaran he had learned to operate.
Nicer by far to observe storms from the sea cliffs. No howler today; just a steady stiff wind, and the distant black broom of a squall on the water north of Copernicus, and the heat of sun on skin. Global average temperature changed every year, up and down, mostly up. With time as the horizontal axis, a rising mountain range. The Year Without Summer, now an old chasm; actually it had lasted three years, but people would not disturb such a name for a mere fact. Three Unusually Cold Years--- no. It didn't have what people wanted, some kind of compression of the truth, to create a strong trace in the memory, perhaps. Symbolic thinking; people needed things thrown together. Sax knew this because he spent a lot of time in Sabishii visiting Michel and Maya. People loved drama. Maya more than most, perhaps, but it served to show. Limit-case demonstration of the norm. He worried about her effect on Michel. Michel seemed not to be enjoying life. Nostalgia, from the Greek nostos, "a return home," and algos, "pain." Pain of the return home. A very accurate description; despite their blurs, words could sometimes be so exact. It was a paradox until you looked into how the brain worked, then it became less surprising. A model of the mind's interaction with physical reality, blurred at the edges. Even science had to admit it. Not that this meant giving up trying to explain things!
"Come out and do some field studies with me," he would urge Michel.
"Soon."
"Concentrate on the moment," Sax suggested. "Each moment is its own reality. It has its particular thisness. You can't predict, but you can explain. Or try. If you are observant, and lucky, you can say, this is why this is happening! It's very interesting!"
"Sax. When did you become such a poet?"
Sax did not know how to answer that. Michel was still stuffed with his immense nostalgia. Finally Sax said, "Make time to come out into the field."
• • •
In the mild winters when the winds were gentle, Sax took sailing trips around the south end of Chryse Gulf. The golden gulf. The rest of the year he stayed on the peninsula, and went out from Da Vinci Crater on foot, or in a little car for overnighters. Mostly he did meteorology, though of course he looked at everything. On the water he would sit and feel the wind in the sail as he wandered into one little convolution of the coast after another. On the land he would drive in the mornings, looking at the view until he saw a good spot. Then he would stop the car and go outside.
Pants, shirt, windbreaker, hiking boots, his old hat; all he needed on this day of m-year 65. A fact that never ceased to amaze him. Usually it was in the 280s--- bracing, but he liked it. Global averages were bouncing around the mid-270s. A good average, he felt--- above freezing--- sending a thermal pulse down into the permafrost. On its own this pulse would melt the permafrost in about ten thousand years. But of course it was not on its own.
He wandered over tundra moss and samphire, kedge and grass. Life on Mars. An odd business. Life anywhere, really. Not at all obvious why it should appear. This was something Sax had been thinking about recently. Why was there increasing order in any part of the cosmos, when one might expect nothing but entropy everywhere? This puzzled him greatly. He had been intrigued when Spencer had offered an offhand explanation, over beer one night on the Odessa corniche--- in an expanding universe, Spencer had said, order was not really order, but merely the difference between the actual entropy exhibited and the maximum entropy possible. This difference was what humans perceived as order. Sax had been surprised to hear such an interesting cosmological notion from Spencer, but Spencer was a surprising man. Although he drank too much alcohol.
Lying on the grass looking at tundra flowers, one couldn't help thinking about life. In the sunlight the little flowers stood on their stems glowing with their anthracyins, dense with color. Ideograms of order. They did not look like a mere difference in entropic levels. Such a fine texture to a flower petal; drenched in light, it was almost as if it were visible molecule by molecule: there a white molecule, there lavender, there clematis blue. These pointillist dots were not molecules, of course, which were well below visible resolution. And even if molecules had been visible, the ultimate building blocks of the petal were so much smaller than that that they were hard to imagine--- finer than one's conceptual resolution, one might say. Although recently the theory group at Da Vinci had begun buzzing about developments in superstring theory and quantum gravity they were making; it had even gotten to the point of testable predictions, which historically had been string theory's great weakness. Intrigued by this reconnection with experiment, Sax had recently started trying to understand what they were doing. It meant foregoing sea cliffs for seminar rooms, but in the rainy seasons he had done it, sitting in on the group's afternoon meetings, listening to the presentations and the discussions afterward, studying the scrawled math on the screens and spending his mornings working on Riemann surfaces, Lie algebras, Euler numbers, the topologies of compact six-dimensional spaces, differential geometries, Grassmannian variables, Vlad's emergence operators, and all the rest of the mathematics necessary to follow what the current generation was talking about.
Some of this math concerning superstrings he had looked into before. The theory had existed for almost two centuries now, but it had been proposed speculatively long before there was either the math or the experimental ability to properly investigate it. The theory described the smallest particles of spacetime not as geometrical points but as ultramicroscopic loops, vibrating in ten dimensions, six of which were compactified around the loops, making them somewhat exotic mathematical objects. The space they vibrated in had been quantized by twenty-first-century theorists, into loop patterns called spin networks, in which lines of force in the finest grain of the gravitational field acted somewhat like the lines of magnetic force around a magnet, allowing the strings to vibrate only in certain harmonics. These supersymmetrical strings, vibrating harmonically in ten-dimensional spin networks, accounted very elegantly and plausibly for the various forces and particles as perceived at the subatomic level, all the bosons and fermions, and their gravitational effects as well. The fully elaborated theory therefore claimed to mesh successfully quantum mechanics with gravity, which had been the problem in physical theory for over two centuries.
All very well; indeed, exciting. But the problem, for Sax and many other skeptics, came with the difficulty of confirming any of this beautiful math by experiment, a difficulty caused by the very, very, very small sizes of the loops and spaces being theorized. These were all in the 10-33 centimeter range, the so-called Planck length, and this length was so much smaller than subatomic particles that it was hard to imagine. A typical atomic nucleus was about 10-13 centimeter in diameter, or one millionth of a billionth of a centimeter. First Sax had tried very hard to contemplate that distance for a while; hopeless, but one had to try, one had to hold that hopelessly inconceivable smallness in the mind for a moment. And then remember that in string theory they were talking about a distance twenty magnitudes smaller still--- about objects one thousandth of one billionth of one billionth the size of an atomic nucleus! Sax struggled for ratio; a string, then, was to the size of an atom, as an atom was to the size of . . . the solar system. A ratio which rationality itself could scarcely comprehend.
Worse yet, it was too small to detect experimentally. This to Sax was the crux of the problem. Physicists had been managing experiments in accelerators at energy levels on the order of one hundred GeV, or one hundred times the mass energy of a proton. From these experiments they had worked up, with great effort, over many years, the so-called revised standard model of particle physics. The revised standard model explained a lot, it was really an amazing achievement, and it made predictions that could be proved or disproved by lab experiment or cosmological observations, predictions that were so varied and had been so well fulfilled that physicists could speak with confidence about much of what had gone on in the history of the universe since the Big Bang, going as far back as the first millionth of a second of time.
String theorists, however, wanted to make a fantastic leap beyond the revised standard model, to the Planck distance which was the smallest realm possible, the minimum quantum movement, which could not be decreased without contradicting the Pauli exclusion principle. It made sense, in a way, to think about that minimum size of things; but actually seeing events at this scale would take experimental energy levels of at least 1019 GeV, and they could not create those. No accelerator would ever come close. The heart of a supernova would be more like it. No. A great divide, like a vast chasm or desert, separated them from the Planck realm. It was a level of reality fated to remain unknown to them in any physical sense.
Or so skeptics maintained. But those interested in the theory had never been dissuaded from studying it. They searched for indirect confirmation of the theory at the subatomic level, which from this perspective now seemed gigantic, and from cosmology. Anomalies in phenomena that the revised standard could not explain, might be explained by predictions made by string theory about the Planck realm. These predictions had been few, however, and the predicted phenomena very difficult to see. No real clinchers had been found. But as the decades passed, a few string enthusiasts had always continued to explore new mathematical structures, which might reveal more ramifications of the theory, might predict more detectable indirect results. This was all they could do; and it was a very chancy road for physics to take, Sax felt. He believed in the experimental testing of theories with all his heart. If it couldn't be tested, it remained math only, and its beauty was irrelevant; there were lots of bizarrely beautiful exotic fields of mathematics, but if they weren't modeling the phenomenal world, Sax wasn't interested.
Now, however, after all the decades of work, they were beginning to make progress in ways that Sax found interesting. At the new supercollider in Rutherford Crater's rim, they had found the second Z particle that string theory had long predicted would be there. And a magnetic monopole detector, orbiting the sun out of the plane of the ecliptic, had captured a trace of what looked to be a fractionally charged unconfined particle with a mass as big as a bacterium--- a very rare glimpse of a "weakly interacting massive particle," or WIMP. String theory had predicted WIMPs would be out there, while the revised standard did not call for them. That was thought provoking, because the shapes of galaxies showed that they had gravitational masses ten times as large as their visible light revealed; if the dark matter could be explained satisfactorily as weakly interacting massive particles, Sax thought, then the theory responsible would have to be called very interesting indeed.
Interesting in a different way was the fact that one of the leading theorists in this new stage of development was working right there in Da Vinci, part of the impressive group Sax was sitting in on. Her name was Bao Shuyo. She had been born and raised in Dorsa Brevia, her ancestry Japanese and Polynesian. She was small for one of the young natives, though still half a meter taller than Sax. Black hair, dark skin, Pacific features, very regular and somewhat plain. She was shy with Sax, shy with everyone; she even sometimes stuttered, which Sax found extremely endearing. But when she stood up in the seminar room to give a presentation, she became quite firm in hand if not in voice, writing her equations and notes on the screen very quickly, as if doing speed calligraphy. Everyone in these moments attended to her very closely, in effect mesmerized; she had been working at Da Vinci for a year now, and everyone there smart enough to recognize such a thing knew that they were watching one of the pantheon at work, discovering reality right there before their eyes.
The other young turks would interrupt her to ask questions, of course--- there were many good minds in that group--- and if they were lucky, off they would all go together, mathematically modeling gravitons and gravitinos, dark matter and shadow matter--- all personality and indeed all persons forgotten. Very productive exciting sessions; and clearly Bao was the driving force in them, the one they relied on, the one they had to reckon with.
It was disconcerting, a bit. Sax had met women in math and physics departments before, but this was the only female mathematical genius he had ever even heard of, in all the long history of mathematical advancement, which, now that he thought of it, had been a weirdly male affair. Was there anything in life as male as mathematics had been? And why was that?
Disconcerting in a different way was the fact that areas of Bao's work were based on the unpublished papers of a Thai mathematician of the previous century, an unstable young man named Samui, who had lived in Bangkok brothels and committed suicide at the age of twenty-three, leaving behind several "last problems" in the manner of Fermat, and insisting to the end that all of his math had been dictated to him by telepathic aliens. Bao had ignored all that and explained some of Samui's more obscure innovations, and then used them to develop a group of expressions called advanced Rovelli-Smolin operators, which allowed her to establish a system of spin networks that meshed with superstrings very beautifully. In effect this was the complete uniting of quantum mechanics and gravity at last, the great problem solved--- if it were true. And true or not, it had been powerful enough to allow Bao to make several specific predictions in the larger realms of the atom and the cosmos; and some of these had since been confirmed.
So now she was the queen of physics--- the first queen of physics--- and experimentalists in labs all over were on-line to Da Vinci, anxious to have more suggestions from her. The afternoon sessions in the seminar room were invested with a palpable sense of tension and excitement; Max Schnell would start the meeting, and at some point call on Bao; and she would stand and go to the screen at the front of the room, plain, graceful, demure, firm, pen flying over the screen as she gave them a way to calculate precisely the neutrino mass, or described very specifically the ways strings vibrated to form the different quarks, or quantized space so that gravitinos were divided into three families, and so on; and her colleagues and friends, perhaps twenty men and one other woman, would interrupt to ask questions, or add equations that explained side issues, or tell the rest of them about the latest results from Geneva or Palo Alto or Rutherford; and during that hour, they all knew they were at the center of the world.
And in labs on Earth and Mars and in the asteroid belt, following her work, unusual gravity waves were noted; in very difficult delicate experiments; particular geometric patterns were revealed in the fine fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation; dark-matter WIMPs and shadow-matter WISPs were being sought out; the various families of leptons and fermions and leptoquarks were explained; galactic clumping in the first inflation was provisionally solved; and so on. It seemed as if physics might be on the brink of the Final Theory at last. Or at least in the midst of the Next Big Step.
• • •
Given the significance of what Bao was doing, Sax felt shy about speaking to her. He did not want to waste her time on trivial things. But one afternoon at a kava party, out on one of the arc balconies overlooking Da Vinci's crater lake, she approached him--- even more shy and stumbling than he was--- so much so that he was forced into the very unusual position of trying to put someone else at ease, finishing sentences for her and the like. He did that as best he could, and they stumbled along, talking about his old Russell diagrams for gravitinos, useless now he would have thought, though she said they still helped her to see gravitational action. And then when he asked a question about that day's seminar, she was much more relaxed. Yes, clearly that was the way to put her at ease; he should have thought of it immediately. It was what he liked himself.
After that, they got in the habit of talking from time to time. He always had to work to draw her out, but it was interesting work. And when the dry season came, in the fall helionequinox, and he started going out sailing again from the little harbor Alpha, he asked her haltingly if she would like to join him, and they stuttered their way through a deeply awkward interaction, which resulted in her going out with him the next nice day, sailing in one of the lab's many little catamarans.
When day sailing, Sax stayed in the little bay called the Florentine, southeast of the peninsula, where Ravi Fjord widened but before it became Hydroates Bay. This was where Sax had learned to sail, and where he still felt best acquainted with the winds and currents. On longer trips he had explored the delta of fjords and bays at the bottom end of the Marineris system, and three or four times he had sailed up the eastern side of the Chryse Gulf, all the way to Mawrth Fjord and along the Sinai Peninsula.
On this special day, however, he confined himself to the Florentine. The wind was from the south, and Sax tacked down into it, enlisting Bao's help at every change of tack. Neither of them said much. Finally, to get things started, Sax was forced to ask about physics. They talked about the ways in which strings constituted the very fabric of spacetime itself, rather than being replacements for points in some absolute abstract grid.
Thinking it over, Sax said, "Do you ever worry that work on a realm so far beyond the reach of experiment will turn out to be a kind of house of cards--- knocked over by some simple discrepancy in the math, or some later different theory that does the job better, or is more confirmable?"
"No," Bao said. "Something so beautiful as this has to be true."
"Hmm," Sax said, glancing at her. "I must admit I'd rather have something solid crop up. Something like Einstein's Mercury--- a known discrepancy in the previous theory, which the new theory resolves."
"Some people would say that the missing shadow matter fills that bill."
"Possibly."
She laughed. "You need more, I can see. Perhaps some kind of thing we can do."
"Not necessarily," Sax said. "Although it would be nice, of course. Convincing, I mean. If something were better understood, so that we could manipulate it better. Like the plasmas in fusion reactors." This was an ongoing problem in another lab at Da Vinci.
"Plasmas might very well be better understood if you modeled them as having patterns imposed by spin networks."
"Really?"
"I think so."
She closed her eyes--- as if she could see it all written down, on the inside of her eyelids. Everything in the world. Sax felt a piercing stab of envy, of--- loss. He had always wanted that kind of insight; and there it was, right in the boat beside him. Genius was a strange thing to witness.
"Do you think this theory will mean the end of physics?" he asked.
"Oh no. Although we might work out the fundamentals. You know, the basic laws. That might be possible, sure. But then every level of emergence above that creates its own problems. Taneev's work only scratches the surface there. It's like chess--- we might learn all the rules, but still not be able to play very well because of emergent properties. Like, you know, pieces are stronger if they're out in the center of the board. That's not in the rules, it's a result of all the rules put together."
"Like weather."
"Yes. We already understand atoms better than weather. The interactions of the elements are too complex to follow."
"There's holonomy. Study of whole systems."
"But it's just a bunch of speculation at this point. The start of a science, if it turns out to work."
"And so plasmas, though?"
"Those are very homogeneous. There's only a very few factors involved, so it might be amenable to spin-network analysis."
"You should talk to the fusion group about that."
"Yes?" She looked surprised.
"Yes."
Then a hard gust hit, and they spent a few minutes watching the boat respond, the mast sucking in sails with a bit of humming until they were reset, and running across the strengthening breeze, into the sun. Light flaked off the fine black hair gathered at the back of Bao's neck; beyond that, the sea cliffs of Da Vinci. Networks, trembling at the touch of the sun--- no. He could not see it, with eyes open or closed.
Cautiously he said, "Do you ever wonder about being, you know. Being one of the first great women mathematicians?"
She looked startled, then turned her head away. She had thought about it, he saw. "The atoms in a plasma move in patterns that are big fractals of the spin-network patterns," she said.
Sax nodded, asked more questions about that. It seemed possible to him that she would be able to help Da Vinci's fusion group with the problems they were having engineering a lightweight fusion apparatus. "Have you ever done any engineering? Or physics?"
Affronted: "I am a physicist."
"Well, a mathematical physicist. I was thinking of the engineering side."
"Physics is physics."
"True."
Only once more did he push, and this time indirectly. "When did you first learn math?"
"My mom gave me quadratic equations at four, and all kinds of math games. She was a statistician, very keen about it all."
"And the Dorsa Brevia schools. . . ."
She shrugged. "They were fair. Math was mostly something I did by reading, and correspondence with the department in Sabishii."
"I see."
And they went back to talking about the new results from CERN; about weather; about the sailboat's ability to point to within a few degrees of the wind. And then the following week she went out with him again, on one of his walks on the peninsula's sea cliffs. It was a great pleasure to show her a bit of the tundra. And over time, taking him through it step-by-step, she managed to convince him that they were perhaps coming close to understanding what was happening at the Planck level. A truly amazing thing, he thought, to intuit this level, and then make the speculations and deductions necessary to flesh it out and understand it, creating a very complex powerful physics, for a realm that was so very small, so very far beyond the senses. Awe-inspiring, really. The fabric of reality. Although both of them agreed that just as with all earlier theories, many fundamental questions were left unanswered. It was inevitable. So that they could lie side by side in the grass in the sun, staring as deeply into the petals of a tundra flower as ever one could, and no matter what was happening at the Planck level, in the here and now the petals glowed blue in the light with a quite mysterious power to catch the eye.
• • •
Actually, lying on the grass made it clear how much the permafrost was melting. And the melt lay on a hardpan of still-frozen ground, so that the surface became saturated and boggy. When Sax stood up, his ventral side chilled instantly in the breeze. He spread his arms to the sunlight. Photon rain, vibrating across the spin networks. In many regions heat exhaust from nuclear power plants was being directed down into capillary galleries in the permafrost, he told Bao as they walked back to the rover. This was causing trouble in some wet areas, which were tending to saturate at the surface. The land melting, so to speak. Instant wetlands. A very active biome, in fact. Though the Reds objected. But most of the land that would have been affected by permafrost melt was now under the North Sea anyway. What little remained above the sea was to be treasured as swamps and marshes.
The rest of the hydrosphere was almost equally transformative of the surface. It couldn't be helped; water was a very effective carver of rock, hard though it was to believe when watching a gossamer waterfall drift down a sea cliff, turning to white mist long before it hit the ocean. Then again there was the sight of the massive giant howler waves, battering the cliffs so hard that the ground shook underfoot. A few million years of that and those cliffs would be significantly eroded.
"Have you seen the riverine canyons?" she asked.
"Yes, I saw Nirgal Vallis. Remarkable how satisfying it was to see water down at its bottom. So apt."
"I didn't know there was so much tundra out here."
Tundra was the dominant ecology for much of the southern highlands, he told her. Tundra and desert. In the tundra, fines were fixed very effectively to the ground; no wind could lift mud, or quicksand, of which there was a good quantity, making it dangerous to travel in certain regions. But in the deserts the powerful winds ripped great quantities of dust into the sky, cooling temperatures while they darkened the day, and causing problems where they landed, as they had for Nirgal. Suddenly curious, he said, "Have you ever met Nirgal?"
"No."
The sandstorms these days were nothing like the long-forgotten Great Storm of course, but still a factor that had to be considered. Desert pavement formed by microbacteria was one very promising solution, though it tended to fix only the top centimeter of deposits, and if the wind tore the edge of the pavement, what was underneath was then free to be borne away. Not an easy problem. Dust storms would be with them for centuries.
Still, an active hydrosphere. Meaning life everywhere.
• • •
Bao's mother died in a small plane crash, and Bao as the youngest daughter had to go home and take care of things, including possession of the family home. Ultimogeniture in action, modeled on the Hopi matriarchy, he was told. Bao wasn't sure when she would be back; there was even a chance she wouldn't be. She was matter-of-fact about it, it was just something that had to be done. Withdrawn already into an internal world. Sax could only wave good-bye to her and walk back to his room, shaking his head. They would understand the fundamental laws of the universe before they had even the slightest handle on society. A particularly obdurate subject of study. He called Michel on screen and expressed something like this, and Michel said, "It's because culture keeps progressing."
Sax thought he could see what Michel meant--- there were rapid changes in attitudes to many things. Werteswandel, as Bela called it, mutation of values. But they still lived in a society struggling with archaisms of all sorts. Primates banding into tribes, guarding a territory, praying to a god like a cartoon parent. . . . "Sometimes I don't think there's been any progress at all," he said, feeling strangely disconsolate.
"But Sax," Michel protested, "right here on Mars we have seen both patriarchy and property brought to an end. It's one of the greatest achievements in human history."
"If true."
"Don't you think women have as much power as men now?"
"As far as I can tell."
"Perhaps even more, when it comes to reproduction."
"That would make sense."
"And the land is in the shared stewardship of everyone. We still own personal items as property, but land as property has never happened here. That's a new social reality, we struggle with it every day."
So they did. And Sax remembered how bitter the conflicts had been in the old days, when property and capital had been the order of the day. Yes, perhaps it was true: patriarchy and property were in the process of being dismantled. At least on Mars, at least for now. As with string theory, it might take a long time to work it into any proper state. After all Sax himself, who had no prejudices whatsoever, had been amazed to see a woman mathematician at work. Or, to be more precise, a woman genius. By whom he had been promptly hypnotized, so to speak, along with every other man in the theory group--- to the point of being rendered quite distraught by her departure. Uneasily he said, "On Earth people seem to be fighting just as much as before."
Even Michel had to admit it. "Population pressures," he said, trying to wave them away. "There are too many people down there, and more all the time. You saw what it was like during our visit. As long as Earth is in that situation, Mars is under threat. And so we fight up here too."
Sax took the point. In a way it was comforting; human behavior not as irreducibly evil or stupid, but as responding, semirationally, to a given historical situation, a danger. Seizing what one could, with the notion that there might not be enough for all; doing everything possible to protect one's offspring; which of course endangered all offspring, by the aggregate of individual selfish actions. But at least it could be called an attempt at reason, a first approximation.
"It's not as bad as it was, anyway," Michel was saying. "Even on Earth people are having far fewer children. And they're reorganizing into collectives pretty well, considering the flood and all the trouble that preceded it. A lot of new social movements down there, a lot of them inspired by what we're doing here. And by what Nirgal does. They're still watching him and listening to him, even when he doesn't speak. What he said during our visit there is still having a big effect."
"I believe it."
"Well, there you are! It's getting better, you have to admit it. And when the longevity treatments stop working, there will come a balance of births and deaths."
"We'll hit that time soon," Sax predicted glumly.
"Why do you say so?"
"Signs of it cropping up. People dying from one thing or other. Senescence is not a simple matter. Staying alive when senescence should have kicked in--- it's a wonder we've done as much as we have. There's probably a purpose in senescence. Avoiding overpopulation, perhaps. Making room for new genetic material."
"That bodes poorly for us."
"We're already over two hundred percent the old average lifetime."
"Granted, but even so. One doesn't want it to end just because of that."
"No. But we have to focus on the moment. Speaking of which, why don't you come out into the field with me? I'll be as upbeat as you want out there. It's very interesting."
"I'll try to free up some time. I've got a lot of clients."
"You've got a lot of free time. You'll see."
• • •
In this particular moment, the sun was high. Rounded white clouds were piling up in the air overhead, forming great masses that would never come again, though at the moment they were as solid as marble, and darkening at their bottoms. Cumulonimbus. He was standing on Da Vinci Peninsula's western cliff again, looking across Shalbatana Fjord to the cliff edging the east side of Lunae Planum. Behind him rose the flat-topped hill that was the rim of Da Vinci Crater. Home base. He had lived there a long time now. These days their co-op was making many of the satellites being put up into orbit, and the boosters as well, in collaboration with Spencer's lab in Odessa, and a great number of other places. A Mondragon-style cooperative, operating the ring of labs and homes in the rim, and the fields and lake filling the crater floor. Some of them chafed at restrictions imposed by the courts on projects they had in mind, involving new power plants that would put out too much heat. In the last few years the GEC had been issuing K rations, as they were called, giving communities the right to add some fraction of a degree Kelvin to the global warming. Some Red communities were doing their best to get assigned K rations and then not use them. This action, along with ongoing incidences of ecotage, kept the global temperature from rising very fast no matter what other communities did. Or so the other communities argued. But the ecocourts were still parsimonious with the K rations. Cases were judged by a provincial ecocourt, then the judgment was approved by the GEC, and that was it: no appeals, unless you could get a petition signed by fifty other communities, and even then the appeal was only dropped into the morass of the global legislature, where its fate was up to the undisciplined crowd in the duma.
Slow progress. Just as well. With the global average temperatures above freezing, Sax was content. Without the constraint of the GEC, things could easily get too warm. No, he was in no further hurry. He had become an advocate of stabilization.
Now, out in the sun of a perihelion day, it was an invigorating 281 K, and he was walking along the sea-cliff edge of Da Vinci, looking at alpine flowers in the cracks of the rubble, then past them to the distant quantum sheen of the fjord's sunny surface, when down the cliff edge walking his way came a tall woman, wearing a face mask and jumper, and big hiking boots: Ann. He recognized her instantly--- that stride, no doubt about it--- Ann Clayborne, in the flesh.
• • •
This surprise brought a double jolt to his memory--- of Hiroko, emerging out of the snow to lead him to his rover--- then of Ann, in Antarctica, striding over rock to meet him--- but for what?
Confused, he tried to track the thought. Double image--- a fleet single image---
Then Ann was before him and the memories were gone, forgotten like a dream.
• • •
He had not seen her since forcing the gerontological treatment on her in Tempe, and he was acutely uncomfortable; possibly this was a fright reaction. Of course it was unlikely she would physically assault him. Though she had before. But that was never the kind of assault that worried him. That time in Antarctica--- he grasped for the elusive memory, lost it again. Memories on the edge of consciousness were certain to be lost if one made any deliberate effort to retrieve them. Why that should be was a mystery. He didn't know what to say.
"Are you immune to carbon dioxide now?" she asked through her face mask.
He explained about the new hemoglobin treatment, struggling for each word, in the way he had after his stroke. Halfway through his explanation, she laughed out loud. "Crocodile blood now, eh?"
"Yes," he said, guessing her thought. "Crocodile blood, rat mind."
"A hundred rats."
"Yes. Special rats," he said, striving for accuracy. Myths after all had their own rigorous logic, as Lévi-Strauss had shown. They had been genius rats, he wanted to say, a hundred of them and geniuses every one. Even his miserable graduate students had had to admit that.
"Minds altered," she said, following his drift.
"Yes."
"So, after your brain damage, altered twice," she noted.
"That's right." Depressing when you thought of it that way. Those rats were far from home. "Plasticity enhancement. Did you . . . ?"
"No. I did not."
So it was still the same old Ann. He had been hoping she would try the drugs on her own recognizance. See the light. But no. Although in fact the woman before him did not look like the same Ann, not exactly. The look in her eye; he had gotten used to a look from her that seemed a certain signal of hatred. Ever since their arguments on the Ares, and perhaps before. He had had time to get used to it. Or at least to learn it.
Now, with a face mask on, and a different expression around her eyes, it was almost like a different face. She was watching him closely, but the skin around the eyes was no longer so knotted. Wrinkled, she and he were both maximally wrinkled, but the pattern of wrinkles was that of a relaxed musculature. It seemed possible the mask even hid a small smile. He didn't know what to make of it.
"You gave me the gerontological treatment," she said.
"Yes."
Should he say he was sorry if he wasn't? Tonguetied, lockjawed, he stared at her like a bird transfixed by a snake, hoping for some sign that it was all right, that he had done the right thing.
She gestured suddenly at their surroundings. "What are you trying to do now?"
He struggled to understand her meaning, which seemed to him as gnomic as a koan. "I'm out looking," he said. He couldn't think what to say. Language, all those beautiful precious words, had suddenly scattered away, like a flock of startled birds. All out of reach. That kind of meaning gone. Just two animals, standing there in the sun. Look, look, look!
She was no longer smiling, if she had been. Neither was she looking daggers at him. A more evaluative look, as if he were a rock. A rock; with Ann that surely indicated progress.
But then she turned and walked away, down the sea cliff toward the little seaport at Zed.
Sax returned to Da Vinci Crater feeling mildly stunned. Back inside they were having their annual Russian Roulette Party, in which they selected the year's representatives to the global legislature, and also the various co-op posts. After the ritual of names from a hat, they thanked the people who had done these jobs for the previous year, consoled those to whom the lot had fallen this year, and, for most of them, celebrated once again having been passed over.
The random selection method for Da Vinci's administrative jobs had been adapted because it was the only way to get people to do them. Ironically, after all their efforts to give every citizen the fullest measure of self-management, the Da Vinci techs had turned out to be allergic to the work involved. They only wanted to do their research. "We should give the administration entirely to AIs," Konta Arai was saying, as he did every year, between sips from a foaming stein of beer. Aonia, last year's representative to the duma, was saying to this year's selection, "You go to Mangala and sit around arguing, and the staff does what work there is. Most of it has been drained off to the council or the courts or the parties. It's Free Mars apparatchiks who are really running this planet. But it's a really pretty town, nice sailing in the bay, and iceboating in the winter."
Sax wandered away. Someone was complaining about the many new harbor towns springing up in the south gulf, too near them for comfort. Politics in its most common form: complaint. No one wanted to do it but everyone was happy to complain about it. This kind of talk would go on for about half an hour, and then they would cycle back to talking about work. There was one group doing that already, Sax could tell by the tone of their voices; he wandered over, and found they were talking about fusion. Sax stopped: it appeared they were excited by recent developments in their lab in the quest for a pulsed fusion propulsion engine. Continuous fusion had been achieved decades before, but it took extremely massive tokamaks to do it, assemblages too big and heavy and expensive to be used in many situations. This lab, however, was attempting to implode small pellets of fuel many times in rapid sequence, and use the fusion results to power things.
"Did Bao talk to you about this?" Sax asked.
"Why yes, before she left she was coming over to talk with us about plasma patterns, it wasn't immediately helpful, this is really macro compared to what she does, but she's so damn smart, and afterward something she said set Yananda off on how we could seal off the implosion and still leave a space for emission afterward."
They needed their lasers to hit the pellets on all sides at once, but there also had to be a vent for charged particles to escape. Bao had apparently been interested in the problem, and now they returned to a lively discussion of it, which they thought they had solved at last; and when someone dropped into the circle and mentioned the day's lottery results, they brushed him off. "Ka, no politics, please."
As Sax wandered on, half listening to the conversations he passed, he was struck again by the apolitical nature of most scientists and technicians. There was something about politics they were allergic to, and he felt it as well, he had to admit it. Politics was irreducibly subjective and compromised, a process that went entirely against the grain of the scientific method. Was that true? These feelings and prejudices were subjective themselves. One could try to regard politics as a kind of science--- a long series of experiments in communal living, say, with all the data consistently contaminated. Thus people hypothesized a system of governance, lived under it, examined how they felt about it, then changed the system and tried again. Certain constants or principles seemed to have emerged over the centuries, as they ran through their experiments and paradigms, trying successively closer approximations of systems that promoted qualities like physical welfare, individual freedom, equality, stewardship of the land, guided markets, rule of law, compassion to all. After repeated experiments it had become clear--- on Mars at least--- that all these sometimes contradictory goals could be best achieved in polyarchy, a complex system in which power was distributed out to a great number of institutions. In theory this network of distributed power, partly centralized and partly decentralized, created the greatest amount of individual freedom and collective good, by maximizing the amount of control that an individual had over his or her life.
Thus political science. And fine, in theory. But it followed that if they believed in the theory, people then had to devote a fair amount of time to the exercise of their power. That was self-government, by tautology; the self governed. And that took time. "Those who value freedom must make the effort necessary to defend it," as Tom Paine had said, a fact which Sax knew because Bela had gotten into the bad habit of putting up signs in the halls with such inspirational sentiments printed on them. "Science Is Politics by Other Means," another of his signs had announced, rather cryptically.
But in Da Vinci most people did not want to spend their time that way. "Socialism will never succeed," Oscar Wilde had remarked (in handwriting on yet another sign), "it takes up too many evenings." So it did; and the solution was to make your friends take up their evenings for you. Thus the lottery method of election, a calculated risk, for one might get stuck with the job oneself someday. But usually the risk paid off. Which accounted for the gaiety of this annual party; people were pouring in and out of the French doors of the commons, onto the open terraces overlooking the crater lake, talking with great animation. Even the drafted ones were beginning to cheer up again, after the solace of kavajava and alcohol, and perhaps the thought that power after all was power; it was an imposition, but the draftees could do some little things that no doubt were occurring to them even now--- make trouble for rivals, do favors for people they wanted to impress, etc. So once again the system had worked; they had warm bodies filling the whole polyarchic array, the neighborhood boards, the ag board, the water board, the architectural review board, the project review council, the economic coordination group, the crater council to coordinate all these smaller bodies, the global delegates' advisory board--- all that network of small management bodies that progressive political theorists had been suggesting in one variation or another for centuries, incorporating aspects of the almost-forgotten guild socialism of Great Britain, Yugoslavian worker management, Mondragon ownership, Kerala land tenure, and so on. An experiment in synthesis. And so far it seemed to be working, in the sense that the Da Vinci techs seemed about as self-determined and happy as they had been during the ad hoc underground years, when everything had been done (apparently) by instinct, or, to be more precise, by the general consensus of the (much smaller) population in Da Vinci at that time.
They certainly seemed as happy; out on the terraces they were lining up at big pots of kavajava and Irish coffee, or kegs of beer, clumped in talkative groups so that the clatter of voices was like the sound of waves, as at any cocktail party: an amazing sound, those voices all together. A chorus of talk--- it was a music that no one consciously listened to but Sax, as far as he could tell; but as he listened to it he suspected strongly that the sound of it, heard unconsciously, was one of the things that made people at parties so happy and gregarious. Get two hundred people together, talking loudly so that each conversation could be heard only by its small group: such a music they made!
So running Da Vinci was a successful experiment, despite the fact that the citizens showed no interest in it. If they had they might have been less happy. Maybe ignoring government was a good strategy. Maybe the definition of good government was the government you could safely ignore, "to finally get back to my own work!" as one happily buzzed ex-water-board chief was just now saying. Self-government not being considered part of one's own work!
Although of course there were those people who did like the work, something about the interplay of theory and practice, the argument, the problem solving, the collaboration with other people, the service to others as a kind of gift, the endless talk; the power. And these people stayed on to serve two terms, or three if they were allowed, and then took on some other volunteer task that was going a-begging; indeed, most of these people did more than one task at once. Bela, for instance, had claimed not to like the chairmanship of the lab of labs, but now he was going directly into the volunteer advisory group, which always had a number of spots in danger of being unfilled. Sax wandered over to him: "Would you agree with Aonia that Free Mars is dominating global policy?"
"Oh undoubtedly, assuredly. They are simply so big. And they have packed the courts, and rigged some things their way. I think they want to control all the new asteroid colonies. And to conquer Earth too, for that matter. All the politically ambitious young natives are joining the party, like bees to the flower."
"Trying to dominate other settlements. . . ."
"Yes?"
"It sounds like trouble."
"Yes it does."
"Have you heard about this lightweight fusion engine they're talking about?"
"Yes, a little."
"You might look into backing that a bit more. If we could get engines like that into spaceships. . . ."
"Yes? Sax?"
"Transport that fast might have the effect of cracking domination by any one party."
"Do you think so?"
"Well, it would make it a hard situation to control."
"Yes, I suppose so. Hmm, well, I must think about this further."
"Yes. Science is politics by other means, remember."
"Indeed it is! Indeed it is." And Bela went off to the beer kegs, muttering to himself, then greeting another group as they approached him.
So spontaneously there emerged that bureaucratic class that had been the terror of so many political theorists: the experts who took control of the polity, and supposedly would never relinquish their grip. But to whom would they relinquish it? Who else wanted it? No one, as far as Sax could tell. Bela could stay on the advisory board forever if he wanted to. Expert, from the Latin experiri, to try. As in experiment. So it was government by the experimenters. Trying by the triers. In effect government by the interested. So yet another kind of oligarchy. But what other choice did they have? Once you had to draft members into the governing body, then the notion of self-government as an aspect of individual liberty became somewhat paradoxical.
Hector and Sylvia, from Bao's seminar, broke into Sax's reverie and invited him to come down and hear their music group do a selection of songs from Maria dos Buenos Aires. Sax agreed and followed them.
Outside the little amphitheater where the recital was going to take place, Sax stopped at a drink table and dispensed another small cup of kava. The festival spirit was growing all around them. Hector and Sylvia hurried down to get ready, glowing with anticipation. Watching them Sax remembered his recent encounter with Ann. If only he had been able to think! Why, he had gone completely incoherent! If only he had thought to become Stephen Lindholm again, perhaps that would have helped. Where was Ann now, what was she thinking? What had she been doing? Did she only wander the face of Mars now, like a ghost, moving from one Red station to another? What were the Reds doing now, how did they live? Had they been about to bomb Da Vinci, had his chance encounter stopped a raid? No no. There were ecoteurs still out there monkey-wrenching projects, but with the legal limits on terraforming, most Reds had rejoined society somehow; it was one mainstream political strand among the rest, vigilant, quick to litigate--- indeed much more interested in taking on political work than less ideological citizens--- but still, and by that very tendency, normalized. Where then would Ann fit in? With whom did she associate?
Well, he could call her and ask.
But he was afraid to call, afraid to ask. Afraid to talk to her! At least by wrist. And apparently in person as well. She had not said what she thought of him giving her the treatment against her will. No thanks, no curse; nothing. What did she think? What was she thinking?
He sighed, sipped his kava. Down below they were beginning, Hector rolling out a recitative in Spanish, his voice so musical and expressive it was almost as if Sax could understand him by tone of voice alone.
Ann, Ann, Ann. This obsessive interest in someone else's thought was so uncomfortable. So much easier to concentrate on the planet, on rock and air, on biology. It was a ploy Ann herself would understand. And there was in ecopoesis something fundamentally intriguing. The birth of a world. Out of their control. Still he wondered what she made of it. Perhaps he would run into her again.
• • •
Meanwhile, the world. He went back out on it again. Rumpled land under the blue dome of the sky. The ordinary sky at the equator in spring changed color day by day, it took a color chart even to approximate the tone colors; some days it was a deep violet blue--- clematis blue, or hyacinth blue, or lapis lazuli, or a purplish indigo. Or Prussian blue, a pigment made from ferric ferrocyanide, interestingly, as there was certainly a lot of ferric material up there. Iron blue. Slightly more purple than Himalayan skies as seen in photographs, but otherwise like the Terran skies seen at those high altitudes. And combined with the rocky indented landscape, it did seem like a high-altitude place. Everything: the sky color, the rumpled rock, the cold thin air so pure and chill. Everything so high. He walked into the wind, or across the wind, or with the wind at his back, and each felt different. In his nostrils the wind was like a mild intoxicant, flooding the brain. He stepped on lichen-crusted rocks, from slab to slab, as if walking on a personal sidewalk appearing magically out of the shatter of the land, up and down, every step just a step, wandering attentive to the thisness of each moment. Moment to moment to moment, each one discrete, like Bao's loops of timespace, like the successive positions of a finch's head, the little birds plancking from one quantum pose to the next. It appeared on close inspection that moments were not regular units but varied in duration, depending on what was happening in them. The wind dropped, no birds in sight: everything suddenly still, and oh so silent, except for the buzzing of insects; those moments could last several seconds each. Whereas when sparrows were dogfighting a crow, the moments were nearly instantaneous. Look very closely; sometimes it was a flow, sometimes the planck-planck-planck of individual stillnesses.
To know. There were different ways of knowing; but none of them was quite so satisfactory, Sax decided, as the direct knowledge of the senses. Out here in the brilliant spring light, and the cold wind, he came to the edge of a cliff, and looked down onto the ultramarine plate of Simud Fjord, silvered by myriad chips of light blazing off the water. Cliffs on the other side were banded by stratification lines, some of which had become green ledges lining the basalt. Gulls, puffins, terns, guillemots, ospreys, all wheeling in the gulfs of air below him.
• • •
As he learned the different fjords, he found he had his favorites. The Florentine, directly southeast of Da Vinci, was a pretty oval of water; a walk along the low bluffs overlooking it was continuously picturesque. Thick grass grew like a mat over these bluffs, they looked like Sax's image of the Irish coast. The land's edges were softening as soil and flora began to fill in the cracks, holding to mounds that defied the angle of repose, so that one walked over pads of ground, swelling between the sharp teeth of still-bare rocks.
Clouds poured inland from the sea to the north, and the rain fell, steady deluges that soaked everything. The day after a storm like that the air steamed, the land gurgled and dripped, and every step off bare rock was a boggy squish. Heath, moor, bog. Gnarly little forests in the low grabens. A quick brown fox, seen out of the corner of the eye as it dashed behind a sierra juniper. Away from him, after something? No way to know. On business of its own. Waves striking the sea cliffs bounced back outward, creating interference patterns with the incoming waves that could have come right out of a physics wave tank: so beautiful. And so strange, that the world should conform so well to mathematical formulation. The unreasonable effectiveness of math; it was at the heart of the great unexplainable.
Every sunset was different, as a result of the residual fines in the upper atmosphere. These lofted so high that they were often illuminated by the sun long after everything else was in twilight's great shadow. So Sax would sit on the western sea cliff, rapt through the setting of the sun, then stay through the hour of twilight, watching the sky colors change as the sun's shadow rose up, until all the sky was black; and then sometimes there would appear noctilucent clouds, thirty kilometers above the planet, broad streaks gleaming like abalone shells.
The pewter sky of a hazy day. The florid sunset in a hard blow. The warmth of the sun on his skin, at peace in a windless late afternoon. The patterns of waves on the sea below. The feel of the wind, the look of it.
But once in an indigo twilight, under the sparkling array of fat blurry stars, he grew uneasy. "The snowy poles of moonless Mars," Tennyson had written just a few years before the discovery. Moonless Mars. It was in this hour that Phobos had used to shoot up over the western horizon like a flare. A moment of the areophany if ever there was one. Fear and Dread. And he had completed the desatellitization himself. They could have popped any military base built on Deimos, what had he been thinking? He couldn't remember. Some kind of desire for symmetry; down, up; but symmetry was perhaps a quality prized more by mathematicians than other people. Up. Somewhere Deimos was still orbiting the sun. "Hmm." He looked it up on the wrist. A lot of new colonies were starting out there: people were hollowing out asteroids, then spinning them to create a gravity effect on their insides, then moving in. New worlds.
A word caught his eye: Pseudophobos. He tracked back, read; informal name for an asteroid that somewhat resembled the lost moon in size and shape. "Hmmm." Sax tapped around and got a photo. Well, the resemblance was superficial: a triaxial ellipsoid, but weren't they all. Potatoshaped, right size, banged hard on one end, a Stickneyesque crater. Stickney; there had been a nice little settlement tucked into it. What's in a name? Say they dropped the pseudo. A couple of mass drivers and Als, some side jets . . . that peculiar moment, when Phobos had shot up over the western horizon. "Hmmmmm," Sax said.
• • •
The days passed and the seasons. He did field studies and meteorology. Effects of atmospheric pressure on cloud formation. Meaning drives out around the peninsula, then a walk, then out with the balloons and kites. Weather balloons these days were elegant things, instrument packages less than ten grams, lofted by a bag eight meters tall. Capable of rising right into the exosphere.
Sax enjoyed arranging the bag over a smooth patch of sand or grass, the top downwind from him, then sitting and holding the delicate little payload in his fingers, then flicking the toggle that shot compressed hydrogen into the balloon, and watching it fill and yank up at the sky. If he held on to the line he was almost hauled to his feet, and without gloves on the line would cut his palm, as he had quickly learned. Release it then, thump back to the sand, watch the round red dot shimmy up through the wind, until it was a pinprick and then could no longer be seen. That happened at around a thousand meters, depending on the haze in the air; once it had happened as low as 479 meters, once as high as 1,352 meters, a very clear day indeed. After that, he would read some of the data on his wrist, sitting in the sunshine feeling like a little piece of him was sailing up into space. Strange what made one happy.
The kites were just as nice. They were a bit more complex than the balloons, but a special pleasure during the autumn, when the trade winds blew strong and steady every day. Go out to one of the western sea cliffs, take a short run into the wind, get the kite into the air; a big orange box kite, bobbing this way and that; then as it got up into the steadier wind it stabilized, and he reeled it out feeling the shifts in the wind as subtle quiverings in his arms. Or else he wedged a spool pole in a crack, and set the resistance, and watched the kite soar up and away. The line was nearly invisible. When the spool ran out the line hummed, and if he held it between his fingers, the wind's fluctuations were communicated to him as a kind of music. The kite would stay up for weeks at a time, out of sight or, if he kept it low enough, just within sight, a tiny flaw in the sky. Transmitting data all the while. A square object was visible at a greater distance than a round object of the same area. The mind was a funny animal.
• • •
Michel called up to talk about nothing in particular. This was the hardest kind of conversation of all for Sax. The image of Michel would look down and to the right, and it would be very clear as he spoke that his mind was elsewhere, that he was unhappy, that Sax needed to somehow take the lead.
"Come visit and go for a walk with me," Sax said again. "I really think you should." How could one emphasize that? "I really think you should." Throw things together. "Da Vinci is like the west coast of Ireland. The end of Europe, all green sea cliff over a big plate of water."
Michel nodded uncertainly.
Then a couple of weeks later there he was, walking down a hall in Da Vinci. "I wouldn't mind seeing the end of Europe."
"Good man."
So they went out together on a day trip. Sax drove him west to the Shalbatana cliffs, then they got out and walked north, toward Simshal Point. Such a pleasure to have his old friend with him in this beautiful place. Seeing any of the First Hundred was a welcome break in his routine, a rare event that he treasured. The weeks would pass in their comfortable round, and then suddenly one of the old family would appear, and it was like a homecoming without the home, making him think he perhaps ought to move to Sabishii or Odessa someday, so that he could experience such a wonderful feeling more often.
And no one's company pleased him more than Michel's. Although on this day Michel wandered behind, distracted, seemingly troubled. Sax observed this, and wondered what he could do to help. Michel had given him so much help in the long months of his return to speech--- had taught him to think again, had taught him to see everything differently. It would be nice if he could do something to repay such a gift, even partially.
Well, it would only happen if he said something. So after they stopped, and Sax got out the kite and assembled it, he handed the spool to Michel.
"Here," he said. "I'll hold the kite ready. You run it up. That way, into the wind." And he held the kite as Michel walked across the grassy mounds, until the line was taut and Sax let the kite go as Michel started running, and off it went, up up up.
Michel came back grinning. "Here, touch the line--- you can feel the wind."
"Ah," Sax said. "So you can." And the nearly invisible line thrummed against his fingers.
They sat down and opened Sax's wicker basket, and took out the picnic lunch he had packed. Michel became quiet once again.
"Something is troubling you?" Sax ventured as they ate. Michel waved a chunk of bread, swallowed. "I think I want to go back to Provence."
"For good?" Sax said, shocked.
Michel frowned. "Not necessarily. But for a visit. I was only just beginning to enjoy my last visit there when we had to leave."
"It's heavy on Earth."
"True. But I found the adjustment surprisingly easy."
"Hmm." Sax had not liked the return to Terran gravity. Certainly evolution had adapted their bodies to it, and it was true that living in .38 g caused an array of medical problems. But he was used to the feel of Martian g now, to the point he never noticed it; and if he did, it felt good.
"Without Maya?" he said.
"I suppose it would have to be. She doesn't want to go. She says she will someday, but it's always later, later. She's working for the credit co-op bank in Sabishii, and thinks she's indispensable. Well, that's not fair. She just doesn't want to miss any of it."
"Can you not make a kind of Provence where you live? Plant an olive grove?"
"It's not the same."
"No, but. . . ."
Sax didn't know what to say. He felt no nostalgia for Earth. As for living with Maya, he could no more imagine that than he could imagine living in a damaged erratic centrifuge. The effect would be much the same. Thus perhaps Michel's desire for solid ground, for the touch of the Earth.
"You should go," Sax said. "But wait just a little longer. If they get these pulsed fusion engines on spaceships, then you could be there fairly soon."
"But that might cause real problems with Earth's gravity. I think you need the months of the trip to get prepared for it."
Sax nodded. "What you would need is a kind of exoskeleton. Inside it you'd feel somewhat supported, and therefore as if in a lighter g, perhaps. Those new birdsuits I've heard of, they must have the capacity to stiffen to something like an exoskeleton, or you'd never be able to hold the wings in position."
"An ever-shifting carapace of carbon," Michel said with a smile. "A flowing shell."
"Yes. You might be able to wear something like that to walk around in. It wouldn't be so bad."
"So first we move to Mars, you're saying, where we have to wear walkers for a hundred years--- then when we have changed everything, to the extent that we can sit out here in the sun only slightly freezing, then we move back to Earth, where we have to wear walkers again for another hundred years."
"Or forever after," Sax said. "That's correct."
Michel laughed. "Well, maybe I will go then. When it gets like that." He shook his head. "Someday we'll be able to do everything we want, eh?"
The sun beat down on them. The wind rustled over the tips of the grass. Each blade a green stroke of light. Michel talked about Maya for a while, first complaining, then making allowances, then enumerating her good qualities, the qualities that made her indispensable, the source of all excitement in life. Sax nodded dutifully at every declaration, no matter how much they contradicted the ones that had come before. It was like listening to an addict, he imagined; but this was the way people were; and he was not so far from such contradictions himself.
After a silence had stretched out, Sax said, "How do you think Ann sees this kind of landscape now?"
Michel shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't seen her for years."
"She didn't take the brain plasticity treatment."
"No. She's stubborn, eh? She wants to stay herself. But in this world, I'm afraid. . . ."
Sax nodded. If you saw all the signs of life in the landscape as contaminations, as a horrible mold encrusting the pure beauty of the mineral world, then even the oxygen blue of the sky would be implicated. It would drive one mad. Even Michel thought so: "I'm afraid she will never be sane, not really."
"I know."
On the other hand, who were they to say? Was Michel insane because he was obsessively concerned with a region on another planet, or in love with a very difficult person? Was Sax insane because he could no longer speak well, and had trouble with various mental operations as the result of a stroke and an experimental cure? He didn't think so, in either case. But he did believe quite firmly that he had been rescued from a storm by Hiroko, no matter what Desmond said. This some might consider a sign of, well, of purely mental events seeming to have an external reality. Which was often cited as a symptom of insanity, as Sax recalled. "Like those people who think they've seen Hiroko," he murmured tentatively, to see what Michel would say.
"Ah yes," Michel said. "Magical thinking--- it's a very persistent form of thinking. Never let your rationalism blind you to the fact that most of our thinking is magical thinking. And so often following archetypal patterns, as in Hiroko's case, which is like the story of Persephone, or Christ. I suppose that when someone like that dies, the shock of the loss is nearly insupportable, and then it only takes one grieving friend or disciple to dream of the lost one's presence, and wake up crying 'I saw her'--- and within a week everyone is convinced that the prophet is back, or never died at all. And thus with Hiroko, who is spotted regularly."
But I really did see her, Sax wanted to say. She grabbed my wrist.
And yet he was deeply troubled. Michel's explanation made good sense. And it matched up very well with Desmond's. Both these men missed Hiroko greatly, Sax presumed, and yet they were facing up to the fact of her disappearance and its most probable explanation. And unusual mental events might very understandably occur in the stress of a physical crisis. Maybe he had hallucinated her. But no, no, that wasn't right; he could remember it just as it had happened, every detail vivid!
But it was a fragment, he noticed, as when one recalled a fragment of a dream upon waking, everything else slipping out of reach with an almost tangible squirt, like something slick and elusive. He couldn't quite remember, for instance, what had come right before Hiroko's appearance, or after. Not the details.
He clicked his teeth together nervously. There were all kinds of madness, evidently. Ann wandering the old world, off on her own; the rest of them staggering on in the new world like ghosts, struggling to construct one life or another. Maybe it was true what Michel said, that they could not come to grips with their longevity, that they did not know what to do with their time, did not know how to construct a life.
Well--- still. Here they were, sitting on the Da Vinci sea cliffs. There was no need to get too overwrought about these matters, not really. As Nanao would have said, what now is lacking? They had eaten a good lunch, were full, not thirsty, out in the sun and wind, watching a kite soar far above in the dark velvet blue; old friends sitting in the grass, talking. What now was lacking? Peace of mind? Nanao would have laughed. The presence of other old friends? Well, there would be other days for that. Now, in this moment, they were two old brothers in arms, sitting on a sea cliff. After all the years of struggle they could sit out there all afternoon if they liked, flying a kite and talking. Discussing their old friends and the weather. There had been trouble before, there would be trouble again; but here they were.
"How John would have liked this," Sax said, haltingly. So hard to speak of these things. "I wonder if he could have made Ann see it. How I miss him. How I want her to see it. Not to see it the way I do. Just to see it as if it were something--- good. See how beautiful it is--- in its own way. In itself, the way it all organizes itself. We say we manage it, but we don't. It's too complex. We just brought it here. After that it took off on its own. Now we try to push it this way or that, but the total biosphere. . . . It's self-organizing. There's nothing unnatural about it."
"Well. . . ." Michel demurred.
"There isn't! We can fiddle all we want, but we're only like the sorcerer's apprentice. It's all taken on a life of its own."
"But the life it had before," Michel said. "This is what Ann treasures. The life of the rocks and the ice."
"Life?"
"Some kind of slow mineral existence. Call it what you will. An areophany of rock. Besides, who is to say that these rocks don't have their own kind of slow consciousness?"
"I think consciousness has to do with brains," Sax said primly.
"Perhaps, but who can say? And if not consciousness as we define it, then at least existence. An intrinsic worth, simply because it exists."
"That's a worth it still has." Sax picked up a rock the size of a baseball. Brecciated ejecta, from the looks of it: a shattercone. Common as dirt, actually much more common than dirt. He inspected it closely. Hello, rock. What are you thinking? "I mean--- here it all is. Still here."
"But not the same."
"But nothing is ever the same. Moment to moment everything changes. As for mineral consciousness, that's too mystical for me. Not that I'm automatically opposed to mysticism, but still. . . ."
Michel laughed. "You've changed a lot, Sax, but you are still Sax."
"I should hope so. But I don't think Ann is much of a mystic either."
"What, then?"
"I don't know! I don't know. Such a . . . such a pure scientist that, that she can't stand to have the data contaminated? That's a silly way to put it. An awe at the phenomena. Do you know what I mean by that? Worship of what is. Live with it, and worship it, but don't try to change it and mess it up, wreck it. I don't know. But I want to know."
"You always want to know."
"True. But this I want to know more than most things. More than anything else I can think of! Truly."
"Ah Sax. I want Provence; you want Ann." Michel grinned. "We're both crazy!"
They laughed. Photons rained onto their skin, most shooting right through them. Here they were, transparent to the world.
Werteswandel
Prologue
It was past midnight, the offices were quiet. The head adviser went to the samovar and started dispensing coffee into tiny cups. Three of his colleagues stood around a table covered with handscreens.
From the samovar the head adviser said, "So spheres of deuterium and helium3 are struck by your laser array, one after the next. They implode and fusion takes places. Temperature at ignition is seven hundred million kelvins, but this is okay because it is a local temperature, and very short-lived."
"A matter of nanoseconds."
"Good. I find that comforting. Then, okay, the resulting energy is released entirely as charged particles, so that they can all be contained by your electromagnetic fields--- there are no neutrons to fly forward and fry your passengers. The fields serve as shield and pusher plate, and also as the collection system for the energy used to fuel the lasers. All the charged particles are directed out the back, passing through your angled mirror apparatus which is the door arc for the lasers, and the passage collimates the fusion products."
"That's right, that's the neat part," said the engineer.
"Very neat. How much fuel does it burn?"
"If you want Mars gravity-equivalent acceleration, that's three-point-seventy-three meters per second squared, so assume a ship of a thousand tons, three hundred and fifty tons for the people and the ship, and six-fifty for the device and fuel--- then you have to burn three hundred and seventy-three grams a second."
"Ka, that adds up fairly fast?"
"It's about thirty tons a day, but it's a lot of acceleration too. The trips are short."
"And these spheres are how big?"
The physicist said, "A centimeter radius, mass point-twenty-nine grams. So we burn twelve hundred and ninety of them per second. That ought to give passengers in the ship a good continuous g feel."
"I should say so. But helium3, isn't it quite rare?"
The engineer said, "A Galilean collective has started harvesting it out of the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. And they may be working out that surface collection method on Luna as well, though that's not been going well. But Jupiter has all we'll ever need."
"So the ships will carry five hundred passengers."
"That's what we've been using for our calculations. It could be adjusted, of course."
"You accelerate halfway to your destination, turn around and decelerate for the second half of the trip."
The physicist shook his head. "Short trips yes, longer trips no. You only need to accelerate for a few days to be going quite fast. Longer trips you should coast through the middle, to save fuel."
The head adviser nodded, handed the others full cups. They sipped.
The mathematician said, "Travel times will change so radically. Three weeks from Mars to Uranus. Ten days from Mars to Jupiter. From Mars to Earth, three days. Three days!" She looked around at the others, frowning. "It will make the solar system something like Europe in the nineteenth century. Train trips. Ocean liners."
The others nodded. The engineer said, "Now we're neighbors with people on Mercury, or Uranus, or Pluto."
The head adviser shrugged. "Or for that matter Alpha Centauri. Let's not worry about that. Contact is a good thing. Only connect, the poet says. Only connect. Now we will connect with a vengeance." He raised his cup. "Cheers."
Nirgal got in a rhythm and kept it all day. Lung-gom-pa. The religion of running, running as meditation or prayer. Zazen, ka zen. Part of the areophany, as Martian gravity was integral to it; what the human body could achieve in two fifths the pull it had evolved for was a euphoria of effort. One ran as a pilgrim, half worshiper half god.
A religion with quite a few adherents these days, loners out running around. Sometimes there were organized runs, races: Thread the Labyrinth, Chaos Crawl, the Transmarineris, the Round-the-Worlder. And in between those, the daily discipline. Purposeless activity; art for art's sake. For Nirgal it was worship, or meditation, or oblivion. His mind wandered, or focused on his body, or on the trail; or went blank. At this moment he was running to music, Bach then Bruckner then Bonnie Tyndall, an Elysian neoclassicist whose music poured along like the day itself, tall chords shifting in steady internal modulation, somewhat like Bach or Bruckner in fact but slower and steadier, more inexorable and grand. Fine music to run by, even though for hours at a time he didn't consciously hear it. He only ran.
It was coming time for the Round-the-Worlder, which began every other perihelion. Starting from Sheffield the contestants could run east or west around the world, without wristpad or any other navigational aid, shorn of everything but the information of their senses, and small bags of food and drink and gear. They were allowed to choose any route that stayed within twenty degrees of the equator (they were tracked by satellite, and disqualified if they left the equatorial zone), and all bridges were allowed, including the Ganges Strait Bridge, which made routes both north and south of Marineris competitive, and created almost as many viable routes as contestants. Nirgal had won the race in five of the nine previous runnings, because of his route-finding ability rather than his speed; the "Nirgalweg" was considered by many fell runners to be in the nature of a mystical achievement, full of counterintuitive extravagance, and in the last couple races he had had trackers following him with the plan of passing him at the end. But each year he took a different route, and often he made choices that looked so bad that some of his trackers gave up and took off in more promising directions. Others couldn't keep up the pace over the two hundred days of the circumnavigation, crossing some 21,000 kilometers--- it required truly long-distance endurance, one had to be able to sustain it as a way of life. Running every day.
Nirgal liked it. He wanted to win the next Round-the-Worlder, to have won a majority of the first ten. He was out researching the route, checking new trails. Many new paths were being built every year, there had been a craze recently to inlay staircase trails in the sides of the canyon cliffs and dorsa and escarpments that everywhere seamed the outback. The trail he was on now had been constructed since he had last been in this area; it dropped down the steep cliff wall of a sink in the Aromatum Chaos, and there was a matching trail on the opposite wall of the sink. Going straight through Aromatum would add a fair bit of verticality to a run, but all flatter routes had to swing far to north or south, and Nirgal thought that if all the trails were as good as this one, the cost in elevation might turn out to be worth it.
The new trail occupied angled cracks in the blocky cliff wall, the steps fitted like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and very regular, so that it was like running down a staircase in the ruined wall of some giant's castle. Cliffside trailmaking was an art, a lovely form of work that Nirgal had joined from time to time, helping to move cut rocks with a crane, to wedge them into position on top of the step below--- hours in a belay harness, pulling on the thin green lines with gloved hands, guiding big polygons of basalt into place. The first trail builder Nirgal had met had been a woman constructing a trail along the finback of the Geryon Montes, the long ridge on the floor of Ius Chasma. He had helped her all of one summer, down most of the ridge. She was still in Marineris somewhere, constructing trails with her hand tools and high-powered rock saws, and pulley systems with superstrong line, and glue bolts stronger than the rock itself--- painstakingly assembling a sidewalk or staircase from the surrounding rock, some trails like miraculously helpful natural features, others like Roman roads, others still with a pharaonic or Incan massiveness, huge blocks fitted with hairline precision across boulder slopes or large-grained chaos.
Down three hundred steps, counting, then across the sink floor in the hour before sunset, the strip of sky a velvet violet glowing over dark cliff walls. No trail here on the shadowed sand of the sink floor, and he focused on the rocks and plants scattered over it, running between things, his glance caught by light-colored flowers on top of round-barreled cacti, glowing like the sky. His body was also glowing, with the end of the day's run, and the prospect of dinner, his hunger a gnawing from within, a faintness, getting more unpleasant by the minute.
He found the staircase trail on the western cliff wall, up and up, changing gears into the uphill push stride, smooth and regular, turning left and right with the switchbacks, admiring the elegant placement of the trail in the crack system of the cliff, a placement that usually had him running with a waist-high wall of rock on the air side, except during the ascent of one bare sheer patch of rock, where the builders had been forced to the extremity of bolting in a solid magnesium ladder. He hurried up it, feeling his quadriceps like giant rubber bands; he was tired.
On a plinth to the left of the staircase there was a flat patch with a great view of the long narrow canyon below. He turned off the trail and stopped running. He sat down on a rock like a chair. It was windy; he popped his little mushroom tent, and it stood before him transparent in the dusk. Bedding, lamp, lectern, all pulled hastily from his fanny pack in the search for food, all burnished by years of use, and as light as feathers--- his gear kit altogether weighed less than three kilos. And there they were in their place at the back, battery-powered stove and food bag and water bottle.
The twilight passed in Himalayan majesty as he cooked a pot of powdered soup, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping pad, leaning back against the tent's clear wall. Tired muscles feeling the luxury of sitting down. Another beautiful day.
• • •
He slept poorly that night, and got up in the predawn cold wind, and packed up quickly, shivering, and ran west again. Out of the last Aromatum jumbles he came to the northern shore of Ganges Bay. The dark blue plate of the bay lay to his left as he ran. Here the long beaches were backed by wide sand dunes, covered by short grass that made for easy running. Nirgal flowed on, in his rhythm, glancing at the sea or into the taiga forest off to the right. Millions of trees had been planted along this coastline in order to stabilize the ground and cut down on dust storms. The great forest of Ophir was one of the least populated regions on Mars; it had been rarely visited in the earlier years of its existence, and had never been host to a tent town; deep deposits of dust and fines had discouraged travel. Now these deposits were somewhat fixed by the forest, but bordering the streams were swamps and quicksand lakes, and unstable loess bluffs that caused breaks in the lattice roof of branches and leaves. Nirgal kept to the border of forest and sea, on the dunes or among stands of smaller trees. He crossed several small bridges spanning river mouths. He spent a night on the beach, lulled to sleep by the sound of breaking waves.
The next day at dawn he followed the trail under the canopy of green leaves, the coast having stopped at the Ganges Chasma dam. The light was dim and cool. Everything at this hour looked like a shadow of itself. Faint trails branched off uphill to the left. The forest here was conifer for the most part: redwoods in tall groves, surrounded by smaller pines and junipers. The forest floor was covered by dry needles. In wet places ferns broke through this brown mat, adding their archaic fractals to the sun-dappled floor. A stream braided among narrow grassy islands. He could rarely see more than a hundred meters ahead. Green and brown were the dominant colors; the only red visible was the tint of the redwoods' hairy bark. Shafts of sunlight like slender living beings danced over the forest floor. Nirgal ran outside himself, mesmerized as he passed among these pencils of light. He skipped on rocks across a shallow creek, in a fern-floored glade. It was like crossing a room, with hallways extending to similar rooms upstream and down. A short waterfall gurgled to his left.
He stopped for a drink from the far side of the creek. Then as he straightened up he saw a marmot, waddling over moss under the waterfall. He felt a quick stab to the heart. The marmot drank and then washed its paws and face. It did not see Nirgal.
Then there was a rustle and the marmot ran, was buried in a flurry of spotted fur--- white teeth--- a big lynx, pinning the marmot's throat in powerful jaws, shaking the little creature hard, then pressing it still under a big paw.
Nirgal had jumped at the moment of attack, and now as the lynx stood over its prey it looked in Nirgal's direction, as if just now registering the movement. Its eyes glittered in the dim light, its mouth was bloody; Nirgal shuddered, and when the cat saw him and their gazes locked, he saw it running at him and jumping on him, its pointed teeth bright even in the dim light---
But no. It disappeared with its prey, leaving only a bobbing fern.
Nirgal ran on. The day was darker than the cloud shadow could explain, a malign dimness. He had to focus on the trail. Light flickered through the shadows, white piercing green. Hunter and hunted. Ice-rimmed ponds in the gloom. Moss on bark, fern patterns in his peripheral vision. Here a gnarly pile of bristlecone pines, there a pit of quicksand. The day was chill, the night would be frigid.
He ran all day. His pack bounced against his back, nearly empty of food. He was glad he was nearing his next cache. Sometimes on runs he took only a few handfuls of cereal and lived off the land as best he could, gathering pine nuts and fishing; but on trips of that kind half of every day had to be spent in the search for food, and there wasn't much to be found. When the fish were biting a lake was an incredible cornucopia. Lake people. But on this run he was going full tilt from cache to cache, eating seven or eight thousand calories a day, and still ravenous every evening. So when he came to the little arroyo containing his next cache, and found the arroyo's side wall collapsed in a landslide over it, he shouted with dismay and anger. He even dug for a while at the pile of loose rock; it was a small slide; but a couple of tons would have to be removed. No chance. He would have to run hard across Ophir to the next cache, and go hungry. He took off in the very moment of realization, thinking to save time.
Now he looked for edible things as he ran, pine nuts, meadow onions, anything. He ate the food left in his pack very slowly, chewing it for as long as he could, trying to imagine it to some higher level of nutrient value. Savoring every bite. Hunger kept him awake part of every night, though he slept heavily through the hours before dawn.
On the third day of this unexpected hunger run he emerged from the forest just south of Juventa Chasma, in land broken by the ancient Juventa aquifer outbreak. It was a lot of work to make his way through this land on a clean line, and he was hungrier than he could ever remember being; and his next cache still two days away. His body had eaten all its fat reserves, or so it felt, and was now feeding on the muscles themselves. This autocannibalism gave every object a sharp edge, tinged with glories--- the whiteness shining out of things, as if reality itself were going translucent. Soon after this stage, as he knew from similar past experiences, the lung-gom-pa state would give way to hallucinations. Already there were lots of crawling worms in his eyes, and black dots, and circles of little blue mushrooms, and then green lizardlike things scurrying along in the sand, right before the blurs of his feet, for hours at a time.
It took all the thought he could muster to navigate the broken land. He watched the rock underfoot and the land ahead equally, head up and down and up and down, in a bobbing motion that had little to do with his thinking, which browsed over near and far in an entirely different rhythm. The Juventa Chaos, downhill to his right, was a shallow jumbled depression, over which he could see to a distant horizon; it was like looking into a big shattered bowl. Ahead the land was rumpled and uneven, pits and hillocks covered with boulders and sand drifts, the shadows too dark, the sunlit highlights too bright. Dark yet glary; it was near sunset again, and his pupils were pinched by the light. Up and down, up and down; he came on an ancient dune side, and glissaded down the sand and scree, a dreamy descent, left, right, left, each step carrying him down a few meters, feet cushioned by sand and gravel shoved off the angle of repose. All too easy to get used to that; once on flat ground again it was hard work to return to honest jogging, and the next little uphill was devastating. He would have to look for a campsite soon, perhaps in the next hollow, or on the next sandy flat next to a rock bench. He was starving, faint with lack of food, and nothing in his pack but some meadow onions pulled earlier; but it would help to be so tired, he would fall asleep no matter what. Exhaustion beat hunger every time.
He stumbled across a shallow depression, over a knob, between two house-sized boulders. Then in a flash of white a naked woman was standing before him, waving a green sash; he stopped abruptly, he reeled, stunned at the sight of her, then concerned that the hallucinations had gotten so out of hand. But there she stood, as vivid as a flame, blood streaks spattering her breasts and legs, waving the green scarf silently. Then other human figures ran past her and over the next little knob, going where she pointed, or so it seemed. She looked at Nirgal, gestured to the south as if directing him as well, then took off running, her lean white body flowing like something visible in more than three dimensions, strong back, long legs, round bottom, already distant, the green scarf flying this way and that as she used it to point.
Suddenly he saw three antelope ahead, moving over a hillock to the west, silhouetted by the low sun. Ah; hunters. The antelope were being herded west by the humans, who were scattered in an arc behind them, waving scarves at them from behind rocks. All in silence, as if sound had disappeared from the world: no wind, no cries. For a moment, as the antelope stopped on the hillock, everyone stopped moving, everyone alert but still; hunters and hunted all frozen together, in a tableau that transfixed Nirgal. He was afraid to blink for fear the whole scene would wink away to nothing.
The antelope buck moved, breaking the tableau. He rocked forward cautiously, step-by-step. The woman with the green sash walked after him, upright and in the open. The other hunters popped in and out of view, moving like finches from one frozen position to the next. They were barefoot, and wore loincloths or singlets. Some of their faces and backs were painted red or black or ochre.
Nirgal followed them. They swerved, and he found himself on their left wing as they moved west. This turned out to be lucky, as the antelope buck tried to make a break around his side, and Nirgal was in position to jump in its path, waving his hands wildly. The three antelope then turned as one, dashed west again. The troop of hunters followed, running faster than Nirgal at his fastest, maintaining their arc. Nirgal had to work hard just to keep them in sight; they were very fast, barefoot or not. It was hard to see them in the long shadows, and they stayed silent; on the other wing of the arc someone yipped once, and that was their only sound, except for the squeak and clatter of sand and gravel, the harsh breath in their throats. In and out of sight they ran, the antelope keeping their distance in short bursts of flowing speed. No human would ever catch them. Still Nirgal ran, panting hard, following the hunt. Ahead he spotted their prey again. Ah--- the antelope had stopped. They had come to the edge of a cliff. A canyon rim--- he saw the gap and the opposite rim. A shallow fossa, pine tops sticking out of it. Had the antelope known it was there? Were they familiar with this region? The canyon had not been visible even a few hundred meters back. . . .
But perhaps they did know the place, for in the pure flow of animal grace they half trotted, half pronged south along the cliff edge to a little embayment. This turned out to be the top of a steep ravine, down which rubble siphoned onto the canyon floor. As the antelope disappeared down this slot all the hunters rushed to the rim, where they looked on as the three animals descended the ravine, in an astonishing display of power and balance, clacking from rock to rock in tremendous leaps down. One of the hunters howled, "Owwwwwwwww," and with that cry all the hunters hurried over to the head of the ravine, yelping and grunting. Nirgal joined the others and dropped over the rim and then they were all in a mad descent, clacking and jumping, and though Nirgal's legs were rubbery his endless days of lung-gom now served him well, for he dropped past most of the others as he hopped down boulders and glissaded down little rockslides, jumping, holding balance, using his hands, making great desperate leaps, like everyone else utterly locked into the moment, into the striving for a quick descent without a bad fall.
Only when he was successfully on the canyon floor did Nirgal look up again, to see that the canyon was filled by the forest he had barely seen from above. Trees stood high over a needle-strewn floor of old snow, big fir and pine, and then, upcanyon to the south, the unmistakably massive trunks of giant sequoias, big trees, trees so huge that the canyon suddenly seemed shallow, though the descent of the ravine had taken quite a while. These were the treetops that had stuck up over the canyon rim; engineered giant sequoias two hundred meters tall, towering like great silent saints, each one extending its arms in a broad circle over daughter trees, the fir and pine, the thin patchy snow and the brown needle beds.
The antelope had trotted upcanyon into this primeval forest, headed south, and with a few happy hoots the hunters followed them, darting past one huge trunk after another. The massive cylinders of riven red bark dwarfed everything else--- they all looked like little animals, like mice, dashing over a snowy forest floor in the failing light. Nirgal's skin tingled down his back and flanks, he was still adrenalated from the descent of the ravine, panting and lightheaded. It was obvious that they could not catch the antelope, he didn't understand what they were doing. Nevertheless he raced between the stupendous trees, following the lead hunters. The chase itself was all he wanted.
Then the sequoia towers became more scattered, as at the edge of a skyscraper district, until there were only a few left. And looking between the trunks of the last of the behemoths, Nirgal again hauled up short: on the other side of a narrow clearing, the canyon was blocked off by a wall of water. A sheer wall of water, filling the canyon right to the rim, hanging suspended over them in a smooth transparent mass.
Reservoir dam. Recently they had begun building them out of transparent sheets of diamond lattice, sunk in a concrete foundation; Nirgal could see this one running down both canyon walls and across the canyon floor, a thick white line.
The mass of water stood over them like the side of a great aquarium, turbid near the bottom, weeds floating in dark mud. Above them silver fish as big as the antelope flitted next to the clear wall, then receded into dark crystalline depths.
The three antelope pronged nervously back and forth before this barrier, the doe and fawn following the quick turns of the buck. As the hunters closed on them, the buck suddenly leaped away and crashed its head against the dam with a powerful thrust of its whole body--- antlers like bone knives, thwack--- Nirgal froze in fear, everyone froze at this violent gesture, so ferocious as to be human; but the buck bounced away, staggered. He turned and charged at them. Bola balls spun through the air and the line wrapped around his legs just above the hocks, and he crashed forward and down. Some of the hunters swarmed on him, others brought down doe and fawn in a hail of rocks and spears. A squeal cut off abruptly. Nirgal saw the doe's throat cut with an obsidian-bladed dagger, the blood pouring onto the sand next to the foundation of the dam. The big fish flashed by overhead, looking down at them.
The woman with the green scarf was nowhere to be seen. Another hunter, a man wearing only necklaces, tilted his head back and howled, shattering the strange silence of the work; he danced in a circle, then ran at the clear wall of the dam and threw his spear straight at it. The spear bounced away. The exultant hunter ran up and slammed his fist against the clear hard membrane.
A woman hunter with blood on her hands turned her head to give the man a contemptuous look. "Quit fooling around," she said.
The spear thrower laughed. "You don't have to worry. These dams are a hundred times stronger than they need to be."
The woman shook her head, disgusted. "It's stupid to tempt fate."
"It's amazing what superstitions survive in fearful minds."
"You're a fool," the woman said. "Luck is as real as anything else."
"Luck! Fate! Ka." The spear thrower picked up his spear and ran and threw it at the dam again; it rebounded and almost hit him, and he laughed wildly. "How lucky," he said. "Fortune favors the bold, eh?"
"Asshole. Show some respect."
"All honor to that buck, indeed, crashing the wall like he did." The man laughed raucously.
The others were ignoring these two, busy butchering the animals. "Many thanks, brother. Many thanks, sister." Nirgal's hands shook as he watched; he could smell the blood; he was salivating. Piles of intestines steamed in the chill air. Magnesium poles were pulled from waist bags and telescoped out, and the decapitated antelope bodies were tied over them by the legs. Hunters at the ends of the poles hefted the headless carcasses into the air.
The bloody-handed woman shouted at the spear thrower, "You'd better help carry if you want to eat any of these."
"Fuck you." But he helped carry the front end of the buck.
"Come on," the woman said to Nirgal, and then they were hurrying west across the canyon floor, between the great wall of water and the last of the massive sequoias. Nirgal followed, stomach growling.
The west wall of the canyon was marked with petroglyphs: animals, lingams, yonis, handprints, comets and spaceships, geometric designs, the humpbacked flute player Kokopelli, all scarcely visible in the dusk. There was a staircase trail inlaid in the cliff, following a nearly perfect Z of ledges. The hunters hiked up it and Nirgal followed. Shift into the uphill rhythm one more time, his stomach eating him from within, his head swimming. A black antelope splayed across the rock beside him.
Above, a few giant sequoias stood isolated on the canyon rim. When they reached the rim, returning to the sunset's last light, he saw that these trees formed a circle, nine trees in a rough woodhenge, with a big firepit at their center.
The band entered the circle and got to work starting a fire, skinning the antelope, cutting big venison steaks out of the haunches. Nirgal stood watching, legs in a sewing-machine tremble, mouth salivating like a fountain; he swallowed again and again as he sniffed the steak juices lofting in the smoke through the early stars. Firelight pushed like a bubble at the dusk's gloom, turning the circle of trees into a flickering roofless room. The light flickering against the needles was like seeing your own capillaries. Some of the trees had wooden staircases spiraling around their trunks, up into their branches. High above them lamps were being lit, voices like skylarks among the stars.
Three or four of the hunters bunched around him, offering him flatcakes of what tasted like barley, then a fiery liquor out of clay jars. They told him they had found the sequoia henge a few years before.
"What happened to the, the leader of the hunt?" Nirgal asked, looking around.
"Oh, the diana can't sleep with us tonight."
"Besides she fucked up, she don't want to."
"Yes she does. You know Zo, she always has a reason."
They laughed and moved nearer to the fire. A woman poked out a charred steak, waved it on its stick until it cooled. "I eat all of you, little sister." And bit into the steak.
Nirgal ate with them, lost in the wet hot taste of the meat, chewing hard but still bolting the food, his body all abuzz with trembling lightheaded hunger. Food, food!
He ate his second steak more slowly, watching the others. His stomach was filling quickly. He recalled the scramble down the ravine: it was amazing what the body could do in such a situation, it had been an out-of-body experience--- or rather an experience so far into the body that it was like unconsciousness--- diving deep into the cerebellum, presumably, into that ancient undermind that knew how to do things. A state of grace.
A resiny branch spit flames out of the blaze. His sight had not yet settled down, things jumped and blurred with afterimages. The spear thrower and another man came up to him, "Here, drink this," and tilted a skin's spigot against his lips and laughed, some bitter milky drink in his mouth. "Have some of the white brother, brother." A group of them picked up some stones and began to hit them together in rhythm, all their different patterns meshing bass to treble. The rest of them began to dance around the bonfire, hooting or singing or chanting. "Auqakuh, Qahira, Harmakhis, Kasei. Auqakuh, Mangala, Ma'adim, Bahram." Nirgal danced with them, exhaustion banished. It was a cold night and one could move in or away from the heat of the fire, feel its radiance against cold bare skin, move back out into the chill. When everyone was hot and sweaty they took off into the night, stumbling back toward the canyon, south along the rim. A hand clutched at Nirgal's arm and it looked like the diana was there beside him again, light in the dark, but it was too dark to see, and then they were crashing into the water of the reservoir, shockingly frigid, dive under, waist-deep silt and sand, heart-stopping cold, stand up, wade back out all the senses pulsating wildly, gasps, laughter, a hand at his ankle and down he went again, into the shallows face first, laughing. Through the dark wet, freezing, toes banging "ow! ow!" and back into the henge, into the heat. Soaking they danced again, pressed to the heat of the fire, arms extended, hugging its radiance. All the bodies ruddy in the firelight, the sequoia needles flashing against pinwheel stars, bouncing in rhythm to the rock percussion.
When they warmed back up and the fire died down, they led him up one of the sequoia staircases. On the massive upper limbs of the tree were perched small flat sleeping platforms, low-walled and open to the sky. The floors swayed very slightly underfoot, on a cold breeze that had roused the trees' deep airy choral voices. Nirgal was left alone on what appeared to be the highest platform. He unpacked his bedding and lay down. To the chorus of wind in sequoia needles he fell fast asleep.
In the early dawn he woke suddenly. He sat against the wall of his platform, surprised that the whole evening had not turned out to be a dream. He looked over the edge; the ground was far, far below. It was like being in the crow's nest of an enormous ship; it reminded him of his high bamboo room in Zygote, but everything here was vastly bigger, the starry dome of the sky, the horizon's distant jagged black line. All the land was a rumpled dark blanket, with the water of the reservoir a squiggle of silver inlaid into it.
He made his way down the stairs; four hundred of them. The tree was perhaps 150 meters tall, standing over the 150-meter drop of the canyon cliff. In the presunrise light he looked down on the wall over which they had tried to drive the antelope, saw the ravine they had crashed down, the clear dam, the mass of water behind it.
He went back to the henge. A few of the hunters were up, coaxing the fire back to life, shivering in the dawn chill. Nirgal asked them if they were moving on that day. They were; north through the Juventa Chaos, then on toward the southwest shore of the Chryse Gulf. After that they didn't know.
Nirgal asked if he could join them for a while. They looked surprised; surveyed him; spoke among themselves in a language he didn't recognize. While they talked, Nirgal wondered that he had asked. He wanted to see the diana again, yes. But it was more than that. Nothing in his lung-gom-pa had been like that last half hour of the hunt. Of course the running had set the stage for the experience--- the hunger, the weariness--- but then it had happened, something new. Snowy forest floor, the pursuit through the primeval trees--- the dash down the ravine--- the scene under the dam. . . .
The early risers were nodding at him. He could come along.
• • •
All that day they hiked north, threading a complicated path through the Juventa Chaos. That evening they came to a small mesa, its whole cap covered by an apple orchard. A ramp road led the way up to this grove. The trees had been pruned to the shape of cocktail glasses, and now new shoots rose straight up from the gnarled older branches. Through the afternoon they pulled ladders around from tree to tree, pruning the thin shoots away and thereby harvesting some hard, tart, unripe little apples, which they saved.
In the center of the grove was a open-walled round-roofed structure. A disk house, they called it. Nirgal walked through it, admiring the design. The foundation was a round slab of concrete, polished to a finish like marble. The roof was also round, held up by a simple T of interior walls, a diameter and a radius. In the open semicircle were kitchen and living space; on the other side, bedrooms and bathroom. The circumference, now open to the air, could be closed off in inclement weather by clear walls of tenting material, drawn around the circle like drapes.
There were disk houses all over Lunae, the woman who had butchered the antelope told Nirgal. Other groups used the same set of houses, tending the orchards when they passed through. They were all part of a loose co-op, working out a nomad life, with some agriculture, some hunting, some gathering. Now one group was cooking down the little apples, making applesauce for preservation; others were grilling antelope steaks over a fire outside, or working in a smokehouse.
Two round baths right next to the disk house were now steaming, and some of the group were shedding their clothes and hopping into the smaller bath, to clean up before supper. They were very dirty; they had been in the back country a long time. Nirgal followed the woman (her hands still spotted with dried blood) and joined them in the bath, the hot water like another world, like the heat of the fire transmuted to liquid that one could touch, in which one could immerse one's body.
• • •
They woke at dawn and lazed around a fire, brewing coffee and kava, talking, stitching clothes, working around the disk house. After a while they gathered their few traveling possessions and killed the fire and moved out. Everyone carried a backpack or waistpack, but most of them traveled as lightly as Nirgal or more so, with nothing but thin sleeping rolls and some food, and a few with spears or bows and arrows slung over a shoulder. They walked hard through the morning, then split into smaller groups to gather pine nuts, acorns, meadow onions, wild corn; or hunt for marmots or rabbits or frogs, or perhaps larger game. They were lean people; their ribs showed, their faces were thin. We like to stay a little hungry, the woman told him. It makes the food taste better. And indeed every night of this extended walk Nirgal bolted his food as during his runs, shaky and ravenous; and everything tasted like ambrosia. They walked a long distance every day, and during their big hunts they often ended up in terrain that would have been a disaster to run in, terrain so rough that it was often four or five days before they all managed to find each other again, at the next disk house in its orchard. Since Nirgal didn't know where these were, he had to stick close to one or another of the group. Once they had him take the four children in the group on an easier route across Lunae Planum's cratered terrain, and the children told him what direction to take every time they had to make a choice; and they were the first to reach the next disk house. The kids loved it. Often they were consulted by the larger group as to when they should leave a disk house. "Hey you kids, is it time to go?" They would answer yes or no very firmly within seconds, in concert. Once two adults got in a fight and afterward they had to present their cases to the four kids, who decided against one of them. The butcher woman explained to Nirgal: "We teach them, they judge us. They're hard but fair."
They harvested some of the yield of the orchards: peaches, pears, apricots, apples. If a crop was getting overripe they harvested everything and cooked it down and bottled it as sauces or chutneys, leaving it in big pantries under the disk houses for other groups, or for themselves on their next time through. Then they were off again, north over Lunae until it fell down the Great Escarpment, here very dramatically, dropping from Lunae's high plateau five thousand meters down to the Chryse Gulf, in only just over a hundred horizontal kilometers.
The way was difficult across this tilted country, the land ripped and corrugated by a million small deformations. No trails had been constructed here, and there was no good way through; it was up and down and over and back and up and down again; and nothing much to hunt; and no disk houses nearby; and not much food to be found. And one of the youngsters slipped while they were crossing a line of coral cactus, seaming the land like a living barbed-wire fence, and he fell on one knee into a nest of spines. The magnesium poles served then as a stretcher frame, and on they went north carrying the crying boy, the best hunters out on the flanks of the group with bows and arrows, to see if they could shoot anything flushed by their passage. Nirgal saw several misses, then one long flight of an arrow that hit a running jackrabbit, which tumbled and flopped until they killed it--- a tremendous shot, it had them all leaping around shrieking. They burned more calories celebrating the shot than they ever got back from eating the tiny shreds of rabbit meat that were each person's share, and the butcher woman was contemptuous. "Ritual cannibalism of our rodent brother," she scoffed as she ate her shred. "Don't ever tell me there's no such thing as luck." But the hothead spear thrower just laughed at her, and the others seemed cheered by their mouthful of meat.
Then later that same day they came on a young caribou bull, off on his own, looking disoriented. Their food problems were solved, if they could catch him. But he was wary despite his confused air, and he kept beyond the reach of even the longest bow shot, heading away from the group, down the Great Escarpment with all the hunters in view on the slope above.
Eventually everyone got on their hands and knees, and began to crawl laboriously over the hot rock of midday, trying to traverse quick enough to circle the caribou. But the wind blew from behind them, and the caribou moved skittishly downslope or traversed north, grazing as he went, and looking back at his pursuers more and more curiously, as if wondering why they continued with such a charade. Nirgal too began to wonder. And apparently he was not alone; the caribou's skepticism had infected them. A variety of subtle and not-so-subtle whistles filled the air, in what was evidently an argument over strategy. Nirgal understood then that hunting was hard, that the group failed often. That they were perhaps not very good at it. Everyone was baking on the rock, and they had not eaten properly for a couple of days. Part of life for these people; but today too miserable to be fun.
Then as they continued, the horizon below them to the east seemed to double: Chryse Gulf, gleaming blue and flat, still far below. As they continued to follow the caribou downslope, the sea covered more and more of their view of the globe; the Great Escarpment pitched so steeply here that even Mars's tight curvature did not bend fast enough to hide the long view, and they could see out over Chryse Gulf for many kilometers. The sea, the blue sea!
Perhaps they could trap the caribou against the water. But now he was trending north, traversing the slope of the escarpment. They crawled after him, over a little ridge, and suddenly had a good view down to the coastline: fringe of green forest flanking the water, small whitewashed buildings under the trees. A white lighthouse on a bluff.
As they continued north a turn in the coast hove over the horizon. Just beyond the point of the turn lay a seaside town, banked around a half-moon bay on the southern side of what they now saw was a strait, or more accurately a fjord, for across a narrow passage of water rose a wall even steeper than the slope they were on: three thousand meters of red rock rearing out of the sea, the giant cliff like the edge of a continent, its horizontal bands cut deep by a billion years of wind. Nirgal realized suddenly where they were; that massive cliff was the sea-facing escarpment of the Sharanov Peninsula, and the fjord therefore Kasei Fjord, and the harbor town therefore Nilokeras. They had come a long way.
The whistles between the hunters got very noisy and expressive. About half the group sat up--- a crop of heads, sticking out over a field of stones, looking at each other as if an idea had struck them all at once--- and then they stood and walked down the slope toward the town, abandoning the hunt and leaving the caribou heedlessly munching. After a while they skipped and hopped downslope, hooting and laughing, leaving the stretcher bearers and the injured boy behind.
They waited lower down, however, under tall Hokkaido pines on the outskirts of the town. When the stretcher group caught up, they descended through the pines and orchards together, into the upper streets of the town. A loud gang, passing fine window-fronted houses overlooking the crowded harbor, straight to a medical clinic, as if they knew where they were going. They dropped off the injured youth and then went to some public baths; and after a quick bath they went to the curve of businesses backing the docks, and invaded three or four adjacent restaurants with tables out under umbrellas, and strings of bare incandescent lightbulbs. Nirgal sat at a table with the youngsters, in a seafood restaurant; after a while the injured boy joined them, knee and calf wrapped, and they all ate and drank in huge quantities--- shrimp, clams, mussels, trout, fresh bread, cheeses, peasant salad, liters of water, wine, ouzo--- all in such excess that they staggered away when they were done, drunk, their stomachs taut as drums.
Some went immediately to what the butcher woman called their usual hostel, to lie down or throw up. The rest limped on past the building to a nearby park, where a performance of Tyndall's opera Phyllis Boyle was to be followed by a dance.
Nirgal lay sprawled on the grass with the park contingent, out at the back of the audience. Like the rest he was awed by the facility of the singers, the sheer lushness of orchestral sound as Tyndall used it. When the opera was done some of the group had digested their feast enough to dance, and Nirgal joined them, and after an hour of dancing joined the band as well, with many other audience sit-ins; and he drummed away until his whole body was humming like the magnesium of the pans.
But he had eaten too much, and when some of the group returned to the hostel, he decided to go back with them. On their way back, some passersby said something---"Look at the ferals," or something like that--- and the spear thrower howled, and just like that he and some of the young hunters had pushed the passersby against a wall, shoving them and shouting abuse:"Watch your mouth or we'll beat the shit out of you," Spear Thrower shouted happily, "you caged rats, you drug addicts, you sleepwalkers, you fucking earthworms, you think you can take drugs and get what we get, we'll kick your ass and then you'll feel some real feeling, you'll see what we mean," and then Nirgal was pulling him back, saying "Come on, come on, don't make trouble," and the passersby were on them with a roar, hard-fisted and-footed men who were not drunk and were not amused, the young hunters had to retreat, then let themselves be pulled away by Nirgal when the passersby were satisfied at having driven them off; still shouting abuse, staggering up the street, holding their bruises, laughing and snarling, completely full of themselves, "Fucking sleepwalkers, wrapped in your gift boxes, we'll kick your ass! Kick your ass right out of your dollhouse into the drink! Stupid sheep that you are!"
Nirgal cuffed them along, giggling despite himself. The ranters were very drunk, and Nirgal was not much more sober himself. When they got to their hostel he looked into the bar across the street, saw the butcher woman was sitting in there, and so went in with the rest of the rough boys. He sat back watching them while he drank a glass of cognac, swishing it over his tongue. Ferals, the passersby had called them. The butcher woman was eyeing him, wondering what he thought. Much later he stood, with difficulty, and left the bar with the others, walking unsteadily across the cobbled street, humming along with the others as they bellowed "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." On the obsidian water of Kasei Fjord the stars rode up and down. Mind and body full of feeling, sweet fatigue a state of grace.
The next morning they slept in and woke up late, dopey and hungover. They lay around for a while in their dorm room, slurping kavajava. Then they went downstairs, and even though they claimed to be still stuffed, ate a huge hostel breakfast. While they ate they decided to go flying. The winds that poured down Kasei Fjord were as powerful as any on the planet, and windsurfers and fliers of all kinds had come to Nilokeras to take advantage of them. Of course at any time howlers could take the situation "off scale" and shut down the fun for everyone except the big wind riders; but the average day's hard blow was glorious.
The fliers' base of operations was an offshore crater rim island, called Santorini. After breakfast the group went down to the docks together and got on a ferry, and debarked half an hour later on the little arcuate island, and trooped with the other passengers up to the gliderport.
Nirgal had not flown for years, and it was a great joy to strap into a blimpglider's gondola and rise up the mast, and let loose and soar on the powerful updrafts pushing off Santorini's steep inner rim. As Nirgal ascended he saw that most of the fliers wore birdsuits of one sort or another; it looked like he was flying in a flock of wide-winged flying creatures, which resembled not birds but something more like flying foxes, or some mythic hybrid like the griffin or Pegasus: bird-humans. The birdsuits were of several different kinds, imitating in some respects the configurations of different species--- albatross, eagle, swift, lammergeier. Each suit encased its flier in what was in effect an everchanging exoskeleton, which responded to interior pressure from the flier's body, to take and then hold positions, or make certain movements, all reinforced in proportion to the pressure exerted inside them, so that a human's muscles could flap the big wings, or hold them in place against the great torque of the wind's onslaughts, meanwhile keeping the streamlined helmets and tail feathers in the proper positions. Suit AIs helped fliers who wanted help, and they could even function as automatic pilots; but most fliers preferred to do the thinking for themselves, and controlled the suit as a waldo, exaggerating many times the strength of their own muscles.
Sitting in his blimpglider Nirgal watched with both pleasure and trepidation as these bird people shot down past him in terrifying stoops toward the sea, then popped their wings and curved away and gyred back up again on the inner-wall updraft. It looked to Nirgal like the suits took a high level of skill to fly; they were the opposite of the blimpgliders, a few of which soared with Nirgal over the island, rising and falling in much gentler swoops, taking in the view like agile balloonists.
Then soaring up past him in a rising spiral, Nirgal spotted the face of the diana, the woman who had led the ferals' hunt. She recognized him too, raised her chin and bared her teeth in a quick smile, then pulled her wings in and tipped over, dropping away with a tearing sound. Nirgal watched her from above with fearful excitement, then a moment of terror as she dove right past the edge of Santorini's cliff; from his vantage point it had looked like she was going to hit. Then she was back up, soaring on the updraft in tight spirals. It looked so graceful he wanted to learn to fly in a birdsuit, even as he felt his pulse still hammering at the sight of her dive. Stoop and soar, stoop and soar; no blimpglider could fly like that, not even close. Birds were the greatest fliers, and the diana flew like a bird. Now, along with everything else, people were birds.
With him, past him, around him, as if performing one of those darting courtships that members of some species put on for each other; after about an hour of this, she smiled at him one last time and tipped away, then drifted in lazy circles down to the gliderport at Phira. Nirgal followed her down, landing half an hour later with a swoop into the wind, running and then stopping just short of her. She had been waiting, wings spread around her on the ground.
She stepped in a circle around him, as if still doing a courtship dance. She walked toward him, pulling her hood back and offering her head, her black hair spilling out in the light like a crow's wing. The diana. She stretched up on her toes and kissed him full on the mouth, then stood back, watching him gravely. He remembered her running naked ahead of the hunt, a green sash bouncing from one hand.
"Breakfast?" she said.
It was midafternoon, and he was famished. "Sure."
They ate at the gliderport restaurant, looking out at the arc of the island's little bay, and the immensity of the Sharanov cliffs, and the acrobatics of the fliers still in the air. They talked about flying, and running the land; about the hunt for the three antelope, and the islands of the North Sea, and the great fjord of Kasei, pouring its wind over them. They flirted; and Nirgal felt the pleasant anticipation of where they were headed, he luxuriated in it. It had been a long time. This too was part of the descent into the city, into civilization. Flirting, seduction--- how wonderful all that was when one was interested, when one saw that the other was interested! She was fairly young, he judged, but her face was sunburned, skin lined around the eyes--- not a youth--- she had been to the Jovian moons, she said, and had taught at the new university in Nilokeras, and was now running with the ferals for a time. Twenty m-years old, perhaps, or older--- hard to tell these days. An adult, in any case; in those first twenty m-years people got most of whatever experience was ever going to give them, after that it was only a matter of repetition. He had met old fools and young sages almost as often as the reverse. They were both adults, contemporaries. And there they were, in the shared experience of the present.
Nirgal watched her face as she talked. Careless, smart, confident. A Minoan: dark-skinned, dark-eyed, aquiline nose, dramatic lower lip; Mediterranean ancestry, perhaps, Greek, Arabic, Indian; as with most of the yonsei, it was impossible to tell. She was simply a Martian woman, with Dorsa Brevia English, and that look in the eye as she watched him--- ah yes--- how many times in his wandering had it happened, a conversation turning at some point, and then suddenly he was flying with some woman in the long glide of seduction, the courtship leading to some bed or hidden dip in the hills. . . .
"Hey Zo," the butcher woman said in passing. "Going with us to the ancestral neck?"
"No," Zo said.
"The ancestral neck?" Nirgal inquired.
"Boone's Neck," Zo said. "The town up on the polar peninsula."
"Ancestral?"
"She's John Boone's great-grandaughter," the butcher woman explained.
"By way of?" Nirgal asked, looking at Zo.
"Jackie Boone," she said. "My mother."
"Ah," Nirgal managed to say.
He sat back in his seat. The baby he had seen Jackie nursing, in Cairo. The similarity to her mother was obvious once he knew. His skin was goose-pimpling, the hairs lifting from the skin of his forearms. He hugged himself, shivered. "I must be getting old," he said.
She smiled, and he saw suddenly that she had known who he was. She had been toying with him, laying a little trap--- as an experiment, perhaps, or to displease her mother, or for some other reason he could not imagine. For fun.
Now she was frowning at him, trying to look serious. "It doesn't matter," she said.
"No," he said. For there were other ferals out there.
Viriditas
Prologue
It was a disordered time. Population pressures now drove everything. The general plan to get through the hypermalthusian years was obvious, and holding up fairly well; each generation got smaller; nevertheless, there were now eighteen billion people on Earth, and eighteen million on Mars; and more being born all the time; and more moving from Earth to Mars all the time; and people on both worlds crying enough, enough!
When Terrans heard Martians crying enough, some of them became enraged. The concept of carrying capacity meant nothing before the sheer numbers, the images on the screens. Uneasily the Martian global government did what it could to deal with this anger. It explained that Mars with its thin new biosphere could not sustain as many people as the fat old Earth. It also set the Martian rocket industry into the shuttle business, and rapidly expanded a program to turn asteroids into floating cities. This program was an unexpected offshoot of what had been serving as part of their prison system. For many years now the punishment for conviction of serious crimes on Mars had been permanent exile from the planet, begun by some years of confinement and servitude on some new asteroid settlement. After they had served their sentence it was a matter of indifference to the Martian government where the exiles went, as long as they did not return to Mars. So inevitably a steady stream of people arrived on Hebe, shipped out and did their time, and then moved somewhere else, sometimes out to the still thinly populated outer satellites, sometimes back into the inner system; but often to one of the many hollowed-asteroid colonies that were being established. Da Vinci and several other co-ops made and distributed shareware for starting up these settlements, and many other organizations did the same, for in truth the program was simple. Surveying teams had found thousands of candidates in the asteroid belt for the treatment, and on the best of them they left behind the equipment to transform them. A team of self-reproducing digging robots went to work on one end of the asteroid, boring into the rock like dogs, tossing most of the rubble into space, and using the rest to make and fuel more diggers. When the rock was hollowed out, the open end was capped and the whole thing was spun, so that centrifugal force provided a gravity equivalent inside. Powerful lamps called sunlines or sunspots were fired up in the centers of these hollowed-out cylinders, and they provided light levels equivalent to the Terran or Martian day, with the g usually adjusted accordingly, so that there were little Mars-equivalent cities, and little Earth-equivalent cities, and cities all across the range in between, and beyond, at least to the light side; many of the little worlds were experimenting with quite low gs.
There were some alliances between these little new city-states, and often ties to founder organizations back on a home world, but there was no overall organization. From the independents, especially those occupied mostly by Martian exiles, there had been in the early days some fairly hostile behavior to passersby, including attempts to impose passage tolls on spaceships, tolls so blatant as to resemble piracy. But now shuttles passing through the belts were moving at very high speeds, and slightly above or below the plane of the ecliptic, to avoid the dust and rubble that was only getting worse with the hollowing of so many rocks. It was difficult to demand a toll from these ships without threatening their total destruction, which invited heavy retribution; and so the trend in tolls had proved to be short-lived.
Now, with both Earth and Mars feeling population pressures that were more and more intense, the Martian co-ops were doing everything they could to encourage the rapid development of new asteroid cities. They were also building large new tented settlements on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and most recently Uranus, with Neptune and perhaps even Pluto to follow. The big satellites of the inner gas giants were very large moons, really little planets, and all of them now had inhabitants who were beginning terraforming projects that were more or less long-range, depending on the local situation. None of them could be terraformed quickly, but all of them appeared to be possible, at least to an extent; and some offered the tantalizing opportunity of a complete new world. Titan, for instance, was beginning to come out of its nitrogen haze, as settlers living in tents on the smaller moons nearby heated and pumped the big moon's surface oxygen into its atmosphere. Titan had the right volatiles for terraformation, and though it was at great distance from the sun, receiving only one percent the insolation that Earth did, an extensive series of mirrors was adding light, more all the time, and the locals were looking into the possibility of free-hanging deuterium fusion lanterns, orbiting Titan and illuminating it further. This would be an alternative to another device that so far the Saturnians had been averse to using, called a gas lantern. These gas lanterns were now flying through the upper atmospheres of Jupiter and Uranus, collecting and burning helium, and other gases in flares whose light was reflected outward by electromagnetic disks. But the Saturnians had refused to allow them, because they did not want to disturb the ringed planet's appearance.
So in all these outer orbits the Martian co-ops were extremely busy, helping Martians and Terrans to emigrate to one of the new little worlds. And as the process continued, and a hundred and then a thousand asteroids and moonlets were given a local habitation and a name, the process took fire, becoming what some called the explosive diaspora, others simply the accelerando. People took to the idea, and the project gathered an energy that was felt everywhere, expressing a growing sense of humanity's power to create, its vitality and variety. And the accelerando was also understood to be humanity's response to the supreme crisis of the population surge, a crisis so severe that it made the Terran flood of 2129 look in comparison like no more than a bad high tide. It was a crisis which could have triggered a terminal disaster, a descent into chaos and barbarity; and instead it was being met head-on by the greatest efflorescence of civilization in history, a new renaissance.
Many historians, sociologists, and other social observers attempted to explain the vibrant nature of this most selfconscious age. One school of historians, called the Deluge Group, looked back to the great Terran flood, and declared that it had been the cause of the new renaissance: a forced jump to a higher level. Another school of thought put forth the so-called Technical Explanation; humanity had passed through one of the transitions to a new level of technological competence, they maintained, as it had every half century or so right back to the first industrial revolution. The Deluge Group tended to use the term diaspora, the Technics the term accelerando. Then in the 2170s the Martian historian Charlotte Dorsa Brevia wrote and published a dense multivolumed analytical metahistory, as she called it, which maintained that the great flood had indeed served as a trigger point, and technical advances as the enabling mechanism, but that the specific character of the new renaissance had been caused by something much more fundamental, which was the shift from one kind of global socioeconomic system to the next. She described what she called a "residual/emergent complex of overlapping paradigms," in which each great socioeconomic era was composed of roughly equal parts of the systems immediately adjacent to it in past and future. The periods immediately before and after were not the only ones involved, however; they formed the bulk of a system, and comprised its most contradictory components, but additional important features came from particularly persistent aspects of more archaic systems, and also faint hesitant intuitions of developments that would not flower until much later.
Feudalism, therefore, to take one example, was for Charlotte made up of a clash of the residual system of absolute religious monarchy, and the emergent system of capitalism--- with important echoes of more archaic tribal caste, and faint foreshadowings of later individualist humanisms. The clashing of these forces shifted over time, until the Renaissance of the sixteenth century ushered in the age of capitalism. Capitalism then was composed of clashing elements of the residual feudalism, and an emergent future order that was only now being defined in their own time, which Charlotte called democracy. And now, Charlotte claimed, they were, on Mars at least, in the democratic age itself. Capitalism had therefore, like all other ages, been the combination of two systems in very sharp opposition to each other. This incompatibility of its constituent parts was underlined by the unfortunate experience of capitalism's critical shadow, socialism, which had theorized true democracy, and called for it, but in the attempt to enact it had used the methods at hand in its time, the same feudal methods so prevalent in capitalism itself; so that both versions of the mix had ended up about as destructive and unjust as their common residual parent. The feudal hierarchies in capitalism had been mirrored in the lived socialist experiments; and so the whole era had remained a highly charged chaotic struggle, exhibiting several different versions of the dynamic struggle between feudalism and democracy.
But the democratic age had finally, on Mars, emerged from the capitalist age. And this age too, following the logic of Charlotte's paradigm, was necessarily a clash of residual and emergent--- between the contentious, competitive residuals of the capitalist system, and some emergent aspects of an order beyond democracy--- one that could not be fully characterized yet, as it had never existed, but which Charlotte ventured to call Harmony, or General Goodwill. This speculative leap she made partly by studying closely how different cooperative economics was from capitalism, and partly by taking an even larger metahistorical perspective, and identifying a broad general movement in history which commentators called her Big Seesaw, a movement from the deep residuals of the dominance hierarchies of our primate ancestors on the savanna, toward the very slow, uncertain, difficult, unpredetermined, free emergence of a pure harmony and equality which would then characterize the very truest democracy. Both of these longterm clashing elements had always existed, Charlotte maintained, creating the big seesaw, with the balance between them slowly and irregularly shifting, over all human history: dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expressed in every primate's sense of self, and resentment of hierarchies that after all had to be imposed, by force. And so as the seesaw of this meta-metahistory had shifted balance over the centuries, the noticeably imperfect attempts to institute democracy had slowly gained power. Thus a very small percentage of humans had counted as true equals in slave-holding societies like ancient Greece or revolutionary America, and the circle of true equals had only enlarged a bit more in the later "capitalist democracies." But as each system passed on to the next, the circle of equal citizens had bloomed wider, by a slight or great margin, until now not only were all humans (in theory, anyway) equal, but consideration was being given to other animals, and even to plants, ecosystems, and the elements themselves. These last extensions of "citizenship" Charlotte considered to be among the foreshadowings of the emergent system that might come after democracy per se, Charlotte's postulated period of utopian "harmony." These glimmerings were faint, and Charlotte's distant hoped-for system a vague hypothesis; when Sax Russell read the later volumes of her work, poring avidly over the endless examples and arguments (for this account is a severe abridgment of her work, a mere abstract only), reading in an excited state at finding a general paradigm that might clarify history for him at last, he wondered if this putative age of universal harmony and goodwill would ever actually come about; it seemed to him possible or even likely that there was some sort of asymptotic curve in the human story--- the ballast of the body, perhaps--- which would keep civilization struggling there in the age of democracy, struggling always upward, also away from relapse, and never getting much further along; but it also seemed to him that this state itself would be good enough to call a successful civilization. Enough was as good as a feast, after all.
In any case, Charlotte's metahistory was very influential, providing for the explosively accelerating diaspora a kind of master narrative, by which they could orient themselves; and so she joined the small list of historians whose analyses had affected the flow of their own time, people like Plato, Plutarch, Bacon, Gibbon, Chamfort, Carlyle, Emerson, Marx, Spengler--- and on Mars before Charlotte, Michel Duval. People now ordinarily understood capitalism to have been the clash of feudalism and democracy, and the present to be the democratic age, the clash of capitalism and harmony. And they also understood that their own era could still become anything else as well--- Charlotte was insistent that there was no such thing as historical determinism, but only people's repeated efforts to enact their hopes; then the analyst's retroactive recognition of such hopes as came true created an illusion of determinism. Anything could have happened; they could have fallen apart into general anarchy, they could have become a universal police state to "control" the crisis years; but as the great metanationals of Terra had in reality all mutated into Praxis-like worker-owned cooperatives, with people in control of their own work--- democracy it was, for the moment. They had enacted that hope.
And now their democratic civilization was accomplishing something that the previous system could never have accomplished, which was simply survival in the hypermalthusian period. Now they could begin to see that fundamental shift in systems, in this twenty-second century they were enacting; they had shifted the balance, in order to survive the new conditions. In the cooperative democratic economy, everyone saw the stakes were high; everyone felt responsible for their collective fate; and everyone benefited from the frenetic burst of coordinated construction that was going on everywhere in the solar system.
This flowering civilization included not only the solar system beyond Mars, but the inner planets as well. In the flush of energy and confidence humanity was working back in to areas previously considered uninhabitable, and now Venus was attracting a crowd of new terraformers, who were following up on the gesture made by Sax Russell with the relocation of Mars's great mirrors, and had elaborated a grand vision for the eventual inhabitation of that planet, the sister to Earth in so many ways.
And even Mercury had its settlement. Although it had to be admitted that for most purposes, Mercury was too close to the sun. Its day lasted fifty-nine Terran days, its year eighty-eight Terran days, so that three of its days equaled two years, a pattern that was not a coincidence but a node on the way to being tidally locked, like Luna around the Earth. The combination of these two spins gave Mercury a very slow roll through its solar day, during which the brightside hemisphere became much too hot, while the nightside hemisphere became extremely cold. The lone city currently on the planet was therefore a kind of enormous train, running around the planet on tracks set on the northern forty-fifth latitude. These tracks were made of a metalloceramic alloy that was the first of the Mercurial physicists' many alchemical tricks, a matrix that withstood the eight-hundred-K heat of midbrightside. The city itself, called Terminator, then ran over these tracks at a speed of about three kilometers per hour, which kept it within the planet's terminator, the zone of predawn shadow that was in most terrain about twenty kilometers wide. A slight expansion of the tracks exposed to the morning sun farther to the east drove the city ever westward, as it rested on tightly fitting sleeves shaped to slide the city away from the expansion. This motion was so inexorable that resistance to it in another part of the sleeves generated great amounts of electrical power, as did the solar collectors trailing the city, and set on the very top of the high Dawn Wall, catching the first blasting rays of sunlight. Even in a civilization where energy was cheap, Mercury was amazingly blessed. And so it joined the worlds farther out, and became one of the brightest of all. And a hundred new floating worlds opened every year--- cities in flight, little city-states, each with its own charter, settler mix, landscape, style.
And yet still, with all the blossoming of human effort and confidence of the accelerando, there was a sense of tension in the air, of danger. For despite all the building, emigration, settlement, and inhabitation, there were still eighteen billion on Earth, and eighteen million on Mars; and the semipermeable membrane between the two planets was curved taut with the osmotic pressure of that demographic imbalance. Relations between the two were tense, and many feared that a prick of the taut membrane could tear everything asunder. In this pressured situation, history was little comfort; so far they had dealt with it well, but never before had humanity responded to a crisis of need with any longterm consistent sensible sanity; mass madness had erupted before; and they were the exact same animals that in previous centuries, faced with matters of subsistence and survival, had slaughtered each other indiscriminately. Presumably it could happen again. So people built, argued, grew furious; waited, uneasily, for signs that the oldest superelderly were dying; stared hard at every child they saw. A stressed renaissance, then, living fast, on the edge, a manic golden age: the Accelerando. And no one could say what would happen next.
Zo sat at the back of a room full of diplomats, looking out the window at Terminator as the oval city rolled majestically over the blasted wastelands of Mercury. The hemiellipsoidal space under the city's high clear dome would have been a pretty airspace to fly in, but the local authorities had banned it as too dangerous--- one of many fascist regulations that bound life here--- the state as nanny, what Nietzsche so aptly called the slave mentality, still alive and well here at the end of the twenty-second century, in fact popping up everywhere, hierarchy reerecting its comforting structure in all these new provincial settlements, Mercury, the asteroids, the outer systems--- everywhere except on noble Mars.
Here on Mercury it was particularly bad. Meetings between the Martian delegation and the Mercurians had been going on in Terminator for weeks, and Zo was tired of them, both the meetings and the Mercurial negotiators, a secretive self-important group of oligarchic mullahs haughty and fawning at the same time, who had not yet comprehended the new order of things in the solar system. She wanted to forget them and their little world, to go home and fly.
On the other hand, in her cover as a lowly staff assistant she had up to this point been an entirely minor figure in the proceedings, and now that negotiations were grinding to a halt, stalled on the stubborn incomprehension of these happy slaves, her turn had come at last. As the meeting broke up, she took aside an aide to the highest leader in Terminator, who was called rather picturesquely the Lion of Mercury, and she asked the aide for a private meeting. The young man, an ex-Terran, was agreeable--- Zo had made sure of his interest long before--- and they retired to a terrace outside the city offices.
Zo put a hand to the man's arm, said kindly, "We're very concerned that if Mercury and Mars don't make a solid partnership, Terra will wedge between us and play us off against each other. We're the two largest collections of heavy metals left in the solar system, and the more civilization spreads, the more valuable that becomes. And civilization is certainly spreading. This is the Accelerando, after all. Metals are valuable."
And Mercury's natural fund of metals, though hard to mine, was truly spectacular; the planet was only a little bigger than Luna and yet its gravity nearly equaled that of Mars, a very tangible sign of its heavy iron core, and its accompanying array of more precious metals, seamed all through the meteor-battered surface.
"Yes . . . ?" the young man said.
"We feel that we need to establish a more explicit. . . . "
"Cartel?"
"Partnership."
The young Mercurian smiled. "We aren't worried about being pitted against Mars by anyone."
"Obviously. But we are."
For a time there, at the beginning of its colonization, Mercury had seemed to be very flush. Not only did the colonists have metals, but being so close to the sun, they had the possibility of tapping a great deal of solar energy. Just the resistance set up between the city's sleeves and the expanding tracks they slid over created enormous amounts of it, and there was even more in solar-collection potential; collectors in Mercurial orbit had started lazing some of that sunlight out to the new outer-solar-system colonies. From the first fleet of track-laying cars, in 2142, through the rolling construction of Terminator in the 2150s, and throughout the 2160s and 70s, the Mercurians had thought they were rich.
Now it was 2181, however, and with the successful wide deployment of various kinds of fusion power, energy was cheap, and light was reasonably plentiful. The so-called lamp satellites, and the gas lanterns burning in the upper atmospheres of the gas giants, were being built and lit all over the outer system. As a result Mercury's copious solar resources had been rendered insignificant. Mercury had become once again nothing more than a metal-rich but dreadfully hot-and-cold place, a hardship assignment. And unterraformable to boot.
Quite a crash in their fortunes, as Zo reminded the young man without much subtlety. Which meant they needed to cooperate with their more conveniently located allies in the system. "Otherwise the risk of Terran return to dominance is very real."
"Terra is too enmeshed in its own problems to endanger anyone else," the young man said.
Zo shook her head gently. "The more trouble Terra is in, the worse danger for the rest of us. That's why we're worried. That's why we're thinking that, if you don't want to enter into an agreement with us, we may just have to build another city and track system on Mercury, down in the southern hemisphere, and cruise in the terminator down there. Where some of the best metal deposits are."
The young man was shocked. "You couldn't do that without our permission."
"Couldn't we?"
"No city on Mercury can exist if we don't want it to."
"Why, what will you do?"
The young man was silent.
Zo said, "Anyone can do what they want, eh? This is true for everyone ever born."
The young man thought it over. "There's not enough water."
"No." Mercury's water supply consisted in its entirety of small ice fields lying inside craters at the two poles, where they remained in permanent shadow. These crater glaciers contained enough water for Terminator's purposes, but not much more. "A few comets directed at the poles would add more, however."
"Unless their impact blasted all the water on the poles away! No, that wouldn't work! The ice in those polar craters is only a tiny fraction of the water from billions of years of comets, hitting all over the planet. Most of the water was lost to space on impact, or burned off. The same thing would happen if comets struck up there now. You'd get a net loss."
"The AI modelers suggest all kinds of possibilities. We could always try it and see."
The young man stepped back, affronted. And rightly so; you couldn't put a threat much more explicitly than that. But in slave moralities the good and the stupid tended to become much the same, so one had to be explicit. Zo held her expression steady, though the young man's indignation had a commedia dell'arte quality that was quite funny. She stepped closer to him, emphasizing their difference in height; she had half a meter on him.
"I'll give the Lion your message," he said through his teeth.
"Thanks," Zo said, and leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.
These slaves had created for themselves a ruling caste of physicist-priests, who were a black box for those on the outside, but like all good oligarchies predictable and powerful in their exterior action. They would take the hint, and be able to act on it. An alliance would follow. So Zo left their offices, and walked happily down the stepped streets of the Dawn Wall. Her work was done, and so very likely the mission would soon return to Mars.
She entered the Martian consulate midway down the wall, sent a call to Jackie letting her know that the next move had been made. After that she walked out onto the balcony to have a smoke.
Her color vision surged under the impact of the chromotropics lacing her cigarette, and the little city below her became quite stunning, a Fauvist fantasia. Against the Dawn Wall the terracing rose in ever-narrower strips, until the highest buildings (the offices of the city rulers, naturally) were a mere line of windows under the Great Gates and the clear dome above it. Tile roofs and balconies were nestled under the green treetops below her, the balconies all floored and walled by mosaics. Down on the oval flat that held the greater part of the city, the roofs were bigger and closer together, the greenery bunched in crops that glowed under the light that bounced down from filtered mirrors in the dome; altogether it looked like a big Fabergé egg, elaborate, colorful, pretty in the way that all cities were. But to be trapped inside one . . . well, there was nothing for it but to pass the hours in as entertaining a manner as possible, until she got the word to go home. Part of one's nobility was devotion to duty, after all.
So she strode down the wall's staircase streets to Le Dôme, to party with Miguel and Arlene and Xerxes, and the band of composers, musicians, writers and other artists and aesthetes who hung out at the café. It was a wild bunch. Mercury's craters had all been named centuries before after the most famous artists in Terran history, and so as Terminator rolled along it passed Dürer and Mozart, Phidias and Purcell, Turgenev and Van Dyke; and elsewhere on the planet were Beethoven, Imhotep, Mahler, Matisse, Murasaki, Milton, Mark Twain; Homer and Holbein touched rims; Ovid starred the rim of the much larger Pushkin, in one of many reversals of true importance; Goya overlapped Sophocles, Van Gogh was inside Cervantes; Chao Meng-fu was full of ice; and so on and so forth, in a most capricious manner, as if the naming committee of the International Astronomical Union had one night gotten hilariously drunk and started tossing named darts at a map; there was even a clue commemorating this party, a huge escarpment named Pourquoi Pas.
Zo thoroughly approved the method. But the effect on the artists currently living on Mercury had been catastrophic in the extreme. Constantly confronted as they were with Terra's unmatchable canon, an overwhelming anxiety of influence had crippled them. But their partying had taken on a corresponding greatness that Zo quite enjoyed.
On this evening, after a considerable amount of drinking in the Dôme, during which time the city rolled between Stravinsky and Vyasa, the group took off through the narrow alleyways of the city, looking for trouble. A few blocks away they barged in on a ceremony of Mithraists or Zoroastrians, sun worshipers in any case, influential in local government and indeed perhaps the heart of it, and their catcalls quickly broke up the meeting and stimulated a fistfight, and in short order they had to run to avoid arrest by the local constabulary, the spasspolizei as the Dôme crowd called them.
After that they went to the Odeon, but were kicked out for being unruly; then they cruised the alleyways of the entertainment district, and danced outside a bar where loud bad industrial was being played. But there was something missing. Forced gaiety was so pathetic, Zo thought, looking down at their sweaty faces. "Let's go outside," she suggested. "Let's go out on the surface and play piper at the gates of dawn."
No one except Miguel showed any interest. They were worms in a bottle, they had forgotten the ground existed. But Miguel had promised to take her out many times, and now, with her time on Mercury short, he was finally just bored enough to agree to go.
• • •
Terminator's tracks were numerous, each smooth gray cylinder held several meters off the ground by an endless row of thick pylons. As the city slid majestically westward, it passed small stationary platforms leading to underground transfer bunkers, baked ballardian space-plane runways, and crater-rim refuges. Leaving the city was a controlled activity, no surprise, but Miguel had a pass, and so the two of them activated the south city doors with it, and stepped into the lock and across into an underground station called Hammersmith. There they suited up, in bulky but flexible spacesuits, and went out through a lock into a tunnel, and up onto the blasted dust of Mercury.
Nothing could have been more clean and spare than this waste of black and gray. In such a context Miguel's drunken giggling bothered Zo more than usual, and she turned down her helmet intercom until it was no more than a whisper.
Walking east of the city was dangerous; even standing still was dangerous; but to see the sun's edge, that's what they had to do. Zo kicked at the rocks as they wandered southwest, to get an angle on their view of the city. She wished she could fly over this back world; presumably some kind of rocket backpack would do the trick, but no one had bothered to work it up, as far as she knew. So they trudged along instead, keeping a sharp eye to the east. Very soon the sun would rise over that horizon; above them now, in the ultrathin neon-argon atmosphere, fine dust kicked up by electron bombardment turning to a faint white mist in the solar bombardment. Behind them the very top of the Dawn Wall was a blaze of pure white, impossible to look at even through the heavy differential filtering of their helmet face masks.
Then the rocky flat horizon ahead of them to the east, near Stravinsky Crater, turned into a silver nitrate image of itself. Zo stared into the explosive phosphorescent dancing line, rapt: Sol's corona, like a forest fire in some silver forest just over the horizon. Zo's spirit flashed likewise, she would have flown like Icarus into the sun if she could, she felt like a moth wanting the flame, a kind of spiritual sexual hunger, and indeed she was crying out in just the same involuntary orgasmic cries, such a fire, such a beauty. The solar rapture, they called this back in the city, and well named. Miguel felt it as well; he was leaping from boulder tops eastward, arms spread wide, like Icarus trying to launch himself.
Then he came down awkwardly in the dust, and Zo could hear his cry even with her intercom volume turned almost off. She ran to him and saw the impossible angle of his left knee, cried out herself and knelt at his side. Through the suit the ground was frigid. She helped him up, his arm over her shoulder. She turned up the volume on her intercom, even though he was groaning loudly. "Shut up," she said. "Concentrate, pay attention."
They got into a rhythm, hopping west after the receding Dawn Wall, still incandescent across the top of its tall bell curve. It was receding from them, there was no time to be lost. But they kept falling. The third time, sprawled in the dust, the landscape a blinding mix of pure white and pure black, Miguel screamed in pain and then panted out, "Go on, Zo, go save yourself! No reason both of us should die out here!""Go!"
"Oh fuck that," Zo said, picking herself up.
"I won't! Shut up now, let me try carrying you."
He weighed about what he would on Mars, seventy kilos with the suit, she guessed, more a matter of balance than anything else, so while he babbled on hysterically, "Let me go, Zo, truth is beauty, beauty truth, that is all you know and all you need to know," she leaned over and put her arms under his back and knees, which caused him to shriek. "Shut up!" she cried. "Right now this is the truth, and therefore beautiful." And she laughed as she started to run with him in her arms.
He blocked her view of the ground directly before them, so she had to look forward in the blaze-and-black, with sweat in her eyes. It was hard going, and twice more she fell; but while running she thumped along at a good speed back toward the city.
Then she felt sunlight on her back. It was like the pricking of needles, even through her insulated suit. Massive surge of adrenaline; blinded by the light; some kind of valley aligned to the dawn; then back into the patchy zone of light-shot shadows, a crazy chiaroscuro; then, slowly, back into the terminator proper, everything shadowed and dim except for the fiery city wall, blazing far above. She was gasping hard for air, sweating heavily, hot from exertion now rather than sunlight. And yet still the sight of the incandescent arc at the top of the city was enough to make one into a Mithraist.
Of course even when the city was directly over them, there was no immediate way of getting back up into it. She had to run past it, on to the next underground station. Complete focus on running, for minute after minute. Lactic-acid pain. And there it was, up ahead on the horizon, a door in a hill beside the tracks; pound and pound over the smoothed regolith. Violent hammering on the door got the two of them let into the lock and inside, where they were arrested; but Zo just laughed at the spasspolizei, and got her helmet off, and Miguel's, and kissed the sobbing Miguel repeatedly for his clumsiness. In his pain he didn't notice, he was latched onto her as a drowning man to a lifesaver. She only succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp by banging him gently on his hurt knee. She laughed out loud at his howl, feeling a rush pour through her; such adrenaline, so beautiful, rarer by far than any sexual orgasm, thus more precious. So she kissed Miguel again and again, kisses that he did not notice, and then she barged through the spasspolizei, claiming diplomatic status and a need for haste. "Get him some drugs, you fools," she said. "A shuttle for Mars is leaving tonight, I have to go."
"Thank you, Zo!" Miguel cried. "Thank you! You saved my life!"
"I saved my trip home," she said, and laughed at his expression. She returned to kiss him some more. "It's me should be thanking you! Such an opportunity! Thank you, thank you."
"No, thank you!"
"No, thank you!"
And even in his agony he laughed. "I love you, Zo."
"And I love you."
But if she didn't hurry she would miss her shuttle.
The shuttle was a pulsed fusion rocket, and they would reach Earth the day after tomorrow. And in a decent gravity the whole time, except for during the somersault.
All manner of things were changing because of this sudden shrinkage of the solar system. One small result was that Venus was no longer needed as a gravity handle for rocket travel, and so it was coincidence only that had Zo's shuttle, the Nike of Samothrace, passing fairly near to the shaded planet. Zo joined the rest of the passengers in the big skylight ballroom to look at it as they passed. The clouds of the planet's superheated atmosphere were dark; the planet appeared as a gray circle against the black of space. The terraforming of Venus was proceeding apace, the whole planet in the shade of a parasol, which was Mars's old soletta with its mirrors repositioned so that they did just the opposite of what they had done in front of Mars; rather than redirect light onto the planet, they reflected it all away. Venus rolled in darkness.
This was the first step of a terraforming project that many people deemed mad. Venus had no water, a stupendously thick superheated carbon-dioxide atmosphere, a day longer than its year, and surface temperatures that would melt lead and zinc. Not a promising set of initial conditions, it was true, but people had begun to try anyway, humanity's reach continuing to exceed its grasp, even as its grasp became godlike; Zo thought it was wonderful. The people who had initiated the project were even claiming it could happen faster than the terraforming of Mars. This was because the complete removal of sunlight had profound effects; the temperature in the thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere (ninety-five bar at the surface!) had been dropping by five K a year for the last half century. Soon the "Big Rain" would begin to fall, and in just a couple hundred years the carbon dioxide would all be on the planet, in dry-ice glaciers covering the low parts of the surface. At that point the dry ice was to be covered by an insulating layer of diamond coating or foamed rock, and once sealed off, water oceans would be introduced. The water was going to come from somewhere else, as Venus's natural inventory would cover it to a depth of a centimeter or less. The Venusian terraformers, mystics of a new kind of viriditas, were currently negotiating with the Saturnian League for the rights to the ice moon Enceledus, which they hoped to drive down into Venusian orbit and break up in successive passes through the atmosphere. This moon's water once rained onto Venus would create shallow oceans over about seventy percent of the planet, entirely covering the wrapped carbon-dioxide glaciers. An atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen would be left in place, some light would be let through the parasol, and at that point human settlements would become possible, on the two high continents Ishtar and Aphrodite. After that, they would have all the remaining problems of terraforming that Mars had been dealing with, and they would also have the very longterm, specifically Venusian projects of removing the CO2 ice sheets from the planet somehow, and also imparting enough spin to the planet to give it a reasonable diurnal cycle; for the short term, days and nights could be established using the parasol as a giant circular venetian blind, but in the long run they did not want to rely on something so fragile. With a quiver she imagined it: some centuries hence, a biosphere and civilization established on Venus, the two continents inhabited, the beautiful Diana Rift a fair valley, billions of people and animals--- and then one day the parasol knocked awry, and ssssss, a whole world roasted. Not a happy prospect. And so now, even before the massive flooding and scouring of the Big Rain, they were trying to lay metallic windings as physicalized latitude lines around the planet, windings that would, when a fleet of solar-powered generators were placed in fluctuating orbits around the planet, make the planet in effect the armature of a giant electric motor, the magnetic forces of which would create the torque that would increase the planet's spin. The system's designers claimed that, in about the same time it would take to freeze out the atmosphere and drop an ocean, the impetus of this "Dyson motor" could speed Venus's rotation enough to give the planet a weeklong day; so there they would be, in perhaps three hundred years, down on the transmogrified world, planting crops. The surface would be massively eroded of course, and still very volcanic, with carbon dioxide trapped under the seas ready to burst out and poison them, and weeklong days cooking and freezing them; but there they would be nevertheless, everything stripped, raw, new.
The plan was insane. It was beautiful. Zo stared up through the ballroom ceiling at the gibbous gray globe, hopping from foot to foot in her excitement, in her horror and admiration, hoping to catch a glimpse of the little dots of the new asteroid moons that were home to the terraforming mystics, or perhaps the coronal arc of a reflection from the annular mirror that used to be Mars's. No luck there--- only the gray disk of the shaded evening star, the signet of people who had taken on a task that recontextualized humanity as a kind of god bacteria, chewing away at worlds, dying to prepare the ground for later life--- dwarfed most grandiosely in the cosmic scheme of things, in an almost Calvinistic masochist-heroism--- a parodic travesty of the Mars project--- and yet just as magnificent. They were specks in this universe, specks! But what ideas they had. People would do anything for the sake of an idea, anything.
• • •
Even visit Earth. Steaming, clotted, infectious, a human anthill stuck with a stick; the panic pullulation ongoing in the dreadful mash of history; the hypermalthusian nightmare at its worst; hot, humid, and heavy; and yet still, or perhaps because of all that, a great place to visit. And Jackie wanted her to check in with a couple of people in India anyway. So Zo had taken the Nike, and would later catch a Mars shuttle from Earth.
Before she went to India to talk to Jackie's contacts, however, she made her regular pilgrimage to Crete, to see the ruins that here were still called Minoan, although in Dorsa Brevia she had been taught to call them Ariadnean. Minos had been the one to wreck the ancient matriarchy, after all, so it was one of the many travesties of Terran history that the destroyed civilization should now be named after the destroyer. But names could be changed.
She wore a rented exoskeleton, made for off-world visitors oppressed by the g. Gravity was destiny, as they said, and Earth had a lot of destiny. The suits were like birdsuits without wings, conformable bodysuits that moved with one's muscles while providing some undersupport; body bras. They did not entirely ease the effect of the planet's pull, for breathing was still an effort, and Zo's limbs felt heavy within the suit, so to speak, pressed down uncomfortably against the fabric. She had gotten used to walking around in the suits on previous trips, and it was a fascinating exercise, like weight lifting, but not one that she liked very much. Better than the alternative, however. She had tried that too, but it was a terrible distraction, it kept one from really seeing, really being there.
So she walked around the ancient site of Gournia, in the peculiar, somewhat submarine flow of the suit. Gournia was her favorite of all the Ariadnean ruins, the only ordinary village of that civilization to have been found and excavated; the other sites were all palaces. This village had probably been a satellite of the palace at Malia: now a warren of waist-high walls made of stacked stones, covering a hilltop overlooking the Aegean. All the rooms were very small, often one meter by two, with alleys running between shared walls; little labyrinths, yes, and very much like the whitewashed villages that still dotted the countryside. People said that Crete had been hard hit by the great flood, as the Ariadneans had been by theirs following the explosion of Thera; and it was true that all the pretty little fishing harbors were flooded to one extent or another, and the Ariadnean ruins at Zakros and Malia entirely drowned. But what Zo saw on Crete was an everlasting vitality. There was no other place on Earth she had seen that had handled the population surge as well; everywhere small whitewashed villages clung to the land, like beehives, covering hilltops, filling valleys, and surrounded by crops and orchards, with the dry knobby hills still sticking out of the cultivated land, in sculptured ridges rising to the central spine of the island. The island's population had risen to over forty million, she had heard, and yet the island still looked much the same; there were just more villages, built to match the pattern not only of the existing ones but of the ancient ones like Gournia and Itanos as well. Town planning with a continuity five thousand years old, continuity with that first peak of civilization or final peak of prehistory, so tall as to be glimpsed even by classical Greece a thousand years later, enduring by oral transmission alone as the myth of Atlantis--- and then also in the shapes of all their subsequent lives, not only on Crete, but now on her Mars as well. Because of the names used in Dorsa Brevia, and that culture's valorization of the Ariadnean matriarchy, the two places had developed a relationship; many Martians came to Crete to visit the ancient sites, and there were new hotels near all of them now, built on a slightly larger scale to accommodate the tall young pilgrims, visiting the holy places station to station--- Phaistos, Gournia, Itanos, Malia and Zakros under the water, even the ridiculous "reconstruction" at Knossos. They came and saw how it had all begun, back in the morning of the world. Zo too--- standing in the brilliant blue Aegean light, straddling a stone alleyway five thousand years old, she felt pouring into her the reverberations of that greatness, up through the spongy red stones underfoot and into her own heart. Nobility that would never end.
• • •
The rest of Earth, however, was Calcutta. Well, that wasn't really fair. But Calcutta itself was definitely Calcutta. Fetid humanity at its most compacted; whenever she went out of her room Zo had at least five hundred people in her field of vision, and often a few thousand. There was a frightful exhilaration in the sight of all this life in the streets, a world of dwarfs and midgets and other assorted small people, all of whom saw her and clumped like baby birds to a parent who could feed them. Although Zo had to admit that the clumping was friendlier than that, composed more of curiosity than hunger--- indeed they seemed more interested in her exoskeleton than her. And they seemed happy enough, thin but not emaciated, even when they were clearly permanently camped on the streets. The streets themselves were co-ops now, people had tenure, swept them, regulated the millions of little markets, grew crops in every plaza, and slept among them too. That was life on Earth in the late Holocene. After Ariadne it had been downhill all the way.
Zo went up to Prahapore, an enclave in the hills to the north of the city. This was where one of Jackie's Terran spies lived, in the midst of a jammed dorm of harried civil servants, all living at their screens and sleeping under their desks. Jackie's contact was a translator programmer, a woman who understood Mandarin, Urdu, Dravidian and Vietnamese, as well as her Hindu and English; she also was important in an extensive eavesdropping network, and could keep Jackie informed concerning some of the Indian-Chinese conversations about Mars.
"Of course they both will send more people to Mars," the heavyset woman said to Zo, after they were out in the compound's little herb garden. "That's a given. But it does look like both governments feel they have their populations in a longterm solution. No one expects to have more than one child anymore. It's not only the law, it's the tradition."
"The uterine law," Zo said.
The woman shrugged. "Possibly so. A very strong tradition, in any case. People look around, they see the problem. They expect to get the longevity treatment, and they expect to have a sterility implant at that time. And in India, anyway, they feel lucky if they get the permits to remove the implants. And after having one child, people expect to be sterilized for good. Even the Hindu fundamentalists have changed on this, the social pressure on them was so great. And the Chinese have been doing this for centuries. The longevity treatment only reinforced what they had already been doing."
"So Mars has less to fear from them than Jackie thinks."
"Well, they still want to send up emigrants, that's part of the overall strategy. And resistance to the one-child rule has been stronger in some Catholic and Muslim countries, and several of those nations would like to colonize Mars as if it were empty. The threat shifts now, from India and China to the Philippines, Brazil, Pakistan."
"Hmm," Zo said. Talk of immigration always made her feel oppressed. Threatened by lemmings. "What about the exmetas?"
"The old Group of Eleven is rebanding in support of the strongest of the old metanats. They will be looking for places to develop. They're much weaker than before the flood, but they still have a lot of influence in America, Russia, Europe, South America. Tell Jackie to watch what Japan does in the next few months, she'll see what I mean." They connected up wristpads so that the woman could make a secure transfer of detailed information for Jackie.
"Okay," Zo said. Suddenly she was tired, as if a heavy man had crawled into the exoskeleton with her and were dragging her down. Earth, what a drag. Some people said they liked the weight, as if they needed that pressure to be convinced of their own reality. Zo wasn't like that. Earth was the very definition of exoticism, which was fine, but suddenly she longed to be home. She unplugged her wristpad from the translator's, imagining all the while that perfect middle way, that perfect test of will and flesh: the exquisite gravity of Mars.
Then it was down the space elevator from Clarke, a trip that took longer than the flight from Earth; and she was back in the world, the only real world, Mars the magnificent. "There's no place like home," Zo said to the train-station crowd in Sheffield, and then she sat happily in the trains as they flowed over the pistes down Tharsis, then north to Echus Overlook.
The little town had grown since its early days as the terraforming headquarters, but not much; it was out of the way, and built into the steep east wall of Echus Chasma, so that there wasn't much of it to be seen--- a bit on the plateau at the top of the cliff, a bit at the bottom, but with three vertical kilometers between the two, so that they were not visible one from the other--- more like two separate villages, connected by a vertical subway. Indeed if it weren't for the fliers, Echus Overlook might have subsided into sleepy historic-monument status, like Underhill or Senzeni Na, or the icy hideouts in the south. But the eastern wall of Echus Chasma stood right in the path of the prevailing westerlies that came pouring down the Tharsis Bulge, causing them to shoot up in the most astonishingly powerful updrafts. Which made it a birding paradise.
Zo was supposed to check in with Jackie and the Free Mars apparatchiks working for her, but before getting embroiled in all that she wanted to fly. So she checked her old Santorini hawksuit out of storage at the gliderport, and went to the changing room and slipped into it, feeling the smooth muscly texture of the suit's flexible exoskeleton. Then it was out the smooth path, trailing her tail feathers, and onto the Diving Board, a natural overhang that had been artificially extended with a concrete slab. She walked to the edge of this slab and looked down, down, down, three thousand meters down, to the umber floor of Echus Chasma. With the usual burst of adrenaline she tipped forward and fell off the cliff. Headfirst down, down, down, the wind picking up in a swift whoosh over her helmet as she reached terminal velocity, which she recognized by the pitch of the whooshing; and then she spread her arms, and felt the suit stiffen and help her muscles to hold the beautiful wings wide, and with a loud crumping smoosh of wind she curved up into the sun, turned her head, arched her back, pointed her toes and set the tail feathers, left right left; and the wind was pulling her up, up, up. Shift her feet and arms together, turn then in a tight gyre, see the cliff then the chasm floor, around and around: flying. Zo the hawk, wild and free. She was laughing happily, and tears streamed this way and that in her goggles, dashed away by the force of the g.
The air above Echus was nearly empty this morning. After riding the updraft most fliers were peeling off to the north, soaring, or shooting down one of the clefts in the cliff wall, where the updraft was diminished and it was possible to tip and dive in stoops of great velocity. Zo too, when she had gotten about five thousand meters above Overlook, and was breathing the pure oxygen of her helmet's enclosed air system, turned her head right and dipped her right wing, and curved through the exhilaration of a run across the wind, feeling it keen over her body in a rapid continuous fingering. No sound but the hard whoosh of wind in her wings. The somatic pressure of the wind all over her body was a subtly sensuous massage, and she felt it through the tightened suit as if the suit were not there, as if she were naked and feeling the wind directly on her skin, as she wished she could be. A good suit reinforced this impression, of course, and she had used this one for three m-years before leaving for Mercury; it fit like a glove, it was great to be back in it.
She pulled up into a kite, then stunted forward in the maneuver called Jesus Falling. A thousand meters down and she pulled her wings in and began to dolphin-kick to speed her stoop, until the wind was keening loudly over her, and she passed the edge of the great wall going well over terminal velocity. Passing the rim was the sign to start pulling out, because as tall as the cliff was, at full stoop the chasm floor came rushing up like a final slap in the face, and it took a while to pull out of it, even given her strength and skill and nerve, and the reinforcement of the suit. So she arched her back and popped her wings, and felt the strain in her pecs and biceps, a tremendous pressure even though the suit aided her with a logarithmically increasing percentage of the load. Tail feathers down; pike; four hard flaps; and then she was jinking across the chasm's sandy floor, she could have picked a mouse off it.
She turned and got back in the updraft, gyred back up into developing high clouds. The wind was erratic today, and it was an all-absorbing pleasure to tumble and play in it. This was the meaning of life, the purpose of the universe: pure joy, the sense of self gone, the mind become no more than a mirror of the wind. Exuberance; she flew like an angel, as they said. Sometimes one flew like a drone, sometimes one flew like a bird; and then on rare occasions one flew like an angel. It had been a long time.
She came to herself, and lofted back down the wall toward Overlook, feeling tired in her arms. Then she spotted a hawk. Like a lot of fliers, if there was a bird in sight she tracked it, watching it more closely than birders had ever before watched a bird, imitating its every twitch and flutter to try to learn the genius of its flight. Sometimes hawks over this cliff would be innocently wheeling in a search for food and a whole squadron of fliers would be above it following its moves, or trying to. It was fun.
Now she shadowed the hawk, turning when it did, imitating the placement of the wings and tail. Its mastery of the air was like a talent that she craved but could never have. But she could try: bright sun in the racing clouds, indigo sky, the wind against her body, the little weightless gut orgasms when she peeled over into a stoop . . . eternal moments of no-mind. The best, cleanest use of human time.
But the sun fell westward and she got thirsty, and so she left the hawk to its day and turned and coursed down in giant lazy S's to Overlook, to nail her landing with a flap and a step, right on the green Kokopelli, just as if she had never left.
• • •
The neighborhood behind the launching complex was called Topside, and it was a mass of cheap dorms and restaurants inhabited almost entirely by fliers, and tourists come to watch the flying, all eating and drinking and roving and talking and dancing and looking for someone with whom to tandem the night. And there, no surprise, were her flier friends, Rose and Imhotep and Ella and Estavan, all in a group at the Adler Hofbrauhaus, high already and delighted to see Zo back again among them. They had a drink at the Adler to celebrate the reunion, and then went to Overlook Overlook, and sat on the rail catching up on gossip, passing around a big spliff laced with pandorph, making ribald commentary on the passing parade below the railing, shouting at friends spotted in the crowd.
Eventually they left Overlook Overlook and went down into the crowds of Topside, and slowly made their way through the bars to one of the bathhouses. They piled into the changing room and took off their clothes, and wandered naked through the dark warm watery rooms, the water waist-deep, ankle-deep, chest-deep--- hot, cold, lukewarm--- splitting up, finding each other later, having sex with scarcely visible strangers, Zo working slowly through several partners to her own orgasm, purring happily as her body clamped down on itself and her mind went away. Sex, sex, there was nothing like sex, except for flying, which it much resembled: the rapture of the body, yet another echo of the Big Bang, that first orgasm. Joy at the sight of the stars in the skylight overhead, at the feel of warm water and of some boy who came in her and stayed in her, nearly hard, and three minutes later stiffened and started humping again, laughing at the approach of another bright orgasm. After that she sloshed into the comparative brightness of the bar and found the others there, Estavan declaring that the night's third orgasm was usually the best, with an exquisitely long approach to climax and yet still a good bit of semen left to ejaculate. "After that it's still fine, but more of an effort, you have to be wild to get off, and then it isn't like the third anyway." Zo and Rose and the rest of the women agreed that in this as in so many other ways, being female was superior; in a night at the baths they routinely had several wonderful orgasms, and even these were as nothing compared to the status orgasmus, a kind of running continuous orgasm that could last half an hour if one were lucky and one's partners skillful. There was a craft to this that they studied assiduously, but it was still more art than science, as they all agreed: one had to be high but not too high, with a group but not a crowd . . . lately they had gotten pretty reliably good at it, they told Zo, and happily Zo demanded proof. "Come on, I want to be tabled." Estavan hooted and led her and the rest down to a room with a big table sticking out of the water. Imhotep lay on his back on the table, Zo's mattress man for the session; she was lifted up by the others, lying on her back as well, and slid down onto him, and then the whole group was on her, hands and mouths and genitals, a tongue in each ear, in her mouth, contact everywhere; after a while it was all an undifferentiated mass of erotic sensation, total sexsurround, Zo purring loudly. Then when she started to come, arching up off Imhotep with the violence of the cramping, they all kept going; more subtly now, teasing her, not letting her land, and then she was off and flying, the touch of a little finger would keep her going, until she cried out "No, I can't," and they laughed and said "You can," and kept her going until her stomach muscles truly cramped, and she rolled violently off Imhotep and was caught by Rose and Estavan. She couldn't even stand. Someone said they had had her off for twenty minutes; it had felt like two, or eternity. All her abdominal muscles ached, as did her thighs and butt. "Cold bath," she said, and crawled off to the cool water in a nearby room.
But after being tabled there was little else at the baths that could appeal. Any more orgasms would hurt. She helped to table Estavan and Xerxes, and then a thin woman she didn't know, all fun, but then she got bored. Flesh flesh flesh. Sometimes after being tabled one got further and further into it; other times it became just skin and hair and flesh, insides and outsides, who cared.
She went to the changing room and dressed, went outside. It was morning, the sun bright over the bare plains of Lunae. She flowed through the empty streets to her hostel, feeling relaxed and clean and sleepy. A big breakfast, fall into bed, delicious sleep.
But there in the hostel restaurant was Jackie. "If it isn't our Zoya." She had always hated the name, which Zo had chosen for herself.
Zo, surprised, said, "Did you follow me here?"
Jackie looked disgusted. "It's my co-op too, you might recall. Why didn't you check in when you got back?"
"I wanted to fly."
"That's no excuse."
"I didn't mean it as one."
Zo went to the buffet table, piled a plate with scrambled eggs and muffins. She returned to Jackie's table, kissed her mother on the top of the head. "You're looking good."
Actually she looked younger than Zo, who was often sunburned and therefore wrinkled--- younger but somehow preserved, as if she were a twin sister of Zo's who had been bottled for a time and only recently decanted. She wouldn't tell Zo how often she had had the gerontological treatments, but Rachel had said that she was always trying new variants, which were coming out at the rate of two or three a year, and that she got the basic package every three years at the most. So although she was somewhere in her fifth m-decade, she looked almost like Zo's contemporary, except for that preserved quality, which was not so much body as spirit--- a look in the eye, a certain hardening, a tightness, a wariness or weariness. It was hard work being the alpha female year after year, a heroic struggle, it had worn visible tracks in her no matter how baby smooth her skin, no matter how much a beauty she remained--- and she was still quite a beauty, no doubt about it. But she was getting old. Soon her young men would unwrap themselves from around her little fingers and drop away.
Meanwhile she still had a great deal of presence, and at the moment she appeared considerably put out. People averted their eyes as if her look might strike them dead, which made Zo laugh. Not the politest way to greet one's beloved mother, but what else could one do? Zo was too relaxed to be irritated.
Probably a mistake to laugh at her, however. She stared coldly until Zo straightened up.
"Tell me what happened on Mercury."
Zo shrugged. "I told you. They still think they have the sun to give to the outer solar system, and it's gone to their heads."
"I suppose their sunlight would still be useful out there."
"Energy's always useful, but the outer satellites should be able to generate what they need, now."
"So the Mercurians are left with metals."
"That's right."
"But what do they want for them?"
"Everyone wants to be free. None of these new little worlds are big enough to be self-sufficient, so they have to have something to trade if they want to stay free. Mercury has sunlight and metals, the asteroids have metals, the outer satellites have volatiles, if anything. So they package and trade what they have, and try to make alliances to avoid domination by Earth or Mars."
"It isn't domination."
"Of course not." Zo kept a straight face. "But the big worlds, you know---"
"Are big." Jackie nodded. "But add all these little ones together, and they're big too."
"Who's going to add them?" Zo asked.
Jackie ignored the question. The answer was obvious anyway: Jackie would. Jackie was locked into a longterm battle with various forces on Earth, for what came down to the control of Mars; she was trying to keep them from being inundated by the immense home world; and as human civilization continued to spread throughout the solar system, Jackie considered the new little settlements pawns in this great struggle. And indeed if there were enough of them, they might make a difference.
"There's not much reason to worry about Mercury," Zo reassured her. "It's a dead end, a provincial little town, run by a cult. No one can settle very many people there, no one. So even if we do manage to bring them on board, they won't matter much."
Jackie's face took on its world-weary look, as if Zo's analysis of the situation were the work of a child--- as if there were hidden sources of political power on Mercury, of all places. It was irritating, but Zo restrained herself and did not show her irritation.
Antar came in, looking for them; he saw them and smiled, came over and gave Jackie a quick kiss, Zo a longer one. He and Jackie conferred for a while about something or other, in whispers, and then Jackie told him to leave.
There was a great deal of the will to power in Jackie, Zo saw once again. Ordering Antar around gratuitously; it was a flaunting of power that one saw in many nisei women, women who had grown up in patriarchies and therefore reacted virulently against them. They did not fully understand that patriarchy no longer mattered, and perhaps never had--- that it had always been caught in the Kegel grip of uterine law, which operated outside patriarchy with a biological power that could not be controlled by any mere politics. The female hold on male sexual pleasure, on life itself--- these were realities for patriarchs as much as anyone, despite all their repression, their fear of the female which had been expressed in so many ways, purdah, clitoridectomy, foot binding and so on--- ugly stuff indeed, a desperate ruthless last-ditch defense, successful for a time, certainly--- but now blown away without a trace. Now the poor fellows had to fend for themselves, and it was hard. Women like Jackie had them whipped. And women like Jackie liked to whip them.
"I want you to go out to the Uranian system," Jackie was saying. "They're just settling out there, and I want to get them early. You can pass along a word to the Galileans as well, they're getting out of line."
"I should do a co-op stint," Zo said, "or it will become too obvious that it's a front."
After many years of running with a feral co-op based in Lunae, Zo had joined one of the co-ops that functioned in part as a front for Free Mars, allowing Zo and other operatives to do party work without it becoming obvious that that was their principal activity. The co-op Zo had joined built and installed crater screens, but she hadn't worked for them in any real job for over a year.
Jackie nodded. "Put in some time, then take another leave. In a month or so."
"Okay."
Zo was interested in seeing the outer satellites, so it was easy to agree. But Jackie only nodded, showing no sign of awareness that Zo might not have agreed. Her mother was not a very imaginative person, when all was said and done. No doubt Zo's father was the source of that quality in Zo, ka bless him. Zo did not want to know his identity, which at this point would only have been an imposition on her freedom, but she felt a surge of gratitude to him for his genes, her salvation from pure Jackieness.
Zo stood, too tired to take her mother any longer. "You look tired, and I'm beat," she said. She kissed Jackie on the cheek as she went off to her room. "I love you. Maybe you should think about getting the treatment again."
• • •
Her co-op was based in Moreux Crater, in the Protonilus Mensae, between Mangala and Bradbury Point. It was a big crater, puncturing the long slope of the Great Escarpment as it fell down toward the Boone's Neck peninsula. The co-op was always developing new varieties of molecular netting to replace earlier nets, and the old tent fabrics; the mesh they had installed over Moreux was the latest thing, the polyhydroxybutyrate plastic of its fibers harvested from soybean plants, engineered to produce the PHB in the plants' chloroplasts. The mesh held in the equivalent of a daily inversion layer, which made the air inside the crater about thirty percent thicker and considerably warmer than the outside air. Nets like this one made it easier to get biomes through the tough transition from tent to open air, and when permanently installed, they created nice mesoclimates at higher altitudes or latitudes. Moreux extended up to forty-three degrees north, and winters outside the crater were always going to be fairly severe. With the mesh in place they were able to sustain a warm high-altitude forest, sporting an exotic array of plants engineered from the East African volcanoes, New Guinea, and the Himalayas. Down on the crater floor in the summer the days were seriously hot, and the weird blooming spiky trees as fragrant as perfume.
The crater's inhabitants lived in spacious apartments dug into the northern arc of the rim, in four setback levels of balconies and broad window walls, overlooking the green fronds of the Kilimanjaro slope forest underneath them. The balconies baked in the sun in the winter, and rested under vine-covered trellises in the summer, when daytime temperatures soared to 305 K, and people muttered about changing to a coarser mesh to allow more hot air to escape, or even working up a system where they could simply roll off the mesh during the summer.
Zo spent most of every day working on the outer apron or under it, grinding out as much of a full work stint as she could before it came time to leave for the outer satellites. The work this time was interesting, involving long trips underground in mining tunnels, following veins and layers in the crater's old splosh apron. The impact brecciation had created all kinds of useful metamorphic rock, and greenhouse-gas minerals were a common secondary find throughout the apron. The co-op was therefore working on new methods of mining, as well as extracting some feedstocks for mesh looms, hoping to make marketable improvements in mining methods that would leave the surface undisturbed while the regolith under it was still being mined intensively. Most of the underground work was of course robotic, but there were various human-optimum tasks still, as there always would be in mining. Zo found it very satisfying to spelunk in the dim submartian world, to spend all day in the bowels of the planet between great plates of rock, in caves with their close rough black walls gleaming with crystals, the powerful lights exploding off them; to check samples, and explore newly cut galleries, in a forest of dull magnesium uprights jammed into place by the robot excavators; to work like a troglodyte, seeking rare treasure underground; and then to emerge from the elevator car, blinking madly at the sudden sunlight of late afternoon, the air bronze or salmon or amber as the sun blazed through the purpling sky like an old friend, warming them as they trudged up the slope of the apron to the rim gate, where the round forest of Moreux lay below them, a lost world, home to jaguars and vultures. Once inside the mesh there was a cable car that dropped on looping wires to the settlement, but Zo usually went instead to the gatehouse and got her birdsuit out of its locker, and slipped into it and zipped up, and ran off a flier's platform and spread her wings, and flew in lazy spirals down to the north rim town, to dinner on one of the dining terraces, watching parrots and cockatiels and lorikeets dart about trying to scavenge a meal. For work it was not bad. She slept well.
One day a group of atmospheric engineers came by to see how much air was escaping through the Moreux mesh in the midday summer heat. There were a lot of old ones in the group, people with the blasted eyes and diffuse manner of the longtime field areologist. One of these issei was Sax Russell himself, a small bald man with a crooked nose, and skin as wrinkled as that of the tortoises clomping around the crater floor. Zo stared and stared at the old man, one of the most famous people in Martian history; it was bizarre to have such a figure out of the books saying hello to her, as if George Washington or Archimedes might dodder by next, the dead hand of the past still there living among them, perpetually dumbfounded by all the latest developments.
Russell certainly appeared dumbfounded; he looked thoroughly stunned through the whole orientation meeting, and left the atmospheric inquiries to his associates, and spent his time staring down at the forest below the town. When someone at dinner introduced Zo to him, he blinked at her with a tortoise's dim cunning. "I taught your mother once."
"Yes," Zo said.
"Will you show me the crater floor?" he asked.
"I usually fly over it," Zo said, surprised.
"I was hoping to walk," he said, and looked at her, blinking.
The novelty value was so great that she agreed to join him.
• • •
They started out in the cool of the morning, following the shade under the eastern rim. Balsa and saal trees intersected overhead, forming a high canopy through which lemurs howled and leaped. The old man walked slowly along, peering at the heedless creatures of the forest, and he spoke seldom, mostly to ask if Zo knew the names of the various ferns and trees. All she could identify for him were the birds. "The names of plants go in one ear and out the other, I'm afraid," she admitted cheerfully.
His forehead wrinkled at this.
"I think that helps me to see them better," she added.
"Really." He looked around again, as if trying it. "Does that mean you don't see the birds as well as the plants?"
"They're different. They're my brothers and sisters, they have to have names. It's part of them. But this stuff"--- she gestured at the green fronds around them, giant ferns under spiky flowering trees---"this stuff is nameless, really. We make up names, but they don't really have them."
He thought about this.
"Where do you fly?" he said a kilometer down the overgrown trail.
"Everywhere."
"Do you have favorite places?"
"I like Echus Overlook."
"Good updrafts?"
"Very good. I was there until Jackie descended on me and put me to work."
"It's not your work?"
"Oh yes, yes. But my co-op is good at flex time."
"Ah. So you will stay here awhile?"
"Only until the Galilean shuttle leaves."
"Then you will emigrate?"
"No no. A tour, for Jackie. Diplomatic mission."
"Ah. Will you visit Uranus?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see Miranda."
"Me too. That's one reason I'm going."
"Ah."
They crossed a shallow creek, stepping on exposed flat stones. Birds called, insects whirred. Sunlight filled the entire crater bowl now, but under the forest canopy it was still cool, the air shot with parallel columns and wires of slanting yellow light. Russell crouched to stare into the creek they had crossed.
"What was my mother like as a child?" Zo asked.
"Jackie?"
He thought about it. A long time passed. Just as Zo was concluding with exasperation that he had forgotten the question, he said, "She was a fast runner. She asked a lot of questions. Why why why. I liked that. She was the oldest of that generation of ectogenes, I think. The leader anyway."
"Was she in love with Nirgal?"
"I don't know. Why, have you met Nirgal?"
"I think so, yes. With the ferals once. What about with Peter Clayborne, was she in love with him?"
"In love? Later, maybe. When they were older. In Zygote, I don't know."
"You aren't much help."
"No."
"Forgotten it all?"
"Not all. But what I remember is--- hard to characterize. I remember Jackie asking about John Boone one day, just in the way you're asking about her. More than once. She was pleased to be his granddaughter. Proud of him."
"She still is. And I'm proud of her."
"And--- I remember her crying, once."
"Why? And don't say I don't know!"
This balked him. Finally he looked up at her, with a smile almost human. "She was sad."
"Oh very good!"
"Because her mother had left. Esther?"
"That's right."
"Kasei and Esther broke up, and Esther left for--- I don't know. But Kasei and Jackie stayed in Zygote. And one day she got to school early, on a day I was teaching. She asked why a lot. And this time too, but about Kasei and Esther. And then she cried."
"What did you say to her?"
"I don't. . . . 'Nothing, I suppose. I didn't know what to say. Hmm. . . . I thought she perhaps should have gone with Esther. The mother bond is crucial."
"Come on."
"You don't agree? I thought all you young natives were sociobiologists."
"What's that?"
"Um--- someone who believes that most cultural traits have a biological explanation."
"Oh no. Of course not. We're much freer than that. Mothering can be any kind of thing. Sometimes mothers are nothing but incubators."
"I suppose so---"
"Take my word for it."
". . . But Jackie cried."
On they hiked, in silence. Like a lot of the big craters, Moreux turned out to have several pie-wedge watersheds, converging on a central marsh and lake. In this case the lake was small and kidney-shaped, curving around the rough low knobs of a central peak complex. Zo and Russell came out from under the forest canopy on an indistinct trail that faded into elephant grass, and they would have gotten quickly lost except for the stream, which was oxbowing through the grass toward a meadow and then the marshy lake. Even the meadow was dominated by elephant grass, great circular clumps of it that stood well overhead, so that they often had a view of nothing but giant grasses and sky. The long blades of grass gleamed under the lilac midday zenith. Russell stumbled along well behind Zo, his round sunglasses like mirrors in his face, reflecting the grass bundles as he looked this way and that. He appeared utterly foxed, amazed at the surroundings, and he muttered into an old wristpad that hung on his wrist like a manacle.
A final oxbow into the lake had created a fine sand-and-pebble beach, and after testing with a stick for quicksand at the waterline, and finding the sand firm, Zo stripped off her sweaty singlet and walked out into the water, which got nice and cold a few meters offshore. She dove under, swam around, hit her head on the bottom. There was a beached boulder standing over some deep water, and she climbed it and dove in three or four times, doing a forward flip in the water right after entry; this forward somersault, difficult and graceless in the air, caused a quick little tug of weightless pleasure in the pit of her stomach, a feeling as close to orgasm as any nonorgasm she had ever felt. So she dove several times, until the sensation wore off and she was cooled. Then she walked out of the lake and lay on the sand, feeling its heat and the solar radiation cook both sides of her. A real orgasm would have been perfect, but despite the fact that she was laid out before him like a map of sex, Russell sat cross-legged in the shallows, absorbed apparently by the mud, naked himself except for sunglasses and wristpad. A farmer-tanned little bald wizened primate, like her image of Gandhi or Homo habilis. It was even a bit sexy how different he was, so ancient and small, like the male of some turtle-without-a-shell species. She pulled her knee to the side and shifted up her bottom in an unmistakable present posture, the sunlight hot on her exposed vulva.
"What amazing mud," he said, staring at the glop in his hand. "I've never seen anything like this biome."
"No."
"Do you like it?"
"This biome? I suppose so. It's a bit hot and overgrown, but interesting. It makes a change."
"So you don't object. You're not a Red."
"A Red?" She laughed. "No, I'm a whig."
He thought that one over. "Do you mean to say that greens and Reds are no longer a contemporary political division?"
She gestured at the elephant grass and saal trees backing the meadow. "How could they be?"
"Very interesting." He cleared his throat. "When you go to Uranus, will you invite a friend of mine?"
"Maybe," Zo said, and shifted her hips back a bit.
He took the hint, and after a moment leaned forward and began to massage the thigh nearest him. It felt like a monkey's little hands on her skin, clever and knowing. He could lose his whole hand in her pubic hair, a phenomenon he appeared to like, as he repeated it several times and got an erection, which she held hard as she came. It was not like being tabled, of course, but any orgasm was a good thing, especially out in the sun's hot rain. And although his handling of her was basic, he did not exhibit any of that hankering for simultaneous affection which so many of the old ones had, a sentimentality which interfered with the much more acute pleasures that could be achieved one person at a time. So when her shuddering had stilled she rolled on her side, and took his erection in her mouth--- like a little finger she could wrap her tongue entirely around--- while giving him a good view of her body. She stopped once to look herself, big rich taut curves, and saw that the span of her hips stood nearly as high as his shoulders. Then back to it, vagina dentata, so absurd those frightened patriarchal myths, teeth were entirely superfluous, did a python need teeth, did a rock stamp need teeth? Just grab the poor creatures by the cock and squeeze till they whimpered, and what were they going to do? They could try to stay out of the grip, but at the same time it was the place they most wanted to be, so that they wandered in the pathetic confusion and denial of that double bind--- and put themselves at the risk of teeth anyway, any chance they got; she nipped at him, to remind him of his situation; then let him come. Men were so lucky they weren't telepathic.
Afterward they took another dip in the lake, and back on the sand he pulled a loaf of bread from his day pack. They broke the loaf in half and ate.
"Were you purring, then?" he said between swallows.
"Mm-hmm."
"You had the trait inserted?"
She nodded, swallowed. "Last time I took the treatment."
"The genes are from cats?"
"From tigers."
"Ah."
"It turns out to be a minor change in the larynx and vocal cords. You should try it, it feels really good."
He was blinking and did not answer.
"Now who's this friend you want me to take to Uranus?"
"Ann Clayborne."
"Ah! Your old nemesis."
"Something like that."
"What makes you think she would go?"
"She might not. But she might. Michel says she's trying some new things. And I think Miranda would be interesting to her. A moon knocked apart in an impact, and then reassembled, moon and impactor together. It's an image I'd . . . like her to see. All that rock, you know. She's fond of rock."
"So I've heard."
Russell and Clayborne, the green and the Red, two of the most famous antagonists in all the melodramatic saga of the first years of settlement. Those first years: a situation so claustrophobic Zo shuddered to think of it. Clearly the experience had brecciated the minds of all those who had suffered through it. And then Russell had had even more spectacular damage inflicted later on, as she recalled; hard to remember; all the First Hundred's stories tended to blur together for her, the Great Storm, the lost colony, Maya's betrayals--- all the arguments, affairs, murders, rebellions, and so on--- such sordid stuff, with scarcely a moment of joy in the whole thing, as far as she could tell. As if the old ones had been anaerobic bacteria, living in poison, slowly excreting the necessary conditions for the emergence of a fully oxygenated life.
Except perhaps for Ann Clayborne, who seemed, from the stories, to have understood that to feel joy in a rock world, you had to love rock. Zo liked that attitude, and so she said, "Sure, I'll ask her. Or you should, shouldn't you? You ask, and tell her I'm agreeable. We can make room in the diplomatic group."
"It's a Free Mars group?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
He asked her questions about Jackie's political ambitions, and she answered when she could, looking down her body and its curves, the hard muscles smoothed by the fat under the skin--- hipbones flanking the belly, navel, wiry black pubic hair (she brushed bread crumbs out of it), long powerful thighs. Women's bodies were much more handsomely proportioned than men's, Michelangelo had been wrong about that, although his David made a best case for his argument, a flier's body if ever there was one.
"I wish we could fly back up to the rim," she said.
"I don't know how to fly the birdsuits."
"I could have carried you on my back."
"Really?"
She glanced at him. Another thirty or thirty-five kilos. . . . "Sure. It would depend on the suit."
"It's amazing what those suits can do."
"It's not just the suits."
"No. But we weren't meant to fly. Heavy bones and all. You know."
"I do. Certainly the suits are necessary. Just not sufficient."
"Yes." He was looking at her body. "It's interesting how big people are getting."
"Especially genitals."
"Do you think so?"
She laughed. "Just teasing."
"Ah."
"Although you would think the parts would grow that had increased use, eh?"
"Yes. Depth of chests have grown greater, I read."
She laughed again. "The thin air, right?"
"Presumably. It's true in the Andes, anyway. The distances from spine to sternum in Andean natives are nearly twice as large as they are in people who live at sea level."
"Really! Like the chest cavities of birds, eh?"
"I suppose."
"Then add big pecs, and big breasts. . . ."
He didn't reply.
"So we're evolving into something like birds."
He shook his head. "It's phenotypic. If you raised your kids on Earth, their chests would shrink right back down."
"I doubt I'll have kids."
"Ah. Because of the population problem?"
"Yes. We need you issei to start dying. Even all these new little worlds aren't helping that much. Earth and Mars are both turning into anthills. You've taken our world from us, really. You're kleptoparasites."
"That sounds redundant."
"No, it's a real term, for animals that steal food from their young during exceptionally hard winters."
"Very apt."
"We should probably kill you all when you turn a hundred."
"Or as soon as we have children."
She grinned. He was so imperturbable! "Whichever comes first."
He nodded as if this were a sensible suggestion. She laughed, although it was vexing too: "Of course it will never happen."
"No. But it won't be necessary."
"No? You're going to act like lemmings and run off cliffs?"
"No. Treatment-resistant diseases are appearing. Older people are dying. It's bound to happen."
"Is it?"
"I think so."
"You don't think they'll figure out ways to cure these new diseases, keep stringing things along?"
"In some cases. But senescence is complex, and sooner or later. . . ." He shrugged.
"That's a bad thought," Zo said.
She stood, pulled the dried fabric of her singlet up her legs. He stood and dressed too.
"Have you ever met Bao Shuyo?" he asked.
"No, who's she?"
"A mathematician, living in Da Vinci."
"No. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious."
They hiked uphill through the forest, from time to time stopping to look after the quick blur of an animal. A big jungle chicken, what looked like a lone hyena, standing looking down a wash at them. . . . Zo found she was enjoying herself. This issei was unteasable, unshockable; and his opinions were unpredictable, which was an unusual trait in the old, indeed in anyone. Most of the ancient ones Zo had met seemed especially bound in the tightly warped spacetime of their values; and as the way people lived their values was in inverse proportion to how tightly they were bound in them, the old had ended up Tartuffes to a man, or so she had thought, hypocrites for whom she had no patience at all. She despised the old and their precious values. But this one didn't seem to have any. It made her want to talk more with him.
When they got back to the village she patted him on the head. "That was fun. I'll talk to your friend."
"Thanks."
• • •
A few days later she gave Ann Clayborne a call. The face that appeared on the screen was as forbidding as a skull.
"Hi, I'm Zoya Boone."
"Yes?"
"It's my name," Zo said. "That's how I introduce myself to strangers."
"Boone?"
"Jackie's daughter."
"Ah."
Clearly she didn't like Jackie. A common reaction; Jackie was so wonderful that a lot of people hated her.
"I'm also a friend of Sax Russell's."
"Ah."
Impossible to read what she meant by that one.
"I was telling him that I'm on my way out to the Uranian system, and he said you might be interested in joining me."
"He did?"
"He did. So I called. I'm going to Jupiter and then Uranus, with two weeks on Miranda."
"Miranda!" she said. "Who are you again?"
"I'm Zo Boone! What are you, senile?"
"Miranda, you said?"
"Yes. Two weeks, maybe more if I like it."
"If you like it?"
"Yes. I don't stay places I don't like."
Clayborne nodded as if that were only sensible, and so Zo added mock solemnly, as if to a child, "There's a lot of rock there."
"Yes yes."
A long pause. Zo studied the face on the screen. Gaunt and wrinkled, like Russell, only in her case almost all the wrinkles were vertical. A face hacked out of wood. Finally she said, "I'll think about it."
"You're supposed to be trying new things," Zo reminded her.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Sax told you that?"
"No--- I asked Jackie about you."
"I'll think about it," she said again, and cut the connection.
So much for that, Zo thought. Still she had tried, and therefore felt virtuous, a disagreeable sensation. These issei had a way of pulling one into their realities; and they were all mad.
And unpredictable as well; the next day Clayborne called back, and said she would go.
In person Ann Clayborne proved to be indeed as withered and sun-dried as Russell, but even more silent and strange--- waspish, laconic, prone to brief ill-tempered outbursts. She showed up at the last minute with a single backpack and a slim black wristpad, one of the latest models. Her skin was a nut brown, and marked by wens and warts and scars where skin disorders had been removed. A long life spent outdoors, and in the early days too, when UV bombardment had been intense; in short, she was fried. A bakehead, as they said in Echus. Her eyes were gray, her mouth a lizard slash, the lines from the corners of her mouth to her nostrils like deep hatchet chops. Nothing could be more severe than that face.
During the week of the voyage to Jupiter she spent her time in the little ship park, walking through the trees. Zo preferred the dining hall, or the big viewing bubble where a small group gathered in the evening watch, to eat tabs of pandorph and play go, or smoke opium and look at the stars. So she seldom saw Ann on the trip out.
They shot over the asteroid belt, slightly out of the plane of the ecliptic, passing over several of the hollowed-out little worlds, no doubt, though it was hard to tell; inside the rock potatoes shown on the ship's screens there might be rough shells like finished mines, or towns landscaped into beautiful estates; societies anarchic and dangerous, or settled by religious groups or utopian collectives, and painfully peaceable. The existence of such a wide variety of systems, coexisting in a semianarchic state, made Zo doubt that Jackie's plans for organizing the outer satellites under a Martian umbrella would ever succeed; it seemed to her that the asteroid belt might serve as a model for what the entire solar system's political organization would become. But Jackie did not agree; the asteroid belt was as it was, she said, because of its particular nature, scattered through a broad band all around the sun. The outer satellites on the other hand were clumped in groups around their gas giants, and were certain to become leagues because of that; and were such large worlds, compared to the asteroids, that eventually it would make a difference with whom they allied themselves in the inner system.
Zo was not convinced. But their deceleration brought them into the Jovian system, where she would have a chance to put Jackie's theories to the test. The ship ran a cat's cradle through the Galileans to slow down further, giving them close-ups of the four big moons. All four of them had ambitious terraforming plans, and had started to put them into action. The outer three, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, had similar initial conditions to deal with; they were all covered by water ice layers, Callisto and Ganymede to a depth of a thousand kilometers, Europa to a depth of a hundred kilometers. Water was not uncommon in the outer solar system, but it was by no means ubiquitous either, and so these water worlds had something to trade. All three moons had large amounts of rock scattered over their icy surfaces, the remnants of meteoric impact for the most part, carbonaeous chondrite rubble, a very useful building material. The settlers of the three moons had, on their arrival some thirty m-years before, rendered the chondrites and built tent frameworks of carbon nanotube similar to that used in Mars's space elevator, tenting spaces twenty or fifty kilometers across with multilayered tent materials. Under their tents they had spread crushed rock to create a thin layer of ground--- the ultimate permafrost--- in some places surrounding lakes they had melted into the ice.
On Callisto the tent town built to this plan was called Lake Geneva; this was where the Martian delegation went to meet with the various leaders and policy groups of the Jovian League. As usual Zo accompanied the delegation as a minor functionary and observer, looking for opportunities to convey Jackie's messages to people who could discreetly do something about it.
This particular meeting was part of a biannual series the Jovians held to discuss the terraforming of the Galileans, and so a good context for Jackie's interests to be expressed. Zo sat at the back of the room next to Ann, who had decided to sit in on the meeting. The technical problems of terraforming these moons were big in scale, but simple in concept. Callisto, Ganymede and Europa were being dealt with in the same way, at least at the beginning: mobile fusion reactors were out roaming their surfaces, heating the ice and pumping gases into early hydrogen/oxygen atmospheres. Eventually they hoped to create equatorial belts where gathered rock had been crushed to create ground over the ice; atmospheric temperatures would then be kept near freezing, so that tundra ecologies could be established around a string of equatorial lakes, in a breathable oxygen/hydrogen atmosphere.
Io, the innermost of the Galileans, was more difficult, but intriguing; rail-gun launchers were firing large missiles of ice and chaldates down to it from the other three big moons; being so close to Jupiter it had very little water, its surface made up of intermixed layers of basalt and sulfur--- the sulfur spewing out onto the surface in spectacular volcanic plumes, driven by the tidal action from Jupiter and the other Galileans. The plan for Io's terraformation was more longterm than most, and was to be driven in part by an infusion of sulfur-eating bacteria into hot sulfur springs around the volcanoes.
All four of these projects were slowed by the lack of light, and space mirrors of tremendous size were being built at Jupiter's Lagrange points, where the complications of the Jovian system's gravitational fields were reduced; sunlight would be directed from these mirrors to the equators of the four Galileans. All four moons were tidally locked around Jupiter, so their solar days depended on the length of their orbits around Jupiter, ranging from forty-two hours for Io to fifteen days for Callisto; and whatever the length of their days, they all received during them only four percent as much sunlight as the Earth. But the truth was that the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth was stupendously excessive, so that four percent was actually a lot of light, when it came to visibility--- seventeen thousand times as much as the full moon on Earth--- but not much heat, if one wanted to terraform. They therefore were cadging light any way they could; Lake Geneva and all the settlements on the other moons were located facing Jupiter, to take advantage of the sunlight reflected from that giant globe in the sky; and flying "gas lanterns" had been dropped into the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, clusters of them igniting some of the planet's helium3 in points of light that were too brilliant to look directly at for more than a second; the fusion burns were suspended before electromagnetic reflecting dishes that put all the light out into the planet's plane of the ecliptic. Thus the banded monster ball was now made an even more spectacular sight by the achingly bright diamond dots of some twenty gas lanterns wandering its face.
The space mirrors and the gas lanterns together would still leave the settlements with less than half the sunlight Mars got, but it was the best they could do. That was life in the outer solar system, a somewhat dim business all around, Zo judged. Even gathering that much light would require the manufacture of a massive infrastructure; and this was where the Martian delegation came in. Jackie had arranged to offer a lot of help, including more fusion behemoths, more gas lanterns, and also Martian experience in space mirrors and terraforming techniques generally, through an association of aerospace co-ops interested in obtaining more projects now that the situation in Martian space was largely stabilized. They would contribute capital and expertise, in return for preferential trade agreements, supplies of helium3 culled from Jupiter's upper atmosphere, and the opportunity to explore, mine, and possibly join terraforming efforts on Jupiter's clutch of smaller moons, all eighteen of them.
Invested capital, expertise, trade; this was the carrot, and a big one. Clearly if the Galileans accepted it, the tendrils of association with Mars would be there, and Jackie could then follow that up with political alliances of various sorts; and pull the Jovian moons into her web. This eventuality was as clear to the Jovians as it was to anyone, however, and they were doing what they could to get what they wanted without giving too much in return. No doubt they would soon be playing the Martians off against similar offers from the Terran exmetas and other organizations.
This was where Zo came in; she was the stick. Public carrot, private stick; this was Jackie's method, in all phases of life.
Zo revealed Jackie's threats in tiny indirect glimpses, to make them seem even more threatening. Brief meeting with officials from Io: the ecopoetic plan, Zo said to them, casually, seemed far too slow. It would be thousands of years before their bacteria chewed the sulfur into useful gases, and meanwhile Jupiter's intense radio field, which enveloped Io and added to its problems, would mutate the bacteria beyond recognition. They needed an ionosphere, they needed water, it was possible they even needed to think about pulling the moon out into a higher orbit around their great gas god. Mars, home of terraforming expertise and the healthiest wealthiest civilization in the solar system, could help them with all that, give them special help. Or even discuss with the other Galileans the notion of taking over the project, in order to bring it up to speed.
After that, casual conversations with various authorities from the ice Galileans: in cocktail parties after workshops, in bars after the parties, walking in groups along Lake Geneva's signature lakefront promenade, under the sonolu-minescent streetlights suspended from the tent framework. The delegates from Io, she told these people, are looking into cutting a separate deal on their own. They had the situation with the most potential, when all was said and done; hard ground to stand on, heat, heavy metals; great tourist potential. Zo ventured that they seemed to be willing to use these advantages to strike out on their own, and fractionate the Jovian League.
Ann followed Zo and the others on some of these walks, and Zo let her listen in on a couple of the conversations, curious to see what she would make of them. She followed them down the waterfront promenade, which was set on the low meteor crater rim they had used to contain the lake. The slosh craters here beat any slosh crater on Mars by a long shot; the icy rim of this one was only a few meters higher than the general surface of the moon, forming a round levee from which one could look over the water of the lake, or back onto the grassy streets of the town, or beyond the streets to the rubbly ice plain outside the tent, visibly curving to the nearby horizon. The extreme flatness of the landscape outside the tent gave an indication of its nature--- a glacier covering a whole world, ice a thousand kilometers deep, ice which ate every meteor impact and tidal cracking, and quickly flowed back to flatness again.
On the surface of the lake small black waves formed interference patterns on the flat sheet of water, which was white like the lake's ice bottom, tinted yellow by the great ball of Jupiter looming gibbous overhead, all its bands of creamy yellow and orange visibly swirled at their edges and around the pinprick lanterns.
They passed a line of wooden buildings; the wood came from forested islands, floating around like rafts on the far side of the lake. Streetgrass gleamed greenly, and gardens grew in oversized planter boxes behind the buildings, under long bright lamps. Zo showed a bit of the stick to their companions on the walk, confused functionaries from Ganymede; she reminded them of Mars's military might, mentioned again that Io was considering defection from their league.
The Ganymedans went off to get dinner, looking dismayed. "So subtle," Ann remarked when they were out of earshot.
"Now we're being sarcastic," Zo said.
"You're a thug. Put it that way."
"I will have to enroll in the Red school of diplomatic subtlety. Perhaps arrange for assistants to come along with me and blow up some of their property."
Ann made a noise between her teeth. She continued down the promenade, and Zo kept up with her.
"Strange that the Great Red Spot is gone," Zo remarked as they crossed a bridge over a white-bottomed canal. "Like some kind of sign. I keep expecting it to come around into view."
The air was chill and damp. The people they passed were mostly of Terran origin, part of the diaspora. Some fliers cut lazy spirals up near the tent frame. Zo watched them cross the face of the great planet. Ann stopped frequently to inspect cut surfaces of rock, ignoring the town on ice and its crowds, with their tiptoe grace and their rainbow clothing, a gang of young natives greyhounding past---"You really are more interested in rocks than people," Zo said, half-admiring, half-irritated.
Ann looked at her; such a basilisk glare! But Zo shrugged and took her by the arm, pulled her along. "The young natives out here are less than fifteen m-years old, they've lived in point-one g all their lives, they don't care about Earth or Mars. They believe in the Jovian moons, in water, in swimming and flying. Most of them have altered their eyes for the low light. Some of them are growing gills. They have a plan to terraform these moons that will take them five thousand years. They're the next step in evolution, for ka's sake, and here you are staring at rocks that are just the same as rocks everywhere else in this galaxy. You're just as crazy as they said."
This bounced off Ann like a thrown pebble. She said, "You sound like me, when I tried to get Nadia away from Underhill."
Zo shrugged. "Come on," she said, "I have another meeting."
"Mafia work never stops, does it." But she followed, peering around like a wizened court jester, dwarfish and oddly dressed in her old-fashioned jumper.
Some Lake Geneva council members greeted them, somewhat nervously, by the docks. They got on a small ferry, which threaded its way out through a fleet of small sailing boats. Out on the lake it was windy. They puttered to one of the forest islands. Vast specimens of balsa and teak stood over the swampy mat of the floating island's heated ground, and on the island's shore loggers were working outside a little sawmill. The mill was soundproofed, nevertheless a muffled whine of saw cuts accompanied the conversation. Floating on a lake on a moon of Jupiter, all the colors suffused with the gray of solar distance: Zo felt little bursts of flier's exhilaration, and she said to the locals, "This is so beautiful. I can see why there are people on Europa who talk about making their whole world a water world, sail around and around. They could even ship away water to Venus and get down to some solid land for islands. I don't know if they've mentioned it to you. Maybe it's just all talk, like the idea I heard for creating a small black hole and dropping it into Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Stellarizing Jupiter! You'd have all the light you needed then."
"Wouldn't Jupiter be consumed?" one of the locals asked.
"Oh but it would take ever so long, they said; millions of years."
"And then a nova," Ann pointed out.
"Yes yes. Everything but Pluto destroyed. But by that time we'll be long gone, one way or another. Or if not, they'll figure something out."
Ann laughed harshly. The locals, thinking hard, did not appear to notice.
Back on the lakeshore Ann and Zo walked the promenade. "You're so blatant," Ann said.
"On the contrary. It's very subtle. They don't know if I'm speaking for me, or for Jackie, or for Mars. It could be just talk. But it reminds them of the larger context. It's too easy for them to get wrapped up in the Jovian situation and forget all the rest. The solar system entire, as a single political body; people need help thinking about that, they can't conceptualize it."
"You need help yourself. It's not Renaissance Italy, you know."
"Machiavelli will always remain true, if that's what you mean. And they need to be reminded of that here."
"You remind me of Frank."
"Frank?"
"Frank Chalmers."
"Now there's an issei I admire," Zo said. "What I've read about him, anyway. He was the only one of you who wasn't a hypocrite. And he was the one that got the most done."
"You don't know anything about it," Ann said.
Zo shrugged. "The past is the same for all of us. I know as much about it as you do."
A group of the Jovians walked by, pale and big-eyed, utterly absorbed by their own talk. Zo gestured: "Look at them! They're so focused. I admire them too, really--- throwing themselves so energetically into a project that won't be completed until long after their death--- it's an absurd gesture, a gesture of defiance and freedom, a divine madness, as if they were sperm wiggling madly toward an unknown goal."
"That's all of us," Ann said. "That's evolution. When do we go to Miranda?"
Around Uranus. four times as far from the sun as Jupiter, objects were struck by one quarter of a percent the light that would have struck them on Earth. This was a problem for powering major terraforming projects, although as Zo found when they entered the Uranian system, it still provided quite enough illumination for visibility; the sunlight was 1,300 times as bright as the full moon on Earth, the sun still a blinding little chip in the black array of stars, and though things in the region were a bit dim and drained of their color, one could see them perfectly well. Thus the great power of the human eye and spirit, functioning well so far from home.
But there were no big moons around Uranus to attract a major terraforming effort; Uranus's family consisted of fifteen very small moons, none larger than Titania and Oberon at six hundred kilometers in diameter, and most considerably smaller--- a collection of little asteroids, really, named after Shakespeare's women for the most part, all circling the blandest of the gas giants, blue-green Uranus, rolling around with its poles in the plane of the ecliptic, its eleven narrow graphite rings scarcely visible fairy loops. All in all, not a promising system for inhabitation.
Nevertheless people had come, people had settled. This was no surprise to Zo; there were people exploring and starting to build on Triton, on Pluto, on Charon, and if a tenth planet were discovered and an expedition sent out to it, they would no doubt find a tent town already there, its citizens already squabbling with each other, already bristling at any suggestion of outside interference in their affairs. This was life in the diaspora.
• • •
The major tent town in the Uranian system was on Oberon, the biggest and farthest out of the fifteen moons. Zo and Ann and the rest of the travelers from Mars parked in a planetary orbit just outside Oberon, and took a ferry down to the moon to make a brief visit to the main settlement.
This town, Hippolyta, spanned one of the big groove valleys that were common to all the larger Uranian moons. Because the gravity was even more meager than the light was dim, the town had been designed as a fully three-dimensional space, with railings and glide ropes and flying dumbbell waiters, cliffside balconies and elevators, chutes and ladders, diving boards and trampolines, hanging restaurants and plinth pavilions, all illuminated by bright white floating lamp globes. Zo saw immediately that so much paraphernalia in the air made flying inside the tent impossible; but in this gravity daily life was a kind of flight, and as she bounded in the air with a flex of her foot, she decided to join those residents who treated daily life that way; she danced. And in fact very few people tried to walk in the Terran way; here human movement was naturally airborne, sinuous, full of vaulting leaps and spinning dives and long Tarzan loops. The lowest level of the city was netted.~;~;Dé0#0;:
The people who lived out here came from everywhere else in the system, although of course they were mostly Martian or Terran. At this point there were no native Uranians, except for a single crèche of young children who had been born to mothers building the settlement. Six moons were now occupied, and recently they had dropped a number of gas lanterns into the upper atmosphere of Uranus, to swim in rings around its equator; these now burned in the planet's blue-green like pinpricks of sunlight, forming a kind of diamond necklace around the middle of the giant. These lanterns had increased the system's light enough so that everyone they met in Oberon remarked on how much more color there was in things, but Zo was not impressed. "I'd hate to have seen it before," she said to one of the local enthusiasts, "it's Monochromomundos." Actually all the buildings in the town were brightly painted in broad swaths of color, but which color a swath happened to be was sometimes beyond Zo's telling. She needed a pupil dilator.
But the locals seemed to like it. Of course some of them spoke of moving on after the Uranian towns were finished, out to Triton, "the next great problem," or Pluto or Charon; they were builders. But others were settling in here for good, giving themselves drugs and genetic transcriptions to adapt to the low g, to increase the sensitivity of their eyes, etc. They spoke of guiding in comets from the Oort cloud to provide water, and perhaps forcing two or three of the smaller uninhabited moons to collide, to create larger and warmer bodies to work with, "artificial Mirandas" as one person called them.
Ann walked out of that meeting, or rather pulled herself along a railing, unable to cope with the mini-g. After a while Zo followed her, onto streets covered with luxuriant green grass. She looked up: aquamarine giant, slender dim rings; a cold fey sight, unappealing by any previous human standard, and perhaps untenable in the long run because of the moonlet gravity. But back in the meeting there had been Uranians praising the planet's subtle beauties, inventing an aesthetics to appreciate it, even as they planned to modify everything they could. They emphasized the subtle shades of the colors, the cool warmth of the tented air, the movement so like flight, like dance in a dream. . . . Some of them had even become patriots to the point of arguing against radical transformation; they were as preservationist as this inhospitable place could logically sustain.
And now some of these preservationists found Ann. They came up to Ann in a group, standing in a circle around her to shake her hand, hug her, kiss the top of her head; one got down on his knees to kiss her feet. Zo saw the look on Ann's face and laughed. "Come on," she said to the group, who apparently had been assigned a kind of guardian status for the moon Miranda. The local version of Reds, sprung into existence out here where it made no sense at all, and long after redness had ceased to be much of an issue even on Mars. But they flowed or pulled themselves into position around a table set out in the middle of the tent on a tall slender column, and ate a meal as the discussion ranged all over the system. The table was an oasis in the dim air of the tent, with the diamond necklace in its round jade setting shining down on them; it seemed the center of town, but Zo saw suspended in the air other such oases, and no doubt they seemed like the center as well. Hippolyta was a real town, but Oberon could hold scores of towns like it, and so would Titania, Ariel, Miranda; small as they were, these satellites all had surfaces covering hundreds of square kilometers. This was the attraction of these sun-forsaken moons: free land, open space--- a new world, a frontier, with its ever-receding chance to start new, to found a society from scratch. For the Uranians this freedom was worth more than light or gravity. And so they had gathered the programs and the starter robots, and taken off for the high frontier with plans for a tent and a constitution, to be their own first hundred.
But these were precisely the kind of people least interested in hearing about Jackie's plans for a systemwide alliance. And already there had been local disagreements strong enough to have caused trouble; among the people sitting around the table were some serious enemies, Zo could tell. She watched their faces closely as the head of their delegation, Marie, laid out the Martian proposal in the most general terms: an alliance designed to deal with the massive historical-economic-numerical gravity well of Earth, which was huge, teeming, flooded, mired in its past like a pig in a sty, and still the dominant force in the diaspora. It was in the best interests of all the other settlements to band with Mars and present a united front, in control of their own immigration, trade, growth--- in control of their destinies.
Except none of the Uranians, despite their arguments with each other, looked at all convinced. An elderly woman who was the mayor of Hippolyta spoke, and even the Mirandan "Reds" nodded: they would deal with Earth on their own. Earth or Mars was equally dangerous to freedom. Out here they planned on dealing with all potential alliances or confrontations as free agents, in temporary collusion or opposition with equals, depending on circumstances. There was simply no need for any more formal arrangements to be made. "All that alliance stuff smacks of control from above," the woman concluded. "You don't do it on Mars, why try it out here?"
"We do do it on Mars," Marie said. "That level of control is emergent from the complex of smaller systems below it, and it's useful for dealing with problems at the holistic level. And now at the interplanetary level. You're confusing totalization with totalitarianism, a very serious error."
They did not look convinced. Reason had to be backed with leverage; that was why Zo was along. And the application of leverage would go easier with the reasoning laid out like this beforehand.
Throughout the dinner Ann remained silent, until the general discussion ended and the Miranda group began to ask her questions. Then she came alive, as if switched on, and asked them in return about current local planetology: the classification of different regions of Miranda as parts of the two colliding planetessimals, the recent theory that identified the tiny moons Ophelia, Desdemona, Bianca, and Puck as ejected pieces of the Mirandan collision, and so on. Her questions were detailed and knowledgeable; the guardians were thrilled, in transports, their eyes as big as lemurs' eyes. The rest of the Uranians were likewise pleased to see Ann's interest. She was The Red; now Zo saw what that really meant; she was one of the most famous people in history. And it seemed possible that all the Uranians had a little Red in them; unlike the settlers of the Jovian and Saturnian systems, they had no plans for large-scale terraforming, they planned to live in tents and go out on the primal rock for the rest of their lives. And they felt--- at least its guardian group felt--- that Miranda was so unusual that it had to be left entirely alone. That was a red idea, of course. Nothing humans did there, one of the Uranian Reds said, would do anything but reduce what was most valuable about it. It had an intrinsic worth that transcended even its value as a planetological specimen. It had its dignity. Ann watched them carefully as they said this, and Zo saw in her eyes that she did not agree, or even quite understand. For her it was a matter of science--- for these people, a matter of spirit. Zo actually sympathized more with the locals' view than Ann's, with its cramped insistence on the object. But the result was the same, they both had the Red ethic in its pure form: no terraforming on Miranda, of course, also no domes, no tents, no mirrors; only a single visitor's station and a few rocket pads (though this too appeared to be controversial within the guardian group); a ban on anything except no-impact foot travel, and rocket hops high enough over the surface to avoid disturbing the dust. The guardian group conceived of Miranda as wilderness, to be walked through but never lived on, never changed. A climber's world, or even better, a flier's world. Looked at and nothing more. A natural work of art.
Ann nodded at all this. And there--- there it was, something more in her than the crimping fear: a passion for rock, in a world of rock. Fetishes could fix on anything. And all these people shared the fetish. Zo found it peculiar to be among them, peculiar and intriguing. Certainly her leverage point was coming clear. The guardian group had arranged a special ferry to Miranda, to show it to Ann. No one else would be there. A private tour of the strangest moon of all, for the strangest Red. Zo laughed. "I'd like to come along," she said earnestly.
• • •
And the Great No said yes. That was Ann on Miranda.
It was the smallest of Uranus's five big moons, only 470 kilometers in diameter. In its early years, some 3.5 billion years before the present, its smaller precursor had run into another moon of about the same size; the two had shattered, then clumped, then, in the heat of the collision, coalesced into a single ball. But the new moon had cooled before the coalescing was quite finished.
The result was a landscape out of a dream, violently divergent and disarranged. Some regions were as smooth as skin, others were ripped raw; some were metamorphosed surfaces of two proto-moons, others were exposed interior material. And then there were the deeply grooved rift zones, where the fragments met, imperfectly. In these zones extensive parallel groove systems bent at acute angles, in dramatic chevron formations, a clear sign of the tremendous torques involved in the collision. The big rifts were so large that they were visible from space as hack marks, incised scores of kilometers deep into the side of the gray sphere.
• • •
They came down on a plateau next to the biggest of these hacked chasms, called Prospero's Rift. They suited up, then left the spacecraft, and walked out to the rift's edge. A dim abyss, so deep that the bottom looked to be on a different world. Combined with the airy micro-g, the sight gave Zo the distinct feeling of flying, flying however as she sometimes did in dreams, all Martian conditions suspended in favor of some sky of the spirit. Overhead Uranus floated full and green, giving all of Miranda a jade tinge. Zo danced along the rim, pushing off on her toes and floating, floating, coming down in little pliés, her heart full of beauty. So strange, the diamond sparks of the gas lanterns, surfing on Uranus's stratosphere; the eldritch jade. Lights hung across a round green paper lantern. The depths of the abyss only suggested. Everything glowing with its own internal greenness, viriditas bursting out of every thing--- and yet everything still and motionless forever, except for them, the intruders, the observers. Zo danced.
Ann hiked along much more comfortably than she had in Hippolyta, with the unconscious grace of someone who has spent a lot of time walking on rock. Boulder ballet; she carried a long angular hammer in her thick glove, and her thigh pockets bulged with specimens. She didn't respond to the exclamations of Zo or the guardian group, she was oblivious to them. Like an actor playing the part of Ann Clayborne. Zo laughed: that one could become such a cliché!
"If they domed this dark backward and abysm of time, it would make a beautiful place to live," she said. "Lots of land for the amount of tent needed, eh? And such a view. It would be a wonder."
No response to such a blunt provocation, of course. But it would set them thinking. Zo followed the guardian group like an albatross. They had started descending a broken staircase of rock that lined the edge of a slim buttress, extending far out from the chasm wall, like a fold of drapery in a marble statue. This feature ended in a flat swirl several kilometers out from the wall, and a kilometer or more lower than the rim. After the flat spot the buttress fell away abruptly, in a sheer drop to the chasm floor, some twenty kilometers straight down. Twenty kilometers! Twenty thousand meters, some seventy thousand feet. . . . Even great Mars itself could boast no such wall.
There were a number of buttresses and other deformations on the wall similar to the one they were hiking out on: flutings and draperies, as in a limestone cavern, but formed all at once; the wall had been melted, molten rock had dripped into the abyss until the chill of space had frozen it forever. Everything was visible from every point of their descent. A railing had been bolted to the buttress's edge, and they were all clipped to this railing by lines, connected to harnesses in their spacesuits; a good thing, as the edge of the buttress was narrow, and the slightest slip sideways could launch one out into the space of the chasm. The spidery little spacecraft that had dropped them off was going to fly down and take them off at the bottom of the staircase, from the flat spot at the end of the buttress promontory. So they could descend without a worry for the return; and descend they did, for minute after minute, in a silence that was not at all companionable. Zo had to grin; you could almost hear them thinking black thoughts at her, the grinding was palpable. Except for Ann, who was stopping every few meters to inspect the cracks between their rough stairs.
"This obsession with rock is so pathetic," Zo said to her on a private band. "To be so old and still so small. To limit yourself to the world of inert matter, a world that will never surprise you, never do a single thing. So that you won't be hurt. Areology as a kind of cowardice. Sad, really."
A noise on the intercom: air shot between front teeth. Disgust.
Zo laughed.
"You're an impertinent girl," Ann said.
"Yes I am."
"And stupid as well."
"That I am not!" Zo was surprised at her own vehemence. And then she saw Ann's face was twisted with anger behind her faceplate, and her voice hissed in the intercom over sharp heavy breaths.
"Don't ruin the walk," Ann snapped.
"I was tired of being ignored."
"So who's afraid now?"
"Afraid of the boredom."
Another disgusted hiss. "You've been very poorly brought up."
"Whose fault is that?"
"Oh yours. Yours. But we have to suffer the results."
"Suffer on. I'm the one that got you here, remember."
"Sax is the one who got me here, bless his little heart."
"Everyone's little to you."
"Compared to this. . . ." The movement of her helmet showed she had glanced down into the rift.
"This speechless immobility that you're so safe in."
"This is the wreckage of a collision very similar to other planetessimal collisions in the early solar system. Mars had some, Earth too. That's the matrix life emerged out of. This is a window into that time, understand?"
"I understand, but I don't care."
"You don't think it matters."
"Nothing matters, in the sense you mean. There is no meaning to all this. It's just an accident of the Big Bang."
"Oh please," Ann said. "Nihilism is so ridiculous."
"Look who's talking! You're a nihilist yourself! No meaning or value to life or to your senses--- it's weak nihilism, nihilism for cowards, if you can imagine such a thing."
"My brave little nihilist."
"Yes--- I face it. And then enjoy what can be enjoyed."
"Which is?"
"Pleasure. The senses and their input. I'm a sensualist, really. It takes some courage, I think. To face pain, to risk death to get the senses really roaring. . . ."
"You think you've faced pain?"
Zo remembered a stalled landing at Overlook, the pain-beyond-pain of broken legs and ribs. "Yes. I have."
Radio silence. The static of the Uranian magnetic field. Perhaps Ann was allowing her the experience of pain, which given its omnipresence was no great generosity. In fact it made Zo furious. "Do you really think it takes centuries to become human, that no one was human until you geriatrics came along? Keats died at twenty-five, have you read Hyperion? Do you think this hole in a rock is as sublime as even a phrase of Hyperion? Really, you issei are so horrible. And you especially. For you to judge me, when you haven't changed from the moment you touched Mars. . . ."
"Quite an accomplishment, eh?"
"An accomplishment in playing dead. Ann Clayborne, the greatest dead person who ever lived."
"And an impertinent girl. But look at the grain of this rock, twisted like a pretzel."
"Fuck the rocks."
"I'll leave that to the sensualist. No, look. This rock hasn't changed in three-point-five billion years. And when it did change, my Lord what a change."
Zo looked at the jade rock under their boots. Somewhat glasslike, but otherwise utterly nondescript. "You're obsessed," she said.
"Yes. But I like my obsessions."
• • •
After that they hiked down the spine of the buttress in silence. Over the course of the day they descended to Bottom's Landing. Now they were a kilometer below the rims of the chasm, and the sky was a starry band overhead, Uranus fat in the middle of it, the sun a blazing jewel just to one side. Under this gorgeous array the depth of the rift was sublime, astonishing; again Zo felt herself to be flying. "You've located intrinsic worth in the wrong place," she said to all of them, over the common band. "It's like a rainbow. Without an observer at a twenty-three-degree angle to the light reflecting off a cloud of spherical droplets, there is no rainbow. The whole universe is like that. Our spirits stand at a twenty-three-degree angle to the universe. There is some new thing created at the contact of photon and retina, some space created between rock and mind. Without mind there is no intrinsic worth."
"That's just saying there is no intrinsic worth," one of the guardians replied. "It collapses back to utilitarianism. But there's no need to include human participation. These places exist without us and before us, and that is their intrinsic worth. When we arrive we should honor that precedence, if we want to be in a right attitude to the universe, if we want to actually see it."
"But I see it," Zo said happily. "Or almost see it. You people will have to sensitize your eyes with some addition to your genetic treatments. Meanwhile it's glorious, it truly is. But that glory is in our minds."
They did not answer. After a while Zo went on:
"All these issues have been raised before, on Mars. The whole matter of environmental ethics was raised to a new level by the experience on Mars, raised right into the heart of our actions. Now you want to protect this place as wilderness, and I can see why. But I'm a Martian, and so I understand. A lot of you are Martian, or your parents were. You start from that ethical position, and in the end wilderness is an ethical position. Terrans won't understand you as well as I do. They'll come out here and build a big casino right on this promontory. They'll cover this rift from rim to rim, and try terraforming it like they have everywhere else. The Chinese are still jammed into their country like sardines, and they don't give a damn about the intrinsic worth of China itself, much less a barren moonlet on the edge of the solar system. They need room and they see it's out here, and they'll come and build and look at you funny when you object, and what are you going to do? You can try sabotage like the Reds did on Mars, but they can blow you off the moons here just as easy as you can them, and they've got a million replacements for every colonist they lose. That's what we're talking about when we talk about Earth. We're like the Lilliputians with Gulliver. We've got to work together, and tie him down with as many little lines as we can devise."
No response from the others.
Zo sighed. "Well," she said, "maybe it's for the best. Spread people around out here, they won't be pressuring Mars so hard. It might be possible to work out deals whereby the Chinese are free to settle out here all they want, and we on Mars are free to cut down immigration to nearly nothing. It might work rather well."
Again no response from the others.
Finally Ann said, "Shut up. Let us concentrate on the land here."
"Oh of course."
Then, as they were approaching the very end of the buttress, the promontory standing out in a gap of air beyond all telling, under the bejeweled jade disk and the brilliant diamond chip beyond it, the whole solar system suddenly triangulated by these celestial objects, the true size of things revealed--- they saw moving stars overhead. The rocket jets of their spacecraft.
"See?" Zo said. "It's the Chinese, coming to have a look."
Suddenly one of the guardians was on her in a fury, striking her directly on the faceplate. Zo laughed. But she had forgotten Miranda's ultralight gravity, and was surprised when a ridiculous uppercut lifted her right off her feet. Then she hit the railing with the back of her knees, spun head over heels, twisting to catch herself, bang--- a hard blow to the head, but the helmet protected her, she was still conscious, tumbling down the incline at the edge of the promontory--- beyond it the void--- fear shot through her like an electric shock, she fought for balance but was tumbling, out of control--- she felt a jolt--- ah yes, the end of her harness! Then the sickening sensation of a farther slide down--- the harness clip must have given way. Second surge of adrenal fear--- she turned inward and grabbed at the passing rock. Human power in .005 g; the same gravity that had sent her flying now allowed her to catch herself by a single fingertip, and bring the whole weight of her falling body to a halt, as in a miracle.
She was on the edge of a long drop. Sparking lights in her eyes, nausea, darkness beyond; she couldn't see the floor of the chasm, it was like a bottomless pit, a dream image, black falling. . . . "Don't move," said Ann's voice in her ear. "Hold on. Don't move." Above her, a foot, then legs. Very slowly Zo turned her head up to look. A hand clutched her right wrist, hard. "Okay. There's a hold for your left hand, above it by half a meter. Higher. There. Okay, climb. You above, pull us up."
They were hauled up like fish on a line.
Zo sat on the ground. The little space ferry was landing soundlessly, over on a pad on the far side of the flat spot. Brief flare of light from its rockets. The concerned looks of the guardians, standing over her.
"Not such a funny joke," Ann suggested.
"No," Zo said, thinking hard about how she could use the incident. "Thanks for helping me." It was impressive how quickly Ann had jumped to her help--- not impressive that she had decided to, for this was the code of nobility, one had obligations to one's peers, and enemies were just as important as friends; enemies were equals, they were necessary, they were what made it possible to be a good friend. But just as a physical maneuver it had been impressive. "Very quick of you."
On the flight back to Oberon they were all silent, until one of the ferry's crew turned to Ann and mentioned that Hiroko and some of her followers had been seen here in the Uranian system recently, on Puck.
"Oh what crap," Ann said.
"How do you know?" Zo asked. "Maybe she decided to get as far away from Earth and Mars as possible. I wouldn't blame her."
"This isn't her kind of place."
"Maybe she doesn't know that. Maybe she hasn't heard this is your private rock garden."
But Ann simply waved her away.
Back to Mars, the red planet, the most beautiful world in the solar system. The only real world.
Their shuttle accelerated, made its turn, floated a few days, decelerated; and in two weeks they were in the lineup for Clarke, and then on the elevator, going down, down, down. So slow, this final descent! Zo looked out at Echus, there to the northeast, between red Tharsis and the blue North Sea. So good to see it; Zo ate several tabs of pandorph as the elevator car made its approach into Sheffield, and when she walked out into the Socket, and then through the streets between the glossy stone buildings to the giant train station on the rim, she was in the rapture of the areophany, loving every face she saw, loving all her tall brothers and sisters with their striking beauty and their phenomenal grace, loving even the Terrans running around underfoot. The train to Echus didn't leave for a couple of hours, and so she walked the rim park restlessly for a time, looking down into the great Pavonis Mons caldera, as spectacular as anything on Miranda, even if it wasn't as deep as Prospero's Rift: infinity of horizontal banding, all the shades of red, tan, crimson, rust, umber, maroon, copper, brick, sienna, paprika, oxblood, cinnabar, vermilion, all under the dark star-studded afternoon sky. Her world. Though Sheffield was under its tent, and would ever be; and she wanted back in the wind again.
So she went back to the station and got on the train for Echus, and felt the train fly down the piste, off the great cone of Pavonis, down the pure xeriscape of east Tharsis, to Cairo and a Swiss-precision exchange onto the train north to Echus Overlook. The train came in near midnight, and she checked in at the co-op's hostel and walked over to the Adler, feeling the last of the pandorph buzz through her like the feather in the cap of her happiness, and the whole gang was there as if no time had passed, and they cheered to see her, they all hugged her, singly and severally, they all kissed her, they gave her drinks and asked questions about her trip, and told her about the recent wind conditions, and caressed her in her chair, until quickly it was the hour before dawn and they all trooped down to the ledge and suited up and took off, out into the darkness of the sky and the exhilarating lift of the wind, all of it coming back instantly like breathing or sex, the black mass of the Echus escarpment bulking to the east like the edge of a continent, the dim floor of Echus Chasma so far below--- the landscape of her heart, with its dim lowland and high plateau, and the vertiginous cliff between them, and over it all the intense purples of the sky, lavender and mauve in the east, black indigo out to the west, the whole arch lightening and taking on color each second, the stars popping out of existence--- high clouds to the west flaring pink--- and as several stoops had taken her well below the level of Overlook, she was able to close on the cliff and catch a hard westerly updraft and sail on it, inches over Underlook and then up in a tight gyre, motionless herself and yet cast violently up by the wind, until she burst out of the shadow of the cliff into the raw yellows of the new day, an incredibly joyful combination of the kinetic and the visual, of sense and world, and as she soared up into the clouds she thought, To hell with you, Ann Clayborne--- you and the rest of your kind can go on forever about your moral imperatives, your issei ethics, values, goals, strictures, responsibilities, virtues, grand purposes of life, you can pour out those words to the end of time in all their hypocrisy and fear, and still you will never have a feeling like this one, when the grace of mind and body and world are all in perfect consort--- you can rant your Calvinist rant until you are blue in the face, what humans should do with their brief lives, as if there were any way to tell for sure, as if you didn't turn out to be a bunch of cruel bastards in the end--- but until you get out here and fly, surf, climb, jump, exert yourself somehow in the risk of space, in the pure grace of the body, you just don't know, you have no right to speak, you are slaves to your ideas and your hierarchies and so can't see that there is no higher goal than this, the ultimate purpose of existence, of the cosmos itself: the free play of flight.
• • •
In the northern spring the trade winds blew, pushing against the westerlies and damping the Echus updrafts. Jackie was on the Grand Canal, distracted from her interplanetary maneuverings by the tedium of local politics; indeed she seemed irritated and tense at having to deal with it, and clearly she did not want Zo around. So Zo went to work in the mines at Moreux for a while, and then joined a group of flying friends on the coast of the North Sea, south of Boone's Neck, near Blochs Hoffnung, where the sea cliffs reared a kilometer out of the crashing surf. Late-afternoon onshore breezes hit these cliffs and sent up a small flock of fliers, wheeling through seastacks that poked out of tapestries of foam surging up and down, up and down, pure white on the wine-dark sea.
This flying group was led by a young woman Zo hadn't met before, a girl of only nine m-years, named Melka. She was the best flier Zo had ever seen. When she was in the air leading them it was as if an angel had come into their midst, darting through them like a raptor through doves, at other times leading them through the tight maneuvers that made flocking such fun. And so Zo worked through the days at her co-op's local partner, and flew every day after her work stint was over. And her heart was always soaring, pleased by one thing after another. Once she even called Ann Clayborne, to try to tell her about flying, about what it really meant; but the old one had nearly forgotten who she was, and did not appear interested even when Zo managed to make it clear when and how they had met.
That afternoon she flew with an ache inside. The past was a dead letter, sure; but that people could become such ghosts. . . .
Nothing for such a feeling but sun and salt air, the everchanging spill of sea foam, rising and falling against the cliffs. There was Melka, diving; Zo chased her, feeling a sudden rush of affection for such a beautiful spirit. But then Melka saw her and tipped away, and clipped the highest rock of a seastack with the end of one wing, and tumbled down like a shot bird. Shocked at the sight of the accident, Zo pulled her wings in and began dolphin-kicking downward next to the seastack, until she was plummeting in a powerful stoop; she caught up the tumbling girl in her arms, she flapped one wing just over the blue waves, while Melka struggled under her; then she saw that they were going to have to swim.
It Goes So Fast
Prologue
They walked down to the low bluffs overlooking the Florentine. It was night, the air still and cool, the stars bunched overhead in their thousands. They strode side by side on the bluff trail, looking down at the beaches below. The black water was smooth, pricked everywhere by reflected starlight, and the long smeared line reflecting Pseudophobos setting in the east, leading the eye to the dim black mass of land across the bay.
I'm worried, yes, very worried. In fact I'm scared.
Why?
It's Maya. Her mind. Her mental problems. Her emotional problems. They're getting worse.
What are the symptoms?
The same, only worse. She can't sleep at night. She hates the way she looks, sometimes. She's still in her manic-depressive cycle, but it's changing somehow, I don't know how to characterize it. As if she can't always remember where in the cycle she is. Bouncing around in it. She forgets things, a lot of things.
We all do.
I know. But Maya is forgetting things that I would have said were essentially Mayan. She doesn't seem to care. That's the worst part; she doesn't seem to care.
I find that hard to imagine.
Me too. Maybe it's just the depressive part of her mood cycle, now predominating. But there are days when she loses all affect.
What you call jamais vu?
No, not exactly. She has those incidents too, mind you. Like a certain kind of prestroke symptom. I know, I know--- I told you, I'm scared. But I don't know what this is, not really. She has jamais vus that are like a prestroke symptom. She has presque vus, where she feels almost on the edge of a revelation that never comes. That often happens to people in pre-epileptic auras.
I have feelings like that myself.
Yes, I suppose we all do. Sometimes it seems like things will come clear, and then the feeling goes away. Yes. But for Maya these are very intense, as in everything.
Better than the loss of affect.
Oh yes. I agree. Presque vu is not so bad. It's déjà vu that is the worst, and she has periods of continuous déjà vu that can last up to a week. Those are devastating to her. They rob the world of something she can't live without.
Contingency. Free will.
Perhaps. But the net effect of all these symptoms is to drive her into a state of apathy. Almost catatonia. Tried to avoid any of the abnormal states by not feeling too much. Not feeling at all.
They say one of the common issei ailments is falling into a funk.
Yes, I've been reading about that. Loss of affectual function, anomie, apathy. They've been treating it as they would catatonia, or schizophrenia--- giving them a serotonin dopamine complex, limbic stimulants . . .a big cocktail, as you can imagine. Brain chemistry . . .I've been dosing her with everything I can think of, I must admit, keeping journals, running tests, sometimes with her cooperation, sometimes without her knowing much about it. I've been doing what I can, I swear I have.
I'm sure you have.
But it isn't working. She's losing it. Oh Sax---
He stopped, held on to his friend's shoulder.
I can't bear it if she goes. She was always such an airy spirit. We are earth and water, fire and air. And Maya was always in flight. Such an airy spirit, flying on her own gales up above us. I can't stand to see her falling like this!
Ah well.
They walked on.
It's nice to have Phobos back again.
Yes. That was a good idea of yours.
It was your idea, actually. You suggested it to me.
Did I? I don't remember that.
You did.
Below them the sea crunched faintly on rocks.
These four elements. Earth, water, fire, and air. One of your semantic rectangles?
It's from the Greeks.
Like the four temperaments?
Yes. Thales made the hypothesis. The first scientist.
But there were always scientists, you told me. All the way back to the savanna.
Yes, that's true.
And the Greeks--- all honor to them, they were obviously great minds--- but they were only part of a continuum of scientists, you know. There has been some work done since.
Yes I know.
Yes. And some of that subsequent work might be of use to you, in these conceptual schemata of yours. In mapping the world for us. So that you might be given new ways of seeing things that might help you, even with problems like Maya's. Because there are more than four elements. A hundred and twenty, more or less. Maybe there are more than four temperaments as well. Maybe a hundred and twenty of them, eh? And the nature of these elements--- well--- things have gotten strange since the Greeks. You know subatomic particles have an attribute called spin, that comes only in multiples of one half? And you know how an object in our visible world, it spins three hundred and sixty degrees, and is back to its original position? Well, a particle with a spin designated one half, like a proton or a neutron--- it has to rotate through seven hundred and twenty degrees to get back to its original configuration.
What's that?
It has to go through a double rotation relative to ordinary objects, to come back to its starting state.
You're kidding.
No no. This has been known for centuries. The geometry of space is simply different for spin one half particles. They live in a different world.
And so. . . .
Well, I don't know. But it seems suggestive to me. I mean, if you are going to use physical models as analogues for our mental states, and throw them together in the patterns that you do, then perhaps you ought to be considering these somewhat newer physical models. To think of Maya as a proton, perhaps, a spin one half particle, living in a world twice as big as ours.
Ah.
And it gets stranger than that. There are ten dimensions to this world, Michel. Ten. The three of macrospace that we can perceive, the one of time, and then six more microdimensions, compactified around the fundamental particles in ways we can describe mathematically but cannot visualize. Convolutions and topologies. Differential geometries, invisible but real, down at the ultimate level of spacetime. Think about it. It could lead to whole new systems of thought for you. A vast new enlargement of your mind.
I don't care about my mind. I only care about Maya.
Yes. I know.
They stood looking over the starry water. Over them arched the dome of stars, and in the silence the air breathed over them, the sea mumbled below. The world seemed a big place, wild and free, dark and mysterious.
After a time they turned, and began walking back along the trail.
One time I was taking the train from Da Vinci to Sheffield, and there was some problem with the piste, and we stopped for a while in Underhill. I got off and took a walk through the old trailer park. And I started remembering things. Just looking around. I wasn't really trying. But things came to me.
A common phenomenon.
Yes, so I understand. But I wonder if it might not help Maya to do something like that. Not Underhill in particular, but all the places where she was happy. Where the two of you were happy. You're living in Sabishii now, but why not move back to some place like Odessa?
She didn't want to.
She might have been wrong. Why don't you try living in Odessa, and visiting Underhill from time to time, or Sheffield. Cairo. Maybe even Nicosia. The south-pole cities, Dorsa Brevia. A dive into Burroughs. A train tour of the Hellas Basin. All that kind of return might help her to stitch her selves together, to see again where our story began. Where we were formed for good or ill, in the morning of the world. She might need that whether she knows it or not.
Hmm.
Arm in arm they walked back to the crater, following a dim track through dark bracken.
Bless you, Sax. Bless you.
The water of Isidis Bay was the color of a bruise or a clematis petal, sparkling with sunlight that glanced off waves just on the verge of whitecapping. The swell was from the north, and the cabin cruiser pitched and yawed as they motored northwest from DuMartheray Harbor. A bright day in spring, Ls 51, m-year 79, A.D. 2181.
Maya sat on the upper deck of the boat, drinking in the sea air and the flood of blue sunlight. It was a joy to be out on the water like this, away from all the haze and junk on shore. Wonderful the way the sea could not be tamed or changed in any way, wonderful how when one got out of the sight of land one rocked on blue wilderness again, always the same no matter what happened back there. She could have sailed on, all day every day, and each slide down the waves a little roller-coaster ride of the soul.
But that wasn't what they were about. There ahead whitecaps broke over a broad patch, and beside her the boat's pilot brought the wheel over a spoke or two, and knocked the throttle down a few rpm. That white water was the top of Double Decker Butte, now a reef marked by a black buoy, clanging a deep bongBong, bongBong, bongBong.
Mooring buoys were scattered around this big nautical church bell. Their pilot steered to the nearest one. There were no other boats anchored here, or visible anywhere; it was as if they were alone in the world. Michel came up from below and stood by her, hand on her shoulder as the pilot cut the throttle, and a sailor in the bow below them reached out with a boat hook and snagged the buoy, clipped their mooring rope onto it. The pilot killed the engine and they drifted back on the swells till the mooring line tugged them short into one swell, with a loud slap and a fan of white spray. They were at anchor over Burroughs.
THE GRAND CANAL
• • •
Down in the cabin Maya got out of her clothes and pulled on a flexible orange dry suit: suit and hood, booties, tank and helmet, lastly gloves. She had only learned to dive for this descent, and every part of it was still new, except for the sensation of being underwater, which was like the weightlessness of space. So once she got over the side of the boat and into the water, it was a familiar feeling: sinking down, pulled by the weight belt, aware that the water around her was cold, but not feeling it in any real way. Breathing underwater; that was odd, but it worked. Down into the dark. She let go and swam down, away from the little pin of sunlight.
• • •
Down and down. Past the upper edge of Double Decker Butte, past its silvered or coppery windows, standing in rows like mineral extrusions or the one-way mirrors of observers from another dimension. Quickly gone in the murk, however, and she dream-parachuted down again, down and down. Michel and a couple others were following her, but it was so dark that she couldn't see them. Then a robot trawl shaped like a thick bed frame sank past them all, its powerful headlights shooting forward long cones of crystalline fluidity, cones so long that they became one blurry diffuse cylinder, flowing this way and that as the trawl dipped and bobbed, striking now a distant mesa's metallic windows, now the black muck down on the rooftops of the old Niederdorf. Somewhere down there, the Niederdorf Canal had run--- there, a gleam of white teeth--- the Bareiss columns, impervious white under their diamond coating, about half-buried in black sand and muck. She pulled up and kicked her fins back and forth a few times to stop descending, then pushed a button that shot some compressed air into one part of her weight belt, to stabilize herself. She floated then over the canal like a ghost. Yes; it was like Scrooge's dream, the trawl a kind of robot Christmas Past, illuminating the drowned world of lost time, the city she had loved so much. Sudden darts of pain lanced through her ribs; mostly she was numb to any feeling. It was too strange, too hard to understand or believe that this was Burroughs, her Burroughs, now Atlantis at the bottom of a Martian sea.
Bothered by her lack of feeling, she kicked hard and swam down the canal park, over the salt columns and farther west. There on the left loomed Hunt Mesa, where she and Michel had lived in hiding over a dance studio; then the broad black upslope of Great Escarpment Boulevard. Ahead lay Princess Park, where in the second revolution she had stood on a stage and given a speech to a huge throng; the crowd had stood just below where she was floating now. Over there--- that was where she and Nirgal had spoken. Now the black bottom of a bay. All of that, so long ago--- her life--- They had cut open the tent and walked away from the city, they had flooded it and never looked back. Yes, no doubt Michel was right, this dive was a perfect image of the murky processes of memory; and maybe it would help to see it; and yet . . . Maya felt her numbness, and doubted it. The city was drowned, sure. But it was still here. Anytime they wanted to someone could rebuild the dike and pump out this arm of the bay, and there the city would be again, drenched and steaming in the sunlight, safely enclosed in a polder as if it were some town in the Netherlands; wash down the muddy streets, plant streetgrass and trees, clean out the mesa interiors, and the houses and the shops down in the Niederdorf, and up the broad boulevards--- polish the windows--- and there you would have it all again--- Burroughs, Mars, on the surface and gleaming. It could be done; it even made sense, almost, given how much excavation there had been in the nine mesas, given that Isidis Bay had no other good harbor. Well, no one would ever do it. But it could be done. And so it was not really like the past at all.
Numb, and feeling more and more chill, Maya shot more air into the weight belt, turned and swam back up the length of Canal Park, back toward the light trawl. Again she spotted the row of salt columns, and something about them drew her. She kicked down to them, then swam just over the black sand, disturbing the rippled surface with the downdraft from her fins. The rows of Bareiss columns had bracketed the old canal. They looked more tumbledown than ever now that their symmetricality was ruined by half burial. She remembered taking afternoon walks in the park, west into the sun, then back, with the light pouring past them. It had been a beautiful place. Down among the great mesas it had been like being in a giant city of many cathedrals.
There beyond the columns was a row of buildings. The buildings were the anchoring point for a line of kelp; long trunks rose from their roofs into the murk, their broad leaves undulating gently in a slow current. There had been a café in the front of that end building, a sidewalk café, partly shaded by a trellis covered with wisteria. The last salt column served as a marker, and Maya was sure of her identification.
She swam laboriously into a standing position, and a time came back to her. Frank had shouted at her and run off, no rhyme or reason as usual with him. She had dressed and followed him, and found him here hunched over a coffee. Yes. She had confronted him and they had argued right there, she had berated him for not hurrying up to Sheffield . . . she had knocked a coffee cup off the table, and the handle had broken off and spun on the ground. Frank got up and they walked away arguing, and went back to Sheffield. But no, no. That wasn't how it had been. They had quarreled, yes, but then made up. Frank had reached across the table and held her hand, and a great black weight had lifted off her heart, giving her a brief moment of grace, of being in love and being loved.
One or the other. But which had it been?
She couldn't remember. Couldn't be sure. So many fights with Frank, so many reconciliations; both could have happened. It was impossible to keep track, to remember what had happened when. It was all blurring together in her mind, into vague impressions, disconnected moments. The past, disappearing entirely. Small noises, like an animal in pain--- ah--- that was her throat. Mewling, sobbing. Numb and yet sobbing, it was absurd. Whatever had happened then, she just wanted it back. "Fuh." She couldn't say his name. It hurt, as if someone had stuck a pin in her heart. Ah--- that was feeling, it was! It couldn't be denied; she was gasping with it, it hurt so. One couldn't deny it.
She pumped the fins slowly, floated off the sand, up away from the rooftops anchoring their kelp. Sitting miserably at that café table, what would they have thought if they had known that a hundred and twenty years later she would be swimming overhead, and Frank dead all that time?
End of a dream. Disorientation, of a shift from one reality to another. Floating in the dark water brought back some of the numbness. Ah but there it was, that pinprick pain, there inside, encysted--- insisted--- hold on to it forever, hold on to any feeling you can, any feeling you can dredge up out of all that muck, anything! Anything but the numbness; sobbing in pain was rapture compared to that.
And so Michel was proved right again, the old alchemist. She looked around for him; he had swum off on voyages of his own. Quite some time had passed, the others were making their rendezvous in the cone of light before the trawl, like tropical fish in a dark cold tank, drawn to the light in hopes of warmth. Dreamy slow weightlessness. She thought of John, floating naked against black space and crystal stars. Ah--- too much to feel. One could only stand a single shard of the past at a time; this drowned city; but she had made love to John here too, in a dorm somewhere in the first years--- to John, to Frank, to that engineer whose name she could seldom recall, no doubt to others besides, all forgotten, or almost; she would have to work on that. Encyst them all, precious stabs of feeling held in her forever, till death did they part. Up, up, up, among the colorful tropical fish with their arms and their legs, back into the light of day, blue sunlight, ah God yes, ears popping, a giddiness perhaps of nitrogen narcosis, rapture of the deep. Or the rapture of human depth, the way they lived and lived, giants plunged through the years, yes, and what they held on to. Michel was swimming up from below, following her; she kicked then waited, waited, clasped him and squeezed hard, ah, how she loved the other's solidity in her arms, that proof of reality, she squeezed thinking thank you Michel you sorcerer of my soul, thank you Mars for what endures in us, drowned or encysted though it may be. Up into the glorious sun, into the wind, strip off the suit with cold clumsy fingers, pull it off and step out of it chrysalislike, careless of the power of the female nude over the male eye, then suddenly aware of it, give them that startling vision of flesh in the sunlight, sex in the afternoon, breathe deep in the wind, goose-pimpling all over with the shock of being alive. "I'm still Maya," she insisted to Michel, teeth chattering; she hugged her breasts and toweled off, luxury of terry cloth on wet skin. She pulled on clothes, whooped at the chill of the wind. Michel's face was the image of happiness, the deification, that mask of joy, old Dionysius, laughing aloud at the success of his plan, at the rapture of his friend and companion. "What did you see?" "The café--- the park--- the canal--- and you?" "Hunt Mesa--- the dance studio--- Thoth Boulevard--- Table Mountain." In the cabin he had a bucket of champagne on ice, and he popped the cork and it shot off into the wind and landed lightly on the water, then floated off on the blue waves.
• • •
But she refused to say any more about it. She would not tell the story of her dive. The others did and then it was her turn, somehow, and the people on the boat were looking at her like vultures, eager to gulp down her experiences. She drank her champagne and sat silently on the upper deck, watching the broad-sloped waves. Waves looked odd on Mars, big and sloppy, impressive. She gave Michel a look to let him know she was all right, that he had done well to send her under. Beyond that, silence. Let them have their own experiences to feed on, the vultures.
The boat returned to DuMartheray Harbor, which consisted of a little crescent of marina-platted water, curving under part of the apron of DuMartheray Crater. The slope of the apron was covered with buildings and greenery, right up to the rim.
They disembarked and walked up through the town, had dinner in a rim restaurant, watching sunset flare over the water of Isidis Bay. The evening wind fell down the escarpment and whistled offshore, holding the waves up and tearing spray off their tops, in white plumes crossed by brief rainbow arcs. Maya sat next to Michel, and kept a hand on his thigh or shoulder. "Amazing," someone said, "to see the row of salt columns still gleaming down there."
"And the rows of windows in the mesas! Did you see that broken one? I wanted to go in and look, but I was afraid."
Maya grimaced, concentrated on the moment. People across the table were talking to Michel about a new institute concerning the First Hundred and other early colonists--- some kind of museum, a repository of oral histories, committees to protect the earliest buildings from destruction, etc., also a program to provide help for superelderly early settlers. Naturally these earnest young men (and young men could be so earnest) were particularly interested in Michel's help, and in finding and somehow enlisting all of the First Hundred left alive; twenty-three now, they said. Michel was of course perfectly courteous, and indeed seemed truly interested in the project.
Maya couldn't have hated the idea more. A dive into the wreckage of the past, as a kind of smelling salts, repellent but invigorating--- fine. That was acceptable, even healthy. But to fix on the past, to focus on it; disgusting. She would have happily tossed the earnest young men over the rail. Meanwhile Michel was agreeing to interview all the remaining First Hundred, to help the project get started. Maya stood up and went to the rail, leaned against it. Below on the darkening water luminous plumes of spray were still blowing off the top of every wave.
• • •
A young woman came up beside her and leaned on the railing. "My name is Vendana," she said to Maya, while looking down at the waves. "I'm the Green party's local political agent for the year." She had a beautiful profile, clean and sharp in a classic Indian look: olive-skinned, black-eyebrowed, long nose, small mouth. Intelligent subtle brown eyes. It was odd how much one could tell by faces alone; Maya was beginning to feel she knew everything essential about a person at first glance. Which was a useful ability, given that so much of what the young natives said these days baffled her. She needed that first insight.
Greenness, however, she understood, or thought she did; actually an archaic political term, she would have thought, given that Mars was fully green now, and blue as well. "What do you want?"
Vendana said, "Jackie Boone, and the Free Mars slate of candidates for offices from this area, are traveling around campaigning for the upcoming elections. If Jackie stays party chair again, and gets back on the executive council, then she'll continue working on the Free Mars plan to ban all new immigration from Earth. It's her idea, and she's been pushing it hard. Her contention is that Terran immigration can all be redirected elsewhere in the solar system. That isn't true, but it's a stance that goes over very well in certain quarters. The Terrans, of course, don't like it. If Free Mars wins big on an isolationist program, we think Earth will react very badly. They've already got problems they can barely handle, they need to have what little out we provide. And they'll call it a breaking of the treaty you negotiated. They might even go to war over it."
Maya nodded; for years she had felt a heightening tension between Earth and Mars, no matter Michel's assurances. She had known this was coming, she had seen it.
"Jackie has a lot of groups lined up behind her, and Free Mars has had a supermajority in the global government for years now. They've been packing the environmental courts all the while. The courts will back her in any immigration ban she cares to propose. We want to maintain the policies as set by the treaty you negotiated, or even widen immigration quotas a bit, to give Earth as much help as we can. But Jackie's going to be hard to stop. To tell you the truth, I don't think we know quite how. So I thought I'd ask you."
Maya was surprised: "How to stop her?"
"Yes. Or more generally, to ask you to help us. I think it will take unpisting her personally. I thought you might be interested."
And she turned her head to look at Maya with a knowing smile.
There was something vaguely familiar in the ironic smile lifting that classic little full-lipped mouth, something which though offensive was much preferable to the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the young historians pestering Michel. And as Maya considered it, the invitation began to look better and better; it was contemporary politics, an engagement with the present. The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History. And this issue could prove to be important, as the young woman had said. And it would put her back in the midst of things. And of course (she did not think this consciously) anything that balked Jackie would have its own satisfactions. "Tell me more about it," Maya said, moving down the balcony out of earshot of the others. And the tall ironic young woman followed her.
Michel had always wanted to take a trip on the Grand Canal, and recently he had talked Maya into trying a move from Sabishii back to Odessa, as a way to combat Maya's various mental afflictions; they might even take an apartment in the same Praxis complex that they had lived in before the second revolution. That was the only place Maya thought of as home, aside from Underhill, which she refused even to visit. And Michel felt that coming back to some kind of home might help her. So, Odessa. Maya was agreeable; it did not matter to her. And Michel's desire to travel there by way of the Grand Canal seemed fine as well. Maya had not cared. She wasn't sure of anything these days, she had few opinions, few preferences; that was the trouble.
Now Vendana was saying that Jackie's campaign was to proceed along the Grand Canal, north to south, in a big canal cruiser that doubled as campaign headquarters. They were there now, at the canal's north end, getting ready in the Narrows.
So Maya returned to Michel on the terrace, and when the historians left them she said, "So let's go to Odessa by the Grand Canal, like you said."
Michel was delighted. Indeed it seemed to lift from him a certain somberness that had followed the dive into drowned Burroughs; he had been pleased at its effect on Maya, but for himself it had perhaps not been so good. He had been uncharacteristically reticent about his experience, somehow oppressed, as if overwhelmed by all that the great sunken capital represented in his own life. Hard to tell. So that now, to see Maya responding so well to the experience, and also to suddenly be given the prospect of seeing the Grand Canal--- a kind of giant joke, in Maya's opinion--- it made him laugh. And that she liked to see. Michel thought that Maya needed a lot of help these days, but she knew full well that it was Michel who was struggling.
• • •
So a few days later they walked up a gangway onto the deck of a long narrow sailing ship, whose single mast and sail were one curved unit of dull white material, shaped like a bird's wing. This ship was a kind of passenger ferry, sailing eastward around the North Sea in perpetual circumnavigations. When everyone was aboard, they motored out of DuMartheray's little harbor, and turned east, keeping within sight of land. The ship's mast sail proved to be flexible and mobile in many different directions; it shifted in its curves like a bird's wing, every moment different as its AI responded minutely to catch the fitful winds.
On the second afternoon of their voyage into the Narrows, the Elysium massif came over the horizon ahead of them, bulking alpenglow pink against the hyacinth sky. The coast of the mainland rose to the south as well, as if to stretch up and see the great massif across the bay: bluffs alternated with marshes, and then a long tawny reach was succeeded by an ever-higher sea cliff. The horizontal red strata of this cliff were all broken by bands of black and ivory, and the ledges were lined with mats of samphire and grasses, and streaked with white guano. The waves slammed into the sheer rock at the bottom of these cliffs and rebounded, the arcs of the backwash intersecting the oncoming swells in quick points of upshot water. In short, beautiful sailing: long glides down the swells, the wind an offshore powerhouse, especially in the afternoons--- the spray, the salt tang in the air--- for the North Sea was becoming salty--- the wind in her hair, the white V tapestry of the ship's wake, luminous over the indigo sea: beautiful days. It made Maya want to stay on board, to sail around the world and then around again, to never land and never change . . . there were people doing that now, she had heard, giant greenhouse ships utterly self-sufficient, sailing the great ocean in their own thalassacracy. . . .
But there ahead of them were the Narrows, narrowing. The trip from DuMartheray was already almost over. Why were the good days always so short? Moment to moment, day by day--- each so full, and oh so lovely--- and then gone forever, gone before there was a chance to absorb them properly, to really live them. Sailing through life looking back at the wake, high seas, flying wind. . . . Now the sun was low, the light slanting across the sea cliffs, accenting all their wild irregularities, their overhangs, caves, sheer clean faces dropping directly into the sea, red rock into blue water, all untouched by human hands (though the sea itself was their work). Sudden shards of splendor, splintering inside her. But the sun was disappearing, and the break in the sea cliffs ahead marked the first big harbor of the Narrows, Rhodos, where they would dock and the evening would come. They would eat in a harbor café next to the water in the long twilight, and that day's glorious sail would never come again. This strange nostalgia, for the moment just gone, for the evening yet to come: "Ah, I'm alive again," she said to herself, and marveled that it could have happened. Michel and his tricks--- one would think that by now she would have become impervious to all that psychiatric-alchemical mumbo jumbo. It was too much for the heart to bear. But--- well--- better this than the numbness, that was certain. And it had a certain painful splendor, this acute sensation--- and she could endure it--- she could even enjoy it, somehow, in snatches--- a sublime intensity to these late-afternoon colors, everything suffused with them. And under such a flood of nostalgic light, the harbor of Rhodos looked gorgeous--- the big lighthouse on the western cape, the pair of clanging buoys red and green, port and starboard. Then in to the calm dark water of an anchorage, and down into rowboats, in the failing light, across black water through a crowd of exotic ships at anchor, no two the same as ship design was going through a period of rapid innovation, new materials making almost anything possible, and all the old designs being reinvented, drastically altered, then returned to again; there a clipper ship, there a schooner, there something that looked to be entirely outrigger . . . finally to bang into a busy wooden dock, in the dusk.
Harbor towns at dusk were all alike. A corniche, a curving narrow park, lines of trees, an arc of ramshackle hotels and restaurants backing the wharves . . . they checked into one of these hotels, and then strolled the dock, ate under an awning just as Maya had supposed they would. She relaxed in the grounded stability of her chair, watching liquid light oxbow over the viscous black water of the harbor, listening to Michel talk to the people sitting at the next table, tasting the olive oil and bread, the cheeses and ouzo. It was strange how much beauty hurt, sometimes, and even happiness. And yet she wished the lazy postprandial sprawl in their hard chairs could go on forever.
Of course it didn't. They went up to bed, hand in hand, and she held on to Michel as hard as ever she could. And the next day they hauled their bags across town to the inner harbor, just north of the first canal lock, and up into a big canal boat, long and luxurious, like a barge become cruise ship. They were two of about a hundred passengers coming on board; and among the others was Vendana and some of her friends. And further on, on a private canal boat a few locks ahead, were Jackie and her consort of followers, about to travel south as well. On some nights they would be docked in the same canalside towns. "Interesting," Maya drawled, and at the word Michel looked both pleased and worried.
• • •
The Grand Canal's bed had been cut by an aerial lens, concentrating sunlight beamed down from the soletta. The lens had flown very high in the atmosphere, surfing on the thermal cloud of gases thrown up by the melted and vaporized rock; it had flown in straight lines, and burned its way across the land without the slightest regard for details of topography. Maya vaguely remembered seeing vids of the process at the time, but the photos had necessarily been taken from a distance, and they had not prepared her at all for the sheer size of the canal. Their long low canal boat motored into the first lock; was lifted up a short distance on infilling water; motored out of an opening gate--- and there they were, in a wind-rippled lake two kilometers wide, extending in a straight line directly southwest toward the Hellas Sea, two thousand kilometers away. A great number of boats large and small were proceeding in both directions, keeping to the right with the slower ones closer to the banks, in the standard rules of the road. Almost all the craft were motorized, although many also sported lines of masts in schooner rig, and some of the smallest boats had big triangular sails and no engines---"dhows," Michel said, pointing. An Arab design, apparently.
Somewhere up ahead was Jackie's campaign ship. Maya ignored that and concentrated on the canal, gazing from bank to bank. The absent rock had not been excavated but vaporized, and looking at the banks one could tell; temperatures under the concentrated light of the aerial lens had reached five thousand K, and the rock had simply dissociated into its constituent atoms and shot into the air. After cooling, some material had fallen back on the banks, and some back into the trench, pooling there as lava; so the canal had been left with a flat floor, and banks some hundred meters high, and each over a kilometer wide: rounded black slag levees, on which very little could grow, so that they were nearly as bare and black now as when they had cooled forty m-years before, with only the occasional sand-filled crack bursting with greenery. The canal water appeared black under the banks, shading to sky color out in the middle of the canal, or rather to a shade just darker than sky color, the effect of the dark bottom no doubt; with streaks of green zigzagging across all.
The obsidian rise of the two banks, the straight gash of dark water between; boats of all sizes, but many of them long and narrow to maximize space in the locks; then every few hours a canalside town, hacked into the bankside and then spreading on top of the levee. Most of the towns had been named after one of the many canals on the classic Lowell and Antoniadi maps, and these names had been taken by the canal-besotted astronomers from the canals and rivers of classical antiquity. The first towns they passed were quite near the equator, and they were bracketed by groves of palm trees, then wooden docks, backed by busy little waterside districts; pleasant terrace neighborhoods above; then the bulk of the towns up on the flats of the levees. Of course the lens, in cutting a straight line, had carved a canal bed that rose directly up the Great Escarpment onto the high plain of Hesperia, a four-kilometer rise in elevation; so every few kilometers the canal was blocked by a lock dam. These, like dams everywhere these days, were transparent walls, and looked as thin as cellophane, yet were still many magnitudes stronger than necessary to hold the water they held, or so people said. Maya found their windowpane clarity offensive, a bit of whimsical hubris that would surely be struck down one day, when one of the thin walls would pop like a balloon and wreak havoc, and people would go back to good old concrete and carbon filament.
For now, however, the approach to a lock involved sailing toward a wall of water like the Red Sea parted for the passage of the Israelites, fish darting hither and thither overhead like primitive birds, a surreal sight, like something out of an Escher print. Then into a lock like a water-walled grave, surrounded by these bird-fish; and then up, and up, and out onto a new level of the great straight-sided river, cutting through the black land. "Bizarre," Maya said after the first lock, and the second and the third; and Michel could only grin and nod.
The fourth night of the trip they docked at a small canalside town called Naarsares. Across the canal was an even smaller town called Naarmalcha. Mesopotamian names, apparently. A terrace restaurant on top of the levee gave a view far up and down the canal, and behind the canal to the arid highlands flanking it. Ahead they could see where the canal cut through the wall of Gale Crater, floored with water: Gale was now a bulb in the canal, a holding area for ships and goods.
After dinner Maya stood on the terrace looking through the gap into Gale. Out of the inky talc of twilight Vendana and some companions approached her: "How do you like the canal?" they asked.
"Very interesting," Maya said curtly. She didn't like being asked questions, or being at the center of a group; it was too much like being an exhibit in a museum. They weren't going to get anything out of her. She stared at them. One of the young men among them gave up, began to talk to the woman next to him. He had an extraordinarily beautiful face, features neatly chiseled under a shock of black hair; a sweet smile, an unselfconscious laugh; altogether captivating. Young, but not so young as to seem unformed. He looked Indian perhaps--- such dark skin, such white regular teeth--- strong, lean as a whippet, a good bit taller than Maya, but not one of these new giants--- human scale still, unprepossessing but solid, graceful. Sexy.
She moved toward him slowly, as the group shifted into a more relaxed cocktail-party format, people wandering around to talk and look down at the canal and the docks. Finally she got a chance to speak with him, and he did not react as if approached by Helen of Troy or Lucy the habiline fossil. It would be lovely to kiss such a mouth. Out of the question, of course, and she didn't even really want to. But she liked to think about it; and the thought gave her ideas. Faces were so powerful.
His name was Athos. He was from Licus Vallis, to the west of Rhodos. Sansei, from a seafaring family, grandparents Greek and Indian. He had helped to found this new Green party, convinced that helping Earth through its surge was the only way to stay out of the maelstrom: the controversial tail-wagging-the-dog approach, as he admitted with an easy beautiful smile. Now he was running for representative from the Nepenthes Bay towns, and helping to coordinate the Green campaigns more generally.
"We'll catch up with the Free Mars campaign in a few days?" Maya asked Vendana later.
"Yes. We plan to debate them at a meeting in Gale."
• • •
Then as they were walking up the gangplank onto their boat, the young ones turned away from her, heading together up to the foredeck to continue partying; Maya was forgotten, she wasn't part of that. She stared after them, then joined Michel in their little cabin near the stern. Seething. She couldn't help it, even though she was shocked when it occurred: sometimes she hated the young. "I hate them," she said to Michel. And simply because they were young. She might disguise it as hatred of their thoughtlessness, stupidity, callowness, utter provincialism; that was all true; but beyond that, she also hated their youth--- not just their physical perfection, but simply their age--- sheer chronology--- the fact that they had it all in front of them. It was all best in anticipation, everything. Sometimes she woke from floating dreams in which she had been looking down on Mars from the Ares, after they had aerobraked, and were stabilizing their orbit in preparation for the descent; and shocked at the abrupt fall back into the present, she realized that for her that had been the best moment of all, that rush of anticipation as it all lay there below them, anything possible. That was youth.
"Think of them as fellow travelers," Michel advised now, as he had several times before when Maya had confessed to this feeling. "They're only going to be young for as long as we were--- a snap of the fingers, right? And then they're old, and then gone. We all go through it. Even a century's difference doesn't matter a damn. And of all the humans who ever existed and ever will exist, these people are the only ones alive at the same time we are. Just being alive at the same time, that makes us all contemporaries. And your contemporaries are the only ones who are ever going to really understand you."
"Yes yes," Maya said. It was true. "But I still hate them."
• • •
The aerial lens's burn had been about equally deep everywhere, so when it had blazed across Gale Crater it had cut a wide swath through the rim on the northeast and southwest sides; but these cuts were higher than the canal bed elsewhere, so that narrower cuts had been excavated through them, and locks installed, and the inner crater made into a high lake, a bulb in the canal's endless thermometer. The Lowellian system of ancient nomenclature was in abeyance here for some reason, and the northeastern locks were bracketed by a little divided town called Birch's Trenches, while the southwestern locks' larger town was called Banks. The town Banks covered the meltzone of the burn, and then rose in broad bending terraces onto the unmelted rim of Gale, overlooking the interior lake. It was a wild town, crews and passengers of passing ships pounding down their gangplanks to join a more or less continuous festival. On this night the party was focused on the arrival of the Free Mars campaign. A big grassy plaza, perched on a wide bench over the lake lock, was jammed with people, some attending to the speeches given from a flat rooftop stage overlooking the plaza, others ignoring the commotion and shopping, or promenading, or drinking, or sitting over the lock eating food purchased from small smoky stands, or dancing, or wandering off to explore the upper reaches of the town.
Throughout the campaign speeches Maya stood on a terrace above the stage, which gave her a view of the backstage area, where Jackie and the rest of the Free Mars leadership were milling about, talking or listening as they waited for their turn in the spotlights. Antar was there, Ariadne, some others Maya half-recognized from recent news vids. Observation from a distance could be so revealing; down there she saw all the primate dominance dynamics that Frank used to go on about. Two or three of the men were fixed on Jackie, and, in a different way, a couple of the women. One of the men, named Mikka, was on the global executive council these days, a leader of the MarsFirst party. MarsFirst was one of the oldest political parties on Mars, formed to contest terms of the renewal of the first Mars treaty; Maya had been part of that, she seemed to recall. Now Martian politics had fallen into a pattern somewhat resembling European parliamentary countries, with a broad spectrum of small parties bracketing a few centrist coalitions, in this case Free Mars, the Reds, and the Dorsa Brevian matriarchy, with the others latching on, or filling gaps, or running off to the sides, all of them shifting this way and that in temporary alliances, to advance their little causes. In this array MarsFirst had become something like the political wing of the Red ecoteurs still in the outback, a nasty expedient unscrupulous organization, folded into the Free Mars supermajority for no good ideological reason; there had to be some kind of deal going on. Or something more personal; the way that Mikka followed Jackie, the way he regarded her; a lover, or very recent ex-lover, Maya would have bet on it. Besides which she had heard rumors to that effect.
Their speeches were all about beautiful wonderful Mars and how it was going to be ruined by overpopulation, unless they closed it to further Terran immigration. There was a strong case to be made for that point of view, actually, as could be told by the cheers and applause from the crowd. Their attitude was deeply hypocritical, as most of those applauding made their living from Terran tourists, and all of them were immigrants or the children of immigrants; but they cheered anyway. It was a good election issue. Especially if you ignored the risk of war, if you ignored the sheer immensity of Earth, and its primacy in human civilization. Defying it in this way. . . . Well, it didn't matter; these people didn't give a damn about Earth, and they didn't understand it either. So defiance only made Jackie look more brave and beautiful, standing up for a free Mars. The ovation for her was loud and sustained; she had learned a lot since her maladroit speeches during the second revolution, she had gotten quite good. Very good.
When the Green speakers got up to take their turn, and argue for an open Mars, they tried to talk about the danger of a closed-Mars policy, but the response was of course much less enthusiastic than it had been for Jackie--- their position sounded like cowardice, to tell the truth, and the desirability of an open Mars, naive. Before arriving in Banks Vendana had offered Maya a chance to speak, but she had declined, and now she was confirmed in her judgment; she did not envy these speakers their unpopular stance before a dwindling crowd.
Afterward the Greens held a small party/postmortem, and Maya critiqued their performance with some severity. "I've never seen such incompetence. You're trying to scare them, but you only sound fearful. The stick is necessary, but you need a carrot as well. The possibility of war is the stick, but you have to tell them why it would be good to keep Terrans coming up, without sounding like idiots. You have to remind them that we all have Terran origins, we are always immigrants here. For you can never leave Earth."
They nodded at this, Athos among them looking thoughtful. After that Maya got Vendana to one side, and grilled her about Jackie's recent liaisons. Mikka was indeed a recent partner, and probably still was. MarsFirst was if anything more anti-immigration than the larger party. Maya nodded; she had begun to see the outlines of a plan.
When the postmortem was over, Maya wandered downtown with Vendana and Athos and the rest, until they passed a large band playing what they called Sheffield sound. This music was only noise to Maya: twenty different drum rhythms at once, on instruments not intended for percussion or even for musical use. But it suited her purposes, as under the clatter and pounding she was able to guide the young Greens unobtrusively toward Antar, whom she had spotted across the dance floor. When they were nearer to him she could say, "Oh, there's Antar--- hello, An-tar! These are the people I'm sailing with. We're right behind you, apparently, headed to Hell's Gate and then Odessa. How's the campaign going?"
And Antar was his usual gracious princely self, a man hard to object to even when you knew how reactionary he was, how much he had been in the pocket of Earth's Arab nations. Now he must be turning on those old allies, another dangerous part of this anti-immigrant strategy. It was curious the way the Free Mars leadership had decided to defy the Terran powers, and at the same time to try to dominate all the new settlements in the outer solar system. Hubris. Or perhaps they just felt threatened; Free Mars had always been the young natives' party, and if unrestricted immigration brought in millions of new issei, then Free Mars's status would be endangered, not only its supermajority but its simple majority as well. These new hordes with all their old fanaticisms intact--- churches and mosques, flags, hidden firearms, open feuds--- there was definitely a case for the Free Mars position to be made, for during the intensive immigration of the past decade, the new arrivals had clearly begun to construct another Earth, just as stupid as the first one. John would have gone crazy, Frank would have laughed. Arkady would have said I told you so, and suggested yet another revolution.
But Earth had to be dealt with more realistically than that, it could not be banished or wished away. And here in the moment, Antar was being gracious, extra gracious, as if he thought Maya might be useful for something. And as he always followed Jackie around, Maya was not surprised at all when suddenly Jackie and some others were at his side, and everyone saying hello. Maya nodded to Jackie, who smiled back flawlessly. Maya gestured to her new companions, carefully introduced them one by one. When she came to Athos she saw Jackie watching him, and Athos, as he was introduced, gave a friendly glance to her. Swiftly but very casually Maya started asking Antar about Zeyk and Nazik, who were living on the coast of Acheron Bay, apparently. The two groups were moving slowly toward the music, and soon, if they kept going, they would be thoroughly mingled, and it would be too loud to hear any conversation but one's own. "I like this Sheffield sound," Maya said to Antar. "Help me get through to the dance floor?"
An obvious ploy, as she needed no help getting through crowds. But Antar took her arm, and did not notice Jackie talking to Athos--- or pretended not to. It was an old story to him anyway. But that Mikka, looking very tall and powerful up close; Scandinavian ancestry perhaps, looking a bit of a hothead; he was now trailing the group with a sour expression. Maya pursed her lips, satisfied that the gambit had started well. If MarsFirst was even more isolationist than Free Mars, then trouble between them might be all the more useful.
So she danced with more enthusiasm than she had felt in years. Indeed if you concentrated on the bass drums only, and held to their rhythms, then it was somewhat like the knocking of an excited heart; and over that fundamental ground bass the chattering of the various woodblocks and kitchen implements and round stones was no more than the ephemera of stomach rumbling or rapid thought. It made a kind of sense; not musical sense as she understood it, but rhythmic sense, in some way. Dance, sweat, watch Antar shuffle gracefully about. He must be a fool but it didn't show. Jackie and Athos had disappeared. And so had Mikka. Perhaps he would go nova and murder them all. Maya grinned and spun in the dance.
Michel came over and Maya gave him a big smile, a sweaty hug. He liked sweaty hugs, and looked pleased but curious: "I thought you didn't like this kind of music?"
"Sometimes I do."
• • •
Southwest of Gale the canal rose through lock after lock, up onto the highlands of Hesperia. As it crossed the highlands, to the east of the Tyrrhena massif, it remained at about the four-kilometer elevation, now more often called five kilometers above sea level, and so there was little need for locks. For days at a time they motored along the canal, or sailed under the power of the ship's line of little mast sails, stopping in some bankside towns, passing others. Oxus, Jaxartes, Scamander, Simois, Xanthus, Steropes, Polyphemus--- they stopped in each, keeping a steady pace with the Free Mars campaign, and indeed with most of the other Hellas-bound barges and yachts. Everything stretched out without change to both horizons, although occasionally in this region the lens had burned through something other than the usual basaltic regolith, so that in the vaporizing and falling out there had occurred some variation in the levees, stretches of obsidian or sideromelane, swirls of brilliant glossy color, of marbled porphyry greens, violent sulfuric yellows, lumpy conglomerates, even one long section of clear glass banks, clear on both sides of the canal, distorting the highlands behind them and for long stretches reflecting the sky. This stretch, called Glass Banks, was of course intensively developed. Between the canalside towns ran mosaic paths, shaded by palm trees in giant ceramic pots, and backed by villas complete with grass lawns and hedges. The Glass Banks towns were whitewashed, bright with pastel shutters and window boxes and doors, and blue-glazed tile roofs, and long colored neon signs over blue awnings in the waterfront restaurants. It was a kind of dream Mars, a canal cliché from the ancient dreamscape, but none the less beautiful for that, the obviousness of it indeed part of its pleasure. The days of their passage through this region were warm and windless, the canal surface as smooth as the banks, and as clear: a glass world. Maya sat on the forward deck under a green awning, watching the freight barges and the tourist paddle wheelers heading in the other direction, everyone out on deck to enjoy the sight of the glass banks and the colorful towns decorating them. This was the heart of the Martian tourist industry, the favorite destination for off-world visitors; ridiculous, but true; and one had to admit it was pretty. Gazing at the passing scene it occurred to Maya that whichever party won the next general election, and whichever way the immigration battle fell out, this world would probably go on, gleaming like a toy in the sun. Still, she hoped her gambit would work.
• • •
As they barged farther south the southern autumn put a chill in the air. Hardwood trees began to appear on the once-again-basalt banks, their leaves flaring red and yellow; and one morning there was a skim of ice sheeting the smooth water against the shores. When they stood on the top of the western bank, the volcanoes Tyrrhena Patera and Hadriaca Patera loomed on the horizon like flattened Fujis, Hadriaca displaying the banded maypole of white glaciers on black rock which Maya had first seen from the other side, coming up out of Dao Vallis when she had made her tour of the flooding Hellas Basin, so long ago. With that young girl, what was her name? A relative of someone she knew.
The canal cut through the dragonback mounds of the Hesperia Dorsa. The canalside towns grew less equatorial, more austere, more highland. Volga river towns, New England fishing villages, but with names like Astapus, Aeria, Uchronia, Apis, Eunostos, Agathadaemon, Kaiko . . . on and on the broad band of water led them, south by west, as straight as a compass bearing for day after day, until it was hard to remember that this was the only one, that such canals were not webbed everywhere, as on the maps of the ancient dream. Oh there was one other big canal, at Boone's Neck, but it was short and very wide, and getting wider every year, as draglines and the eastward current tore at it; no longer a canal, really, but rather an artificial strait. No, the dream of the canals had been enacted only here, in all the world; and while here, cruising tranquilly over the water, one's view of everything else cut off by the high banks, there was a sense of romance in the air, a sense that their political and personal squabbles had a kind of Barsoomian grandeur.
Or so it felt, strolling in the nip of an evening under the pastel neons of a canalside town. In one, called Anteus, Maya was strolling the canalside promenade, looking down into boats large and small, onto beautiful big young people drinking and chatting lazily, sometimes cooking meat on braziers clamped to the railings and hung out over the water. On a wide dock extending into the canal, there was an open-air café, from which came the plaintive singing of a gypsy violin; she turned into the café instinctively, and only at the last minute saw Jackie and Athos, sitting at a canalside table alone, leaning over until their foreheads almost touched. Maya certainly did not want to interrupt such a promising scene, but the very abruptness of her halt caught Jackie's eye, so that she looked up, then started. Maya turned to leave, but saw Jackie was getting up to come over.
Another scene, Maya thought, only partly unhappy at the prospect. But Jackie was smiling, and Athos was coming with her, at her side, watching it all with wide-eyed innocence; either he had no idea of their history, or else he had a good control of his expressions. Maya guessed the latter, simply because of the look in his eye, just that bit too innocent to be real. An actor.
"It's beautiful this canal, don't you think?" Jackie was saying.
"A tourist trap," Maya said. "But a pretty one. And it keeps the tourists nicely bunched."
"Oh come now," Jackie said, laughing. She took Athos's arm. "Where's your sense of romance?"
"What sense of romance," Maya said, pleased at this public display of affection. The old Jackie would not have done it. Indeed it was a shock to see that she was no longer young; stupid of Maya not to have thought of that, but her sense of time was such a mishmash that her own face in the mirror was a perpetual shock to her--- every morning she woke up in the wrong century, so seeing Jackie looking matronly with Athos on her arm was only more of the same--- an impossibility--- this was the fresh dangerous girl of Zygote, the young goddess of Dorsa Brevia!
"Everyone has a sense of romance," Jackie said. The years were not making her any wiser. Another chronological discontinuity. Perhaps taking the longevity treatment so often had clogged her brain. Curious that after such assiduous use of the treatments there should be any signs of aging left at all; in the absence of cell-division error, where exactly was it coming from? There were no wrinkles on Jackie's face, in some ways she could be mistaken for twenty-five; and the look of happy Boonean confidence was as entrenched as ever, the only way really she resembled John--- glowing like the neon scrim of the café overhead. But despite all that she looked her years, somehow--- in her eyes, or in some gestalt at work despite all the medical manipulation.
And then one of Jackie's many assistants was there among them, panting, gasping, pulling Jackie's arm away from Athos, crying "Jackie, I'm so sorry, so sorry, she's killed, she's killed---"--- shivering---
"Who?" Jackie said sharply, like a slap.
The young woman (but she was aging) said miserably, "Zo."
"Zo?"
"A flying accident. She fell into the sea."
This ought to slow her down, Maya thought.
"Of course," Jackie said.
"But the birdsuits," Athos protested. He was aging too. "Didn't they. . . ."
"I don't know about that."
"It doesn't matter," Jackie said, shutting them up. Later Maya heard an eyewitness account of the accident, and the image stayed etched in her mind forever--- the two fliers struggling in the waves like wet dragonflies, staying afloat so that they would have been okay, until one of the North Sea's big swells picked them up and slammed them into the base of a seastack. After which they had drifted in the foam.
Now Jackie was withdrawn, remote, thinking things over. She and Zo had not been close, Maya had heard; some said they hated each other. But one's child. You were not supposed to survive your children, that was something even childless Maya felt instinctively. But they had abrogated all the laws, biology meant nothing to them anymore; and here they were. If Ann had lost Peter on the falling cable; if Nadia and Art ever lost Nikki . . . even Jackie, as foolish as she was, had to feel it.
And she did. She was thinking hard, trying to find the way out. But she wasn't going to; and then she would be a different person. Aging--- it had nothing to do with time, nothing. "Oh Jackie," Maya said, and put a hand forward. Jackie flinched, and Maya pulled the hand back. "I'm sorry."
But just when people most need help is when their isolation is the most extreme. Maya had learned that on the night of Hiroko's disappearance, when she had tried to comfort Michel. Nothing could be done.
Maya almost cuffed the sniffling young aide, restrained herself: "Why don't you escort Ms. Boone back to your ship. And then keep people away for a while."
Jackie was still lost in her thoughts. Her flinch away from Maya had been instinct only, she was stunned--- disbelieving--- and the disbelief absorbed all her effort. All just as one would expect, from any human being. Maybe it was even worse if you hadn't gotten along with the child--- worse than if you loved them, ah, God---"Go," Maya said to the aide, and with a look commanded Athos to help. He would certainly make an impression on her, one way or the other. They led her off. She still had the most beautiful back in the world, and held herself like a queen. That would change when the news sank in.
Later Maya found herself down at the southern edge of town, where the lights left off and the starry sheen of the canal was banked by black berms of slag. It looked like the scroll of a life, someone's world line: bright neon squiggles, moving across a landscape to the black horizon. Stars overhead and underfoot. A black piste over which they glided soundlessly.
She walked back to their boat. Stumped down the gangplank. It was distressing to feel this way for an enemy, to lose an enemy to this kind of disaster. "Who am I going to hate now?" she cried to Michel.
"Well," Michel said, shocked. Then, in a comforting tone: "I'm sure you'll think of someone."
Maya laughed shortly, and Michel cracked a brief smile. Then he shrugged, looking grave. He less than any of them had been lulled by the treatment. Immortal stories in mortal flesh, he had always insisted. He was downright morbid about it. And here another illustration of his point.
"So the all-too-human got hers at last," he said.
"She was an idiot with all those risks, she was asking for it."
"She didn't believe in it."
Maya nodded. No doubt true. Few believed in death anymore, especially the young, who never had, even before the days of the treatment. And now less than ever. But believe in it or not, it was touching down more and more, mostly of course among the superelderly. New diseases, or old diseases returned, or else a rapid holistic collapse with no apparent cause--- this last had killed Helmut Bronski and Derek Hastings in recent years, people Maya had met, if not known well. Now an accident had struck someone so much younger than they were that it made no sense, fit no pattern but youthful recklessness. An accident. Random chance.
"Do you still want to get Peter to come?" Michel asked, from out of a whole different realm of thought. What was this, realpolitik from Michel? Ah--- he was trying to distract her. She almost laughed again.
"Let's still get in touch with him," she said. "See if he might come." But this was only to reassure Michel; her heart was not in it.
That was the beginning of the string of deaths.
But she didn't know that then. Then, it was only the end of their canal journey.
The burn of the aerial lens had stopped just short of the eastern edge of the Hellas Basin watershed, between Dao and Harmakhis valleys. The final segment of the canal had been dug by conventional means, and it dropped so precipitously down the steep eastern slope of the basin that frequent locks were necessary, here functioning as dams, so that the canal no longer had the classic look it had had in the highlands, but was rather a series of reservoir lakes connected by short broad reddish rivers, extending out from under each clear dam. So they boated across lake after lake, down and down in a slow parade of barges and sailboats and cabin cruisers and steamers, and as they dropped in the locks they could see through their clear walls down the string of lakes like a giant staircase of blue stepping-stones, down to the distant bronze plate of the Hellas Sea. Somewhere in the badlands to right and left, the Dao and Harmakhis canyons cut deeply into the redrock plateau, following their more natural courses down the great slope; but with their tents removed the two canyons were not visible until you were right on their rims, and nothing could be seen of them from the canal.
On board their ship, life went on. Apparently it was much the same on the Free Mars barge, where Jackie was said to be doing well. Still seeing Athos when the two boats were docked in the same town. Accepting sympathy graciously, and then turning the topic elsewhere, usually to the campaign business at hand. And their campaign continued to go well. Under Maya's coaching the Green campaign was being run better than before, but anti-immigrant sentiment was strong. Everywhere they went the other Free Mars councillors and candidates spoke at the rallies, and Jackie only made occasional short, dignified appearances. She was a lot more powerful and intelligent a speaker than she used to be. But by watching the others speak Maya got a good sense of who was at the top level of the organization, and several of these people looked very happy to have gained the limelight. One young man, another one of Jackie's young men, named Nanedi, stood out in particular. And Jackie did not seem very pleased to see it; she became cool to him, she turned more and more to Athos, and Mikka, and even Antar. Some nights she appeared a veritable queen among the consorts. But Maya could see under that, to the truth she had witnessed in Anteus. From a hundred meters away she could see the darkness at the heart of things.
Nevertheless, when Peter returned her call, Maya asked him to meet her for a talk about the current elections; and when Peter arrived, Maya rested, watchfully. Something would happen.
Peter looked relaxed, calm. He lived in the Charitum Montes these days, working on the Argyre wilderness project, and also with a co-op making Mars-to-space planes for people who wanted to bypass the elevator. Relaxed, calm, even a bit withdrawn. Simon-like.
Antar was already angry at Jackie, for embarrassing him more than usual by her lack of discretion with Athos. Mikka was even angrier than Antar. Now, with Peter on hand, Jackie was baffling and then angering Athos as well, as she devoted all her attention to Peter. She was as reliable as a magnet. But she was attracted to Peter, who was as inert to her as always, iron to her magnet. It was depressing how predictable they were. But useful: the Free Mars campaign was subtly losing momentum. Antar was no longer so bold as to suggest to the Qahiran Mahjaris that they forget about Arabia during its time of troubles. Mikka was intensifying the MarsFirst critique of various Free Mars positions unrelated to immigration, and pulling some of the other members of the executive council into his sphere. Yes--- Peter was acting as intensifier to Jackie's impolitic side, making her erratic and ineffective. So it all was working as Maya had planned; one only had to roll men toward Jackie like bowling balls, and over she would go. And yet Maya felt no sense of triumph.
• • •
And then they were pushing out of the final lock into Malachite Bay, a funnel-shaped indentation of the Hellas Sea, its shallow water covered by a sun-beaten windchop. Farther out they pitched gently onto the darker sea, where many of the barges and smaller craft turned north and made toward Hell's Gate, the largest deepwater harbor on the east coast of Hellas. Their barge followed this parade, and soon the great bridge crossing Dao Vallis appeared over the horizon, then the building-covered walls at the entrance to the canyon; then the masts, the long jetty, the harbor slips.
Maya and Michel went ashore, and made their way up the cobbled and staired streets, to the old Praxis dorms under the bridge. There was an autumn harvest festival the next week that Michel wanted to attend, and then they would be off to Minus One Island, and Odessa. After they checked in and dropped their bags, Maya took off for a walk through the streets of Hell's Gate, happy to be out of the canal boat's confinement, able to get off by herself. It was near sunset, near the end of a day that had begun in the Grand Canal. That trip was over.
Maya had last visited Hell's Gate back in 2121, during her first piste tour of the basin, working for Deep Waters, and traveling with--- with Diana! that was her name! Esther's granddaughter, and a niece of Jackie's. That big cheerful girl had been Maya's introduction to the young natives, really--- not only by way of her contacts in the new settlements around the basin, but in herself, in her attitudes and ideas--- the way Earth was just a word to her, the way her own generation absorbed all her interest, all her efforts. That had been the first time Maya had begun to feel herself slipping out of the present, into the history books. Only the most intense effort had allowed her to continue to engage the moment, to have an influence on those times. But she had made that effort, had been an influence. It had been one of the great periods of her life, perhaps the last great period of her life. The years since then had been like a stream in the southern highlands, wandering through cracks and grabens and then sinking into some unexpected pothole.
But once, sixty years before, she had stood right here, under the great bridge that carried the piste from cliff to cliff over the mouth of Dao canyon--- the famous Hell's Gate bridge, with the city falling down the steep sun-washed slopes on both sides of the river, facing the sea. At that time there had been only sand out there, except for a band of ice visible on the horizon. The town had been smaller and ruder, the stone steps of the staircase streets rough and dusty. Now they had been polished on their tops by feet toiling up them. The dust had been washed away by the years; everything was clean and had a dark patina; now it was a beautiful Mediterranean hillside harbor, perched in the shadow of a bridge that rendered the whole town a miniature, like something in a paperweight or a postcard from Portugal. Quite beautiful in an autumn's early sunset, all shadowed and florid to the west, everything sepia, the moment trapped in amber. But once she had passed through this way with a vibrant young Amazon, when a whole new world was opening up, the native Mars she had helped to bring into being--- all of it revealed to her, while she was still a part of it.
The sun set on these memories. Maya returned to the Praxis building, still located up under the bridge, the final staircase to it as steeply pitched as a ladder. Ascending it with pushes on her thighs to help, Maya suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. She had done this before--- not only climbed these steps, but climbed them with the sense that she had climbed them before--- with precisely the same feeling that in a yet earlier visit, she had been an effective part of the world.
Of course--- she had been one of the first explorers of Hellas Basin, in the years right after Underhill. That had slipped her mind. She had helped to found Lowpoint, and then had driven around, exploring the basin before anyone else had, even Ann. So that later, when working for Deep Waters, and seeing the new native settlements, she had felt similarly removed from the contemporary scene. "My God," she exclaimed, appalled. Layer on layer, life after life--- they had lived so long! It was like reincarnation in a way, or eternal recurrence.
There was some little kernel of hope at the middle of that feeling. Back then, in that first feeling of slipping away, she had started a new life. Yes she had--- she had moved to Odessa, and made her mark on the revolution, helping it to succeed by hard work, and a lot of thought about why people support change, about how to change without engendering a bitter backlash, which though perhaps decades removed yet always seemed to smash back into any revolutionary success, wrecking what was good in it. And it looked as though they had indeed avoided that bitterness.
At least until now. Perhaps that was the best way of looking at what was happening in this election; an inevitable backlash of some kind. Perhaps she had not succeeded as much as she had thought--- perhaps she had only failed less drastically than Arkady, or John, or Frank. Who could be sure; so hard to say anymore what was really going on in history, it was too vast, too inchoate. So much was happening everywhere that anything might be happening anywhere. Co-ops, republics, feudal monarchies . . . no doubt there were Oriental satrapies out there in the back country, in some caravan gone wrong . . . so that any characterization one made of history would have some validity somewhere. This thing she was involved in now, the young native settlements demanding water, going off the net and outside UNTA's control--- no--- it wasn't that--- something else. . . .
But standing there at the Praxis flat door, she couldn't remember what it was. She and Diana would take a piste train south the next morning, around the southeast bend of Hellas to see the Zea Dorsa, and the lava-tube tunnel they had converted to use as an aqueduct. No. She was here because. . . .
She couldn't bring it back. On the tip of the tongue . . . Deep Waters. Diana--- they had just finished driving up and down Dao Vallis, where on the canyon floor natives and immigrants were starting up an agrarian valley life, creating a complex biosphere under their enormous tent. Some of them spoke Russian, it had brought tears to her eyes to hear it! There--- her mother's voice, sharp and sarcastic as she ironed clothes in their little apartment kitchen nook--- sharp smell of cabbage---
No. It wasn't that. Look to the west, to the sea shimmering in the dusk air. Water had flooded the sand dunes of east Hellas. It was a century later at least, it had to be. She was here for some other reason . . . scores of boats, little dots down in a postage-stamp harbor, behind a breakwater. It wouldn't come back to her. It wouldn't come. A horrible sense of tip-of-the-tongueism made her dizzy, then sick, as if she would get it out by vomiting. She sat down on the step. On the tip of the tongue, her whole life! Her whole life! She groaned aloud, and some kids throwing pebbles at gulls stared at her. Diana. She had met Nirgal by accident, they had had a dinner. . . . But Nirgal had gotten sick. Sick on Earth!
And it all came back with a physical snap, like a blow to her solar plexus, a wave rolling over her. The canal voyage, of course, of course, the dive down into drowned Burroughs, Jackie, poor Zo the crazy fool. Of course of course of course. She hadn't really forgotten, of course. So obvious now that it was back. It hadn't really been gone; just a momentary lapse in her thinking, while her attention had wandered elsewhere. To another life. A strong memory had its own integrity, its own dangers, just as much as a weak memory did. It was only the result of thinking that the past was more interesting than the present. Which in many ways was true. But still. . . .
Still, she found she preferred to sit a while longer. The little nausea persisted. And there was a bit of residual pressure in her head, as if that tongue's hard tipping had left things sore; yes, it had been a bad moment. Hard to deny when you could still feel the throbbing from that tongue's desperate thrusts.
She watched the end of dusk turn the town a deep dark orange, then a glowing color like light shining through a brown bottle. Hell's Gate indeed. She shivered, got up, stepped unsteadily down the stairs into the harborside district, where the restaurants ringing the quays were bright moth-flittering globes of tavern light. The bridge loomed overhead like a negative Milky Way. Maya walked behind the docks, toward the marina.
There was Jackie, walking toward her. There were some aides following some way back, but in front it was just Jackie, coming toward her unseeing; then seeing. At the sight of Maya a corner of her mouth tightened, no more, but it was enough to allow Maya to see that Jackie was, what, ninety years old? A hundred? She was beautiful, she was powerful; but she was no longer young. Events would soon be washing by her, the way they did everyone else; history was a wave that moved through time slightly faster than an individual life did, so that even when people had lived only to seventy or eighty, they had been behind the wave by the time they died; and how much more so now. No sailboard would keep you up with that wave, not even a birdsuit allowing you to air-surf the wave in pelican style, like Zo. Ah, that was it; it was Zo's death she saw on Jackie's face. Jackie had tried her best to ignore it, to let it run off her like water off a duck's back. But it hadn't worked, and now she stood in Hell's Gate over star-smeared water, an old woman.
Maya, shocked by the intensity of this vision, stopped. Jackie stopped. In the distance the clack of dishes, the loud burble of restaurant conversations. The two women looked at each other. This was not something Maya could remember doing with Jackie--- this fundamental act of acknowledgment, meeting the other's eye. Yes, you are real; I am real. Here we are, the both of us. Big sheets of glass, cracking inside. Something freer, Maya turned and walked away.
Michel found them a passenger schooner, going to Odessa by way of Minus One Island. The boat's crew told them that Nirgal was expected to be on the island for a race, news which made Maya happy. It was always good to see Nirgal, and this time she needed his help as well. And she wanted to see Minus One; the last time she had been there it had not been an island at all, just a weather station and airstrip on a bump in the basin floor.
Their ship was a long low schooner, with five bird's-wing mast sails. Once beyond the end of the jetty the mast sails extruded their taut triangular expanses, and then, as the wind was from behind, the crew set a big blue kite spinnaker out front. After that the ship leaped into the clear blue swells, knocking up sheets of spray with every slam into an oncoming wave. After the confinement of the Grand Canal's black banks it felt wonderful to be out on the sea, with the wind in her face and the waves coursing by--- it blew all the confusion of Hell's Gate out of her head--- Jackie forgotten--- the previous month now understood to be a kind of malignant carnival that she would never have to revisit--- she would never return there--- the open sea for her, and a life in the wind! "Oh Michel, this is the life for me."
"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
And at the end of the voyage they were to settle in Odessa, now a seaside town like Hell's Gate. Living there they could sail out any day they wanted when the weather was nice, and it would be just like this, windy and sunny. Bright moments in time, the living present which was the only reality they ever had; the future a vision, the past a nightmare--- or vice versa--- anyway only here in the moment could one feel the wind, and marvel at the waves, so big and sloppy! Maya pointed at one blue hillside rolling by in a long irregular fluctuating line, and Michel laughed out loud; they watched more closely, laughed harder; not in years had Maya felt so strongly the sense of being on a different world, these waves just didn't act right, they flew around and fell over and bulged and wriggled all over their surfaces much more than the admittedly stiff breeze could justify, it looked odd; it was alien. Ah Mars, Mars, Mars!
The seas were always high, the crew told them, on the Hellas Sea. The absence of tides made no difference--- what mattered most when it came to waves was gravity, and the strength of the wind. Hearing that as she looked out at the heaving blue plain, Maya's spirits bounced up in the same wild way. Her g was light, and the winds were strong in her. She was a Martian, one of the first Martians, and she had surveyed this basin in the beginning, helped to fill it with water, helped to build the harbors and put free sailors at sea on it; now she sailed over it herself, and if she never did anything again but sail over it, that would be enough.
And so they sailed, and Maya stood in the bow near the bowsprit, hand on the rail to steady her, feeling the wind and the spray. Michel came and stood with her.
"So nice to be off the canal," she said.
"It's true."
They talked about the campaign, and Michel shook his head. "This anti-immigration campaign is so popular."
"Are the yonsei racist, do you think?"
"That would be hard, given their own racial mix. I think they are just generally xenophobic. Contemptuous of Earth's problems--- afraid of being overrun. So Jackie is articulating a real fear that everyone already has. It doesn't have to be racist."
"But you're a good man."
Michel blew out air. "Well, most people are."
"Come on," Maya said. Sometimes Michel's optimism was too much. "Whether it's racist or not, it still stinks. Earth is down there looking at all our open land, and if we close the door on them now they're likely to come hammer it open. People think it could never happen, but if the Terrans are desperate enough then they'll just bring people up and land them, and if we try to stop them they'll defend themselves here, and presto we'll have a war. And right here on Mars, not back on Earth or in space, but on Mars. It could happen--- you can hear the threat of it in the way people in the UN are trying to warn us. But Jackie isn't listening. She doesn't care. She's fanning xenophobia for her own purposes."
Michel was staring at her. Oh yes; she was supposed to have stopped hating Jackie. It was a hard habit to break. She waved all that she had said away, all the malevolent hallucinatory politicking of the Grand Canal. "Maybe her motives are good," she said, trying to believe it. "Maybe she only wants what's best for Mars. But she's still wrong, and she still has to be stopped."
"It isn't just her."
"I know, I know. We'll have to think about what we might do. But look, let's not talk about them anymore. Let's see if we can spot the island before the crew."
• • •
Two days later they did just that. And as they approached Minus One, Maya was pleased to see that the island was not at all in the style of the Grand Canal. Oh there were whitewashed little fishing villages on the water, but these had a handmade look, an unelectrified look. And above them on the bluffs stood groves of tree houses, little villages in the air. Ferals and fisherfolk occupied the island, the sailors told them. The land was bare on the headlands, green with crops in the sea valleys. Umber sandstone hills broke into the sea, alternating with little bay beaches, all empty except for dune grass flowing in the wind.
"It looks so empty," Maya remarked as they sailed around the north point and down the western shore. "They see the vids of this back on Earth. That's why they won't let us shut the door."
"Yes," Michel said. "But look how the people here bunch their population. The Dorsa Brevians brought the pattern up from Crete. Everyone lives in the villages, and goes out into the country to work it during the days. What looks empty is being used already, to support those little villages."
There was no proper harbor. They sailed into a shallow bay overlooked by a tiny whitewashed fishing village, and dropped an anchor, which remained clearly visible on the sandy bottom, ten meters below. They ferried ashore using the schooner's dinghy, passing some big sloops and several fishing boats anchored closer to the beach.
Beyond the village, which was nearly deserted, a twisting arroyo led them up into the hills. When the arroyo ended in a box canyon, a switchbacked trail gave them access to the plateau above. On this rugged moor, with the sea in view all around, groves of big oak trees had been planted long ago. Now some of the trees were festooned with walkways and staircases, and little wooden rooms high in their branches. These tree houses reminded Maya of Zygote, and she was not at all surprised to learn that among the prominent citizens of the island were several of the Zygote ectogenes--- Rachel, Tiu, Simud, Emily--- they had all come to roost here, and helped to build a way of life that Hiroko presumably would have been proud to see. Indeed there were some who said that the islanders hid Hiroko and the lost colonists in one of the more remote of these oak groves, giving them an area to roam in without fear of discovery. Looking around, Maya thought it was quite possible; it made as much sense as any other Hiroko rumor, and more than most. But there was no way of knowing. And it didn't matter anyway; if Hiroko was determined to hide, as she must have been if she was alive, then where she hid was not worth worrying about. Why anyone bothered with it was beyond Maya. Which was nothing new; everything to do with Hiroko had always baffled her.
The northern end of Minus One Island was less hilly than the rest, and as they came down onto this plain they spotted most of the island's conventional buildings, clustered together. These were devoted to the island's olympiads, and they had a consciously Greek look to them: stadium, amphitheater, a sacred grove of towering sequoia, and out on a point over the sea, a small pillared temple, made of some white stone that was not marble but looked like it--- alabaster, or diamond-coated salt. Temporary yurt camps had been erected on the hills above. Several thousand people milled about this scene; much of the island's population, apparently, and a good number of visitors from around Hellas Basin--- the games were still mostly a Hellas affair. So they were surprised to find Sax in the stadium, helping to do the measurements for the throwing events. He gave them a hug, nodding in his diffuse way. "Annarita is throwing the discus today," he said. "It should be good."
And so on that fine afternoon Maya and Michel joined Sax out on the track, and forgot about everything but the day at hand. They stood on the inner field, getting as close to events as they wanted. The pole vault was Maya's favorite, it amazed her--- more than any other event it illustrated to her the possibilities of Martian g. Although it clearly required a lot of technique to take advantage of it: the bounding yet controlled sprint, the precise planting of the extremely long pole as it jounced forward, the leap, the pull, the vault itself, feet pointing at the sky; then the catapulted flight into space, body upside down as the jumper shot above the flexing pole, and up, and up; then the neat twist over the bar (or not), and the long fall onto an airgel pad. The Martian record was fourteen meters and change, and the young man vaulting now, already winner for the day, was trying for fifteen, but failing. When he came down off the airgel pad Maya could see how very tall he was, with powerful shoulders and arms, but otherwise lean to the point of gauntness. The women vaulters waiting their turn looked much the same.
It was that way in all the events, everyone big and lean and hard-muscled--- the new species, Maya thought, feeling small and weak and old. Homo martial. Luckily she had good bones and still carried herself well, or else she would have been ashamed to walk among such creatures. As it was she stood unconscious of her own defiant grace, and watched as the woman discus thrower Sax had pointed out to them spun in an accelerating burst that flung the discus as if shot from a skeet-casting device. This Annarita was very tall, with a long torso and wide rangy shoulders, and lats like wings under her arms; neat breasts, squashed by a singlet; narrow hips, but a full strong bottom, over powerful long thighs--- yes, a real beauty among the beauties. And so strong; though it was clear that it was the swiftness of her spin that propelled her discus so far. "One hundred eighty meters!" Michel exclaimed, smiling. "What joy for her."
And the woman was pleased. They all applied themselves intensely in the moment of effort, then stood around relaxing, or trying to relax--- stretching muscles, joking with each other. There were no officials, no scoreboard, only some helpers like Sax. People took turns running events other than their own. Races started with a loud bang. Times were clocked by hand, and called out and logged onto a screen. Shot puts still looked heavy, their throwing awkward. Javelins flew forever. High jumpers were only able to clear four meters, to Maya and Michel's surprise. Long jumpers, twenty meters; which was a most amazing sight, the jumpers flailing their limbs through a leap that lasted four or five seconds, and crossed a big part of the field.
In the late afternoon they held the sprints. As with the rest of the events, men and women competed together, all wearing singlets. "I wonder if sexual dimorphism itself is lessened in these people," Michel said as he watched a group warm up. "Everything is so much less genderized for them--- they do the same work, the women only get pregnant once in their lives, or never--- they do the same sports, they build up the same muscles. . . ."
Maya fully believed in the reality of the new species, but at this notion she scoffed: "Why do you always watch the women then?"
Michel grinned. "Oh I can tell the difference, but I come from the old species. I just wonder if they can."
Maya laughed out loud. "Come on. I mean look there, and there," pointing. "Proportions, faces. . . ."
"Yeah yeah. But still, it's not like, you know, Bardot and Atlas, if you know what I mean."
"I do. These people are prettier."
Michel nodded. It was as he had said from the start, Maya thought; on Mars it would finally become clear that they were all little gods and goddesses, and should live life in a sacred joyfulness. . . . Gender, however, remained clear at first glance. Although she too came from the old species; maybe it was just her. But that runner over there . . . ah. A woman, but with short powerful legs, narrow hips, flat chest. And that one next to her? Again female--- no, male! A high jumper, as graceful as a dancer, though all the high jumpers were having trouble: Sax muttered something about plants. Well, still; even if some of them were a bit androgynous, for most it was the usual matter of instant recognition.
"You see what I mean," Michel said, observing her silence.
"Sort of. I wonder if these youngsters really think about it differently, though. If they have ended patriarchy, then there must necessarily be a new social balance of the sexes. . . ."
"That's certainly what the Dorsa Brevians would claim."
"Then I wonder if that's not the problem with Terran immigration. Not the numbers themselves, but the fact that so many people arriving from Earth are coming from older cultures. It's like they're arriving out of a time machine from the Middle Ages, and suddenly here are all these huge Minoans, women and men much the same---"
"And a new collective unconscious."
"Yes, I suppose. And so the newcomers can't cope. They cluster in immigrant ghettos, or new towns entire, and keep their traditions and their ties to home, and hate everything here, and all the xenophobia and misogyny in those old cultures breaks out again, against both their own women and the native girls." She had heard of problems in the cities, in fact, in Sheffield and all over east Tharsis. Sometimes young native women beat the shit out of surprised immigrant assailants; sometimes the opposite occurred. "And the young natives don't like it. They feel like they're letting monsters into their midst."
Michel grimaced. "Terran cultures were all neurotic at their core, and when the neurotic is confronted with the sane, it usually gets more neurotic than ever. And the sane don't know what to do."
"So they press to stop immigration. And put us at risk of another war."
But Michel was distracted by the beginning of another race. The races were fast, but not anywhere near two and a half times as fast as Terra's, despite the gravity difference. It was the same problem as the high jumpers' plants, but continuous through the race: the runners took off with such acceleration that they had to stay very low to keep from bounding too high away from the track. In the sprints they stayed canted forward throughout, as if desperately trying to avoid falling on their faces, their legs pumping furiously. In the longer dashes they finally straightened up near the end, and began to scull at the air as if swimming forward from an upright position, their strides longer and longer until they seemed to be leaping foward like one-leg-at-a-time kangaroos. The sight reminded Maya of Peter and Jackie, the two speedsters of Zygote, running the beach under the polar dome; on their own they had developed a similar style.
Using these techniques, the winner of the fifty-meter dash ran the race in 4.4 seconds; the winner of the hundred in 8.3; the two hundred in 17.1; and the four hundred in 37.9; but in each case the balance problems engendered by their speeds seemed to keep them from a full sprint the way Maya remembered seeing it in her youth.
In the longer races, the running style was a graceful bounding pace, similar to what they had called the Martian lope back at Underhill, where they had tried it without much success in their tight walkers. Now it was like flight. A young woman led most of the ten-thousand-meter race, and she had enough in reserve to kick hard at the end, accelerating throughout the entire last lap, faster and faster until she gazelled around the track only touching down every few meters, lapping some of the other racers who seemed to toil as she flew past; it was lovely; Maya shouted herself hoarse. She held to Michel's arm, she felt dizzy, tears sprang to her eyes even as she laughed; it was so strange and so marvelous to see these new creatures, and yet none of them knew, none of them!
She liked to see women beating men, though they themselves did not seem to remark it. Women won slightly more often in long distances and hurdles, men in the sprints. Sax said that testosterone helped with strength but caused cramping eventually, hampering long-distance efforts. Clearly most of the events were a matter of technique in any case. And so one saw what one wanted, she thought. Back on Earth--- but these people would have laughed if she had started a sentence with that phrase. Back on Earth, so what? There had been all sorts of bizarre and ugly behavior back in the nest world, but why worry about that when a hurdle was approaching and another runner advancing in your peripheral vision? Fly, fly! She shouted herself hoarse.
At the end of the day the field athletes, finished with their events, cleared a passageway into the stadium and around the track; and a single runner jogged in, to sustained applause and wild cheers. And it was Nirgal! Starting hoarse already, Maya's shouting was ragged, almost painful.
The cross-country racers had started at the southern end of Minus One that morning, barefoot and naked. They had run over a hundred kilometers, over the heavy corrugations of Minus One's central moors, a devilish network of ravines, grabens, pingo holes, alases, escarpments and rockfalls--- nothing too deep, apparently, so that many different routes were possible, making it as much an orienteering event as a run; but difficult all the way; and to come jogging in at four P.M. was apparently a phenomenal accomplishment. The next racer wouldn't be coming in until after sunset, people said. So Nirgal took a victory lap, looking dusty and exhausted, like a refugee from a disaster; then he put on pants, and ducked his head for his laurel wreath, and accepted a hundred hugs.
Maya was the last of these, and Nirgal laughed happily to see her. His skin was white with dried sweat, his lips caked and cracking, hair dust-colored, eyes bloodshot. Ribby and wiry, almost emaciated. He gulped water from a bottle, drained it, refused another. "Thanks, I'm not that dehydrated, I hit a reservoir there around Jiri Ki."
"So which way did you take?" someone called.
"Don't ask!" he said with a laugh, as if it had been too ugly to own up to. Later Maya learned that people's routes were left unobserved and undescribed, a kind of secret. These cross-country races were popular in a certain group, and Nirgal was a champion, Maya knew, particularly at the longer distances; people spoke of his routes as if they involved teleportation. This was apparently a short race for him to win, so he was especially pleased.
Now he walked over to a bench and sat down. "Let me get myself together a bit," he said, and sat watching the last sprints, looking distracted and happy. Maya sat next to him and stared; she couldn't get enough of him. He had been living on the land for the longest time, part of a feral farmer-and-gatherer co-op . . . it was a life Maya could scarcely imagine, and so she tended to think of Nirgal as in limbo, banished to an outback netherworld, where he survived like a rat or a plant. But here he was, exhausted but exclaiming at a four-hundred-meter race's photo finish, exactly the vital Nirgal she remembered from that Hell's Gate tour so long ago--- glory years for him as well as her. But looking at him, it seemed unlikely that he thought of the past in the same way she did. She felt in thrall to her past, to history; but something other than history was his fulfillment now--- his destiny survived and put aside like an old book, and now here he was, in the moment, laughing in the sun, having beat a whole pack of wild young animals at their own game, by his wits alone and his feel for Mars, and his lung-gom-pa technique and his hard legs. He had always been a runner, she could see in her mind Jackie and him dashing over the beach after Peter as if it were yesterday--- the other two had been faster, but he had gone on all day sometimes, round and round the little lake, for no reason anyone could tell. "Oh Nirgal." She leaned over and kissed his dusty hair, felt him hugging her. She laughed, and looked around at all the beautiful giants around the field, the athletes ruddy in the sunset, and she felt life slipping into her again. Nirgal could do that.
• • •
Late that night, however, she took Nirgal aside, after an outdoor feast in the cool evening air, and she told him all her fears about the latest conflict between Earth and Mars. Michel was off talking to people; Sax sat on the bench across from them, listening silently.
"Jackie and the Free Mars leadership are talking a hard line, but it won't work. The Terrans won't be stopped. It could lead to war, I tell you, war."
Nirgal stared at her. He still took her seriously, God bless his beautiful soul, and Maya put her arm around him like she would have her own son, and squeezed him hard, hard.
"What do you think we should do?" he asked.
"We have to keep Mars open. We have to fight for that, and you have to be part of it. We need you more than anyone else. You were the one that had the greatest impact during our visit to Earth; in essence you're the most important Martian in Terran history, because of that visit. They still write books and articles about what you do, did you know that? There's a feral movement getting very strong in North America and Australia, and growing everywhere. The Turtle Island people have almost entirely reorganized the American west, it's scores of feral co-ops now. They're listening to you. And it's the same here. I've been doing what I can, we just fought them in the election campaign for the whole length of the Grand Canal. And I tried to counter Jackie a bit. That worked a little, I think, but it's bigger than Jackie. She's gone to Irishka, and of course it makes sense for the Reds to oppose immigration, they think that will help protect their precious rocks. So Free Mars and the Reds may be in the same camp for the first time, because of this issue. They'll be very hard to beat. But if they aren't. . . ."
Nirgal nodded. He took her point. She could have kissed him. She squeezed him across the shoulders, leaned over and kissed his cheek, nuzzled his neck. "I love you, Nirgal."
"And I love you," he said with an easy laugh, looking a bit surprised. "But look, I don't want to get involved in a political campaign. No, listen--- I agree that it's important, and I agree we should keep Mars open, and help Earth out through the population surge. That's what I've always said, that's what I told them when we were there. But I won't get into the political institutions. I can't. I'll make my contribution the way I did before, do you understand? I cover a lot of ground, I see a lot of people. I'll talk to them. I'll start giving talks to meetings again. I'll do what I can at that level."
Maya nodded. "That would be great, Nirgal. That's the level we need to reach anyway."
Sax cleared his throat. "Nirgal, have you ever met the mathematician Bao?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Ah."
Sax slumped back into his reverie. Maya talked for a while about the problems she and Michel had discussed that day--- how immigration worked as a time machine, bringing up little islands of the past into the present. "That was John's worry too, and now it's happening."
Nirgal nodded. "We have to have faith in the areophany. And in the constitution. They have to live by it once they're here, the government should insist on that."
"Yes. But the people, the natives I mean. . . ."
"Some kind of assimilationist ethic. We need to draw everyone in."
"Yes."
"Okay, Maya. I'll see what I can do." He smiled at her; then suddenly he was falling asleep, right before their eyes. "Maybe we can pull it off one more time, eh?"
"Maybe."
"I've got to get flat. Good night. I love you."
• • •
They sailed northwest from Minus One, and the island slipped under the horizon like a dream of ancient Greece, and they were on the open sea again, with its high broad sloppy groundswell. Hard trade winds poured out of the northeast for every hour of their passage, tearing off whitecaps that made the dark purple water look even darker. Wind and water made a continuous roar; it was hard to hear, everything had to be shouted. The crew gave up speech entirely, and worked on setting the maximum amount of sail possible, forcing the ship's AI to deal with their enthusiasm; the mast sails stretched or tightened with each gust like bird's wings, so that the wind had a visual component to match the invisible kinetics of Maya's buffeted skin, and she stood in the bow looking up and back, taking it all in.
On the third day the wind blew even harder, and the boat got up to its hydroplaning speed, the hull lifting up onto a flat section at the stern and then skipping over the waves, knocking up far more spray than was comfortable for anyone on deck; Maya retreated to the first cabin, where she could look out the bow windows and witness the spectacle. Such speed! Occasionally crew members would come in sopping, to catch their breath and suck down some java. One of them told Maya that they were adjusting their course to take account of the Hellas current; "this sea's the biggest example ever of the Coriolis force on a bathtub drain, it being round, and in the latitudes where trade winds push it the same way as the Coriolis force, so it's swirling clockwise around Minus One Island like a great big whirlpool. We have to adjust for it big time or we'll make landfall halfway to Hell's Gate."
The strong winds held, and flying along like they were, hydroplaning for most of the day, it took them only four days to sail across their radius of the Hellas Sea. On the fourth afternoon the mast sails feathered in, and the hull fell back into the water, rolling in the whitecaps. To the north land appeared over all the horizon at once: the rim of the great basin, like a mountain range without any peaks: a giant berm of a slope, looking like the inner wall of a crater, which of course it was, but so much bigger than any normal crater that one could only barely see the arcing of the circle--- exactly that big--- which struck Maya as beautiful, somehow. And as they closed on the land, and then coasted westward toward Odessa (their landfall had still been east of the town, despite their adjustment for the clockwise current) she could, by climbing up the shrouds into the wind, see the beach that the sea had created: a wide strand, backed by grass-covered dunes, with creek mouths cutting through here and there. A handsome coast, and near the outskirts of Odessa; part of Odessa's handsomeness then, part of her town.
Off to the west, the rugged peaks of the Hellespontus Montes began to poke over the waves, distant and small, very different in character from the smooth northern rise. So they had to be close. Maya climbed up farther in the shrouds. And there it was, on the rise of the northern slope--- the topmost rows of parks and buildings, all green and white, turquoise and terra-cotta. And then the big bowed middle of town, like an enormous amphitheater looking down on the stage of the harbor, which came over the horizon white lighthouse first, then the statue of Arkady, then the breakwater, then the thousand masts of the marina, and the jumble of roofs and trees behind the stained concrete of the corniche seawall. Odessa.
She scampered down the shroud like a crew member, almost, and hugged a few of them and Michel, feeling herself grin, feeling the wind pour over them. They came into the harbor and the sails furled into their masts like touched snails. They puttered into a slip, and walked down a gangplank, and along the dock, up through the marina and into the corniche park. And there they were. The blue trolley still clang-clanged on the street behind the park.
Maya and Michel walked down the corniche hand in hand, looking at all the food vendors and the small outdoor cafés across the street. All the names seemed new, not a single one the same, but that was restauranteering for you; they all looked much as they had before, and the city rising up terrace by terrace behind the seafront was just as they remembered it: "There's the Odeon, there's the Sinter---"
"That's where I worked for Deep Waters, I wonder what they all do now?"
"I think maintaining sea level keeps a good number of them busy. There's always some kind of water work."
"True."
And then they came to the old Praxis apartment building, its walls now mostly ivy-covered, the white stucco discolored, the blue shutters faded. In need of a bit of work, as Michel said, but Maya loved it that way: old. There on the third floor she spotted their old kitchen window and balcony, and Spencer's there beside it. Spencer himself was supposed to be inside.
And they went in the gate, and said hello to the new concierge, and indeed Spencer was inside, sort of: he had died that afternoon.
It shouldn't have mattered so much. Maya hadn't seen Spencer Jackson in years, she had never seen that much of him, even when he lived next door; never known him at all well. No one had. Spencer was one of the least comprehensible of the First Hundred, which was saying a lot. His own man, his own life. And he had lived as part of the surface world under an assumed identity, a spy, working for the security gestapo in Kasei Vallis for almost twenty years, until the night they had blown the town away and rescued Sax, and Spencer as well. Twenty years as someone else, with a false past, and no one to talk to; what would that do to one? But then Spencer had always been withdrawn, private, self-contained. So maybe it hadn't mattered as much to him. He had seemed all right in their years in Odessa, always in therapy with Michel of course, and a very heavy drinker at times; but easy to have as a neighbor, a good friend, quiet, solid, reliable in his ways. And he certainly had continued to work, his production with the Bogdanovist designers had never flagged, neither during his double life or after. A great designer. And his pen sketches were beautiful. But what would twenty years of duplicity do to you? Maybe all his identities had become assumed. Maya had never thought about it; she couldn't imagine it; and now, packing Spencer's things in his empty apartment, she wondered that she had never even tried before--- that somehow Spencer had managed to live in such a way that one did not even wonder about him. It was a very strange accomplishment. Crying, she said to Michel, "You have to wonder about everybody!"
He only nodded. Spencer had been one of his best friends.
And then in the next few days an amazing number of people came to Odessa for the funeral. Sax, Nadia, Mikhail, Zeyk and Nazik, Roald, Coyote, Mary, Ursula, Marina and Vlad, Jurgen and Sibilla, Steve and Marion, George and Edvard, Samantha, really it was like a convocation of the remaining Hundred and associated issei. And Maya stared around at all their old familiar faces, and realized with a sinking heart that they would be meeting like this for a long time to come. Gathering from around the world each time one fewer, in a final game of musical chairs, until one day one of them would get a call and realize they were the last one left. A horrible fate. But not one that Maya expected to have to endure; she would die before that, surely. The quick decline would get her, or something else; she would step in front of a trolley if she had to. Anything to avoid such a fate. Well--- not anything. To step in front of a trolley would be both too cowardly and too brave, at one and the same time. She trusted she would die before it came to that. Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it. Maybe the final survivor of the First Hundred wouldn't be such a bad thing anyway. New friends, a new life--- wasn't that what she was searching for now? So that these sad old faces were just a hindrance to her?
She stood grimly through the short memorial service and the quick eulogies. Those who spoke looked somewhat perplexed as to what they could say. A big crowd of engineers had come from Da Vinci, Spencer's colleagues from his design years. Clearly a lot of people had been fond of him, it was surprising, even though Maya had been fond of him herself. Curious that such a hidden man could evoke such a response. Perhaps they had all projected onto his blankness, made their own Spencer and loved him as part of themselves. They all did that anyway; that was life.
But now he was gone. They went down to the harbor and the engineers let loose a helium balloon, and when it reached a hundred meters Spencer's ashes began to spill out, in a slow trickle. Part of the haze, the blue of the sky, the brass of sunset.
In the days that followed the crowd dispersed, and Maya wandered Odessa nosing through used-furniture shops and sitting on benches on the corniche, watching the sun bounce over the water. It was lovely to be in Odessa again, but she felt the funereal chill of Spencer's death much more than she would have expected. It cast a pall over even the beauty of this most beautiful town; it reminded her that in coming back here and moving into the old building, they were attempting the impossible--- trying to go back, trying to deny time's passing. Hopeless--- everything was passing--- everything they did was the last time they would ever do it. Habits were such lies, such lies, lulling them into the feeling that there was something that was lasting, when really nothing lasted. This was the last time she would ever sit on this bench. If she came down to the corniche tomorrow and sat on this same bench, it would again be the last time, and there would again be nothing lasting about it. Last time after last time, so it would go, on and on, always one final moment after the next, finality following finality in seamless endless succession. She could not grasp it, really. Words couldn't say it, ideas couldn't articulate it. But she could feel it, like the edge of a wave front pushing ever outward, or a constant wind in her mind, rushing things along so fast it was hard to think, hard to really feel them. At night in bed she would think, this is the last time for this night, and she would hug Michel hard, hard, as if she could stop it happening if she squeezed hard enough. Even Michel, even the little dual world they had built---"Oh Michel," she said, frightened. "It goes so fast."
He nodded, mouth pursed. He no longer tried to give her therapy, he no longer tried always and ever to put the brightest face on things; he treated her as an equal now, and her moods as some kind of truth, which was only her due. But sometimes she missed being comforted.
Michel offered no rebuttal, however, no hopeful comment. Spencer had been his friend. Before, in the Odessa years, when he and Maya had fought, he had sometimes gone to Spencer's to sleep, and no doubt to talk late into the night over glasses of whiskey. If anyone could draw out Spencer it would have been Michel. Now he sat on the bed looking out the window, a tired old man. They never fought anymore. Maya felt it would probably do her some good if they did; clear out the cobwebs, get charged again. But Michel would not respond to any provocation. He himself didn't care to fight, and as he was no longer giving her therapy, he wouldn't do it for her sake either. No. They sat side by side on the bed. If someone walked in, Maya thought, they would observe a couple so old and worn that they did not even bother to speak anymore. Just sat together, alone in their own thoughts.
"Well," Michel said after the longest time, "but here we are."
Maya smiled. The hopeful remark, made at last, at great effort. He was a brave man. And quoting the first words spoken on Mars. John had had a knack, in a funny way, for saying things. "Here we are." It was stupid, really. And yet might he have meant something more than the John-obvious assertion, had it been more than the thoughtless exclamation that anyone might make? "Here we are," she repeated, testing the phrase on her tongue. On Mars. First an idea, then a place. And now they were in a nearly empty apartment bedroom, not the one they had lived in before but a corner apartment, with views out big windows to south and west. The great curve of sea and mountains said Odessa, nowhere else. The old plaster walls were stained, the wood floors dark and gleaming; it had taken many years of life to achieve that patination. Living room through one door, hall to the kitchen through the other. They had a mattress on a frame, a couch, some chairs, some unopened boxes--- their things from before, pulled out of storage. Odd how a few sticks of furniture hung around like that. It made her feel better to see them. They would unpack, deploy the furniture, use it until it became invisible. Habit would once again cloak the naked reality of the world. And thank God for that.
• • •
Soon after that the global elections were held, and Free Mars and its cluster of small allies were returned as a supermajority in the global legislature. Its victory was not as large as had been expected, however, and some of its allies were grumbling and looking around for better deals. Mangala was a hotbed of rumors, one could have spent days at the screen reading columnists and analysts and provocateurs hashing over the possibilities; with the immigration issue on the table the stakes were higher than they had been in years, and the kicked-anthill behavior of Mangala proved it. The outcome of the election for the next executive council remained very much in doubt, and there were rumors that Jackie was fending off challenges from within the party.
Maya shut off her screen, thinking hard. She gave a call to Athos, who looked surprised to see her, then quickly polite. He had been elected representative from the Nepenthes Bay towns, and was in Mangala working hard for the Greens, who had made a fairly strong showing and had a solid group of representatives, and many interesting new alliances. "You should run for the executive council," Maya told him.
Now he was really surprised. "Me?"
"You." Maya wanted to tell him to go look in a mirror and think it over, but bit her tongue. "You made the best impression in the campaign, and a lot of people want to support a pro-Earth policy, and don't know who to back. You're their best bet. You might even go talk to MarsFirst and see if you can pull them out of the Free Mars alliance. Promise them a moderate stance and a voice with a councillor, and long-range Reddish sympathies."
Now he was looking worried. If he was still involved with Jackie and he ran for the council, then he would be in big trouble on that front. Especially if he went after MarsFirst as well. But after Peter's visit he might not be as concerned about that as he would have been during the bright nights on the canal. Maya let him go stew about it. There was only so much you could do with these people.
• • •
Although she did not want to reconstruct her previous life in Odessa, she did want to work, and at this point hydrology had overtaken ergonomics (and politics, obviously) as her primary area of expertise. And she was interested in the water cycle in the Hellas Basin, curious to see how the work was changing now that the basin was full. Michel had his practice, and was going to get involved with the first settlers' project that had been mentioned to him in Rhodos; she would have to do something; and so after they had unpacked and furnished the new apartment, she went looking for Deep Waters.
The old offices were now a seafront apartment, very smart. And the name was no longer in the directories. But Diana was, living in one of the big group houses in the upper town; and happy to see Maya show up at her door, happy to go out to lunch with her and tell her all about the current situation in the local water world, which was still her work.
"Most of the Deep Waters people moved straight into the Hellas Sea Institute." This was an interdisciplinary group, composed of representatives from all the agricultural co-ops and water stations around the basin, as well as fisheries, the University of Odessa, and all the towns on the coast, and all the settlements higher in the the basin's extensive rimland watersheds. The seaside towns in particular were intensely interested in stabilizing the sea's level at just above the old minus-one-kilometer contour, just a few-score meters higher than the North Sea's current level. "They don't want sea level to change by even a meter," Diana said, "if it can be helped. And the Grand Canal is useless as a runoff canal to the North Sea, because the locks need water flowing in both directions. So it's a matter of balancing the inflow from aquifers and rainfall, with evaporation loss. That's been fine so far. Evaporation loss is slightly higher than the precipitation into the watershed, so every year they draw down the aquifers a few meters. Eventually that'll be a problem, but not for a long time, because there's a good aquifer reserve left, and they're refilling a bit now, and may more in the future. We're hoping precipitation levels will also rise over time, and they have been so far, so they probably will continue to, for a while longer anyway. I don't know. That's the main worry, anyway; that the atmosphere will suck off more than the aquifers can resupply."
"Won't the atmosphere finally hydrate fully?"
"Maybe. No one is really sure how humid it will get. Climate studies are a joke, if you ask me. The global models are just too complex, there are too many unknown variables. What we do know is that the air is still pretty arid, and it seems likely it will get more humid. So, everybody believes what they want, and goes out there and tries to please themselves, and the environmental courts keep track of it all as best they can."
"They don't forbid anything?"
"Oh yeah, but only big heat pumpers. The small stuff they don't mess with. Or at least they didn't used to. Lately the courts have been getting tougher, and tackling smaller projects."
"It's exactly the smaller projects that would be most calculable, I should think."
"Sort of. They tend to cancel each other out. There are a lot of Red projects, you know, to protect the higher altitudes, and any place they can in the south. They've got that constitutional height limit to back them, and so they're always taking their complaints right up to the global court. They win there, and do their thing, and then all the little development projects are somewhat counterbalanced. It's a nightmare legally."
"But they're managing to hold things steady."
"Well, I think the high altitudes are getting a bit more air and water than they're supposed to. You have to go really high to get away from it."
"I thought you said they were winning in court?"
"In the courts, yes. In the atmosphere, no. There's too much going on."
"You'd think they'd sue the greenhouse-gas factories."
"They have. But they've lost. Those gases have everyone else's support. Without them we'd have gone into an ice age and stayed there."
"But a reduction in emission levels. . . ."
"Yeah, I know. It's still being fought over. It'll go on forever."
"True."
Meanwhile the Hellas Sea's sea level had been agreed on; it was a legislative fact, and efforts all around the basin were coordinated to make sure the sea obeyed the law. The whole matter was fantastically complicated, although simple in principle: they measured the hydrological cycle, with all its storms and variations in rain and snow, melting and seeping into the ground, running over the surface in creeks and rivers, down into lakes and then into the Hellas Sea, there to freeze in the winter, then evaporate in the summer and begin the whole round again . . . and to this immense cycle they did what was necessary to stabilize the level of the sea, which was about the size of the Caribbean. If there was too much water and they wanted to draw down the sea level, there was the possibility of piping some of it back up into the emptied aquifers in the Amphitrites Mountains to the south. They were fairly limited in this, however, because the aquifers were composed of porous rock which tended to crush down when the water was first removed, making them difficult or impossible to refill. In fact spill-off possibilities were one of the main problems still facing the project. Keeping the balance. . . .
And this kind of effort was going on all over Mars. It was crazy. But they wanted to do it, and that was that. Diana was talking now about the efforts to keep the Argyre Basin dry, an effort in its way as large as the one to fill Hellas: they had built giant pipelines to evacuate water from Argyre to Hellas if Hellas needed water, or to river systems that led to the North Sea if it didn't.
"What about the North Sea itself?" Maya asked.
Diana shook her head, mouth full. Apparently the consensus was that the North Sea was beyond regulation, but basically stable. They would just have to watch and see what happened, and the seaside towns up there take their chances. Many believed that the North Sea's level would eventually fall a bit, as water returned to the permafrost or was trapped in one of the thousands of crater lakes in the southern highlands. Then again precipitation and runoff into the North Sea was substantial. The southern highlands were where the issue would be decided, Diana said; she called up a map onto her wristpad screen to show Maya. Watershed construction co-ops were still wandering around installing drainage, running water into highland creeks, reinforcing riverbeds, excavating quicksand, which in some cases revealed the ghost creekbeds of ancient watersheds below the fines; but mostly their new streams had to be based on lava features or fracture canyons, or the occasional short canal. The result was very unlike the venous clarity of Terran watersheds: a confusion of little round lakes, frozen swamps, canyon arroyos, and long straight rivers with abrupt right-angle turns, or sudden disappearances into sinkholes or pipelines. Only the refilled ancient riverbeds looked "right"; everywhere else the terrain looked like a bomb range after a rainstorm.
Many of the Deep Waters veterans who had not directly joined the Hellas Sea Institute had started an associated co-op of their own, which was mapping the groundwater basins around Hellas, measuring the return of water to the aquifers and the underground rivers, figuring out what water could be stored and recovered, and so on. Diana was a member of this co-op, as were many of the people in Maya's old office. After their lunch Diana went to the rest of the group, and told them about Maya's return to town; when they heard that Maya was interested in joining them, they offered her a position in the co-op with a reduced joining fee. Pleased at the compliment, she decided to take them up on it.
• • •
So she worked for Aegean Water Table, as the co-op was called. She got up in the mornings and made coffee and ate some toast or a biscuit, or croissant, or muffin, or crumpet. In fine weather she ate out on their balcony; more often she ate in the bay window at the round dining table, reading the Odessa Messenger on the screen, noting every little incident that combined to reveal to her the darkening situation vis à vis Earth. The legislature in Mangala elected the new executive council, and Jackie was not one of the seven; she had been replaced by Nanedi. Maya whooped, and then read all the accounts she could find, and watched the interviews; Jackie claimed to have declined to run, she said she was tired after so many m-years, and would take a break like she had several times before, and be back (a sharp glint to her eye with that last remark). Nanedi kept a discreet silence on that topic, but he had the pleased, slightly amazed look of the man who had killed the dragon; and though Jackie declared that she would continue her work for the Free Mars party apparatus, clearly her influence there had waned, or else she would still be on the council.
So; she had bowled Jackie off the global playing field; but the anti-immigrant forces were still in power. Free Mars still held its supermajority alliance in uneasy check. Nothing important had changed; life went on; the reports from pullulating Earth were still ominous. Those people were going to come up after them someday, Maya was sure of it. They were getting along among themselves, they could rest, take a look around, make some plans, coordinate their efforts. Better really to eat breakfast without turning the screen on, if she wanted to keep her appetite.
So she took to going downtown and having a larger breakfast on the corniche, with Diana, or later Nadia and Art, or with visitors to town. After breakfast she would walk down to the AWT offices, near the eastern end of the seafront--- a good walk, in air that each year was just the slightest bit saltier. At AWT she had an office with a window, and did what she had done for Deep Waters, serving as liaison with the Hellas Sea Institute, and coordinating a fluctuating team of areologists and hydrologists and engineers, directing their research efforts mostly in the Hellespontus and Amphitrites mountains, where most of the aquifers were. She took trips around the curve of the coast to inspect some of their sites and facilities, going up into the hills, staying often in the little harbor town of Montepulciano, on the southwest shore of the sea. Back in Odessa she worked through the days, and quit early, and wandered around the town, shopping in used-furniture stores, or for clothes; she was getting interested in the new styles and their changes through the seasons; it was a stylish town, people dressed well, and the latest styles suited her, she looked rather like a smallish elderly native, with erect regal carriage. . . . Often she arranged to be out on the corniche in the late afternoon, walking home to their apartment, or else sitting below it in the park, or having an early meal in the summers in some seaside restaurant. In the fall a flotilla of ships docked at the wharf and threw out gangplanks between the ships and charged entry for a wine festival, with fireworks over the lake after dark. In the winter the dusk fell on the sea early, and the inshore water was sometimes sheeted with ice, and glowing with a pastel of whatever clear color might be filling the sky that evening, dotted by ice-skaters and swift low iceboats.
One twilight hour as she was eating by herself, a theater company put on a production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in an adjoining alley, and between the dusk and the spots on the planks of the temporary stage, the quality of light was such that Maya was drawn like a moth to watch. She barely followed the play, but some moments struck her with great force, especially the blackouts when the action was supposed to stop, the actors all frozen on stage in the late light. That moment only needed some blue, she thought, to be perfect.
Afterward the theater company came over to the restaurant to eat, and Maya talked with the director, a middle-aged native woman named Latrobe, who was interested to meet her, to talk about the play, and about Brecht's theory of political theater. Latrobe proved to be pro-Terran, pro-immigrationist; she wanted to stage plays that made the case for an open Mars, and for assimilating the new immigrants into the areophany. It was frightening, she said, how few plays of the classical repertory reinforced such feelings. They needed new plays. Maya told her about Diana's political evenings in the UNTA years, how they had sometimes met in the parks. About her notion concerning the blues in the lighting of that night's production. Latrobe invited Maya to come by and talk to the troupe about politics, and also to help with the lighting if she wanted, which was a weak point in the company, having had its origin in the very same parks Diana's group had used to meet in. Perhaps they could get out there again, and do some more Brechtian theater.
And so Maya dropped by and talked with the troupe, and over time, without ever really deciding to, she became one of its lighting crew, helping also with costumes, which was fashion in a different way. She also talked to them long into the nights about the concept of a political theater, and helped them to find new plays; in effect she was a kind of political-aesthetic consultant. But she steadfastly resisted all efforts to get her on stage, not only from the company, but from Michel and Nadia as well. "No," she said. "I don't want to do that. If I did they would immediately want me to be playing Maya Toitovna, in that play about John."
"That's an opera," Michel said. "You'd have to be a soprano."
"Nevertheless."
She did not want to act. Everyday life was enough. But she did enjoy the world of the theater. This was a new way of getting at people and changing their values, less wearing than the direct approach of politics, more entertaining, and perhaps in some ways even more effective. Theater in Odessa was powerful; movies were a dead art, the constant incessant oversaturation of screen images had made all images equally boring; what the citizens of Odessa seemed to like was the immediacy and danger of spontaneous performance, the moment that would never return, never be the same. Theater was the most powerful art in town, really, and the same was true in many other Martian cities as well. So as the m-years passed, the Odessa troupe mounted any number of political plays, including a complete run through of the work of the South African Athol Fugard, searing passionate plays anatomizing institutionalized prejudice, the xenophobia of the soul; the best English language plays since Shakespeare, Maya thought. And then the troupe was instrumental in discovering and making famous what was later called the Odessa Group, a half-dozen young native playwrights as ferocious as Fugard, men and women who in play after play explored the wrenching problems of the new issei and nisei, and their painful assimilation into the areophany--- a million little Romeos and Juliets, a million little blood knots cut or tied. It was Maya's best window into the contemporary world, and more and more her way of speaking back to it, doing her best to shape it--- very satisfying indeed, as many of the plays caused talk, sometimes even a furor, as new works by the Group attacked the anti-immigrant government that was still in power in Mangala. It was politics in a new mode, the most intriguing she had yet encountered; she longed to tell Frank about it, to show him how it worked.
In those same years, as the months passed two by two, Latrobe mounted quite a few productions of old classics, and as Maya watched them, she got more and more snared by the power of tragedy. She liked doing the political plays, which angry or hopeful tended to contain an innate utopianism, a drive for progress; but the plays that struck her as most true, and moved her most deeply, were the old Terran tragedies. And the more tragic the better. Catharsis as described by Aristotle seemed to work very well for her; she emerged from good performances of the great tragedies shattered, cleansed--- somehow happier. They were the replacement for her fights with Michel, she realized one night--- a sublimation, he would have said, and a good one at that--- easier on him, of course, and more dignified all around, nobler. And there was that connection to the ancient Greeks as well, a connection being made in any number of ways all around Hellas Basin, in the towns and among the ferals, a neoclassicism that Maya felt was good for them all, as they confronted and tried to measure up to the Greeks' great honesty, their unflinching look at reality. The Oresteia, Antigone, Electra, Medea, Agamemnon which should have been called Clytemnestra--- those amazing women, reacting in bitter power to whatever strange fates their men inflicted on them, striking back, as when Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon and Cassandra, then told the audience how she had done it, at the end staring out into the audience, right at Maya:
"Enough of misery! Start no more. Our hands are red.
Go home and yield to fate in time,
In time before you suffer. We have acted as we had to act."
We have acted as we had to act. So true, so true. She loved the truth of these things. Sad plays, sad music--- threnodies, gypsy tangos, Prometheus Bound, even the Jacobean revenge plays--- the darker the better, really. The truer. She did the lighting for Titus Andronicus and people were disgusted, appalled, they said it was just a bloodbath, and by God she certainly used a lot of red spots--- but that moment when the handless and tongueless Lavinia tried to indicate who had done it to her, or knelt to carry away Titus's severed hand in her teeth, like a dog--- the audience had been as if frozen; one could not say that Shakespeare had not had his sense of stagecraft right from the start, bloodbath or no. And then with every play he had gotten more powerful, more electifyingly dark and true, even as an old man; she had come out of a long harrowing inspired performance of King Lear in an elation, flushed and laughing, grabbing a young member of the lighting crew by the shoulder, shaking him, shouting "Was that not wonderful, magnificent?"
"Ka, Maya, I don't know, I might have preferred the Restoration version myself, the one where Cordelia is saved and marries Edgar, do you know that one?"
"Bah! Stupid child! We have told the truth tonight, that is what is important! You can go back to your lies in the morning!" Laughing harshly at him and throwing him back to his friends, "Foolish youth!"
He explained to the friends: "It's Maya."
"Toitovna? The one in the opera?"
"Yes, but for real."
"Real," Maya scoffed, waving them away. "You don't even know what real is." And she felt that she did.
And friends came to town, visiting for a week or two; and then, as the summers got warmer and warmer, they took to spending one of the Decembers out in a beach village west of the town, in a shack behind the dunes, swimming and sailing and windsurfing and lying on the sand under an umbrella, reading and sleeping through the perihelion. Then back into Odessa, to the familiar comforts of their apartment and the town, in the burnished light of the southern autumn which was the longest season of the Martian year, also the approach to aphelion, day after day dimmer and dimmer, until aphelion came, on Ls 70, and between then and the winter solstice at Ls 90 was the Ice Festival, and they ice-skated on the white sea ice right under the corniche, looking up at the town's seafront all drifted with snow, white under black clouds; or iceboating so far out on the ice that the town was just a break in the white curve of the big rim. Or eating by herself in steamy loud restaurants, waiting for the music to start, wet snow pelting down on the street outside. Walking into a musty little theater and its anticipatory laughter. Eating out on the balcony for the first time in the spring, sweater on against the chill, looking at the new buds on the tips of the tree twigs, a green unlike any other, like little viriditas teardrops. And so around, deep in the folds of habit and its rhythms, happy in the déjà vu that one made for oneself.
Then she turned on her screen one morning and checked the news and found out that a large settlement of Chinese had been discovered already esconced in Huo Hsing Vallis (as if the name justified the intrusion); a surprised global police had ordered them to leave, but now they were calmly defying the order. And the Chinese government was warning Mars that any interference with the settlement would be regarded as an attack on Chinese citizens, with an appropriate response. "What!" Maya shouted. "No!"
She called up everyone in Mangala she knew; these days there weren't that many of them in positions of any importance. She asked what they knew, and demanded to be told why the settlers weren't being escorted back to the elevator and sent home, and so on; "This is simply not acceptable, you have to stop it now!"
But incursions only a bit less blatant had been happening for some time now, as she had seen herself in occasional news reports. Immigrants were being landed in cheap landing vehicles, bypassing the elevator and the authorities in Sheffield. Rocket-and-parachute landings, as in the old days; and there was little that could be done about it, without provoking an interplanetary incident. People were working hard on the problem behind the scenes. The UN was backing China, so it was hard. Progress was being made, slowly but surely. She was not to worry.
She shut down the screen. Once upon a time she had suffered under the illusion that if only she exerted herself hard enough, the whole world would change. Now she knew better.
Although it was a hard thing to admit. "It's enough to turn you red," she said to Michel as she left for work. "It's enough to get us up to Mangala," she warned him.
But in a week the crisis passed. An accommodation was reached; the settlement was allowed to remain, and the Chinese promised to send up a correspondingly smaller number of legal immigrants the following year. Very unsatisfactory, but there it was. Life went on under this new shadow.
Except she was walking home, one late-spring afternoon after work, and a line of rosebushes at the back of the corniche caught her attention, and she walked over to have a closer look. Behind the bushes people were walking on Harmakhis Avenue by the cafés, most of them in a hurry. The bushes had a lot of new leaves, their brown a mixture of green and red. The new roses were a pure dark red, their lustrous velvet petals glowing in the afternoon light. Lincoln, the tag on the trunk said. A kind of rose. Also the greatest American, a man who had been a kind of combination of John and Frank, as Maya understood him. One of the Group had written a great play about him, dark and troubling, the hero murdered senselessly, a real heartbreaker. They needed a Lincoln these days. The red of the roses was glowing brightly. Suddenly she couldn't see; for a moment everything dazzled, as if she had glanced into the sun.
Then she was looking at an array of things.
Shapes, colors--- she was aware of that much, but what they were--- who she was--- wordlessly she struggled to recognize. . . .
Then it all crashed back at once. Rose, Odessa, all of it just as if it had never been gone. But she staggered, she had to catch her balance. "Ah no," she said. "My God." She swallowed; throat dry, very dry. A physiological event. It had lasted quite some time. She hissed, choked back a cry. Stood rigid on the gravel path, the hedge brown green before her, spotted by livid red. She would have to remember that color effect for the next Jacobean play they did.
She had always known it was going to happen. She had always known. Habit, such a liar; she knew that. Inside her ticked a bomb. In the old days it had had three billion ticks, more or less. Now they had rigged it to have ten billion--- or more--- or less. The ticks kept ticking nevertheless. She had heard of a clock one could buy, which ran downward through a certain finite number of hours, presumably those you had left if you were to live to five hundred years, or whatever length of life you chose. Choose a million and relax. Choose one, and pay a little bit closer attention to the moment. Or dive into your habits and never think about it, like everyone else she knew.
She would have been perfectly happy to do that. She had done it before and would do it again. But now in this moment something had happened, and she was back in the interregnum, the stripped time between sets of habits, waiting for the next exfoliation. No, no! Why? She didn't want such a time, they were too hard--- she could scarcely stand the raw sense of time passing that came to her during these periods. The sense that everything was for the last time. She hated that feeling, hated it. And this time she hadn't changed her habits at all! Nothing was different; it had struck out of the blue. Maybe it had been too long since the last time, habits nonwithstanding. Maybe it would start happening now whenever it chose to, randomly, perhaps frequently.
She went home (thinking, I know where my home is) and tried to tell Michel what had happened, describing and sobbing and describing and then giving up. "We only do things once! Do you understand?"
He was very concerned, though he tried not to show it. Blankouts or not, she had no trouble recognizing the moods of Monsieur Duval. He said that her little jamais vu was perhaps a small epileptic fit or a tiny stroke, but he could not be sure, and even tests might not tell them. jamais vu was poorly understood; a variation on déjà vu, essentially its reverse: "It seems to be a kind of temporary interference in the brain's wave patterns. They go from alpha waves to delta waves, in a little dip. If you'll wear a monitor we could find out next time it happens, if it does. It's somewhat like a waking sleep, in which a lot of cognition shuts down."
"Do people ever get stuck there?"
"No. I don't know of any cases like that. It's rare, and always temporary."
"So far."
He tried to act as if that were a baseless fear.
Maya knew better, and went into the kitchen to start a meal. Bang the pots, open the refrigerator, pull out vegetables, chop them and throw them in the pan. Chop chop chop chop. Stop to cry, stop to stop crying; even this had happened ten thousand times before. The disasters one couldn't avoid, the habit of hunger. In the kitchen, trying to ignore everything and make a meal; how many times. Well, here we are.
After that she avoided the row of rosebushes, fearful of another incident. But of course they were visible from anywhere on that stretch of the corniche, right out to the seawall. And they were in bloom almost all the time, roses were amazing that way. And once, in that same afternoon light, pouring over the Hellespontus and making everything to the west somewhat washed out, darkened to pastel opacities, her eye caught the pinprick reds of the roses in the hedge, even though she was walking the seawall--- and seeing the tapestry of foam on the black water to one side of her, and the roses and Odessa rising up to the other side, she stopped, stilled by something in the double vision, by a realization--- or almost--- the edge of an epiphany--- she felt some vast truth pushing at her, just outside her--- or inside her body, even, inside her skull but outside her thoughts, pushing at the dura that encased the brain--- everything explained, everything come clear at last, for once. . . . "Presque vu." Almost seen. "I get that one a lot," he said. With a characteristic look of secret sorrow.
But the epiphany never made it through the barrier. A feeling only, cloudy and huge--- then the pressure on her mind passed, and the afternoon took on its ordinary pewter luminance. She walked home feeling full, oceans of clouds in her chest, full to bursting with something like frustration, or a kind of anguished joy. Again she told Michel what had happened, and he nodded; he had a name for this too:
But all of his symptomatic categories suddenly seemed to Maya only to mask what was really happening to her. Sometimes she got very confused; sometimes she thought she understood things that did not exist; sometimes she forgot things, forever; and sometimes she got very, very scared. And these were the things Michel was trying to contain with his names and his combinatoires.
• • •
Almost seen. Almost understood. And then back into the world of light and time. And there was nothing for it but to go on. And so on she went. Enough days passed and she could forget what it had felt like, forget just how frightened she had been, or how close to joy. It was a strange enough thing that it was easy to forget. Just live in la vie quotidienne, pay attention to daily life with its work, friends, visitors.
Among other visitors were Charlotte and Ariadne, who came down from Mangala to consult with Maya about the worsening situation with Earth. They went out to breakfast on the corniche, and talked about Dorsa Brevia's concerns. Essentially, despite the fact that the Minoans had left the Free Mars coalition because they disliked its attempt to dominate the outer satellite settlements, among other things, the Dorsa Brevians had come to think Jackie had been right about immigration, at least to an extent.
"It's not that Mars is approaching its human carrying capacity," Charlotte said, "they're wrong about that. We could tighten our belts, densify the towns. And these new floating towns on the North Sea could accommodate a lot of people, they're a sign of how many more could live here. They have practically no impact, except on harbor towns, in some senses. But there's room for more harbor towns, on the North Sea anyway."
"Many more," Maya said. Despite the Terran incursions, she did not like to hear anti-immigrant talk in any form. But Charlotte was back on the executive council, and for years she had supported a close relation to Earth, so this was hard for her to say:
"It isn't the numbers. It's who they are, what they believe. The assimilation troubles are getting really severe."
Maya nodded. "I've read about them on the screen."
"Yes. We've tried to integrate newcomers every way we know, but they clump, naturally, and you can't just break them up."
"No."
"But so many problems are rising--- cases of sharia, family abuse, ethnic gangs getting in fights, immigrants attacking natives--- usually men attacking women, but not always. And young native gangs are retaliating, harassing the new settlements and so on. It's big trouble. And this with immigration already much reduced, at least legally. But the UN is angry with us about that, they want to send up even more. And if they do we'll become a kind of human disposal site, and all our work will have gone to waste."
"Hmm." Maya shook her head. She knew the problem, of course. But it was depressing to think that allies like these might leave and join the other side, just because the problem was getting hard. "Still, whatever you do has to take the UN into account. If you ban immigration and they immigrate anyway, and back it up, then our work goes to waste even quicker. That's what's been happening with these incursions, right? Better to allow immigration, to keep it at the lowest level that will be satisfactory to the UN, and deal with the immigrants as they come."
The two women nodded unhappily. They ate for a while, looking out at the fresh blue of the morning sea. Ariadne said, "The exmetas are a problem as well. They want to come here even more than the UN."
"Of course." It was no surprise to Maya that the old metanationals were still such powers on Earth. Of course they had all aped the Praxis model to survive, and so with that fundamental change in their nature, they were no longer like totalitarian fiefdoms out to conquer the world; but they were still big and strong, with a lot of people in them and a lot of capital accumulated; and they still wanted to do business, to make their members' livings. Strategies for doing that were sometimes admirable, sometimes not: one could make things that people really needed, in a new and better way; or one could play the angles, try to press advantages, try to inflate false needs. Most exmetas pursued a mix of strategies, of course, trying to stabilize by diversification as in their old investment days. But that made fighting the bad strategies even harder in a way, because everyone was pursuing them to some extent. And now a lot of exmetas were pursuing very active Martian programs, working for the Terran governments and shipping people up from Earth, building cities and starting farms, mining, production, trade. Sometimes it seemed that emigration from Earth to Mars would not cease until there was an exact balance in their fullnesses; which given the hypermalthusian situation on Earth, would be a disaster for Mars.
"Yes yes," Maya said impatiently. "Nevertheless, we have to try to help, and we have to keep ourselves within the realm of the acceptable, vis à vis Earth. Or else it will be war."
So Charlotte and Ariadne went away, both looking as worried as Maya felt. And it suddenly occurred to Maya, very grimly, that if they were coming to her for help, then they were in deep trouble indeed.
So her direct political work picked up again, although she tried to keep a limit on it. She seldom traveled away from Odessa, except for AWT business. She did not stop working with her theater group, which in any case was now the true heart of her political work. But she started going to meetings again, and rallies, and sometimes she took the stage and spoke. Werteswandel took many forms. One night she even got carried away and agreed to run for Odessa's seat in the global senate, as a member of the Terran Society of Friends, if they couldn't find a more viable candidate. Later, when she had a chance to think it over, she begged them to look for someone else first, and in the end they decided to go with one of the young playwrights from the Group, who worked in the Odessa town administration; a good choice. So she escaped that, and went on doing what she could to help the Earth Quakers less actively--- feeling more and more odd about it, for one could not overshoot a planet's carrying capacity without disaster following--- that was what Earth's history since the nineteenth century existed to prove. So they had to be careful, and not let too many people up--- it was a tightrope act--- but coping with a limited period of overpopulation was better than dealing with an outright invasion, and this was a point she made in meeting after meeting.
And all this time Nirgal was out there in the outback, wandering in his nomadic life and talking to the ferals and the farmers, and, she hoped, having his usual effect on the Martian worldview, on what Michel called its collective unconscious. She pinned a lot of her hopes on Nirgal. And did her best to deal with this other strand in her life, to face up to history, in some ways the darkest strand of all, as it stitched its course through her life and bunched it up, in a big twisting loop, back into the foreboding that had prevailed during her previous life in Odessa.
So that was already a kind of malign déjà vu. And then the real déjà vus came back, sucking the life out of things as they aways did. Oh a single flash of the sensation was just a jolt, of course, a fearful reminder, here then gone. But a day of it was torture; and a week, hell itself. The stereotemporal state, Michel said the current medical journals were calling it. Others called it the "always-already sensation." Apparently a problem for a certain percentage of the ancient ones. And nothing could be worse, in terms of her emotions. She would wake on these days and every moment of the day would be an exact repetition of some earlier identical day--- this was how it felt--- as if Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence, the endless repetition of all possible spacetime continuums, had become somehow transparent for her, a lived experience. Horrible, horrible! And yet there was nothing to do but stagger through the always-already of the foreseen days, zombielike, until the curse lifted, sometimes in a slow fog, sometimes in a quick snap back to the nonstereotemporal state--- like double vision coming back into focus, giving things back their depth. Back to the real, with its blessed sense of newness, contingency, blind becoming, where she was free to experience each moment with surprise, and feel the ordinary rise and fall of her emotional sine wave, a roller coaster which though uncomfortable was at least movement.
"Ah good," Michel said as she came out of one of these spells, obviously wondering which of the drugs he had been giving her had done the trick.
"Maybe if I could just get to the other side of a presque vu," Maya said weakly. "Not déjà or presque or jamais, but just the vu."
"A kind of enlightenment," Michel guessed. "Satori. Or epiphany. A mystical oneness with the universe. It's usually a short-lived phenomenon, I am told. A peak experience."
"But with a residue?"
"Yes. Afterward you feel better about things. But, well, it's said to usually come only if one achieves a certain. . . ."
"Serenity?"
"No, well . . . yes. Stillness of mind, you might say."
"Not my kind of thing, you mean."
Which cracked a grin. "But it could be cultivated. Prepared for, I mean. That's what they do in Zen Buddhism, if I understand it correctly."
So she read some Zen texts. But they all made it clear; Zen was not information, but behavior. If your behavior was right, then the mystic clarity might descend; or might not. And even if it did, it was usually a brief thing, a vision.
She was too stuck in her habits for that kind of change in her mental behavior. She was not in the kind of control of her thoughts that could prepare for a peak experience. She lived her life, and these mental breakdowns intruded on her. Thinking about the past helped to trigger them, it seemed; so she focused on the present as much as she could. That was Zen, after all, and she got fairly good at it; it had been an instinctive survival strategy for years. But a peak experience . . . sometimes she yearned for it, for the almost seen to be seen at last. A presque vu would descend on her, the world take on that aura of vague powerful meaning just outside her thoughts, and she would stand and push, or relax, or just try to follow it, to bring it on home; curious, fearful, hoping; and then it would fade, and pass. Still, someday . . . if only it would come clear! It might help, in the time after. And sometimes she was so curious; what would the insight be? What was that understanding which hovered just outside her mind, those times? It felt too real to be just an illusion. . . .
So, though it didn't occur to her at first that this was what she was seeking, she accepted an invitation from Nirgal to go with him to the Olympus Mons festival. Michel thought it was a great idea. Once every m-year, in the northern spring, people met on the summit of Olympus Mons near Crater Zp, to hold a festival inside a cascade of crescent-shaped tents, over stone and tile mosaics, as during that first meeting there, the celebration of the end of the Great Storm, when the ice asteroid had blazed across the sky and John had spoken to them of the coming Martian society.
Which society, Maya thought as they ascended the great volcano in a train car, might be said to have arrived, at least in certain times and places. Now, here: here we are. On Olympus, on Ls 90 every year, to remember John's promise and celebrate its achievement. By far the greater number of celebrants were young natives, but there were a lot of new immigrants as well, come up to see what the famous festival was like, intent on partying all week long, mostly by continuously playing music or dancing to it, or both. Maya preferred dance, as she still played no other instrument than the tambourine. And she lost Michel and all their other friends there, Nadia and Art and Sax and Marina and Ursula and Mary and Nirgal and Diana and all the rest, so that she could dance with strangers, and forget. Do nothing but focus on the passing faces luminous before her, each one like a pulsar of consciousness crying I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive.
Great dancing, all night long; a sign that assimilation might be happening, the areophany working its invisible spell on everyone who came to the planet, so that their toxic Terran pasts would be diluted and forgotten, and the true Martian culture achieved at last in a collective creation. Yes, and fine. But no peak experience. This was not the place for it, not for her. It was too much the dead hand of the past, perhaps; things were much the same on the peak of Olympus Mons, the sky still black and starry with a purple band around the horizon. . . . There were hostels built around the immense rim, Marina said, for pilgrims to stay in as they made circumnavigations of the summit; and other shelters down in the caldera, for the red climbers who spent their existence down in that world of overlapping convex cliffs. Strange what people would do, Maya thought, strange what destinies were being enacted on Mars nowadays.
But not by her. Olympus Mons was too high, therefore too stuck in the past. It was not where she was going to have the kind of experience she was seeking.
She did, however, get a chance to have a long talk with Nirgal, on the train ride back to Odessa. She told him about Charlotte and Ariadne and their concerns, and he nodded and told her about some of his adventures in the outback, many illustrating progress in assimilation. "We'll win in the end," he predicted. "Mars right now is the battleground of past and future, and the past has its power, but the future is where we're all going. There's a kind of inexorable power in it, like a vacuum pull forward. These days I can almost feel it." And he looked happy.
Then he pulled their bags off the overhead racks, he kissed her cheek. He was thin and hard, slipping away from her. "We'll keep working on it, yes? I'll come visit you and Michel in Odessa. I love you."
• • •
Which made her feel better, of course. No peak experience; but a train trip with Nirgal, a chance to talk with that most elusive native, that most beloved son.
After her return from the mountain, however, she continued to be subject to her array of "mental events," as Michel called them. He got more worried every time one of them happened. They were beginning to scare him, Maya saw, even though he tried to hide it. And no wonder. These "events," and others like them, were happening to a lot of his aged clients. The gerontological treatments could not seem to help people's memories hold on to their ever-lengthening pasts. And as their pasts slipped away, year by year, and their memories weakened, the incidence of "events" grew ever higher, until some people even had to be institutionalized.
Or, alternatively, they died. The First Settlers' Institute that Michel continued to work with had a smaller group of subjects every year. Even Vlad died, one year. After that Marina and Ursula moved from Acheron to Odessa. Nadia and Art had already moved to west Odessa, after their daughter Nikki had grown up and moved there. Even Sax Russell took an apartment in town, though he spent most of the year in Da Vinci still.
For Maya these moves were both good and bad. Good because she loved all these people, and it felt like they were clustering around her, which pleased her vanity. And it was a great pleasure to see their faces. So she helped Marina, for instance, to help Ursula to deal with Vlad's loss. It seemed that Ursula and Vlad had been the true couple, in some sense--- though Marina and Ursula . . . well, there were no terms for the three points of a ménage à trois, no matter how it was constituted. Anyway Marina and Ursula were now the remainder, a couple very close in their grieving, otherwise much like the young native same-sex couples one saw in Odessa, men arm in arm on the street (a comforting sight), women hand in hand.
So she was happy to see the two of them, or Nadia, or any of the rest of the old gang. But she couldn't always remember the incidents they discussed as if unforgettable, and this was irritating. Another kind of jamais vu; her own life. No, it was better to focus on the moment, to go down and work on water, or the lighting for the current play, or sit chatting in the bars with new friends from work, or with complete strangers. Waiting for that enlightenment to someday come. . . .
Samantha died. Then Boris. Oh there were two or three years between their deaths, but still, after the long decades during which none of them had died, this frequency pattern felt very fast. So they got through those funerals as best they could, and meanwhile everything was getting darker, as on the corniche when a black squall approached from over the Hellespontus--- Terran nations still sending up unauthorized people and landing them, the UN still threatening, China and Indonesia suddenly at each other's throats, Red ecoteurs blowing things up more and more indiscriminately, recklessly, killing people. And then Michel came up the stairs, heavy with grief; "Yeli died."
"What? No--- oh no."
"Some kind of heart arrhythmia."
"Oh my God."
Maya hadn't seen Yeli for decades, but to lose another one of the remaining First Hundred--- lose the possibility of ever seeing again Yeli's shy smile . . . no. She didn't hear the rest of what Michel said, not so much from grief as from distraction. Or grief for herself.
"This is going to happen more and more often, isn't it?" she said at last, when she noticed Michel staring at her.
He sighed. "Maybe."
Again most of the surviving members of the First Hundred came to Odessa for the memorial service, organized by Michel. Maya learned a lot about Yeli in those calls, mostly from Nadia. He had left Underhill and moved to Lasswitz early on, he had helped to build the domed town, and had become an expert in aquifer hydrology. In '61 he had wandered with Nadia, trying to repair structures and stay out of trouble, but in Cairo, where Maya had seen him briefly, he had gotten separated from the others, and missed the escape down Marineris. At the time they had assumed he had been killed like Sasha, but in fact he had survived, as most of the people in Cairo had, and after the revolt he had moved down to Sabishii and worked again in aquifers, linking up with the underground and helping to make Sabishii into the capital of the demimonde. He had lived for a while with Mary Dunkel, and when Sabishii was closed down by UNTA, he and Mary had come through Odessa; they had been there for the m-50 celebration, which was the last time Maya remembered seeing him, all the Russians in the group offering up the old drinking toasts. Then he and Mary broke up, Mary said, and he moved to Senzeni Na and became one of the leaders there in the second revolution. When Senzeni Na joined Nicosia and Sheffield and Cairo in the east Tharsis alliance, he had gone up to help in the Sheffield situation; after that he had returned to Senzeni Na, served on its first independent town council, and slowly become one of the grandfathers of the community there, just like so many others of the First Hundred had elsewhere. He had married a Nigerian nisei, they had had a boy; he had been back to Moscow twice, and was a popular commentator on Russian vids. Right before his death he had been working on the Argyre Basin project with Peter, siphoning off some big aquifers under the Charitum Montes without disturbing the surface. A great-grandaughter living out on Callisto was pregnant. But then one day during a picnic on the Senzeni Na mohole mound he had collapsed, and they hadn't been able to revive him.
So they were down to the First Eighteen. Although Sax, of all people, made a provisional inclusion of seven more, for the possibility that Hiroko's band was still alive somewhere. Maya regarded this as a fantasy, obvious wishful thinking, but on the other hand Sax was not prone to wishful thinking, so maybe there was something to it. Only eighteen for certain, however, and the youngest of them, Mary (unless Hiroko were alive) was now 212 years old. The oldest, Ann, was 226. Maya herself was 221, an obvious absurdity, but there it was, year 2206 in the Terran news reports. . . .
"But there are people in their two-fifties," Michel noted, "and the treatments may very well continue to work for a long long time. This may just be a bad coincidence."
"Maybe."
Each death seemed to cut a piece from him. He was getting darker and darker, which irritated Maya. No doubt he still thought he should have stayed in Provence--- that was his wish-fulfillment fantasy, this imaginary home that persisted in the face of the obvious fact that Mars was his home and had been from the moment they had landed--- or from the moment he had joined Hiroko--- or perhaps from the moment he had first seen it in the sky as a boy! No one could say when it had happened, but Mars was his home, and it was obvious to everyone but him. And yet he pined for Provence; and considered Maya both his exiler and his country in exile, her body his replacement Provence, her breasts his hills, her belly his valley, her sex his beach and ocean. Of course it was an impossible project being someone's home as well as their partner; but as it was all nostalgia anyway, and as Michel believed in impossible projects as good things, it generally turned out all right. Part of their relationship. Though sometimes an awful burden for her. And never more than when a death of one of the First Hundred drove him to her, and thus to thoughts of home.
Sax was always vexed at a funeral or a memorial service. Clearly he felt that death was some kind of rude imposition, a flagrant bit of the great unexplainable waving its red flag in his face; he could not abide it, it was a scientific problem waiting to be solved. But even he was baffled by the various manifestations of the quick decline, which were always different except for the speed of their effect, and the lack of an obvious single cause. A wave collapse like her jamais vu, a kind of jamais vivre--- theories were endless, it was a vital concern for all the old ones, and all the younger ones who expected to become old--- for everyone, in other words. And so it was being intensely studied. But so far no one knew for sure what the quick decline was, or even if it was any one thing; and the deaths kept happening.
For Yeli's service they cast some portion of his ashes off in another swiftly rising balloon, launching it from the same point of the breakwater they had launched Spencer, standing out where they could look back and see all Odessa. Afterward they retreated to Maya and Michel's apartment. Praxis indeed, the way they held each other then. They went through Michel's scrapbooks, talking about Olympus Mons, '61, Underhill. The past. Maya ignored all that and served them tea and cakes, until only Michel and Sax and Nadia remained in the apartment. The wake was over; she could relax. She stopped at the kitchen table, put her hand on Michel's shoulder, and looked over it at a grainy black-and-white photo, stained by what looked like spots of spaghetti sauce and coffee. A faded picture of a young man grinning right at the camera, grinning with a confident knowing smile.
"What an interesting face," she said.
Under her hand Michel stiffened. Nadia had a stricken look. Maya knew she had said something wrong, even Sax looked somehow pinched, almost distraught. Maya stared at the young man in the photo, stared and stared. Nothing came to her.
She left the apartment. She walked up the steep streets of Odessa, past all the whitewash and the turquoise doors and shutters, the cats and the terra-cotta flower boxes, until she was high in the town, and could look out over the indigo plate of the Hellas Sea for many kilometers. As she walked she cried, but without knowing why, a curious desolation. And yet this too had happened before.
Sometime later she found herself in the west part of the upper town. There was the Paradeplatz Park, where they had staged The Blood Knot, or had it been The Winter's Tale. Yes, The Winter's Tale. But there would be no coming back to life for them.
Ah well. Here she was. She made her way slowly down the long staircase alleyways, down and down toward their building, thinking about plays, her spirits a bit lighter as she descended. But there was an ambulance there at the apartment gate, and feeling cold, as if ice water had been dashed over her, she veered away and continued past the building, down to the corniche.
She walked up and down the corniche, until she was too tired to walk. Then she sat on a bench. Across from her in a sidewalk café a man was playing a wheezy bandoneon, a bald man with a white mustache, bags under his eyes, round cheeks, red nose. His sad music was right there in his face. The sun was setting and the sea was nearly still, each broad facet glistening with the viscous glassy luster that liquid surfaces sometimes display, all of it as orange as the sun winking out over the mountains to the west. She sat back, relaxing, and felt the sea breeze on her skin. Gulls planed overhead. Suddenly the sea's color looked familiar to her, and she remembered looking down from the Ares at the mottled orange ball that Mars had been, the untouched planet rolling below them after their arrival in orbit, symbol of every potential happiness. She had never been happier than that, in all the time since.
And then the feeling came on her again, the pre-epileptic aura of the presque vu, the sea glittering, a vast significance suffusing everything, immanent everywhere but just beyond reach, pressing in on things--- and with a little pop she got it--- that that very aspect of the phenomenon was itself the meaning--- that the significance of everything always lay just out of reach, in the future, tugging them forward--- that in special moments one felt this tidal tug of becoming as a sensation of sharp happy anticipation, as she had when looking down on Mars from the Ares, the unconscious mind filled not with the detritus of a dead past but with the unforeseeable possibilities of the live future, ah, yes--- anything could happen, anything, anything. And so as the presque vu washed slowly away from her, unseen again and yet somehow this time comprehended, she sat back on the bench, full and glowing; here she was, after all, and the potential for happiness would always be in her.
Experimental Procedures
Prologue
At the last minute Nirgal went up to Sheffield. From the train station he took the subway out to the Socket, not seeing a thing. Inside the vast halls of the Socket he walked to the departure lounge. And there she was.
When she saw him she was pleased that he had come, but irritated that he had come so late. It was almost time for her to go. Up the cable, onto a shuttle, out to one of the new hollowed-out asteroids, this one particularly large and luxuriant; and then off, accelerating for a matter of months, until it could coast at several percent of the speed of light. For this asteroid was a starship; and they were off to a star near Aldebaran, where a Marslike planet rolled in an Earth-like orbit around a sun-like sun. A new world, a new life. And Jackie was going.
Nirgal still couldn't quite believe it. He had gotten the message only two days before, had not slept as he tried to decide whether this mattered, whether it was part of his life, whether he ought to see her off, whether he ought to try to talk her out of it.
Seeing her now, he knew he could not talk her out of it. She was going. I want to try something new, she had said in her message, a voice record without a visual image. There coming from his wrist, her voice: There's nothing for me here now anymore. I've done my part. I want to try something new.
The group in the starship asteroid were mostly from Dorsa Brevia. Nirgal had called Charlotte to try to find out why. It's complicated, Charlotte said. There's a lot of reasons. This planet they're going to is relatively nearby, and it's perfect for terraforming. Humanity going there is a big step. The first step to the stars.
I know, Nirgal had said. Quite a few starships had already left, off to other likely planets. The step had been taken.
But this planet is the best one yet. And in Dorsa Brevia, people are beginning to wonder if we don't have to get that distance from Earth to get a fresh start. The hardest part is leaving Earth behind. And now it's looking bad again. These unauthorized landings; it could be the start of an invasion. And if you think of Mars as being the new democratic society, and Earth the old feudalism, then the influx can look like the old trying to crush the new, before it gets too big. And they've got us outnumbered twenty billion to two. And part of that old feudalism is patriarchy itself. So the people in Dorsa Brevia wonder if they can get a little bit more distance. It's only twenty years to Aldebaran, and they're going to live a long time. So a group of them are doing it. Families, family groups, childless couples, childless single people. It's like the First Hundred going to Mars, like the days of Boone and Chalmers.
And so Jackie sat on the carpeted floor of the departure lounge, and Nirgal sat next to her. She looked down. She was smoothing the carpet with the palm of her hand, and then drawing patterns in the nap, letters. Nirgal, she wrote.
He sat down beside her. The departure lounge was crowded but subdued. People looked grave, wan, upset, thoughtful, radiant. Some were going, some were seeing people off. Through a broad window they looked into the interior of the socket, where elevator cars levitated in silence against the walls, and the foot of the 37,000-kilometer-long cable stood hovering ten meters over the concrete floor.
So you're going, Nirgal said.
Yes, Jackie said. I want a new start.
Nirgal said nothing.
It will be an adventure, she said.
True. He didn't know what else to say.
In the carpet she wrote Jackie Boone Went to the Moon.
It's an awesome idea when you think of it, she said. Humanity, spreading through the galaxy. Star by star, ever outward. It's our destiny. It's what we ought to be doing. In fact I've heard people say that that's where Hiroko is--- that she and her people joined one of the first starships, the one to Barnard's star. To start a new world. Spread viriditas.
It's as likely as any other story, Nirgal said. And it was true; he could imagine Hiroko doing it, taking off again, joining the new diaspora, of humanity across the stars, settling the nearby planets and then on from there. A step out of the cradle. The end of prehistory.
He stared at her profile as she drew patterns on the carpet. This was the last time he would ever see her. For each of them it was as if the other were dying. That was true for a lot of the couples huddled silently together in this room. That people should leave everyone they knew.
And that was the First Hundred. That was why they had all been so strange--- they had been willing to leave the people they knew, and go off with ninety-nine strangers. Some of them had been famous scientists, all of them had had parents, presumably. But none of them had had children. And none of them had had spouses, except for the six married couples who had been part of the hundred. Single childless people, middle-aged, ready for a fresh start. That was who they were. And now that was Jackie too: childless, single.
Nirgal looked away, looked back; there she was, flush in the light. Fine-grained gloss of black hair. She glanced up at him, looked back down. Wherever you go, she wrote, there you are.
She looked up at him. What do you think happened to us? she asked.
I don't know.
They sat looking at the carpet. Through the window, in the cable chamber, an elevator levitated across the floor, hovering upright as it moved over a piste to the cable. It latched on, and a jetway snaked out and enveloped its outer side.
Don't go, he wanted to say. Don't go. Don't leave this world forever. Don't leave me. Remember the time the Sufis married us? Remember the time we made love by the heat of a volcano? Remember Zygote?
He said nothing. She remembered.
I don't know.
He reached down and rubbed the nap of the carpet so that he erased the second you. With his forefinger he wrote we.
She smiled wistfully. Against all the years, what was a word?
The loudspeakers announced that the elevator was ready for departure. People stood, saying things in agitated voices. Nirgal found himself standing, facing Jackie. She was looking right at him. He hugged her. That was her body in his arms, as real as rock. Her hair in his nostrils. He breathed in, held his breath. Let her go. She walked off without a word. At the entry to the jetway she looked back once; her face. And then she was gone.
Later he got a print message by radio from deep space. Wherever you go, there we are. It wasn't true. But it made him feel better. That was what words could do. Okay, he said as he went through his days wandering the planet. Now I am flying to Aldebaran.
The northern polar island had suffered perhaps more deformation than any other landscape on Mars; so Sax had heard, and now walking on a bluff edging the Chasma Borealis River, he could see what they meant. The polar cap had melted by about half, and the massive ice walls of Chasma Borealis were mostly gone. Their departure had been a thaw unlike any seen on Mars since the middle Hesperian, and all that water had rushed every spring and summer down the stratified sand and loess, cutting through them with great force. Declivities in the landscape had turned into deep sand-walled canyons, cutting downstream to the North Sea in very unstable watersheds, channelizing subsequent spring melts and shifting rapidly as slopes collapsed and landslides created short-lived lakes, before the dams were cut through and carried off in their turn, leaving only beach terraces and slide gates.
Sax stood looking down on one of these slide gates now, calculating how much water must have accumulated in the lake before the dam had broken. One couldn't stand too close to the edge of the overlook, the new canyon rims were by no means stable. There were few plants to be seen, only here and there a strip of pale lichen color, providing some relief from the mineral tones. The Borealis River was a wide shallow wash of tumbling glacial milk, some hundred and eighty meters below him. Tributaries cut hanging valleys much less deep, and dumped their loads in opaque waterfalls like spills of thin paint.
Up above the canyons, on what had been the floor of Chasma Borealis, the plateau was cut with tributary streams like the pattern of veins in a leaf. This had been laminated terrain to begin with, looking as if elevation contours had been artfully incised into the landscape, and the stream cuts revealed that the French curve laminae went down many meters, as if the map had marked the territory to a great depth.
It was near midsummer, and the sun rode the sky all day long. Clouds poured off the ice to the north. When the sun was at its lowest, the equivalent of midafternoon, these clouds drifted south toward the sea in thick mists, colored bronze or purple or lilac or some other vibrant subtle shade. A thin scattering of fellfield flowers graced the laminate plateau, reminding Sax of Arena Glacier, the landscape that had first caught his attention, back before his incident. That first encounter was very difficult for Sax to remember, but apparently it had imprinted on him in the way ducklings imprinted on the first creatures they saw as their mothers. There were great forests covering the temperate regions, where stands of giant sequoia shaded pine understories; there were spectacular sea cliffs, home to great clouds of mewling birds; there were crater jungle terraria of all kinds, and in the winters there were the endless plains of sastrugi snow; there were escarpments like vertical worlds, vast deserts of red shifting sands, volcano slopes of black rubble, there was every manner of biome, great and small; but for Sax this spare rock bioscape was the best.
He walked along over the rocks. His little car followed as best it could, crossing the tributaries of the Borealis upstream at the first car ford. The summertime flowering, though hard to pick out if one were more than ten meters away, was nevertheless intensely colorful, as spectacular in its way as any rain forest. The soil created by these plants in their generations was extremely thin, and would thicken only slowly. And augmenting it was difficult; all soil dropped in the canyons would wind up in the North Sea, and on the laminate terrain the winters were so harsh that soil availed little, it only became part of the permafrost. So they let the fellfields grow in their own slow course to tundra, and saved the soil for more promising regions in the south. Which was fine by Sax. It left for everyone to experience, for many centuries to come, the first areobiome, so spare and un-Terran.
Trudging over the rubble, alert for any plant life underfoot, Sax veered toward his car, which was now out of sight to his right. The sun was at much the same height it had been all day, and away from the deep narrow new Chasma Borealis running down the broad old one, it was very hard to keep oriented; north could have been anywhere across about one hundred and eighty degrees: basically, "behind him." And it would not do to walk casually into the vicinity of the North Sea, somewhere ahead of him, because polar bears did very well on that littoral, killing seals and raiding rookeries.
So Sax paused for a moment, and checked his wristpad maps to get a precise fix on his position and his car's. He had a very good map program in his wristpad these days. He found he was at 31.63844 degrees longitude, 84.89926 degrees north latitude, give or take a few centimeters; his car was at 31.64114, 84.86857; if he climbed to the top of this little breadloaf knoll to the west northwest, up an exquisite natural staircase, he should see it. Yes. There it rolled, at a lazy walking pace. And there, in the cracks of this breadloaf (so apt, this anthropomorphic analogizing) was some small purple saxifrage, stubbornly hunkering down in the protection of broken rock.
Something in the sight was so satisfying: the laminate terrain, the saxifrage in the light--- the little car moving to its dinner rendezvous with him--- the delicious weariness in his feet--- and then something indefinable, he had to admit it--- unexplainable--- in that the individual elements of the experience were insufficient to explain the pleasure of it. A kind of euphoria. He supposed this was love. Spirit of place, love of place--- the areophany, not only as Hiroko had described it, but perhaps as she had experienced it as well. Ah, Hiroko--- could she really have felt this good, all the time? Blessed creature! No wonder she had projected such an aura, collected such a following. To be near that bliss, to learn to feel it oneself . . . love of planet. Love of a planet's life. Certainly the biological component of the scene was a critical part of one's regard for it. Even Ann would surely have to admit that, if she were standing there beside him. An interesting hypothesis to test. Look, Ann, at this purple saxifrage. See how it catches the eye, somehow. One's regard focused, in the center of the curvilinear landscape. And so love, spontaneously generated.
Indeed this sublime land seemed to him a kind of image of the universe itself, at least in its relation of life to nonlife. He had been following the biogenetic theories of Deleuze, an attempt to mathematicize on a cosmological scale something rather like Hiroko's viriditas. As far as Sax could tell, Deleuze was maintaining that viriditas had been a threadlike force in the Big Bang, a complex border phenomenon functioning between forces and particles, and radiating outward from the Big Bang as a mere potentiality until second-generation planetary systems had collected the full array of heavier elements, at which point life had sprung forth, bursting in "little bangs" at the end of each thread of viriditas. There had been none too many threads, and they had been uniformly distributed through the universe, following the galactic clumping and partly shaping it; so that each little bang at the end of a thread was as far removed from the others as it was possible to be. Thus all the life islands were widely separated in timespace, making contact between any two islands very unlikely simply because they were all late phenomena, and at a great distance from the rest; there hadn't been time for contact. This hypothesis, if true, seemed to Sax a more than adequate explanation for the failure of SETI, that silence from the stars that had been ongoing for nearly four centuries now. A blink of the eye compared to the billion light-years that Deleuze estimated separated all life islands each a tertiary emergent phenomenon.
So viriditas existed in the universe like this saxifrage on the great sand curves of the polar island: small, isolate, magnificent. Sax saw a curving universe before him; but Deleuze maintained that they lived in a flat universe, on the cusp between permanent expansion and the expand-contract model, in a delicate balance. And he also maintained that the turning point, when the universe would either start to shrink or else expand past all possibility of shrinking, appeared to be very close to the present time! This made Sax very suspicious, as did the implication in Deleuze that they could influence the matter one way or the other: stomp on the ground and send the universe flying outward to dissolution and heat death, or catch one's breath, and pull it all inward to the unimaginable omega point of the eschaton: no. The first law of thermodynamics, among many other considerations, made this a kind of cosmological hallucination, a small god's existentialism. Psychological result of humanity's suddenly vastly increased physical powers, perhaps. Or Deleuze's own tendencies to megalomania; he thought he could explain everything.
In fact Sax was suspicious of all the current cosmology, placing humanity as it did right at the center of things, time after time. It suggested to Sax that all these formulations were artifacts of human perception only, the strong anthropic principle seeping into everything they saw, like color. Although he had to admit some of the observations seemed very solid, and hard to accept as human perceptual intrusion, or coincidence. Of course it was hard to believe that the sun and Luna looked exactly the same size when seen from Earth's surface, but they did. Coincidences happened. Most of these anthropocentric features, however, seemed to Sax likely to be the mark of the limits of their understanding; very possibly there were things larger than the universe, and others smaller than strings--- some even larger plenum, made of even smaller components--- all beyond human perception, even mathematically. If that were true it might explain some of the inconsistencies in Bao's equations--- if one allowed that the four macrodimensions of timespace were in relation to some larger dimensions, like the six microdimensions were to their ordinary four, then the equations might work quite beautifully--- he had a vision of one possible formulation, right there---
He stumbled, caught his balance. Another small bench of sand, about three times the size of the normal one. Okay--- on and up to the car. Now what had he been thinking about?
He couldn't remember. He had been thinking something interesting, he knew that. Figuring something out, it seemed like. But try as he might, he couldn't recall what it was. It bulked at the back of his mind like a rock in his shoe, a tip-of-the-tongueism that never came through. Most uncomfortable; even maddening. It had happened to him before, he seemed to recall--- and more frequently recently, wasn't that true? He wasn't sure, but that felt right. He had been losing his train of thought, and then been unable to retrieve it, no matter how hard he tried.
He reached his car without seeing his walk there. Love of place, yes--- but one had to be able to remember things to love them! One had to be able to remember one's thoughts! Confused, affronted, he clattered about the car getting a dinner together, then ate it without noticing.
This memory trouble would not do.
• • •
Actually, now that he thought of it, losing his train of thought had been happening a lot. Or so he seemed to remember. It was an odd problem that way. But certainly he had been aware of losing trains of thought, which seemed, in their blank aftermath, to have been good thoughts. He had even tried to talk into his wristpad when such an accelerated burst of thinking began, when he felt that sense of several different strands braiding together to make something new. But the act of talking stopped the mentation. He was not a verbal thinker, it seemed; it was a matter of images, sometimes in the languages of math, sometimes in some kind of inchoate flow that he could not characterize. So talking stopped it. Or else the lost thoughts were much less impressive than they had felt; for the wrist recordings had only a few phrases, hesitant, disconnected, and most of all slow--- they were nothing like the thoughts he had hoped to record, which, especially in this particular state, were just the reverse--- fast, coherent, effortless--- the free play of the mind. That process could not be captured; and it struck Sax forcibly how little of anyone's thinking was ever recorded or remembered or conveyed in any way to others--- the stream of one's consciousness never shared except in thimblefuls, even by the most prolific mathematician, the most diligent diarist.
So, well; these incidents were just one of the many conditions they had to adapt to in their unnaturally prolonged old age. It was very inconvenient, even irritating. No doubt the matter ought to be investigated, although memory was a notorious quagmire for brain science. And it was somewhat like the leaky-roof problem; immediately after such a lost train of thought, with the absent shape of it still in his mind, and the emotional excitation, it almost drove him mad; but as the content of the thought was forgotten, half an hour later it did not seem much more significant than the slipping away of dreams in the minutes after waking. He had other things to worry about.
• • •
Such as the death of his friends. Yeli Zudov this time, a member of the First Hundred he had never known well; nevertheless he went down to Odessa, and after a memorial service, a lugubrious affair during which Sax was frequently distracted by thoughts of Vlad, of Spencer, of Phyllis, and then of Ann--- they returned to the Praxis building, and sat in Michel and Maya's apartment. It was not the same apartment they had lived in before the second revolution, but Michel had taken pains to make it look much the same, as far as Sax could recall--- something about Maya's therapy, as she was having more and more mental trouble--- Sax wasn't sure what the latest was. He had never been able to deal with the more melodramatic aspects of Maya, and he hadn't paid overmuch attention to Michel's talk about her when the two of them last got together--- it was always different, always the same.
Now, however, he took a cup of tea from Maya, and watched her go back into the kitchen, past the table on which Michel's scrapbooks were spread. Face up was a photo of Frank that Maya had treasured long ago; she had had it taped to the kitchen cabinet by the sink, in the apartment down the hall--- Sax remembered that most clearly, it was a kind of heraldic feature of those tense years: all of them struggling while the young Frank laughed at them.
Maya stopped and looked down at the photo, stared at it closely. Remembering their earlier dead, no doubt. Those who had gone before, so very long ago.
But she said, "What an interesting face."
Sax felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. So distinct, the physiological manifestations of distress. To lose the substance of a speculative train of thought, a venture into the metaphysical--- that was one thing. But this--- her own past, their past--- it was insupportable. Not to be abided. He would not abide it.
Maya saw they were shocked, though she did not know why. Nadia had tears in her eyes, not a common sight. Michel looked stricken. Maya, sensing something seriously wrong, fled the apartment. No one stopped her.
The others picked up the place. Nadia went to Michel.
"More and more like that," Michel muttered, looking haunted. "More and more. I feel it myself. But for Maya. . . ." He shook his head, looking deeply discouraged. Even Michel could make nothing good of this, Michel who had worked his alchemy of optimism on all their previous reversals, making them part of his great story, the myth of Mars that he had somehow wrenched out of the daily morass. But this was the death of story. Thus hard to mythologize. No--- living on after the memory died was mere farce, pointless and awful. Something was going to have to be done.
• • •
Sax was still thinking about this, sitting in a corner absorbed in his wristpad, reading a collection of abstracts from recent experimental work on the memory, when there came a thump from the kitchen and a cry from Nadia. Sax rushed in to find Nadia and Art crouched over Michel, who lay white-faced on the floor. Sax called the concierge, and faster than he would have imagined possible an emergency crew had barged in with their equipment and shouldered Art aside, big young natives who brusquely encased Michel into their compact web of machinery, leaving the old ones as spectators only of their friend's--- struggle.
Sax sat down among the medics, in their way, and put a hand to Michel's neck and shoulder. Michel's breathing had stopped, his pulse as well. White-faced. The resuscitation attempts were violent, the electrical shocks tried at a variety of strengths, the subsequent shift to heart-lung machine accomplished with a minimum of fuss; and the young medics worked in near silence, talking among themselves only when necessary, seemingly unaware of the old ones sitting against the wall. They did all they could; but Michel remained stubbornly, mysteriously dead.
Of course he had been upset by Maya's memory failure. But this did not seem an adequate explanation. He had already been aware of Maya's problem, none more so, and he had been worried; so any single display of her problem shouldn't have mattered. A coincidence. A bad one. And of course eventually--- quite late that evening, actually, after the doctors had finally given up, and taken Michel downstairs, and were clearing out their equipment--- Maya returned, and they had to tell her what had happened.
She was distraught, naturally. Her shock and anguish were too much for one of the young medics, who tried to comfort her (that won't work, Sax wanted to say, I've tried that myself) and got himself struck in the face for his pains, which made him angry; he went out in the hall, sat down heavily.
Sax went out and sat beside him. He was weeping.
"I can't do this anymore," the man said after a while. He shook his head, seemingly apologetic. "It's pointless. We come and do all we can and it makes no difference. Nothing stops the quick decline."
"Which is?" Sax said.
The young man shrugged his massive shoulders, sniffed. "That's the problem. No one knows."
"Surely there must be theories? Autopsies?"
"Heart arrhythmia," said one of the other medics curtly as he passed by with some equipment.
"That's just the symptom," the sitting man snarled, and sniffed again. "Why does it go arrhythmic? And why doesn't CPR restart it?"
No one answered.
Another mystery to be solved. Through the door Sax could see Maya crying on the couch, Nadia beside her like a statue of Nadia. Suddenly Sax realized that even if he found an explanation, Michel would still be dead.
Art was dealing with the medics, making arrangements. Sax tapped at his wrist and looked at a list of titles for articles on quick decline; 8,361 titles in this index. There were literature reviews, and tables assembled by AIs, but nothing that looked like a definitive paradigm statement. Still at the stage of observation and initial hypothesis . . . flailing. In many ways it resembled the work on memory Sax had been reading. Death and the mind; how long they had studied these problems, how long the problems had resisted! Michel himself had commented on that, implying some deeper narrative that explained their unexplainables--- Michel who had brought Sax back from aphasia, who had taught him to understand parts of himself he hadn't even known existed. Michel was gone. He wouldn't be back. They had carried the last version of his body out of the apartment. He had been around Sax's age, about 220 years old. It was an advanced age by any previous standard; why then this pain in Sax's chest, this hot blur of tears? It didn't make sense. But Michel would have understood. Better this than the death of the mind, he would have said. But Sax wasn't so sure; his memory problems seemed less important now, Maya's as well. She remembered enough to be devastated, after all. Him too. He remembered what was important.
Strange to recall: he had been in her company immediately in the wake of the death of all three of her consorts. John, Frank, now Michel. Each time it got worse for her. And the same for him.
• • •
Michel's ashes, up in a balloon over the Hellas Sea. They saved a pinch for return to Provence.
The literature on longevity and senescence was so vast and specialized that Sax found it difficult at first to organize his usual assault on the material. Recent work on the quick decline was the obvious starting point, but understanding articles on the subject meant going back to their predecessors and coming to some fuller understanding of the longevity treatments themselves. This was an area Sax had never understood more than superficially, shying away from it instinctively because of its messy biological inexplicable semimiraculous nature. A subject very near the heart of the great unexplainable, really. He had left it happily to Hiroko and to the supremely gifted Vladimir Taneev, who along with Ursula and Marina had designed and overseen the first treatments, and many major modifications since then.
Now, however, Vlad was dead. And Sax was interested. It was time to dive into viriditas, into the realm of the complex.
There was orderly behavior, there was chaotic behavior; and on their border, in their interplay, so to speak, lay a very large and convoluted zone, the realm of the complex. This was the zone in which viriditas made its appearance, the place where life could exist. Keeping life in the middle of the zone of complexity was, in the most general philosophical sense, what the longevity treatments had been about--- keeping various incursions of chaos (like arrhythmia) or of order (like malignant cell growth) from fatally disrupting the organism.
But now something was causing the gerontologically treated individual to go from negligible senescence to extremely rapid senescence--- or, even more disturbingly, straight from health to death, without senescence at all. Some heretofore unseen irruption of chaos or order, into the border zone of the complex. This was how it seemed to him, in any case, at the end of one very long session of reading the most general descriptions of the phenomenon he could find. And it suggested certain avenues of investigation as well, in the mathematical descriptions of the complexity-chaotic border, likewise the order-complexity border. But he lost this holistic vision of the problem in one of his blankouts, the train of thought concerning the substance of the math gone forever. And it had probably (he tried to console himself afterward) been too philosophical a vision to do him any good anyway. The explanation after all was not going to be obvious, or else the massive concerted effort of medical science would have searched it out by now. On the contrary; it was likely to be something very subtle in the biochemistry of the brain, an arena that had resisted five hundred years of effort to investigate it scientifically, resisted like the hydra, every new discovery only suggesting another headful of mysteries. . . .
Nevertheless he persevered. And over the course of a few weeks' absorbed reading, he certainly gave himself a better orientation in the field than he had ever had before. Previously his impression had been that the longevity treatment consisted of a fairly straightforward injection of the subject's own DNA, the artificially produced strands reinforcing the ones already in the cells, so that the breaks and errors that crept in over time were repaired, and the strands generally strengthened. This much was true; but the longevity treatment was more than this, just as senescence itself was more than cell-division error. It was, as one might have predicted, much more complicated than just breaking chromosomes; it was an entire complex of processes. And while some were well understood, others were not. Senescencial action (aging) took place on every level: molecule, cell, organ, organism. Some senescence resulted from hormonal effects that were positive for the young organism in its reproductive phase, and only later negative for the post-reproductive animal, when in evolutionary terms it no longer mattered. Some cell lines were virtually immortal; bone-marrow cells and the mucus in the gut went on replicating for as long as their surroundings were alive, with no sign at all of time-related changes. Other cells, such as the nonreplaced proteins in the lens of the eye, underwent change that was driven by exposure to heat or light, regular enough to function as a kind of biological chronometer. Each kind of cell line aged at a different speed, or did not age at all; thus it was not just "a matter of time" in the sense of a kind of Newtonian absolute time, working entropically on an organism; there was no such time. Rather it was a great many trains of specific physical and chemical events, moving at different speeds, and with varying effects. There was a fantastically large number of cell-repair mechanisms inherent in any large organism, and an immune system of great and various power; the longevity treatments often supplemented these processes, or worked on them directly, or replaced them. The treatment now included supplements of the enzyme photolyase, to correct DNA damage, and supplements of the pineal hormone melatonin, and dehydroepiandrosterone, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal glands. . . . There were about two hundred components like these in the longevity treatment now.
So vast, so complex--- sometimes Sax finished his day's reading and walked down to Odessa's seafront, to sit on the corniche with Maya, and he would pause in eating a burrito and stare at it--- contemplate everything that went into its digestion, everything that kept them alive--- feel his breath which he had never noted at all, before--- and suddenly he would feel breathless--- lose his appetite--- lose his belief that any such complex system could exist for more than a moment before collapsing into primordial chaos and the simplicities of astrophysics. Like a house of cards a hundred stories tall, in a wind. Tap it anywhere. . . . It was lucky Maya did not require much in the way of active companionship, because often he was rendered speechless for many minutes at a time, rapt in the contemplation of his own evident impossibility.
But he persevered. This was what a scientist did, confronted with an enigma. And there were others helping in the search, working ahead of him on the frontiers, and beside him in related fields, from the small--- virology, where the inquiries into tiny forms such as prions and viroids were revealing even smaller forms, almost too partial to be called life: virids, viris, virs, vis, vs, all of which might have relevance to the larger problem. . . . All the way up to the large organismic issues, such as brain-wave rhythms and their relationship to the heart and other organs, or the pineal gland's ever-decreasing secretions of melatonin, a hormone that seemed to regulate many aspects of aging. Sax followed them all, trying to glean a new view by his later and hopefully larger perspective. He had to follow his intuition to what seemed important, and study that.
Of course it did not help that some of his best thoughts on the subject blanked out on him at the moment of completion. He had to be able to get these thought flurries recorded before they disappeared! He began to talk aloud to himself, frequently, even in public situations, hoping that this would help to forestall the blanks; but again, it didn't work. It simply was not a verbal process.
In all this work the meetings with Maya were a pleasure. Every evening, if he noticed it was evening, he would stop reading and walk down the staircase streets of the town to the corniche, and there, on one of four different benches, he would often see Maya, sitting and looking out over the harbor to the sea. He would go to one of the food stands back in the park, buy a burrito or a gyro or a salad or a corn dog, and walk over and sit down next to her. She would nod and they would eat without saying much. Afterward they sat and watched the sea. "How was your day?" "Okay. And yours?" He did not attempt to talk much about his reading, and she didn't say much about her hydrology, or the theater productions that she would go off to after dusk had fallen. Really they didn't have much to say to each other. But it was companionable anyway. And one evening the sunset flared to an unusual lavender brilliance, and Maya said, "I wonder what color that is?" and Sax had ventured, "Lavender?"
"But lavender is usually more pastel, isn't it?"
Sax called up a large color chart he had found long before to help him see the colors of the sky. Maya snorted at this, but he held his wrist up anyway, and compared various sample squares to the sky. "We need a bigger screen." And then they found one that they thought matched: light violet. Or somewhere between light violet and pale violet.
And after that they had a little hobby. Really it was remarkable how varied the colors of the Odessa sunsets were, affecting sky, sea, the whitewashed walls of the town; endless variation. Much more variation than there were names. The poverty of language in this area was a constant surprise to Sax. Even the poverty of the color chart. The eye could perceive perhaps ten million different shades, he read; the color handbook he was referring to had 1,266 samples in it; and only a very small fraction of these had names. So most evenings they held up their forearms, and tried different colors against the sky, and found a patch that matched fairly well, and it was a nondescript; no name. They made up names: 2 October the 11th Orange, Aphelion Purple, Lemon Leaf, Almost Green, Arkady's Beard; Maya could go on forever, she was really good at it. Then sometimes they would find a named patch matching the sky (for a moment, anyway) and they would learn the real meaning of a new word, which Sax found satisfying. But in that stretch between red and blue, English had surprisingly little to offer; the language just was not equipped for Mars. One evening in the dusk, after a mauvish sunset, they went through the chart methodically, just to see: purple, magenta, lilac, amaranth, aubergine, mauve, amethyst, plum, violaceous, violet, heliotrope, clematis, lavender, indigo, hyacinth, ultramarine--- and then they were into the many words for the blues. There were many, many blues. But for the red-blue span that was it, except for the many modulations of the list, royal violet, lavender gray, and so on.
One evening the sky was clear, and after the sun had gone down behind the Hellespontus Mountains, but was still illuminating the air over the sea, it turned a very familiar rusty brown orange; Maya seized his arm in her clawlike grip, "That's Martian orange, look, that's the color of the planet from space, what we saw from the Ares! Look! Quick, what color is that, what color is that?"
They looked through the charts, arms held up before them. "Paprika red." "Tomato red." "Oxide red, now that should be right; it's oxygen's affinity for iron makes that color after all."
"But it's way too dark, look."
"True."
"Brownish red."
"Reddish brown."
Cinnamon, raw sienna, Persian orange, sunburn, camel, rust brown, Sahara, chrome orange . . . they began to laugh. Nothing was quite right. "We'll call it Martian orange," Maya decided.
"Fine. But look how many more names there are for these colors than there are for the purples, why is that?"
Maya shrugged. Sax went reading in the material accompanying the chart, to see if they said anything about it. "Ah. It appears that the cones in the retina contain cells sensitive to blue, green or red, and so colors around those three have lots of distinction, while those in between are composites." Then in the empurpling dusk he came on a sentence that surprised him so much he read it aloud:
"Redness and greenness form another pair which cannot be perceived simultaneously as components of the same color."
"That's not true," Maya said immediately. "That's just because they're using a color wheel, and those two are on opposite sides."
"What do you mean? That there's more colors than these?"
"Of course. Artists' colors, theater colors; you put a green spot and a red spot on someone and you get a color all right, and it's not red or green."
"But what is it? Does it have a name?"
"I don't know. Look in an artist's color wheel."
And so he did, and so did she. She found it first: "Here. Burnt umber, Indian red, madder alizarin . . . those are all green-red mixes."
"Interesting! Red-green mixes! Don't you find that suggestive?"
She gave him a look. "We're talking about colors here, Sax, not politics."
"I know, I know. But still. . . ."
"No. Don't be silly."
"But don't you think we need a red-green mix?"
"Politically? There's a red-green mix already, Sax. That's the trouble. Free Mars got the Reds on board to stop immigration, that's why they're having such success. They're teaming up and closing down Mars to Earth, and soon after that we'll be at war with them again. I tell you, I can see it coming. We're spiraling down into it again."
"Hmm," Sax said, sobered. He was not paying attention to solar systemic politics these days, but he knew that Maya, who had a very sharp eye for these things, was getting more and more worried about it--- with her usual mordant Mayan dash of satisfaction at the approach of crisis. So that it was perhaps not as bad as she thought. Probably he would have to look into it again soon, pay attention. But meanwhile---
"Look, it's gone indigo, right over the mountains." Intense saw edge of black below, purple blue above. . . .
"That's not indigo, it's royal blue."
"But they shouldn't call it blue if it's got some red in it."
"Shouldn't. Look, marine blue, Prussian blue, king's blue, they all have red in them."
"But that color on the horizon isn't any of those."
"No, you're right. Nondescript."
They marked it on their charts. Ls 24, m-year 91, September 2206; a new color. And so another evening passed.
Then one winter evening they were sitting on the westernmost bench, in the hour before sunset, everything still, the Hellas Sea like a plate of glass, the sky cloudless and clean, pure, transparent; and as the sun dropped everything drifted over the spectrum into the blue, until Maya looked up from her salade niÃsect;oise and clutched Sax by the arm, "Oh my God, look," and she put her paper plate aside and they both stood instinctively, like ancient veterans hearing the national anthem from an approaching parade; Sax swallowed hamburger in a lump, "Ah," he said, and stared. Everything was blue, sky blue, Terran sky blue, drenching everything for most of an hour, flooding their retinas and the nerve pathways in their brains, no doubt long starved for precisely that color, the home they had left forever.
• • •
Those were pleasant evenings. By day, however, things got more and more complicated. Sax gave up studying whole-body problems, sharpened his focus to the brain alone. This was like halving infinity, but still, it cut down on the papers he had to look at, and it did seem like the brain was the heart of the problem, so to speak. There were changes in the hyperaged brain, changes visible both on autopsy and during the various scans of blood flow, electrical activity, protein use, sugar use, heat, and all the rest of the indirect tests they had managed to concoct through the centuries, studying the living brain during mental activity of every kind. Observed changes in the hyperaged brain included calcification of the pineal gland, which reduced the amount of melatonin it produced; synthetic melatonin supplements were part of the longevity treatment, but of course it would be better to stop the calcification from occurring in the first place, for it probably had other effects. Then there was a clear growth in the number of neurofibrillary tangles, which were protein filament aggregates that grew between neurons, exerting physical pressure on them, perhaps the analogue of the pressure Maya reported feeling during her presque vus, who could say. Then again beta-amyloid protein accumulated in the cerebral blood vessels and in the extracellular space around nerve terminals, again impeding function. And pyramidal neurons in the frontal cortex and hippocampus accumulated calpain, which meant they were vulnerable to calcium influxes, which damaged them. And these were nondividing cells, the same age as the organism itself; damage to them was permanent, as during Sax's stroke. He had lost a lot of his brain in that incident, he didn't like to think of it. And the ability of the molecules in these nondividing cells to replace themselves could also be damaged, a smaller but over time equally significant loss. Autopsies of people over two hundred who had died of the quick decline regularly showed serious calcification of the pineal gland, coupled with increases in calpain levels in the hippocampus. And the hippocampus and calpain levels generally were both implicated in some of the leading current models of how the memory worked. It was an interesting connection.
But all inconclusive. And no one was going to solve the mystery by literature review alone. But the experiments that might clear things up were not practical, given the inaccessibility of the living brain. You could kill chicks and mice and rats and dogs and pigs and lemurs and chimps, you could kill individuals of every species in creation, dissect the brains of their fetuses and embryos as well, and still never find what you were looking for; for it was autopsy itself that was insufficient to the task. And the various live scans were likewise insufficient to the task, as the processes involved were either more fine-grained than the scans could perceive, or more holistic, or more combinatorial, or, probably, all three at once.
Still, some of the experiments and the resultant modeling were suggestive; calpain buildup seemed to alter brain-wave function, for instance; and this fact and others gave him ideas for further investigation. He began to read intensively in the literature on the effects of calcium-binding protein levels, on corticosteroids, on the calcium currents in the hippocampal pyramidal neurons, and on the calcification of the pineal gland. It appeared there were synergistic effects that might impact both memory and general brain-wave function, indeed all bodily rhythms, including heart rhythms. "Was Michel experiencing any memory troubles?" Sax asked Maya. "Perhaps feeling that he had lost entire trains of thought--- even very useful trains of thought?"
Maya shrugged. By now Michel was almost a year gone. "I can't remember."
It made Sax nervous. Maya seemed in retreat, her memory worse every day. Even Nadia could do nothing for her. Sax met her down on the corniche more and more frequently, it was a habit they both clearly must have enjoyed, though they never spoke of that; they simply sat, ate a kiosk meal, watched the sunset and pulled up their color charts to see if they would catch another new one. But if it weren't for the notations they made on the charts, neither of them would have been sure whether the colors they saw were new or not. Sax himself felt that he was experiencing his blankouts more frequently, perhaps some four to eight a day, although he couldn't be sure. He took to keeping his AI running a sound recorder permanently, activated by voice; and rather than try to describe his complete train of thought, he just spoke a few words that he hoped would later key a fuller recollection of what he had been thinking. Thus at the end of the day he would sit down apprehensively or hopefully, and listen to what the AI had captured during the day: and mostly it was thought that he remembered thinking, but occasionally he would hear himself say, "Synthetic melatonins may be a better antioxidant than natural ones, so that there aren't enough free radicals," or "Viriditas is a fundamental mystery, there will never be a grand unified theory," without having any memory of saying such things, or, often, what they might mean. But sometimes the statements were suggestive, their meanings excavatable.
And so he struggled on. As he did he saw it anew, as fresh as in his undergraduate days: the structure of science was so beautiful. It was surely one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit, a kind of stupendous parthenon of the mind, constantly a work in progress, like a symphonic epic poem of thousands of stanzas, being composed by them all in a giant ongoing collaboration. The language of the poem was mathematics, because this appeared to be the language of nature itself; there was no other way to explain the startling adherence of natural phenomena to mathematical expressions of great difficulty and subtlety. And so in this marvelous family of languages their songs explored the various manifestations of reality, in the different fields of science, and each science worked up its standard model to explain things, all constellating at some distance around the basics of particle physics, depending on what level or scale was being investigated, so that all the standard models hopefully interlocked in a coherent larger structure. These standard models were somewhat like Kuhnian paradigms but in reality (paradigms being a model of modeling) more supple and various, a dialogic process in which thousands of minds had participated over the previous hundreds of years; so that figures like Newton or Einstein or Vlad were not the isolate giants of public perception, but the tallest peaks of a great mountain range, as Newton himself had tried to make clear with his comment about standing on the shoulders of giants. In truth the work of science was a communal thing; extending back even beyond the birth of modern science, back all the way into prehistory, as Michel had insisted; a constant struggle to understand. Now of course it was highly structured, articulated beyond the ability of any single individual to fully grasp. But this was only because of the sheer quantity of it; the spectacular efflorescence of structure was not in any particular incomprehensible, one could still walk around anywhere inside the parthenon, so to speak, and thus comprehend at least the shape of the whole, and make choices as to where to study, where to learn the current surface, where to contribute. One could first learn the dialect of the language relevant to the study; which in itself could be a formidable task, as in superstring theory or cascading recombinant chaos; then one could survey the background literature, and hopefully find some syncretic work by someone who had worked long on the cutting edge, and was able to give a coherent account of the status of the field for outsiders; this work, disparaged by most working scientists, called the "gray literature" and considered a vacation or a lowering of oneself on the part of the synthesist, was nevertheless often of great value for someone coming in from the outside. With a general overview (though it was better to think of it as an underview, with the actual workers up there lost in the dim rafters and entablatures of the edifice), one could then move up into the journals, the peer-reviewed "white literature," where the current work was being recorded; and one could read the abstracts, and get a sense of who was attacking what part of the problem. So public, so explicit. . . . And for any given problem in science, the people who were actually out there on the edge making progress constituted a special group, of a few hundred at most--- often with a core group of synthesists and innovators that was no more than a dozen people in all the worlds--- inventing a new jargon of their dialect to convey their new insights, arguing over results, suggesting new avenues of investigation, giving each other jobs in labs, meeting at conferences specially devoted to the topic--- talking to each other, in all the media there were. And there in the labs and the conference bars the work went forward, as a dialogue of people who understood the issues, and did the sheer hard work of experimentation, and of thinking about experiments.
And all this vast articulated structure of a culture stood out in the open sun of day, accessible to anyone who wanted to join, who was willing and able to do the work; there were no secrets, there were no closed shops, and if every lab and every specialization had its politics, that was just politics; and in the end politics could not materially affect the structure itself, the mathematical edifice of their understanding of the phenomenal world. So Sax had always believed, and no analysis by social scientists, nor even the troubling experience of the Martian terraforming process, had ever caused him to waver in that belief. Science was a social construct, but it was also and most importantly its own space, conforming to reality only; that was its beauty. Truth is beauty, as the poet had said, speaking of science. And it was; the poet had been right (they weren't always).
And so Sax moved about in the great structure, comfortable, capable, and on some levels content.
• • •
But he began to understand that as beautiful and powerful as science was, the problem of biological senescence was perhaps too difficult. Not too difficult to be solved ever, nothing was that, but simply too difficult to be solved in his lifetime. Actually it was still an open question how hard a problem it was. Their understanding of matter, space and time was incomplete, and it might be that it would always necessarily shade off into metaphysics, like the speculations about the cosmos before the Big Bang, or things smaller than strings. On the other hand the world might be amenable to progressive explanations, until it all (at least from string to cosmos) would be brought someday within the realm of the great parthenon. Either result was possible, the court was still out, the next thousand years or so should tell the tale.
But in the meantime, he was experiencing several blankouts a day. And sometimes he was short of breath. Sometimes his heart seemed to beat so hard. Seldom did he sleep at night. And Michel was dead, so that Sax's sense of the meaning of things was becoming uncertain, and in great need of help. When he managed to think at all on the level of meaning, he found that he felt he was in a race. Him and everyone else, but especially the life scientists actually at work on the problem: they were in a race with death. To win it, they had to explain one of the greatest of the great unexplainables.
And one day, sitting down on a bench with Maya after a day in front of his screen, thinking of the vastness of that growing wing of the parthenon, he realized that it was a race he couldn't win. The human species might win it, someday, but it looked to be a long way off still. It was no great surprise, really; he knew this; that is to say, he had always known it. Labeling the current largest manifestation of the problem had not disguised to him its profundity, "the quick decline" was just a name, inaccurate, over-simple--- not science, in fact, but rather an attempt (like "the Big Bang") to diminish and contain the reality, as yet not understood. In this case the problem was simply death. A quick decline indeed. And given the nature of life and of time, this was a problem that no living organism would ever truly solve. Postponements, yes; solutions, no. "Reality itself is mortal," he said.
"Of course," Maya said, absorbed in the sight of the sunset.
He needed a simpler problem. As a postponement, as a step toward the harder problems; or just as something he could solve. Memory, perhaps. Fighting the blankouts; it was certainly a problem that stood at hand, ready for study. His memory was in need of help. Working on it might even cast light on the quick decline. And even if it didn't, he had to try it, no matter how hard it was. Because they were all going to die; but they could at least die with their memories intact.
So he switched his emphasis to the memory problem, abandoning the quick decline and all the rest of the senescence issues. He was only mortal after all.
Recent memory work was fairly suggestive of avenues of approach. This particular scientific front was related in some of its aspects to the work on learning that had enabled Sax to (partially) recover from his stroke. This was not surprising, as memory was the retention of learning. All brain science tended to move together in its understanding of consciousness. But in that progression, retention and recall remained recalcitrant crux issues, still imperfectly understood.
But there were indications, and more all the time. Clinical clues; a lot of the ancient ones were experiencing memory problems of varying kinds, and behind the ancient ones came a giant generation of nisei, who could see the problems manifesting in their elders, and hoped to avoid them. So memory was a hot topic. Hundreds, indeed thousands of labs were working on it in one way or another, and as a result many aspects of it were coming clear. Sax immersed himself in the literature in his usual style, reading intensively for several months on end; and at the end of that time he thought he could say, in general terms, how memory worked; although in the end he, like all the rest of the scientists working on the problem, ran into their insufficient understanding of the underlying basics--- of consciousness, matter, time. And at this point, as detailed as their understanding was, Sax could not see how memory might be improved or reinforced. They needed something more.
The original Hebb hypothesis, first proposed by Donald Hebb in 1949, was still held to be true, because it was such a general principle; learning changed some physical feature in the brain, and after that the changed feature somehow encoded the event learned. In Hebb's time the physical feature (the engram) was conceived of as occurring somewhere on the synaptic level, and as there could be hundreds of thousands of synapses for each of the ten billion neurons in the brain, this gave researchers the impression that the brain might be capable of holding some 1014 data bits; at the time this seemed more than adequate to explain human consciousness. And as it was also within the realm of the possible for computers, it led to a brief vogue in the notion of strong artificial intelligence, as well as that era's version of the "machine fallacy," a variant of the pathetic fallacy, in which the brain was thought of as being something like the most powerful machine of the time. The work of the twenty-first and twenty-second century, however, had made it clear that there were no specific "engram" sites as such. Any number of experiments failed to locate these sites, including one in which various parts of rat's brains were removed after they learned a task, with no part of the brain proving essential; the frustrated experimenters concluded that memory was "everywhere and nowhere," leading to the analogy of brain to hologram, even sillier than all the other machine analogies; but they were stumped, they were flailing. Later experiments clarified things; it became obvious that all the actions of consciousness were taking place on a level far smaller even than that of neurons; this was associated in Sax's mind with the general miniaturization of scientific attention through the twenty-second century. In that finer-grained appraisal they had begun investigating the cytoskeletons of neuron cells, which were internal arrays of microtubules, with protein bridges between the microtubules. The microtubules' structure consisted of hollow tubes made of thirteen columns of tubulin dimers, peanut-shaped globular protein pairs, each about eight-by-four-by-four nanometers, existing in two different configurations, depending on their electrical polarization. So the dimers represented a possible on-off switch of the hoped-for engram; but they were so small that the electrical state of each dimer was influenced by the dimers around it, because of van der Waals interactions between them. So messages of all kinds could be propagated along each microtubule column, and along the protein bridges connecting them. Then most recently had come yet another step in miniaturization: each dimer contained about 450 amino acids, which could retain information by changes in the sequences of amino acids. And contained inside the dimer columns were tiny threads of water in an ordered state, a state called vicinal water, and this vicinal water was capable of conveying quantumcoherent oscillations for the length of the tubule. A great number of experiments on living monkey brains, with miniaturized instrumentation of many different kinds, had established that while consciousness was thinking, amino-acid sequences were shifting, tubulin dimers in many different places in the brain were changing configuration, in pulsed phases; microtubules were moving, sometimes growing; and on a much larger scale, dendrite spines then grew and made new connections, sometimes changing synapses permanently, sometimes not.
So now the best current model had it that memories were encoded (somehow) as standing patterns of quantumcoherent oscillations, set up by changes in the microtubules and their constituent parts, all working in patterns inside the neurons. Although there were now researchers who speculated that there could be significant action at even finer ultramicroscopic levels, permanently beyond their ability to investigate (familiar refrain); some saw traces of signs that the oscillations were structured in the kind of spin-network patterns that Bao's work described, in knotted nodes and networks that Sax found eerily reminiscent of the palace-of-memory plan, utilizing rooms and hallways, as if the ancient Greeks by introspection alone had intuited the very geometry of timespace.
In any case, it was sure that these ultramicroscopic actions were implicated in the brain's plasticity; they were part of how the brain learned and then remembered. So memory was happening at a far smaller level than had been previously imagined, which gave the brain a much higher computational possibility than before, up to perhaps 1024 operations per second--- or even 1043 in some calculations, leading one researcher to note that every human mind was in a certain sense more complicated that all the rest of the universe (minus its other consciousnesses, of course). Sax found this suspiciously like the strong anthropic phantoms seen elsewhere in cosmological theory, but it was an interesting idea to contemplate.
So, not only was there simply more going on, it was also happening at such fine levels that quantum effects were certainly involved. Experimentation had made it clear that large-scale collective quantum phenomena were happening in every brain; there existed in the brain both global quantum coherence, and quantum entanglement between the various electrical states of the microtubules; and this meant that all the counterintuitive phenomena and sheer paradox of quantum reality were an integral part of consciousness. Indeed it was only very recently, by including the quantum effects in the cytoskeletons, that a team of French researchers had finally managed to put forth a plausible theory as to why general anesthetics worked, after all the centuries of blithely using them.
So they were confronted with yet another bizarre quantum world, in which there was action at a distance, in which decisions not made could affect events that really happened, in which certain events seemed to be triggered teleologically, that is to say by events that appeared to come after them in time. . . . Sax was not greatly surprised by this development. It supported a feeling he had had all his life, that the human mind was deeply mysterious, a black box that science could scarcely investigate. And now that science was investigating it, it was coming up hard against the great unexplainables of reality itself.
Still, one could hold to what science had learned; and admit that reality at the quantum level behaved in ways that were simply outrageous at the level of human senses and ordinary experience. They had had three hundred years to get used to that, and eventually they had somehow to incorporate this knowledge into their worldviews, and forge on. Sax would have indeed said that he was comfortable with the familiar quantum paradoxes; things at the microscale were bizarre but explicable, quantifiable or at least describable, using complex numbers, Riemannian geometry, and all the rest of the armatures of the appropriate branches of mathematics. Finding such stuff in the very workings of the brain should have been no surprise at all. Indeed, compared to things like human history or psychology or culture, it was even somehow comforting. It was only quantum mechanics after all. Something that could be modeled by mathematics. And that was saying something.
So. At an extremely fine level of structure in the brain, much of one's past was contained, encoded in a unique complex network of synapses, microtubules, dimers and vicinal water and amino-acid chains, all small enough and near enough together to have quantum effects on each other. Patterns of quantum fluctuation, diverging and collapsing; this was consciousness. And the patterns were clearly held or generated in specific parts of the brain; they were the result of a physical structure articulated on many levels. The hippocampus, for instance, was critically important, especially the dentate gyrus region and the perforant pathway nerves that led to it. And the hippocampus was extremely sensitive to action in the limbic system, directly underneath it in the brain; and the limbic system was in many ways the seat of the emotions, what the ancients would have called the heart. Thus the emotional charge of an event had much to do with how fully it was laid out in the memory. Things happened, and the consciousness witnessed or experienced them, and inevitably a great deal of this experienced changed the brain, and became part of it forever; particularly the events heightened by emotion. This description seemed right to Sax; what he had felt most he remembered best--- or forgot most assiduously, as certain experiments suggested, with an unconscious constant effort that was not true forgetting at all, but repression.
After that initial change in the brain, however, the slow process of degradation began. For one thing, the power of recollection was different in different people, but always less powerful than memory storage, it appeared, and very hard to direct. So much was patterned into the brain but never retrieved. And then if one never remembered a pattern, never recollected and rehearsed it, then they never got the reinforcement of another run-through; and after about 150 years of storage, experiments suggested, the pattern began to degrade more and more rapidly, due apparently to the accumulated quantum effects of free radicals collecting randomly in the brain. This was apparently what was happening to the ancient ones; a breakdown process which began immediately after an event was patterned into the brain, eventually hit a cumulative level where the effects were catastrophic for the oscillatory patterns involved, and thus for the memories. It was probably about as clocklike, Sax thought glumly, as the thermodynamic clouding of the lens of the eye.
However--- if one could rehearse all one's memories, ecphorize them as some called it in the literature on the subject--- from the Greek, meaning something like "echo transmission"--- then it would reinforce the patterns, giving them a fresh start and setting the clock of degradation back to zero. A sort of longevity treatment for dimer patterns, in effect, sometimes referred to in the literature as anamnesis, or loss of forgetting. And after such treatment it would be easier to recall any given event, or at least as easy as it had been soon after the event happened. This was the general direction that work in memory reinforcement was taking. Some called the drugs and electrical devices involved in this process nootropics, a word which Sax read as "acting upon mind." There were a lot of terms for the process being bandied about in the current literature, people scrambling through their Greek and Latin lexicons in the hope of becoming the namer of the phenomenon: Sax had seen mnemonics and mnemonistics, and mnemosynics, after the goddess of memory; also mimenskesthains, from the Greek verb "to remember." Sax preferred memory reinforcer, although he also liked anamnesis, which seemed the most accurate term for what they were trying to do. He wanted to concoct an anamnestic.
But the practical difficulties of ecphorization--- of remembering all one's past, or even some particular part of it--- were great. Not just finding the anamnestics that might stimulate such a process, but finding as well the time it would take! When one had lived two centuries, it seemed possible that it might take years to ecphorize all the significant events of one's life.
Clearly a sequential chronological run-through was impractical, in more ways than one. What would be preferable was some kind of simultaneous flushing of the system, strengthening the entire network without consciously remembering every component of it. Whether such a flushing was electrochemically possible was unclear; and what such a flushing might feel like was impossible to imagine. But if one were to electrically stimulate the perforant pathway to the hippocampus, and get a great deal of adenosine triphosphate past the blood-brain barrier, for instance, thus stimulating the longterm potentiation that aided learning in the first place; and then impose a brain-wave pattern stimulating and supporting the quantum oscillations of the microtubules; and then direct one's consciousness to review the memories that felt most important to one, while the rest were being reinforced as well, unconsciously. . . .
He ran through another accelerando of thought on this issue, then crashed blank on it. There he was, sitting in his apartment living room, blanked, cursing himself for not at least trying to mutter something into his AI. It seemed that he had been onto something--- something about ATP, or was it LTP? Well. If it was a genuinely useful thought, it would come back. He had to believe that. It seemed probable.
As it did, more and more as he studied the issues, that the shock of Maya's amnesiac moment had somehow propelled Michel into the quick decline. Not that such an explanation could ever be proved, or that it even really mattered. But Michel would not have wanted to survive either his memory or hers; he had loved her as his life project, his definition of himself. The shock of Maya blanking on something so basic, so important (like the key to memory restoration). . . . And the mind-body connection was so strong--- so strong that the distinction itself was probably false, a vestige of Cartesian metaphysics or earlier religious views of the soul. Mind was one's body's life. Memory was mind. And so, by a simple transitive equation, memory equaled life. So that with memory gone, life was gone. So Michel must have felt, in that final traumatic half hour, as his self tumbled into a fatal arrhythmia, under the anguish of grieving for his love's death-of-mind.
They had to remember to be truly alive. And so ecphorization, if he could figure out the appropriate anamnestic methodology, was going to have to be tried.
• • •
Of course it might be dangerous. If he did manage to work up a memory reinforcer, it would flush the system all at once, perhaps, and no one could predict what that would feel like subjectively. One would just have to try it. It would be an experiment. Self-experimentation. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. Vlad had given himself the first gerontological treatment, though it could have killed him; Jennings had inoculated himself with live smallpox vaccine; Arkady's ancestor Alexander Bogdanov had exchanged his blood for that of a young man suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, and had died while the young man had lived for thirty more years. And of course there was the story of the young physicists at Los Alamos, who had set off the first nuclear explosion wondering among themselves whether it might not burn up the entire atmosphere of the Earth, a somewhat disturbing case of self-experimentation, one had to admit. Compared to that ingesting a few amino acids seemed no very great thing, something more like Dr. Hoffman trying LSD on himself. Presumably ecphorizing would be less disorienting than an LSD experience, for if all one's memories were being reinforced at once, consciousness would surely not be capable of being aware of it. The so-called stream of consciousness was fairly unilinear, it seemed to Sax on introspection. So that at most one might experience a quick associative train of recollections, or a random jumble--- not unlike Sax's everyday mentation, to tell the truth. He could handle that. And he was willing to risk something more traumatic, if that was what it happened to take.
He flew to Acheron.
Up at Acheron a new crowd was in place in the old labs, now vastly expanded, so that the entire high long fin of rock was excavated and occupied--- it was a city now of some 200,000 people. At the same time it was still, of course, a spectacular fin of rock some fifteen kilometers long and six hundred meters high, while never more than a kilometer wide at any point; and it was still a lab, or a complex of labs, in a way that Echus Overlook had long since ceased to be--- something more like Da Vinci, with a similar organization. After Praxis had renovated the infrastructure, Vlad and Ursula and Marina had led the formation of a new biological research station; now Vlad was dead, but Acheron had a life of its own, and did not seem to miss him. Ursula and Marina directed their own little labs, and lived still in the quarters they had shared with Vlad, just under the crest of the fin--- a partially walled arboreal slot, very windy. They were as private as ever, withdrawn into their own world even more than they had been with Vlad; and they were certainly taken for granted in Acheron, treated by the younger scientists as local grandmothers or great-aunts, or simply as colleagues in the labs.
Sax, however, the younger scientists stared at, looking just as nonplussed as if they were being introduced to Archimedes. It was as disconcerting to be treated in such a way as it was to meet such an anachronism, and Sax struggled through several conversations of surpassing awkwardness as he tried to convince everyone that he did not know the magic secret of life, that he used words to stand for the same things as they did, that his mind was not yet altogether shattered by age, etc.
But this estrangement could also be an advantage. Young scientists as a class tended to be naive empiricists, also idealistic energetic enthusiasts. So coming in from outside, both new and old at once, Sax was able to impress them in the seminars Ursula convened to discuss the current state of memory work. Sax laid out his hypotheses concerning the creation of a possible anamnestic, with suggestions for various lines of experimental work on these possibilities, and he could see that his suggestions had for the young scientists a kind of prophetic power, even (or perhaps especially) when they were quite general comments. If these vague suggestions happened to chime with some avenue these people were already exploring, then the response could be enthusiastic in the extreme. In fact it was a case of the more gnomic the better; which was not very scientific, but there it was.
As he watched them Sax realized for the first time that the versatile, responsive, highly focused nature of science that he was getting used to in Da Vinci was not confined to Da Vinci alone, but was a feature of all the labs arranged as cooperative ventures; it was the nature of Martian science more generally. With the scientists in control of their own work, to a degree never seen in his youth on Earth, the work itself had an unprecedented rapidity and power. In his day the resources necessary to do the work would have belonged to other people, to institutions with their own interests and bureaucracies, creating a ponderous and often foolish clumsy scattering of effort; and even the coherent efforts were often devoted to trivial things, to the monetary profits of the institution in control of the lab. Here, on the other hand, Acheron was a semiautonomous self-contained community, answerable to the environmental courts and to the constitution of course, but to no one else. They chose among themselves what to work on, and when they were asked for help, if they were interested, they could respond immediately.
So he was not going to have to do all the work of developing a memory reinforcer himself, not by any means; the Acheron labs were highly interested, and Marina remained active in the city's lab of labs, and the city still had a close relationship with Praxis, with all its resources. And many labs there were already investigating memory. It was a big part of the longevity project now, for obvious reasons. Marina said that some twenty percent of all human effort was now being devoted, in one form or another, to the longevity project. And longevity itself was pointless without memory lasting as long as the rest of the system. So it made sense for a complex like Acheron to focus on it.
• • •
Soon after his arrival Sax joined Marina and Ursula alone, for breakfast in the dining area of their quarters. Just the three of them, surrounded by portable walls covered by batiks from Dorsa Brevia, and trees in pots. No remembrance of Vlad. Nor did they mention him. Sax, conscious of how unusual it was to be invited into their home, had trouble focusing on the matter at hand. He had known both these women from the beginning, and greatly respected both of them, Ursula especially for her great empathic qualities; but he didn't feel he knew them at all well. So he sat there in the wind, eating and looking at them, and out the open window walls. There to the north lay a narrow strip of blue, Acheron Bay, a deep indentation in the North Sea--- to the south, far beyond the first nearby horizon, the enormous bulk of Olympus Mons. In between, a devil's golf course of a land--- hard gnarled eroded old lava flows, riven and pocked--- and in each hollow a little green oasis, dotting the blackish waste of the plateau.
Marina said, "We've been thinking about why experimental psychologists in every generation have reported a few isolated cases of truly exceptional memories, but there is never any attempt to explain them by the memory models of the period."
"In fact they forget them as soon as they can," Ursula said.
"Yes. And then when the reports are exhumed, no one quite believes them to be true. It's put down to the credulity of earlier times. Typically no one alive can be found who can reproduce the feats described, and so the tendency is to conclude that the earlier investigators were mistaken or fooled. But a lot of the reports were perfectly well substantiated."
"Such as?" Sax said. It had not occurred to him to look at organism-level real-world functional accounts, anecdotal as they invariably were. But of course it made sense to do so.
Marina said, "The conductor Toscanini knew by heart every note of every instrument for about two hundred and fifty symphonic works, and the words and music of about a hundred operas, plus a lot more shorter works."
"They tested this?"
"Spot checks, so to speak. A bassoonist broke a key of his bassoon and told Toscanini, who thought it over and told him not to worry, he wouldn't have to play that note that night. Things like that. And he conducted without scores, and wrote down missing parts for players, and so on."
"Uh-huh. . . ."
"The musicologist Tovey had a similar power," Ursula added. "It isn't uncommon in musicians. It's as if music is a language where incredible memory feats are sometimes possible."
"Hmm."
Marina went on. "A Professor Athens, of Cambridge University, early twenty-first century, had a vast knowledge of specifics of all sorts--- again music, but also verse, facts, math, his own past on a daily basis. 'Interest is the thing,' he was reported to have said. 'Interest focuses the attention.' "
"True," Sax said.
"He mostly used his memory for what he found interesting. An interest in meaning, he called it. But in 2060 he remembered all of a list of twenty-three words he had learned for a casual test in 2032. And so on."
"I'd like to learn more about him."
"Yes," Ursula said. "He was less of a freak than some of the others. The so-called calendar calculators, or the ones who can recall visual images presented to them in great detail--- they're often impaired in other parts of their lives."
Marina nodded. "Like the Latvians Shereskevskii and the man known as V.P., who remembered truly huge quantities of random fact, in tests and in general. But both of them experienced synesthesia."
"Hmm. Hippocampal hyperactivity, perhaps."
"Perhaps."
They mentioned several more. A man named Finkelstein, who could calculate the election returns for the entire United States faster than any calculators of the 1930s. Talmudic scholars who had not only memorized the Talmud, but also the location of every word on every page. Oral storytellers who knew Homeric amounts of verse by heart. Even people who were said to have used the Renaissance palace-of-memory method to great effect; Sax had tried that himself after his stroke, with fair results. And so on.
"These extraordinary abilities don't seem to be the same as ordinary memory," Sax observed.
"Eidetic memory," Marina said. "Based on images that return in great detail. It's said to be the way that most children remember. Then at puberty, the way we remember changes, at least for most of us. It's as if these people don't ever metamorphose away from the children's way."
"Hmm," Sax said. "Still, I wonder if they are the upper extremes of continuous distributions of ability, or whether they are examples of a rare bimodal distribution."
Marina shrugged. "We don't know. But we have one here to study."
"You do!"
"Yes. It's Zeyk. He and Nazik have moved here so that we can study him. He's being very cooperative; she's encouraging him. There might as well be some good that comes of it, she says. He doesn't like his ability, you see. In him it doesn't have much to do with computational tricks, although he's better at that than most of us. But he can remember his past in extraordinary detail."
"I think I remember hearing about this," Sax said. The two women laughed, and startled, he joined in. "I'd like to see what you're doing with him."
"Sure. He's down in Smadar's lab. It's interesting. They view vids from events that he witnessed, and ask him questions about the events, and he talks about what he remembers while they've got all the latest scans running on his brain."
"Sounds very interesting."
• • •
Ursula led him down to a long dimmed lab, in which some operating beds were occupied by subjects undergoing scans of one sort or another, colored images flickering on screens or holographically in the air; while other beds were empty, and somehow ominous.
After all the young native subjects, when they came to Zeyk he looked to Sax like a specimen of Homo habilis, whisked out of prehistory to be tested for mental capacity. He was wearing a helmet studded with contact points on its inner surface, and his white beard was damp, his eyes sunken and weary in bruise-colored, withered skin. Nazik sat on the other side of his bed, holding his hand in hers. Hovering in the air over a holograph next to her was a detailed three-dimensional transparent image of some part of Zeyk's brain; through it colored light was flickering continuously, like heat lightning, creating patterns of green and red and blue and pale gold. On the screen by the bed jiggled images of a small tent settlement, after dark. A young woman, presumably the researcher Smadar, was asking questions.
"So the Ahad attacked the Fetah?"
"Yes. Or they were fighting, and my impression was that the Ahad started it. But someone was setting them on each other, I thought. Cutting slogans in the windows."
"Did the Muslim Brotherhood often have internal conflicts this severe?"
"At that time they did. But why on that night, I don't know. Someone set them on each other. It was as if everyone had suddenly gone crazy."
Sax felt his stomach tighten. Then he felt chilled, as if the ventilation system had let in the air of the cold morning outside. The little tent town in the vids was Nicosia. They were talking about the night John Boone had been killed. Smadar was watching the vids, asking questions. Zeyk was being recorded. Now he looked at Sax, nodded a greeting. "Russell was there also."
"Were you," Smadar said, looking at Sax speculatively.
"Yes."
It was something Sax had not thought about in years; decades; a century, perhaps. He realized that he had never been back to Nicosia again, not even once since that night. As if he had been avoiding it. Repression, no doubt. He had been very fond of John, who had worked for him for several years before the assassination. They had been friends. "I saw him attacked," he said, surprising them all.
"Did you!" Smadar exclaimed. Now Zeyk and Nazik and Ursula were staring at him as well, and Marina had joined them.
"What did you see?" Smadar asked him, glancing briefly up at Zeyk's brain image, flickering away in its silent storm. This was the past, just such a silent flickering electric storm. This was the work they were embarked on.
"There was fighting," Sax said slowly, uneasily, looking into the hologram image as if into a crystal ball. "In a little plaza, where a side street met the central boulevard. Near the medina."
"Were they Arab?" the young woman asked.
"Possibly," Sax said. He closed his eyes, and though he could not see it he could somehow imagine it, a kind of blind sight. "Yes, I think so."
He opened his eyes again, saw Zeyk staring at him. "Did you know them?" Zeyk croaked. "Can you tell me what they looked like?"
Sax shook his head, but this seemed to shake loose an image, black and yet there. The vid showed the dark streets of Nicosia, flickering with light like the thought in Zeyk's brain. "A tall man with a thin face, a black mustache. They all had black mustaches, but his was longer, and he was shouting at the other men attacking Boone, rather than at Boone himself."
Zeyk and Nazik were looking at each other. "Yussuf," Zeyk said. "Yussuf and Nejm. They led the Fetah then, and they were worse about Boone than any of the Ahad. And when Selim appeared at our place later that night, dying, he said Boone killed me, Boone and Chalmers. He didn't say I killed Boone; he said Boone killed me." He stared again at Sax: "But what happened then? What did you do?"
Sax shuddered. This was why he had never returned to Nicosia, never thought about it: on that night, at the critical moment, he had hesitated. He had been afraid. "I saw them from across the plaza. I was a distance away, and I didn't know what to do. They struck John down. They pulled him away. I--- I watched. Then--- then I was in a group running after them, I don't know who the rest were. They carried me along. But the attackers were dragging him down those side streets, and in the dark, our group . . . our group lost them."
"There were probably friends of the assailants in your group," Zeyk said. "There by plan, to lead you the wrong way in the pursuit."
"Ah," Sax said. There had been mustached men among the group. "Possibly."
He felt sick. He had frozen, he had done nothing. The images on the screen flickered, flashes in darkness, and Zeyk's cortex was alive with microscopic colored lightning.
"So it was not Selim," Zeyk said to Nazik. "Not Selim, and so not Frank Chalmers."
"We should tell Maya," Nazik said. "We must tell her."
Zeyk shrugged. "She won't care. If Frank did set Selim on John, and yet someone else actually did the deed, does that matter?"
"But you think it was someone else?" Smadar said.
"Yes. Yussuf and Nejm. The Fetah. Or whoever it was setting people on each other. Nejm, perhaps. . . ."
"Who is dead."
"And Yussuf as well," Zeyk said grimly. "And whoever started the rioting that night. . . ." He shook his head, and the image overhead quivered slightly.
"Tell me what happened next," Smadar said, looking down at her screen.
"Unsi al-Khan came running into the hajr to tell us Boone had been attacked. Unsi . . . well, anyway, I went with some others to the Syrian Gate, to see if it had been used. The Arab method of execution at that time was to throw you out onto the surface. And we found that the gate had been used once and no one had come back in by it."
"Do you remember the lock code?" Smadar asked.
Zeyk frowned, his lips moved, his eyes clamped shut. "They were part of the Fibonacci sequence, I remember noticing that. Five-eight-one-three-two-one."
Sax gaped. Smadar nodded. "Go on."
"Then a woman I didn't know ran by and told us Boone had been found in the farm. We followed her to the medical clinic in the medina. It was new, everything was clean and shiny, no pictures on the walls yet. Sax, you were there, and the rest of the First Hundred in the town: Chalmers and Toitovna, and Samantha Hoyle."
Sax found he had no memory of the clinic at all. Wait . . . an image of Frank, his face flushed, and Maya, wearing a white domino, her mouth a bloodless line. But that had been outside, on the glass-scattered boulevard. He had told them of the attack on Boone, and Maya had cried instantly Didn't you stop them? Didn't you stop them? and he had realized all of a sudden that he hadn't stopped them--- that he had failed to help his friend--- that he had stood there frozen in shock, and watched while his friend had been assaulted and dragged off. We tried, he had said to Maya. I tried. Though he hadn't.
But at the clinic, later; nothing. Nothing came to him of the whole rest of that night, in fact. He closed his eyes like Zeyk, clamped the lids shut as if that might squeeze out another image. But nothing came. The memory was odd that way; he remembered the critical moments of trauma, when these realizations had stabbed into him; the rest had disappeared. Surely the limbic system and the emotional charge of every incident must be crucially involved in the entrainment or encoding or embedding of a memory.
And yet there was Zeyk, slowly naming every person he had known in the clinic waiting room, which must have been crowded; then describing the face of the doctor who had come out to give them the news of Boone's death. "She said, 'He's dead. Too long out there.' And Maya put a hand on Frank's shoulder, and he jumped."
"We have to tell Maya," Nazik whispered.
"He said to her, 'I'm sorry,' which I thought was odd. She said something to him about how he had never liked John anyway, which was true. And Frank even agreed, but then he left. He was angry at Maya as well. He said, he said 'What do you know about what I like or don't like.' So bitter. He didn't like her presumption. The idea that she knew him." Zeyk shook his head.
"Was I there during this?" Sax said.
". . . Yes. You were sitting right on the other side of Maya. But you were distracted. You were crying."
Nothing came back to Sax of that, nothing. It occurred to him with a lurch that just as there were many things that he had done that no one else would ever know about, there were also things he had done that others remembered, that he himself could not recall. So little they knew! So little!
And still Zeyk went on: the rest of that night, the next morning. The appearance of Selim, his death; then the day after that, when Zeyk and Nazik had left Nicosia. And the day after that as well. Later Ursula said that he could go on in that amount of detail for every week of his life.
But now Nazik stopped the session. "This one is too hard," she said to Smadar. "Let's start again tomorrow."
Smadar agreed, and began tapping at the console of the machine beside her. Zeyk stared at the dark ceiling like a haunted man; and Sax saw that among the many dysfunctions of the memory, one would have to include memories that worked too well. But how? What was the mechanism? That image of Zeyk's brain, replicating in another medium the patterns of quantum activity--- lightning flickering around in his cortex . . . a mind that held the past far better than the rest of the ancient ones, impervious to the affliction of breaking memory, which Sax had believed to be an inexorable clocklike breakdown . . . well, they were giving that brain every test they could think of. But it was quite possible the secret would remain unsolved; there was simply too much happening of which they were completely unaware. As on that night in Nicosia.
• • •
Shaken, Sax changed into a warm jumper and went outdoors. The land around Acheron had already been providing welcome breaks from his lab time, and now he was very happy to have a place to get away.
He headed north, toward the sea. Some of his best thinking about memory had come when he was walking down to this seashore, over routes so circuitous that he could never find the same way twice, partly because the old lava plateau was so fractured by grabens and scarps, partly because he was never paying attention to the larger topography--- he was either lost in his thoughts or lost in the immediate landscape, only intermittently looking around to see where he was. In fact it was a region in which one could not get lost; ascend any small ridge, and there the Acheron fin stood, like the spine of an immense dragon; and in the other direction, visible from more places as one approached it, the wide blue expanse of Acheron Bay. In between lay a million micro-environments, the rocky plateau pocked with hidden oases, and every crack filled with plants. It was very unlike the melting landscape on the polar shore across the sea; this rocky plateau and its little hidden habitats seemed immemorial, despite the gardening that was certainly being done by the Acheron ecopoets. Many of these oases were experiments, and Sax treated them as such, staying out of them, peering down into one steep-walled alas after another, wondering what the ecopoet responsible was trying to discover with his or her work. Here soil could be spread with no fear of it being washed into the sea, although the startling green of the estuaries extending back into the valleys showed that some fertile soil was making its way down the streams. These estuarine marshes would fill with eroded soils, while at the same time they were getting saltier, along with the North Sea itself. . . .
This time out, however, his observations were broken repeatedly by thoughts of John. John Boone had worked for him for the last several years of John's life, and they had had many a conference as they discussed the rapidly developing Martian situation; vital years; and through them John had been always happy, cheerful, confident--- trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent--- no, no, not exactly--- he had also been abrupt, impatient, arrogant, lazy, slipshod, drug dependent, proud. But how Sax had come to rely on him, how he had loved him--- loved him like a big brother who had protected him out in the world at large. And then they had killed him. Those are the ones the killers always go after. They can't stand that courage. And so they had killed him and Sax had stood on watching and hadn't done a thing. Frozen in shock and personal fear. You didn't stop them? Maya had cried; he remembered it now, her sharp voice. No, I was afraid. No, I did nothing. Of course it was unlikely that there was anything he could have done at that point. Before, when the attacks on John had first started, Sax might have been able to talk him into another assignment, gotten him some bodyguards, or, since John would never have accepted that, hired some bodyguards to follow him in secret, to protect him while his friends froze and stared in shocked witness. But he hadn't hired anyone. And so his brother had been killed, his brother who had laughed at him but who had loved him as well, loved him before anyone else thought of him at all.
Sax wandered over the fractured plain, distraught--- distraught at the loss of a friend 153 years before. Sometimes it seemed there was no such thing as time.
• • •
Then he stopped short, brought back to the present by the sight of life. Small white rodents, sniffing around on the green of a sunken meadow. They were no doubt snow pika or something like, but in their whiteness they looked enough like lab rats to give Sax a start. White lab rats, yes, but tailless--- mutant lab rats, yes--- free at last, out of their cages and into the world, wandering over the intense green meadow grass like surreal hallucinatory objects, all ablink and sniff-whiskered as they checked out the ground between grass clumps for tasties. Munching away on seeds and nuts and flowers. John had been greatly amused at the myth of Sax as the hundred lab rats. Sax's mind, now free and scattered. This is our body.
He crouched and watched the little rodents until he got cold. There were greater creatures out on that plain, and they always stopped him short: deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, reindeer, caribou, black bear, grizzly bear--- even packs of wolves, like swift gray shadows--- and all to Sax like citizens out of a dream, so that every time he spotted even a single creature he felt startled, disconnected, even stunned; it did not seem possible; it was certainly not natural. Yet here they were. And now these little snow pika, happy in their oasis. Not nature, not culture: just Mars.
He thought of Ann. He wanted her to see them.
He often thought of her these days. So many of his friends were dead now, but Ann was alive, he could still talk to her, it was at least possible. He had looked into the matter, and found that she now lived in the caldera of Olympus Mons, as part of the small community of red climbers that occupied it. Apparently they took turns in the caldera, to keep the population low despite the big holes' steep walls and primeval conditions, both so attractive to them. But Ann stayed as long as she liked, Sax had heard, and only left infrequently. This was what Peter had told him, although Peter had only heard it secondhand. Sad how those two were estranged; pointless; but family estrangements seemed to be the most intransigent of all.
Anyway, she was on Olympus Mons. Therefore almost in sight, just over the horizon to the south. And he wanted to talk to her. All his reflections on what happened to Mars, he thought, were framed as an internal conversation with Ann. Not so much as an argument, or so he hoped, but as an endless persuasion. If he could be so changed by the reality of blue Mars, could not Ann as well? Was it not almost inevitable, even necessary? Might it have already happened? Sax felt he had come over the years to love what Ann loved in Mars; and now he wanted her to reciprocate, if possible. She had become for him, in a most uncomfortable way, his measure of the worth of what they had done. The worth, or the acceptability. It was a strange feeling to have settled in him, but there it was.
Another uncomfortable lump in his mind, like the suddenly rediscovered guilt about John's death, which he would try again to forget. If he could blank out on the interesting thoughts he ought to be able to blank out on the awful ones, oughtn't he? John had died, and nothing Sax could have done would have prevented it. Very probably. There was no way to say. And no way to go back. John had been killed and Sax had failed to help him; and here they were, Sax alive and John dead, nothing now but a powerful node-and-network system in the minds of all the people who had known him. And nothing to be done.
But Ann was alive, up there climbing the caldera walls of Olympus. He could talk to her if he wanted. Although she would not come out. He would have to hunt her down. But he could do it, that was the thing. The real sting of John's death lay in the death of that chance; he could no longer talk to him. But he could still talk to Ann, the chance existed.
• • •
Work on the anamnestic package continued. Acheron was a joy that way: days in the labs, talking with the lab directors about their experiments and seeing if he could help. Weekly seminars, where they got together in front of the screens and shared their results, and talked about what they meant and what they might try next. People interrupted their work to help with the farm, or do other business or go on trips; but others were there to fill in, and when people came back they often had new ideas, and always had a new charge of energy. Sax sat in the seminar rooms after the weekly roundups, looking at the coffee cups and the rings of brown coffee and black kava stains on the battered wooden tabletops, the white shiny blackboard screens covered with schemata and chemical diagrams and big looping arrows pointing to acronyms and alchemical symbols that Michel would have loved, and something inside him would glow till it hurt, some parasympathetic reaction spilling out of his limbic system--- now thiswas science, by God, this was Martian science, in the hands of the scientists themselves, working together for some collective goal that made sense, that was for the common good; pushing at the edge of what they knew, theory and experiment bouncing back and forth like a blur of Ping-Pong balls, week after week finding out more, going after more, extending the great invisible parthenon right out into the uncharted territory of the human mind, into life itself. It made him so happy that he almost didn't care if they ever figured things out; the search was all.
But his short-term memory was damaged. He was experiencing blankouts and tip-of-the-tongueism every day; sometimes in the seminars he had to stop midsentence, almost, and sit down and wave at the others, asking them to go on; and they would nod and the person at the blackboard would continue. No, he needed the solution to this one. There would be other puzzles to pursue afterward, without any doubt; the quick decline itself, for instance, or any of the rest of the senescence problem. No, there was no lack of the unexplainable to work on, and never would be. Meanwhile, the problem of the anamnestic was hard enough.
The outlines of it were coming clear, however. One part of it would be a drug cocktail, a mixture of protein-synthesis enhancers, including even amphetamines and chemical relatives of strychnine, and then transmitters like serotonin, glutamate receptor sensitizers, cholinesterase, cyclic AMP, and so on. All of these would be there to help in different ways to reinforce the memory structures when they were rehearsed. Others would be included from the general brain plasticity treatment that Sax had received in the period following his stroke, at much smaller doses. Then it seemed from the experiments in electrical stimulation that a stimulus shock, followed by a continuous oscillation at very rapid frequencies phased with the subject's natural brain waves, would serve to initiate the neurochemical processes augmented by the drug package. After that subjects would have to direct the work of remembering as best they could, perhaps moving from node to node if possible, with the idea that as each node was recalled, the network surrounding the node would then be flushed by the oscillations and reinforced accordingly. Moving from room to room in the theater of memory, in essence. Experiments with all these various aspects of the process were being run on volunteer subjects, often the young native experimenters themselves; they were remembering a great many things, they said with a kind of stunned awe, and the overall prospect was looking more and more promising. Week by week they honed their techniques, and homed in on a process.
For the work of recollection to best succeed, it was becoming clear from the experiments that context was an important component. Lists memorized underwater in diving suits could be recalled much better when the subjects returned to the seafloor than when they tried to remember them on land. Subjects hypnotically induced to feel happy or sad during memorization of a list were better at remembering the list when again hypnotized to feel happy or sad. Congruence of items in the lists helped, as did returning to rooms of the same size or color when remembering them. These were of course all very crude experiments, but the link between context and power of recollection was demonstrated by them strongly enough to cause Sax to think hard about where he might want to try the treatment when they finalized it; where, and with whom.
For the final work on the treatment Sax called up Bao Shuyo and asked her to come join them in Acheron for some consulations. Again, her work was much more theoretical, and very much more fine-grained, but after her work with the fusion group in Da Vinci, he had a healthy respect for her ability to help in any problem that involved quantum gravity and the ultramicrostructure of matter. Just to have her run through what they had done and comment on it would be valuable, he was sure.
Unfortunately, Bao's obligations in Da Vinci were heavy, as they had been ever since her much-heralded return from Dorsa Brevia. Sax was put in the unusual position of manipulating his home labs in order to extricate one of their best theorists, but he did it without compunction, getting Bela's help to put the arm on the current administration, to twist their arms as hard as ever he could. "Ka, Sax," Bela exclaimed during one call, "I never would have guessed that you would turn out to be such a fierce headhunter."
"It's my own head I'm hunting," Sax replied.
Usually tracking someone down was as simple as contacting their wristpad, and looking to see where the person was. Ann's wristpad, however, had been left on the rim of the Olympus Mons caldera, at the descent station near the festival grounds at Crater Zp. This struck Sax as peculiar, since they had worn wristpads of some kind or another since the very beginning in Underhill, Ann as much as anyone, as he recalled. Hadn't she? He called Peter to ask, but Peter did not know, of course, having been born well after the Underhill years. In any case, to go without a wristpad now was to borrow a behavior from the neoprimitive nomads wandering the canyonlands and the North Sea coast--- not a lifestyle he would have expected Ann to take any interest in. One couldn't live in anything like the Paleolithic style up on Olympus Mons, indeed it required the kind of continuous technological support that was no longer necessary in most places, with wristpads an integral part of it. Perhaps she only wanted to get away. Peter didn't know.
But he did know how to contact her: "You have to go in and find her."
At Sax's expression he laughed. "It isn't so bad. There's only a couple hundred people in the caldera, and when they're not staying in one of their huts, they're on the cliff walls."
"She's become a climber?"
"Yes."
"She climbs for--- for recreation?"
"She climbs. Don't ask me why."
"So I just go look at all the cliffs?"
"That's how I had to do it when Marion died."
• • •
The summit of Olympus Mons had for the most part been left alone. Oh there were a few low boulder hermitages on rim overlooks, and a piste had been built on the northeast lava flow that broke the escarpment ring surrounding the volcano, for easy access to the festival complex at Crater Zp; but other than that, there was nothing to show what had happened to the rest of Mars, which from the rim of the caldera was entirely invisible, under the horizon of the encircling escarpment. From its rim Olympus Mons appeared to be the world entire. The local Reds had decided against putting a protective molecular dome over the caldera, something they had done over Arsia Mons; so no doubt there were bacteria, and perhaps some lichens that had blown over on winds and floated down into the caldera and survived; but at pressures little higher than the original ten millibars, they were not going to flourish. Probably the survivors were mostly endochasmoliths, so there would be no sign of them. It was a lucky thing for the Red project that Mars's stupendous vertical scale kept air pressures so low on the big volcanoes; a free and effective sterilization technique.
Sax took the train up to Zp, and then a car on up to the rim, a taxi van driven by the Reds who controlled access into the caldera. The car came to the edge of the rim, and Sax looked down.
The caldera was multiringed, and big: ninety kilometers by sixty, about the same size as Luxembourg, Sax recalled hearing. The main central circle, by far the largest, was marred by overlapping smaller circles to the northeast, center, and south. The southernmost circle cut in half a slightly older, higher circle to the southeast; the meeting of these three arcuate walls was considered one of the finest climbing areas on the planet, Sax was told, with the greatest height anywhere in the caldera, a drop from 26 kilometers above the datum (they used the old term rather than sea level) down to 22.5 kilometers on the southernmost crater floor. A ten-thousand-foot cliff, the young Coloradoan in Sax mused.
The floor of the main caldera was marked by a great number of curving fault patterns, concentric with the caldera walls: arcing ridges and canyons, across which ran some straighter escarpments. These features were all explicable, they had been caused by recurrent caldera collapses following the sideslope drainage of magma from the main chamber under the volcano; but as he looked down from their perch on the rim, it seemed to Sax a mysterious mountain--- a world of its own--- nothing visible but the vast embayed rim, and the five thousand square kilometers of the caldera. Ring on ring of high curved walls and flat round floors, under a black starry sky. Nowhere were the encircling cliffs less than a thousand meters tall. As a rule they were not completely vertical; their average slope appeared to be just steeper than forty-five degrees. But there were steeper sections all over the place. No doubt the climbers flocked to the very steepest sections, given the nature of their interest. There looked to be some very vertical faces out there, even an overhang or two, as right under them, over the confluence of the three walls.
OLYMPUS MONS CALDERA
• • •
"I'm looking for Ann Clayborne," Sax said to the drivers, who were rapt with the view. "Do you know where I could find her?"
"You don't know where she is?" one asked.
"I've heard she's climbing in the Olympus caldera."
"Does she know you're looking for her?"
"No. She's not answering her calls."
"Does she know you?"
"Oh yes. We're old--- friends."
"And who are you?"
"Sax Russell."
They stared at him. One said, "Old friends, eh?"
Her companion elbowed her.
They called the spot they were at Three Walls, sensibly enough. Directly under their car, on a little slump terrace, there was an elevator station. Sax peered at it through binoculars: outer-lock doors, reinforced roofing--- it could have been a structure from the early years. The elevator was the only way down into this part of the caldera, if you did not care to rappel.
"Ann resupplies at Marion Station," the elbower finally said, shocking her codriver. "See it, there? That square dot, where the lava channels from the main floor cut down into South Circle."
This was on the opposite rim of the southernmost circle, which Sax's map named "6." Sax had trouble making out any square dot, even with the binocular's magnification. But then he saw it--- a tiny block just a bit too regular to be natural, although it had been painted the rusty gray of the local basalt. "I see it. How do I get there?"
"Take the elevator down, then walk on over."
• • •
So he showed the elevator attendants the pass the elbower had given him, and took the long elevator ride down the wall of South Circle. The elevator ran on a track affixed to the cliffside, and it had windows; it was like dropping in a helicopter, or coming down the last bit of the space elevator over Sheffield. By the time he got down to the caldera floor it was late afternoon; he checked into the spartan lodge at the bottom and ate a big leisurely dinner, thinking from time to time what he might say to Ann. It came to him, slowly: a coherent and it seemed convincing self-explication, or confession, or cri de coeur, piece by piece. Then to his great chagrin he blanked the whole thing. And there he was on the floor of a volcanic caldera, the blinkered circle of sky dark and starry above. On Olympus. Searching for Ann Clayborne, with nothing to say to her. Very chagrined.
The next morning after breakfast, he pushed his way into a walker. Although the materials were improved, the elastic fabric necessarily clasped the limbs and torso just as tightly as their old suits had. Strange how the kinetics of it evoked trains of thought, flashes of memory: the look of Underhill as they were building the foursquare dome; even a kind of somatic epiphany, which seemed to be a recollection of his very first walk out of the landing craft, with the surprise of the close horizons and the textured pink of the sky. Context and memory, again.
He walked out across the floor of South Circle. This morning the sky was a dark indigo very near black--- marine blue, the chart said, an odd choice of name considering how dark it was. Many stars were visible. The horizon was a round cliff, rising on all sides: the southern semicircle three kilometers tall, the northeast quadrant two kilometers, the northwest quadrant one kilometer only, and shattered. Astonishing sight, actually--- the roundness of it. Thermodynamics of cooling rock in magma chambers, magma throats. Out in the middle the encircling walls were a dizzying sight. The walls looked much the same height in all directions, a textbook example of foreshortening's ability to telescope the perception of vertical distances.
He tromped on at a steady pace. The caldera floor was fairly smooth, pocked by occasional lava bombs and late meteor hits, and curving shallow grabens. Some of these had to be circumvented, a beautifully apt word in this case, as they were circumvents, he was circumventing. But for the most part he could tramp directly toward the broken spill of cliff in the northwest quadrant of the caldera.
It took six hours of steady walking to cross the floor of South Circle, which was less than ten percent of the caldera complex's total area--- all the rest of which was invisible to him for the entire hike. No sign of life, nor of any disturbance to the caldera floor or walls; the atmosphere was visibly thin, everything equally sharp to the eye, right around the primal ten millibars, he judged. The untouched nature of things made him feel uncertain about even his bootprints, and he tried to step on hard rock, and avoid dust patches. It was strangely satisfying to see the primal landscape--- quite reddish--- though the color was mostly an overlay on dark basalt. His color chart was not good at odd mixes.
Sax had never descended into one of the big calderas before. And even many years spent inside impact craters did not prepare one, he found--- for the depth of the chambers, the steepness of the walls, the flatness of the floor. The sheer size of things.
Midafternoon he approached the foot of the northwest arc of the wall. The meeting of wall and floor came up over his horizon, and to his slight relief, the block shelter appeared directly before him; his APS setting had been quite accurate. Not a complicated bit of navigation, but in such an exposed place it was pleasant to be precisely on line. Ever since his experience in the storm so long ago, he had been a bit wary about getting lost. Although there would be no storms up here.
As he approached the hut's lock doors, a group of people appeared from out of the bottom of a stupendously huge steep gully in the vast broken cliff face, debouching onto the crater floor about a kilometer to the west of the refuge. Four figures, carrying big packs on their backs. Sax stopped, the sound of his breath loud in his helmet: he recognized the last figure immediately. Ann was coming in to resupply. Now he was going to have to think of something to say. And then remember it too.
• • •
Inside the hut Sax unclipped his helmet and took it off, feeling a familiar but most unwelcome tension in his stomach as he did. Every meeting with Ann it got worse. He turned around and waited. Finally Ann came in, and took off her helmet, and saw him. She started as if she were seeing a ghost. "Sax?" she cried.
He nodded. He remembered when they had last met; long ago, on Da Vinci Island; it felt like a previous life. He had lost his tongue.
Ann shook her head, smiled to herself. She crossed the room with an expression he couldn't read, and held his arms in her two hands, and leaned forward and kissed his cheek gently. When she pulled back, one of her hands continued to clutch his left arm, sliding down to the wrist. She was staring right into him, and her grip was like metal. Sax was speechless again, although he very much wanted to speak. But there was nothing to say, or too much, he couldn't even tell which it was; his tongue was again paralyzed. That hand on his wrist; it was more incapacitating than any glare or cutting remark had ever been.
A wave seemed to pass through her, and she became somewhat more the Ann he knew, looking at him suspiciously, then with alarm. "Everyone's okay?"
"Yes yes," Sax said. "I mean--- you heard about Michel?"
"Yes." Her mouth tightened, for a second she became the black Ann of his dreams. Then another wave passed through her, and she was this new stranger, still clutching his wrist as if trying to snip his hand off. "But now you're just here to see me."
"Yes. I wanted to"--- he searched wildly for a finish to the sentence--- ". . . to talk! Yes--- to, to, to, to, to ask you some questions. I'm having some trouble with my memory. I wondered if I, if we could travel up here, and talk. Hike"--- he gulped---"or climb. You could show me some of the caldera?"
She was smiling. Again it was some other Ann. "You can climb with me if you want."
"I'm not a climber."
"We'll go up an easy route. Up Wang's Gully, and over the great circle to north circle, I've wanted to get up there while it's still summer anyway."
"It's Ls 200, actually. But I mean, it sounds good." His heart was beating at about 150 beats a minute.
• • •
Ann had all the equipment they needed, it turned out. The next morning, as they were suiting up, she said to him, "Here, take that off." Pointing at his wristpad.
"Oh dear," Sax said. "I--- isn't it really part of the suit's system?"
It was, but she shook her head. "The suit is autonomous."
"Semiautonomous, I hope."
She smiled. "Yes. But no wristpad is necessary. Look--- that thing connects you to the whole world. It's your manacle to spacetime. Today let's just be in Wang's Gully. It will be enough."
It was enough. Wang's Gully was a broad weathered chute, cutting up through steeper cliff ridges like a giant shattered culvert. Most of the day Sax followed Ann up smaller gullies within the body of this larger one, scrambling up waist-high steps, using his hands most of the time, but seldom with the feeling that a fall would kill him, or do much more than sprain an ankle. "This isn't as dangerous as I thought it would be," he said. "Is this the kind of climbing you always do?"
"This isn't climbing at all."
"Ah."
So she went up slopes steeper than this. Taking risks that were, strictly speaking, unjustifiable.
And indeed, in the afternoon they came to a short wall, cut by horizontal fissures; Ann began to climb it, without ropes or pitons, and gritting his teeth, Sax followed. Near the top of a geckolike ascent, with his boot tips and gloved fingers all jammed into small cracks, he looked back down Wang's Gully, which suddenly seemed very much steeper in its entirety than it had in any given section, and all his muscles began to quiver with some kind of fatigued excitation. Nothing for it but to finish the pitch; but he had to risk his position time after time as he hurried higher, the holds getting slimmer just as he was becoming of necessity hastier. The basalt was very slightly pitted, its dark gray tinged rust or sienna; he found himself hyperfocused on one crack over a meter above his eye level; he was going to have to use that crack; was it deep enough for his fingertips to gain any purchase? He had to try to find out. So he took a deep breath and reached up and tried, and as it turned out it was not really deep enough at all; but with a quick pull, groaning involuntarily at the effort, he was up and past it, using holds he never even consciously saw; and then he was on his hands and knees next to Ann, breathing very heavily. She sat serenely on a narrow ledge.
"Try to use your legs more," she suggested.
"Ah."
"Got your attention, did it?"
"Yes."
"No memory problems, I trust?"
"No."
"That's what I like about climbing."
Later that day, when the gully had lain back a bit, and opened up, Sax said, "So have you been having memory problems?"
"Let's talk about that later," Ann said. "Pay attention to this crack here."
"Indeed."
• • •
That night they lay in sleeping bags, in a clear mushroom tent big enough to hold ten. At this altitude, with its superthin atmosphere, it was impressive to consider the strength of the tent fabric, holding in 450 millibars of air with no sign of untoward bulging at any point; the clear material was nice and taut, but not rock hard; no doubt it was holding many bars of air less than would test its holding capacity. When Sax recalled the meters of rock and sandbags they had had to pile on their earliest habitats to keep them from exploding, he couldn't help but be impressed by the subsequent advancements in materials science.
Ann nodded when he spoke of this. "We've moved beyond our ability to understand our technology."
"Well. It's understandable, I think. Just hard to believe."
"I suppose I see the distinction," she said easily.
Feeling more comfortable, he brought up memory again. "I've been having what I call blankouts, where I can't remember my thoughts of the previous several minutes, or up to say an hour. Short-term-memory failures, having to do with brain-wave fluctuations, apparently. And the longterm past is getting very uncertain as well, I'm afraid."
For a long time she didn't reply, except to grunt that she'd heard him. Then:
"I've forgotten my whole self. I think there's someone else in me now. In partway. A kind of opposite. My shadow, or the shadow of my shadow. Seeded, and growing inside me."
"How do you mean?" Sax said apprehensively.
"An opposite. She thinks just what I wouldn't have thought." She turned her head away, as if shy. "I call her Counter-Ann."
"And how would you--- characterize her?"
"She is . . . I don't know. Emotional. Sentimental. Stupid. Cries at the sight of a flower. Feels that everyone is doing their best. Crap like that."
"You weren't like that before, at all?"
"No no no. It's all crap. But I feel it as though it's real. So . . . now there's Ann and Counter-Ann. And . . . maybe a third."
"A third?"
"I think so. Something that isn't either of the other two."
"And what do you--- I mean, do you call that one anything?"
"No. She doesn't have a name. She's elusive. Younger. Fewer ideas about things, and those ideas are--- strange. Not Ann or Counter-Ann. Somewhat like that Zo, did you know her?"
"Yes," Sax said, surprised. "I liked her."
"Did you? I thought she was awful. And yet . . . there's something like that in me as well. Three people."
"It's an odd way to think of it."
She laughed. "Aren't you the one who had a mental lab that contained all your memories, filed by room and cabinet number or something?"
"That was a very effective system."
She laughed again, harder. It made him grin to hear it. Though he was frightened too. Three Anns? Even one had been more than he could understand.
"But I'm losing some of those labs," he said. "Whole units of my past. Some people model memory as a node-and-network system, so it's possible the palace-of-memory method intuitively echoes the physical system involved. But if you somehow lose the node, the whole network around it goes too. So, I'll run across a reference in the literature to something I did, for instance, and try to recall doing it, what methodological problems we had or whatever, and the whole, the whole era will just refuse to come to me. As if it never happened."
"A problem with the palace."
"Yes. I didn't anticipate it. Even after my--- my incident--- I was sure nothing would ever happen to my ability to--- to think."
"You still seem to think okay."
Sax shook his head, recalling the blankouts, the gaps in memory, the presque vus as Michel had called them, the confusions. Thinking was not just analytical or cognitive ability, but something more general. . . . He tried to describe what had been happening to him recently, and Ann seemed to be listening closely. "So you see, I've been looking at the recent work being done on memory. It's gotten interesting--- pressing, really. And Ursula and Marina and the Acheron labs have been helping me. And I think they've worked out something that might help us."
"A memory drug, you mean?"
"Yes." He explained the action of the new anamnestic complex. "So. My notion is to try it. But I've become convinced that it will work best if a number of the First Hundred gathered at Underhill, and take it together. Context is very important to recollection, and the sight of each other might help. Not everyone is interested, but a surprising number of the remaining First Hundred are, actually."
"Not so surprising. Who?"
He named everyone he had contacted. It was, sad to admit, most of them left; a dozen or so. "And all of us would like it if you were there too. I know I would like it more than anything."
"It sounds interesting," Ann said. "But first we have to cross this caldera."
• • •
Walking over the rock, Sax was amazed anew by the stony reality of their world. The fundamentals: rock, sand, dust, fines. Dark chocolate sky, on this day, and no stars. The long distances with no blurring to define them. The stretch of ten minutes. The length of an hour when one was only walking. The feeling in one's legs.
And there were the rings of the calderas around them, jutting far into the sky even when the two walkers were out in the center of the central circle, out where the later, deeper calderas appeared as big embayments in a single wall's roundness. Out here the planet's sharp curvature had no effect on one's perspective, the curve was for once invisible, the cliffs free and clear even thirty kilometers away. The net effect, it seemed to Sax, was of a kind of enclosure. A park, a stone garden, a maze with only one wall separating it from the world beyond, the world which, though invisible, conditioned everything here. The caldera was big but not big enough. You couldn't hide here. The world poured in and overflowed the mind, no matter its hundred-trillion-bit capacity. No matter how big the neural array there was still just a single thread of awed mentation, consciousness itself, a living wire of thought saying rock, cliff, sky, star.
• • •
The rock became heavily cracked by fissures, each one an arc of a circle with its center point back in the middle of the central circle: old cracks relative to the big new holes of the north and south circles, old cracks filled with rubble and dust. These rock crevasses made their walk into a wandering ramble--- in a real maze now, a maze with crevasses rather than walls, yet just as difficult of passage as a walled one.
But they threaded it, and finally reached the rim of north circle, number 2 on Sax's map. Looking down into it gave them a new perspective--- a proper shape to the caldera and its circular embayments, a sudden drop to a heretofore hidden floor, a thousand meters below.
Apparently there was a climbing route down onto the floor of north circle; but when Ann saw the look on his face as she pointed it out--- achievable only by rappelling--- she laughed. They would only have to climb up out of it again, she said easily, and the main caldera wall was already tall enough. They could hike around north circle to another route instead.
Surprised by this flexibility, and thankful for it, Sax followed her around the north circle on its west circumference. Under the great wall of the main caldera they stopped for the night, popped the tent, ate in silence.
After sunset Phobos shot up over the western wall of the caldera like a little gray flare. Fear and dread, what names.
"I heard that putting the moons back in orbit was your idea?" Ann said from her sleeping bag.
"Yes, it was."
"Now that's what I call landscape restoration," she said, sounding pleased.
Sax felt a little glow. "I wanted to please you."
After a silence: "I like seeing them."
"And how did you like Miranda?"
"Oh, it was very interesting." She talked about some of the geological features of the odd moon. Two planetesimals, impacted, joined together imperfectly. . . .
"There's a color between red and green," Sax said when it appeared she was done talking about Miranda. "A mixture of the two. Madder alizarin, it's sometimes called. You see it in plants sometimes."
"Uh-huhn."
"It makes me think of the political situation. If there couldn't be some kind of red-green synthesis."
"Browns."
"Yes. Or alizarins."
"I thought that's what this Free Mars-Red coalition was, Irishka and the people who tossed out Jackie."
"An anti-immigration coalition," Sax said. "The wrong kind of red-green combination. In that they're embroiling us in a conflict with Earth that isn't necessary."
"No?"
"No. The population problem is soon going to be eased. The issei--- we're hitting the limit, I think. And the nisei aren't far behind."
"Quick decline, you mean."
"Exactly. When it gets our generation, and the one after, the human population of the solar system will be less than half what it is now."
"Then they'll figure out a different way to screw it up."
"No doubt. But it won't be the Hypermalthusian Age anymore. It'll be their problem. So, worrying so much about immigration, to the point of causing conflict, threatening interplanetary war . . . it just isn't necessary. It's shortsighted. If there was a red movement on Mars pointing that out, offering to help Earth through the last of the surge years, it might keep people from killing each other, needlessly. It would be a new way of thinking about Mars."
"A new areophany."
"Yes. That's what Maya called it."
She laughed. "But Maya is crazy."
"Why no," Sax said sharply. "She certainly is not."
Ann said no more, and Sax did not press the issue. Phobos moved visibly across the sky, backward through the zodiac.
They slept well. The next day they made an arduous climb up a steep gully in the wall, which apparently Ann and the other red climbers considered the walker's route out. Sax had never had such a hard day's work in his life; and even so they didn't make it all the way out, but had to pitch the tent in haste at sunset, on a narrow ledge, and finish their emergence the following day, around noon.
• • •
On the great rim of Olympus Mons, all was as before. A giant cored circle of flat land; the violet sky in a band around the horizon so far below, a black zenith above; little hermitages scattered in boulder ejecta that had been hollowed out. A separate world. Part of blue Mars, but not.
The hut they stopped at first was inhabited by very old red mendicants of some sort, apparently living there while waiting for the quick decline to strike them, after which their bodies would be cremated, and the ashes cast into the thin jet stream.
This struck Sax as overfatalistic. Ann apparently was likewise unimpressed: "All right," she said, watching them eat their meager meal. "Let's go try this memory treatment then."
Many of the First Hundred argued for sites other than Underhill, arguing in a way that they didn't even recognize as part of their group nature; but Sax was adamant, shrugging off requests for Olympus Mons, low orbit, Pseudophobos, Sheffield, Odessa, Hell's Gate, Sabishii, Senzeni Na, Acheron, the south polar cap, Mangala, and on the high seas. He insisted that the setting for such a procedure was a critical factor, as experiments on context had proved. Coyote brayed most inappropriately at his description of the experiment with students in scuba gear learning word lists on the floor of the North Sea, but data were data, and given the data, why not do their experiment in the place where they would get the best results? The stakes were high enough to justify doing everything they could to get it right. After all, Sax pointed out, if their memories were returned to them intact, anything might be possible--- anything--- breakthroughs on other fronts, a defeat of the quick decline, health that lasted centuries more, an ever-expanding community of garden worlds, from thence perhaps up again in some emergent phase change to a higher level of progress, into some realm of wisdom that could not even be imagined at this point--- they teetered on the edge of some such golden age, Sax told them. But it all depended on wholeness of mind. Nothing could continue without wholeness of mind. And so he insisted on Underhill.
"You're too sure," Marina complained; she had been arguing for Acheron. "You have to keep more of an open mind about things."
"Yes yes." Keep an open mind. This was easy for Sax, his mind was a lab that had burned down. Now he stood in the open air. And no one could refute the logic of Underhill, not Marina nor any of the rest of them. Those who objected were afraid, he thought--- afraid of the power of the past. They did not want to acknowledge that power over them, they did not want to give themselves fully over to it. But that was what they needed to do. Certainly Michel would have supported the choice of Underhill, had he been still among them. Place was crucial, all their lives had served to show that. And even the people dubious, or skeptical, or afraid--- i.e. all of them--- had to admit that Underhill was the appropriate place, given what they were trying to do.
So in the end they agreed to meet there.
• • •
At this point Underhill was a kind of museum, kept in the state it had been in in 2138, the last year it had been a functioning piste stop. This meant that it did not look exactly as it had in the years of their occupancy, but the older parts were all still there, so the changes since wouldn't affect their project much, Sax judged. After his arrival with several others he took a walk around to see, and there the old buildings all were: the original four habitats, dropped whole from space; their junk heaps; Nadia's square of barrel vault chambers, with their domed center; Hiroko's greenhouse framework, its enclosing bubble gone; Nadia's trench arcade off to the northwest; Chernobyl; the salt pyramids; and finally the Alchemist's Quarter, where Sax ended his walk, wandering around in the warren of buildings and pipes, trying to ready himself for the next day's experience. Trying for an open mind.
Already his memory was seething, as if trying to prove that it needed no help to do its work. Here among these buildings he had first witnessed the transformative power of technology over the blank materiality of nature; they had started with just rocks and gases, really, and from that they had extracted and purified and transformed and recombined and shaped, in so many different ways that no one person could keep good track of them all, nor even imagine their effect. So he had seen but he had not understood: and they had acted perpetually in ignorance of their true powers, and with (perhaps as a result) very little sense of what they were trying for. But there in the Alchemist's Quarter, he hadn't been able to see that. He had been so sure that the world made green would be a fine place.
Now here he stood in the open, head free under a blue sky, in the heat of second August, looking around and trying to think, to remember. It was hard to direct the memory; things simply occurred to him. The objects in the old part of town felt distinctly familiar, as in the word's root meaning "of the family." Even the individual red stones and boulders around the settlement, and all the bumps and hollows in view, were perfectly familiar, all still in their proper places on the compass flower. Prospects for the experiment seemed very good to Sax; they were in their place, in their context, situated, oriented. At home.
He returned to the square of barrel vaults, where they were going to stay. Some cars had driven in during his walk, and some little excursion trains were parked on the sidings next to the piste. People were arriving. There were Maya and Nadia, hugging Tasha and Andrea, who had arrived together; their voices rang in the air like a Russian opera, like recitative on the edge of bursting into song. Of the hundred and one they had begun with, there were only fourteen of them going to show up: Sax, Ann, Maya, Nadia, Desmond, Ursula, Marina, Vasili, George, Edvard, Roger, Mary, Dmitri, Andrea. Not so many, but it was every one of them still alive and in contact with the world; all the rest were dead, or missing. If Hiroko and the other seven of the First Hundred who had disappeared with her were still alive, they had sent no word. Perhaps they would show up unannounced, as they had at John's first festival on Olympus. Perhaps not.
So they were fourteen. Thus reduced, Underhill seemed underoccupied; though all of it was theirs to spread out in, they yet crowded together into the south wing of the barrel vaults. Nevertheless the emptiness of the rest of it was palpable. It was as if the place itself was an image of their failing memories, with their lost labs and lost lands and lost companions. Every single one of them was suffering from memory losses and disorders of one sort or another--- between them they had experienced almost all the problems in mentation mentioned in the literature, as far as Sax could tell, and a good bit of their conversation was taken up in comparative symptomatology, in the recounting of various terrifying and/or sublime experiences that had afflicted them in the last decade. It made them jocular and somber by turns, as they milled around that evening in the little barrelvault kitchen in the southwest corner, with its high window looking out onto the floor of the central greenhouse, still under its thick glass dome, in its muted light. They ate a picnic dinner brought in coolers, talking, catching up, then spreading along the south wing, preparing the upstairs bedrooms for an uneasy night. They stayed up as late as they could, talking and talking; but eventually they gave up, in ones and twos, and tried to sleep. Several times that night Sax woke from dreams, and heard people stumbling down to the bathrooms, or whispering conversations in the kitchen, or muttering to themselves in the troubled sleep of the aged. Each time he managed to slip back under again, into a light dream-filled sleep of his own.
Finally morning came. They were up at dawn; in the horizontal light they ate a quick breakfast, fruit and croissants and bread and coffee. Long shadows cast west from every rock and hillock. So familiar.
Then they were ready. There was nothing else to do. There was a kind of collective deep breath--- uneasy laughter--- an inability to meet the others' eyes.
Maya, however, was still refusing to take the treatment. She was unswayed by every argument they tried. "I won't," she had said over and over the night before. "You'll need a keeper in any case, in case you go crazy. I'll do that."
Sax had thought she would change her mind, that she was just being Maya. Now he stood before her, baffled. "I thought you were having the worst memory troubles of all."
"Perhaps."
"So it would make sense to try this treatment. Michel gave you lots of different drugs for mental trouble."
"I don't want to," she said, looking him in the eye.
He sighed. "I don't understand you, Maya."
"I know."
And she went into the old med clinic in the corner, and took on her role as their keeper for the day. Everything in there was ready, and she called them in one by one, and took up little ultrasound injectors and put them to their necks, and with a little click-hiss administered one part of the drug package, and gave them the pills that contained the rest of it, and then helped them insert the earplugs that were custom-designed for each of them, to broadcast the silent electromagnetic waves. In the kitchen they waited for everyone to finish their preparations, in a nervous silence. When they were all done Maya ushered them to the door and guided them outside. And they were off.
• • •
Sax saw and felt an image: bright lights, a feeling of his skull being crushed, choking, gasping, spitting. Chill air and his mother's voice, like an animal's yelp, "Oh? Oh? Oh! Oh!" Then lying wet on her chest, cold.
"Oh my."
• • •
The hippocampus was one of several specific brain regions that had been very strongly stimulated by the treatment. This meant that his limbic system, spread under the hippocampus like a net under a walnut, was likewise stimulated, as if the nut were bouncing up and down on a trampoline of nerves, causing the trampoline to resonate or even to jangle. Thus Sax felt the start of what would no doubt be a flood of emotions--- registering not any single emotion, he noted, but many at once and at nearly the same intensity, and free of any cause--- joy, grief, love, hate, exhilaration, melancholy, hope, fear, generosity, jealousy--- many of which of course did not match with their opposite or with most of the others present in him. The result of this overcrowded mix, for Sax at any rate, sitting on a bench outside the barrel vault, breathing hard, was a kind of adrenalized breath-stopping growth in his sensation of significance. A suffusion of meaning through everything--- it was heartbreaking, or heart filling--- as if oceans of clouds were stuffed in his chest, so that he could scarcely breathe--- a kind of nostalgia to the nth power, a fullness, even bliss--- pure sublimity--- just sitting there, just the fact that they were alive! But all of it with a sharp edge of loss, with regret for lost time, with fear of death, fear of everything, grief for Michel, for John, for all of them really. This was so unlike Sax's usual calm, steady, one might even say phlegmatic state, that he was almost incapacitated; he could not move well, and for several minutes he bitterly regretted ever initiating any such experiment as this. It was very foolish--- idiotically foolhardy--- no doubt everyone would hate him forever.
Stunned, nearly overwhelmed, he decided to try to walk, to see if that would clear his head. He found he could walk; push off the bench, stand, balance, walk, avoiding others who were wandering by in their own worlds, as oblivious to him as he was to them, everyone getting past each other like objects to be avoided. And then he was out in the open space of the Underhill environs, out in the chilly morning breeze, walking toward the salt pyramids, under a strangely blue sky.
He stopped and looked around--- considered--- grunted in surprise, came to a halt--- could not walk. For all of a sudden he could remember everything.
• • •
Not everything everything. He could not recall what he had had for breakfast on 2 August 13 in 2029, for instance; that was in accord with experiments which suggested that daily habitual activities were not differentiated enough on entrainment to allow for individual recall. But as a class . . .in the late 2020s he had started his days back in the barrel vault, at the southeast corner, where he had shared an upstairs bedroom with Hiroko, Evgenia, Rya, and Iwao. Experiments, incidents, conversations flickered in his mind as he saw that bedroom in his mind's eye. A node in timespace, vibrating a whole network of days. Rya's pretty back across the room as she washed under her arms. Things people said that hurt in their carelessness. Vlad talking about clipping genes. He and Vlad had stood out here together on this very spot, in their very first minute on Mars, looking around at everything without a word for each other, just absorbing the gravity and the pink of the sky and the close horizons, looking just as they looked now, so many years later: areological time, as slow and long as the great systolis itself. In the walkers one had felt hollow. Chernobyl had required more concrete than could be cured in the thin dry cold air. Nadia had fixed it somehow, how? Heating it, that's right. Nadia had fixed a lot of things in those years--- the barrel vaults, the manufactories, the arcade--- who would have suspected a person so quiet on the Ares would prove so competent and energetic? He hadn't remembered that Ares impression of her for ages. She had been so pained when Tatiana Durova was killed by a falling crane, it was a shock to them all, all except Michel, who had been revealed as amazingly dissociated by the disaster, their first death. Would Nadia remember that now? Yes, she would if she thought about it. Nothing unique about Sax, or to be more accurate, if the treatment was working on him, it would work on all of them. There was Vasili, who had fought for UNOMA in both revolutions; what was he remembering? He looked stricken, but it could have been rapture--- anything or everything--- very likely it was the everything emotion, the fullness, apparently one of the first effects of the treatment. Perhaps he was remembering Tatiana's death as well. Once Sax and Tatiana had gone out on a hike in Antarctica during their year there, and Tatiana had slipped on a loose boulder and sprained an ankle, and they had had to wait on Nussbaum Riegel for a helicopter from McMurdo to lift them back to camp. He had forgotten that for years, and then Phyllis had reminded him of it the night she had had him arrested, and he had promptly forgotten it again until this very moment. Two rehearsals in two hundred years; but now it was back, the low sun, the cold, the beauty of the Dry Valleys, Phyllis's jealousy of Tatiana's great dark beauty. That their beauty should die first--- it was like a sign, a primal curse, Mars as Pluto, planet of fear and dread. And now that day in Antarctica, the two women long dead--- he was the only carrier of that day so precious, without him it would be gone. Ah yes--- what one could remember was precisely the part of the past that one had felt the most, the events spiked by emotion above a certain threshold--- the great joys, the great crises, the great disasters. And the small ones as well. He had been cut from the seventh-grade basketball team, had cried alone after reading the list, at a drinking fountain at the far edge of the school, thinking You will remember this forever. And by God he had. Great beauty. The first times one did things had that special charge, first love--- who had that been, though? A blank, back there in Boulder, a face--- some friend of a friend--- but that wasn't love; and he couldn't recall her name. No--- now he was thinking of Ann Clayborne, standing before him, looking at him closely, sometime long ago. What had he been trying to recall? The rush of thought was so dense and rapid he would not be able to remember some of this remembering, he was pretty sure. A paradox, but only one of many caused by the single thread of consciousness in the huge field of the mind. Ten to the forty-third power, the matrix in which all big bangs flowered. Inside the skull was a universe as vast as the one outside. Ann--- he had taken a walk with her in Antarctica as well. She was strong. Curious, during the walk across Olympus Mons caldera he had never once remembered this walk across Wright Valley in Antarctica, despite the similarities, a walk during which they had argued so earnestly over the fate of Mars, and he had wanted so much to take her hand, or for her to take his, why he had had a kind of crush on her! And him in his labrat mode, having never before risen to such feelings, now stifled for no better reason than shyness. She had looked at him curiously but had not understood his import, only wondered that he should stammer so. He had stammered a fair bit when a boy, it was a biochemical problem apparently solved by puberty, but it occasionally came back when he was nervous. Ann--- Ann--- he saw her face as he argued with her on the Ares, in Underhill, in Dorsa Brevia, in the warehouse on Pavonis. Why always this assault on a woman he had been attracted to, why? She was so strong. And yet he had seen her so depressed that she lay helplessly on the floor, in that boulder car, for many days as her red Mars died. Just lay there. But then she had pried herself off the floor and gone on. She had stopped Maya from yelling at him. She had helped bury her partner Simon. She had done all these things, and never, never, never had Sax been anything but a burden to her. Part of her pain. That was what he was for her. Angry with her in Zygote or Gamete--- Gamete--- both, really--- her face so drawn--- and then he hadn't seen her for twenty years. And then later, after he had forced the longevity treatment on her, he hadn't seen her for thirty years. All that time, wasted. If they lived for a thousand years it wouldn't be long enough to justify such waste.
Wandering in the Alchemist's Quarter. He came on Vasili again, sitting in the dust with the tears running down his face. The two of them had botched the Underhill algae experiment together, right there inside this very building, but Sax doubted very much that this was what Vasili was crying about. Something from the many years he had worked for UNOMA, perhaps, or something else--- no way to know--- well, he could ask--- but wandering around Underhill seeing faces, and then remembering in a rush everything about them that one knew, was not a situation conducive to follow-up inquiries. No--- walk on, leave Vasili to his own past. Sax did not want to know what Vasili regretted. Besides, halfway to the horizon to the north a figure was striding away alone--- Ann. Odd to see her head free of a helmet, white hair coursing back in the wind. It was enough to stop the flow of memories--- but then he had seen her that way before, in Wright Valley, yes, her hair light then too, dishwater blond they called that color, not very generously. So dangerous to develop any bond under the watchful eyes of the psychologists. They were there on business, under pressure, there was no room for personal relations which were dangerous indeed, as Natasha and Sergei had proved. But still it happened. Vlad and Ursula became a couple, solid, stable; and same with Hiroko and Iwao, Nadia and Arkady. But the danger, the risk. Ann had looked at him across the lab table, eating lunch, and there was something in her eye, some regard--- he didn't know, he couldn't read people. They were all such mysteries. The day he got his letter of acceptance, selection to the First Hundred, he had felt so sad; why was that? No way of knowing. But now he saw that letter in the fax box, the maple tree outside the window; he had called Ann to see if she had been included--- she had, a bit of a surprise, her such a loner, but he had been a bit happier, but still--- sad. The maple had been red-leafed; autumn in Princeton, traditionally a melancholy time, but that hadn't been it, not at all. Just sad. As if accomplishment were nothing but a certain number of the body's three billion heartbeats passed. And now it was ten billion, and counting. No, there was no explanation. People were mysteries. So when Ann had said, "Do you want to hike out to Lookout Point?" in that dry valley lab, he had agreed instantly, without a stammer. And without really arranging to, they had walked out separately; she had left the camp and hiked out to Lookout Point, and he had followed, and out there--- oh yes--- looking down at the cluster of huts and the greenhouse dome, a kind of proto-Underhill, he had taken her gloved hand in his, as they sat side by side arguing over terraforming in a perfectly friendly way, no stakes involved. And she had pulled her hand away as if shocked, and shuddered (it was very cold, for Terra anyway) and he had stammered just as badly as he had after his stroke. A limbic hemorrhage, killing on the spot certain elements, certain hopes, yearnings. Love dead. And he had harried her ever since. Not that these events functioned as proper causal explanations, no matter what Michel would have said! But the Antarctic cold of that walk back to the base. Even in the eidetic clarity of his current power of recollection he could not see much of that walk. Distracted. Why, why had he repelled her so? Little man. White lab coat. There was no reason. But it had happened. And left its mark forever. And even Michel had never known.
Repression. Thinking of Michel made him think of Maya. Ann was on the horizon now, he would never catch her; he wasn't sure he wanted to at that moment, still stunned by this so-surprising, so-painful memory. He went looking for Maya. Past where Arkady had laughed at their tawdriness when he came down from Phobos, past Hiroko's greenhouse where she had seduced him with her impersonal friendliness, like primates on the savanna, the alpha female grabbing one male among the others, an alpha, a beta, or that class of could-be-alpha-but-not-interested which struck him as the only decent way to behave; past the trailer park where they had all slept on the floor together, a family. With Desmond in a closet somewhere. Desmond had promised to show them how he had lived then, all his hiding places. Jumble of Desmond images, the flight over the burning canal, then the flight over burning Kasei, the fear in Kasei as the security people strapped him into their insane device; that had been the end of Saxifrage Russell. Now he was something else, and Ann was Counter-Ann, also the third woman that was neither Ann nor Counter-Ann. He could perhaps speak to her on that basis: as two strangers, meeting. Rather than the two who had met in the Antarctic.
Maya was sitting in the barrelvault kitchen, waiting for a big teapot to boil. She was making tea for them.
"Maya," Sax said, feeling the words like pebbles in his mouth, "You should try it. It's not so bad."
She shook her head. "I remember everything that I want to. Even now, without your drugs, even now when I hardly remember anything, I still remember more than you ever will. I don't want any more than that."
It was possible that minute quantities of the drugs had gotten into the air and thus onto her skin, giving her a small fraction of the hyperemotional experience. Or perhaps this was just her ordinary state.
"Why shouldn't now be enough?" she was saying. "I don't want my past back, I don't want it. I can't bear it."
"Maybe later," Sax said.
What could one say to her? She had been like this in Underhill as well--- unpredictable, moody. It was amazing what eccentrics had been selected to the First Hundred. But what choice had the selection committee had? People were all like that, unless they were stupid. And they hadn't sent stupid people to Mars, or not at first, or not too many. And even the dull-witted had their complexities.
"Maybe," she said now, and patted his head, and took the teapot off the burner. "Maybe not. I remember too much as it is."
"Frank?" Sax said.
"Of course. Frank, John--- they're all there." She stabbed her chest with a thumb. "It hurts enough. I don't need more."
"Ah."
He walked back outside, feeling stuffed, uncertain of anything, off balance. Limbic system vibrating madly under the impact of his whole life, under the impact of Maya, so beautiful and damned. How he wished her happy, but what could one do? Maya lived her unhappiness to the full, it made her happy one might say. Or complete. Perhaps she felt this acutely uncomfortable emotional overfullness all the time! Wow. So much easier to be phlegmatic. And yet she was so alive. The way she had flailed them onward out of the chaos, south to the refuge in Zygote . . . such strength. All these strong women. Actually to face up to life's awfulness, awfulness, to face it and feel it without denial, without defenses, just admit it and carry on. John, Frank, Arkady, even Michel, they had all had their great optimism, pessimism, idealism, their mythologies to mask the pain of existence, all their various sciences, and still they were dead--- killed off one way or another--- leaving Nadia and Maya and Ann to carry on and carry on. No doubt he was a lucky man to have such tough sisters. Even Phyllis--- yes, somehow--- with the toughness of the stupid, making her way, pretty well at least, fairly well, well at least making it, for a while. Never giving up. Never admitting anything. She had protested his torture, Spencer had told him so, Spencer and all their hours of aerodynamics together, telling him over too many whiskeys how she had gone to the security chief in Kasei and demanded his release, his decent treatment, even after he had knocked her cold, almost killed her with nitrous oxide, lied to her in her own bed. She had forgiven him apparently, and Spencer had never forgiven Maya for killing her, though he pretended he had; and Sax had forgiven her, even though for years he had acted as if he hadn't, to get some kind of hold on her. Ah the strange recombinant tangle they had made of their lives, result of the overextension, or perhaps it was that way in every village always. But so much sadness and betrayal! Perhaps memory was triggered by loss, as everything was inevitably lost. But what about joy? He tried to remember: could one cast back by emotional category, interesting idea, was that possible? Walking through the halls of the terraforming conference, for instance, and seeing the poster board that estimated the heat contribution of the Russell Cocktail at twelve kelvins. Waking up in Echus Overlook and seeing that the Great Storm was gone, the pink sky radiant with sunlight. Seeing the faces on the train as they slid out of Libya Station. Being kissed in the ear by Hiroko, in the baths one winter day in Zygote, when it was evening all afternoon. Hiroko! Ah--- ah--- He had been huddling in the cold, quite vexed to think he would be killed by a storm just when things were getting interesting, trying to work out how he might call his car to him, as it seemed he would not be able to get to it, and then there she had appeared out of the snow, a short figure in a rustred spacesuit, bright in the white storm of wind and horizontal snow, the wind so loud that even the intercom mike in his helmet was no more than a whisper: "Hiroko?" he cried as he saw her face through the slush-smeared faceplate; and she said "yes." And pulled him up by the wrist--- helped him up. That hand on his wrist! He felt it. And up he came, like viriditas itself, the green force pouring through him, through the white noise, the white static sleeting by, her grip warm and hard, as full as the plenum itself. Yes. Hiroko had been there. She had led him back to the car, had saved his life, had then disappeared again, and no matter how certain Desmond was of her death in Sabishii, no matter how convincing his arguments were, no matter how often second climbers had been hallucinated by solo climbers in distress, Sax knew better, because of that hand on his wrist, that visitation in the snow--- Hiroko herself in the hard compact flesh, as real as rock. Alive! So that he could rest in that knowledge, he could know something--- in the inexplicable seeping of the unexplainable into everything, he could rest in that known fact. Hiroko lived. Start with that and go on, build on it, the axiom of a lifetime of joy. Perhaps even convince Desmond of it, give him that peace.
He was back outside, looking for the Coyote. Not an easy task, ever. What did Desmond recall of Underhill--- hiding, whispers, the lost farm crew, then the lost colony, slipping away with them--- out there driving around Mars in disguised boulder cars, being loved by Hiroko, flying over the night surface in a stealthed plane, playing the demimonde, knitting the underground together--- Sax could almost remember it himself, it was so vivid to him. Telepathic transfer of all their stories to all of them; one hundred squared, in the square of barrel vaults. No. That would be too much. Just the imagination of someone else's reality was stunning enough, was all the telepathy one required or could handle.
But where had Desmond gone? Hopeless. One could never find Coyote; one only waited for him to find you. He would show up when he chose. For now, out northwest of the pyramids and the Alchemist's Quarter, there was a very ancient lander skeleton, probably from the original pre-landing-equipment drop, its metal stripped of paint and encrusted with salt. The beginning of their hopes, now a skeleton of old metal, nothing really. Hiroko had helped him unload this one.
Back into the Alchemist's Quarter, all the machines in the old buildings shut down, hopelessly outdated, even the very clever Sabatier processor. He had enjoyed watching that thing work. Nadia had fixed it one day when everyone else was baffled; little round woman humming some tune in a world of her own, communing with machinery, back when machines could be understood. Thank God for Nadia, the anchor holding them all to reality, the one they could always count on. He wanted to give her a hug, this most beloved sister of his, who it appeared was over there in the vehicle yard trying to get a museum-exhibit bulldozer to run.
But there on the horizon was a figure walking westward over a knoll: Ann. Had she been circling the horizon, walking and walking? He ran out toward her, stumbling just as he would have in the first week. He caught up with her, slowly, gasping.
"Ann? Ann?"
She turned and he saw the instinctive fear on her face, as on the face of a hunted animal. He was a creature to run from; this was what he had been to her. "I made mistakes," he said as he stopped before her. They could speak in the open air, in the air he had made over her objection. Though it was still thin enough to make one gasp. "I didn't see the--- the beauty until it was too late. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Oh he had tried to say it before, in Michel's car when the deluge poured, in Zygote, in Tempe Terra; never had it worked. Ann and Mars, all intertwined--- and yet he had no apology to make to Mars, every sunset was beautiful, the sky's color a different washed tint every minute of every day, blue sign of their power and their responsibility, their place in the cosmos and their power within it, so small and yet so important; they had brought life to Mars and it was good, he was sure of that.
But to Ann he needed to apologize. For the years of missionary fervor, the pressure applied to make her agree, the hunt for the wild beast of her refusal, to kill it dead. Sorry for that, so sorry--- his face wet with tears, and she stared at him so--- just precisely as she had on that cold rock in Antarctica, in that first refusal--- which had all come back and rested inside him now. His past.
"Do you remember?" he said to her curiously, shunted onto that new train of thought. "We walked out to Lookout Point together--- I mean one after the next--- but to meet, to talk in private? We went out separately, I mean--- you know how it was then--- that Russian couple had fought and been sent home--- we all hid everything we could from the selection people!" He laughed, choking somewhat, at the image of their deeply irrational beginnings. So apt! And everything since played out so in keeping with such a beginning! They had come out to Mars and replayed everything just as it had always been played before, it was nothing but trait recurrence, pattern repetition. "We sat there and I thought we were getting on and I took your hand but you pulled it away, you didn't like it. I felt, I felt bad. We went back separately and didn't talk again like that, in that way, not ever. And then I hounded you through all this, I guess, and I thought it was because of the, the . . ." He waved at the blue sky.
"I remember," she said.
She was looking cross-eyed at him. He felt the shock of it; one didn't get to do this, one never got to say to the lost love of one's youth I remember, it still hurts. And yet there she stood, looking at his face amazed.
"Yes," she said. "But that wasn't what happened," she said, frowning. "It was me. I mean, I put my hand on your shoulder, I liked you, it seemed like we might become . . . but you jumped! Ha, you jumped like I had shocked you with a cattle prod! Static electricity was bad down there, but still"--- sharp laugh---"no. It was you. You didn't--- it wasn't your kind of thing, I figured. And it wasn't mine either! In a way it should have worked, just because of that. But it didn't. And then I forgot about it."
"No," Sax said.
He shook his head, in a primitive attempt to recast his thought, to re-remember. He could still see in his mental theater that awkward instant at Lookout Point, the whole thing clear almost word for word, move for move, it's a net gain in order, he had said, trying to explain the purpose of science; and she had said, for that you would destroy the entire face of a planet. He remembered it.
But there was that look on Ann's face as she recalled the incident, that look of someone in full possession of a moment of her past, alive with the upwelling--- clearly she remembered it too--- and yet remembered something different than he had. One of them had to be wrong, didn't they? Didn't they?
"Could we really," he said, and had to stop and try again. "Could we really have been two such maladroit people as to both go out--- intending to--- to reveal ourselves---"
Ann laughed. "And both go away feeling rebuffed by the other?" She laughed again. "Why sure."
He laughed as well. They turned their faces to the sky and laughed.
But then Sax shook his head, rueful to the point of agony. Whatever had happened--- well. No way of knowing, now. Even with his memory upwelling like an artesian fountain, like one of the cataclysmic outbreak floods themselves, there was still no way to be sure what had really happened.
Which gave him a sudden chill. If he could not trust these upwelling memories to be true--- if one so crucial as this one was now cast in doubt--- what then of the others, what about Hiroko there in the storm, leading him to his car, hand on his wrist--- could that too be. . . . No. That hand on his wrist. But Ann's hand had jerked away from him, a somatic memory just as solidly real, just as physical, a kinetic event remembered in his body, in the pattern of cells for as long as he should live. That one had to be true; they both had to be true.
And so?
So that was the past. There and not there. His whole life. If nothing was real but this moment, Planck instant after Planck instant, an unimaginably thin membrane of becoming between past and future--- his life--- what then was it, so thin, so without any tangible past or future: a blaze of color. A thread of thought lost in the act of thinking. Reality so tenuous, so barely there; was there nothing they could hold to?
He tried to say some of this, stammered, failed, gave up.
"Well," Ann said, apparently understanding him. "At least we remember that much. I mean, we agree that we went out there. We had ideas, they didn't work out. Something happened that we probably neither understood at the time, so it's no surprise we can't remember it properly now, or that we recall it differently. We have to understand something to remember it."
"Is that true?"
"I think so. It's why two-year-olds can't remember. They feel things like crazy, but they don't remember them because they don't really understand them."
"Perhaps."
He wasn't sure that was how memory worked. Early childhood memories were eidetic images, like exposed photographic plates. But if it was true, then he was perhaps all right; for he had definitely understood Hiroko's appearance in the storm, her hand on his wrist. These things of the heart, in the violence of the storm. . . .
Ann stepped forward and gave him a hug. He turned his face to the side, his ear pressed against her collarbone. She was tall. He felt her body against his, and he hugged her back, hard. You will remember this forever, he thought. She held him away from her, held him by the arms. "That's the past," she said. "It doesn't explain what happened between us on Mars, I don't think. It's a different matter."
"Perhaps."
"We haven't agreed, but we had the same--- the same terms. The same things were important to us. I remember when you tried to make me feel better, in that boulder car in Marineris, during the outbreak flood."
"And you me. When Maya was yelling at me, after Frank died."
"Yes," she said, thinking back. Such power of recall they had in these amazing hours! That car had been a crucible, they had all metamorphosed in it, in their own ways. "I suppose I did. It wasn't fair, you were just trying to help her. And that look on your face. . . ."
They stood there, looking back at the scattering of low structures that was Underhill.
"And here we are," Sax said finally.
"Yes. Here we are."
Awkward instant. Another awkward instant. This was life with the other: one awkward instant after the next. He would have to get used to it, somehow. He stepped back. He reached out and held her hand, squeezed it hard. Then let go. She wanted to walk out past Nadia's arcade, she said, into the untouched wilderness west of Underhill. She was experiencing a rush of memory too strong to concentrate on the present. She needed to walk.
He understood. Off she went, with a wave. With a wave! And there was Coyote, over there near the salt pyramids so brilliant in the afternoon light. Feeling Mars's gravity for the first time in decades, Sax hopped over to the little man. The only one of the First Hundred's men who had been shorter than Sax. His brother in arms.
• • •
Stumbling here and there through his life, step-by-step shocked elsewhere, it was actually quite difficult to focus on Coyote's asymmetrical face, faceted like Deimos--- but there it was, most vibrantly there, pulsing it seemed with all its past shapes as well. At least Desmond had more or less resembled himself throughout. God knew what Sax looked like to the others, or what he would see if he looked in a mirror--- the idea was dizzying, it might even be interesting to test it, look in a mirror while remembering something from his youth, the view might distort. Desmond, a Tobagonian of Indian descent, now saying something difficult to comprehend, something about rapture of the deeps, unclear if he was referring to the memory drug or to some nautical incident from his youth. Sax wanted so much to tell him that Hiroko was alive, but just as the words were on the tip of his tongue, he stopped himself. Desmond looked so happy at this moment; and he would not believe Sax. So it would only upset him. Knowledge by experience is not always translatable into discursive knowledge, which was a shame, but there it was. Desmond would not believe him because he had not felt that hand on his wrist. And why should he, after all?
They walked out toward Chernobyl, talking about Arkady and Spencer. "We're getting old," Sax said.
Desmond hooted. He still had a most alarming laugh--- infectious, however, and Sax laughed too. "Getting old? Getting old?"
The sight of their little Rickover put them into paroxysms. Though it was pathetic as well, and brave, and stupid, and clever. Their limbic systems were overloaded still, Sax noted, jangling with all the emotions at once. All his past was coming clearer and clearer, in a kind of simultaneous overlay of sequences, each event with its unique emotional charge, now firing all at once: so full, so full. Perhaps fuller than the, the what--- the mind? the soul?--- fuller than it was capable of being. Overflowing, yes, that was the way it felt. "Desmond, I'm overflowing."
Desmond only laughed harder.
His life had exceeded his capacity to feel it all at once. Except what was this, then, this feeling? A limbic hum, the roaring hum of the wind in conifers high in the mountains, lying in a sleeping bag at night in the Rockies, with the wind thrumming through the pine needles. . . . Very interesting. Possibly an effect of the drug, which would pass, although he was hoping that there were effects of the drug that would last, and who could say if this aspect might not as well, as an integral part of the whole? Thus: if you can remember your past, and it is very long, then you will necessarily feel very full, full of experiences and emotions, perhaps to the point where it might not be easy to feel much more. Wasn't that possible? Or perhaps everything would feel more intensely than was appropriate; perhaps he had inadvertently turned them all into horribly sentimental people, stricken with grief if they stepped on an ant, weeping with joy at the sight of sunrise, etc. That would be unfortunate. Enough was enough, or more than enough. In fact Sax had always believed that the amplitude of emotional response exhibited in the people around him could be turned down a fair bit with no very great loss to humanity. Of course it wouldn't work to try consciously to damp one's emotions, that was repression, sublimation, with a resulting overpressure elsewhere. Curious how useful Freud's steam-engine model of the mind remained, compression, venting, the entire apparatus, as if the brain had been designed by James Watt. But reductive models were useful, they were at the heart of science. And he had needed to blow off steam for a long time.
So he and Desmond walked around Chernobyl, throwing rocks at it, laughing, talking in a halting rush and flow, not so much a conversation as a simultaneous transmission, as they were both absorbed by their own thoughts. Thus very dislocated talk, but companionable nevertheless, and reassuring to hear someone else sounding so confused. And altogether a great pleasure to feel so close to this man, so different from him in so many ways, and yet now babbling together with him about school, the snowscapes of the southern polar region, the parks in the Ares; and they were so similar anyway.
"We all go through the same things."
"It's true! It's true!"
Curious that this fact didn't affect people's behavior more.
Eventually they wandered back to the trailer park, slowing down as they passed through it, held by ever-thickening cobwebs of past association. It was near sunset. In the barrel vaults people were milling around, working on dinner. Most had been too distracted to eat during the day, and the drug appeared to be a mild appetite suppressant; but now people were famished. Maya had been cooking a big pot of stew, chopping and peeling potatoes and throwing them in. Borscht? Bouillabaisse? She had had the forethought to start a breadmaker in the morning, and now the yeasty smell filled the warm air of the barrel vaults.
They congregated in the large double vault at the southwest corner, the room where Sax and Ann had had their famous debate at the beginning of the formal terraforming effort. Hopefully this would not occur to Ann when she came in. Except that a videotape of the debate was playing on a small screen in the corner. Oh well. She would arrive soon after dark, in her old way; this constancy was a pleasure to all of them. It made it possible in some sense to say Here we are--- the others are away tonight--- otherwise everything is the same. An ordinary night in Underhill. Talk about work, the various sites--- food--- the old familiar faces. As if Arkady or John or Tatiana might walk in any second, just as Ann was now, right on time, stomping her feet to warm them, ignoring the others--- just as always.
But she came and sat beside him. Ate her meal (a ProvenÃsect;al stew that Michel used to make) beside him. In her customary silence. Still, people stared. Nadia watched them with tears in her eyes. Permanent sentimentality: it could be a problem.
Later, under the clatter of dishes and voices, everyone seemingly talking at once--- and sometimes it seemed possible also to understand everyone all at once, even while speaking--- under that noise, Ann leaned into him and said:
"Where are you going after this?"
"Well," he said, suddenly nervous again, "some Da Vinci colleagues invited me to, to, to--- to sail. To try out a new boat they've designed for me, for my, my sailing trips. A sailboat. On Chryse--- on Chryse Gulf."
"Ah."
Terrible silence, despite all the noise.
"Can I come with you?"
Burning sensation in the skin of the face; capillary engorgement; very odd. But he must remember to speak! "Oh yes."
• • •
And then everyone sitting around, thinking, talking, remembering. Sipping Maya's tea. Maya looked content, taking care of them. Much later, well into the middle of the night, with almost everyone still slumped in a chair, or hunched over the heater, Sax decided he would go over to the trailer park, where they had spent their first few months. Just to see.
Nadia was already out there, lying down on one of the mattresses. Sax pulled down another one from the wall; his old mattress, yes. And then Maya was there, and then all the rest of them, pulling along the reluctant and one had to say fearful Desmond, sitting him on a mattress in the middle, gathering around him, some in their old spots, others who had slept in other trailers filling the empty mattresses, the ones that had been occupied by people now gone. A single trailer now housed them all quite easily. And sometime in the depth of the night they all lay down, and slid down the slow uneven glide into sleep. All around the room, people falling to sleep in their beds--- and that too was a memory, drowsy and warm, this was how it had always felt, to drift off in a bath of one's friends, weary with the day's work, the oh-so-interesting work of building a town and a world. Sleep, memory, sleep, body; fall thankfully into the moment, and dream.
They sailed out of the Florentine on a windy cloudless day, Ann at the rudder and Sax up in the starboard bow of the sleek new catamaran, making sure the anchor cat had secured the anchor; which reeked of anaerobic bottom mud, so much so that Sax got distracted and spent some time hanging over the rail looking at samples of the mud through his wristpad magnifying lens: a great quantity of dead algae and other bottom organisms. An interesting question whether or not this was typical of the North Sea's bottom, or was restricted for some reason to the Chryse Gulf environs, or to the Florentine, or shallows more generally---
"Sax, get back here," Ann called. "You're the one who knows how to sail."
"So I am."
Though in truth the boat's AI would do everything at the most general command; he could say for instance "Go to Rhodos," and there would be nothing more to be done for the rest of the week. But he had grown fond of the feeling of a tiller under his hand. So he abandoned the anchor's muck to another time, and made his way to the wide shallow cockpit suspended between the two narrow hulls.
"Da Vinci is about to go under the horizon, look."
"So it is."
The outer points of the crater rim were the only parts of Da Vinci Island still visible over the water, though they weren't more than twenty kilometers away. There was an intimacy to a small globe. And the boat was very fast; it hydroplaned in any wind over fifty kilometers an hour, and the hulls had underwater outriggerkeels that extended and set in various dolphinlike shapes, which along with sliding counterbalance weights in the cross struts kept the windward hull in contact with the water, and the leeward hull from driving too far under. So in even moderate winds, like the one striking their unfurled mast sail now, the boat shoved up onto the water and skated over it like an iceboat over ice, moving at a speed just a few percent slower than the wind itself. Looking over the stern Sax could see that a very small percentage of the hulls were actually in contact with the water; it looked like the rudder and the outriggerkeels were the only things that kept them from taking flight. He saw the last bits of Da Vinci Island disappear, under a bouncing serrated horizon no more than four kilometers away from them. He glanced at Ann; she was clutching the rail, looking back at the brilliant white V-tapestries of their wake. Sax said, "Have you been at sea before?" meaning, entirely out of the sight of land.
"No."
"Ah."
They sailed on north, out into Chryse Gulf. Copernicus Island appeared over the water to their right, then Galileo Island behind it. Then both receded under the blue horizon again. The swells on the horizon were individually distinct, so that the horizon was not a straight blue line against the sky, but rather a shifting array of swell tops, one after another in swift succession. The groundswell was coming out of the north, almost directly ahead of them, so that looking to port or starboard the horizon line was particularly jagged, a wavy line of blue water against the blue sky, in a too-small circle surrounding the ship--- as if the proper Terran distance to the horizon were stubbornly embedded in the brain's optics, so that when they saw things clearly here, they would always appear to stand on a planet too small for them. Certainly there was a look of the most extreme discomfort on Ann's face; she glared at the waves, groundswell after groundswell lifting the bow and then the stern. There was a cross chop nearly at right angles to the groundswell, pushed by the west wind and ruffling the bigger broader swells. Wavetank physics; one could see it all laid out; it reminded Sax of the physics lab on the second story of the northeasternmost building in his high school, where hours had passed like minutes, the flat little wavetank full of marvels. Here the groundswell originated in the North Sea's perpetual eastward motion around the globe; the swell was greater or smaller depending on whether local winds reinforced it or interfered with it. The light gravity made for big broad waves, quickly generated by strong winds; if today's wind got very much stronger, for instance, then the windchop from the west would quickly grow bigger than the groundswell from the north, and obscure it completely. Waves on the North Sea were notorious for their size and mutability, their recombinant surprises, though it was also true that they moved fairly slowly through the water; big slow hills, like the giant dunes of Vastitas far underneath them, migrating around the planet. Sometimes they could get very big indeed; in the aftermath of the typhoons that blew over the North Sea, waves seventy meters high had been reported.
This lively cross chop seemed enough for Ann, who was looking a bit distressed. Sax could not think what to say to her. He doubted that his thoughts on wave mechanics would be appropriate, though it was very interesting of course, and would be to anyone interested in the physical sciences. As Ann was. But perhaps not now. Now the sheer sensory array of water, wind, sky--- it looked like it was enough for her. Perhaps silence was in order.
Whitecaps began to roll down the faces of some of the cross-chop waves, and Sax immediately checked into the ship's weather system to see what the wind speed was. The ship had it at thirty-two kilometers per hour. So this was about the speed at which the crests of waves were first knocked over. A simple matter of surface tension against wind speed, calculable, in fact . . . yes, the appropriate equation in fluid dynamics suggested they should start to collapse at a wind speed of thirty-five kilometers per hour, and here they were: whitecaps, startlingly white against the water, which was a dark blue, Prussian blue Sax thought it might be. The sky today was almost sky blue, slightly empurpled at the zenith, and somewhat whitened around the sun, with a metallic sheen between sun and the horizon under it.
"What are you doing?" Ann said, sounding annoyed.
Sax explained, and she listened in stony silence. He didn't know what she might be thinking. That the world was somewhat explicable--- he always found that a comfort. But Ann . . . well, it could be as simple as seasickness. Or something from her past, distracting her; Sax had found in the weeks since the experiment at Underhill that he was often distracted by some past incident, rising unbidden from a great bulk of them in his mind. Involuntary memory. And for Ann, that might include negative incidents of one kind or another; Michel had said she had been mistreated as a child. It still seemed to Sax too shocking to believe. On Earth men had abused women; on Mars, never. Was that true? Sax did not know for sure, but he felt it was true. This was what it meant to live in a just and rational society, this was one of the main reasons it was a good thing, a value. Possibly Ann would know more about the reality of the situation these days. But he did not feel comfortable asking her. It was clearly contraindicated.
"You're awfully quiet," she said.
"Enjoying the view," he said quickly. Perhaps he had better talk about wave mechanics after all. He explained the groundswell, the cross chop, the negative and positive interference patterns that could result. But then he said, "Did you remember much about Earth, during the Underhill experiment?"
"No."
"Ah."
This was probably some kind of repression, and exactly the opposite of the psychotherapeutic method that Michel would probably have recommended. But they were not steam engines. And some things were no doubt better forgotten. He would have to work on once again forgetting John's death, for instance; also on remembering better those parts of his life when he had been most social, as during the years of work for Biotique in Burroughs. So that across the cockpit from him sat Counter-Ann, or that third woman she had mentioned--- while he was, at least in part, Stephen Lindholm. Strangers, despite that startling encounter at Underhill. Or because of it. Hello; nice to meet you.
• • •
Once they got out from among the fjords and islands at the bottom of Chryse Gulf, Sax turned the tiller and the boat swooped northeast, rushing across the wind and the whitecaps. Then the wind was behind them, and with a following wind the mast sail bloomed into its own splayed-wing version of a spinnaker, and the hulls surfed on the mushy crests of the waves before losing to their superior speed. The eastern shore of the Chryse Gulf appeared before them; it was less spectacular than the western shore, but in many ways prettier. Buildings, towers, bridges: it was a well-populated coast, as were most of them these days. Coming off Olympus all the towns must be a bit of a shock.
After they passed the broad mouth of the Ares Fjord, Soo-chow Point emerged over the horizon, and then beyond it the Oxia Islands, one by one. Before the water's arrival these had been the Oxia Colles, an array of round hills that stood at just the height to become an archipelago. Sax sailed into the narrow waterways between these islands, each a low round brown hump, standing forty or fifty meters out of the sea. By far the larger percentage of them were uninhabited, except perhaps by goats, but on the largest ones, especially kidney-shaped ones with bays, the stones covering the hills had been gathered up into walls, which split the slopes into fields and pastures; these islands were irrigated, green with orchards laden with fruit, or pastures dotted with white sheep or miniature cows. The ship's maritime chart named these islands--- Kipini, Wahoo, Wabash, Naukan, Libertad--- and reading the map Ann snorted. "These are the names of the craters out in the middle of the gulf, underwater."
"Ah."
Still, they were pretty islands. The fishing villages on the bays were whitewashed, with blue shutters and doors: the Aegean model again. Indeed, on one high point bluff there stood a little Doric temple, square and proud. The boats down below in the bays were small sloops, or simply rowboats and dories. As they sailed past Sax pointed out a hilltop windmill here, a pasture of llamas there. "It seems a nice life."
They talked about the natives then, easily and without hidden tension. About Zo; about the ferals and their strange hunter-gatherer city-shopper lifestyle; about the ag nomads, moving from crop to crop like migrant laborers who owned the farms; about the cross-fertilization of all these styles; about the new Terran settlements elbowing into the landscape; about the increasing number of harbor towns. Off in the middle of the bay, they spotted one of the new big townships, a floating island of a seacraft, with a population in the thousands; it was too big to enter the Oxia archipelago, and looked to be headed across the gulf to Nilokeras, or down to the southern fjords. As the land all over Mars was becoming more crowded, and the possibility of settling on it more and more restricted by the courts, more and more people were moving onto the North Sea, making townships like these their permanent home.
"Let's go visit it," Ann said. "Can we?"
"I don't see why not," Sax said, surprised at the request. "We can certainly catch it."
He brought the catamaran about and tacked south and west toward the township, pushing the cat as much as he could, to impress the seafarers. In less than an hour they had reached its broad side, a rounded scarp about two kilometers long and fifty meters tall. A dock just above the waterline had a section against the township that would rise, as an open elevator, and when they had stepped across from the cat to the dock and tied their boat on, they got into this railed-off section and were lifted up to the deck of the township.
The deck was almost as broad as it was long, its central area a farm with many small trees scattered on it, so it was hard to see the other side. But it was clear from what they could see that the circumference of the deck was a kind of rectangular street or arcade, with buildings on both sides that were two to four stories high, the outer buildings topped by masts and windmills, the inner ones opening into broad breaks where parks and plazas led inward to the crops and groves of the farm, and a big freshwater pond. A floating town, somewhat like a walled city in Renaissance Tuscany in appearance, except that everything was extraordinarily neat and orderly, shipshape as one might say. A small group of the ship's citizens greeted them on the plaza overlooking the dock, and when they found out who their visitors were they were thrilled--- they insisted the travelers stay for a meal, and a few of them guided them on a walk around the perimeter of the ship, "or for as far as you care to go, it's a good fair walk."
This was a small township, they were told. Population, five thousand. Since its launch it had been almost entirely self-sufficient. "We grow most of our food, and fish for the rest. There are arguments now with other townships about overfishing certain species. We're doing perennial polyculture, growing new strains of corn, sunflower, soybean, sand plum and so on, all intermixed and harvested by robot, because harvesting is backbreaking work. We've finally got the technology to go home to gathering, that's what it comes down to. There are a lot of onboard cottage industries. We've got wineries, see the vineyards out there, and there are vintners and brandy distillers. That we do by hand. Also special-function semiconductors, and a famous bike shop."
"Most of the time we sail around the North Sea. There are some really violent storms sometimes, but we're so big that we ride them out pretty easily. Most of us have lived here for all ten years the ship has existed. It's a great life. The ship is all you need. Although it's great fun to make landfall from time to time. We come down to Nilokeras every Ls zero for the spring festival. We sell what we've made and resupply, and party all night long. Then back out to sea."
"We don't use anything but wind and sunlight, and some fish. The environmental courts like us, they agree we're minimum impact. The population of the North Sea's area might be even higher now than if it had stayed land. There are hundreds of townships now."
"Thousands. And the harbor towns with the shipyards, and the seaports we visit to do business, they're doing very well indeed."
Ann said, "And you think this is one way we can take on some of Earth's surplus population."
"Yes, we do. One of the best ways. It's a big ocean, it could take a lot more ships like this."
"As long as they didn't rely too much on fishing."
As they walked on, Sax said to Ann, "That's another reason that it just isn't worth it to force a crisis over the immigration issue."
Ann didn't reply. She was staring down at the sun-burnished water, then up at one of the couple dozen masts, each with its single schooner sail. The town looked like a tabular iceberg with its surface entirely claimed by earth. A floating island.
"So many different kinds of nomads," Sax commented. "It seems that very few of the natives feel impelled to settle in a single place."
"Unlike us."
"Point taken. But I wonder if this tendency means they are inclined to a certain redness. If you know what I mean."
"I do not."
Sax tried to explain. "It seems to me that nomads in general tend to make use of the land as they find it. They move around with the seasons, and live off what they find growing at that time. And seafaring nomads of course even more so, given that the sea is impervious to most human attempts to change it."
"Except for the people trying to regulate sea level, or salt content. Have you heard about them?"
"Yes. But they're not going to have much luck with that, I would guess. The mechanics of saltification are still very poorly understood."
"If they succeed it will kill a lot of freshwater species."
"True. But the saltwater species will be happy."
They walked across the middle of the township toward the plaza over the dock, passing between long rows of grapevines pruned to the shape of waist-high T's, the intermingled horizontal vines heavy with grape clusters of dusty indigo, and bracken, and clear viridine. Beyond the vineyards the ground was covered with a mix of plants, like a kind of prairie, with narrow foot trails cutting through it.
At a restaurant fronting the plaza they were treated to a meal of pasta and shrimp. The conversation ranged everywhere. But then someone came rushing out of the kitchen, pointing at his wrist: news had just come in of trouble on the space elevator. The UN troops who had been sharing the customs duties on New Clarke had taken over the whole station, and sent all the Martian police down, charging them with corruption and declaring that the UN would administer the upper end of the elevator by itself from now on. The UN's Security Council was now saying that their local officers had overstepped their instructions, but this backpedaling did not include an invitation to the Martians to come back up the cable again, so it looked like a smoke screen to Sax. "Oh my," he said. "Maya will be very angry, I fear."
Ann rolled her eyes. "That isn't really the most important ramification, if you ask me." She looked shocked, and for the first time since Sax had found her in Olympus caldera, fully engaged in the current situation. Drawn out of her distance. It was fairly shocking, now that he thought of it. Even these seafarers were visibly shaken, though before they like Ann had seem distanced from whatever circumstances obtained on land. He could see the news tearing through the restaurant's conversations, and throwing them all into the same space: upheaval, crisis, the threat of war. Voices were incredulous, faces were angry.
The people at their table were also watching Sax and Ann, curious as to their reaction. "You'll have to do something about this," one of their guides noted.
"Why us?" Ann replied tartly. "It's you who will have to do something about it, if you ask me. You're the ones responsible now. We're just a couple of old issei."
Their dinner companions looked startled, uncertain how to take her. One laughed. The host who had spoken shook his head. "That's not true. But you're right, we will be watching, and talking with the other townships about how to respond. We'll do our part. I was just saying that people will be looking to you, to both of you, to see what you do. That isn't so true for us."
Ann was silenced by this. Sax returned to his meal, thinking furiously. He found he wanted to talk to Maya.
The evening continued, the sun fell; the dinner limped on, as they all tried to return to some sense of normality. Sax repressed a little smile; there might be an interplanetary crisis and there might not, but meanwhile dinner had to be gotten through in style. And these seafarers were not the kind of people who looked inclined to worry about the solar system at large. So the mood rallied, and they partied over their dessert, still very pleased to have Clayborne and Russell visiting them. And then in the last light the two of them made their excuses, and were escorted down to sea level and their boat. The waves on Chryse Gulf were a lot larger than they had seemed from up above.
• • •
Sax and Ann sailed off in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Sax looked back up at the township, thinking about what they had seen that day. It looked like a good life. But something about . . . he chased the thought, and then at the end of the rapid steeplechase he caught it, and still held it all: no blankouts these days. Which was a great satisfaction, although the content of this particular train of thought was quite melancholy. Should he even try to share it with Ann? Was it possible to say it?
He said, "Sometimes I regret--- when I see those seafarers, and the lives they lead--- it seems ironic that we--- that we stand on the brink of a--- of a kind of golden age---" There, he had said it; and felt foolish; "--- which will only come to pass when our generation has died. We've worked for it all our lives, and then we have to die before it will come."
"Like Moses outside Israel."
"Yes? Did he not get to go in?" Sax shook his head. "These old stories---" Such a throwing together, like science at its heart, like the flashes of insight one got into an experiment when everything about it clarified, and one understood something. "Well, I can imagine how he felt. It's--- it's frustrating. I would rather see what happens then. Sometimes I get so curious. About the history we'll never know. The future after our death. And all the rest of it. Do you know what I mean?"
Ann was looking at him closely. Finally she said, "Everything dies someday. Better to die thinking that you're going to miss a golden age, than to go out thinking that you had taken down your children's chances with you. That you'd left your descendants with all kinds of toxic longterm debts. Now that would be depressing. As it is, we only have to feel bad for ourselves."
"True."
And this was Ann Clayborne talking. Sax felt that his face was glowing. That capillary action could be quite a pleasant sensation.
• • •
They returned to the Oxia archipelago and sailed through the islands, talking about them. It was possible to talk. They ate in the cockpit, and slept each in their own hull cabin, port and starboard. One fresh morning, with the wind wafting offshore cool and fragrant, Sax said, "I still wonder about the possibility of some kind of browns."
Ann glanced at him. "And where's the red in it?"
"Well, in the desire to hold things steady. To keep a lot of the land untouched. The areophany."
"That's always been green. It sounds like green with just a little touch of red, if you ask me. The khakis."
"Yes, I suppose. That would be Irishka and the Free Mars coalition, right? But also burnt umbers, siennas, madder alizarins, Indian reds."
"I don't think there are any Indian reds." And she laughed darkly.
Indeed she laughed frequently, though the humor expressed seemed often quite mordant. One evening he was in his cabin, and she up near the bow of her hull (she took the port, he the starboard) and he heard her laugh out loud, and coming up and looking around, he thought it must have been caused by the sight of Pseudophobos (most people just called it Phobos), rising again swiftly out of the west, in its old manner. The moons of Mars, sailing through the night again, little gray potatoes of no great distinction, but there they were. As was that dark laugh at the sight of them.
• • •
"Do you think this takeover of Clarke is serious?" Ann asked one night as they were retiring to their hulls.
"It's hard to say. Sometimes I think it must be a threatening gesture only, because if it's serious it would be so--- unintelligent. They must know that Clarke is very vulnerable to--- removal from the scene."
"Kasei and Dao didn't find it that easy to remove."
"No, but---" Sax did not want to say that their attempt had been botched, but he was afraid that she would read the comment out of his silence. "We in Da Vinci set up an X-ray laser complex in Arsia Mons caldera, buried behind a rock curtain in the north wall, and if we set it off the cable will be melted right at about the areosynchronous point. There isn't a defensive system that could stop it."
Ann stared at him; he shrugged. He wasn't personally responsible for Da Vinci actions, no matter what people thought.
"But bringing down the cable," she said, and shook her head. "It would kill a lot of people."
Sax remembered how Peter had survived the fall of the first cable, by jumping out into space. Rescued by chance. Perhaps Ann was less likely to write off the lives that would inevitably be lost. "It's true," he said. "It isn't a good solution. But it could be done, and I would think the Terrans know that."
"So it may just be a threat."
"Yes. Unless they're prepared to go further."
• • •
North of the Oxia archipelago they passed McLaughlin Bay, the eastern side of a drowned crater. North again was Mawrth Point, and behind it the inlet to Mawrth Fjord, one of the narrowest and longest fjords of all. It was a matter of constant tacking to sail up it, pushed this way and that by tricky winds, swirling between steep convolute walls; but Sax did it anyway, because it was a pretty fjord, at the bottom of a very deep and narrow outbreak channel, widening as one sailed farther into it; and beyond and above the end of the water, the rock-floored canyon continued inland for as far as one could see, and many kilometers beyond that. He hoped to show Ann that the existence of the fjords did not necessarily mean the drowning of all the outbreak channels; Ares and Kasei also retained very long canyons above sea level, and Al-Qahira and Ma'adim as well. But he said nothing of this, and Ann made no comment.
After the maneuvering in Mawrth, he sailed them almost directly west. To get out of the Chryse Gulf into the Acidalia region of the North Sea, it was necessary to work around a long arm of land called the Sinai Peninsula, sticking out into the ocean from the west side of Arabia Terra. The strait beyond it connecting Chryse Gulf with the North Sea was 500 kilometers wide; but it would have been 1,500 kilometers wide if it were not for the Sinai Peninsula.
So they sailed west into the wind, day after day, talking or not talking. Many times they came back to what it might mean to be brown. "Perhaps the combination should be called blue," Ann said one evening, looking over the side at the water. "Brown isn't very attractive, and it reeks of compromise. Maybe we should be thinking of something entirely new."
"Maybe we should."
At night after dinner, and some time looking at the stars swimming over the sloppy sea surface, they said good night, and Sax retired to the starboard hull cabin, Ann to the port; and the AI sailed them slowly through the night, dodging the occasional icebergs that began to appear at this latitude, pushed into the gulf from the North Sea. It was quite pleasant.
One morning Sax woke early, stirred by a strong swell under the hull, which pitched his narrow bed up and down in a way that his dreaming mind had interpreted as a giant pendulum, swinging them this way and that. He dressed with some difficulty and went abovedeck, and Ann, standing at the shrouds, called out, "It seems the groundswell and the windchop are in a positive interference pattern."
"Are they!" He tried to join her, and was slammed down into a cockpit seat by a sudden rise of the boat. "Ah!"
She laughed. He grabbed the cockpit handrail, pulled himself up to her side. He saw immediately what she meant; the wind was strong, perhaps sixty-five kilometers per hour, and the whine in the boat's minimal rigging was loud and sustained. There were whitecaps everywhere on the blue sea, and the sound of the wind coursing through all that broken water was very unlike what it would be pouring over rock--- there it would be a high keening shriek--- here, among the trillions of bursting bubbles, it was a deep solid roar. Every wave was whitecapped, and the great hills of the ground swells were obscured by foam flying off the crests and rolling in the troughs. The sky was a dirty opaque raw umber, very ominous looking, the sun a dim old coin, everything else dark, as if in shadow, though there were no clouds. Fines in the air: a dust storm. And now the waves were picking up, so that they spent many long seconds shooting up the side of one, then almost as many schussing down into the trough of the next one. Up and down in a long rhythm. The positive interference Ann had spoken of made some waves doubly big. The water not foaming was turning the color of the sky, brownish and dull, dark, though there was still not a cloud to be seen--- only this ominous color of the sky; not the old pink, but more like the dust-choked air of the Great Storm. The whitecaps ceased in their area and the sound of water against the boat grew louder, a slushy rumble; the sea here was coated with frazil ice, or the thicker elastic layer of ice crystals called nilas. Then the whitecaps returned, twice as thick as before.
Sax climbed down into the cockpit and checked the weather report on the AI. A katabatic wind was pouring down Kasei Vallis and onto Chryse Gulf. A howler, as the Kasei fliers would say. The AI should have warned them. But like many katabatic storms it had come up in an hour, and was still a fairly local phenomenon. Yet strong for all that; the boat was on a roller-coaster ride, shimmying under hammer blows of air as it shot up and down on the huge groundswell. To the side the waves looked like they were being knocked over by the wind, but the boat's skittering flights up and down showed that they underlay the flying foam as big as ever. Overhead the mast sail had contracted almost to a pole, in the shape of an aerodynamic foil. Sax leaned over to check the AI more closely; the volume knob on the beeper was turned all the way down. So perhaps it had tried to warn them after all.
A squall at sea; they came up fast. Horizons only four kilometers away didn't help matters; and the winds on Mars had never slowed down much, in all the years of thickening. Underfoot the boat shuddered as it smashed through some invisible fragments of ice. Brash ice now, it appeared, or the broken pancake ice of a sea surface that had been about to freeze over in the night; difficult to spot in all the flying foam. Occasionally he felt the impact of a larger chunk, bergy bergs as sailors called them. These had come through the Chryse Strait on a current from the north; now they were being pushed against the lee shore of the southern side of the Sinai Peninsula. As the boat was too, for that matter.
They were forced to cover the cockpit with its clear shell, rolling up out of the decking and over to the other side. Under its waterproof cover they were immediately warmer, which was a comfort. It was going to be a true howler, Kasei Vallis serving as a conduit for an extremely powerful blast of air; the AI listed wind speeds at Santorini Island fluctuating between 180 and 220 kilometers an hour, winds which would not diminish much in speed as they crossed the gulf. Certainly it was still a very strong wind, 160 kilometers an hour at the masthead; the surface of the water was disintegrating now, crests flattened by gusts, torn apart. The ship was shutting down in response to all that, mast retracting, cockpit covered, hatches battening; then the sea anchor went out, a tube of material like a wind sock, dragging underwater upwind of them, slowing their drift to leeward, and mitigating the jarring impacts against small icebergs that were becoming more frequent as they all clustered against the lee shore. Now with the sea anchor in place, it was the brash ice and bergy bergs that were floating downwind faster than they were, and knocking against the windward hull, even as the leeward hull still slammed against a thickening ice mass. Both hulls were mostly underwater; in effect the boat was becoming a kind of submarine, lying at the surface and just under it. The strength of the materials of the boat could sustain any shock that even a howler and a lee shore of icebergs could deliver; indeed they could sustain forces several magnitudes stronger. But the weak point, as Sax reflected as he was thrown hard against his seat belt and shoulder harness, holding grimly to the tiller and his seatback, was their bodies. The catamaran lifted on a swell, dropped with a sickening swoop, crashed to a halt against a big berg; and he slammed breathlessly into the restraints. It seemed they might be in danger of being shaken to death, an unpleasant way to go, as he was beginning to understand. Internal organs damaged by seat belts; but if they freed themselves they would be flung around the cockpit, into each other or into something sharp, until something broke or burst. No. It was not a tenable situation. Possibly the restraints he had seen on his bed's frame would be gentler, but the decelerations when the boat struck the ice mass were so abrupt that he doubted being horizontal would help much.
"I'm going to see if the AI can get us into Arigato Bay," he shouted in Ann's ear. She nodded that she had heard. He shouted the instruction right into the AI's pickup, and the computer heard and understood, which was good, as it would have been hard to type accurately with the boat soaring and plunging and shuddering as it slammed into the ice. In all that jarring it was not possible to feel the boat's engine, which had been running all along, but a slight change in their angle to the groundswell convinced him that it was pushing harder as the AI tried to get them farther west.
Down near the point of the Sinai Peninsula, on the southern side, a large inundated crater called Arigato made a round bay. The entrance of the bay was about sixty degrees of the circle of the crater, facing southwest. The wind and waves were both also from the southwest; so the mouth of the bay, quite shallow, as it was a low part of the old crater rim, was bound to be broken water, a difficult crossing no doubt. But once inside the bay the groundswell would be cut off by that same rim, and both waves and wind much reduced, especially when they got behind the western cape of the bay. There they would wait out the howler, and be on their way again when it was done. In theory it was an excellent plan, although Sax worried about conditions in the mouth of the bay; the chart showed it was only ten meters deep, which was certain to cause the groundswells to break. On the other hand, in a boat that became a kind of submarine (and yet drawing less than two meters of water for all that) negotiating broken surf might not be much of a problem ; just go with it. The AI appeared to consider his instructions within the realm of the possible. And indeed the boat had pulled in the sea anchor, and with its powerful little engines was making its way across the wind and waves toward the bay, which was not visible; nothing of the lee shore could be seen through the dirty air.
So they held to the cockpit railings and waited out the reach, speechless; there was little to say, and the booming howl of the howler made it difficult to communicate. Sax's hands and arms got very tired from holding on, but there was no help for that except to abandon the cockpit and go below and strap himself into his bed, which he did not want to do. Despite the discomfort, and the nagging worry about the bay entrance, it was an extraordinary experience to watch the wind pulverize the surface of the water the way it was.
A short while later (though the AI indicated it had been seventy-two minutes), he caught sight of land, a dark ridge over the whitecaps to the lee side of them. Seeing it meant they were probably too close to it, but there ahead it disappeared, and reappeared farther west: the entrance to Arigato Bay. The tiller shifted against his knee, and he noted a change in the boat's direction. For the first time he could hear the hum of the little engines at the sterns of the two hulls. The jarring against the ice got rougher, and they had to hold on tight. Now the groundswells were getting taller, their crests torn off, but the bulk of every wave remaining, its face surging up as it encountered the sea bottom. And now he could see in the foam rolling over the water ice chunks, and larger bergy bits--- clear, blue, jade, aquamarine--- pitted, rough, glassy. A great deal of ice must have been driven against the lee shore ahead of them. If the bay mouth was choked with ice, and waves were breaking over the bar nevertheless, it would be a nasty passage indeed. And yet that looked like what the situation would be. He shouted a question or two at the AI, but its replies were unsatisfactory. It seemed to be saying that the boat could sustain any shocks the situation could inflict, but that the engines could not drive it through pack ice. And in fact the ice was thickening rapidly; they seemed in the process of being enveloped by a loose mass of bergy bits, driven onshore by the wind from all over the gulf. Their grinding and knocking was now a big component of the overwhelming noise of the storm. Indeed it looked like it would now be difficult to motor out of the situation, straight offshore into the wind and waves and out to sea. Not that he really wanted to be out there, tossed up and down on waves that were growing ever larger and more unruly; capsizing would be a very real possibility; but because of the unexpected density of ice inshore, it was beginning to look like getting offshore had been their better option. Now closed to them. They were in for a hard pummeling.
Ann was looking uncomfortable in her restraints, holding to the cockpit rail for dear life, a sight that gave part of Sax's mind satisfaction: she showed no inclination to let go, none at all. In fact she leaned over so that she could shout in his ear, and he turned his head to listen.
"We can't stay here!" she shouted. "When we tire--- the impacts are going to tear us up--- ah!--- like dolls!"
"We can strap ourselves to our beds," Sax shouted.
She frowned doubtfully. And it was true that those restraints might not be any better. He had never tried them out; and there was the problem of getting secured in them by oneself to consider. Amazing how loud the wind was--- shrieking wind, roaring water, thunking ice. The waves were growing larger and larger; when the boat rose on their faces, it took them ten or twelve heart-stopping seconds to shoot to the crests, and now when they got up there they saw chunks of ice being thrown clear of the waves, thrown off with the flying foam to crash down into their fellows below, and sometimes into the boat's hulls and decking, and even the clear thin cockpit shell, with a force they could feel all through their bodies.
Sax leaned over to shout again in Ann's ear. "I believe this is one of those situations in which we are meant to use the lifeboat function!"
". . . lifeboat?" Ann said.
Sax nodded. "The boat is its own lifeboat!" he shouted. "It flies!"
"What do you mean?"
"It flies!"
"You're kidding!"
"No! It becomes a--- a blimp!" He leaned over and put his mouth right to her ear. "The hulls and the keels and the bottom of the cockpit empty their ballast. They fill with helium from tanks in the bow. And balloons deploy. They told me about it back in Da Vinci, but I've never seen it! I didn't think we'd be using it!" The boat could also become a submarine, they had said in Da Vinci, quite pleased with themselves at the new craft's versatility. But the ice packing against the lee shore made that option unavailable to them, something that Sax did not regret; for no particular reason, the idea of going down in the boat didn't appeal to him.
Ann pulled back to look at him, amazed at this news. "Do you know how to fly it!" she shouted.
"No!"
Presumably the AI would take care of that. If they could get it into the air. Just a matter of finding the emergency release, of flicking the right toggles. He pointed at the control panel to mime this thought, then leaned forward to shout in her ear; her head swung in and banged his nose and mouth hard, and then he was blinking with bright pain, the blood running out of his nose like water from a faucet. Impact, just like the two planetesimals, he grinned and split his lip even wider, a painful mistake. He licked and licked, tasting his blood. "I love you!" he shouted. She didn't hear him.
"How do we launch it?" Ann cried.
He indicated the control panel again, there beside the AI, the emergency board under a protective bar.
If they chose to try an escape by air, however, it would bring about a dangerous moment. Once they were moving at the wind's speed, of course, there would be very little force brought to bear on the boat, they would simply blimp along. But at the moment of liftoff, while they were still nearly stationary, the howler would tear hard at them. They would tumble, probably, and this might disable the balloons enough to cast the boat back into the ice-choked breakers, or onto the lee shore. He could see Ann thinking this through herself. Still--- whatever happened, it was likely to be preferable to the bone-jarring impacts that continued to rack them. It would be a temporary thing, one way or the other.
Ann looked at him, scowled at the sight of him; presumably he was a bloody mess. "Worth a try!" she shouted.
So Sax detached the protection bar from the emergency panel, and with a final look at Ann--- their eyes meeting, a gaze with some content he could not articulate, but which warmed him--- he put his fingers on the switches. Hopefully the altitude control would be obvious when the time came. He wished he had spent more time flying.
As the boat rose up the foamy face of each wave, there came a nearly weightless moment at the top, just before the fall down into the next icy trough. In one of these moments Sax flicked the switches on the panel. The boat fell down the waveback anyway, hit the growlers with its usual jar--- then bounced right up and away, lifted, and tilted right over on its lee hull, so that they were hanging in their restraints. Balloons entangled no doubt, the next wave would capsize them and that would be that; but then the boat was dragging away over ice and water and foam, almost free of contact, rolling them head over heels in their restraints. A wild tumbling interval, and then the boat righted itself, and began to swing back and forth like a big pendulum, side to side, front to back--- oops then all the way over again, topsy-turvy--- then righted, and swinging again. Up up up, thrown this way and that, hold on--- his shoulder harness came free and his shoulder slammed against Ann's, even though he had been pressed against her. The tiller was bashing his knee. He held on to it. Another crash together and he held on to Ann, twisted in his seat and clutched her, and after that they were like Siamese twins, arms around each other's shoulders, in danger at every slam of breaking each other's bones. They looked at each other for a second, faces centimeters apart, blood on both of them from some cut or other, or no it was probably just from his nose. She looked impassive. Up they shot into the sky.
His collarbone hurt, where Ann's forehead or elbow had struck it. But they were flying, up and up in an awkward embrace. And as the boat was accelerated to something nearer the wind's speed, the turbulence lessened greatly. The balloons seemed to be connected by rigging to the top of the mast. Then just when Sax was beginning to hope for some kind of zeppelinlike stability, even to expect it, the boat shot straight up and began its horrible tumbling again. Updraft no doubt. They were probably over land by now, and it was all too possible they were being sucked up into a thunderhead, like a hail ball. On Mars there were thunderheads ten kilometers tall, often powered by howlers from far to the south, and balls of hail flew up and down in these thunderheads for a long time. Sometimes hail the size of cannonballs had come crashing down, devastating crops and even killing people. And if they were pulled up too high they might die of altitude, like those early balloonists in France, was in the Montgolfiers themselves it had happened to? Sax couldn't remember. Up and up, tearing through wind and red haze, no chance to see very far---
BOOM! He jumped and hurt himself against his seat belt, came down hard. Thunder. Thunder banging around them, at what had to be well over 130 decibels. Ann seemed limp against him, and he shifted sideways, reached up awkwardly and twisted her ear, trying to turn her head so he could see her face. "Hey!" she cried, though it sounded to him like a whisper in the roar of the wind. "Sorry," he said, though he was sure she couldn't hear him. It was too loud to talk. They were spinning again, but without much centrifugal force. The boat was shrieking as the wind pushed it up; then they dove, and his eardrums hurt to bursting, he wiggled his jaw back and forth, back and forth. Then up again and they popped, painfully. He wondered how high they would go; very possible they would die of thin air. Though maybe the Da Vinci techs had thought to pressurize the cockpit, who knew. It behooved him to try to understand the boat as blimp, or at least master the altitude adjustment system. Not that there was much to be done against the force of such updrafts and downdrafts. Sudden rattle of hail against the cockpit shell. There were small toggles on the emergency panel; in a moment of less violent tumbling he was able to put his face down near the bar and read the display terminal embedded in it. Altitude . . . not obvious. He tried to calculate how high the boat would go before its weight caused it to level off. Hard when he wasn't actually sure of the boat's weight, or the amount of helium deployed.
Then some kind of turbulence in the storm tossed them again. Up, down, up; then down, for many seconds in a row. Sax's stomach was in his throat, or so it felt. His collarbone was an agony. Nose running or bleeding continuously. Then up. Gasping for air, too. He wondered again how high they were, and whether they were still ascending; but there was nothing to be seen outside the shell of the cockpit, nothing but dust and cloud. He seemed in no danger of fainting. Ann was motionless beside him, and he wanted to tug her ear again to see if she was conscious, but couldn't move his arm. He elbowed her side. She elbowed back; if he had elbowed her as hard as that, he would have to remember to go lighter next time. He tried a very gentle elbowing, and felt a less violent prod in return. Perhaps they could resort to Morse code, he had learned it as a boy for no reason at all, and now in his reborn memory he could hear it all, every dit and dot. But perhaps Ann had not learned it, and this was no time for lessons.
The violent ride went on for so long he couldn't estimate it: an hour? Once the noise lessened to the point where they could shout to each other, which they did just because it could be done; there actually wasn't much to say.
"We're in a thunderhead!"
"Yes!"
Then she pointed down with one finger. Pink blurs below. And they were descending rapidly, his eardrums aching again. Being spit out the bottom of the cloud, as hail. Pink, brown, rust, amber, umber. Ah yes--- the surface of the planet, looking not very different than it ever had from the air. Descent. He and Ann had come down in the same landing vehicle, he recalled, the very first time.
Now the boat was scudding along under the cloud's bottom, in falling hail and rain; but the helium might pull them back up into the cloud. He pushed down a likely toggle on the panel, and the boat began to descend. A pair of small toggles; manipulating them seemed to dip them forward or raise them up. Altitude adjustors. He pushed them both gently down.
They seemed to be descending. After a while it was clearer below. In fact they appeared to be over jagged ridges and mesas; that would be the Cydonia Mensa, on the mainland of Arabia Terra. Not a good place to land.
But the storm continued to carry them along, and soon they were east of Cydonia, out over the flat plains of Arabia. Now they needed to descend soon, before they were flung out over the North Sea, which might very well be as wild and ice-filled as Chryse had been. Below lay a patchwork of fields, orchards--- irrigation canals and curving streams, lined by trees. It had been raining a lot, it looked like, and there was water all over the surface of the land, in ponds, in canals, in little craters, and covering the lower parts of fields. Farmhouses clustered in little villages, only outbuildings in the fields--- barns, equipment sheds. Lovely wet countryside, quite flat. Water everywhere. They were descending, but slowly. Ann's hands were a bluish white in the dim afternoon; and so were his.
He pulled himself together, feeling very weary. The landing would be important. He pushed down the adjustors hard.
Now they were descending more swiftly. They were being blown over a line of trees, then down, rapidly over a broad field. At the far end it was inundated, brown rainwater filling the furrows. Beyond the field stood an orchard, and a water landing would be perfect anyway; but they were moving horizontally quite fast, and still perhaps ten or fifteen meters over the field. He shoved the adjustors full forward and saw the underhulls tilt down like diving dolphins, and the boat tilted as well, and then the land came right up at them, brown water, big splash, white waves winging away to both sides, and they were being dragged through muddy water until the boat skated right into a line of young trees, and stopped hard. Down the line of trees a group of kids and a man were running toward them, their mouths all perfect round O's in their faces.
Sax and Ann struggled to a sitting position. Sax opened the cockpit shell. Brown water spilled in over the gunwale. A windy hazy day in the Arabian countryside. The water pouring in felt distinctly warm. Ann's face was wet and her hair stood out in stiff tufts, as if she had been electrocuted. She smiled a crooked smile. "Nicely done," she said.
Phoenix Lake
Prologue
A gun shot, a bell rung, a choir singing counterpoint.
The third Martian revolution was so complex and nonviolent that it was hard to see it as a revolution at all, at the time; more like a shift in a ongoing argument, a change in the tide, a punctuation of equilibrium.
The takeover of the elevator was the seed of the crisis, but then a few weeks later the Terran military came down the cable and the crisis flowered everywhere at once. On the shore of the North Sea, on a small indentation of the coast of Tempe Terra, a cluster of landers dropped out of the sky, swaying under parachutes or shimmering down on plumes of pale fire: a whole new colony, an unauthorized incursion of immigrants. This particular group was from Kampuchea; elsewhere on the planet other landers were descending, with settlers from the Philippines, Pakistan, Australia, Japan, Venezuela, New York. The Martians did not know how to respond. They were a demilitarized society, with no idea that something like this could ever happen, with no way to defend themselves. Or so they thought.
Once again it was Maya who pulled them into action, playing the wrist like Frank used to, calling everyone in the open Mars coalition and many others besides, orchestrating the general response. Come on, she said to Nadia. One more time. And so through the cities and villages the word spread, and people went down into the streets, or got on trains to Mangala.
On the coast of Tempe, the new Kampuchean settlers got out of their landers and went to the little shelters that had been dropped with them, just as the First Hundreds had two centuries before. And out of the hills came people wearing furs, and carrying bows and arrows. They had red stone eyeteeth, and their hair was tied in topknots. Here, they said to the settlers, who had bunched before one of their shelters. Let us help you. Put those guns down. We'll show you where you are. You don't need that kind of shelter, it's an old design. That hill you see to the west is Perepelkin Crater. There's already apple and cherry orchards on the apron, you can take what you need. Look, here are the plans for a disk house, that's the best design for this coast. Then you'll need a marina, and some fishing boats. If you let us use your harbor we'll show you where the truffles grow. Yes, a disk house, see, a Sattelmeier disk house. It's lovely to live out in the open air. You'll see.
All branches of the Martian government had met in the assembly hall in Mangala, to deal with the crisis. The Free Mars majority in the senate, and the executive council, and the Global Environmental Court, all agreed that the illegal incursion of Terrans was an act of aggression the equivalent of war, which had to be responded to in kind. There were suggestions from the floor of the senate that asteroids could be directed at Terra, as bombs that would be diverted only if the immigrants returned home and the elevator went back to a system of dual supervision. It would only take one strike to have a KT event, and so on. UN diplomats on the scene pointed out that this was a sword that could cut both ways.
In these tense days there came a knock on the door of the assembly hall in Mangala, and in walked Maya Toitovna. She said, "We want to speak." Then she ushered in a crowd waiting outside, pushing them up onto the stage like an impatient sheep-dog: first Sax and Ann, walking side by side; then Nadia and Art, Tariki and Nanao, Zeyk and Nazik, Mikhail, Vasili, Ursula and Marina, even Coyote. The ancient issei, come back to haunt the present moment, come back to take the stage and say what they thought. Maya pointed to the room's screens, which showed images of the outside of the building; the group on the stage now extended in an unbroken line through the halls of the building out onto the big central plaza facing the sea, where some half-million people were assembled. The city streets were also stuffed with people, watching screens to see what was happening in the assembly hall. And out in Chalmers Bay there sailed a fleet of townships like a startling new archipelago, with flags and banners waving from their masts. And in every Martian city the crowds were out, the screens were on. Everyone could see everyone else.
Ann went to the podium and said quietly that the government of Mars in recent years had broken both the law and the spirit of human compassion, by forbidding immigration from Earth to Mars. The people of Mars did not want that. They needed a new government. This was a vote of no confidence. The new incursions of Terran settlers were also illegal, and unacceptable, but understandable; the government of Mars had broken the law first. And the number of new settlers in these incursions was no greater than the number of legitimate settlers who had been illegally barred from coming by the current government. Mars, Ann said, had to be open to Terran immigration as much as could be, given the physical constraints, for as long as the population-surge years might last. The surge years would not last much longer. Their duty now to their descendants was to get through the last of these packed years in peace. "Nothing on the table now is worth war. We have seen it, and we know."
Then she looked over her shoulder at Sax, who stepped up next to her to the microphones. He said, "Mars has to be protected." The biosphere was new, its carrying capacity limited. It did not have the physical resources of Earth, and much of its empty land would of physical necessity have to stay empty. Terrans had to understand that, and not overwhelm local systems; if they did, Mars would be no use to anyone at all. Clearly there was a severe population problem on Earth, but Mars alone was not the solution. "The Earth--- Mars relationship has to be renegotiated."
They began that renegotiation. They asked a UN representative to come up and explain the incursions. They argued and debated and expostulated; and shouted in each other's faces. Out in the outback, locals confronted settlers, and some of them on both sides threatened violence; and others stepped in and started talking, cajoling, scolding, wrangling, negotiating; and shouting in each other's faces. At any point in the process, in a thousand different places, things could have turned violent; many people were furious; but cooler heads prevailed. It remained, in most places, at the level of argument. Many feared this could not continue, many did not believe it possible; but it was happening, and the people in the streets saw it happening. They kept it happening. At some point, after all, the mutation of values has to express itself; and why not here, why not now? There were very few weapons on the planet, and it was hard to strike someone in the face, or stick them with a pitchfork, when they were standing there arguing with you. This was the moment of mutation, history in the making, and they could see it right before them, in the streets and on the human hillsides and on the screens, history labile right there in their hands--- and so they seized the moment, and wrenched it in a new direction. They talked themselves into it. A new government. A new treaty with Earth. A polycephalous peace. The negotiations would go on for years. Like a choir in counterpoint, singing a great fugue.
Eventually that cable was going to come back to haunt us, that's what I said all along. You did not, you loved the cable. The only complaint you had was that it was too slow. You can get to Earth faster than you can get to Clarke, you said. That's true, you can, it's ridiculous. But not the same as saying the cable was going to come back and haunt us, you have to admit. Waiter, hey waiter! We'll have tequilas all around, and some lime wedges. We were working the Socket when they came down, the inner chamber didn't have a chance but the Socket is a big building, I don't know if they had a plan and it didn't work or if they didn't have a plan at all, but by the time their third car came down the Socket was sealed off and they were the proud masters of a 37,000-kilometer dead end. It was stupid. It was a nightmare, these foxes kept coming in and at night only, so that they looked like wolves only a lot faster. And they went right for the throat. A plague of rabid foxes, man, it was a nightmare. Like 2128 all over again, I don't know if that's true or not but there they were, Terran police in Sheffield, and when people heard they all came out into the streets, the streets were packed, really packed, I'm short and sometimes my face was squished right into people's backs or women's breasts. I heard about it from a neighbor in the next apartment only about five minutes after it happened, she had heard from a friend living out near the Socket. The response of the people to the takeover of the cable's lower facility was rapid and tumultuous. Those UN storm troopers didn't know what to make of us, a detachment tried to take over Hartz Plaza and we just flowed around them, moving out from in front of them but shoving in at the sides so that it was like a kind of vacuum pull. This snarling foam-toothed rabid demon at my throat, it was a fucking nightmare. Took them right out to rim park and these goddamned starship troopers couldn't have moved a centimeter at that point, not without slaughtering thousands of people. People in the streets, that's the only thing governments are afraid of. Well, or term limits. Or free elections! Or assassination. Or being laughed at, ah, ha-ha-ha! And there were hookups to all the other cities and giant street parties in every one of them. We were in Lasswitz and everyone went down to the river park and stood with candles in their hand, so that cameras could shoot down from the overlook and see this sea of candles, it was great. And Sax and Ann standing there together, it was amazing. Amazing. Unbelievable. They probably scared the UN to death saying each other's lines like that, the UN probably thought we had brain-transfer devices all ready to zap them. What I liked was later when Peter called for a new election for the Red party leadership, and challenged Irishka to hold it right then and there on the wrist. Those party things are basically heavyweight challenges, mano a mano, if Irishka had refused to call a vote then she would have been finished anyway, so she had to call it no matter what, you should have seen the look on her face. We were in Sabishii when we heard the call for a Red vote and when Peter won we went wild, Sabishii was an instant festival. And Senzeni Na. And Nilokeras. And Hell's Gate. And Argyre Station, you should have seen it. Well wait a second, it was only about a sixty-forty vote, in Argyre Station it went crazy because there were so many Irishka backers spoiling for a fight. It's Irishka who saved Argyre Basin and every dry low spot on this planet if you ask me, Peter Clayborne is just an old nisei, he never did anything. Waiter, waiter! Beers all around, weiss beers, bitte. Bringing food out to these little Terrans, didn't have any idea. Nirgal shaking hands with every one of them. So the doctor says, how do you know you've got the quick decline? It was a fucking nightmare. It was a surprise Ann working with Sax, that looked like a sellout. Not if you had paid attention, they been traveling together and everything, you must have been on Venus or something. Or something. The browns, the blues, it's stupid. We shoulda done something like this a long time ago. Well, why worry so much, they're goners, there won't be a single one left in ten years. Don't be too sure about that. Don't be too happy about that, you're only a few years younger than them, you idiot. Oh it was a most interesting week we have been sleeping in the parks, and everyone was most kind. Werteswandel, the Germans call it. They've got a word for everything. Bound to happen, that's evolution. We're all mutants at this point. Speak for yourself jack. Speak to the waiter. Six years! That's great news, I'm surprised you're sober. Oh I'm not, ah-ha-ha, I'm not! Little red people charging around on red ants, think they're helping out, whoops, right over the edge of the rim, better hope they're flying ants. No wonder I've been getting so many ants. So the man says, Well, doc--- Yes, and? That's the end of the joke, he only just gets to say Well doc and then he dies, quick decline get it? Very funny. That's right it is funny! All right, all right, ha-ha, it's not worth getting hot over it. Anytime you have to threaten people to get them to laugh at your joke you have to consider it less than successful, okay? Fuck you. Oh clever. So anyway there we were when the troops kind of make like they want to go back to the Socket. They go at it very gently, single file behind a little electric hotel cart they got their hands on, and everyone moves a little and lets them go, and they were passing through us looking nervous, and then people were shaking their hands like they were all Nirgal at the gates, and asking them to stay, leaving them alone if they couldn't handle it, kissing them on the cheeks, leis piled up till they couldn't see over them. Right back into the Socket. And why not since they made their point and threatened us enough for the goddamned traitor government to fold without a fight? This joker doesn't seem to understand the principles of jujitsu. Of what? What? Hey just who the hell are you? I'm a stranger in town. What? What? Excuse me miz, could you bring us another round of kava? Well, yes, we're still trying to get it into the parts-per-billion range, but no luck yet. Don't give me Fassnacht, I hate Fassnacht, the worst day of the year to me, they killed Boone on Fassnacht. They firebombed Dresden on Fassnacht. No end of evil to atone for. They were sailing in Chryse when a howler picked up their boat and threw it all the way over the Cydonia Mountains. That'll be the kind of experience that brings you closer together. Oh please, who is this guy. It's no big deal there's blimps every week get blown around a bit, it's no big deal. We got caught out in that same howler, but we were just outside Santorini, I mean to tell you the water's surface was torn to smithereens to a depth of about ten meters, I'm not kidding. The boat we were in the AI got scared and took us under right down into another boat that was already down there, so we banged into this boat and it was like the end of the world, boom, everything dark, the AI went insane, scared it to death I swear. It probably just broke. Well I broke my collarbone. That'll be ten sequins please. Thanks. Those howlers are dangerous. I was in one in Echus and we all had to sit down on our butts and even then we were kind of scraping along. I had to hold on to my glasses or else they would have been torn right off my ears. Cars flipping like tiddlywinks. The whole marina cleared of every single boat, it was like some kid took his toy harbor and knocked it across the room. I too experienced this storm at its utmost fury. I was visiting the township Ascension, in the North Sea near Korolev Island. Hey that's where Will Fort surfs. Yes, here as I understand it the waves on Mars reach their greatest heights, and in this storm they towered a hundred meters from trough to crest, no, I do not jest. Waves much taller than the sides of the township, which on these dire rolling black hills appeared no larger than a lifeboat to those of us on it. We were a veritable cork. The animals were unhappy. And to compound our difficulties, we were being cast onto the south point of Korolev. The waves were breaking completely over the final cape into the sea beyond. So every time we rose up the gigantic face of each wave, the pilot of the Ascension turned the township south, and it slid across the face of the wave for some distance before losing the crest and falling back into the next trough. On each wave we moved a little faster and farther, for as we approached the point of the island the wave faces grew steeper and bigger. The very tip of the point curves off to the east, so that the waves were breaking left to right as we looked ahead, crashing onto the rocks and then onto the reef offshore. On our final wave the Ascension was pitched down the steep face of the wave. At the bottom of the face the pilot turned the township right, and the great raft made the cut at the bottom and drifted back up onto the face, moving across it at a speed we could not calculate. It was like flying. Yes--- we were surfing a hundred-meter-high wave, on a raft as big as a village, just over the rocks of the reef below. For a second we flew in the tube of the breaking wave. Then we were out, onto the shoulder of the wave, which was back in deep water, and no longer breaking. And so we passed the island. So the doctor says, how do you know? How? So pretty. Yes, it was a moment to remember. I'm going to take my fund and retire, it just ain't the same anymore. These people are thugs. Heard she went out on one of those starships, that's what I heard. You really saw her? You got to get you a better translator, I did not say Never mind doctor I am feeling better. What the hell kind of machine. Waiter! Villages just like the ones back home, except no caste. If they want caste they have to carry it in their heads. Some issei try but the nisei go feral. The way I heard it is that the little red people finally got sick of all our nonsense, and they were hot to do something having recently domesticated the red ant, and they started this whole campaign so that they could come charging to the rescue when the Terrans invaded. You might think they were being overconfident, but you have to remember that the biomass of red ants on this planet is closing in on a meter thick if averaged, so much biomass they're going to throw us out of orbit they should try ants on Mercury, and every ant has a whole tribe of the little people riding around on it in howdah cities or whatever, and so they weren't so overconfident after all. There's strength in numbers. So they deliberately made the government act stupid to spark this confrontation. I wondered what excuse those fools had, they need an excuse, why it is that people go to Mangala and immediately turn into rapacious corrupt morons, it's a mystery to me. Went down for us. Why is it always the little red people, whatever happened to Big Man, I hate these little red people and their twee little folktales, if you're going to be so stupid as to tell folktales at all, the truth being much more interesting, then at least they could be big tall tales, Titans and Gorgons duking it out with spiral galaxies like razor-edged boomerangs, zip, zip, zip! Hey watch it there, slow down, guy, slow down. Waiter, get this motormouth some kava, will you? He needs to mellow. Be calm, agitated sir. Be calm. Throwing nova bombs back and forth! Boom! Kapow! KA BOOM! Hey! Hey! Calm oneself oh agitated one. I'm sick of these little people. Get your hands off me. It's a sorry excuse for a government anyway. It always gets back to the same old thing, power suckers sucking power. I told them to stick with tents, no global government, so there wouldn't be so much power to suck, but did they listen to me? They did not. You told them. Yeah I told them, I was there. Nirgal, sure. Nirgal and I go way back. What do you mean, honored old one, are you not the Stowaway? Why yes, I am. So you are Nirgal's father, you should go way back as you say. Yeah well in Zygote it didn't always work that way. I tell you that bitch pulled the wool over your eyes your whole life if you let her. Have you living in a closet for years on end. Ah come on, you're not Coyote. Well what can I say. Not many people recognize me. And why should they? I bet he is. You can't be. If you're Nirgal's dad then why is he so tall and you're so short? I'm not short. Why are you laughing? I'm five feet five inches tall. Feet? Feet? Holy ka, here's a man measures his height in feet! In feet! Oh my God you must be kidding, five feet? Feet? Hey you look like it would take more feet than that, just how long were these feet? A foot was about a third of a meter, a little less. This is how they measured? A little less than a third of a meter? No wonder Earth is so messed up. Hey what makes you think your precious meter is so great, it's just some fraction of the distance from Earth's North Pole to its equator, Napoleon chose the fraction on a whim! It's a bar of metal in Paris France and its length was determined by the whim of a madman! Don't you be imagining you're more rational than the old ways. Oh stop, please, I'll die laughing, please. You people have very little respect for your elders, I like that. Hey give the old Coyote another drink, what're you having? Tequila, thanks. And some kava. Oh oh! This guy knows how to live. That's right I do know how to live. These ferals got it figured out, as long as you don't take it too far. They're copying me but they've gone too far. Don't walk, drive. Don't hunt, buy. Sleep every night on a gel bed, and try to have two naked young native women as your blankets. Oh, oh, oh! Whoo! You old lecher! Oh honored sir. Indecent. Well, it works for me. I don't sleep that well but I'm happy. Thanks, don't mind if I do, thanks. I appreciate it. Cheers. Here's to Mars.
She woke in a silence so still she could hear her heart. She couldn't remember where she was. Then it came back. They were at Nadia and Art's house, on the coast of the Hellas Sea, just west of Odessa. Tap tap tap. Dawn; the first nail of the day. Nadia was building outside. She and Art lived at the edge of their beach village, in their co-op's complex of intertwined houses, pavilions, gardens, paths. A community of about a hundred people, linked to a hundred more like it. Apparently Nadia was always working on the infrastructure. Tap tap tap tap tap! Currently building a deck to surround a Zygote bamboo tower.
In the next room someone was breathing. There was an open door between the rooms. She sat up. Drapes on the wall, she pulled them open a crack. Predawn. Grey on gray. A spare room. Sax was on a big bed in the next room, through the door. Under thick coverlets.
She was cold. She got up and padded through the door into his room. His face slack on a broad pillow. An old man. She crawled under the coverlets into bed with him. He was warm. He was shorter than she was, short and round. She knew that, she knew him: from the sauna and pool in Underhill, the baths in Zygote. Another part of their communal body. Tap tap tap tap tap. He stirred and she wrapped herself around him. He snuggled back into her, still deeply asleep.
• • •
During the memory experiment she had focused on Mars. Michel had once said it: Your task is to find the Mars that endures through all. And seeing the same hillocks and hollows around Underhill had reminded her intensely of the early years, when over each horizon had been a new thing. The land. In her mind it endured. On Earth they would never know what it was like, never. The lightness, the tight intimacy of the horizon, everything almost within touch; then the sudden immense vistas, when one of Big Man's neighborhoods hove into view: the vast cliffs, the canyons so deep, the continent volcanoes, the wild chaos. The giant calligraphy of areological time. The world-wrapping dunes. They would never know; it could not be imagined.
But she had known. And during the memory experiment she had kept her mind focused on it, throughout the entirety of a day that had seemed to last ten years. Never once thought of Earth. It was a trick, a tremendous effort; don't think of the word elephant! But she hadn't. It was a trick she had gotten good at, the single-mindedness of the great refuser, a kind of strength. Perhaps. And then Sax had come flying over the horizon, crying Remember Earth? Remember Earth? It was almost funny.
But that had been Antarctica. Immediately her mind, so tricky, so focused, had said That's just Antarctica, a bit of Mars on Earth, a continent transposed. The year they had lived there, a snatched glimpse of their future. In the Dry Valleys they had been on Mars without knowing it. So that she could remember it and it did not lead back to Earth, it was only an ur-Underhill, an Underhill with ice, and a different camp, but the same people, the same situation. And thinking about it, all of it had indeed come back to her, in the magic of the anamnestic enchantment: those talks with Sax; how she had liked someone as solitary in science as she was, how she had been attracted to him. No one else had understood how far you could walk out into it. And out there in that pure distance they had argued. Night after night. About Mars. Aspects technical, aspects philosophical. They had not agreed. But they were out there together.
But not quite. He had been shocked by her touch. Poor flesh. So she had thought. Apparently she had been wrong. Which was too bad, because if she had understood; if he had understood; if they had understood; perhaps all history would have changed. Perhaps not. But they had not understood. And here they were.
And in all the rush into that past, she had never once thought of the Earth farther north, the Earth before. She had stayed inside the Antarctic convergence. Indeed for the most part she had stayed on Mars, the Mars in her mind, red Mars. Now the theory was that the anamnestic treatment stimulated the memory and caused the consciousness to rehearse the associational complexes of node and network, bounding through the years. This rehearsal reinforced the memories in their physical tracery, such as it was, an evanescent field of patterns formed by quantum oscillation. Everything recalled was reinforced; and what was not recalled was perhaps not reinforced; and what was not reinforced would continue to fall prey to breakage, error, quantum collapse, decay. And be forgotten.
So she was a new Ann now. Not the Counter-Ann, nor even that shadowy third person who had haunted her for so long. A new Ann. A fully Martian Ann at last. On a brown Mars of some new kind, red, green, blue, all swirled together. And if there was a Terran Ann still in there, cowering in a lost quantum closet of her own, that was life. No scar was ever fully lost until death and the final dissolution, and that was perhaps the way it should be; one wouldn't want to lose too much, or it would be trouble of a different kind. A balance had to be kept. Here, now, she was the Martian Ann, not issei any longer, but an elderly new native, a Terran-born yonsei. Martian Ann Clayborne, in the moment and the only moment. It felt good to lie there.
• • •
Sax stirred in her arms. She looked at his face. A different face, but still Sax. She had an arm draped over him, and she ran a cold hand down his chest. He woke up, saw who it was, smiled a sleepy little smile. He stretched, turned, pressed his face into her shoulder. Kissed her neck with a little bite. They held on to each other, as they had in the flying boat during the storm. A wild ride. It would be fun to make love in the sky. Not practical in a wind like that. Some other time. She wondered if mattresses were made the same way they used to be. This one was hard. Sax was not as soft as he looked. They hugged and hugged. Sexual congress. He was inside her, moving. She seized him and hugged him, hard, hard.
Now he was kissing her all over, nibbling at her, completely under the covers. Submarining around down there. She could feel it all over her. His teeth, occasionally, but mostly it was the licking of a tonguetip over her skin, like a cat. Lick lick lick. It felt good. He was humming, or mumbling. His chest vibrated with it, it was like purring. "Rrrr, rrrr, rrrrrrrrrr." A peaceful luxurious sound. It too felt good on her skin. Vibration, cat tongue, little licks all over her. She tented the coverlet so she could look down at him.
"Now which feels better?" he murmured. "A?" Kissing her. "Or B." Kissing a different place.
She had to laugh. "Sax, just shut up and do it."
"Ah. Okay."
• • •
They had breakfast with Nadia and Art, and the members of their family that were around. Their daughter Nikki was off on a feral trip into the Hellespontus Mountains, with her husband and three other couples from their co-op. They had left the previous evening in a clatter of excited anticipation, like kids themselves, leaving behind their daughter Francesca, and the friends' kids as well: Nanao, Boone, and Tati. Francesca and Boone were both five, Nanao three, Tati two; all of them thrilled to be together, and with Francesca's grandparents. Today they were going to go to the beach. A big adventure. Over breakfast they worked on logistics. Sax was going to stay home with Art, and help him plant some new trees in an olive grove that Art was establishing on the hill behind the house. Sax would also be waiting to meet two visitors he had invited: Nirgal, and a mathematician from Da Vinci, a woman named Bao. Sax was excited to be introducing them, Ann saw. "It's an experiment," he confided to her. He was as flushed as the kids.
Nadia was going to keep working on her deck. She and Art would perhaps get down to the beach later, with Sax and his guests. For the morning the kids were to be in the care of Aunt Maya. They were so excited by this prospect they couldn't sit still; they squirmed, they bolted around the table like young dogs.
So Ann, it seemed, was needed to go to the beach with Maya and the kids. Maya could use the help. All of them eyed Ann warily. Are you up to it, Aunt Ann? She nodded. They would take the tram.
• • •
So she was off to the beach with Maya and the kids. She and Francesca and Nanao and Tati were crowded in the first seat behind the driver, with Tati on Ann's lap. Boone and Maya were sitting together in the seat behind. Maya came in this way every day; she lived on the far side of Nadia and Art's village, in a detached cottage of her own, on bluffs over the beach. She went in most days to work for her co-op, and stayed in many evenings to work with her theater group. She was also a habitué of the café scene, and, apparently, these kids' most regular baby-sitter.
Now she was engaged in a ferocious tickle fight with Boone, the two of them groping each other hard and giggling unabashedly. Something else to add to the day's store of erotic knowledge: that there could be such a sensuous encounter between a five-year-old boy and a two-hundred-and-thirty-year-old woman, the play of two humans both very experienced in the pleasures of the body. Ann and the other kids fell silent, slightly embarrassed to witness such a scene.
"What's the matter," Maya demanded of them in a breathless break, "cat got your tongue?"
Nanao stared up at Ann, appalled. "A cat got your tongue?"
"No," Ann said.
Maya and Boone shrieked with laughter. People on the tram looked up at them, some grinning, some glowering. Francesca had Nadia's curious flecked eyes, Ann saw. It was all of Nadia to be seen in her, she looked more like Art, but not much like either. A beauty.
• • •
They came to the beach stop: a little tram station, a rain shelter and kiosk, a restaurant, a parking lot for bikes, some country roads leading inland, and a broad path cutting through grassy dunes, down to the beach. They got off the tram, Maya and Ann laden with bags full of towels and toys.
It was a cloudy windy day. The beach proved to be nearly deserted. Swift low waves came in at an angle to the strand, breaking in the shallows just offshore, in abrupt white lines. The sea was dark, the clouds pearl gray, in a herringbone pattern under a dull lavender sky. Maya dropped her bags. She and Boone ran to the water's edge. Down the beach to the east Odessa rose on its hillside, under a hole in the clouds so that all the tiny white walls glowed yellow in the sun. Gulls wheeled by looking for things to eat, feathering in the onshore wind. A pelican air-surfed over the waves, and above the pelican flew a man in a big birdsuit. The sight reminded Ann of Zo. People had died so young: in their forties, thirties, twenties; some in their teens, when they could just guess what they were going to miss; some at the age of these kids. Cut short like frogs in a frost. And it could still happen. At any moment the air itself could pick you up and kill you. Although that would be an accident. Things were different now, it had to be admitted; for barring accident, these kids would probably live a full span. A very full span. There was that to be said for the way things were now.
Nikki's friends had said it would be best to keep their daughter Tati out of the sand, as she was prone to eating it. So Ann tried to keep her back on the narrow lawn between dunes and beach, but she broke away, howling, and trundled over and plopped back on her diaper on the sand, near the others, looking satisfied. "Okay," Ann said, giving up and joining her, "but don't eat any of it."
Maya was helping Nanao and Boone and Francesca dig a hole. "When we reach water sand we'll start the drip castle," Boone declared. Maya nodded, absorbed in the digging.
"Look," Francesca shrieked at them, "I'm running circles around you."
Boone glanced up. "No," he said, "you're running ovals around us."
He returned to discoursing with Maya about the life cycle of sand crabs. Ann had met him before; a year ago he had scarcely been talking, just simple phrases like Tati and Nanao's, Fishie! Mine! and now he was a pedant. The way language came to children was incredible. They were all geniuses at that age, it took adults years and years to twist them down into the bonsai creatures they eventually became. Who would dare to do that, who would dare deform this natural child? No one; and yet it got done. No one did it and everyone did it. Although Nikki and her friends, packing happily for their mountain trip, had still seemed a lot like kids to Ann. And they were nearly eighty years old. So perhaps it didn't happen as much anymore. There was that too to be said for things as they were.
Francesca stopped her circling or ovaling, and plucked a plastic shovel out of Nanao's hands. Nanao wailed in protest. Francesca turned away and stood on her tiptoes, as if to demonstrate how light her conscience was.
"It's my shovel," she said over her shoulder.
"Is not!"
Maya barely glanced up. "Give it back."
Francesca danced off with it.
"Ignore her," Maya instructed Nanao. Nanao wailed more furiously, his face magenta. Maya gave Francesca the eye. "Do you want an ice cream or not."
Francesca returned, dropped the shovel on Nanao's head. Boone and Maya, already reabsorbed in their digging, paid no attention.
"Ann, could you go get some ice creams from the kiosk?"
"Sure."
"Take Tati with you, will you?"
"No!" Tati said.
"Ice cream," Maya said.
Tati thought it over, worked laboriously to her feet.
She and Ann walked back to the tram-stop kiosk, hand in hand. They bought six ice creams, and Ann carried five of them in a bag; Tati insisted on eating hers while they walked. She was not yet good at performing two such operations at once, and they made slow progress. Melted ice cream ran down the stick, and Tati sucked ice cream and fist indiscriminately. "Pretty," she said. "Taste pretty."
A tram came into the station and stopped, then moved on. A few minutes later, three people biked down the path: Sax, leading Nirgal and a native woman. Nirgal braked his bike next to Ann, gave her a hug. She hadn't seen him in many years. He was old. She hugged him hard. She smiled at Sax; she wanted to hug him too.
They went down and joined Maya and the kids. Maya stood to hug Nirgal, then shake hands with Bao. Sax biked back and forth on the lawn behind the sand, at one point riding with no hands and waving at the group; Boone, who was still using training wheels on his bike, saw him and shouted, flabbergasted: "How do you do that!"
Sax grabbed the handlebars. He stopped the bike and stared frowning at Boone. Boone walked awkwardly over to him, arms extended, and staggered right into his bike. "Something wrong?" Sax inquired.
"I'm trying to walk without using my cerebellum!"
"Good idea," Sax said.
"I'll go get more ice cream," Ann offered, and left Tati this time, and trundled back up the sand to the grass path. It felt good to walk into the wind.
• • •
As she was returning with a second bag of ice-cream bars, the air suddenly turned cold. Then she felt a kind of lurch inside her, and a faintness. The sea surface had a glittery hard purple sheen, well above the actual surface of the water. And she was very cold. Oh shit, she thought. Here it comes. Quick decline: she had read about the various symptoms, reported by people who had been somehow resuscitated. Her heart pounded madly in her chest, like a child trying to get out of a black closet. Body insubstantial, as if something had leached her of substance and left her porous; she would collapse into dust at the tap of a finger. Tap! She grunted with surprise and pain, held on to herself. Pain in her chest. She took a step toward a bench beside the path, then stopped and hunched over at a new pain. Tap tap tap! "No!" she exclaimed, and clutched the bag of ice creams. Heart arrhythmic, yes it was bounding about, bang bang, bang bang bang bang, bang, bang, No, she said without speaking. Not yet. The new Ann no doubt, but there was no time for that, Ann herself squeaked "No," and then she was thoroughly absorbed in the effort to hold herself together. Heart you must beat! She held it so tightly she staggered. No. Not yet. The wind was a subzero frigidity, blowing right through her, her body ghostly; she held it together by will alone. Sun so bright, the harsh rays slanting right through her rib cage--- the transparency of the world. Then everything was beating like a heart, the wind breathing right through her. She held herself together with every cramping muscle. Time stopped, everything stopped.
She took a short breath. The fit passed. The wind slowly warmed back up. The sea's aura went away, leaving plain blue water. Her heart thumped with its old bump bump bump. Substance returned, pain subsided. The air was salty and damp, not cold at all. One could sweat in it.
She walked on. How forcibly the body reminded one of things. Still, she had held. She was going to live. For a while longer, at least. If it be not now . . . but not now. So here she was. Tentatively she walked on, one step after another. Everything seemed to work. She had gotten away. Brushed only.
From the sand castle Tati saw Ann and came trundling toward her, intent on the bag of ice creams. But she went too fast and fell right on her face. When she pulled herself up her face was coated with sand, and Ann expected her to howl. But she licked her upper lip like a connoisseur.
Ann walked over to help her. Lifted her to her feet, tried to wipe the sand off her upper lip; but she whipped her head back and forth to avoid the help. Ah well. Let her eat some sand, what harm could it do. "There. Not too much. No, those are for Sax and Nirgal and Bao. No! Hey, look--- look at the gulls! Look at the gulls!"
Tati looked up, saw seagulls overhead, tried to track them, fell on her butt. "Ooh!" she said. "Pretty! Pretty! Innit pretty? Innit pretty?"
Ann hauled her back to her feet. They walked hand in hand toward the group by its widening hole, its mound of sand topped with drip castles. Nirgal and Bao were down by the waterline, talking. Gulls planed overhead. Down the beach an old Asian woman was surf-fishing. The sea was dark blue, the sky clearing, pale mauve, the remaining clouds scrolling off to the east. The air all rushing by. Some pelicans glided in a line over the rising face of a wave, and Tati dragged Ann to a halt, pointing at them. "Innit pretty?"
Ann tried to walk on, but Tati refused to budge, tugged insistently at her hand: "Innit pretty? Innit pretty? Innit pretty?"
"Yes."
Tati let go of her and trundled over the sand, just managing to stay on her feet, her diaper waddling like a duck's behind, the backs of her fat knees dimpling.
But still it moves, Ann thought. She followed the child, smiling at her little joke. Galileo could have refused to recant, gone to the stake for the sake of the truth, but that would have been silly. Better to say what one had to, and go on from there. A brush reminded one what was important. Oh yes, very pretty! She admitted it and was allowed to live. Beat on, heart. And why not admit it. Nowhere on this world were people killing each other, nowhere were they desperate for shelter or food, nowhere were they scared for their kids. There was that to be said. The sand squeaked underfoot as she toed it. She looked more closely: dark grains of basalt, mixed with minute seashell fragments, and a variety of colorful pebbles, some of them no doubt brecciated fragments of the Hellas impact itself. She lifted her eyes to the hills west of the sea, black under the sun. The bones of things stuck out everywhere. Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars.
Acknowledgments
Thanks this time to Lou Aronica, Stuart Atkinson, Terry Baier, Kenneth Bailey, Paul Birch, Michael Carr, Bob Eckert, Peter Fitting, Karen Fowler, Patrick Michel François, Jennifer Hershey, Patsy Inouye, Calvin Johnson, Jane Johnson, Gwyneth Jones, David Kane and Ridge, Christopher McKay, Beth Meacham, Pamela Mellon, Lisa Nowell, Lowry Pei, Bill Purdy, Joel Russell, Paul Sattelmeier, Marc Tatar, Ralph Vicinanza, Bronwen Wang, and Vic Webb.
A special thanks to Martyn Fogg, and, again, to Charles Sheffield.
About the Author
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is the author of the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning Mars trilogy---Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars as well as The Years of Rice and Salt, The Martians, Antartica, The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge, A Short, Sharp Shock, and other novels. He lives in Davis, California.
Table of Contents
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THAT FEELING, YOU CAN ONLY SAY WHAT IT IS IN FRENCH
A second honeymoon in the Florida Keys. What could be more relaxing?
FLOYD, what's that over there? Oh shit. The mans voice speaking these words was vaguely familiar, but the words themselves were just a disconnected snip of dialogue, the kind of thing you heard when you were channel-surfing with the remote. There was no one named Floyd in her life. Still, that was the start. Even before she saw the little girl in the red pinafore, there were those disconnected words.
But it was the little girl who brought it on strong. "Oh-oh, I'm getting that feeling," Carol said.
The girl in the pinafore was in front of a country market called Carson's "Beer, Wine, Groc, Fresh Bait, Lottery" - crouched down with her butt between her ankles and the bright-red apron-dress tucked between her thighs, playing with a doll. The doll was yellow-haired and dirty the kind that's round and stuffed and boneless in the body.
"What feeling?" Bill asked.
"You know. The one you can only say what it is in French. Help me here."
"Deja vu," he said.
"That's it," she said, and turned to look at the little girl one more time. She'll have the doll by one leg, Carol thought. Holding it upside down by one leg with its grimy yellow hair hanging down.
But the little girl had abandoned the doll on the store's splintery gray steps and had gone over to look at a dog caged up in the back of a station wagon. Then Bill and Carol Shelton went around a curve in the road and the store was out of sight.
"How much farther?" Carol asked.
Bill looked at her with one eyebrow raised and his mouth dimpled at one corner - left eyebrow right dimple, always the same. The look that said, You think I'm amused, but I'm really irritated For the ninety-trillionth or so time in the marriage, I'm really irritated You don't know that, though, because you can only see about two inches into me and then your vision fails.
But she had better vision than he realized; it was one of the secrets of the marriage. Probably he had a few secrets of his own. And there were, of course, the ones they kept together.
"I don't know" he said. "I've never been here."
"Once you get over the causeway and onto Sanibel Island, there's only one," he said. "It goes across to Captiva, and there it ends. But before it does we'll come to Palin House. That I promise you."
The arch in his eyebrow began to flatten. The dimple began to fill in. He was returning to what she thought of as the Great Level. She had come to dislike the Great Level, too, but not as much as the eyebrow and the dimple, or his sarcastic way of saying "Excuse me?" when you said something he considered stupid, or his habit of pooching out his lower lip when he wanted to appear thoughtful and deliberative.
"Bill?"
"Do you know anyone named Floyd?"
"There was Floyd Denning. He and I ran the downstairs snack bar at Christ the Redeemer in our senior year. I told you about him, didn't I? He stole the Coke money one Friday and spent the weekend in New York with his girlfriend. They suspended him and expelled her. What made you think of him?"
"I don't know," she said. Easier than telling him that the Floyd with whom Bill had gone to high school wasn't the Floyd the voice in her head was speaking to. At least, she didn't think it was.
Second honeymoon, that's what you call
this, she thought, looking at the palms a that lined Highway 867, a white bird that stalked along the shoulder like an angry preacher, and a sign that read "Seminole Wildlife Park, Bring a Carfull for $10." Florida the Sunshine State. Florida the Hospitality State. Not to mention Florida the Second-Honeymoon State. Florida, where Bill Shelton and Carol Shelton, the former Carol O'Neill, of Lynn, Massachusetts, came on their first honeymoon twenty-five years before. Only that was on the other side, the Atlantic side, at a little cabin colony, and there were cockroaches in the bureau drawers. He couldn't stop touching me. That was all right, though, in those days I wanted to be touched Hell I wanted to he torched like Atlanta in "Gone with the wind," and he torched me, rebuilt me, torched me again. Now it's silver. Twenty-five is silver. And sometimes I get that feeling.
They were approaching a curve, and she thought, Three crosses on the right side of the road. Two small ones flanking a bigger one. The small ones are clapped-together wood. The one in the middle is white birch with a picture on it, a tiny photograph of the seventeen-year-old boy who lost control of his car on this curve, one drunk nght that was his last drunk night, and this is where his girlfriend and her girlfriends marked the spot -
Bill drove around the curve. A pair of black crows, plump and shiny, lifted off from something pasted to the macadam in a splat of blood. They had eaten so well that Carol wasn't sure they were going to get out of the way until they did. There were no crosses, not on the left, not on the right. Just roadkill in the middle, a woodchuck or something, now passing beneath a luxury car that had never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Floyd, what's that over there?
"What's wrong?"
"Huh?" She looked at him, bewildered, feeling a little wild.
"You're sitting bolt upright. Got a cramp in your back?"
"Just a slight one." She settled back by degrees. "I had that feeling again. The deja vu."
"Is it gone?"
'Yes," she said, but she was lying. It had retreated a little, but that was all. She'd had this before, but never so continuously. It came up and went down, but it didn't go away. She'd been aware of it ever since that thing about Floyd started knocking around in her head - and then the little girl in the red pinafore.
But, really, hadn't she felt something before either of those things? Hadn't it actually started when they came down the steps of the Lear 35 into the hammering heat of the Fort Myers sunshine? Or even before? En route from Boston?
They were coming to an intersection. Overhead was a flashing yellow light, and she thought, To the right is a used-car lot and a sign for the Sanibel Community Theatre.
Then she thought, No, it'll be like the crosses that weren't there. It's a strong feeling but it's a false feeling.
Here was the intersection. On the right there was a used-car lot-Palm-dale Motors. Carol felt a real jump at that, a stab of something sharper than disquiet. She told herself to quit being stupid. There had to be car lots all over Florida and if you predicted one at every intersection sooner or later the law of averages made you a prophet. It was a trick mediums had been using for hundreds of years.
Besides, there's no theatre sign.
But there was another sign. It was Mary the Mother of God, the ghost of all her childhood days, holding out her hands the way she did on the medallion Carol's grandmother had given her for her tenth birthday. Her grandmother had pressed it into her hand and looped the chain around her fingers, saying, "Wear her always as you grow, because all the hard days are coming. " She had worn it, all right. At Our Lady of Angels grammar and middle school she had worn it, then at St. Vincent de Paul high. She wore the medal until breasts grew around it like ordinary miracles, and then someplace, probably on the class trip to Hampton Beach, she had lost it. Coming home on the bus she had tongue-kissed for the first time. Butch Soucy had been the boy; and she had been able to taste the cotton candy he'd eaten.
Mary on that long-gone medallion and Mary on this billboard had exactly the same look, the one that made you feel guilty of thinking impure thoughts even when all you were thinking about was a peanut-butter sandwich. Beneath Mary, the sign said "Mother of Mercy Charities Help the Florida Homeless Won't You Help Us?"
Hey there, Mary, what's the story.
More than one voice this time; many voices, girls' voices, chanting ghost voices. There were ordinary miracles; there were also ordinary ghosts. You found these things out as you got older.
"What's wrong with you?" She knew that voice as well as she did the eyebrow-and-dimple look. Bill's I'm-only-pretending-to-be-pissed tone of voice, the one that meant he really was pissed, at least a little.
"Nothing." She gave him the best smile she could manage.
"You really don't seem like yourself Maybe you shouldn't have slept on the plane.
'You're probably right," she said, and not just to be agreeable, either. After all, how many women got a second honeymoon on Captiva Island for their twenty-fifth anniversary? Round trip on a chartered Learjet? Ten days at one of those places where your money was no good (at least until MasterCard coughed up the bill at the end of the month) and if you wanted a massage a big Swedish babe would come and pummel you in your six-room beach house?
Things had been different at the start. Bill, whom she'd first met at a crosstown high-school dance and then met again at college three years later (another ordinarv miracle), had begun their married life working as a janitor, because there were no openings in the computer industry. It was 1973, and computers were essentially going nowhere and they were living in a grotty place in Revere, not on the beach but close to it, and all night people kept going up the stairs to buy drugs from the two sallow creatures who lived in the apartment above them and listened endlessly to dopey records from the sixties. Carol used to lie awake waiting for the shouting to start, thinking, We won't ever get out of here, we'll grow old and die within earshot of Cream and Blue Cheer and the fucking Dodgem cars down on the beach.
Bill, exhausted at the end of his shift, would sleep through the noise, lying on his side, sometimes with one hand on her hip. And when it wasn't there she often put it there, especially if the creatures upstairs were arguing with their customers. Bill was all she had. Her parents had practically disowned her when she married him. He was a Catholic, but the wrong sort of Catholic. Gram had asked why she wanted to go with that boy when anyone could tell he was shanty; how could she fall for all his foolish talk, why did she want to break her father's heart. And what could she say?
It was a long distance from that place in Revere to a private jet soaring at forty-one thousand feet; a long way to this rental car; which was a Crown Victoria-what the goodfellas in the gangster movies invariably called a Crown Vic heading for ten days in a place where the tab would probably be... well, she didn't even want to think about it.
Floyd?... Ohshit.
"Carol? What is it now?"
"Nothing," she said. Up ahead by the road was a little pink bungalow, the porch flanked by palms - seeing those trees with their fringy heads lifted against the blue sky made her think of Japanese Zeros coming in low; their underwing machine guns firing, such an association clearly the result of a youth misspent in front of the TV - and as they passed a black woman would come out. She would be drying her hands on a piece of pink towelling and would watch them expressionlessly as they passed, rich folks in a Crown Vic headed for Captiva, and she'd have no idea that Carol Shelton once lay awake in a ninety-dollar-a-month apartment, listening to the records and the drug deals upstairs, feeling something alive inside her, something that made her think of a cigarette that had fallen down behind the drapes at a party, small and unseen but smoldering away next to the fabric.
"Hon?"
"Nothing, I said." They passed the house. There was no woman. An old man - white, not black-sat in a rocking chair, watching them pass. There were rimless glasses on his nose and a piece of ragged pink towelling, the same shade as the house, across his lap. "I'm fine now. Just anxious to get there and change into some shorts."
His hand touched her hip where he had so often touched her during those first days - and then crept a little farther inland. She thought about stopping him (Roman hands and Russian fingers, they used to say) and didn't. They were, after all, on their second honeymoon. Also, it would make that expression go away.
"Maybe," he said, "we could take a pause. You know, after the dress comes off and before the shorts go on.
"I think that's a lovely idea," she said, and put her hand over his, pressed both more tightly against her. Ahead was a sign that would read "Palm House 3 Mi. on Left" when they got close enough to see it.
The sign actually read "Palm House 2 Mi. on Left." Beyond it was another sign, Mother Mary again, with her hands outstretched and that little electric shimmy that wasn't quite a halo around her head. This version read "Mother of Mercy Charities Help the Florida Sick - Won't You Help Us?"
Bill said, "The next one ought to say 'Burma Shave."'
She didn't understand what he meant, but it was clearly a joke and so she smiled. The next one would say "Mother of Mercy Charities Help the Florida Hungry;" but she couldn't tell him that. Dear Bill. Dear in spite of his sometimes stupid expressions and his sometimes unclear allusions. He'll most likely leave you, and you know something? If you go through with it that's probably the best luck you can expect. This according to her father. Dear Bill, who had proved that just once, just that one crucial time, her judgment had been far better than her father's. She was still married to the man her Gram had called "the big boaster." At a price, true, but everyone paid a price.
Her head itched. She scratched at it absently, watching for the next Mother of Mercy billboard.
Horrible as it was to say, things had started turning around when she lost the baby. That was just before Bill got a job with Beach Computers, out on Route 128; that was when the first winds of change in the industry began to blow.
Lost the baby, had a miscarriage - they all believed that except maybe Bill. Certainly her family had believed it: Dad, Mom, Gram. "Miscarriage" was the story they told, miscarriage was a Catholic's story if ever there was one. Hey, Mary, what's the story, they had sometimes sung when they skipped rope, feeling daring, feeling sinful, the skirts of their uniforrns flipping up and down over their scabby knees. That was at Our Lady of Angels, where Sister Annunciata would spank your knuckles with her ruler if she caught you gazing out the window during Sentence Time, where Sister Dormatilla would tell you that a million years was but the first tick of eternity's endless clock (and you could spend eternity in Hell, most people did, it was easy). In Hell you would live forever with your skin on fire and your bones roasting. Now she was in Florida, now she was in a Crown Vic sitting next to her husband, whose hand was still in her crotch; the dress would be wrinkled but who cared if it got that look off his face, and why wouldn't the feeling stop?
She thought of a mailbox with "Raglan" painted on the side and an American-flag decal on the front, and although the name turned out to be "Reagan" and the flag a Grateful Dead sticker; the box was there. She thought of a small black dog trotting briskly along the other side of the road, its head down, sniffling, and the small black dog was there. She thought again of the billboard and, yes, there it was: "Mother of Mercy Charities Help the Florida Hungry - Won't You Help Us?"
Bill was pointing. "There-see? I think that's Palm House. No, not where the billboard is, the other side. Why do they let people put those things up out here, anyway?"
"I don't know." Her head itched. She scratched, and black dandruff began falling past her eyes. She looked at her fingers and was horrified to see dark smutches on the tips; it was as if someone had just taken her fingerprints.
"Bill?" She raked her hand through her blond hair and this time the flakes were bigger. She saw they were not flakes of skin but flakes of paper. There was a face on one, peering out of the char like a face peering out of a botched negative.
"Bill?"
"What? Wh-" Then a total change in his voice, and that frightened her more than the way the car swerved. "Christ, honey, what's in your hair?"
The face appeared to be Mother Teresa's. Or was that just because she'd been thinking about Our Lady of Angels? Carol plucked it from her dress, meaning to show it to Bill, and it crumbled between her fingers before she could. She turned to him and saw that his glasses were melted to his cheeks. One of his eyes had popped from its socket and then split like a grape pumped full of blood.
And I knew it,
she thought. Even before I turned, I knew it. Because I had that feeling.
A bird was crying in the trees. On the billboard, Mary held out her hands. Carol tried to scream. Tried to scream.
"CAROL?"
It was Bill's voice, coming from a thousand miles away. Then his hand - not pressing the folds of her dress into her crotch, but on her shoulder.
"You O.K., babe?"
She opened her eyes to brilliant sunlight and her ears to the steady hum of the Learjet's engines. And something else-pressure against her eardrums. She looked from Bill's mildly concerned face to the dial below the temperature gauge in the cabin and saw that it had wound down to 28,000.
"Landing?" she said, sounding muzzy to herself "Already?"
"It's fast, huh?" Sounding pleased, as if he had flown it himself instead of only paying for it. "Pilot says we'll be on the ground in Fort Myers in twenty minutes. You took a hell of a jump, girl."
"I had a nightmare."
He laughed-the plummy ain't-you-the-silly-billy laugh she had come really to detest. "No nightmares allowed on your second honeymoon, babe. What was it?"
"I don't remember," she said, and it was the truth. There were only fragments: Bill with his glasses melted all over his face, and one of the three or four forbidden skip rhymes they had sometimes chanted back in fifth and sixth grade. This one had gone Hey there, Mary, what's the story... and then something-something-something. She couldn't come up with the rest. She could remember Jangle-tangle jingle-bingle, I saw your daddy's great big dingle, but she couldn't remember the one about Mary-
Mary helps the Florida sick,
she thought, with no idea of what the thought meant, and just then there was a beep as the pilot turned the seatbelt light on. They had started their final descent. Let the wild rumpus start, she thought, and tightened her belt.
"You really don't remember?" he asked, tightening his own. The little jet ran through a cloud filled with bumps, one of the pilots in the cockpit made a minor adjustment, and the ride smoothed out again. "Because usually, just after you wake up, you can still remember. Even the bad ones."
"I remember Sister Annunciata, from Our Lady of Angels. Sentence Time."
"Now, that's a nightmare.
Ten minutes later the landing gear came down with a whine and a thump. Five minutes after that they landed.
"They were supposed to bring the car right out to the plane," Bill said, already starting up the Type A shit. This she didn't like, but at least she didn't detest it the way she detested the plummy laugh and his repertoire of patronizing looks. "I hope there hasn't been a hitch."
There hasn't been, she thought, and the feeling swept over her full force. I'm going to see it out the window on my side in just a second or two. It's your total Florida vacation car, a great big white goddam Cadillac, or maybe it's a Lincoln - And, yes, here it came, proving what? Well, she supposed, it proved that sometimes when you had deja vu what you thought was going to happen next really did happen next. It wasn't a Caddy or a Lincoln after all, but a Crown Victoria - what the gangsters in a Martin Scorsese film would no doubt call a Crown Vic.
"Whoo," she said as he helped her down the steps and off the plane. The hot sun made her feel dizzy.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, really. I've got deja' vu. Left over from my dream, I guess. We've been here before, that kind of thing."
"It's being in a strange place, that's all," he said, and kissed her cheek. "Come on, let the wild rumpus start."
They went to the car. Bill showed his driver's license to the young woman who had driven it out. Carol saw him check out the hem of her skirt, then sign the paper on her clipboard.
She's going to drop it,
Carol thought. The feeling was now so strong it was like being on an amusement-park ride that goes just a little too fast; all at once you realize you're edging out of the Land of Fun and into the Kingdom of Nausea. She'll drop it, and Bill will say "Whoopsy-daisy" and pick it up for her, get an even closer look at her legs.
But the Hertz woman didn't drop her clipboard. A white courtesy van had appeared, to take her back to the Butler Aviation terminal. She gave Bill a final smile-Carol she had ignored completely-and opened the front passenger door. She stepped up, then slipped. "Whoopsy-daisy, don't be crazy," Bill said, and took her elbow, steadying her. She gave him a smile, he gave her well-turned legs a goodbye look, and Carol stood by the growing pile of their luggage and thought, Hey there, Mary...
"Mrs. Shelton?" It was the co-pilot. He had the last bag, the case with Bill's laptop inside it, and he looked concerned. "Are you all right? You're very pale."
Bill heard and turned away from the departing white van, his face worried. If her strongest feelings about Bill were her only feelings about Bill, now that they were twenty-five years on, she would have left him when she found out about the secretary, a Clairol blonde too young to remember the Clairol slogan that went "If I have only one life to live," etc., etc. But there were other feelings. There was love, for instance. Still love. A kind that girls in Catholic-school uniforms didn't suspect, a weedy species too tough to die.
Besides, it wasn't just love that held people together. Secrets held them, and common history, and the price you paid.
"Carol?" he asked her. "Babe? All right?"
She thought about telling him no, she wasn't all right, she was drowning, but then she managed to smile and said, "It's the heat, that's all. I feel a little groggy - Get me in the car and crank up the air-conditioning. I'll be fine."
Bill took her by the elbow (Bet you're not checking out my legs, though, Carol thought. You know where they go, don't you?) and led her toward the Crown Vic as if she were a very old lady. By the time the door was closed and cool air was pumping over her face, she actually had started to feel a little better.
If the feeling comes back, I'll tell him,
Carol thought. I'll have to. It's just too strong Not normal
Well, deja vu was never normal, she supposed - it was something that was part dream, part chemistry, and (she was sure she'd read this, maybe in a doctor's office somewhere while waiting for her gynecologist to go prospecting up her fifty-two-year-old twat) part the result of an electrical misfire in the brain, causing new experience to be identified as old data. A temporary hole in the pipes, hot water and cold water mingling. She closed her eyes and prayed for it to go away.
Oh, Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Please ("Oh puh-lease," they used to say), not back to parochial school. This was supposed to be a vacation, not - Floyd - what's that over there? Oh shit!
Oh SHIT!
Who was Floyd? The only Floyd Bill knew was Floyd Doming (or maybe it was Darling), the kid he'd run the snack bar with, the one who'd run off to New York with his girlfriend. Carol couldn't remember when Bill had told her about that kid, but she knew he had.
Jast quit it, girl. There's nothing here for you. Slam the door on the whole train of thought.
And that worked. There was a final whisper - what's the story and then she was just Carol Shelton, on her way to Captiva Island, on her way to Palin House with her husband the renowned software designer, on their way to the beaches and those rum drinks with the little paper umbrellas sticking out of them.
They passed a Publix market. They passed an old black man minding a roadside fruit stand - he made her think of actors from the thirties and movies you saw on the American Movie Channel, an old yassuh-boss type of guy wearing bib overalls and a straw hat with a round crown. Bill made small talk, and she made it right back at him. She was faintly amazed that the little girl who had worn a Mary medallion every day from ten to sixteen had become this woman in the Donna Karan dress - that the desperate couple in that Revere apartment were these middle-aged rich folks rolling down a lush aisle of palms - but she was and they were. Once in those Revere days he had come home drunk and she had hit him and drawn blood from below his eye. Once she had been in fear of Hell, had lain half-drugged in steel stirrups, thinking, I'm damned, I've come to damnation. A million years, and that's only the first tick of the clock.
They stopped at the causeway tollbooth and Carol thought, The toll-taker has a strawberry birthmark on the left side of his forehead, all mixed in with his eyebrow.
There was no mark-the toll-taker was just an ordinary guy in his late forties or early fifties, iron-gray hair in a buzz cut, horn-rimmed specs, the kind of guy who says, "Y'all have a nahce tahm, okai?"-but the feeling began to come back, and Carol realized that now the things she thought she knew were things she really did know, at first not all of them, but then, by the time they neared the little market on the right side of Route 41, it was almost everything.
The market's called Corson's and there's a little gid outfront,
Carol thought. She's wearing a red pinafore. She's got a doll, a dirty old yellow-haired thing, that she's left on the store steps so she can look at a dog in the back of a station wagon.
The name of the market turned out to be Carson's, not Corson's, but everything else was the same. As the white Crown Vic passed, the little girl in the red dress turned her solemn face in Carol's direction, a country girl's face, although what a girl from the toolies could be doing here in rich folks' tourist country, her and her dirty yellow-headed doll, Carol didn't know.
Here's where I ask Bill how much farther, only I won't do it. Because I have to break out of this cycle, this groove. I have to.
"How much farther?" she asked him. He says there's only one road, we can't get lost. He says he promises me we'll get to the Palm House with no problem. And, by the way, who's Floyd?
Bill's eyebrow went up. The dimple beside his mouth appeared. "Once you get over the causeway and onto Sanibel Island, there's only one road," he said. Carol barely heard him. He was still talking about the road, her husband who had spent a dirty weekend in bed with his secretary two years ago, risking all they had done and all they had made, Bill doing that with his other face on, being the Bill Carol's mother had warned would break her heart. And later Bill trying to tell her he hadn't been able to help himself, her wanting to scream, I once murdered a child for you, the potential of a child, anyway. How high is that price? And is this what I get in return? To reach my fifties and find out that my husband had to get into some Clairol girl's pants?
Tell him!
she shrieked. Make him pull over and stop, make him do anything that will break you free-change one thing, change everything! You can do it if you could put your feet up in those stirrups, you can do anything!
But she could do nothing, and it all began to tick by faster. The two overfed crows lifted off from their splatter of lunch. Her husband asked why she was sitting that way, was it a cramp, her saying, Yes, yes, a cramp in her back but it was easing. Her mouth quacked on about deja vu just as if she weren't drowning in it, and the Crown Vic moved forward like one of those sadistic Dodgem cars at Revere Beach. Here came Palmdale Motors on the right. And on the lefr? Some kind of sign for the local community theatre, a production of "Naughty Marietta."
No, it's Mary, not Marietta. Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary, mother of God, she's got her hands out....
Carol bent all her will toward telling her husband what was happening, because the right Bill was behind the wheel, the right Bill could still hear her. Being heard was what married love was all about.
Nothing came out. In her mind Gram said, "All the hard days are coming." In her mind a voice asked Floyd what was over there, then said, "Oh shit," then screamed "Oh shit!"
She looked at the speedometer and saw it was calibrated not in miles an hour but thousands of feet: they were at twenty-eight thousand. Bill was telling her that she shouldn't have slept on the plane and she was agreeing.
There was a pink house coming up, little more than a bungalow, fringed with palm trees that looked like the ones you saw in the Second World War movies, fronds framing incoming Learjets with their machine guns blazing-
Blazing. Burning hot. All at once the magazine he's holding turns into a torch. Holy Mary, mother of God, hey there, Mary, what's the story-
They passed the house. The old man sat on the porch and watched them go by. The lenses of his rimless glasses glinted in the sun. Bill's hand established a beachhead on her hip. He said something about how they might pause to refresh themselves between the doffing of her dress and the donning of her shorts and she agreed, although they were never going to get to Palm House. They were going to go down this road and down this road, they were for the white Crown Vic and the white Crown Vic was for them, forever and ever amen.
The next billboard would say "Palm House 2 Mi." Beyond it was the one saying that Mother of Mercy Charities helped the Florida sick. Would they help her?
Now that it was too late she was be-ginning to understand. Beginning to see the light the way she could see the subtropical sun sparkling off the water on their left. Wondering how many wrongs she had done in her life, how many sins if you liked that word, God knew her parents and her Gram certainly had, sin this and sin that and wear the medallion between those growing things the boys look at. And years later she had lain in bed with her new husband on hot summer nights, knowing a decision had to be made, knowing the clock was ticking, the cigarette butt was smoldering, and she remembered making the decision, not telling him out loud because about some things you could be silent.
Her head itched. She scratched it. Black flecks came swirling down past her face. On the Crown Vic's instrument panel the speedometer froze at sixteen thousand feet and then blew out, but Bill appeared not to notice.
Here came a mailbox with a Grateful Dead sticker pasted on the front; here came a little black dog with its head down, trotting busily, and God how her head itched, black flakes drifting in the air like fallout and Mother Teresa's face looking out of one of them.
"Mother of Mary Charities Help the Florida Hungry-Won't You Help Us?"
Floyd What's that over there? Oh shit
She has time to see something big. And to read the word "Delta."
"Bill? Bill?"
His reply, clear enough but nevertheless coming from around the rim of the universe: "Christ, honey, what's in your hair?"
She plucked the charred remnant of Mother Teresa's face from her hair and held it out to him, the older version of the man she had married, the secretary fucking man she had married, the man who had nonetheless rescued her from people who thought that you could live forever in paradise if you only lit enough candles and wore the blue blazer and stuck to the approved skipping rhymes - Lying there with this man one hot summer night while the drug deals went on upstairs and Iron Butterfly sang "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" for the nine-billionth time, she had asked what he thought you got, you know, after. When your part in the show is over. He had taken her in his arms and held her, down the beach she had heard the jangle-jingle of the mid-way and the bang of the Dodgem cars and Bill - Bill's glasses were melted to his face.
One eye bulged out of its socket. His mouth was a bloodhole. In the trees a bird was crying, a bird was screaming, and Carol began to scream with it, holding out the charred fragment of paper with Mother Teresa's picture on it, screaming, watching as his cheeks turned black and his forehead swarmed and his neck split open like a poisoned goiter, screaming, she was screaming, somewhere Iron Butterfly was singing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and she was screaming.
"CAROL?"
It was Bill's voice, from a thousand miles away. His hand was on her, but it was concern in his touch rather than lust.
She opened her eyes and looked around the sun-brilliant cabin of the Lear 35, and for a moment she understood everything in the way one understands the tremendous import of a dream upon the first moment of waking. She remembered asking him what he believed you got, you know, after, and he had said you probably got what you'd always thought you would get, that if Jerry Lee Lewis thought he was going to Hell for playing boogie-woogie, that's exactly where he'd go. Heaven, Hell, or Grand Rapids, it was your choice or the choice of those who had taught you what to believe. It was the human mind's final great service: the perception of eternity in the place where you'd always expected to spend it.
"Carol? You O.K., babe?" In one hand was the magazine he'd been reading, a Newsweek with Mother Teresa on the cover. "SAINTHOOD NOW?" it said in white.
Looking around wildly at the cabin, she was thinking, it happens at sixteen thousand feet I have to tell them, I have to warn them.
But it was fading, all of it, the way those feelings always did. They went like dreams, or cotton candy turning into a sweet mist just above your tongue.
"Landing? Already." She felt wide awake, but her voice sounded thick and muzzy.
"It's fast, huh?" he said, sounding pleased, as if he'd flown it himself instead of paying for it. "Floyd says we'll be on the ground in-"
"Who?" she asked. The cabin of the little plane was warm but her fingers were cold. "Who?"
"Floyd. You know, the pilot" He pointed his thumb toward the cockpit's left-hand seat. They were descending into a scrim of clouds. The plane began to shake. "He says we'll be on the ground in Fort Myers in twenty minutes. You took a hell of a jump, girl. And before that you were moaning."
Carol opened her mouth to say it was that feeling, the one you could only say what it was in French, something vu or rous, but it was fading and all she said was "I had a nightmare."
There was a beep as Floyd the pilot switched the seatbelt light on. Carol turned her head. Somewhere below, waiting for them now and forever, was a white car from Hertz, a gangster car, the kind the characters in a Martin Scorsese movie would probably call a Crown Vic. She looked at the cover of the news magazine, at the face of Mother Teresa, and all at once she remembered skipping rope behind Our Lady of Angels, skipping to one of the forbidden rhymes, skipping to the one that went Hey there, Mary, what's the story, save my ass from Purgatory
All the hard days are coming,
her Gram had said. She had pressed the medal into Carol's palm, wrapped the chain around her fingers. The hard days are coming.
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Contents
1/Ricardo
My name is Junie B. Jones. The B stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all.
I am a bachelorette.
A bachelorette is when your boyfriend named Ricardo dumps you at recess. Only I wasn't actually expecting that terrible trouble.
It happened today on the playground.
First I was playing horses with my friends Lucille and Grace.
Then, all of a sudden, my boyfriend named Ricardo runned right past me.
And he was chasing a new girl named Thelma!
"RICARDO!" I hollered real loud. "HEY! RICARDO! 'ZACTLY WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, MISTER?"
Then I zoomed right after that guy. And I tackled him on the grass. And we wrestled. And tangled. And rolled all around.
Finally, I sat on his legs. And I smoothed my hair very attractive.
"Hello, Ricardo," I said. "How are you today? I am fine. Only I just saw you chasing new Thelma. And so please knock it off. And I mean it."
Ricardo raised his eyebrows very surprised.
"Why? How come?" he said.
I sucked in my cheeks at that guy.
"Because, Ricardo. Because I am your girlfriend. And you are my boyfriend. And boyfriends and girlfriends are only allowed to chase each other. That's how come."
Ricardo kept on looking at me.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry. Those are just the rules," I explained.
Ricardo's face turned very glum.
"But I like chasing new Thelma," he said kind of whiny. "It's fun."
I patted his arm very understanding.
"Yes, well, I don't make the rules, Rick. I just enforce them," I said.
After that, I got off his legs. And I sat in the grass next to him.
Ricardo didn't talk for a long time.
Then finally, he stood up. And he shook my hand real nice.
"Junie B., it's been fun being your boyfriend," he said. "But I think it's time we started chasing other people."
After that, he waved good-bye. And he ran off to chase new Thelma again.
My eyes got big and wide at him.
"NO, RICARDO!" I shouted. "NO, NO, NO! COME BACK! COME BACK!"
But Ricardo kept right on running.
I felt weakish and sickish inside.
I slumped back down in the grass. Only too bad for me. Because just then, the bell rang for the end of recess. And all the children started running to the building.
But not me.
I just kept sitting and sitting in the grass.
My teacher called my name.
Her name is Mrs. She has another name, too. But I just like Mrs. and that's all.
Finally, Mrs. came out to get me.
"Junie B., honey?" she said. "Why aren't you coming in? What's the trouble?"
I looked up real depressed.
"Ricardo," I said real sad. "Ricardo is the trouble."
After that, tears came in my eyes. And my nose started to run very much.
Mrs. closed her eyes.
"Oh no. Not boy problems," she said. "Not already."
After that, she gave me a tissue.
And she stood me on my feet.
And she walked with me to Room Nine.
2/Grinded
Mother had the day off from work.
She met me at my bus stop.
She was pushing my baby brother named Ollie in his carriage.
I ran and hugged her legs.
"Mother! Mother! I am so glad to see you!" I said. "'Cause today was the worstest day of my life. I have been run through the milk, I tell you."
Mother raised her eyebrows kind of confused.
"Oh. I think you mean the mill, Junie B.," she said. "Run through the mill means you've had a hard, grinding day."
I nodded my head.
"Yes, Mother. That's 'zactly what kind of day I had. 'Cause my boyfriend named Ricardo wants to chase other people. And that news grinded me right into the ground."
I reached in my pocket and pulled out my snack cookie.
"Look. See how upset I was, Mother? I couldn't even eat my snack cookie at snack time. 'Cause my stomach felt squeezy and sickish inside."
Mother took my snack cookie out of my hand.
She took a big delicious bite of it.
"Mmm. Thank you, honey," she said.
I stared and stared at that woman. 'Cause she missed the point, apparently.
"No, Mother. You are not supposed to eat my snack cookie," I said. "You are supposed to feel sorry for me. Plus also you have to tell me how to get Ricardo back."
Mother bended down and gave me a hug.
"I'm sorry, honey. I know that you're upset about Ricardo. But really and truly, Junie B., you are way too young to have a boyfriend."
She stood back up and smiled. "You're just a little girl," she said.
I stamped my foot.
"No, I am not little!" I said back. "And anyway, all the girls at school have boyfriends, Mother! My bestest friend Lucille has a boyfriend named Clifton. And my other bestest friend Grace has a boyfriend named Roger. And Charlotte has a boyfriend named Ham. And Rose has a boyfriend named Vincent. And Lynnie has a boyfriend named Crybaby William. And now I am all alone with nobody."
Mother did a sigh.
"I'm sorry, honey. But all of those girls are too young to have boyfriends," she said. "Please, Junie B. Do not start this boy stuff so soon. Little girls are supposed to be footloose and fancy-free."
I did a frown.
"What's loose feet got to do with this problem?" I asked.
Mother laughed. "It's just an expression, Junie B.," she said. "Footloose and fancy-free means that you can run and play with anyone you want."
She ruffled my hair.
"You don't have to worry about picking out a boyfriend till you're much, much older," she said.
I did a huffy breath at her.
"But I'm already much, much older!" I said. "And besides, I don't want loose feet! I want the same kind of feet everybody else has. I'm not a baby, you know."
I quick runned over to Ollie. And I held up his teensy hand.
"See this, Mother? This is a baby hand. See how teensy it is?"
I held my hand right next to it.
"Now look at my hand. See how big it is next to Ollie's? Huh, Mother? Do you?"
After that, I picked up one of Ollie's baby feet.
"And see this teensy foot? My feet are a bajillion times bigger than these little baby things."
I stood up straight and tall.
"I am big, I tell you! I am big like a giant lady, practically!"
Mother did a chuckle.
"Sorry, toots. But I'm afraid you're still too young for a boyfriend," she said.
After that, she gave me another hug.
And she smoothed my hair.
And she ate the rest of my snack cookie.
3/Being a Grown-up Lady
At dinnertime, I told Daddy about what happened on the playground.
And guess what?
He said the same dumb thing as Mother!
"You're way too young to have a boyfriend, Junie B.," he said. "It's nice to have Ricardo as a friend. But little girls should be footloose and fancy-free."
I covered my ears when I heard that.
"Quit saying that about my feet!" I said. "I don't want loose feet, I tell you! I want grown-up feet just like Mother has!"
Just then, Mother looked at Daddy.
"I think someone is s-l-e-e-p-y," she spelled.
I did a mad breath at her. "Yeah, only guess what? I'm a grown-up lady. And grown-up ladies know how to spell. And so I am not one bit slippery. So there."
Then Mother did a chuckle. Only I don't know why.
After that, she got me down from the table. And she took me in the bathroom. And she filled up the tub for my bath.
She put lots of bubbles in the water.
Also, she gave me bath toys. And a washcloth puppet.
I gave them right back to her.
"These things are for babies," I said. "And I am all grown up."
"Suit yourself," said Mother.
After that, she sat down on the floor. And she watched me sit in the bubbles.
I sat and sat and sat.
"See me, Mother? See how I am just sitting here?" I said. "When grown-up ladies take a bath, we just sit in the water. And we don't splash. And we don't play with baby toys."
I sat and sat some more.
Then finally, I did a big sigh.
'Cause I was bored out of my mind, that's why.
I patted the bubbles a little bit. "Sometimes grown-up ladies pat the bubbles," I said. "It is not the same as playing."
Mother smiled.
I picked up some bubbles and put them on my arms.
"Bubbles are good for ladies' skin," I said again. "They make us very smoothie."
I put bubbles on my face and chin.
"Sometimes grown-up ladies enjoy making a bubble beard," I explained very serious.
After that, I covered my whole entire self with bubbles.
"Hey! It is very fluffery in here!" I said real happy.
Mother laughed.
"You look like a bride in a long white veil," she said.
Then, all of a sudden, her whole entire mouth came open.
"Oh my gosh! I almost forgot to tell you the good news, didn't I?" she said. "Your Aunt Flo called today! And she said she's getting married!"
Mother clapped her hands together.
"Aunt Flo, Junie B.! Aunt Flo is getting married! Isn't that exciting? You're going to go to your very first wedding!"
After that, Mother smiled real big.
And she hummed a pretty bride song.
And she danced with my towel.
And so guess what?
Getting married must be a very big deal.
4/Flower Girls
The next day at recess, I sang the pretty bride song.
I sang it to my bestest friends named Lucille and that Grace.
"HERE COMES THE BRIDE...
ALL DRESSED AND WIDE...
HER NAME IS CLYDE,
AND SHE READS TV GUIDE."
That Grace looked admiring at me.
"Wow. I never even knew that song had words," she said.
"Of course it has words, silly. Every song has words," I said. "All you have to do is make them up."
After that, I skipped all around those two. And I sang the song some more.
"Guess why I'm singing this bride song?" I asked. "Guess, people! Guess! Guess! Guess!"
I couldn't wait for them to guess.
"'CAUSE I'M GOING TO MY FIRST WEDDING EVER! ON ACCOUNT OF MY AUNT FLO IS GETTING MARRIED! THAT'S WHY!"
Lucille clapped her hands real delighted.
"A wedding! A wedding! I love weddings, Junie B.! Are you going to be the flower girl? Huh? Are you? Are you?"
I wrinkled my eyebrows.
"The what?" I asked. "The who?"
"The flower girl! The flower girl!" said Lucille. "The flower girl is the very first person to walk down the aisle at the wedding! She gets to carry a flower basket. And she throws beauteous flower petals all over the floor."
"It's really fun, too, Junie B.!" said Grace. "I was the flower girl at my Aunt Lola's wedding. And I got to wear a long satin dress! And I only tripped two times!"
Lucille fluffed her fluffy hair.
"Yes, well, I've been the flower girl in three weddings. Grace," she said. "And I've worn three long satin dresses. And all of them had matching purses and shoes and hats. Plus one of them had a blue fake bunny fur cape. And I never tripped at all. So that makes me the best flower girl, probably."
Grace's face drooped a teeny bit.
"Oh," she said kind of soft.
After that, Lucille asked me a million more questions.
"What kind of flower girl dress are you going to wear, Junie B.? Huh? Is it going to be long or short? What color will it be, do you think? So far I have worn yellow and pink and blue."
She tapped on her chin.
"Hmm. I wonder what kind of flower petals you will carry in your flower basket? Tell your Aunt Flo that I prefer rose petals."
All of a sudden, Lucille did a gasp.
"Junie B.! Junie B.! I just thought of something! Maybe Grace and I can teach you! We can teach you how to walk down the aisle and carry the basket! Want us to? Huh? Want us to teach you?"
I jumped up and down.
"Yes!" I said. "Of course I want you to, Lucille!"
After that, Grace cheered up very much. Then all of us did a high five.
And we skipped in a happy circle.
And we practiced being flower girls.
5/Bo
I skipped home from my bus stop very thrilled. 'Cause I had good news, of course!
My grampa Miller was babysitting baby Ollie. They were playing on the floor together.
I runned and jumped on the couch.
"GRAMPA MILLER! HEY, GRAMPA MILLER! LISTEN TO MY GOOD NEWS! I'M GOING TO BE THE FLOWER GIRL AT AUNT FLO'S WEDDING! AND SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT, SIR?"
Grampa Miller stopped playing with Ollie.
He did a funny look at me.
"What?" he said. "Are you sure about that, toots?"
"Sure I'm sure! Of course I'm sure!" I said. "'Cause me and my friends decided it at school today! And now all I need to do is tell Aunt Flo!"
I zoomed to the kitchen and got my mother's address book.
Then I zoomed right back to my grampa.
"Here, Grampa Miller! Tell me Aunt Flo's phone number. I need to call her right this very minute!"
Grampa Miller scratched his head.
"Gee, I don't know, honey," he said. "This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. What if Aunt Flo has already made arrangements for a flower girl?"
I laughed out loud at that silly man.
"Yeah, only how could she already make arrangements for a flower girl, when she doesn't even know it's me yet?"
Grampa Miller covered his face with his hands. He did a groan back there, I think.
I pulled on his sleeve.
"Come on, Grampa! Look up the number! Please? Please? Please?" I begged.
Finally, Grampa shaked his head no.
"You really need to wait and discuss this with your mother," he said.
I did a huffy breath at that guy.
'Cause Mother would not be home for an hour, probably! And who could wait that long?
That's how come I quick hided the address book under my arm. And I tippytoed down the hall to Mother's room.
Then I closed her door very secret. And I climbed up on her bed.
After that, I opened up the address book to the page with the M's. 'Cause Aunt Flos last name is Miller! Just like my grampa's!
And what do you know!
I spied it right away!
"F-L-O," I spelled real thrilled. "F-L-O SPELLS FLO!"
And here's another good thing! Aunt Flo's phone number was right next to her name!
"Hey! This project was easy as cake!" I said.
After that, I dialed the number speedy quick.
It ringed and ringed.
"Hello?" said a voice.
I did a gasp.
"HEY! WHAT DO YOU KNOW! I DID IT, AUNT FLO! I CALLED YOU RIGHT ON THE TELEPHONE!"
Aunt Flo's voice sounded curious.
"Junie B.?" she said. "Is that you?"
"YES! YES! IT'S ME, AUNT FLO! IT'S JUNIE B. JONES! AND I'VE GOT THE BESTEST SURPRISE YOU EVER HEARD OF!"
Then, all of a sudden, the surprise popped right out of my mouth.
"I'M GOING TO BE THE FLOWER GIRL AT YOUR WEDDING, AUNT FLO! AND SO THIS IS YOUR LUCKY DAY, MADAM!"
I runned all over the bed.
"Wait till you see me, Aunt Flo! I will be the bestest flower girl you ever saw! 'Cause Lucille already showed me how to throw flower petals! And Grace showed me how not to trip!"
I kept on talking very excited.
"Mother thinks I'm a baby, Aunt Flo. But I'm not! I'm a grown-up lady! Wait till you see me! Just wait till you see me!"
Aunt Flo didn't say any words.
I tapped on the receiver with my fingers.
"Aunt Flo? Aunt Flo? Where did you go?"
Finally, she talked again.
"Uh...yes, well...I'm here, Junie B.," she said. "Its just that your news sort of caught me... off guard."
I bounced on the bed some more.
"Hurray!" I said. "Hurray for off guard, right, Aunt Flo? 'Cause off guard is like a big surprise, right? And so what kind of dress would you like me to wear? I think it should be long...all the way to the floor."
I grinned real big. "And guess what else? Maybe I will also wear a blue fake bunny fur cape!"
Aunt Flo didn't talk again.
I looked into the phone with my eyeball.
"Hmm. We musta got a bad connector here," I said.
"Junie B., honey," said Aunt Flo. "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."
Just then, I felt sickish in my stomach. 'Cause bad news is not that good, usually.
My voice got quieter.
"What kind, Aunt Flo?" I asked very nervous. "What kind of bad news?"
"Oh dear. I don't really know how to tell you this, Junie B. But...well, Joe and I have already chosen a flower girl for the wedding, honey. And, uh, I'm afraid it's not you."
I did a gulp.
"Who are you afraid it is?" I asked even quieter.
"It's Bo," said Aunt Flo.
"Bo?"
"Bo is Joe's little sister," said Aunt Flo.
"Joe?"
"Joe is the man I'm marrying," said Aunt Flo. "Joe asked Bo."
"Oh," I whispered.
Just then, my eyes got tears in them.
"I gotta go," I said.
After that, my nose started to run very much.
And I hanged up the phone.
6/The Alternate
The rest of the day was not that enjoyable.
I got in big trouble.
'Cause Aunt Flo tattletaled to Grampa
Miller. And Grampa Miller tattletaled to Daddy. And Daddy tattletaled to Mother.
And Mother made a big issue of it at dinner.
A big issue is the grown-up word for Mother keeps yelling and yelling and she won't let the matter drop.
"It was wrong, Junie B. Jones," she said. "It was wrong to disobey your grandfather. And it was wrong to invite yourself to be in Aunt Flo's wedding."
I sat up a little straighter.
"Flo," I said kind of soft. "F-l-o spells Flo."
Mother sucked in her cheeks.
"Yes...well, we're all thrilled that you're learning to spell. But this isn't about spelling, Junie B. This is about disobeying your grandfather."
I hanged my head way down.
"But I wanted to be a flower girl real bad," I said. "I wanted to wear a long dress and show you I'm a grown-up lady."
Mother did a frown. "I'm sorry, but that's no excuse," she said.
After that, I slumped way far over at the table. Only too bad for me. 'Cause my head got too close to my plate. And my hair got gravy on it.
I stared and stared at my gravy hair.
"Today is not actually going that well," I said to just myself.
Just then, the phone rang.
Mother answered it.
Oh no!
It was Aunt Flo!
And she wanted to talk to me!
Mother handed me the phone.
I shook my head real fast.
"No, thank you. I don't actually care to speak to her at this time," I said.
But Mother kept on shoving the phone at me. And so I didn't have a choice.
My insides felt shaky and nervous.
"H...h... hello?"
"Why, hello, yourself!" said Aunt Flo.
Her voice sounded jolly.
"I'm sorry about what happened today, Junie B.," she said. "But I've got some good news for you. How would you like to be the alternate flower girl? Do you know what an alternate is?"
I shook my head no.
"An alternate is like a substitute, sort of," she said. "Like if Bo gets sick and she can't be in the wedding...you will step in and be the flower girl! Do you understand, honey?"
Just then, I felt a little bit happier inside.
"I do, Aunt Flo. I do understand," I said.
"But wait," said Aunt Flo. "I haven't even told you the best part yet! Because even if Bo doesn't get sick, we still want you to sit with the bridesmaids at the reception! How does that sound?"
My eyes got biggish and widish.
"Perfect! It sounds perfect!" I said real squealy.
I jumped down from my chair.
"Hey, Aunt Flo! This means I can still wear a long dress, right? And who knows? Maybe Bo will even give me a couple of flower petals for my very own!"
I kept on getting happier and happier.
"Thank you, Aunt Flo! Thank you for making me the alternate flower girl! 'Cause this day turned out happier than I thought!"
After that, I quick hanged up the phone.
And I zoomed all around the house like a rocket!
Also, I did a cartwheel!
And I standed on my head!
'Cause now Mother will get to see what a grown-up lady I really, really am!
7/Hope
Mother bought me a beautiful dress for the wedding.
It had golden puffery sleeves. And it came all the way to the floor.
Also, she bought me fancy pantyhose with glimmery shimmers on them. And brand-new shiny gold shoes.
I could not thank that woman enough!
I thanked her the whole time I was in the store.
"Thank you, Mother!" I said. "Thank you for my beautiful dress! Thank you for my fancy pantyhose! And thank you, thank you for my shiny gold shoes!"
I smiled real big.
"Now all I need is my blue fake bunny fur cape. And I will be all set!"
Mother shook her head.
"Oh no. No way," she said. "We've spent quite enough for one day."
I looked and looked at that woman. 'Cause she has no fashion sense, apparently.
"Yes, but I have to have a blue fake bunny fur cape, Mother," I said. "Lucille says a blue fur cape adds elegance to any outfit. Lucille says---"
Mother interrupted my words. Her voice sounded scary in my ear.
"I don't care what Lucille says," she grouched. "No...fur...cape."
I quick backed up from her.
"All rightie then," I said kind of nervous.
After that, I helped carry my bags to the car. And I behaved myself all the way home.
Then I runned to my house with all my beautiful things. And I tried my flower girl dress on for Daddy.
And guess what else?
I walked all the way down the hall!
And I didn't even trip!
Daddy gave me a thumbs-up.
"What a perfect flower girl you are!" he said real proud.
"Thank you," I said. "Only I'm not the real flower girl. Remember, Daddy? I'm just the alternate."
Just then, my shoulders drooped a teeny bit. And I didn't feel that happy anymore.
'Cause at first you're very, very glad to be the alternate.
And after that...
You're not.
That night after dinner, Mother tucked me in bed real snug.
She kissed me good-night on my head.
"Yeah, only don't turn out my light yet. 'Cause I forgot to do something very important," I said.
After that, I quick got out of bed again. And I looked out my window.
"Star light, star bright. First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might...have the wish I wish tonight."
I crossed my fingers for luck.
"Dear Star, Please make Bo sick for Aunt Flo's wedding. Love, your friend, Junie B. Jones."
I hopped back in my bed.
Mother's eyes got big and wide at me.
"No, Junie B.! Absolutely not!" she said. "We do not wish for people to get sick. You go back to that window. And you change that wish right now."
I raised up my eyebrows at her.
"Yeah, only how can I change it? It already got sent," I explained.
"Fine," said Mother. "Then go back to the window and wish a nicer wish on top of it."
She snapped her fingers and pointed.
"Now, Junie B. I mean it."
I got out of bed real slow.
Then I walked to the window again.
And I looked at my same star.
"Dear Star, Mother says not to make Bo sick. And so maybe you could just give her a case of head lice and that's all. Thank you and good night."
Mother shook her head.
"No, Junie B.," she said. "No, no, no."
I did a mad breath.
"But head lice doesn't even hurt, Mother," I said back. "Head lice just takes a little extra shampoo. And that's all."
But Mother kept on shaking her head. And she made me change my wish again.
"Okay, Star, never mind the whole dumb thing. Only now I won't be a flower girl for my whole entire life, probably. And so I hope my mother is happy. Amen."
After that, I got back in my bed. And Mother turned out my light.
After she left, I did a big sigh.
"Shoot. That lice idea was a beaut," I said real soft.
Just then, my stuffed elephant named Philip Johnny Bob tapped on me.
Don't feel bad, he said. You might still get to be the flower girl.
"Yeah, only how?" I asked him.
He thought and thought.
Maybe Bo's daddy will be driving her to the wedding. And their car will get stacked at a railroad crossing. And the train will be a million bajillion miles long, he said.
I felt a little perkier at that idea.
"Hey, yeah," I said. "Or else maybe his car might get stucked in something else. Like in some ooey gooey mud. Or in a traffic jam. Or in...or in..."
Or in a giant paddle of Krazy Glue! said Philip Johnny Bob.
After that, me and him laughed and laughed.
Then I hugged that guy very tight.
'Cause he's always giving me hope.
8/A Little Tussle
Aunt Flo's wedding took forever to get here. I waited for my whole entire life, practically.
Then, one day at breakfast, Mother told me a happy surprise.
"Well, tomorrow is the big day!" she said.
And so what do you know!
MY VERY FIRST WEDDING WAS ALMOST HERE!!!
That night, I could hardly even sleep.
I got up bright and early in the morning.
Then Mother came in my room. And she decorated my hair with a green velvet ribbon. And she helped me get dressed in my flower girl clothes.
Pretty soon, a lady came to babysit for Ollie.
Then me and Mother and Daddy got in our car. And we rode to the church together.
And guess what? There was a million bajillion people there already!
I hurried up the steps.
Then I stood on my tippytoes. And I looked all around for Bo.
"Where is she, Mother? Where is Bo? Is she sick, do you think? Did her car get stucked in Krazy Glue? I don't see her anywhere! And so maybe I will be the flower girl after all!"
Mother smoothed my hair very nice.
"Honey, I've already talked to Aunt Flo today," she said. "And Bo is feeling fine. She's probably getting dressed with the bridesmaids."
Mother smiled.
"Let's be happy for her, okay?"
I didn't say anything back. 'Cause what's to be happy about? That's what I would like to know.
After that, all of us went inside. And a man named Usher holded out his arm. And he walked Mother to her church seat.
Me and Daddy followed them down the aisle.
And guess what? I still didn't trip!
Three ladies smiled at me.
I smiled back.
"HELLO, LADIES! SEE HOW GOOD I AM WALKING DOWN THIS AISLE? TOO BAD I'M NOT THE FLOWER GIRL, RIGHT?"
My voice sounded loud in the church.
I like that kind of loud voice.
After I got to my seat, I smoothed my dress very nice.
And guess who I saw?
I saw my Grandma Helen Miller!
She was sitting right in front of me!
I tapped on her head.
"GRANDMA MILLER! IT'S ME! IT'S YOUR GRANDGIRL, JUNIE B. JONES! LOOK HOW GROWN-UP I AM BEING, HELEN!"
Then Grandma smiled and winked. And she said don't call her Helen.
After that, the organ started to play real loud. And everybody stood up.
Then all of us looked at the back of the church.
And what do you know?
I SAW BO!
She was walking right down the aisle! And she was throwing pink flower petals on the floor!
It looked like fun, I tell you!
My heart got pumpy and poundy inside. 'Cause Bo was coming in my direction!
And so that's how come a great idea popped into my head. And it's called Hey! Maybe Bo wouldn't mind if I took one or two petals out of her basket and threw them! 'Cause that would be fair of her, I think!
Bo kept getting closer and closer and closer.
And then, all of a sudden...
SHE WAS RIGHT NEXT TO ME!!
I quick reached for her flower basket!
"NO!" shouted Bo.
"YES!" I shouted back.
Then I tried to take some petals out of the basket. But Bo pulled it away from me. And so that's how come I had to pull it right back again. And then me and her got into a little tussle.
Little tussle is the grown-up word for how come she just won't let go of the darned thing!
Then, all of a sudden, my mother reached over. And she pulled my hands right off of the basket.
Her face was steamy mad.
I did a gulp.
"Hello. How are you today?" I said kind of shaky. "I am fine. Only I just wanted two little petals. But that plan did not work out, apparently. And so now I will just behave myself for the rest of the wedding, I think."
After that, I smoothed my skirt.
And I fluffed my hair.
And I acted like my best grown-up lady.
9/Loose Feet
After the church, everybody went to the reception.
The reception is a big, giant room where you sit at tables. And you listen to loud music. And you eat food and cake.
And then wait till you hear this! The bridesmaids' table was the longest table in the whole entire place!
I runned right to the end of that hugie thing. And guess what? There was a teensy card with my name printed on it!
"Here! Here! I am sitting here!" I hollered to Mother.
Just then, I saw Aunt Flo.
She was coming over with Bo.
"Uh-oh," I said very nervous.
Then I quick hided behind Mother's skirt.
But Aunt Flo didn't even look mad! She bended down next to me in her beautiful wedding gown. And she held my hand real nice.
"Junie B., honey? I didn't see what happened in the church. But Bo said you tried to take her basket. Is that true?"
I shook my head very fast.
"No, Aunt Flo. I didn't try to take her whole entire basket. I promise. I just wanted two teensy petals and that's all," I said.
I held up two fingers.
"Just this many, Aunt Flo. Just two. 'Cause Bo got all the rest of the petals. And so two would be fair of her, I think."
Aunt Flo looked at Bo.
"Bo, honey? Did you hear that? Junie B. only wanted two little flower petals."
Bo looked shy at me.
Then, all of a sudden, she reached into her basket. And she gave me two petals!
I smiled real big.
"Hey! That is a nice gesture of you, Bo!" I said.
After that, Bo smiled back at me. And Aunt Flo put us in our chairs.
Bo asked me how old I am.
I sat up straight and tall.
"I am almost six," I said very proud.
Bo did a sad sigh.
"Poo," she said. "I'm only five. I'm always the littlest. Always, always, always."
I patted her arm very understanding.
"Don't worry, little Bo. Someday you will be a grown-up lady, just like me," I said.
Bo did a teeny frown.
"You're not a grown-up lady," she said.
"Yes, I am so a grown-up lady, Bo!" I said back. "Just ask my mother if you don't believe me. 'Cause I acted grown-up for the whole entire wedding, almost."
Just then, I quick put my napkin in my lap.
"See this, Bo? See how I am putting this napkin in my lap? If I was a baby, I would tuck it in my collar. But grown-up ladies put them in their laps."
I sat up even taller.
"And see how straight and tall I am sitting? This is how grown-up ladies sit," I said. "We never slouch and slump."
After that, I sat very still. And I didn't move a muscle.
"Now look at me, Bo," I said out of the corner of my mouth. "See how still I am sitting? I am not even squirming. On account of grown-up ladies do not get ants in their pants, that's why."
I folded my hands very polite.
"Now I am folding my hands very polite. And I am waiting for my food."
Bo kept on looking at me.
"The end," I said.
After that, I kept sitting there a real long time.
That's how come Bo got tired of looking at me. And she started playing with her spoon.
She clinked it on her water glass.
Also, she clinked it on her plate. And her knife. And her head.
"Grown-up ladies do not clink their spoons," I said.
Bo shrugged her shoulders at me.
After that, she made a puppet out of her napkin. And she made it bite my nose.
"Hey!" I said very surprised.
Then I quick did a frown.
"Grown-up ladies do not play with their napkins," I said.
After that, I did a big sigh. 'Cause my food was taking a million thousand years, that's why.
Finally, my legs started to get stiffish and tightish.
Also, I got an ant in my pant.
And my foot went to sleep.
That is how come I had to hop down from my chair. And I stamped my foot on the floor.
"Sometimes ladies have to stamp their sleeping feet," I explained to Bo. "It is perfectly acceptable to do this."
After that, I shaked my foot all around. But it still did not wake up.
I looked at Bo.
"Okay. Here's the thing. Sometimes ladies have to skip around the table to get their blood pumping," I said.
"Really?" said Bo.
"Yes," I said. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing."
After that, I started to skip around the table. Only too bad for me. 'Cause my new shoes hurt my heels a real lot. Plus also my fancy pantyhose drooped all the way down to my knees.
I walked back to my seat very limping.
I looked at Bo again.
"Sometimes ladies have to go under the table and adjust theirselves," I said.
Bo looked curious at me.
"They do?" she asked.
"Of course they do," I said. "That's how come they make the tablecloths so long."
After that, I ducked under the tablecloth. And I quick took off my shoes. Plus also I took off my pantyhose.
"Ahh. Better," I said.
Then I climbed back onto my chair again. And I wiggled my piggy toes all around in the air.
"What a relief," I said. "Loose feet."
All of a sudden, my eyes got big and wide! And I did a gasp!
'Cause that reminded me of what Mother and Daddy told me!
"BO! HEY, BO!" I said real thrilled. "LOOSE FEET! GET IT? I HAVE LOOSE FEET!"
"Huh? What?" said Bo.
And so that's how come I told her all about my boyfriend named Ricardo. And how he wanted to chase other people. And how Mother and Daddy said I should have loose feet!
"Get it, Bo? Get it?" I asked. "Mother and Daddy were right! Loose feet are funner than grown-up feet!"
After that, I quick got on my knees. And I clinked my water glass with my spoon. Also, I clinked my plate and my fork and my head.
"Sometimes it's fun to be little! Right, Bo? Right? Right?" I said.
Me and Bo clinked spoons.
"Right!" she said real giggly.
After that, I made a puppet out of my napkin. And I made it bite Bo's nose.
And that is not even the best part!
'Cause after lunch, me and Bo skipped around the whole entire room in bare feet! And we throwed flower petals on people's heads! And no one even got mad. 'Cause when you're little, you can get away with those kind of shenanigans!
It was the funnest time I ever had.
And guess what else?
After the reception, me and Bo hugged each other good-bye. And she said she will call me sometime! And I said I will write her a letter!
"Only first I have to learn to spell more words," I said.
Bo shrugged her shoulders.
"That's okay. First I have to learn to read," she said.
After that, both of our daddies picked us up. And they carried us out to the parking lot.
"Hey! Look how high up I am, Bo!" I hollered to her. "I am as tall as a grown-up lady, almost! Only grown-up ladies don't even get carried! And so too bad for them! Right, Bo? Right?"
"Right!" hollered Bo.
After that, we waved good-bye at each other.
First I waved my hand.
Then I waved my whole entire arm.
Plus also I waved all of my ten piggy toes.
I laughed real happy.
"See, Daddy? See? I've got loose feet just like you said!"
Then Daddy laughed, too.
And we sang the pretty bride song all the way to the car.
Laugh out loud with Junie B. Jones!
#1 Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus
#2 Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business
#3 Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth
#4 Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying
#5 Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake
#6 Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday
#7 Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren
#8 Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed
#9 Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook
#10 Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal
#11 Junie B. Jones Is a Beauty Shop Guy
#12 Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy
#13 Junie B. Jones Is (almost) a Flower Girl
#14 Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime
#15 Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket
#16 Junie B. Jones Is Captain Field Day
#17 Junie B. Jones Is a Graduation Girl
#18 Junie B., First Grader (at last!)
#19 Junie B., First Grader: Boss of Lunch
#20 Junie B., First Grader: Toothless Wonder
#21 Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants
#22 Junie B., First Grader: One-Man Band
#23 Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked
#24 Junie B., First Grader: BOO...and I MEAN It!
#25 Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May.)
#26 Junie B., First Grader: Aloha-ha-ha!
#27 Junie B., First Grader: Dumb Bunny
Top-Secret Personal Beeswax: A Journal by Junie B. (and me!)Junie B.'s Essential Survival Guide to School
Barbara Park says:
"Like Junie B., I would have loved to have been a flower girl when I was little. To me, weddings seemed like events straight out of Fantasy Land. All those swooshy satin dresses. And the beautiful bouquets of flowers. But most of all, what I really, really loved was that HUGIE BIG CAKE.
I'm sorry to say that I haven't gotten better with age. At the last wedding I attended, my husband spent the afternoon pointing to my mouth and telling me to wipe off the icing.
So after years of going to weddings, here's my best advice to all:
Dress up. Behave in a dignified manner. And bring lots of tissues.
(You can wrap extra cake in the tissues and sneak it right out the door.)"
Text copyright © 1999 by Barbara ParkIllustrations copyright © 1999 by Denise BrunkusAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American CopyrightConventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc.,and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPark, Barbara.Junie B. Jones is (almost) a flower girl / by Barbara Park ;illustrated by Denise Brunkus.p. cm "A Stepping Stone book"SUMMARY: Six-year-old Junie B. is disappointed to find out that her aunt has asked someone else to be the flower girl at her wedding.eISBN: 978-0-307-75471-4[1 Weddings---Fiction.] I. Brunkus, Denise, ill. II Title.PZ7.P2197Jtwn 1999 [Fie]---dc21 99-17611
A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Arsenic and Old Paint
AN ART LOVER'S MYSTERY
Hailey Lind
2010 · Palo Alto/McKinleyville
Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Company
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.
The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher's first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher's permission is prohibited.
Copyright © 2010 by Julie Goodson-Lawes and Carolyn Lawes
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
A Perseverance Press Book
Published by John Daniel & CompanyA division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.Post Office Box 2790McKinleyville, California 95519www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance
Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423
Cover image: Julie Goodson-Lawes
ISBN 9781564747402
Library Of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Lind, Hailey.Arsenic and old paint : the art lover's mystery series / by Hailey Lind.p. cm.ISBN (first printed edition) 978-1-56474-490-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)1 Art thefts---Fiction. 2. Art forgers---Fiction. 3. Women detectives---Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)---Fiction. I. Title.PS3612.I5326A89 2010813'.6---dc222010006980
To Susan Jane Lawes,
whose imagination and love of beauty
are second to none.
Can't wait to read your book!
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Shellee Leong and the good people of San Francisco's Cameron House, and to the spirit of Donaldina Cameron and all the denizens of Chinatown, past and present, from sixth-generation natives to the newly arrived. And to Jon Hee for his stories of tunnels and neighborhood history over dim sum .
From Julie: Thanks to the usual cast of wonderful characters who allow me to call them friend: Jace Johnson, Shay Demetrius, Suzanne Chan, Bee Enos, Pamela Groves, Jan Strout, Anna Cabrera, Mary Grae, Susan Baker, Chris Logan, Brian Casey, Kendall Moalem, and the entire Mira Vista Social Club. To all those incredibly supportive, talented writers who have taught me and laughed with me, especially my on-the-road roomie extraordinaire, Sophie Littlefield, and all the Pensfatales; the tavern gang (you know who you are---we miss you, Cornelia); and all my Sisters in Crime.
From Carolyn: Thank you to Janine Latus, Sandra Pryor, and Chris Casnelli for your unflagging friendship and support when it was needed most. To Scott Casper, Anita Fellman, Heather Jersild, Steve Lofgren, Buffy Masten, and Karin Wulf, who always see the joy in life. Thank you all for allowing me to be a part of your lives.
Finally, thanks from both of us to our wonderful, eternally supportive parents, Bob and Jane Lawes, for giving us the kind of childhood every soul should be lucky enough to experience. And lastly and most especially to Sergio Klor de Alva, the newest music sensation to emerge from Oaktown!
Author's Note
Theories abound as to whether there are tunnels under Chinatown. As in this book, it appears that there were sewer pipes and coal chutes that may have been used from time to time, but nothing like the system of tunnels found in other locales such as Portland, Oregon. Any tunnels under Nob Hill are pure conjecture for the sake of fiction. The Fleming-Union and the College Club were entirely fabricated by the author.
To all my fans: It is I, the great international art forger, Georges LeFleur. To all those who believe a man who exalts the beauty of the Renaissance cannot become part of the twenty-first century, I say, "Bah." I may be a Luddite when it comes to egg yolk tempera, pure linseed oil, and crushed-earth pigments, but here I am, with my new blog, surfing these modern internets and sharing my knowledge, free for the asking.
---Georges LeFleur's blog, "Craquelure"(A web of fine lines indicating age, that results in greater beauty)
"What was that ?"
"A ghost?" Samantha teased me.
"Naw, that ain't no ghost," my temporary assistant, Evangeline, said with surprising conviction, her stage whisper reverberating down the wood-paneled hall. "Sounded like a lady to me."
We picked up our pace down the stairs. Although the day outside was bright and cheerful, as befit San Francisco in the early fall, inside the Fleming Mansion it was dim and gloomy. Sunshine struggled to find its way past the floor-length, hunter green velvet curtains to cast a pattern of shadowy prison bars on the intricate Turkish wool runner. A bone-deep mustiness permeated the portrait-laden walls: the smell of old money.
I longed to tear down the curtains and fling open the leaded windows, allowing the sun and fresh bay breezes to air out the place, but we were already sort of trespassing. Two rules had been made crystal clear to me when I signed the contract for this job: what happened in the club stayed in the club, and doubleX chromosomes who wandered beyond the service areas would be summarily fired. According to my birth certificate, that meant me.
Another sound split the tomblike silence.
A woman's scream.
The three of us gaped at each other for an instant before charging down the rest of the stairs to the second-floor landing, across the hallway, through an open bedroom door, and into an old-fashioned en suite bathroom.
Samantha, in the lead, stopped short. I bumped into her, and Evangeline---nearly six feet tall and built like an Olympic shot-putter---plowed into me, throwing me off-balance and causing me to clutch at Sam, who stumbled forward. Our Keystone Kops routine came to a halt as we took in the scene.
The man in the bathtub looked ill. The sword protruding from his bony white chest didn't help.
A curvy blonde with a cheap dye job knelt by the side of the claw-footed tub and sniffled, her blood-curdling screams having subsided to high-pitched whimpers. She wore a black-and-white French maid's outfit, complete with a stiff lace apron and cap, and her name, Destiny , was stitched in gold thread on her right shoulder.
Not so long ago I would have been screaming and whimpering right alongside her, but now I just felt woozy. In the past year and a half I had tripped over a few dead bodies. Apparently a person could get used to anything.
Chalk one up for personal growth.
What bothered me most at the moment was the way the sword's hilt swayed in the air...to and fro...to and fro...as if keeping time to a soundless beat. The movement started when the maid let go as we piled in. Which implied that she had been wielding the sword. Which, in turn, suggested that Destiny-the-maid had just stabbed Richie-the-rich man to death in his bathtub.
I heard Samantha repeating, "Oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord" in her Jamaican sing-song lilt as she hurried from the bathroom to the bedroom and snatched up the receiver of the old-fashioned black desk phone. Evangeline followed her, dropping with a whoosh onto a soft leather armchair next to the huge stone fireplace.
The flames from a gas jet hidden behind a fake log cast an incongruously cheerful glow across the dark bedroom. More heavy velvet curtains covered the arched floor-to-ceiling windows and shielded the ornate Victorian wallpaper and Oriental rugs from the sun's rays. Above the fireplace mantel, in lieu of the cheesy oil painting of an American Revolutionary naval battle so beloved of men's social clubs, was an empty set of brackets suitable for hanging a musket.
Or a sword.
I heard Samantha giving the 911 operator the street address, though it was probably not necessary. The Fleming Mansion is well known in the city. The forbidding historic brownstone holds pride of place at the summit of chic Nob Hill, and is home to the Fleming-Union, one of the most exclusive men's clubs in the country. The membership list is a closely guarded secret but is said to include past and present U.S. presidents, and the board regularly turns away mere corporate moguls, especially those who had committed the unpardonable sin of being born female. By and large, San Franciscans aren't big on gender or class deference; most of us refer to the Fleming-Union as the "F-U."
We four women were sorely out of place in such a masculine domain. I doubted the place had witnessed this much concentrated estrogen since the strippers from the last bachelor party decamped.
"Destiny, come away from there," I said gently, beckoning to the maid from my position in the bathroom doorway. Personal growth or not, I was not entering the Marbled Chamber of Horrors.
"What... What happened?" The maid seemed rooted in place, her gaze fixed on the corpse. "Who coulda done such a thing?"
I refrained from stating the obvious: she coulda. The flickering light from the ancient wall sconces gave an amber tint to Destiny's features, smoothing the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and making her appear younger than the forty-something she probably was. I scarcely knew her, but seldom loath to leap to conclusions, assumed any maid who plunged a sword into her wealthy employer's chest probably had an excellent reason.
I passed my flashlight beam over the scene. Even taking into account the fact that he was dead, the deceased looked unwell, more like an inmate at a tuberculosis sanitarium than an imminent threat. He appeared to be middle-aged, his blank dark eyes sunken into his skull and underlined by half circles. His body was frail, the ribs outlined beneath pale, almost translucent skin. A white towel was draped around the crown of his head, and a handful of dark hairs speckled his scrawny chest. He was unshaven, with tufts of black hair poking out from beneath the folds of the towel. One arm hung over the side of the tub nearly grazing the floor, the fingernails broken and discolored. The other floated in the water as if playing with the blank letter-sized piece of paper that drifted about on the surface.
A single drop of blood oozed from the chest wound and slowly made its way down his ribs. Shouldn't there be more blood, I wondered, enough to tint the water? My stomach lurched.
"The police are on their way," Samantha called out, still holding the phone to her ear, and I heard the faint wail of a siren.
"I'm not supposed to be here," the maid mumbled. She tore her eyes away from the body and looked around, as though surprised to find herself in the room. "None of us are supposed to be here!" She bolted for the door.
"Destiny, stop!" I shouted.
Evangeline, more comfortable with action than with words, grabbed the maid around the waist and lifted her clear off the floor. Destiny let out a string of vile curses and dug her French-tipped nails into Evangeline's forearm. Kicking and screaming, the maid reached back and tried to grab Evangeline's hair, but my assistant's signature buzz-cut was too short and spiky to grip.
"Need a hand here, Annie," Evangeline grunted.
I started toward them, but Destiny's flailing legs kept me at bay, so I picked up the wooden desk chair and approached the twosome like a lion tamer.
"Calm down, Destiny, it's okay," I soothed, though it was doubtful she heard me above her vitriolic shrieking. "Take a deep breath...."
Footsteps pounded up the stairs and a frightened-looking security guard stumbled into the bedroom and stopped short, mouth agape. I recognized him as the boyish blond who sat at the club's back door signing the staff in and out and guiding limited-edition Bentleys and DeLoreans into the club's coveted parking spots. He was clearly out of his comfort zone.
Close on his heels were two San Francisco police officers.
The cops pulled their guns and assumed the shooting stance. "Put her down!" one cop yelled at Evangeline. "Put her down now. Don't move! Nobody move!"
Nobody moved except Destiny, who added spitting to her repertoire of wailing and kicking.
" You !" One cop focused on Evangeline. "Let her go. Now!"
Evangeline promptly released Destiny, who fell to the floor on her butt before bounding to her feet and bolting for the door. Unsure who the evil-doers were, one cop kept his eye and gun on the rest of us while the other launched himself after Destiny, tackling her in the doorway.
More uniformed police thundered up the stairs and poured into the room, eyes wary, radios crackling. The tension eased when they spied the first responders, and then the interminable discussing and speculating began.
All talk halted when a woman materialized at the top of the stairs. The cops fell back, making way as if she were Moses and they the Red Sea.
Tall, more striking than pretty, she wore a dark gray tailored suit and royal blue silk blouse, and projected an imperious air. The type of woman who never had to ask twice.
Inspector Annette Crawford.
Of all the cops in all the towns...
"Are you the only homicide detective in San Francisco?" I asked as she approached.
"Are you the only artist and faux finisher who sniffs out murder scenes? Oh, that's right, you are ," the inspector replied, her sherry-colored eyes giving me the once-over. "I happened to be on duty. Besides, whoever called 911 asked for me by name."
"That would be me," Samantha said, holding up her hand. "I thought it might reduce the need for lengthy explanations. Hello, Inspector."
Inspector Crawford and I had met last year, when a museum custodian had been murdered to hide the knowledge of a stolen, and forged, Caravaggio masterpiece. Since then, our paths had crossed at crime scenes more often than either of us would have liked. I admired the intelligent, acerbic inspector, and had once entertained the notion that we might become friends, but circumstances had made friendship difficult. Especially the part where I kept ending up on the wrong side of the law.
On the other hand, I no longer hyperventilated in the presence of what my felonious grandfather, the internationally acclaimed art forger Georges LeFleur, called "the constabulary."
Score two for personal growth.
After scoping out the scene and issuing orders, Annette led the way down the cop-clogged hallway to a small sitting room, whose flocked burgundy wallpaper and gold-leaf trim gave it the appearance of a down-at-heels bordello. Plopping onto a tufted velvet settee that looked more comfortable than it turned out to be, I watched Annette settle gracefully into a blue brocade armchair, her notepad and pen at the ready. What would it be like, I wondered, to be able to literally poke at a corpse one minute and then appear ready to sit down to tea with the queen, the next?
"I hear I missed a good time," the inspector said. "The men said something about breaking up a catfight?"
"That makes it sound like we were mud-wrestling."
"So what did happen?"
"We were trying to keep Destiny from leaving. She wasn't cooperating."
"Okay, we'll come back to that. Let's take it from the top, shall we?" The inspector's eyes shifted to an ornate hunting scene in oils hanging on the wall behind me. " Please tell me there isn't a forged painting here somewhere."
"Not that I know of. I'm working, actually. Upstairs, with Sam and Evangeline."
"Doing what?"
"Stripping wallpaper in one of the attic rooms, where---"
"You're in the wallpaper business now?"
"Not normally. The club wanted to convert the attic rooms into overflow guest chambers, but there was a roof leak, which damaged the wall coverings. See? The water came all the way down into this room, as well." I gestured to the corner where ugly rust and black stains marred the old yellow-and-brown wallpaper, which was pulling away from the wall in some places. "The contractor who repaired the roof is a history buff, and recognized the wallpaper as an original William Morris print dating from the nineteenth century, when the Fleming Mansion was built."
The contractor, Norm Berger, was an incongruous mixture of good ol' boy and amateur local historian. We'd worked on a few jobs together, and had become semi-sort-of friends. Or at least as good a friend as I could be with a man whose favorite T-shirt bore the slogan WILL FART FOR FOOD.
"The board chairman, Geoffrey McAdams, hired me to recreate the look of the ruined Victorian wallpaper, using paint. Milk paints are preferable to wallpaper because they allow the walls to 'breathe' so that the plaster doesn't develop mold, which means---"
"That's fine," she said, waving off my treatise on plaster and paint. I adore talking about restoration and the artistic process; wind me up and it can be hard to shut me down. Annette knew me well.
"Where's your assistant, Mary Grae? Upstairs?"
"Thailand."
Annette raised one eyebrow.
"She has a friend who opened a bar in Bangkok, and...it's a really long story involving a punk rock band, a beer bottle collection, and a gangrenous thumb. You sure you want to hear it?"
"Never mind. Mary's out of town, got it. Sam's your new assistant?"
"Evangeline Simpson's giving me a hand until Mary returns. Sam's here today because of the wallpaper." I lifted a purple-patterned paper curl caught in the bib of my scruffy overalls: Exhibit A. "Sam and her husband renovated three Victorians, so she knows a lot about removing old wallpaper."
"Given the club's reputation, I'm surprised they allow women to work here in any capacity other than housekeeping."
"Most of the women do have to wear those French maid outfits," I conceded. As far as I was concerned, that sort of thing belonged behind closed doors, between consenting adults. "I prefer my overalls."
"Tell me something I don't know. Such as how you got this gig."
"The contractor gave them my name, and Frank DeBenton, who installed the security system, vouched for me."
"How is Frank?"
"Technically, he's not talking to me, but since he vouched for me I guess there's still hope."
"Where are all the club members, anyway?" Annette asked. "Other than you three, a few housekeepers, and the parking lot guard, this place is deserted."
"Most of the staff is on vacation while the members are on a retreat in Sonoma County. You know, like the Bohemian Club?" The Bohemian Club is a super-secret fraternal society whose elite membership engages in an annual male bonding retreat that, rumor suggests, involves pagan rituals, cavorting nude in the forest, and urinating on centuries-old redwood trees. I didn't get it, but I wasn't really the target audience. "The board asked me to finish the job while they were gone."
"Don't want your arty self polluting their rarified atmosphere?"
"Something like that."
A cell phone trilled, and Annette answered, murmuring softly. It occurred to me that the F-U boys would have a collective aneurysm when they returned from their fresh air frolic to learn that not only had one of their own been murdered in the mansion, but also an African American woman was running the investigation. The thought made me smile.
Annette snapped the phone shut, dropped it in her jacket pocket, and resumed the interrogation. "Continue."
"We were working upstairs, but when I plugged in a hairdryer to dry some plaster, a fuse blew. This place not only has the original wallpaper, it must also have some of the original wiring. We were on our way downstairs to look for the electrical panel."
"All three of you?"
"Sam's better at electrical stuff than I am, and Evangeline refused to be left alone. This place creeps her out, and I can't say I blame her. Even in the middle of the day it's full of shadows. Feels like bad juju."
"And by juju you mean...?"
"Negative energy."
"Have you been hanging out in Berkeley again?"
I nodded. "I'm taking a yoga class."
"How's it going?"
"I pulled a groin muscle, but I'm learning to breathe."
Annette smiled and nodded. "Go on."
"The three of us were coming down the staircase when we heard a woman screaming. We found Destiny in the bathroom with the, um, body."
"Do you recognize the victim?"
"Never saw him before."
"How well do you know Destiny?"
"I've seen her around, but we haven't had any real interaction. She's one of the few housekeepers working during the retreat."
"Describe what you saw when you entered the bathroom."
"The man was in the tub, just as he is now, with the sword...." Something about the gruesome tableau nagged at me, like an itch in the brain that I couldn't scratch.
"Where was Destiny?"
"Kneeling over him. She was...sort of...touching the sword."
"What do you mean, 'sort of touching'?"
"She was holding it."
"Stabbing him?"
"No, the sword was in his chest and---" I took a deep breath. Murder made me queasy; I hadn't outgrown that "---she had both hands on the hilt."
Annette scribbled furiously, and I hastened to add, "Maybe she was trying to pull it out."
"Mm-hmm."
"No, really. She seemed confused, asked me what happened, who would do such a thing. It could be, she discovered the body and grabbed the sword as a reflex. You know, trying to help him."
"Could be."
"We don't know---"
Annette reached into her jacket pocket, took out a well-worn brown leather case and flipped it open, revealing a shiny gold badge. "Oh look, I am still a detective. I thought for a moment we had switched roles."
Chastened, I held my tongue. Despite our earlier tussle, something about Destiny tugged at my heart. I couldn't imagine her as a cold-blooded murderer, capable of running a man through the chest with a sword.
Still, the inspector was right: I wasn't a detective, and I didn't know anything about Destiny. Maybe her usual mild manner and sweet face masked a homicidal soul. Maybe she was working through some childhood issues by stabbing a man who reminded her of her father/grandfather/pervy uncle. Maybe she'd changed one too many sets of five-hundred-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets and decided to off the first rich snob she encountered. I'd done a brief stint as a summer housekeeper at the Olive You Motel in my hometown of Asco, and by the time my first coffee break rolled around I was prepared to wield the toilet bowl brush to inflict grievous bodily harm upon the first rude guest to cross my path.
"What did you do then?"
"Sam called 911. That's when Destiny freaked out and Evangeline grabbed her."
"And you threatened her with a chair?"
"I was just trying to get her to calm down, and help Evangeline."
"Did Destiny say anything?"
"She said she wasn't supposed to be here. That none of us were supposed to be here."
"Did she indicate what she meant by that?"
"When I was hired the board told me in no uncertain terms to stay out of the public areas and to use the rear servants' stairs, never the main stairs."
"Why?"
"I'm the hired help. And I don't have a penis."
On that note a middle-aged officer entered the room and mumbled something in Annette's ear. As he turned to leave I forced myself to meet his eyes and smile like an innocent person.
When I was a mere stripling, my grandfather Georges had not only trained me in the techniques of art forgery, but had also implanted a deep and abiding distrust of officialdom in its many guises. I was starting to run out of patience with this trait---I was thirty-two years old, for crying out loud, surely the shelf life of Georges's teachings had expired---and reminded myself that I was entirely, one-hundred-percent blameless. This time.
"Is that it?" As Annette cocked her head, her pounded copper earrings flashed in the light, accentuating the strong planes of her otherwise unadorned face. "Any other details, no matter how insignificant? Did you see anyone, hear anything else?"
I shook my head. Annette wrote another note to herself in her notebook.
"Annette, what will happen to Destiny? Are you going to arrest her?"
"Let's see.... She was found standing over the victim, holding the alleged murder weapon with both hands, and tried to flee the scene. What do you think?"
"But you don't know that she---"
"Do I need to bring out my badge again?" Annette looked up from her notes, and her tone softened. "I'm not going to railroad an innocent woman, Annie."
"Do me a favor?" I dug a business card out of my wallet. "Give her this?"
"I doubt she requires the services of a faux finisher," Annette said, and glanced at the card. "A defense attorney?"
"Sounds like she needs a lawyer."
Annette stuck the card in her notepad. "Anything else?"
I shook my head.
"All right. Should you think of something, get in touch." The inspector rose and handed me her business card. "In case you've forgotten the number."
"Thanks."
"Believe it or not, it's good to see you again, Annie. I want to speak with your friends for a few minutes, then you'll be free to go."
"Annette, I hope this doesn't sound heartless, considering the circumstances, but I really need to get back to work. The attic's one floor up, you won't even know I'm here."
When I had mentioned this project to my Uncle Anton, an art-forger-turned-art-restorer whose decades of hands-on experience made him a font of useful information about the chemistry of paint and dyes, he'd subjected me to a lengthy lecture on the dangers of "killer wallpaper." I had delayed stripping the paper until I tested for nasty toxins like lead, arsenic, and mercury in the original dyes to be sure I wasn't about to accidentally melt my brain or those of my friends. Now the clock was ticking on the club members' return, and I prided myself on finishing jobs on time, as scheduled.
"Sorry, no. You'll have to wait until we've finished processing the crime scene. I'll have an officer go upstairs with you while you retrieve your things, and escort you out."
There was no point in arguing. Inspector Crawford Hath Spoken.
"When do you think I'll be able to get back to work?"
"I'll keep you posted," she said over her shoulder as she headed for the door.
The unscratchable itch suddenly presented itself. "Annette, wait."
She paused, one hand on the doorknob.
"It sounds silly, but... You're going to think I'm nuts."
She lifted a single eyebrow again. Apparently that ship had sailed long ago.
"The murder scene reminded me of a painting."
"A painting."
"David's Death of Marat ."
Betrayal can be beautiful: it is the source of exquisite pain, and therefore a fountain for great art. Always remember: artists must suffer for their art...but a lovely bottle of wine makes the suffering much easier to bear.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"Isn't David a statue by Michelangelo?"
"No---actually yes---but this has nothing to do with Michelangelo," I said. "Jacques Louis David was a painter who supported the French Revolution. The Death of Marat is one of his best-known paintings."
"Who was Marat?"
"One of the most radical of the French revolutionaries, which if you think about it is saying a lot. He was assassinated in his bathtub."
"Stabbed?"
I nodded. "By a woman, something Corday. Charlene...no, Charlotte, I think."
I couldn't remember what I ate for lunch or the names of influential clients I had met three times, but when it came to art-related trivia, I was a rock star.
"How did she manage to corner him in a bathtub?"
"Marat suffered from a skin disease that was relieved by cold water. He spent so many hours soaking in the bathtub that he habitually worked there. Corday was a moderate revolutionary who didn't like Marat's penchant for guillotining political opponents; she got in by claiming to have information about an uprising, but instead she stabbed him in the heart. In David's painting, Marat's head is wrapped in a white cloth, his arm is drooping to the floor, and in his hand is a piece of paper---a petition from his assassin, Corday."
"Talk about your bad juju," Annette said. "What else can you tell me about this painting?"
"David painted two other revolutionary martyrs, but only The Death of Marat survived the counter-revolution. I imagine it's in one of France's state collections, but I'd have to look it up."
"And you're saying the murder scene was staged to look like this painting?"
"It sure looks like it."
"If that's true, we may be dealing with a lunatic."
"Or someone sending a message."
"About what? The French Revolution?"
I shrugged. "You asked if I noticed anything unusual. You have to admit this fits the bill."
"Write down the name and artist. I'll compare it to the crime scene photos." She handed me her pad and pen, then gave me a searching look. "How well known is this painting? Would a normal person have heard of it?"
Annette considered my endless store of Fun Facts about Fine Art to be "eccentric" because she was too polite to call it "freakish." I suspected what bothered her most was the contrast between my expertise in art and forgery and my dearth of common sense in other areas: cooking, balancing my checkbook, staying out of jail....
"It's well known in France, both because of its history and because of its beauty. The poet Baudelaire praised the painting's visual elegance."
"What about Americans?"
"Most wouldn't recognize it unless they'd studied art or French history," I conceded.
"That's what I thought."
\*
Evangeline turned down my offer of a ride in the cramped cab of my two-seater truck, declaring her intention of picking up some takeout from her favorite Pakistani restaurant and holing up in the apartment she was subletting from my vacationing assistant, Mary. It wasn't an apartment in the strictest sense, just the dining room of an old Victorian in the Mission District that was separated from the rest of the flat by a blanket slung over a clothesline. But to Evangeline it was home.
She also muttered something about looking for another job. "No offense, Annie," she honked in her upstate New York accent before heading for the bus stop. "But you're kinda scary. I never did see no dead bodies where I come from."
Given all we had been through in the past year I didn't blame her. Sometimes I thought I wouldn't hang out with me if I had other options. I needed an assistant, though, because for the next few weeks I had a full painting schedule in addition to running my new Internet art assessment business.
Not to mention coping with my ex-felon of a business partner who, despite the terms of his parole, had taken an unauthorized leave of absence.
Samantha and I climbed into my little green Toyota truck and headed across town towards our studio building in China Basin. Sam spent her days creating one-of-a-kind jewelry, while I ran a mural and faux-finishing business, True/Faux Studios. My real love was portraiture, but faux finishing was much more lucrative. The days of artists becoming celebrated revolutionaries while making a living painting portraits were long past.
I caught a faint whiff of patchouli oil and looked over at my calm, steady friend. With her long, thick locks, her penchant for wearing bright African-print fabrics, and the slight Caribbean lilt that was intensified under the influence of stress or too many mojitos, Samantha Jagger scored about a twenty on the Cool-o-Meter scale of one-to-ten. I looked at my paint-splattered overalls and worn athletic shoes. I cleaned up okay, given sufficient time and motivation, but even on my best days the Cool-o-Meter hovered around four and a half.
Neither of us was in a chatty mood, but I needed a distraction from the ominous sounds emanating from beneath the hood.
"Talk to me so I don't have to listen to the engine's death wail."
Sam was game. "How's your love life?"
"Nonexistent."
"C'mon, I've been married for twenty-one years. I have to live vicariously. Tell me the good stuff."
"I'm afraid there's not much to tell these days."
Not long ago I had broken up with Josh, a sweet, decent carpenter because I decided he was a little too sweet, and a lot too decent, for the likes of me. Sam was rooting for me to hook up with our studio building's straight-arrow landlord, Frank DeBenton, but he had treated me with icy aloofness since I announced my intentions to set up shop with an art thief. The criminal in question, Michael, was sex-on-wheels but bad news, all of which was a moot point at the moment. He had been AWOL for the last week.
My mother advised me to find a nice, steady computer engineer with health insurance and a 401(k) plan. For the moment I was doing a fairly good job sublimating with chocolate.
"Frank's being exceedingly polite to me," I said.
"He's not thrilled about your new online business. Or should I say, your new business partner. What's his full name, Michael X. Something?"
"Michael X. Johnson is his current moniker."
"Meaning?"
"It's the name he uses on the paperwork. I've given up trying to discover his real one."
"Was forming a business partnership with a man whose real name you don't know such a good idea, d'ya think?"
"There were extenuating circumstances."
"Such as?"
"Poverty. Besides, Doug---Michael's parole officer---believes that thieves like Michael can sincerely repent their lives of crime and be rehabilitated."
Sam laughed. "Let me guess: Doug's a Buddhist from Berkeley."
She wasn't far from the mark. I, on the other hand, was a lapsed Presbyterian from a small Sacramento Valley town---by way of Paris---who believed that felons such as Michael could sincerely rue getting caught and develop a healthy respect for the authorities.
Last spring I had come to the realization that I would never attain economic stability---much less comfort, still less retirement---through my art studio alone. So when the allegedly reformed art thief I knew as Michael X. Johnson proposed we join forces to offer online assessments of art and antiquities, it seemed like a relatively straightforward cash cow.
Besides, the FBI's Art Squad was in on the whole thing. With their approval, Michael and I set up a website offering online assessments, while sending out a few rumors that we might be morally flexible when it came to assessing less-than-legitimate art. Despite the Hollywood archetype, most thieves are neither clever nor suave---Michael being the exception that proved the rule---and every so often a crook would contact our website looking for an online assessment of a stolen work of art. We forwarded the information to our "handler" at the Art Squad, and collected a hefty reward if the FBI arrested the perp.
Last week, using information from our site, the police tracked down two Riker's Island corrections officers who had swiped a Salvador Dalí drawing from the prison lobby and replaced it with a twelve-dollar poster. It had taken the prison authorities eight months to notice their Dalí was missing, and the thieves might have gotten away with it had they not quarreled over the value of the purloined piece and decided to seek an outside opinion.
The naiveté of the average art criminal had paid the last few months' rent with a few dollars to spare, and I had begun to dream about cutting back on my faux finishing to concentrate on portraiture. First things first, though: I was shopping for a new truck. I planned to call it the Thief Mobile.
I pulled into a parking spot right in front of Frank DeBenton's office, next to one of his armored cars. In addition to owning the building, our landlord Frank ran his own secure transport business specializing in---ironically enough---valuable art and antiquities.
My gaze lingered for a moment on the sight of his dark, well-coiffed head bent, as usual, over the papers on his desk. I missed him. A couple of months ago, it looked as though our growing mutual attraction might be able to overcome our differences in temperament. But shortly afterward, Frank threw a memorable hissy fit in which he vowed to disown me as a friend, a tenant, an employee, and a romantic interest if I "took up" with the likes of Michael X. Johnson. The FBI must have gotten to him, because he finally agreed to rent the X-man and me a small office space right next to my faux-finishing studio. But since then Frank had treated us both with exquisite politeness, a sure indication that he was pissed.
Sam caught my eye and smiled knowingly as I wrenched my gaze away from the man. We clomped our way up the exterior wooden stairs and down the second-floor hallway, then hugged good-bye and retreated to our respective studios, seeking the solace of art. It had been one hell of a Monday morning.
I paused to straighten the wooden sign I had painted recently:
BACCHUS ART APPRAISALS
ONLINE ART & ANTIQUITIES ASSESSMENTS
"WHAT'S IN YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S ATTIC?"
WWW.ARTRETRIEVAL.COM
Easing open the door, I fostered a tiny spark of hope that Michael X. Johnson---or whatever his real name was---would be sitting behind the gleaming antique mahogany partner's desk he had insisted on buying when we set up shop. I tried to visualize him with a bag of Peet's French Roast coffee beans in one hand, a recovered art masterpiece in the other, and a plausible explanation for his recent absence on his sexy lips.
The office was empty.
I hadn't been able to bring myself to admit to Sam, or to anyone, that the X-man had skipped out on me. Again. But it was time to face facts: Going into business with a known art thief and convicted felon had been a mistake---especially for an ex-forger like me who had aspirations to legitimacy. A wise woman would have known this from the start, but I've always been a little slow on the uptake---especially when felonious tendencies are masked by a pair of sparkling green eyes and a deep, smoky drawl.
Still, sooner or later someone official was going to figure out that the X-man had disappeared. I would be up to my ears in FBI harassment if I didn't inform on him.
Tossing my satchel onto a silk-upholstered hassock---another new item---I changed out of my grimy overalls into a red-and-black patterned skirt, simple black tank top, and black crocheted sweater. I exchanged my worn athletic shoes for a pair of low-heeled leather sandals, smoothed my curly brown hair, and checked out the overall effect in the full-length mirror inside the door of the armoire that held several changes of clothes. Since starting the desk job, I had been dressing less in paint-spattered clothing and more in acceptable business-wear such as skirts and blouses. People---male people, especially---had noticed. It seemed my mother was right: having the appropriate wardrobe was more important than frivolous things like, say, knowledge and talent.
I sank into a plush leather desk chair, powered up the computer, and logged on to an art search site. While it loaded I drummed my fingers on my new desk, wondering how much I could get for it down in the Jackson Square antiques district. While I was at it, I could hock the leather chairs and silk hassock my absent partner had insisted on purchasing before his inconvenient disappearance.
This was the crux of the last argument I had with Michael: I insisted he prove he had bought the furniture in some sort of above-board retail relationship. Feigning hurt, he informed me he had used the company credit card.
What company credit card? I shrilled. We don't have any money, how can we have credit?
And you call yourself an American, he said. Some capitalist you are.
Michael, we're going to go bankrupt before we get this business off the ground if you keep spending like this.
You're caffeine-deprived again, aren't you? he said, targeting my weakness like a heat-seeking missile. I'll just make a quick run to Peet's. Back in a few.
That was a week ago. He never returned, leaving me vaguely insulted, overworked, and under-caffeinated to boot.
Like now. I needed a fix. Not just any coffee would do, either. It had to be Peet's.
I taped a note to the door telling anyone who might stop by that I was next door, and went to my studio, where I found a large man in the little kitchen area. My heart soared. It wasn't Michael-the-thief, but he would do in a pinch.
"Annie!" boomed my Bosnian-born friend, Pete Ibrahimbegovics. "Cuppa Joe?"
Pete ran the stained glass warehouse across the parking lot from the DeBenton Building. We'd been friends for years, and among his many charms was that he was the only one in our circle who could coax something approximating espresso from my cranky garage-sale cappuccino machine. This talent had earned Pete a lifetime pass to the studio and free access to my stash of Peet's coffee beans.
"Love one, thanks. How'd you know?"
"Oho, I know you by now," he chuckled. "You are joking me with this. Annie, I must speak with you."
"What's up?"
"I come today because I have a very important question. Please, sit and I will attend you and you can answer my question."
Uh-oh. The last time Pete had a Very Important Question to ask I wound up drinking too much loza and spent the night trapped in a crypt. I had already encountered a dead body today. A woman could only take so much.
Pete balanced two cups of coffee plus a hand-painted ceramic bowl of sugar and pitcher of cream on a vintage decoupaged tray and joined me on the purple velvet couch. He set the tray on the antique steamer trunk that doubles as a coffee table, and fanned out an abundance of napkins, spoons, and small plates.
"We both take our coffee black," I said. "You know that, right?"
"Coffee is to you the elixir of love, yes? And love must be celebrated."
What could I say to that? I took the cup he held out and waited. He took a deep breath, blew it out, and turned to face me. At six foot four, two-hundred-plus pounds, Pete made an incongruous little boy.
"Evangeline."
"What about her?"
"Do you think Evangeline, she likes me?"
"Evangeline?"
"She is so lovely," he said, a dreamy note in his voice. "She is so... What is the English word..."
Robust? Hearty? Strapping?
"...delicate."
I didn't see that coming. Evangeline was about as delicate as a runaway truck.
"So you like her? Have you asked her out?"
"No, no. This I cannot."
"Why not? She won't bite." At least, I hoped not.
"I can't just talk to her." He blushed and fussed with the napkins.
"Sure you can. Pete, you're a good-looking man. Very handsome. Even better, you're kind and sweet, and you have a good job and a good heart. You've got a lot to offer."
He blushed some more and started to rearrange the couch pillows. "I---"
The studio door banged open and in strode my assistant Mary, a pink plastic bag clutched in each hand and a worn purple knapsack on her back. "Heya!"
Mary was dressed, as usual, in some sort of gauzy, multi-layered concoction in different shades of black. Her chipped nail polish, her boots, her eyeliner---all black. The only exceptions to the mourning look were her bright blue eyes, pale skin, and long blond hair.
"Mary! How was Thailand?"
"Awesome; I've got stories. But I'm out of money. Hope you have some work for me."
"As a matter of fact I do," I said, watching as she dropped the bags, shrugged off the knapsack, and sprawled on the floor. "I'm glad you're back."
"Me, too," she said, riffling through her things. "Now where is that... Aha!" She held up an airplane-sized bottle of tequila. "I knew that sucker was in there somewhere. I brought presents for you guys."
She handed me a pair of small bronze birds on round bases engraved with stamps.
"They're called opium weights."
"Opium weights?" I asked. "What line of work do you think I'm in?"
"I don't think they were really used for opium. They're in all the curio shops. And this is for you," she said, handing Pete an intricately painted mask. "I thought of you when I saw it."
Pete looked delighted. "I am touched. She is beautiful, this mask. I will wear it near my heart, always."
"I was thinking you could hang it on your wall, but whatever."
"You came straight from the airport?" I asked.
"It's a work day, right? It's not, like, still the weekend is it? I kind of lost track of the days. Everything got all jumbled when we crossed the International Date Line and I never got it straightened out. Kind of like going backwards in time, except not."
Pete nodded gravely. Mary took a swig of tequila, jumped up, and donned a painting apron. "Hey, did you know Chinese vampires hop?"
I had long ago given up trying to follow Mary's thought process.
"The Chinese, they have vampires?" asked Pete.
"Sure," said Mary.
"Who hop?" I said.
"That is their name?" Pete asked. "Who Hop?"
I tried not to laugh.
"Every culture's got vampires," Mary said. "It's, like, universal. Thing is, though, they're all way different. Like, a lot of places? They only have female vampires, who get that way when they die in childbirth, which is kind of like blaming the victim if you ask me. The Chinese vampires, though, are the coolest, 'cause they hop instead of walking like normal, and hold their arms out stiff in front of them, like this. Like a mummy. How awesome is that?"
"Sure you don't want to rest a bit after your trip?" I asked, trying to erase the visual of a Chinese vampire hopping toward me, arms outstretched like a zombie.
"Slept on the plane. And I so totally need to make money 'cause I sort of misjudged things by a credit card payment or, ya know, several. Tricia says hi, by the way."
Tricia was the friend who was opening the bar in Bangkok, and who somehow wound up with a gangrenous thumb. I figured it was best not to ask.
Pete stood. "We will speak again, Annie, yes?"
"Call me later. We'll figure something out."
"Figure out what?" Mary asked.
"Nothing," Pete and I said in unison.
I put Mary to work creating sample boards for a faux-finish job scheduled for next week. In theory sample boards demonstrated to clients what the faux finish would look like so that they could change their mind before we started painting the walls. This didn't always succeed. My wealthy clients tended to be rather high-strung, and many's the time I'd been stuck repainting rooms multiple times until we got it "just right." But at least when they'd signed off on the boards, I got paid for each new round of faux finishes.
Mary and I were mixing glazes in subtle shades of putty and beige, this year's exciting color palette, when the door opened again and a stranger stuck his head in.
"G'day. I'm looking for Michael Johnson?"
"I'm his partner, Annie Kincaid. Is there something I can help you with?"
"D'you suppose we could speak in private?"
"Of course. Why don't we go next door?" I said.
The man was short, just a little taller than I, with a thick prizefighter's physique. His face sported two prominent scars, one running from beneath his left ear to the side of his neck, the other slashing down his right cheek. The scars were probably the result of a simple accident---I'd narrowly escaped similar injuries when I caught my head in a storm drain at the age of seven; long story---but they lent the man a sinister air. This was mitigated by a broad smile and his clothes: he wore khaki shorts with a multitude of pockets, a black T-shirt with a slogan for something called the ALL BLACKS, and scuffed tan hiking boots. Except for his modern clothing, mocha skin, and jet-black hair, he might have stepped out of one of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's rollicking portrayals of feasting Flemish peasants.
"Shout if you need anything, Annie," Mary said, eyes narrowed. "You know how thin the walls are in this place."
"Thank you, Mary."
I led the way next door to the Bacchus Art Assessments office.
"So you are the famous Annie Kincaid," he said with a broad accent as he sank into a leather chair.
"Famous?"
"Within certain circles."
That gave me pause. My grandfather Georges is a notorious and entirely unrepentant art forger, currently on the lam in Morocco. I was once implicated in a European art scam myself. And though I had worked hard over the last several years to build up a legitimate decorative painting business in San Francisco, my current---though absent---business partner was a convicted art thief.
It was hard to know which "circles" the stranger was referring to. And more to the point, whether or not I was supposed to own up to my membership in any of those rarified cliques.
"What can I help you with?" I evaded.
"I need your help finding a painting."
"We deal with art assessments here. We're not really investigators, per se."
"No worries. I am." Reaching into his pocket, he handed me a cream-colored business card:
JARRAH PRESTON
SENIOR INVESTIGATOR
AUGUSTA CONFEDERATED RISK
LONDON--PARIS--MOSCOW
Preston's white teeth flashed brilliantly against his dark face. "I'm a glorified insurance agent, but not to panic---I don't sell policies. As it happens, Augusta Confederated has a painting in custody that we have reason to believe is not the one we originally insured. I hear that when it comes to art, you have, shall we say, a special expertise."
"I'd be happy to assess your painting, but I'm not qualified to track down a missing one. Why not go to the police? Or, presuming it's worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, or older than one hundred years, you could turn it over to FBI's Art Squad. I could give you a name."
"For the moment, I'd like to take a, shall we say, less formal approach." He flashed another smile. "You may have noticed from my accent that I'm not from around here."
"Australia?" I guessed.
"New Zealand. A Kiwi through and through. Maori on my mum's side."
I tried to think of something relevant to New Zealand besides sheep and the Lord of the Rings movies, but only one thing came to mind. "I hear you have a fence made of toothbrushes in New Zealand."
"Just outside of Te Pahu," he nodded. "In my estimation, though, it doesn't come close to the interest of the Cardrona Bra Fence."
"A fence made of bras?"
"A bunch of bras hung on a fence, more like. Officials declared it a danger to public decency, took about a hundred bras down, and a thousand more took their place. That's what made it art."
I smiled at the thought.
"But I'm not here to talk about bras," Preston said.
"That's a relief. I spent all day yesterday talking about girdles with a client."
Preston chuckled. "Point is, I'm a stranger in your beautiful city. I don't know the local smuggling routes, and I don't have contacts among the city's black market fences. I understand you and your partner do."
"What gave you that idea?"
"I'm not the law, Ms. Kincaid. I'm not concerned with your past, or Michael X. Johnson's for that matter. Quite the contrary. I'm in need of information of a highly specialized nature. I've admired your work---and your partner's---for some time."
Our eyes met, and I realized he was serious. He liked me because of my shady past. It was a novel sensation.
Preston's wide mouth twisted into an odd but pleasant grin, and he set a battered leather briefcase on the desk between us. Unlocking it, he extracted several bags of honey-roasted peanuts from Qantas Airlines and handed me one.
"D'ya mind? I haven't had lunch." He pushed a thick file folder toward me. "In here are photographs of a painting stolen seven years ago. Can you tell whether or not it's genuine?"
Whoever he was, Jarrah Preston had piqued my curiosity, and my appetite. I munched as I leaned forward and started flipping through the file. I stopped chewing when I realized what I was looking at.
It was an exquisite Gauguin, but not one I had ever seen. Couched in tropical greenery and lush flowers, a couple embraced, their erotic intent made clear by their positions. Many great artists had produced erotica, but I had never heard of Gauguin doing so. His nudes of thirteen-year-old girls were suggestive, often distasteful to modern sensibilities, but they were not explicit. Not like this.
I felt my cheeks redden at the overt sexuality of the painting. I was no innocent, but it was disconcerting to have a strange man watch me as I studied erotica. Forcing myself to ignore the content, I focused on the artist's technique.
Paul Gauguin's Post-impressionist style is primitive in its simplicity, making the artist's work easy to duplicate---on the surface. But the mark of a true Gauguin is his use of hue and tone. The French banker--turned--island-hopping bohemian played with combinations of complementary colors, overlapping and combining them in ways that fool the eye and render the pigments more vivid than they really are. Particular shades of green and orange placed next to each other, for instance, create the illusion of a shimmer.
Gauguin's exceptional understanding of color means that his works do not reproduce well in photographs. They have to be seen in person to be appreciated. The same is true of van Gogh and, indeed, most of the Impressionists as well, whose art was all about the interplay of light and pigment, color and texture.
"It's not an obvious forgery," I said, clearing my throat. "As far as I can tell from the photo, the colors and brushwork are consistent with Gauguin's work. But I can't determine if it's genuine or a good fake without seeing the actual painting. You say you have it in custody?"
"It showed up for sale at Mayfield's Auction House last week. I'd like you to swing by there and take a look. But I'm pretty sure it's a fake."
"Why is that?"
"When it was x-rayed, a secret message appeared."
Dear Georges: Should a true artist paint what he or she sees, warts and all?
---Clear-eyed in Belgrade
Dear Clear-eyed: Caravaggio painted fruit and leaves as he saw them, blemishes and all. Years later, Cézanne did the same, including tiny areas of rot in his exquisite bowls of fruit. Bien sûr, in the hands of a true master, there is no such thing as ugliness, only beauty re-envisioned. Do not the faults make the picture more beautiful?
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Jarrah handed me an X ray.
A sentence leaped out of the black-and-white image: Nature morte est un plat qui se mange froid.
The artist had probably written the message in lead white before methodically covering it up with layers of paint. Invisible to the naked eye, the sentence was revealed when the lead in the pigment fluoresced under the X rays.
The phrase looked as though it had been drawn by an artist's paintbrush, I thought, probably a number nine or ten filbert, and the grammar was perfect. But the handwriting was not the upright, looping script drilled into every French schoolchild by stern-faced professeurs des écoles .
" 'Dead nature is a plate that one eats cold,' " Preston translated literally. "Any idea what that refers to?"
I shrugged and shook my head. "In French---in all the Romance languages---'dead nature' is the term for what is referred to as a 'still life' composition in English and the Germanic languages."
"I didn't know that."
"It's a rare example of the northern Europeans having a sunnier outlook than their Mediterranean counterparts. I don't understand its use in this context, but maybe it was Gauguin's idea of a joke? Or maybe he used an old canvas that had been written on. In any event, by itself the sentence doesn't suggest forgery."
"Except for one thing: the painting was tested before Augusta Confederated insured it. The message wasn't there."
"Could it have been missed?"
In point of fact, dealers, owners, even paid assessment "experts" might all have reason to conspire in keeping a fake painting on the market. For these folks, a fake is as good as an original if it could turn a profit. Only insurance companies---which pay out millions of dollars when an insured painting is stolen---stand to lose, and lose big, by being duped into insuring a fake. One way to make money fast is to insure a painting for millions and arrange to have it "stolen." Lie to the insurance investigator, cash the check, and voilà ---instant millionaire.
Insurance companies are of course aware of the con and go to great lengths to avoid falling for it. It seemed unlikely that Augusta Confederated would skimp on the authentication before insuring a Gauguin, but it was possible.
"I'm double-checking with the lab, but it's a reputable group and I can't imagine their technicians would have missed something so easily revealed by a simple X ray."
"True enough."
"Which leads me to the next question: if the Gauguin was genuine when we had it assessed, did its owner, Victor Yeltsin, sell the original and subsequently replace it with a forgery?"
"You suspect fraud?"
He nodded. "Yeltsin reported the painting as stolen, and filed an insurance claim to the tune of nearly ten million dollars."
"That's a big pay-out."
"It's a Gauguin."
"Maybe the original really was stolen, and someone knew the painting was missing and painted a copy to 'show up' at auction, see if they can slip it past the authorities. That happens."
"That's why I'm investigating before making specific accusations."
"I'm still unclear how I can help other than to confirm what you already suspect: that the painting in your possession is probably a fake."
"I spoke with your business partner, Michael Johnson. According to him, you're the 'girl-wonder of the art forgery world.' And your Uncle Anton seconded that view."
"You spoke with Michael? When?"
"I called him last week. He said he was headed out of town, but thought he'd be back today."
"Really?"
Preston gave me an odd look. It dawned on me I should at least pretend to know more about my business partner's whereabouts than a potential client.
"I wasn't aware that his cell phone had service...where he is," I improvised. I had been calling Michael's number for a week, with no response. "And you say you spoke to Anton?"
"He assured me you were the woman for the job."
Anton Woznikowicz wasn't my real uncle---for that matter, I wasn't entirely sure "Anton" was his real name, either. There's a lot of this sort of thing in my life. Still, I had known him since I was a teenager learning the fine art of forgery from my grandfather in Paris. I still remembered one long, rainy weekend when Anton taught me the basics of traditional tempera, using egg yolks as a medium; afterwards he made us delicious egg-white omelets. Painting and cooking, he insisted, were two sides of the same coin. It worries me that the closest I come to producing an edible meal is dialing my local Thai food delivery service.
I sat back, munched on a peanut, and thought. Jarrah Preston might be a fancy-pants international insurance investigator, but he had a thing or ten to learn if he was willing to take the word of a once-and-future scoundrel like Michael. And "Uncle" Anton's reliability was just as suspect, albeit for different reasons. Why would both of them have recommended me for this job?
I glanced up to find Jarrah's near-black eyes studying me. The inspection went on so long I glanced down to be sure I hadn't dribbled peanuts down my chest. There was a high-energy intensity to him that made me nervous. A slow smile spread across his face.
"Mr. Preston, I'd like to help but I don't want to give you any false hope. I exchange e-mails with people about the treasures---and I use that term loosely---they find in their grandmother's attic. If I suspect something is stolen, I report it to the FBI and let them do the investigating."
"Call me Jarrah," he said with a confident half smile. "As I said, I don't know this town like you do. I'd like you to sniff around, ask a few questions, that's all. I'm not expecting miracles."
I shook my head.
"And whether or not you actually locate the original, my company's willing to pay an obscene amount of money for your time and expertise."
I stopped shaking my head.
"Do I detect a change of heart?"
"You had me at 'obscene.' "
I pulled a notepad out of the desk drawer and jotted down a to-do list, beginning with 1. Find painting . I figured I'd elaborate from there.
"Okay, let's start at the beginning," I said. "Mayfield's Auction House notified you that it had acquired a Gauguin that was listed on the Art Loss Register?"
The international Art Loss Register helps art dealers, museums, and honest citizens avoid being scammed by forgers, thieves, and those who traffic in stolen goods. Most insurance companies require such a listing before they pay a claim.
"Yes. The auction house ran the required search, and found that it matched the description of the missing painting."
"And the painting has its provenance papers?"
He nodded.
"One thing I still don't understand," I said. "You're an investigator. Why hire me?"
"As I said, you have a unique background---"
"I don't buy it, Jarrah," I interrupted. Once I had recovered from the uncommon thrill of not having my past held against me, I realized that Jarrah Preston's stated reason for hiring me wasn't plausible. I painted forgeries---at least I used to---I didn't hunt them down. "A licensed PI or a retired SFPD inspector would be far more familiar with the local black market than I am. Why me?"
Jarrah smiled. "Well done."
I eyed him for a moment, trying to decide if that crooked smile was endearing or menacing. One thing for sure, it was patronizing. "Well done?"
"You're not easily fooled."
"Just wait. You don't know me very well."
"Well enough. You have something else going for you. Victor Yeltsin happens to be a member of the Fleming-Union."
Uh-oh.
"I understand you have access to the mansion."
"Limited access. Very limited."
"You could poke around a little.... Perhaps you could blend in with the housekeeping staff."
I flashed on a visual of myself in a French maid's costume. Not happening.
"How did you know I was working there?"
"Johnson mentioned it. Lucky coincidence, eh?"
"Very lucky. Very coincidental." I watched him closely. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about David's painting called Death of Marat ?"
"Remind me?"
"French revolutionary, Neo-classical..."
"Oh, right. Dead bloke in a tub?"
"I thought you were in the business of insuring art. Doesn't that require a certain amount of art knowledge?"
"I study up on what I'm after. Ask me anything you want to know about Gauguin, and I'll wager I know it."
"It just so happens that there's a police investigation at the Fleming Mansion at the moment. I don't suppose the missing Gauguin would have anything to do with that?"
"What kind of investigation?"
"Someone was...murdered."
"Bloody hell!" Jarrah looked genuinely shocked. "Who was it?"
"I don't know who he was, but the scene was pretty gruesome."
He shook his head and blew out a breath. "I'm looking for information on a painting nicked years ago from Yeltsin's home. I don't see how it could be connected to a recent murder at the Fleming-Union."
Silence reigned while I pretended to study the photos. I'd spent more than thirty years on this planet without giving a second thought to the Fleming-Union; all of a sudden I'm offered two jobs there? Coincidences tend not to bode well in my life.
Still, I needed a new vehicle, and I was bone-tired of worrying about making the rent every month. Preston was offering the kind of financial boon I had been hoping for when I decided to go into this business with Michael. So why was I so worried?
Because I wasn't an idiot.
If there was one thing I had learned over the last couple of years, it was to be cautious when, for instance, a smiling half Maori shows up out of the blue with an inflated check and no personal references. I would go along with him for the moment, but before involving myself in anything too dangerous or stupid I would have to check him out.
Jarrah picked up the X ray. "There's an old saying, 'Revenge is a dish best served cold.' D'ya suppose that's what this message means?"
"Hard to tell. Forgers are an odd group. Many have an axe to grind with the art establishment. It might be a phrase the artist paints under all his fakes, like a signature. I'll have my guy run a check on known forgers, see if it rings any bells."
"My guy" is Pedro Schumacher, a dear friend who knows how to use Google's advanced search function, but I saw no reason for my deep-pocketed client to know this.
Jarrah patted the stack of papers. "You'll find most of what you need here: a copy of the original police report, profiles of the individuals I've interviewed, and information on the painting's last owner, Victor Yeltsin."
"Who brought the Gauguin to Mayfield's Auction House for sale in the first place?"
"A man named Elijah Odibajian."
I dropped a peanut.
"As in Balthazar and Elijah Odibajian, the Brothers Grimm of Bay Area real estate? Those Odibajians?"
"Elijah seems to have disappeared, up the boohai , as we Kiwis say. I'm off to run him to ground." Jarrah sat back, his black eyes twinkling. "Big brother Balthazar insists he knows nothing, but I'd like you to talk with him. As it happens, Balthazar's a member of the Fleming-Union, as well."
"How handy."
"He's a bit of a dag, I'll warn you."
"Translation?"
"Rather difficult. A hard case." He smiled that strange smile again. "But I have a feeling you'll have a way with him. As the saying goes, Ka timu te tai, ka pao te torea, ka ina te harakeke a Hine-kakai. "
"Oh sure, I say that all the time."
"It means, 'The oyster catcher swims when the tide is ebbing and the flax of Hine-kakai burns.' "
I had no idea what Jarrah Preston was talking about, and wondered what I was getting myself into. But as my grandfather was fond of saying, The road to wealth is strewn not with rocks but with boulders, Annie. Bring your hiking boots.
\*
Preston left me with the case file, a fat retainer, and an uneasy feeling that there was more to this case than he was letting on. I glanced down at the computer screen.
Google had obligingly answered my earlier query, and produced a full-color illustration of David's magnificent painting of a dead bloke in a tub. The Death of Marat was housed in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, I read, and there had been no reported thefts or scandals associated with it. Studying the painting---the position of the body, the letter in Marat's hand---I was more convinced than ever that the poor schmuck at the Fleming-Union had been arranged to mimic the painting.
But why?
The more I thought about it, the surer I was that Destiny couldn't be the killer. Among other things, it was hard to imagine her having the requisite knowledge. She seemed more like an ex-stripper than an art history major.
I reminded myself that this wasn't my problem. Annette Crawford and the SFPD were on the case, I was in no way implicated, and despite the staged reconstruction of a famous painting, it didn't even have anything to do with stolen or forged art.
Unless of course Jarrah Preston was lying through his Kiwi teeth.
I dialed my guy, Pedro Schumacher.
"You need somebody to post bail again?" Pedro answered without preamble.
"No, I---"
"Then don't bother us. I finally got my woman to take a long lunch, and we're napping."
"Oh, I'm sorry! Did I wake you?"
"No, we're napping."
"Oh . Then why did you answer the phone?"
"I'm just giving you a hard time. I knew it was you." I heard a woman laughing in the background. "We high-tech folks have this little gadget, Caller ID, that tells us who's calling. I think it'll catch on one day."
A self-employed computer geek with a genius IQ, Pedro spent his days rescuing his corporate clients from multi-million-dollar software snafus and his nights reveling in hardboiled detective fiction. We had been friends for years, and his longtime girlfriend Elena Briones happened to be an attorney who had helped me out on more than one occasion. I had the sneaking suspicion my antics kept them entertained.
"Funny. I have a couple of things for you to look up," I said. "And I'm getting paid this time, so keep track of your hours and eventually I'll pay you a tiny fraction of what your skills are worth."
"Hearing your lovely voice is payment enough, mi amor ."
"You're such a charmer, Pedro."
"It's a Latin thing. Whaddaya need?"
"A background check on an insurance investigator named Jarrah Preston, employed by Augusta Confederated Insurance." I spelled the name. "He's from New Zealand. I'd also like you to search for any cases of forged paintings that involve hidden messages."
"Like how many animals can you find hidden in the drawing of Old MacDonald's Farm? Man, I loved those. Remember Highlights magazine?"
"I liked those, too. But that's not what I mean."
"How else would you hide a message?"
"By painting over it. The lead in certain types of pigment fluoresces under X rays. Look for a French phrase that translates into 'Dead nature is a dish best served cold.' "
" 'Dead nature'? Twisted."
"You speak Spanish, Pedro. It means 'still life.' "
"Dead nature's more interesting."
"One more thing: I need information on a Victor Yeltsin, and Balthazar and Elijah Odibajian."
"As in the Odibajian brothers? The Brothers Grimm of Bay Area real estate?"
"I read that article, too." This was an exaggeration. I had read the headline but hadn't gotten around to the article, which at the moment resided in a two-foot-tall stack of "to be read" newspapers slowly yellowing in a corner of my bedroom. "Would you look them up, please?"
"Don't need to. I can tell you all you need to know right now: those boys are bad news. I don't know much about Elijah, but Balthazar is a major player whose opponents have a habit of abruptly moving out of state or disappearing altogether. More what you'd expect in Jersey than in kinder, gentler San Francisco. Steer clear of that guy."
"I just want to ask a few questions."
"What about?"
"Elijah, the younger brother, brought a stolen painting to Mayfield's Auction House for sale."
"He stole a painting?"
"Hard to say. He had it in his possession. Actually, he had a copy in his possession."
"He stole a fake?"
"Another good question. All I know for sure it that he was trying to sell a fake."
"Rewind. I'm confused."
"A painting was stolen seven years ago, and the insurance company paid the claim. Recently a copy of that painting turned up for sale at Mayfield's Auction House via Elijah Odibajian. The insurance guy wants me to help him figure out if the painting was original when it was stolen, and where the original might be."
"Insurance fraud."
"Exactly. The owner of a genuine painting has it insured, then copied, then sells the original, has the copy stolen, and claims the insurance money on the supposed loss."
"Why even bother with a copy? Why not just have the original 'stolen' and leave it at that?"
"It's much more convincing if the insurance folks, or the cops, have a trail to follow."
"The insurance guy is Jarrah Preston, the fellow you want me to check out?"
"Just in case he's not who he says he is."
"Gotcha. I still say, keep away from the Odibajians, Annie. Insurance fraud isn't the kind of thing they're likely to bother with, frankly---the payoff's too low and the downside's too great. Their real estate holdings alone are worth close to half a billion, and that's only what they admit to the IRS."
"Elijah probably had no idea the painting was a fake when he put it up for sale. Just see what you can find out about them for me, will you?"
"You know who you remind me of?"
"Salma Hayek?" Hope springs eternal.
"A stubborn burro on my grandmother's ranch."
"I prefer to think of myself as dedicated."
"I'll just bet, my little burrita ."
"This is me ignoring you. Could I talk to Elena for a second?"
"Don't tell me you really do need to be bailed out...?"
"No, oh ye of little faith. But I know someone who does."
Pedro's girlfriend came on the line. Elena had recently left the Oakland Public Defender's office to set up her own criminal defense practice. Smart, aggressive, and savvy, her dedication to progressive causes made me feel I should be out protesting global warming, or raising money for AIDS orphans, or scaling a fence at a nuclear silo. I put in my time on peace marches and volunteer work, but Elena seemed disappointed that I had never been arrested for anything political.
I told her about Destiny and the murder at the F-U, and explained that I wasn't sure if the maid had been charged with anything. Elena assured me not to worry, she would take it from here. The steely note in her voice made me feel a little sorry for Inspector Crawford.
Next I tried my Uncle Anton's number. No answer. A Luddite of the highest order, the old forger didn't even have an answering machine.
The pictures I saw of the fake Gauguin were good enough to prove one thing: it was the work of a gifted forger. Anton loved the Post-impressionists, and would have especially enjoyed mixing his own authentic period paints and then mimicking the layering to recreate a true Gauguin. But if he had painted the Gauguin forgery, why would he have spoken with Jarrah Preston, much less given him my name?
Maybe Anton had nothing to do with anything. Could the forged Gauguin have something to do with Michael's recent absence? I had no reason to think so...but coincidences make me nervous.
My hand still lingered on the receiver when there was another knock on the door. I looked up to see my landlord, Frank DeBenton, looking elegant as always in gray slacks and jacket, a striped tie, and a tailored cream shirt. My mind leapt to a memory of Frank a few months ago: tipsy, tie loosened, hair tousled, mouth coming down on mine.... I reached for a Hershey's Kiss from the blue ceramic bowl on my desk.
"Frank."
"Annie." He glanced around the office. "Nice furniture."
"I don't suppose you'd like to buy it?"
He raised his eyebrows in silent question.
"Never mind. Did you get my rent check?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Have a seat. Would you like a Kiss?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Hershey's Kiss?"
"No, thank you."
Silence. Usually if Frank was quiet long enough I would start babbling, say something stupid, and either incriminate myself or agree to something I shouldn't. I used to think it was just his way, but having learned recently that Frank was a former Special Ops agent, I now concluded it was an interrogation technique that, unfortunately, worked like a charm on mere mortals like me. I swore I would no longer buckle under the pressure. From this day forth, Frank's sneaky tactics of silence were useless on me.
I stared at the beams in the ceiling. I stared at the desk blotter. I stared at my paint-stained nails.
I cracked.
"Something I can do for you?"
"I need a favor."
Well. That was unexpected. "Shoot."
"It's about the College Club."
The College Club isn't nearly as exclusive as the F-U, though it does rank high on the city's list of Privileged People's Lairs. But it admits women, which no doubt brings it down a rung or two on the ladder of social snobbery.
"You want to join? I'd be delighted to write you a letter of recommendation."
"Cute. I'm already a member."
"You're not here to sell me some magazine subscriptions, are you?"
"Annie---"
"I'm not buying any cookies, either. Unless you have Thin Mints."
Frank grinned despite himself, and our gazes locked. It was the first real connection we'd had since the beginning of the Ice Age, and I had a sudden sensual memory of his lips on mine.
Zing .
"I need you to find Hermes."
"The French fashion designer? I think he's dead."
"No, the Greek god, also known as Mercury to the Romans."
"Have you checked Mount Olympus?"
" Resting Hermes is a life-sized bronze statue from the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition. It stands outside the College Club, near the sidewalk. At least it used to. Somebody absconded with it."
"A bronze that size would weigh hundreds of pounds."
"More than three hundred pounds, so they say."
"Why would someone steal it? For that matter, how would someone steal it?"
"That's what I'd like you to find out."
" Me ? Call the cops." What was it with men and their missing art these days?
"I did. They're swamped; it's been a week, and the police haven't had much time to spare to search for a statue. I put out a few feelers, but nothing's turned up."
"And you think I can find something you and the cops can't? Have you learned nothing about me, lo, these many moons?"
Frank's eyes swept over me. "Quite a few things, actually."
It was my turn to squirm. I glanced over at the Hershey's Kisses, but told myself "no."
Frank continued, "I hoped you would be willing to...talk to some people."
"People?"
"You know who I mean. People ."
"People who need people? The luckiest people?"
"People who deal in this sort of thing."
"You think I know the people who stole your Hermes ?"
Frank tugged at his shirt collar. "I wouldn't ask if there was any other way."
"Gee, thanks."
"The sculpture is important to the club, Annie. It's important to me ."
It was on the tip of my tongue to deny, for the second time in twenty minutes, any contact with the art underworld. Regardless of how hard and long I had worked to be an honest artist and faux finisher, my reputation as a teenaged forger---combined with that of my scalawag of a grandfather---always preceded me. To be fair, going into business with Michael-the-ex-con had not exactly burnished the luster of my good name. Still, it seemed past time for the art world to forgive and forget. What was a fake Old Master drawing or forty among friends and colleagues?
But it was undeniably flattering to have Frank come to me for a favor. Maybe I should make the most of it. Besides, I rather liked the image of Annie Kincaid, Ace Investigator---Annie's my Name, Art's my Game.
Too bad I hadn't the slightest idea how to find a missing Hermes , much less a lost Gauguin. Half the time I couldn't find my keys in my backpack with a flashlight and a metal detector.
"The club will pay you for your time, of course," Frank continued.
"Frank, I'd love to make some extra money, but I can't imagine I'll be able to help."
"All I'm asking is that you look into it. If you don't find anything, then we'll just have to presume it's gone for good."
This no-results-necessary thing was new to me, and darned attractive. I tried to imagine telling my painting clients, "Gee, I tried but the mural didn't quite work out. Such a shame. Now, where's my money?"
"Won't you at least ask around? I would consider it a personal favor." Ever the gentleman, Frank did not point out the many times he'd done me a favor. He didn't need to.
I blew out a breath.
"I take it that's a yes?"
"All right. But remember---I can't guarantee results."
"Understood." He reached into his inside jacket pocket, brought out an envelope, and slid it across the desk. "Here's a copy of the police report and two hundred dollars. The cash is for expenses. If you need more, let me know. Just keep track so I can get reimbursed by the club. Your fee is, of course, separate. What is the going rate for your services?"
I debated quoting Jarrah Preston's offer, but Frank was, after all, a friend.
"Why don't I charge my hourly rate for faux finishing? Double for overtime. Triple if goons or guns are involved."
"Back off if anything dangerous comes up, Annie. No sculpture is worth your getting hurt."
"Those clubby types are a little scary," I mused.
"I'm a club member."
"You'd scare me, too, if I didn't know what a marshmallow you are under your silk Armani. Oh, by the way, would you happen to know an insurance investigator named Jarrah Preston?"
Frank's dark eyes stared at me for a long moment. "How do you know him?"
"He offered me a lot of money to track down a painting."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why isn't he tracking down the painting himself?"
"He doesn't have the, um, connections that I do."
"Would these be illegal connections?"
"These would be the same sort of connections you just asked me to exploit, if I'm not mistaken."
A slight inclination of the head: I won that round.
"He also asked me to speak with Balthazar Odibajian."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't mess with Odibajian. He's not a man to trifle with."
"But if I were, hypothetically, to wish to speak with him, how would I go about it?"
Frank sat back in his seat. I couldn't tell if his eyes were sweeping over me as a man who appreciates a woman, or as a concerned citizen who thought I was nuts. Pedro's burrita comment had stung.
His gaze paused for a fraction of a second on my lips. Aha!
"Odibajian's tougher to get to than the president," he said. "He won't talk to you. But he'll know you tried to get to him, so you'll be on his radar. Trust me on this one, Annie: you don't want to be on that man's radar."
"You know, the more people warn me away from him, the more I want to talk to him."
"Pardon me for pointing it out, but isn't that the same character trait that almost got you killed a couple of months ago?"
"But I saved---"
"And the time before, when you spent Thanksgiving in jail after an encounter with homicidal drug runners?"
"There was a good explanation---"
"There always is."
This was the crux of the problem between Frank and me. Our interactions almost always led us to this point: Frank accusing, me defending. It did not bode well for the romantic relationship we had been dancing around. For several seconds, silence reigned.
"So, what do you think about the Giants' pitching lineup?" I asked.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm changing the subject."
"And you think I'm a baseball fan?"
"Actually, I had you pegged for tennis. Or polo. Something expensive and exclusive. But even I've heard of Barry Bonds."
Frank chuckled. "I play squash, actually, which is why I'm a member of the College Club. Okay, Annie. Since I know you'll do what you want to anyway, here's some advice: don't bother going to Odibajian's home or office. He's fortified against attack there. But he's a member of the Fleming-Union. Aren't you working there?"
"Sort of."
"If I were suicidal and pigheaded like you, I would find out when Odibajian eats lunch and surprise him before he gets inside the dining room. It's members-only---and by members, I mean men. Women are allowed in only by invitation, and even then they have to go in the back door."
"That place is so bizarre. You're not a member, are you?"
"Do you think I would spend my days dealing with unruly tenants such as yourself if I had that kind of money?"
"And here I was thinking your opposition might be a social protest."
"It does boggle the mind that some men use their wealth to hide from women," he said with a crooked smile. "I'd rather use my money to capture their attention."
Our eyes held. I thought about kissing him again.
My hand inched toward the bowl of chocolates.
"Don't I get a Kiss?" said a deep voice from the doorway.
I believe that a great deal of art, as life, is accidental. Alors! The route that an artist takes to expressing his creativity is a labyrinthine affair, full of twists and turns, full of joy yet always ending in sweet loss.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Frank rose as my misplaced business partner, Michael X. Johnson, sauntered into the room.
"Frank."
"Michael."
The air crackled with tension as the two alpha males bristled and tried to stare each other down. The contest went on so long I cleared my throat.
"Uh, guys?" I interrupted. "This is entertaining as all get-out, but I've got work to do."
"As do I," Frank said. "Let me know what you find out, Annie. Michael."
"Frank."
The door shut quietly.
"Call me crazy, but I feel as though I interrupted something," Michael said, taking the seat Frank had just vacated and cupping his hands over his heart. "A declaration of undying love? A marriage proposal, perhaps?"
"Where the hell have you been ?" I turned on him.
"You missed me." He looked pleased.
"I was on the verge of informing the FBI that you had violated your parole."
Now he looked hurt. Sighing dramatically, he laced his fingers behind his dark head, crossed his ankles on the desk, and fixed his green gaze upon me, concern sketched on his even features. "I don't remember you being such a drag before. I think this business is bringing out the worst in you."
" Where have you been? It's like Remington Steele in reverse around here. I've been pretending to have a partner who doesn't exist or...the other way around. Whatever. Not only did you leave without a word, but you seem to have forgotten that you're supposed to be responsible for half the work load---"
"Hey, I've been working. I arranged the insurance gig with...whatshisname?...the guy with the accent. That should be a real money-maker."
"About that 'insurance gig'...when we established this business you assured me it wouldn't involve anything more than answering a few e-mails."
"I may have exaggerated a tad."
"I have another business, you know, which requires at least half my time and attention. Among other things, I have to get started on some sketches for a seascape in a house out in the Avenues, near the Legion of Honor."
"I thought you were cutting back on your painting-for-hire."
"There was a backlog."
"Must be nice to be so popular. I envy you."
I ignored him. "Which reminds me, a nightclub on Broadway wants me to faux-finish a metal stair-railing...." I jotted a note to myself on the back of a flier for an art supply store. I should stop by and give them a quote.
"A railing?"
"They want it to look rusty."
"I'll sell them the one from my mother's porch. That'll save you time."
"They don't want it to be rusty, just to look rusty."
"Well, there's no accounting for taste," he shrugged.
"Wait a minute---are you admitting you have a mother?"
"Everybody has a mother, Annie."
I remained skeptical. Anyone as effortlessly gorgeous as he was must have emerged, Venus-like, from the sea on a scallop shell. Tall and slender but well-muscled, Michael was a manly man in his mid-to-late thirties---I'd given up trying to discover his age---with glossy dark brown hair and the deep green eyes of a Norse god. At times I feared I had agreed to our partnership purely out of an aesthetic appreciation for his abundance of masculine pulchritude. It was like having a walking, talking work of art hanging around the office.
Fortunately, I'm philosophically opposed to fraternizing with co-workers. Unfortunately, I had coped by upping my chocolate intake to imported seventy-percent-cocoa chocolate bars, and had gained three pounds.
"You're wasting your time faux-finishing banisters," Michael said, looking pained. "Yet you're complaining because I got us a real job?"
"This may come as a surprise to you, partner , but we're not private eyes."
"How hard could it be?"
"I have a feeling it's a learned skill set. People go to school to become investigators. I think you're even supposed to be licensed."
"That's only if you carry a gun."
"Really?" I made a mental note to check on that. "Still, we have no investigative skills or training."
"Ah, but we understand the criminal mind."
"I hate to disappoint you, but I don't know the first thing about tracking down stolen goods."
"It just so happens I know a little. And don't act so naive---surely your dear old grandpapa mentioned it from time to time. Speaking of whom, have you checked out his new blog?"
I adored my grandfather, but whenever I thought about him my stomach clenched with worry and irritation. First Georges had published a memoir that not only outed the plentiful fakes and misattributed paintings hanging on the walls of museums from Antwerp to Zaire, but also functioned as a "how-to" manual for aspiring art forgers everywhere. Then he publicized his book with an international campaign whose antics rivaled those of Napoleon's march across Europe. Interpol gnashed its teeth, but Georges was so well connected to the art world's underground that he was able to remain one step ahead of the law. Lately, he had decided it was time to embrace technology and had started his own blog, the better to answer questions from his legion of adoring fans and to wage his ongoing war against the art establishment. My blood pressure had increased in direct proportion to the death threats against the flamboyant old man. I was hoping the yoga would help.
"Where's your curiosity? Your sense of adventure?" Michael asked, interrupting my thoughts.
"On parole. Like you, if I'm not mistaken." Curiosity and a sense of adventure had landed me in plenty of trouble in my life, which was why respectable people such as Inspector Annette Crawford---and even Frank---hesitated to associate with me.
I glanced at the clock. It was too late in the day to start a new painting project, and the Thief Mobile was calling my name. If the College Club was willing to pay, results or no, who was I to refuse the gig? Besides, given my strange luck I might manage to stumble onto some sort of clue, and I wouldn't mind getting back in Frank's good graces. I put the computer into sleep mode, picked up a few bills and invoices I needed to mail, and grabbed my satchel.
"Okay, fine. You're so dead-set on playing Sherlock Holmes, let's go find us a Hermes ."
"Excuse me?"
"I'll explain on the way. Right after you tell me where you've been for the last six days."
\*
As we drove across town Michael talked a blue streak but managed to tell me precisely nothing about his whereabouts the last week. I replied in kind, telling him precisely nothing about the identity of our client for the missing Resting Hermes . I imagined Michael would balk at working for his arch-enemy. A tense silence then descended, broken only when Michael started to hum the Marseillaise to "remind me of my roots."
His ploy worked, to a point. I recalled vividly that hanging out with criminals such as Michael and my grandfather Georges had almost always gotten me into trouble with the law.
Nob Hill is about as Old Money as San Francisco neighborhoods get, which is to say it dates from the Gold Rush era. Jutting hundreds of feet above the rowdy Barbary Coast waterfront, Nob Hill became a retreat for the city's elite, who led upper-crust lives on what Robert Louis Stevenson called "the hill of palaces." The City's Big Four---Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis Huntington, who made their fortunes in gold, silver, and railroads---took advantage of Nob Hill's central location and spectacular views to build homes as grand as their images of themselves. The steep grade proved so hard on horses and pedestrians alike that in 1878 the residents had their own cable car line installed. Today that same cable car rumbled past, packed with excited tourists clutching cameras and plastic shopping bags filled with trinkets, loaves of sourdough bread, and Ghirardelli chocolate.
My truck emitted an alarming groan as I pulled into a rare metered spot on Powell, not far from where the red brick College Club clung to the side of Nob Hill.
On the corner, a large soapstone pedestal sat empty save for a metal rod sticking straight up from its core. Yellow police tape warned pedestrians to keep their distance lest one, in a feat of acrobatic clumsiness, trip and impale himself. The City's ever-vigilant Visitors Bureau would not be amused.
"Gouge marks." Michael pointed to parallel grooves marring the surface of the pedestal. He jotted notes on a steno pad, muttered and scratched his head, to all appearances channeling television's classic Columbo. I watched to see whether he was going to whip out a nasty stogie and start squinting. "Looks like the thieves used a crowbar."
Impatient with his newly formed PI persona, I sent Michael into the College Club to ask for the representatives listed on the police report. A few moments later the club's tall front door creaked open and two men in expensive suits emerged. A tanned fifty-something, who looked as though he took full advantage of the club's vaunted athletic facilities, shook our hands vigorously and introduced himself as Duke. The withered, elderly man at his side announced his name was Brown, making me wonder if a prerequisite for membership in the College Club was being named for a stuffy private school.
"The club bought Resting Hermes from the Italian government after the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition," Brown piped in a querulous voice. "For years he sat in the rotunda, until our former president suggested we share him with the neighborhood. I told him it was a bad idea, but would he listen?"
He glared at us, and I surmised that the club president had not, in fact, listened.
"The Pan-Pacific Exposition was held only a few years after the earthquake and fire," the sportier Duke explained. " Hermes represented San Francisco rising from the ashes, and assuming its rightful place among the world's greatest cities. Hermes said to the world, 'We'll be back! Better and stronger than ever...' "
Duke's voice trailed off and he gazed in the direction of Chinatown and the Ferry building. Brown, too, had a faraway look in his rheumy eyes. They were a little over the top, but then again every artist should be lucky enough to create for such an appreciative audience.
"Do you have any clues as to the identity of the thieves?" I asked. "A disgruntled employee? Anyone been laid off recently?"
Brown shook his glossy gray head. "Most of the help have been with us for years."
"Does the College Club have any enemies? A rivalry with the Fleming-Union, perhaps?"
The three men stared at me as though I were one sandwich short of a picnic. The suggestion sounded far-fetched even to my own ears, but the frat-boy nature of these clubs made me ask.
Duke shook his head.
"Has anyone shown any undue interest in the statue?" I persisted.
" Hermes was taken once before, in 1974, but it was merely a schoolboy prank. He was found in a student's apartment, holding a cigarette and wearing a fur coat."
"And last month someone painted pink polish on his toenails," Brown added. "Cretins!"
Michael coughed to cover a throaty chuckle.
"I hope nothing untoward has happened to him," Brown said.
"Don't worry," I replied. "Bronze is sturdy stuff. There might be a few scratches, or a nick in the patina. But those are easy to fix. I'm sure he'll be fine. So, have you canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses?"
"Don't worry about a thing, gentlemen," Michael interrupted in a crisp tone. "We'll take it from here. Leave it to the professionals, I always say."
"It's a relief to know you're on the case," Duke said.
"It's the least we can do for the venerable College Club." Michael touched his forehead in a salute.
I waited until Duke and Brown made their way back up the stairs and into the club before turning to Michael.
"If we go home now, we can still charge for the full hour, right?" I was still trying to work the kinks out of this consulting game.
"We haven't done any actual investigating, Annie."
"That's because we're not investigators. I said I'd look into Hermes' whereabouts, but there's no evidence, nothing to go on. I did the best I could."
"This was your best?"
"Listen, apparently we get paid whether we produce results or not."
Michael gave me a disgusted glance. It was unsettling to have a career criminal look at you as though you had the ethics of a bedbug.
"Couldn't you just make some calls or something and track it down?" I asked.
"Track it down, how, exactly?"
"You probably know some people...."
"You think I know the people who stole the sculpture?"
"I thought you might run in the same circles. Use the same fence, maybe?"
The world-class thief's jaw tightened in anger and his eyes swept over the buildings in front of us, avoiding mine. Nothing like implying that swiping something off the street was in the same league as stealing something from a wealthy, well-defended adversary. It didn't escape my notice that I was making the same sort of assumptions about Michael that Frank had about me.
I squirmed.
"I apologize. I forgot you're no longer a crook. And even if you were, you wouldn't be snatching sculptures off public streets."
"Damned right."
"Okay," I said with a martyred sigh. "What do you want to do?"
"Think about it, Annie. The sculpture weighs hundreds of pounds. It would take at least two men and some heavy equipment to move it. This street isn't exactly off the beaten path. Someone had to have seen something." Good humor restored, his eyes sparkled in the muted light, reminding me of an Antonello da Messina portrait in London's National Gallery that I had admired for two entire days. It almost made me forget my irritation with him.
"Let's start knocking on doors." Michael grasped my elbow, intent on steering me across the street.
This from the man who still hadn't accounted for his whereabouts for the last six days.
"I've got a better idea. You start knocking on doors," I said, getting back in touch with my annoyance and yanking my arm away. "You can make up for your unexcused absence. I need coffee. I'll catch up with you."
I puffed up the steep grade of California Street until I reached the very top of Nob Hill, where the Fleming Mansion sat, silent, somber, and foreboding. Ornate bronze filigree gates, greenish with the patina of a century of urban life, guarded the lush grounds; discreet plaques studded the walls, reminding passersby that the building was PRIVATE. MEMBERS ONLY. These Fleming-U boys could out-snob poor Duke and Brown with their silver spoons tied behind their backs.
Several cop cars crowded the mansion's rear parking lot, and the press had arrived and set up their vans nearby, cameras trained on the building's back door. The beleaguered blond guard/parking attendant was back at his post, but still looked ashen. I noted several expensive cars parked in amongst the police units, including a dusty red Aston Martin convertible that I recognized as belonging to Geoffrey McAdams, chairman of the board and the man who had hired me. Next to it sat a mud-splattered black Mercedes sedan proudly proclaiming itself to be a V-12 Biturbo. The police must have tracked down a few of the F-U boys and called them back from their bohemian frolic in the woods.
In contrast to the flurry of activity in the rear, the front door of the building was quiet. As I walked by I noticed that there was a blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox right up on the porch.
Typical. The powers that be had removed all mailboxes within a two-mile radius of my apartment in Oakland, but here the F-U boys had their own right up on the porch. Mounting the broad stone steps, I extracted my bills from my backpack, dropped them in the mailbox, and stole a quick peek through a front window into a messy office with a Diet Coke can perched on a stack of files. Disappointingly normal.
"They won't let you in this way," a voice came from behind me.
I started, stifled a squeak, and turned around to see a tall man at the bottom of the stairs. He had wavy reddish-brown hair and wore heavy, horn-rim glasses, like Mr. Science.
"Women have to go round the back," he said with a sheepish smile. His accent was pure California, but his demeanor and sentence structure made him seem as though he had walked off the set of a British comedy featuring an affable Lord of the Manor. "And I'm afraid even then you'll need to be invited in by a member. Beastly tradition, that. And in any case, there seems to be something untoward going on. Didn't you see all of the police vehicles?"
"Um, yes I did."
"I saw it all from my balcony, right up there," he said, pointing to a very tall, sixties-style building a block northwest of the Fleming-Union. "The police started arriving a couple of hours ago. I was going to go see if I could be of service when I noticed you trying to get in through the front door. I wanted to save you any embarrassment. Women can't use this entrance, except during special events, and even then only with club escorts."
"I wasn't actually going in," I said, returning his smile and trying to calm my still-pounding heart. "Just mailing a letter and couldn't resist a peek. Are you a member here?"
"They had to let me in, didn't they?"
"Did they?"
"I'm Wesley Fleming the Third."
"As in the Fleming Mansion?"
"Indeed. My great-grandfather built this place. And you are...?"
"Annie Kincaid," I said, extending my hand. His was cold and clammy as we shook. Still, his puppy-dog eyes were so open and eager it was hard not to like him. It dawned on me that I could ask him a few questions about the F-U members Victor Yeltsin and Balthazar Odibajian, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Could I double-bill for my time? "Listen, Wesley, could I ask you a few questions about this place? I'm doing a kind of research project about this area...."
"You're a student?"
"Um..."
"I love students."
"Sure am." A student of life, I always say.
"What do you study?"
"Ar---, uh... architecture," I stammered.
"I love architecture!" He checked his wristwatch. "Sure, I have a few minutes."
"I saw a sign for Peet's over at the cathedral. Could I buy you a cup of coffee?"
"Love it."
We both turned and started down the stairs. Wesley moved as though all his parts weren't exactly held together, reminding me of an old marionette I had as a child, whose lone surviving string barely kept all its parts connected, much less in alignment.
"After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed nearly all the mansions on Nob Hill, Arabella Huntington donated the land her house had sat on to the City of San Francisco to be used as a public park," Wesley said, taking on the role of tour guide. "My grandfather's home was the only one to withstand the flames. Good, solid stone. The Fairmont Hotel was under construction at the time and though it was gutted, the walls remained intact. Julia Morgan later redid the interior."
We walked past the park's central fountain.
"That's a replica of Rome's Fontana delle Tartarughe, by Taddeo Landini," explained Wesley. "Grace Church was destroyed in the fire as well, and the cathedral was built in the style of Notre Dame to take its place. The front doors are bronze casts of the Ghiberti doors made for the Baptistery in Florence, depicting scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo had called the original Ghiberti doors the porta del paradiso, the gates of heaven. Shouldn't you be taking notes?"
"It's all up here," I said, tapping my temple. "Like a steel trap."
In fact, I already knew both the fountain and the doors well, both here and in their original incarnations in Europe. Along with painting techniques my grandfather had insisted on teaching me the basics of Western Civilization, which somehow, in his mind, justified his forgery of the finest in Old Master art. Speaking of forgeries...
"Say, Wesley, do you happen to know the Odibajian brothers?"
Wesley stopped in his tracks and gawked at me.
"You can't just go around talking about people like the Odibajians."
"I can't?"
"Good Lord, no. How did you know Balthazar belonged to the Fleming-Union? The membership list is secret."
"It is?"
"Good heavens. Wait---I just assumed you knew he was a member, didn't I? I just gave it away. The brethren always tell me I talk too much. Don't you have any questions about architecture? I know all about architecture."
"I'd love to see inside the club." I was pushing my luck, but ol' Wesley was so easygoing I figured it was worth a shot. "Perhaps you could get me into the Fleming-Union for lunch sometime? As your guest? I'm happy to go in the back."
"Good Lord, I don't think so." He looked decidedly uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. "I know nothing about you. Could you even pass the background check?"
"They do a background check on prospective guests?"
"That's why they need twenty-four-hours' notice. Besides, you're not at all my type. We wouldn't fool anyone."
"Oh."
The last thing I wanted was to have Wesley Fleming the Third's love child, but all the same...I wasn't bad-looking, and I was awfully interesting. I looked down at my outfit. What would he think if he saw me in my overalls?
"Do you know about the reproduction of the Chartres labyrinth?" Wesley asked in a blatant attempt to change the subject, pushing his heavy glasses back up the thin bridge of his nose. "Let me show you."
He gestured toward the church, where a handful of shivering tourists, tricked by the day's earlier sunshine into donning shorts and Tshirts, admired the cathedral's soaring stained glass windows. Wesley insisted we mount the great flight of steps and then paused halfway up, pointing to the outdoor terrazzo labyrinth, a duplicate of the one created at Chartres Cathedral around 1220.
"Unlike mazes, labyrinths have only a single path. The twists and turns are symbolic of the course of a human life, and walking the labyrinth is intended to encourage contemplation."
Two boys jumped from one path of the labyrinth to the other, while a third raced through as fast as he could, arms held out airplane-style, as he emitted an array of engine noises. An eight-year-old's version of contemplation.
Wesley and I shared a smile at their antics, and I decided to try again to get my new pal to talk.
"So, Wesley, how come you're not in the woods with the rest of the 'brethren'?"
He turned bright red and pushed his glasses up his nose again.
"They didn't invite me," he mumbled. "Just said the place was closed for a few days for renovations."
"Surely they didn't mean to leave you out...?" I began.
"I've never...I mean, people don't like me much. They only let me in because of my name, anyway."
I suspected he was right, and he struck me as too intelligent to insult with soothing platitudes. Still, the look on his face put me in mind of an overly eager puppy that had just been smacked.
"It's not really my business," I said, "but if they treat you badly it doesn't seem like the kind of group you'd want to be associated with, anyway."
He shrugged and started back down the stone steps. "I certainly could use some coffee."
Following the Peet's Coffee signs, we entered the basement-level building adjoining Grace Cathedral and followed a long, institutional maze of white, windowless hallways. The muffled sound of children's laughter and the squeak of rubber soles on wooden floors evidenced the church's school for boys was at recess in the basketball court.
At last we came upon the coffee stand, right next to the gift shop.
"Mocha caramel Freddo, please," Wesley ordered.
"Double non-fat latte for me, thanks," I told the apron-clad young man behind the coffee cart.
On the counter was a display stand with silver pendants in the shape of the Chartres labyrinth, but I told myself no . Cheap, interesting jewelry is a weakness of mine. Up to this point in my life I had never had enough expendable income to figure out whether expensive, interesting jewelry would be equally intriguing to me.
I turned back to Wesley. "This place is so different from the cathedral. It reminds me of a really white cave."
"I love caves. Do you?"
"I haven't given it much thought, but sure, I guess so."
"Do you like bats?"
"Excuse me?"
"Bats. I'm the Batman. I love bats. And caves."
"Dude! Me, too," interjected the young barista. His shiny hair swept across his forehead, nearly obscuring his eyes. It was a hairstyle I would have associated with the most hopeless nerd in high school, but according to my nephews it was now considered fashionable in a kind of metrosexual way.
"I go spelunking every chance I get," said the young man as he dumped ingredients into a blender. "You ever check out those bat caves where you can't even go in without a special breathing apparatus, like a scuba diver? Awesome. And hey, they're not caves but dude , they say there used to be some tunnels between the mansions here on the hill before the big quake. Not as cool as caves, but still. I've never found 'em, though."
"Really?" The thought of tunnels in the seismically shaky Bay Area brought out my inner claustrophobe. "Tunnels in San Francisco?"
"They probably caved in during the '06 earthquake," added the barista. "You want extra whipped cream?" he asked Wesley.
I paid for our coffees...and bought a silver pendant. I'm not great at impulse control.
Savoring my blessedly strong caffeine-conveyance device, I followed Wesley back through the tunnel and out into the suddenly foggy day. I paused to take a gulp of coffee and spotted Michael engrossed in conversation with a buxom woman in a long black leather coat and fuchsia scarf. Her voice was loud and strong, and I heard her laughing all the way from the sidewalk.
Michael spied me, and made a beeline in our direction.
"Michael, this is Wesley. Wesley, Michael Johnson."
"Oh dear," Wesley sputtered, looking at his watch. "I really must run."
He handed me his card and loped down the street toward the Fleming Mansion.
The artist is, almost by definition, a mischief maker....Keep in mind the close associations between the words art and artifice, craft and craftiness, artifact and artfulness. The great Aristotle philosophized that all art is imitation; while some artists imitate nature, others imitate art itself. And only then are they able to pay the rent.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
I glanced down at the card in my hand.
Cheap. The kind you can order online---the kind I had until Michael insisted on spending a lot of money to spruce up our image. Name, phone number, address. Picture of a bat. I flipped it over and read the back: ULTIONIS EST PATINA OPTIMUS SERVO GELU .
"Picking up strange men at Peet's again, eh?" Michael asked as he watched Wesley's lanky form walk away.
"Something like that," I said. "Do you read Latin?"
"Only on money." He held out his hand and I surrendered the latte. "You didn't get me anything?"
I shook my head. "I got myself a necklace, though."
"Nice." Warm fingers grazed my skin as Michael lifted the medallion, and I was hyper-aware of his lingering touch. His voice deepened. " Very nice."
"I'll go get you something," I said ignoring his gaze and my quickening pulse. "What do you want?"
"Do they have sandwiches? If not, get a half dozen muffins and croissants."
"What, did you skip lunch?"
"It's not for me." He lifted his chin in the direction of a small alley off Sproule Lane, where the nose of a grocery cart indicated the presence of an informal living situation. "The doorman at the Fairmont said a couple of homeless guys live over there. Said one in particular hangs out on the corner at night. Cathy says they're always hungry."
"Who's Cathy?"
"The dog walker."
"You know her?"
"I do now."
"Is there anyone you can't make friends with?"
"Your buddy Frank doesn't like me."
"Frank's a very perceptive man."
"So you keep saying."
Best not to pursue that line of thought. "Did the homeless men see anything?"
"That's what we're about to find out. Come on."
Ten minutes later we emerged from Grace Cathedral's basement loaded down with cardboard boxes containing paper cups of sweetened, creamy Peet's coffee, three muffins studded with plump blueberries, two cherry-cornbread scones glistening with icing, and two gooey chocolate croissants. Delectable enough to tempt even the most reluctant of informants.
Skirting Huntington Park, we made our way down Sproule Lane until we reached what was technically an alley but was really more of a deep dent between apartment houses. Leaning against one wall was an older African American man with a grizzled beard and red-rimmed, hollow eyes. He was dressed in a black knit cap, dirty Levis, and several layers of grimy sweatshirts, the topmost of which was emblazoned with a crest and HARVARD in gothic script.
The alley's other resident was a younger white man in a newish red-and-black jumpsuit, orange gloves, and a black ski mask. A scraggly blond mustache poked through the opening for the mouth, giving him the appearance of a masked walrus. He lay on his back, eyes closed and arms sticking up and bent at the elbow. It was an oddly infantile gesture, and I hoped he wasn't dead.
Personal growth notwithstanding, two corpses in one day were beyond my coping skills.
"How you doin'?" Michael asked in that easygoing way of his that made me want to confide in him, until I remembered he was a thief and a liar.
The man in the Harvard sweatshirt looked resigned, as though expecting us to order him to abandon his little hollow to the rats.
"We have hot coffee and fresh baked goods," Michael said. "Hungry?"
Harvard nudged the thigh of his jumpsuited companion with the toe of a once-white athletic shoe. "Hey," he said in a flat voice. "Food."
Jumpsuit sat up immediately, blinked blue eyes as red-rimmed and empty as his companion's, and stared at us. Handing me the carton of food, Michael helped the younger man to his feet.
I offered Harvard coffee and a muffin, and smiled. He nodded his thanks but looked right through me. As always when confronted with homelessness, my heart went out to these men. What were their stories? How did they come to live like this? Why were people just scraping by, living in alleys in the richest nation in the world?
"You guys hang out around here?" Michael said as he handed Jumpsuit coffee and a croissant. The man peeled up his ski mask and took a huge bite, smearing chocolate on his chin.
Neither man said anything.
Michael's voice became relaxed, almost slurred. "Thing is, we're lookin' for some guys who were here a coupla nights ago and made off with the sculpture in front of the College Club, over on Powell and California. Know what I'm talkin' about?"
Harvard took another muffin. " Hermes , right?"
"Right."
"Tol' ya," he said to his companion.
"Hermes," murmured Jumpsuit, nodding and gulping his coffee.
"Tol' ya, ol' Hermie was the god of up-to-no-good. Whaddayacallit, mischief. Yeah," Harvard said, his voice coming to life. "We got us a verifiable patron saint in Hermes . I loves that statue, man. A coupla times I slept in that courtyard they got there. Reminded me of home, know what I'm sayin'? People got no respect for art."
Michael nodded. "It was stolen last Monday. Did you happen to see anything?"
"Coupla guys with a crowbar." He nodded. "Came outta nowheres, those guys. Then another guy pulls up in a truck an' they loaded Hermes up."
"What kind of truck?" Michael asked.
"Dark-colored Ford. Full-sized, kinda banged up. Nothin' special. I tried to tell the folks at the club. Huh. Even put on my Harvard shirt for 'em, but them sumbitches wouldna talk to me."
"Sumbitches," Jumpsuit echoed.
"Did you call the police?" I asked.
For the second time that day, three pairs of male eyes stared at me, incredulous. Note to self: stop hanging out with guys.
Harvard shook his head.
"Did you happen to notice anything strange over at the Fleming-Union earlier today, or last night?" I asked.
"There was a woman there pretty late last night," Harvard said as he reached for a blueberry muffin. "Only reason I mention it is 'cause women aren't allowed in there, and she didn't look like no maid. But sometimes they got professional women goin' in there, if you get my meaning."
"Do you remember what she looked like?"
He shrugged and gestured towards his chest. "Well built. Today there were a bunch o' cops. I steered clear."
"About Hermes... " Michael gave me a "stay on topic" look. "Any chance you noticed the truck's license plate?"
"Sure," Harvard mumbled around a mouth full of muffin, crumbs and errant blueberries clinging to his whiskers. "Thought maybe there be a reward. But them sumbitches wouldn't talk to me."
A look of pleased surprise flitted across Michael's face, but he quickly disguised it with his customary mien of amused self-confidence.
"Sumbitches," whispered Jumpsuit like a Greek chorus.
"Do you remember what it was?"
"I said I did, din't I?" Harvard sounded offended, and Michael held up his hands in apology. "Mem'ry's not so good. Tha's a fact . I wrote it down." He reached into the coin pocket of his threadbare Levis and fished out a gum wrapper. "I been thinkin' maybe this be worth somethin'? Say, ten bucks... Or twenty? Git us a room wit' real beds and a nice, hot shower."
"Hot shower," Jumpsuit echoed dreamily.
"Sounds fair." Michael took a business card and two crisp twenty-dollar bills from his wallet. "There's more where that came from if you think of anything else."
Harvard nodded, exchanging the gum wrapper for the card and the cash. "Best get on it, ya hear? They be sellin' my man for scrap, and he be melted down before you knows it."
"Scrap?" Michael asked.
"Sure. Might could git forty, fifty cents a pound. Maybe more."
"Maybe more," Jumpsuit repeated.
As we walked back toward the top of Nob Hill, Michael's eyes slewed in my direction.
"All right, I'll admit it: you did well," I conceded. "Though I'd like to point out that if the members of the College Club weren't such snobs, they wouldn't need our services."
"Sumbitches."
We shared a grin, and I felt a dangerous sensation. Was it affection? Animal attraction was one thing, but affection was dangerous . It was the first step on the road to picking out kitchen curtains.
Since Michael refused to tell me where he lived, this would be highly complicated.
"So, Super Sleuth, how do we find out who the license plate belongs to?" I asked.
"Now, missy, don't you go troublin' your purty li'l head 'bout that."
Good idea. The less I knew about Michael's investigative techniques, the better.
"What's this sudden interest in the Fleming Mansion?" Michael asked as we neared the huge building. "Weren't you researching 'killer wallpaper' for that place? Don't tell me the Martha Stewart Cabbage Rose collection took someone out?"
"As a matter of fact, I was working there earlier today." I took a deep breath. "A man was murdered, and the crime scene resembled The Death of Marat . You know the painting by David? The victim was in a bathtub and everything."
Michael's jaw tightened. "I told you not to take that job. The members of the F-U can't be trusted. They have too much money and too much power. It twists people. They start to think the rules don't apply to them."
"Does the phrase 'pot calling the kettle black' mean anything to you?"
"We're talking about you, not me. Do as I ask, just this once? Tell them you can't finish the job."
"First off, it's not for you to decide what commissions I accept. You're my partner for the online business only. Period. And second, I'm not involved. I just happened to be in the mansion when the body was found. Inspector Crawford's on the case."
"Glad to hear it," Michael said grimly. "I thought you might do something stupid because your Uncle Anton---ah, hell."
I halted in my tracks. "What about Anton?"
"Don't you think it's significant that Hermes is the god of theft?" Michael asked, his tone buoyant. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and stared into the distance, an odd look on his face.
It was the first time I'd caught him in a slip of the tongue.
"Perhaps the thieves have an ironic sense of humor," Michael continued.
"Don't change the subject. What were you going to say about Anton?"
"It has nothing to do with anything."
"I'll be the judge of that."
Michael's gaze shifted to a point over my shoulder. I turned to see what he was looking at and saw Annette Crawford approaching. She did not look pleased.
When I looked back to Michael, all I saw was his back as he disappeared down a nearby alley.
"I thought you were headed home, Annie," Crawford said. "But look, you're still here."
"No, I'm not. I mean, I went to my studio, then came back here, but I'm not trying to get into the Fleming Mansion. We...I'm investigating a different situation."
"Situation?"
"I have a new art assessment business, and---"
"I understood you ran a website that dealt with e-mails."
"Um..."
"You're not impersonating a private investigator, are you? PIs have to be licensed, you know."
"I don't carry a gun."
"Thank the Lord for small favors," she said. "What sort of investigation are you mucking around with, and please tell me it has nothing to do with my murder investigation."
"The boys at the College Club lost their Hermes ."
"Excuse me?
"You know the big bronze statue that used to sit outside their club? It was stolen last week."
"And what are you supposed to do about it?"
"Find it?"
"Uh-huh." An unmarked police car pulled up next to her and she opened the passenger door to climb in. "Annie, do us all a favor and stick to faux finishing. It's more your speed."
\*
Back home in Oakland, I flipped through my mail halfheartedly as I mounted the three flights of stairs to my apartment up under the eaves in an old house--turned--apartment building.
As I neared the little landing at the top of the stairs, right outside my door, I slowed my pace and looked up. Something was wrong.
Yummy cooking smells. Emanating from under the door of my apartment. My stomach growled in appreciation. There was only one problem: there hadn't been any actual food in my kitchen since I broke up with Josh-the-wonder-chef-and-carpenter.
And my front door was ajar.
"Hello?"
"Annie!" The door flew wide open and there stood my ersatz uncle, Anton Woznikowicz, arms outstretched, a brilliant grin on his face. "I thought you would never arrive!"
"Anton," I said as he wrapped strong, pudgy arms around me in a bear hug. He smelled of garlic, onions, and turpentine. "I see you've started on the wine. You know, most people call before they break into someone's home to cook dinner."
"Bah." He waved me off. "Family doesn't stand on ceremony."
"LeFleurs sure don't." I wasn't technically a LeFleur, but then no one in the family was. Grandfather, a Brooklyn native, had made the name up in a bid to convince the world he was French. Unfortunately, his linguistic skills left something to be desired; in French fleur is a feminine noun, so the name should have been La Fleur. It was something of a sore subject with the old forger.
"Come in, come in, my darling," said Anton. "Tell me: how long has it been since you came home to a traditional Spanish paella ?"
"Pretty much never."
"Then it's well past high time." He tsk-tsk ed, and handed me a glass of ruby red Rioja. We clinked glasses.
"To your love life," he said with a wink.
"To yours ," I replied. Anton laughed heartily.
Lately Grandfather and his cronies had been waging a none-too-subtle campaign to marry me off. I wasn't certain of Georges's motives, since he also maintained I would come to my senses one day, chuck the boring law-abiding life, and move to Paris where he and I would forge beautiful art together in his atelier in the Place des Vosges. But I suspected Georges was hoping that if I did crank out a passel of kids at least some of them would inherit the LeFleur art-forger gene. And should Michael---whom Georges adored---be the father of said children, they'd also lack a moral center.
They'd be perfect, in other words.
"How did you get in?" I asked.
"Ah, Annie! You are so droll!" Anton did legal art restoration these days, but in his prime---and in his heart---he was an unrepentant forger like Georges. Breaking into my dead-bolted third-floor apartment was child's play to my uncle's ilk.
"It's been a long time," I said.
"That it has, that it has. Georges will be so pleased to learn of our visit!"
"Have you heard from him recently?"
"I've been reading his blog. Don't worry, he sounds his old self."
"Oh, I'm not worried." It would take a speeding Mack truck to fell my septuagenarian grandfather. I just hoped it was genetic.
I was surprised Anton had found enough pots and pans to work his culinary magic. I noted a cardboard box that he must have toted in. He had brought his own special paella pan, and a number of other items, including a chipped mug emblazoned LE PREMIER ARTISTE DU MONDE , or "world's best artist." I had made it for him in Paris when I was sixteen, when Anton, Georges, and I had spent our days "aging" paper and canvases, and our evenings strolling along the Seine as the men vied to tell the most outrageous tale of international intrigue and daring. Did Anton always carry the mug with him? Or was this a none-too-subtle reminder of our shared past, and the importance of loyalty?
The kitchen was a disaster area, and I wondered why good cooks seemed to think the dishes cleaned themselves. Still, the whole place smelled great . Saffron and olive oil and shrimp and sausage. What's not to like?
"What are you working on these days?" I asked as I set out two places.
"A little of this, a little of that. Restoration mostly. It is very boring work---a child could do it." I noticed splotches of paint on his hands, and a streak of vermilion on his bald head.
"I doubt that. By the way," I began, real casual-like, while I fussed with the silverware, "did you happen to forge the Gauguin the New Zealander's looking for?"
Anton spilled the olive oil he had been pouring into a shallow saucer, swore under his breath, and sopped up the mess with a paper towel.
"Cut up that baguette, will you, Annie?"
I did as he asked, but kept one eye on him. Anton had never before dropped by to cook me dinner; in fact, he had never come to my apartment without an invitation. He was right; we were practically family and did not stand on ceremony. Still, his out-of-the-blue appearance was cause for concern. Anton had something to tell me. But he needed to butter me up first.
We sat at the table and served ourselves. I let the richness of the saffron rice and olives bathe my tongue. Besides being delicious, paella is a feast for the eyes. I remembered Anton telling me that the deep orangey-yellow saffron, a subtle spice gathered from the stamens of crocus flowers, was a component of traditional paints. When mixed with egg yolk, it was often used by medieval painters to imitate gold gilding.
After taking the edge off my hunger, I sipped my wine, sat back, and contemplated my faux uncle.
"A man was murdered at the Fleming Mansion today, and the scene was arranged like David's Death of Marat. Ring any bells?"
Anton paled. "I never cared for the Neo-classicists."
"It's better to talk to me now than to be questioned by the police later."
He snorted. "It would break your grandpapa's heart to learn you are with the FBI!"
"I'm not with the FBI," I insisted, though I couldn't suppress a visual of myself as a muy macha , gun-wielding Special Agent. I sort of liked it. Plus, I imagined FBI agents had health insurance. Maybe even dental. "This is about murder, not art. At least, that's what I thought---until someone suggested you might be involved."
"I am not involved in murder, Annie."
"I never thought you were. How are you involved?"
"I have done occasional restoration work for the club. Also, I painted a charming reproduction for a Fleming-Union member, many years ago."
"How long ago?"
"Five, maybe seven years. I don't remember; time passes so quickly at my age that---"
"And this is the copy that showed up at auction recently? The one the Kiwi insurance guy is looking into?"
"Ah, you met him! Such a charming fellow. Smart, too. Interesting people, the Maori." He waggled his bushy eyebrows. "He's single, you know."
"Anton, just tell me: did you paint the forgery that came up at auction?"
He just stared at me, lips pressed together in a stubborn line.
"Might as well 'fess up. I'll know the moment I see the painting in person."
"There's nothing illegal about copying a painting." He muttered in Polish, took a sip of wine, and sighed. "It wasn't supposed to go into circulation. Believe me when I say this. My client was forced to sell the original but insisted he would keep my copy at home. He did not want to lose face in front of his friends by admitting he had to sell."
I'd heard that one before. "So your client was a 'he,' then. Was it Victor Yeltsin?"
"I can't say, Annie. You know that."
Anton and Georges were Old School forgers, which meant they lived by a strict code of personal and professional ethics that often baffled outsiders. The men were, after all, criminals. Near the top of the list, just below "What Happens in thy Studio Stays in thy Studio," was "Thou Shalt Not Squeal on thy Employer."
"But you're positive there was a genuine Gauguin?"
"Of course! She lived with me for more than a month while I worked. A rare beauty. I could have stared at her forever...." Anton's expression was wistful, as though recalling a bittersweet romance. Passion such as this puts the "love" in "art lover."
"Who did he sell the original to?"
"All I know is that it was someone discreet. I did think..."
"What?"
"I got the impression at the time that selling the painting was part of another deal, perhaps a trade rather than a sale, and that he needed the insurance money."
"And the secret message?"
"The client asked me to write it. To distinguish the copy from the original, I presume. I also acquired for him an EDXRF."
"An EDXRF?"
"Annie, I'm surprised at you." He gave me a disappointed look, as though the acronym were as common as toothpaste. "An energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. So he could see the message on the spot, not confuse the two paintings."
"Did you tell all this to Jarrah Preston?"
Anton looked shocked. "He's practically a police officer!"
"Then why did you refer him to me ?"
"Listen, Annie, I'm leaving town tomorrow. Wonderful news, my daughter is having a baby."
"Congratulations. But---"
"I am to be a grandpapa! Oh, to think that my dear sweet grandchild might one day turn out as well as you, my dear. That would be the greatest of blessings indeed. How I have envied Georges his relationship with you, his granddaughter."
Even though I knew full well that Anton was manipulating my emotions, and none too subtly at that, I got a little choked up. "You deserve all the best, Anton."
"I think I do."
"Now will you answer my question? Why did you refer Preston to me?"
He waved a hand airily. "I assumed you would recognize my work, keep my secret, and find the real Gauguin. I thought you might as well get paid for it. Your old Uncle Anton is always looking out for you, eh?"
"The only surprise is that I was surprised." I reached for more paella .
Anton looked at me sternly. "It is critical that you find the missing Gauguin, Annie. I cannot bear to think it might disappear forever. "
"Yeah, that's me all right," I said glumly; as good as it was, paella did not have the magical frustration-fighting abilities of chocolate. "Annie Kincaid the First, Finder of Lost Art."
Dear Georges: Is it true that some of your forgeries sell for millions of dollars?
Dear Reader: Yes. But if I tell you which ones they no longer will.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
After Anton left, I knelt on my living room floor beside my stack of old newspapers. Digging down a couple of weeks' worth, I found what I was looking for: the front page article on the Odibajian brothers.
According to the reporter, the two had built an empire together, riding to unthinkable wealth on the wave of real estate fever that clutched the San Francisco Bay Area over the last two decades. With the kind of money-making intuition that always eludes folks like me, they had diversified just in time to keep the bulk of their assets safe in the recent economic decline. They now had significant investments in the pharmaceutical industry, oil concerns, and several lucrative high-tech startups, besides owning a good section of San Francisco's downtown. They were important benefactors to the San Francisco Opera, the symphony, the Legion of Honor and de Young museums. They'd bought the naming rights for the baseball stadium next year.
But the brothers had developed certain "irreconcilable differences"---differences in management style, it said here---and were untangling their assets. I got the distinct impression that the elder, Balthazar Odibajian, ran the show. He was the one who gave the majority of the quotes, and in the color photo of the two brothers "in happier times" he was slightly ahead of Elijah, looking larger, more confident, unsmiling. Elijah's face was hard to make out, looking off in the distance.
Another, smaller black-and-white photo showed Balthazar Odibajian standing with a crowd of well-dressed men and women whom I assumed to be the city's upper-crust party-goers. Balthazar had his arms draped casually around two glossy, well-endowed women, one on either side. Despite the arm candy, he looked unrelentingly stern.
So Balthazar Odibajian and Victor Yeltsin were "brethren" at the Fleming-Union. Maybe Victor knew Elijah through his brother, and had sold Elijah the Gauguin five years ago, giving him the copy instead of the real one. Then Elijah, under financial pressures because of the rift with his brother, decided to sell. And only then did he realize the painting was a fake. So could the man in the tub be Victor Yeltsin, killed by Elijah in a fury? And what happened to the genuine painting?
I glanced at the clock: 11:30. Too late to call Jarrah to see whether he'd managed to track down Elijah. I'd check in with him in the morning.
I tore out the Brothers Grimm article and put it into the case folder Jarrah Preston had given me, then took the folder into bed, fully intending to read up on one Victor Yeltsin. I flipped through the papers for all of five minutes. Police reports will put a person to sleep faster than a pill.
\*
A friend of mine moved from New York City to the Bay Area last year and the first time he experienced what we locals call Casual Carpool, he called a New Yorker friend to exclaim that strangers were crawling into other strangers' cars, and it wasn't even something normal like a carjacking.
Casual Carpool is a unique Bay Area answer to inadequate public transportation. San Francisco-bound drivers want to avoid the Bay Bridge toll and the most congested traffic lanes by using the "diamond" carpool lanes, which require three passengers on the bridge---except for two-seaters like my truck. Passengers, meanwhile, wish to avoid the cost of gas and parking, or BART or the bus. Riders wait at designated Casual Carpool spots, and drivers pick them up to cross the bridge. Simple as that.
This morning there was a long line of cars outnumbering riders. The aroma of my Peet's French roast permeated my truck's cab as I waited, creeping along in line as cars picked up two passengers at a time.
I had already called ahead to Spenser Keating at Mayfield's auction house. I would go straight there to assess the ersatz Gauguin, even though I knew it must be Anton's forgery. I doubted it would give me any more information than Anton had himself, but I had to look at it in person, and while I was there I would see if I could learn anything more from Keating about Elijah Odibajian. I had even dressed as a respectable professional for the meeting: straight skirt, silk tank, soft cardigan sweater.
Anton said he was going to drop out of sight for a while. That was good; one fewer thing to worry about. On the other hand, one more thing to try to keep from Inspector Annette Crawford, who, while she wasn't out to get me, wasn't the sort to turn her back on an obvious act of larceny either. With regard to the SFPD, my basic game plan was to avoid contact for the next few days until I figured a few things out.
Too bad I wasn't on better terms with Annette---or with anyone in the police department. I would love to know how things were progressing with the murder investigation.
I pulled ahead one more spot, starting to chafe at the delay. Why are there always more cars than riders, or the other way around? The law of averages would suggest that it even out, at least some of the time, shouldn't it?
Actually I had no idea what the law of averages said. Math was never my strong suit.
I placed a call to Elena Briones. I hated to talk while driving, but there wasn't any driving going on at the moment.
"Elena? It's Annie. I was just wondering whether you had an update on Destiny's situation with the police."
"Actually, it looks as though she's going to be released today."
"Already? Good job."
"It's not anything I can take credit for. They made some assessments having to do with the body and the crime scene, and let her go."
"What kind of assessments?"
"All I know is, the sword seems to have gone in postmortem. The most she'll be charged with is 'unlawful handling of a deceased individual.' "
"Why would she stab a corpse?"
"She didn't stab anything," Elena, the lawyer, said in no uncertain terms. "She was trying to pull it out."
"Oh. Right. Thanks a lot for helping her out. I owe you."
"No problem. All my clients should be so easy. But if she can't pay the bill, I'll send it on to you."
She wasn't kidding. Unlike Pedro, Elena was very pragmatic when it came to her professional services.
I craned my neck to look down the street, hoping for more pedestrians to show up, briefcases in hand and ready to be productive members of society by shuffling money around from one account to the next. I've never figured out how the money ever does anything useful, but that probably explains why I never seem to have any at hand. As Michael would say, I don't grasp the fundamentals of capitalism.
Speaking of whom, I tried Michael's cell phone again. No answer. No surprise.
If he disappeared for another week, I was calling the FBI on him. For real this time.
I called Jarrah Preston to see if he had made any headway with finding Elijah Odibajian, but he didn't pick up either. I left a message and asked him to get back to me.
Finally, I got to the head of the line. My turn to pick up the next passenger. I fiddled with my new Bluetooth device, which always made me feel like a cyborg, not even looking up as a suit-clad executive climbed into the cab of my truck, snapped open the San Francisco Chronicle 's business section, and disappeared behind the newspaper. This was par for the course at Casual Carpool, where too much social interaction was generally frowned upon.
By the time we reached the toll plaza I noticed the man in the passenger seat smelled good. Really good. I'm not a cologne girl, but despite this--or perhaps because of it---I notice when men smell inordinately good. Must be a vegetarian.
There was a brief delay at the metering lights regulating the entrance to the bridge, so I tried calling Michael one more time. My passenger's phone also rang. I rolled my eyes at our brave new high-tech world, where we're more likely to chat with someone miles away than with the person sitting next to us. The businessman answered his phone just as Michael finally answered his.
"Hello?" the executive said as I heard Michael say, " Hello ?"
I looked to the right. The executive looked to the left.
I cursed.
"You're not exactly a morning person, are you?" Michael smiled.
"How did you manage...never mind. Listen, partner, we have to talk."
We made it through the carpool metering lights to the span, then screeched to a halt once again.
"So talk."
"Why are you dressed like that?"
"That's what we 'need' to talk about? My wardrobe? Whatever you say. This morning I'm wearing an amusing little ensemble, a summery wool neither too heavy nor too light, but appropriate for all venues, from bedroom to boardroom to ballroom---"
I snorted. "You look like you're attending a funeral."
"I'm heeding your words of wisdom and am taking seriously my responsibilities as a small-business owner. We entrepreneurs are the backbone of this country, the epitome of the American dream. It is by the sweat of our lowly brows that this great nation was built. Do you know, we self-employed small-business owners pay ten times as much in federal taxes than all the corporations in America combined?"
"No, we don't." We rolled ahead at five miles per hour, still only halfway across the first span. It was going to be one of those mornings that drove otherwise rational commuters to fantasize about rocket launchers and jetpacks.
"You got me. I made that up. You're looking pretty spiffy yourself today, partner."
"Michael, cut the bull. You owe me an explanation. Where were you last week?"
"On a business trip."
"What kind of business trip? You mean business as in your old business, as in stealing something?"
He frowned at me. "Annie, I'm hurt."
"Not half as hurt as when I finish with you---or more precisely, the feds finish with you---if you're back to your old ways."
He leaned back against the door.
"You want the truth?"
"It would be so refreshing."
"I had some family business to attend to."
"Family? What kind of family?"
"What do you mean, what kind of family? I didn't think there were that many options."
"Flesh-and-blood family?"
"Yes."
"The people you share your DNA with?"
"Is 'family' a difficult concept for you?"
"Huh."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's just---nothing. So, where does your family live?"
"All over."
"What did they need from you?"
"It's personal."
First he mentions a mother, and now a personal life. Next thing you know the man would turn out to be a real person instead of a demi-god, and things would really spin out of control. I had an intense craving for chocolate.
After a brief pick-up in speed, the traffic slowed to a standstill again. Out the window Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge shimmered in the morning light. My eyes fell upon the dozen bright red mechanical cranes that were supposed to be rebuilding the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, though they never seemed to be in operation. The Bay Bridge is actually two bridges: the western span connects San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, and the eastern span reaches from there to Oakland. San Francisco's half is attractive and in good condition. Oakland's half is ugly and seismically unsafe. A chunk of it fell during the last significant shaker.
Many Oaktown boosters find this symbolic, and more than a few whisper of conspiracies. Usually I'm happy to jump aboard the victimization bandwagon, but I find it hard to embrace conspiracy theories. In my experience, people are too self-centered to organize a decent block party, much less pull off a successful conspiracy.
"Maybe you should stop disappearing," I said, sipping my coffee. "It makes me question your reliability."
He laughed and reached over with his left hand to smooth my hair, letting his hand rest on the back of my neck. "I am many things, Annie. Reliable is not one of them."
"I know, I know. If I want reliability I should marry Frank."
"I sure as hell wouldn't go that far. In fact, about your golden boy Frank---"
"I already know your feelings toward the man, Michael. My point is, this is your chance. Your shelf life as a thief is limited, you know. Surely you must be on your third strike by now. This is California. Despite our loosey-goosey reputation, we put people away for life for stealing candy bars on their third strike in California."
Traffic picked up and we zoomed through the tunnel at Yerba Buena Island.
"Shocking," Michael said. "Then again, sometimes you feel like a nut...."
"I'm serious."
"Careful, Annie. It almost sounds like you care."
"I..."
"Take the Embarcadero exit," said Michael as we reached the foot of the bridge and entered San Francisco.
"Here? Why?"
"I have a lead on Hermes . We have to talk with some folks."
"I don't feel like it. I don't like those clubby types, and they don't like me. I want to do something fun, like work on the sketches for my clients' living room. Besides, I have to go by Mayfield's to check on the Kiwi's painting."
"This will be quick. And it's practically on the way. And need I remind you, you're the one who accepted this job."
I pointed the truck toward one of the last affordable neighborhoods in San Francisco: Bayview--Hunter's Point. Crime rates are high, drug use rampant. On the up side, there is plenty of parking. I followed Michael's directions and pulled up in front of a run-down, two-story apartment building painted a bilious Pepto Bismol--pink that reminded me of the repurposed Motel 6 where I had lived in my senior year at college. The downstairs apartments opened onto the parking lot while the upstairs ones opened onto a covered walkway. In front of the former motel office was a small, kidney-shaped pool that had been emptied of water and filled with trash and broken furniture. A dusty neon sign with a palm tree declared the place to be "Aloha Court," though based on the number of crack vials littering the premises, "Sayonara City" seemed more apt.
"Who---or what---are we looking for?" I asked.
"I ran the license plate number the homeless guy gave us," Michael said, handing me a slip of paper with a name and address.
"The truck's owner is 'Perry Outlaw'?" I said, reading. "You have got to be kidding. A man named 'Outlaw' becomes a criminal? If he had any sense of irony at all he'd have become a judge."
Michael chuckled as we climbed out of the truck.
"You guys cops, or Social?" a scrawny young woman called out to us, and I surmised our business-themed attire screamed "outsider." She was dressed in jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt, her shaggy hair an unnatural arterial-blood red with dark roots.
"Something we can help you with?" Michael asked.
"Bitch stole my money!" she fumed, flinging her arm toward the squat building. "Apartment Two."
"What happened?"
"I gave her twenty bucks and she gave me a hunk of plaster!" On her outstretched palm sat a small white chunk of plaster. We looked at it, at her, and then at each other.
"What do you want us to do about it?" I asked.
"Get my money back!"
"You think we're cops, and you want us to get your drug money back?" I said, not sure I'd followed the conversation.
"Hey, she stole my twenty bucks! This is America! Do something!"
"I'm afraid we're on another case, ma'am," Michael said. "But if you'd like, I'll be happy to call in some backup and you can explain to the nice officers that you want your drug dealer arrested for selling fake crack cocaine."
The woman stared at us, mouth open, before turning away with a look of pure disgust.
"I think we've shattered her faith in the system," I said softly as we walked away.
"That's what she gets for seeking justice from a forger and a thief," Michael replied.
" Former forger."
" Former thief."
"Fine."
"Good."
We shared a smile.
"So how do we handle this?" I asked.
"Let me lead. I'll be the bad cop. Jump in when you think you should."
"Okay, but be careful---impersonating a police officer actually is a crime."
We reached Apartment Six, on the ground floor, and Michael knocked briskly. A skinny, pale young man in his early twenties answered, dressed in nothing more than a pair of tighty-whities that were more gray than white. After my initial impression I tried very hard not to look.
"Perry Outlaw?"
"Who wants to know?"
"I'm Johnson. This is Kincaid. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"You from Social?"
Michael inclined his head.
Outlaw stepped back and we walked into an apartment that looked like a cheap motel room: to the left was an unmade double bed flanked by a pair of generic faux-wood nightstands, and to the right a dresser was pushed up against the wall. Atop the dresser a television set was chained to a bolt in the wall. The floor was carpeted in the common brown-and-tan mottled shag favored by tightwad landlords wanting to disguise suspicious stains. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke, fried chicken, and spoiled milk.
A thin blond woman, resembling a strung-out Kate Moss with bad skin, perched on the room's only chair, a towheaded toddler in her lap. The child pointed a bright green laser-type gun at us and pretended to pull the trigger.
"We're doin' okay," Perry said. "Erin's just fine, aren't you, sweetie?"
I smiled at the child, who turned back to the cartoons that nipped and squawked on the TV.
"That's not a real gun or nothin'," Outlaw said ingratiatingly. "Her uncle gave it to her on account of she wouldn't stop crying. But it don't shoot nothin'. Listen, we're clean," he insisted, dropping his voice but speaking in a determined tone. "Ever since Melissa got outta jail the last time, we been on the straight and narrow, swear-to-God. I know this place don' look like much but---"
"Where were you last Monday night?"
"Monday?"
Michael nodded.
"I...uh...let's see. I guess I was here. Yep, I was here. I come home straight after work."
"When's the last time you were on Nob Hill?" Michael asked.
"Downtown?"
Michael nodded.
"Nah, man, not for years." He shook his head.
"Your truck was seen there."
"Ah, maaaaan ." Outlaw clutched at the top of his head with both hands and blew out a breath in a dramatic move. "I told those dudes to stay clean. What'd they do?"
"There was a sculpture stolen."
"Naaaah, dude , they just borrowed my truck."
"Who?"
"Dude, I don't even know, man," Perry moaned.
"Listen, bud," I said. "Your scumbag friends stole an extremely valuable sculpture that belongs to someone with a whole lot of juice and not much patience, understand? If we don't get it back for him the legal way, he'll hire someone who will get it back the hard way. A real sick S.O.B., let me tell you. "
Michael looked amused, and I remembered I was supposed to be the good cop.
Outlaw looked genuinely stricken. "I'm telling you, they just borrowed my truck! I had nothin' to do with it, I swear!"
"Names and addresses. Now."
He continued to protest as he wrote down the information. "I got me a job, a legitimate job. Don't pay much, but I'm legit. Here."
He handed Michael a piece of paper with two names, Alan Dizikes and Skip Goldberg, and an address in Crockett, a small city on a northern finger of the bay about half an hour's drive.
"Hey, I can't get in trouble for lendin' them the truck, right?" Outlaw pleaded. "I didn't know what they was up to and I wasn't there, man. Hey, maybe I got somethin' you could use for another case. Go ahead, ask me anythin'."
"We're just interested in the sculpture, Mr. Outlaw," Michael said. "Any idea what they'd do with a sculpture like that?"
Outlaw rubbed his jaw, the stubble making a skritch ing sound. "Sell it. Ain't like none of them wants it for his garden."
"Sell it where?"
"Dude, anywhere they can."
"Anything else?" I asked. "Now's your chance to do the right thing. Because if I find out you held out on us, I'm gonna take that as a personal insult. Johnson, tell Mr. Outlaw here what happened to the last lying low-life who insulted me."
"Well, now, that's hard to say, seeing how the body was never found."
Outlaw's jaw dropped, but no sound came out.
Michael handed him a business card. "You think of anything else, just give me a call."
"Sure. Sure I will. You can count on me."
Michael and I walked in silence to the truck. The sights and sounds of the Outlaw apartment had given me a dull headache and a nauseated feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt the urge to go paint. Yes, I whined about the pitiful state of my bank account, but as an artist I could consider myself bohemian rather than just plain poor. Aloha Court was depressing .
"I don't think I'm cut out for this investigating gig," I said, climbing into the driver's seat and leaning across to unlock the door for Michael. "First snooty club types, now this. How can people live like that? And with a kid? Maybe my grandfather's right. Maybe I should go back to forgery."
"They're not as bad as some. At least they're trying, and that counts for a lot. So: off to Crockett? We could swing by Mayfield's first."
"I don't know...maybe we should split up on this one." I pulled onto busy Third Street. "We could get more done."
"It's more fun together," Michael said. "Besides, you just want to go hide in your studio and paint. Admit it."
"That is still my main job, you know."
"You've seen how lucrative some of these gigs are, Annie. We wrap this one up, plus that Gauguin gig, and you'll be able to put money down on that new truck you keep talking about."
My cell phone signaled an incoming call with an electronic version of Flight of the Bumblebee , which Mary put on it last month after I demanded she remove the annoying rap tune she had previously uploaded. Rooting around for my Bluetooth was enough to make me frantic; the frenetic music was not helping.
"Hello?" I answered, barely evading the switch to voicemail.
"Annie? It's Jarrah Preston."
"Hi, Jarrah. Thanks for calling back. I wanted to ask you---"
"Listen, Annie. I don't know if you've heard but your uncle Anton," Preston interrupted. "Anton Woznikowicz---"
"Has he been involved in something? Is he in trouble?" Lord , I had known something was going on. Damn . I just hoped the bail wasn't set too high, because I really needed to buy that new truck.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Annie. I stopped by his place this morning and found him on the floor. He's been poisoned."
The history of paint is the history of poison, judiciously applied.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"He hasn't been able to tell us what happened." Jarrah greeted me when I burst into the ICU waiting room at San Francisco General. Michael had gone to park the truck after I jumped out in front of the emergency room. "When I found him he was conscious and mumbling, but just barely. The ER doctors said we have to wait and see if he regains consciousness."
I squeezed my eyes shut. I should have done more. I should have forced Anton, at the point of a palette knife if necessary, to tell me what was really going on. And then I should have hand-delivered the nefarious fellow to his daughter's doorstep.
"What's wrong with him?"
"Here's the doctor now."
The physician was dark-featured and petite. Notwithstanding the stethoscope hanging around her neck, the clipboard under her arm, and the spotless white lab coat, she looked all of fifteen years old.
"I'm Anton's niece," I said. "I'm his only local family. What's the prognosis?"
"We believe your uncle's been poisoned," she said with a slight Pakistani lilt. "It looks like arsenic."
"Arsenic poisoning?"
"We've begun a process known as chelation, which is a way to try to rid the system of the poison."
"How does that work?"
"We're administering a drug called dimercaprol every four hours. It's more toxic than succimer, but we don't have much choice given his acute condition. We'll do that for the first two days, followed by two injections on the third day then one a day for the next five days."
"And what does 'chelating' do, exactly?"
"The chelating agents sequester the arsenic away from blood proteins, which is the most immediately damaging aspect of this kind of poisoning."
"Are there side effects?"
"Sure. The most important side effect is hypertension, and possible kidney damage later. But at this point we don't have much choice. I hate to be blunt, but your uncle's condition is considered grave at this time. Given his age...well, it's not an ideal situation. It's lucky his friend found him in time. Be assured we are doing everything we can. "
I sensed a presence behind me, and turned to see a large, square-headed man who looked like a caricature of a Polish Mafioso. In fact, he was a Polish Mafioso. Hipolit---Hippo to his friends; I could only guess what his enemies called him---was an Old School gangster, which meant he rained mayhem down upon the heads of his enemies but drew the line at their families, civilians, and cops. I wasn't sure how he and Anton knew each other---whether the connection was social, business, or cultural---but they were long-term associates. Most of the time Hippo's very existence made me nervous, but today I was glad to see him.
"I have my best man on it, Annie," he said, hugging me. He smelled of tobacco and Juicy Fruit gum. "You need anything, Anton needs anything, you let me know. Here's my private line." He handed me a business card engraved with his name and phone number.
"Do you know how to get in touch with Anton's daughter?" I asked.
"I've already called her," Hippo said. "But she won't be able to make the trip in her condition. She's in Milan, due to have her baby any day now."
Michael hurried in from the parking garage and put an arm around my waist. I leaned into him, grateful for his presence, and told him what I knew. He and Hippo acknowledged each other with a barely perceptible nod.
"Can I see him?" I asked no one in particular.
"He's this way," Hippo replied.
A short way down the hall I spied Anton through a window. I moved to stand next to my unconscious faux-uncle, who looked small and fragile in the hospital bed. A plastic tube was taped to his mouth, he was hooked up to an IV stand, and wires and electrodes connected him to a bank of monitors that made rhythmic beeping sounds. For the first time he looked every inch of his seventy-something years.
Michael took up a position on the other side of the bed and gazed at Anton, shock and sorrow in his eyes. In my own grief I'd forgotten that Anton was a big part of Michael's world, too.
I felt rage boiling up, threatening to spill over. There was no point in hanging around the ICU. There was a would-be murderer to find. I turned to Michael, who nodded in unspoken agreement.
We walked out of the hospital into the strong late-morning sunshine. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the curb, struggling to breathe as my head swam. Michael sat beside me and stroked my hair.
"I was with him last night," I said.
"It was an accident, Annie. A mistake. It happens."
"Accidental arsenic poisoning? Tell me how that's possible. Anton knows paint chemistry better than anyone---better even than my grandfather, and he knows more than most chemists. Anton taught me himself, when I was a teenager."
"He was also an absentminded fellow, Annie, you know that. As likely to put a tin of linseed oil on the stove to boil as the teakettle. And he's always covered in paint."
"Arsenic doesn't work that way. It's not easily absorbed through the skin---that kind of poisoning would happen gradually, after years of exposure. The only way arsenic kills quickly is if it's ingested. We had dinner together last night, and I feel fine."
"Perhaps he ate something else later."
I stood up abruptly.
"Where are you going?"
"To his studio."
"Annie, wait..."
I was already marching to the parking structure.
"At least let me drive," Michael said, trotting up behind me.
"Make it fast." I tossed him the keys.
We turned onto Anton's street in the Noe Valley neighborhood, and saw four black-and-white police cruisers, a hazardous materials truck, and an unmarked police car parked in the already cramped space in front of his house. A uniformed cop halted us at the gate to Anton's yard, and at my insistence, called over the investigating officer.
Annette Crawford.
"Annie, I'm so sorry---"
"Why would Homicide be here if this was an accident?" I challenged without preliminary.
Annette shot a concerned look at Michael. It made me angrier.
"Homicide gets called in on special cases to assess the crime scene," she said, her deep voice gentle. "It's standard procedure."
"I want to see his studio."
"You can't. The place was full of arsine gas. Hazmat is in there now, cleaning up so we can assess the scene."
"Arsine gas ?" I asked.
Someone dressed in a moon-suit shouted to Annette, and she nodded. "Listen, this isn't even my catch. I was checking out a possible link with the Fleming-Union. There have been some...developments that I need to speak with you---the two of you---about. I'll call with an update and we can arrange a time to meet, all right?"
"But---"
"Later, Annie. I promise."
I became aware of Michael's firm grip on my upper arm, and allowed myself to be turned toward the street. Halfway down the block, beyond the clump of emergency vehicles, I spied Anton's cargo van parked at the curb. Its tan paint was dented and scratched, its windowless sides advertised SULLY'S CARPET CLEANERS. It was the sort of vehicle that appeared unlikely to contain a functioning radio much less valuable artwork. Glancing around to be sure the cop at Anton's gate wasn't watching, I headed straight for it.
" Now where are you going?" Michael said, chasing after me.
"Open it," I demanded as we reached the van.
"Why?"
"It's Anton's. I want to check it out."
"Forgive me for stating the obvious, but if this wasn't an accident we should tell the cops about the van. It may contain evidence."
"You heard Annette, Michael. They think it's an accident. No one's interested in what really happened. They're only too happy to blame the crazy old artist. Besides, even if the cops do rule it an assault, the closure rate on homicide in San Francisco is, what---thirty percent? Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough."
"It's not a homicide, Annie. Anton's still alive, remember?"
"For now. But it was meant to be a homicide. And if anyone's going to get to the bottom of this, it'll have to be us." I was in a fever of needing to do something, anything. If I didn't keep going I would have to think about the fact that Anton--- Uncle Anton---the talented, gossipy old artist, might never again bug me about my love life in his funny Polish accent. "Now, will you open the damned van or do I get a new business partner?"
Michael hesitated for a moment longer before trotting back down the street to my truck. He scrounged in back of the seat for a minute, returning to the van with a couple long strips of thin metal.
"Act as lookout," he said. I kept an eye on the bored cop guarding Anton's gate as he chatted on his cell phone, oblivious to the breaking-and-entering a hundred yards away. Michael slid a metal strip between the driver's door and the weather stripping and yanked up, popping the lock mechanism. It had taken at least three seconds.
"After you." Michael gestured.
"On second thought, let's drive around the corner so we can search it in peace."
"No keys, love."
"So hotwire it."
"You want me to hotwire it?"
"You expect me to believe you don't know how to hotwire a car?"
"I know how to hotwire a damned car," Michael bit off, casting a glance back toward the marked police presence half a block down. He climbed into the driver's seat and started kicking at a panel under the dashboard. Leaning down, he fiddled with wires, working by touch while keeping his eyes fixed on me. "In case you're wondering, I'm imagining what my poor parole officer will say when I'm busted for Grand Theft Auto."
"I know exactly what he'll say," I replied. " 'Practice your breathing.' "
Breathing was a big part of Doug-the-parole-officer's philosophy of How to Fix the World and Find One's Place in It. He had explained it all to me over a vegan meal of flaxseed, tofu, and shredded carrots in a raspberry-melon vinaigrette at the Gratitude Café in Berkeley. The meal was memorable mostly because I grew weary of chewing long before my hunger was sated, which I imagine would be an excellent dieting technique. According to Doug, the secret to inner peace was to breathe with intent, inhaling anger and exhaling compassion. Or maybe it was the other way around. I got it mixed up.
At the moment I was both inhaling and exhaling anger and misery, with nary a hint of compassion.
The old van coughed to life, and I ran around to the passenger's side. Michael executed a twelve-point U-turn on the narrow, choked lane, took a right on Twenty-third, a quiet residential street, and maneuvered into a tight spot in front of a fire hydrant. I climbed in back and started poking around the cargo area in the dim light from the front and rear windows.
"Find anything?" Michael asked.
"Not yet. So far it's pretty much like his studio. Just, you know, without the easels."
One thing seemed out of place: I picked up a pack of sparklers stapled to a fireworks catalog.
"Does this seem strange to you?" I asked, handing him the fireworks.
"Why? Do you think I'm not a patriot?"
"I never actually thought about it."
"Hey, I'm as American as...the next American. I'm a big fan of John Philip Sousa."
"Why would Anton want fireworks? Fireworks are illegal around here, aren't they? Too great a fire risk."
"I'm fairly certain Anton would not be deterred by something as minor as fireworks being illegal," said Michael. "Wait a second. There's something written on the catalog."
I looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, Anton had scribbled a phone number and "Chan---Cameron House, two o'clock."
"What's Cameron House?" I asked.
"Beats me. Let's keep looking."
I leaned against the side of the van and picked up a brown grocery bag stuffed with papers, fearing it was only trash Anton had intended to toss in a recycling bin. Old ATM receipts, junk mail, a Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes entry, takeout menus for pizza restaurants---and a newsletter from Cameron House.
I handed it to Michael. "Look at this."
The front page of the newsletter featured a black-and-white photograph of Anton surrounded by a dozen kids, everyone grinning happily. The accompanying article was a laudatory piece describing how Anton Woznikowicz, "an internationally famous artist and CH benefactor" had restored a mural in the Cameron House entryway.
A siren blared, and we jumped. "I'll check it out," Michael said.
While he scoped out the scene, I pawed through the rest of the junk. Plastic milk crates held cans of turpentine and kerosene; sealed bottles of different kinds of oils; boxes of powdered pigments; brushes of various sizes and shapes; more boxes of artists' crayons and charcoal, pencils and chalk; a cloth bag of clean rags---the usual effluvia every working artist carts around. Nothing distinctive or suspicious about any of it.
I crawled to the front and slipped into the driver's seat. If I were an elderly Polish art forger who drove a piece-of-crap van any half-wit could break into, where would I put something valuable? In the molded plastic well between the front seats were some crumpled papers, including a coupon for five dollars off an oil change, two Golden Gate Bridge toll receipts dated several months ago, and a piece of heavy sketch paper on which was written "Victor" and a hand-drawn map to an address in Sausalito. Another piece of paper had a sketch of a brick-lined tunnel labeled "tunnel vision." On yet another scrap he had written "Fleming-Union" and a time, and jotted down a reference to Balthazar O.
A fresh wave of tears stung my eyes. Anton had never mastered the finer points of the criminal life, such as not writing down incriminating information. Dear, silly old man. If he weren't already in Intensive Care I would be tempted to send him there myself for doing whatever he had done this time.
"Anything?" Michael asked through the window.
"Some notes," I said.
"Isn't it possible this was an accident, Annie? I thought lots of artists suffered from toxin poisoning. Didn't van Gogh manage to poison himself with paint?"
I sat back, and tried to dredge up one of Anton's many lectures about the toxic potential of paint. I could practically hear the talented forger pontificating about one of his favorite topics: "The history of paint is the history of poison, Annie. Lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium, manganese...and Emerald Green, such a lovely hue, is only achieved because of the arsenic in the pigment. The genuine shade was outlawed years ago, which is why a clever painter must mix it himself, of course! No modern green can compare to True Emerald. You know, Annie, art is but a metaphor for life: a little poison, judiciously applied, makes all the difference."
Interestingly, Emerald Green was one of Gauguin's favorite paint colors.
"Daily exposure can mess with your system, true, but that's over the long run," I said. "When I was a kid in Paris Anton insisted I wear latex gloves anytime we worked with dangerous pigments."
"Somehow I doubt Anton took his own advice. He was always covered in paint."
I nodded. Artists hate protective gear. Feeling the paint is part of the joy.
"The thing is," I said, "Anton was poisoned by arsenic gas. Arsenic green could be the culprit, but not only is it banned in the U.S., as far as I know it comes in the form of a powdered pigment, a solid. Why would he turn it into gas? It doesn't make sense." I wished I had paid more attention to Anton's lectures. I needed to talk to someone who understood the chemistry of paint.
What had Anton said last night? Several years ago, he forged a copy of the original Gauguin painting for an F-U member. The forgery was supposed to have been kept private but for some reason was brought to Mayfair's Auction House. I was working from the assumption that Anton painted the forgery for Victor Yeltsin, the fellow who reported the Gauguin stolen and reaped a huge insurance windfall, which was why Jarrah Preston was investigating. Had someone tried to kill Anton to prevent him from admitting to the forgery?
That didn't make much sense. First, copying an artwork is not a crime in itself. Anyone who tries to pass that artwork off as genuine, however, is guilty of fraud. Forgers aren't normally a threat to their co-conspirators because not only are they also implicated in the crime but unless the forgery can be proved---which, when it comes to fine art and other original masterpieces, is much harder to do than most people realized---the law can't touch them.
Unless...a forger decided to indulge in a spot of blackmail. But successful blackmail required a degree of cunning and ruthlessness that Anton simply did not have. Anton was a criminal, to be sure, but he did not have a violent bone in his body. On the other hand, he was always talking about one last big score. Or could he have been working on a second Gauguin forgery? It wouldn't be the first time there were multiple Anton forgeries floating around. Could that be why he had arsenic-laden pigment in his studio? But why would he have needed another fake?
As much as I hated to admit it, this really was a job for the police. Michael was right; I needed to tell Annette Crawford the little I knew about Anton's possible connections with the F-U, and a copied Gauguin that had recently turned up at auction.
We returned to Anton's where, at my insistence, Annette broke away from her duties for a few minutes and listened to my vague suspicions and half-baked theories. The one time I decide to do the sane, legal thing and spill my guts to the officials, and all Annette had to say was: "I'll nose around, but chances are that it was just an accident. You're so close to it it's hard for you to see."
She also mentioned, again, that she needed to call Michael and me down to the station in the near future to discuss further "developments" in the Fleming-Union case. Oh goodie.
After that less-than-satisfying interaction with the police, Michael drove us back to the DeBenton studio building. Suddenly the X-man had become Mr. Law-and-Order, an obedient citizen arguing for allowing the wheels of justice to turn, telling me to let the SFPD handle it.
"I just gave the police all the information, didn't I?" I asked. A fat lot of good that would do Anton, I thought.
"Are you saying you'll let it drop?" Michael pushed me. "And the Preston case is on the back burner until we figure out how Anton's connected to that."
"I thought you knew that Anton was involved..."
"In what?"
"You let it slip that Anton was involved with the Fleming-Union. Remember?"
"That was something entirely different," Michael said.
"Like what?"
"A while back, Anton was doing some restoration work on an old mural in their wine cellar, and he happened upon something."
"What?"
"I don't know the particulars. You know how closed-mouth Anton could be. He thought he had discovered something relevant to the past.... He was asking the F-U for money for some community group."
"Do you know what group?"
He shook his head.
"Anyway," I said, "I just want to look up some of these names I found in Anton's van. Maybe one of them will shed some light on all of this."
"Look up some names, like 'Victor in Sausalito'? Didn't I hear you tell Annette that the man who filed for the insurance money was named Victor? And where did he live again?" He drove into the DeBenton building parking lot and pulled in next to Frank's shiny Jaguar. We were still arguing as we climbed out. "I'm serious, Annie. Leave this to the authorities this time. Just drop it."
"You are such a hypocrite," I said.
"Pardon me if I'm not looking forward to a repeat of last time."
Frank strolled out of his office, looking amused, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his gray wool trousers. "Everything okay out here?"
Michael glared at him, then at me, before stomping up the stairs.
"Lover's quarrel?" Frank asked with a ghost of a smile.
I burst into tears.
Dear Monsieur: Our school board cut the arts program in the elementary schools while increasing the budget for the sports programs. How can I make them change their minds?
Dear Madame: I regret to say that anyone who places a higher value on an inflated pig's bladder than on the spark of divinity within each of us, which is the very essence of art and beauty, is beyond redemption. It was for such as they that Dr. Joseph Guillotin invented Madame la Guillotine.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Frank looked so appalled I almost started to laugh. But I was still sniffling when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, gently led me through the door of his office, and sat me down in the leather chair he kept for visitors. He hitched a hip up onto the side of his desk, handed me a tissue, and looked down at me with a slight frown of concentration, as though trying to decide what to say.
"Annie, I'm not trying to tell you what to do"---that was news to me---"but I'm speaking as your friend. He's not good for you. It's as simple as that."
I sniffed loudly and looked up at him. "What do you mean?"
"Look at your life, at everything you've accomplished. He's part of your past, Annie, not your future. It's time you walked away. Just turn your back on him and everything he represents, and walk away."
"I can't do that. Not now, when he needs me most."
"You have to. You owe it to yourself."
"I can't just abandon him."
"He's gotten along without you all these years, hasn't he?"
"I don't care what legal troubles he's in. I still love him."
Frank let out an audible sigh. "All right then. I guess I'm the one who needs to walk away. Once and for all."
"Wait..." I saw muscles working as Frank clenched his jaw. He was furious. "Who are you talking about?"
"Michael."
"Michael?"
Frank spoke slowly, as if I'd lost my mind. "He's wrong for you. He can't give you---"
"You think I'm crying over Michael ?" I croaked.
"I---"
"It's my Uncle Anton. He was found..." My voice wavered. "Hurt. Poisoned. He's been hospitalized."
"Anton Woznikowicz? I'm so sorry, Annie, I didn't realize---"
I stood and rested my head on his chest. He smelled of soap and a subtle male musk: pure Frank. Strong arms wrapped around me, one hand stroking my back slowly, and I let myself sink into him. It felt good. Really good. Safe. What would it be like to live in Frank's world, I wondered, a world where people you cared about never died under mysterious arsine-gas circumstances?
"I have to find out what happened," I said, sniffling. "Someone tried to kill him, Frank. I'm sure of it."
"This is a job for the police, Annie." Frank's voice was quiet and oh-so-reasonable.
"I realize that. I gave all the information I have to Inspector Crawford, remember her?"
"Then..."
"She says she'll look into it, but she still thinks it was an accident. But I think this might have something to do with the case I mentioned---"
"The case with Odibajian?"
I nodded.
"You have got to be kidding." His voice started to rise. "What did I tell you about him, not twenty-four hours ago? Why can't you leave things well enough alone?"
So much for soothing my worried brow. I pulled away from him. The good news was that I no longer felt like crying. The bad news was, it didn't look as though I would have much help in my quest.
"I'm an investigator now, remember?"
"You're not an investigator. Investigators need to be licensed, not to mention trained."
"That's only if they carry guns---"
"It is not only if they carry guns. You and your buddy-the-thief are supposed to be operating a simple Internet sting operation through an anonymous website, and the whole thing is meant to be overseen by the FBI to avoid precisely this sort of insane behavior. What is wrong with the two of you?"
"You weren't so picky when you hired me to find your stupid statue."
"That was a simple inquiry. I expected you to talk with some of your underground friends, not to go after shady billionaires with personal armies at their disposal."
"For your information, Michael's on your side about this one," I said over my shoulder as I headed for the door. "And as far as I'm concerned, you can both go to hell."
Fuming, I hopped in my truck and took off. I exhaled anger until I felt lightheaded and was forced to inhale a little compassion lest I keel over while driving.
Get a grip, Annie. Focus .
First stop: Mayfield's Auction House.
One of the reasons I had been a stand-out art forger while still in my early teens is because of my rare, some might say bizarre, ability to tell a faked work of art from the Real McCoy. I'm sure there must be some kind of intellectual process at work, but all I know is that when I stare at a piece of art an impression pops into my mind without conscious thought or effort. It isn't supposed to work that way; the determination of originality usually involves scientific tests for correct dating of materials, debates over proper brushwork and artistic technique, tedious research into the work's provenance, or paper trail, and a healthy portion of educated guesswork. I have no quarrel with scientific methods and esoteric debates, or even with educated guesses. But I don't guess. I know. Over the years a variety of skeptical artists, dealers, and experts have tried to prove me wrong. They failed.
Which is why I knew the instant I laid eyes on it that the Gauguin painting Elijah Odibajian had brought to Mayfield's Auction House was a fake, and that Anton was the forger. I didn't recognize every art forger's signature, but I had trained with the funny old Pole and knew what to look for: tell-tale brushstrokes, methods of shadowing, and an indefinable artistic "signature" that I would recognize anywhere.
Did you leave me any secrets, Anton? Holding the painting in my white-gloved hands made me feel close to him. If only a picture really were worth a thousand words, I thought, I would have a few choice questions to ask it.
The folks at Mayfield's weren't able to tell me any more than I already knew: Elijah Odibajian enlisted the auction house to sell the painting. The provenance papers appeared to be in order, but when they checked the Art Loss Register they found the painting listed as stolen. As required by law, Mayfield's notified Augusta Confederated, which now owned the painting since they had reimbursed the original owner for his loss. Elijah had dropped out of sight, and the auction house was now trying to keep the incident under wraps. Great forgeries have an undeniable cachet among the general public but don't do much for an auction house's reputation.
I left Mayfield's, wondering what my next step should be. I needed to tell Grandfather the news about Anton but he rarely answered his cell phone---he was convinced Interpol had tapped it---and, since he was somewhere in North Africa at the moment, e-mail was my only option. My computer was back at the office but so was Michael, and I was in no mood to deal with him. I drove to an Internet café in North Beach, ordered a double cappuccino and a chocolate croissant, and settled in at a table looking out onto Columbus Avenue.
I logged on to the free e-mail account I used on those occasions when I wanted to reach out and touch someone but didn't want that touch to be traced back to me. I got as far as Très cher Grand-père and stalled. How did I soften the blow of his learning an old friend had been assaulted and left for dead? I felt tears well up, gritted my teeth, and kept typing. I had to tell Georges before he heard it from someone else. The art underworld is one big gossip mill, surprisingly small and intimate, where everybody who matters knows everybody else who matters.
Still, even the forgery world changes over time. In the last decade or so, since international drug dealers and gun runners had gotten into the game, art crime had become more dangerous. The older generation of forgers and thieves despised the brutality of the new players, and liked to gather in out-of-the-way places and wax nostalgic about the good old days, when forger, thief, and buyer all knew each other and hardly anyone ever got killed.
...let you know the moment I learn anything new. Please, please be careful! You are not impervious to harm, you know. Je t'aime et je t'embrasse, A.
I hit SEND. My filial duty was done, and I felt like crap. Might as well ruin the day completely, I thought, and Googled "arsenic poisoning."
Arsenic, it turns out, is a naturally occurring mineral that converts to a gas when exposed to hydrogen. Arsine gas is colorless, though it sometimes smells like garlic or fish, and is often hard to detect because it is not immediately irritating. But it is intensely toxic. The gas is heavier than air, which means it sinks, and those lowest to the ground---children, pets, or anyone on a low bed or chair---are at greatest risk. The most common source of arsine gas is metal manufacturing, but art restorers can be exposed if they unknowingly apply solvents containing hydroxide to paints containing arsenic, such as True Emerald or Paris Green pigment. Sometimes simple mildew can be the culprit, acting upon the arsenic in paint pigments to release arsine gas.
Once released, the gas is inhaled and enters the bloodstream through the lungs. In acute cases arsine poisoning leads immediately to nausea, difficulty breathing, and abdominal cramps followed within hours by fatigue, loss of consciousness, liver damage, red blood cell damage, renal failure...and death.
I stopped reading.
The high-pitched wail of steam foaming milk for cappuccinos brought me back to reality. I hadn't touched the croissant; chocolate relieves frustration but is powerless against grief. Even the coffee tasted sour. The only thing that would help right now was to move forward. I took a deep breath, pulled my notebook from my backpack, and started another list.
1. Get into F-U and talk to Balthazar Odibajian
2. Find "Chan" at Cameron House. Ask about fireworks?
3. Talk to Victor Yeltsin re: stolen Gauguin and Jarrah Preston
4. Forge my own damn Gauguin, sell it to the highest bidder, and sail into the sunset with Michael and/or Frank bound and stuffed into the cargo hold for my amusement
"Have you ever heard of Cameron House?" I asked the young man in a striped polyester shirt from the 1970s who was busing the table next to mine.
"Sure. It's that big brick place in Chinatown," he said. "I forget which street. It's Presbyterian, I think."
"It's a church?"
"More like a community center or a mission or something. But there's some sort of religious connection."
"Thanks."
He nodded at my untouched plate. "If you don't like the croissant I can get you something else. Skinny thing like you needs to eat."
"Just out of curiosity, will you marry me?"
He grinned. "Sorry. I bat for the other team."
"Just my luck." I returned his smile.
I picked at my croissant while I called Pedro. "Do you have a home address for Elijah Odibajian?"
"Top o' the mornin' to you, lassie."
"You're not Irish and it's not morning."
"Whatever." I heard rapid-fire clicking sounds. If computer keyboards were souped-up cars, Pedro would be a NASCAR champ. "His official address was up on Pacific Heights, but it looks like he was most recently residing at the Fleming Mansion on Nob Hill."
"That can't be right. The F-U's a club, not an apartment building."
"It's not unusual for men's clubs. They rent rooms to members and special guests."
"According to the newspaper, Balthazar and Elijah are at each others' throats. Why would Elijah rent a room at his brother's social club?"
"The ways of the wealthy are mysterious, Grasshopper. What can I say? Looks like Elijah put his Pacific Heights condo up for sale recently, and he listed the F-U on the change-of-address form he filed with the post office. You're not planning to drop in on him, are you?"
"Nope." I was planning to drop in on Balthazar.
"Want the rest of the info you asked about earlier?"
"I'll call you back," I said.
The clock behind the counter said 1 P.M. Long past my lunch hour, but just right for the beautiful people. Would the F-U's kitchen have opened so soon after yesterday's tragic discovery? Was the bedroom still considered a crime scene? Annette Crawford said she would let me know when I could return to work but she hadn't mentioned anything when I saw her at Anton's....
One way to find out.
The Fleming-Union's parking lot was quiet. The police cruisers were gone, replaced by newly washed luxury cars. Feigning nonchalance, I marched up to the rear servants' entrance, said hi to the blond parking lot attendant, and tried to sign in, as I had for the past several days as I worked on the attic wallpaper project. Just another day in the life of a faux finisher, no matter than I was wearing a skirt and a silk top.
Blondie snatched the clipboard from me. "You can't go in."
"Sure I can. Remember me? Annie Kincaid? I'm working upstairs, in the attic."
"Not now, you're not. Not after..." Blondie's voice dropped and he leaned in toward me, as though we were sharing a secret. "Not after yesterday."
"Is it still an active crime scene?"
He shrugged.
"Then why can't I get back to work? I won't go anywhere near..." I dropped my voice, too. It just seemed right "...where we found him."
"Did the cops talk to you?" Blondie's eyes darted around and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. "They were looking for you."
"Yes, I spoke with Inspector Crawford. Several times, in fact. But now I have to finish the job. Are any of the...er...brethren around to talk to about that?"
"No," he said, his gaze turning up to the surrounding buildings. "They're not here."
"There are a lot of cars in the parking lot."
"Well, there's some but not the ones you need to talk to."
"Not to be rude, but how can you be so sure?"
"Thing is," he licked his lips, "I don't think they want you to come back."
"They don't want me to finish the job?"
He shook his head.
"Why not?"
"On account o' maybe you took the paintings."
"What paintings?" My mind flashed on the cheesy Western art and European hunting scenes that peppered the walls of the mansion. "I didn't take any paintings."
He shrugged. "Maybe you did, maybe you didn't."
"Listen, I could probably clear this up right now. Is Geoffrey McAdams here? He hired me."
"Maybe he is, maybe he isn't."
Blondie was really starting to annoy me. "What about Balthazar Odibajian?"
His blue eyes flashed. "Don't you go botherin' Mr. Odibajian!"
"So he is here, then?"
The attendant looked aghast at being outfoxed. He stomped over to his wooden kiosk, closed and locked the door, plugged into his iPod, and tuned me out.
Now what? Searching for inspiration, I spied yesterday's informants, Harvard and Jumpsuit, sitting on a park bench across the street.
"Hey there," I greeted them as I approached. "How's it going?"
"Beautiful day," Harvard said.
"Beautiful," echoed Jumpsuit softly.
"Either of you happen to know if the cops are gone for good across the street?"
"Dunno," Harvard said.
"Nope," Jumpsuit replied.
"So I don't suppose you'd know if they're open for business as usual?"
They both shrugged.
I sighed. It was a long shot anyway.
"Hey," said Harvard. " 'Member how you was askin' 'bout if I seen anythin' unusual at the F-U the other day?"
I nodded.
"You see that lady over there? She walks her dog hereabouts a lot, so's I seen her."
"The woman with the full-sized poodle?" She was the one I saw talking with Michael yesterday. Same dog trimmed to within an inch of its life, same fuchsia scarf.
"Yup. She's the woman I seen go in the club."
"Okay, thanks a lot."
I sidled up to her. The woman had pretty blue eyes that crinkled up endearingly when she smiled, which she did almost constantly. She was not tall, only reaching my shoulder, but completely outclassed me in the va-va-va-voom department, sporting a pair of torpedo-shaped breasts that had either been surgically enhanced or bore witness to her ability to defy gravity. I estimated she was in her late forties, possibly older. It was hard to tell because her face had the oddly flat quality of an expensive facelift. Her hair was beautifully colored and cut, and her makeup was subtle yet striking. Large diamond studs adorned her pierced ears, and she played with a sparkling diamond tennis bracelet on one wrist. She reeked of disposable income.
"Beautiful dog," I said, putting my hand out to the animal to let it sniff, then stroking it under the chin.
"Isn't she just? And so smart !"
"I've heard that about poodles," I said. "What's her name?"
"Cuddles." She chuckled. "I didn't name her; she's a rescue and came prenamed. I probably would have chosen something outlandish, like Princess Napoleon Biscuit-Bottom or some such nonsense, so it's just as well!"
"Could you tell me, do you know anything about the Fleming-Union?"
She leaned toward me and whispered, as though offering late-breaking news. "It's a very exclusive place."
"Is that right. Are you a member?"
She laughed. "Well... I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but yes, my husband's a member."
She wasn't exactly a tough nut to crack.
"Is he on the retreat?"
"Yes, but it was cut short unexpectedly. How do you know so much about it?"
"I've been working there, doing some restoration. I'm a faux finisher."
"How exciting!"
One thing I had learned about the wealthy: they bore easily, and to keep themselves amused they renovate constantly. I had built a career on rich people's short attention spans.
"You're a faux finisher?" the woman asked. "This is wonderful! I've been meaning to have someone take a look at a project I've been thinking about. And here you are, out of the blue! It's fate, isn't it? Do you have a card?"
"I'm Annie Kincaid," I said, handing her a business card.
"Annie, it is just lovely to meet you. I'm Catrina Yeltsin. Call me Cathy."
"Nice to...meet you," I said, faltering as her name filtered into my brain. Yeltsin? "And your husband is...?"
"Victor Yeltsin. You don't happen to know him?"
"I may have seen him at the club, while I was working."
"Such a coincidence!" she gushed.
Wasn't it just? My mind raced. Did I dare ask her about the stolen Gauguin? I had meant to speak with the Yeltsins, but wasn't prepared and didn't want to blow it. Maybe it was better to follow up on her interest in hiring me as a faux finisher and figure out my next step later.
"And your husband's well?"
"Oh yes, he's in wonderful health! Aren't you a dear for asking."
Scratch Yeltsin's name from the list of possible dead blokes in the tub.
"It's so exciting, you working at the Fleming-Union," Cathy continued. "It's a beautiful place!"
"Yes, isn't it? The thing is, I have to complete the next step in the process. Faux finishing is a tricky business, you know, timing is everything, and that silly security guard won't let me in. I hate to impose, but can you think of any way I might get in?"
"Gosh, I wish I could help but even I can't go in!" she said with a huge smile. "I'm just waiting for my Victor to finish up a business lunch, then we're going home. Aren't we, Miss Cuddle-Cakes?"
The dog gazed up at Cathy adoringly.
"Aren't you allowed in sometimes?" I asked. "The other night...?"
Cathy was babbling high-pitched baby-talk to the dog and didn't seem to hear my question. Either that, or she was ignoring it.
My attention was drawn by a pair of coverall-clad men arranging neon orange cones around an open manhole before descending, one by one, under the street. In a flash I had an idea for getting access to the F-U. One of my oldest and best clients divided his time between San Francisco and London, and paid me to keep an eye on things for him when he was out of town. One of my tasks was to schedule the annual testing and certification of something called a backflow prevention device. I had no idea what the device accomplished, but it didn't matter. When it came to bureaucracy and plumbing, nobody ever wanted to know the details.
"Cathy, it's been lovely chatting with you," I said. "Why don't you give me your name and number? I'll call and make an appointment to come look at your job."
Cathy waved gaily as I headed for my truck, which I'd parked out of sight on Powell. I flipped the seat forward and started riffling through the mountain of junk I kept there through sheer laziness. Sure enough, I found several things of use: worn khaki coveralls, a clipboard, a tube of hair goop, my tool belt, a pack of peppermint Trident, dusty work boots, registration forms from the local DVD store, and a black ballpoint pen with PROPERTY OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT printed in gold. I stuffed everything into a canvas carryall, walked to the Fairmont Hotel, and made a beeline for their elegant, marble-lined women's room.
I knew exactly where it was; as the possessor of a tiny bladder I had long ago memorized the location of the rest rooms in all the nicer downtown hotels.
Ten minutes later I emerged a new woman: dressed in stained coveralls with my hair slicked down, braided, and wrapped around my head. I had scrubbed any vestiges of makeup from my face and removed my earrings. I looked plain, workmanlike. Utterly unmemorable. I tossed my nice clothes in the truck, slid the DVD store paperwork under the hinge of the clipboard, stuck the government's pen in my chest pocket, and cradled the clipboard in one arm. Now for the pièce de résistance : I crammed two pieces of gum in my mouth.
You're a cog in the wheel , I told myself. Just another cog in the machinery. I strode officiously up the Fleming Mansion's front steps, rang the bell, and commenced snapping my gum.
No answer. I peered in the side window, which opened into the office where a Diet Coke can still perched precariously on a stack of paperwork, just as it had yesterday when I met Wesley Fleming III. There was a man at the desk with his back to me, wearing a blue blazer that strained against his chubby shoulders. I banged on the window, held up the clipboard, and pointed sternly toward the door.
"Maintenance is in the back," he said through the closed window.
"Open the door," I insisted, ringing the bell again. I knocked for good measure.
At last the man came around to the front door and cracked it open a few inches, a radio crackling on his hip.
"Go round back," he said, and tried to close the door.
I put my boot-clad foot on the threshold.
"I gotta check your backflow prevention device."
"My what?"
"Backflow. Prevention. Device," I enunciated, eyebrows raised, my tone implying duh .
"Talk to Maintenance."
"Look, pal, this isn't brain surgery," I said as I put my shoulder to the door and shoved past him to step inside, speaking loudly. "Now I'm here it'll take, like, ten minutes. I just gotta do the annual check of the backflow prevention device."
A pair of well-dressed men descending the stairs glanced over at us, their expressions a combination of annoyance and contempt.
"I'm a card-carrying member of the American Backflow Prevention Association, the ABPA, if that's what's bothering you. Licensed and bonded, which is more than you can say about most people."
I waved the clipboard at him again, complete with the official-looking DVD rental agreement form. In my experience, a clipboard with paperwork is like a magic wand---people assume you're doing something official, and usually figure they don't want to be involved.
"Maintenance is in the back," he sputtered. "You'll have to go around and check in with them."
"All I know is, I gotta test the backflow device or your water gets cut off." I shrugged. "No skin off my nose, but I gotta lotta other people waitin' up to six weeks for my services." I flipped through the paperwork on the clipboard. "We scheduled this doohickey back on...yep, month and a half ago."
My cell phone rang. The readout said Annette Crawford. I pressed IGNORE.
"See there? My next customer. Listen, pal, you don't want me to come in, no problemo. I'll shut the water off at the meter and you can call to schedule to have it turned back on just as soon as you get your BPD tested. Shouldn't take more'n six, eight weeks. More if you run into a holiday." I turned to leave.
"Wait."
Gotcha .
He checked his watch. "You know exactly where to find this device?"
"Sure, I was here...lessee..." I made a show of flipping through the papers on the clipboard "...last September nineteenth. And the year before that, too. Gotta get recertified every year. They like to send the same folks out on account o' we know where to find the BPD. They're little buggers, but they're real important."
"Fine. Whatever. Just make it fast." He chugged back into his office, muttering into his radio.
I strode down the hallway as if I knew where I was going. The regal, oversized entryway was empty but for a few oil portraits of sour-looking old men, plush Oriental rugs, and the colossal staircase. I followed the muted sounds of silverware clinking against porcelain until I reached the dining room. Based on the hubbub it sure didn't seem like the members were in deep mourning for the man in the tub.
The dining room was a walnut-paneled extravaganza featuring a massive carved limestone fireplace in which a blaze roared despite the warm weather. Heavy brocade curtains and sheers dimmed the natural light. About half the linen-draped tables were occupied by well-dressed men, nearly identical with their close-cropped hair, starched white shirts, and plain business suits. I hoped none of them ever committed a crime in my presence because I'd never be able to pick one of them out of a lineup.
For several seconds everyone seemed so flummoxed by the sight of a woman---in coveralls, no less---that no one moved. I strode over to the man I recognized from the newspaper photograph: Balthazar Odibajian.
"Mr. Odibajian, I need to speak with you," I began. My confidence faltered when I realized his lunch companion, with his back to me, was none other than Frank DeBenton.
During a lovely meal upon a terrace in Siena this evening, I pondered.... I have never trusted those who purport to have a great love of art, yet profess no fondness for the culinary arts. Palate and Palette---coincidence? I think not.... Consider these indispensable items for the chef, as well as for the forger: eggs, milk, bread, potatoes, coffee, tea, olive oil, gelatin, flour...even the pastry board and the kitchen stove.
On the other hand...as anyone who has ever dined with a gallery owner will attest, there is still no such thing as a free lunch.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"And who might you be?" Odibajian asked in a quiet voice as he placed his fork and knife on the lip of his fine china plate as his nanny must have taught him when he was a boy. Red juice flowed freely from his steak, staining the roasted fingerling potatoes pink. His hazel eyes were cold and flat as they ran over my outfit; his nostrils flared as though he were inspecting something sticky and brown on the sole of his shoe. Authority and privilege came off him in waves.
He lifted his chin, ever so subtly, and the muscled men who had come up on either side of me backed off.
"I'm Annie Kincaid," I said, thrusting my hand out. He looked, but did not shake. "Anton Woznikowicz is my uncle. Last week your brother tried to hawk a fake Gauguin, painted---quite legally I might add---by my uncle, and now Anton's been assaulted and left for dead. I don't think that was a coincidence."
"I don't understand your meaning, young lady. To what are you referring? A fake?"
"An inspired fake."
"You're saying the Gauguin was a fake?"
I nodded.
"And now you're looking for my brother?"
"You'll do for the moment."
"Are you suggesting I had something to do with your uncle's misfortune?"
"I think it's a possibility."
Frank stood. "Annie---"
"You know the woman?" Odibajian asked Frank.
"She's my...tenant," Frank said. "Geoffrey hired her for the painting restoration upstairs. She's very upset about her uncle's accident."
"Of course," he said. His flat eyes held mine. "Family is so important, isn't it?"
Why did that sound like a threat? A chill ran through me. I realized why everyone warned me about him.
"Speaking of family, where is your brother?" I asked.
"In the morgue."
I gaped at him.
"The...morgue?"
"I believe you found him yesterday in one of the upstairs guestrooms. That was you, was it not?"
"Yes, it was. I didn't know he was your brother. I'm...so sorry. For your loss."
"And yet though you were by your own admission at the crime scene I have managed not to accuse you of playing a role in his murder. Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me the same consideration, especially since I've never met your poor uncle. I do, however, wish him a speedy return to good health."
His little speech sounded as sincere as that of a televangelist resigning from the pulpit after a video of him partying with prostitutes went viral on YouTube.
"What about the painting Elijah tried to sell? Did you have something to do with that?"
"I should say not. He spirited it away from the club's collection."
"The club's collection?" That was news. This whole talk wasn't exactly playing out the way I had imagined it. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach.
"It was donated to the club anonymously, years ago. The provenance papers were in order. Suffice it to say that we had no way of knowing it was stolen when we accepted it."
"But it was stolen from one of the club members . How is it he never mentioned it?"
"Perhaps he never visited the gallery. Such a shame. Art is a gift to us all."
The half smile on Odibajian's face suggested he was toying with me.
"There's an international database of stolen and missing art. It's as simple as pie to check."
"And I will personally suggest to the board that we make it a policy to do so in the future. Ours is a small, intimate art collection. I'm afraid we're rather informal, not really up on the most current trends in art curation."
"I'd be happy to curate it for you."
He let out a loud bark of laughter. Everyone in the room seemed shocked at the sound.
"She is priceless, this one." The smile fell from his face and he gestured to the men hovering by my side.
One man grabbed me by each arm. My clipboard clattered to the floor.
Startled, I tried to pull away but I didn't stand a chance. They started dragging me toward the door.
"Hey," Frank protested, his chair screeching loudly as he jumped up. "There's no call for that. I'll escort her out."
While my captors looked to Odibajian, I decided not to wait and stomped heavily on one man's foot. He grunted and wrapped an arm around my neck in a choke hold. I reached for my secret weapon---a travel-size can of hairspray, as effective as Mace if used properly---and tried to aim the nozzle at his eyes but before I could fire off the first spritz Frank punched him in the nose, the other goon grabbed Frank, and two more oversized men joined the fray. One snatched the Lady Clairol from me but not before I smacked him in the face with the can.
All in all, it wasn't much of a fight. Without my chemical weapon I was useless, and Frank could only do so much against four musclebound men.
"Take them out of here," Odibajian said with contempt. "I wish to return to my meal."
We were hustled out of the mansion and tossed onto the sidewalk like trash. I lay on my back for a few minutes, rubbing my neck and imagining the size and color of the bruise I would soon be sporting on the hip that had made first contact with the concrete. When I worked up enough courage to sneak a peek at Frank, his shoulders were shaking.
My heart sank. Had I reduced Frank to tears? I sat up for a better look. No, my straight-arrow landlord was laughing . I was speechless.
After a few minutes he lay back, tucked his hands under his head, crossed his ankles, and gazed up at the cheerful blue sky. "I don't suppose it ever occurs to you, Annie, to think before you act?"
"You told me I should drop in on him over lunch."
He chuckled. "And you took me quite literally."
"I wanted to talk with the man. I don't know why he had to make a federal case out of it. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Interrogating him in what I imagine would have had a far more productive outcome had you not interrupted."
"I mean this in the nicest way possible, Frank," I said, "but the way you phrase things makes you sound pompous from time to time."
"Having been summarily ejected from one of the city's most prestigious social clubs and currently lying on a public sidewalk in a twelve-hundred-dollar suit, I postulate I may be overcompensating for a certain loss of dignity." He got to his feet and brushed some dust off his pants, held out a hand, and hoisted me up. "Where's your truck?"
"On Powell."
"I'll give you a lift."
We walked to his gleaming Jaguar. It was parked in a visitor's spot in the club's lot and looked like a poor relation in a sea of six-figure automobiles. I think of Frank as wealthy, but it's all relative, I suppose.
The blond parking attendant confronted us and swallowed hard. "Uh, yes sir, ma'am. I'm to tell you not to come back. Ever. Because of the stolen paintings."
"Sure, sport. Whatever you say." I sank into the Jaguar's leather-scented cocoon. As Frank roared out of the parking lot I asked, "What paintings is he talking about?"
"No idea."
"I didn't know the F-U had an art gallery. Did you know the F-U had an art gallery?"
Frank's face went blank.
"Oh, wait, let me guess. You installed the gallery's alarm system, didn't you?"
"I told you I did some work there."
"If it's your security system, and you're the best, then how did the paintings get gone?"
"Well, let's see. Bypassing the system I installed would take a thief with considerable skill and expertise. Know anybody like that?"
I ignored his question. "Where is this gallery?"
"It's private."
"The whole club's private."
"I meant, I'm not telling you."
"What's in the collection?"
"A few minor Impressionists, a couple of so-so contemporary pieces that may or may not appreciate much. Considering the membership's resources it's nothing special. Kind of rinky-dink, actually, as private art collections go. The Gauguin was by far their best piece. Until it turned out to be a fake, that is."
"When did the alleged theft of the other paintings occur?" For some reason, I was channeling Inspector Crawford.
"Earlier today was the first I've heard of it. Either they don't know or they won't tell me. Now that you've gotten involved, of course, I'll probably be accused of aiding and abetting a theft from a gallery whose system I installed."
"Surely it isn't that bad? They can't prove you had anything to do with it, can they?"
"Unless I find who did, I imagine I'll be the fall guy. I vouched for an art forger who's in business with a convicted art thief. I doubt that will reflect well on me."
"Who cares what the F-U thinks? They're a bunch of creepy, misogynistic old men."
"I envy you sometimes, Annie," Frank said. "The world you live in, where you don't have to deal with anyone you don't like. But then again, I knew what I was doing when I gave them your name, so I only have myself to blame."
"What were you talking to Balthazar Odibajian about?"
"You."
"What about me?"
"I was trying to do you a favor. Feeling him out. My approach is more---what's the word? Ah, yes--- subtle than yours. And as usual, when I try to do you a favor I wind up paying a price."
"I really am sorry. I'll take your suit to be dry-cleaned."
He shrugged. "It's almost a badge of honor to have Odibajian as an enemy. At least he'll keep things interesting. It's you I'm worried about."
"Don't."
"Too late. Just do me a favor. Don't go home tonight. Change things up, stay around people for the next few days. I don't know what's going on but I'm going to find out. At the very least I'll get some information on the paintings they claim were stolen."
"You don't believe them?"
"I think it's interesting they didn't mention it earlier. I want to see if a report was filed with the police, much less the feds. If they didn't know the real provenance for the Gauguin, perhaps the rest of the paintings are questionable, as well. They might not want the cops prying around."
"Good point."
Frank pulled in behind my truck, and as I turned to open the door he rested a hand on my arm.
"Annie...I'm sorry about earlier in my office. You came to me for comfort, and I wound up yelling at you."
"It's okay. I have it on good authority that I can be annoying."
Our gazes held.
Suddenly I was acutely aware of what I was wearing, feared how I must look. I could feel my curls corkscrewing out from my otherwise slicked-back 'do, I was a little sweaty from the scuffle, and I didn't have a bit of makeup on. I was a fresh-faced, street-brawling grease monkey.
Frank, on the other hand, looked great. I loved his mussed-up look. I saw it so rarely.
"You drive me insane, you know that?" Frank spoke in a low, intense whisper.
"I---"
"Come here."
"What?"
"Come over here and kiss me."
So I did.
He was hungry, demanding. I matched his ardor and then some, melting into him, the pain and fear and frustration of the day's events dissipating in the face of desire. Finally I pulled away, clamping down on the impulse to crawl right into his lap.
I was startled by a face in my window.
It was Jumpsuit, giving me a thumbs-up, wearing his ski mask like a hat. I sketched a wave in return, and he and Harvard ambled on down the sidewalk.
"Friends of yours?" Frank asked, his arm still curled around me.
"Sort of. Informants, actually. They gave us a lead on your Hermes ."
Frank raised his eyebrows. "That was fast."
"They said they tried to talk to the management at your club, but no one would speak with them."
We watched the men push their grocery cart past homes whose mailboxes were worth more than all the pair's worldly possessions.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Had I been there---"
"I know." Frank could be stuffy, but he was not a snob.
"Stay with me tonight," Frank said softly.
"For my protection or for...?"
He chuckled. "I know I'm a Type-A personality, but that is one area of my life I don't like to plan. Let's play it by ear, let nature take its course."
We fell silent. I don't know about Frank, but I was thinking about nature taking its course. That was followed up, almost immediately, by the horrifying knowledge that I hadn't shaved my legs in more than a week and that I was wearing my plain-Jane underwear, boring cotton briefs. Oh, and I didn't have a toothbrush or---
"We could have dinner," Frank said. "Make it a real evening."
"You mean a date?"
"What the hell, Annie, we've known each other for, what---two years? I say we throw caution to the wind."
"Whatever happened to your girlfriend?"
"Who?"
"Hildegard. Svenska? Something Swedish."
"Ingrid. And she's not my girlfriend."
"You're sure?"
He smiled. "Very. Tell you what: I'll even tell you all about Ingrid. I know you've been curious."
Hairy legs be damned. I could pick up a disposable razor, take a quick shower to freshen up and rinse out the hair goop, and be good to go. I was never one for primping. "What time?"
"How about now? We'll play hooky. That way I'll know you're safe."
"Oh... I, uh, have to do a couple of things first."
"Like what?"
"Talk. To...some people."
"Drop the Hermes case. It doesn't matter. Or better yet, just give me whatever you turned up and I'll hand it over to the police, help them with their own investigation."
"There are a few other things I need to follow up on...."
Frank's eyes narrowed. "You're going to keep at this Anton thing, aren't you? Even though he nearly died last night, Inspector Crawford's on the case, and you've thrown down the gauntlet to one of the most powerful men in Northern California?"
I avoided his eyes. What could I say? The man was right. As high as my blood was running, I couldn't stop thinking about Anton. I had to pursue this.
"Annie, I'm dead serious. You'll be lucky to survive the night if you go traipsing around accusing a man like Balthazar Odibajian." His voice dropped. "And what would I do without you to annoy me all day, every day?"
I leaned forward and kissed him again. For a long time. When I spoke, my voice was husky. "Thanks for worrying about me. I'll annoy you tomorrow. Promise."
And hopped out of the car.
\*
My hormones were stuck in overdrive. Before getting into my truck I stopped in at a corner store and bought comfort chocolate: a Snickers bar and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. What was my problem? Frank was smart and funny and a successful professional. My mother adored him. My sensible friends were fond of him. My looney-tunes friends thought he was a riot. He kissed like...well, like Frank. He made me tingle and my heart race. I was scared to say it, but the truth was, it was easy to picture a future with a man like Frank.
The problem was that this future included a lot of him telling me what to do---or more precisely, what not to do. Maybe I had lived on my own for so long that I didn't know how to negotiate with anyone. I like things on my terms. I'm not any good at taking orders; hell, I'm not very good at taking broad hints. So did that mean I was destined to wind up alone; a lonely, sad lonesome loner? Wouldn't I have to learn to spin if I were to become a spinster?
I devoured the Snickers and licked my fingers. A rotund spinster.
Then again, if I was happy with my life the way it was, why was I fretting?
One thing I knew for sure: I couldn't deal with Anton's assault and pursue a romantic relationship with my stud-muffin landlord at the same time. Best to concentrate. Forget Frank's kisses. All of them. Right.
I polished off the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, because they were, after all, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, grabbed the carryall from my truck, and headed back to the women's room at the Fairmont Hotel to change into my street clothes. The doorman saluted as I breezed past.
Next stop: Cameron House.
Leaving my truck in its precious parking space, I hiked to nearby Chinatown. Within the space of a few city blocks, Nob Hill's fine homes and apartment buildings give way to storefronts selling lumpy root vegetables, bunches of leafy greens, salt-dried shrimp and fish, myriad varieties of mushrooms---inelegantly advertised as "fungus"---and twisted, unfamiliar fruits that to all appearances had been cultivated on an alien planet. Commerce was alive and bustling in this part of town, and crowds thronged the sidewalks clutching bags of fresh produce or bakery boxes full of delicacies such as sesame balls or pork-filled buns called char siu bao . San Francisco's Chinatown is a perennial favorite for tourists but is also home to thousands of immigrants and their American-born descendants, and the community is vibrant with cultural variety. In some alleys off the main drags, one could imagine being in a foreign country altogether.
I wandered aimlessly for a few blocks, up one alley and down another, hoping to spot a sign for Cameron House. Chinatown wasn't that spread out; how hard could it be to find a big brick Presbyterian mission?
Harder than one might think, so I gave up and popped into one of the hundreds of souvenir shops that were jammed with mementos of San Francisco, disposable cameras, sets of embroidered silk pajamas, cheap plastic shoes, and carved jade chess sets. A woman behind the counter obligingly directed me up the hill to the corner of Sacramento and Joice.
The pediment was inscribed OCCIDENTAL BOARD PRESBYTERIAN MISSION HOUSE, but it was more familiarly known as Cameron House. It was an imposing, square brick structure in a city without many brick buildings because, as any California schoolchild can tell you, when you live in earthquake country, mortar is not your friend. Either Cameron House had held up remarkably well over the years or it had been built after the 1906 earthquake and fire that leveled most of the city's brick edifices. I took a moment to appreciate the beautiful masonry. At regular intervals the bricks were misshapen: twisted, bubbly, and blackened. Intrigued, I ran my fingers over one, slick and glass-like.
"Those are called clinker bricks," said a young woman coming down the front steps. She wore her glossy black hair in a loose knot at the back of her neck, and a bright quilted backpack was slung over one shoulder.
"They're different," I said. "How did they get this way?"
"When bricks are fired some will melt and twist, and are considered throwaways." She spoke with the breezy confidence of an experienced tour guide. "These bricks became clinkers because of the explosions and intense heat of the fire in the wake of the '06 quake. The firefighters dynamited the original Cameron House, and much of this section of Chinatown, to save the mansions on Nob Hill."
"It didn't work."
"No, it didn't. Kind of ironic, isn't it? Cameron House survived the natural disaster but not the city's elite."
"That's a depressing commentary."
"I sometimes wonder if the architect who rebuilt Cameron House used the clinker bricks because she liked the way they looked, or as a reminder of how they came to be that way."
"Who was the architect?"
"Julia Morgan."
Morgan was also architect of famous Hearst Castle, halfway down the California coast. She rebuilt the Fairmont Hotel after the fire, and the Chinatown YWCA a block away from here, as well as dozens of stunning Italianate Gothic Revival homes and buildings across the bay in Berkeley and Oakland. Not long ago I had done some restoration work in Oakland's historic Chapel of the Chimes, another Morgan masterpiece. The woman got around.
"Do you work here?" I asked.
"Used to. I practically grew up in this place, along with half of Chinatown." She held out her hand. "I'm Laurene Chan."
We shook. "Annie Kincaid. Actually, I was looking for someone by the name of Chan. I thought they might know my Uncle Anton."
There was no sign of recognition. She shook her head.
"Good luck." She smiled. "Chan's a common surname, the Chinese equivalent of Smith or Jones. I have about forty cousins named Chan in the neighborhood, and that's not counting all the Chans I'm not related to."
"Oh." This wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped.
"I even married a Chan, so technically I'm Laurene Chan Chan. Sounds like a dance from the Roaring Twenties, doesn't it?"
"It does," I said with a smile. "I'm trying to find someone who might have spoken to my uncle recently. He was...assaulted. Hospitalized."
"And you think someone named Chan did it?"
"Not at all. But he mentioned meeting with someone named Chan at Cameron House, and I was hoping he or she might be able to help me figure out who did hurt him."
She glanced at her watch. "Come on in, I'll introduce you. My cousin Nicole is working today, maybe she was the one he met with."
We walked into a dark wood-paneled foyer in the spare, sturdy architectural style of the Arts and Crafts movement to which Julia Morgan belonged. A stairwell dominated the ample entry, beyond which a pair of pocket doors opened into a large hall with a small stage at one end. Surrounding the pocket doors was a beautiful mural depicting the history of the neighborhood and Cameron House.
Laurene poked her head into a small office near the foyer. "Hey Nic, this is Annie Kincaid. She's asking about a man named Anton."
"Anton Woznikowicz?" She said without hesitation, though I still had a hard time pronouncing his name. "He's not here today."
"He's in the hospital," Laurene put in.
"I'm so sorry!" Nicole said. "What happened? I just saw him the other day."
"When was that?"
"Thursday...Friday, maybe. He's been giving us some advice on preserving our mural. He's a sweetheart. The kids love him."
"That's all he's been doing here? Working with the kids on the mural?"
"Pretty much."
"Did he mention anything about fireworks?"
"We don't sell fireworks," Nicole said. "We offer services to the community. Not fireworks sales, which are illegal, by the way."
"I didn't mean to imply... It's just that I think he was looking to buy some."
"Why?"
"I don't know. When you saw Anton did he say anything, do anything unusual?"
She shook her head, pensive. "Not that I remember. He did ask for a tour of the place. I think he was interested in the tunnels."
Today finds me in my adopted city (are you listening, Interpol?) The city of my heart and dreams: Paris. Ah, is there any splendor that compares? The cafés, the opera, les musées...even the subterranean secrets. Except for the smell, the arched brick sewers of Paris are among the most beautiful passages in the world. And they have proved most handy when outrunning Nazis...or Interpol, for that matter.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"What tunnels?"
"I'm afraid I have to run," Laurene said, heading for the door. "I'm sorry about your uncle, Annie. I hope he's feeling better soon. I'll leave you in Nic's capable hands."
Nicole waved good-bye and turned to me. "Let me guess: you want to see the tunnels?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
"Nah, that's okay. One of the downsides of working in a historic building---people want to see it. Just don't be surprised if I hit you up for a donation to the building fund. Let's start with some history to get you up to speed, shall we?"
Nicole led me to a display case containing an exhibit of sepia-toned photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Groups of young Chinese men, dressed in traditional clothing and with long braids, paused in their labors to peer at the camera, unsmiling. Photo after photo illustrated the challenges facing the immigrants.
"Anti-Asian sentiment was strong in the U.S., especially in California, which drew most of the Asian immigrants in the nineteenth century. Conditions were brutal for the Chinese in San Francisco in those days. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act ended legal immigration from China, which meant married men could not bring their wives and families over, nor were unmarried women permitted to immigrate. The result was an illegal trade in young women and girls. Their futures were bleak in China, but when they arrived here they were forced to work as prostitutes. Young girls were sold as domestic servants called mui tsais , though many were also forced into prostitution. Most survived no more than five years."
"That's appalling."
"Not everyone ignored what was happening. In 1895, Donaldina Cameron came to work as a sewing teacher at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls, as Cameron House was then known. A few years later she became the home's superintendent. When she learned where some girls were being held, she and a few strong men armed with axes would stage a raid in the middle of the night, grab the girls, and bring them to Cameron House."
"Wow."
"The girls called her Lo Mo , Beloved Mother. Occasionally the girls' 'owners' bribed the police to attempt a 'rescue.' The girls hid in the tunnels until Donaldina Cameron could persuade the police to leave."
"Do the tunnels still exist?"
"There's an entrance, but it's been sealed off. We store sports equipment there now. I can show you if you'd like."
We descended a set of narrow, steep stairs into a bright basement, where half a dozen elderly Chinese were sorting and packing groceries into paper bags and cardboard boxes.
"Community food bank," Nicole told me. "Pardon us."
Nicole led me across the basement to a set of cupboards, and opened the doors to reveal a collection of soccer balls, basketballs, baseball bats, orange cones, and lacrosse nets. Immediately in front of us was a wall of concrete, the side of the street. On each end was clean white wallboard.
"That's it?" I asked.
"Kind of a letdown, isn't it?" Nicole asked. "When the original building was imploded after the earthquake, the tunnel was sealed off. That's assuming it was actually a tunnel; I don't know if it linked up to anything. It may have been more like a secret room. Look here." She opened another cupboard and we peered inside. At the top, near the low ceiling, was a gap about a foot high and two feet wide. "Here's another entrance. I think it must have been bigger back in the day."
"Where does it lead?" I asked.
One of the elderly women spoke to Nicole in Chinese.
Nicole nodded. "She says it leads to a coal chute. Big enough for kids to hide in."
The elderly woman was gray-haired and stooped, but unless she'd discovered a miracle cure for aging she was nowhere near old enough to have had personal experience with the tunnel. The woman spoke some more, and Nicole answered my unasked question. "Her mother was hidden there."
"When was that?"
Nicole translated. "Nineteen-oh-four or -five, she thinks. Her mother was rescued from a brothel. She was twelve years old and had been working there for two years."
I was speechless. I returned the old woman's smile and nod, but couldn't stop wondering what must it have been like for a ten-year-old girl to be taken from her family and village in China, smuggled across the ocean, forced to work as a prostitute for two years, seized by strangers in the middle of the night, and hidden in a dark tunnel? I silently thanked the powers that be for my life of privilege and my somewhat insane but always loving family.
"If the girls had been smuggled into the country---no matter that it wasn't their choice---weren't they in legal limbo?" I asked.
"They were, and the slave traders counted on that. But they hadn't counted on Donaldina Cameron. She used her social status and connections to petition sympathetic judges for guardianship of the girls. When the building was about to be destroyed in the chaos after the earthquake, Lo Mo ran back into the mission to retrieve the guardianship papers. She wasn't about to risk losing her girls."
"What a remarkable woman."
I thought about Julia Morgan, another woman who had accomplished great things during a time when there were so many barriers to women's ambitions. I liked the idea of Cameron and Morgan working together to rebuild Cameron House to make sure vulnerable children were safe and cared for. I also finally had a response for that cocktail-party conversation starter: If you could go back in time, with whom would you like to have dinner?
"Shall we?" Nicole started back up the stairs.
"You mentioned there might be other tunnels?"
"There are rumors of tunnels criss-crossing Chinatown, though I don't know if it's ever been proven. All kinds of rumors swirl about this community. Like, the Chinese will shanghai you and sell you into slavery if you're not careful. That sort of thing. Goes with the mysterious Asian stereotypes. You know, like fireworks."
I looked chagrined, but Nicole just laughed.
"You think the tunnels are a myth, then."
"Really can't say. Tunnel systems from this era have been found in Red Bluff and Portland, but those cities aren't as earthquake-prone as San Francisco."
"Red Bluff?" I asked. The small Sacramento Valley town wasn't far from where I grew up, but it was just as isolated. Hard to imagine Chinese immigrants landing there at all, but even harder imagining them building tunnels there.
Nicole nodded. "I'm sure their local historical society could tell you about them. Chinese immigrants were found in most early California towns, working in the mining camps, railroad construction, all sorts of things."
"Why would they build tunnels?"
"Lots of reasons, I'm really not the expert. And like I said, I don't even really believe it. But my cousin Will insists he's seen evidence of tunnels, especially when they take down old buildings. And he sees a lot; he runs a street-sweeping truck on the graveyard shift."
"Do you think he'd talk to me?"
"Are you kidding? He'll talk your ear off if you give him a chance. Will's a volunteer at the Chinatown Historical Society on Clay. I think he's there this afternoon."
"Thanks."
Nicole hesitated. "Listen, you really think this might have something to do with your uncle?"
"Someone tried to poison him. He wrote the name 'Chan' on the front of a catalogue where he scribbled something about tunnels." I took the fireworks catalogue I'd found in Anton's van from my backpack and showed her. "I don't know if they're connected or if they were random thoughts, but something strange is going on, and for Anton's sake I want to know what it is."
"Tell you what. Why don't I call Will and see when he's done at the historical society? Maybe we could have dinner. You like food?"
"Food?"
"Sorry." Nicole smiled. "Stupid joke---you call it Chinese food, but we just call it food."
I laughed. "I love food, Chinese food in particular."
Nicole made a phone call and told me to meet her and Will for dinner at a restaurant on Washington Street in an hour and a half. I meandered over to busy Portsmouth Square and perched on a slatted bench, pondering my next move. Clusters of old men played games and gambled, pigeons scouted for scraps, and San Franciscans of every age and stripe hustled in and out of the underground parking garage.
I called Pedro. "Hola. ¿Qué tal?"
"Your accent sucks."
"You should hear me speak French."
"This Jarrah Preston guy you asked about? Looks legit. You know, this little assignment didn't exactly test my computer skills. Preston not only works for Augusta Confederated, he's on their website. Photo and everything. Kinda cute, in an offbeat sort of way. You interested?"
"Why is everyone so invested in my love life all of a sudden?" I snapped.
"Whoa, sorry. We just want our Annie to be happy."
"I apologize, Pedro. It's been a rough day." I told him about Anton, and the Fleming Mansion, and what I'd found at Cameron House. He listened carefully, as he always did, and made soothing "There, there" sounds.
"And Elijah Odibajian?" I asked, hoping for news. "Find out anything more about him?"
"Turns out the Brothers Odibajian parted on bad terms. After what they so charmingly refer to as their 'corporate divorce,' Elijah disappeared. Seems he had a gambling problem."
"Serious?"
"I'd say it was pretty serious: he burned through his personal fortune---no small feat---and may have been skimming from the business. I imagine that's why Balthazar split from him. There are rumors Elijah was on the hook to some unpleasant people, which is pretty scary when you think about the Odibajians' reputation. We're talkin' Terminator 2 -type nasty."
Pedro is a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. It is a testament to our friendship that we work around his obsession.
"But you probably have better sources than I for that sort of thing," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"You know. Sources . Of information."
"Isn't that what I have you for?"
"You're telling me you don't know any bookies, loan sharks, or well-groomed men with a taste for gaudy jewelry?"
"Pedro, I'm an artist , not a gun moll. Good heavens. I hang out with people like you."
"You're a special type of artist, if I'm not mistaken."
"Hey, I let my membership lapse in the International Brotherhood of Forgers and Fakers years ago."
"And speaking of which, you asked about hidden messages under paintings? Turns out it's not that strange. A lot of artists do that. Who knew? Including your Uncle Anton."
"Yeah, I got that last bit already, thanks. But nothing on the phrase per se?"
"Squat-comma-diddley. Just that it seems to be a take-off on 'Revenge is a dish best served cold.' "
"What about Victor Yeltsin, the owner of the original Gauguin? I met his wife. She seems nice enough."
"Judging by...?"
"She was sweet to her dog."
"Yeah? So was Hitler."
"I didn't know that."
"Sure---loved his German shepherd, Blondi."
"That's...really creepy."
"Tell me about it."
"Okay, so what's up with the Yeltsins?"
"Let's see... Yup, got it right here. Catrina and Victor Yeltsin, Sausalito. About five years ago, Yeltsin started making a whole lot of money. Before that, he was well off thanks to his wife; she inherited a bundle from her grandmother, a heartwarming rags-to-riches story. Brewed up shampoo and creme rinse in her kitchen during the Great Depression, branched out into moisturizers and makeup after World War Two. Made a killing. After fifteen years of depression and war, America wanted to look pretty. Marrying Yeltsin was a step down for Catrina, fortune-wise."
"What happened five years ago?"
"Dunno, but he started making a whole lot of money round about the time he joined the Fleming-Union. That's typical though---those guys throw each other work, seats on corporate boards, that type of thing. The surprising thing is that he'd be allowed into the club, though. They're pretty darned exclusive."
"What kind of work does Yeltsin do?"
"Consulting."
"What does he consult about?"
"Dunno. His business is called Yeltsin Consulting, Inc. Has one of those flashy, elaborate websites that look great but offer almost nothing in actual information. It's privately held, so there are no SEC filings that I can get my hands on without hacking into the feds' system. And that's a line I won't cross."
"I wouldn't ask you to."
"I would. But that's not why. I know a few tricks for getting in and out of the system without being detected, but there are only so many times I can play that card. I'm saving it for something special."
"You're secretly the mastermind of an evil criminal empire, aren't you, Pedro?"
"Well, I don't like to brag...."
"Thank you for the scoop on Yeltsin."
"Wish I had more for you. Want me to look up Catrina Yeltsin?"
"Sure. Any info is helpful. Oh, and the other name in the file, a guy described as their 'houseboy,' Kyle Jones."
The moment I hung up the phone rang: Annette Crawford. I hesitated, then decided not to answer. Suppose she wanted to talk to me about the Fleming-Union's missing paintings? I hated being questioned by the police at any time, but especially when I was a) innocent and b) didn't have the slightest idea what was going on. What would I say to Annette? That my business partner, a "retired" art thief, had been missing for an entire week during which the paintings disappeared? That I was working for a New Zealand insurance investigator who had hired me because I had a tendency to look the other way where the law was concerned as long as no one got hurt? That, yet one more time, I seemed to be caught up in some sort of criminal conspiracy?
I blew out a breath, frustrated. Annie Kincaid, Crime Magnet . Was it something in my DNA? Had the line for the "Catch a Clue" gene been so long that my pre-embodied self had settled for the "Freakin' Clueless" gene instead?
Maybe I should commit a crime so that at least once in my life I would understand what was happening.
I looked up at the monument to Robert Louis Stevenson, who in 1879 and 1880 used to sit in this very square, depressed, writing poetry while waiting for his beloved Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him. Failing to find that particularly inspirational, I looked down at my list of Things to Do. 2...."Ask about fireworks?"
That sounded simple. I could do that. I was in the heart of Chinatown, after all. And no matter what the upstanding citizens over at the Cameron House thought about it, this neighborhood was the mother lode for illegal fireworks. Even clueless lasses like me knew that .
I went into the first retail store I saw that sold a wide variety of items and asked about fireworks, receiving nothing for my trouble but wary looks and suspicious glances. In the next store, I made up a story about wanting fireworks for my children. Still nothing.
Probably I should have left my coveralls on.
I needed someone with criminal savvy. Someone with the face of a heavenly angel and the heart of a fallen angel. Someone who could talk others into doing things they would otherwise never consider. Too bad I wasn't currently speaking to Michael, my usual Plan A.
My usual Plan B was to call Anton.
I didn't have a Plan C. I had never needed one. Anton had always been able to---
Wait.
I clawed through my backpack and found the business card.
" 'allo?"
"Hello Mr., uh, Hippo. It's Annie Kincaid. Any update on my uncle?"
"No better, no worse. Which is good news of a sort. The physicians are calling it 'wait and see mode,' which seems to mean they don't know what's going on."
"I am wondering if I might ask you a favor."
"For Anton's niece? Name it, and if I can help I will."
"I need to get my hands on some fireworks. Do you know where I might buy some? Oh, and the name of anyone who deals in stolen art?"
Twenty minutes Hippo called me back with a couple of contacts and addresses, and told me to use his name as a calling card. I could get used to having friends in high places.
"Before you go, could I ask whether you knew Elijah Odibajian?" I asked.
"Why are you asking?" His voice sounded wary.
"I don't know if you heard, but he was found dead yesterday."
"Yes, I did hear that."
"Did you also hear that he had substantial gambling debts?"
I heard a long intake of breath. "Yes."
"I'm not asking for any details. I was just wondering whether he thought he'd be coming into some money to pay off those debts?"
"Yes, I believe he was going to sell an asset, and pay on the balance."
So, one lonely night in the mansion, Elijah had crept down those wide carpeted stairs, made his way to the club's art gallery, disabled the security system, and snatched the fake Gauguin? Then he snuck it out of the club and took it to Mayfield's for sale, figuring since he had the provenance papers, it was no problem? Could he have taken the other paintings as well?
"Okay, thanks so much for all the information."
"Of course. But Annie? Be very careful."
"Yes, I know, I'm dealing with some scary people."
"No, they're actually lovely people. But you can lose a finger handling those firecrackers. Or worse. One of my nephews... Well, you don't want to know. Let's just say his friends call him Lefty."
"He blew his hand off?" I asked, appalled.
"It wasn't his hand."
\*
The first fireworks supplier's address Hippo had given me led to a nondescript door opening off an alley. I banged on the door for what seemed like an eternity until a young man answered. Thin and short, he was not the typical bouncer; I had probably outweighed him by my tenth birthday. Feeling like a bad actress in a low-budget movie, I told him Hippo had sent me, and was escorted into a retail area jammed with a dizzying array of brightly colored packages. The place reeked of rotten eggs and Pine-Sol. I fought the urge to hold my nose and approached an old man behind the glass counter.
"I think my uncle was here recently." I showed him the photograph from the Cameron House newsletter. "Looking for fireworks?"
He nodded.
"You helped him?"
He nodded again.
This was going to be easy. "When was that?"
He turned stiffly to consult a flowery pink-and-red calendar from Dragon Land Bakery, and pointed to a day two weeks ago.
"Did he say what he wanted the fireworks for?"
He shook his head.
"Did he say anything?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing at all...? All right, thanks."
The newspaper article on the Odibajian brothers slipped out of the file. He tapped the black-and-white photo of Balthazar and nodded.
"What, you saw him, too?"
The young man came out from the back.
"He understands some English, but he doesn't really speak."
"Oh. He tapped the photo as though he knew this man. Could you ask him about it for me?"
The young man came and looked at the grainy newspaper image of Balthazar, and the newsletter photo of Anton, then shrugged.
"All old white guys look the same."
"Oh. So you don't remember either of these men?"
Grudgingly, he looked at the photos again, and tapped Anton's. "Maybe this one. Seems like he came in, said he was a painter."
"Why did he want fireworks?"
"We got Emerald Green, Paris Green, and Scheele's green. Different names for pretty much the same thing. Any kind copper arsenite, copper acetoarsenite. You can use it as a pigment, mix it for paint colors. Gotta be careful, though, it's poison."
"Do you keep records of when you sold it, who you sold it to, maybe?"
"Yeah, right." He laughed and escorted me out.
Dear readers, I have been asked many times, isn't it illegal to copy a painting? I shall clarify:
1. Creating a new Old Master is not, in itself, a crime.
2. Pretending that the painting is a genuine Old Master, and therefore selling it for much more than it would have been sold as a copy, is a crime according to Interpol and the FBI.
3. Creating fake certificates of authentification or otherwise falsifying a trail of provenance, is always a crime.
4. To deprive the world of my masterpieces, my versions of beautiful paintings...well, this would be the greatest crime of all.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Will and Nicole were cousins who squabbled like siblings.
"Order," she demanded.
"You order," Will replied.
"Don't argue with me, William. I know where your bodies are buried."
"You really want to launch a cycle of revenge that can only end in tragedy?"
Nicole rolled her eyes. "I speak Mandarin, Will, not Cantonese. Order."
"Right. You grew up in Chinatown with Cantonese parents but only speak Mandarin. We're not buying it, are we, Annie?" Will looked at me for support, but I was staying out of it.
"I learned at college," Nicole explained to me. "Cantonese and Mandarin are the same written language but not the same spoken language. I can communicate in Cantonese just fine as long as I'm writing."
"So write already," said Will. "I'm hungry."
I got the feeling I was witnessing a Chan Family Smackdown. My money was on Nicole.
She stared at her cousin and raised one eyebrow.
He finally snorted and rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll do it. But only because I'm starving." Will flagged down a waiter who soon returned with several plates of noodles, rice, fried meats, and vegetables. The scrumptious-smelling dishes were placed on the lazy Susan in the middle of the large round table we shared with others.
The cavernous room was filled with men, women, and children and loud with the clatter of dishes and the sound of people speaking, presumably, in Cantonese.
"So," Will said as we started in on the varied delicacies, "Nicole says you want to know about the tunnels."
"Do you think they really exist?"
"I know they do. I've seen evidence of them when they take down buildings, that sort of thing. PG and E knows about them, too."
"The gas company?"
"They know what's under the streets. Infrastructure. Pretty important."
"So if everyone knows about these tunnels, why are they still considered a myth?"
"Fact is, there's all sorts of weird stuff goes on under our feet: pipes, wires, cables, sewers. Did you ever hear about them finding old, wrecked ships sometimes when they excavate new building sites? But these might not be tunnels the way most people think about them. There were two and a half miles of brick sewer tunnels under Chinatown alone, back in the day, before the quake. They were big enough to walk in, and discharged into the bay."
"What were the tunnels used for?"
"Besides the sewage and coal they were designed for? Anything you didn't want people to know about. Gambling, smoking opium, smuggling. Maybe just a place to get away from the whites. No offense."
"Racial violence was a fact of life in old Chinatown," Nicole said. "Every once in a while tensions would flare out of control and curfews were imposed on anyone of Asian heritage. When bubonic plague broke out at the turn of the twentieth century, Chinatown was put under strict curfew. They may have needed the tunnels to move around after sunset."
"Or to get away from their wives," Will teased.
"They wished. Most of the men didn't have wives. That was the whole point of bringing in girls for prostitution: the whites didn't want the Chinese to marry, settle down, and start families, so they didn't allow marriageable Asian women to enter the country. Then somebody started bringing in Chinese girls to work as house servants, claiming they were here under 'three-year service contracts,' though they were usually forced into prostitution or domestic slavery. The authorities looked the other way."
Will gave the lazy Susan a spin and said to me, "Try the chicken feet."
"She doesn't want chicken feet," Nicole objected. "Why would she want chicken feet?"
"They're good!"
"Ignore him, Annie," Nicole said. "Nobody's feelings will be hurt if you don't eat chicken feet."
One of my strengths as a social being was the ability to eat almost anything, so I tried the chicken feet.
"What do you think?" Will asked, impressed.
"They're kind of...gelatinous. They're okay, but keep slipping out of my chopsticks," I said, dabbing at a spot on my silk blouse left by a swan-diving chicken's foot. "I like the noodles better."
"Who doesn't?" Nicole said, nudging her cousin.
"Allow me to continue my fascinating historical lecture," Will said. "A lot of the so-called 'dens of iniquity' that so intrigued non-Chinese were actually connected basements that were built to follow the contours of Chinatown's steep hills. Tourists thought they were several floors beneath the surface when in reality they were in a cellar just below street level. Same thing with the speakeasies during Prohibition. The subterranean mystique was good for business. Customers loved the thrill."
"How about under Nob Hill?"
"What about it?"
"Are there tunnels under there, as well?"
The cousins exchanged a look.
"There are stories about that," said Will. "Supposedly there used to be. But I don't know if it's ever been confirmed."
"Your Uncle Anton mentioned he'd found out something about that," Nicole said. "He was going to ask the F-U for some grant money to restore the Cameron House mural and other decorative pieces we inherited over the years."
"He intended to ask the Fleming-Union for money?"
"It seems only right considering their history. I'm not one to blame the living for the sins of the dead, but in this case some kind of reparations seem in order."
"What did they do?"
"Domestic slavery. Worse, maybe. Donaldina Cameron was never able to make much progress with them; they had more pull than she did. It's rumored the folks on 'Snob Hill' had their own tunnels connecting the homes of the wealthy so they could trade girls back and forth without anyone knowing. All the other mansions were destroyed in the earthquake, but the F-U kept the tradition alive."
\*
By the time we parted, the city lights were coming on, making San Francisco look like fairyland. Nicole and Will wished me luck in my search and I hiked the several city blocks, mostly uphill, back to my truck.
What Nicole hinted at about the history of the Fleming-Union seemed to confirm my worst prejudices about all-male, exclusive refuges of the super-wealthy. Michael was right, that sort of milieu twists people. On the other hand, I reminded myself that I had a tendency to jump to conclusions. After all, a lot of organizations had shocking histories. And this in no way proved that anyone connected to the F-U had set out to harm Anton.
My stomach lurched when I thought of my uncle. I kept half expecting a phone call from the hospital, saying Anton had awakened and told everyone what the heck's been going on; either that, or a phone call saying he would never be able to speak to us again.
The current situation was ironic, really. Had it not been for Anton's being poisoned I might well be with Frank at this very moment, developing that love life Anton was so keen on.
I needed a serious distraction.
Surely the police would have cleared out of Anton's studio by now?
While riffling through the cab of my truck earlier, I noticed a respirator with a pack of fresh cartridges stashed behind the seat. I couldn't tell whether it was rated for arsenic, but presuming Hazmat had done their job airing things out, it wouldn't be an issue.
The street outside of Anton's place was quiet, with no police presence in sight. I slipped in through the gate and across the courtyard, then up the rickety stairs to Anton's atelier built over a garage.
At the top landing outside his door, I cut the police tape, used my old key to his studio, took a deep breath, pulled on my respirator, and started snooping.
Like most artists, Anton was a messy guy. Still, despite the general jumble and the aftermath of the police investigation, the studio did not show signs of having been ransacked. So whoever attacked him had either found what they were looking for sitting out in the open, or they were simply trying to silence the old forger. Successfully, so far.
I noticed that Hazmat had cleared out all toxic substances, which is saying a lot in a traditional artist's studio. Turpentine, mineral spirits, linseed oil, and of course any arsenic green they might have found. Normally Anton's shelves were crowded with dusty glass jars and bottles filled with enough toxic liquids and powders to rival nearby former Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard as a Superfund site.
In one dim corner stood a mannequin draped with an embroidered velvet cape and wearing a jaunty felt hat decorated with a large ostrich feather, à la the Three Musketeers. Mismatched bookcases, window ledges, table tops, and all other horizontal surfaces were cluttered with dirty wineglasses, half-empty cups of tea, cigar butts, wrinkled sketches, stacks of reference books, outlandish Mardi Gras masks, sea shells, goose feathers, flower pods, and teetering stacks of art supply catalogs hawking everything from gold gilt to terrazzo.
It was much like my own studio, except that the balding Pole's fondness for unfiltered Gitanes cigarettes made this place smell like a cheap French tavern on New Year's Day. Still, for an art restorer that could be a plus. Just as it does with the human body, nicotine speeds the aging process of paintings. It is an old forger's trick to tint new canvases an age-appropriate brownish-yellow by pumping cigarette smoke into sealed chambers.
I spotted a stack of unframed canvases leaning against one wall and wandered over. Shoving aside an insipid nineteenth-century landscape, I flipped through the paintings, which ranged in style from French Rococo to American Expressionism. None was worth much. Anton had probably picked them up for a song at estate sales and flea markets with the idea of recycling the vintage linen canvases and the aged wood stretchers dotted with authentic wormholes. A forgery painted on top of one of these would be good enough to fool most art dealers and collectors, the majority of whom decide on a painting's authenticity after a cursory inspection by the naked eye. More reliable testing methods, such as chemical paint composition analysis and spectrometer X rays of the underpainting, are expensive and are reserved for the most valuable works of art. A clever artist can make a good living, and avoid a prison sentence, by painting forgeries that sell for thousands of dollars instead of millions.
But Anton had promised me he hadn't been involved in anything nefarious lately. Supposedly he had gone straight.
A man appeared in the doorway.
I jumped and let out a scream, blessedly muffled by the respirator.
Jarrah Preston. "Sorry 'bout that. Did I scare you?"
I took off the mask. "Just a little jumpy, I guess. Let's talk outside."
We descended the wooden stairs and sat on a sad-looking concrete bench surrounded by a couple of tomato plants and straggly bushes that looked suspiciously like pot.
"I'm so sorry about what happened to your uncle," Preston began. "I had no idea this Gauguin thing would stir up a viper's nest."
"So you don't think this was an accident?"
He shook his head. "Do you?"
I shook mine in response. "But we can't be sure it has anything to do with the forgery, can we?"
"It would be awfully coincidental, if not. I wonder if Elijah---"
"He's dead."
"Dead?"
"He was the body we found in the bathtub at the Fleming-Union."
He looked stunned. "You're saying both the man who painted the copy, and the one who brought in the forgery for sale, are dead?"
"Anton's still alive." My voice shook slightly.
"Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I meant to say that they were both assaulted."
"Hardly seems like an accident, does it?"
He shook his head. "But why would they be harmed? What could they be hiding? What possible motivation?"
"What made you stop by this morning, when you found Anton?"
"He called and left me a message last night, saying he wanted to speak with me. I didn't get the voicemail until this morning, and I came right over."
We sat in companionable silence for a long few minutes, both lost in thought.
"Where to now?" Jarrah asked. I heard frank sympathy in his voice.
I shrugged, at a complete loss.
"It's late," he added. "A good night's sleep works wonders."
"I'm not supposed to go home," I thought aloud. Frank's warning rang in my ears. He was probably overreacting...or maybe he had just said that in an attempt to seduce me. Nah. Frank was more upfront than that. Still, the thought of climbing three stories to a lonely apartment, the one that still carried the fragrance of saffron rice cooked by the little Pole currently lying prostrate in the San Francisco General ICU, was too much.
Jarrah raised his eyebrows in question.
"I had something of a run-in with Balthazar Odibajian earlier today."
"What kind of a run-in?"
"I sort of broke into the Fleming-Union and...kind of accused him of being involved in what happened to Anton."
He gave a silent whistle. "I warned you Odibajian was a bit of a dag. But you really think he's a physical threat?"
"Probably not. But I promised someone I would lay low for a couple of days, let things cool off. Just in case."
"I've a suite at the Palace."
"What are you, visiting royalty?"
He gave me a wicked grin. "Expense account."
"I want your job."
"Sure, it looks glamorous, but the reality is traveling first-class to fabulous places, meeting fascinating people, and in general living the high life. How much can one man take?"
"Do you think Augusta Confederated would hire me to take your place, once I've served my time for killing you?"
He gave me a crooked smile. "How about a bribe to let me live? I can offer dinner and an expensive bottle of wine, and you're welcome to sleep over. There's a pull-out sofa in the sitting room. Can't imagine Odibajian would be able to track you down there."
"Really?"
"It'll be my first American slumber party."
"A real slumber party includes pillow fights."
"If you insist," he said with a slight leer. "But only if we do it in our jammies."
I laughed. "I'm afraid at this point, I might fall asleep in the elevator on the way up."
"Then by all means, let's get you to bed. And don't worry, no funny stuff."
Jarrah was true to his word. We ordered up room service, watched an appalling amount of cable TV, sipped a lovely Cabernet Franc, and then he tucked me into the sleeper sofa with a brotherly wink.
I really was going to have to visit New Zealand one of these days. Nice people.
\*
Despite what my friends, enemies, and acquaintances seem to think of me, I haven't spent all that much time walking on life's wild side. I have never, for example, been in a street fight. I have never driven faster than eighty miles per hour, though in fairness this is because I've never had a vehicle that would go any faster. I don't have a tattoo. I have never danced naked in public. And never have I set foot inside a pawnshop.
Until today.
The store was in Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue. It looked like a cross between a regular retail shop and a high-end thrift store. Electronics and musical instruments lined the walls and took up most of the floor space, but there were also glass cases packed with jewelry, watches and guns, silver tea services and similar wedding-and anniversary-themed knickknacks, and, most disturbingly, numerous children's bicycles.
The man behind the counter was huge, dressed in a black leather vest over a Harley-Davidson T-shirt that was meant to either disguise or highlight his substantial gut. Greasy brown hair hung in lank clumps around his sallow face, his nose was vaguely porcine, and his bloodshot brown eyes bugged out in an unfortunate manner. He was, in brief, precisely what one expected of the proprietor of a pawnshop.
"Good morning," I said, ignoring his baleful glare and holding out the article with the photo of the Odibajians. "Do you by any chance happen to know these guys?"
He shrugged.
"Is that a yes or a no?"
"Vamoose, lady. I'm not good with faces."
"Did I mention Hipolit sent me?"
His prominent eyes got even bigger. Now he looked like a praying mantis. "Prove it."
"Call him."
"Don't have his number."
"I do." I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and flipped it open. "I'll be sure to mention you're not being helpful."
He grunted, glanced at the photo, and shook his head. "Haven't seen 'em."
"How about someone looking to sell a Gauguin?"
"A Gauguin? Like a real one?"
Either this particular pawnshop owner had taken a few art history classes, or he was a fence. I nodded.
"Coupla guys came in, askin' 'bout it a while back, two, three weeks ago."
"What kind of guys?"
"Two-bit hoods, not my usual clientele, if you catch my drift. I don't deal with that sort of thing much. Told 'em to get the provenance together and we'd talk. I'm no retard."
"Who were they? Where were they from?"
"We weren't formally introduced. Butler's day off."
I bit down on my annoyance. "What did the men look like?"
"One was kinda middle-aged, the other young, probably in his twenties. I told you, amateurs."
"White guys?"
He nodded.
"Hair color, height?"
He shrugged, buggy eyes focusing on a pair of teenage boys who had entered the shop and were admiring an electric guitar. "Like I said, I don't really know nothin'."
"Not even for Hippo?"
"Not tall, not short. Look, they didn't make an impression, okay? You want me to lie and say somethin' else, just tell me what. I'll do it. But I can't tell you somethin' I don't know."
It was a weirdly honest response. "How about a bronze sculpture? A life-sized sculpture of a Greek god. Anybody try to sell that recently?"
"That one? Sure. Those guys have tried to foist that thing off on every pawnshop from here to Sacramento. Coupla morons get drunk one night and snatch a---what? Five-hundred-pound? More?---big-ass sculpture off the street? How ya gonna move somethin' like that? Ain't no market for that sort of thing. Crazy-ass, shit-for-brains fuck-ups. Pardon my French."
"I think that's actually their legal name."
"You know, for a stuck-up bitch, you're all right."
"Thanks. Were those the same guys as the ones talking about the Gauguin?"
"What?" His attention was again fixed on the boys playing around with the guitar. "Oh, no. Different guys. Look, lady, like I said, I don't know nothin'. Okay? Hey, you two. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you. Watch it with that---that guitar's expensive...."
"All right. Thanks."
"Hey, any time. You be sure an' tell Hippo I cooperated, will ya?"
"Will do."
Seemed I now had a friend in the pawning business.
I walked into an "art" store today, and was confronted with hundreds of tubes of different oil colors! I simply must protest. First, an artist should mix his or her own paint. It is an act of devotion and love. Second, if you must buy "off the shelf," consider the traditional palette: 1. Flake White 2. Yellow Ochre 3. Venetian Red 4. Charcoal Black. Finis. From these, you can mix a pale blue, an olive green, flesh tones, and a rich brown. From these alone, such artists as Rembrandt and Hals created masterpieces.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
As long as I was in Oakland, I decided to stop by the Piedmont Hills jobsite where my contractor friend, Norm Berger, was working. Norm had asked me to bid on the job last month, but the homeowner had low-balled it and I'd walked away. It was just as well; I never regretted losing those kinds of customers. Whenever a homeowner tries to save on remodeling costs by skimping on the subcontractors, it turns out badly.
From half a block away the annoying whine of a compressor clued me in to the jobsite. As I approached I saw dust wafting through open windows, plastic sheeting tacked across door frames, and scaffolding climbing the side of the Italianate Revival home.
"Well, well, well. If it ain't Her Highness, the Princess of Paint," Norm called out. With his dishwater blond hair, nicotine-stained teeth, and belly hanging over his dusty jeans, Norm could have been the pawnshop owner's brother by a different father. Today's T-shirt, tame by Norm standards, read REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS .
"Heya, Norm. What're you up to?"
"Oh, 'bout two hundred pounds," he said. "Hey, what the hell happened over to the F-U? McAdams called for another reference to finish up their job. I got Marisco on it."
"Mauricio, not Marisco."
"What's the diff?"
" Marisco means seafood, whereas Mauricio is actually a man's name. Like Maurice."
"And your point is...?"
"It's...nothing. So they hired him to finish the job I started?"
"Yeah. This sorta thing doesn't look great for me, ya know. Anyhoo, glad you're here. I gotta ask you about a gold gilt dealio in the master. Mauricio--- " he enunciated in an exaggerated fashion "---is up there if you want to talk to him."
Upstairs we entered a huge room that served as the master bath. Mauricio was a young man with a slight build and a quick smile; he was covered in dust from sanding what may well have been lead paint, given the age of the house. We had all worked together a couple of months ago on a job in Pacific Heights.
We talked shop for a few minutes: I mixed a Venetian red base color for Mauricio, and gave him a few pointers on how to restore the gold and silver gilt on the bathroom mirror frames. The original base for gilding was clay, which was dampened and made slick and smooth as glass before the tissue-thin sheets of metal were applied. These days we use a poor substitute, red oxide acrylic paint, but if done correctly the overall effect is superb. The secret is to make the base as smooth as possible, and to "age" the final gilt surface with steel wool and a coat of burnt umber varnish or amber shellac.
Watch out , I thought, wrenching myself back from the paints and brushes and sample pieces laid out on a temporary work table. I yearned to stay and play, but I wasn't being paid, after all. And if I gave away all my faux-finish secrets to house-painters I'd wind up losing all my bids, and then I'd have to make my living as an investigator.
"So, you're working on the Fleming Mansion?" I asked Mauricio.
He nodded eagerly. "They told me it was a rush job. I been there all yesterday. Removed most of the paper but haven't started painting yet. I got two men there today just sanding and filling, doing prep."
"In the attic rooms?"
"And the second floor, too."
"The second floor? Where?"
"A couple bedrooms had water damage like in the attic."
"Do you remember which rooms? The numbers?"
"Two-twelve and two-ten, I think. Two-twelve was the worst. We were there all yesterday. I wasn't feeling that great this morning, so I came here instead."
"Do you have any of the wallpaper scraps?"
He gave me an odd look. "No, we took 'em to the landfill already. Cleanup's part of the job."
"Right. Did you wear masks?"
He shook his head.
"You and your workers should really wear protective gear, Mauricio. This sort of thing can catch up with you." I glared at Norm. "OSHA, for example, might have a few thoughts on the subject were it to stumble upon this jobsite after, say, receiving an anonymous tip from a good citizen."
"Yeah, yeah, okay," Norm gave me a glare. "Marisco, get some masks for you and the boys."
"Not just cheap dust masks," I put in. "You need respirators with cartridges that are rated for lead dust and fumes."
"Yeah, whatever the princess says," Norm grumbled before leading me out of the room and down the stairs. "You're a bleeding-heart-liberal pain in my ass, you know that?"
"That's why you like me so much," I said. "So, about the F-U boys. Anything about them seem odd to you?"
"You mean a bunch of super-rich guys playing house together? It's all weird, you ask me. They should just marry each other and make it official. That's legal now, ain't it?"
"Not quite. Did you know they had a private art gallery there?"
"Nah, but it weren't like they were giving me the grand tour. Alls I did was put on a new roof, a little electrical and plumbing, some finish work. And send them a huge bill."
Our conversation paused while we walked past a compressor drowning out all conversation with its ear-splitting wail. We went out the front door and Norm closed it behind us, quieting things down a tad.
"This one time I went in? Emergency call, leaking roof. Flunky hustled me upstairs but not before I saw what they were doing."
"Human sacrifices?" I guessed.
"Nope. The men were all dressed in old-fashioned costumes and the women were all hoes. And get this: they were all sittin' round like they's at an indoor picnic. Weird."
"How do you know the women were hoes?"
"They were all naked. Butt-naked."
"Ah."
" 'Cept for some leaves."
"Got the picture."
He gave a wolfish grin. "The weird part was that they made, like, fake trees n' shit, and rolled out some sod---I'm not kiddin' you, real honest-to-God sod right there on the floor---and had set up a whole picnic. You wanna picnic, don't you go to Golden Gate Park or somethin'?"
"Not if you want the women naked."
"I guess you got me there."
"What did they do when you saw them?"
He shook his head. "They didn't see me. Figured they weren't in the mood to talk shop, so I just left."
"Did you ever meet Elijah Odibajian?"
"Oh, that the guy they found in the bathtub? I saw that on the news." He shook his head. "I dealt with McAdams, same as you. The only strange thing was, he asked for you by name."
"McAdams asked for me? I thought you gave him my name."
Norm shook his head. "I woulda, don't get me wrong, but he said he knew we'd worked together on the Garner place and asked for you. That's why I don't get why he wanted somebody else. Whadja do? Take a dump in the men's room and not flush?"
"Norm, you're something else."
He grinned, flashing nicotine-stained teeth. "Hey: I'm here, I drink beer, get used to it."
\*
The upside to running afoul of the law over the past few years is that I now have a network of friends and acquaintances with useful expertise. Elena-the-lawyer, for instance, and Annette-the-cop, who, if she weren't suspecting me of crimes and whatnot, would be especially useful. But more to the point at the moment: I knew a chemist.
Brianna Nguyen was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. We'd met only once, when her roommate got involved with some bad types at Oakland's historic Bayview cemetery. It was a difficult time, but I was pretty sure she'd remember me, and I needed her expertise. I drove up past the magnificent Claremont Hotel, through the university campus, and finally found a metered parking spot not too far from Hildebrand Hall, one of several buildings housing the College of Chemistry. I made my way to an institutional beige break room frequented by graduate students, and found Brianna almost exactly as I had the last time we spoke: huddled over a huge notebook, making notes in tiny, neat little columns of words and numbers.
"Brianna?" I said.
"Oh my God!" she said as she looked up, pushing long, straight, shiny hair out of her face. She looked all of fifteen years old in her fashionable jeans and gauzy floral blouse, and she spoke like a true California Valley Girl, but I knew from experience she was a knowledgeable scientist. "It's been, like, forever. Did someone else die?"
"As a matter of fact..."
"Oh. My. God ." She gasped. One hand flew up to her cheek, her jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. "I was just kidding! You have, like, the worst job ever ."
I could think of a few worse ones---cleaning out the sewer plant, for instance---but I saw her point.
"I was hoping you could help me. I need to know the specifics on arsenic poisoning. How long does it take? What are the symptoms?"
"I'm no expert," she said with a little shrug of her slim shoulders. "I mean, as far as I know arsenic poisoning basically involves the allosteric inhibition of essential metabolic enzymes, the ones that require lipoic acid as a cofactor, such as pyruvate and alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase. On account of that, the substrates before the dehydrogenase steps accumulate, such as pyruvate and lactate."
I must have been staring.
"What is it?" Brianna asked.
I cleared my throat. "Sorry, I know you were speaking English but I have no idea what you just said."
She rolled her eyes. "It screws with your circulatory system and brain, causing neurological disturbances and leading to death from multi-system organ failure."
"Okay, that I get. How hard is it to detect?"
"Used to be hard, which is why it was so popular for killing your family members. White arsenic used to be called 'inheritance powder,' can you imagine? It's pretty standard to test for it now, though. In fact, they can find traces in hair so they can even dig up old bodies and run the tests if someone makes allegations of foul play after death. Oh my God , are you digging up bodies again, like you did in Bayview Cemetery?"
"I never dug up bodies."
"Grave robbery, then."
"No, I've never..." I sighed. What shreds of a reputation was I trying to salvage, anyway? "Never mind. I'm just trying to understand what happened to my uncle. He's still alive, but he was found---" it was still hard for me to get the words out "---poisoned by arsine gas."
"Arsine gas? Are you sure?"
"That's what they said."
"That's, like, a whole different deal than eating it. That hardly ever happens anymore. Does he work in a metal factory, some kind of manufacturing that mixes metals?"
I shook my head.
"That's weird then. Does he live in a place with really old wallpaper?"
Again with the killer wallpaper. "No. But how would that work?"
"Back in the day, like the late eighteen-hundreds, this Italian biochemist named Gosio figured out that when Scheele's green, a popular pigment at the time, is used in wallpaper and stuff, and it gets wet and then moldy, the latent arsenic in the green pigment can convert to vapor arsine, even dimethyl and trimethyl arsine. In these old homes, whole families were dying off, kids first since they're smaller and closer to the floor. The gas is heavier than air. Some people think that's what killed Napoleon when he was exiled on that island...what was it again?"
"Elba?"
"No...St. Helena. Anyway, he got exiled there and then got sick. Somehow they had a piece of the old wallpaper so they analyzed it to see if there was any arsenic green. By the way, the green darkens with exposure to oxygen, especially when it's degrading, so the paper might not look green. It goes kinda brown or gray. You can always find out by using an energy-dispersive analysis, like the Niton Portable XRF spectrometer. There's one around here somewhere. Want to borrow it?"
"Could I?"
"Sure. Just don't tell anybody you're not, you know, official UC. Want to test your uncle's wallpaper?"
"Actually, in his case I don't think there was any wallpaper involved. But he was an artist, and he might have been mixing a pigment he got from a fireworks distrib---"
I was cut off by Brianna's quick intake of breath. "Oooh, nasty. You can still get those colors, like Paris Green and stuff, and if they mix with any kind of hydrochloric acid you're in serious trouble. He's in the hospital? Are they chelating?"
"Even as we speak."
"That's good, then. He'll prob'ly be okay. It's a good thing he was found in time. Does he like garlic?"
"Garlic?"
"They say people who eat a lot of garlic don't absorb the arsenic as well, or pee a lot of it out or something. I read about it once. Arsenic's a real problem in the drinking water in parts of India, so a lot of the information comes from there. The scientists there are probably the most knowledgeable on the subject these days. It doesn't come up much around here, since arsenic has been outlawed from anything but rat poison for years. Oh, and fireworks."
\*
After stopping for a quick garlic-based lunch at a small trattoria on Hearst, I pulled the Gauguin case file out of my satchel. Time to talk to Victor Yeltsin, victim of art theft...or perpetrator of insurance fraud. I still had no idea how he might be involved with Elijah Odibajian's fate, much less Anton's, but there was no time like the present to find out.
Cathy Yeltsin answered the phone and remembered our meeting in Huntington Park. I mentioned the remodeling project she wanted to talk about, and she invited me over to talk faux "right this minute."
Unfortunately there are no good traffic options to get from Oakland to Sausalito on a weekday afternoon. One choice was to take the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, cross the city on surface streets, then head over the Golden Gate Bridge; alternatively, you could head north and cross the Richmond--San Rafael Bridge, pass San Quentin Prison, take surface streets through Larkspur Landing, pick up the freeway again and drive another twelve miles or so to the west.
I opted for the latter. It took me a good fifty minutes to arrive in quaint, tourist-clogged Sausalito, a small, historic fishing village on the bay just north of San Francisco.
Cathy had given me directions, but I'm better with visuals: I followed Anton's sketched map through the narrow, twisty roads etched out of the steep side of the mountain. The Yeltsins' house was a modern structure that clung to what appeared to be a sheer cliff. It offered an amazing view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge to the right, and Alcatraz and Angel Islands in the bay to the left.
So this is what undisclosed consulting work can get you, I thought. Maybe I should take up vague consulting for a career myself, and let Jarrah Preston keep his job.
The door was already opening as I angled my truck into the apron of the driveway, trying to leave enough room for cars to be able to pass on the narrow street. I noted an alarm service sticker in the window, right next to a Cal Bears placard.
A petite but perfectly muscled, tanned, dark-haired man with limited English skills stood at the door, beckoning me inside. Barefoot and wearing cut-off jeans, he looked like a pool boy in Acapulco---not that I would know from experience, not living the kind of life that allowed me to loll by pools in lush tropical settings. The case file referred to a statement from a "houseboy." Would this be him? Kyle something?
I followed the young man into the home, which featured plate-glass windows to take advantage of the view. Unfortunately, it was hard to notice the view because of all of the art, taking up every free inch of wall and floor space.
Normally I was in favor of such things. But this art...
There were wooden carvings from Africa with huge phalluses, and clay reproductions---or were they real?---of pre-Columbian artifacts with huge phalluses, and oils and acrylic paintings and drawings and etchings of everything from mythological satyrs to space aliens with huge phalluses. And everywhere in between were Indian paintings, sculptures, and woodcuts of couples enacting the Kama Sutra , and deities with huge phalluses.
I was sensing a theme.
I'm an art lover. And I'm no prude. But this stuff had me wishing I was tucked away in my studio or on some nameless jobsite faux-finishing banisters.
Banisters made me think of huge phalluses.
I tried to clear my mind.
"Annie!" Cathy wore black Spandex pants and a stretchy shirt that formed a V to point out her spectacular cleavage. Pedicured feet were stuffed into leopard-print backless pumps with a puff of red feathers on the toe. She rushed over to me and gave me a big hug, as though we were fast friends instead of virtual strangers. "I am so glad you could come! I've been telling Victor all about you, and he's beside himself as well. Wonderful, just wonderful. So glad you came."
I wondered if Cathy might be playing fast and loose with the Prozac. No one was this happy all the time.
"Ah, here he is now. Victor, lovey, come meet Annie Kincaid, the miracle worker who's going to transform our basement for us."
"Good to meet you," Victor said with a smile, holding his hand out to shake. Afterward, he held my hand in both of his, gazing into my eyes with a very warm welcome. Too warm. He was a powerfully built man in his early fifties, dressed in white pants and turtleneck, with a shining pink bald head.
Like a penis.
I looked away, desperate for someplace to rest my eyes without thinking about sex and nudity.
"Great view," I said, admiring the sights out the window.
"Please, come in, have a seat. Jean-Paul," he said in a deep, booming voice to the young man who answered the door, "get Annie a sherry."
"Oh, no thanks, I'm fi---"
Before I could finish my protest, a small crystal glass was held out to me. I accepted it.
Victor and Cathy took seats on a lipstick-red leather couch. She perched with her short, shapely legs crossed demurely. He relaxed with his arms up on the back of the couch and his knees splayed open, wide apart.
I remained silent for a moment, trying to decide which approach to use. I'd had the entire traffic-clogged drive over here to come up with something to say, yet everything I had practiced seemed somehow inadequate when faced with Victor and Cathy in the House of Erotic Art.
"You're not here for a faux-finish job," Victor said, breaking the long silence.
"I'm not?"
He shook his head and gave me a half smile. Cathy looked at me, then back up at Victor, making a distressed little moue.
"Then what am I here for?" I asked. Heh. Frank's interrogation technique---refusing to talk---really did work well. I could be as noncommunicative as Frank.
"You're working with Jarrah Preston. You want to ask about the stolen Gauguin."
"Oh dear," whispered Cathy, frowning.
"How did you know that?"
"He told me you'd be calling. Why the subterfuge?"
"I just wasn't sure about the situation...and then I happened to meet Cathy in Huntington Park, and she asked me about the faux finish, and since that really is my main job, I thought I'd go with it." So much for playing my cards close to my chest.
"Kill two birds with one stone, eh?"
"Something like that."
Victor nodded his shiny bald head and stared at me.
"So," I said, pulling the case file out of my satchel. "Could you go over the basics of the case with me?"
"I believe my statements---both the one to the police at the time, and the more recent one to Preston---are in the report."
"Oblige me," I said, now trying to channel Inspector Annette Crawford. I even attempted to do her one-eyebrow-lifting thing, but I only managed to twist my forehead, which I felt sure made me look more crazy than intimidating.
"Cathy and I had gone out for the evening, it was a Saturday."
I glanced down at the file. "You were at the Power Play?"
"Have you been there?"
" Me ? Um, no... Nope. Uh-uh. Nosiree..."
I really am not a prude. I love that the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the few places in the world where people are, by and large, allowed---encouraged, even---to explore their fantasies and pursue what is so coyly referred to as their "lifestyle." Still, there are certain aspects of said lifestyles about which I am just as happy to remain ignorant. It's sort of like thinking about your parents' sex life: you may know they have one, and are glad for it, but it's really best not to dwell on the specifics.
I was getting to know a little too much about Victor and Cathy already. I wasn't near ready for their club outfits.
"You should go," Victor was saying. "It would be an eye-opener. People unfamiliar with the lifestyle tend to think of us as sickos, aberrant. Nothing could be further from the truth."
He curled his arm around his wife. Their eyes met and held, and they shared a smile.
I cleared my throat. "So you were at the club until..."
"They close at two, so we probably got home about five."
"And the intervening time..."
"We joined some friends at their home."
"Oh." Clear the mind, Annie.
"When we returned, we found the place ransacked. It was terrible."
"It says in the report that there were signs of forced entry?"
He nodded. "A crowbar in the window."
"You owned some very valuable artwork. Why didn't you have an alarm system?"
"We did. This is a safe neighborhood, but the insurance stipulated we install a security system. But as you probably know, with a smash-and-grab job the thieves are gone long before the police arrive. The neighbors witnessed the whole thing, even saw a quick flash of the painting."
"Yes, I read that in the original report. How many people knew the artwork was here?"
"I told the police everyone I could think of. It was a long time ago, Annie."
"It would stand to reason that household employees would be high on the suspect list," I said.
"The only help we had at the time was our houseboy."
"And who was your...er...houseboy?"
"A young man named Kyle Jones. But the police cleared him. They searched his place and everything, but found nothing."
"Any idea where I could find Kyle?"
There was a slight hesitation. Cathy opened her pink-lipsticked mouth to say something, but Victor silenced her with a look. I thought I saw a strange flicker in his easy eyes.
"Kyle's often at the Power Play."
"At the...um..."
"The sex club. Right downtown."
"Oh, okay. Do you have any idea how Elijah Odibajian wound up with the painting in his possession?"
"Not at all."
"Do you know him?"
He shook his head.
"Aren't you both members of the Fleming-Union?"
Victor's eyes were growing more distant, his relaxed mien less so.
"No."
"No?"
"In any case, the members' list is private."
"I realize that, but we're talking about a crime---"
"It's not relevant. I have no association with Elijah Odibajian."
"How about Anton Woznikowicz?"
"Sure. Anton did some restoration work for me years ago."
"On the Gauguin?"
He nodded, then smiled down at a vague, distressed-looking Cathy, whose hands were tapping her knees. Victor put his hand over hers to stop their nervous fluttering. "You know, that painting was in Cathy's family for generations. Great-granddad Halstrom bought it in Amsterdam. We always hoped it would turn up somehow. And it did."
"You mean a forgery showed up."
Victor's gaze snapped up to meet mine. Already pale, he looked as though all the blood had drained from his face.
"A forgery?" he asked.
Oops. Was I not supposed to tell him that?
My phone rang again---Annette Crawford. I put it on Silent.
"Um, were you certain the painting was real when you owned it?"
"Of course it was real." He squirmed in his seat. "That's how we insured it for its worth. When can we get it back?"
"The insurance company owns it now, since they paid out for it."
"They don't want it. I do."
"You would have to return their money."
"That's not a problem."
"In any case, the painting that showed up at auction was a forgery, not the Gauguin you lost."
"That makes no sense," Victor protested, though his voice had lost its booming self-assurance.
"I'll leave those discussions to you and Jarrah Preston," I said, standing. I was anxious to have this interview over with. "Thanks for talking to me."
"Before you leave, don't you want to see the faux-finishing project?" Cathy asked.
No .
"Oh, right. Sure," I said. "That'd be great."
She and I descended a narrow flight of stairs into the basement. Intricate Indian tapestries adorned the walls on either side.
"I see you like Indian art," I said.
"Oh! I lo-o-ove it! It's so brash, so overtly sensual, don't you think? I spent some time there as a student. Even attended an ashram."
"Really? That must have been fascinating."
"Oh, it was. I traveled all about. Believe it or not, I was a science major in college, but after my time in India everything changed."
I wondered about access to drugs in India. Wasn't that what the Beatles discovered on their roads to enlightenment? Maybe that's why she was so happy all the time. On the other hand, I was awfully quick to attribute Cathy's perpetually sunny nature to chemical substances. Cynic. Maybe she was on a natural high, born from her activities at the Power Play. What did I know?
I looked around the unfinished basement. Spackled, unprimed wallboard and bare wooden beams gave it the look of half-done basements the world over. The space, though windowless, boasted a normal-height ceiling and an open floor plan that ran the full footprint of the house.
"Nice basement," I murmured. "Lots of potential."
"We never quite got around to finishing up in here. What I really want is for it to look like a medieval dungeon."
"A dungeon."
Her eyes twinkled. "Like a modern rumpus room."
"For the kids or..."
Her laugh practically echoed in the under-furnished space. "Good heavens, no! For our grown-up play. Could you paint it to look like stone walls, like an old castle? Gargoyles, maybe, and you could paint a flag with the colors on it, like old style? Like at the Renaissance Faire---do you ever go to that?"
"Um, sure." I had taken my nephews to the Ren-Faire last year. They wore plastic swords tucked into leather belts, and I dressed up as a tavern wench. It had been good, innocent fun. It would be hard now to see it in the same light. "I have to go...away now. I'll get back to you on this."
When we emerged, Victor was nowhere to be found.
"That's odd...Victor!" Cathy yelled as she ducked in and out of rooms. "Victor's so special. An artistic temperament, you know. I don't know where he could be. Oh well, fiddle-dee-dee."
Fiddle-dee- dee ?
"Mommy!"
I swung around to see twin boys, about ten years old, both wearing blue-and-gold Cal sweatshirts, running in through the front door. They were followed by a sweet-faced toddler, also bedecked in UC style, and a bedraggled, plump young woman laden with an overstuffed diaper bag. I assumed she was the nanny.
"My angels!" Cathy fell to her knees and hugged the children to her. "How was the piano lesson? Do tell Mommy all about your day..."
I said a quick good-bye and slipped out the still-open front door. I had enough worlds colliding at the moment. I wasn't anxious to witness Catrina Yeltsin, Queen of the Dungeon, in Mommy mode.
Is there anything more beautiful than a well-rendered nude? There is no shame in such a painting; only beauty and metaphor and life.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
What next? The last pinky-gold rays of the afternoon sun were lighting up San Francisco and making the red-painted Golden Gate Bridge appear actually golden. I supposed if I were ambitious, I could go straight on over to the Power Play and look for an ex-houseboy named Kyle. The police had cleared him in the original theft, but talking to him seemed like a logical next step.
Still, I needed company for a trip to a San Francisco sex club. Moral support. Even at my most impulsive, going into a sex club alone sounded like a classic example of a Really Bad Idea.
Speaking of bad ideas, Balthazar Odibajian's house was around here somewhere. I had the exact address from Pedro. I looked it up. Not far, in Belvedere. Surely I could drive by without being noticed, so long as I took a few precautions. I smeared mud on my license plates, removed my magnetic TRUE/FAUX STUDIOS signs from my truck doors, donned a pair of sunglasses, and set off.
I cast my mind back to the last time I was in this neighborhood, accompanied by none other than Michael X. Johnson. He had talked our way into a private residence in search of a stolen painting, and then he had abandoned me there. Ah, the good old days.
There were two kinds of vehicles found in this sort of neighborhood: wildly expensive, and work trucks. I rolled by Balthazar Odibajian's driveway, pretending to be one of the help on the way home. Odibajian's place was impossible to see from the road, sealed off with iron gates and an eight-foot stucco wall. I wouldn't be surprised if broken glass was embedded in the top of the wall. Balthazar seemed the type.
Frank had told me this place was like a fortress, fortified against all attack. That was no understatement. A guard stood in a kiosk right inside the iron gates, under harsh security lights. Remote cameras atop occasional pillars followed my truck as I passed by.
Looked to me like Balthazar Odibajian had a lot to hide.
Weariness washed over me, reaching all the way down to my marrow. The most ambitious thing I could think about doing right now was passing by the hospital to check in on Anton. Maybe, I thought, hope rising, he had awoken and was able to speak. He could tell us what had happened, who had attacked him, and why.
Or not.
Anton's condition was stable, but he was still listed in critical condition. The doctors were keeping him sedated but retained high hopes for the effectiveness of the chelation therapy. I was glad to see that Hippo had assigned a man to guard Anton's bed twenty-four hours a day. I sat by my ersatz uncle, dozing slightly, until they kicked me out at eleven.
\*
I still couldn't face going home, so I called Sam. On my way over, Annette Crawford called again. I let it go to voicemail, and then checked my messages. She said it was very important she talk to me about a development in the Fleming-Union case. Like missing paintings, perhaps? Yikes. No way.
"Apparently we were the only ones besides the regular staff who were there that day," Sam told me as we slouched on her worn but comfy couch, brandy snifters of Nicaraguan rum in hand.
Sam, living in the world of the law-abiding, hadn't thought to duck the SFPD. She had already been questioned, but she didn't seem particularly traumatized by the event.
"And Crawford really thinks we might have taken the paintings?"
"I don't think so, not really, but she's obligated to follow up on all leads. Besides, she might believe us to be innocent, but I doubt she's so sanguine about your new business partner."
"Who, Michael?"
"She was asking for his whereabouts."
"Ungh."
"So now I'll ask: Where's Michael been lately?"
"He wouldn't do something like that."
Sam gave me the skeptical, chiding Mom-look I had seen her use on her children when they were teenagers sneaking home after curfew.
"Okay, okay," I said. "I will grant you that he used to do that sort of thing all the time. But he knew I was working at the Fleming Mansion---he wouldn't put me under suspicion like that. He's capable of a lot, but that is so not his style."
Sam gave a noncommittal shrug and sipped her rum.
"Besides, there's so much more to this whole thing," I continued. I told Sam about Anton's possible involvement, and my encounter with Balthazar Odibajian over lunch, and Cameron House and the pawnshop and the Yeltsins. It had been a busy few days.
"I don't see what any of this has to do with Elijah Odibajian being killed in a bathtub?"
"I don't know either, but when there are a lot of coincidences in my life things tend to go bad, fast. It's probably nothing. Most likely my imagination running away with me."
"Most likely."
"There's one other weird thing, though. Anton scribbled something about tunnels, and apparently there are tunnels under Chinatown and maybe even Nob Hill."
"I thought those tunnel stories were discredited. They've never found anything real, have they?"
I filled her in on my talk with Nicole and her cousin, and what I had seen at Cameron House.
"Okay, even if there were tunnels, and they were significant historically, I still don't get how they could be relevant to what you're talking about. A dead man in a tub, and Anton nearly dead from arsine gas."
"Yeah, I don't get that part either. Though tunnels would make a convenient way to spirit things out of the club without witnesses, wouldn't they?"
"Such as paintings?"
I nodded.
"I suppose... Still, how would you prove something like that?"
"I don't know. Maybe there's an obvious connection that would explain it all. Maybe there's a secret storage place."
"A storage unit down in secret tunnels? I think you're grasping at straws a bit."
"You're right, I know. But you have to admit I tend to stumble on to things, mostly by looking in places without any good reason."
She chuckled. "There's no arguing with that."
"So," my eyes slid over to her, "want to look for tunnels with me?"
"Nooooo. Nunh-uh. No thanks. Not my kind of thing. Finding a body in a bathtub was about my quota of excitement for the year. Or the decade, more like."
"I don't want to go by myself," I mused.
"I think that's wise. What about Michael? A thief like him ought to be able to ferret out secret passages, oughtn't he?"
"He's claustrophobic."
"Seriously?"
I nodded. "Got caught in a safe room once. Not a pretty sight. I doubt tunnels are his cup of tea."
"You know, the other, sane, idea is to talk to Inspector Crawford about all this. If there are tunnels, wouldn't the cops know about them? And if not, and there's a secret way in and out of the Fleming-Union, maybe they should know about it."
Good point. But that would require that I talk to Annette Crawford with her shiny SFPD badge. I know, I was working on personal growth and all, but this seemed like a bad idea, all the way around. Among other things, I didn't really know anything beyond conjecture and wild speculation with regard to the tunnels. That was plenty good for my unlicensed investigative standards, but official police types usually wanted something concrete to go on.
I stared into my rum.
"Anyway," Sam said, "tonight we both need to get some sleep. Reggie will be up early to make coffee and he'll probably rouse you. The man can't sleep past six o'clock, even on the weekends."
"That's okay. I've got a lot to do tomorrow, myself."
\*
The next morning Sam's husband, Reggie, stumbled into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and a rumpled white T-shirt. He took in my presence on the couch with the aplomb born of awakening often to find children's college friends, relatives, and assorted Caribbean types sprawled upon furniture and pallets on the floor. Reggie brewed a pot of coffee with quiet efficiency and passed me a lopsided orange-glazed mug made years ago by their son. I joined him at the vintage green linoleum kitchen table. He handed me the Arts and Leisure section of the paper, tapped an article on the front page, and spoke for the first time.
"Check out the story about a new museum of erotica in Russia. You should paint erotica, Annie. You'd make a fortune."
"I'm not so sure what I find erotic is what other people find erotic."
"You paint naked people all the time."
"Not the same thing," I said, taking a deep drink of my coffee. "Naked's not always sexy."
"You're telling me . I ran the Bay to Breakers last year. There are still a lot of naked images I'd like to get out of my head."
The Bay to Breakers is San Francisco's major annual footrace, where world-class athletes run twelve kilometers from the Embarcadero, on the bay, to the breaking surf of the Pacific. Accompanying the more traditional runners are thousands of cross-dressers, samba dancers, people dressed like pirates, roller-skaters, naked strollers. As befits the City by the Bay, pretty much anything goes. Spirits are high, the mood is lighthearted, and fun is had by all.
However, as one of my mature-beyond-his-years nephews noted, the kind of people who like to get naked in public are rarely the kind of people one would choose to see naked.
Reggie rattled the paper. "All I'm saying is, sex is on everybody's mind all the time. I'm a trained social worker. I know these things."
Sam dragged in, sleepy and grumpy. One of the things I like about my Jamaican friend is that despite her typical equanimity, she is as cranky in the morning as I.
"There she is," Reggie announced. "My own little ray of sunshine. Make us some breakfast, woman."
"Oh sure, I'll get right on it," Sam said with a snort.
Reggie smiled at me and winked.
"Last thing they need in Russia is a sex museum," Sam muttered. "Like they don't need, say, an economic infrastructure first."
"Nothing wrong with a museum of any kind," Reggie argued. "And there's nothing wrong with erotica and healthy sexuality. You two are prudes, is all."
"That's me in a nutshell," I said.
"Prude is my middle name," Sam echoed, smiling at me over her steaming mug of coffee. "I'm still stunned we had children, Reggie my love."
Reggie ignored us and rattled his paper again. "Says here that local entrepreneur Victor Yeltsin is to donate a Gauguin."
I looked at the newspaper more closely.
"It's not his to donate." Looked like I should place a call to Jarrah Preston.
After a quick shower I asked to borrow fresh clothes from Sam. She offered me a brown-and-cream patterned African mudcloth caftan I had always admired on her tall, elegant form. On my average, slightly less chic physique it looked like I was acting in a play of some sort, or perhaps taking part in an experimental performance piece making subtle, cutting fun of the fashion-challenged. But since I had been wearing the same wrinkled clothes for two days, I decided it would have to do.
I met Jarrah at Caffe Trieste in North Beach. His dark eyes flickered over my outfit, but he remained politely mute. We took our creamy lattes to a small table in the corner.
"Victor Yeltsin contacted me, offering to buy the Gauguin back," Jarrah said.
"The fake one?"
"That's what the man said."
"Do you think he's trying to get it out of the country?"
"Seems like. He also mentioned that he was going out of town, and that he would be back in touch with me. He refused to meet in person. Truth to tell, he sounded scared."
"When I met with him yesterday, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear that the painting was fake," I mused. "But according to Anton, Victor hired him to copy it himself. So he must have known there was a fake. You think there was some kind of honest mix-up?"
"I doubt honesty enters into it in any form. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something else: I've checked out Balthazar, and as much as it pains me to say so, he looks clean in all of this."
"Really."
"I know he's unlikable. Tell the truth, I was looking forward to busting him myself, but I'm afraid in this case he's innocent. It seems Elijah nicked the Gauguin from the club's collection one night, simple as that. Which means that the club had been given a forgery with provenance papers, and the real one is still out there somewhere."
"The club acquired the fake Gauguin around the same time as Victor was invited to join. Do you think his donation of the painting was what won him admittance?"
"Very possible. I think he probably had the painting copied with the intent to give the club the proper Gauguin, got mixed up, and instead perhaps sold the real one to someone else, or God forbid, destroyed it under the assumption that it was a fake."
If I were Catholic I would have crossed myself. A Gauguin masterpiece being deliberately destroyed was unthinkable, yet such things happened. Not so long ago a French waiter named Stephane Breitwieser had stolen hundreds of pieces of historic, one-of-a-kind artwork, including paintings by Watteau, Brueghel, and Boucher. While he was in jail awaiting trial, his mother attempted to destroy the evidence by shredding the paintings in her garbage disposal or tossing them into a canal.
"What about Anton?" I asked.
"It's possible that what happened to him isn't connected to the Gauguin at all," Jarrah said, sympathy playing in his dark eyes. "He has a sketchy past, a lot of enemies. Or there's still the possibility that it was an accident, after all."
Great. Now Jarrah Preston was jumping on the "it was an accident" bandwagon.
"I want to pay you for your time. You've really worked this case, Annie, we appreciate it."
"But I haven't found the Gauguin."
"At this point, the firm feels it would be throwing good money after bad. I'm just going to finish up a few things myself, then close the case."
"Why would Elijah Odibajian have been arranged to look like Marat in the tub?"
"I have no idea. But I have to be honest here: that's not my problem. It's not yours, either. That's an issue for the police. I was here looking for a work of art that looks lost...unless I can track Victor down and get the truth out of him."
"Another person of interest up the boohai ? Did you check the other tubs in the mansion?"
Jarrah smiled ruefully and handed me a fat check. "Not yet. Still haven't been granted access. That's a tough place."
"You're telling me."
\*
It was only midmorning by the time Jarrah and I went our separate ways. It dawned on me that I had been letting my regular work obligations slide for the last couple of days. I didn't have any current projects in progress, but there was always plenty of prep work to do. That was the thing about owning one's own business: the demands never stopped, no matter that my uncle had been poisoned and I had criminals to catch and a masterpiece to save.
I checked my pocket agenda, following the lines and arrows to figure out what I was supposed to be doing this week in my professional life. As Mary pointed out to me ad nauseam, normal business people maintain devices like BlackBerries or iPhones so they don't have to try to read through erasures and scratched-out appointments. But in this regard I take after my Uncle Anton, if not quite as bad as he: Anton is such a technophobe that he won't even leave a message on voicemail, much less install a machine of his own.
I called Mary and asked her to drop the new sample boards off with our client on Lyon Street; and to run the "ideas portfolio" over to a Russian restaurateur out in the Richmond; and finally to pick up the supplies I ordered from the San Francisco Gravel Company for a mural project that required traditional fresco: painting with dry pigments onto wet plaster walls.
While in North Beach, I figured I might as well take the newly painted rusty-railing sample over to the strip club off Broadway.
"Are you Fred?" I asked the big man standing outside the main doors, smoking. He looked about eight and a half months pregnant in his pale blue embroidered guayabera . An intricate tattoo ran up his bicep, disappeared under the shirt, and reappeared on his bulky neck. "I'm Annie Kincaid, the painter."
"Oh, right. You just called? That was fast."
"I was in the neighborhood. Here's the sample," I said as I handed it to him and brought out my measuring tape and camera. I took measurements of the short span and snapped a few digital photos. This was the sort of simple, quick job that would take Mary and me all of an afternoon to complete. I gave Fred a verbal quote for the work.
"Sounds fair," he said. "Management just wants it done fast. Come on into my office and I'll give you a deposit."
I loved it when people didn't want to bother with opposing bids.
Though it was only nine-thirty, inside the venue it could have been three in the morning: it was dark, the bass thumped, and the lights pulsed. I was surprised to see a woman dancing on the stage this early, and customers already hunkered down low over their drinks.
The girlie show put me in mind of what Norm had mentioned about the strange event with the "hoes" at the Fleming Mansion.
"This might seem like an odd question," I asked Fred as he handed me a check with my required fifty percent deposit, "but you wouldn't happen to know of any juicy gossip with regards to the F-U, up on Nob Hill?"
"Sure," he said with an unpleasant grin. "Some of the girls go up there from time to time."
"What sorts of things do they do?"
His pale eyes drifted over me as though assessing whether I could pass stripper muster.
"You ever hear of any strange parties, that sort of thing?" I asked.
"What's in it for me?"
"What do you want?"
"Carton of Marlboros."
"Deal." I was getting off cheap---I thought he was going to ask me to paint the railing for free. "I'll bring them by when I do the railing."
"Sure, they put out a call for girls every once in a while. Some weird shit up there."
"Weird?"
"Sometimes all they do is pose 'n' shit. Like it's some sort of living painting, costumes 'n' shit. Half those guys prolly can't even get it up anymore."
\*
On my way out of North Beach I drove down Green Street. Not long ago I found out that my scalawag of a grandfather had been maintaining a pied-à-terre in a two-story stucco building on this street, not two blocks from Columbus. I love Oakland, but I would give my eyeteeth to live in a place like this, right in the heart of one of my favorite neighborhoods in San Francisco. I hadn't yet managed to get a key, but Michael, of course, doesn't let little things like keys stand in his way. He once took me there, pretending it was his place.
Since then, whenever I happened to be in the neighborhood, I drove by. No reason. Except that I was morbidly fascinated by the fact that Michael wouldn't tell me where he lived. He and my grandfather both swore he was no longer staying in Georges's apartment, but since I didn't know where else he was...
A tall dark-haired man was standing outside the building, laughing and looking down into the face of a very beautiful woman with shiny, thick honey-blond hair that fell halfway down her back. I rolled forward, not believing what I was seeing.
Michael?
Dearest Georges, Greatest Forger in the World: I want to be famous like you! What advice can you offer me?
---Yearning to be like Georges LeFleur
Dear Yearning: Give up. True fame comes only to those who do not seek it. But keep painting...always, always paint!
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Michael never laughed like that! Michael laughed in a cynical "I'm so much cooler than you'll ever be" kind of way. He was looking at this woman like...like he cared about her.
My stomach dropped. I stomped on the brakes and gaped.
Even though I turned the man down as frequently as twice a day, I was the one he was supposed to be sexually harassing. Who was this woman?
She was gorgeous, of course. Only a couple of inches shorter than Michael, with legs up to here and breasts out to there. No belly. Boyish hips. The face of a Madonna/whore, no doubt depending upon the circumstances.
They looked magnificent together: two demi-gods amongst the earthly gremlins.
I glanced down at the too-big African mudprint caftan I was wearing, thought of my wild hair and lack of makeup, and felt like something that had crawled out from under a rock.
Michael's face was split by a huge grin at something the woman said, and then he scooped her up in a big bear hug and twirled her around. My heart, already turning green, sank to my toes.
Suddenly Michael glanced up at the truck, and at me. Without missing a beat he put his hand on the woman's shoulder and escorted her quickly in through the front door, closing it firmly behind them both.
He had seen me, clear as day, and yet he turned and walked away. With a beautiful woman. Laughing.
I let the truck idle in the middle of the street for a minute, weighing my options. I could bang on the door and ring the doorbell, but given that Michael had just ducked into the apartment when he spotted me, I doubted it would do much good. I could call him and leave a threatening message. So far that tactic hadn't gotten me as far as I would have liked, either.
I could wait until he left and somehow pick the lock---or more likely, hire someone to break in there for me... Mary had an ex-boyfriend who was a locksmith---and ransack the apartment under the guise of looking for the F-U's stolen paintings. Maybe the unrepentant thief had them after all. Annette Crawford suspected him, as did Frank, so why was I so certain that he couldn't have them? And if I happened to snoop a little in bureau drawers looking for women's underwear or an extra toothbrush while I was in there, well, that would be part of the search for art.
Or I could be a grown-up about this whole thing, acknowledge that the man had a private life, and leave it at that. Respect his privacy.
Jeez, I hated being reasonable sometimes.
Fine . I blew out a deep breath. Best channel this energy into something useful, like trying to find stolen paintings.
The Fleming Mansion wasn't far. I wanted to get in and take a look at the room Elijah Odibajian had been found in. I had the XRF spectrometer Brianna had lent to me; I could check out whatever remained of the wallpaper, see if it contained arsenic, and get the information to Annette Crawford. That would be useful. And maybe I would stumble upon a secret cache of paintings the Fleming-Union brethren claimed were stolen.
Of course, the intractable blond guy wouldn't let me in, for sure, but they had to have another parking attendant/security guard from time to time, right? Blond guy couldn't be there every day, could he?
I was right: there was another security guard on duty today. This one was a fortyish, buff, Latino guy. Unfortunately, he was Alert and On the Job and knew all about little old me. There was even a grainy photo of me tacked up on the small bulletin board, no doubt taken by a hidden camera at the front door when I was insisting upon testing the Backflow Prevention Device. I did not look my best.
Unfortunately, I think I looked even worse today.
As I stood arguing with the stoic and unrelenting guard, the parking lot's ornate iron gates swung slowly open to allow entrance to a shiny red Aston Martin convertible.
Driving it was the man who had originally hired me for the attic wallpaper job, Geoffrey McAdams. And in the passenger seat was Destiny-the-maid.
McAdams left the car idling in the middle of the entrance. Before climbing out of the car he leaned over and said something to Destiny, who nodded and stared straight ahead.
"Annie Kincaid," he said as he oozed over to me and held out his hand to shake. His eyes flickered over my outfit, and once again I realized I wasn't making the best impression. McAdams reeked of old money and entitlement, and had a way of talking that was simultaneously all politeness yet made you feel like you were the tiniest pawn in his chess game of life. "What a surprise. How are you?"
"Hello Geoffrey." I nodded and shook his hand.
"Listen, Annie, did the police ever get a chance to speak with you further? There have been a few developments we all need to figure out."
"They've called, yes," I evaded. "A few times."
"This is a terrible affair, all of it. Very distressing to us all."
I nodded, but my eyes met Destiny's gaze.
"Hi Destiny," I said, ducking my head toward the passenger's side window. "How are you?"
"She's a little shaken up, but just fine," said Geoffrey, stepping in between us. "She insisted on coming back to work today, didn't you, Ms. Baker?"
Destiny Baker just nodded, remained mute, and looked away.
"Speaking of working," I said to Geoffrey, "I was wondering when I could get back to the attic job. No time like the present, I always say."
"The brethren agree that the project shall be put on hold for the near future."
Oh really? Except for having it done by a fellow named Mauricio...
"We have a contract," I reminded him, wondering how far he would take this.
"I assure you the terms of the contract will be fulfilled." He took a billfold and pen from the pocket of his costly double-breasted suit. "I have my checkbook with me now; would you like me to pay you for your services immediately?"
I must be doing something right, I thought. First I was hired on a no-results-necessary basis, and now people were paying me not to work.
I cleared my throat and glanced back at the mansion. The security guard was watching with avid fascination.
"Fifty percent is fair upon postponement of the project," I said. "If it's a cancellation, I'll have to ask for the full amount. I don't have the paperwork with me---"
"I happen to have the contract right here," he said, leaning in to the open window of his car to extract a sleek black leather briefcase. He took out the contract, handed it over, wrote out a check, and held it out to me. It was made out for the full amount of the original bid.
"It was lovely seeing you, as always," Geoffrey said as he moved back to stand next to the driver's side door and met my eyes over the roof of the car. "Now, please go away, and don't come back."
The frozen blue of his gaze chilled me to the core.
We stared at each other for a long moment. Overlong. I blinked first.
Destiny continued to stare straight ahead as Geoffrey McAdams climbed back into the driver's seat. How in the world did someone as sweet as Wesley Fleming hang out with these guys, ancestral home or no? More importantly, why ? I watched as the gate slowly cranked closed behind the gleaming, vintage machine, which glided into the parking lot and came to a stop right next to the rear door of the Fleming Mansion.
The very door through which women and servants entered and exited, right alongside the groceries. And the trash.
As she climbed out of the car, Destiny looked over at me. Call me crazy, but it looked like a plea for rescue.
Not wanting the F-U cartel to think that I would just leave whenever they told me, I loitered outside the parking lot gates for a few minutes after McAdams had taken Destiny by the elbow and escorted her past the security guard.
Yeah, boy. Guess I showed them, sticking around for all of five minutes.
Ringing Nob Hill were several huge, 1960s-era apartment buildings. I remembered that Wesley told me he lived in one nearby, in an apartment with a view.
I still had his card in the pocket of my satchel. Couldn't hurt, right?
The entrance was on Clay Street at Jones. My heart dropped when I was met by a uniformed doorman in the glass-fronted entryway.
"I'm here to see Wesley Fleming. I'm a friend."
The doorman phoned upstairs and spoke for a moment.
To my surprise, Wesley invited me up.
"What are you doing here?" he asked as he flung open the door. "Come in, come in. I never get visitors here. This is a lovely surprise. Pardon the mess; what do they say at remodels at the airport? Pardon our dust? Quite literally in my case."
He wasn't kidding. I guess if you're a handyman without a garage, and you live by yourself, you make stuff wherever you darn well pleased. There were piles of wood scraps and small saws set up in what normally served as the living room area.
The apartment boasted incredible views of the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and Angel islands, Nob Hill to one side, and Chinatown straight down the hill. And it overlooked the vast clay tile roof of the F-U.
"Great view," I said. "You can see right down to the Fleming-Union."
"Yes, I know. I've seen some funny things over the years. Down there," he pointed to the backyard of a house two doors down Jones, "lives a very old woman who still hangs her clothes out to dry herself. And I can see part of the Chinese New Year parade from here; I love the dragon, don't you? And do you know, the brethren take such great care of the Fleming Mansion that they even wash the roof? There were some workers out there just last week, making sure everything is spic and span."
"They wash the roof?"
"That's what it looks like. They go out every once in a while with hoses. Maybe they're cleaning out the gutters. A place like that keeps you up to your ears in maintenance---they're forever caulking windows or repainting rooms. That's why I like living in an apartment---it's someone else's headache."
I nodded, then gestured to his woodworking project. "What are you making?"
"Bat houses."
"Houses for bats? I thought they lived in caves."
He laughed. "Oh, they do, they do. When they can. But in urban areas it's hard for them to find refuge. Did you know, we're losing almost forty percent of our bat population in the U.S. due to habitat loss? These boxes," he hoisted a finished one up for me to see, "can be mounted on the sides of houses and apartment buildings, just anywhere."
It looked like the sort of flat, rectangular mailbox that was often attached to the side of a house, but the front was covered with closely placed slats. I tried to look in through the narrow openings.
"Neat."
"Aren't they, though? You mount them high on your exterior wall, near the roof. Can you think of anything cuter than having a little family of bats living right there under your eaves?"
"Um...real cute."
As the words came out of my mouth I noticed the series of framed photos covering one entire wall of the living room. Bat portraits. I walked over to read the brass plaques that were attached at the bottom of each one: CLEOBATRA, BINKY, ROCKY BATBOA, STELLA, MINI-ME , a brown ball of fluff named STICKY.
"I've adopted all those bats there," Wesley explained. He gazed at them with a father's adoration. "They're at a bat rescue center in Tulsa. Those are my babies."
"Cute names. Why 'Sticky'?"
"He was rescued from flypaper."
"Flypaper catches bats?"
"It can, depending on their size, and especially if they're immature. Sticky was tiny when they found him. Poor little buddy."
"Is this what you do, you know, full time? Work for the bat cause?"
"Pretty much. I'm lucky, I don't really have to work for a living. Family fund, you know. If I watch my pennies, I can live off my interest. But I want to give something back to the world, obviously. This is my calling. Everyone should have a calling. I run a website for bat enthusiasts, and make bat houses to distribute, and try to educate people. There's a lot of ignorance out there about bats."
"I can imagine."
"For instance, megachiroptera are usually called 'megabats' while microchiroptera are usually referred to as 'microbats,' but despite the name, megabats aren't always larger than microbats. The main difference is that microbats use echolocation; they need it to help locate prey. Megabats mainly live off of fruit, pollen, and nectar, whereas microbats feed off of insects, blood, small mammals, and even fish sometimes."
"Blood? Like vampire bats?"
He gave me a disgusted look.
"Bats eat thousands of pounds of insects, you know. If not for bats, we'd all be eaten alive by mosquitoes. Think about that next time Count Dracula supposedly shape-shifts into a bat."
Good point. But I couldn't help but wonder whether even the lowly mosquito had a defender somewhere, like Wesley, building wee larvae habitats for the little buddies.
As I looked around I saw that Wesley's place was, indeed, the bat-cave. Except for being on the ninth floor, that is. There were bat pictures and bat replicas and bat books and a lamp that looked like a bat. I read another name off another picture of a bat.
"Is Bootsana Melonmouth a name or a type of bat?" I asked.
Wesley laughed as though I had made a joke. "Good one. Hey, can I get you something to drink? I've got lemonade."
"That'd be great," I said, trailing him into the small efficiency kitchen. "Could you tell me more about the tunnels you mentioned the other day? I was in Chinatown yesterday and it seems some people think there were tunnels there, too."
"You were talking about tunnels? To whom?"
"Just some folks there. Friends of a friend."
"You shouldn't really talk about that kind of thing."
"Why not?"
He just shrugged, taking two tall glasses down from a glass-fronted cabinet.
"Anyway, those were mostly coal chutes and sewer tunnels under Chinatown," Wesley said. He filled the glasses from a large turquoise plastic pitcher. "They weren't connected to the family tunnels."
"Family tunnels?"
"Oh dear." Wesley opened the freezer and pulled out an ice tray. "I always say too much."
"You can tell me, Wesley. What's the big secret?"
"The brethren don't like me to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"I don't know the details. There were some nasty things, in the past. You know, my great-grandfather built the place but he gave it to the club a long time ago. There were...events that...well, things have changed over the years. Values have changed."
"You think the club was involved in something bad in the past?"
"No...but times have changed. There's nothing like that now."
"I have to say, Wesley, except for you, I haven't liked any of the Fleming-Union brethren I've met."
Wesley turned around to look at me, ice in hand.
"Really? You've met them?"
"A few. Pretty creepy if you ask me."
"They're very powerful men. They own this city."
"Maybe that's the problem. They say power corrupts."
Wesley, realizing the ice was melting in his hands, dropped the cubes into the glasses of lemonade. He set one in front of me. Seemingly lost in thought, he pushed his glasses up on his nose, leaving a drop of water that trailed down and hung on the end of his nose.
"You're not really a student, are you?" Wesley asked.
"Not exactly," I answered. "I'm actually an artist, if you can believe that." I took a sip. "Good lemonade, thanks."
"Welcome." Wesley said. "Why's an artist asking all these questions?"
"It's pretty hard to explain. Something strange happened in the Fleming-Union just the other day, Wesley. Did you know someone died? Elijah Odibajian?"
"Yes, I heard about that. He wasn't really a member, he was just visiting. For a long time. But anyway, he died of natural causes."
"Who told you that?"
"He looked terrible. He'd been getting sicker over the last couple of months. No one could figure out what was wrong with him, even though his brother, Balthazar, brought in one of the best doctors. Up from Stanford Medical Center."
"Do you remember the doctor's name?"
He shook his head. "No, but Balthazar said he wanted only the best for his brother."
Wesley steered the conversation back to the lives and times of bats while we finished our lemonade. Afterward, I asked to use the bathroom and Wesley pointed me down a short hallway. There were more bat icons lining the corridor, but what stopped me dead in my tracks was a glossy reproduction of Jacques Louis David's Death of Marat , hanging on the wall right outside the apartment's sole bedroom.
"You like it?" Wesley asked, standing too close behind me.
I jumped. "Oh, uh, yeah. Sure."
"It used to hang outside some of the guest rooms in the F-U. One of the brethren gave it to me just the other day. I don't know why but I always liked it. Is that weird?"
I looked closer at the reproduction. On the simple frame was a brass plaque: NATURE MORTE .
"That means 'still life,' " said Wesley.
"I know. Why is it labeled that?"
"I guess it's the name of the painting."
"No it's not."
"You're sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Wesley, what does the Latin phrase on your card refer to?"
"Oh, that's the Fleming-Union motto."
"Do you know what it means?"
"Yes."
When there was no more forthcoming, I urged him on. "Could you tell me what it means?"
He looked wary and pushed up his glasses. "I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it."
"It's in Latin, Wesley, not Elvish. I'm sure it's not meant to be a secret."
"Oh, I don't know. The brethren always say I talk too much. I'd feel much better about it if you just asked someone else who knows Latin. Didn't you need to use the bathroom?"
I did. Wesley was waiting for me right outside the door when I emerged.
"I'll walk you out," he said.
Hanging on the elevator doors was a handwritten note scrawled on a piece of scratch-paper: OUT OF SERVICE .
"Rats," Wesley said. "Let's take the freight elevator."
We let ourselves through a heavy metal fire door to a service corridor and waited at the freight elevator for another five minutes, but according to the numbered indicator, the lift never left the basement floor.
"Well, this has never happened before," Wesley said. "Good Lord. I guess we have to take the stairs. Good for our health, in any case, right?"
We started down. At the first landing we came to a man in coveralls, caulking a small window.
As we moved past him, he suddenly stuck his foot out, tripping Wesley and shoving him on the back.
Wesley tumbled down the flight of stairs, falling to the next landing, limp and silent as a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Until the advent of the signature, art was created to be used: as public history for the illiterate; in magical invocations when calling for rain or game; as the focus of religious reflection. The creator of the piece was invisible, allowing the art to speak for itself. As soon as attribution became important---especially now that it is all-important---forgery followed. It seems to me a law of nature.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
The man grabbed me from behind and yanked me back against his hard, muscled chest.
I threw my head back into his chin and stomped on his instep, gratified by the grunt I heard. Still, his grasp only tightened, pulling my upper arms back so hard I felt like they would pull out of their sockets.
Another man, in a ski mask, appeared in front of me. He slapped me, hard, across the face. Pain burst through my temple and cheekbone, sending more knife-edged shards of pain into my brain. He was speaking, but I couldn't focus, couldn't process the words. My sense of smell wasn't affected, though; the man holding me stank of sweat and the same pungent cologne worn by the goon who held me in the F-U dining room.
The ski-masked man slapped me again, across the other cheek. My ears rang, I tasted blood, and my cheeks felt on fire.
"...hear me?" he yelled in my face.
The guy holding me from behind leaned his head forward and bit me right on the fleshy part above my collarbone. The bite wasn't hard enough to break the skin, but I could feel it bruising.
"Yum," he said.
"You're a sick fuck, you know that?" said the goon in the ski mask to the guy holding me, who just laughed.
Ski Mask then held a knife to my throat. The shock of its sharp point brought everything into focus.
"This is your only warning, get me?"
I nodded vigorously, which made my head hurt. At that point I would have agreed to just about anything; all my concentration was focused on getting as far away from these men as possible.
Ski Mask took my bag, shook it out, grabbed the cell phone, scrolled through numbers, then threw it down the stairwell. I could hear it crashing on the cement steps below. Then he took my wallet, my money. Even my change purse, and my cheap silver earrings.
Then he descended the stairs and checked Wesley's pockets as well. Wesley's heavy glasses had been knocked into the corner; he tried to rouse himself, sputtering a protest, but after the goon showed him a fist he backed down.
"It's just terrible, someone getting mugged in such a nice building," The Biter in coveralls rasped as he pushed me to my knees. "What's the world coming to?"
They ran.
\*
Time in the emergency room is almost as bad as getting interrogated by the police, so I decided to skip it.
I wanted Wesley to get his head looked at, but I was afraid my name would come up on the police scanner if I went with him. I used the lobby phone to call Mary---who was already out and about, running the errands I had sent her on---and asked her to accompany Wesley to the hospital.
One of the things I love about my assistant is that she doesn't ask a whole lot of questions. Wesley tried to protest that he didn't need any help until he saw her, all six-feet-blonde of her. She was wearing a particularly see-through black outfit today.
I slipped out before the police arrived, then limped on back to my truck and drove to the studio. Happily, Frank wasn't in his office. I had already reneged on my promise to show up and annoy him yesterday; if he were here now I was afraid I would collapse into his arms and ask him to marry me and take me away from all this.
I hurried into the bathroom to wash up.
The mirror showed that both cheeks were bright red from the vicious slaps I had received, but I doubted there would be bruising. It would look like slight sunburn to anyone who didn't know I'd been hit. Moving gingerly, I pulled the collar of Sam's dress aside to see a reddish-blue bruise developing above my collarbone, in the crescent shape of teeth. The bite hadn't broken the skin, and I knew a simple contusion wasn't a serious injury, but it creeped me out. The pungent smell of that aftershave and the weirdly intimate act of biting...ick.
I brought out a bag of frozen peas I kept in the tiny freezer compartment of my studio mini-fridge---a trick I learned from my sister, Bonnie, when she was the first-aid go-to gal for her sons' Little League team. Holding the peas to the bruise, I sat at my studio desk and started the rounds of phone calls to cancel my credit cards.
Unfortunately, navigating voicemail loops and sitting on hold with bad music piped into my ears did not succeed in getting my thoughts off what had happened in that stairwell.
Pedro had warned me. Frank had warned me. Even Odibajian himself had warned me. Was there anyone who hadn't warned me? And yet I stood talking to Geoffrey McAdams right in front of the F-U, then proceeded directly to Wesley's apartment. Those goons must have trailed me straight there from the club. Duh.
Looked like somebody needed to go back to spy school. Or at least learn to skulk properly. At the very least: manage not to take innocent bystanders down with me.
I felt terrible. Poor Wesley. He had been perfectly happy, just him and his bats, the monotony of his days interrupted by the occasional club function where he was no doubt teased and demeaned, but he still felt part of something historic and worthwhile...until Annie Kincaid, disaster on wheels, barged into his life.
I powered up the computer and Googled "Chinatown tunnels." There was a whole lot of information on the Broadway tube, and on Chinese-built tunnels in towns up and down the California gold trail. Fascinating. Still, the consensus was that tunnels under San Francisco were a myth. But I found a sole reference on a message board to a tunnel under a home on Nob Hill; the writer said his great-grandfather had lived in a mansion there, and that supposedly the tunnels really did exist. The man signed his name: The Batman. Wesley was a real subtle guy. At least it alleviated my guilt just a tad; even if I hadn't led them to him, maybe the F-U boys would have gone after The Batman anyway. Surely they could use the Google search function if I could.
While I was on the Internet, I looked up the painting most famous for juxtaposing nude females with fully dressed men. Edouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe , or "The Luncheon on the Grass" is a large painting currently hanging in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. I downloaded a copy and faxed it to Norm with a note: Does this look like the party you witnessed? Also, please ask Mauricio if he could save me a sample of the wallpaper he took from the Fleming Mansion, no matter how small. I'll buy you both a beer.
Then I did something I should have done two days ago: I called every scrap metal yard I could find in the phone book, promising a reward, no questions asked, for Resting Hermes . I wasn't going to spend much time and energy on the search, but it seemed like the least I could do.
Next I called Pedro to see if he'd had any luck locating Kyle Jones.
"He's not listed anywhere. He moved years ago from the address you gave me from the police report, and disappeared. I'm doubting Kyle Jones is his real name, or else he moved out of state."
"Rats."
"But here's something interesting: Catrina Yeltsin, née Watts, was an excellent student at Cal until she took off on a student exchange program to India, and never returned to school."
"I don't think it's that unusual. A lot of people get sidetracked, don't finish up their degree."
"I guess so. Still, seems suspicious to me."
"Everything seems suspicious to you. What was her major at Berkeley?"
"Chemistry."
That surprised me. "You're sure?"
"Yup. She even worked for a lab in India for a while."
The fax machine beeped. Still on the phone to Pedro, I picked up the incoming message. A note from Norm: FNA on the picnic picture, nope on the wallpaper samples. You obsessed with wallpaper now, or what?
"Pedro, what do the initials 'FNA' stand for?"
"Fuckin' A."
"Seriously?"
"Yup."
One day I was going to have to join the modern world, before everyone I knew left me behind.
Okay, so what did I know at this point? Anton had painted a forgery years ago for a club member, Victor; then Elijah had tried to sell that forgery as authentic, and then was killed in the mansion while I was working there. Anton was poisoned, but I couldn't be sure there was a connection. There appeared to be tunnels running under the Fleming Mansion and perhaps connecting to old tunnels to Cameron House. Other paintings perhaps were stolen from the club while I worked there, despite Frank's security system, and Geoffrey McAdams had asked Norm to hire me.
All in all, this wasn't looking great for True/Faux Studios, much less Bacchus Art Associates. Or for Frank DeBenton's professional reputation, for that matter.
\*
I felt the need to talk to someone keyed into the gossip of the City. My old friend Bryan Boissevain and I had been through quite a few adventures over the past few years, including tampering with evidence in a drug smuggling case, tracking down a Chagall he was suspected of helping to steal, and ruining a beautiful ball gown that had belonged to a gorgeous transvestite who, it turned out, held a grudge. But unlike me, Bryan both paid attention to, and remembered, stories about Who's Who in San Francisco.
Bryan works from home, so unless he's under deadline he relishes the chance to get out during the day. I made a phone call and invited him to a late lunch/early dinner.
An hour later we were sitting cross-legged on the floor of my studio in front of a sushi feast. Bryan, as was his wont, had brought a picnic basket full of rectangular ceramic painted dishes---white with delicate sprigs of flowers in blue---tiny cups, and chopsticks, along with a chilled bottle of sake and cloth napkins. He laid a beautiful steamer trunk--turned--coffee table.
"I thought I was taking you to lunch," I had told him when he arrived at my door with basket in hand.
"I had a yen for sushi. Get it?"
"Bryan, you keep 'em rolling in the aisles."
"Don't I though? Anyway, you know the sushi bar right under my apartment has the best spicy tuna in town, so I took the liberty of ordering for you."
I'm one of those people who love to have people order for me. Since I'm an equal-opportunity gourmet, I almost always appreciate whatever's put on my plate. And I'm a Libra, so I have a hard time making decisions, especially in times of stress. And I was feeling just a tad stressed at the moment. Bryan noticed my funk, but I put it down to being tired. He didn't believe me, but we'd been friends for so long that he didn't push it.
"What do you know about the Fleming-Union?" I asked as we started in on our meal.
"Oooh, that place. No women, no liberals, no reporters," said Bryan, "they take it seriously, God love 'em. I can see them now, bunch of wrinkly old white guys, smoking cigars and rattling their canes."
"Women aren't allowed through the front door."
"That's 'cause you've got cooties," Bryan said as he used his chopsticks to gracefully spear a glistening white rectangle of himachi . "And you're not the only ones. There's an old saw: if there were only five men left in the world, three would sneak out behind the house and form a club, and not allow the other two in. And I don't have to tell you which side of that wall I'd be on."
Bryan was gay and African American, and though he and his financier husband lived a comfortable life in an expensive city, they were neither rich nor powerful in Fleming-Union terms. "Three strikes, I'm out" was how Bryan usually phrased it. The only F-U membership qualification he held was being male, and since that applied to roughly half the world I suspected his engraved invitation to join had been lost in the mail right alongside mine.
"Do you know any of the members?" I asked as I helped myself to a disc of spicy tuna roll.
"The membership list is secret, though in many cases it's an open secret. Plenty of the city's movers and shakers, the older and more conservative the better. But there's a younger contingent, as well, I understand, the up-and-coming power brokers. I don't know anyone personally, if that's what you're asking."
"I need to find a way in there."
"Why?"
"It's sort of complicated."
"Uh-oh." Bryan put his chopsticks down on the edge of his plate and leaned back against the couch. "When you say something's 'sort of complicated' that usually means someone is going to post bail soon."
"Very funny."
"I'm not kidding."
"It's important. Too bad I didn't think to leave a window unlocked or something," I mused. "I was working there until a couple of days ago."
"What were you doing?"
"Stripping wallpaper in one of the attic rooms. I was supposed to reproduce the historical pattern in paint. But then they hired someone else."
"They kicked you off a job? What'd you do?"
"Why do all my loyal friends assume I did something to deserve having my services cancelled?"
He just gave me a Look.
"It wasn't my fault," I insisted, trying to keep the whiney note out of my voice. "I happened upon a body the other day. No one I had anything to do with."
"So why are you getting involved now?"
I told him about Elijah Odibajian, and Anton, and the Gauguin fake that turned up at auction. I left out the part about getting attacked by goons in the stairwell.
"I can't stop thinking that if I had a chance to look around the club, I would find something that would help explain things, maybe prove something?"
"Like what?"
Good question.
"Well...for one thing, I'd like to get the spectrometer up to the room Elijah was staying in and test that wallpaper, if there's any left."
"Let me get this straight: the place is full of a bunch of ethically challenged, incredibly rich men, and is also a current murder scene. And you want to poke around without even knowing what you're looking for?"
Bryan was loyal to a fault, loving and generous, and one of my dearest friends, but he was not what most people would refer to as the most level-headed of men. If he was doubting my schemes, maybe I really was going around the bend a bit.
"I---"
Mary flung open the studio door and stepped in, Wesley in tow, a small bandage placed over his left eye.
I jumped up. "Wesley, how are you feeling?
"No concussion," Mary said before Wesley had a chance to respond. "But we're supposed to keep him awake."
"Why?" I asked.
Mary shrugged. "That's what they always said at camp. Keep them awake."
"Did the doctors tell you to stay awake?" I asked Wesley.
"Not exactly, but that's okay," he said with an enthusiastic note in his voice. "I'll just stay with you, if you really don't mind."
"He's been threatened," Mary said. "He doesn't want to be alone."
"Of course," I said. "Hang out with us. This is my friend Bryan."
The men shook.
"Care for sushi? There's more than enough," Bryan offered. As Mary and Wesley joined us on the floor, Bryan looked pointedly at Wesley's bandage, then at me, but had the grace not to ask what had happened.
"Hey, you haven't heard anything about Michael, have you?" I asked Bryan.
"You mean Michael X. Johnson, as in your finer-than-fine business partner?"
"Yeah, where's he been lately?" Mary asked.
Bryan shook his head. "His name doesn't pop up much. He plays his cards close to his chest, as I believe you know from personal experience."
"Do I ever."
"I don't know why you two don't just sleep together and get it out of your system," Bryan said. " I would sleep with him if he were playing for my team."
Wesley gawked openly. Mary leaned over and whispered, "Bryan's gay." Bryan, unfazed, just looked over at the pair and winked. Wesley's eyes widened, and I wondered whether he was among the last people in the City by the Bay to become accustomed to alternative lifestyles.
"Liar," I said to Bryan. "You wouldn't sleep with Michael. You're too loyal to Ron."
"Yeah, well...if I weren't married to Ron, and I were a straight woman, you bet your boots I'd have slept with him already. Long time ago."
"That's what I said," Mary said. She leaned over to Wesley. "No offense."
"None taken," he said, looking up at her eagerly.
"You think that's the way it works?" I asked, busy chasing a slippery piece of plump pink tuna around my little rectangular ceramic plate. "Like if I slept with him, I would get him out of my system and I wouldn't have to think about him again?"
"Sure," Bryan said. "Maybe he's bad in bed."
I looked up at Bryan, and Mary looked over at me. We all started laughing.
"That's a good one," I said.
"Yeah, you're right," Bryan said. "One night with that man, presuming you survived, and you'd be ruined for anyone else."
The phone rang. I picked it up to hear Cathy Yeltsin's cheery voice.
"I found some wonderful design ideas for my basement!" she declared. She gave me a website address which I dutifully jotted down, but I made no promises as to when I would get back to her with drawings. It was going to take a much healthier frame of mind than I currently possessed to actually work on the design of a dungeon, faux or otherwise.
"Also, I have to tell you the strangest thing. My Victor seems to have gone missing."
"Really."
"I haven't seen him since you were here. Remember how he disappeared without saying good-bye? What do you suppose could have possessed him?"
"Has he dropped out of sight before?"
"Oh, no, never. Perhaps for a night at a time, but nothing like this. If you're going to the Power Play, could you keep an eye out for him? I would go myself but I don't have childcare."
"I wasn't really planning on---"
"Tonight's really your best bet to catch Kyle in action," she mentioned. "He's always there Thursdays."
I didn't like the sound of that . Or the visual, more precisely. On the other hand, trying to find a way into the Fleming Mansion might be too crazy, even for me. I was still moving slowly due to the bruises I had just obtained, and the goons' warning still reverberated in my battered brain. But Kyle-the-houseboy didn't have anything to do with the F-U directly, right? Surely tracking him down in the Power Play wouldn't be overly dangerous, beyond possibly seeing much more of him than I'd like.
"What does Kyle look like?"
"Late twenties, light hair, blue eyes, medium height. Pretty."
"Okay," I said. "I might go. And if I happen to see Victor, I'll tell him to phone home."
I turned back to my little group of friends, old and new: Bryan, Mary, and now poor smitten Wesley. My eyes alighted upon Bryan.
Bryan is a big, buff, gym-toned man, but given his gentle character and easy smile, it was easy to forget he could be formidable. I had seen him in action, however: when he wanted to be intimidating, it was an easy feat.
"Would you be willing to go to the Power Play with me tonight?" I asked Bryan.
"The Power Play?" Bryan said, nearly choking on a slice of unagi . "What, has all this talk put you in the mood?"
"Not exactly. I need to talk to someone there."
"Why does it have to be there?"
"I don't know where he lives, but he's supposed to be at the Power Play tonight. I really don't want to go alone."
He looked at me for a long moment, his mouth pulled tight with disapproval.
"I'll go, but under protest. Personally, I think you should reconsider this art investigation business. Faux finishes are more up your alley."
I'd heard that before.
"No way you're going to the Power Play without me! I wanna go!" said Mary. She leaned over and jabbed an elbow at Wesley. "You up for it, Wes?"
"Oh, I, er..." he sputtered.
"Great. We'll all go. It'll be an outing," said Mary.
I could use all the company I could get, but somehow I couldn't imagine Wesley in a sex club. I could barely imagine myself in a sex club. Mary, on the other hand...well, let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if she already knew the way there.
"Are you sure you want to come, Wesley?" I asked.
"I---"
"Of course he does," put in Mary. "After what he's been through, he needs to be with his friends. Don't worry, Wes, I'll look out for you."
Wesley remained mute, but looked over at Mary with eager adoration shining in his eyes. I had a feeling I now knew who Wesley's "type" was.
Just then our Bosnian friend, Pete, walked into the studio, flushed with happiness. "Evangeline, she said yes!" he said. "She will go out with me tonight!"
"No way," said Mary.
"Way," responded Pete.
"I could help you dress there, homeboy," said Bryan. "It'll be like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy ."
Pete looked worried. "What kind of eye?"
"Never mind," Bryan said with an encouraging smile. "On second thought, you're cute as a button just as you are."
"Speaking of which, what does a person even wear to a sex club?" I wondered aloud.
"You're going?" Pete asked. "When?"
"Tonight, say around nine?" I suggested to my Power Play entourage.
"Could Evangeline and I accompany you?"
"Are you sure?" I asked. "It might be a bit much for a first date."
"We will be with all of you. Please. That way I won't be so nervous."
The Power Play seemed pretty much like the opposite of their kind of place, but I guessed Pete didn't want to be left out. Besides, Pete was a big, hulking man, and Evangeline was no wilting waif herself. I could use the backup.
"Sure, come along. What the heck," I said, giving in to the absurdity of the situation. I had no idea what we'd find at the Power Play, but given the excursion participants it was bound to be interesting. "The more the merrier. Anyway, back to the important stuff: what should we wear?"
Mary met my eyes.
" Jeans ," we said in unison.
"No easy access," Mary said.
"Amen to that."
"And boots." My assistant always wore boots, but that in no way diminished the wisdom of her suggestion. " Big boots."
\*
We met on the street in front of the Power Play: Bryan and me and Wesley and Mary and Pete and Evangeline. Boy girl, boy girl. Bryan's partner Ron refused to participate, citing any number of reasons; chief among them, decency and sanity.
Clearly I wasn't the only one who decided jeans and boots were de rigueur at a sex club. Five of us could form a band. Only Wesley had dressed, as usual, in an ill-fitting tweed blazer and brown loafers. Meanwhile, typically mild, sweet Bryan looked like the quintessential sexy bad boy in his bulky black leather jacket, worn jeans stuffed into heavy black boots.
Perfect.
"Don't accept drinks from anyone," Bryan ordered, his agitation ratcheting up the closer we got to the entrance. He looked around and scowled. "You've all heard of roofies?"
"They don't serve alcohol here," I mentioned.
Bryan stopped in his tracks and gave me a horrified look. "We're supposed to get through this without a drink ?"
Bryan's never been a big drinker, but I had to admit I was wishing I'd thought to have a shot or two of tequila before arriving tonight. It would help to have something to take the edge off, I thought as I noted the hand sanitizer dispensers mounted at frequent intervals on the wall. Next to them was a large sign that read: TOUCHING SOMEONE WITHOUT PERMISSION WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE EJECTION FROM THE CLUB .
"Well, see there? That's good news," I said with a falsely cheerful ring to my voice.
"Oh, look," Mary said, eyeing Pete. "Women get in cheap, but men have to pay more. Ya gotta love that. But guys get in for half-price if they take off their clothes and just wear a towel."
"Annie," Pete said with a sense of urgency, drawing me aside. He was blushing; behind us, Evangeline just lurked, silent and agog. "What kind of place is this?"
"It's an S and M club, Pete. But we won't be doing anything, we're just looking---"
"What is this essenem?"
"A sex club," Mary interpreted.
"A sex club?" Pete exclaimed.
"What did you think it was?" I asked.
"A music club."
"Music?"
"Didn't you say sax? Like the instrument?"
" 'fraid not," Mary said. "This is a sex club, with all sorts of sexy stuff going on."
Pete and Evangeline didn't make it past the first bowl of free condoms. Stumbling over an excuse about having left clothes in the dryer, he and Evangeline fled without a look back.
"They're the only ones amongst us with brains," Bryan said wistfully as he watched them retreat.
As we entered the foyer, Wesley's nervous gaze kept sliding over to Bryan.
"Don't look at me, I've never been to a place like this," Bryan said. "We're not nearly as bad as y'all heteros. This is her doing." He jerked a thumb in my direction.
Since Bryan was the only one of this motley crew that I had actually asked to come on this ill-conceived venture, I had the grace to feel a tad guilty. Still, I wasn't above using my friends from time to time. This was important.
We approached the front desk to pay our entrance fees. Couples got in much cheaper than singles, so Bryan slung an arm around my shoulders, and Mary put hers around Wesley's.
"He's my boy toy," declared Mary. Wesley looked up at her with liquid, puppy-dog eyes.
"It costs more if you keep your pants on," said the bored-looking man behind the counter.
Wesley had a coughing fit. Mary slapped him on the back. Bryan glared at the receptionist, his eyes cold and dangerous. I stepped in between them, afraid for the first time in my life that Bryan might be moved to physical violence.
"We're good," I said as I shelled out several twenties to pay for everyone. It was the least I could do. "They like their pants. Do you happen to know where Kyle Jones is tonight?"
The man's eyes drifted over me, clearly seeing me naked and, no doubt, in an advanced Kama Sutra position reminiscent of a pretzel. My yoga hadn't advanced that far and, I hoped, never would. Unbidden, my mind flashed on the Indian artwork in Catrina and Victor's house.
"He's usually in the Dungeon, or the Pirate's Lair. But you could check the Jail Cells, or the Coffin Room."
Oh. Goodie.
Wesley paled. He would have left at that description, I felt sure, if Mary hadn't been latched on to his arm as though he were the big, bad protector of a woman two inches taller, and no doubt much fitter, than he. Mary had been taking kickboxing for years, and wore serious boots.
"Where do you want to go first?" Mary asked. "It would be faster to split up, but I think we should stay together."
"Oh, definitely," I said.
"None of you are leaving my sight," Bryan said, glowering at a clutch of young men entering the place behind us.
We started to look around. There weren't many people in the first couple of big, open rooms on the main floor. There was an empty rec room with Ping-Pong tables, a pinball machine, and foosball games. Kind of like camp for grown-ups. Another, smaller room was decorated like the great hall of a castle, complete with an iron chandelier and a huge wooden table. I didn't think much of the paint job, but the concept was kind of fun. Moving on, we found the Jail Cells, only one of which was occupied by a hopeful-looking young man who had already thrust his hands into the chains on the wall.
"Kyle?" I asked.
"I can be Kyle," he said with a smile. "What would you like to do with Kyle?"
Bryan stepped forward and steered me away.
A handful of men, most of them clad only in towels, meandered through the rooms and hallways as though lost. Most of these were middle-aged and paunchy, giving the Power Play more the air of an executive locker room at the gym than a sex palace. It seemed anything but erotic.
"Shall we check out the Dungeon?" I said, my voice unnaturally high.
"Unless we can go home now," Bryan muttered.
Wesley hadn't said a word since we first entered. As we descended the stairs to the Dungeon, I looked over to see him swallowing convulsively, eyes popping out of his head. His black-rimmed Mr. Science glasses were fogged up.
We paused at the bottom of the stairs. This was where all the people were. As on the first floor there were at least nine men to every woman, and most were wandering the hall, which skirted a cyclone-fence encircled area, where racks, frames, and lots of ropes and chains were set up. A woman dressed in black vinyl was spanking a man who was leaning over a leather horse. According to a tall, thin, purple-haired passerby, this was Stain, the resident masochist.
"You'd think they'd get someone else for a change." At my inquiring look, she added with a sigh, "He's here every week."
"Don't touch anything ," Bryan told us in a fierce whisper. "Has everyone had their tetanus boosters?"
"Do you know a guy named Kyle?" I asked the young woman.
"Sure. Blond guy. Usually in costume."
"What kind of costume?"
"Thinks he's a freaking pirate. Thinks he's freaking Orlando Bloom or something."
A man tottered by in white pumps, wearing a pink Jackie O--style suit, complete with pillbox hat, white gloves, and vintage white patent leather pocketbook. It's not unusual to see transvestites here in San Francisco, but usually they were sexier and more feminine than half the women in town. This man, in contrast, had no makeup on, and had done nothing special with his short salt-and-pepper hair. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a glum expression on his unshaven face. It looked for all the world like Murray from Accounting had lost a bet.
A group of at least half a dozen silent, watchful young men started to trail us, duckling-like, as we moved down the hallway past a series of fantasy bedroom situations. I was trying to imagine being willing to lie down on one of those beds; all I could think of was that TV show where they bring special lights and cameras to uncover the invisible cooties on hotel bedspreads.
Mary grabbed my arm and leaned into me to say something.
There was an audible gasp from the crowd. They circled around us.
" Back off , you freaks," Mary said. "We're not going to make out or anything. Ew."
One of the young men opened his mouth to say something.
"I said, back off !" Mary yelled, taking a step toward them.
Bryan glared at them, and they fell back. But when we continued walking, they followed at a respectful distance.
"We are in a sex club, Mare," I whispered. "It's not out of the question to assume we might be game."
"Freaks," she muttered, looking around malevolently. She put her arm back through Wesley's. He beamed.
We poked our heads into one room where a big-screen TV was playing porn movies, then entered a long, dark tunnel that led down one side of the basement. A few couples and trios were making out in the dimly lit corridor.
"Kyle?" I yelled, just to see. No answer.
Most of our loyal ducklings were still trailing us down the dim hallway.
"What this place needs is bats," said Wesley, finding his voice.
"Next time I'm bringing a flask," grumbled Bryan.
"I'm bo-ored," whined Mary-of-the-short-attention-span.
"Let's just loop around quickly and then we'll go on up to the second floor, couples-only. Then we can leave."
I averted my eyes as we passed the rack and a masked man with a cat-o'-nine-tails. The burly masked man came over to stand just on the other side of the cyclone fence.
"Good evening," he said as though a maître d', greeting us for lunch. "You ladies care for a turn? Giving or receiving, it's all good."
"Maybe later," I said, pulling Mary back before she could speak. I wasn't sure whether she would go for his throat or decide she was bored enough to give it a go---on the giving end, I was sure. Either way, we didn't have time for such things. We had work to do. "Have you seen Kyle, by any chance?"
"Second floor, I think. Couples only."
Our duckling entourage stuck with us up to the main floor, only dropping off as we ascended the stairs to the second floor, where men had to be accompanied by at least one woman. I glanced back at them. They looked crestfallen, standing at the bottom of the stairs in their towels. They appeared to be of every nationality and skin shade: Latinos, Asians, blacks, whites...it was like a dismal mini--U.N. convention of lonely men.
The couples floor seemed more like a regular club, with a dance floor and pounding music---complete with a stripper pole, of course---couches and benches, lots of couples around who seemed to be together and happy. One woman was dressed as a sexy Snow White, the man as the Woodsman. Another reclined in an Egyptian sarcophagus, with her attendant serving her needs.
The Pirate's Lair was decorated to resemble below-decks of an old-fashioned ship. A woman, naked from the waist up but wearing Victorian-style bloomers, was tied to a rack with tasseled silk ties, while a blond man in a Mardi Gras mask, ruffled pirate shirt, and black breeches whipped her with what looked like the floppy head of the industrial mop we used to use back in my maid days at the Olive You Motel.
The crowd ringing the couple stood silently, just watching. Indeed, the whole affair seemed more like a piece of theater---or performance art---than anything particularly threatening. I spent a couple of weeks roaming the streets of New York City last year, and in comparison it was all pretty tame.
Still, I think I was experiencing sensory overload. As I looked around, all I could think of was how I could do a much better paint job. I pondered Victor and Catrina's basement. There must be hundreds of rich people with a tendency toward kink. Just in case I didn't get any better at the Annie Kincaid, Crack Art Investigator role, I could develop a whole new career adorning Smut Chambers. Think of the possibilities: Stone walls and gargoyles and...
The tied-up woman moaned.
"Is she okay?" I asked, looking around at the avid bystanders. No one moved or said a word.
She cried out again, loudly.
" Stop it ," I told the man in breeches as I approached the tied woman. "Are you okay?"
Everyone looked at me like I was the freak. Apparently I had broken Power Play etiquette.
"She's fine..."
"Are you crazy?..."
"She didn't use her safe word yet."
The woman herself glared at me. The glare turned into a wide-eyed look of fear.
It was Destiny-the-maid.
"Oh!" she cried. "Cabbages! Cabbages! "
Is erotica art, or pornography? Well as they say, it depends upon the viewer. I believe that it is both, and that the vast majority of us are better for having seen it.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
Cabbages?
The man wielding the whip stopped short, brought her a white gossamer robe, and wrapped it around her shoulders, murmuring to her as he released her wrists.
She turned her head and said something to him, her tone urgent.
The man swung around to gape at me for a brief moment, then took off.
I ran after him. Destiny chased after us, untied robe flapping out behind her. I assumed the rest of my gang was following, but my concentration was on the man in the mask and breeches, running away. Kyle Jones, I presumed.
At the bottom of the stairs our ducklings were still milling about, blocking access to the front door. Without pausing, Kyle careened down the main hallway, toward the Dungeon. I glanced over my shoulder to see Destiny behind me, Bryan, Mary, and Wesley behind her, and now the ducklings bringing up the rear, stirred up by the excitement or Destiny's half-naked body, it was hard to say which.
Kyle fled down the stairs. By the time I reached the bottom, he was nowhere to be seen.
"Which way?" I asked the crowd.
No one spoke.
Mary grabbed the first guy she saw with a shirt on, squeezed the collar, and snarled: "Tell us which way he went or I'll kick you in the balls."
"Promise?"
Mary rolled her eyes, and tightened her grip on his neck.
"Tell me!"
He pointed toward the darkened tunnel.
Two hefty men wearing Power Play--logo Tshirts came up to us. "Everything okay in here? Everything consensual?"
"Yes, thank you, very consensual." We all stopped and smiled like kids caught running in the school hallways.
"Okay then. Let's keep it that way."
We hurried down the corridor. It was empty but for one couple; no Kyle.
I grabbed Destiny's arm and hustled her into a "private" room---it had walls and a door, but featured one very large viewing window. The ducklings jockeyed for position at the glass.
"Destiny, tell me what you really do at the F-U. You're not just a maid, are you?"
"It's not illegal or anything. I help set up the parties. I used to be part of them when I was younger, but now mostly I arrange them."
"What kind of parties?"
She hesitated.
"Come on, Destiny. These guys are hurting people. Help us understand what's going on."
"You can't tell the police. They'll kill me if they find out I talked to the cops."
"No police."
Destiny twirled a lock of blond hair around one long-nailed finger and shrugged. "They're like re-enactment parties. They choose a painting and then re-enact it. Usually paintings with naked women."
Big surprise.
"And what do they do at these parties?"
"What do you think they do? Have sex. But there's nothing illegal about it. People can have sex if they want to."
"So they re-enact paintings for their parties? Is that what they did with the dead man you found? Made him look like the painting, The Death of Marat?"
"I dunno about that, but somebody made him look like the picture in the hallway. I don't know why. I felt so bad for Elijah! He was always so much nicer than his brother."
"Balthazar?"
She nodded. "At first Balthazar said Elijah had to leave, he couldn't stay at the club anymore. But then he let Elijah stay as long as he didn't leave his room."
"That's the room he was found in?"
Nodding, she teared up. "Room two-twelve. It was dreary in there, wasn't it? It's one of the few rooms that hadn't been redone yet. It got water-damaged from the leak in the roof. It was damned depressing, you ask me. I think that's part of the reason he got so sick. Depression is bad for the---whaddayacallit?---immune system. Poor Elijah had to stay in his room, wasn't even allowed to mingle with the rest of the boys."
"Even during the parties?"
"Especially then. Those are really exclusive-type-deals. Only the select membership gets invited to those."
"So Elijah stayed in his room for how long, all told?"
"Months. He hadn't felt well, so he just stayed in there, plus he was scared to leave the building, on account of he owed money to some scary characters. He only left once, last month, he went out for the afternoon when Balthazar was out of town. That's about it."
Out to sell a painting, perhaps?
I looked up to see a commotion with the ducklings. They had caught Kyle, and were hanging on to him for us, showing us through the observation window. While we hurried out the door, Kyle managed to pull away and ran through an emergency exit, blocking the door with a bunch of wooden crates. It took several of us to shove the crates out of the way. Finally it swung open onto a dimly lit brick alley smelling of trash and urine.
A single gunshot rang out.
We all hunkered down, hugging the wall.
Two more shots, then silence.
I looked up to see Kyle sprawled face down on the dirty concrete.
"Kyle! Baby !" Destiny cried out, running to him. She sank to her knees and turned him over. A large dark stain spread across his white pirate shirt. She took off his mask to show the young, handsome face of the Fleming-Union parking attendant-slash-guard. The one I called Blondie. Destiny hugged the man to her breast, rocking slightly, making an awful, pitiful keening sound. The sound of a heart breaking.
"Call 911," I shouted to Mary. I ran to Kyle's side, and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. I held my ear to his chest, his mouth, listening for breathing signs. More nothing.
Bryan and I jogged the rest of the way down the alley, which ended in a T. We hung back, then carefully looked around the corner, first one way, then the next. The alleyways were dim and shadowy, but empty. About half a block to our left was busy Gough Street. To our right the alley ended about forty feet down at a rear access door. We checked it. Locked. A dead end.
"Probably ran to Gough," Bryan said, his voice subdued. "Long gone by now."
"Yeah." I trotted down to Gough Street and looked both ways, not really expecting to see anything, but needing to look. And using the moment to regroup. I was nauseated, and shaky.
I dislike murder. I mean, really dislike it. And in the case of the blond young man lying dead in the alley, I had the uncomfortable and profound knowledge that if not for me, he would still be alive and whipping.
We returned to the dead man.
"I have to get out of here," whispered Destiny. She looked up at me and repeated with greater urgency: " I have to go . If they find me here with you they'll kill me this time for sure."
" Who , Destiny?"
"The brethren," she said, shaking her head and crying. "They'll kill me, too!"
"They won't, Destiny. We'll help you. We'll figure this out."
"They killed him," she said, gazing down at Kyle's lifeless form. "It wasn't his fault. He tried to be good."
The sound of sirens split the night. Destiny looked up at me in dismay.
"I can't talk to the police again! You promised you'd help me! Hide me!"
"You don't have any idea who did this?"
"The brethren! Duh!"
"Anyone in particular?"
"It doesn't matter! They take care of their own problems!"
I made a decision, for better or worse.
"Bryan, will you take her out of here?"
He looked almost as though he was going to balk, but then hustled her down the alley. Mary and Wesley followed.
\*
"I haven't been in this place for years," Inspector Annette Crawford said, her perceptive gaze sweeping over our surroundings. We were sitting in the "private" booth where I had tried to interrogate Destiny not so long ago.
"You've been to the Power Play before?" I asked.
"I used to work Vice, remember?"
"Oh, right. Lots of problems here?"
"Very few, actually. In general this group is quite law-abiding, just want to be left alone to pursue their lifestyle, as they say. They have security on staff, safe words, lots of oversight, no alcohol...all night spots should be so sane. I imagine as a woman alone you'd be safer here than at your average bar."
I thought of the ducklings, who had been eager and interested but not aggressive, and decided she was probably right.
"Just like you came here tonight, all alone, right?" Annette's tone was casual, but her dark eyes had me in their tractor beam.
"I...uh..."
"Before you go too far with lying to the police you might remember that they keep records at the front desk. No lone women came in tonight. They would remember. In fact, Mr. Happy over there remembers you quite well, says you were with a 'buff black man' and another couple."
"I can explain---"
"I'm sure you can. I'm waiting. I'm tired of half truths, Annie. I want to know everything you know, and I want to know yesterday."
"Should I call my lawyer?"
"Have you broken any laws?"
I thought about that one for a long moment.
"I don't think so...but I think I might need a lawyer, just in case."
Annette stared at me for a long moment. "Talk to me, Annie. I'll stop you if you're about to incriminate yourself."
I told her that Kyle Jones had worked at the Fleming-Union, and what Destiny had told me. I didn't mention that Destiny had been here not long ago and that I had a friend spirit her away...so I guessed I really had broken the law. Sometimes it was hard for me to remember.
"So Destiny used to be part of these bacchanalian festivals at the Fleming-Union, and now she continues to help set them up and provide the girls," Annette summarized.
"That's what she said."
"At least the F-U is offering her a certain amount of job security. Kind of makes a person feel warm and fuzzy inside."
Annette's humor was so dry it was sometimes hard to tell whether she was kidding.
"Yeah. A lot about the F-U made me feel that way."
"And you have no idea where Destiny is at the moment?"
"None at all," I said. That was the truth. Pretty much.
"So you're thinking, what? That one of these parties got out of hand and Elijah ended up dead in a tub like a painting?"
"No. I think he died of arsenic poisoning."
She shook her head. "According to his brother and friends, Elijah Odibajian had been ill for some time."
"He may have been. But I think Balthazar put him in that room, number two-twelve, on purpose. I think the wallpaper was very old, and full of an arsenic-based pigment that reacts with mold and mildew."
"You're losing me." Annette frowned.
"Old wallpaper manufacturers---even the famous William Morris---sometimes used forms of arsenic green as a pigment, as did painters in the old days. But damp plaster and water leaks can create mildew, which reacts with the arsenic, causing arsine gas. Whole families died from the effects."
"Gas like what we found in your uncle's studio?"
"No, this would have been much more subtle than that, building up over time. But Destiny said Elijah was made to stay in his room, and he was essentially a prisoner there for months."
"These are some pretty serious allegations," Annette said. "And virtually impossible to prove."
"The Fleming Mansion's leaky roof was deliberately hosed down from time to time. How strange is that? And now they've fired me, and hired some guy who doesn't know anything to take all the paper down, to get rid of the evidence."
"Why did they hire you in the first place?"
"I'm not sure. I think I was being set up as a fall-guy for something, maybe the theft of the Gauguin, something like that?"
Annette had her blank cop face on, but I could tell she was skeptical.
"Listen, just have Elijah Odibajian's body tested for arsenic poisoning. Apparently it's very easy to detect. I think he was poisoned, and then arranged postmortem to look like a painting."
"Why would someone take the trouble to make him look like that?"
"I have no idea."
"You're still not off the hook with the whole stolen-paintings scandal," Annette admonished. "Tell me about that."
"Sam, Evangeline, and I were working up in the attic. I swear to you, I didn't even know there was a Fleming-Union art collection. I still don't know where it is, or was. I think they're trying to pin it on me, or at least insinuate that I was involved to discredit me...or something."
Annette seemed to be mulling this over.
"From what I understand," I added, "the paintings weren't even particularly valuable. Frank said the club didn't report their loss to the FBI."
"That's true. It made me a bit skeptical, as well. Still and all, I need to chat with your business partner. He is one of the few with the requisite knowledge to overcome the security system."
"Besides the F-U members who had the code," I pointed out.
"Yes, besides them. But they were all in the woods when the theft occurred."
"Alleged theft."
Annette gave me a half smile. "Alleged theft. Anyway, I haven't been able to track Michael Johnson down, though I did receive a call from your handler at the FBI."
Michael and I had a handler. Like we were rare white tigers. That cracked me up. I think I was getting a little punchy.
"Okay, let's get you on back to the station, and you can call your lawyer."
"Are you serious?"
"I appreciate the information you've given me, Annie, but there are some serious holes in your story, especially concerning the friends you came in with tonight. I just want to make sure we have everything we need from you before I lose track of you again. It really bothers me when you don't answer your phone."
A mere two hours later Destiny was headed for a safe house; Bryan, Mary, and Wesley were off the hook; Elijah's body was being tested for arsenic poisoning; I had spilled everything I knew about everything; Elena told me she'd send me a hefty bill...and I was royally pissed off.
\*
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Mary asked over the phone.
"It's a little after one in the morning. You weren't asleep, were you?"
"Nah. You know me, never go to bed before dawn unless your mean boss makes you get up early."
"That's what I figured."
"So a visit to a sex club and a dead guy in an alley aren't enough for one night? You want me to crawl through tunnels with you? Right now?"
"Alleged tunnels. They might not actually exist, or we might not find them even if they do. Do you think you could get your locksmith boyfriend to join us?"
" Ex -boyfriend."
"Do you think he'd be game? We may have to do a little breaking and entering."
"Sounding better all the time. I can't think of the last time anyone's asked me to crawl through creepy old sewage tunnels."
We met a block from Cameron House, and walked toward the building together. The neighborhood was quiet at this hour, the buildings dark. I noted alarm service stickers in the street-level windows, but one thing I had learned from hanging around thieves like Michael was that if you were fast enough, alarms didn't much matter. In many cases, success had more to do with speed than finesse.
Mary's locksmith ex-boyfriend made short work of the basement door lock. He showed Mary how to jimmy it, then closed it up again. In the process they set off the alarm. That was no problem---I would have done it on purpose anyway. We hunkered down, observing the response time. From our hiding place behind a large ripe-smelling Dumpster, we could hear the phone ringing inside. It took the security guard a full four minutes before he made his way to the basement. Another nine until a black-and-white pulled up. A cop climbed out and spoke with the security guard, made a cursory inspection of the basement room, then left.
Once the security guard was settled back at his post on the main floor, Mary jimmied the basement door and set the alarm off again. Same procedure, but this time with a lot of grumbling about a faulty alarm system. It took the cops longer to arrive this time, for a total of seventeen minutes. The security guard was visibly irritated.
Perfect.
Committing felonies always made me think of Michael. Who was that woman he was with? Push it to the back of your mind, Annie, I told myself. Now was the time for breaking and entering, not romance.
"Here's the deal," I told Mary after her ex-boyfriend went home, leaving her with a small kit of locksmith tools. "We'll need to dash through the basement, over to a little cubby, then climb on something to get in the tunnel. Then we're all set. If the guard even bothers to come downstairs, we should be long gone."
"Then what? Do we know where the tunnels lead?"
"We don't. Not really. We might have to make our way out the way we go in, but again, I'm thinking the guard's already decided it's a faulty system. The alarm company's gonna have some 'splainin' to do."
"What?"
" 'Splainin'. You know, 'Luu-cy, you've got some 'splainin' to do.' "
Still nothing.
"From I Love Lucy . It's a classic."
"Before my time."
"It was before my time, too, but surely you've seen reruns?"
"Not really. I've seen reruns of Three's Company , though. It always makes me think of you, me, and Pete. One blonde, one brunette, one guy who's, ya know, gay but not really."
"All right, to each their own. Well, here we go. Carpe diem . Seize the day."
" Carpe noctem , more like."
I looked at her, eyebrows raised in question. "Seize the night?"
"Bingo."
"I always forget you know Latin." That reminded me... I pulled Wesley's card out of my pocket. "Can you translate this?"
She took the card and I watched her lips moving as she read it to herself. "It's kinda weird...something about revenge and cold food?"
" 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'?" I asked.
"That sounds about right." She turned the card over. "This is Wesley's card?"
I nodded.
"That's a weird saying to have on your card, isn't it?"
I nodded again.
Mary opened the back door for us. No alarm went off this time. Maybe they turned it off, assuming it was malfunctioning. We snuck across the basement floor. I had a backpack, and for once in my life I had come prepared: flashlights for Mary and me, extra batteries, and an emergency backup flashlight just in case. Travel-sized hairspray, one for each. A box cutter, a small crowbar, a screwdriver set.
The alarm screamed.
I opened the cupboard door, pulled open a stepladder conveniently placed there, knocked paper towels out of the way, and scrambled up.
Mary stacked the paper towels neatly so no one would notice, and pushed me up by my butt.
This was not going to work. I'm no waif. There was no way I was going to make it through that opening, and if I couldn't, Mary couldn't. I looked at my watch. It had been two minutes.
"Let's try the closet." We moved the equipment onto the floor as quietly as possible, and I felt the wallboard. Depending on its thickness, this stuff was akin to sturdy Styrofoam. Easy enough to bash through. I even came prepared with a box cutter in my bag of tricks, but as I got really close to the wallboard, I noticed tiny hinges. I pressed the other side of the wallboard, and it swung open. A hidden door.
I shone my high-powered flashlight into the pitch-black rectangle. Then I crawled in.
This was a tunnel, sure, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind: a rather romantic arched tunnel like the ample sewers of Paris, which made you think of the Paris Resistance movement, or lovers sneaking out for trysts. This was more like a tight, cement-and-stone animal burrow. We could pass, but only on our hands and knees.
I hadn't thought to bring knee pads and gloves. Rough cement shards, dirt, and gravel pressed into our palms and knees as we crawled. Even more fun were occasional bits of wire and scrap metal...and cockroaches.
"You okay, Mare?" I asked.
"Yup. Just keep going, 'cause there's no backing out of here."
It got much cooler the farther we crawled, dank and chill. After an eternity the tiny tube we were in opened onto a much larger space. About five feet tall by three feet wide, we still had to hunch over to walk, but at least we were on our feet. This looked like the old sewer Will Chan had talked about. There was a gutter in the center, and what was known as rat rails on the sides to walk along. The arched brick roof showed the skill of a bygone era. Other than a little murky water in the gutter, the sewer didn't seem to be used for anything anymore. It didn't even stink.
"Let's stop a second and try to figure out where we are," said Mary. "And where we're going."
"How are we going to do that, exactly?"
"Camp Good News survival training. They used to tell us that out in the woods, God will help you find your way back. Him and a compass and map, of course."
Mary started rooting through the equipment in my backpack. She looked at the compass, approximated the distance we had traveled, then consulted the map of the city, and came up with a possible location.
We continued on. My back was starting to ache from being hunched over for so long, and the creepiness of the damp, enclosed space was starting to give me the willies. I tried to distract myself by thinking of the evening's annoying police interrogation, and how Anton was doing, and why Jarrah Preston was giving up on finding the real Gauguin.
"You know, I was thinking," Mary said. "Down here, there's no one to hear you if you scream."
"Don't think, Mare, just navigate."
"Didja ever take that vampire tour of Nob Hill?" Mary asked.
"Uh...no."
We walked a few more yards in silence.
Great. Now I was thinking about vampires. Almost never did I think about the undead, and I certainly never gave them credence. But now that I was wandering down deep in the bowels of San Francisco, in the dark and the muck, they were harder to laugh off.
Finally, I had to ask: "Why?"
"It's just that...well...the guide said the vampires nested in the tunnels under Nob Hill."
"You're saying vampires live down here?"
"That's what she said."
"Wait. Isn't this the woman who insists she's a hundred-twenty-seven years old?"
"I think so."
"Does she look a hundred-twenty-seven years old to you?"
"Not really. I'd say thirty-fivish."
"Mary, you ever hear that phrase, consider the source?"
"Yep."
"I'm thinking vampires aren't the worst of our problems," I said, my flashlight picking out yet another fork in the tunnels ahead. I was getting the willies. What if we never found our way back out? "For instance, do we have any idea where we are?"
I waited while Mary hunkered down with the map again, moving her flashlight beam back and forth between the map and the compass.
"I'm pretty sure we're under Nob Hill now," Mary said as she stood and looked around. "We've been moving pretty steadily uphill, and I've been counting steps. I think if we take the tunnel to the right, we might actually wind up under the Fleming Mansion."
The opening to the right led to an unlocked iron gate, and beyond that it opened onto an ample nine-feet-wide, eight-feet-tall arched tunnel. We stood up and stretched.
"This is really wild," Mary said. "I love hanging out with you."
"Thanks."
"I mean, a sex club, a murder, and underground tunnels, all in one night... Setting up a biker bar in Thailand was like a walk in the park. Hey---" She shone her flashlight on a section of the wall. "Check this out."
Scratched into the stone wall, as though by use of another rock, were Chinese characters. Their white lines were faint and chalky, but they were easy to make out.
"Chinese graffiti?" Mary asked.
"Looks like," I said, extracting my digital camera and snapping photos of the symbols.
We moved ahead, Mary taking the lead.
"Eeeee!" she screamed, dropping her flashlight into the water in the central gutter where it flickered briefly, then extinguished.
To view a great painting is to see something that has been loved; no artist can create a work of art without falling in love with every centimeter, every inch, every foot. Therefore a great artist must be a great lover.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"What? What? " I yelled.
"A rat! A rat ! Eee! Another one!"
Mary was moving backward at a rapid clip, and I was scrambling so as not to be trampled. "Wait, Mare!"
She brought out the Lady Clairol and sprayed for all she was worth. Sounds of squeals and scurrying echoed off the tunnel walls. After a few moments, there was silence. I passed my flashlight beam all around.
"Where'd they go?"
There was a small hole in the wall, where brick didn't quite meet concrete, right at the base of a stairway leading up, with a solid iron door at the top.
I reached into my satchel, brought out the reserve flashlight, and handed it to Mary. "Don't drop this one." And started up the stairs.
"Do you think we're at the Fleming-Union?" Mary whispered, close on my heels.
"I'm not sure."
The soft soles of my sneakers sounded like boots on metal, the sounds were so magnified in the echoey tunnel.
I reached the doors. Over them was written a Latin phrase, the same as was on Wesley's business card. REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD. An appalling motto. These Fleming-Union boys were getting on my last nerve.
The old metal doorknob turned, but the door was stuck. I put my shoulder into it and pushed. It started to give way slowly, creaking.
" Annie ," Mary said in an urgent whisper behind me. She handed me a crucifix she wore as part of her Goth outfit. "Take this. Just in case."
I tried to snort and roll my eyes, but the truth was, I half expected Count Dracula and his minions to be lurking behind the iron door, ready to pounce on me and make me an unwilling blood donor. Or maybe, I thought wildly, Balthazar Odibajian was actually a vampire. That would explain a lot .
I accepted the crucifix and held it in front of me as I pushed the heavy door open a few more inches.
Pitch black. The doorway had been covered with a velvet curtain. Pushing this aside, we stepped into another arched brick space. It looked just like Anton's sketch, "Tunnel Vision." Around the top of the walls, right under rough wooden corbels, was an intricate border that looked recently painted. The stone floor was swept clean. And there were racks and racks of bottles.
"This is awesome," Mary whispered behind me. "A wine cellar?"
There was a thick coating of dust and cobwebs on many of the bottles. I glanced at a few, and saw dates going back to the early 1900s. I doubted wine remained drinkable that long, but it was undeniably impressive. This was quite the historic collection.
I checked my watch. It was a quarter to three in the morning. No one would be up and around at this hour, would they? It was as good a time as any to sneak around, right? There must be some stairs that led---
A door opened. We heard far-off noises, sounds of a party. Voices, glass clinking, laughter.
And two men's voices in discussion, descending toward us.
" Get back !" I said in an urgent whisper to Mary. "Back to the tunnel!"
Mary and I careened back through the door to the tunnels. The lights in the wine cellar flipped on just as we slipped behind the curtain. We tried to close the door, but the heavy, stubborn iron was hard to budge, and creaked.
We left it ajar and ran down the steps, and around the corner, flattening ourselves against the wall. We could keep running, but our steps echoed in the tunnels. Presuming they had powerful flashlights, there would be nowhere to hide if they actually came down to investigate.
"Why's the door ajar?" A man's voice said.
He pulled back the curtain. Light spilled down the steps and pooled in the water of the sewer.
"I want this door locked at all times, understand me? What the hell's wrong with you people?"
It banged shut, and we heard the loud scraping metal-on-metal sounds of an iron bar being secured.
Mary and I stayed where we were for a few minutes, in the damp dark, catching our breath. Then we turned our flashlights on and snuck back down the tunnel.
We came to another iron gate, this one locked. Mary used her lock picks and opened it easily enough, but the area beyond it looked caved in.
"Is this the only way out, do you think?" asked Mary.
"It's hard to say," I equivocated. I was having a tough time thinking straight. Suddenly the walls felt like they were closing in on us. "Maybe we could retrace our steps."
"We'd probably end up explaining ourselves to the Cameron House security," said Mary. "Besides, we've been walking---and crawling---for more than an hour, and took a bunch of turns. We might get lost, make things worse."
"True."
"I sure would like to get out of here," Mary said. "It's cold. And I might talk a good game, but I really don't like vampires."
I flashed my light through the caved-in section. There was still enough room to pass. It didn't even look as narrow as the first stretch we went through from Cameron House, and it only went about ten feet before opening back up. The ceiling looked intact; the cave-in had come from the sides. I tapped the roof and a wall with the flashlight. It seemed secure.
"Okay, I'll go first," I said. "If I die, you get the business."
"Does that mean I have to do all the paperwork?" she whined.
"I'm facing death and you're worried about paperwork?"
"I'm just saying."
I took a deep breath and entered the space, crawling carefully on hands and knees. I held the flashlight awkwardly under my arm, wishing I had one of those miner's hats with the lamps on them. Ten feet stretched out, seemed like twenty. Thirty. I was feeling a whole lot of sympathy for Michael's claustrophobia about now.
At long last I emerged at the other end.
Mary's turn.
As she pulled herself through slowly, I looked around. My flashlight beam landed on a ladder that disappeared into a hole in the ceiling. As soon as Mary emerged from the collapsed section, we hurried over to it.
Metal rungs led up a vertical tube, to a round manhole cover.
Mary illuminated the shaft with her light while I climbed up. With a great deal of grunting and pushing, I finally managed to shove the heavy manhole cover up slightly and to the side. I waited for a moment, listening for cars: nothing. Finally I poked my head up, praying some Mack truck would not choose that precise moment to come whizzing down the street.
"I know you," said a voice. "What you doin' in the sewer?"
I looked around. Harvard and his jumpsuited buddy stood staring at me, bewildered expressions on their faces.
Harvard offered me his hand and helped pull me up and out. His younger companion, meanwhile, took a broad-legged stance out in the street with his hands held out stiffly in front of him, keeping traffic at bay. Despite the fact that there were no cars on the street at this hour, I gave him points for good intentions.
Mary popped her head up, startling them both.
"Hey," Mary said.
"Hey," answered Harvard with a nod.
"Hey," repeated the blond man in the jumpsuit. "What up?"
The four of us just stood, somewhat awkwardly, for a moment. Hard to know what to say, really. Though it was dark, after the pitch black of the sewer Mary and I were blinking in the streetlights. We were right in front of the Fairmont Hotel, across Mason Street from the Fleming-Union.
"What you two doin'?" Harvard asked.
"Exploring, sort of."
"You sayin' Hermes is down there?"
"No, not that I know of."
"Find him yet?"
I shook my head.
"So you explorin' down in the sewers? Just the two of you? Woman shouldn't go down there by herself. Where's the man was with you?"
"He wouldn't go," Mary said, brushing herself off. "Scared of vampires."
"Duude," said Jumpsuit with a sympathetic nod. "Me, too. They totally weird me out. Supposedly they live right under Nob Hill."
Harvard snorted and rolled his eyes at me.
"Speaking of vampires," Mary said, "did you know that Chinese vampires hop?"
\*
I dropped Mary at her apartment off Valencia in the Mission, then drove over the Bay Bridge, home to Oakland. I needed to shower and change, and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. It was well past three in the morning. Surely that didn't still count as night, did it? Besides, at this point I was thinking maybe I should just let Odibajian's goons put me out of my misery.
As I trudged up the stairs past the second floor landing, I noticed a tiny video camera near the ceiling of the stairwell. I had never seen that before. Was the building's normally hands-off management going high-tech?
I turned the corner at the landing and peeked up at my door. It stood wide open. This time it wasn't Anton with paella , that much was sure.
It was Frank. Looking rumpled and sleepy, shoving something into his jacket pocket. I glimpsed the butt of a gun.
"Is there something in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
He gave me a grudging smile. "You okay?"
"Sure." I walked the rest of the way up the stairs, and he stood back to let me pass. I noted a pillow and blanket on the couch, and perched on the coffee table was a small video player with a black and white picture of the stairwell showing on the screen. "Looks like you set up shop."
"You haven't been answering your cell phone."
"It sort of got broken."
"And you haven't been home for days."
"You told me to stay away, remember?"
"Since when do you do what I tell you?"
I shrugged.
"You sure you're okay?"
I nodded, not wanting to review the day, or the night, or remember pretty blond Kyle Jones lying too still in a filthy alley.
I pulled a bottle of vodka from my freezer and poured two shots, offering one to Frank.
"Listen, Annie, I need to talk to you about something." He reached for me, but I pulled back. In part because I feared I smelled like a sewer; in part because I thought if he touched me right now I would just melt right into him.
"I'm in desperate need of a shower," I said. "Could we talk after?"
By the time I came out, wrapped in my comfy robe, Frank had taken off his jacket and fallen back asleep while sitting up on the couch. I stood over him for a moment, and for the first time caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like as a little boy: pouty lower lip, long dark lashes. I had never seen him look vulnerable before.
As I watched him, his eyes opened.
He reached for me. This time I didn't back away.
As in the car, his mouth was ardent, demanding. I crawled into his lap, fully aware that the robe I wore was all that stood between him and me. All he had to do was push it open and---
"What's that?" he asked.
"What's what?"
"Here, on your shoulder." He traced the bruise gently with his fingertips. His eyes met mine, accusatory. "It looks like a love bite."
"It's, um..."
"Are you seeing someone? Please tell me it's not Michael, or whatever the hell his real name is."
"No. I'm not seeing anyone, least of all Michael."
Frank looked angry, hurt even. I didn't want to tell him the truth, but I was too tired, my mind too muddled to come up with any sort of plausible explanation. A doorknob? A crescent-shaped branch that somehow whacked me while on a hike?
"I...had a little run-in with a goon."
Frank froze. "A goon."
"I don't know what to call those guys. Guys who beat people up."
"Some goon bit you?"
"Kind of."
Frank shot up to his feet, dumping me unceremoniously onto the couch. He paced the living room, hands on hips. He finally turned back toward me, still breathing hard. When he spoke his voice was strained.
"When was this?"
"Earlier today...I mean yesterday afternoon. It's been a long day."
"Where?"
"In a stairwell. It really doesn't matter---"
"It doesn't matter ? What else did he do?"
"They just---"
" They ? There was more than one?"
"Two. One held me and the other sort of slapped me. No big deal, really, except for the bruise. It was worse for the fellow I was with, they pushed him down a flight of stairs. They just wanted to scare me, told me to back off and...What are you doing?"
Frank was pulling on his jacket and adjusting the pistol in his pocket.
"He's gone too damned far."
"Who?"
"Balthazar Odibajian."
"What do you think you're doing? Where are you going? It's four in the morning." He was pulling on his jacket and striding for the door. I ran to intercept him, putting my hands on his chest. " Frank . Stop it. You're acting as crazy as me. Stay. Here. With me."
Frank was livid, black eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, breathing heavily.
Suddenly I couldn't keep from smiling. My straight-laced landlord was like one big, blustery, ex--Special Forces sex machine. And I had him in my clutches. My hormones shifted into overdrive. Time to use my feminine wiles.
My smile gave him pause. But then his eyes dropped to where my robe gaped open, displaying one naked breast. If that's not a supreme example of feminine wiles, I don't know what is.
After a very brief moment, his mouth followed his gaze.
There was no more talk of goons, or Balthazar Odibajian, or retribution. There was very little talk at all, beyond moans and gasps and whispered nothings.
\*
Far too soon I was awakened. Frank had already showered and dressed.
"Breakfast meeting?" I croaked.
"As a matter of fact, yes. I'm sorry about this." He sat on the side of the bed and pushed a lock of hair out of my face. "How do you feel?"
My eyelids felt like sandpaper. I glanced at the clock: just after nine A.M. As I sat up, any number of unfamiliar muscles cried out in protest. Were they from my active day yesterday...or the even more active night? Frank looked a little the worse for wear, himself. We couldn't have gotten more than a couple hours of sleep between the two of us.
Frank's lovemaking had been as passionately demanding, as gloriously insistent, as deliciously wicked, as his kisses had always promised. And I matched him at every step. Neither of us seemed able to get enough.
"Why don't you go back to sleep for a while?" Frank suggested. "I already called a guy to come watch your door."
"A babysitter?"
"A bodyguard."
"Frank---"
"Just let me do this. I'm older than you. My heart can't take the stress."
I smiled and kissed him on the cheek, hyper-aware of my morning breath.
He hugged me. Our eyes met. If my teeth had been brushed I would have kissed him, maybe tried to convince him to come back to bed.
"Frank, promise me you won't do anything crazy against Odibajian."
He smiled. "Thanks for reining me in last night. It's not like me to go off half-cocked."
"I'll say."
"Cute." He gave me a crooked grin. "I've decided upon a much better revenge. Odibajian will pay, believe me."
"Just as long as you don't get killed or hurt in the process."
"Now you sound like me. Let's both try to stick to that."
Frank kissed me on the top of the head, then cupped my cheek in his hand. When he spoke his voice was low, husky. "Last night was...incredible. Worth waiting for."
I just nodded, feeling suddenly awkward. After he left I tried to go back to sleep. Usually that's a real skill of mine. But now random thoughts kept flitting through my mind.
Among these was the fact that I might be falling in love with my landlord. He wasn't even trying to tell me what to do, or bend me to his will. What the heck was that about? Was this some sort of sneaky plan to lure me into his web, like a spider? Or could he really be just about the most decent man I had ever known?
My mind started replaying last night. The kisses, the caresses, the moans...
But then I started thinking. How was this going to work, exactly? Were we a couple now? He hated my business partner, and Michael would find it problematic to work with Frank. Plus, I still had no idea what was going on with Anton et al; and I think we all knew that I wasn't going to let that drop.
The vision of Kyle Jones's body came back to me, chilling me to the core, washing over me like a bucket of cold water. I had practically caused a man's death last night, then spent hours frolicking in bed. I was scum. Confused scum. Confused, horny scum.
All right, time for a quick shower, a stop at Peet's Coffee, and if I was very lucky I might even find a straggler at the Casual Carpool line.
There was one lone man waiting at Casual Carpool, but since I was the only car---other than the one containing Frank's man tailing me---I lucked out. I didn't even look over as a man in a cowboy hat and jeans with a huge belt buckle climbed in.
"What I don't get is, why you don't just call me if you want a ride," I said, maneuvering us onto the freeway entrance.
Michael-the-cowboy grinned. "This is so much more fun. And look how fast you caught on. I'm proud of you."
He leaned over and ruffled my hair. I pulled away. After the night with Frank I was fortified against Michael's charms.
"Hands to yourself, jerk."
"Whoa. What's up?"
"Crawford needs to talk to you. ASAP. You're casting doubts upon me and the business."
"I had Kevin, our FBI guy, call her."
"I realize that. She still needs to talk to you. In person."
He stared at my profile for a moment.
"That's not what's bothering you. Is it that you saw me with another woman?"
"What?" Truth was, it was the furthest thing from my mind. Funny how violence and passing the night in a police interrogation room and sewer tunnels could put things into perspective. Not to mention that I had spent the last several hours indulging in the lewdest sort of behavior with Frank, so it seemed a bit much now to act jealous with Michael. I shook my head and took a drink of my coffee. "A man died last night. Because of me."
"Who? What happened?"
"Kyle Jones. He was the parking attendant at the F-U, and used to work for the couple who originally lost the Gauguin. I think he must have stolen the painting from Victor Yeltsin in the first place," I mused aloud. "I just can't figure out why he was working at the F-U, especially if he had the painting. Unless, of course, it was a worthless fake. But even so, why would he hang around a club where Victor is a member? It makes no sense."
"How did he die?"
"Shot. In an alleyway, right outside the Power Play."
"You were at the Power Play last night? How did I miss out on this little excursion?"
I glared at him. "We're talking about a man's life, here, Michael."
"Sorry. Why do you say he died because of you?"
"I was trying to ask him some questions. I think someone stopped him from answering."
We were approaching the typical rush-hour traffic backup at the MacArthur Maze.
"Don't get on the bridge. Take 80 North instead," Michael said.
"Why?"
"I have my reasons."
"There is no 80 North. You mean 80 East?"
"It says East, but it's going north."
This is typical Bay Area signage. The freeway runs more or less north--south, following the edge of the bay, but the signs say 80 East and 580 West. So a person could go north, east, and west all at once. It seemed a fitting metaphor for my life these days.
After a brief hesitation I crossed six lanes of freeway, weaving my way through traffic with the skill born of near-daily experience dealing with this difficult, intricate intersection, to take the far-right off-ramp for 80. I noticed that the silver Honda Pilot tailing me didn't make it over in time. Poor guy. Looked like somebody was going to get in trouble with a Mr. Frank DeBenton.
"So you're saying that since you were trying to get some information from this Kyle fellow, and he was killed, now you're responsible?"
"He'd be alive right now if not for me."
"You don't know that."
Silence. I took a swig of coffee and savored the familiar, comforting smell and taste. Peet's French Roast is one of the few things in life I am utterly, completely sure about. I was grasping at straws, but there it is.
It was confusing to be with Michael so soon after Frank. I was beginning to yearn for the simplicity of last week, when my frustrating business partner was still missing and my sexy landlord was still refusing to talk to me. And my uncle was still well.
Traffic in the opposite direction was at a standstill, but 80 East is against the A.M. commute direction so we whizzed along, passing UC Berkeley's Campanile to our right, the bay and San Francisco to our left. The Golden Gate was socked in under a thick blanket of fog.
"Where are we headed?" I asked.
"Crockett."
"Why?"
"Remember Perry Outlaw? He gave us that Crockett address?"
I let out an exasperated breath. "I don't care about finding Hermes anymore, Michael. I have to figure out what's going on at the F-U. I have to find some way to talk to Balthazar Odibajian. I have to---"
"Turns out Perry has--- had ---a brother. Named Kyle."
Pablo Picasso said that copying oneself is more dangerous than copying others, for it only leads to sterility.
Therefore, I feel free to copy others.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"Kyle Jones ?"
"Née Outlaw. I guess in his line of work he felt he needed an alias. Maybe he was the brighter of the two brothers."
"He couldn't come up with something more interesting than Jones?"
"I'm thinking intelligent creativity wasn't his strong suit."
"You've got me there." So if Perry and Kyle were brothers...was this yet another unlikely coincidence?
Crockett is a small industrial town on a northern finger of the bay called the Carquinez Strait. Though I had seen the signs for the town, I had never gotten off the freeway, just noticed it as I whizzed by on the way to the Carquinez Bridge and points north. From the freeway the most remarkable thing about the town is a huge C&H Sugar plant sitting right on the water.
Once we exited and drove along surface streets, however, Crockett was charming. It had been caught in a 1950s time warp, and had the mien of a pleasant, slightly depressed Mayberry RFD. The small main street had a number of boarded-up businesses, but there were still several shops and people on the sidewalks. Colorful banners batted around by the wind off the strait announced an upcoming SUGARTOWN FESTIVAL AND STREET FAIR!
I pulled up to the curb on Pomona, the main drag. It was early yet; folks were headed to their cars, newspapers tucked under their arms, travel mugs of coffee in hand. Michael steered me across the quiet street to an old-fashioned diner, where we slid into an orange vinyl booth by a spotless plate-glass window.
"I'm not a breakfast person," I grumbled.
"Most important meal of the day," Michael said brightly.
The waitress came over, "Sandy," a middle-aged woman sporting a huge smile and orthopedic shoes. Michael ordered coffee and grapefruit juice for both of us, even though I was still clutching my travel mug full of Peet's. I leaned back into the corner of the booth, feeling listless. Elijah Odibajian, Anton Woznikowicz, Kyle "Jones" Outlaw...other than having complicated names, what did they have in common? Why had they been marked for death? Perhaps most importantly, how did I get myself wrapped up in these things?
When Sandy came over with our drinks, Michael ordered a Western omelet for himself and an English muffin, well-toasted, for me.
I stared out the window. Maybe I should move to Crockett. Seemed like a nice place. Slow pace, friendly people, cute houses. I bet people hardly ever got shot outside sex clubs here. On second thought, it wasn't nearly far enough away. At this point Siberia seemed like the better option.
Would Frank like Crockett, I wondered? My heart thudded. What, was I going to run out and purchase our first home? You slept together once, Annie. Don't blow it out of proportion.
While I was lost in thought, Michael struck up a conversation with Sandy. By the time I started listening in, she was eating out of his hand.
"Oh, sure, the Outlaw boys," she chuckled. "With a name like that, I guess it's no wonder that they were into mischief. Not bad kids, but lots of petty stuff, ran a little wild."
"And their friends...?"
"Alan Dizikes and Skip Goldberg. They were like our own little Crockett gang," she chuckled again and shook her head, "but like I say, they were basically good kids. Bored, is all. Not much to do here in town, so a while back Perry and Kyle moved to San Fran, but Alan and Skip stuck around."
"And they're up on Cherry Street?"
"That's right. Alan's folks passed away early on, so he inherited the house, rents out rooms. Skip lives there now, too. Corner of Tilden."
Michael gave Sandy one of his patented "you are the most fascinating creature in the world" smiles.
She melted. I wasn't sure Crockett was ready for Michael's megawatt sexiness.
"Thanks, Sandy," I said, reaching across the table and putting my hand atop Michael's. "I'm sure you're busy; don't let my nosy husband monopolize your time."
"Oh, sure, no problem," she said, picking up her coffeepot. A little bell tinkled as the front door opened, capturing Sandy's attention. "Well, look who just walked in. Speak of the devil...."
We looked around to see a short, paunchy man in wire-rimmed frames and a cheap brown suit walk in and take a stool at the counter. By his graying temples and jowly face I would guess he was in his mid-fifties. Surely this couldn't be one of the Crockett Boy Gang?
"That's Jim Stafford. He's their lawyer."
"Whose lawyer?"
"All of 'em. Every one of those boys has needed a lawyer at least once in their lives. Well, eat hearty." She hustled off to refresh coffee cups on linoleum tables throughout the small diner.
Michael and I looked at each other, and without saying a word we got up and each took a stool on either side of Jim Stafford, lawyer to the Crockett gang.
"Hi," I said.
"Um, hello," Stafford said.
"Good morning," Michael said.
Stafford swung his head toward Michael, then back to me. "Is...everything okay? Can I do something for you two?"
"We wanted to talk to you about a client of yours."
"Clients' information is entirely confidential."
"What about after they've been shot to death in a dirty alleyway?" I asked.
Stafford took off his glasses and looked at me. Up close I realized some of his puffiness probably had to do with the veins on his nose and in his cheeks, and the red rims of his eyes. He was a drinker. But I had the sense he was no fool.
"Who? Who died?"
"Kyle Outlaw. A.k.a. Kyle Jones."
"Kyle?" Stafford stared straight ahead, sipped his coffee, and shook his head. "I guess I'm not surprised. Kyle did have a way of living on the edge. I'm sorry to hear that, though."
"He was a client of yours, right?"
He nodded. "But I haven't seen him for some time. I was under the impression he was toeing the line, keeping out of trouble. I represented his brother's wife not too long ago, but Kyle and Perry have both been trying to straighten up."
"What about a few years ago? Kyle was working for a couple in Sausalito, and a valuable painting was stolen. Do you remember that?"
"Kyle was questioned by the police at the time, but he wasn't ever charged."
"When did you represent him?"
"It was shortly after that, actually. He got involved in a robbery, was driving the car, wasn't part of the heist at all, didn't even know what his friends were up to until it was too late."
Uh-huh.
"Would you happen to know anything about Kyle being involved with stolen paintings?"
His red-rimmed eyes looked at me, then over to Michael. He gave a mirthless chuckle and climbed off the stool, throwing a few dollars on the counter.
"Let's talk outside."
Michael settled up with Sandy and the three of us headed out to the street.
"Listen, I've got an ex-wife going for my jugular, prostate problems, and chronic heartburn. Last thing I need at this point is to get hassled over some dead kid's past." Stafford paused and looked up and down the street, as though searching for inspiration. "Tell you what. Kyle gave me something for safekeeping a while ago, against a later payment...which never came, thank you very much. You want it, it's yours."
The Stafford Law Office was just a few blocks away, housed in the front room of an old Victorian on a corner lot in a residential neighborhood. The lawyer brought us in, then marched upstairs to a small bedroom, pulled down a set of retractable attic stairs from the ceiling, and led the way up. He pulled on a string and a bare lightbulb lit up the cramped space: a few crates of Christmas decorations, an old footlocker covered with University of Washington stickers, random cardboard boxes and bags, and numerous white file boxes neatly labeled with names and dates.
"I got a bum knee on top of everything else," Stafford complained, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, jingling change. He looked around absently, as though he couldn't remember why he was here. "I tell you, I don't need the hassle."
"What are we looking for?" Michael asked.
"It's here somewhere...a black plastic Hefty bag..."
In the distance we could hear the phone ringing.
"That's my business line," Stafford said. "I'll be right back."
He descended the stairs, then slammed the apparatus shut and locked the trapdoor from the outside.
"Hey!"
We could hear him thundering down the stairs, and the front door slamming. I ran to the tiny ventilation window just in time to see Stafford run out of the house and climb into a dated red Cadillac, talking on his cell phone. He peeled out. Damn !
The window was far too small to crawl out, and I'm not good with heights, anyway. I pondered for a second. Calling 911 wouldn't do---there was no way I was going to deal with the police again. Besides, my cell phone was in pieces.
"Do you have your cell?" I asked Michael, hand outstretched. He handed it over.
I dialed Mary.
After she stopped laughing, she said: "I'm impressed, though. You had your cell phone, and it was actually charged. Awesome."
"Actually it's Michael's phone. Do you think you could borrow a car and come get us?" I asked.
"Are you serious ? Michael the über-thief is with you, and you thought you needed my help to get you out?" She yawned loudly. "Annie, you have got to learn to take that man seriously. I'm going back to bed. You can't ask a girl to traipse through vampire tunnels all night, then get up with the birds."
I heard a crashing noise. I turned around to see Michael using a heavy candelabrum to bash at the attic door. He shoved a corner between the attic floor and the lip of the panel and fortunately seemed to be making progress prying the pieces apart. Wood whined and splintered.
The hatch finally popped open, hanging limply on one hinge.
"Good work there, chief, but now we can't use the ladder."
Michael had a relieved look in his eye, and I remembered his claustrophobia. Probably he just needed to know there was a way out.
"Let's look through this stuff first," Michael said.
"What are we looking for?" I asked.
He hauled a couple of boxes to the side, then checked the date on one and looked inside.
"Goldberg was one of 'the gang,' right?" He pulled a file.
"And...?"
"Alan something. But Kyle's who we most want."
We found files for Perry Outlaw, Alan Dizikes, and Skip Goldberg...but nothing at all for Kyle, even though we ended up looking through each and every box. No mystery treasure in a black plastic Hefty bag, either.
"All right, I don't think there's anything here," Michael said. "Let's check downstairs."
Rather than try to use the now lopsided, perilous ladder Michael hoisted himself over the side of the opening, hung down by his arms, then dropped the rest of the way to the floor below. As easy as pie.
"Your turn."
"It's high. I don't like jumping from high places."
"I'll catch you."
"Yeah, right." I'm no lightweight. I could just see flattening Michael like a pancake, and then I'd have a paraplegic partner on my hands, one who would spend the rest of his life waxing on about his exploits before Annie-the-elephant landed on him in a rescue attempt gone bad. No thanks.
"Annie? You there?"
"Just stand to the side." I didn't even try to keep the irritation out of my voice. Gingerly, I sat on the edge of the opening, then turned over on my stomach, butt in the air, and ooched my way toward the edge. I hung briefly, but I didn't have great upper body strength. I finally made myself let go, and dropped to the ground, thumping and rolling. Luckily during all my machinations Michael had thrown some cushions from a nearby couch onto the ground, so I survived, winded but unbroken. I lay on my back for a minute to recover.
Michael stood over me, crooking his head, eyebrows knitted in confusion. "You okay?"
I nodded.
"You might want to work on your physical prowess a bit, there, sweetheart. In this business you occasionally have to jump all of three feet."
"It was a lot more than three feet."
"Four, tops."
"At least five. And I'm taking yoga, but I'm not as young as I used to be. And I don't like heights. And what 'business' are you referring to that requires me to study gymnastics?"
"Investigations."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that. According to both Frank and Inspector Crawford, we're not investigators. Apparently a person does have to be licensed to call yourself a private eye, whether you carry a gun or not."
"So?"
"We're not licensed so we can't call ourselves investigators."
"Hmm. Maybe you should get on that."
"It requires forms to be filled out. Fees to be paid. And tests to be taken."
"Sounds like your strong suit, not mine."
"Not hardly."
Michael held his hand out to me and pulled me to my feet. "Let's get moving," he said.
We rummaged through Stafford's office for a bit, Michael standing at a big gray metal filing cabinet and me poking around his large oak desk.
"What is it we're looking for?" I asked.
"Hard to say. Usually it's a sort of 'we'll know it when we see it' scenario. There may be nothing at all, but Stafford's behavior seems rather unusual for an innocent man."
True enough. I riffled through his desk drawers: plenty of files and legal pads with notes; a bottle of The Macallan 18-year scotch; Xeroxed reference materials. And in one desk drawer, several auction catalogs for fine art. I hadn't noticed a lot of collectible art in the home; in fact, there was nothing on the walls beyond family photos and a decorative print or two.
"Find something?" Michael asked.
I shrugged. "Could be something, could be nothing. Art catalogs."
Could Stafford have been telling the truth, that Kyle offered him something in lieu of a retainer? Something like a valuable painting? Your average person would have no idea how to put a well-known painting up for sale. I thought back to the pawnshop fence I had spoken to in Oakland: he had mentioned a couple of white guys offering up a Gauguin, one middle-aged, one young. Jim Stafford and Kyle Jones?
"Why don't we check out Skip Goldberg's current address?" Michael suggested.
"You don't want to ransack this place, see if there's stolen artwork stuck in a closet somewhere?"
"We can look around if you want, but somehow I doubt he would have it just lying around, and left us in here with it. He must have known we'd be looking around once we got out of the attic."
"True. Let's go."
We hurried a few bucolic tree-lined blocks away to check out Goldberg's address. With my newfound knowledge about local disreputable lawyers and boy gangs, probably I should have been dissuaded from wanting to make my home in Crockett. But it sure was a charming town. Big trees shaded the streets and supported rope swings. The houses were relics of a more prosperous age, marching up the hillside, with views of the strait. Down closer to the water the train chugged by, blowing its horn. Cute as all get-out.
The Goldberg home was a simple clapboard saltbox. The driveway was empty of cars, and peeking in the windows we saw that the place looked abandoned. There was a fair amount of trash on the floors and cupboard doors gaped open, not in a ransacked way...more in a "we'd better get the hell out of here" way.
"Well. Crockett has been something of a bust," I said as Michael and I headed back toward the main drag of Pomona Street.
"Except that we now know Kyle Jones's lawyer and friends were in on something, or are afraid of something."
"Aren't we all."
I leaned against my dusty truck, waiting while Michael went back into the diner and worked his magic with Sandy. I could see him gesturing and smiling through the plate-glass window. He was so freaking gorgeous, so at home in his body, so confident. And the weird part was, I really believed that he liked me for me , not for some cleaned-up version of me. Then I thought of Frank and my stomach clenched. What did Frank offer? Escape? Or a trap? Could Frank really love me as I am, or would he expect me to stay on the straight and narrow?
Leave it to me to choose now to worry about my love life.
I was a mess.
I pondered moving to Siberia again, but I realized I would need a really good coat. We Bay Area folks don't really do coats.
"Stafford hangs out at Toby's Tavern," Michael said as he trotted across the street to join me. "Might be worth coming back tonight, asking around."
"Sure. Super. Can't wait."
Michael looked down at me.
"You okay?"
"No, I'm not okay. A man was killed last night, practically right in front of me. My Uncle Anton might not pull through. I can't figure out how Kyle is connected to a forgery, stolen paintings, and now a stolen sculpture. I put my friend Bryan on the line with the police to keep a maid safe...." I trailed off and looked down Pomona Street. No way was I going to mention that I'd slept with Frank last night. Instead, I took the offensive. "And you're an ass."
He leaned back against the truck and crossed his arms over his chest. To my great relief he didn't say a word, just stood there with me for a long couple of minutes. I closed my eyes and sighed.
"Why am I always so clueless?" I whined. "Why does all this stuff happen around me, but I never have any idea what's going on?"
He smoothed my hair back, resting his large palm on the nape of my neck and giving me a little massage.
"I think you're being a little hard on yourself, there, tiger. You do tend to attract trouble, I'll give you that, but it seems to me you always get your man---or woman---eventually. You just do it in your own special way."
"Why did you turn and walk away from me?"
"What?"
"You saw me clear as day yesterday in North Beach, and you turned and walked away from me."
"I have no recollection of that event."
"Who was that woman you were with?
"She's shy."
"She didn't look shy."
He smiled. "What did she look like?"
"She looked like a smart lingerie model. A nightmare to every normal woman in the world."
"You're adorable when you're jealous."
"Hunh. Jealousy would imply that we have some sort of relationship."
"I think we're dancing around one, aren't we?"
I shook my head. "Only a business relationship."
Michael put his hand under my chin again, and I met his gaze.
"You can't possibly be this obtuse. You know I want more, have wanted more since the day I met you."
"Sex, you mean," I said, pulling away.
"That's always a good place to start."
"It's a moot point, anyway. I don't believe in dating co-workers."
"That's easy enough: I quit."
"Besides, it's..."
"What?"
"Things have changed. Between me and Frank..."
He snorted. "Oh yes, your sainted Frank."
"Frank's a good man, Michael. You should give him a chance."
"Thanks anyway."
"I mean it. You two could be...friends, maybe."
He peered at me for a long moment, so intently that I looked away.
"You slept with him." It was more an accusation than a statement.
"I...uh..." Strictly speaking, there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on. But it seemed a sore point to bring up at the moment.
Michael stepped back, shook his head, and let out a mirthless chuckle. He ran his hands through his hair. "I can not believe this. I really can't. Among other things, when did you possibly find the time?"
"Don't be a such a hypocrite. You've probably slept with half the women in San Francisco by now."
"I don't judge you for having a love life, Annie. It's your choice I quibble with."
"I know he's law-abiding, but being a man of honor is considered a positive trait for most people."
"A man of honor. Oh, that's a good one."
"What are you talking about?"
"You want to know the truth? That woman you saw me with yesterday was my sister."
"Sister? For real?" No wonder they looked like a matched set of demi-gods. I could only imagine what their parents looked like---what kind of DNA must they be carting around?
"My sister, Ingrid."
"Wow, I can't believe you have a sister. Wait, her name's Ingrid?"
"She also happens to be your precious Frank's wife."
From the dimmest corner of the Kasbah, to the grittiest New York dive bar, to the raunchiest bordello in Amsterdam, never neglect humble establishments, for there is some great art to be found. Believe me. This is the voice of experience talking.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
I couldn't speak for a full minute. Michael was a habitual liar, but I couldn't imagine him fabricating something like this.
"Ex cuse me?" I finally croaked. "What did you say?"
"You heard me."
"I don't think I did."
"My father and I have been...estranged for a few years. I haven't been in close contact with my family for some time. I only found out about this recently, myself."
"But I don't understand...how could Frank possibly be married to your sister?"
"The world is a strange and frightening place."
And mine was tilting on its axis. I couldn't process this. Couldn't deal. Not with everything else going on.
"We'd better go," I said, pushing away from the truck. My voice sounded hollow to my own ears. "I want to get to the hospital, check on Anton."
\*
I dropped Michael downtown before proceeding to the hospital. Anton was still sedated, but the doctors seemed pleased with his progress. The process of chelation would be completed soon, and then all that was left was to wait and see, hoping that Anton's prior health and spirit were enough to bring him back from the brink.
By now word had gotten out about Anton's condition. The ICU's waiting room was filling with a steady stream of Anton's friends and associates, from artists and art aficionados whom he'd met at galleries and museums, to drinking buddies from the bars where he'd been a regular for twenty years. There were even a few upstanding citizens, for Anton was a man of cosmopolitan charm when he wanted to be.
I sat in the sole remaining chair, glum and uncommunicative. A cell phone rang, and for an instant I thought it was mine. Before I could stop myself, I hoped it was Frank calling. I blew out a breath, envisioning Frank's deep, espresso-brown eyes. The eyes that had always seemed, though guarded and often disapproving, brutally honest. And now this latest revelation.
What was it with me? Was I a magnet for lying, charming, worthless men? That and random crime?
To distract myself, I flipped through the case file Jarrah Preston had given me, it seemed a lifetime ago. I reread the article on the Odibajian brothers to see if I'd missed anything the first go-round. Nothing jumped out at me from the text, but in the black-and-white photo of Balthazar with a woman on each arm...one of the women was none other than Catrina Yeltsin. No big surprise. It could have been taken at any Fleming-Union function. Still, I remembered the old man in the fireworks shop tapping the photo. Could he have recognized Catrina rather than Odibajian? Or did all white women look the same, as well? Or was he merely a fan of spectacular cleavage?
"Annie?"
"Nicole, hi." I looked up to see my Cameron House tour guide standing in front of me.
"The kids made Anton a bunch of get-well cards." She held up a brown paper grocery bag. "I volunteered to bring them over. I wanted to see how he is."
"He's still sedated, so he can't really respond. But so far his vital signs look good. The doctors are hoping he'll be coming back to us soon."
"I'm so glad to hear that."
"He'll be cheered to see the kids' cards, I'm sure. Hey, I wanted to show you something." I fished around in my bag until I found my digital camera. I pushed buttons until I found the photos of the symbols etched on the tunnel walls. "Do you have any idea what these mean?"
"They're names, and dates, and the names of...villages, maybe? I only recognize one or two." Her dark eyes looked up at me. "Where did you get these?"
"I saw them written on a wall. In a tunnel."
"A tunnel. Where?"
"Under the Fleming-Union."
"You found tunnels? How?" She gave me a shrewd look. "Hold on, you didn't happen to break in last night...never mind. I don't really want to know. But tell me---you found this written on the walls, like graffiti?"
"Like very old graffiti."
"I have to see this in person."
"It's not all that easy."
"Do you have any idea what this means? The girls, the mui tsais , must have written this. I can look up the records, see how the village names correlate with the areas they were coming in from."
"Wouldn't the girls have been illiterate?"
"Most of them, sure. But many knew how to sign their names, at least. And a few of them might have known how to write, or just to copy the village symbols from their papers."
I took a moment to think about these youngsters, so far from home, brought through these tunnels to work as housemaids, or worse, as prostitutes. They had managed to leave traces of themselves nonetheless. And some of them had even survived, helped perhaps by Donaldina Cameron, or other characters lost to history, or through their own superhuman efforts. Some of their descendants had gone on to contribute to the crazy tapestry of humanity that is San Francisco.
"Do you realize how big this is?" Nicole asked, excitement in her voice. "This is proof of the Fleming-Union's past."
"It's remarkable, but I'm not sure it proves anything."
"Knowledge of these tunnels, along with the oral histories we've collected over the years, handed down from grandmothers, and these characters...at least it's enough for supposition. After all, this isn't a court of law, it's a court of public opinion."
"I guess you're right about that," I said.
"For years the Fleming-Union members have been denying any part in this sort of thing. Anton was looking into it when he got sick." With a determined look on her face, Nicole said, "There will be no more denial."
Could the F-U boys have come after Anton, simply because he had seen the writing on the wall? Surely if they had found it themselves, they would simply have destroyed it, wouldn't they? In any case, a few Chinese characters were pretty slim evidence, and they didn't prove anything. Unless Anton had further proof somewhere, somehow. Besides, Kyle might well have been shot by hired muscle, but Anton and Elijah---those seemed much more personal crimes, committed by someone who knew something about both art and chemistry.
I looked up to see Frank come into the ICU. Dressed impeccably, as always, he carried an expensive-looking bouquet of flowers and gave me a warm smile. It was hard for me to see anything but red.
I stormed down the hall, away from him.
"Annie?"
I whirled around.
" Bastard . Asshole. Piece of crap ."
"Sorry?"
"You bet your ass you are. A sorry character. So, Frank, buddy, how's the old ball-and-chain?"
He stared at me for several beats. I noticed his jaw clenching.
"It's been in-name-only for some time. Over two years now."
My heart sank. Though I really didn't think Michael was lying, I had been hoping against hope for some sort of explanation. Talk about your worlds colliding.
"Why do you think I've taken things so slowly with you?" Frank continued.
"Slowly. Is that what you call it? What I remember, with great clarity, is you telling me to break up with Josh, and then to stay away from Michael."
"I take it Michael's the one who told you?"
When I didn't answer, he cleared his throat and continued. "She had legal reasons to continue with the marriage. But we're divorced in any significant sense of the word."
"All except the eyes of the law." Speaking of eyes, I couldn't bring myself to meet his.
"Hey," he said, voice husky. "I'm still the same man. It probably sounds hard to believe at this moment, but I was going to tell you when I got you to stop moving for an hour. This isn't the sort of thing a person can blurt out at the office, or while being thrown out of the Fleming Mansion."
"How about while rolling about in bed?"
"You're absolutely right. I meant to, but you were naked under that robe... I got distracted. I'm only a man you know."
"I'm not so sure. A man would have told me the truth."
Frank inhaled deeply through his nostrils as though trying to calm himself down. "Could we talk about it now?"
"No. I've got to go faux a railing at a strip club."
"Is that a euphemism for something?"
"Yeah. It means I don't want to talk to you."
I stopped off to buy a carton of Marlboros for the doorman, then had Mary gather supplies and meet me at the club off Broadway. We "rustified" their railing in record time. Nothing like misery to spur on a work ethic, I always say.
\*
That night I slept at Sam's again, hiding from Frank more than the threat of Odibajian. The next day Michael and I headed back to Crockett. According to Destiny, there was to be a memorial service for Kyle Jones at the Community Baptist Church, right on Pomona. Michael dropped me at the church while he returned to Jim Stafford's place. He thought he might find the attorney there, or if not, he could use the opportunity to look through the house with more care, just in case we missed something.
I stood in the back of the church while I listened to the preacher, and the call-and-response of the congregation, feeling like a fraud. I wasn't exactly one of Kyle's fans in life. Still, I was genuinely sorry for his passing, and couldn't quite shake the idea that I played a role in his death. Kyle's mother may have raised two no-good kids, but she was experiencing the kind of grief no parent should ever have to face.
I've been lucky so far; though I'd seen more dead bodies than anyone should have to, until now they had never been anyone I was close to. Until Anton. I said a little prayer for him. His age was a mark against him, but his love of life was a definite boon.
When the service wrapped up, I watched a newly shorn, suit-clad Perry Outlaw assist his weeping mother from the pew. She was soon surrounded by several aging women, and Perry extricated himself and headed for the door.
I followed, watching as his wife and daughter joined him. They exchanged hugs. Then the young woman took the girl by the hand and they wandered over toward the church garden.
"Perry," I said.
"Hi, oh, he-ey." He reared back from me as he drew out the last syllable, and I figured he was remembering where he knew me from. The smile dropped from his face and his eyes looked wary.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Perry," I said. "I know this is bad timing. And I'm really sorry about your brother. But I need to ask you a couple of questions."
"I, er..."
"Look, I'm not a social worker; I'm not a cop, either. I'm just looking into a missing painting, and I think it might have something to do with your brother's death."
Perry looked over at his mother, still surrounded by relatives. He then glanced at his wife and daughter, who were picking tiny daisies from the lawn and making a fairy chain.
"They look great," I said.
"They do, don't they? Fresh air and all that. You know, this whole thing with Kyle." He shook his head. "It's actually what decided me to try and straighten up, know what I mean? I mean, he was just getting so strung out over everything."
"What happened?"
"I guess it don't matter anymore. No more secrets, right?" Perry paused and kicked at a brownish weed in the sidewalk. "For years now, Kyle was always going on about some big score with a painting he lifted, but then it turned out he couldn't figure a way to sell it."
"They say that's the hardest part," I said.
"Yeah, right? Seems like the stealing would be tough, but seems like that's the easy part. Then you can't unload it."
"Did he ever mention anything about a forgery?"
"Like, a copy of the painting?"
I nodded.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact he did. Said his asshole boss had the painting copied, and wanted Kyle to 'steal' the copy and give the real thing to some men's club up there on Nob Hill. Up where Kyle works now...worked, until..." His eyes took on a faraway look. "Anyway, he even had a little X-ray gun thingie to tell which painting was real. Revealed a secret message and everything. He gave it to me for my little girl to play with, last time I saw him."
"But he didn't turn the genuine painting over to the club, did he?" I asked.
"He figured, why should his boss get any richer than he already was? And the copy was so good, nobody could tell but a museum, like. But then he gave the painting to his lawyer for safekeeping 'til he could find some way to sell it. Plus, he didn't have no cash and he needed Stafford to get him out of jail." He shrugged. "That was a different deal."
"Jim Stafford is the lawyer, right? He lives here in Crockett?"
He nodded. "Not much of a lawyer, but the best we could afford, I guess. Mostly he drinks. We even met him at Toby's Tavern, he liked it better than his office. Sometimes you could get him so sloshed he'd forget to charge you. But then again, sometimes he forgot what you talked about so you were back to square one."
The women were dispersing, coming toward us.
"I don't want to keep you from your family any longer," I said. "I appreciate you talking to me about this."
"You really think the shooting had something to do with that painting?"
"It might."
He shook his head. "I thought sure Kyle got away with it. So did he. 'sides, since he couldn't sell it anyway, it was just like, who cares? And it was years ago, before Erin was even born ."
"I'm very sorry for your loss," I said. "Take care of that beautiful little girl of yours."
"I'm gonna. Got a new job and everything. Gonna move back here to Crockett. It's a nice town, my mom can see Erin more, help with childcare. Get us a nice place, maybe a one-bedroom."
"I like this town," I said. "Seems like a really nice place to raise a kid."
"Right?"
I smiled. "Right."
\*
"Let's stop by Toby's Tavern on the way out of town," suggested Michael. He had failed to locate Stafford, or any other telling evidence in the lawyer's house and office.
"You really think Stafford's going to be sitting there waiting for us?"
"No, but we should at least have a chat with the bartender. Besides, you never know---drunks haunt their favorite bars. Creatures of habit."
Though smoking has been illegal in California bars for several years, Toby's Tavern still smelled of stale cigarettes and spilled beer. It featured roughly finished dark wood, zero natural light, and a multitude of knickknacks. Thousands of business cards and receipts had been tacked to walls and ceiling, many of them brown and crumbling with age. There were road signs and paintings and cartoons; old pairs of eyeglasses studding standing lamps; what looked like frilly bloomers atop a petite figurine of Bo Peep; and wrapped around the neck of a chipped, life-sized plastic Marlon Brando was a pink feather boa so dusty it looked like an oversized pipe cleaner.
A lone man with a straggly white beard sat at one end of the bar, nursing a beer. A young fellow stood at the jukebox, studying the music selections. And a burly bartender stood behind the bar, slicing limes. He ignored us as we took two stools at the counter.
We gave him a few minutes.
"Get for ya?" the man behind the bar finally asked, still not meeting our eyes.
"Sierra Nevada," Michael said.
"Gin and tonic, lots of lime," I ordered.
"You Toby?" asked Michael.
He nodded.
"You seen Jim Stafford in here lately?" Michael asked.
"I don't see nothin'," the nice bartender replied, turning to fill a pint glass from the tap.
Michael extracted two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and laid them on the counter.
"Keep the change, maybe use the cash to get your eyes checked. Can't go around neglecting your vision."
The bartender scooped up the bills with impressive speed.
"I'll be right back," I said. I figured Michael might be more convincing one-on-one.
I headed toward the restrooms, which were down a very dark, narrow hallway decorated with a Polynesian theme, complete with Tiki dolls. The facilities were labeled DUDES and DAMES. A man was coming out of the Dudes' room, and as I scootched out of his way I almost sat on a sculpture in the corner.
Bronze.
Life-size.
Greek God.
Resting Hermes , treasure of the College Club, sign that San Francisco would rise from the ashes, victim of frat-boy pranks...was sitting right outside the Dames' toilet at Toby's Tavern.
Even more interesting: the man passing me was attorney Jim Stafford.
We gawked at each other for an awkward moment. Even in the dim light I could make out the signs of a recent beating: a black eye, a cut on the chin, vivid purple bruising along the cheekbone. Alcohol fumes wafted off him, filling the cramped space.
"What are you doing here?" he gasped.
"Hi there," I began, grasping his arm. "We need---"
He yanked it away from me, turned, and ran.
" Michael!" I shouted.
Michael nabbed him before the lawyer made it past Marlon Brando. He grabbed Stafford by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to a table in the corner, shoving him into a chair.
"Let's have a chat, shall we?"
"Look," Stafford said, "I'm sorry about yesterday. But you don't know what I've been going through, swear to God."
"Just tell us about the Gauguin," I said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied. "I don't know anything about a painting."
Toby interrupted from the other side of the room, intrigued now by our discussion. "What about that painting you asked me to hold for you? The one you picked up earlier?"
Stafford rolled his eyes and hung his head in his hands. "Idiot," he hissed.
"Today?" I asked Toby. "When?"
"Just an hour or so ago," said Toby. "With some bald guy."
"Bald guy?" I turned back to Stafford. "As in Victor Yeltsin?"
"Oops," said Toby, picking up his knife and returning to his task slicing limes. I got the sense that Toby wasn't quite as slow-witted as he might appear. "Was I not supposed to say anything?"
Michael smiled and slipped the man another twenty across the bar.
"Okay, listen," began Stafford. "Kyle gave the painting to me years ago, but we couldn't figure out a way to sell it."
"How did Victor Yeltsin find you?"
"Few days ago, Victor found out that he gave the club the wrong painting, the fake, which means he's in deep shit. They take this stuff seriously. So he forced Kyle to tell him what he did with the real Gauguin. I guess then he must have shot him. I feel guilty as shit. Couldn't even go to the memorial service, face Kyle's mother." His voice took on a plaintive, whiny note. "Plus, he hit me. I tell you what: I couldn't even figure out how to unload the thing. No way am I gonna get shot over some stupid painting. I gave it to Victor. It's just been hanging here outside the men's room for five years, anyway."
Hanging in plain sight, amongst the grass skirts and Polynesian posters. Brilliant. Anyone who noticed it in the dim space would assume it was a cheap copy. Anyone but me. Note to self: spend more time in dive bars.
Which reminded me of what I had just seen.
"So, Toby, that's an interesting sculpture you have back there. Next to the Women's."
"You like it? I didn't even want it really. Looks gay to me. Couple local boys came in---clients of Stafford, here, actually---trying to sell it. Turned 'em down the first time they came around, but then they came back a few days later and said they'd hock it for scrap metal if I didn't buy it, I was their last chance. Seemed like a shame. Somebody made it and everything."
A real art lover.
I looked at Michael. "Don't you need the bathroom? You might check it out."
He gave me an odd look, but went down the short hall. A moment later he returned, stunned.
"That sculpture is the College Club's Resting Hermes . It was stolen from outside the club last week."
The bartender held up his hands, the picture of innocence. "Hey, I've got a receipt and everything."
And he did. He brought it out to show us: $300 to Alan Dizikes and Skip Goldberg. The receipt was complete with their home address and phone number. Doh! I had an idea for a new TV show: America's Stupidest Criminals.
"I swear," said Toby. "I had no way of knowin' it was stolen."
"You don't watch the news?" I asked, eying the TV with the local news blaring over the bar. "Anybody else sell you anything a little, you know, fishy? I'm not police, just looking to get people their stuff back."
"Only thing new in here lately is that stuffed moose head, there, that's a favorite." It already had a red lace bra hanging off one antler. "Hey, you think I could get my money back, what I paid out for the sculpture? I don't really even want it."
"I'll bet the College Club will compensate you. Because you held on to it, it wasn't melted down. They'll be grateful. There might even be a reward in it for you. I'll put in a good word."
I felt a little surge of optimism. At last one thing had gone right. It wasn't a Gauguin, and it didn't cast much light on the mystery of Anton's assault, but Resting Hermes was a venerable piece of art that had been saved from destruction. I turned back to Stafford. "So where did Yeltsin take the real Gauguin?"
"We didn't exactly trade Day-Timers."
"You have no idea what his plans were?"
"He said something about a big party tonight. That's his deadline, I guess. Quite literally. He was gonna bring it back to the club, all triumphant, or else he was a dead man," Stafford said.
"He thought they'd kill him?"
"That's what the man said. He said the guy who absconded with the fake from the club, the fake he thought was real, well that guy ended up dead. Elijah Odibajian, of all people."
"I heard about that one on the news---they found him in a bathtub or something?" Toby put in. "They said maybe foul play, but then they didn't follow up. How come they never follow up? They just tell you what happened and then go on to the next story, and meanwhile you gotta try to figure it out yourself."
"As a wise friend of mine once said," I told him, "the world is a strange and frightening place."
Edouard Manet said: "Anything containing the spark of humanity, containing the spirit of the age, is interesting." To this I would only add that "interesting" does not always equal "good." Still, I would much prefer to be interested and unhappy than the opposite.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
"What now? Presuming Victor Yeltsin brought the Gauguin back to the Fleming Mansion, how are we supposed to find it?" I mused as I turned the key in the ignition. My truck made its now-familiar, scary clunking noise. I should cash that check from Jarrah before he changed his mind.
"Good question," Michael said. "That place is pretty secure, thanks to their security staff and your boyfriend's alarm systems."
"He's not my boyfriend. He's married."
A rare silence from Michael. I felt tears prickle at the back of my eyes. How could Frank be married? Much more importantly, how could he not have told me?
I pulled away from the curb and headed for the freeway.
"Anyway, don't distract me," I said. "Is there any way we could get in the mansion for this party tonight, try to intercept Victor? Maybe I should call Annette Crawford."
"Oh, yeah, that's brilliant. Bring in the cops. They're trying to 'talk' to me about paintings supposedly stolen from the F-U, and you want to try to convince them to rescue a Gauguin from the club---the Gauguin the club thought was theirs in the first place, by the way. You might want to mention that Elijah Odibajian was killed for hawking the fake one, while you're at it. They'll really believe that."
"I already told Annette Crawford a lot of it. Anyway, you keep switching sides. I thought you were all pro-police."
"That's back when I thought they might help keep you alive."
"And now?"
"I honestly don't think they can help on this one. There's no way the F-U boys will let the Gauguin be found, if they know the police are looking for it. If we really want to save it, we have to get in there ourselves."
Michael may be a cynical thief and liar, but he has a true respect for art.
As we raced toward San Francisco, I had Michael call Mary and tell her to talk Wesley into taking her to the F-U party, during which she should sneak into the wine cellar and open the door to the tunnels.
Next, Michael called Jarrah and told him we had a lead on the real Gauguin.
Jarrah was waiting for us in front of Grace Cathedral when we arrived on Nob Hill. We huddled for a moment beside the truck.
"You're saying the Gauguin is somewhere in the mansion?" Jarrah asked. "How are we supposed to locate it?"
"Find Victor and make him tell us what he did with it," I said.
"That's your plan?" He looked over at Michael, who just shrugged.
"Pretty much." At Jarrah's dubious expression, I added, "I'm kind of an improviser."
"How do you plan on getting in the building?"
"I've got that part handled. Listen, Victor values his membership in this stupid club. Can he keep that with a prison record? Jarrah, you'll have to convince Victor that you met with his ex-houseboy Kyle Jones, and that Kyle told you everything before he died. That you have enough information to convict Victor if he doesn't cooperate."
Michael's phone rang. He handed it over to me.
Mary was on the line, whispering. "Wesley wimped out, but Destiny made a phone call and helped me get in with the girls. This is awesome! You should see it!"
"I'll take your word for it. Can you open the door to the tunnels for us?"
"I'm on it. No problem. By the way, I've got this great harem costume. You've so got to check this out, for serious."
I led Michael and Jarrah to the sewer entrance. Using a crowbar from my truck, Michael helped haul the heavy iron top off the hole. I descended the ladder. Jarrah came after me. We stood at the bottom and looked up to the circle of light above us, with Michael looking down, backlit like an angel.
"I can't," Michael balked. "I'm sorry, I really can't."
"Michael, we need you. I need you."
"I'll find another way in, and meet you. I promise." He replaced the manhole cover, and was gone.
Jarrah and I flashed our lights and looked around to get a sense of the place. I led the way down the corridor towards the scary fallen-in section. It was just as well that Michael wasn't here; how did I think I was going to coax Michael past this stretch? This was like his own private hell.
I squeezed through on hands and knees, desperately trying not to think of all the icky things I might be touching or picking up on my clothing. I made it to the other side, then helped Jarrah stand as he came through.
"That was...interesting," he said, speaking in a low voice. Something about these reverberating tunnel chambers seemed to inspire whispering.
"That was the worst of it," I said. "From here on we can walk, though somewhat hunched over."
We made our way down one passage, then took a right at the T. If I recalled correctly, this opened onto the bigger tunnels, and then on to the short flight of stairs that led to the club's wine cellar.
"Almost there," I said. "Here they are---the stairs."
Jarrah didn't reply. I turned around.
He just stood there, staring at me.
Gun in hand.
"Jarrah?" I asked, looking behind me to see if he was aiming at someone else. Nope, just little old me. My heart fluttered. "What's up?"
"I'm really sorry about this," Jarrah said. "I tried to warn you off."
"You hired me to look into it!"
"Yes, at first. But then I tried to fire you. But you wouldn't quit."
"My uncle was hurt. I had to find out why, and the Gauguin was mixed up in it all."
"You had no way of really knowing that. But it's a moot point. Now I have to kill you."
"Says who? There's no need for dramatics. I'll just walk away."
"I don't think so. I mean, you say that now because of the gun." I noted beads of sweat on Jarrah's brow, and the hand holding the gun shook. "Honestly, I never thought I'd be in this position. But you have no idea how much money we're talking."
"You mean your company expense account wasn't generous enough?"
"This is beyond anything I could hope to achieve at Augusta Confederated."
"Am I supposed to care about your finances at this moment?"
He shrugged. "I'm just saying."
"Well, I for one take back all the nice things I said about New Zealanders," I grumbled. I wrenched my eyes from the sight of that gun barrel, glinting dully in the dim light of the flashlights. I had been confronted with a gun up close before, not so long ago. That time it made me sick to my stomach with fear, but this time it seemed like I was standing outside myself, looking on with detached interest. I knew I should be scared, but mostly I felt weary and disillusioned. What right did the seemingly sweet New Zealander have to pull something like this? One simply didn't expect this kind of behavior from Kiwis.
"This is why you didn't know Elijah was staying at the mansion," I said.
"What?"
"It just dawned on me. It seemed strange that my friend could find out over the Internet that Elijah had moved into the Fleming-Union, but you weren't able to locate him as a trained investigator."
Jarrah shrugged.
"And then you said Anton left you a voicemail message, but he never leaves voicemail messages." How could I have been so stupid? "Are you the one who poisoned him?"
"Of course not, I'm the one who saved him. Cathy Yeltsin did it. It was so pointless, she was just angry because she thought Anton had double-crossed them with regard to the Gauguin. I've never hurt anybody."
"Why start now?" I asked. "I hear it gets real easy. Easier each time, and pretty soon you're nothing but a killing machine."
"That's a terrible thing to say," Jarrah said, in a surprised, hurt tone as though I had hurled insults about his mother.
"It's the truth," I said. "Happens all the time. You could do one of us maybe, but by the time you kill Michael, too, that makes you a serial killer."
I read doubt in his eyes. He started swallowing convulsively, looking at the door that led to the wine cellar. Jarrah Preston was no fool, but he was under a whole heck of a lot of stress. You don't go from being an upstanding international insurance guy to a cold-blooded killer without passing through stages of serious self-doubt. I hoped.
"I mean, do Kiwis even kill people?" I pressed on. "Do you know how to use that gun, for example?
"How hard could it be? You just squeeze. American children kill each other all the time by accident."
Words to warm a mother's heart.
"Okay, so enough talk," said Jarrah. "Do whatever you need to before I...you know."
"What do you mean?"
"Say the Lord's Prayer, or whatever works for you."
"You mean that 'Shadow of the Valley of Death' thing?" I asked. "I'm not sure I remember all the words. Isn't that a heck of a thing, given the situation?"
Jarrah gave me a nervous little smile.
"Say it with me?" I asked.
"All right."
"Our father, who art in..." we recited together.
My mind was racing. I was reasonably sure I could jump fast enough, and that Jarrah would be a bad enough shot, that I might well survive. But then what? What if he regrouped while I was still sprawled in the sewer, and shot again? And again? He was right, at this distance even a child could manage it. Gun control was seeming like a really good idea at the moment.
"...hallowed be thy name, thy..."
There was no other choice. As I was screwing up my courage to jump, I saw a pale visage poke around the bend in the tunnel behind us, barely discernible in the reflected light from our flashlights. Frank! And behind him...the two homeless men, known to me only as Harvard and Jumpsuit. When this was over, I pledged to myself, I was going to find out their names, and rent them a damned apartment. Who needed a new truck, after all?
Luckily Preston had his back to them. He still looked nervously to the door where he expected Michael to appear momentarily. In any case, he was probably too intent on the direction of his soul to take note of what was happening in the dark tunnel behind him.
"...kingdom come, thy will be done..."
Frank seemed to catch on that things were not going According to Plan.
"Okay, now this second part I never remember," I said in a desperate bid to keep Jarrah from turning around and noticing Frank, who was creeping down the damp rat rail, clutching his own gun. "Is it 'forgive those who trespass against us,' or 'who sin against us'---that would be you in this instance, Jarrah, by the way---or 'those who are indebted to us'?"
"It doesn't matter ," said Jarrah. His eyes were getting a little wild. "You---"
Frank held the muzzle of his gun to Jarrah's head. "Don't move."
Jarrah moved. In fact, he jumped about three feet in the air, then spun around to run. Frank leapt onto Jarrah's shoulders, knocking the gun out of Jarrah's hand; the weapon skittered along the rat rail without discharging.
The two men struggled briefly. They were well-matched physically, but Frank had the element of surprise and with a right clip followed by a knee to the stomach, soon overpowered Preston, who splashed into several inches of stagnant runoff in the bottom of the sewer.
I scooped up the gun. The safety was still on. I clicked it off, pointed it at Jarrah, and held it with a steadiness that surprised me.
"Jarrah!" I yelled. "I've got the gun, and I'm an American, damn it. Just give me a reason, any reason, to go all Dirty Harry on your ass."
He stayed down.
Harvard passed Frank a length of rope, which Frank used to tie Preston, tightly, to an iron pipe protruding from the sewer wall.
"Dirty Harry?" Frank said, his lip curling up slightly.
"People still get that reference, don't they?" I was a little out of touch, media-wise. "You know, 'make my day' and all that?"
"Yes, I believe they do get that reference, Dirty Harriette."
"We'll stay with him," said Harvard.
"Stay with 'im," echoed Jumpsuit with a firm nod.
"Thanks guys," I said. "A million thanks. We'll be back for you."
We left them our flashlights and ran up the stairs toward the wine cellar.
"Why don't you let me have the gun?" Frank said.
I swung the muzzle toward him. "Don't even get me started on you."
The door was open and swung in with a push. We snuck up the stone stairs and entered a back hallway. Muffled laughter and voices drew us down the hall. Through the open doors we could see the party in full swing.
By gosh if the painting of the evening wasn't The Dance of the Bee in the Harem , by Vincenzo Marinelli. Oriental rugs had been laid out at odd angles, a few young men played stringed instruments, and half-naked women in belly-dancing costumes lolled about, drinking wine or dancing before the appreciative audience.
I had to give the F-U boys credit: I applauded their obvious efforts. This was prostitution at its finest. I mean, how many people would think of such a thing? It took some real creativity, research, and knowledge. And there was Mary, doing her utmost in her harem costume, dancing with the other women. I spied Wesley sitting to the side in the audience, slack-jawed, glasses fogged up again. Between the visit to the Power Play, his new gay friend Bryan, and now this, I imagined good old Wes would never be quite the same.
Still, I hoped Mary wasn't planning on joining the after-party.
I paused, wondering where to start, when I saw Michael at the top of the main stairs, gesturing for us to come up.
Luckily the security guard was avidly taking in the scene through the open double doors off the foyer, and his gaze did not waver.
At the top of the stairs we could hear the muffled sounds of a man's voice, and then a woman's.
Michael eased the door open. The couple didn't notice us at first, but it appeared for all the world as though they were having their own private art recreation. Both dressed in togas, the woman was feeding the man grapes rolled in sugar. They looked like purple frosted jewels.
" Good Lord ," Balthazar said when he spotted us. He tried to sit up, but his efforts were hampered by a scantily clad Catrina Yeltsin draped over his chest.
"Hold it right there," I said. Among other things, I really did not want to see more of Balthazar than was strictly necessary. I still had Jarrah's gun, and I was still channeling a young, macho Clint Eastwood. "But don't let me dissuade you from your meal. Dig in, by all means. Has your girlfriend mentioned how proficient she is with arsenic?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Are you feeling woozy at all lately, Balthazar? Headaches, stomach problems...? Because Cathy seems adept at finding the killing combination. First Elijah---did you know he would eventually be poisoned by the wallpaper? The paper you kept damp and moldy from the leak in the roof? That's one way to get rid of a business liability."
Odibajian looked horrified. His gaze went first to Cathy, than back to me.
"He was ill, but surely no one hastened his..." Balthazar trailed off, nonplussed.
"And then Anton, of course. That was an easy one, just mixing the acid in with the powdered pigment you got from the fireworks distributor. Are you moving on to Balthazar now, Cathy? Are those grapes rolled in plain sugar, or do they include some special secret ingredient?"
Cathy just laughed.
"This is utterly insane." Odibajian finally found his tongue. "To what are you referring?"
"Did Cathy here forget to mention she's a chem grad from UC Berkeley? Surely you and she worked up the plan for Elijah together?"
"What plan?" put in Balthazar. "Cathy is a good woman. She convinced me to show my brother sympathy, for the sake of the family. I let him stay here."
"In a room full of arsine gas released from the wallpaper. Are you saying you weren't the one who set him up to look like a painting, in retribution for his spiriting the Gauguin out of the club?"
"He was dead anyway. Of natural causes. I had to set an example for the others."
"We'll wait until the medical examiner runs a couple of easy tests to see what he died of, exactly. But then you realized the Gauguin had been a forgery all the time, and that Victor must have been holding out on you. He brought it back, you know. Victor must be around here somewhere. You'll never guess where the painting's been: hanging in a dive bar, just as open as you please."
"Balthazar, sweetie," said Cathy with a smile, "don't mind her, she's talking crazy."
Odibajian just shook his head in disbelief.
"Cathy, Bal-Balthazar," Victor stammered as he crashed through the door, his own gun trained on his wife and Odibajian. He dropped the Gauguin, all his concentration on the tableau in front of his eyes. "How could you?"
"Victor, sweetie!"
"You've never...I mean, without me..." Victor wore the countenance of a man betrayed. As Mary had explained to me on the way to the Power Play, even swingers had rules and limits. More than most people, even. Apparently Cathy wasn't supposed to go off on her own. "You... whore ."
"Victor! That's enough!" bellowed Balthazar.
"Sweetie!"
The three started yelling. Frank took my arm and started backing us out of the room. Michael followed, grabbing the Gauguin on the way out the door.
Behind us we heard more shouting, and then the sound of gunfire.
"A little help in here," Frank yelled. Two Fleming-Union security guards finally wrested their eyes from the living art exhibit and realized they were hearing gunshots. They hurried toward the door.
Frank, Michael, and I ran the opposite way.
\*
Michael disappeared before the cops showed up, though he gave me the Gauguin to turn over to the authories. Ambulances arrived on the heels of the patrol cars, but we weren't given any information as to the fate of Catrina, Balthazar, or Victor. I led a pair of police officers down to the sewer, where they took Jarrah into custody. I gave Harvard and Jumpsuit money to get a room for the night---though given their high spirits I thought they might be planning a night of celebration instead. I made arrangements to meet them in Huntington Park the next day; somehow I was going to think of a way to pay them back.
Frank and I gave our statements to Annette and other officials for what felt like hours. But we hadn't spoken a single word to each other since being in the tunnel.
It was a cold night. The air carried the briny, damp scent of a foggy San Francisco evening. In the bay a foghorn sounded its mournful cry. I put the key in the truck door.
"Annie," Frank said, standing close behind me.
"Swear to God, Frank, if I still had that gun in my hand..."
"We need to talk."
I swung around to face him. "We needed to talk before we spent the night together."
"You're absolutely right. I apologize. I'm scum. But I'm scum that is very nearly divorced. And I'm scum that loves you. That's got to count for something."
I swallowed, hard. "Scum that loves me?"
He gave a mirthless laugh. "You think I go through this sort of thing for just anyone? In case it escapes your notice, I go out of my way to support you as best I can. Even to the point of having to rescue you in tunnels and sabotage my own professional reputation. You know putting yourself in danger drives me insane, but I've been biting my tongue, trying not to tell you what to do. And right now I'm trying not to say I told you so."
"Told me what?"
"Not to get involved with Odibajian."
He had me there.
"Why don't you come back to my place with me, you can take a shower, we'll order a pizza---with anchovies, if you insist---and you can ask me all the questions you want about Ingrid and anything else you want to know."
"I...uh...I'm not sure. I don't know what to think right now, Frank. Between Anton and you and Michael..."
"What about Michael?"
"I don't know how...I mean, the man is my business partner after all, and you're sort of his brother-in-law, and---"
"And he's in love with you. Are you in love with him ?"
"I don't...I mean I think I'm..." I took a deep breath. "I think I'm in love with you. But I do love him."
"I suppose it's too much to hope that this is a sisterly sort of love?"
I gave him a grudging smile. "All I want to do right now is go back to my studio and paint something. I have to think, or maybe not think for a while."
"Fine, if that's what you need. I'm putting a man on you, though."
"I thought that was exactly what you didn't want."
"Funny. I'm going to have Thomas trail you, and please, I beg of you, don't try to lose him. He's there for your own good until this thing settles down completely. We still don't know exactly where Odibajian stands in all of this."
"Presuming he's still alive."
Frank nodded. "Presuming Victor's got terrible aim."
"Hey, I know something you can do for me, by way of apology. Those two homeless guys, the ones who led you into the tunnels..."
"The ones who saved your life."
I nodded. "We have to do something for them. Find them a place to live, a rehab program, job training maybe?"
"I'm already on it. I made a few phone calls while we were waiting."
"Thanks." I turned to open the door of my truck.
"And Annie? Call me."
"I will."
Dear Georges: What is the greatest single piece of advice you could give an aspiring forger?
Dear Reader: Settle out of court.
---Georges LeFleur, "Craquelure"
I was hoping for some solitude to get my head straight, but my business partner was waiting for me at the studio, a bottle of fine cabernet in hand. When solitude is impossible, wine is a good alternative. I took a glass gratefully.
"I was thinking," Michael began. "Maybe I should drop out of sight for a time."
"Oh no you don't, not again. Besides, I don't think this whole stolen-paintings thing is resolved. If you leave they'll pin it on you for sure."
"That's the point."
I looked at him for a full ten seconds. "Why would you want them to do that?"
He took a long pull on his wine and looked around the studio. "Those paintings won't ever be found. Either that, or Odibajian or McAdams or whoever else 'disappeared' them will simply put them back quietly without bothering to inform the police. In the meantime, somebody's going to take the fall."
"Okay, I'm following you so far. I'm just not getting the whole 'blame me' angle."
"They'll never be able to catch me and even if they did, somehow, they don't have a case. No fingerprints, no footage, no anything."
"Since you're actually innocent."
"Precisely."
"Okay...but how does this work to our advantage?"
"If I don't take the fall, Frank's going to get smeared. They can't prove anything against him, either, but as the guy who designed the security system, even if he doesn't get accused of out-and-out theft his name's going to be associated with failure. Meanwhile, they'll probably accuse you of the theft. The Fleming-Union's bigger than just Balthazar Odibajian, you know. Even if he's dead, someone else will pick up the mantle." Michael got up and moved to the window, looking out.
"I figure it will go something like this: these two are lovers, Frank designs the alarm and tells Annie how to disarm the thing, she gets a job there with his recommendation, all the boys are out of town, no one else had access, she disarms the alarm and snatches the paintings, and by the way did we mention her grandfather is a renowned international art criminal and she herself was once brought up on forgery charges?"
"Yeah, that scenario had occurred to me, too. Not in such stark terms, but still."
"It's a tough world out there."
"I guess I'm slow, but the part I'm still not getting, partner, is how your disappearing would help matters."
"They put the blame on me: here's an international art thief better than any security system, no one could possibly defend themselves from---"
"Yeah, yeah. You've got super-thief skills. Go on. What then?"
Pause. Another drink of wine.
"Then I do what I do best. I lead them on a merry chase for a while, 'til they get tired and drop it."
"Where will you go?"
"Maybe Vienna. I hear they have a whole new therapy for claustrophobia. I think I need to get that handled."
"And then?"
He gave a very French sort of shrug, sticking out his chin slightly and raising his eyebrows.
"No. Freaking. Way ."
"No?"
"That's the worst idea I've ever heard! Are you listening to yourself? What are you talking about, going on the lam for something you didn't do?"
"I don't see a lot of other options. You and Frank---"
"What are you, being noble all of a sudden?"
"I've been noble before."
"Have not."
"Have, too. I happen to have a very wide noble streak."
"Do not."
"Do, too."
"This is stupid. It's insane. There's got to be another way. I don't want to hear another word, you hear me? I just have to find those paintings---"
"And somehow prove that the brethren took them to set up the crime."
"Right, and that, too. And then everything will be fine."
He fixed me with his gaze. "You tracked down the Gauguin, figured out how Elijah died, and fingered the people responsible for assaulting your uncle and murdering Kyle Jones. You found Hermes . You even helped expose the Fleming-Union's past so they'll cough up some money for Cameron House. All of which was done at great personal risk to your health. I think you've done enough."
"So all I have to do now is find those other paintings."
"Forget the goddamned paintings!"
I was taken aback. Michael never yelled.
"I'm sorry, but for Christ's sake , Annie, drop it. You'll never find them. If the brethren are smart, and they are, they destroyed them already, anyway. None of those boys is going to offer a confession; they understood the message from Elijah's death tableau loud and clear, and none of them has a death wish." He shrugged again. "Anyway, I'm not really cut out for this kind of life."
"What kind of life?"
"Working in an office everyday, meeting with my parole officer, reporting to the FBI. I'm more a self-employed, footloose and fancy-free, party-of-one kind of guy."
The dawning realization: he wanted to leave. He wanted to leave me .
He came over to me, pulled me to him, and kissed me. Instantly I forgot what we were talking about. Michael was like crack: he made me lose track of everything, and only made me want more.
When he finally lifted his head, we were both breathing hard.
"Maybe you should come with me," he said.
"Yeah, right."
"I'm serious, Annie. Haven't you ever just wanted to embrace the lifestyle, enjoy yourself, free of restraint...?"
I swallowed hard. The temptation was always there. I shook my head. "I really hate jail. And I barely survive police interrogations. Somehow I don't think I'm up for a prison sentence."
"It won't come to that. You have my personal guarantee."
"You can't make that kind of promise. You'll be on the lam from the FBI, unless I miss my guess. If I go AWOL, why would I do it with someone who's already a wanted man?"
He fixed me with his intense green gaze for a long moment.
"Is all of this because of me and Frank?" I asked. "Because I'm not even sure---"
"I really don't want to think about you and Frank, if it's all the same to you."
"Promise me you won't do anything stupid, Michael," I said. "This is just talk, right? You'll be here at the office tomorrow, right? Promise me."
He kissed me again.
"Promise. See you tomorrow."
And he was gone.
Annie's Guide to Antiquing with Craquelure
Porcelain-like cracks that instantly "age" painted surfaces and decoupage
Supplies and Equipment:
Oil-based "antiquing" varnish, or regular artists' oil varnish
Water-based gum arabic
Antiquing oil glaze (1/3 mineral spirits, 1/3 linseed oil or oil painting medium, 1/3 paint), tinted with artists' oil colors
Soft varnish brushes
Glaze brush
Rags
Craquelure is the French word for the network of fine cracks often found on the surface of old oil paintings. The cracks result from the layers of paint and varnish drying and shrinking in uneven patterns for decades, eventually pulling away from each other. Over time, the cracks fill with dirt and dust, creating the distinctive "antiqued" look of Old Master paintings.
To mimic this crackle, we apply an oil-based varnish that dries slowly, and top it with a water-based finish that dries quickly. As the two drying times react, the top layer pulls away from itself to form delicate cracks. The result is a beautiful effect that instantly ages and unifies painted surfaces---try it over paintings, painted furniture, cabinets, decoupage, even entire walls!
Make sure the painted surface is completely dry. This surface may be of any paint type. Apply varnish as evenly as possible, using an appropriate brush, and making sure to check from all sides to be sure that you see the glint of wet varnish all over. It's easy to accidentally miss a spot.
When the varnish is dry enough to pass the back of your knuckle over it without sticking, lightly apply the gum arabic over the varnish.
Leave in a warm area for cracking to develop as drying occurs; to speed the process and increase the number of cracks, try applying heat with a hair dryer. Allow the surface to harden for at least an hour after cracking occurs.
Apply an antiquing glaze, using thinned artists' oil paints. Typical colors include raw or burnt umber for a dark "dirty" look; raw sienna for a golden sheen; or a whitish-gray to stand out over dark backgrounds. Apply the color with a brush or rag and then rub it into the cracks with a rag, using a circular motion. Wipe excess glaze from the surface with a rag, or leave a light glaze for a unifying tint. Color will remain in the cracks, highlighting them. Always use an oil-based glaze for this stage, as a water-based glaze will re-activate the gum arabic and destroy the cracks. (Forgers sometimes mix fine dust from a vacuum cleaner bag with linseed oil, and rub this in rather than a paint glaze. That way if the material is tested, it will mimic the kind of environmental dirt that fills the cracks of real oil paintings over the course of time.)
When thoroughly dry, top the surface with an oil-based varnish to protect it.
\* Tip: Remember, this is art, not science! This process is temperamental and dependent upon room temperature, humidity, and varnish thickness. As a rule of thumb, the thicker the oil-based varnish, the bigger and more spaced-out the cracks; the thinner, the more delicate the craquelure . Other than controlling this aspect of the process, there is very little you can do to affect the overall outcome of the cracks, other than to apply heat. But if you look at true antique oil paintings, you'll see that the craquelure patterns vary over different colors of paint and portions of the picture. Just sit back and let it do its thing!
About the Authors
Hailey Lind is the pseudonym of two sisters, one a historian and the other an artist.
Carolyn J. Lawes (left) is an associate professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where she specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. history, with a particular interest in women's history.
Julie Goodson-Lawes (right) is a writer, muralist, and portrait painter who has run her own faux-finishing and design business in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than a decade. She also writes two other mystery series under the name Juliet Blackwell.
The sisters take advantage of free cell phone minutes on weekends and the magic of e-mail to write the Art Lover's Mysteries as a team. Feint of Art was nominated for an Agatha Award in 2007.
Hailey Lind welcomes visitors and e-mail at www.haileylind.com and www.artloversmysteries.blogspot.com.
Also by Hailey Lind
Feint of Art
Shooting Gallery
Brush with Death
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Opal Carew
Her ultimate sexual fantasy brought to life...
While Becca's friends fantasize about multiple men and erotic situations, Becca longs for something more down to earth---a sizzling night with the male stripper she hired for her friend's bachelorette party.
Despite her friends' good-natured insistence that she go for it, Becca just doesn't know how to tell this super sexy man she wants to jump his bones.
But when he shows up at her door later that night---and with a hunky friend in tow---she decides she just can't let this opportunity slip away.
Volume 1 of the Red Hot Fantasies series
5 Stars!
"No one writes stories about erotic fantasies better than Opal Carew...
Kudos to Opal Carew for another well-written erotic romance. I look forward to where she takes us next."
Jennifer Porter, Romance Novel News
4.5 Stars!
"...there are a lot of twists to this roller coaster ride of a story... A scorcher of a read, I was unable to put this one down."
Sensual Reads
4.5 Kisses!
"another blazing hot romance not to be missed by erotic author Opal Carew. Once I started this book, I just couldn't put it down... [her] erotic story-writing talent shines through... one wild ride of a book that just whets my appetite for more erotic romance by Opal Carew!"
Victoria, TwoLips Reviews"
4.5 Blue Ribbons!
"a blazing hot erotic romp... A fabulously fun and stupendously steamy read for a cold winter's night. This one's so hot, you might need to wear oven mitts while you're reading it!"
Romance Junkies
4 Cups!
"There is little chance of reading anything more sexually stimulating than a book by Opal Carew."
Lototy, Coffee Time Romance & More"...a keeper on my shelf."
"Opal Carew is a genius at spinning the most erotic stories by tapping into forbidden fantasies and visiting emotions that bring the characters literally to their knees. A steamy-hot read! WOW!"
Mandy Burns, Fresh Fiction
"Be prepared for an all out sensual feast.... The sex is creative, detailed, and sizzling.... Step outside of the ordinary for something adventuresome...."Romance Reviews Today
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this story are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Male Stripper
Copyright © 2011 by Opal Carew
All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First edition: December 2011
The Male Stripper
Opal Carew
This is for Star
"Right there. That's my fantasy. In the flesh." Becca's gaze glided across the man's broad shoulders to his open shirt, revealing a solid chest and sinfully tight abs.
"Mmm. In the flesh is right." Sylvia grinned. "At least he will be soon."
He pivoted his pelvis, and teased the eighteen women in Becca's living room by unfastening the button on his tight black pants.
He strutted to Celia, the bride-to-be, with a big smile on his face, gyrated his hips, then slid his fingers to the tab of his zipper and tugged it down a little.
Lucky Celia sat front and center, while Becca sat on a foldout chair behind the couch along with Jan, Sylvia and Kalie. Heat thrummed through her at the thought that she would soon see Cal's undoubtedly long, thick, and probably extremely hard cock. She drew in a deep breath as he lowered the zipper even more.
God, she'd been thinking dirty thoughts about this sexy, gorgeous man---Cal---ever since she'd hired him for Celia's bachelorette party.
Becca noticed Jan's cheeks flushing pink as his zipper parted, revealing a trail of dark hair from his navel to the band of his black briefs.
"So, Jan, what's your sexual fantasy?" Kalie asked.
Sylvia had brought up the topic just before the sexy male stripper had appeared.
"Oh, uh..." Jan dragged her gaze away from the gorgeous hunk stripping for their enjoyment. "I don't really know."
"Come on, you must have thought about it."
Her cheeks flushed a little darker. "Well, I... uh... sometimes think about, you know, doing it with a stranger."
"You mean like a one-night-stand?" Kalie asked.
"No, I mean, it's dark, or I have a blindfold on so I can't see his face. I can just... feel him."
"Oh, that's sexy," Kalie said.
"And kind of kinky." Sylvia smiled at Jan's deepening blush. "I bet you're tied up, too, right?"
Becca smiled at Jan's nervous giggle. Since Jan found it hard to talk to men, having hot sex with an anonymous stranger made sense.
"What about you, Sylvia?" Becca asked, knowing her actress friend would definitely have something fun and unusual.
Sylvia took a sip of her drink. "I just finished reading this book where a woman is indebted to these business partners and has to become their sex slave." She grinned. "I think that's incredibly hot."
"Nice," Becca said. "Being a sex slave to two guys."
Sylvia's grin broadened. "I didn't say two."
Kalie's eyebrows arched. "You said partners."
"That's right. In the book there were three, but I think four would be more fun."
Becca laughed. That was Sylvia. "So Jan wants a stranger, and Sylvia wants to be a sex slave... for four guys."
"And you want the stripper," Sylvia chimed in.
Becca's gaze returned to the god-like man as his shirt slipped to the floor. "Yep."
He was absolutely gorgeous, and a really nice guy, too, with none of the arrogance that often accompanied a man who was good-looking and knew it, especially when he used that asset as part of his livelihood. Cal was actually doing this job to work his way through grad school.
Damn, what was hotter than a sexy, intelligent, nice man?
"What about you, Kalie?" Jan asked.
"Well, unlike Sylvia, I'd be happy with just two men... but I'd like them to kidnap me and take me,"---Kalie gestured with air-quotes---"against my will."
"Mmm." Sylvia sighed. "I'm getting hot just thinking about that."
So was Becca. Her gaze shifted back to the handsome stud currently standing in front of Celia, rocking his pelvis forward and back as he slowly lowered his pants. She couldn't help imagining him holding her against the wall, her wrists pinned above her head. Her breasts swelled and her hard nipples pressed against the lace of her bra. She watched in fascination as he shed his tight black pants, her gaze locking on the large bulge outlined by his black briefs.
Celia giggled as he turned in a circle in front of her, his hips gyrating, then he faced her again and glided his thumbs under his briefs and eased them down, first one hip, then the other. The fabric clung to his shaft, keeping it hidden from view, but Becca knew that every woman in the room stared at it, breath held in anticipation.
He slid one finger toward his shaft. As he pulled the fabric forward, Becca wished she were alone in the room with him, that it was her instead of Celia sitting right in front of him with a world-class view.
Then he tugged the fabric down, revealing his huge, thick shaft, bulging veins lining the side of his magnificent cock. Oh, God, if she were Celia right now, she'd have trouble not reaching forward and stroking it, then devouring it. She could imagine the solid flesh stretching her mouth as she wrapped her lips around it.
Sylvia nudged Becca's shoulder and she tore her gaze away.
"My God, woman. He is sinfully hot." Sylvia's heated gaze was locked on his big member. "Wherever you found him, make sure you keep the address. No wonder he's your fantasy."
Becca just nodded.
Sylvia nudged her again. "So, when you interviewed him, did you get to see the goods?"
Now it was Becca's turn to blush. "Um... no."
It had been a very business-like interview, where she'd asked about his experience and references. She was an event planner, after all, and although she had arranged this party as Celia's friend, this kind of thing was a business for her. Not that she'd ever hired a stripper before. Usually, she set up charity events or anniversary parties. That kind of thing.
"Too bad." Kalie grinned.
As he undulated his hot body in front of Celia, then turned around and swayed his fine, hard ass in front of her, Becca felt her insides melt with need.
Sylvia nudged her again. "You know, there's no reason you couldn't live out your fantasy. The fantasies the rest of us have aren't likely to happen, but yours is right there in front of you. Go for it."
\*
Becca still thought about Sylvia's words as she carried a tray of glasses into the kitchen and set it on the counter. Cal was in her spare room getting dressed. Soon he would be on his way.
"I'm ready to go."
Becca turned to see Cal standing in the kitchen doorway---all six feet two muscular inches of him---and her heart thundered.
"I hope you and your friends enjoyed the show." He smiled and stepped into the room.
"Oh, yes. Celia, the bride-to-be, especially seemed to enjoy it."
"And you?"
Her gaze flew to his face and his sexy brown eyes which twinkled at her. Had he noticed her ogling him? Of course, every woman in the room had been ogling him. She was quite sure every woman in every room he performed in ogled him. Still, she stammered when she said, "Me?"
He stepped closer and she felt tremors quiver through her as her hormone kicked up a notch.
"I hope you were satisfied with my performance."
Of course, he would be hoping she would use him for future events, and that she would recommend him to other event planners. This was his business.
And she still needed to pay him.
"Yes, you were great. Please feel free to use me as a reference." She grabbed her purse from the table, took out her check book, and wrote him a check. "Thanks again."
"Thank you." He smiled and tucked the check into his pants pocket. They were so tight she wondered how he could even fit his hand into that pocket.
He walked into the dining room and she followed, watching his tight butt as he moved.
"Do you need a hand cleaning up?" he asked.
"Um... I wouldn't want to keep you."
Was he hoping she would invite him to stay for more than clean up detail?
Yeah, she wished!
But if she did take him up on his offer, maybe it would lead to her fantasy coming true.
"No problem," he said. "I have a half hour before I need to be anywhere, but I can get a lot done in that time."
A half hour? Damn. That wasn't nearly enough time for what she hoped would happen. He'd probably just meant cleaning up, but if he'd meant more, she wasn't interested in a speed session.
"No, that's okay. I'll be fine, thanks."
He nodded. "Okay, I guess I'll be on my way."
\*
An hour later, she stretched out on the couch with a glass of wine in her hand and grabbed the TV remote. It was late, but she needed to unwind a little before going to bed.
A tap sounded at her front door. Her heart raced as she wondered who would be at her door at two a.m.? She walked to the foyer and peered through the side window.
Cal stood on her porch.
She relaxed and opened the door.
"Hi," he said. "Sorry to disturb you so late, but I saw your lights were on."
"That's okay. What's up?" she asked.
He tugged something from his pocket and held it out to her. She glanced at the paper he presented and realized it was the check she'd given him.
"You forgot to sign it. I just thought, while I was still in the neighborhood, I'd drop by. That would save mailing back and forth."
"Oh, I'm so sorry about that. Of course, come on in and I'll get a pen."
She walked to the desk in her living room and grabbed one of the pens from the slender black mug she used as a pen holder. She signed the check and turned around to find him standing right behind her, all tall, sexy and smiling at her. Her knees felt weak and she almost grabbed his big, broad shoulders for support.
She handed him the check and when his fingers brushed hers, electricity singed through her. Their gazes locked and her breath caught. His dark brown eyes flickered with interest and heat blazed through her. Did he feel the same sizzling attraction to her that she felt toward him, or was it just her imagination?
The moment lingered between them as they seemed drawn together by an invisible magnet. She found herself tipping up her face, her lips tingling in anticipation. He seemed to be closing in for a kiss, but hesitated.
Of course, this was a business situation and he wouldn't want to cross a line. And she shouldn't either.
But Sylvia's words glided through her mind. There's no reason you couldn't live out your fantasy.
She wanted him, and judging from the gleam in his eyes, there was a good chance he was interested in her, too. Why not take the chance? What did she have to lose?
Other than the embarrassment of being turned down.
Just take the chance.
She drew in a breath. "Um... would you like to stay for a glass of wine?" She gestured toward the half-full bottle sitting on the coffee table. "It was opened during the party and I'd hate to waste it."
Smooth move. Ask him to stay for dregs of wine that I'll throw out otherwise.
"I... look am I reading this correctly?" he asked. "You are a really attractive woman and I'm definitely interested, but I don't want to assume..."
She stepped closer and cupped his cheeks, then drew his face down to hers. As soon as their lips met, an explosion of heat seared her senses. Oh, God, as his tongue dipped into her mouth, her whole body sizzled with electricity. His arms came around her and crushed her against his body, her hard nipples driving into his solid chest. A long, hard bulge pressed against her stomach, leaving her in no doubt about how much he wanted her.
Then he released her, and his hot, chocolate eyes stared into hers.
"Oh, God, you have no idea how much I want to stay right now."
"Then why don't you?"
"Damn it, my friend's waiting in the car."
The words stunned her like a splash of cold water.
"A girlfriend?" she uttered before her brain could sensor the words.
"What? No, nothing like that. It's my room-mate. We have classes together and he's a stripper, too. He had a job in this area tonight, so we're driving home together.
Another guy who would be just as hot as Cal. God, two of them.
She remembered Kalie mentioning her fantasy was to be with two guys. And Sylvia wanted four. Becca drew in a deep breath as heat washed through her. Maybe her fantasy was about to get twice as hot as she'd imagined.
"Well, why don't you invite him in, too?"
He blinked. "Well, that'll cramp our style a little, won't it?"
She smiled wickedly. "It doesn't have to." Man, she couldn't believe how bold she was being.
"Becca, I really don't want to make assumptions."
She took his hands and guided his arms around her waist, then kissed him again. His lips were pure ambrosia.
"Look, normally I'd never do something like this," she said, "but ever since I met you, I've been wishing something would happen between us. The attraction we share is... explosive and I'd really like to explore that."
He pulled her tighter against his hard body and devoured her lips with another scorching kiss. "Me, too, but that doesn't mean you need to entertain Don. I could always come back tomorrow."
She stroked a finger down his chest and grinned. "Well, I figure if I'm going to go wild and live out my fantasy of being with a hot, sexy stripper, why not go all the way and be with two? Especially when the opportunity so conveniently presents itself." She eased back. "Unless you're not into it."
Oh, God, was she being an idiot? She didn't want him to think he wasn't special.
"I mean, I really want to be with you. Inviting your friend is just because I think it will make it even more exciting. If you'd rather we wait..."
"Are you kidding? The thought of being with you is driving me insane with need, and the thought of watching you with Don too, is"---he captured her lips again, sending her temperature rising---"intensely fucking hot."
She wrapped her arms around his neck, thrilled to be pressed tight to his hot, hard body, then thrust her tongue into the hot depths of his mouth. He tasted of coffee with a hint of cinnamon. His growing erection pressed against her, hard and ready.
He drew back, his breath coming quickly. "I'd better go get Don before I lose it and take you right now."
She laughed in delight. He definitely wanted her and that made her feel desirable and sexy.
"What are you going to tell him? I mean, I don't want him to think..." She shook her head, not quite sure how to finish that sentence. She was, after all, inviting two men, one she'd never even seen before, to come into her house and have sex with her. At the same time.
"Don't worry about it. I've told him what a great person you are, and that I was hoping that you might go out with me. He might be a little confused about this turn of events, but he won't think anything negative about you."
She barely heard his last sentence. "You wanted to go out with me?"
He grinned. "Yes, but since you'd hired me for this party, I was going to wait a week or two. I didn't want to mix business and personal." He took her hand. "I'm still hoping you'll go out with me."
A broad smiled claimed her lips. "I'd like that." She kissed him again. "We're kind of doing things backward."
"That's okay. Doing things like everyone else is overrated."
She laughed. "Okay, now I'd like to meet this friend of yours."
"You know, I have an idea. I'll bring him in and you go with the flow, okay?"
"Sure."
She watched him walk to the door, anticipation quivering through her. And a little trepidation. She was about to have sex with a man she barely knew and a total stranger. Both hot, sexy strippers. Her vagina clenched. Oh, God, the thought was turning her on.
She heard a car door close outside, then voices at the front door. Cal opened the door and stepped inside, followed by a man with striking blue eyes and long, wavy brown hair, tied back in a ponytail. Cal's friend was a little shorter than Cal, but still about six feet tall.
"Hello, Ms. Courtland." Don stuck out his hand for a handshake. "I'm Don Grainger."
She stepped forward and placed her hand in his. His big fingers wrapped around hers and he squeezed gently as he shook her hand.
"Cal said you might be needing entertainment for another party, and you might let me audition for you."
She raised an eyebrow at Cal, then turned to Don. "Well, of course, if you're not too tired. I know you had an event this evening."
He grinned with a twinkle in his eye. "Ma'am, I'm never too tired to entertain a pretty lady."
Man, he was a total charmer. And she loved it.
He tugged a CD from the pocket of his dark brown leather jacket. "Here's my music."
Cal took the disc. "I'll put it in the player."
"Would you like some wine?" she asked.
"I'd love a glass," Cal said as he popped the disc in her CD player.
"How about you, Don?"
"I'd love one after the audition."
"Okay, I'll go get glasses. Back in a minute," she said.
Cal followed her into the kitchen.
"I feel like we're tricking him," she murmured.
"It's okay. I happen to know he has a fantasy of a beautiful woman seducing him while he auditions for her." He grinned. "A lot of male strippers have that fantasy."
She smiled. "Really?"
"Are you kidding?" He walked toward her, a predatory gleam in his eyes. "The day you invited me here for an interview"---he backed her against the counter and wrapped his hands around her---"I was desperately hoping you'd ask me to audition." He nuzzled her neck. "And that it would lead to..."---he captured her lips in a heart-stopping kiss, then glided his hands down her back to her hips and pulled her hard against his solid erection---"this." He pivoted his hips forward, driving the length of his hard bulge against her, then rocked back, then forward again.
She grasped his shoulders, holding herself steady as hormones swirled through her, fogging her brain.
Cal chuckled and drew away slowly. "We'd better get back in there."
She just nodded, then followed him back into the living room. Don sat on one of the bar stools she'd brought in from the kitchen for extra seating at the party. She started toward the couch, but Cal headed her off.
"Why don't you sit on the chair where Celia sat tonight?" He turned the large armchair that sat at a ninety degree angle from the couch toward the clear area of the living room. That way, it wasn't blocked by the coffee table. "You want the best seat in the house for the audition."
She sat down and Cal topped up her glass of wine, then handed it to her. He filled one for himself and sat on the couch.
Don stood and walked to the CD player, then flicked a switch. A primal, vibrant music filled the room, sending excitement thrumming through her. He strutted to the middle of the room, and smiled broadly as he pivoted his hips from side to side in time to the surging beat. When he ripped open his shirt, revealing a broad, muscular chest and sculpted abs, she sucked in a deep breath. His body undulated to the music and she couldn't tear her gaze from the rippling muscles of his torso.
He turned around and his magnificent butt swayed back and forth. She longed to reach out and squeeze his tight buns. He turned back to face her, tore away the pants, and tossed them aside. Her gaze travelled up his long, muscular legs and tight-muscled body, and fixed on the skimpy briefs covering a very long bulge. He strode forward, stopping right in front of her, then gyrated his hips. He turned away from her again and her eyes widened at the sight of his delightful naked ass on full display.
Her breath caught as he leaned forward... slowly... his butt muscles rippling as he swayed his pelvis. He stood up and swirled his hips as he turned around again, then thrust his pelvis forward and back in time to the music.
He moved closer and, with his torso undulating slowly, took her hand and drew it toward him. Oh, God, was he going to place it on that magnificent bulge?
He grinned and winked, then rested her palm on his flat stomach. Her hormones spiked at the feel of his hot, hard flesh moving under her hand. He slid her hand up a little, then back down, until it almost brushed the top of his cloth covered cock, then he released her. She didn't pull away, allowing her fingers to linger on his ridged stomach, longing to glide downward and feel that hard, intimate flesh of his.
Had he been inviting her to do so? Should she just wrap her fingers around him, making her intent clear?
But she couldn't just do that. Reluctantly, she drew her hand away. He smiled and stepped back a little, then drew one side of his thong down a few inches, then the other, sending her pulse surging. He ran his thumb along the waistband, then with a quick jerk, he tore away the thong, revealing the longest cock she'd ever seen---except for Cal's.
He twirled the thong, then tossed it aside and strutted close again. He stood in front of her, and wrapped his hand around his big, hard shaft, a wicked grin on his face.
God, she wanted to reach out and stroke it. She ran her tongue around her dry lips.
The music ended and she realized she'd been staring straight at his long, stiff shaft.
He drew his hand from his cock and she knew he was going to step away, then turn business-like. If she didn't do something, her opportunity would slip away. Cal had told her that Don had a fantasy of being seduced by a client during an audition, so she had to make the first move.
"That was great. Very, very sexy. In fact, it made me so hot, I was wondering if..." Her gaze dropped to his tall erection and she licked her lips---"I could..." She moved her hand to hover mere inches from his shaft, her insides trembling with the need to feel it in her hand, then she gazed up at him again.
Don glanced at Cal and Cal winked and nodded, a big grin on his face.
Don smiled at her, his blue eyes dark as midnight. "Be my guest," he said in a low murmur.
She wrapped her hand around him. The feel of his thick, hard, hot shaft in her hand melted her insides. It seemed to pulse in her hand.
"Oh, God, it's so... big."
She glanced at Cal, whose grin faded slightly as his brown eyes darkened with simmering desire.
"His cock's looking a bit lonely over there," Cal said as he stood up and walked toward the chair. "Think it needs some company?"
She just nodded, anticipation flaring. She'd seen Cal's cock at the party, but not up close and personal.
He stripped of his black pants, then his briefs. His big cock, a little longer than Don's and definitely thicker, dropped in front of her. She wrapped her free hand around it. At the feel of two hot cocks, one in each hand, her vagina clenched in need.
"I'm starting to feel like this was a setup." Don glanced at Cal with a grin.
"Is that a problem?" Cal asked.
Don's eyes glittered. "Not if it means what I think it means."
Cal winked. "It does."
Don sent Becca a devilish smile. "Excellent. So, pretty lady, let's get on with the action."
She giggled and stroked both their cocks, gliding her hands up and down their big members. Don groaned and elation fluttered through her. Both he and Cal were hunky sex Gods, yet both wanted to be with her. She leaned forward and licked the tip of Don's cock.
"Oh, yeah. I like that."
She opened her mouth and glided over his cockhead, taking the whole thing into her mouth. She swirled her tongue over his tip, then spiraled downward and teased the underside of his corona.
"Oh, pretty lady, that is fantastic."
With one hand wrapped around Cal's cock while she stroked him, she had her other hand wrapped tight around the base of Don's shaft as she licked and squeezed him in her mouth. She glided off Don and took Cal in her mouth. He was bigger and stretched her mouth wide. He was long and hard and she glided as deep as she could go, then squeezed him. His hand wrapped around her head, his fingers twining in her long hair. She dove down on him a couple more times, loving the feel of his big cock in her mouth, then she slid off and guided Don back into her mouth.
She sucked and squeezed, sucked and squeezed as she moved from one to the other.
"Damn, honey, you are really hot." Don groaned as she relaxed her throat and took him really deep.
His hand clamped around her head. "Fuck, that's it. I'm going to come."
She released Cal and cradled Don's balls in her hand as she continued to bob up and down on him. His balls tightened, then she felt hot liquid fill her mouth. She kept squeezing him inside, swallowing around him as he continued to spurt.
Once she was sure he was done, she leaned back and guided Cal's cock toward her mouth.
"Hold on, sweetheart. I can wait." He stepped back and stripped off his shirt. "You've seen both of us naked, now how about you return the favor?"
She glanced down at her black wrap-around dress. "There's no way I'm going to do a striptease in front of two professional strippers."
Don laughed.
"No problem." Cal stepped toward her, his hard cock bobbing up and down as he walked. "We can help you."
He reached for her hand and drew her to her feet. Don grabbed the tie on her dress and pulled until the small bow at her hip unfastened, then he undid the knot, the thin black strips gliding through his big fingers. Cal eased the dress from her shoulders and guided it down her arms. Now she stood before them in just her black lace bra, thong, garter belt and stockings.
Don's gaze glided down her body, then back to her bosom. "Mmm. Hot lady."
Cal dragged her against his body and captured her lips. At the feel of his hard, hot body pressed against her naked skin, her blood boiled with need. His tongue drove into her mouth and she met it. Another pair of hands glided down her back, then over her bare ass. Don stepped closer and nuzzled her neck, sending tingles dancing along her spine. Her bra loosened and Cal slid the straps from her shoulders. He released her lips and eased back, drawing the bra from her body, his gaze locked on her breasts. The nipples hardened under his intense scrutiny.
"God, you have beautiful breasts." He cupped one reverently and her hard nipple pressed into his palm.
"Fuck, no kidding." Don covered the other one and kneaded it gently.
She drew in a deep breath, her hormones spiraling out of control.
Cal kissed her neck, then down her chest. As Don's hand slipped away, Cal licked her nipple. She sucked in a breath, then gasped as he took the hard nub in his mouth and sucked. Don slid her thong over her hips and down her thighs. He slid them to the floor and she stepped out of them, now in just her garter belt and stockings. He kissed up the back of her calves, then her thighs. The feel of his lips caressing her skin heightened the sensation of Cal's mouth moving on her nipple. As Cal licked, Don kissed her ass.
She sucked in a breath as his fingers glided between her legs and along her slippery slit. Cal's mouth found her other nipple while he stroked the abandoned one with his fingertips. Then he grasped the hard nub between his fingers and squeezed. Don's fingers slid inside her opening and her knees grew weak.
Cal grasped her waist and grinned up at her. "Don, I think we better have her sit down."
Don chuckled and drew his fingers free, then Cal guided her to the couch and she sat down. Cal sat on one side of her and nuzzled her neck as his hand found and cupped her breast. Crouching in front of her, Don cupped her other breast, then leaned forward and licked her hard nipple. He took it in his mouth and began to suckle. Cal leaned down and captured her other nub. Her breathing accelerated at the heat of their warm mouths on her as the two men licked and sucked her nipples.
Don's mouth slipped away and he kissed down her stomach. She felt her knees pressed wide and he knelt in front of her.
"Spread your legs wider, honey," he said.
She allowed him to ease her thighs wider apart. Cal captured her lips and his tongue glided into her mouth and swirled. Her tongue met his and they danced together.
Something soft and warm nestled against her slick opening. Don's tongue. Her head fell back against the couch as he licked her slit. Cal's tongue thrust deeper. She moaned into his mouth as Don's fingers slid inside her slit and stroked.
"So soft and warm." Don licked her clit and her breath caught.
Cal kissed down her neck then found her nipple again and sucked it deep into his mouth. Don swirled his tongue over her clit. Heat oozed from her and she could feel moisture dripping from her opening.
"I want to taste her, too," Cal said.
Don lifted his face, his lips glistening with her moisture as Cal slid to his knees and stroked her pussy reverently. Then he leaned down and licked her slit.
God, she couldn't believe she had two gorgeous male strippers feasting on her body. They could have any woman they wanted, but they wanted her.
Cal flicked his tongue over her clit and she gasped in pleasure. Don stroked her breast, then lapped at the hard nub. She reached down and found Don's hard cock, then grasped it. She loved the solid feel of it in her hand. Don laughed and slid onto the couch beside her, then he tugged her onto his lap. Cal watched patiently as they settled. Don's huge cock rested against her slick opening, sticking straight up between her legs. She reached down and wrapped her hand around it again, then stroked, her fingers gliding against her slit, too.
"That's right, sweetheart. I like seeing you touch yourself," Cal said in a hoarse voice.
She continued to stroke Don, up and down, allowing her fingers to trail along her damp opening.
"God damn, that's sexy." Cal grasped Don's cock and held it out of the way while he dove between her legs and licked her.
"Oh, that feels so good." Her gaze locked on his hand around Don's thick shaft. "Tell you what. I'll stroke myself, if you..."---she grinned---"stroke Don's cock."
Cal glanced at Don. Don must have nodded, because Cal began to stroke the big cock in his hand. True to her word, she slid her fingers across her slit. As Cal pumped Don, heat welled in her. She slipped her fingers inside and stroked her melting passage.
"Oh, yeah. That's so sexy." She flicked her finger over her clit. "Now... please... take him in your mouth."
Cal's eyes widened, then he laughed. "What do you think, Don?"
"I'm game."
God, she found men this comfortable with their bodies to be a total turn on! She sucked in a breath as Cal's lips surrounded Don's cock, then it disappeared into his mouth. He glided down on the big member, then back again. As the big shaft slid in and out of his mouth, her breathing came quicker. She stroked herself faster and harder.
"Oh, God, that's so sexy." She wriggled her fingertip faster on her clit as pleasure bombarded her. Heat seared through her and she gasped as joy blasted through her. She moaned her release.
"So, our little lady likes to watch two men." Don slid her onto the couch beside him, then knelt on the floor. "Cal, how about I return the favor."
Cal sat on the carpet and Don grasped Cal's cock and stroked, then he leaned forward and licked his cockhead. Becca watched as Cal's cock disappeared into Don's mouth. Then Cal turned his head and licked her slit and she sighed. As Don sucked Cal's big member, Cal continued to lick her slit. His mouth found her clit and he teased and cajoled, swirling his tongue over her sensitive nub.
She arched against him and felt the pleasure build again. With her gaze locked on Don as he sucked Cal's cock, she moaned at the incredible sensations building inside her. Cal swirled his tongue over her bud, then sucked and the orgasm blasted through her. She slumped against the couch to the sound of Cal's loud groan as he found his release inside Don's mouth.
As she gasped for air, Don sat beside her. He grinned, then kissed her, gliding his tongue into her mouth, sharing with her the salty taste of Cal's semen. She drove her tongue deeper into his mouth, then sucked his tongue, wanting more. Her hand slid down his muscular chest, then his sculpted stomach until she found his rock hard cock. She wrapped her hand around it and stroked.
"I want to feel your big cock inside me."
"Here." Cal handed Don a condom and dropped a few packets on the table beside the couch.
Don opened the packet and rolled the condom over his big, hard cock. He shifted around until he knelt in front of her, then grinned. "You look so fucking sexy sitting there with that garter belt and stockings framing your sweet little pussy."
He nudged his big cockhead against her wet opening.
She quivered.
But he didn't push inside. Instead, he glided his cockhead up and down her slick slit. She arched forward, but to no avail. He kept his hard member only a whisper's breath against her.
She moaned in frustration.
He laughed and tucked his cock against his stomach, then pressed the length of his erection against her slit. He captured her lips as he undulated against her. Each time his pelvis moved forward, his hard shaft ground against her, then slid along her length. Heat blazed through her as her need intensified.
Her breathing accelerated until she was practically panting.
He leaned toward her and nuzzled her temple. "So, am I hired?"
"Huh?" She gazed at him with wide eyes, then realized he was role-playing the fantasy of auditioning for her.
She stroked her hands over his shoulders, and pulled him tight to her body, her breasts crushing against his solid chest, then she nibbled his earlobe.
"I'll let you know as soon as I see..."---she nipped his ear---"how satisfied I am."
He grinned down at her. "Oh, I'm sure you'll be totally satisfied." He winked. "And then some."
"Big talk for a---"
He ground his pelvis forward, driving his hard shaft tight against her clit and she gasped. He was driving her insane with need.
"...big man." She reached down and wrapped her hand around his hard cock, marveling at how wonderfully thick it was. And how good it would feel gliding inside her.
"Buddy, I think you'd better give her what she craves if you want the job." Cal sat down beside them, his hand wrapped around his own rising cock.
"Well, I do want the job." Don grinned and wrapped his hand around hers, then guided his cockhead to her opening.
She released him as he pushed it against her. Oh, God, it was so big. It stretched her as it eased in a little, then he drew back. Then he eased forward again, pushing a little deeper, then eased back again. He pushed the whole cockhead inside this time, then swirled it around, sending wild sensations spiraling through her. His thumb flicked her clit and she gasped.
Cal chuckled. "Man, you're teasing her like crazy."
Don leaned forward and kissed her, then nibbled her lower lip. "That's why they call it striptease." He grinned at her. "How about it, pretty lady? Do you want me to just go for it?"
She gazed up at him---dazed and needy---and nodded.
"Okay, you're the boss," he said.
His big cock drove into her in one sudden thrust. She gasped at the exquisite pleasure, clinging to his shoulders. He held her tight against his body as she caught her breath, his cock buried deep inside her.
"Oh, yes." Pleasure washed over her as she squeezed internal muscles around him. "Oh, God, please fuck me."
He brushed his lips across her temple. "Well, since you asked so nicely."
He drew back and thrust forward again. She trembled with pleasure. He thrust again, driving deep.
God, his body was so hard and hot. His cock was so thick and long. He drove in again and pleasure quivered through her.
She clung to his shoulders. "Faster. Please."
He chuckled. "So polite."
He drove in again, and again, picking up speed. His pelvis rammed against her, stroke after stroke. Her nerve endings exploded with sensation, and pleasure swelled through her. She gasped as he thrust again, then she plummeted over the edge, moaning in pure ecstasy.
Don groaned, then twitched against her. He held her tight for several long moments, then slowly loosened his hold.
She drew in a deep breath, then nuzzled his cheek.
"You are definitely hired."
He kissed her, then eased back. "And what about Cal?"
She stroked her hands up her body, then over her breasts. "Well, I wouldn't mind seeing what you could do as a team."
Don drew away, then sat on the couch beside her.
"That's great by me." Cal cupped her breast, then kneaded. "But first I'd like a solo run."
She stroked his six-pack abs, then grasped his rigid cock and tugged lightly. "You've got it."
He grabbed a condom and rolled it on, then knelt between her thighs and stroked her dripping slit. "Oh, yeah, you're so hot and wet."
He pressed his cock to her opening, then glided forward. His cockhead stretched her even more than Don's had. He kept moving forward, his exceptional length continuing to fill her. She tightened her muscles around him, gripping him as he entered her.
"Man, sweetheart, that feels incredible," he said.
She stroked an errant curl from his forehead and smiled. "I aim to please."
He smiled, then drew back and thrust forward, making her gasp. "So do I."
He leaned down and licked her nipple, then sucked it mercilessly. He captured her lips and drove his tongue into her mouth as he drove his cock into her again. He kept thrusting, kissing her at the same time until she pulled away to suck in air. His big cock filled her again and again. Each thrust drove her pleasure higher, until it neared the point of no return.
She clung to him. "Oh, God, I'm going to..." She gasped as delicious sensations danced through her body with an electrifying intensity.
"What are you going to do, sweetheart?" he murmured against her ear.
"I'm going to... ahhh... come."
He thrust deep, catapulting her into full orgasm. She moaned as her body seemed to dissolve into pure pleasure. Her insides exploded in ecstasy.
He continued to pump into her, then groaned loudly. He shuddered against her, driving her pleasure higher. She rode the wave as everything around her faded away until she was in a realm of pure bliss, holding onto him in joyful abandon.
"Sweetheart? You okay?"
His voice seemed to come from far away. She blinked and opened her eyes.
"We seemed to lose you there for a minute."
"Fuck, man," Don said. "You actually made her faint with pleasure."
She couldn't believe she'd actually lost consciousness, but wow!
"I've never experienced anything like that before."
A huge grin claimed Cal's face and he kissed her, full out, his tongue filling her mouth and stroking until she gasped for air. She stroked his cheek and smiled.
"You are definitely hired."
She sat up and Don handed her a glass of wine. He started to collect his clothes from the floor. Cal stood up and helped.
Oh, God, she wasn't ready for them to leave yet.
"I know it's late, but I'd love you to stay a little longer. You could sleep here if you like. Then you can relax and have some more wine."
Cal took her hand and drew her to her feet and into his arms. "That's good, because I'm not ready to go yet."
Don grinned. "Me, neither. I'm still looking forward to dancing as a team."
Cal tipped back his half full glass of wine, downing it in once gulp, then began to sway his hips. "Yeah, let's get started."
Don flicked on the music to a slow, pulsing beat. He moved in front of Cal, facing him, and their two bodies began to undulate. She slumped on the couch and watched mesmerized as their muscular bodies moved, their big, flaccid cocks swinging. She slid a hand to her breast and toyed with her nipple as she watched their erotic movements. They thrust their pelvises forward, then turned toward her.
Don grabbed her hand and drew her to her feet then to the center of the room. His hands glided down her sides and Cal moved close. The two of them circled her, gyrating and thrusting their bodies toward her. They moved closer, until their bodies were pressed against her, still undulating. Her pulse quickened at the feel of their muscular torsos gliding against her.
Don, who was facing her now, grasped her hips and Cal's arms slid around her from behind and he cupped her breasts. She could feel his cock swelling against her buttocks. Don cupped her face and merged his lips with hers. As his tongue glided into her mouth, Cal nuzzled the side of her neck at the base, sending tingles through her.
She sighed. "Oh, God, you two are so sexy."
Their bodies moved against her in time to the music. Her head in a spin, she clung to Don's shoulders as Cal kneaded her breasts.
"Oh, yeah. I want to feel your mouths on me. Both of them."
Cal drew her backwards, then she found herself sitting on the couch, both men crouching in front of her. First Cal covered her left nipple, then Don her right one. They both sucked deeply and she moaned at the exquisite sharp pleasure spiking right to her vagina. She clenched her intimate muscles, longing for a hard, hot shaft inside her.
Cal's fingers glided over her mound, then found her slit. His fingers slid over the slickness then pushed inside. Don's hand slid between her legs, too, and his fingers joined Cal's inside.
She leaned back as they sucked her nipples and stroked her vagina. She arched at the intense pleasure.
"Oh, God, if you keep doing that, I'm going to come again."
Cal grinned at her. "Bring it on, sweetheart." He kissed her lips, then captured her nipple again, sucking harder.
She stroked her fingers through his short, dark hair. As Cal continued to suck, Don slipped downward and kissed her navel, then pressed her legs apart and licked her clit, while both their fingers moved inside her. Joyful sensations spiraled through her, swelling and building until she gasped in orgasm. Cal's lips glided upward until they caressed her neck. She pulled him tight against her as she rode the wave of pleasure. Finally, she lay panting on the couch.
"She's all finished and I still have a hard cock," Don said.
"Me, too." Cal winked at her. "But I'm sure we can just ignore them and go to sleep."
Becca smiled and reached for the tall, solid erections in front of her, and grasped one in each hand. "No way. I wouldn't want to waste something so beautiful."
She drew them closer and licked the tip of Don's cockhead. Then Cal's. The long members twitched in her hands. She took Cal's cock in her mouth and glided up and down, then moved to Don's and licked his shaft, then wrapped her lips around it.
Cal pulled her to her feet. "Okay, sweetheart, now let's show you some real teamwork."
Don cupped her shoulders and guided her behind the couch, then leaned her over it. Her stomach rested on the back of the couch.
"Spread your legs wider, honey," Don said behind her as Cal stroked her breasts.
Don's hands glided over her ass, then his fingers slid between her legs and along her slippery slit.
She almost jumped when she felt something soft and warm nestle against her opening. Don's tongue. He licked her slit, then leaned her over more. Cal stroked her breasts more vigorously as he watched Cal behind her.
Don's fingers slid inside her slit and he stroked. Then he moved away and she heard him tear open a condom packet. A moment later, she felt his big cock press against her. He pushed her down more and nudged her legs wider, then he slowly slid inside her, his big, hard cock stroking her vagina. She squeezed around him and he groaned, but he glided out. She felt his big cockhead press against her back opening.
"You ready for this?" Don asked.
She pushed her ass tighter against him, aching for the feel of his hard cock inside.
"I'm way past ready."
He eased forward, his big cockhead stretching her. She relaxed and pushed her muscles to allow him entry. He continued forward, filling her with his big cock. Slowly. Deeper. Until he filled her all the way.
With his hands on her hips, he held her tight against him. She squeezed her muscles around his big, hard shaft.
"Okay, now we're going to turn around." He eased her back, then turned them around slowly, his cock still embedded in her. He leaned against the couch, drawing her to lean against him.
"My turn." Cal stood in front of her, a big smile on his face, his hand wrapped snuggly around his monstrous erection, already encased in a condom.
"Are you going to put that big, hard cock inside me, too?" she asked with a smile.
"You bet I am."
She giggled with glee as he stepped closer, then he pressed his cockhead to her slick opening.
"God, this is so exciting." She stroked his shoulders. "Push it in."
Without further ado, he slid deep, filling her with one smooth stroke. She gasped at the breathtaking pleasure and clung to him, holding him tight to her body. Both men pressed tight against her, sandwiching her between two hard, muscular bodies, their long, marble-hard shafts filling her. Her heart thundered with excitement.
"Oh, yeah. I definitely love teamwork."
Cal nuzzled the base of her neck. "Then you're going to love this even more."
He drew back slowly, then glided forward again. Behind her, Don pivoted his pelvis, causing his cock to slide within her. Cal drew back and glided forward again while Don continued to rock up and down.
Oh, they were so big and hard inside her. Moving. Stroking. Driving her pleasure higher.
"Oh, fuck, that feels so good," Don murmured.
They began to move faster. Cal thrust deep and hard while Don ground up and down in her ass. She sucked in a breath and began to moan as the intensity of the erotic sensations of two cocks stroking her insides increased.
She melted against Don unable to hold herself steady as the two cocks surged within her. Her inner muscles tightened around them and pleasure swamped her senses.
"Oh, God, I'm... ahhh... so close." She sucked in air, then moaned again.
"Damn, you're so fucking hot." Don nipped her earlobe and began to rock faster.
Cal kissed her, his tongue thrusting into her mouth. "Let me see you come, sweetheart."
His cock thrust deep and she lost it. Bliss surged through her and she cried out in ecstasy.
"Oh, yeah, baby. Let me hear you scream." Don thrust hard, driving deep into her ass.
Her pleasure rocketed higher.
"Oh, yeah," she whimpered, joy spiraling through her.
Cal plunged deeper, too, and she wailed as she plummeted into ecstasy.
Don thrust again, groaning, his hands tightening on her hips.
"God damn, you're so fucking sexy when you come." Cal nuzzled her neck, then thrust faster, and deeper. His breath caught, then he shuddered.
Finally, he slumped against her. She nuzzled his collar bone and he shifted and captured her lips, then drew her to her feet. Don's cock slipped free.
He pulled her into a deep kiss, then gazed down at her with a warm smile. "You are incredibly hot. That was sensational."
She grinned back. "I think that's my line."
"Honey, it's no line." Don moved behind her and kissed her shoulder. "You are something else."
She felt her cheeks heat at his compliment. "Well, it was a team effort."
Cal chuckled. "Yes, it was that." He nuzzled her ear. "Now why don't we go grab some sleep so we can give it another go in a few hours?"
Don started toward the bedroom and Cal took her hand and followed him.
What an incredible experience. She couldn't believe that what had started out as a vague fantasy had turned into such a sensational reality. Her friends had encouraged her to go after her fantasy, and it had worked out better than she ever could have imagined.
She watched Don's fine, tight ass as he walked in front of her. She'd even managed to bring Don's fantasy to life.
As they stepped into the bedroom, a thought occurred to her. Maybe she could do something about her friends' fantasies, too. She was an event planner, and Don and Cal would have some helpful contacts.
She pulled back the covers and sat down on the bed. "You know, Don. Maybe your audition wasn't for a fantasy job after all."
"Really? You have another event you need a stripper for?"
"Well, the job would include stripping, but it would be more interesting than that."
Don grinned. "It sounds intriguing."
Cal stood beside the bed and she gazed at his big cock, then glanced at Don's. They'd all need some sleep before she'd get to feel those big shafts inside her again.
"Let's talk about it in the morning." She slipped under the covers and patted the bed on either side of her. "Right now I'd like a little male heat to help me sleep."
As the men climbed in bed and snuggled their hot naked bodies against her, thoughts of her friends slipped from her mind.
Tonight was still a fantasy come true for her, and she intended to enjoy every minute of it.
###
Opal Carew is an award-winning author of erotic romance. She was named "Fresh Face of Erotic Fiction 2009" and her books have won the Award of Excellence, Golden Leaf Award, and Golden Quill Award. They have also been finalists for the National Readers' Choice Award, HOLT Medallion, Laurel Wreath Award, Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, and Passionate Plume Award. Also, her book TOTAL ABANDON is a finalist for RT Book Reviews magazine's best erotic book of 2011 award.
Opal loves crystals, dragons, feathers, cats, pink hair, the occult, Manga artwork, and all that glitters. She earned a degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and spent 15 years as a software analyst before turning to her passions as a writer. She lives in Canada with her husband, two sons and two cats.
To learn more about Opal, visit her website at www.opalcarew.com, or contact her at [email protected].
Contemporary erotic romance
Futuristic erotic romance
The King and I (Book 1, Celestial Soul-Mates series)
The Commander's Woman (Book 2, Celestial Soul-Mates series)
Passion Play (Book 3, Celestial Soul-Mates series)
Fantasy erotic romance
Short contemporary erotic story
Contemporary romance
Contemporary fantasy romance
Website: http://www.OpalCarew.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/opalcarew
Facebook: http://facebook.com/OpalCarewRomanceAuthor
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/OpalCarew
The Male Stripper is the first in the Red Hot Fantasies series. Please watch for The Stranger, the second story in the series, which will also be released in December 2011.
If you enjoyed this love story, you might enjoy one of Opal Carew's erotic romance books, PLEASURE BOUND, or her short story, THREE
An excerpt of each is included below.
by Opal Carew
Her ultimate sexual fantasy brought to live...
Excerpt
Jan heard the door open and close. The darkness and silence loomed around her and her heart thundered in her chest.
Oh, God, in a moment a strange man is going to come in here and...
She heard the door open and someone step inside, but she couldn't see him with the blindfold snug against her eyes. Her heart rate accelerated and she tugged at the leather bands around her wrists, holding them firmly to the wall about a foot from her shoulders.
The stranger. Her fantasy stranger.
She could feel his hot gaze gliding over her. Goose bumps danced along her flesh. Her breasts ached as the nipples swelled against the confines of her bra. He could probably see the nubs pushing at the thin silk of her blouse.
She could sense his presence. Hear the sound of his footfalls as he approached. He was close now. She drew in a deep breath. Very close. She could feel the warmth of his body near hers, his breath lightly brushing her cheek.
She hadn't realized it would be so intense. Not seeing him. Not knowing who he was. Not knowing when---
She gasped as his lips brushed her collar bone. Firm yet teasing.
"You are mine. You know that," he murmured, his deep, sexy voice sending a shiver down her spine. His lips fluttered along her neck, then moved away. Wisps of hair danced against her temple as his warm breath caressed her cheek.
"I'm going to possess you. Strip you naked and touch you everywhere. Do whatever I want to you." He leaned closer. "And there's nothing you can do about it."
Her heart skipped a beat as she thought about his strong masculine hands peeling away her clothes, then roaming over her body. Her insides quivered.
Sex with a stranger. She had yearned to live out that fantasy for a long time. The need had haunted her.
Now, it would come true.
His finger traced down the neckline of her blouse, then tugged a little on the fabric when he reached the bottom of the V. The top button released and she felt the cool air of the room caress the swell of her breasts.
"A sexy black bra, I see. I like that."
She could hear the smile in his deep, sexy voice. She could feel the heat of him as he leaned closer. His raspy cheek brushed against her neck and his lips nuzzled her collar bone.
His fingers played along the neckline of her blouse and---she gasped at the sound of the fabric ripping open. Cool air wafted across her chest.
"Black silk. Lovely."
His fingers glided along the top of one cup, then continued over the smooth fabric. Her hard nipple throbbed as he grazed over it.
He chuckled. "Beautiful." He stroked her aching nub again, sending lightning pleasure spiking through her. "You're very turned on."
His lips, warm and firm, brushed against hers, then began to move. Gently. Her lips moved with his as quivers of excitement rippled through her. His tongue glided along the seam of her lips. Then drove inside. It filled her mouth, thrusting deep. His fingers curled around her neck and he drew her closer. When his lips parted from hers, she whimpered at the loss.
He nuzzled her neck, sending goose bumps dancing along her flesh. He laughed warmly. "You really want this."
Oh God, he was right. She wanted this bad.
He captured her lips again with his masterful mouth and his tongue filled her. This time, she opened for him, relaxing into his invasion. His firm tongue thrust in and out, in and out, until her heart pounded and she could barely breathe. His tongue filled her, then withdrew a little. She wanted him deep again, but he didn't thrust forward. She whimpered and nudged his tongue with hers, trying to coax him further. He glided a little deeper, but stopped. Damn. She sucked, pulling as hard as she could. He groaned, then relented. His tongue thrust into her, filling her again. Filling her mouth like she wanted him to fill her more private opening.
He thrust several more times, storming her mouth until she was gasping, then he withdrew.
"God, you are so sexy. And that mouth of yours is so talented," he murmured.
He moved away, she didn't know how far, then she jumped as she felt his hot mouth on the swell of her breast. His finger stroked the top of the cup again, then he pulled it down. His lips surrounded her pebbled aureole, his tongue flicking her hard nub.
"Oh, God," she whimpered.
He tugged down the other cup, exposing her second nipple to the cool air, then covered it with his mouth and sucked. His fingers found the first nipple, still slick with his saliva. He toyed with it, sending wild spikes of sensation through her, shooting straight to her pussy.
This man---this stranger---was licking and... oh, God, sucking, on her nipple. Leaving her trembling in need.
by Opal Carew
Hot steamy dreams...a sexy stranger...and his two brothers...all add up to an erotic adventure she'll never forget.
Excerpt
How would Lori possibly get through the weekend with Marie and her new husband, Drake, the man who still starred in her erotic dreams?
After Lori had turned down two invitations to dinner and a couple more for drinks, always claiming work issues, Marie had finally insisted Lori give her a date when she could join them at Drake's family cottage near Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto.
She hadn't wanted to drive up with them, in case she came up with a brilliant plan to cut the weekend short without hurting Marie's feelings.
She tucked the bouquet of fresh cut flowers under her arm and clung to the strap of her small suitcase as she rang the doorbell. The place was huge. It was more like a full-fledged home than what Lori thought of as a cottage.
Marie opened the door and squealed, then pulled Lori inside and threw her arms around her, practically knocking the flowers flying.
Marie pulled back and grinned at Lori, then held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers. A bright, shiny diamond glittered on her ring finger. Lori grasped Marie's hand and stared admiringly.
"It's gorgeous."
And it was. A marquis cut solitaire in a white gold setting. The matching band had a delicate pattern engraved on the surface.
"Here, I brought some flowers." Lori handed Marie the bouquet.
"Lovely. Thanks." She led Lori into a large, gourmet kitchen and grabbed a crystal vase from the cupboard beside the stainless steel, double door refrigerator, then filled the vase with water.
Lori peeled the paper from the flowers and placed them in the vase.
"Perfect." Marie's face glowed.
Well, why not? She was a brand new bride and she seemed very happy. "Come on. Let me show you around."
"Where's... ah... Drake," Lori asked.
"Oh, he won't be arriving until late tonight." Marie grinned. "He thought you and I would like some girl time to catch up without the new husband getting in the way." She waved a dismissive hand. "I told him there'd be no problem but... he seemed almost nervous to meet you. Imagine that."
Nervous? So, did that mean he'd recognized her, too? Did he have feelings of lust in return? The mere possibility sent Lori's hormones dancing, chased away by guilt... and the realization that if it were true, the weekend would be excruciatingly long and awkward.
Sunshine danced along the polished, dark hardwood floors as Lori padded into the kitchen, awakened by the smell of coffee. The house was very quiet. Marie and Drake must still be asleep. The coffee maker had probably been set to automatic.
She slipped into the kitchen, poured herself a cup and carried it to the stools that sat in front of the counter, facing a fabulous view of the lake. As she took a seat, she noticed a note on the black granite counter top.
'Gone to do some grocery shopping. Back about one.'
Lori glanced at the clock. It was only nine now. That meant she had the house to herself for four hours.
She ate a quick breakfast then pulled on her bikini and headed for the patio doors to the backyard. She stepped through to a paradise of plants, stone decking, and a gorgeous free form pool with a waterfall-and even a hot tub.
Wow, her idea of heaven.
She stretched out on one of the lounge chairs and opened her book. After about a half hour, she dropped her book onto the table beside the chair and rolled onto her stomach. She undid the strap of her top to maximize her tan and tucked her hands under her head. The sun beat down on her, lulling her into a quiet nap.
"You're going to burn if you're not careful."
A man's voice-it must be Drake's-startled her. She flushed as she realized from the back, with her thong bottoms and her top strap undone, she might as well be naked.
"You need some protection."
She saw his masculine hands pick up her tube of sun block from the table beside her and felt the warm lotion form a line across her back. His large hand stroked her flesh as he massaged it in: first across her shoulders, then down her back, then the length of each leg. Next, she felt his hand cup one of her ass cheeks as he slowly and thoroughly massaged the lotion into her skin. She longed to flip over and allow him to give the same attention to other parts of her body. Her breasts tingled and her vagina tightened with need.
But he was just being a good host. He didn't want her to sunburn. She couldn't stand the wonderful feel of his hands caressing her a moment longer. It felt too good. She clutched her bathing suit top to her chest and rolled over to a sitting position.
He smiled that electric smile of his and winked. "Whatever you say."
He stood up and she nearly gasped. He wore the briefest, sexiest bathing suit she'd ever seen on a man. It left little to the imagination. She could see the length of his cock straining against the thin fabric, the head nearly pushing out the top. Clearly, applying the sun block had affected him just as much as it had affected her.
If Marie were to step out on the deck right now, it would be very embarrassing.
"Where... uh... where is Marie?"
"She went out shopping. Didn't you see her note?"
Alone. They were alone? Panic shot through her. He was practically naked in front of her, and obviously turned on. A little voice inside her suggested she drop her hands to her sides and let her top fall to the ground. That would certainly heat things up between them.
But she couldn't. This was her best friend's husband.
"By the way, I'm not Drake." He sat on the lounge chair facing her.
"What?" She stared at him, perplexed.
"I'm Drake's brother, Craig." At her narrowing eyes, he continued, "I'm not kidding."
"You're identical-"
"That's right. Marie said she was having a friend visit this weekend and thought I'd like to meet you. I'm glad I took her up on the invitation." His gaze shifted up and down her body, coming to rest on her breasts, and her hands clinging to the loose bikini top.
"Nice to meet you, Craig. I'm Lori. I'd shake your hand, but..."
He smiled and a devilish glint lit his eyes. "I sure wouldn't complain if you did."
by Opal Carew
When Marie meets Zeke---a tattooed, motorcycle-riding bad boy with a body built for sin---she's swept up in a torrid affair that rocks her world. He's so different from the dependable Mr.-Nice-guy-types she's always dated in the past---and after a few nights in his arms, she vows never to go back.
Little does she know that her best friend Ty, the quintessential Mr. Nice guy, is gearing up to make his move and finally admit his true feelings for her. When Ty learns that Marie thinks he's "too nice" for her, he sets out to prove that he can be the overpowering dominant she wants and overwhelm her senses in ways Zeke never could.
What Marie never expected to discover is that Zeke and Ty share a secret history together---one that changes everything she thought she knew about both men. A past that went far beyond the bounds of friendship...and now they're about to take Marie beyond the bounds of pleasure...and into a world of soul-shattering ecstasy.
Chapter 1
Images of the sexy bad boy from the next cottage haunted Marie as she stepped outside onto the wooden deck and glanced across the tranquil lake. She took a deep breath of fresh countr y air as she walked down the stairs and headed toward the water. She wanted to sit on the beach and enjoy the sunrise in quiet solitude before other cottagers were up and about. Maybe take a refreshing dip in the calm water.
Of course, if she happened to run into the gorgeous guy from next door, that would be quite fine.
She liked his name. Zeke. It was different from the names of the other men she dated. Of course, Zeke was a completely different type of man. The men she'd dated were very nice. Dependable. Confident. Pleasant. Although she'd only spoken with Zeke briefly, and it had been friendly and pleasant, she could sense in him an aura of... danger. No, that wasn't quite right. She felt safe around him. Protected almost. It was more as if he would like to... dominate her. That he would take control and totally master her. Which sent tingles through her.
It wasn't anything he'd said. In fact, it was probably more a matter of how she reacted to his extremely masculine presence. And a result of their first encounter.
Marie's friend Sylvia had invited her to the cottage for the Labor Day weekend. They'd arrived last night and had been enjoying a quiet evening under the stars roasting marshmallows and talking. As much as they could with a wild party going on at the next cottage, with its tough-looking crowd. Marie had never seen so many tattoos and body piercings in one group of people. As the evening progressed, the music had gotten louder and the partygoers more drunk. When tempers flared and a fight broke out, Zeke had shown up out of nowhere.
At first, Marie and Sylvia had thought Zeke was one of them, in his tight jeans and black T-shirt, a tattoo along his arm and the two spike piercings in his eyebrow, but he'd turned out to be more like a knight in shining armor. He'd settled them down, promising to bust their butts if they acted up again. He had an air of authority that they couldn't ignore.
Nor could she. A knight in shining armor was nice, and she was glad he'd been on hand, but the bad-boy aura was a total turn-on. He'd stopped by their cottage afterward to see if they were okay, explaining he was in the cottage two doors down. He'd come to the lake to enjoy some solitude. They'd invited him in for a drink and chatted for a half hour, then he'd headed out.
She sighed as she walked past a clump of bushes toward the secluded patch of beach Sylvia had shown her yesterday. Birds chirped in the trees, the water swished against the shore, and the haunting cry of a loon sounded in the distance.
Her beach towel draped over her shoulder, she slipped between the bushes to the quiet inlet... then stopped cold. A man was wading into the water. He had a large tattoo of a fierce-looking dragon arched along his back, another tattoo coiling along his arm and over his shoulder, and a black tribal band around the other bicep.
And... he was completely butt naked!
And a fine butt it was. She couldn't help watching the muscles ripple as he stepped forward. As if sensing her presence, he stopped and turned around. She felt her cheeks burning at having been caught ogling him, but he simply smiled, revealing beautiful white teeth. That square jaw and those rich olive green eyes... it was Zeke.
How could she not have recognized the golden serpentine body of a dragon tattooed along his upper arm and disappearing over his shoulder? Of course, she had been busy admiring those hard, tight buttocks.
The whole time they'd chatted at the cottage last night, Marie had wondered what the rest of that tattoo, which had disappeared under the sleeve of his T-shirt, looked like. In fact, she'd wondered what it would be like to see him naked, as well as what it would feel like to have his lips pressed hard to hers. Now, she knew. At least, the naked part.
As he watched her, his cock hardened and rose. Man, his butt was fine, but his cock was absolutely sensational! Enormous. She'd love to...
"Join me." His words, almost matter-of-fact, held a spine-tingling tone of authority.
Mesmerized, she dropped her towel and walked toward him. Tremors rippled across her flesh as she got closer. He held out his hand and she took it, then he tugged her toward him and drew her into his arms. She sucked in a breath as her bikini-clad body came in contact with his hard masculine body. Naked flesh to naked flesh. He smiled a devilish grin, then captured her lips.
His mouth, firm and confident, moved on hers with quiet authority. When his tongue brushed her lips she opened and he invaded her firmly and thoroughly. Breathless, she stepped back and stared at him in awe. He scooped her up and carried her into the water, his lips merging with hers again.
It was sweet heaven. He was so... masculine. So... powerful. Yet she felt totally safe with him.
The water caressed first her bottom, then more of her... cool... but she barely noticed. As he continued deeper, the water surrounding them, he released her legs and she curled around until she faced him, then she wrapped her legs around him. His hard cock nestled between them, pressing against her. Oh God, she wanted this man. She didn't care that they'd just met. That she never had sex with a man until at least five dates. She wanted him. Here and now. What was wrong with being a little wild and crazy every now and again? Why couldn't she do something totally out of character?
She reached down to her bikini bottom and untied the strings holding it together at the sides, then tugged the scrap of fabric away. He grinned at the obvious invitation. His fingers slid down her belly and found her wet passage, then glided inside. Oh God, his touch felt so good.
She wrapped her hand around his thick hard cock and stroked, then pressed it to her slit, sending her hormones spinning. His cock glided over her slick flesh but did notslide into her. Thank heavens, since she'd seemed to have lost her mind and thrown caution to the wind. His hard cock rubbed against her, stroking her clit, driving her wild.
"You are gorgeous and incredible." He nibbled her ear as his fingers found her clit and stroked. Wild pleasure throbbed through her.
His fingers slid inside her again, his thumb continuing to stroke her sensitive little button. His lips played against her neck as she gasped in pleasure over his shoulder. His thumb vibrated against her clit and a torrent of blissful energy surged through her. She moaned, clinging to him as the orgasm washed over her.
He captured her lips and kissed her soundly.
"Sweet thing, you are something else."
He carried her back to shore and lay her down on a towel stretched out on the sand. The seagulls cried and the songbirds chirped in the trees. He prowled over her and stripped off her bathing suit top. When he drew her hard, cold nipple into his mouth, she gasped. He sucked as his fingers toyed with her other nipple.
She ran her fingers through his black shoulder-length hair, enjoying the total decadence of the moment. The pleasure intensified, spiraling through her, sending her hormones churning.
"Oh God, take me," she pleaded.
He grinned, then she felt his hard, hot cock stroke along her slit again.
"Have any condoms?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No, but I'm on the Pill."
"I've been tested," he said. "What about you?"
She nodded.
He grinned and surged forward, impaling her with his hot, hard shaft. His cockhead moved deeper inside her. On and on. Stretching her.
Once he was fully immersed, he lay for a moment, smiling at her.
"This is not the last time I want to do this, sweet thing. I promise you that."
Then he drew back, his wide cockhead dragging along the walls of her vagina in an intensely pleasurable stroke, then he drove deep again. She moaned. Oh God, she'd never had a man so deep inside her. She stroked her hands across his broad muscular shoulders as he drew out again, her gaze locked on his intense olive green eyes, then she clung to him as he thrust inside. Then he drew back and thrust deep again.
She couldn't believe this sexy, overwhelmingly masculine man was making love to her. Thrusting his big cock into her. She tightened around him, intensifying the pleasure of his thrusting. She moaned as waves of pleasure washed through her, then exploded in a vibrant, incredible orgasm.
He thrust hard again and groaned as he released inside her.
As she lay beneath him catching her breath, his big body covering hers, his big cock still fully embedded in her, she sighed. Following her instincts certainly had its rewards.
Today was the day.
Ty turned the key in the lock and opened the door. As soon as he stepped inside, he heard a thump in the kitchen followed by a series of smaller thumps as the little four-legged critter with pointed ears trotted toward him, its quizzical green gaze locked on Ty.
People always thought cats were such quiet creatures, but this little guy sounded like a small elephant, despite his sleek black form. Ty scooped up the animal and tucked its furry body against his chest while stroking under its chin and was rewarded with an agreeable rumbling. He'd never realized how much he liked hearing a cat purr. Or feeling one nudging its head against him, demanding attention.
"Hey, fur-ball. Do you miss Marie?"
The cat tipped its head in the way it did when it wanted Ty to scratch the side of its chin. Ty scratched the sweet spot as he walked into the kitchen.
"She'll be back tonight."
He placed the cat on the tile floor and retrieved the can opener from the drawer beside the sink, then opened the last can of food from the supply Marie had left on the granite counter. At the sound of the can opening, the cat rubbed against his legs, meowing loudly. Once Ty placed the bowl on the floor, the critter began eating noisily. He poured himself a glass of orange juice, then leaned against the counter and watched the cat devour its meal.
He'd never really liked cats before---too damned snooty---but then, he'd never really gotten to know a cat before.
And then there was its owner. Marie. From the first moment he'd met her six months ago, he'd known he was in love with her.
Problem was, she was already dating someone. Until a month ago.
When that idiot had walked out on her and broken her heart, Ty had been there. A shoulder to cry on. Every day for the past four weeks, he'd wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her breathless, to show her exactly how he felt about her, but he hadn't. She'd needed a friend and that's what he'd been.
But now was the time to move forward. To tell her how he felt about her. Not completely, of course. She would probably run away screaming. With a woman like Marie, he needed to move slowly. He needed to be subtle. Tell her he was interested in her. Ask her out. Gently coax her into falling in love with him.
And keep the beast inside him in careful check.
Every time he closed his eyes, every time he thought about holding her in his arms, her warm curvy body nestled against his, his body reacted with a fierce passion. His groin flooded with heat and his cock grew as rigid as a night-stick. Next came images of her arms bound above her head, her ankles held wide apart, sending his senses whirling. He longed to tear off her clothes, then explore every silky inch of her well-proportioned body.
He trembled as the natural Dominant in him longed to command her to drop to her knees and free his cock, then draw it into her sweet mouth and suck it deep. To hear her call him Master. He almost groaned out loud at the thought.
But he wouldn't do that to Marie.
Five years ago, it would have been a different story. Although he'd left behind the young ruffian from the streets, he'd allowed himself to keep that side of his nature in the bedroom. Dominating his women. Capturing them. Binding them. Mastering them. Whatever it was that appealed to each woman. All role-playing, of course. And every woman left quite happy with the experience.
But after the incident with his supposed best friend, he'd decided to leave that part of his life behind. Too many links to people better forgotten.
At a sound from the hallway, he jerked around, then smiled as he saw a sleepy-looking Marie leaning against the door frame, her shiny brown hair deliciously mussed and her sky blue eyes only partially open. She wore an oversized yet very enticing T-shirt, which draped nicely over her sensational body, and revealed most of her long shapely legs. Clearly, she wore nothing underneath but a thong. Or maybe regular panties, but he preferred to believe it was a thong. Or nothing. All he really knew for sure was no bra. His gaze dropped to her puckering nipples and his heart rate doubled.
"Ty?"
He jerked his gaze back to her face. Luckily, she'd been yawning so she hadn't noticed his distraction.
"Here to feed the critter," he said.
She glanced at the fur-ball, still munching away at its dinner.
"Right." She crouched down and stroked the cat, who murmured then returned to eating. "How you doing, Jade?"
"Seems to be more impressed with the food than you."
"Yeah, we did the affection thing last night. Now everything's back to normal as far as she's concerned."
She grabbed the orange juice from the fridge and filled a small glass, then took a sip. She leaned back against the counter beside him.
"Why'd you and Sylvia decide to cut the weekend short?"
She shrugged. "I just felt like getting back."
Her evasive manner told him there was clearly more to it than that.
Whatever the reason, she was here now, and he was anxious to move forward with his plan to win her heart.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part I
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Part II
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Part III
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Epilogue
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2010 by Emery Lee
Cover and internal design © 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover design by The Book Designers
Cover images © The Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Olga Rutko/ Shutterstock.com; Victorian Traditions/Shutterstock.com; Kraska/ Shutterstock.com
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems---except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews---without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410(630) 961-3900FAX: (630) 961-2168www.sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.
Williamsburg, Virginia
The blue roan colt had the finely shaped head and alert look of his sire, with strong, straight legs, a chest deep and wide, a short back with well-sprung ribs, and a highly muscled hind end inherited from his dam.
Best of all, this colt lived to run! He was lightning off the line and seemingly grew more energized with every stride. Christened "Retribution," the colt represented all of his owner's hopes for the future, a future in which that gentleman would finally be free to move forward with his life without evermore looking back.
This race, a test of both raw speed and endurance, would be like no other ever run in Colonial history, the victor gaining both the fame and the spoils. The winning horse would be crowned the indisputable king of Colonial racing, while the owner stood to gain a purse of several thousand pounds.
The roan was slated to run among a field of over a dozen representatives of the Colonies' finest hot-blooded horseflesh---a surprising number considering the exorbitant entry fee---but the high stakes had acted as a dropped gauntlet to all who took pride in their racing stock, and Virginians, in particular, were known for such pride.
Although sorely tempted to hire one of the many competent jockeys among his acquaintance and knowing that his actions might put his fine colt to some disadvantage, the man's compulsion to ride his own horse to victory was an overpowering and irresistible force. He needed this win more than anything he could recall, and a vicarious victory would never be as sweet. No. He must ride!
By entering his colt in the running, he had made the second most consequential wager of his life. The first, made nine years ago, had nearly destroyed him. Cheated, deceived, and betrayed, he had lost his love, his livelihood, even his country.
And now, on this momentous day, he would finally see if his patiently formulated plan, a plan that had preoccupied both his conscious and unconscious mind for eight long years, would come to fruition.
Only through this racing trial and, he prayed, a triumph to follow, could he be made to feel whole again. Only with this victory could he have retribution.
Lichfield, Staffordshire, September 6, 1742
Robert Devington was growing more anxious by the moment. Once more he scanned the crowded and bustling paddocks. The call had already sounded for the first race in which Charles Wallace was to ride the gray mare, White Rose. The filly was entered in this particular race, a onehundred-guinea challenge for maiden fiveyear-olds, young horses that had yet to win a race. It was a single fourand-a-half-mile heat, ten-stone weight, and about to start with her rider yet nowhere in sight.
With barely a quarter hour remaining to present the horse and weigh in, Robert was in an agitated quandary. Audibly cursing, he pulled the blankets from the mare's back, just to put them back on again. He considered the only alternatives before him: to deceive the racing judges by presenting the horse in Charles's stead and committing an act of fraud; or do nothing and risk both the forfeiture of Sir Garfield's entry fee---no paltry sum by any standard---as well as this fine young mare's best chance to win a race, a circumstance that would do nothing to improve his standing with his beloved's uncle.
His future with Charlotte was nearly a hopeless cause to begin with. He could scarce afford to fall afoul of her guardian's temper. Robert searched the milling crowd for the last time, desperately seeking a glimpse of Charles Wallace. Still none, blast it all! His last hope now dashed, he cursed with greater vehemence and led the horse out of her paddock to commit an act of fraud for the sake of love.
The Lichfield races, held annually in September, transformed the Whittington Heath, a three-hundred-acre sheep pasture, into the premiere event for all of Staffordshire. This hybrid of a horse race, garden party, and county fair attracted all classes of people from as far away as Derbyshire, the county's closest equine rival, but this year it drew an extraordinary number of persons of consequence. Lords and gentlemen had arrived from the North of England, Wales, and even the Scottish highlands, but as unusual as this was, never since its inception had this innocuous little village ever attracted a foreign dignitary.
By far, the most distinguished patron of the races this year was the elegant and illustrious Grand Ecuyer de France, comte d'Armagnac, Master of the Horse in the court of King Louis XV. Rumored to have travelled all the way from Versailles to procure a number of English running-bloods for the Royal stud, Monsieur Le Grand's visit to Baron John Leveson-Gower had propitiously coincided with the Lichfield races, over which Lord Gower would preside.
With the final preparations for the race in progress, Lord Gower and his eminent guest promenaded the grounds, surveying the field and assessing prospective stock to complement the Royal stud of France.
"I have heard for a number of years, Lord Gower, that the finest racing flesh resides across the Channel in England. I was of course loath to believe such a thing, but most curiously, after seeing so many specimens of excellence, I must confess that this might be so." He paused in his perambulations to admire a particularly sleek black stallion in one of the myriad paddocks.
"Do you know, what is the breeding of this horse, Lord Gower?"
"Hastings's Hawke? He is indeed a fine specimen! I believe he is by Francis Lord Godolphin's barb stallion, but I shall inquire further, if you so desire."
"The Godolphin again! He shall forever plague me, this horse!"
Lord Gower gave an inquisitive look, and the count bowed to him slightly.
"It is said that one of the finest producers of racing champions in England was first cast off by Versailles. A very foolish move by the Grand Ecuyer, was it not?"
"Am I to assume that you refer to Lord Godolphin's stallion?"
"Indeed! One and the same, but the name was not so. In France, the stallion was called by El Sham. You do not know the history of this horse, Lord Gower?
"Only these past years while he stands in Cambridgeshire, Monsieur Le Grand."
"Then I shall recount to you this story, bien sur?"
"Indeed, I am most intrigued."
"The stallion, El Sham, was presented to His Majesty as one of eight horses---chevales pur sang arabes---from the Sultan Muley Abdulah of Moroc. The grand riding master at Versailles, Monsieur de La Gueriniere, the man whom I appoint, finds this stallion wanting, you see. As he is small in stature and not of the form preferred for the dressage, he is cast out from the stud Royale. This same horse was then procured by your Englishman, Monsieur Coke, who brings him to England, where he soon becomes the sire of champions! So you see that I, en effet, am responsible indirectly for this horse leaving France, and now I come to England to find such a one to take back! C'est l'ironie magnifique, n'est-ce pas?" He recounted his tale with surprising good humor.
"Indeed, it is an amazing irony! But in all truth, this stallion's value was little realized at the first. When he left our poor departed Coke's hands for Lord Godolphin's stud, he was intended as a teasing stallion, used to prepare the mares for the services of his lordship's stallion, Hobgoblin. Apparently, he fought Hobgoblin for Roxana's honors, and the unintended byproduct, Lath, was a most formidable opponent on the turf. The fleetest since Flying Childers, some say, and now this former teasing stallion is making a greater name as a sire than Hobgoblin.
"Indeed, it may be of further interest that a son of his, called by Cade, is to run today. He is full brother to Lath and already proving as remarkable a runner. His first year at Newmarket, he won both heats of the King's Plate. His next year, he ran second only to Sedbury, a great-grandson of Colonel Byerley's Turk, another long-proven champion sire. I daresay we might yet see a match race betwixt the pair, but I should be in a veritable quandary where to lay my money on that one!"
"How I should like to see such a race!" remarked Monsieur Le Grand.
"If one offers a large enough purse, most anything might be arranged for the entertainment of Le Grand Ecuyer de France."
The trumpet called the first race, prompting the gentlemen to return to the viewing pavilion, the elegantly appointed structure erected in Monsieur Le Grand's honor. Built to Lord Gower's specifications, the covered and partially enclosed platform, which had employed a score of laborers for nearly two full for'nights, afforded a near bird's-eye view of the field, sheltered from sun, wind, and rain. Most importantly, however, the structure provided the requisite privacy for all of his particular guests, who now congregated in anticipation of the first race.
"As the races are set to commence," Lord Gower said, addressing his guests, "I suggest, Your Graces, lords, and gentlemen, that we take our places." He indicated the comte should be first to proceed. The French envoy was followed by nine of the most prominent and influential Tories in the British kingdom.
Though most were well known to one another through their positions in Parliament, there was little speech outside the mundane, until the liveried footmen, garbed also to honor the French dignitary, served platters of delicacies, poured the imported French wine, and were dismissed by Lord Gower. The host took no chances in protecting the security of this meeting.
Noting the white cockades adorning each guest's lapel or tricorn, said host raised his glass to the company. "As each of us today has both literally and figuratively committed a horse to the race"---his eyes scanned those of the group for reaction to this fitting analogy---"I solemnly propose a toast to the king across the water."
The day, which earlier promised to be sunny and brisk, had warmed with the noontime sun. The lumbering traveling coach, after battling miles of the wheel-sucking mire that barely functioned as a serviceable ingress in the best of times, finally drew near to Whittington Heath. This generously proportioned vehicle had conveyed a family of five ninety-some miles from South Yorkshire for the express purpose of the races.
Sir Garfield Wallace, master of the household, was a most avid turf follower, but with limited success to his credit. With his son riding in the first event of the day, he would have been one of the most fervent of spectators, but his damnable equipage was once again entrenched in the blasted muck!
The occupants of the coach fortunate to be nearest the windows espied the hundred acres punctuated with vendor booths hawking their wares of everything from mutton leg to bonnet ribbons. These were complemented by a halfdozen elegant pavilions serving as provisional banquet and concert halls.
Farther downfield, countless grooms and jockeys frantically hustled about to ready their mounts.
Growing edgier with each passing minute, Sir Garfield rapped impatiently on the roof, but his signal went unheeded by the coachman, who had already alighted---for the third time this day---to assess the extent of their plight.
With increasing agitation and with much greater power than intended, Sir Garfield forced open the coach door. Leaning out to bark his orders, he lurched forward, nearly toppling into the mire, saving himself only at the last by grasping onto the top of the coach door. Although he had narrowly escaped a disastrous tumble into the muck, this unfortunate gentleman found himself suspended, one leg in the carriage and the other dangling in midair outside, with his heft balanced precariously in between.
Charles Wallace, seated on the side opposite, moved with dispatch to aid his father, but his way was blocked by his sister, cousin, and mother, who wailed ineffectually and clutched at the elder gentleman's coat skirts.
Charles, now half-lying over the women, called out to his father as he reached, "If you will just let loose one hand..."
"Not another bloody word, Charles!" Sir Garfield blustered.
Rescue for the gent appeared from an unlikely quarter, as a young officer of the King's Horse stopped to observe the spectacle. "A true predicament, upon my word!" he exclaimed with a chuckle. He deftly dismounted in reckless disregard of the six inches of mud and then tethered his horse to the coach.
"Captain Philip Drake, at your service," he said, concealing his mirth with a flourishing bow. "Need I ask, sir, whether you desire to be inside or outside of the coach?"
"I bloody well shan't attend the races looking like a pig come from the sty!" the portly gent retorted.
Fighting to suppress an outright guffaw at the mental picture, the officer mastered himself enough to reply, "Then, sir, I shall do my humble best to lend my aid."
By this time, the bemired coachman had returned from beneath the rear of the vehicle, and betwixt them, he and the officer shouldered the gentleman's significant bulk, closing the door sufficiently for his son to pull him back into the coach.
"Such a chivalrous officer! Don't you think, Mama?" gushed a sweet and breathy voice, which immediately piqued the trooper's interest. He stepped closer to peer at the other occupants within the vehicle. To his pleasure, an angelic face did indeed complement the voice.
Red-faced and disconcerted in his struggle for composure, the portly gentleman offered gruffly: "My gratitude for your timely intervention, Captain Drake."
"If your desire is to attend the races, sir---"
"Wallace. Sir Garfield Wallace," the gentleman interjected.
"Might I suggest, Sir Garfield, that with your carriage thus entrenched, the labor of dislodging it from the mire might be greatly lessened by the removal of its occupants."
"Indeed, sir," piped up the coachman. "'Twould be a good deal easier empty if'n we must push it out again."
"And just how do you propose to proceed, Captain?" Sir Garfield glowered at the mud below.
"The coachman and I might, by crossing our arms, form a chair of sorts to convey you beyond the danger, from whence you might safely proceed to the nearest pavilion. Otherwise, I fear the races may be well underway before the coach is extracted."
"The races underway!" Sir Garfield exclaimed.
"Is the hour as far advanced as that?" Charles Wallace inquired anxiously. "I am to ride the first race, and on a filly sure to win, you know!"
As he glanced up at the noonday sun, the officer considered the question. "I fear they may have already commenced."
"Hell and damnation! We must proceed to the grounds at once!"
Charles had already alighted out of the door opposite, landing in ankle-deep mud. He remorsefully inspected his new riding boots before dashing off in the general direction of the paddocks in a desperate search of his groom and mount.
"Curse it all!" Sir Garfield swore again. "Four years and onehundred-guineas entry fee to put my horse in this blasted race, only to miss it!"
"Then might I suggest we conduct your remaining party thither without further delay," said Captain Drake.
Forming the human chair, the two men strained to carry Sir Garfield the ten paces to the grassy heath. They followed with Lady Felicia, another sizeable burden, then returned for the two final and much lighter occupants.
Reaching the coach first, Drake hoisted the seraphic beauty into his arms. Well disposed to this notion, she wrapped her own arms tightly about his neck as he carried her.
"So very gallant, Captain Drake," she cooed while gazing dreamily into his eyes.
"Mayhap we shall become better acquainted these two days, my lady?" he suggested.
"One may always hope," she replied à la coquette. Their arrival on solid ground ended any further private discourse.
The coachman arrived, carrying the last occupant, Charlotte Wallace, and Sir Garfield offered another thanks but, having witnessed his daughter in the officer's arms, with less enthusiasm.
The party now safely assembled on the far side of the road, Drake bowed his departure, crossed the mucky path for the final time, and remounted. Without a backward glance, he waved down a fellow officer in the near distance and spurred his horse toward the racing paddocks.
His every motion was followed by Beatrix's intent gaze. Robert Devington found he could barely squeeze into Charles's racing silks. He was now more than a bit worried about making the ten-stone weight for this class. Since attaining the age of twenty, his form had matured, and his added muscle had limited his rides to those assigning weight by inches or by the age of the horse. He didn't know if he would make the cutoff, reckoning now that he must outweigh the younger and slighter Charles Wallace by a good half stone.
His second worry, if he made the weight, was that this race was sanctioned only for gentlemen jockeys. Although Robert had jockeyed in races for nearly eight years, these events had allowed grooms and hired riders. This was not such a race. He approached the weighing station with pounding heart.
"Name?" inquired the clerk of the scales.
"Wall...," he began but hesitated. Charles might very well be known to these gents. Much better to take his chances with the truth.
"Name," the clerk repeated.
"Devington. Robert Devington. The horse is White Rose. Owner, Sir Garfield Wallace."
"I don't show a Devington on White Rose. Charles Wallace is to be up."
"Charles Wallace was unpredictably detained. I ride in his stead. Devington, Robert Devington," he repeated.
"This is a sanctioned race, Mr. Devington." The clerk spoke accusingly. "No grooms allowed. Gentleman jockeys only. Unless you are a kinsman, the race is forfeit."
"I am not in Sir Garfield's employ," Devington said, dissembling, and nonchalantly sat upon the scales. "I am betrothed to the gentleman's niece and therefore a kinsman."
The scales swung in the balance.
"Nine stone, twelve and one-half pounds," the attendant announced with raised brows.
Having made the weight by the skin of his teeth, Robert slowly exhaled. He was uncertain if he was relieved or not. Had he not made weight, he would have had a valid excuse not to go through with an act he would surely live to regret.
"Sign the register, then proceed with your mount." The clerk's voice was a no-nonsense monotone. "Next rider."
As he signed, Devington scanned the book for the other entries in his race. Nine had been slated to run, but strangely, six were now struck from the register: Merry Andrew, Traveler, Miss Romp, Cupid, Phantom, and Othello. All good horses. Curious why they should have withdrawn, Devington continued down the list.
The first name that had not forfeited was Lord Gower's own Slug, whom Devington knew to be a respectable runner but certainly not one to scare off the competition. Lastly appeared Hastings's Hawke, Lord Edmund Drake, Viscount Uxeter up.
The horse, Hawke, was said to be unbeatable in his class, and Viscount Uxeter was a man preceded by a foul reputation. He was a villainous rider with a passion for high-spirited but ill-tempered horses, and would bloody his mount's flanks before suffering defeat. He had proven as much last spring with Spanking Roger, son of the famed Flying Childers, and a superlative runner. The horse had lived up to expectations by running four seasons undefeated in all but one race---the one in which he had viciously tossed his rider. Spanking Roger's name thereafter became synonymous with malevolence, and Lord Uxeter had relished the challenge of owning and racing him. In the end, however, the fiery steed proved unequal to his rider, who pushed him to his very death in a match race.
The combination of names answered the riddle, and a chill of foreboding accompanied Robert to the starting post.
Robert's own mount, a mare affectionately called Rosie, was the first out of Sir Garfield's racing stud to show any real running potential. She was a scrawny foal and Charlotte's pet from the start. Truth be told, though none would ever confess it, Charlotte had trained the mare to run. Although Rosie came to this event green, Robert knew Charlotte had made her as fit as any horse on the Whittington Heath. But how game was she?
The young mare carried champion blood. She was by a Darley son, out of a Darley granddaughter, Amoret. With the noted stallion twice her grandsire, she had the blood of a runner, but did she have the heart to go with it? This was the remaining question to which he would soon have an answer.
Now less than five minutes to start, the bugler sounded the final call. Robert mounted the frisky mare and proceeded at a brisk trot to the starting post, where Slug's rider waited patiently astride the gelding, and Viscount Uxeter spurred his horse, Hawke, into a dancing frenzy.
The starter gave the command for the trio to line up and waited for all to settle before raising the flag, but Hawke, worked up to a nervous lather, broke forward in a false start. Lord Uxeter, realizing the error, jerked his horse to a hard halt and wrenched him back around to the starting post. Their horses now jigging in heightened anticipation, Devington and Gower had to circle for some minutes to resettle their excited mounts.
For the second time, the starter raised the flag. As it descended, the trio broke forth in a flurry of legs, lunging forward for a fourand-a-half-mile test of endurance, by a three-time circumnavigation of the track.
Devington knew his mare was up to the distance. Her daily routine for the past six months had included a spirited five-mile gallop on similar turf, but the day prior had been soggy, saturating the ground. The spongy turf pulled at her feet with every stride, but the going was as good as it was going to get.
Devington consoled himself that they at least had the advantage of the first race, before the track became completely pockmarked with hoofprints. The last riders would suffer the most disadvantage, as the now green surface became degraded by day's end to pure muck. With each lap of the track, the running would get slower and harder and try to suck the horses in.
It paid the rider to understand how turf conditions affect performance and how to manage even those things beyond a jockey's normal control. It was even more vital to understand how best to manage both the strengths and limitations of one's mount, even under adverse conditions.
The most superior jockeys were not always on the most superior horses, but were always the ones who knew how to ride smart rather than just hard. Devington was such a rider. He had acquired years of such equine wisdom under two of the best tutors: first his father and later Jeffries, the stable master at Heathstead Hall. In his relatively short career, Devington had ridden a hundred horses if he had ridden one, and he knew how to read them.
Keeping his mare well in hand, he studied the pair with whom he shared the field. Slug, he mused, was aptly named. He was the lazy sort. The type of horse with talent, but with a stubborn lethargy, having the inherent speed within him, but requiring the incessant driving of his rider to bring it out. This kind of horse required constant attention.
Devington knew this would serve him later. They would hang back just a notch and await the precise moment when Slug's rider would be too worried about driving acceleration to be aware of his competition. This is when they would grab the inside.
That Hawke was another case altogether from Slug was evident from the very outset, the moment he broke for a false start. He was a tightly strung stallion with a fine-tuned flight impulse, needing no encouragement from his rider to run. A horse of his kind ran with a frantic fear, as if his very life depended upon it, burning up excess energy that he could ill afford to lose on a field with worthy competition. Pushing a horse like Hawke with injudicious whip and spur would prove counterproductive, serving only to increase his stress and rarely inciting any willing or renewed effort to the fore.
The third type of runner, well represented by Rosie, the sprightly mare on whom Devington was mounted, was the willing partner. This kind was eager to please and attuned at every moment to its rider, anticipating and responding to the slightest cue of hand, voice, or leg. This was an honest runner, one rarely needing encouragement to perform, a horse to be trusted to run its own race to the best of its ability, simply guided by the intelligent rider.
Devington relaxed almost imperceptibly, trusting Rosie to pace herself for a while. As long as she didn't drop back or lag more than a length or two, he wouldn't drive her. Instead, he kept his eyes focused on the competition, reading every sign, developing his plan, seeking his advantage, riding this race to the peak of his horse's ability.
Either of the other two horses could be managed and run successfully, but success would depend completely on the skill and management of the rider, and Devington could clearly ascertain by the end of the second lap that Slug was decidedly undermanaged by his indolent jockey, and the high-strung Hawke was incontrovertibly terrorized by his.
By the start of the third lap, Devington was crouched low over the mare, well pleased and encouraged that Rosie was up in the bridle, holding her own, and keeping good pace with the two taller, longer-legged horses. Lord Uxeter was already plying the spur into the first bend, but Rosie, keenly aware of her rider, required little urging, voluntarily lengthening her stride to maintain her position.
By the end of the final lap of the arduous run, Lord Uxeter had completely used up his horse, and Slug had completely used up his rider!
Grinning with satisfaction, Devington seized the moment to claim the lead, murmuring low to Rosie, "It would appear, my lovely girl, the race is ours."
Charles Wallace arrived breathless and perspiring just as Devington, with only a few furlongs to go, gave Rosie her keenly anticipated cue to seize the lead. The mare visibly coiled and sprung forward with renewed vigor. Her dainty legs sliced the air, barely grazing the turf with her flying hooves, and she overtook the harried Hawke to win a clean and undisputed finish.
Charles couldn't believe his eyes, but moreover, couldn't understand how Devington had managed to ride. The Lichfield races prohibited grooms. He feared there would be hell to pay once the breach was discovered, but for now he reveled with his friend who had just clearly beaten the unbeatable.
Sir Garfield arrived amid a plethora of congratulations on the fine performance of his mare, accepting the news with amazement, and made his befuddled way to the paddocks. How could Charles have possibly run Rosie in the last race? The second was already underway, and Charles had been only a few minutes ahead of him. There must be some misunderstanding, but he was loath to refute the glad tidings.
He arrived at Rosie's paddock just as Charles clapped Robert on the back. "Capital ride, Devington! I could scarce believe my eyes when I saw you overtake Uxeter. He's a veritable fiend in the saddle, you know."
"Rosie performed admirably," Robert replied.
"'Twas more'n just Rosie took that race."
"Devington!" Sir Garfield began just as Lord Gower appeared with his distinguished guest.
"Sir Garfield," Lord Gower said, "my most eminent guest wishes to be made known to the owner of the splendid mare who cleaned the field of her illustrious company.
"Monsieur Le Grand, may I introduce Sir Garfield Wallace of Wortley, South Yorkshire. Sir Garfield," he continued, "I present Le Grand Ecuyer de France, Charles de Lorraine, comte d'Armagnac."
Confounded as to how to greet a French dignitary, Sir Garfield's bow was so low and obsequious that his knees creaked, and stays threatened to burst. Failing to recall the elongated title, he tentatively began, "Munsoor..." and directed a pleading query to Lord Gower.
"Monsieur Le Grand," Lord Gower volunteered.
"Indeed. Indeed. Munsoor Le Grun."
The comte flinched at Sir Garfield's appalling French and responded, "Mais oui, I was most insistent to speak with the owner of this cheval magnifique, who claims such victory. And such rider superlative, he too must be congratulated, non?"
"Just so," Lord Gower agreed. "But I don't believe I am acquainted with your kinsman, Sir Garfield." He eyed Robert curiously. Sir Garfield flushed, but Devington interceded, saving them both from disgrace.
"Devington. Robert Devington," he offered with a deferential bow, thankful for having once aped Charles's lessons in etiquette and gentlemanly comportment. The gentlemen's reciprocal nods affirmed that his efforts had passed muster, but his bravado wavered when his lordship prodded further.
"What precisely is your kinship to the baronet, Devington? A nephew on the wife's side, mayhap?"
"N-no, your lordship." Devington vowed to stay as close as possible to the truth. "The relationship is by law rather than blood. I am betrothed to Sir Garfield's niece, Miss Charlotte Wallace."
"Indeed so? My felicitations to you. 'Tis peculiar I had heard none of this." He directed his inquiring gaze to Sir Garfield, who opened his mouth to refute.
Robert again interjected, "It has yet to be announced, your lordship, as Charlotte is but seventeen."
The reply satisfied Lord Gower. "'Twould appear congratulations are well in order, young Devington, on a superlative ride. Lord Hastings, the owner of the defeated champion, was near apoplectic when he saw you rout his prized stallion, ridden by his heir apparent, no less."
"More than worthy opponents," Devington said humbly.
"I privately confess to a belief that Uxeter is heavy-handed with his livestock, and 'twas past time for his set down. Now as to the point of this introduction, Monsieur Le Grand?" he prompted.
"Sir Garfield," the Frenchman began, "I had come to this country, you see, in search of a fine stallion for the stud Royale, but I tell myself, after seeing this performance of your mare, that one must never underestimate the value of the broodmare, non?"
"Just so," Sir Garfield replied.
"Then I should like to discuss with you the procurement of such a specimen as this mare. The King of France is a man très genereux, Sir Garfield."
"Indeed?" Sir Garfield's eyes lit with an avaricious gleam.
"What would you say to an offer of five hundred pounds?"
"'Tis exceedingly generous, Sir Garfield," Lord Gower encouraged.
Sir Garfield carefully posed his reply. "It is indeed, but the mare is yet young. This is only the first of what I suspect should be many successful racing seasons. I might gain as much in her race winnings alone, not to mention the sale of future offspring."
"'Tis a truth I should not doubt," the comte conceded. "As I perceive you are a shrewd man, we shall then forgo this bourgeois custom of bartering. I shall ask directly. Precisely what amount of gold should entice you to part with this mare?"
"No less than one thousand guineas."
"A thousand guineas! 'Tis not unheard of for a stallion, I think, but such is a price très cher for a mare, n'est ce pas?" He directed this last to Lord Gower.
Sir Garfield defended his stance. "She carries the Darley blood, top to bottom, proven blood of champions."
"I confess, Monsieur Le Grand, the blood alone will tell," Lord Gower espoused. "Darley's stallion has produced a prolific number of good runners."
"Très bien." He nodded. "If such is the case, I shall provide the purse you request on the morrow and will make arrangement to take the mare back to France after the races. Enfin, Messieurs. My business now complete, I am free to attend most heartily to plaisir. A good day to you, Sir Garfield." The party made their bows with great pomp, and the comte and Lord Gower departed.
"A thousand guineas!" Sir Garfield rubbed his hands gleefully. News of this sale would do more to establish his racing credibility than an entire season of wins.
"Sir Garfield," Robert began, "I feel compelled to explain my actions. With no sign of Charles, and the race beginning, I was induced to act."
In his delight of the moment, Sir Garfield had nearly forgotten Devington's act of deception. "'Tis of little consequence. 'Twas a clever and credible fabrication, by the by. Shows a quick wit," he added in grudging approval.
Perceiving in the baronet's good humor a golden opportunity to pursue his agenda, Robert pressed further. "Sir, as to the fabricated betrothal... I have made no secret of my feelings for Charlotte, and I have reason to believe she reciprocates these sentiments. Though I have little to recommend me, I should do all in my power to care for her. I should desire nothing more in my life than to make this a betrothal in truth."
"Enough, Devington! We have had this discussion for the final time."
"But we have never discussed it at all. You have scarce given me the chance."
"Nor shall I! You are a penniless groom in my employ. My niece is a gentlewoman. There shall never be such a match. Promptly dismiss the notion from your head, lest I dismiss you altogether. You'd better serve yourself to rub down that mare. Come, Charles, I'm famished and in a mood to celebrate. There's food and wine in the pavilions."
Charles cast Robert an apologetic look but followed his father nonetheless.
Once more rebuffed and at a loss how else to achieve his goal, Devington directed his attention back to the mare. No sooner having done so, he was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.
"Here, lad. I had a bit of luck on the last race, thanks to you." The trooper carelessly tossed Devington a coin purse. "There's ten guineas within," he volunteered. "Should hold you over for a spell, if you haven't a predilection for whores, gaming, or strong drink," he added the disclaimer. "'Tis but a fraction of my winnings, which before night's end will have completely vanished by all of the aforementioned vice," he said with a raffish smirk.
"By the by, lad, I caught that last from the overstuffed windbag. I deem you should better serve yourself to seek opportunity elsewhere. The King's Horse could use more crack riders." He threw the remark over his shoulder as he departed, leaving Devington stupefied.
Captain Drake left the dumbfounded youth to amble at a leisurely pace to the paddock reserved for the Hastings stud. He arrived to overhear a second dispute related to the prior race.
"But, your lordship," the groom pleaded, "'twas surely a fouled sinew led to his defeat. I seen he lost his action right at t'end, round that last bend, I seen it. Knewed he was off right then, I did. He wasn't hisself, on account o' it. But he'll be right as rain in a for'night. Wi' rest and me poultice, 'twill be no time at all. He'll be spankin' ready for Epsom."
"Shoot him," replied Lord Uxeter dispassionately.
"Surely ye canna mean it! He'll be right as rain in a for'night," the groom insisted.
"I've just lost a thousand guineas on him. I said shoot him."
"But, your lordship!" the groom begged as if for his own life. "Even should he ne'er run another race, surely he be good enough for the breedin' shed."
"This horse is not good for bloody dog meat," Lord Uxeter spat. "Upon the morrow, you shall present me this stallion's tail as proof you carried out my injunction. Otherwise, Willis, you shall find yourself seeking other employment."
"'Twas quite the showing today, Edmund," the captain interrupted. "I confess I may also have lost a great deal of money, had I bet it on you. Fortunately, I fancied the look of the little gray mare instead. 'Twas a magnificent payoff!"
"Piss off, Philip." Lord Uxeter spat in his direction and was gone.
"Ye be best not to goad 'im like that, Master Philip. He be of a murderous mind, he be," the groom warned.
"Edmund is a sadistic bastard. Now what's this rubbish about shooting the horse?"
"Ye overheered that, did ye?"
"Indeed. 'Twould appear a tremendous waste of a fine piece of horseflesh, wouldn't you say, Willis?"
"'Twould indeed, Master Philip. He be no screw, this one."
"So you say?"
"Byerley bred, twice over, he be."
"The Byerley Turk? I know of the horse. He was taken from a Turkish officer in the siege of Buda. He later served as Colonel Byerley's reconnaissance mount at the Battle of the Boyne. The horse was reputed to have remarkable courage."
"That 'e was, and later proved a fine runner to boot."
"Indeed? And this is his grandson, you say, Willis?"
"Aye."
"They say 'like begets like.' If it be so, he would be a worthy addition to the King's Horse. As an officer, I have forage allowance for a second mount. Hmm." He circled the horse and ran his hand down the stallion's right foreleg, feeling for heat. The horse shifted in discomfort as his hand touched the base of the cannon bone. He looked up at the groom. "What do you make of his injury?"
"'Tis naught that a bran poultice and se'nnight o' stall rest won't cure."
"Then I suggest you seek out some poor, decrepit cart horse with a black tail. Surely someone in Staffordshire can produce such a sad specimen for ten quid." Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the sum in coin.
"Rest assured o' it, Master Philip," answered the relieved Willis with a toothless grin.
By day's end, eight races had been run with the surprising addition of a grand finale, a two-hundred-guineas match race between the two strongest contenders of the year. Mr. Martindale's Sedbury, another grandson of the Byerley Turk, and Cade, by Lord Godolphin's Barb. The contest would be a full three heats of four-mile distance, carrying twelve stone.
After having received this news with singular delight, Monsieur Le Grand turned to address his company. "My most distinguished messieurs, while having been received with the most pleasing hospitality within your midst, I am regrettably recalled to my purpose.
"I am come sadly, not for my gratification alone, nor solely for the acquisition of horses for the stud Royale. I am come, in truth, as envoy of His Most Christian Majesty, who has agreed after a much grave and extended consideration, to help restore Le Chevalier, the true and rightful king to the throne of England.
"When thirty years past, Louis XIV provided an army of several thousand French troops, the noble Scots rallied to their rightful king, but there was, I think, a decided lack of English zeal to restore Le Chevalier, non? But now you say the English people grow discontent and resentful of the Hanoverian Crown, who would make war with France for his insignificant German electorate."
Lord Gower replied, "It is our belief, Monsieur Le Grand, that in only a matter of months the English people will rally to the cause. The opportune moment of restoration is soon to present itself. We must be prepared to act."
"D'accord," replied the comte. "His Majesty is prepared to offer a fleet of thirty ships, and the troops numbering ten thousand. It is for this reason, I am come to England, to secure... shall we say... certain guarantees. Every favor of the Crown comes at some price, non? And these troops, they must be maintained."
"Precisely what manner of assurance does His Majesty have in mind?" Lord Gower asked warily.
"A pittance, as you English would say. Two hundred thousand pounds. An offer most genereux, oui?"
"His Majesty is infinitely benevolent," replied Lord Gower.
"Then I shall await your answer. All arrangements may be made through our usual friends," said Monsieur Le Grand. "And now I see the commencement of the race." He smiled and indicated the
sinewy, sleek, and dancing forms of Cade and Sedbury proceeding to the starting post.
By six o'clock, the crowds had dispersed in preparation for the Grand Ball to be held on the far end of the race grounds. Though record numbers attended the races earlier in the day, the ball more than doubled that number, drawing those whose interest lay more in social events than in sport. Accommodations were made for all.
An open-air dance floor and hired fiddlers provided entertainment to the local folk, while luxuriously appointed and brightly lit pavilions served food and wine for the nobility and gentry. A half dozen such structures were erected in a circle surrounding an immense dance floor constructed within the center.
Having stayed to the last race at Sir Garfield's insistence, the Wallace party was among the last to arrive. Sir Garfield and Charles dragged behind the ladies Wallace, who meandered from one pavilion to the next inspecting, admiring, or criticizing those they passed by.
Beatrix moved about with an air of studied nonchalance, periodically shielding her eyes with her fan and scanning the crowds for a dark-eyed man in a scarlet coat with blue facings. Once or twice her pulse quickened, but the officer she sought failed to reveal himself.
Sir Garfield tolerated this circuitous perambulation by keeping his glass perpetually filled. Charles Wallace hung back from his clinging mother and sister to keep company with his cousin Charlotte. They had hardly seen one another since the carriage debacle, and Charles noted that Charlotte appeared even less enamored of the ball than he was.
"I trust your afternoon was diverting, cousin? I know how extraordinarily fond you are of the races," he said as the pair strolled along behind his twittering mother and sister.
"I hardly caught more than a glimpse of any of the races," she replied with dismay. "Aunt, in her belief that no decent lady shows her face near the track, scarce let me out of her sight. Did you arrive in time for Rosie's trial? I caught none of it and have been dying to know how she did. Though Uncle appears in exceeding good humor, he has not spoken of it, and I scarce dared to ask."
"'Twas a remarkable day indeed. I regret having missed the start of Rosie's race."
Charlotte's face fell.
"But the mare did run," he hastily added, "and she ran superbly, Charlotte. She routed Lord Hastings's Hawke."
"Splendid! Absolutely splendid, Charles. But how can it be? You can't mean to say that Robert rode?"
"Indeed he did, though I literally caught only the tail end of it. His riding in the last few furlongs was nothing short of brilliant. I'm convinced that none other should have accomplished it. M'father doesn't give the man enough credit."
"He never has. 'Tis so unfair of Uncle. Robert deserves the opportunity to prove himself. Uncle could have one of the finest racing studs in Yorkshire if he would only give Robert a chance."
"You bring up another point, Charlotte. After the race, Devington pressed his suit for you."
"Did he! Surely it was an opportune moment to do so! Uncle could not possibly have been in a better humor to listen. And?" She waited expectantly.
"And father threatened to dismiss him if he ever broached the subject again. I'm sorry, Charlotte."
Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. "I must speak with him, now, Charles. You must take me to him."
"But the ball," he protested. "The dancing will soon commence."
"What do I care? You know I despise these balls. Seas of faces I shall never encounter again. Scores of names I shan't ever recall, even if I cared to. Not to mention the dancing. I scarce can remember the simplest steps. Surely we can slip away for a short while."
"You can't claim to need air. We are already strolling out-of-doors."
"Then it must be infirmity."
"But that would require that I take you back to the inn," he moaned.
She regarded him with stubborn determination.
"Must you jut your chin so, Charlotte?"
The mulish look became a glare. "Will you take me or not, Charles? If you refuse, don't doubt that I shall slip away on my own, though with the grounds so ill-lit beyond the pavilions, I daresay I should need to carry something for protection."
He knew she would carry out her threat. Charles groaned in submission to the blackmail. Charlotte spoke briefly to her aunt, pleading a headache, but the lady was too preoccupied with her own diversion to pay much heed.
"Charles"---his mother turned to him---"I have noted a remarkable shortage of eligible gentlemen for dancing, particularly in light of the prodigious number who turned out for the races." She spoke deprecatingly. "You will return to lead your sister out to dance, should she lack partners. This is not a request, mind you."
The beleaguered Charles, wishing the world completely devoid of womankind, vowed to return as promptly as possible. Their excuses made, Charlotte and Charles then slipped away to the paddocks.
Mortified at the thought of dancing with her brother, Beatrix renewed her hunt for the officer she had selected to lead her out for the first dance, but he was nowhere in sight. Surely he was even now seeking her in the crowds. She had worn her very best silk gown in shades of yellow and gold to match her hair, but perhaps she hadn't made herself conspicuous enough.
"Mother, we have yet to inspect the last pavilion," Beatrix insisted.
"But we have already partaken of food and drink aplenty at all of the others," Lady Felicia replied.
"But Mama," she persisted, "there's a large crowd gathered hither. Should we not investigate? Mayhap there is something or someone of interest."
Sir Garfield interrupted his wife and daughter at this point. "Quite slipped my mind, m'dears, regretfully, as I know how these matters signify to ladies. There is indeed a person of great consequence at the races this year. Had the privilege to be introduced myself. 'Tis a Monsoor Com d'Grun something-er-other, come all the way from the court of Louis Cans."
"A French nobleman, Papa? A courtier of the king? How could you be so cruel not to say so earlier?"
"Indeed, Sir Garfield, 'twas unforgivably remiss of you," his wife scolded. "You must think of our son and daughter, who can only benefit from even the remotest connection to such a personage. You must perform introductions at once! But confound it, Charles is departed with Charlotte. You must contrive an introduction for him on the morrow," his wife insisted.
"Charles was present, m'dear, but 'twas a very brief encounter. He and Lord Gower came upon me for a matter of business."
His wife stopped in her tracks. "What possible business could you have with a French count?"
"'Twas a matter of a horse, m'dear. Seems the monsoor was quite taken with Rosie. Offered a thousand quid for the mare."
"A thousand, you say! 'Tis a king's ransom, Sir Garfield."
"Quite literally, madam," he said with a laugh.
"We shall be infamous for it!"
"'Twas quite what I thought, m'dear."
"Then surely we must be made known to this count, Sir Garfield." Taking her husband by the arm, Lady Felicia dragged him to the crowded pavilion.
By the time they were cognizant of the activities within, it was too late. The crowds pressed so tightly, there was scarce room to maneuver, let alone escape. The sixth pavilion, they discovered, was solely to entertain unencumbered gentlemen.
"Sir Garfield!" Lady Felicia exclaimed, attempting to shield her daughter's eyes from the open debauchery, but not succeeding before Beatrix had looked her fill, immediately spotting and fixating on her elusive quarry. Seated at a card table was her handsome officer. Resplendent in his crimson coat, his pristine breeches were further adorned by a voluptuous, painted doxy.
As if feeling the weight of Beatrix's gaze, Captain Drake glanced up from his cards, straight into her face, and without the least modicum of shame, winked!
With a gasp of outrage, Beatrix spun around to push and shove her way out of the tent. "How dare he amuse himself at my expense!"
For years she had been the one to mercilessly toy with the young men of her acquaintance. It had been her personal challenge to reduce them to pathetic little lap dogs who begged for her favors.
But not this man! Never had she been treated with such contempt. And to be cast aside for a painted whore was not to be borne! Oh, he would pay for this, Beatrix vowed. If ever he crossed her path again in this lifetime, he would surely pay.
Charles, preceding Charlotte by a pace or two, arrived as Robert, exhausted from the day, made ready to bed down for the night.
"Won't do at all, Robert," Charles declared. "If anyone sees you bedding down like a groom, 'twill be sure disaster. You must, at the least, retire to the inn. Surely there is a loft above the stables or some such to be had. Even failing that, you could make do in the coach, but let none see you now as our groom."
"Robert." Heedless of her cousin's presence, Charlotte stepped forward, extending her hands. Robert clasped them in his own, pulling her close. "I am so sorry I missed your ride. It must have been glorious! I wish with all my heart that I might have seen it. My uncle is in such rare good humor this evening."
"He has reason. Your filly has garnered him fame and fortune in one fell swoop."
"I doubt the fame should last long, and the hundred guineas was hardly a fortune by my uncle's account."
"Then have you not heard? Charles, you craven," he accused. "You've not told her yet!"
"Told me what, Robert?" Alarm reflected in her eyes.
"He has sold her, my love. Sir Garfield has sold Rosie to some pompous, painted, and befrilled French count, who is taking her to France after the races."
"Rosie? France? I don't understand! Rosie is mine!" Charlotte protested. "No one cared for her but me! I'm the one who believed in her, nurtured and loved her, taught her to run. You all would have cast her off as nothing! Even Jeffries had failed to see her potential. How could he do this to me?" Sobbing, she threw herself into Robert's comforting arms.
"Your uncle is a man completely devoid of sentiment, Charlotte. You know this. He cares naught for anyone lest they serve him a greater purpose, and today Rosie served him well. 'Twas at your expense and to his shame, and I'm deeply aggrieved by your loss." Robert spoke with earnest eloquence.
"But look at the bright side," Charles said cheerily, "her exceptional performance today earned her a place as one of King Louis's broodmares. She shall live out her life as a queen of equines in the stables at Versailles. Quite an honor, if you consider it, Charlotte. And I can't say I've ever seen m'father more ebullient."
"Even so, Charles, I fear his humor shall never be sufficiently charitable where I am concerned," Robert remarked.
"Surely m' father shall come around in time."
"Never, Charles. The day shall never arrive that he will perceive me as an equal."
Charlotte ardently protested. "Don't say so!"
"Today, so that your uncle might have his racing victory, I went so far as to announce myself your bridegroom. After thus perjuring myself for his gain, he was offered a thousand guineas for the mare. Knowing I should never see a more propitious moment, I pressed my advantage. I begged that he should grant our betrothal in truth, but he threatened to give me the boot. He means it, Charlotte. As long as I am in his employ, I shall never be more to him than some mindless lackey!"
"What he thinks signifies nothing! I know you for the man you are, and you are the man I love." She stroked his cheek with tenderness. "Only this is of consequence. If he will not be moved, then we will just run away together. I have my father's timepiece and my mother's pearls. Surely they could sustain us for a time."
"But only for a time, my love, and notwithstanding that I could never allow it. As it is, without your dowry, we could scarce feed ourselves. No, my love, I am resolved to make my own way and return to you only with respectability and means. Unless I can provide for you in at least a modest semblance of the manner to which you are accustomed, there should be a perpetual cloud dimming our happiness."
"How can you say so?" she pleaded. "Our love is what matters."
"Charlotte, a woman must respect the man she marries, and should I fail to support a wife and family by living hand-to-fist, I would never be worthy of your respect or your love. I must make my own way."
"But how? You aren't going away?"
"I must."
"B-but for how long?" Her voice broke; her heart wrenched.
"That I cannot answer, my love, but we are young. We have time." He drew her hands to his heart.
"When will you leave?" Her lip quivered.
"Soon."
"Oh, my love. My only love." Charlotte flung herself into his arms.
AN ORPHAN'S TALE
Charlotte Wallace was thirteen when her uncle's carriage came to collect her three weeks after her parents' accidental deaths. Sir Garfield Wallace's instructions to his London man of business were brief and concise: close up the house, auction off the contents, and dismiss all the servants, save one to care for the child. His directives left Charlotte in an empty house, awaiting the arrival of a man she hardly knew, to take her to a home she had never seen.
Upon the appointed day at precisely the appointed time, the grand coachand-four arrived at the modest house on Mount Pleasant near to Grey's Inn Road.
Perched upon the window seat of the second-floor salon, Charlotte peered apprehensively through the window, hoping her first glimpse of her uncle would provide a glimmer of hope for her future. The vision meeting her eyes did little to diminish her qualms. The footman opened the carriage door, and the portly gentleman wedged himself through the narrow opening and descended. Brushing off the footman's assistance with a frown, he straightened his waistcoat, righted his crooked periwig, and lumbered to the front door with the chastised footman following behind.
Catching her charge spying out the window, Letty pulled the girl briskly away. "Come, Charlotte. Ye don't want yer uncle to catch ye. 'Twould not be good manners, and ye daren't make a bad impression, seein' he's the only kin come to claim ye."
Charlotte valiantly battled the incipient tears, but her quivering lip gave her away.
"Oh, my poor lamb! It breaks me heart, it does, after what ye been through, but ye needs t'pick yer chin up. 'Twill be a'right in the end. Ye go to a grand house in the country wi' two cousins to keep ye comp'ny, and rest assured, Letty'll never leave ye."
"But I don't even remember them, Letty, not any of them!"
"I can't doubt it, lambkin. Ye were very young, mayhap three or four the last time that ye visited the Yorkshire kin, but 'tis no matter, luv. Yer cousins'll come to be like brother and sister to ye in no time."
"I pray you're right, Letty."
"Rest assured, my duck. 'Twill be all right in the end." She offered an encouraging wink, which Charlotte returned with a forced smile. A rap sounded briskly at the door, and with no other servants to answer it, Letty left her charge.
Wasting no time on formalities, Sir Garfield entered the foyer, nodding curtly to the maid, asking gruffly, "Where is the girl?"
"Above stairs, sir. Me name's Letty, sir," she offered with a deferential curtsy. "I've been with the household since Charlotte were a babe."
"I don't require your complete history," he answered irritably. "Take me to her."
A heated flush brightened Letty's cheeks. "Indeed, sir. I'll take ye directly."
"And the bags? Are her belongings packed? I have little time to waste."
"Yes, sir. We was told to expect ye and have been ready this past hour or more."
"Simmons, see to the baggage!" Sir Garfield commanded the footman.
Nervously fidgeting in the salon, Charlotte rose hastily at the
sound of the heavy footsteps signaling her uncle's approach. Letty's curt nod from the doorway reminded Charlotte to curtsey, lest she forget decorum.
"Uncle," Charlotte said in tentative greeting.
He inspected her with a long, critical sweep. "How old are ye, gel?" he demanded.
"Just thirteen, Uncle."
"Small for your age. You don't look near so robust as your cousins. Not sickly, are ye?"
"N-n-o, Uncle."
Letty interjected hastily, "Nay, sir. The child's in the best of health."
"Good. Ye have quite the look of your mother about ye but not half the looks of my Trixie," he proudly asserted. "A rare beauty, that girl."
For want of a reply, Charlotte nodded.
"A timid thing, aren't you?" he remarked.
Always described as a spirited child, Charlotte drew breath to differ, but Letty directed a quelling look. Mindful to make a good impression, Charlotte maintained her silence.
The cursory introductions completed, Sir Garfield was wont to be on his way. "You know why I've come?" he asked rhetorically.
"Indeed, sir. I am most grateful for your exceeding kindness and generosity."
He nodded with a satisfied grunt, and the party set out for Yorkshire.
For Charlotte, the journey was scarce more than a blur, hours on end bouncing and jostling in the closed carriage, her uncle snoring and sputtering and otherwise ignoring her. At least he had allowed Letty to travel within the coach rather than outside on the driver's seat. The maid's presence fortified Charlotte.
After three interminable days, the coach halted at the gate of Heathstead Hall. Pulling back the curtain, Charlotte gained her first view of the long gravel drive that meandered up a lush green landscaped hill to an imposing brick, Georgian manor house. The carriage struggled up the steep drive until the door opened and the steps lowered for their descent.
"Heathstead Hall. Your new home," her uncle stated proudly.
Wide-eyed and speechless, Charlotte was thankful for Letty's reassuring hand squeeze before she alighted the carriage. Mechanically going through the motions, she would later have only vague first impressions of her new family.
Her Aunt Felicia, a plump and powdered woman, near smothered Charlotte with a cloyingly effusive welcome. "Why, Sir Garfield, what a little darling our Charlotte is! Welcome, my dearest, into the bosom of your new family. I am Lady Felicia, but we shan't stand on ceremony. You must call me Aunt. Now come and meet your cousins. They've been overcome with rapture in anticipation of your arrival, my dear." She looked to her children and propelled a fresh-faced lad, akin to Charlotte in age and stature, toward her. "Here is Charles, but where is Beatrix?"
She frowned that her welcome party was incomplete. Beatrix was nowhere in sight.
"She was here only a moment ago, Mama," Charles answered.
"'Tis no matter, my dear," Sir Garfield replied. "Charlotte will meet Beatrix in due time. For now, let us just see the gel properly settled."
"Indeed, Sir Garfield. The rooms are all prepared."
"I leave all in your capable hands," he replied absently. "I am off to inspect the broodmares." Having fulfilled his obligation to safely deliver his niece, he departed without another thought.
"Always those confounded horses!" Lady Felicia cursed under her breath. "I just don't understand what's become of Beatrix."
With her sudden arrival in her uncle's household, Charlotte's world turned upside-down. She was regarded with disingenuous sympathy from her aunt, indifference from her uncle, jealousy and resentment from Beatrix, and seemingly no more than tolerance by Charles.
Charlotte had been adored by her parents, and by her father in particular, who treated her more as a son than a daughter. For this reason, she perceived Charles as her most likely ally and determined to cultivate a friend in her male cousin.
Her first opportunity presented early one morning, shortly after her arrival, when she espied Charles departing the house. Stealing surreptitiously through the back courtyard and gardens, she followed him down the narrow path to Sir Garfield's prized stables. Trailing in stealthy pursuit, she bypassed the carriage house and pressed on toward the broodmare paddocks, where arrested by a warm nicker and the approach of a sleek and glossy little chestnut mare, Charlotte completely forgot about Charles.
With her head held high, the little horse trotted merrily to the fence and nuzzled the girl. Her warm breath tickled Charlotte's cheek. Completely and unreservedly captivated, Charlotte reached out to stroke the velvety nose.
A voice spoke from behind. "That mare is Amoret. She's Darley blood, you know."
Startled, Charlotte flushed.
"I saw you following me," Charles said, his grin accusing.
"I wanted to explore the grounds but didn't know my way around."
"No matter to me. You don't seem half the trouble of my sister."
"I promise not to be any trouble at all. Though we lived in the city, I have a great fondness for the out-of-doors. My papa used to take me to the park to play every day when I was a child."
Charles considered her for a moment. "I've never been to a great city, leastwise not outside of Leeds. Can't rightly say if I should be keen on it or not."
"There is so much to do in London! There are people everywhere, strolling in their finery at St James or riding their horses in Hyde Park."
"I should hate to confine my riding to a mere park."
"But Hyde Park must be a hundred acres or more!" she protested.
"A hundred acres is nothing," he scoffed. "Heathstead Hall covers nearly a square mile."
"But Hyde Park has the Serpentine," she challenged.
"The what? Sounds like a bleedin' snake museum."
"Don't be such an addlepate, Charles! The Serpentine is a great man-made lake within the park. Papa once took me punting there. We had a lovely day." She blinked rapidly. Her mouth quivered.
Charles looked away visibly discomfited.
"You mentioned riding in that serpent park," he said. "Do you ride, Cousin?"
"No, but Papa always promised me..." Still fighting the incipient tears, her voice dropped to a whisper.
His question had failed to serve its purpose. Flustered by his second botched attempt to distract her, Charles tried again. "Well, would you like to? Ride, that is?"
The mare immediately nudged Charlotte's hand, as if encouraging her. Charlotte's eyes suddenly grew wide with delight. "Do you mean to teach me?"
"I could start you in the basics I suppose, though t'would be best to put you in Jeffries's hands. He's the stable master. Though he mostly works with the running bloods, he's also charged with our instruction, mine and Beatrix's, that is. 'Tis a waste of time on that girl," he added contemptuously. "Beatrix is afraid of anything with four legs."
"I should not be afraid at all," Charlotte answered intrepidly, determination replacing her tears.
"A bit of fear is a healthy thing," he advised. "Horses are powerful beasts, even the most docile ones, but if you truly wish to learn..."
"Oh, I should! Indeed I should!"
"Suit yourself, then," Charles replied gruffly, secretly pleased that his flash of brilliance had drawn his cousin out of her melancholia. "You go to the Hall and change into your riding habit. I'll instruct the groom to saddle Beatrix's old gelding for your first lesson."
"But, Charles," she began timidly, "I should like to ride Amoret."
"You don't understand, Charlotte. This one is of pure racing blood. Even if you attempted to ride her, you'd surely risk your neck. Nay, you'll ride the swayback gelding, leastwise until you develop a seat."
Charlotte regarded him forlornly. "But I haven't a riding habit."
"Bother," Charles replied, and then surveyed her from head to toe. "Well, we're of a size, I daresay. Have your maid fetch some of my riding breeches. You'll be riding astride anyways, as I know naught of a lady's side saddle. Now run along, Charlotte!"
Beatrix, who had earlier spied on her brother and Charlotte, arrived unexpectedly in the stables garbed in her velvet habit and haughtily demanded her horse.
"Ye be riding then this morning, miss?" Jeffries inquired with surprise, knowing her distaste of horses.
"Indeed I shall. 'Tis a glorious day for it. Don't you agree little brother?"
"But Charlotte was to accompany me, Trixie," Charles protested, "and there is no other suitable horse for her, aside from Lancelot."
"He is my horse. Charlotte will just have to petition Papa for her own, as she shall not be riding mine."
Obediently, Jeffries led out Lancelot and lifted Beatrix up. Charles sent his young cousin an apologetic look but mounted his own horse to accompany his sister for what he knew would be an exceedingly dull ride.
Forlornly, Charlotte watched her cousins disappear from sight. Why did Beatrix hate her so much? Dejected and fighting tears of frustration, she wandered to the broodmare paddocks, alighted the top fence rail, and settled there, watching the horses peacefully graze. Noting her presence, Amoret left off cropping her patch of clover to float across the paddock in a daisy-cutter stride. Her enthusiastic greeting, although nearly knocking Charlotte from her perch with a playful toss of the head, served as some consolation to the girl's despair.
"'Twas naught but jealousy prompted that." Jeffries nodded in the direction Beatrix and Charles had ridden. He spoke absently, casting a lazy gaze over Charlotte. "I've no doubt wi' a few lessons ye'd soon be ridin' circles around that pair. 'Tis too bad there be no other suitable mount for ye."
Charlotte stroked and scratched the mare, who happily nuzzled her in kind. "Is there nary a one, Jeffries?"
"Nay, miss. The lady Felicia don't ride, and Sir Garfield, bless him, is grown so in bulk that he be nigh too big for the saddle. The rest be but carriage horses, broodmares, and yearlings."
"But what of Amoret, here? She is quite biddable, is she not?"
"That she is, but she's bred to the hilt for running, miss, and no mount for a young lass just finding her seat."
"But, Jeffries," she protested, "did you not just say I might soon be running circles around my cousins?"
"Indeed so, but 'tis a great distance 'atween a biddable hack and a courser, miss."
"But they both have four legs, don't they? I fail to discern the difference."
"Do you not, indeed?" He chuckled indulgently. "Then ye'd best study more closely. Come wi' me miss." He handed her down from the fence and led her across the stable yard to the carriage horses, a grazing group of bigboned bay geldings.
"Fine old English stock, they be, Yorkshire coach horses and unsurpassed for carriage work. If we compare this great gelding to Amoret over there, you see how he was bred to drive? You see it in long, well-muscled neck, the power of his forequarters, with his broad, deep chest. His shoulders are big, strong, and built to pull. His back is long, withers low. His legs be short in relation to his carcass but heavy in bone. This is a hardy breed, long-lived and docile in temperament, but not built for speed. Now cast yer gaze back to Amoret."
The contrast was unmistakable, even to Charlotte's uneducated eye.
"A horse bred for running has a well-chiseled head on a long neck, is high in the withers, has a deep, narrow chest, a short back, good depth in the hindquarters, a lean body, and long legs. A racehorse is a completely different creature, bred for dash, spirit, and bottom. Not for a lass to hack about the countryside."
"But Amoret is the very picture of docility," Charlotte protested.
"Aye, she may have the look of a lamb, but on the turf," he added with a scratch under Amoret's chin, "this one has the heart of a lioness. The difference lies not as much in the form of the horse but in its spirit."
"Amoret, a lioness? I can't conceive such a vision."
"She's right docile enough now, but don't mistake this one for no soft-hearted jade."
"How do you mean?" Charlotte sat forward with a rapt expression.
"This mare is from one of the great running families, ye see. It's deep in her blood. Her grandsire was the Darley Arabian hisself."
"Indeed?" she responded with wonderment. "But who is this Darley?"
"I was but a lad working at Aldby Park stud when Thomas Darley brought a horse all the way from the Syrian desert to Yorkshire. No more handsome beast have I ever seen. The Darleys knew he was a prime one. They stood him 'specially for their own mares, taking few outsiders. And they got some of the best whatever ran in these parts: Childers, Almanzor, Aleppo, Cupid, Brisk, Daedalus, Dart, Skipjack, Manica, and Lord Lonsdale's Mare."
"They were all winning racehorses?"
"They all could run like the wind, but the primest of the get was crack as any horse in his time or ever since. That was Flying Childers, bred right over yon at Doncaster, out of a daughter of Old Careless, another what was the best o' his time."
"Did you ever see him run, Flying Childers?"
"Right enough, I did. I disremember the exact date, but 'twas the Beacon Course at Newmarket. Flying Childers bolted over it, well over four miles of hill and dale, in seven-and-a-half minutes. Bless me, miss, if I ever seen another horse run like that! His next races was all won for lack o'takers, so early on the Duke of Devonshire put him to stud. 'Twas his full brother what sired this 'un right here." He rubbed Amoret's ears.
"Is it truly so, Jeffries?"
"Aye, 'tis so."
"But Amoret doesn't race."
"Not any longer, she don't. But in her heyday, no mor'n half a dozen years back, she was right full o' piss 'n' vinegar, Amoret was. As game a little filly as they come. It was at the two hundred guineas for fillies in Hambleton that I first seen her. 'Twas on the Round Course, which was dedicated to runnin' only mares since the time of Queen Anne. I was up on Lord Portmore's Favorite, Isaac Cope from Middleham was up Amoret, and Johnny Singleton rode Lord Rockingham's Lucy. A gamer lot of fillies never was than that trio.
"And this little mare run that course up the hill, round the bend, and down the straight as if driven by the devil. She could flirt wi' the best of 'em for half a day and give 'em treble the distance in her time.
"'Twas a sad day I laid eyes on her at the blood sales, right dwindled to naught and lookin' like a rail. Sir Garfield wanted naught to do wi' her, but I knowed what she was, carrying the blood of the royal mares of King Charles on the one side and nicked wi' the full brother of one of the best runnin' horses e'er lived on the other."
"Indeed? What had happened to her that she went to auction?"
"Same's happens to many o' the best runnin' mares. Raced young and hard, pinched o' feed to keep their carcasses light 'til they be too weak and broken to run anymore. Then when the runnin' is completely wasted from 'em, they be turned out to the breeding shed completely sapped of juice and in no condition to propagate.
"Full in flesh and vigor is what a broodmare should be. Drained in body and spirit, a mare's in no condition to breed, leastwise not and produce a strong, healthy foal."
Charlotte looked at the mare pityingly.
"She had a yearling filly still suckling on her and further dragging her down, while she was breeding again. Bred back to her own sire, she was. Damned incestuous habit, goes against natural law, if'n ye ask me." He spat in disgust. "If'n the Almighty don't countenance such breedin' habits in man, why should man practice it in his lower creatures? But the high and mighty ones has some queer notions on blood. I'd as life nick a Darley granddaughter like her wi' a Byerley blood any day. Best of blood top and bottom, but there you be." He ended his tirade with a gesture of resignation.
"But what then became of her foal? You said she was bred, not is bred."
"Though we weaned her filly what was draggin' 'er down and give her the best of victuals to pick 'er back up, she slipped the foal right enough. 'Twas much to be expected, considering her miserable state."
"But how could anyone be so cruel and negligent to such a lovely animal?"
"Ignorance and neglect abound wi' running bloods who don't keep their owners flush in the pocket. The lot of the racer is to run and win or to breed winners. A blood horse that can do neither is nigh useless. Even with this one's high breeding, if she don't produce, she'll soon be back at the auction block."
"Does my uncle intend to breed her again?"
"Sir Garfield won't abide to keep her about if she don't earn her oats, but she be not ready to breed back again. She's had no time off to soften her condition. Like as a farmer need leave a hard-worked field fallow for a season, the racing mare must be roughed off for a time. Her owner didn't care to rough her off. 'Tis some wonder she even took on the first leap, but a mare that don't get a rest and time to recover throws a weak foal, matterin' not what blood she's bred to. Moreover, continuous breedin' will only make 'em go barren well afore their time."
"But what of the filly? You said you weaned her filly, didn't you? Did my uncle keep her, Jeffries?"
"Aye, and a right scrawny thing she be. That's her o'er in yon paddock. The gray. Daughter of Whitefoot she is, and her blood goes back to the White D'Arcy Turk. She be bred well enough, but as feeble as she looks, she's more'n likely to be useless as a runner. Mayhap her blood will tell as a broodmare, but I've a fair notion not to trouble training her to run. Sir Garfield has some colts what look to be far better racing prospects."
"But 'tis hardly a fair assessment to make so soon. You've not even given her an opportunity to prove herself," Charlotte protested indignantly.
"Mayhap so." He shrugged, adding philosophically, "Yet oft expectation fails where 'twould appear most promising, and nigh as oft it succeeds where hope is coldest. 'Twere never more true a sayin' than with blood horses."
"Well, I for one think she deserves an opportunity, especially having come into the world at such a disadvantage."
"You've a tender heart, lass."
"Maybe I just understand what it's like for her to be abandoned like that."
"Aye, lass, just mebbe ye do."
"Jeffries, since you have so little time and have already deemed her a poor prospect for racing, might I train her?"
Jeffries laughed. "You! Ye've ne'er even been in the saddle! What would you know of training a horse?"
"Well, nothing," she answered defensively. "But you could teach me couldn't you? You could give us both a chance." Her wide eyes spoke much louder than her voiced entreaty.
"Training a racehorse ain't hackin' about the heath, miss. 'Tis hard work, and not at all suitable for a young lady."
"But I shall prove my mettle to you if you give me the chance," she pleaded. "I'm made of much sterner stuff than you might think." She jutted her chin mulishly.
Suddenly moved by her eagerness and determination, Jeffries spoke without weighing the possible consequences of his actions. "If ye truly have a mind to learn the blood horse, I reckon there be no better teacher for ye than Amoret." The mare answered by rubbing her head against his shoulder.
"Do you mean to say you'll actually let me ride her?" Charlotte's face lit, and her pulse quickened.
"She grows heavy and idle out to pasture. Some light exercise can do her no harm. We'll start ye on the longe line with her tomorrow morn, if'n ye can be up and mounted betimes. The boys muck and feed well afore the cock even crows and are riding by first light. If ye can drag yerself from yer pallet afore light, none should be the wiser." He gave her a conspiratorial wink.
"You mean Beatrix. She never rises early."
"Then ye'd best be at the rubbin' house by daybreak."
"Indeed, I shall! I am a very early riser. I regularly watch the sun come up," she prevaricated with a broad grin and then turned to Amoret. "Until the morrow, my lovely."
She kissed the little mare on the nose and departed with a skip in her step.
Charlotte spent the night in restive anticipation, springing from her bed at the first crow of the cock. Pulling on Charles's shirt and breeches over her shift, she yanked on a pair of his castoff boots and pulled a cap over her plaited hair. Careful not to disturb Letty, she then slinked out of her chamber and down the back stairs, avoiding the kitchen where the cook was already about her work. Charlotte then exited a back door and surreptitiously edged her way through the gardens.
Her heart fairly skipping in anticipation, Charlotte strode eagerly down the gravel-laden pathway and along the waist-high yew hedge to the stable block. The gray slate roofs of the low redbrick buildings had only begun to reflect the rays of the rising sun. By midmorning they would cast their shadows upon the large, bedewed, grassy plot in the yard's center, but for now, the yard was a low hum of activity.
Charlotte wandered to the center of the bustling stable yard, watching as seven or eight boys methodically carried out their morning chores. One or two of them yawned and stretched, with stray pieces of straw and litter still clinging to their hair and clothing from the night spent in the lofts above the stables.
They set about their work, leading horses out of their boxes, fetching buckets of water, and mucking out the nightly refuse from the stalls. She had been to the stables on many prior occasions. Why had she never noticed any of this activity before?
Someone, presumably one of these same boys, always had her cousins' horses ready and waiting when they were appointed to ride. Upon their return, the boys collected and tended the horses and then faded back into the woodwork from whence they had emerged. She had never before given thought to all that was required to care for a stable of twenty-some horses.
Impatient to locate Jeffries and be about her own business, Charlotte dismissed further reflection. She scanned the yard, expecting to find her own saddled mare or, at the least, for someone to take notice of her. Ignoring her presence completely, the grooms continued about their morning routine, much like ants busy on their nest.
With Jeffries nowhere in sight, she looked about, huffing in disappointment mixed with annoyance. Suddenly she remembered. Jeffries had said to meet him in the rubbing house.
But which of these confounded buildings was the rubbing house? Turning about, she attempted to arrest the attention of a small boy straining to transport his manure-teemed wheelbarrow to the dung pit.
"Excuse me, lad?" Charlotte began. The boy glowered and continued on his way.
"Pardon me," she said louder now and grasped him by the sleeve. The slight pull was all it took to completely unbalance his precarious load and dump the manure---all atop her boots.
"Bloody hell! Look what ye done," the boy cried.
"Look what I've done? I'm sorry to have made you spill it, but I was simply looking for the rubbing house."
"'Tis over yon, ye muttonhead!"
"Muttonhead? There's no occasion for rudeness. If you hadn't overloaded your cart..."
"If ye hadn't come along and pulled me o'er, it ne'er would have happened. But now ye'd best clean it up afore Jeffries or Devington comes along."
"Me?" she replied incredulously. "I'm not the clumsy oaf who dumped it. It's not my mess to clean."
"Well, I ain't about to be last to finish me chores. Devington is back from Doncaster and will have me turning over the reeking dung pit instead of breaking me fast wi' t'other chaps."
"Well, I'm sorry for you, but that's nothing compared to what you've done to my only pair of boots, you ham-fisted lout!"
"'Tweren't me what pulled the wheelbarrow arse over teakettle, ye wantwit! Go bugger yer mother, and then lick yer boots clean!"
"Why, I'll box your ears, you brazen-faced little jackanapes!" Charlotte made a fist as if to try, but the boy flew at her first. They both tumbled onto the pile of manure in a wild, tangled flurry of thrashing limbs.
The commotion caused by the circle of cheering and jeering stable boys drew the attention of the head groom, who was leading his fresh mount out from the rubbing house. Hastily tying his horse, Robert Devington strode furiously across the stable yard to break up the mill. He tore apart the dung-covered combatants by the scruff of the neck. Turning first to the smaller of the pair, he cuffed his ear. "Jemmy! What the devil are you about? It's nigh past feeding time; you've still half your stalls to muck."
"But it ain't me what started it!" Jemmy whined. "'Twas the new chap what turned over me cart!"
"I don't give a groat who started it! Now get about your business before I tan your arse with a riding crop! And now for you, lad." He turned ominously to Charlotte and stopped mid-sentence, gaping at the spectacle she presented with her oversized clothes pulled awry and stained with ordure, her cap askew and nose oozing blood.
"Who the blazes are you? Or better said, what are you!"
Charlotte brushed a clump of dung from her flushed cheeks with the back of her hand and haughtily met his stare. "I was simply looking for the rubbing house where I am to meet Jeffries. Now if you would kindly direct me, I shall trouble you no further." Her voice was husky and quivered with righteous indignation.
"You say Jeffries sent for you? He told me nothing of a new boy." He regarded her closer, quizzically.
Charlotte refused to enlighten him. "The rubbing house, if you please?"
"The rubbing house"---he pointed over her left shoulder---"is the squat building hither."
"Thank you," she replied with as much dignity as she could muster. She turned on her heel and marched to the indicated building where, as promised, Jeffries awaited her with Amoret.
"Thought ye must be yet bedbound, miss." Puzzled by her appearance, he regarded her head to toe. "A right tussle wi' the lads is not what I expected when ye said ye'd prove yer mettle. Ye look nigh like ye been drug through the yew hedge backwards! By the looks of it, ye been well initiated into the world of the stable grooms." He chuckled.
"Indeed I have, but I'd rather not speak of it, if you don't mind," she said crossly. Desiring to divert the subject, Charlotte surveyed the low-roofed, poorly ventilated building where Amoret and another heavily blanketed horse stood tied. "What is this place, and why is it so stifling hot in here?"
"'Tis where the running horses are saddled to ride and rubbed down after their exercise."
"But why would you not saddle in the stable yard where it's cooler?"
"'Tis all well and good for the saddle hack, but the racehorse must be kept in condition. This requires sweating the beasts to remove spare flesh what weights 'em down. Though I've no great likin' for the practices of some what calls themselves training groom in Newmarket. I seen 'em destroy good horses by keepin' 'em always in a box wi' no air and covered in rugs three or four layers deep, turnin' the stables into a blessed Turkish bath.
"They send the horses out daily for 'strong exercise,' two or three times doubled wi' rugs, sometimes even addin' a woolen breast sweater and a hood. They put 'em through a four-mile gallop, and they returns heavin' in the flanks and lookin' like buckets of water was thrown over 'em. After this, the animals be scraped, rubbed down, wiped dry, and new clothes put on 'em afore goin' back in the hot box, where they breaks out in fresh sweats.
"This routine what some swears by, workin' 'em to exhaustion then clothin' and stovin' 'em, does naught more'n drain their juices such quantities as to destroy their strength and spirits."
"What a cruel and inhumane practice!" Charlotte exclaimed.
"Now I don't be sayin' a weekly sweat don't do a horse good," Jeffries said. "The cumbrous flesh a fat horse carries tears down his sinews when he runs. I lief run a horse lean than large. A horse don't never meet wi' his destruction by runnin' light in the carcass. But as to the sweats, all things be best in moderation. It be nigh easier to pull down than to put up flesh on a running blood."
As he spoke, he removed the three layers of rugs from the gelding. Scrutinizing the horse beneath the blankets, he gave a low whistle, murmuring curses to himself. "What's he thinking, the Bart, 'specting me to train a screw like this!"
"Whatever do you mean?" Charlotte asked.
"He be from the best sire, and 'he cost too much not to be good, Jeffries,' the Bart says." The stable master snorted in disgust. "Horses run in all shapes, lass, but always best when the shape is good."
"But I've never seen a coat with such a coppery sheen. He's akin to a new penny."
"Ye must look beyond the coat! Too many judge a horse's condition by the color or shine. This one be bad-kneed and built downhill. His croup's nigh taller than the withers. A horse that's ill-formed can't tolerate the training. He's thick-winded, too. He'll be roarin' like a lion afore the second mile."
"But how can you know which ones will be any good?"
"It begins in the breedin' shed, by selecting proven blood from a running family on both sides. Too many breeders care only for the sire and the damsire, givin' no heed atall to the dam herself. Begin wi' good blood then make sure the horse be well put together and full of vigor. The rest be in the training."
"But what will become of this one?" Her hand moved over his coat of satin.
"I says, by 'is looks, Sir Garfield would do better training that aged broodmare"---he indicated Amoret---"than this fouryear-old."
"Amoret? Do you really think so?"
Jeffries chuckled. "Nay, miss. Her runnin' days be well past, but wi' exercise, she'll regain the vigor she lost in the last foaling. Some light rides on the heath will be good for the twain of ye, though I doubt yer Uncle would be too fond of the notion. Now then, time's a wastin'. We'd best be about your lesson."
Charlotte looked at him blankly. "But I don't know what to do."
"Then it be high time ye learn."
He conducted Charlotte into the harness room. The air was permeated with the rich smells of leather and neatsfoot oil. Several boys were at work cleaning the saddlery. Charlotte scanned the rows of gleaming leather as Jeffries moved to lift Beatrix's saddle from its rack.
"But isn't that a side-saddle, Jeffries?" She asked, regarding the saddle askance. "I don't want to amble along side-saddle like the fine ladies who parade on Rotten Row. I want to really ride, like the lads do. I want to hear the thunder of hooves and feel the wind in my hair."
"So you've a mind to ride the cracks, do you? 'Tis not the thing at all for a lady, ye know."
"What do I care for that? Please teach me to ride astride, won't you?"
"Ye truly think ye be up to the task?"
Charlotte lit up. "Yes indeed! If you'll only but show me."
"It'll be the devil to pay if'n the Bart should get wind of it," he warned.
"I promise he won't. I'll come to the stables before anyone is up at the house. Please, Jeffries."
The wide hazel eyes did him in. The stable master sighed in capitulation.
"Thank you, Jeffries!" Turning back to the saddlery, she asked, "Now which one shall I use? This one?" She indicated another saddle.
"Not unless ye be plannin' to leap the hedgerows chasin' foxes," he said with a twinkle in his eye.
"Mayhap not right away," she answered in all gravity. "But I fail to see the difference between any of those without the leg horn on them," she said with consternation.
"Then look more closely. Ye see the seat? This rise in the front is called the pommel, and the back is the cantle. On a hunting saddle, the pommel be low so that the rider can rise up in his seat to better take his fences."
"Oh, I see." Charlotte approached what looked like no more than an elongated leather pad. "And this one, Jeffries?" she asked.
"Ah, that be a racing saddle."
"But there's nothing to it! How does one even secure it to the horse?"
Jeffries pulled out a wide woven strap. "This is a surcingle. It goes over the saddle and around the horse's belly."
"It doesn't look like it would be very secure," she remarked skeptically.
"That be true, lass, but 'tis small and light, made that way to not interfere with the horse's running."
"We'll use this one." He pulled an exercise saddle from the rack, along with a blanket.
"Now, lass, bring me the snaffle. He indicated an entire wall covered with leather headstalls hanging from their hooks.
"What is a snaffle?"
Then commenced her lesson in bits and bridles.
After learning the basics of riding tackle, Charlotte was ready to commence her lessons upon Amoret. Waiting until the grooms and horses were going about the morning exercise and the stable block all but deserted, Jeffries instructed her in riding astride.
Her first few lessons were conducted with a long length of rope attached to the bridle, which Jeffries used to control the horse, while Charlotte learned equilibrium in the saddle. Greatly surprising the stablemaster, Charlotte proved to have a natural rider's seat and was confidently poised in only a matter of days. A fortnight later she and Amoret were leaving the exercise paddock and trotting freely out of the stable yard, with the mare tossing her head and snorting in delight.
With elation Charlotte and Amoret explored the open heath until unexpectedly encountering that horrid undergroom astride Sir Garfield's prime racing prospect. He had snuck up from behind, taking her unawares. Well, in all fairness, he hadn't exactly snuck up. He had spoken first, called out, but startled her nonetheless.
Charlotte was tongue-tied and paralyzed with fear that he would discover her identity and betray her to her uncle, and her only happiness would come to an abrupt end almost before it had begun. With a racing heart, she followed her first impulse, spurred her mare into action, and fled.
Needing little encouragement from her rider, the spirited mare sprung. Nostrils flaring, tail in the air, she surged forth, increasing her stride with each drawn breath. The young man, struggling to catch them, hung closely over his own horse's neck, spurring, encouraging, but still losing ground until the mist of the heath swallowed them. The sprightly Amoret was lightning on four legs!
Arriving back at the stable yard breathless, Charlotte dismounted, but Robert arrived hot on her heels. He swung agilely down from his saddle to land directly in her path.
"You bloody little reckless fool! Do you have no care for either yourself or your horse? She could have easily caught a hoof in a rabbit hole out there and broken a leg, or thrown you and broken your neck. Though by my first impression, the former would surely be the greater loss."
"How dare you lecture me, when you were in pursuit!"
"The difference is after ten years of riding that heath, I know every warren on it. You don't! Besides the fact that you ran that poor broodmare ragged. You can't ride a horse like that that's out of condition!"
"But Jeffries said I could take her out for an airing, and she loved every minute of it!" Charlotte replied.
"Because she was born to run, and you asked her to! A game little mare like that would run herself to death before quitting!" Charlotte cast a guilty look at Amoret's body, now coated in sweat and white lather.
"When the boys here exercise, they take their mounts for a light hack. That's a sedate trot and easy canter, not all out and hellfor-leather. A horse that's out of condition must be brought along easily, not worked too fast or for too long. You need to retrain the horse how to carry herself and strengthen her with light exercise, short gallops, short sweats, and regular rough offs, lest you destroy her legs."
"But that's not how you were riding!"
"It's my job to run the cracks, the ones who are already properly conditioned and ready to run. Did they teach you nothing where you came from, lad? And what is your name, anyway?"
"I'm not a lad," she retorted, pulling her cap from her head, "and my name is Charlotte. Pray excuse me; my horse requires cooling."
For days following the incident, Charlotte feared that Robert would betray her to her uncle, but after a se'nnight of agony, Robert had not spoken a word. His behavior was puzzling. With caution, Charlotte resumed her rides, but to her consternation, Robert began to appear every morning on the heath.
With her breath catching and her pulse racing, she had run. Run
from any promise of friendship or love. But before long, she looked forward to their meetings with a fluttering heart and unexplained anticipation. Their morning rides became an exhilarating game of chase that Charlotte relished with sheer abandonment. For these few hours each day, Charlotte could take flight from her otherwise tightly controlled universe to share together this freedom and world without boundaries.
Over time, this unspoken, nameless attraction between them continued to blossom, refusing to dwindle or fade, though they had little opportunity to foster or nourish it. Slowly and patiently, Robert's sheer persistence in the chase had revealed his heart, and Charlotte came to realize the nameless thing between them was love.
Woolwich Training Grounds, December 1742
Captain Philip Drake swaggered down the line of crimson-coated new recruits, scrutinizing the would-be troopers with cynicism. Callow young men, barely off their mother's teat, with visions of grandeur in the King's Horse, he scoffed.
At barely three-and-twenty himself, the young captain was one of over sixteen thousand Englishmen who had joined the British Army as part of the Pragmatic alliance to defend the territories of the new Queen of Austria after a French and Prussian invasion of her territories.
George II, wearing dual crowns as King of Britain and Electorate of Hanover, headed the alliance, but acting more to secure his own German electorate than to honor the treaty with Austria.
The vast majority of British recruits desired nothing more than to fight Britain's age-old Gallic adversary. Although they had little concern for the threat to Hanover, French dominion across the face of Europe was another thing altogether.
Philip Drake was among this number and had purchased a commission with a small inheritance received on his twenty-first birthday. He had joined the King's Horse Guard with a desire to find purpose in his otherwise meaningless existence of drinking, gaming, and whoring, pursuits shared with his peers, other younger sons of nobility.
Already an able horseman, Drake was prepared for grueling hours in the saddle, but on the training field, he discovered he was a near prodigy in the art of swordplay. With his natural confidence and cool head, he had the true makings of a cavalry officer, although he had lacked the necessary funds to advance his career. Fate, however, intervened, and Philip Drake, the ne'er-do-well scapegrace of his family, became a captain of the King's Horse through a game of chance.
His first campaign, spent mostly garrisoned in Flanders, had failed miserably to live up to his expectations. Instead of riding gloriously into battle as he had envisioned, his entire regiment spent six months with thumbs up their arses whilst their generals dithered and the French amassed across the continent.
Disillusionment led to fond reminiscences of his "worthless" days of gaming, drinking, and whoring. His former life may have been meaningless, but damned if he hadn't enjoyed it more!
Increasingly restless and bored to distraction, newly commissioned Captain Drake began to drill and sharpen his men, lest in these months of inactivity they grow complacent, lazy, and dead... should the French and Prussians finally engage this muddle of a Pragmatic Army. In short order, the men under Drake's command were acknowledged as the best troop of the King's Horse.
With recognition of his success, the captain was recalled from Flanders to Horse Guard headquarters with orders to train the new Household Cavalry recruits for the coming spring campaign.
Now Captain Philip Drake faced his most daunting task: that of molding this pitiful assemblage into a troop worthy of the King's Horse.
As Drake strode the ranks of new recruits and their horses, his critical eye saw little raw material with which to work. A trooper was responsible for providing his own horse, and by the look of it, a full fourth of the nags wouldn't survive a march, let alone a battle!
Was this the best His Majesty could expect? He grimaced that any of this group might ride under his command. This was, after all, the unit bearing the Royal insignia, the best of the best, and their role was vital to the success of an army in the field. They were scouts, the eyes and ears of the generals, their watchfulness and intelligencegathering crucial to strategic decisions. They were the protectors of essential supply wagons and escorts to dignitaries carrying urgent messages. They were expert horsemen and fearsome warriors trained for swift and unexpected attack at a moment's notice. They were a breed apart, but the captain saw little evidence of any of these traits before him.
"Mount your horses!" he boomed, watching each man pull himself into the saddle. His eye was caught by one particular trooper who vaulted with easy grace onto the back of a short-coupled, heavyboned skewbald. The captain swaggered up to this young man, who saluted awkwardly, sitting tensely at attention.
"Name," the captain barked.
"Devington, sir. Robert Devington," the young man croaked.
"And what may I ask, Trooper Devington, is this sorry-looking beast? The King's Horse does not charge into battle on halfbred nags."
Trooper Devington's face flushed. "Permission to speak, Captain?"
He nodded curtly. "Permission granted, Trooper."
"Respectfully, Captain, although this horse was the product of an inadvertent coupling between a carriage-bred stallion and a racing mare, I believe him to be a superlative cavalry mount."
"You do indeed, Trooper Devington!" the captain roared and required more than a moment to compose his mirth before he could continue. "A superlative beast, you say? Pray tell me; upon what criteria?"
The crimson-faced trooper continued, "The qualities m'father taught me to look for in all horseflesh, Captain---soundness, sense, swiftness, stamina, and strength."
"Indeed desirable qualities..." The captain stepped back and circled around, scrutinizing the stocky gelding from every possible angle before snorting. "You actually believe this animal a paragon of the species?"
The captain's remark, traveling like wildfire through the ranks, was received with muffled chortles and coughs.
"Indeed I do. I'm no novice of horseflesh, Captain. On the contrary, I am well acquainted with this animal and confident in his abilities. He has demonstrated exceptional heart and stamina."
Now more irked than amused by the cockiness of this green whelp, the captain pressed. "And what of your skill, Devington? It would seem that only one of exceptional ability could mount such an exceptional steed."
"I hold my own, sir," he replied with quiet confidence.
"Hold your own with whom, Trooper? This is not the annual plowshare pull or the cart race of the county fair."
Trooper Devington's cheeks burned under the mockery. "Again, with due respect, sir, I can ride with the best of 'em."
"So you say, Devington, so you say... but are you willing to wager your career on it?"
Taken aback by the blatant challenge, Trooper Devington was at a loss to respond.
"Perhaps you didn't hear me, Devington," the captain repeated, his voice echoing through the ranks. "Are you willing to wager your career on that horse?"
"I'm not a gambling man, Captain."
"Not a gambler, you say, but indeed a braggart."
The captain addressed the full line of troopers in a booming voice. "There is no room in the Horse Guard for any whose words surpass their deeds." Addressing the trooper again, he commanded, "You may now prove your words, or dismount and return that wretched beast to your plowshare."
His future drifting completely out of reach, Devington blurted, "I accept any challenge of riding skill that you make, Captain."
"Do you now, Devington?" He paused. "I suppose you to be an expert swordsman, as well?"
"That would be quite an erroneous assumption, sir. I claim no experience or skill with either sword or pistol."
The trooper to Robert's right sniggered. The captain took mental note of him.
"No martial skill, you say? Yet you chose a military career?"
"These are skills I seek to acquire under your expert tutelage, Captain," he responded with sufficient humility to appease the officer, who now directed his attention to the sniggering trooper on Devington's right.
"Name, Trooper," he commanded.
"Prescott. George Prescott of the Derbyshire Prescotts," he replied smugly.
"Sir!" Drake barked. "I am your commanding officer, Prescott, and am to be addressed at all times as 'sir,' or better yet, as 'Captain.'"
Placing his arms behind his back, the captain paced down the ranks, speaking in an ominous voice. "You appeared prodigiously amused at Trooper Devington's inexperience with weaponry a moment ago, Prescott."
"He is ill-prepared for the Horse Guard, Captain."
"Indeed, it would appear so," the captain agreed. "And are you better prepared, Prescott?"
"I have studied, Captain, under the finest instructors of both horse and sword. My fencing master was a student of Sir William Hope."
"A student of Sir William Hope, you say? Then you are a virtual one-man army, to be certain. Perhaps we should send you to wage war single-handedly with the French, Prescott? The Maison du Roi will assuredly quake in their boots."
This was again met with muffled guffaws from the ranks.
"I, for one, have no fear of embarrassing myself," Prescott retorted, eyeing Devington with open disdain.
Raising his hands and looking about in mock wonderment, the captain stated to the assemblage, "I feel yet another challenge in the air."
He resumed his pacing but this time slowly, pensively, thumb and forefinger to his chin. The past months on campaign had been tedious, filled with nothing but vacillations of the various generals, endless marching, and repositioning of forces, followed by more dithering while the French moved decisively and conquered. He was damnably tired of it and frustrated by inaction. He relished this opportunity to hone his skills, if only on these pitiful recruits.
By the look of it, none deserved to wear the uniform, but the sorting of the wheat from the chaff would start today. Those few who made his cut would be worthy of the Horse Guard; the rest were free to join the expendable ranks of the infantry. It was time to test their mettle, and humbling this cocksure pair was the perfect start.
"It would appear, gentlemen," the captain said to the column of troopers, "that with this expert horseman and this master swordsman among our ranks, we should all benefit from an exhibition of their skills. The day's training is about to begin." B'God, he hadn't enjoyed himself this much in a long time!
Calling to his subaltern, the captain ordered his horse.
"Soundness... sense... swiftness... stamina... and strength," he repeated when the corporal returned leading a glossy ebony stallion. Leading the impressive charger to a position opposite the skewbald, the captain remarked, "What of Hawke here? By comparison, he would be near antithesis of your ideal."
Devington remembered this remarkable horse from his racing days. Although past his prime for the track, Hastings's Hawke was still a magnificent horse.
"A matchless beast to be sure, Captain, but I stand by my appraisal of Ol' Jack."
"Indeed, you say!" The captain laughed. "We shall soon test his mettle, as well as your own."
Stepping out of earshot, Captain Drake spoke again to his subaltern, who departed briskly to carry out the captain's orders.
"Well, gentlemen," the captain said to Devington and Prescott, "'twould appear the two of you just might make a whole. Furthermore, Devington, given the unparalleled claims you have made of the strength and speed of your noble steed, it shouldn't be out of the question to put him to the test against Hawke... while carrying you both." He paused while the company digested the outlandish challenge.
"You can't really expect this, Captain?" Devington was incredulous.
"Indeed, I do. This and more. 'Tis not an impossible feat to demand of a war horse, should one of your comrades be cut down or lose his own mount in the course of battle." The captain indicated the training field. "Do you see the effigies hanging in various positions around the field?"
The troopers strained to see the long column of straw-stuffed effigies of the French cavalry.
"Upon my signal to charge, you shall proceed against me and Hawke down the field. Your challenge is to be first to cut down each of the effigies. Thence you shall continue the circumference of the field at full gallop. Should you both remain horsed during this exercise, upon your return to this very spot, Trooper Prescott will engage my sword. You shall ride as one man and fight as one man. Do you comprehend?"
"All while mounted on this nag?" Prescott snorted with ripe contempt.
"Such dismay, Prescott? Trooper Devington has full faith in the beast," the captain replied with a smirk.
Prescott's eyes flashed with fury as he clumsily pulled himself up behind Devington while the captain agilely mounted his snorting black.
"This sorry nag had better sprout wings, Devington! You'll engage my sword if my career ends today because of you," Prescott hissed.
"Just concentrate on your swordplay, Prescott, and leave the horse to me."
"Are you ready, gentlemen?" The captain quirked a mocking brow. Both troopers nodded. In truth, the captain's plan was a simple exercise in humility, as the entire company would witness their unhorsing and humiliation upon the cannon fire he covertly ordered.
However, as the earth shook in repercussion from the booming thunderclap of the cannon, the captain had underestimated both the resolve of Trooper Devington and the sensibility of his sturdy gelding.
As ranks of troopers struggled to control their wide-eyed mounts, Devington's skewbald remained the least ruffled of the herd. Startling slightly, he recovered and responded readily to Devington's cue, and they galloped down the field toward their intended targets.
The captain was astonished. Even Hawke had reared unexpectedly, nearly unhorsing him. He had regained control only to see the trio well on their way down the field. Wheeling Hawke into eager pursuit, the lean hot-blood hastily gained lengths on the smaller, stockier horse. The pair drove hard down the field, and Ol' Jack approached the first target. Within slashing distance, Robert cued his mount, and Prescott struck in concert, skillfully cutting down the first of the straw-stuffed soldiers of the Gen d'Armes.
The thunder of hoof beats was closer upon them, and Captain Drake and Hawke came up alongside. Robert, leaning forward in his saddle, coaxed Ol' Jack, and the gelding, straining under the heavy burden, nonetheless surged with a grunt of renewed effort, fighting to keep pace with the leggy Hawke.
As the next target came into sight, Captain Drake pushed easily ahead, squeezed into position, and sliced through the rope. On release, the dummy swung back to strike the other pair of riders. Robert ducked, but Prescott was hit hard in the face, thrown off balance and onto the ground.
Devington cursed, recalling his own success and his very fate were entwined with Prescott's. Pulling his horse into a hard halt on its haunches, they executed a half-pirouette, and without missing a beat, Robert swept down from his saddle to hoist his companion back up. He spurred the horse again, and Ol' Jack gave his all in response, but they had lost valuable time. The captain had nearly finished the course by the time the trio were headed back down the field.
They had failed. He burned with the injustice yet vowed to endure to the bitter end.
"Ah, Troopers Devington and Prescott, you join me at last! Better late than never, I suppose," Drake chided. "Prepare your weapon, Prescott," the captain commanded, maneuvering his horse to face them and drawing his saber.
Facing the captain, Prescott blanched, now realizing the grave error in his boast. Although somewhat experienced with the art of parry, lunge, and thrust with a small sword, he had never actually "pinked" an opponent, but moreover, his practiced technique of lunge and thrust was not developed for mounted combat.
Bile rose in his throat, and his saber suddenly felt heavy, awkward, and unwieldy in his sweating hand. He shivered with apprehension. This weapon, the slightly curved cavalry saber, was designed for slashing one's enemy to pieces. And to manage from the back of a galloping beast was another matter altogether.
"We ride in hard and strike hard, Prescott, like a joust. We need to unhorse him, take him down rather than engage hand to hand. We can prevail only with speed and steadfastness. You'll never best him otherwise. He has the advantage," Devington counseled.
"You just keep this nag moving, Devington, and I'll devise my own strategy," Prescott retorted hotly.
"My patience has nigh worn thin, gentlemen." The captain spoke authoritatively and without his customary mocking humor. "Prepare to charge or be struck down where you stand."
The gelding jigged under the tension of his riders. "Are you ready?" Robert asked tersely.
"Control your bloody beast!" Prescott fumed.
Ignoring the remark, Devington saluted the captain to signify their readiness, then spun and trotted off some distance to prepare for the charge.
The subaltern signaled, and both men spurred their mounts into action, hurtling at a headlong gallop toward one another. The captain held his sword in tierce, blade horizontal, point to the fore as he charged forth. He immediately perceived by his opponent's position that Prescott would attempt a thrusting attack.
While effective on foot, the technique was awkward at best on horseback, due to a mounted man's need to lean the upper body in order to extend his reach sufficiently to execute. Even when well done, this attack threw off one's balance, making it child's play to become unhorsed by an opponent. Drake considered making short work of Prescott in such a manner, but decided against it. What a pity 'twould be to end the lesson before it had truly begun!
Trooper Devington struggled to maintain his equanimity as the captain fiercely and unblinkingly charged toward them. "Now, Prescott! Now!" Devington yelled when they came together in a flurry, but Prescott, disregarding Robert's counsel, maintained his blade for a thrust.
As his sword point approached the captain's torso, Drake effortlessly dodged, and at the last second, like a cat with a mouse, parried. The opponents' blades clashed in the first pass, and Prescott fought to maintain his precarious balance on the horse, knowing if it were the captain's intent to harm rather than humiliate, he would have been disarmed, unhorsed, and damnably lucky to escape the encounter unscathed.
Robert pulled hard and swift and spun Ol' Jack around in an attempt to disengage the combatants, but Drake pursued, and before Prescott could prepare his guard, the captain's blade sliced the air downward inches from Prescott's left ear. He followed swiftly with a backhand stroke, which Prescott successfully dodged, knowing that had the captain intended, he would be missing both ears.
Prescott attempted to parry, but a third and forth diagonal slice of the captain's blade had Prescott gaping at his torso as if expecting his entrails to be exposed.
Robert again valiantly attempted to extricate them from this merciless onslaught, pulling Ol' Jack into a second retreat then circling around for another pass.
The captain reengaged with a final swift and fierce horizontal cut on the forehand, striking Prescott's blade from his hand, effortlessly unbalancing and disarming him. He and his weapon dashed to the ground.
As Prescott lay stunned and violently retching, Devington unsheathed his own saber and sprung into action. Spurring his horse, he leaned from his saddle, and in one fluid motion, swept the ground and tossed his comrade's lost weapon to him, but before the stunned Prescott could even react, Captain Drake intercepted, catching it midair.
"Very neat work! Neat work, indeed! Lesson's over." He paused. "Though my intent was an exercise in humility for two insolent new recruits, ironically, you have prevailed with your tenacity and quick wits. Dismount and cool your steed, Trooper Devington," the captain commanded. "By the by, as the new Corporal of the Horse, you are entitled to house him in my stables."
By early spring 1743, the newly created British regiments were dispatched to the Continent. Having spent months in idleness interrupted only by drills, Corporal of the Horse Robert Devington believed himself exceedingly ill-equipped when these orders finally came.
With half of Europe now drawn into the conflict over the Hapsburg lands and the King's growing anxiety over his beloved homeland, His Majesty had called the Earl of Stair, an old veteran of war under Marlborough, out of a twenty-year retirement and appointed him Field Marshal.
Although the allied forces were by treaty committed to Austria's defense, it was no secret to the British that they had been positioned only to prevent French aggrandizement into the King's own Hanover.
As part of an advanced guard, Corporal Devington was to assist with the transport of one hundred newly procured remounts, which the guard would march halfway across the European continent to Pragmatic headquarters.
The horses, handpicked by the Regiment's Riding Master, Major Lord Bainbridge, were from some of the country's finest stables, but as Devington walked the paddocks prior to transport, he marveled at the major's choice of so many young, untrained horses as cavalry chargers. His experience told him that Bainbridge's procurements, all sleek, snorting, prancing specimens, were not at all suitable for war. Had he not held such a subordinate position, he would have said as much. As it was, he held his tongue and attended to duties.
They were to transport an entire herd in an enclosed vessel in unpredictable seas. Spring squalls were notorious for rising from nowhere. Many ships and many souls over the centuries had perished in those deceitful Channel waters.
Although the crossing would take only a few days, the men would need to take every precaution to safely transport their live cargo. Preparation of the horses began with Major Winthrop's express instructions two days prior to departure: to provide each horse with half their normal ration of oats the first day, then only hay the second day, and nothing to eat or drink the morning of embarkation.
"A horse whose belly is distended with food and water only adds to the inherent peril of slinging them aboard the ship," he explained to Devington. "Moreover, a bit of hunger will encourage them to take to their food once on board and help them to become reconciled to their change of quarters."
"Are they all to be loaded by sling, then?"
"I should think the few old campaigners within this lot shall walk upon the gangway with little enough fuss, but 'tis the green ones we must have a care to. I daresay the majority of them won't take to the gangway by any amount of coercion. A properly slung horse cannot injure himself, as his kicks and struggles meet only with air. 'Twill be by far safer and more expedient to sling the young ones.
"For now, my orders are to leave off the oats and maintain them quiet as possible. It is also vital, Corporal Devington, to keep together pairs who are accustomed to standing side-by-side in the troop stables. If they are settled in the ship stables in their customary order of precedence, they will feed and stand quieter, taking comfort from a familiar presence in unfamiliar surroundings. They must load in proper order. 'Twill be a stressful day tomorrow, and nervous horses are prone to colic."
By first light, the transport vessels were lined up for a half mile along the south bank of the river Thames. The veteran cavalry horses, with Devington's Ol' Jack and Captain Drake's Hawke among them, boarded in the precise order agreed upon and with little to-do. Once they were settled below, Captain Drake then directed all efforts to loading the restive young herd remaining in the paddocks.
Devington led the first of the bunch to the landing, from which the sling was suspended. As the men approached with the contrivance that would be used to lift the horse, the wind caught the fabric and sent the canvas snapping and flapping akin to a sail. White-eyed, the colt shied in terror, snorting and bolting backward.
"Are you men daft?" Devington rebuked angrily. "You can't expect him to just walk up and let us catapult him into the air. The poor beast must be allowed to accustom himself to the apparatus. Now lay the bloody thing down on the ground so it will cease that confounded flapping!"
Obeying the harshly spoken command, the troopers lowered the canvas until it lay motionless and benignly blanketed the ground. Stroking and quietly murmuring, Devington led the quaking horse by degrees toward the object of its fear. Snorting loudly, the horse lowered its nose to the ground to sniff the fiendish fabric then jumped back in renewed alarm. With Devington coaxing, man and horse circumnavigated the sling, until, gaining courage, they walked warily across the monster.
"You there," he commanded a trooper, "take hold the head collar and stroke him while I accustom him to the feel of it." Taking up the length of canvas, Devington approached the horse's side.
"Easy now, my good fellow," he murmured and rubbed the fabric along the horse's body, causing its skin to ripple. Devington continued until the animal was desensitized to the sensation and relaxed his stance.
Captain Drake, passing by to oversee the progress of the loading, halted his inspection to inquire: "Precisely how many horses have you loaded, Corporal Devington?"
"Not counting the ones who walked themselves aboard, this is the first, Captain."
"Indeed? Your counterparts on the other transports have already slung a half dozen aboard."
"This horse was excessively afeared, sir."
"Are not they all? 'Tis not natural for a horse to fly." The attending troopers chuckled at the wry remark.
"Indeed you are right, sir," Devington answered, "but I would convince you that a bit of extra time and care now will greatly reduce the dangers to both man and beast later. If we proceed with gentle persistence, he will load undaunted the next time. If we make the experience traumatic to the animal, he will subsequently be overwrought with fear, thus creating a danger to himself and others."
"Very well, Devington, have it your way. If, however, we are not loaded and ready to sail with the evening tide, it will be your neck. Understood, Corporal?"
"Perfectly, sir." He saluted and turned back to the horse. "Now then. He has all but tasted the thing and knows there is naught to fear. We may proceed to sling him."
The captain stood back to observe unobtrusively while Devington addressed the animal in caressing tones and two others passed the canvas under his belly. Reaching hastily for the breast girth, which would prevent the horse from sliding forward within the sling, Devington deftly secured it. A fourth man fumbled to fasten the breech band, which would in turn prevent backward slipping.
Once assured that the animal was secure, Devington stepped back with a cry: "Make haste, lads, lest he decide to panic. Take him up anon!"
With four strong men manning the pulley, the bewildered beast was hoisted ten feet above the ground and swung over the ship's hatch, where he was lowered with the greatest of care into a large opening to the stable deck deep in the belly of the vessel.
Two additional men stood between decks to protect the animal's head and legs from striking the sides of the hatchway as he descended below. Once his feet were on solid planking, three more troopers awaited to release him and lead him to the stall and straw bedding that lay prepared to receive him.
The sling was then returned and the next horse led up. And the next. And the next. The procedure was repeated thirty times, until the paddock stood empty and the stable deck was loaded to near its capacity of fifty horses.
Returning later that afternoon to find Devington exhausted and anxious to locate his own pallet after ten unbroken hours of loading horses, Captain Drake remarked, "You have scarce an hour to spare before the tide goes out, Corporal."
"We have loaded the lot of them, sir." As he spoke, he rolled his shoulders in an effort to loosen his tight and aching muscles.
"Not quite so hasty, Corporal Devington. One yet remains."
"I hesitate to naysay you, Captain, but the paddocks are empty."
"The last of the horses we transport was not held amongst those in the general paddocks. He has awaited his turn in the relative luxury of the Riding Master's personal stables," Captain Drake remarked with a quirk of his brow. "Major Lord Bainbridge has given express orders that his prized young stallion be loaded last and that he is comfortably housed in the large box reserved for use by the veterinary surgeon."
"Indeed? And what of the animals that might become injured or distressed on the voyage?"
"Major Winthrop will have to address the issue with Bainbridge. The matter is far above our lowly ranks to resolve."
"Very well. Where is this specimen of equine perfection that our Regimental Riding Master holds so very dear?"
"Ah," Drake exclaimed, "here is the precious cargo at last!" He indicated two slight figures being tossed and dragged across the grounds by a magnificent, thrashing, plunging beast.
The finely sculpted head, small hooked ears, and highly arched neck revealed the stallion's Eastern origins. Notwithstanding his behavior, the tautly muscled, raging beast was a true beauty to behold.
"Our eminent Riding Master, Major Lord Bainbridge, especially selected this one out of the procurements as his own personal mount, but the stallion has proven an irascible brute. He plies all the arts of snorting, pawing, biting, rearing, and striking at his handlers."
"Good God! A fractious fiend, if ever there was one. And we are to load him?" Devington asked rhetorically.
"You might consider this a golden opportunity to prove the effectiveness of your unique training methods." The captain chuckled.
"I shan't go this alone, Captain!" Devington replied as he observed the horse rear and strike again at one of the grooms. "If I had a day perhaps to work with him, such progress might be made with the rogue, but with barely an hour? 'Tis an impossible task you would ask of me."
"And if I should offer you a full for'night's relief from stable duty?"
Devington considered the bargain. "Two for'nights and five guineas, Captain. I shan't risk my neck for nothing."
"Done," he answered promptly and with obvious relief. "By the by, you sold yourself short, Devington. I should have gone ten guineas for the sheer entertainment. Indeed, I shall now undertake to find a restful spot where I might safely observe your magic." He grinned broadly.
"I shall require a long length of rope."
"Easily found on a ship. You there! Trooper Benton, is it? Cut ten yards from that line."
Taking up the cord tossed to him, Devington formed several loops, rolled his shoulders once more, breathed deeply, and turned toward the approaching horse.
Taking firm hold of the lead, Devington abruptly dismissed the men who had escorted the horse at near peril to their lives. Devington then released the shank with which they had held the stallion and quickly slipped his own makeshift halter over the horse's head and moved back, out of striking range.
"Now, my boy, give me your worst."
When the stallion realized the slack in his tether, he set himself to renewed and violent plunging. Holding the line in his right hand, Devington sidestepped to position himself parallel to the thrashing stallion's hip. Giving the horse several more yards of slack, he took up the remaining length with his left hand and purposely made a large arc in the air to startle the stallion into forward motion.
Anchoring his right arm closely to his hip to keep from being dragged, Devington again made the gesture, but rather than invoking the flight reflex he expected, the stallion spun around to face him. Rising again on his hind legs, he snorted and struck out with both forelegs. Devington narrowly dodged the thrashing hooves.
"Yes, my boy, you are indeed much faster, bigger, and stronger than me and an altogether superior specimen of God's creation, but I have seen your like before. Only one of us can be master, and it won't be you."
He swung the rope in another arc to the side of the horse's head. Dodging the rope, the horse landed and spun his hindquarters toward Devington. The captain then struck the horse on the rump with the rope. Surprised once more, flight instinct prevailed, and the horse launched himself forward to escape.
Perceiving his advantage, Devington continued to use the rope to drive the animal from behind, forcing the stallion to run circles around him. Around and around he encircled his handler, until exhausted and licking his lips in the first visible sign of submission, he halted. Flanks heaving, he turned to regard his handler warily.
"That's a good fellow. Nice and easy now." Devington advanced slowly toward the horse, taking up yards of slack rope and carefully approaching the stallion's head. Within four feet, he paused. The stallion snorted and shook his mane menacingly. He stood his ground, staring Devington down, but made no further move to strike.
"You're a restive brute, you are, but I don't believe you are truly vicious, though you do your best to convince me." Speaking calmly and quietly, he moved ever closer toward the horse's shoulder, until he reached out his hand to stroke the horse's neck.
The stallion snorted again but remained in place. Wary of the horse's every signal, Devington made his way around the animal, running his hands over every quarter. Coming last to the animal's head, Devington brushed the broad forehead. The horse lowered his head with a great sigh.
Taking the lead close to the halter, Devington walked the subdued beast toward the sling, which lay again on the ground. At first notice of the canvas, the horse abruptly stalled. Snorting, he took three quick steps backward. Ears pricked forward in curiosity, he regarded the canvas suspiciously. Observing the flickering ears, Devington released some slack. The young stallion moved guardedly forward. Halting inches from the canvas, he stomped his foot and jumped back, his gaze never leaving the object.
With sudden boldness, he strode forward, reached his head down, took the fabric up in his teeth, and tossed it about while trotting a small circle, his tail raised triumphantly in the air.
"A born cavalry mount, b'God, for the one who can master him!" Drake remarked with astonishment. "You've an undeniable gift, Devington."
"I won't rest on my laurels, Captain. Horses are a whimsical and capricious species. I'd rather load the beast before he changes his mind."
Foregoing dinner for his berth, Corporal Devington collapsed and fell instantly into deep slumber. His rest was shortlived, however, interrupted by a violent list of the ship and followed by the groan of his cabin mates as they tossed up their accounts into the chamber pots. Soon following suit, Devington was on his knees with seasickness and heartily thanking God Almighty that His hand of Providence had not guided him to join the Royal Navy!
By first light, the storm had passed. The trumpet sounded, calling all to duty. Though he was relieved of stable duty and barely recovered from his infirmity, Devington was compelled to the ship's stables to see how the horses had fared during the turbulent crossing.
Finding Ol' Jack next to Hawke and quietly munching his hay, the corporal moved on to the other end of the stable deck where he found one stall door kicked loose from its hinges. Though all the horses' heads had been tied tight and short to prevent movement, one of them had managed to break free of its head collar and was no doubt wreaking havoc among the rest of the herd. He didn't go far before he located the renegade, who stood bullying the men who had come to clean and feed.
"You again!" Devington said to the stallion. "I should have known you as the malefactor."
The gray acknowledged him with a snort and challenging toss of his head.
"I'll see to this one, lads," Devington said to the troopers and took down a canvas head collar and lead from a peg on the wall. He slowly and steadily walked forward. The stallion promptly pinned his ears back and turned his hinder end to face the corporal.
"Tut. Tut, my man. I shan't allow such disrespectful behavior; such insolence cannot be tolerated in His Majesty's Horse. Discipline must prevail, you know."
Standing clear of the horse's flying hooves, Devington rebuked the stallion's rump with a smart pop of the lead.
Kicking out in vexation, the horse snorted and then turned again to face his antagonist. Devington stood firm, unruffled, and unintimidated. Almost imperceptibly, the stallion licked his lips and dropped his head.
"There's oats and hay aplenty back in your box," Devington said softly, moved to the horse's head, and deftly slipped on the collar. "Play time is now over, my man."
He led the miscreant to the first empty stall. Gathering some oats as distraction, Devington entered the box with the intention of examining the horse's legs for injury; but still restive and distrustful, the stallion circled with widened eyes and pinned ears. Not wanting to distress the horse further and impair the progress he had made, Devington decided to leave him to settle and see to the others.
By this time, Major Winthrop had arrived to make his twicedaily inspection. Proceeding down the rows, he assessed the general condition of the horses. Spying Devington exiting the gray's box, he halted.
"Corporal! What have you done with Bainbridge's gray?" he demanded. "He was at the other end of the stable deck when I saw to him last evening."
"Major." Devington saluted. "Not so. He broke free during the night, apparently kicked down his door. I moved him to this box to assess his legs for injury."
"And what knowledge would you have of a horse's legs?" Winthrop posed the question condescendingly.
"Enough to know he shall require a bran poultice to his right hock. There is visible swelling, but he appears not to favor it overmuch. I doubt 'tis more than a self-inflicted strain from kicking down the door. With rest and a poultice, I would guess him sound in a matter of days."
"I daresay Bainbridge shall put little stock in your opinion regarding his animal. Stand aside, and I shall give him a proper examination."
"Would you care for my assistance, sir?"
"I should doubt it."
Devington shrugged his resignation but stood closely by and grinned as Winthrop entered the box. Within moments, the gray commenced a fit of plunging, kicking, and thrashing that made any attempt of examination impossible. Finally called upon to assist, the corporal spent nearly an hour patiently soothing and pacifying the stallion's volatile temper, all while Winthrop watched in amazement.
"Very well, I shall leave it to you to apply the poultice, Corporal Devington. And what is your assessment of the others? Beyond this renegade, how are they holding up?"
Devington noted that rather than condescension, the major made this address with what might be described as a modicum of respect.
"Other than some minor abrasions, for which I have applied standing bandages, I detect no great injuries, but I fear stall number five begins to colic."
"So you say? Then what would you do for this first case of colic? I warn it is nigh impossible to cross the sea without losing at least one thusly."
"One would normally commence to hand-walking at the first sign, but 'tis impossible to do when he must remain confined below decks."
"Then he must have three pints of warm water injected into his rectum to stimulate his bowels to move."
"I have already done so, sir."
The major regarded him quizzically. "Then mayhap my services as chief veterinary surgeon are superfluous?"
His rancor led the corporal to humbly volunteer, "Major Winthrop, sir, having been raised my entire life with equines, I have seen most every ailment and have no small experience of veterinary medicine. I sought only to help in your absence."
"Is that so, Corporal? Then pray, what is your professional opinion regarding this particular patient?"
"To massage his gut and promptly administer a colic remedy."
"And of what is your colic remedy comprised?"
"Two drams of ginger and one-half ounce of black pepper instilled in half a bottle of gin diluted with one pint of warm water."
The major raised his brows. "Ginger, eh? 'Tis a well-known remedy in humans for all manner of belly pain, and I suppose the intoxicating effects of the gin might serve as a sedative. But while I find your recipe interesting, I prefer to adhere to cures based on sound medical science. I shall administer two ounces tincture of opium and two ounces spirits of turpentine in one pint of warm water. I shall return anon, and you may administer this physic, as well as applying the bran poultice to Bainbridge's gray."
"It will be done as you wish, sir." Devington saluted.
"Gin and ginger," the major mused and walked away.
By the time they docked at Ostend, three horses from the other ships had been lost to colic. Several more had perished by struggling and fighting so violently during the unloading that they had broken legs, dashing them against the hatches, or had breached the canvas sling and dropped into the sea. To Devington's credit, his entire herd was slung to shore with little fuss and no incident.
With all of the horses now unloaded and picketed, the troopers of the Household Cavalry spent three more days in Ostend, awaiting the ships conveying the supply wagons that would carry the forage and the accoutrements necessary for their march.
On the morning of the fourth day, the reveille trumpet was muffled by the soggy gray dawn. The day of decampment had arrived in the midst of heavy April rains. Waking cold and damp from his bed of straw above the tavern stables, Devington pushed his bedmates aside to pull on his boots and supervise the morning routine of mucking, feeding, watering, and grooming.
Though temporarily exempt from stable duties, Devington still retained charge over the care and feeding of the horses, whose importance superseded even the needs of the men. The valiant men of the King's Horse would be permitted to take their morning rations only after caring for the animals upon whom they depended to carry them.
Devington shortly joined Captain Drake and Major Winthrop, and the trio proceeded through the stables and picket lines of their troop horses, inspecting each one, until meeting the troop's farrier.
"How goes it, Tom?" Winthop asked as the farrier pounded the final nail into the hoof of the last troop horse on the picket line.
"Spent the past two days reseating shoes and painting tar on the soles of all their hooves, Major. 'Tis all can be done to prevent the thrush, though I daresay 'twill be all for naught. Wi' such heavy rains, we'll be marching for at least a for'night in the mud. Inevitably, a number of 'em will be footsore and oozing black pus afore we see Ghent."
"The tar should make a difference, as long as it's applied regularly," Devington remarked.
"Should it be reapplied twice or thrice per se'nnight, Tom?" Major Winthrop asked.
"Thrice... if'n the supply holds that long," he remarked dubiously. "Elsewise, the troop horses be ready to march, sirs." He then amended hastily, "Leastwise, all save one. Unmanageable brute he be. Look at this." The farrier lifted his smock and lowered his breeches to expose the deep purple tooth marks that marred his broad, bared buttocks.
"I might well hazard a guess which one it was." The Captain regarded Devington knowingly.
A fter having seen to the men and horses, Devington washed down the last bite of dry black bread with a gulp of bitter coffee. Throwing the tin muck in his haversack, he slung it over his shoulder.
He then secured his accoutrements to his saddle, placed his new pistols in their case in front of his pommel, taking special care to protect his pouch of gunpowder from the damp. After making a last adjustment to his saddle girth, Devington straightened his sword and took up his carbine, whose butt would rest in the bucket on the right side of his saddle with his picket pole strapped securely alongside. Once he made his final checks, the corporal mounted---a clumsy business at best---while balancing two weapons and a fourfoot picket pole.
When the trump sounded for parade inspection, Devington was ready and responded eagerly. With an encouraging pat to Ol' Jack, he wheeled and trotted off briskly to join his squadron, easily identifiable by their blue facings and housings, made conspicuous by a sea of crimson.
Locating his own Sixth Troop of the King's Horse, Devington hastily fell into the second line center, directly behind Captain Drake, whose height alone would have placed him in the front line if his position had not. Although of medium height, Devington was consigned to the more diminutive middle ranks, sandwiched front and aft by the taller men.
To Captain Drake's credit, his entire rank and file marshaled with precision and alacrity. They set out, smart-stepping in rigid scarlet columns. Their rifles clanked as they swung against their sabers, and the ground quaked with the low, rumbling thunder of their ironshod chargers' hooves in rhythm with the kettledrum.
They marched through days of whipping wind and pelting rain, making field camp every night, with rarely a dry stick to start a fire, sleeping in wet clothes, and eating the coarse bread and dried meat that comprised the daily ration. Striking up camp every dawn, they repeated the routine, day after day. The journey, although onerous enough for the callow recruits, proved debilitating to a number of the young, green horses, who had to be put down for foundering.
After three arduous weeks of heavy marching in such deplorable conditions, the troops finally gained the Flemish city of Maestricht, temporary field headquarters of Field Marshal Stair, commander in chief of the Pragmatic Army. Their respite, however, was dismally brief.
After having wasted months in his unsuccessful effort to press the Dutch to join the alliance against her neighbor, France, Lord Stair's patience had finally expired. Frustrated and eager to engage, Lord Stair ordered his forces to decamp from Flanders. Without Dutch support and against the counsel of the Austrian and Hanoverian general, the field marshal advanced his British forces into French-occupied Franconia and marched resolutely up the hills of Killersbach, drawing up lines of battle in full sight of the French generals, who completely ignored the taunt.
Failing to engage even the interest of the enemy, the British Army moved farther up the river to join the Austrian and Hanoverian regiments. Stair and his Pragmatic generals continued to vacillate and dither, failing still to agree on a single plan of action, forcing their respective troops into the mundane and restless routine of regimental life while the French set up camp on the opposite bank of the river,
patiently waiting to make their move.
For Devington, the monotony of the routine gave him far too much time to ponder. He missed the rolling Yorkshire hills and the morning "breezes" on the heath, but most of all, his heart yearned for Charlotte.
June 1, 1743
My Dearest Love,
I write from our regiment's encampment outside the city of Aschaffenburg in Franconia.
To my great disillusionment, my soldiering days thus far have differed little from my days as the under groom at Heathstead Hall.
I rise each morning before dawn, awakened by the trump of reveille, and push aside my four tent mates, who cram each night into our sevenby-nine-foot canvas shelter. We report for roll at five of the clock and then stable call at five and a quarter, during which time all troopers feed and groom their horses. At half past six, we receive a sparse breakfast.
Watering call ensues breakfast, which while garrisoned requires carting hundreds of gallons of water to the picket lines, or if encamped, marching the horses a full mile or more to the nearest watering place.
Drills and arms' practice take place from nine until eleven, with a brief respite prior to our noon meal of beer, dark bread, and cheese. The afternoon continues with troop reviews and mounted drill, followed by dismounted drill to prepare for battle on foot. The four-thirty trump signals water and stable call once more, with all troopers repeating the morning care of our mounts.
Once the horses are settled for the evening, the men partake of the evening meal, usually a watery soup with more bread, unless those of us not assigned to patrol are free for a few hours of leisure. In this happy event, we sup at a public house where the bill of fare barely
surpasses that of the encampment. The Germanic folk subsist in great part on potatoes, cabbage, and all manner of greasy sausage. The beer, however, is more than tolerable.
The evening tattoo at approximately eight of the clock signals the barkeeps to close the taps and sends us back to our respective quarters for bed checks.
As to our Germanic brothers-in-arms, with whom we are united in name as one Pragmatic Army, I can assure you of a vastly different reality. There is mounting tension and a decided lack of camaraderie between the British and German troops who are daily more convinced that we wage war with France solely to protect Hanover.
The only cement in the Pragmatic alliance appears to be our mutual and absolute detestation of the French, which far exceeds our animosity toward one another. Nonetheless, fear of French domination has not been sufficient to cohere our generals on a battle plan.
But while finding ourselves in this sad state of limbo, I contrive to busy myself with my duties as Corporal of the Horse. My responsibilities in this office, I confess, are ill-defined and varied. One day I am the right hand of Captain Drake as he inspects his troops, and the next I might be acting veterinary assistant to Major Winthrop, whose respect I have finally managed to win.
'Tis nonetheless a post, for which I am exceedingly grateful, as it has allowed me firsthand knowledge of all the regimental horses. The most extraordinary of these is by far the Riding Master's personal, a beauteous specimen, whose behavior has been so unruly and rancorous that Winthrop was induced to conduct a physical examination, lest there be some unknown injury that incites his passions.
Finding naught physically wrong, and having seen me manage the stallion better than any of his other handlers, Winthrop asked if I should care to try him under saddle in order to assess his back.
Relishing such a challenge after months of ceaseless marching, I saddled the horse. After completing the deed (with no small difficulty!),
I was preparing to back him, when arrives Bainbridge demanding to know why the gray was out of his stables!
At this juncture, I discovered our Riding Master to be a man of great self-conceit and jealously possessive of his horses. With no allowance for explanation, he snatched up the bridle reins and mounted, whereby the animal commenced any number of capers.
Charlotte, although the man is highly regarded by the regiment as its most superlative horseman, I can by no means concur but for his propensity to violence. Without compunction or hesitation, the major applied whip and spur to the horse so zealously, I believed he was bent on flogging the wickedness out of him. His actions only incited the full and uninhibited passion of the irascible beast, who thrashed and tossed himself about, bucking, plunging, and rearing in furious rebellion. Nonetheless, he failed in all his attempts to unseat the major, who gave back in full measure.
At length, Bainbridge succeeded in beating the horse into an angry, resentful submission. Convinced that he alone had tamed the untamable and mastered the unmasterable, the major's vanity was satisfied, but I could see clearly in the gray's eyes that he had conceded only the battle but not the war.
I am gratified to know that the horse's spirit remains unbroken. Capricious and cunning as he is, he will undoubtedly invent many schemes to oppose what is demanded of him by brute force. The major does not comprehend that the key to governing such a one is to gain his trust and respect by degrees, until he willingly comes to submit to his master. No man has yet, or ever will, gain a point over a horse in any but this manner. I am thankful to Jeffries for this wisdom.
I must now close, my dearest love, but know you are ever in my thoughts.
Your Most Devoted,
R. D.
Finishing his letter with a sigh, Devington laid down the quill upon the crate-table, folded the foolscap, sealed it with wax, and stuffed it into his left breast pocket. Rising from the camp chair, Devington turned to his captain. "I thank you for the use of your tent," he said. "I first feared I'd never have the leisure to write, but then when I did, I lacked the implements to do so."
"I am happy to oblige, Devington, but if you are now finished with your correspondence, I say we locate Winthrop and quit this accursed compound. With His Majesty's arrival, there should be no dearth of entertainment in the town... or at least in the taverns."
The Pragmatic Army's flagging spirits were greatly elevated by the arrival of King George, who assumed Supreme Command of his army. Sporting the gold sash of Hanover over his military uniform, he and his second son, the Duke of Cumberland, and their escort of Hanoverian Guards on their Hanoverian-bred horses, rode through the encampments and reviewed the troops.
Revelry permeated the town and filled the taverns as men pressed shoulder to shoulder into the crowded taprooms where Austrians, British, and Hanoverians mixed company and cheered the arrival of His Britannic Majesty. As much beer spilled as flowed, and the bawdy ballads sung in indiscernible tongues were drowned out only by the raucous laughter.
Pushing up to the bar, the three British cavalrymen squeezed in amongst a group of Hanoverians, who eyed the trio head to toe disparagingly. The most senior of the group, a captain, greeted them with a smile of overt disdain. Turning back to his compatriots, he said, "Die Englisch, Sie glauben Sie Soldaten sind. Bah! Sie sind nur die Schafe in Wolfe Kleidung!"
In answer, the group broke into hearty guffaws, drained their tankards, and poured another round.
Standing closest to the Hanoverian captain, Major Winthrop spoke in a low voice to his two countrymen. "Though I am no linguist, I have mastered the basics of High Dutch while in this accursed country. It is my belief that our Hanoverian comrades-in-arms have just referred to our English army as 'sheep in wolves' clothing.'"
"Sheep?" Devington's hand went impulsively to his sword, a gesture not missed by either his friends or their antagonists, who abruptly ceased their chuckles.
"We need not begin a war within this taproom, Devington. Pray rein in your temper and allow me to handle this," Drake answered coolly, breaking the mounting tension. Pasting on a smile of affability, he then turned to the offending officer.
"So, meine guten Kapitän, you would presume to affront the very English sheep who have come to protect your inconsequential little electorate? I might ask you where were the brave Hanoverians whilst the English sheep mounted the hills of Killersbach to confront the French wolves?"
"What do you English know of making land war?" the Hanoverian jeered, ignoring the question. "Your field marshal is an old man. Your troops want disziplin, and your Kavallerie, mounted on inferior nags, is a mockery."
"Now he even dares insults our horses!" Devington cried. Drake shot him a quelling look.
"Even your king acknowledges the inadequacy of the Englisch Kavallerie and their horses. He brings from the Royal Stud at Celle the finest of Hanoverian mounts for himself, the duc, and his Hanoverian Guard."
"Inadequate, you say? Then I suppose you would not hesitate to back your claim?" Drake replied with icy composure.
"Die Englisch would drop die Gauntlet, ja?"
"Just so, meine freund. Sadly, as dueling between officers is prohibited, I cannot defend the honor of my countrymen with my sword, but by horse is another matter. There is no man among you who can outride an English cavalryman."
"So you think, ja?" He translated the British officer's remarks, and his compatriots laughed at the ludicrous idea that an Englishman might better a Hanoverian in any endeavor.
Tamping down his rising temper, Drake responded with dead calm. "There is no doubt of it, Herr Kapitän, and I stand ready to back my claim. I challenge your best Hanoverian horse and rider to a contest of speed, strength, and stamina against our English finest."
"A contest, you say?"
"Indeed, a contest. I propose a bloody race."
"Mark my words, Captain, he won't like it."
"I wouldn't be so hasty to judge, Devington. There is no love lost between our Field Marshal Stair and his Hanoverian counterparts. They have opposed his every move and completely hamstrung him this entire campaign. Furthermore, he is well aware that his British troops are as low on morale as we are on bread. As an old campaigner, he knows the danger this creates."
"Assuming he does not forbid the scheme, what is your plan?"
"I'll send a message of appointment to der Kapitän Ranzau."
"So you propose to ride?"
"I am the one who issued the challenge. And there is no better suited mount than Hawke. In his racing career he suffered only one defeat, and that was due only to a strained tendon," he stated matterof-factly.
"I beg to differ with you, Captain. If you recall, I was the rider who defeated him, and Rosie would have won regardless. She was still as fresh at the finish as when she began."
Drake quirked a brow.
"So you would pull rank on me, knowing I'm the best suited for the task? Though I know none who would criticize your manner with a horse, Captain, you know there is no better rider in this regiment than I, and no stouter horse than Ol' Jack. Besides, I carry a full stone and a half less than you. The weight will be very telling on the horse for the distance you propose."
Major Winthrop's arrival from Field Marshal Stair's headquarters interrupted their discourse. Drake and Devington regarded him expectantly. As Winthrop spoke, his face was grave.
"The field marshal asks if you both fully realize the repercussions of what you have proposed---that this trial could further ignite the animosities within our camp."
"The possibility had come to mind. 'Tis precisely why I thought you should go as emissary to Field Marshal Stair to beg his approbation."
"Damn-it-all, Winthrop, what was his response?" Devington demanded.
"That is not so easily answered. His reply: Firstly, he offered 'to hang the damned lot of Hanoverians,' then catching himself, he offered up any horse in the entire regiment for the deed... including his own."
"So! The field marshal himself has given us the wink and the nod. I daresay he is more than eager to finally see a Hanoverian set down," the captain said with deep satisfaction.
"That may be so, however, he also stated that if asked by His Majesty, he will profess to complete ignorance of the affair, and lastly, he threatened that the challenger of this race will most certainly face the courts-martial... if he loses. Now I ask, gentlemen, if you are still so hell-bent on your scheme?"
"Indeed a good question. Notwithstanding these caveats, are you still so eager to ride, Devington?"
Perceiving his opportunity to prove himself at last, Devington answered with bravado, "You wish to win, don't you?"
"To think I had amended my opinion that you are a cocky upstart," the captain declared wryly. "You are quite sure of yourself, then. What do you think, Winthrop?"
"I must side with Devington. He handles a horse better than any man I know. A veritable centaur is our young corporal."
"Then I suppose it's settled. We shall meet the Hanoverians three days hence at sunup. 'Twill be a race like no other, from Aschaffenburg to the village of Dettingen and back again. 'Tis nigh on six leagues across rough country and surely a distance to test the mettle of man and beast."
"But who shall judge?" Winthrop asked.
"I suppose we must have a man placed at Dettingen, but one who has no vested interest."
"The Austrians, mayhap?" Winthrop offered.
"Know you any trustworthy man within D'Ahremburg's camp? One who would have no stake in the outcome?"
"I am acquainted with my Austrian counterpart. He and I have had many a discussion between the colic and the gripe. He owes me a boon and 'twould be no bad thing to have a veterinarian on hand after nearly a ten-mile run. I daresay he would show no favoritism."
"Then, gentlemen... let the games begin."
A s had become her habit, Charlotte rose before the sun, but rather than snatching on her riding clothes as was her custom, she lit a candle and drifted dreamily to the mahogany box on her dressing table, where she retrieved her letter.
It was from Robert and the first word she had received since his departure from Woolwich nearly three months ago. Sick with worry, she had spent that time sleepless and without appetite, but now she knew he was safe. Robert was alive and well and thinking of her always, just as his image never completely vanished from her own mind and heart.
With tears of joy, Charlotte tenderly opened the pages she had read and reread a dozen times since receiving them from Jeffries only the day before. As she committed his words to heart, her eyes caressed every pen stroke.
Corporal of the Horse! Robert had already been promoted to corporal. He was well on his way to achieving his ambitions and making his mark. Soon, she reassured herself, soon he would return for her. He would appear one day in his handsome uniform and throw her up behind him and together they would ride away, just as she had dreamed they would.
Holding the pages against her breast, she spoke her morning prayer for his continued safety and returned to her dressing table to replace his letter inside her treasure box, along with her father's silver watch and her mother's single strand of pearls.
Now changing her shift for Charles's castoffs, which Letty had freshly repatched for her, she drew on her boots and moved stealthily through the quiet house. She exited the back, passing silently by the kitchens, and followed her well-trod path to the stables with a renewed spring in her step and whistling tunelessly as she went.
"Good morning, Jemmy," she said cheerily to the gangly young man at work grooming a leggy gray gelding while the other boys still busied themselves shoveling and carting the muck.
"G'mornin', miss." He paused with the curry to pull his forelock diffidently.
"You've finished the mucking already?" Charlotte smiled teasingly, reminding him again of his impudence at their first meeting. In those early days, Jemmy had stood in awe of Robert, and as Charlotte had grown in Robert's esteem, so had she reluctantly grown in Jemmy's.
Now, in Robert's absence, he had somehow deemed himself her de facto protector. He tended her horse, accompanied her on her rides, and stood as sentinel to guard her secret from those who would not condone her regular presence in her uncle's stables.
"Indeed so, miss. I started early so's yer horse would be ready."
"My horse?" She regarded Jemmy askance. "Where is Amoret?"
"Jeffries has took her North. The Bart had a mind to breed her to Hobgoblin."
"Indeed? The get of that cross would be twice Darley bred. I would think breeding her with Godolphin's stallion would result in a superior cross."
"You mean the old teaser stallion what is makin' such a name for hisself?"
"Yes. He is the sire of Lath and Cade, both exceptional runners. Breeding Amoret with him would blend the blood of two exceptional families, the Darley and the Godolphin. But if she is gone, who now am I to ride?"
"Don't ye fret about that, miss. Jeffries told the lads you was as able to ride the cracks as any of their sorry arses. 'Scuse me, miss." He blushed. "Forgot meself."
Ignoring his slip, she flushed with pleasure. "Jeffries said that?"
"'Deed he did. Says since Robert left, you was the only one could ready the runners for the fall season. Says you was to have yer pick o' the lot of 'em... that is, any but Rascallion."
"Rascallion?"
"He be the Bart's newest crack, miss. Bought yesterday. He be bred to run and looks right enough, but his temper is rightly soured. A vicious bast... er... beast, that is. Jeffries has his hands full, if the Bart 'spects 'im to run come spring."
"Indeed? I should like to take him out then."
"Not that one, miss. Jeffries need get 'im in hand first."
"Then who am I to ride, Jemmy?"
"This one 'ere is a fine colt, miss."
"Tortoise?"
"Indeed. Jeffries thought you might take to the idea, given that he's full brother to Rosie and all. Robert done started 'is training afore he left. Said that if he can run like 'is sister done, the Bart might finally have a go for the King's Plate. Jeffries has high hopes for him, even if it is wi' Master Charles up. Yer cousin is a right enough chap, ain't 'e? If'n not, ye might teach this horse o' his a trick or two."
"Charles's horse? Indeed I should not!" She laughed. "Charles has been ever kind and is my only friend within the family, though he rarely dares stand up to my uncle or even to Beatrix's bullying. Poor boy, though competent enough, he is not a gifted horseman, and sadly, that is the only accomplishment my uncle cares about. I fear he shall never live up to his father's expectations, and I think Charles knows it, too. No, I will return his kindness by teaching his horse good manners. Charles needs every advantage in a race. I'll finish up and saddle this one myself, if you want to go ahead and get your own mount ready."
"'Tis a'ready done, miss." Jemmy broke into a gap-toothed grin. "There be no need for ye to dirty yerself anymore groomin'. 'Tis a job for the lads."
"You know I don't mind the dirt," she protested. "I enjoy caring for the horses, though I am nonetheless grateful for your help. But if you are ready, let us not dally! I need keep my rides short these days. I dare not risk discovery. Beatrix would relish any opportunity to sour my uncle's temper against me."
She lightly tossed the saddle pad upon the gelding's back, placed the saddle behind his withers, and buckled the girth around his belly. Jemmy, meanwhile, slid the bit into the horse's mouth and drew the headstall into position. Charlotte then took the reins from Jemmy's hand and led the gelding out into the misty stable yard, where Tortoise tossed his head with delight.
"You're a fresh one this morning," she declared and sprung up into the saddle. "Jemmy," she called over her shoulder, "catch us if you can!" And Charlotte cantered gleefully out of the yard.
D evington awoke on the appointed day, his mind and emotions awhirl. His opportunity to distinguish himself had finally presented itself, and he had grasped it with both hands, but his burden was multiplied by the weight of his entire regiment upon his shoulders. This race was a matter of honor.
He dressed with deliberate care, not desiring to give the Hanoverians any fault to criticize in his appearance or bearing. He lastly strapped on his sword, and taking up his riding tack, he walked briskly to the officer's stables, where his horse had been housed for the night. The corporal was surprised to encounter Major Winthrop and Captain Drake arrived ahead of him, and moreover, devastated to see Captain Drake walking the limping gelding out of his stall, whereupon Major Winthrop pronounced him dead lame.
"The devil he is!" Devington cursed. "Just yesterday he was rock solid."
"'Tis far from the case today. Nigh on three-legged lame, he is. Here, take him out a few paces at the trot."
Taking the horse's lead, Devington forced the gimping animal forward with a smart swat on the rump. After ten paces, they circled back with Jack's head jerking spasmodically upward with every step of his right fore.
"I found naught amiss in the sinews," Winthrop remarked. "I suspect it might be his right forefoot."
"Have you hoof testers?" Devington asked.
"Aye. We'll test him," the vet concurred.
Captain Drake located the device while Winthrop lifted the horse's foreleg and braced it between his own knees. He then clamped the hoof between the calipers and gently compressed. The jolt of the horse's body instantly confirmed his suspicions.
"'Tis an abscess, right enough. The good news is that the ailment is completely curable. I'll drill into the sole a wee bit, and a few days of mud packed with Epsom salts and vinegar will draw out the purulence. He'll soon be sound enough to march, but the bad news is he shan't be running any race today. You must find yourself another mount, Devington."
"Confound it all! I've no time! I've no doubt the captain's Hawke would give it a go, but I daren't push him such a distance with his old injury. This trial needs a swift athlete, a horse with grit to his very bones. Where can I find such a one with so little time?"
"If it's high spirits and an iron will you desire, I can think of only one such animal in this camp," the captain replied slowly.
"Indeed. There is one." The corporal and the captain exchanged knowing looks.
"You can't mean that notorious gray," Winthrop responded, incredulous. "Besides, Bainbridge will never allow it."
"Bainbridge answers to Lord Stair," Captain Drake interjected. "You said the field marshal offered up any horse in his army. Why should this preclude Major Bainbridge's stallion? Needs must when the devil drives. Besides, all will be forgiven, providing Devington wins."
"One would hope you know what you are about with that one, Devington," Winthrop said.
"It can be no other," he answered. With everything to gain--- and everything to lose---he took up his riding tack and marched purposefully to the gray's stables, where he found the stallion pacing restlessly in his stall. Recognizing Devington at once, he uttered a low nicker in greeting, but then, as if remembering himself, he followed with a more menacing snort.
"I'm glad to see you too, my man, though I would wish it were under other circumstances. I require a boon, you see."
Accompanied by their seconds, much as a pair of duelists, the riders were appointed to meet at the Aschaffenburg bridge at precisely eight o'clock in the morning. Each rider departed his respective camp, dressed in his parade uniform and carrying his sword, pistols, and regimental standard.
While every attempt had been made to keep the matter quiet, word had spread in excited whispers, growing and swelling in rippling waves throughout the Pragmatic camps. Hundreds upon hundreds of British, Hanoverians, and Austrians formed a miles-long line, beginning at the bridge, crowding the streets, and skirting along the river path, which the riders would eventually follow nearly eight miles to Dettingen and back.
As the contenders advanced to the bridge, a party of British troopers hoisted the Union Jack and broke into a jubilant if unharmonious chorus of Hail Britannia! Devington paused his excitedly prancing horse to salute his country's flag, and the exultant Englishmen cheered. The startled gray reared, but Devington maintained his seat and calmly circled his agitated mount a few times to resettle him.
Arriving at the bridge, Devington and his opponent, one Captain Ranzau, faced one another appraisingly. Ranzau sat atop his largeboned, heavily muscled black charger. Standing well over sixteen hands, the splendid stallion towered over Devington and his lighter, lither gray, who danced, pawed, and snorted challengingly at his Goliath of an adversary.
"He's a fine one," Devington remarked appreciatively of the captain's black.
"He is Sohn of His Majesty's own Gyldenstein, one of the twelve best stallions von all Europe."
"That may well be true, Kapitän, but England is not part of Europe."
The Hanoverian flushed. "You English have so conceit of your horses, but we shall soon prove otherwise."
A trumpet sounded unexpectedly, startling both men and their horses. The herald caused a great commotion among the amassed soldiers, and the two riders regarded one another speculatively. Following a second trump, a group of riders came into view, now easily recognizable as an assemblage of His Majesty's Life Guards. The guards approached, headed by a portly, florid-faced young man in a highly decorated uniform.
"'Tis the Duke of Cumberland," Captain Drake reported quietly to Devington.
Abashed by the royal arrival and anxious of the repercussions, Devington and Ranzau moved to dismount, but the duke arrested them.
"As you were, gentleman," His Grace said to the pair. "I have come to verify for myself the report I received this morning of a challenge between His Majesty's British and Hanoverian Cavalries. Now, I would judge the rumor to be true." He spoke sternly, raking them with cool blue eyes. "Here we sit on half rations, with our supply lines cut and French all about us, and our troops would run a horse race?"
Captain Drake stepped forward. "Your Grace, Corporal Devington is not to be faulted. 'Twas I who issued the challenge, to avoid what might otherwise have been a nasty confrontation between your British and Hanoverian troops."
"And in so doing, you have marshaled the men and boosted pitifully low morale in both camps. I commend you, Captain. And now, I request the honor of commencing this race."
At the sound of the trump, the riders spurred their horses into action, clamoring down the crowded cobbles in a fierce flurry of hooves, accompanied by waving hats and a deafening cacophony of English and German cheers. The race was unlike any other Devington had ridden. The rules were simple: to be the first to reach the village of Dettingen and return, with the course completely determined by the riders.
Side-by-side, they galloped northeastward through the streets of Aschaffenburg until breaking into the open fields where the masses of British infantry and artillery were going about their morning routines.
Devington and Ranzau blazed through the middle of the encampment, causing men to scatter their weaponry and scurry out of the way. Hurtling now through the artillery, Devington heard the rumble of iron wheels and cracking of whips before he actually perceived the line of limbers and caissons stuck in the mud and blocking their path all the way to the riverfront. Hesitating, he pulled up his horse, looking right and left for an opening, while with a triumphant cry, the Hanoverian spurred his charger ever faster, and with a great and powerful spring, they cleared the cannon with the grace of a stag.
Devington sat frozen, momentarily bedazzled by the magnificent performance; then snapping back to attention, he wheeled his own horse with a mind to follow suit. Cantering back about twenty paces, he urged the gray forward, directly toward the cannon. At the final second of the approach, the stallion realized what his rider demanded. Suddenly balking, the gray propped on the fore and pitched Devington headlong into an artillery wagon full of gun powder. With his once pristine uniform coated with the black residue that had cushioned his fall, Devington rose and wiped the soot from his eyes in angry swipes. The stallion looked on, snorting and tossing his head victoriously with the success of his caper.
"I concede you've bested me once, my man, but 'tis a long ride yet to Dettingen." Gathering up his standard, Devington vaulted back onto the horse and squeezed narrowly through a break between the limbers and caissons.
With a cloud of dust in his wake, the Hanoverian was now barely a speck in the distance. "Damn! Damn! Bloody damn! You see what you've done?" Devington swore and urged his horse once more into a furious gallop. The stallion at first hesitated, but as if deciding to enter into the spirit of the game, surged forward in zealous pursuit.
Though yet ruffled by his unexpected unhorsing, Devington realized the Hanoverian had set far too aggressive a pace. The kapitän's vanity had compelled him to make a show as they ripped through the British camp, but their overzealous exertions would eventually tell. The captain, although on a stronger horse, was a much heavier rider than the corporal. Devington knew he had to gain lost ground, but there was no need to catch them. Not yet. For now, they would stalk.
On they ran, following the deep, wheel-creviced path toward the Austrian and Hanoverian cantonments just north of the village of Klein Ostheim. Half a mile from the village, the narrow road forked right and left, with the left leading toward steeply wooded hills and the army camp, and the right sloping downward toward the village on the river. The going here was known to be low and level for nearly a league, but the bridge passing over a rivulet feeding into the river Main was completely blocked by a farmer driving a large herd of sheep across the narrow bridge. It was at this juncture that Devington caught his quarry.
Cursing, gesticulating, and flailing his whip, the Hanoverian railed at the farmer, who shrugged in incomprehension and turned his attention back to his bleating charges. Arriving at the site, Devington surveyed the river, estimating the distance across at approximately twenty yards. The captain was not going to leap this obstacle! Perceiving his chance, Devington glanced down hesitatingly at the near-vertical embankment. Even if they could navigate the drop, the swirling currents made calculating the depth of the water impossible.
Directing the gray's attention toward the river, he spoke reassuringly. "Though you may not yet have tried it, most horses are quite adequate swimmers, at least for a short distance."
The gray snorted at the moving water but advanced unprompted toward the bank, where he stopped and licked his lips.
"Thirsty are you, old chum? Let us have a drink, then." Leaning far back in his saddle to help the horse to balance himself down the sharp embankment, the corporal coaxed the horse forward, but as they stepped toward the edge of the churning water, the earth gave way beneath, sliding horse and rider into the icy river. Devington made a startled cry, wresting the captain's attention from the farmer.
The snorting stallion floundered and splashed in an attempt to climb back up, but the footing was too loose and the incline too steep. Frustrated, he tossed his head angrily. Finding themselves belly-deep in water, Devington exclaimed, "It's sink or swim now, my boy!"
Sliding from the horse's back, he took hold of the stallion's tail and urged him forward. Paddling dog-style, the pair made their way steadily across the tributary to a rocky place on the other side, where they scrambled onto dry land.
With biped and quadruped both back on solid ground, the gray cast his rider a look of outrage then shook the water from his sopping charcoal coat. Soaked to his own chin, Devington pulled himself heavily back into the saddle, then stole a look over his shoulder to see the captain spurring and thrashing his horse, who refused to advance to the embankment.
Glancing down at the water sloshing from the tops of his boots, the corporal remarked deprecatingly to himself, "No one said we must arrive dry. Let's go, boy!" and broke into an easy canter back to the road, holding his mount well in hand, nursing him along with the knowledge that they had gained at least ten minutes on their opponent in the crossing.
Galloping in rolling strides, they continued onward past neat whitewashed cottages and golden cornfields, Devington glancing periodically over his shoulder for the Hanoverian. As he drew closer to Dettingen, Robert had become acutely aware of enemy activity across the river Main, catching sight through the trees of the French camps on the distant south side. Now, however, breaks in the wood revealed a glimpse of blue uniform on the north side!
In growing alarm, the corporal pulled up his horse, taking cover behind a thick row of trees on a small hill skirting the north side of the road. His vantage point gave an unobstructed view of the surrounds---clumps of trees and detached farms that comprised the village, and the river beyond. Clearly visible now were countless blue uniforms crossing the river by bridges comprised of boats linked and anchored to each shore.
The infantry had crossed and had already begun constructing trenches. Clearly the French were preparing to make their longawaited move.
Pulling one of his pistols from its case, he realized its utter uselessness after having taken a swim in the river. Devington then withdrew his saber smoothly from its sheath and contemplated his next move.
Sensing first the oncoming rider, his horse sidled excitedly beneath him. Devington moved to warn the Hanoverian of the danger, but the French infantryman leveled his musket and opened fire, crying, "C'est un espion!"
The shot, fired true, took Ranzau on the left shoulder, knocking him clean of his horse. Responding to the alarm, a halfdozen French infantrymen appeared within seconds to form an irregular semicircle around the hapless Hanoverian, who with unwavering valor, regained his feet and brandished his saber.
"You think alone to fight us, eh?" The Frenchmen laughed. "You are now prisoner of le duc de Grammont, just as your foolish king soon will be."
Outnumbered and without aid of a firearm, Devington had little hope of freeing Ranzau, but with a diversion, perhaps the captain might yet free himself.
Taking a great breath of courage, Devington raised his own saber, and with a savage war cry, he leaped out from his cover directly into the group of infantry, dispersing the startled men in all directions.
Swiftly, he grasped the reins of Ranzau's horse and tossed them to the captain, who threw himself clumsily over the saddle. Desperately clutching his horse's neck, they bolted away amidst a firestorm of French musketry.
I t was far later than usual when Charlotte snuck back into the house following her morning ride. She had taken Tortoise for his daily gallop, visited with Amoret who had just returned from Lord Godolphin's stud farm, and had looked on as Jeffries began putting the obstreperous young Rascallion through his paces.
Though Rascallion was old enough to be well under saddle, Jeffries had determined that his prior owner had completely soured him for riding of any kind and that the only way to manage him was to go back to the beginning in his training. As Charlotte watched, Jeffries calmly snapped the whip in the air, which set the horse into a frenzied fit of wheeling and plunging.
"A rebellious one, 'e is. In particular, 'e don't care much for a whip," Jeffries remarked. "Been properly soured wi' mismanagement, I'd say, but he be not completely unmanageable if'n he be placed in the proper hands. If'n his energy can be rightly directed, he'll be nigh to lightning on the turf. Easy now, me lad." Jeffries lowered the whip to the ground. Having sufficiently demonstrated his displeasure, the young horse then raised his tail and trotted off in a circle, as if it had all been his idea from the start.
"When will he be ready to ride?" Charlotte asked.
"Sir Garfield wants him to run come spring, but I has me doubts. Now if young Devington were here..."
Charlotte averted her face at the mention of Robert's name. It had been nearly a month since his last letter. Word had spread that the army had finally encountered the French, but nothing was yet confirmed. No news is good news, she kept telling herself to no great comfort.
Turning back to Jeffries, she offered, "I could try him."
"Nay, miss. Though you be as good as any of the lads, this one needs a strong hand to master."
"But if Uncle wants him to run in spring, who is to jockey?"
"The Bart has a mind to put the master Charles up."
"Charles! You doubt that I can handle the horse, yet you propose Charles to ride him!"
"I didn't say that I had a mind to put Charles up; 'tis your uncle what so desperately wants his son on a winner."
"And get poor Charles killed! Jeffries, you must let me ride. Perhaps I can gentle him enough for my cousin to handle."
"I'll think on it, miss, but 'tis well nigh breakfast time up at the house. You'd best move yerself along."
"Is it really so late?" Charlotte frowned at the position of the sun and trotted off anxiously to change her clothes for breakfast, but to her utter dismay, she encountered Beatrix on the staircase.
"Charlotte! Just look at you!" she exclaimed in horror at the mudstained boots and patched-up boy's clothes. "Just wait until Mother sees you!" Her cousin made no attempt to hide her glee. Charlotte made to brush by, but Beatrix blocked her way. "Mother!" Beatrix cried over her shoulder. "Mother! Come quickly!"
"What is this shrieking, Trixie! Ladies do not shriek," she scolded from the top of the stairs. Then she shrieked, "Good God! Is that Charlotte? Go and change yourself at once! Letty shall burn those clothes, or I'll give her the boot! Imagine any niece of mine looking like a filthy beggar child."
"And the smell, Mother," Beatrix added. "Did you bathe in the dung, Cousin?" Her words were honey-coated venom.
"Now go to your room, and do not let me see you until you have bathed and transformed yourself into a respectable young woman. And I shall talk to your uncle about your riding. You have been given by far too much license to the stables. You must begin to comport yourself as a lady, Charlotte. What kind of gentleman would have such a hoydenish creature as you present?" Her aunt continued the harangue without giving Charlotte time to answer. "Now go! Go, child, and make yourself presentable! Go!" She gestured in a shooing fashion, and then with the air of a martyr, Lady Felicia descended to the breakfast room.
Charlotte ran to her room and the comfort of Letty's maternal embrace.
It was nearly an hour later that Charlotte made her appearance in the breakfast room. Her uncle had finished eating and now sat engulfed behind the pages of his London Daily Gazette.
Red-eyed, Charlotte took her place across from Beatrix, who smiled smugly at the evidence of Charlotte's misery. Refusing to gratify Beatrix further, Charlotte directed her gaze down at her teacup.
With a flip of the page, Sir Garfield interrupted the silence. "Well, b'God, 'tis finally begun at last!"
"What has begun, Sir Garfield?" Lady Felicia asked.
"The war has begun."
"But I thought we were already at war?" Charles replied.
"We have played at war for two confounded years, but now the French have made it official. There appears to have been a bloodbath at a German village just northeast of Ash... Ash... Bah! Someplace in Franconia."
"Aschaffenberg, Uncle?" Charlotte volunteered, hoping her intuition was wrong.
"Indeed. That is the place."
"Wh-what has occurred?" she asked barely above a whisper.
"Appears the French, who outnumbered our men by some twenty thousand, crossed the river to the north and south, cutting off supply lines and with the intent of capturing our king. Upon word of this, His Majesty commanded a march for Hanua to meet up with Hessian reinforcements, but as they gained this village of Dettingen, they met with a French ambuscade."
Charlotte blanched, unable to speak.
Charles prompted, "What happened?"
"It says here that our brave king himself charged to the fore where his English Horse bore the brunt of the cannonade. He is recorded as brandishing his sword and crying, 'Now my brave boys! Now for the honor of England! Advance boldly, fire, and the French will soon run!'
"The Foot rallied. The Horse on the left flank charged with the trumpeter playing 'Britons Strike Home.' They became virtually surrounded by the Frenchies and should have been cut to pieces but for the arrival of the Austrian artillery."
Her face now spectral, Charlotte gasped.
"How did it end, Father?" Charles pressed excitedly.
"The French were repulsed across the river, forced to swim like ducks!"
"So we won!" Charles exclaimed, nearly jumping from his seat.
"Suffice to say, we had a lower body count, my boy," Sir Garfield responded then proceeded to read the statistics of dead and wounded.
With a cry, Charlotte pushed from the table, dropping her teacup, which shattered on the floor, and fled the room.
"What's amiss with the girl?" Sir Garfield asked vaguely.
"She's no doubt overwrought for news of Robert," Charles remarked sympathetically. "You remember he joined the Horse Guard, Father."
"Left me high and dry for the Horse Guard, eh? Serves him right if he's blown to bits. Now where's my copy of Cheny's Racing Calendar?"
Ten days later, another letter came to Charlotte, again via Jeffries. She received it with trembling hands and stared blindly at the handwriting. Was it truly Robert's hand? Was he alive?
She was afraid to break the seal for fear of what news it might contain. With her heart hammering erratically, she sought solace and privacy in a corner of Amoret's stall, where she collapsed on a pile of clean straw. Sensing Charlotte's disquiet, Amoret turned her attention from her hay and ambled over, nosing the letter.
"It's from Robert," Charlotte said and stroked the mare's muzzle. Amoret's warm, grass-scented breath gently fanned her cheek. "But what if he wrote it before the battle? What if these are his last words to me? But there's only one way to know, isn't there?"
Amoret snorted agreement and nudged Charlotte's hand. Offering up a prayer, Charlotte thumbed open the wax seal.
July 10, 1743
My Dearest Charlotte,
I write you from our cantonment in Bergen, where we await our orders following our routing of the French at the village of Dettingen. I further pray my news will reach you prior to the official account of our historic battle, as I would not worry your heart to save my very soul.
The enemy, in far superior numbers to ours, was encamped in close proximity, only a few miles downriver. By a sheer fluke (a story I
will recount to you later) I discovered their preparations for a preemptive strike. Returning to our camp with the utmost dispatch, I made my report, and His Majesty commanded an immediate withdrawal to Flanders, where Hessian reinforcements and supplies awaited us.
We struck camp stealthily before light and began our march without drumbeat, but upon approaching the village of Dettingen, we were met with an ambuscade of French cannons, which we were unprepared to counter. Our own artillery was several miles to the rear, from whence His Majesty had most anticipated the attack.
We were drawn out between the wood and the river and utterly vulnerable. The Horse was completely ensnared on either flank. The French artillery was stationed across the river on our left, and their Horse and light infantry were hidden in the wooded hills upon our right. Both commenced a vast outpour of fire upon us. We were caught in the very thick of it.
Our horses screamed. Men panicked. Sheer mayhem arose amongst our green recruits. Major Bainbridge, riding the magnificent gray stallion of whom I previously wrote, was carried into the direct line of fire. The horse was wounded and the major struck down. Captain Drake assumed command but struggled in vain to gain a fraction of control and some manner of order from the chaos.
His Majesty rushed to the fore upon report of cannon, entering valiantly and unreservedly into the midst of the fray, but his steed, like as many others, responded frantically to the fire, unseating His Majesty and charging off to the wood. Captain Drake sprang into action to shield the King into the protection of a nearby oak grove. Taking stock of our predicament, the King ordered our artillery to advance from the rear and commanded our infantry to a counterfire.
Our green recruits, however, having done naught more than march and camp for months, fired aimlessly, randomly, and precipitately. With precious few hits to their ranks, the French advanced briskly and with a tenacious fire, further weakening us.
The young Duke of Cumberland was next to arrive, courageously charging up from our rear infantry lines and taking command of the right flank. Cool, composed, and with remarkable presence of mind, he ordered the Foot to advance and fire. His propinquity alone rallied the men to respond with feverish fury. Even after taking a musket shot through the leg, Cumberland continued stoically in command, while our Horse and remaining infantry steadily closed ranks.
We now rallied against the French, who had broken our first line and penetrated the Scottish Fusiliers, but by this time several of our cannons were in play and wreaking havoc on them. Bit by bit, we drove them back before they ever reached our second line.
We had barely begun to regain ground when the fierce besiege of French cavalry began in earnest with a second wave. The famed Mousquetaires Gris charged us full force with two hundred horse! With slashing saber and smoking carbine, we fought like devils. We were now confronted with the enemy on all sides.
Forgetting nearly all I had learned, I cut and slashed blindly until charged by a French officer. Our horses screamed and collided. Jack, brave and true to the last, took a musket ball to the chest. Struck from under me, he crashed to the ground, breaking my leg and pinning me beneath him. I struggled in vain to free myself. I was defenseless.
My antagonist, now recovered from his own fall, approached with his saber to strike the deathblow. I knew my end had come, Charlotte, but of a sudden, he lurched to the ground, cleanly struck by musket fire. The hand of Captain Drake had delivered me. Clearly, our fates were sealed from that moment.
The battle raged interminably until our valiant English infantry rallied again and advanced for the final attack, driving back the remnants of French Horse and forcing the now battered and all but broken enemy to a hasty retreat across the river. Notwithstanding the sudden and massive withdrawal, their makeshift bridges collapsed, drowning no small number. The remainder swam like ducks to the opposite shore!
Of the two hundred French cavalry, fewer than fifty survived. We took a great number of their officers and men prisoner and captured nine cannons, as well as several of their colors and standards. Their losses exceed five thousand and ours about two thousand men.
My own Sixth Troop, by the hand of Providence, sustained only minimal damage, with but three men and four horses, and six wounded, including myself. Pray do not be worried for me, Charlotte. 'Twas only a break of the thigh bone and already healing well under Dr. Pringle's care---a rather crotchety Scotsman and Lord Stair's personal physician. He judges I shall be mounted again in no time. Indeed, I hope to ride through the gates of Whitehall on the back of the gray stallion.
As for him, he had taken a ball to the flank and lost the tip of an ear. I can only believe 'twas Bainbridge's vanity that caused his fall, and no fault of the horse. Winthrop conceded to retrieve the ball, if only to reward my service, and I shall take the horse in hand for the duration of my recovery.
As for the man to whom I owe my life, Captain Drake has deservedly received a field promotion for his multifarious acts of valor, and I have also been conferred a captaincy. Though I parted England a boy in soldier's clothing, I return a man who will control his own destiny, and that destiny shall be with you, if you would still have me, my dearest. I pray that I shall soon return to you. Until then, I most earnestly pledge my honor and my heart.
Your Most Devoted,
R. D.
George II, the last British monarch to lead his own army, marched proudly through the gates of London with much parade and fanfare. The King's Horse Guard arrived weary and worn after weeks of hard riding and another accursed Channel crossing. They had reached their destination only a week before the slated victory celebrations. The city of London rejoiced to receive her heroes.
The inauguration of the month-long fete was the King's grand birthday parade, held at Whitehall Parade Grounds. After reviewing his Household troops, he presented the King's regiment of Horse with their new insignia, a golden oak leaf to commemorate their valor. The festivities concluded at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens with fireworks and a symphonic performance of Handel's "Te Deum" composed in honor of the victory.
It was mid-December before the troops were at leisure and settled into winter quarters and finally free to pursue their own pleasure. For the captain, the novelty of London and nightly carousing had quickly waned. He'd been away from home for too long.
His heart ached for his Charlotte.
December 1743
R ising well before daybreak, Captain Devington prepared to depart his rooms in the crowded inn serving as garrison for his company. Quietly fumbling in the dark, he bundled his scant belongings into his pack and endeavored not to disturb his snoring comrades.
Nearby, Major Drake stirred, bleary-eyed and groggy after another night's carousing. "We're on furlough, you bloody sod! What are you doing up before the cock has even crowed?" he growled at Devington.
"I'm departing for Yorkshire, Philip. I've some unfinished business to attend."
"What the bloody hell is so damned pressing in Yorkshire that can't wait until a respectable hour?"
"I told you, it's business. Personal business."
Intrigued by the evasive reply, Philip raised up on one elbow. "Oh? I surmise 'tis a woman, then. Must be a fine piece of arse if you're dragging your own all the bloody way to Yorkshire."
"Keep a civil tongue in your head." The warning was made with a telling glower.
Philip smirked. "Indeed? True love, then. Didn't know you were a romantic, Devington. Didn't know you were a Yorkshireman either, come to think of it. Small wonder you joined the Horse Guard," he drawled. "From whence do you hail in the land of frightened sheep?"
"The South, if it's anything to you. Raised near Doncaster, and for your elucidation, the horses in the region outnumber the sheep."
"Indeed? Doncaster, you say? I hear of tolerable good horseflesh in Doncaster. I have on occasion witnessed a respectable Doncaster runner at Newmarket."
"Occasionally, you say! We run some of the primest flesh in England on Cantley Common!"
"So you fancy? You've not witnessed a race 'til you seen them run the Rowley Mile. Newmarket's where the real action is. My family has kept a stable for decades at Cheveley, outside Newmarket, and all prime Derbyshire stock."
"I quite assure you of the quality of South Yorkshire horseflesh, Drake. I find you surprisingly ignorant for a turf-follower, my friend. Who can be unacquainted with the famed Flying Childers? The stallion has one of the greatest names in the country, with an undefeated running career. Indeed, he won over half his races by default, as none dared challenge him."
"I am well acquainted with the Duke of Devonshire's celebrated stallion. He's a top producer of champions, and he stands in Derbyshire."
"You are once again misinformed. Flying Childers, the pride of the Duke of Devonshire, who once refused the horse's weight in gold, was born and bred by Colonel Childers in Doncaster."
"I shan't dispute the quality of this one stallion from the region," Drake grudgingly conceded.
"I contest that he was one of a number of exceptional South Yorkshire blood horses. Indeed, Colonel Childers knew a good thing when he saw it. He bred his dam, Betty Leedes, a second time to the Darley Arabian and produced a full brother, Bartlett's Childers, who still stands at Masham in Yorkshire. This blood-cross has produced many good runners: Smale's Childers and Lord Portmore's Grey Childers both come to mind, but the finest of the Darley grandsons to date, is probably Squirt. His was a most lucrative career. He won the two hundred guineas in '37 and again in '39 at Newmarket, and then followed with wins at Epsom, Stamford, Winchester, and Salisbury."
"I know well the reputation of Squirt, but I argue this fine horse also stands at Derbyshire. And what of Francis Godolphin's famed stallion? He stands in Derbyshire, and none dare contest the quality of his get. Thus far, they are without match. His son Lath won the thousand guineas in '37, and defeated your Squirt the following year."
"It might surprise you to learn that Lath was also indisputably bred in Yorkshire," Robert contested with no small pride. "I stand by my claim that our Yorkshire studs produce the finest horses in the country."
"I am duly impressed with your knowledge, Devington," Drake confessed, "but how do you come by such an intimate knowledge of blood horses?"
"I was probably mounted before I was out of leading strings. I spent my formative years riding anything with four legs. Worked as stable groom, under groom, racing groom, and later apprenticed in the North as a stud groom. Living no great distance from Doncaster, I had ample opportunity to follow my passion. Addiction, it is, the racing, sheer addiction," Devington murmured wistfully.
"So you fancy the races, Devington? Surprising. You've never struck me as a gambling man."
"Me, gamble on the horses? God forbid, man! Learned my lessons early on at the expense of others who were so imprudent. 'Tis a dirty business, that. I've witnessed countless men fall into utter ruination following a four-mile heat. No. My addiction is riding, chasing the wind, you know. There's nothing like it. No future in it, though.
"After my father passed, I had hoped to fill his shoes at Heathstead Hall but... circumstances as they were..." He paused as if hesitant to continue on that track. "Suffice to say, it came upon me to make my own way, and with no name to recommend me and no connections, my options were few."
"So you packed your belongings and Ol' Jack and made your way to Woolwich," Philip finished for him.
"Something like that, though the initial seed was planted in my head by a cocky young officer of the Horse who threw me a coin purse at the Litchfield races!" Devington grinned.
"Litchfield is where I procured Hawke. Damme, was that you, Devington?"
"One and the same, though I hardly caught more than a glimpse of you at the time. Later, at Woolwich, I didn't make the connection until seeing Hawke. I remembered the horse well. It was the race that I defeated that fiend Uxeter. How exactly did you come by Hawke, anyway?"
"That fiend Uxeter, as you so aptly describe him, is my half brother."
"I didn't know. No offense intended."
Drake laughed outright. "Oh, don't fear any insult on my account. He's an irrefutably arrogant sod and a blight on my existence. There's no love lost between siblings in my family. But to answer your question and to recount the rest of the story, when the blackguard lost the race, he ordered the groom to shoot the horse. So, given your history, one might say my presence at the Lichfield races proved serendipitous to both man and beast."
"It certainly was for me. I daresay I never should have entertained any notion of the Horse Guard otherwise, but here I am now, a lowly servant of the Crown. I never should have believed I'd make the cut that day. You didn't make it easy, by any means."
The major grinned, remembering their first meeting at Horse Guard training grounds. "And now you are returned a captain and a hero, by all accounts. Better a captain in the Horse than a major in the infantry, I say."
"A hero? I question that. I believe 'twas more the hand of Providence, or more accurately, the hand of Major Drake that preserved me at Dettingen."
"You have no cause for shame. You kept your head about you under fire and displayed remarkable valor for one so green. We are in a like position, you know, to have chosen a military career. As a second son, I am merely spare to the heir, as the adage goes. Edmund holds the birthright and all that goes with it. Miserable, ungrateful wretch. He'll inherit all, though not much more than a London townhouse and a manor rebuilt from a crumbling Norman keep. All I have to recommend myself to the world is an old family name. Even that's worth precious nothing without the title. Sorry, ole chap, forgot whom I was addressing," Philip added sheepishly.
"No offense taken. I am not ashamed of common birth; at least it was on the right side of the blanket, more than a great many sons of noblemen can claim."
"You have a point there," Philip replied dryly. "But although legitimate, I am the family scapegrace, the proverbial black sheep who has spent the past eight years following an ignominious expulsion from Harrow, doing my wretched best to live down to my family's expectations."
"But why?"
"My father, the Earl of Hastings, is a very exacting man," he said bitterly. "After Harrow, he cut me off and effectively washed his hands of me. I lived by little more than my wits for five years until attaining my majority and the meager trust left by my mother. After paying my debts, I purchased a commission. My only remaining alternative was the clergy. Can you picture me a clergyman, Devington?"
"You would have been a veritable disgrace to the cloth."
"Quite so," Philip agreed without shame.
"But if you truly desired to play the part of scapegrace, you have failed miserably, Major."
"Oh, I wouldn't quite say that; my advancement has not been wholly honorable."
"What do you mean?"
"I entered the Horse as a cornet but gained my captaincy by the hand of Lady Luck."
"Gaming?"
"I had a good night at the Hazard table, whilst Captain Simpson did not," he remarked dismissively. "But I begin to tire of the soldier's life, Devington. The past two campaigns have hardly proven the adventure I envisaged. 'Tis a hard life and hardly profitable. Now on furlough, I am resolved to scour the London ballrooms to find an heiress and be done with it."
"You, scour the ballrooms?" Robert scoffed. "You will surely be in good company. London is crawling with half-pay officers seeking a rich wife. Why not accompany me to the country instead? With the coming holidays, the capital will likely be devoid of heiresses anyway."
"I fail to perceive any advantage in leaving London."
"Doncaster may actually hold a prospect or two for you. Colonel Childers has three daughters. No doubt a bevy of marriageable ladies of their acquaintance will congregate at Cantley Hall or the surrounding estates for the Christmas season. Though most of 'em can't tell mane from tail, there will no doubt be heiresses among them."
Robert gestured grandly to their cramped and dingy quarters. "Care to leave all this grandeur and rusticate until we're called back, ole chum? Can't say I couldn't bear the company."
"'Twill be devilish going with only a for'night's furlough. Pushing hard, it's what, three days? I assume you're riding?"
"My carriage is in repair," Robert said ruefully.
"It'll be damnably cold riding, too. You'd best elaborate much more on the heiresses, ole boy."
"At this very moment stands a well-dowered and virtuous heiress, bounteous of charm, pining away for a handsome rogue to sweep her off her feet."
"Virtuous? That might be laying it a bit thick."
Recognizing his exercise in futility, Robert snapped smartly to attention. "Right then, I shall see you in a for'night."
Philip hesitated. "Mayhap I've enough of wine, women, and song... well, mayhap just the song, but what possible diversion can there be in bloody Yorkshire?"
"Mayhap a bit of racing. Weather permitting, they'll surely have a few training runs in preparation for the spring season."
Philip considered this for a moment and groaned as he pulled himself heavily from bed. "Allow me an hour, and I'll be in the saddle."
Surprisingly true to his word, within the hour he was shaved, packed, and swaggering into the stable yard, calling for his mount as the hostler, a grizzled Scotsman of indeterminate age, led out Devington's snorting, jigging, battle-scarred stallion.
"Son of a beast tried to bite me when I turned me back to the billets! No warning. Just barred his ugly teeth fur the attack! Daemon steed, that 'un!" Nostrils flaring and ears pinned, the gray repeated the offense.
"He wants another go at it. Be a sport, ole man!" Robert chortled. The indignant Scotsman threw the reins in his face, tromping off to collect the major's horse.
"I wonder, was it reward or punishment Winthrop had in mind in allowing you to keep that brute?" Drake innocently inquired.
"He eats only Scotsmen," Robert quipped. "He's actually as fine a horse as I've ever known, truth be told. Were he taller and less battle-scarred, I've no doubt he would have been appropriated for one of the colonels, or perhaps for Cumberland himself. They say he has an eye for horseflesh."
"He does, indeed, but I daresay the beast's reputation would have put him off."
"This horse has more heart than any I've ever known. I'd back him against anyone."
"Thought you weren't a betting man, Devington. Be warned that I might take up your gauntlet when we have the opportunity. Speaking of which, have you at least thought of a decent name for the animal? 'Captain Devington on Nameless Nag' doesn't have much of a ring to it." Drake smirked.
"I begin to think Mars, the god of war, might suit," Robert replied with a devious grin.
"The hostler would hardly disagree."
The sun was cresting the eastern horizon when the two young officers mounted up and set out on the North Road. Travelling for some time in companionable silence, each was lost in his own thoughts. Philip contemplated racing and rich, voluptuous heiresses.
Robert, conversely, brooded on his next course of action. He would offer for Charlotte again. He was resolute, but Sir Garfield was a cunning and ruthless adversary. His mind wrestled with the conundrum of how to win the man over. His expression revealed more of his thoughts than he intended.
Philip interrupted his cogitations. "You appear as if laboring with a veritable poser."
Devington didn't answer.
"At the risk of intruding further into your private world, I surmise that your unfinished business concerns a lady and your former employer. Were I not so well acquainted with your noble character, I'd be lief to suspect a dismissal following your seduction of the squire's daughter."
His companion answered the off-hand remark with a glower. "You pry into matters that don't concern you."
"Aha!" Drake laughed, unabashed. "I strike dangerously near the mark! Since you are so reticent to share your history, you compel me to follow the leadings of my imagination... and I own a very lively imagination."
"Lively or lurid?"
"Guilty as charged! Now, would you care to share your story, or shall I continue my summation based wholly on my deductions?"
"I fail to understand your interest."
"Rest assured, my interest is merely a passing fancy, but as you talked me into this infernal ride and have been less than a stimulating conversationalist for the last three hours, I am compelled to entertain myself."
Robert colored but ignored the remark.
Philip, purely for diversion, continued his narrative. "Very well, Devington, I shall piece together the facts of this tale you are so loathe to disclose. Pray feel free to interject as you see fit.
"You have a passion and obvious talent with horses but were passed over for the very position you had been groomed for and were, in essence, given the boot. But rather than taking the easy route and moving on to the Doncaster racing studs, you elected to leave all behind to join the Horse Guard. To what end?
"Now returned from the campaign, you defy reason by leaving the comfort and pleasures of London to ride all the way to Yorkshire in the dead of winter. No rational man would do such a thing.
"Evidence plainly indicates you are painfully and wretchedly enamored with some young woman. I surmise, nay fear," he amended, "that you intend to sacrifice your blessed bachelorhood at the matrimonial altar."
"Am I so damnably transparent?"
"Pitifully so."
"Well, you haven't all of it right, not by a long shot!" Robert said.
"No? Would you care to enlighten me?"
Having bared his soul to no one, Robert was weary of keeping his own counsel. Drake had proven a loyal friend and had even saved his life. He was also a man with broader experience and greater worldliness.
"It's a long story, Drake."
His companion shrugged. "It's a long ride, Devington."
Overcoming his reticence, Robert began his extended history.
"I was raised on the property of Heathstead Hall in Wortley, an estate owned by Sir Garfield Wallace, the man to whom my father owed his living. His son, Charles, and I grew up together, nearly as brothers. We spent many years of our boyhood riding, hunting the wood, fishing, cavorting, and even shared, or more aptly tortured, a tutor, the pious and pinch-faced Mr. Smythe.
"Sir Garfield's disposition toward me markedly changed, however, after the arrival of his orphaned niece, Charlotte. With his fortune, vast country estate, and children of comparable age, her situation should have been ideal, but this proved far from the case. Although her cousin Charles is an amiable chap, Beatrix is of another mold altogether. Vain, jealous, selfish, and spiteful, she resented Charlotte's arrival from the very beginning, making it clear she regarded her orphaned cousin as an interloper and a charity case."
"I have known many such women as you describe," Drake said. "I would argue this Beatrix's manner is hardly unexceptional in the circumstance. Your vision may be somewhat clouded, Devington."
"That may be, but you must perceive what an abominable position this poor girl was placed in."
"Quite so, that of a completely dependent poor relation, regarded little better than a servant. 'Tis a common enough plight," Drake remarked callously.
"You have no idea what she suffered living as a mere shadow under her uncle's roof."
"A pusillanimous miss. I marvel at your taste in women. Between the two, I profess a predilection for the vain and selfish cousin. Assuredly more spirited, at any rate."
"Charlotte lacking spirit? Then you would be duped as the rest of them. Only by the necessity of her situation has she cultivated meekness, but I know the real girl. I peered into her soul the first day I espied this waif-of-a-thing riding hellfor-leather across the heath."
"Ah! So finally, the tale piques my interest. Pray continue, Devington."
"Nearly five years ago, I broke up a brawl between dungencrusted stable lads, and later while out for a training gallop on a misty morning, I unexpectedly encountered one of the same lads virtually flying across the heath. My first thought was to discover the identity of the one who would surely become my adversary on the track, and I was astonished to discover that he was a she!"
Robert then explained how Charles had informed him of his orphaned cousin's arrival, and how he began to look for Charlotte on her morning rides. "Whenever the vixen sensed my presence, she would turn tail and run, spurring me all the more to pursue. Mayhap that's what drew me to the girl, but I was bloody well intrigued."
"Chasing a little hoyden about the countryside a-horseback sounds too exerting for my blood," Drake scoffed. "Were I in your shoes, I should have sought out a plump and sassy dairymaid, most of whom, by contrast, expend their energies in a much more gratifying manner."
Robert ignored the sardonic remark. "The reward for me was well worth the effort. Unfortunately, Beatrix discovered our assignations and told her father. When he learned of my interest, he sent me to apprentice as a stud groom with John Bartlett in North Yorkshire. I remained there two years; hence, my intimate knowledge of the Northern horseflesh," he added in an aside.
"What of you and Charlotte?" Drake prompted.
"We were only fifteen and eighteen when I left, but we made plans to one day marry. When my father passed, I had expectation as well as hope, but Sir Garfield never gave me the first consideration in either case.
"I sold my father's meager belongings, as well as our livestock, save Ol' Jack. I had less than fifty pounds to my name. Of course my resentment of Sir Garfield only grew with the knowledge that this paltry sum was all my father had to show for a business partnership that garnered another man a fortune and a veritable empire."
"An empire? What do you mean, Devington? I thought we spoke of a simple country squire."
"On the contrary. Although of humble beginnings---a tavern keep, to be precise---Sir Garfield Wallace is an extremely wealthy man."
"Indeed? From a tavern to a fortune? I should like to know how this came about."
"'Twas in truth my father's notion. He was a private coachman for a genteel family in Doncaster and remarked one day over a shared tankard at Wallace's Blue Boar Tavern that it might be a profitable enterprise to start a public coaching service between Doncaster, Sheffield, and Leeds."
"One must credit his foresight," Drake remarked.
"Quite so, but Conrad Devington was never overly hindered with ambition. Garfield Wallace, however, was. Believing his establishment ideal to stage such a commercial venture, he and my father became partners of a sort."
"So I presume that this Wallace fellow put up the capital?"
"Precisely so. They began with a single coachand-four. My father, with his keen eye for horseflesh, kept the business well supplied with strong, sound horses. In the first year, they were profitable and able to purchase additional coaches. My father then suggested breeding their own carriage stock to produce superior horses that could endure longer trips under heavier loads. Wallace compounded their initial success by building more inns and expanding the routes to include London and Edinburgh."
"It sounds like an extremely lucrative venture."
"It was; but my father had a partiality for gin. My mother, whom he loved dearly, kept him in line, but I was still in leading strings when she contracted smallpox. He never recovered from the loss and took heavily to the bottle from that time. He was never the same man."
"But what of the partnership? Did it dissolve?"
"Not precisely, but Wallace took advantage of my father's weakness, buying him out for a pittance during one of Conrad's drunken binges. Wallace then kept him on as stable master."
"Grasping bastard, eh?"
"You have no idea, Drake. Having tasted of riches, Wallace hungered for more, for what was yet out of reach. He had wealth but no social status, so he sold out and invested the bulk of his worth with the Society of Merchant Venturers."
"Invested with the slavers, eh?" Drake commented with mild distaste. "Barbaric business that, but I durst not assume the moral high ground. My father might own shares in a dozen such enterprises, for all my knowledge. I gather the investment was fruitful?"
"Immensely so. His profits on the Bristol slaving ships provided a yield sufficient to buy an estate and enter the ranks of the landed gentry. He then wooed the daughter and only child of a baronet and somehow finagled to come by the title upon his father-inlaw's passing."
"Patents of nobility are a rare commodity these days, unlike centuries hence, when the Crown sold peerages to fill their private coffers. My own family's title traces back to James I, who supplemented his personal fortune thus."
"In Sir Garfield's case, he may have gained a title but has yet to achieve the heights of grandeur to which he aspires. He's a man who will use any means at his disposal to get what he wants."
"I am intimately acquainted with the archetype. I confess my own father comes immediately to mind," Drake remarked deprecatingly. "Although an interesting rags-to-riches tale, I still fail to see how this all relates to you, Devington."
"I warned you 'twas a long story, and beg your forbearance. Now where was I?"
"The shrewd, ruthless baronet made his fortune but yet reaches higher," Drake prompted.
"Indeed. Desiring to mix with the aristocracy, Sir Garfield focused his attention on the turf. He converted the stables, which once bred the country's finest carriage horses, into a racing stud, but my father had no experience of running bloods, so Sir Garfield was obliged to seek a competent man for the purpose. He found such a one in John Jeffries."
"The man who eventually took your father's stead."
"I don't begrudge Jeffries. He has been friend and mentor to me and is the devil of a horseman. I resent only Sir Garfield's duplicity, which led my father to drink himself into an early grave."
"This was when you were in North Yorkshire?"
"Indeed, my story now comes full circle. Upon my return, Sir Garfield promoted Jeffries to stable master. Although I had little after my father's death, Charlotte's father had left her a small dowry. Our monies combined should have sufficed to make us a very modest start, but Sir Garfield refused to consider my suit, and as you aptly surmised, sent me packing."
"You were no doubt in a state of mind to commit some act of folly."
"We discussed elopement."
"Mayhap not the wisest course of action, when one has not even a pot to piss in."
"Spoken in the words of a true sage, Drake."
"So we come back to the beginning. In an impetuously quixotic
notion, you took your destiny into your own hands and left the girl behind to seek your fortune in the Horse Guard. And now you intend to claim your bride. What is your strategy?"
"'Tis what plagues me, Drake, as I yet have none."
A HERO'S WELCOME
Yorkshire, December 1743
A fter three days with nary a break from the saddle, the officers' suffering bodies ached for respite. Their very bones jarred with each plodding step of their utterly spent mounts, but Doncaster remained another half-day's ride. Gaining Sheffield---damp, cold, and ravenous---the travel-weary pair drew up at the first public house they encountered: the Dark Horse Tavern.
They entered the ramshackle stable yard and slithered wearily from their lathered and drooping mounts. After settling their horses, the pair dragged themselves to the tavern. The taproom reeked of stale ale, and the smoky tallow provided meager illumination in the cluttered, low-ceilinged space. Hungry beyond discrimination, the pair collapsed at a corner table, wincing at the hard bench that was so unforgiving to their saddle-sore posteriors.
Pausing little for conversation, they greedily devoured a meal of bread, cheese, and mutton stew, chasing it all down with several tankards of stout.
Now sated, Captain Devington leaned back from the table, suppressed a yawn, and sleepily took in his surroundings. Major Drake, hands clasped behind his head, directed his calculating gaze toward an even dingier back room, taking in a small band of foot soldiers playing at cards. Devington noted his comrade's less-than-latent interest.
"Infantry," Drake humphed, scrutinizing the company more closely. "Devington," he asked, "do my eyes deceive me, or might it be our old chum Prescott?"
"Prescott, you say?" Devington grimaced. "I had hoped never again to cross paths with that blighter."
"Are you so poor spirited as that?" The Major grinned wickedly.
Robert refused the bait. He replied with another yawn, "I don't guess to know what you're about, old man, but I'm nigh fagged to death."
"It's bad form to go to the races with empty pockets," Drake chided.
"My pockets, although lean, are not yet empty. However, I know of no surer way to hasten that inevitability than to gamble what I have following little sleep and much stout. You're on your own, old chap; I shan't join you in your sport this night." Somewhat unsteadily, he rose to his feet.
"I find to the contrary that the prospect of sport has given me a second wind." Philip cracked his knuckles.
"On the morrow, then." Robert sighed, staggering to the staircase and up to their room.
"Oh, I daresay I shan't be detained overlong." Philip laughed and swaggered toward the back room.
It was midmorning and Christmas Eve Day before the deeply slumbering men finally roused.
The first to wake, Robert blinked in an effort to orient himself. "Sheffield," he mumbled, remembering where he was. His critical gaze took in their less-than-pristine accommodations. "We must have been completely fagged," he remarked disparagingly and rose stiffly from the hard bed.
"What are you muttering?" Philip muttered. "And don't I recall already having this conversation about rising before the cock? Damme if one of us remembered it."
"Philip, it must be near noon. We'd best be about our business."
"Your business awaits, Devington, not mine. I took care of mine last night. While you counted your Yorkshire sheep, I perchance fleeced mine." He chuckled. "Fleeced them but good, I might say. As I stated earlier, 'tis poor form to attend a race without a farthing. Makes a very bad impression."
"Glad Lady Luck was on your side, Philip. Just remember she's fickle. You can only hope she returns to you at the track."
"No fear, man. I've never wanted for a lady. She'll return. She may even bring her twin, Lady of Fortune. I've always fancied a threesome." He chuckled again.
"Reprobate."
"The boot fits just fine," he quipped, customarily getting the last word.
"I do have important business to attend this morning, a long overdue call, so to speak. Would you be offended should I not ask you to accompany me? When I return, we can continue on to Doncaster."
"Don't fear for me, ole chum. I shall contrive to entertain myself. Perhaps our friend Prescott remains?" The devilish grin reappeared.
"Are you determined to cross swords with him again? He has company this time," Devington warned.
"You need not fret for my safety. He's proven himself no better swordsman on foot than on horse."
"So you say? And a poor loser as well, by the sound of it," Robert replied with mixed exasperation and relief. Turning to his ablutions, he approached the cracked and tarnished mirror at the dressing table, noting his disheveled appearance with a decided grimace. Discovering no water with which to wash or shave, he rang for the chambermaid.
Several rings and nearly twenty minutes later, the call was answered by the same voluptuous bar-cum-chambermaid who had tended the taproom the prior evening. Sizing them both up and down, she inquired in seductive tones, "And 'ow may I serve you 'ansome gents?" Placing a special emphasis on serve, Maggie directed Philip a wicked look, leaving no question as to her meaning.
While Philip quirked a brow in her direction, Robert ignored the exchange, answering, "Hot water, miss. I should very much like some hot water in which to wash and shave." He would have preferred a bath but knew such a request would be ludicrous in their present abode.
"Oh, I'll gladly wash and shave ya, Cap'n." The girl winked knowingly at Philip.
"Cheeky wench," Philip returned with a wicked gleam.
Robert retorted in his growing impatience, "No need to put yourself out, miss."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Philip drawled. "Maggie here can put herself out as she well pleases."
"I've pressing business and should like to be on my way. I've no further time to waste," Robert retorted and tromped out.
Ignoring Devington's outburst and fitful departure, Maggie cast her siren's gaze on Philip. With her hips sashaying, she slowly approached until they stood breast to chest, thigh to thigh. Placing both hands on Philip's shoulders, she gently but firmly pushed him back into a nearby chair and shamelessly rucked her skirts to straddle his thighs. Pressing her half-exposed breasts into his face, she breathed wantonly into his ear, "Now 'ow did you want your shave, Cap'n?"
Robert arrived agitated at Heathstead Hall. The morning had not begun well, and he still had no plan. Uncertain of his reception in the best of circumstances, he was chagrinned to appear the worse for wear. Yet unshaven and unkempt, he was in no state to call on Charlotte, let alone petition Sir Garfield.
Thankfully it was two o'clock, the traditional teatime at Heathstead Hall. He was unlikely to be seen by anyone at this time of day, outside of a groom or possibly Charles, his friend from boyhood, whose discretion he could trust. With relative confidence he could escape detection, he cautiously circled the house, sneaking to the backside of the stables where he hoped to find a champion for his cause in his old friend, Jeffries. But as fortune---or he thought more aptly, misfortune---would have it, he was startled by a familiar voice crooning in hypnotic tones to her mare.
"And how goes it today, my lovely? I will have you know I risked a capital offense on your behalf by absconding with sugar cubes from the teacart. I fear Beatrix will be exceedingly vexed to have no sugar for her tea today." Charlotte giggled at her mischief while Amoret eagerly devoured the contraband.
Drawn to her voice, Robert slunk into the adjacent stall. Even awareness of his scruff appearance could not keep him from her. "Charlotte," he whispered.
Startled, she spun around, spying no one. "Who's there?" she cried.
"It's me, Robert," answered a low voice. "Is anyone else about?"
"Robert!" she exclaimed breathlessly, her eyes searching the stable. "Robert! Where are you?"
"I'm in the next box. Is anyone else about?" he asked cautiously.
"Why, no. B-but why are you hiding in the stables? You have not deserted!"
"No, Charlotte." He spoke in a louder whisper. "'Tis nothing like that; I simply need to speak privily with you."
"We are alone at present," she reassured him. "I have dismissed the groom. There is none here but me, but I haven't long before I am missed for tea. Pray show yourself. I must see you!"
He rose cautiously. "If we don't have much time, I must come directly to my purpose. I have need of your assistance, Char---" Stupefied, he gained his first vision of Charlotte in nearly two years. He gaped at the young woman standing before him.
Gone were the girlish braids and boy's breeches to which he was accustomed. Instead, there stood a vision before him. Her golden brown hair was elegantly coiffed under a frilled bonnet, and her cousin's ill-fitting garb had been exchanged for the snugly fit gown that revealed the transformation of his reedy little waif into a curvaceous young woman.
As incredulous as Robert was at Charlotte's metamorphosis, she was equally thunderstruck at her first sight of this scruffily handsome captain. She stared back at him with luminous eyes.
"Robert." She breathed his name, breaking the silence that held them. He, however, still gaped, to her increasing discomfiture. "You needn't look so surprised." She blushed furiously. "It was bound to happen, sooner or later---becoming a lady, that is. I had no choice," she protested. "Aunt Felicia and Beatrix...," she rambled on breathily.
Robert took her face in his hands, and her babbling abruptly ceased.
His kiss, swift and fierce, was unexpected and unnerving. His lips, simultaneously hard and soft, moved over hers and created ineffable sensations. Initially shocked to her core, Charlotte's response had been unschooled, but ardent. With growing understanding, she parted her lips and entwined her arms tightly about his neck.
Robert responded by deepening their kiss, and with this first real taste of her, experienced a quickening of desire. Charlotte sighed and leaned intimately closer, her soft curves now hugging his aroused body. Robert's mind ran rampant; he was becoming more lost to rational thought with every stroke of their tongues. They were alone and perilously near a large pile of clean straw... He shook the fog rapidly filling his brain and abruptly broke the embrace.
Weak-kneed, breathless, and bewildered, Charlotte regarded him with wounded, wide-eyed disappointment.
He took her hands in response to her unspoken question and raised them tenderly to his lips. "My love, I am come with an honorable proposition."
Cautiously quitting the stables, Charlotte scurried to the house for tea, and afterwards, waylaid Charles. Robert had judged his boyhood friend correctly. Charles was eagerly conscripted to play his part.
Next, after escaping to her room, Charlotte called for Letty and breathlessly divulged their plot.
Once enlisted, Letty snuck off to Jeffries's cottage to prepare Robert a bath. Jemmy was only too keen to join the conspirators and served as sentry over the stable yard.
After undressing and handing off his boots and less-than-pristine uniform, Robert bathed and shaved while Letty and Charlotte sponged, pressed, and polished all back to its former glory.
By five of the clock, bedecked in scarlet regimentals, adorned with the blue cuffs and facings designating the King's Horse, and with the gleaming captain's gorget adorning his neck, Robert Devington was every bit the resplendent officer. Mounting his charger, he decamped the stable via a hidden path and circled around to the front drive. Thence he reentered the gate and cued the eager gray into a springing piaffe. Dancing up the drive with proudly arched neck, the stallion carried the captain to the great house.
Charles, as planned, espied his erstwhile friend and alerted the remaining household of the hero's arrival. "Mother, Father, Beatrix," he said, summoning them, "'tis Devington returned, and a Captain of the Horse, no less!"
Charlotte, her aunt, and Beatrix swiftly quit the parlor, with the ensuing commotion interrupting Sir Garfield's afternoon coze. The baronet grumbled a diatribe on why a man could never find peace in his own home, only to be startled to full wakefulness by feminine exclamations of admiration and wonderment.
Hefting his ponderous bulk from his favorite chair, Sir Garfield threw his wig on askew and grabbed his silver-handled cane before lumbering out to investigate the hullabaloo that had his household in a tumult. He was stunned to see Devington on his prancing charger.
"What? Devington a captain? How is this possible?" Sir Garfield exclaimed in disgruntled astonishment that was soon overcome by fascination with the captain's horse.
Robert swiftly dismounted as Jemmy appeared to take charge of the captain's horse.
"Just a moment, boy." Sir Garfield stayed the groom. "Let's have a better look at this horse."
Sir Garfield ran his appraising eye over every line and muscle with grudging admiration, and the co-conspirators exchanged knowing looks.
"A fine looking animal, Devington. Might I ask how you have come by such a specimen?"
Devington nodded to Jemmy to take the charger off to the stables. "Spoils of war, one might say," he replied glibly.
"Is he indeed? You've seen action, then?"
"My Sixth Troop was among those at Dettingen."
"Survived the battle, did you?" Sir Garfield asked rhetorically. "You intend to make a career of it, I presume."
"Indeed, I do, sir."
"Then what draws you back to Yorkshire?" He watched intently for any subtle exchange between the captain and his niece. "'Tis a long way from any garrison."
"Homesick, one might say. I've been away for too long, and with a for'night's leave, I couldn't bear to spend the holidays in cramped London barracks."
"Can't say I blame you, but I didn't expect to see you return. Leastwise not hale and whole," Sir Garfield said callously and cast another glance at his niece. Charlotte, playing her part, appeared dispassionate, the very picture of decorum.
"Then I beg forgiveness for disappointing you, sir."
"Sir Garfield," interrupted Lady Felicia, endeavoring to vitiate the growing tension, "you may continue to grill the poor boy after dinner. I insist he join us. After all, 'tis Christmas Eve, and Devington was nearly one of us for a number of years."
"Indeed, madam, indeed," Sir Garfield grudgingly acceded. Lady Felicia called her housekeeper and cook to prepare another place.
Robert considered the condescending tone of the invitation, meant to remind him of his station. It rankled.
"Indeed, Mama!" Beatrix chimed with affected adulation. "How dashing our Robert is become! And a captain so quickly. Our own dearest Robert must recount all of the battle of Gettinden."
"I believe that was Dettingen, Beatrix," her brother corrected.
Unrebuffed, Beatrix cast a hand to her breast. "How stirring to have a war hero among us!"
Though seething at her cousin's conduct, for her uncle's benefit, Charlotte displayed only polite interest in their exchange.
Observing Charlotte's detachment, Sir Garfield heaved an inner sigh that the enforced time and distance between the would-be lovers had finally made the cure. He refocused, with growing alarm, on Beatrix's display of coquetry as she led Captain Devington by the arm to the drawing room.
Surprisingly, conversation was far from stilted. The ladies desired to hear all about the sights and events in London. The gentlemen, having read several newspaper reports of Dettingen, were keen for a firsthand account.
"I just don't countenance this war with the French," Sir Garfield remarked, "while we had every reason to make war with Spain, with those infernal Spanish boarding and seizing our ships and destroying our trade! Wars are necessary to protect our commerce, but what is the point in spilling English blood for Hanover?"
Robert answered, "We entered the war to honor our treaty with Austria and protect her sovereignty. Without our deterring presence, Frederick of Prussia would have long since taken Silesia and Bohemia. And if the French resent our actions enough to threaten our king's Hanover, are we not as obligated to protect it?"
"Hanover!" the baronet scoffed. "The King uses the French threat to strengthen his German Electorate with British resources. Englishmen are sick to death of Hanover!"
"I confess your sentiments have permeated our army, sir," Robert said. "Field Marshal Stair and the Duke of Marlborough took umbrage to the King's preference for his German generals over his English counsel, and have both resigned."
"If Stair and Marlborough have both resigned, who then is to command?" Charles asked.
"At the moment, Lieutenant-general Honeywood is acting commander in chief, Colonel Churchill has the infantry, and Colonel Ligonier of the Black Horse Dragoons has overall command of the cavalry."
"Ligonier, you say? Didn't he fight the last Spanish war under Marlborough?"
"Indeed. He is a most able man. His Black Horse Dragoons were virtually surrounded by French and fought their way through the enemy lines at Dettingen. The colonel narrowly escaped capture. His Majesty later conferred upon him the honor of knight banneret, but the most compelling tale is that of Cornet Henry Richardson, who suffered thirty-seven wounds defending the company's standard."
"Thirty-seven? Good God!" Charles exclaimed.
"Incredibly, the man survived. He was presented the same bloodstained standard in honor of his exceptional valor."
The captain then spoke of the ball the Austrian general D'Aremburg had taken in the shoulder, and the Duke of Cumberland's leg wound, received at the hands of his own Austrian infantryman who mistook him for a French officer. Lastly he spoke of those fallen in battle.
Growing bored and truculent at the lack of attention, Beatrix lowered her napkin to her lap and reached under the table to stroke Robert's thigh.
Robert choked on his wine.
"Dear Robert, how overwrought you are," she exclaimed, all innocence. "And you are far too reticent about yourself. Pray recount how you earned your captaincy," she prettily appealed.
Robert maintained a somewhat stilted flow of conversation while restoring Beatrix's roving hand to her own lap, and detailed the battle, but resisted the temptation to expound and boast of his heroics.
Sir Garfield was keen to hear more of Cumberland, who at the tender age of one-and-twenty had so proven himself under fire.
"He behaved as bravely as any man could have, and the men rallied just to have him so near. They even sing his praises." Grinning, Robert broke out in tuneless song:
"Then rode up Billy the bold Who ne'er was tried before
And shewd he came out of the mouldThat could fight as well as wereFor he bravely faced the foeAnd fought by his father's side
When his leg with a ball was pierced through Smart money my boys he cry'd."
Entertained thus, an hour passed and then two, prompting the ladies to withdraw and leave the men to their drink.
All having played out as Robert hoped, he waited for the conversation to turn to Sir Garfield's passion: his horses.
"They'll be soon getting ready for the spring season in Doncaster," Charles prompted, as they had earlier rehearsed.
"Will they indeed? Who will you be running this year, Sir Garfield?"
The baronet lit up at the chance to boast of the new addition to his stables. "I've Rascallion in training. He's half brother to the mare Rosie, who won herself a life of leisure in King Louis's stables."
"I well recall the mare. You believe the colt is as promising?"
"Indeed. Shows great potential, though Jeffries is loath to run him yet. Says he's not ready. But at four years old, I say he should be tried."
"You intend to run him at Doncaster, then?"
"Got my eye on Newmarket wi' this one! He'll be a contender for the King's Plate, mark my words. Grisewood's Bolton Starling son, a fouryear-old called by Teazer, is in training at Doncaster. He was first in the King's Plate at Ipswich, and I hear he's to run at Newmarket come the spring season. I've a mind to see my Rascallion put Grisewood in his place. The colt just needs a trial to prepare him."
"As it so happens," Robert segued, "I've a mind to have a go at it."
"You plan to race? But you have no horse!"
"No? I refer to the gray charger. I believe he has the fire in his veins."
Sir Garfield sputtered at the notion. "A daft notion if I ever heard one, a war charger on the track!"
"I beg to differ. Mars is a stallion in his prime, and there's not a beast with more heart. He'll run or he'll die in the doing. I'd bet my all on it."
"Betting now, are you?"
"Are they running Saturday on the moor?" Robert inquired with studied nonchalance.
"Aye, weather permitting."
"Then I shall take Mars out for an airing, and we'll match anyone who shows."
"Ye'd best pray that none show, then!" Sir Garfield chortled. "Ye'll surely lose your shirt, and seeing that it belongs to His Majesty..."
Robert ignored the cut and replied with deliberate sang froid, "Then perhaps you would care to make a gentleman's wager? I challenge you, Sir Garfield, to a match race. My Mars against any of your prized bloodstock."
"What? A wager against your charger? A ridiculous vagary!"
"Is it so? Only a moment ago you said Rascallion was in need of a trial, and here I present the perfect opportunity."
"You think to challenge me?" Sir Garfield retorted. "For years I've bred the finest, and you think to best my horse? Presumptuous pup!" He snorted in contempt.
"Indeed I do, sir. If you're so confident of your horses, you have nothing to lose."
"Lose? I should not lose! Just what would you propose to wager, Devington?" he asked snidely.
"I should like to propose a breeding to your Darley mare Amoret. I've a mind to try Mars in the breeding shed, if he proves himself a runner, and I've always favored that mare. If my horse wins, I should like a foal out of her."
"And when you receive your sound thrashing, instead?" Sir Garfield challenged.
"I should propose the same; however, the resulting offspring would, of course, be yours. 'Tis a free breeding for you. You confessed admiration for the stallion. 'Twould be a fair wager."
"Ah," Sir Garfield said, ruminating, "but delayed gratification, you see; and what would I care for a horse of unknown blood?" He paused. "You may not be aware that Parliament has now prohibited any racing wager of less than fifty pounds. If you are so hell-bent to race, Devington, I'll accept your breeding wager, supplemented by fifty guineas." He regarded Devington shrewdly, anticipating a refusal.
"Then I accept your wager, sir." Devington's words were confidently if rashly spoken.
Sir Garfield sat back in his chair, considering the proposition further. "Charles will run Rascallion." Though he knew Charles to be no match to Devington in the saddle, he believed his colt so vastly superior that he would win regardless of the rider.
"But Jeffries says he's not ready," Charles protested, prompting Robert to raise a curious brow.
"Jeffries be hung!" Sir Garfield retorted. "'Twill be a good trial for both of you, before you ride him in the King's Plate in spring. I'll not suffer humiliation again as we did last May in Malton when you insisted on riding Old Screw. He was no match for the company. Routh's Frolic took the first race, Witty's gelding, Raffler, the second, and the Duke of Perth's Chance stole the third. You will ride Rascallion, Charles."
"If we are agreed," Robert prompted, "we shall meet at Doncaster Heath, Saturday next at ten o'clock."
"You may look forward to a lesson in humility, Devington." Sir Garfield's eyes gleamed at the prospect. "Think I'll retire on that note." Sir Garfield hefted his ample girth from the chair. "Charles will see you out." He nodded to the captain.
While they lingered over their drinks, Charles voiced his qualms about opposing Jeffries and running Rascallion. Knowing Sir Garfield's actions would prove to his advantage, Robert refrained from comment and diverted Charles back to talk of the war.
"I so envy you, Robert. If only I could join up," Charles said wistfully. "I've been tempted many times to go against the old man, but then I remind myself of my duty as the only son to conform to his wishes."
"'Tis not the adventure and romance you imagine, Charles. I would gladly trade shoes with you."
"But you at least had the freedom to choose for yourself, while my entire life is plotted out for me. Sometimes I wonder if I can bear it."
"I fully understand your yen to choose your own destiny. Is it not every man's God-given right to do so?" With this parting thought, Robert called for his horse and bade his old friend good night.
Robert had been perfectly satisfied that his plan had played out to perfection, until Sir Garfield had raised the stakes. Fifty guineas was still a paltry bet by racing standards, but Sir Garfield had done it only to put him in his place. He would have known it was a hefty wager for a captain. The sum represented more than a quarter's wage, and that was before the army deducted his allowances for food, lodging, and forage for his horse.
Robert had barely two farthings to rub together, let alone fifty guineas in hand. The combined value of his possessions would barely cover the bet, and a loss would mean selling his horse to cover it.
But, finally having a plan, nothing would now deter Robert from his purpose. He was resolved to see it through to the bitter end.
"We'd best be victorious, old man," he said to Mars, "or our partnership shall be very shortlived."
A ROGUE'S HEART
T he next morning, Robert and Philip rode twenty miles to Doncaster. While Robert hoped to secure less shabby accommodations whilst preparing Mars for his run, Philip hoped the change of venue might provide opportunity to survey the field for his prospective heiress.
Arriving at the Black Lion in Firbeck, they found a large, welllit taproom with two roaring fireplaces filled with the aromas of hearty Christmas fare. They feasted on goose, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, game pie, several bottles of Portuguese wine, and various puddings and sweetmeats.
Having satisfied his appetite for food, Philip surveyed the room in his quest to gratify his near-consuming craving for sport. Philip pushed back from the table and sprawled in his chair. His keen eyes perused their surroundings, much as a predator stalking prey, but discovered little potential in the occupants of the taproom: a pair of elderly spinsters, an ancient who appeared deaf, and a genteel middle-aged couple.
Philip eyed the last gentleman and speculatively rolled a pair of dice between his long fingers, considering if he might offer a game of cards or dice. He promptly discarded the notion when he witnessed the gent meekly receiving an earful from his shrewish wife.
"Sir Horace," the woman sharply addressed the man, who dumbly studied the fire, "Did you even attend to one word I said?"
"N-no, my dearest. Ah... I mean, yes, my love."
She glared at him. "Here we are stuck at a horrid little tavern in the middle of nowhere on Christmas all because of your negligence! And if that odious public coach hadn't come along, we might well have frozen to death! Here I am once again obliged to make the most out of pitiful circumstances."
Sir Horace mumbled agreement about making the best of it, and redirected his morose stare to the hearth.
"But I expect it will all be soon forgotten. It is Christmas, after all. The time of giving." Her formerly acid tone was suddenly cloying. She regarded her husband expectantly.
"Uhm... er... ah... as to that my dear," he said visibly flustered, "with such an untoward event, and the numerous baggage we transferred..."
"Do you mean to say you have nothing for me?"
"No, my dearest. Of course not, my sweet, but I might have left it in the carriage, you see. One small parcel was all too easy to lose track of."
"One tiny parcel? When I have given the best years of my life attending your every need? And you lost it!" she exclaimed in indignation.
Listening to this exchange, Philip could no longer contain himself. "Good God, woman! You carry on like a common fishwife! What more do you want? You're warm and housed, safe from harm. You are undeniably well fed," he added, sizing her up. "You will retire to a clean and comfortable bed, and your equipage will be repaired. What more can you expect of a man?" The harridan's jaw dropped, shocked to the core at such unspeakable effrontery.
"And you, sir!" He addressed the gentleman with even greater vehemence. "Where the bloody hell are your ballocks? What the devil kind of example are you, behaving like an accursed sheep and allowing this... harpy (being the mildest word that came to mind) to emasculate the lot of us! Damme, if 'tis not enough to strike terror into any soul contemplating matrimony!"
His point made, Philip threw down his napkin in disgust, grabbed a bottle of wine, and quit the taproom for the peace and solitude of his chamber.
Robert made a hasty apology for his friend's erratic behavior and quickly beat his own retreat before the woman recovered enough to shriek her indignation. He forthwith joined Philip and kicked off his boots to slump into the second chair by the hearth.
"Dare I ask what that was about?" he asked his brooding companion.
"Mayhap I overstepped a notch, but damme if I could witness that spectacle any longer! To think I was actually contemplating the connubial state. God only knows what I was thinking. A king's ransom in dowry could never compensate for that!"
"What you witnessed, dear fellow, was obviously a loveless union. And 'tis likely what you will have if you seek marriage solely to increase your wealth. In my lowly world, people mostly marry for love and live quite happily. Some in poverty, but happily, nonetheless. You might consider it, Drake."
"Lovely sentiments, but what point is there in leg-shackling if not for gain? There is verily no advantage for me to face the same woman, day after day, year after year. Like this wine," he mused, inspecting the bottle, "'tis adequate for this occasion, but would I chose to imbibe the same every meal? I think not when there are so many other vintages to sample."
"Can you not even imagine a woman to whom you could be devoted?" The question, earnestly posed, received a scoffing reply.
"I hold no such illusions. Monogamy? Monotony? Daresay I confuse the two. Aphrodite herself could not entice me to the altar without a large dowry."
"Then you have my pity. In all your experience of women, you have yet to know love."
Philip's lips suddenly formed a grim, hard line. "What do you know of my life? I have indeed known what you call love, but my experience is far removed from your chimera, Devington."
Scowling into the fire, Drake continued. "I was barely twenty when I met a young widow of my father's acquaintance. She was nearly ten years my senior and bent on making up for a decade of lost youth while married to a doddering old man.
"I was completely smitten, and she was more than willing to initiate me to manhood. In time, I became nothing more than her pining lackey, while she regarded me as little more than an indulged pet.
"I found no such bliss as you ascribe to love, only regret and selfdisgust. I had no contentment, no peace, only an intense jealousy of her affection, a restless angst, and a gut-wrenching vulnerability greatly exceeding anything I have encountered on the battlefield."
He took another long swig from the mouth of the bottle, continuing bitterly, "In my blind passion, I offered her love, eternal devotion, and even... my name, but she was too contemptuous of my proposal even to reply. After the affair lost its novelty, the jade cast me off. The anguish of the entire affair, by far, outweighed its pleasures. I grow maudlin," he stated with distaste, "'tis undoubtedly the wine." He grimaced and examined the bottle. "Empty," he said and tossed it away, along with his dredged-up memories.
The morning mist was still rolling over the heath as Robert and Mars rode to the Doncaster Common that served as the official racetrack, but he was unprepared for the amassing crowd. Spotting Drake and anxious to discover what had incited such a mob, he hailed the conspicuous crimson-clad figure threading his way toward the field.
"Appears I'm in luck today, Devington." Philip grinned. "The fine weather has presented a much-anticipated match race between the local champion and a new contender. Mayhap we should put your extensive knowledge of Yorkshire horseflesh to some good use?"
"How so?" Devington asked warily.
"Apparently a certain Mr. Martindale of North Yorkshire has a score to settle with the honorable Mr. Grisewood. 'Tis reported that Grisewood's Teazer soundly trounced two of Martindale's best runners this season past, and Martindale, unable to resign himself to such sound defeat, has issued a new challenge. What do you know of this Teazer?"
"Teazer, you say? I recall the horse from when I apprenticed at John Croft's stud in Barforth. He's by Bolton Starling, but one would be easily deceived by the look of him. 'Tis perhaps the secret to Grisewood's success."
"How so?"
"Teazer is remarkable for being so unremarkable. He stands barely thirteen-two. Though he appears the antithesis of a running blood, what the tiny giant lacks in stature, he well compensates in speed. He established a formidable reputation on the track. His first year out he won at Carlisle, again at Durham, and Grantham, and finally the King's Plate at Ipswich. He trounced a number of good horses."
"So you say?" Drake listened attentively and remarked, "Yet our worthy Martindale, who assuredly knows his competition, challenges him. The man is either supremely confident or a fool." He directed another inquiry to his companion. "Which would you wager, Devington?"
"I would first know whom he plans to run."
"'Tis a Godolphin son, called by Regulus."
"Regulus, by Godolphin? Though I've not seen the colt, he's likely the half brother to Lancaster's Starling, Martindale's favorite. If Martindale has the aphoristic axe to grind, 'twould be curious for him to run the lesser of the pair. Gives one pause for reflection, does it not?"
"My notion precisely, especially as Martindale appears too impatient to wait until spring for his payback and even meets Teazer on his home training grounds."
"Then I anticipate the devil of a run today." Devington gestured at the throng anxious to lay their odds. "Surely fortunes great and small will be wagered over a four-mile gallop."
"I swore I heard from your own lips that you never play the horses."
"Oh, I'm not here to place a bet. I told you earlier I had business in Doncaster."
"I thought your business involved a woman. You made no mention of racing."
"It's a complicated matter. My purpose is related to both, but it appears my own appointment will be delayed this morning."
"Indeed? And just what appointment is this?"
Although initially reluctant to reveal his true purpose, Robert unfurled the events of the previous day. Philip was at once intrigued and amused. "This is your mysterious business? A racing wager?"
"But there is much more to this than the horse race." Robert expounded on his plan, to return to Heathstead Hall in spring to breed the mare and pursue formal courtship of Charlotte.
"So it is actually a wager for love." Drake laughed. "Your purpose is only to ingratiate yourself to the lady's uncle in the belief that he will then accept your suit?"
"Something to that effect," Robert answered. "I sought to turn his racing obsession to my advantage."
"Must admit I've heard of stranger bets, but your reasoning may be somewhat flawed, my friend."
"What do you mean?" Robert asked.
"If you win, what makes you think the blighter will favor your suit? You take altogether the wrong approach. Marriage among the landed class is a business arrangement made to each family's mutual advantage. The purpose is to advance one's standing. You might ask yourself what you bring to the negotiating table, Devington. What do you have to offer Sir Garfield in exchange for this precious commodity, his niece?"
"In truth, Drake, I have nothing at present but a promise to love, protect, and care for Charlotte. I'll never be a rich man, but her dowry and the eventual sale of my commission should afford us a modest living. We might even endeavor to breed some horses of our own, Charlotte and I."
"Though I regret to burst your bubble, the man undoubtedly has plans to marry his niece off to someone of consequence, someone who can advance his agenda. An impoverished earl, perhaps? It happens every bloody day," he stated cynically. "Besides, if he is so averse to losing a race, the very sight of you will remind him of his disgrace. 'Tis hardly the way to ingratiate yourself."
Considering Drake's arguments against his plan, Robert realized the flaw in his thinking. In consternation, he asked," Now that you raze my only plan, I'm compelled to ask if you've any better strategy?"
Philip mused a moment. "Why not give the man what he wants, the victory he craves?"
"You propose I should lose the race?"
"Perhaps. It's only a thought, ludicrous though it may seem. If it's the man's goodwill you desire..." Philip shrugged. "Consider, if you should concede the race to him, he might respond altruistically, the magnanimous victor and all that rot. In such a moment, he might be more disposed to attend to your plea."
Robert hesitated. "I see your point, but this alternative creates a bit of a snag."
"Indeed?" he asked sardonically. "Just how much is this snag going to cost?"
"Just how lucky were you at the cards the other night?"
"Lady Luck bestowed her graces generously," Philip drawled.
"If I am to lose, I need fifty guineas."
"Fifty guineas!" Philip hooted. "A bloody gentlemen's wager! Hardly worth the trouble."
"Unless you're living on a captain's wages," Robert said dolefully.
Realization dawned on the major. "Are you mad, Devington? You challenged the man without the funds to back your bet?"
"I had no intention of losing, but now you suggest a significant deviation from my prior plan. Whether I win or lose, I shall return to breed Mars to the mare. The difference is who shall own the resulting foal. At least he agreed to that much before he upped the ante. So now 'tis just the matter of the money, should I lose."
"But I contest that you risk all you have in this infernal wager. There are much easier ways up a woman's petticoat. Have you learned nothing in my presence, man?"
"Be wary how you tread, Drake," Robert remarked with a deathly glower.
"What, are you now going to call me out?" He laughingly dismissed the notion. "I fail to understand why you have made this ludicrous wager."
"For Charlotte; I intend to have Charlotte!" Robert cried.
"Not if you end up in debtor's prison. I credited you with more sense."
"I'll cover it. If nothing else, I'll sell Mars."
"The devil you will!" Philip rebuked him. "Just how do you expect to return to the Horse Guards without a horse? You've lost all sense! In the interest of your sanity, if not for your professed devotion, I'll back your infernal bet... if I'm able."
"What do you mean, if you're able? You just said you were lucky at cards."
"Indeed I was, but I've wagered it all on the first race, ole chap. Just have to wait and see what this newcomer Regulus is made of."
Robert awaited the start of the race, knowing his fate was in the balance.
As the starting time approached, spectators to the private match drew in to the track in keen anticipation, with the breeders, owners, and local gentry finding reserved places on a raised dais overlooking the field. The other spectators milled about, seeking the best vantage point, and the contenders were led in.
Mr. Grisewood and Mr. Martindale had agreed that the single heat of four miles, two furlongs, was sufficient to trial the newcomer, Regulus, against the more seasoned runner, Teazer. The gleaming, snorting fifteen-one-hand copper chestnut took his position first at the starting post, appearing to tower over the diminutive Teazer, who innocuously resembled a prancing gray pony being led up to the start. Once at the post, both horses eyed each other, snorting, dancing, and tossing their heads. Their nostrils flared, and every visible muscle tensed in acute anticipation. Their riders balanced precariously on the restless mounts and edged closer to the mark.
With the signal, the horses launched forward in unison, surging forth and grunting their exertions with every stride. As they thundered past the crowd, their ironshod hooves hammered the ground. Down the track, they fought neck and neck along the rail. They pounded down the turf, and clods of earth became projectiles in all directions.
In the first pass, the panting animals flashed by the frantic spectators, shoulder to shoulder, in a blaze of gleaming sinew. They rounded the bend. Teazer was visibly slipping, but every bit the fighter, he brought all to bear and rallied valiantly to regain the fore. Eyes glazing and mouth foaming, he pressed on. His jockey urged him furiously, but Regulus gained by inches, soon by feet, then by yards. By the final bend, Teazer's supreme efforts had waned. The game was up for Teazer, and in the end, he proved no match for the leggy chestnut, who easily breezed him by. Regulus gleaned a clean victory.
With the defeat of the local champion, moans of agony overcame roars of triumph. Mr. Martindale, however, was not alone in his ecstasy.
"Looks like I've more than enough blunt to go around." The jubilant major clapped a hand on his companion's back. "I'll back your bet, Devington. Just tell me which way the race is to be run."
Devington considered his answer. "I suppose I am about to run a losing race."
"Then when I double my winnings on your race, your debt to me shall be quite forgiven."
"How so?"
"How do you think?" He grinned. "I plan to bet against you."
"Opportunistic bounder," Robert mumbled, watching his comrade swagger off to place his "sure bet."
At ten o'clock, the riders checked in, with the horses being weighted by age and size. Rascallion, the younger, carried ten stone, while Robert's mount, perforce, carried twelve. The single heat of three miles was shorter than normal but also gauged to equalize the age difference of the contenders.
This anticlimactic challenge of two unknowns, following Teazer-- Regulus, drew few but the most die-hard spectators. Among them, Sir Garfield awaited the celebration of his assured victory, while Charlotte watched expectantly, absorbing the final preparations and the horses advancing to the start. With intense concentration, she unconsciously angled forward, her hands clenched in her lap. In her mind's eye, she was positioned to ride.
As the gentleman jockeys came forth, Jeffries made his way to his young master's side. His instructions were tersely spoken. "If'n ye hope to ride him to the finish, Master Charles, ye'd do well to give me yer ridin' crop. This 'un be none too fond o' it." Without comment, Charles handed the object to the trainer. "And don't ye be too generous wi' the spur neither, or this horse will run the race wi'out ye," Jeffries warned him ominously.
Already nervous, Charles struggled to maintain control over the unruly chestnut, who jigged sideways and thrashed his way to the start.
Conversely, Robert cued Mars quietly, almost imperceptibly, and the horse pawed the ground, arched his powerful neck, and locked his gaze intently on the horizon. He sensed that Mars had coiled, akin to a spring. The horse was prepared to launch.
Awaiting the signal, Robert and Charles slanted over their horses' necks. Their fingers tightly threaded the reins. Their legs locked in position.
The starter signaled. Mars exploded like a lightning bolt, with greater power and speed than Robert could have imagined. Wholly engaging his hindquarters, he stretched forward. Running nearly nose to earth, in a peculiar style of his own, he drove forth with an astonishing intensity that left Rascallion in the dust.
Fearful after Jeffries's instruction to give any direction to his horse, Charles rode as little more than a passenger, not caring who crossed the line first, as long as he remained horsed.
With the finish in sight, Robert was at once euphoric and dismayed. Rascallion was truly a good runner, so he had counted on a challenge, had hoped for a good fight, but never in his wildest dreams had he envisaged such a blistering start. Mars, never trained or tried to race, had already such a strong lead that no attempt to pull him up would go unremarked.
Robert's only option: submit to the will of his steed and chase the wind to the finish.
He relaxed the loop of rein through his fingers, leaned forward, stomach to withers, with his face to the wind-whipped mane, and held on for the ride, resigned to face the music later.
The race called without question. Mars had completely distanced his challenger and was the clear champion. Sir Garfield watched agog, with his greatest hopes, pinned on his best prospect, torn asunder.
Philip was nearly purple with suppressed fury. "Incredible! Simply bloody incredible! What in the devil's name are you about, Devington?" He glowered once he was capable of forming coherent speech.
"It didn't play out as I intended. Honestly, Philip. I knew he would make a good show, but by the time I realized what a lead we had, the race was nigh run. What else could I do?"
"I lost a bloody fortune on that race!"
"Perhaps we might yet turn this around," Robert offered hopefully.
"Just let it rest!"
"But I haven't told you about the mare."
"What do I care about the bloody mare?"
"Half of the wager was that I should breed Mars to one of Sir Garfield's mares. She's a daughter of Bartlett's Childers, and a good one, I tell you."
"I recall your fondness for this lineage," Philip remarked with little interest.
"The mare's a producer, Drake. Her first filly, White Rose, ran only one race and was sold to the king of France."
"I recall winning on that one," Philip remarked acerbically.
Ignoring the remark, Robert continued, "With the right stud, the right blood, we could produce an unbeatable champion."
"Precisely what has this to do with me?" he snapped.
"In for a penny, in for a pound? You fronted me the fifty guineas, so I propose a partnership. I offer you one-half ownership in the offspring."
"You propose half ownership in an unborn horse as repayment?"
"Surely a good racehorse is worth what you lost?"
"The horse would need be bloody Pegasus to cover what I lost! But let's have a look at this mare."
F ree to travel cross-country, the two officers preceded Sir Garfield's lumbering coach to Heathstead Hall by a full half hour. They dismounted in the stable yard, handed their horses off to the younger groom, and then proceeded to the house, where its mistress, who hadn't the least interest in horseracing, awaited her husband's return.
A footman led the gentlemen to the morning room, and Devington made the introductions. Lady Felicia eyed the major speculatively. "Drake?" she said, repeating the name. "I've a peculiar notion we've met before, but can't seem to place you."
"Having never before visited Yorkshire, madam, I might ask whether your family have perhaps any political connections? My father and brother are both in Parliament."
"No, Major, we do not. But 'tis of no moment. Undoubtedly 'twill come to me soon enough. Now, gentlemen," she continued, "would you care to join me for a dish of Bohea while we await our racing party? I had expected their arrival in time for tea but am disappointed again. Sir Garfield's horses seem to always take precedence."
The clattering outside announced Sir Garfield's arrival, whereby the two men took leave of the lady to greet the coach. They arrived outside just as the footman lowered the steps.
Though Philip had accompanied his friend only to provide moral support, he soon realized the serendipity of his decision when Beatrix made to alight from the carriage. Robert had come to claim his prize, but Philip now espied his own trophy in the baronet's daughter.
Unaware of the company, Beatrix said with a giggle over her shoulder, "What a vastly entertaining ride, Charles! I thought dearest Papa was in danger of apoplexy! I fail to comprehend all this ado over a silly little horse race."
Intercepting the footman, the major reached up to hand the lady out of the carriage. Beatrix's giggle died on her lips.
"So we meet again." Philip's voice was low and smooth but his lips smoother as they brushed her fingertips. Frozen, Beatrix blinked three times before her brain could process the vision or compose a response. Here stood the same man, the raffish captain, who had ridiculed her.
"'Twas the Lichfield races, was it not?" His eyes mocked even as his lips spoke the reminder of her humiliation by his hand.
She flushed, taken unawares, but recalling her vow of vengeance, she reclaimed her equanimity with an artful reply. "Are we acquainted, Major? I'm afraid I have not the least recollection of you."
"But I remember it well," Charles said, exiting the carriage. "'Tis the same chap who came to our rescue when we were entrenched in that devilish mud. Trixie, you must recall it," Charles insisted, soon joined by Sir Garfield and Charlotte.
"Regretfully, Major, the event signifies with my brother, but alas, my poor memory fails." Her vindictive glint belied the mendacious response.
Realizing her game, Philip suppressed a wicked chuckle. Hell hath no fury, eh? We'll just see about that. Beatrix had dropped the gauntlet, and Philip was not one to refuse a challenge.
With an infuriatingly rakish grin, Philip replied, "I am chagrinned, my lady, in having made such a poor and forgettable impression. A grievous discredit to my rank and station, for which I am compelled
to make amends."
Beatrix gave this man further study. Did he still mock her? She would surely exact vengeance for his scorn. She vowed to bring her charms to full measure. She would enslave him, make him beg as no man had ever begged. She would hold nothing back to achieve her aim: the complete degradation and utter humiliation of Philip Drake. Her decision made, she applied herself immediately and unreservedly to her purpose.
"Amends, you say?" She flashed her most beguiling smile and placed her hand on his sleeve, allowing him to lead her into the house.
Once inside, Charlotte and Beatrix excused themselves to change, and Sir Garfield withdrew to his study for a stiff drink, mumbling about settling the bet after tea.
Lady Felicia, abashed at her husband's inhospitality and less-thanconvivial manner, and secretly eager to further Beatrix's acquaintance with the major, ordered tea served in the solarium and then instructed a footman to prepare a chamber for the two men to refresh themselves.
Once in the privacy of the bedchamber, Philip ventured languidly, "Beatrix was none too concerned with her father's losses today."
"Beatrix? She's a vain and frivolous chit. She hasn't the least care for money, leastwise not the spending of it," Robert added dryly.
"But one would expect her to have more care for her dowry," Philip artfully segued to his purpose.
"She needn't worry on that account, I assure you."
"Do you indeed?"
"Nigh on twenty thousand, I've heard."
Philip's interest was decidedly piqued. "You do say, Devington? How reliable is your source?"
"Her cousin, Charlotte. Why the interest?"
"You promised heiresses, as I recall." Philip's indolent tone did nothing to assuage Robert's growing unease. He instinctively balked at Drake's setting his mercenary sights on Beatrix.
"I meant in Doncaster, not here at Heathstead Hall," Robert said.
"I beg to see the difference, and I daresay you owe me after your brilliant performance this morning."
Mortified by the truth, Robert suppressed any further protest.
Once retired to her chamber, Beatrix set about formulating her battle plan. She took particular pains with her toilette and selected her most flattering day gown. The pink silk bespoke innocence, but she bade Letty lace her stays as tightly as achievable, to display her bosom to best advantage.
With her blond curls newly coiffed, she rehearsed a sultry moue in the looking glass, and then an enticing smile, and rubbed her teeth for shine. Her vanity now well satisfied, she went to Charlotte's dressing room to ply her with questions.
"Charlotte, what do you know of this Major Drake? What has Robert said of him?"
Charlotte was surprised by her cousin's keen interest in the major. Beatrix had never shown sincere interest in any other gentleman. She answered warily.
"As an officer, Robert is in admiration of him. He has described the major as capable, competent, and brave. He exhibited great valor in battle. Outside of that, I know little of the man."
"But what do you know of his family?"
"I believe he is the son of an earl, but 'tis the limit of my knowledge."
"From a noble family?" Beatrix furrowed her brow. "But he has no title, Charlotte. Do you suppose he is heir to one? But then surely he would have introduced himself with at least a courtesy title such as Sir Philip Drake or Major Lord So-and-so, if he was heir to one. Even Charles, as first son of a baronet, is eligible for knighthood at his coming-of-age." She frowned again, posing the question almost to herself. "Since you are no help, I suppose I must make it my objective to discover for myself." And then make him grovel at my
feet for forgiveness.
Beatrix wafted gracefully into the solarium, gushing disingenuous apologies, just as Lady Felicia began pouring tea. Charlotte followed demurely in her wake.
Accepting the obvious bait, Major Drake complimented Beatrix on her charming appearance, but his appraising gaze spoke volumes more. Satisfied she had achieved her aim to fix his interest, Beatrix lowered her eyes coyly in a perfect imitation of a blush.
Observing the interaction, Charlotte and Robert exchanged skeptical looks.
Yet ill-humored from the race and completely oblivious to the exchange between his daughter and the major, Sir Garfield fixed his morose stare on Robert. "Well, now you've won your wager, what have you in mind regarding the mare?"
Considering for a moment, Robert replied, "I have a mind to breed her to Mars in the spring."
"'Twas pure happenstance, your taking the race," Sir Garfield grumbled crossly. "Rascallion's by far the superior horse. Must've been off today. Damned fluke it was, nothing more!"
"He's a fine colt, Sir Garfield. No doubt he was off," Robert amiably conceded.
"'Twasn't even a proper race, for that matter," Sir Garfield continued, gaining steam. "A proper race would have been four miles and three heats! That's the true test. The true runner has bottom; still runs with vigor at the end, don't you know. Four miles, three heats: that's the true test!"
"Indeed." Philip encouraged Sir Garfield, perceiving a golden opportunity, the proverbial gift horse about to raise its head, if he would take the bait. He winced at his mixed metaphors then prompted, "Perhaps, sir, a rematch is in order?"
"A rematch?" Robert eyed his comrade speculatively.
"Yes... yes, indubitably a rematch is in order," Sir Garfield
parroted.
"What do you propose, sir?" Robert asked cautiously, veiling his enthusiasm for Philip's stroke of brilliance.
"Yes. Indeed. A real race, b'God. Four miles, three heats."
Robert eyed him squarely. "I accept, Sir Garfield."
"If it is a real match, it must be a real wager, Devington," Sir Garfield challenged, fully expecting Robert to back down.
"Then I propose substantially higher stakes, sir." He paused for courage then took the ultimate plunge. "I propose Charlotte and Amoret should I win, and the forfeiture of Mars, should I lose."
Sir Garfield choked on his tea. "What do you say?"
With his heart in his throat, Robert enunciated slowly, "Should we again triumph against your Rascallion, I shall win the mare, as well as your consent to Charlotte's hand, if she will have me." He directed his gaze straight into her astonished hazel eyes. "Conversely," he continued, "should I lose, you shall acquire one fine gray charger, and I shall foreswear my feelings for your niece forever."
Charlotte was stricken at these last words.
"You would have me wager my own niece? You impudent puppy!"
"'Twould appear your stakes are too high for the gentleman's liking, Devington," Philip drawled.
"Stakes too high? Indeed not, you insolent whelp!" Sir Garfield furiously sputtered.
"Whelp, sir? I think the remark needlessly disparaging to my poor mother." The major smirked.
"Your mother?" Sir Garfield scowled, befuddled by the major's satire.
Robert regarded Philip intently with a silent plea to hold his peace. Sir Garfield needed no further goading. The man had never refused a racing wager in his life.
"Must mull this overnight," the baronet replied sullenly. "You'll
have my answer on the morrow, Devington."
"On the morrow, then, sir." Robert said and bowed his dismissal.
While Robert departed in relative haste, Philip tarried, making his adieus in an obsequious fashion. He thanked his hostess for her congenial hospitality and displayed his leg in the execution of a most courtly bow. Advancing to Beatrix, he lingered longer than necessary over her hand. "My lady," he said for her ears alone, "I fear I provoked your father and have jeopardized my opportunity to make atonement for our prior meeting."
Beatrix lowered her head demurely for her mother's benefit, but her brazen gaze belied her innocent tone. "I am yet unconvinced of your contrition, Major." She accompanied the words with a practiced moue. "You have yet to pay penance."
Philip was all too familiar with such coquetry but played along. "Indeed, my lady? And precisely what... penance... have you in mind?"
"The penalty should match the crime, should it not?" she challenged.
"Indeed, so." Philip chuckled. So, the little minx wanted to play deep, did she? She ventured into unchartered waters if she intended to play with him. "I then leave it to your imagination, my lady." He made his departure.
Charlotte confronted Robert, intercepting him as he was leaving. "Why, Robert? Why take such a gamble, such an impossible risk? What are you about? Please make me understand," she beseeched.
"My dearest, dearest, love." He clasped her shoulders. "When I left you, I had no wealth, property, or title attached to my name. I departed with only the desire to elevate myself in your uncle's esteem. I had the naïve belief that my new rank might deem me an acceptable suitor. I had hoped to part with a betrothal.
"I realize now 'twas a false hope. Your uncle will never perceive me as either an equal or as a suitable match. As matters rest, we will never be together. You will soon be given to another, and I would have nothing beyond a hard and lonely soldier's life, with greater likelihood of an early grave than a prosperous future.
"Although it is an undeniably rash act, this is my only way forward. I have pledged to you and before God to take charge of my destiny and of our future. If I cannot earn Sir Garfield's favor, then I would incur his debt of honor. If I lose, I am no worse off, but if I win, I gain my heart's desire. It truly is no gamble, Charlotte. Do you see it now?"
"But, Robert, I have as much at risk as you. My uncle already has plans to take us off to London in a few months to arrange marriages for Beatrix and me. I'll do anything to prevent this and secure our future together. You must let me help."
"There's nothing you can do, my love," he said tenderly.
"But there is," she insisted. "You need to ready Mars, don't you see? Though he made an impressive showing today, it was a short race. Rascallion doesn't start as strong, but he has impressive stamina. I've seen him run, and I'm not nearly as confident of victory as you are. It is by no means assured, especially if Mars is not prepared."
"What do you propose?"
"Let me ride. I can ready him for you. You know I can outride even you. I proved it years ago. I can help. You must let me," she pleaded, knowing their future balanced on the outcome.
Arriving to overhear her entreaty, Philip retorted with a snort, "What rot! A woman to ride? I credited you with more sense, man! Take the horse back to Doncaster and hire a professional."
"Don't be so quick to dismiss her, Philip. She speaks the truth. I've told you as much before. Her suggestion is not without merit."
Eyeing Philip disapprovingly, Charlotte continued, "It must be very early, at first light. Only the servants are about before dawn. We can trust Letty, and Jeffries will be in Doncaster with Rascallion, at least until the race is over. A few coins should bribe the stable hands."
"You've yet to convince me," Philip interjected with clenched teeth, "and it's once again my blunt at risk. I've played the fool once on your account, Devington, and it's not a role I relish."
"Reserve judgment until you've seen her ride. We won't have Sir Garfield's final word 'til the morrow anyway. If you're not swayed by then, we'll off to Doncaster if he accepts the terms, though I doubt not he will. The man doesn't suffer defeat easily."
Charlotte concurred. "My uncle is entirely predictable on that score."
"All right, I withhold judgment until the morrow," Philip conceded grudgingly.
"Until the morrow, my little hoyden." Robert pulled Charlotte into his embrace and sealed their pact with a long, lingering kiss.
They met at daybreak and rode in silence to the heath. The rising sun shed barely enough light to limn the laid-out course.
Robert cast his nostalgic gaze over the same great oak where the young lovers had first raced, and then over Charlotte, garbed once again in her cousin's castoff britches. Drawing off her cloak, she pulled a woolen cap from her pocket and tightly tucked up her long, honeyed locks until well contained in the cap.
Philip stood askance while Charlotte and Robert exchanged horses and joined their heads to confer on the distance and course. This decided, Charlotte led the restless stallion a short distance away but did not immediately mount, as Philip had expected. Instead, she laid her hands on the horse and began murmuring in a low, hypnotic voice.
With skepticism, Philip watched her move around the horse, from neck to shoulder and down his foreleg, speaking to him and tracing every muscle with her hands. She continued her journey over his withers, back, flank, stifle, and hock. She memorized his very form with her hands.
Moving back to his head, she whispered and murmured in his ear. Mars was mesmerized by Charlotte's witchcraft and responded in his own language of snorts and nickers. He appeared hers to command.
With a sharp nod to Robert, Charlotte signaled her readiness to mount. Philip and Hawke then joined them at the start, in the belief that competition would help stir the stallion's blood.
They ambled the short distance to the oak, and the contenders took position.
Breathing deeply, Charlotte poised over the stallion's withers, reins woven through tightened fingers, her small body lithely balancing in the frame of the stirrup irons. As the stallion arched and tensed in anticipation, she forced herself to relax.
Robert gave the signal, and Mars, fully engaged in the hind end, let fly. He lunged forward, stretching into his peculiar gait. Gaining impulsion and with it momentum, he instantly parted company with Philip and Hawke. Were it a real race, 'twould have been a cruel hoax. Horse and rider disappeared like a gray ghost into the horizon, their hoof beats echoing in the silent dawn.
Charlotte initially struggled for balance, but within a few strides found her rhythm with the horse. She rode with intensity previously unknown to her. Gauging the time, the distance, the exertions, the pace, she no longer harbored any doubt the horse could run. But did he have the staying power, the "bottom," to last four miles at this bruising rate? Moreover, could he sustain for the two additional heats that would be asked, nay, demanded of him? Only the toughest and most tenacious survived such a trial uninjured in body or spirit.
Charlotte pushed him harder on the second lap, and he responded without hesitation. Instinctively watching, waiting, feeling, she hovered, belly over withers, hands along the crest of his neck. Her toes balanced in the irons, legs flexing along his sides, he felt to her akin to a bellows, flexing and contracting with every stride. She was lost in the cadence, the tattoo of hooves striking earth. Her only thoughts were of lightness: lightness of limb, lightness of hand, as she by degrees gave and took of the slack, rating him, pacing him, willing him to maintain his momentum, to persevere. She became one with the horse, losing herself in the glorious, ineffable thrill of their gallop.
Rounding the final bend, she urged further acceleration. He answered readily, lunging forth again, exerting his power to lengthen his stride for home. At once Charlotte understood Robert's confidence and why one who never gambled had wagered his all on this horse. Her racing heart lightened when the great oak came into sight. With a smug little smile to Philip, she pulled up to the waiting men.
"You've made your point," he grudgingly confessed.
The trio set out at a sedate pace for Heathstead Hall, well satisfied with both their performances. Charlotte handed the horse off to the bleary-eyed Jemmy and then scurried back to the house to dress for breakfast, where they would soon hear Sir Garfield's decision.
After giving Mars a vigorous rubdown, Robert turned him out in the paddock next to an indignant Amoret. The stallion, eager to attract the mare's attention, first snorted then powerfully arched his neck, tossed his head, and trotted in a springing stride up to the fence, where he nickered softly to her.
The mare, who had been cropping grass, paused to regard the eager stallion with haughty disinterest and then turned away. With her hindquarters facing him, the stallion curled back his upper lip, trying to better catch her scent in order to decipher her receptiveness to his nickered invitation.
This time the mare exhibited mild curiosity and ambled up to the fence. Eagerly, the stallion stretched his neck and reached out his head to sniff her more closely. Amoret, rather than showing any encouragement, demonstrated her repugnance with a squeal of displeasure and a lightning-fast strike of her foreleg. Contrary to the male's amorous inclinations, the mare was more disposed to kicking his teeth in. The hapless stallion, demonstrating good sense and even better reflexes, retreated from the peevish mare.
"'Tis not yet her season, my good fellow," Robert replied. "She will surely show more interest as the days grow longer."
Philip chuckled to the stallion, considering his own pursuit of Beatrix. "She merely plays hard to get, old chum. With patience, and above all finesse on your part, she'll issue her own invitation in due time."
The officers left the paddocks for the house and joined the family, who were still seated at breakfast. Lady Felicia again played the gracious hostess, and Charles greeted the pair genially enough. Beatrix feigned disinterest but stole covert glances at Major Drake. Charlotte concealed her apprehension by diverting her eyes to her teacup. Sir Garfield, however, was all business. Without preamble and forgoing any social niceties, he staunchly announced, "I shall accept the rematch with the following provisions: Firstly, it shall be run at Doncaster Common, three days hence. Secondly, the horses will be ridden by a hired jockey." Far from crestfallen not to ride again, Charles received the news with a sigh of relief, return by Sir Garfield's darkling look.
Sir Garfield continued, undaunted by his son's sullen visage. "Thirdly, they will run four miles distance and perform three heats, if required, to clearly declare a victor." He paused, scrutinizing the captain, and added the final proviso. "As to the wager, it shall be augmented by five hundred pounds. I accept nothing less. A bona fide race requires a true wager."
Robert's heart skipped a beat at this final pronouncement. At his rate of twelve shillings per day, five hundred pounds represented over two years' salary! It would be impossible for him to cover such a loss.
By issuing such a challenge, Sir Garfield had saved his own face. He had intentionally proposed stakes so exorbitant that Devington would have no choice but decline, but doing so would also compromise his honor as a gentleman.
Philip's ire rose at the gall of this game played at Robert's expense. Such men as this baronet were the lowest of the low in his estimation. He refused to suffer his fellow officer's debasement by such a pusillanimous sod, but given his recent ill luck, five hundred pounds was a devilish stiff loss to cover. He had a rule never to overextend himself and lived by this basic canon to avoid the humiliation of appealing to his family to cover his debts. Nonetheless, he vowed to support his companion. In for a penny, in for a pound... Catching Robert's eye, Philip nodded almost imperceptibly to accept the wager.
Though taken aback by the magnanimous gesture, Robert managed to choke out the words, "I accept your conditions, Sir Garfield."
The wily baronet, in belief he had outmaneuvered the captain, now found himself backed into a corner.
The race was most definitely "on."
R eturning to the house, Charlotte was greeted by a summons from her uncle. "He wishes to see you in the library, miss," the footman notified her.
With foreboding, she straightened her shoulders and proceeded to his sanctuary, where he beckoned her to a chair. Charlotte perched upon it rigidly, expectantly.
"I wish a word with you, Niece," Sir Garfield began in deceptively cordial tones belied by his visage. Rising, he sighed deeply and commenced pacing with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Charlotte, as your uncle, it befalls to me to see to your future, to ensure you properly settled and espoused to a gentleman. Do not deceive yourself that I am ignorant of this romantic fantasy you persist in entertaining. I had hoped you had done with your foolish fancy when he went off to war, but since he failed to get himself blown to bits, I find I must needs deal with this once and for all. This infatuation with young Devington must come to an immediate conclusion."
"But, Uncle---" His dark look cowed her.
"A marriage, not unlike a business partnership, is an amicable arrangement at best. It is not to be entered indiscriminately and upon one's personal whim. One must consider the betterment of one's family, as in horse breeding, with sagacious deliberation to improve the stock. With no name, no holdings, and no future, Devington is of a decidedly inferior breed. He is not, nor will he ever be, a suitable match."
"But I love him!"
"That is of absolutely no consequence! Love is for paupers, those who have nothing else. The boy is not for you, so get this maggot out of your head once and for all! Henceforth, you are expressly forbidden any contact with that upstart. Do you understand?"
"But the race! You agreed to his wager!"
"Whatever the outcome of this ludicrous wager, you are to refuse his suit. Attend to me closely, Charlotte," he said, his voice threatening, "regardless of the outcome, you will refuse him."
Charlotte, who had scarce spoken a word during his tirade, sat pensively silent. She had almost known what he was going to say before he said it, but the knowledge didn't lessen the sting. He claimed to have her best interests at heart, but the truth was selfevident. Her uncle viewed her as nothing more than a commodity to advance his own ambitions.
He had used her father in the same way. When young Edward Wallace approached his brother with a desire to enter the clergy, Sir Garfield had refused. He had no use for a clergyman in the family. Instead, he had insisted that his brother study law or lose his financial support. Edward acquiesced and entered the Honorable Society of Gray's Inn, where he spent the ensuing decade repaying his brother with legal favors.
Although he never developed a passion for the law, he had found contentment with his wife and daughter. Charlotte's parents had loved one another deeply and were truly happy. Having seen this, Charlotte would settle for nothing less. She would never agree to a loveless union, and only Robert held the key to her heart, that sacred organ she had warily guarded. Her future would be with the man she loved, or with no one.
Misreading her silence, Sir Garfield brought the interview to a closure, gratified by the ease and success of his subjugation. Charlotte excused herself, and with a heavy heart, escaped to her room. Upon entering her chamber, she went directly to her treasure chest, the ornately engraved mahogany box on her night table. Opening the lid, she solemnly fingered her only valuables, her most treasured possessions---Robert's letters, a short strand of milky pearls tied with a pink satin ribbon, and a silver watch.
She knew the value of these items was only a fraction of the five hundred pounds Robert needed, but he had gambled everything to win their future together. Her sacrifice could be no less. Tenderly wrapping her treasures in a linen handkerchief, she slid the small bundle through the slit in her petticoat and into her pocket.
Lest anyone spy her, she exited the house through the garden and crept thru a neglected opening in the hedgerow, taking the well-worn path to the stables. Failing at first to see her beloved, she wandered over to the paddocks. Amoret greeted her with a warm nicker and trotted prettily up to the fence.
"How goes it, my lovely, with your handsome gent?" Charlotte crooned, stroking the mare.
"Not as well as he had hoped," Robert replied, striding up behind her. "Though I confess I had no real expectations for either of us until spring."
Charlotte turned, and Robert pulled her to him, encircling her in his warm embrace. Charlotte was suddenly hypersensitive of the rising physical tension between them. "Spring?" she asked.
"Aye. If all goes as planned. Spring would be a good time to wed, would it not?"
Hope rekindled in her eyes. "B-but what if---"
He hushed her with a finger to her lips and slowly traced them before inclining his head and brushing them with his own. Charlotte quivered involuntarily. Alarmed by her sudden clamor of emotions, Charlotte backed away, fumbling for her pocket and the small package within.
"But we needn't wait, Robert, and you needn't risk everything in this wager. We could run away together."
"But how would we get by?"
"With these," she answered, retrieving her bundle and offering it with open hands.
Distraught by her sudden anxiety, Robert had neither need nor desire to inspect her gift. Probing deeply into those hazel eyes, he cupped her hands in his and closed them back about her offering. "Have faith," he whispered.
His kiss expressed the greatest reverence for her selfless gesture, and Charlotte responded with all her being. Any further speech was superfluous.
Keen to learn even the most tedious and mundane details of army life, Charles detained Philip after breakfast. Callow and idealistic, he would have enthusiastically enlisted in the army had not his father dismissed the notion and any further discussion of it. Sir Garfield's interdiction, however, did little to stifle his son's interest in all martial matters, and most particularly in the current campaign.
"Major Drake, I understand from Robert that you've served with His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland?"
"Not precisely, Charles. All cavalry units were under Ligonier's command, but during the fray at Dettingen, His Grace rode bravely to the fore and assumed command of the left flank when our major fell and Ligonier was cut off. The duke took charge of the remaining Horse whilst His Majesty and Lord Stair commanded the Foot on our right. We were sure to be annihilated, but the men rallied, and the tide was turned, ere I shouldn't be standing before you."
"By all newspaper accounts, our forces soundly routed the French," Charles remarked.
"Indeed so, and had the advice of Lord Stair prevailed, we should have pursued them back to France with their tails between their legs."
"I wish I had been there," Charles said wistfully. "When do you return?"
"Devington and I report back to Whitehall within the se'nnight, and I anticipate preparations for the spring campaign to hastily ensue, lest the French take obscene advantage of our absence. I expect our troop transports will embark by mid-April."
At this moment, Beatrix appeared, feigning a search for her fan. "War again! Have you ever encountered a more ponderous household, Major? Papa thinks of nothing but his blessed horses, and Charles of nothing but the war. I fear I shall die of sheer tedium!"
"My frivolous sister gives no thought to such weighty matters," Charles remarked disparagingly, "even when thousands of Englishmen shed their blood."
"Englishmen shed blood? Why should you imagine such a thing, Charles?" she replied indignantly. "We are fighting Frenchmen, after all; how difficult can that be?"
Philip suppressed a chuckle. "One should never underestimate one's adversaries, my dear, even those more disposed to food, frippery, and fashion than fighting."
"But why should they not be? All the best styles come from Paris."
"Is this a confession, my lady? Have a care, lest I detain you for purchasing contraband French goods."
"I confess nothing, for fear of the reprisal," she teased.
Master of this particular dance, Philip didn't miss a beat. "As a British cavalry officer, I well assure you of reprisals, my lady."
"Indeed? And precisely what should you do with me, Major?" she taunted.
"Do you truly wish me to elaborate?" He spoke sotto voce.
Regarding him coyly, she placed her hand intimately on his arm. "You must enlighten me, lest I be tempted to commit any shamefully illicit act."
An interesting choice of words. The chit was wading deep now, but the question remained whether she actually knew how to swim.
His interest was piqued, but a change of venue was in order. "Perhaps I could elaborate... with a stroll?"
Beatrix acquiesced with a knowing smile, and the pair quit the morning room through the French doors, wholly intent on exploring the delights of her garden.
Robert hailed Charlotte as she completed Mars's second training run on the heath. "You are managing him too heavily from his mouth," he said.
"What do you mean?" she asked a bit defensively.
"You are holding him too fast, which puts his frame all wrong and makes him heavy. Though any Newmarket jockey would advocate holding a horse fast in his running, I say it encourages him to run with his mouth open and in a fretting, jumping attitude, like a stag, with his forelegs pointed and head in the air. A horse that runs in this fashion works to excess. He strains his sinews, and his wind becomes locked. He will be used up early."
"What would you have me do differently?" she asked.
"Run him light in the mouth, and he will be willing and at ease and respond readily to your cues. His legs will be more beneath him, and his sinews less extended. He will be relaxed, exert less, and have freer wind, enabling him to run faster when you call upon him. Hold him, Charlotte, as if your reins were a silken thread as fine as a hair that you are afraid of breaking. This is how you should ride."
Charlotte absorbed his words intently and thenceforth gave the stallion a free hand.
Robert was immensely pleased with their progress. Charlotte had quickly learned to rate the horse, and he had run superbly, but the horse still needed a capable jockey. Robert struggled with his dilemma: Who would ride the horse in tomorrow's race?
Philip was an able horseman in his own right and might have ridden for Robert, but his size and weight of over twelve stone, compared to the average jockey groom at nine stone, was prohibitive. Jeffries would have been Robert's first choice, but he could not go against his employer. He would no doubt ride for Sir Garfield. Jemmy was among the best exercise riders but hadn't the experience to ride a true race. Though Robert racked his brain, he could think of no other competent rider with whom he could entrust his future.
He needed someone like Charlotte. She was barely eight stone and a crack rider, but women were strictly excluded from racing. He watched her dismount and continued to turn this over in his mind. Technically speaking, it was not a sanctioned race. He and Sir Garfield had settled on the terms without any specifics as to the jockey.
Unlike most gentleman of the turf, Sir Garfield was encumbered by his sheer girth and never rode his own horses. Charles had failed him in the prior run, thus his mandate for a hired jockey.
Though Robert heartily doubted Philip would embrace the idea, he was utterly convinced that Charlotte should ride. It was their best hope to win, but also at their greatest peril.
The night before the race, Charlotte pleaded a headache to excuse herself from dinner, with her ever-faithful Letty promising without hesitation to cover her prevarication until Charlotte's return after the race. Charlotte met Robert in the stables, and the pair journeyed to Doncaster so that Mars would be settled and well rested for the next day's event.
They arrived at dusk and located the stable block farthest from the track, where they could avoid unnecessary contact with others and reduce Charlotte's exposure.
Once their horses were comfortably settled, Robert found a wooden crate to use as a table and unpacked their saddlebags. Letty, in her foresight, had provided them a small meal of bread and cheese, as well as a flask of wine for their supper. After their brief repast, Robert gathered up a large pile of clean straw into a makeshift pallet and covered it with the woolen blanket from his equipage.
Exhausted from the day, he carelessly stretched out upon it, and Charlotte joined him, snuggling up against his side with her head resting on his shoulder. They lay quietly together for some time before Charlotte's whisper broke the silence.
"Robert, what will happen after tomorrow? When we win the race, that is? What will we do?"
He answered while hypnotically stroking her hair. "We'll begin our life, my love," he said simply. "We'll take the mare and the winnings and buy a plot of land. Mars and Amoret will be the foundation of our own racing stud. And with the sale of my commission, we shall purchase the best lot of broodmares we can find."
"Do you know so much of breeding to make a go of it?"
"I have my own theories, though some run contrary to the practices of most breeders."
"In what way?"
"Most men believe the quality of the get is solely determined by the sire. Although a number of stallions have proven exceptionally prepotent, I tend to believe the mare has an equally important role."
"What do you mean by prepotent?"
"Ah, 'tis a term I learned while working as a stud groom in the North. Namely, it describes a sire's ability to breed consistently true to type, to stamp his offspring with a high degree of desirable characteristics. In running bloods, this premise of prepotency is impossible to dismiss; however, many foolishly breed a quality stallion with an indifferent mare in the erroneous belief that she is only the vessel. I, however, have a strong notion that coupling such a stallion with a superior mare would produce the best possible result.
"Just look at the top horses of our day. Virtually all of the best runners have sprung from a very limited number of families, begotten by an even more elite group of sires. The Byerley Turk strain is probably the oldest of these lines. When bred to mares of no great quality, there were a few good horses, but when his blood was crossed with that of a well-bred mare of pure Eastern blood, the result was a filly named Bonny Black, who at fours years old beat thirty others at Black Hambleton and repeated the performance the next year. This mare later challenged any horse in England four times round the King's Plate course at Newmarket, with no takers.
"The offspring of this cross was the best possible combination. It is then hard for me to believe that one should disregard the importance of the mare, but I digress."
"You were speaking of the most prepotent sire lines," Charlotte prompted.
"Ah, yes. The second great sire line comes by the Darley Arabian, a horse that was also nicked with mediocrity until the fair Betty Leedes."
"I know this story!" Charlotte declared. "Betty Leedes brought forth the famous Flying Childers, and then through her second breeding to the Darley, produced Bartlett's Childers, who was Amoret's sire."
"Indeed, Charlotte. Amoret has exceptional lineage, precisely why she must be our foundation broodmare. Now as to the others we need for our harem, I would have a mind to also seek out mares of Byerley blood, as well as daughters of this Godolphin."
"You mean El Sham," she corrected.
"El Sham, eh? I surmise that Jeffries has entertained you with his version of this soon-to-be legend's history."
"Indeed he did! 'Tis such a romantic story, don't you think?"
"Perhaps it is all in the telling, dearest." He chuckled and stroked her cheek.
"Then perhaps I shall recount my version to you."
"Pray do so, my sweet." He smiled indulgently.
Bright-eyed, Charlotte began. "The story starts ten years hence. It is a dark, dreary, and rainy morning. An emaciated brown horse strains through the streets of Paris, pulling a water cart. The carter plies the whip to the poor beast, who is too weak to take another step and stumbles to his knees. The man raises the lash again, but the poor horse is too feeble and his knees too ravaged by the cobbles to pull himself up. Observing the incident, a passerby, a foreigner, stays the whip hand of the brute."
"And instead shoots the horse to put him out of his misery," Robert interjected.
Charlotte glares in indignation. "I thought you wanted to hear my story?"
"A million apologies, my sweet." He brings her hand to his lips. Charlotte frowned but was mollified. The tale continued.
"The foreigner is an Englishman and a Quaker, with business in Paris. His heart goes out in sympathy for the poor animal. He offers the carter three gold louis to buy the horse. The carter agrees, in the belief it will cost him more to dispose of the body. He unhitches the cart, and the Englishman, Mr. Coke, leads the horse back to his filthy stable, where to his immense surprise, he finds a blackamoor groom and a large gray cat.
"'What is this?' asked Mr. Coke of the carter.
"'It is a madman, a groom who accompanied the stallion from his homeland and is avowed never to leave his side.'
"'Never?'
"'Never, Monsieur. Queer beliefs have these Moors.'
"'And the cat?'
"'A curiosity. It rarely leaves the horse's side. So for three gold louis, Monsieur, you are now the owner of the horse, the groom, and the cat!'
"Poor Mr. Coke was quite stunned at first, but he did acknowledge the need of a groom to help nurse the poor creature back to strength. After several days, as the animal begins to improve, the gentleman realizes this is no ordinary horse. As poor as he appears, he is possessed of a beautiful conformation. He is exquisitely proportioned, with a small head on a well-arched and heavily crested neck. He is short-coupled with large hocks, tremendous quarters, and a high-set tail. But although he is of incomparable beauty, the stallion is fiery and headstrong.
"Knowing the stallion is too distinctive in appearance to be anything but Eastern bred, Mr. Coke makes inquiries of his friends at Versailles. He is amazed to learn that this pathetic creature was once the pride of the desert, one of the great blood stallions of the Bey of Tunis, given as a gift to the King of France, but was deemed by the equerries as too difficult to manage. This was how he came to the carter.
"Excited by this knowledge, Mr. Coke arranges to transport the new members of his family back to England but finds the stallion gentle only toward his loyal groom and his pet cat, Grimalkin. He is far too volatile for Mr. Coke to ride, so the gentleman gives him to a friend. This friend, failing also to manage the stallion, passes him along to another, and another, until his ultimate fate: this magnificent son of the desert, who once had a harem of the choicest mares of the purest, most ancient blood, was destined to become a lowly and despised teazer stallion for the racing stud of Lord Godolphin."
"Do you even know what that is, my dearest?" Robert interrupted.
"What what is?"
"A teazer stallion."
Charlotte blushed. "Yes. Jeffries was kind enough to explain to me that valuable stallions are not wasted with the preliminaries of mating; that a lesser stallion is often utilized to... to... to..."
"Prepare the mare for mating?" Robert offered.
"Yes. Precisely so," Charlotte added hastily. Robert's laugh rumbled deep in his chest.
"Are you quite ready to attend now?" she asked peevishly. He nodded with a smirk, and Charlotte continued her tale. "The pride and joy of Lord Godolphin was Hobgoblin."
"Another fine stallion of the Darley line," Robert volunteered.
"Indeed. And one he intended to breed to his most prized racing mare, the lovely Roxana."
"Do you know of this mare?"
"Only that Jeffries described her as unparalleled."
"In more ways than one. A flightier mare never was. She was of such an excessively nervous temperament that she had to be led to the starting post with a blindfold that was only removed at the word 'go'!"
"I would just call her a female of great sensibility and discriminating taste, Robert," Charlotte defended. "After all, she would have none of Hobgoblin. Though the tale is told that he refused her, I am not the least inclined to believe it. She instinctively knew him as the inferior male and had eyes only for El Sham, with whom she demonstrated all willingness. When he was removed from her and Hobgoblin led out to leap her, she repelled him most violently, calling instead to her love, El Sham. That stallion responded to her entreaty by breaking loose from his handler and attacking his rival for her affections.
"The stallions reared and pawed and rained blows upon one another. It appeared, at the start, that Hobgoblin, the larger of the two, would prevail, but El Sham sunk his great teeth into the other stallion's crest and wrestled Hobgoblin to the ground, where he lay stunned. Conceding defeat, Hobgoblin turned tail and ran away."
"And to the winner went the spoils?" Robert added with a grin. "And one year later, Lath arrived, one of the greatest racers of our day. The next year came Cade, and now we see the excitement surrounding Regulus, the third son of Godolphin to make his name on the turf in as many years."
"What was the word you used, pre..."
"Prepotent. Yes, the Godolphin has most definitely made his mark as a champion sire."
"Now you see what a lovely story that was?"
"Not near as lovely as the lips that told it." Robert gently traced her lips with his forefinger. Unconsciously, Charlotte parted them. Robert did not need a second invitation. Their lips met. He moved over hers gently at first, touching, tasting, softly probing. Charlotte responded tentatively to his exploration. He then pulled her closer, molding her to him, and she replied with a sigh and moved instinctively against him.
Such ready compliance was more than Robert had expected. His pulse quickened; his heart pounded painfully against his chest. He desperately yearned to hold her warm, supple, naked body in his arms. To lie with her, kissing, caressing, and breathing in her very essence.
Suddenly with a groan, he put her away and was on his feet, pacing to tamp down his raging fever.
Charlotte regarded him once again in bewilderment. "Please, Robert." She patted the blanket beside her, entreating so softly, so innocently tempting. "There's room for us both, and it will surely grow cold before the night is out."
Was she luring him in this guileless way? Or was she completely unaware of his struggle?
He responded with a scowl, knowing too well the inherent danger of lying together, even if she did not. They were completely alone and had the whole night ahead of them.
"Perhaps you should not be so trusting," he snapped more sharply than intended. "I am not impervious to temptation. I am but a man."
"But I trust you," she said earnestly.
"Perhaps you should not," he replied, resolving right then to protect her honor by upholding his own. Ignoring her wounded look, Robert then gestured for her to bed down while he made ready to sleep against the wall opposite.
"As you will, then, my noble captain," Charlotte whispered and then closed her eyes and fell swiftly into deep slumber. Robert remained as he sat, keeping his silent vigil.
Lady Felicia intercepted Beatrix and Major Drake returning from their interlude in the garden, from whence Beatrix emerged with a telling flush. Determined to encourage what she perceived as a burgeoning attraction between the two, Lady Felicia placed a possessive hand on Philip's sleeve.
"My dear major, do you find our company so lackluster that you would take your leave of us?"
"Indeed not, madam! But I have already greatly imposed. I have no wish to overstay my welcome."
"Pshaw! You will do no such thing. We are country folk here and do not abide by such stringent rules of society. On the contrary, we should not wish to be so soon deprived of your company. I insist you sup with us."
"Indeed, Mama," Beatrix readily agreed.
Philip received the invitation with unabashed delight. He would take full advantage to ingratiate himself to this family. Although Beatrix had thought to have him eating out of her hand, she had played right into his. Now he had an entire evening to dedicate to singleminded pursuit of his heiress and her twenty thousand pounds.
Philip Ian Drake was a born charmer and raconteur nonpareil. Although his quick wit and glib tongue had led to more than one caning at Harrow, the same talents had made him exceedingly popular with his classmates, and later, with his fellow cavalry officers. Philip could transform the most mundane event into a comic farce. No one was untouched by his sardonic wit when he chose to yield it.
His repertoire of military tales, political anecdotes, and sordid court gossip entertained and scandalized the Wallace family throughout the evening. He amused Charles with his boyhood pranks and followed with accounts of the Horse Guard, including his hazing of Troopers Devington and Prescott, a tale particularly well received by the chortling baronet.
Philip provided Lady Felicia with several juicy morsels of court gossip.
"Is it true that on Queen Caroline's deathbed she begged our king to remarry?" she asked the major.
"Indeed so. His reply was, 'No, I shall have mistresses!'"
Lady Felicia was aghast. "Surely he said no such thing!"
"There were several witnesses to the exchange. I fail to understand why his response should have surprised anyone at Court."
"Has the King so very many mistresses?" she inquired eagerly.
"Several former ladies of the queen's bedchamber, and even the governess to the Royal princesses. His Majesty is a vain little man who believes that keeping several women confirms his virility."
"Disgraceful! Absolutely disgraceful! But what of that Wallmolden woman?"
"Ah! You refer of course to the Countess of Yarmouth. Seemingly, Hanoverian mistresses surpass English ones in the King's eyes," he remarked sardonically. "Barely a year beyond the queen's passing, His Majesty imported her from Hanover, along with the bastard son he reputedly fathered. Mistress and bastard are both now naturalized and patented with lifetime peerages. She's the King's favorite, the maitress en titre, if you will.
"Our poor Queen Caroline, what she endured. God rest her soul."
"Every man has his weakness," Sir Garfield remarked with indifference. "But what of our new foreign secretary, Lord Carteret? I hear he has an uncommon fondness for drink. Surely this is much exaggerated."
"I assure you not, sir. I have it from Ligonier's own lips that our secretary spent the entire German campaign half-soused, though I daresay one with Ligonier's turpitude durst not cast the first stone."
"Indeed, you say?" Sir Garfield's interest was piqued.
"Consummate dissipation might be credited by many as far less egregious than debauching young girls."
Lady Felicia gasped.
"I beg your pardon, madam, for having spoken of it," Philip hastily apologized.
"Debauchery?" she repeated with diminished outrage at the salacious tidbit. "Beatrix," she commanded her daughter, "you must cover your ears."
Beatrix gaped and then protested, "I am not a child, Mama!"
"You heard me, Trixie," she repeated. "Cover your ears!"
Beatrix complied with a petulant pout.
"Now, Major, what is this about debauchery?" Lady Felicia said in a loud whisper and leaned forward eagerly.
Amused by such blatant hypocrisy, Philip obliged. "Sir John Ligonier has only a slightly lesser penchant for drink than our esteemed secretary, but a far greater proclivity for young girls. Though past sixty years, he reputedly keeps four separate mistresses. Although this alone is remarkable for such an ancient, the pièce de résistance is that the combined ages of said mistresses do not exceed eight-and-fifty years."
Performing the mathematical computation, the lady gasped in coalesced shock and delight. "Surely you hoax, Major!"
"Indeed not, madam. The man states that a woman over fifteen is past her prime and not worth his trouble. All evidence corroborates his belief."
"The dirty lecher!" she exclaimed in outward outrage but was secretly titillated. Now remembering her daughter, she tapped Beatrix on the arm, giving her leave to uncover her ears.
"Drake," Sir Garfield mused Philip's surname aloud. "Your family name's vaguely familiar. From whence do you hail?"
"East Sussex, if you please. The family seat is within an hour of London, though the earl, until recent years, spent a great deal more time in the capital than rusticating in the country."
"East Sussex, eh?" Sir Garfield paused. "I'm surprised you didn't seek your commission in the Royal Navy."
"Truth be told, I'm much more at ease in the saddle than on the deck of a ship," Philip replied.
"Never cared for the sea myself," Sir Garfield agreed. "Much prefer my feet on solid ground."
"What of your mother, dear boy? Does the countess reside in Sussex?" Lady Felicia inquired.
"The dear lady passed away of consumption nearly a decade ago."
"So sorry, my dear," she offered sympathetically. "Have you siblings?"
"One brother, Edmund, Lord Uxeter. He was born to the earl's first wife, who died of fever following childbirth. He's eleven years my senior, hence we've never been close. Staid and humorless type, exceedingly sober and excruciatingly dull. He has aspirations in politics and holds a seat in the House of Commons, though he recently sits as proxy for Lord Hastings in the upper house."
"So, your family has seats in both houses, you say." Sir Garfield digested this tidbit for future rumination. "What is your family's political affiliation? Whig or Tory?"
"The Earl of Hastings descends from a long line of Tories. Although the family claims remote blood connection to William the Conqueror, the patent of earldom was a reward by James the First to my great-grandfather for some long-forgotten favor. The family supported all of the Stuarts until it was no longer politically expedient to do so," he added dryly.
"The Earls of Hastings, past and present, hold very accommodating political views, thus my heritage has proven nothing if not resilient. This tractability, shall we say, has allowed the family title to survive one regicide, two civil wars, an abdication, a restoration, and several Jacobite uprisings."
"Jacobites! The whole damnable lot do nothing more than blather on impotently about restoration!" Sir Garfield said.
"'Tis ironic, is it not, that the throne of England was endowed by Parliament to the one man who truly didn't want it! 'Tis said of George the First that he knew nothing, he desired to know nothing, and he did nothing. The only good spoke of him at all was that he would have loved nothing more than to hand the English Crown back to its heredity successor."
"I can't say which is easier to swallow: to live under the tyrannical Stuarts or under the war-mongering Hanoverians. George the Second will have us a bloody province of his beloved Hanover before 'tis all over. Mark my words on it!"
"Regardless of kings, sir, we are obligated by treaty to act in our allies' defense. Though I don't deny the King has his own agenda," Philip replied.
"Englishmen have no business fighting on the Continent. It wasn't enough to fight Spain; now we would commence hostilities with France," Sir Garfield said. "If an Englishman must die, better in defending one's own country, I say."
"But surely, Father, you would not allow France to overrun all of Europe?" Charles protested.
"Again this tedious talk of politics and war!" Beatrix rolled her eyes.
"As you say, my lady, immensely tedious," Philip agreed with warm sympathy.
"My dear gentlemen," Lady Felicia interrupted, "if the conversation is to continue on this bellicose theme, Beatrix and I shall retire to the drawing room. We shall not wait for you, so pray enjoy your port. And, Major,"---she paused---"I shall have a chamber prepared for you. It is far too late for you to ride back to your lodgings. Don't you agree, Sir Garfield?"
"Just so, madam. Just so," he agreed affably enough.
"My sincerest gratitude, my lady." Drake rose in a bow as she and Beatrix departed. The footman, leaving in their wake, promptly returned with several bottles of Portugal's finest vintages, and then produced several chamber pots, placed convenient to each gentleman.
While the footman returned to refill their wine glasses, Sir Garfield stood to relieve himself. "Thought I'd bloody well burst before the women left." As he filled the vessel, he grunted and then sighed with satisfaction. "It's damnably inconvenient to drink in mixed company!"
"Quite so, sir," Philip agreed, gratified that the baronet had at least the courtesy to turn his back to the table.
Speaking over his shoulder, Sir Garfield revisited politics. "So the question remains, Drake, where do you and your family stand?"
"Following family tradition, I daresay Edmund is hedging his bets," he replied with a smirk. "He has joined the so-called Patriot Whigs who pay court to the Prince of Wales."
Sir Garfield remarked, "Forming an alliance with the future heir shows foresight as well as ambition, I'd say."
"Quite," he replied curtly, uninterested in discussing his brother.
Resuming his place at the table, Sir Garfield took up his glass. "But what of your ambitions?" he asked.
"For the moment, His Majesty has my future in his hands. While we've thousands of troops on the Continent, it is said King Louis would render assistance to restore the Pretender."
"Do you give any credence to such talk?" Charles asked.
"The threat may be credible. The Scots are either gullible enough or naively loyal enough to raise the Pretender's standard yet again. 'Tis yet hard to say how much support they might garner among the English, but we could expect some trouble from that quarter." Philip's reply was pragmatic.
"What of your leanings, Major? You wear the King's regimentals, but do you favor the King, his heir, or the Pretender?" Sir Garfield asked.
"In sum, I am first and foremost an Englishman, loyal to my country to my very death. As to the King, I defer to the poet John Byrom." The major raised his glass in a sardonic salute:
"God bless the King, I mean the faith's defender,God bless, (no harm in blessing), the Pretender,But who Pretender is, or who is King,God bless us all, that's quite another thing."
Sir Garfield thumped the table heartily. "Here, here. Damn the Papists, the Jacobites, and the Hanover-lovers, too!" he bellowed, now well in his cups.
"I would that I could join you in the army," Charles replied in growing resentment of his father's injunction.
"Ever seen a battle, Charles?" Philip demanded of the callow youth. "The cannon charge is deafening, the smoke acrid and smothering as it hits one's lungs. Ever seen a man die? Once he realizes he's hit, the sheer panic is replaced by a vacuous disbelief glazing his eyes as his lifeblood drains slowly away. Furthermore, have you ever killed a man? Once one has regained enough composure to survey the aftermath of battle, the stench of blood and grotesque scene of miscellaneous disembodied parts scattering the field is sickening. It's ubiquitous and inescapable. War is not the romantic drivel conveyed to us by poets, Charles. War is emphatically unromantic. It is massive and overpowering death."
"The man's right, Charles. War's a vile business, vile business!" Sir Garfield said.
"But it is one's duty and honor to defend one's king and country. A soldier's life has purpose!" Charles rejoined.
"'Tis no purpose at all for an only son! I say, leave war to the ones who can be spared!" his father retorted.
"Indeed, 'tis precisely why the spare son is so highly recommended," Philip remarked laconically.
"'Twas not exactly what I intended, Drake," Sir Garfield blustered.
"I comprehend precisely your meaning, sir," he replied evenly. "'Tis true, Charles, that some must fight. I would that I needn't; however, soldiering is one of few honorable professions open to a younger son. Some achieve glory and others an early grave, and I confess I aspire to the former." Philip laughed, altering the conversation's morose tone.
Sir Garfield stifled a yawn. "I aspire to a comfortable bed and a fluffy pillow. So I bid you good night, Drake." He then emptied his last glass of port, and on the second attempt, hefted onto his feet.
The younger men followed suit and staggered up the stairs to their respective chambers.
Having brought no change of clothing, Philip undressed for bed and moved to snuff the candle. He was arrested by a light scratch at the door. Snatching on his breeches, he opened it with a mild curse. There stood Beatrix, garbed in her dressing gown, with her long, blond hair tumbling freely over her shoulders.
His gaze raked over her, and his instincts overruled his judgment.
Casting a cursory glance down the hallway, he hauled her brusquely into the privacy of his room.
"Now what the devil are you doing here?" he asked.
Beatrix suddenly grasped the weight of her actions. She was alone with a man in his bedchamber. She trembled at her own daring, but any trepidation was now overcome by something more powerful... rousing... exciting. She had never before experienced such a physical awareness, such a heightening of her senses as in this illicit moment.
"I-I desired a private word," she began.
"And the matter was so urgent it could not wait until morning?"
"Quite urgent, I assure you." she said and boldly entwined her arms about his neck. "But suddenly I've forgotten what it was." She pressed herself against him and reveled in the sensation of the thin silk against his bare torso.
Philip tried to ignore the sudden stirrings of arousal. No gentleman would seduce a young woman under her father's roof, though one could debate who was the seducer when a nubile young woman appears half dressed at said gentleman's room in the dead of night.
He considered the point moot and attempted only halfheartedly to extricate himself from her hold.
"One would hope you are well aware of the danger you court in coming to my room like this," he said softly.
"Danger?" she whispered back provocatively. "What kind of danger?"
Purposefully he angled her hips to him and gripped the globes of her buttocks.
She gasped but made no move to retreat.
His low and husky voice breached the silence. "I believe you have just made a most irrevocable decision, my lady."
T he morning dawned foggy with a light, misting rain, unfavorable conditions for spectators but advantageous to the incognito rider. Having garbed herself again as a lad, Charlotte tightly bound her bosom and even added light padding to her clothes in order to better simulate the male form.
She wore an oversized jacket, a muffler up to her chin, and her long honeyed tresses were tightly confined in a snug-fitting jockey's cap. Thus prepared, she waited impatiently to present herself for Robert's inspection.
He returned from his brief meeting with Sir Garfield and the racing stewards and declared, "All is in readiness, and Philip has agreed to assist."
"Philip?" she asked dubiously. "What can he possibly do?"
"Never underestimate the talents and resourcefulness of the man, Charlotte. Major Drake will sit with the Wallaces and do what he does best, provide diversion at any sign of trouble. I am entirely confident in his abilities and am astonished at how warmly the master of Heathstead Hall embraces him. He will play this to our advantage."
"I know he's your friend, Robert, but there's something about him I just can't trust."
"He is given to caprice, I'll admit, but he's been as a brother to me. Besides, how could I not trust a man who saved my life?"
"How could you not," she replied.
"Drake shall attend to Sir Garfield. Now, as to your disguise." He circled once to inspect her and grinned appreciatively. "You are nearly the same young scamp I first mistook you for those years ago. But wait, there is something missing..." He cocked his head, studying her. "Indeed, I have it." He grinned broadly.
As he stooped to the rain-softened ground, scooping up half a handful of mud, she looked her question, and to her chagrin, he smeared it on her face.
"It's not horse dung, but I had to do something to counter such a suspiciously pretty face."
She laughed outright at the shared remembrance of their very first encounter after she and Jemmy had milled in the stable yard.
Robert nodded approval at his finishing touch, and he continued coaching her. "Now you are a lad who has taken his mount for an airing. I believe you shall pass muster to any but the veriest scrutiny. Now, what is your name?" he grilled.
"Charlie Devington, your cousin, recently apprenticed in Lichfield."
"Just so." He nodded. "But when you speak, Charlotte, and don't do so more than necessary, remember to lower your voice and evade eye contact as much as possible. Avoid Jeffries. He is the one I am wary of exposing you. He won't be fooled for a moment by your disguise."
"But he has been a loyal friend to both of us for years. Why should you doubt him now?"
"Suffice to say I question his loyalty only if his livelihood at Heathstead Hall should come into jeopardy. I shouldn't blame him, of course, but pray try to keep your distance from him."
"I understand. I shall not let you down. We shall prevail, Robert."
"Yes, my love. We shall."
Charlotte, in assisting Robert with the final preparations, was completely puzzled by his instructions.
"Hold his tail up for me, Charlotte. I daresay he won't care much for what I am about to do." Charlotte's eyes widened, and Mars kicked out to demonstrate his immense displeasure as Robert inserted a large syringe into the horse's rectum.
"What in heaven's name are you doing?" she asked in bewilderment.
He answered matterof-factly, "Using every weapon in the arsenal. A bit of alum and water will cause him to tighten his sphincter muscles, thus preventing him from taking in air thru the rectum that might later cause abdominal cramping."
Robert then removed his neck cloth and tore a narrow strip from the fine linen. Charlotte looked her question this time.
"I am going to tie his tongue down," he answered the silent query.
"Why would you do such a thing?"
A horse's wind is every bit as important as his legs. With insufficient air, he cannot last. By tying it down, the horse's tongue cannot obstruct his airway while running."
"But you did none of this before," she remarked.
"I did not feel it necessary when challenged by no better horseman than your cousin Charles. But in this contest, we have need of every advantage."
Suddenly feeling the weight on her shoulders, Charlotte swallowed hard in apprehension.
At precisely 9:45 a.m., the jockeys presented to the clerk of the scales where Charlotte mumbled her responses exactly as rehearsed. The preparations moved forward without incident, until shocked and dismayed, Charlotte discovered the identity of her adversary. Rather than mounting one of his own grooms on Rascallion, Sir Garfield had hired Jake Harrow to ride!
Harrow was a small, mean-spirited veteran of the turf, who had reputedly never lost a race. He knew how to bully it all out of his horses, pushing them to their limits, and some beyond. All his mounts won, though some never raced again.
Charlotte was astonished that Jeffries would allow this cruel and callous man anywhere near a horse he had trained, let alone ride one of his best. Noticing for the first time Jeffries's conspicuous absence, she could only surmise he had no say in the matter. If so, he likely wouldn't even watch the proceedings. Her uncle was very desperate, indeed, to hire such as Jake Harrow.
At precisely ten o'clock, and in fine form, the sleek, leggy colt Rascallion eagerly pranced alongside the leading groom as he proceeded to the start. Once his rider mounted, the horse practically cantered in place in his impatience to start. Raring to go, the young horse appeared the sure bet, but as Rascallion pulled alongside Mars---snorting, head tossing, and eyeing his competitor---the jockey took him forcibly in hand.
Holding hard at the starting post, horse and rider gave their competition an aggressive once-over, scornfully eyeing Charlotte and her battle-scarred mount. "Bloody snot-nosed apprentice! Should have demanded another ten quid from the ole gaffer for this!" Jake snorted derisively and intentionally loud enough for Charlotte's ears.
Avoiding Jake's eye, Charlotte struggled to compose her jangled nerves. Focus. Focus. Can't think about him. Breathe. Just breathe!
Mars tensed in anticipation, but except for the occasional flicker of his ears, he was as a statue compared to the tightly wound beast beside him. One unacquainted with Mars might misperceive his manner as lethargic, but that would be a grave error. Mars didn't expend his energy injudiciously. He amassed it, kindled it into a pent-up flame, and at the signal would ignite with the sheer force of it.
Coiled and poised for his signal, the stallion closely attended to his rider. In the months following Dettingen, Robert had spent countless hours training Mars for battle and honing one key trait, a trait even deviant to the equine nature... patience. Patience was for the predator in stalking his prey, but to the prey animal, it was unnatural and perilous. Patience meant certain death.
As a charger, Mars had been taught to entrust his very life unto the master, to conquer his innate fear and charge without hesitation into the full fury of battle. In so doing, the horse had transitioned in his mind from prey to predator. He had learned to anticipate his master's signal and succumb to his will. He awaited that signal now, and as the starter lowered the flag, Charlotte gave Mars what he most desired. They were off!
Mars surged forth from the start, head low, nose to the ground, hooves digging and clawing at the soft, moist earth, tearing a blazing trail down the turf. Rascallion, long forelegs stretching, reaching, slicing the air, also broke remarkably strong. Both horses fought valiantly from the start for the elusive prize, the yearned for, coveted, oh-so-precious early lead.
Though Rascallion was unquestionably improved in the past few days, Mars was still stronger. With little encouragement from Charlotte, he lengthened his stride, eating up yards of turf, gaining a clean lead with Rascallion chasing nose to tail behind them.
Although Mars claimed his lead effortlessly, Charlotte's dilemma was how hard to press him. If she asked, he would put such distance between them that Rascallion would be hard at it ever to catch up, but this risked using Mars up. Although he performed superlatively in their training, Mars was a warhorse. Did he truly have the heart and soul of a running blood?
How long could he sustain this blistering speed? Moreover, could he produce the same in a second heat? Did he have it in him to answer when the time was ripe? As she debated holding back, these were the unknowns. They needed to take the first heat, but if she used him up to claim it, he might have nothing left in the second and be obligated to fight to the death in the third. If they won now and she preserved just enough of him to take the next, he need not run the third. Her decision was critical. Her future with Robert rested on her judgment.
Though it would mean a hotter contest now, she determined to conserve him. Almost imperceptibly, Charlotte's fingers crept along the reins. Remembering Robert's words about the silken thread, she took up slack by minute degrees. Mars reluctantly conceded his will, snorting in protest and letting Rascallion creep back into his line of sight.
Coming out of the bend and into the stretch, Rascallion clamored for the lead and surged forth with renewed vigor. Gaining momentum with his refreshed confidence, he crept up alongside Mars, but this wasn't enough for Harrow, who commenced his particular brand of "encouragement." Rascallion, always a willing runner, continued in rare form but was clearly resentful of the crop.
Charlotte had known Rascallion from his first days under Jeffries. She had watched the trainer work with him and knew his mind. She had never quite taken a fancy to Rascallion, as he been unpredictable and refractory at times, but he had come along well enough under Jeffries's firm but gentle hand. The trainer understood how to work with the horse rather than fighting against him, using firm and persistent persuasion rather than brute force to manage the colt's irascible temper. Some horses didn't take well to bullying, and Rascallion was one of them.
His ire was unmistakable in the angry glare of his eye and in the flattening of his ears with the jockey's every downward stroke. Charlotte had witnessed Rascallion's temper firsthand and mused with a faint smile that it might soon prove Jake Harrow's undoing.
Holding Mars in check, shoulder at Rascallion's flank, they pounded along, waiting and watching. Charlotte would let them hold the lead, but just barely, just enough to keep the pressure cooking. Holding this position and preserving Mars, she would watch their opponents for any sign of weakness or fatigue, any window of opportunity as they drew nearer the finish. She would not push needlessly but would wait until the time was ripe.
Charlotte smiled with renewed confidence in her strategy. Her fingers slowly played, releasing first an inch and then two of slack. Mars, in tune with his rider, took his cue, once more gathering just enough speed to creep up along the outside, now shoulder to shoulder in synchronous stride with the increasingly agitated Rascallion.
Harrow, conscious of their advance, was either too callous to care or completely oblivious to the growing distress of his mount, even with the clear warning signs his colt exhibited as he plied the whip. The heedless jockey, intent only upon the finish line, prepared to thrash more speed out of a horse that was rapidly coming unglued. The colt was near boiling point, straining under the jockey's brutality, now more concerned about the crop than the track under his hooves.
His distress suddenly morphed into something much more dangerous. His ears pinned flat to his head, his nostrils flared blood red, his tail thrashed in open rebellion, and his eyes rolled menacingly back in a final unheeded warning. Charlotte almost felt pity for the jockey and yet again encouraged Mars. Leaning closer, chin to his mane, she loosened her fingers and released more slack. In instant response, he surged forth, and Harrow raised his crop for the very last time.
Rascallion had had enough!
The colt insidiously detonated by slamming all of his forward momentum onto the forehand. Harrow pitched ten feet straight into the air, arse over teakettle, before landing in a ghastly tangled, muddy mass.
Once free of his tormentor, Rascallion rejoiced! He spun, bucking and rearing gleefully, and ran to beat hell, finishing half a length ahead of Mars. The mutinous colt then celebrated his freedom with a victory lap and was halfway again around the track before the elusive Jeffries materialized to take him in hand.
The crowd went wild to get a firsthand glimpse of the broken body, while the physician called to examine the mangled Mr. Harrow promptly announced the end of the infamous jockey's riding days. He had finally met his match in the murderous Rascallion.
The stewards, aghast at such goings-on, having never before witnessed such a grisly incident, called a special race meeting. Charlotte, during the deliberations, slipped warily away from the crowds. Meeting Robert, Charlotte dismounted, handing Mars off to a waiting groom for hot walking while they awaited the decision.
Although Rascallion had technically crossed the finish line ahead of Mars, even an unsanctioned race could not concede the win to a jockey-less horse. The stewards unanimously decided heat number one in Mars's favor and called for a one-hour hiatus, during which time Sir Garfield was required to hire a new jockey or forfeit.
Sir Garfield called for Jeffries to ride, but the trainer adamantly declared himself unfit. Sir Garfield had completely dismissed his advice regarding Rascallion's readiness to run. He had compounded this transgression against his trainer in hiring such a known scoundrel as Jake Harrow. Thoroughly disgusted by the travesty, Jeffries outright refused to ride.
Charles, however, perceived in this moment his opportunity to finally prove his worth to his father and to make atonement for his first defeat. Willing himself to overcome his apprehension, he spoke up. "Let me ride in the next race."
"Absolutely not!"
"But why not? I've raced him before!"
"And a damned poor showing you made of it, Charles," his father said. "Besides, after what befell Harrow I could never allow it. Let some other poor sod risk his fool neck."
Sir Garfield was furious but refused to cry off. He dispatched Jeffries to hire another jockey, but remarkably, in a town full of racing stables, there was none to be hired, leastwise not to mount the "homicidal" Rascallion. Eyes bulging and purpling with rage, Sir Garfield bellowed that he would find another jockey if he had to scrounge the bowels of hell for one.
With opportunity so blatantly presented, Philip hadn't the will to resist.
"What news?" Robert anxiously inquired of Phillip.
"Seems we have a predicament, ol' chap. Curiously, Sir Garfield can't find a replacement jockey. Even at quadruple the going rate, he had no takers. Superstitious lot," he scoffed. "Seems they all believe the colt demon-possessed."
"One can hardly blame them after that performance!" Robert chuckled. "Will he forfeit, then?"
"Refuses to cry off, but he's requesting a renegotiation."
"A what?" Charlotte interjected.
"A renegotiation of the terms," Philip replied matterof-factly. "The original agreement was for each horse to carry a hired jockey, but Jeffries claims to have injured his shoulder chasing down the obstreperous colt. With no other jockey for hire, Sir Garfield respectfully requests a reversion to Newmarket rules: gentlemen only to ride."
Robert brightened. "This is exceptional news! I had feared Charlotte's discovery every moment, and Charles is no match for me. Never has been. 'Twill be an effortless victory."
"This is decidedly to our advantage, Robert," Charlotte agreed. "Charles is barely more than a competent rider."
Philip interrupted. "I fear you both labor under some misapprehension. Charles Wallace is not to ride."
"If not Charles, then who?" Charlotte asked, bewildered.
"Simply stated, me."
"Surely you jest, Drake!" Robert exclaimed in disbelief.
"I assure you, 'tis no jest."
"Just whose side are you on?" Charlotte exclaimed.
"Why mine, of course. When have I implied otherwise?"
"But why would my uncle possibly trust you?" she asked incredulously.
"We came to a mutually advantageous agreement," Philip replied blandly. "After some manner of negotiations, Sir Garfield put forth such an attractive offer that I could find no reason to refuse. You came to Yorkshire in pursuit of your ambition, Devington, and I came with mine. The ends justify the means," Philip replied unabashedly.
"The devil you say, Philip! This changes everything!"
"Indeed. The weights are decidedly a problem. I daresay poor Rascallion must now carry near thirteen stone."
"That's hardly what I meant! I say Sir Garfield should forfeit."
"He is unlikely to do so with any measure of grace, Devington. I should think it much more to your advantage to finish this business in a sporting fashion. Indeed, I have a strong yen for sport. Are you not up to the challenge, old man?" He goaded Devington with an arrogant arch of his brow. "It's been some time since we two have pitted our skill against one another. The training field at Woolwich last comes to mind."
"Woolwich was decidedly to my disadvantage, and you know it. The scales were balanced in your favor; you designed it so."
"Decidedly, Devington. I could hardly allow a green recruit to show me up in front of the ranks, could I? But I'll promise you a fair run."
"Think again, Drake, if you imagine besting me on the racecourse!"
"I count you a worthy adversary, Devington, though Rascallion appears more than capable of the challenge. 'Twas exceedingly illjudged of Sir Garfield to place him in that imbecile Harrow's hands. The horse simply wants for a rider with more finesse. Now what do you say? I have thrown down the gauntlet. Do you accept?"
"Bloody hell, Drake, I accept!"
With public executions the most popular entertainment of the day, word spread like wildfire of the continuation of the race featuring the homicidal horse. With their nominally suppressed appetites for blood whetted by the earlier race, the Doncaster populace thronged to the rail in eager anticipation of Rascallion's next performance.
Robert recognized the raw talent, the fleetness of the younger horse, particularly once liberated from his brutal jockey. Rascallion under pressure was volatile and easily rattled, but Philip Drake, an expert rider with a level head and a light hand, was just the sort to manage such volatility.
The major, fully cognizant of his mount's weaknesses, would ride him accordingly, and if he could sufficiently focus Rascallion to bring all to bear, he would be a daunting, if not invincible, foe.
Robert still harbored some doubt that Mars possessed the sheer swiftness to outrun the younger colt, especially with the onerous thirteen stone he must carry to even the odds. The going under such weight would prove arduous, but Mars was intrepid to the last, and when asked, would give all without faltering.
Robert rested unwaveringly in his horse's courage and strength of will, but Philip would know how to get the most out of Rascallion. He hoped he needn't press Mars for supreme efforts. Robert would have to ride smart if they would prevail.
Once mounted and ready, the two officers proceeded to the starting post. Mars, well collected, proceeded as before, keenly aware of his rider's anticipation. Philip had the rambunctious Rascallion surprisingly well in hand, and the snorting colt sidled up to the start. Saluting one another, they nodded readiness to the steward, who lowered the flag.
The two horses burst forward in unison, but Rascallion, encouraged by his earlier success, initiated his new rider with a wild bucking spree. Demonstrating great prowess in the saddle, Philip was unmoved and smartly pulled the colt's head up to regain control. Philip knew from the prior run that this colt was, in Newmarket jargon, a "fizzy" runner. Such types never bore heavy management. Rascallion needed to be eased along in his running. Rather than holding fast to the horse, Drake mystified the spectators by crouching low over the testy colt's neck and murmuring words of encouragement.
Under Drake's cool and calm management, Rascallion remarkably forgot his act of rebellion. He once again pricked his ears to dash forward with great celerity, anxious to regain his lost ground. Having now won his first round with the colt, Philip channeled Rascallion's surplus of nervous energy to setting his mind back on the field.
Robert laid low over the gray, his reins laced loosely through his fingers, while Mars galloped in cadence with his rider's pounding heart. Briefly closing his eyes, Robert sensed well before he heard the thunderous approach of Philip and Rascallion coming up hard upon them.
Mars waited, as if baiting the other horse. Rascallion's nose appeared at his flank. Mars still waited. The colt crept up. They were shoulder to shoulder arcing around the bend. The tension rose in Mars. His body recoiling, he pushed onward but made no attempt to accelerate beyond the pace asked by his rider.
Stretching forward neck and neck, Rascallion glared at the gray, tossing his head while his forelegs reached, slicing the air as they proceeded down the track. Refusing to yield, Mars matched stride for stride, hanging alongside.
Rascallion fought to shake off Mars and gain the lead, but the gray refused to give an inch. With a deep and audible groan, the chestnut heaved and strained in another vain attempt, but dogged in his determination, Mars unremittingly clung to Rascallion.
Mars now displayed visible signs of fatigue. His light gray coat was coated with sweat. Foam spewed from his mouth. His sides heaved with every new stride, yet he relentlessly persevered, his cadence never faltering.
The battle heightened in intensity, and the wild-eyed Rascallion began to exhibit chinks in his armor. In his frustration to break free from Mars, the chestnut gnashed at the bit and shook his head in ire. While his mount was holding up well physically, Philip struggled to manage Rascallion's undisciplined mind and bilious temper. Another push could drive the fitful young stallion over the brink. The pair of riders entered the home stretch. The moment of decision had arrived.
Philip knew the potential of the colt under him. Although volatile, managed properly, the horse was a winner, and Philip himself was competitively driven. He had begun the race with a single purpose: to win. His heiress and her twenty thousand could be his, but in the final seconds, his conscience pricked like a needle.
"Bloody hell!" he swore and imperceptibly shifted his weight into his seat, just cue enough to give his horse pause. It was all the advantage Robert needed.
Mars, the warrior horse, was the undisputed victor.
As the final seconds unfurled, Sir Garfield leapt to his feet and nearly tumbled from the dais. His triumph had once again slipped elusively through his fingers, or in his mind, through Philip's fingers. Sir Garfield stormed onto the field in a blustering rage to confront the dismounting major. "What the devil was that performance? You could easily have overtaken them! The horse proved it in the last run!"
Philip handed the hot colt off to Jeffries's tender care, calmly responding, "You forget the colt was riderless and therefore at some advantage."
"What game do you think you're playing, Drake? You let the damned bounder win!"
"You suspect I am in league with Devington? I assure you not, sir. Our arrangement was as much to my benefit as yours."
Philip impassively waited for Sir Garfield to fully and unreservedly vent his spleen, allowing him to run out of breath before answering the accusations flung in his face.
"With all due respect, good sir, the horse was coming undone, nearly over the brink, as it were. He's a fine runner but has an exceedingly fizzy temperament. He would have no future at all should I have pushed him beyond his limits. Racing is as much a matter of disciplining the horse's mind as it is his body. Many fouryear-olds aren't mature enough to handle this kind of pressure."
"How dare you lecture me on my stock! I've owned runners since you were suckling your mother's teat, you insolent cur!"
"I repeat, it was to my advantage to ride the colt to victory, but that would have been his undoing. 'Twould have been a very shortlived victory and an ultimate crime if one illconceived match race ruined a promising career. In truth," he drawled, "I did you a great service by saving this good horse for future races."
In full accord with the major, Jeffries jumped in, "Aye, he be right, sir. I've said as much, but ye wouldn't heed me. Yer got a prime piece of horseflesh in Rascallion, but like yer prized burgundies, 'e needs a bit of age on him. Knew from the beginning 'twas no good, this race. The major done right by 'im. Though I daresay naught will convince ye o' it." The trainer snorted his indignation and took his young charge off for cooling.
"Believe what you will, sir." Philip turned on his heel. With his aspirations temporarily thwarted, Philip would console himself with a bottle of smuggled French brandy and a warm woman. He had a good notion where to find both, but he first sought out Devington.
"My congratulations on a hellava ride, Devington! Devilish good sport!"
This said, he departed, leaving the astonished captain to wonder, yet again, just what Philip Drake was all about.
S oon to be five hundred pounds richer, and with Sir Garfield's consent guaranteed, Robert's long-sought goal was finally within grasp. With the sale of his commission, Charlotte's dowry, and Mars and Amoret as their foundation stock, he and Charlotte would be well set to start their own racing stud. Perhaps they could leave Yorkshire behind and settle in Newmarket. Lost in his musings, Robert proceeded to Heathstead Hall, intending to press for a spring wedding.
Letty intercepted Robert upon his arrival and handed him a hastily scribed note from Charlotte. "She can't see ye, Captain. He's locked her in her rooms," the maid said apologetically.
His face flushed upon reading her words:
Dearest Robert,
I am disconsolate that I shan't see you before you depart, my uncle having now resorted to the crudest measures. Still unmoved in accepting your suit, there is naught to change his mind.
I had falsely hoped that upon your return, he would finally see you as a man worthy of his respect, and moreover, as the man I love. But alas, my dearest, he cares for no one's happiness but his own. I despair for our future unless we act soon. We must find a way.
Pray send me word as soon as you are able, and know that only you have my heart.
Your Most Devoted,
Charlotte
Struggling to maintain his equanimity, Robert sought out Sir Garfield, striding with grim determination past the protesting footman to Sir Garfield's sanctum. Seated behind his great mahogany desk in the library, the baronet glowered. "What is the meaning of this intrusion? I gave strict orders that I should not be disturbed!" Sir Garfield reprimanded the harried footman who had followed in Devington's wake.
Robert posed his response with forced civility. "As you might expect, sir, I have come to see our wager settled and to speak with Charlotte."
"Charlotte is indisposed," the baronet replied contemptuously.
"I request only a brief word, sir."
"As I stated, she is indisposed!" he repeated sternly as he sharpened a quill.
"I respectfully remind you of our agreement, sir."
Sir Garfield paused with his penknife before meeting Devington's eyes. "Our agreement, you say? I have no obligation to you. Our wager is null and void."
"What did you say?"
"A wager is an agreement of honor between two gentlemen," he said condescendingly, "but it is revealed to me that our race was run under most dishonorable pretences, Captain."
"What do you mean?"
"You know bloody well what I mean. My wayward niece rode disguised as a boy in the first race. I never should have believed it but for Charles. He recognized something familiar in the rider, as did Jeffries, and the stable hands confirmed it. I know all about Charlotte's surreptitious rides."
Robert's face was ashen. "The race was run fairly under the rules we established at the outset. The rider's gender was never specified."
"As you well know, Newmarket rules prohibit females from riding."
"I don't dispute this; however, the same rules specify only gentlemen to ride. When you hired a jockey, Newmarket rules no longer applied." He knew it a lame argument and should have saved his breath.
"At my behest, the Doncaster officials conferred and agree that women are exclusively banned from all racing. Moreover, this act of fraud is not your first offense. Under the circumstances, I was compelled to reveal your prior duplicity at the Lichfield races, and they unanimously agreed the race is forfeit. I have no obligation to honor the wager of a cheat, and this embarrassment will never blight the racing record of a clearly superior running blood. Moreover, you are officially banned from the turf," he finished with a selfsatisfied gleam.
Banned from the turf? The man was bent to destroy him. Robert was at a loss to understand the reason behind such loathing. "I ask you, Sir Garfield," he said, enunciating his words with care, "is it that you can't stomach losing or can't stomach losing to me?"
The truth was that Sir Garfield saw in Devington's triumph not only his defeat on the turf but the ruination of all his long-laid plans. He was infuriated by his loss but even more by the threat Devington represented to all his ambitions.
Sir Garfield's success in racing was his means of achieving upward social mobility. Rascallion had represented his best prospect since the mare he had sold to the king of France.
Sir Garfield's second means of attaining his ambitions was through a marital alliance with a peer of the realm. With numerous noble estates teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, many aristocrats would deign to marry below their class, given sufficient pecuniary persuasion. Such was Sir Garfield's design for both his daughter and his niece, who were now of marriageable age. He would be damned to hell before allowing this presumptuous upstart to lay waste to everything!
"I won our wager, Sir Garfield, and will claim what is mine," Robert declared. "I will have Charlotte."
"Hear me once more, Devington; I will not ever sanction the union of my niece with a stable hand."
"I am no longer your infernal stable hand! You may think to keep me in my place, as you did my father, but I am not my father, nor will I ever allow another man to dictate my future and my happiness."
"Then seek your damned future and happiness elsewhere. Get out of my house before I throw you out!" Sir Garfield directed an unspoken command to the footman to conduct the captain to the door.
Robert hesitated but recognized he had no choice. His appeal had failed; the same scene had replayed. Again. What right had the man to snub him so? Robert had left Yorkshire with virtually nothing and returned a captain. He had gained the respect of his men as well as his superiors, yet Sir Garfield regarded him with nothing less than seething contempt. "Damn the man!" Robert cursed.
Finding no one about to carry word to Charlotte, he conceded defeat and headed for the stables, where he reluctantly saddled Mars and departed for Sheffield. He arrived at the tavern well after dark. After settling his horse, he headed straight to the near-deserted taproom, fully intent on drowning his sorrows. His customary small beer wouldn't dull this pain. Glancing above the bar, he read the placard: Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence, clean straw for nothing.
He tossed down thruppence, and the barkeep assured him of achieving his inebriated stupor with contraband gin. Devington lifted the bottle in salute. "Like father, like son," he mumbled. Forgoing the dirty glass, he took a great choking draught of the rotgut disguised as drink. Having eaten nothing since breaking his fast, several more swigs had him well on his way to his yearned-for oblivion.
Perceiving a familiar low rumble from the back corner of the dim taproom, Robert spun around. His bleary-eyed squint revealed Philip Drake fondling a woman who sat on his lap, giggling in obviously feigned protest. With a grimace at the bawdy display, Robert advanced a bit unsteadily toward the preoccupied couple. He thumped his bottle loudly on the table to announce himself, and then slumped heavily and unceremoniously into the opposing chair.
"Devington, what an unanticipated surprise," Philip drawled in apparent displeasure. Devington failed to respond but knocked back draughts of gin at a rate that impressed even the jaded major.
Now that he perceived his miserable friend was come to seek his counsel, Philip heaved a reluctant sigh and gently settled Maggie back on her feet with a not-so-gentle pat on her shapely derriere.
Nodding her understanding, Maggie gathered up their empty glasses, and with sultry look of promise cast over her shoulder, she sashayed away. Philip's gaze riveted on her departing bottom for several seconds before transferring back to Robert. He helped himself to a drink from the rapidly diminishing supply and then addressed his companion. "I scarce thought to see you so soon, but I surmise from your untimely appearance that matters failed to transpire to your expectations."
"No, it bloody well didn't turn out."
"What now, then? How shall you go on?"
"B'damned if I know."
"Well, old chap, let's take stock of the situation. Charlotte still agrees to have you?"
"I've no doubt of her devotion. Charlotte's constant as the sun."
"Although poetic, I question your metaphor. The sun disappears every night. What would this imply of her nocturnal fidelity?" He smirked, and Robert glowered.
"My apologies, Devington. A man in his cups is scarce expected to reason clearly or appreciate irony. So I shall endeavor to aid you. Now, where were we? Oh yes, her devotion. There is still some hope, then. I suppose you're now contemplating elopement?"
"I can't do it! Though I know she'd have me, I can't go to her penniless. The five hundred from the race, combined with her dowry, would have been more'n enough to keep her in comfort, but the old rotter reneged on the wager, and without his blessing, there's no dowry. I've naught to my name but a captain's wages and fifty guineas from the first race. If we elope, she'd be condemned to a life following the drum in a soldier's camp. She deserves better, much better." His voice fell, and he downed another draught.
"Indeed. The truest love and devotion are known to diminish with privation and penury. But we're soldiers, Devington. 'Tis the life we've chosen, or perhaps it chose us. On either score, a soldier lives by his fortune, and fortune is exceedingly fickle. My point is that it can change on a whim. The corpulent old bugger could pop off tomorrow; then what?"
"Charles'd inherit and assume guardianship of Charlotte."
"And would Charles follow his father's lead? Seemed an amiable enough chap to me."
Robert raised the bottle, pausing midair to consider this thought. "Really can't say what Charles's disposition would be. S'pose he might be amenable."
"Then, it appears you have some choices: either abscond with the chit to Scotland for a clandestine marriage and live thenceforth in your blissful poverty, or wait until Charlotte comes of age or her uncle expires, whichever comes first.
"In either case, Hope, Devington, may displace your present courtship of Despair. She's a distant cousin to Lady Fortune, whom I personally hold dearest, but I believe Hope much more constant in her attachments; thus I trust she will serve you well."
Clapping his friend on the shoulder, Philip continued. "Speaking of ladies has put me in mind of some unfinished business." He grinned broadly, taking up the near-empty bottle. "Think I'll do you a favor, old chap, and save you some morning agony." Philip rose and swaggered, bottle in hand, in search of Maggie.
Robert sighed deeply and passed out flat on the table.
Robert awoke cotton-mouthed, bleary-eyed, and aching, sprawled in a chair by the hearth in an unfamiliar room. Attempting to focus and make sense of the night before, he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He then unwisely shook his cobweb-filled head, which answered with the strike of a thousand anvils, awakening the most violent nausea he had ever known.
Moaning in abject agony, he stumbled to his feet, knocking over a side table as he frantically sought the chamber pot. Finding it, he wretched relentlessly.
"Oh my, luv!" Maggie spoke in sympathetically dulcet tones. "Ye'd best be still," she advised, rising quickly from Philip's bed. Holding the chamber pot, she guided Robert back to his chair. "Now Maggie'll jes' run and get ye a little sommat to help cure yer ills."
She threw her gown over her shift and sought the major's assistance to do up her laces. Then Maggie stuffed her hair under her cap and slipped from the room.
"She has a warm heart, that Maggie," Philip mused. "If it weren't for her, your arse would still be passed out in the taproom." Only her pity for the lovesick captain, coupled with concerns of thieves and cutthroats, had cajoled Philip into carrying his comatose companion to his chamber.
"You're a saint among men," Robert groaned. "Pray remind me later how much I'm indebted by your tender mercies."
Maggie returned armed with a tankard of weak ale and a pot of hot tea, just about the time the captain's retching ceased.
"Hair of the dog?" Philip inquired skeptically.
"Got ye sommat better?" she retorted saucily and deftly righted the table, placing her tray upon it. Then bringing a pitcher of water and a reasonably clean towel, she ministered to the wretched captain, endeavoring to put him back in passable order.
"Now how about a shave, Cap'n? Ye refused last time, if'n I recall, but jes' you ask Major Philip what a steady hand I've got."
Sensing Robert's refusal, Philip interjected, "She really does mean a shave this time, Devington. It's a sure bet Maggie's hand'll be steadier than yours. Let Maggie set you to rights. After last night's indulgence, you're sure to slit your own throat." Answering for Robert, Philip gave her a nod. She left to fetch hot water and a sharp blade.
"That's what you really need, a simple, uncomplicated wench like Maggie. I've half a mind to keep her myself," he mused.
"And what of your heiress?" Robert asked.
"Completely beside the point. Said I'd a mind to keep Maggie, not leg-shackle to her. I'm utterly bewildered by your fixation on matrimony, unless of course you've gotten the girl with child. Is that it, Devington?"
Robert glared his response.
"Nay, the most honorable Captain Devington wouldn't do such a thing, would he?"
"I would never dishonor Charlotte."
"Do you mean to say," Philip asked incredulously, "that you've pined nearly five years for her, stoically awaiting the day you may legally claim your conjugal rights and release your pent-up passions? I'm completely confounded by it."
"And what if I should be killed, leaving Charlotte unmarried and with child? Unable to collect even my military pension? She'd be destitute."
"There are ways to prevent conception, Devington."
"You still don't fathom it, do you? That I desire to marry her."
"You've yet to live, man. With women like Maggie so plentiful, why do you seek bondage?"
"I've no interest in whores, Philip. Not every man adheres to your voluptuary conviction that marriage is the fatal penance to be paid only after a lifetime of license. Doesn't love exist in your hedonistic Utopia?"
"Love? I seem to recall having this conversation with you once before. Pray let me ease your mind that I am no agnostic of love. Quite the contrary, I worship faithfully at the altar of Venus. I am religious in my practice of love and endeavor to share it in a most selfsacrificing and altruistic manner." He finished this last pronouncement with a smirk just as Maggie returned.
"I can vouch for 'im, Cap'n," Maggie said with a chortle.
Robert finally surrendered, flopping unceremoniously into the chair, and Maggie readied to shave him. Once dressed and sufficiently recovered to travel, Robert scrawled a missive with Maggie's promise to ensure its delivery to Miss Charlotte Wallace of Heathstead Hall.
With her reassurance, the two officers departed for London.
A TALE OF TWO SECRETS
C harlotte waited impatiently for word from Robert. She had read his frustrated missive repeatedly during her for'night of confinement. Surely he would write again soon. He wouldn't abandon her, yet she was increasingly apprehensive. Her position in her uncle's household had never been comfortable, but now she suffocated from the oppression.
Sympathetic to his cousin's plight, even Charles's normal exuberance dimmed. In an attempt to release Charlotte from her mental, if no longer physical, imprisonment, he casually remarked at breakfast, "Since it looks to be a fine day, I had thought to take a ride to the heath." He looked to Sir Garfield. "Father, might Charlotte be permitted to accompany me? And Trixie, too, of course, if she should care to go?"
Beatrix surprisingly agreed. "I daresay, I, for one, could use the fresh air. It's become so stifling here." She glared at Charlotte.
Charlotte, brightening suddenly at the suggestion, dimmed as acutely with her uncle's reply.
"I am afraid that won't be possible, Charles. Charlotte no longer has a horse in my stables."
"I b-beg your pardon, Uncle?" Charlotte stammered, spilling her tea.
"You have forfeited such privileges by your recent conduct. I depart this morning to London and have instructed Jeffries to accompany me with the mare. She will be sold at the blood sale."
Charlotte gaped at her uncle.
"Though I intended to have this conversation later, I suppose 'twould be best to be done with it now, to give you time to contemplate the consequences of your actions, my girl." He paused to lower his cup to the saucer.
"You have proven willful and headstrong, Charlotte, and many a man won't tolerate such a wife. It is thus my responsibility to take you to task, as it were, and I shall do it for your own good, b'God."
"Your uncle is right," Lady Felicia interjected. "I have never condoned your hoydenish behavior. You need now practice the manners and deportment of a young lady. How else shall you ever expect us to make you a desirable match?"
Sir Garfield smiled approvingly at his wife then said to Charlotte, "You and Beatrix are both come of marriageable age, and with so few eligible prospects in the county, I am bound for London for the arrangement of nuptials."
"Arrangement of nuptials?" Charlotte repeated blankly.
"Indeed. My solicitor, Wiggins, has already made inquiries at my behest. There are several eligible prospects, all members of the peerage, who would greatly benefit from the largess of a well-dowered bride."
"Well-dowered, Uncle? Five hundred pounds would hardly be considered a large dowry."
"'Tis precisely why I instructed Wiggins to increase your dowry to five thousand. That should see you married well enough, if not quite as auspiciously as Beatrix. My only niece will not be wed to a former stable boy, even one who parades about in crimson regimentals."
"My dear sir, should not we discuss this matter privately?" Lady Felicia inquired.
Sir Garfield replied condescendingly, "No need to worry yourself over matters of business, my dear. There is little left but to negotiate the settlements."
"The settlements?" Lady Felicia prompted.
"Indeed, madam. How should you like to see our Trixie settled a countess?"
"Our Beatrix... a countess!" Lady Felicia exclaimed, her eyes taking on an avaricious gleam. "Is it to be so, Sir Garfield?"
"There is a particular nobleman, heir to a considerable estate, though diminished in fortune, to whom an alliance would prove advantageous. Our Trixie's dowry will provide a considerable bolster to his estate. Her only obligation will be to produce an heir to secure the future succession of the earldom. Wiggins indicates the gentleman was well disposed to discussion. I anticipate expeditious settlements and formal announcement of the betrothal upon our family's arrival in London."
Charlotte was incredulous that her cousin's future should be determined in such a callous and calculating manner. By this time, even Beatrix realized the implications of her father's machinations.
"But, Papa," she protested, thinking of Major Drake, "a title is all well and good, but how could I marry a man I haven't even met? What if we don't suit?"
"My dear Beatrix, marriage is an agreeable arrangement. As I have made the arrangement, you will be agreeable." Sir Garfield smiled indulgently, and she, blank-faced, took this in.
"Indeed, Beatrix," her mother agreed, "the most advantageous marriages are made thusly."
With her marriage all but arranged, Beatrix pulled her lightly arched brows together in a deep frown, once more counting the days since her last menses. Surely it could not happen the very first time?
She never should have gone to his room that night, but after tossing restlessly in bed, she'd crept down the hall to his chamber with only vague ideas of tantalizing him. She had intended to bewitch him with her charms but soon found the boot on the other leg. Beatrix herself had become drunk with passion. She now wondered at the cost.
Beatrix snapped out of her reverie when her mother asked, "But what shall become of Charlotte, Sir Garfield?"
"Once Beatrix is settled, I shall deal with the wayward chit. Finding a suitable husband to manage her may present more of a challenge than I first believed. I have a mind to consider a widower, mayhap, someone older to take the girl firmly in hand."
Charlotte's eyes grew wide in disbelief, and Charles jumped to his cousin's defense.
"Father, how can you contemplate such a scheme? You speak of marital arrangements in the same vein as taking a horse to auction!"
"Charles, it is your future in the making here! Through your sister's connection, you will have entrance into the most privileged circles, and through this so-called scheme, I shall ensure comfort and security for both my offspring. What father could do more for his children?"
Perceiving a cloud upon his sunny idealism, Charles could vouch no further argument.
"Well then, my girls," Lady Felicia began breathlessly, "there is little to discuss but much to do. Beatrix, you shall require a trousseau. Your present wardrobe is not fit for a countess-to-be. We must also address Charlotte's dowdy appearance. It will not do to arrive in London looking like backward country gentry. Come now, Beatrix, Charlotte. We have much to plan."
Beatrix truculently trailed her mother and whined, "But, Mama, why have I no choice?"
Lady Felicia reassured her with a pat on the hand. "My dearest daughter, though it is a sad injustice, a woman seldom weds to her own volition. The Good Lord bestowed upon males the greater reasoning and intellect, thus it is for us women to obey them."
"But what if the man is a besotted lech... or a fusty bore... or
ill-visaged, bad tempered, and deformed... or stingy, cruel, and close-fisted... or all of it!" she wailed.
"Trixie, I clearly sympathize, but pray cease the histrionics. As to your apprehensions, a clever woman can learn to manage her husband, even one who is... shall we say... less than desirable."
"But, Mama, I don't want such a husband!"
"Hear me out, Beatrix," she admonished. "If your husband should be faithless, affect ignorance. If he has a predilection for strong drink, feign tolerance; if he is choleric or sullen, be long-suffering until his mood spends itself. If he be a close-fisted despot, adopt a demure address. But if he be a weak and incompetent man, count your blessings, for you need only give him the very orders you should later receive from him. Lastly and most importantly, if you have wealth and position, your marriage need not be the least incommodious, regardless of your husband's temperament."
Beatrix scarce attended. Her father had arranged her marriage! He would never allow her betrothal to a lowly major of the Horse Guard when he had an earldom at hand. Though the match would make her a countess, she could not be pleased about it.
Beatrix was distraught, nearly overcome in her anxiety. If her husband suspected her prior indiscretion, an annulment would surely ensue, and with it, disgrace upon her entire family. It would be bad enough for her husband to discover her deflowered, but to wed while carrying another's child? She dared not even think of those repercussions!
"What am I to do?" she fretted to herself. Six weeks. It was now six weeks. Inspecting her abdomen daily, she was increasingly convinced she was growing with child and ever fearful some outward sign would mark her---that the truth would show in her eyes.
Ironically, she didn't feel guilty for her actions. If she had the chance, she would unhesitatingly do it again. Fear of the consequences distressed her. She could see no way out of her predicament. She needed to confide in someone, but to whom? Perhaps Charlotte? Surely she would understand, would have compassion. After all, she was in love, and she wouldn't tell Papa. Whom else could she possibly trust? She resolved to speak with Charlotte, and it had to be soon.
Opportunity came unexpectedly with a trip to Sheffield under the guise of purchasing embroidery silks. To insure privacy, Beatrix insisted that Letty ride outside with the coachman. Although Beatrix made her best attempts at normal prattle, they had scarce departed ten minutes before she spoke. "Charlotte," she began tentatively, "I have a confession, something of a most private nature. I must tell someone, or I shall expire. Can I trust you?"
"What is it, Beatrix? Are you ill?" she asked, alarmed at her cousin's demeanor.
"No... not ill exactly... but before I speak of it, I need your promise, your solemn vow, that you will not breathe a word to anyone."
Charlotte was taken aback by this sudden desire for confidence. They had never been close, had never shared intimacies. This must be grave indeed. "Yes, you can trust me. I promise, Beatrix," she reassured, handing the girl her handkerchief.
With Charlotte sworn to secrecy, Beatrix inhaled deeply and blurted out, "I think I'm breeding."
"Pardon me?" Charlotte gasped.
"You heard me." Beatrix lowered her voice to a whisper. "I believe I'm with child."
"B-but you have never even met your betrothed!" Charlotte stammered in disbelief.
"Of course it is not by my betrothed, you peahen! But that is precisely the problem. It was Philip Drake." Beatrix spoke his name with a guilty smile.
"But when? How did this happen, Beatrix?"
"It was the night before you raced. And how? Are you quite certain you want me to elaborate? It's quite shocking." Beatrix giggled.
"There is no need to particularize. I've spent enough time with the broodmares to have figured it out. I just can't fathom it." Charlotte broke off with her cousin's indignant flush.
"And I suppose you are the innocent! I hardly think so, the way you run off with Devington at every opportunity."
"It's not like that with us, Beatrix. Robert insists we wait for the marriage bed."
"Then you shall have a long and lonely wait, as my father shall never countenance it, just as he will never allow me to wed Major Drake."
"He has asked for your hand?"
Beatrix's flush deepened. "Not exactly, or not yet." She recovered. "He intended to speak to Papa, but then you and Robert spoiled everything! But I shan't regret the doing, just my undoing as the result," she said defiantly.
"Oh my," Charlotte murmured, the repercussions dawning. "Beatrix, you must tell him."
"Papa would disown me!" Beatrix wailed. "I can't possibly tell him."
"Not your father; you must tell Philip. He has a right to know and no less an obligation to put things to rights. He must marry you."
"Marry me? Papa has made other plans. He shall never allow it."
"But under the circumstances, he has little choice. If the major is a gentleman, he will offer. No doubt it shall be horridly awkward with other arrangements already made, but I can't believe even Uncle could contemplate marrying you off while carrying another man's child!"
"But if I marry the major, I shan't ever be a countess."
"But I thought you were in love with him?"
"Well, I was, before I thought to be a countess." Beatrix pouted.
"You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Besides, you shan't be a countess once your betrothed learns of this. 'Tis hardly something you can hide for very long. In either regard, you must tell the major. It is your only recourse."
"But how?"
With her heart hammering, Charlotte fingered the envelope in the pocket of her petticoat. Although she had proposed a shopping trip, her real intent was to take a letter to the tavern maid who had served as Robert's courier to her. Could she trust Beatrix with her secret? But her cousin was far too self-absorbed with her own predicament to attend to Charlotte's doings.
"As it happens, I know how to privately convey a message." She could only hope that Maggie would be of a mind to help.
T he portly, periwigged, and unfashionably clad man felt conspicuously out of place upon entering the doors of White's, London's oldest and most elite gentlemen's club. He was further abashed at the need to proffer his invitation, sealed by a longtime member, in order to gain entry to the hallowed halls, and even further mortified at his need to request assistance in locating the member.
Indeed, he had never even laid eyes on Viscount Uxeter, who had unexpectedly called this meeting. Sir Garfield mopped the perspiration, evidence of his discomfort, hastily from his brow and followed the lackey to a private parlor. The sole occupant was an elegantly dressed gentleman who sat engrossed in studying his drink.
The portly man was even further discomposed at the gentleman's prolonged hesitation to break from his trance and acknowledge his invited guest. Sir Garfield cleared his throat, and his lordship, foregoing even the most rudimentary of social graces, grazed him with a haughty stare. "Wallace, I presume?"
"Just so, my lord, just so," he replied with due diffidence.
With a curt nod, Lord Uxeter indicated the vacant chair. Taking his cue, Sir Garfield seated himself without ceremony and glanced admiringly about the room. "So gracious of you to sponsor me,
my lord---"
The viscount's brows snapped together. "Sponsor you?" he scoffed. "I have no recollection of offering a sponsorship. White's membership is by election only."
Sir Garfield felt the heat of his flush at such an imperious set-down. "I had assumed with our talk of betrothal and your invitation..."
"You grossly misapprehend my purpose, sir," Lord Uxeter said and produced a packet of papers from his inner pocket. "I am in receipt of a most audacious proposition from my solicitor. Am I to understand that you desire a betrothal of marriage between myself and your daughter?"
"Exactly so, my lord."
"Pray let us be frank, Sir Garfield. If you design to align yourself with one of the oldest families in England, you are presumptuous beyond measure." His icy gaze penetrated right through Sir Garfield, and he slowly tore the betrothal contract into halves.
Sir Garfield considered the man and indicated the torn documents. "I shouldn't act so hastily in dismissing the notion, my lord. I fear you give no consideration to the advantages of the match."
"I need consider nothing beyond your low birth. Such a misalliance could only corrupt, indeed bastardize, a noble family line."
"Pray hear me out, my lord. I don't yet despair of overcoming your objections."
"You waste my time and your breath," Uxeter said with a sneer.
"My birth may be inferior, my lord, but I am possessed of a vastly superior fortune."
"What would you know of my family's affairs?"
"I make it my business to know. I am well aware of Lord Hastings's illconceived investments and the sorry state of your holdings."
"You overstep yourself!"
Sir Garfield's tone was placatory. "I fail to comprehend you aristocrats and your repugnance of discussing such dirty matters as money, but I plead your forbearance. Should we come to an understanding, I am in a position to refortify your fortune."
Lord Uxeter paused. "Is that so?"
"My daughter is possessed of a very generous dowry."
"How generous?"
He cast the lure. "Twenty thousand pounds."
Edmund regarded the baronet scornfully. "Not enough to taint the blood of a noble family." His voice dripped with contempt.
"But is not everything in life negotiable?" Sir Garfield remarked with a conciliatory smile.
"You wish to barter?" He was stunned at the man's effrontery. "Gentlemen employ solicitors for such business."
Disregarding still another set-down, Sir Garfield forced another smile. "Then your solicitor should be in expectation of an offer more worthy of your consideration."
"I should very much doubt it, sir." Upon that remark, Lord Uxeter rose and departed, leaving Sir Garfield vowing to buy the arrogant bastard's very soul if necessary.
"We shall see, my lord. We shall just see." The baronet leaned back in the leather chair with a selfsatisfied smile and a growing sense of ease in his new surroundings.
January 5, 1744
The unmarked carriage arrived at Hastings House at precisely ten o'clock. The quartet of darkly cloaked figures descended, but rapping at the door was unnecessary. They were expected, and the servant who answered had his instructions. He led the gentlemen into a large book room with a blazing fire, where the host of this conclave awaited.
"Good evening, gentlemen." Lord Uxeter advanced and greeted
his guests as his servant collected their doffed hats and cloaks.
"So good of you to play host," Lord Gower replied. "We must take care from this day forward to avoid any public venue." Lord Gower eyed the servant warily.
"Port or brandy, gentlemen?" Uxeter inquired. Noting his lordship's concern, he dismissed his footman. Lord Gower waited until the servant departed before continuing.
"With word of our friend's arrival in France, we must be ever wary of the minister's spies."
Edmund had never truly believed this plan, nigh on three years in the making, would ever come to fruition. For three decades, the Jacobites had ineffectually looked to France to help deliver their rightful king, but could the French really be trusted to deliver on their promises?
"You mention preparations, but how can we be assured of France's resolve?" he asked.
"The interests of Versailles finally converge with our own. France has never been more disposed to restoring the Stuarts."
Lord Barrymore interjected. "Our French agent, Lord Semphil, confirms eight thousand Foot and two thousand Horse already amassed at Dunkirk under Marshal de Saxe. The Brest squadron is also made ready.
"The French have provided fifteen ships of the line, four frigates, and sixteen troop transports. An additional three thousand of their number are to join our three thousand Highlanders in a coordinated invasion from the North while the prince lands on the Southern Coast and advances to the capital."
"We have confirmation, and the invasion is imminent," said Colonel Cecil. "But the prince requires more than our vows of support; he must subsidize the campaign, and his troops and munitions must be maintained. The restoration of our rightful king comes at a price, but those who lend their support will be justly rewarded.
"Twenty-five thousand pounds should secure your place on
the Regent's Council, Uxeter, though the prince shall appoint his ministers as he will. Rest assured that he shall not forget those with him in his hour of greatest need."
Edmund eyed the gentlemen. How many men before them had plotted and schemed against the Crown of England, only to fail? The revolt of thirty years ago had led to executions and attainder of old and noble estates. Was he willing to take such a risk?
But should the Young Chevalier, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, succeed where his father had previously failed, Edmund might finally attain a position worthy of his talents.
This begged the question of whether the reward would be worth the potential price he might pay. It was a calculated gamble. His next question was how to come by twenty-five thousand?
Deciding to defer further contemplation, he only smiled and raised his glass to the assemblage. "To the Young Chevalier, Charles Edward Stuart, Prince Regent of Great Britain."
"To Bonnie Prince Charlie," they echoed.
W hile heated debate on the war continued, the King and his most favored minister advanced preparations and appointed the new command for the spring campaign.
With the augmented cavalry numbers came a need for more horses. Procurement duty befell Captain Devington, who had gained a reputation for the keenest eye in horseflesh. Majors Drake and Winthrop were eager to join him at the Hyde Park blood sales.
Passing through the myriad of paddocks, they scouted hundreds of horses, in quest of the cavalry archetype: steady-tempered, bigboned, sound geldings. The gelding sale began at ten of the clock, and of the eighty-some horses run through the auction, only a handful passed muster under Devington's scrutiny. Once thoroughly vetted by Major Winthrop, they arranged to deliver the dozen or so select geldings to Whitehall.
The officers were just completing this business at the start of the broodmare sale, when quite by happenstance, Devington's eye caught the coppery glint of a familiar little mare led by the equally familiar Jeffries.
"The bloody sod!" Robert swore. "That's Amoret. I'll swear it! I can't believe Sir Garfield would go so far as to sell the mare."
"Is it truly surprising, given the scoundrel's conduct?" Drake asked.
"The bidding's about to commence. I'll be deuced to abide by it!"
"You have my sympathy, but we've two dilemmas. First and foremost, I'm bloody well strapped for capital. London's not an inexpensive place to entertain oneself, especially on half pay. Unless you are faring better than me, I have barely sixpence left to rub together. Secondly, where would you stable a mare? Our procurement orders are for geldings only."
"It doesn't matter how or where! We can't let her go."
"Are you really so persuaded?"
Major Winthrop overheard this exchange. "What has you so bedeviled, Devington?"
"That mare, sir, the chestnut just passed by. I know her."
"What the devil would the Horse Guard do with a fancy-stepping little mare? We are soldiers, not bloody fops! The cavalry can't use mares. Far too much trouble, they are. Our orders are for sensible, sound geldings."
"You misunderstand, Winthrop. She isn't for the Horse Guard. That mare belonged to my affianced, and her uncle owes me a foal from the same mare from a lost wager. He has reneged on the bet and apparently sells her as further reprisal."
"I see, indeed. So you wish to buy her back?" Winthrop asked rhetorically.
"Just so. But where to stable her?"
"Well, Devington,"---Winthrop clapped his companion on the back with a conspiratorial wink---"'twould appear the Household Cavalry has a previously unanticipated need for a broodmare. You can put her in the veterinary stables for the time being, just until you make other provisions." Robert reciprocated with a grin, and the trio proceeded to the auction paddock.
House of Commons, February 1744
Mr. Pitt's voice cried out as he indicated a sheaf of papers by his side. "I have in hand, gentlemen, a document confiscated by Admiral Norris from a packet bound for Scotland. It is dated December 23, 1743, and is a Commission of Regency for Prince Charles Edward Stuart, signed by the Pretender himself.
"Only ten days ago, the Young Pretender was headed for Calais, where the French fleet awaited him, and two days later our navy espied the Brest squadron off Land's End. I speak of a threat that is very real, the French invasion of England to restore the Stuart Crown. I only pray that there are none among this house so desperate or mad to join such an ill-considered attempt against the throne and our country."
With Parliament in an uproar over the imminent invasion and the risk of his discovery in the plot increasing, Lord Uxeter was livid at having to quit London at his father's sudden summons. Except through the earl's secretary, he had not seen or spoken to his father in months, but the old man now demanded that he drop all his obligations to return to Sussex.
Nothing appeared to be going his way, and his future had never appeared more uncertain. He burned with bitterness and frustration for his lagging career, and seethed with scorn and contempt for his filial duty.
Edmund arrived at the family seat of Hastings Park in an unusual state of agitation. He leaped from the carriage and snapped instructions to the footman. His appearance was haggard, as if he had not slept in days, and his manner, in marked contrast to his normal haughty self-possession, was impatient and edgy.
Standing outside the earl's door, he battled to compose himself enough to play doting son and obedient heir. When he entered the earl's chamber, however, he was stunned to behold his father's frail, feeble, and ancient appearance. Beside the blazing hearth, he was covered in rugs, and as Edmund approached, he discerned an audible rattle resonating with every breath the old man took. Mayhap his sudden summons was not much ado about nothing.
Supposing the earl asleep, Edmund conducted himself with less than his usual diffidence. He slumped into the chair opposite his father and studied the old man with insouciance. For all appearances, the earl was nearing death's door.
The stinging blow by the earl's cane gave sharp notice of his error.
"You insolent whelp!" the earl croaked, his gimlet eyes burning like a firebrand.
Recovering from the shock of the blow, Lord Uxeter smoldered his odium to force an apology from his lips. "Pray forgive me, my lord. I had thought you asleep and only sought to wait by your side until you awakened. I intended no disrespect."
"Your judgment is sorely lacking, Edmund. I seem to find you wanting in many areas these days."
"Then I am sorely grieved. In what manner have I displeased you?" His tone was appropriately contrite.
"You presume to the earldom, Edmund, yet you fail to honor my single request. I have long ignored the whispers from certain unsavory circles, the rumors that you run among those who are less than troubled by a repugnance to the unnatural. I now wonder why you are so loath to stand up to your obligations, and ask if these filthy rumors are not founded?"
Edmund had always maintained utmost discretion in his private affairs and had paid dearly for it. Nevertheless, he had enemies whom he could look to for motive.
"Nasty rumors are ofttimes generated by those who would most benefit from another's fall from grace. We live in times of great political unrest, my lord."
"You would blame political enemies? Yet your career has been considerably less than I expected. You were born to one of the oldest aristocratic families in England, yet you have failed to achieve anything remarkable. I begin to question your worthiness of an earldom."
His throat constricted, and Edmund responded with more insolence than he would have previously dared. "Whether you deem me worthy or not, my lord, I am your legitimate firstborn, and your heir. None may question my birthright."
The earl regarded his eldest son with a piercing stare. "You presume much, Edmund. While there is breath in my body, I will not allow the estate and possessions of four generations to revert back to the Crown! And to a Hanoverian Crown at that! I am still the Earl of Hastings, and I will see my wishes carried out, regardless of your birthright!"
"What do you mean? You cannot dictate the laws of the land. Patrilineal primogeniture guarantees my right of inheritance."
"Patrilineal primogeniture, eh? You think to hold inheritance law over my head? Although English custom dictates the eldest male to inherit an entailed estate, the Statute of Wills of 1540 guarantees my right to designate an heir by testament. Thereby, I may confer the right of inheritance upon whomever I wish."
Edmund was stunned.
"And since you have been so disinclined to heed my wishes, I am compelled to enforce them. I can and shall ensure my will prevails, Edmund, whether in this life or in the next.
"I have already met with my solicitors and have made my last will and testament. Upon my death, you shall have one year to produce a male heir. One year. Should you fail, my estate shall go to whichever of my two sons is first to beget legitimate male issue. Should Philip succeed where you have failed, he shall inherit all, and you shall be cut off completely."
"Philip? That wastrel! How can you even think it?"
"I am inclined to believe that since he embarked upon his military career, your brother is mending his ways. One may at least hope as much. I am further confident that news of my wishes might well provide him further... inspiration. I also trust this change in circumstance shall provide you with proper motivation. Perhaps you now fully comprehend the weight of an earldom, Edmund."
His first reaction was blind rage, but amidst it all, Edmund was thunderstruck. Had not Providence recently delivered a bride to his very door? He had initially dismissed Sir Garfield's proposition. Now he realized the twofold advantage. The timing could not have been more opportune. He could assure his inheritance, and the immense dowry would help advance his lagging political career. Edmund smiled placatingly at the earl.
"As a matter of fact, my lord, I had wished to make known to you news of my imminent betrothal."
"Your what? Of a sudden you would have me believe you intend to wed?"
"Indeed, my lord, the marriage settlements are already in progress."
"Don't think this news alone shall mollify me, Edmund. The will is made, and I will ensure it is executed. If you have indeed chosen a bride, you damned well better get her with child, and not in this leisurely manner in which you chose to wed! My time is running short, and I will not go to my grave unassured."
"I fully intend to comply with your wishes and produce an heir, my lord."
"And what of your betrothed? Who is the family?"
"As to the family, she daughter of a Yorkshire baronet. I am told she has a strong constitution and will undoubtedly prove sound to the task of bearing progeny."
Lord Hastings directed him a frosty stare. "A baronet? I once erred by wedding a woman of inferior birth. I will never countenance begetting the future heir of Hastings from common stock."
"Yet you propose to offer my halfbred brother an earldom?" Edmund sneered.
W ith the threat of French invasion, the remaining British fleet not already engaged with France in southern waters patrolled the Channel in force, and extra garrisons were dispatched to the southernmost coast, where the landing was most anticipated.
Major Drake was placed in command of two hundred Horse and a thousand infantry to patrol his home coast of East Sussex. Devington, under his command, was starkly reminded what a grueling taskmaster his friend could be. The major was assiduous in preparing his men to defend their beloved shores.
He garrisoned the troops of Horse at Hastings Castle, a ruined Norman fortification that had succumbed to the elements over the centuries. Great sections of the castle, along with chunks of the soft sandstone cliff face, had long given way into the sea, but it provided an ideal vantage point to spot any encroaching vessels. He positioned his cavalry units to patrol the cliffs and garrisoned the remainder of his forces five miles to the north at Battle Abbey.
By February 16th, the French naval squadrons, under Admiral Roquefeuille, set sail up the Channel to clear the way for the troop and armament transports. On the 23rd, Roquefeuille---mistakenly believing all the British ships to be at Portsmouth---sent a vessel on to Dunkirk to signal Marshal de Saxe.
He was unprepared to meet fourand-twenty British ships of the line with orders to burn the French transports. The total destruction of the French fleet was virtually inevitable, but Admiral Norris tarried and deferred his assault. In the morning, Roquefeuille and the French fleet had slipped away!
Although Norris failed to pursue, Providence worked on Britain's behalf, with a fierce gale. Three days of punishing winds and squalling waves scattered and dashed the French transports, sinking some of the largest and wrecking others along the coast, devastating the French navy without a single cannon having fired.
Their few remaining ships returned to port, and the surviving troops disembarked to march for Flanders. The Stuart prince, having barely escaped with his life, was all but abandoned.
Major Drake's troops patrolled the coast for a full for'night before receiving report of the devastation to the Brest fleet, but fear of a second invasion attempt persisted. After another month with no French flagships sighted and no appearance of the Young Pretender, the British concluded they had held the domestic threat at bay.
With the crisis now averted, Drake left a handful of troops behind to continue patrols, while the rest were recalled for another deployment to Flanders, following France's formal declaration of war. All officers were given three days to take care of personal business and report to Whitehall.
Given his current proximity to home, Philip decided to make a much-dreaded but long-overdue visit to the ancestral estate before returning to Headquarters. Inviting Devington to accompany him, the pair set off on the twelve-mile ride.
"Misery does prefer company," Philip remarked as they mounted up.
"Just how long have you been away?" Robert inquired.
"Nearly five years, but not long enough by my estimation."
"Indeed? Why so bitter?" Robert asked.
"I would that I had only one reason, my friend," Philip replied ruefully, pulling a newspaper clipping from his inside pocket and handing it to Robert.
"What's this? I should hardly think you followed the social scene."
"On the contrary, I was quite thunderstruck by this news. Indeed, you may also be overcome with the incongruity."
Robert's eyes grew wide. The clipping was the betrothal announcement of Edmund Giles Drake, Lord Uxeter, heir apparent to Anthony Philip Drake, Earl of Hastings, and Lady Beatrix Wallace, daughter of Sir Garfield Wallace of Heathstead Hall, Wortley, South Yorkshire.
"Beatrix engaged to your brother? B'God, looks like the old sod has buggered us both. But what does it mean, Drake?"
"The announcement has already run in the Times, so I can only assume the settlements are made. I cannot help but believe it is retaliation for the lost race."
"But I wasn't aware of any connection between Sir Garfield and Lord Uxeter. How could this have come about?"
"It came about from my own bloody stupidity, that's how! After a fine dinner and several bottles of port, Sir Garfield petitioned me for a letter of introduction to my family. I was more than happy to oblige, thinking it might advance my cause. I erroneously assumed Sir Garfield desired an introduction into one of my father's clubs. I had no clue of any such devious intent!
"One can't but laugh at the irony, that through my own doing, my sanctimonious brother not only inherits the entire estate but now shall gain my heiress, as well. Though Edmund, I assure you, will not appreciate Beatrix's particular charms."
"Why do you say so? Although not to my taste, her pulchritude is widely remarked in Yorkshire."
"My brother is arrogant, conceited, and pretentious. He takes singular delight in exercising his erudition and intellectual prowess at the disparagement of others less gifted. He values political connections over friendships, and I have never known him to look sideways at a woman, let alone harbor any tender feelings toward one."
"Never?"
"I have never known him to keep a mistress or pursue any serious romantic liaison, though I have heard whispers regarding his particular preferences."
"Are you saying he's a sodomite, Drake?"
"I have my suspicions. Regardless, he will doubtless hold Beatrix and her charming prattle in utter contempt. 'Tis a veritable match made in hell."
"Might I interject that the deed's not yet done. You might decide just how badly you want her."
"I confess I had an indifference to all but her fortune in the beginning, but later I discovered at least one area of compatibility. I am convinced that we would get on tolerably well in our daily intercourse." He grinned.
"Quite so." Robert ignored the double entendre. "So what are you to do?"
"That, Devington, I have yet to decide."
Within two hours, Philip and Robert caught their first view of the estate. The manor was an imposing gray stone edifice set back several hundred yards from the cliffs---as if looming over them---in a vista of desolate grandeur.
"Most resembles an ancient keep from this vantage point, don't you think?" Philip asked. "Centuries hence, this region was a Norman stronghold. You'll find that many like structures, dating back to William the Conqueror, dot the coastline. The house, built on the site of a castle ruin, used many of the original stones."
The long drive to the manor gate was well landscaped at one time.
The numerous trees and shrubs were designed to lend the entrance a more welcoming appeal, but evidence of neglect abounded. Now, in the dead of winter, bereft of their leaves, they somehow enhanced the loneliness, the eeriness of the landscape.
Philip dismounted to open the gates, and Robert could not help remarking, "To be sure, Drake, 'tis not the most welcoming sight."
Philip laughed cynically. "Not by half, and you have yet to see the inside, dear boy! Do you now understand my lack of enthusiasm as well as my yearning for company?"
"Quite." They entered the deserted courtyard, and Robert gazed up at the weathered stone walls. "Charming," he remarked dryly.
"'Twas much more welcoming in my mother's time, I assure you. She loved flowers. They were everywhere, giving the old place almost an air of enchantment. There were half a dozen full-time gardeners about the place at that time." Philip's voice dropped off, and he gazed at the overgrown, ivy-covered walls and empty flowerbeds.
With no groom appearing at their arrival, the two men dismounted. Philip approached the large iron knocker on the massive door. He had barely laid it to rest, when the door opened to a most formidable manservant.
Recognizing the major, the somber face made a complete metamorphosis. "Why, Master Philip! 'Tis so long, I scarce recognized you. Welcome home!" Only his dignity and awareness of his position prevented the old retainer from taking the major into a joyful embrace.
"Thank you, Grayson," Philip responded, truly taken aback by the enthusiasm of his greeting. "One would hope my family will receive me so warmly."
"Certainly after such extended an absence," the butler replied, but they both knew it a lie. "You have brought a guest?" He looked toward the officer holding the horses.
"Indeed, this is Captain Devington."
"Welcome, Captain. We shall do our utmost to ensure your comfort." He turned back to Philip. "My apologies there was no groom to meet you. I will summon one, posthaste." He rang a bell and stated, "The staff is much reduced these days, you see. Half attend Lord Uxeter in the London house, and the rest care for the earl, who since his illness, rarely leaves his apartments or receives visitors. Shall I prepare your old rooms, Master Philip?"
"Please, and a guest chamber in the same wing for Captain Devington, but don't trouble yourself overmuch. I daresay it will be a short stay."
"When we received news of the army patrolling the coast, we had hoped to see your return, but we hardly dared expect you. 'Tis prodigious pleased I am, Master Philip." He grinned again. The hunched old groom arrived to take the horses, and the butler ushered them inside to the Great Hall.
"I trust there's a fire and a bottle of brandy to be had in the library?"
"Aye, Master Philip. His lordship still enjoys an active commerce with the free traders." He winked knowingly.
Philip answered Robert's questioning look. "The Sussex coast is second only to Cornwall in smuggling activity." He turned back to Grayson. "You mentioned my father's recent illness. Am I to understand this is something beyond his gout?"
"Sadly so. His lordship suffered an apoplectic seizure several months ago. Although much recovered, he retains a lingering weakness of his right side. You will perceive him much changed."
"Dare I ask if his illness impaired his faculties in any manner?"
"His faculties are yet as sharp as his tongue."
Philip ignored the impertinence and responded with good humor. "I appreciate the word of warning."
"My lord is currently resting above stairs, but I will announce you as soon as he awakens."
"And my brother? Is he also in residence?"
"He has been much occupied in Parliament since France's declaration of war, but he is expected this evening."
They entered the library, where Grayson took their hats and cloaks and set about building a fire. Philip, meanwhile, went straight to the brandy decanter. Pulling two chairs close to the hearth, he poured two generous glasses for the captain and himself and set the bottle on a table between them.
"Is there aught else you require, sir?" Grayson asked.
"Not at the moment." Philip met the old servant's eye with a murmur of thanks. The retainer, slightly embarrassed, mumbled about it being his pleasure to serve, and departed to alert the cook and supervise room preparations.
Now comfortably ensconced by a blazing fire, the two men nursed their drinks and warmed their chilled bones.
"Drake, it may be altogether impertinent of me, but why is there such acrimony between you and Edmund? Knowing you as I do, I find it hard to believe it stems only from the birthright."
"You are entirely impertinent to pry into my family matters," Philip chided, threw back his drink, and generously refilled the glass.
Devington regarded him expectantly.
"All right," Philip said, deciding. "You surmise correctly; it goes much deeper than the birthright. If you are so dammed interested, I'll air our dirty laundry." He paused to take another long swallow of brandy.
"I suppose I should begin with the present Earl of Hastings. Shortly after inheriting the title and estates, he married his paternal cousin. He had awaited her coming of age by design to merge the fortunes of two related families, and to ensure the purity of the family line, a notion no longer held by many outside the royal families."
"Is your family so very old and noble, Drake?"
"Old, yes, but noble? Mayhap ignoble is more apposite," he added ruefully. "It is said we descend from the blood of the Conqueror, but on the dubious side of the blanket. My great-grandfather persuaded James the First, for a handsome fee of course, to recognize the connection and thus issue the patent of earldom. But I digress.
"The earl's first wife died of puerperal fever following childbirth, but the babe, Edmund, survived. Grieving his wife but satisfied in having produced an heir, Lord Hastings returned to London and left the infant in the care of nursemaids. The earl was at that time one of the high Tories at Queen Anne's Court, but his fortunes changed with her death. The Act of Settlement, which rang in the Hanoverians, rang the death toll for the Tories. Less than a decade later, he lost the vast majority of his fortune with the South Sea Company. He then did what most noblemen in such positions do: he sought a rich wife.
"At five-and-forty, he married twenty-year-old Eugenia Forsythe, the daughter of a London merchant and the lady who would be my mother." He took another long drink as he reflected on his boyhood memories.
"Although she was anxious to make a successful marriage, the earl's excessive pride and arrogance destroyed the remotest possibility of happiness. The bastard never gave her a chance, but buried her in the country while he supported himself in town, largely on her dowry. I was born scarcely ten months following their nuptials. To this day, I am dubious whether the old man ever touched her again after my birth."
"And your brother?"
"Edmund was eleven years old and at school when the earl remarried. My mother endeavored to nurture a relationship with him, but even then he was jealous and exceedingly aloof. He was cruel and actively sought to damn me in my father's eyes. From the earliest age, I perceived that ours was no ordinary sibling rivalry.
"He was successful in this aim, as I have lived under my father's consummate disapprobation. Knowing I could never amend his bad opinion, I thought it a great lark to confirm his belief in my utter worthlessness. I chose to confound and antagonize them both at every turn, even at the expense of my own hide. I survived numerous birchings for my miscellaneous high crimes and misdemeanors, and I daresay the headmaster at Harrow earned his wings in heaven for all his pains. To this very day, I bear the scars of his labors to save my soul. Fortunately, he finally realized the futility of flogging my sins out of me, and I was expelled."
"Expelled? On what grounds?"
"The coup de grâce was the discovery of the late-night gambling Hell carried on in my room." He laughed.
"You were running a gambling Hell?"
"I was a most enterprising lad, Devington." He flashed a rueful grin. "But my venture came to an ignominious end."
"This must not have gone well for you."
"Indeed it did not, my friend! And by this time my dear mother had succumbed to her illness. I dared not return home, and although she left me a small inheritance, I was but sixteen and had no access to it."
"So, how did you get on?"
"By little more than my wits, for nearly five years."
"And your father allowed this life?"
"He cared little. He'd long written me off as a ne'er-do-well, blaming my inferior breeding. The bad blood, you know."
Philip refilled his glass and offered the decanter to Robert. He refused but prompted, "So why did you decide on the military?"
"By the time I received my inheritance, I had gained maturity and discovered a desire to prove them all wrong. So I purchased my commission. Now you have it: the raison d'être for my cool familial affections."
"Under the circumstances, I quite understand," Robert replied.
"Have no doubt that now here I'll perform my filial duty, but with any luck, I'll be spared further obligation for another three years."
Grayson knocked lightly on the door. "Your rooms are ready whenever you wish to refresh yourselves, sir. I have placed Captain Devington's bag in the green room as you requested."
"Thank you. I will show Devington to his room. No need to trouble yourself further, Grayson."
"As you wish." The butler departed.
Having drunk their fill of brandy, the officers stumbled up the eastwing staircase leading to the former nursery and Philip's boyhood rooms. The green room, two doors down from Philip's, had once housed his tutor, and there was a small study betwixt the chambers. Grayson had ensured a comfortable arrangement, with blazing fires in all three rooms along with basins of hot water and towels. Philip showed Robert to his room before retiring to his own.
Once in his chamber, Philip removed his coat and took off his boots, placing the articles of clothing outside the door, knowing they would be cleaned, pressed, and shined in time for dinner. He pulled his shirt over his head and washed. He then promptly collapsed, sprawled full-length on the tester bed. He had just closed his eyes when a light scratch on the door interrupted his repose. Grayson entered with his cleaned and pressed uniform and gleaming boots.
"Master Philip," he said, "the earl will see you now."
"Indeed? Might I inquire after his humor in learning of my arrival?"
Grayson hesitated. "My lord appeared almost... pleased."
"Remarkable," Philip murmured.
"May I also inform you that Lord Uxeter has arrived. He bids you and your companion dine with him at six. Is there aught more that you require, sir?"
"Just more brandy, if I am to deal with both my father and brother on the same day," Philip remarked, only half in jest.
"I shall see to it," Grayson responded soberly.
Philip groaned at the prospect of facing his father. He rose from his bed, raked a hand through his hair, and donned his clean linen and boots. He buttoned his coat and inspected himself in the looking glass. After Grayson's fastidious attentions, he was ready for parade. Although his appearance would have satisfied any of his commanding officers, in his entire life, he had never passed muster with the Earl of Hastings. Philip squared his shoulders and proceeded to his lordship's apartments.
A half hour later, Philip knocked lightly on the captain's door.
"You look none the worse for wear," Robert remarked.
"On the outside only, I confess. I'm in desperate need of another drink, a dose of liquid courage, if you will, for what is likely to be a second trying engagement."
"It would sound as if you prepare for battle."
Philip's look spoke volumes.
"That bad, eh?"
"Quite." He grimaced.
The pair descended the stair and proceeded to the great dining hall.
"My lord Uxeter is seated within, sir," Grayson informed him. "The earl dines alone in his rooms."
The footman opened the door to the formal dining hall to announce their arrival.
"I see 'tis to be a cozy, informal gathering," Philip commented under his breath.
Noting Edmund seated in the earl's place at the table's head, Philip executed a less than deferential bow and remarked, "A bit precipitate, don't you think, Edmund? The earl was quite alive above stairs only a quarter hour ago."
Edmund responded with a haughty stare. The tension between the pair was already palpable to the captain, who stepped forward with his own bow, curious to assess the viscount for himself.
In observing the two brothers, he noted both were tall and lean, but other than being of a comparable build, the pair stood in stark contrast to one another.
Philip was of dark complexion, with a ruggedly handsome visage and a mobile, sensuous mouth. His black gaze could be hard as flint one moment or warm with capricious mirth the next.
Edmund was fair and had sharp, distinctly aristocratic features, with his slightly aquiline nose and thin mouth set in straight, harsh lines. His icy blue, humorless gaze was eerily penetrating and contemptuous.
"So young Philip has come back to the nest from which he was tossed, or mayhap more like a young vulture come to circle the carrion," Edmund drawled, but his lips formed a sneer.
Philip's skin prickled at the early provocation, but he responded with indolence. "I credit you with a vivid metaphor, Edmund. I should rather have expected some boorish remark about the return of the prodigal."
"No doubt you've come to beg a loan to cover your gaming debts."
"Alas, I am come merely to pay long-overdue respects to our father. Much as I hate to disappoint you, my finances are in tolerable order. I have no need of money." He was immeasurably grateful at the truth of it. Although perpetually low in the pockets while in London, his luck ran true. He had at least managed to keep his head above water.
Perceiving his disadvantage in the first parry, Edmund's eyes narrowed. "Why, then, have you really come?"
"'Tis nigh on three years since I have visited the ancestral home. Is this not reason enough?"
Silence reigned while the footmen poured wine and brought in the first covers. The captain moved to break the oppressiveness. "Do you still maintain a racing stable, Lord Uxeter? Philip has mentioned you have horses at Cheveley, I believe?"
"You know blood horses, Devington?"
"Undeniably, my lord. Raised and raced 'em."
"I don't recall seeing you at Newmarket."
"Doncaster racing," Robert amended.
"Doncaster!" Edmund scoffed.
Robert eyed him ruefully, remembering his prior arguments with Phillip. Obviously, these misbegotten views ran in the family. "I beg to differ with you, my lord. Many prominent runners hail from Yorkshire. Indeed, Major Drake and I recently witnessed one of Martindale's new colts trounce a Bolton Starling son."
"Martindale, eh? The pompous ass goes on incessantly about his stud. He's got a fouryear-old he claims is undefeated under twelve stone. I've a mind to match him with Perseus for a thousand guineas. We'll then see if he stands by his claim."
"Perseus?" Robert queried. "Of what blood is he?"
"Only the oldest and purest of English racing blood, the Byerley Turk and Old Careless. He's full brother to Hawke, you know; both carry pure Eastern blood, undiluted by any common stock." He ended his intimation by directing Philip a contemptuous stare.
"I know Hastings's Hawke very well, my lord. He is a fine stallion," Devington remarked.
"Was a fine stallion. 'Twas a sad day when he was euthanized after injuring a leg at the Lichfield races."
"I remember this race, my lord, but I was unaware of any incapacitating injury," Robert replied. He and Philip exchanged knowing looks.
"I'm sure you were devastated, Edmund," Philip remarked.
"Just so. I thought the horse irreplaceable at the time, but Perseus shows even more promise. The blood will always tell."
This second insinuation sent the bile rising to Philip's throat, but Robert intervened. "But even the purest stock, my lord, can on occasion produce imperfect get. Indeed, this manner of inbreeding you advocate has proven to bring out either the best or the very worst in the offspring."
"I am affronted by your ignorance, Captain! Superior blood will always prevail, just as bad blood will eventually out."
Robert countered, "While I beg not a quarrel, 'tis well known that a number of highly inbred crosses have produced imperfect get. Flying Childers of the Darley line, by example, was one of the most successful racers of his time, but his full brother, Bartlett's Childers, was unfit to race due to a blood-vessel disorder thought to descend from the dam, Betty Leedes. She was also inbred with the blood of Darcy's Yellow Turk. As there are a number of highly bred racers with similar bleeding disorders, I suspect some connection to this particular breeding method. This is, of course, just my personal theory," he added.
The footman cleared the covers and refilled glasses. Philip gestured to leave a bottle close at hand. Robert noted he had barely touched his food.
"While on the topic of breeding, what of your family, Devington?" Lord Uxeter inquired.
"Undoubtedly common stock, my lord." Robert's self-deprecating laugh was met with Lord Uxeter's narrowed stare. "My father was first a coachman and later stable master for a South Yorkshire baronet."
"I am recently acquainted with a South Yorkshire baronet by the name of Wallace, a Sir Garfield Wallace. Do you know of him, Captain?"
"Indeed, my lord! My father was in the same man's employ from the very start of his coaching service."
"Coaching service? The man to whom I refer is a significant Yorkshire landholder."
"Indeed, 'tis one and the same man. Sir Garfield is possessed of a considerable fortune made in trade but is assuredly a commoner by birth. Are you acquainted with him through your racing stud, my lord? He has a considerable interest in blood horses."
Lord Uxeter's displeasure shone in the hardness of his eye and the grim line of his mouth. It was bad enough he should be betrothed to the daughter of a country squire, but a tradesman?
"Are you acquainted with the gentleman through horses, my lord?" Robert repeated.
"I don't recall the circumstances," he remarked dismissively.
"Sir Garfield Wallace of Yorkshire?" Philip mused artlessly. "It seems I've encountered the name. There was recently something related to his family," Philip uttered pensively.
"It is of no consequence!" Lord Uxeter snapped, throwing down his napkin.
"Precisely what is your connection, Edmund?"
Edmund exploded in a venomous outburst. "I didn't say, you accursed halfbreed whelp!"
"Another interesting choice of words," Philip drawled, "especially given your choice of bride and your stated views on selective reproduction. Mayhap you'll produce a whole litter of such halfbred whelps."
"Damn your insolence!"
"It appears the noble viscount forgets himself. My apologies for my brother's poor breeding, Devington." Philip rose stiffly, and with a mocking bow, strode out.
When he arrived in his room, Phillip was thankful for Grayson's foresight. Forgoing the glass, he took a long swig from the mouth of the bottle, cradled it in his arms, and collapsed on the bed. He drank for some minutes, bemused even more by Edmund's behavior than what his father had revealed.
His audience with the earl had been, thankfully, exceedingly brief. Philip had spoken little beyond answering his father's questions. Although he wasn't fool enough to believe he had entered the earl's good graces, mayhap his military success had at least removed him from utter perdition. At least it was progress, he mused. He shrugged resignedly, took another drink, and pulled a crumpled letter from his inner pocket. It was written in a childlike, sloping hand and dated over a for'night ago.
My Dearest Philip,
I pray that you forgive the impropriety of this message, but I must needs speak with you on a matter of the utmost urgency. 'Tis a matter most confidential and delicate, that may be made only unto your own ears. Time is of the essence, as we depart the first week of April for London. I await your reply with greatest anxiety and "expectation."
Your Beloved,
B. W.
He digested the brief contents. Confidential and delicate disclosure? Expectation? What the devil did that mean? Did she wish to personally inform him of her betrothal to Edmund? Unlikely, he thought. There were no promises between them. Indeed, they had little conversation at all during their last encounter. He grinned. Besides, the betrothal was already public news.
Did she wish to reveal that she was under duress? That she did not wish to go through with the marriage? If so, she could have written thus.
The next thought that sprang to his mind was nearly unthinkable. Although he had exercised less than his normal degree of caution, Philip couldn't believe in any undesirable consequences. Were it that easy, he'd have fathered a pack of bastards by now.
Nevertheless, if Beatrix was with child, 'twould certainly foil all Sir Garfield's schemes, let alone humiliate Edmund. What retribution that would be! The notion amused him.
When his brother had provoked him at dinner, he had been tempted to expose his liaison with Beatrix, but he had bit his tongue. As a gentleman, his code would not allow him to ever willingly cause shame or embarrassment to a woman. Beatrix's letter gave him cause to address her father, but his sense of honor required that he do so with utmost discretion. He also could take no action until he knew if Beatrix was a willing party to the betrothal, or not. He filed this thought away in his brain for further reflection.
In examining the other side of the coin, Edmund had obviously contracted the marriage for financial gain. This knowledge alone would not have got under Philip's skin, as his own motives were equally rapacious, but the difference lay in Beatrix's destiny of misery should she marry Edmund, Lord Uxeter.
Although Philip was by no means in love with the girl, if he had to marry someone, he could do much worse. She was an heiress, after all, and he thought they would rub along tolerably well together. Indeed, he decided, all would be much better served, whether or not she be with child, if she were to marry him.
Having now muddled through the tangled web to some semblance of a plan, he resolved that he must intervene. He would confront Sir Garfield with her letter.
E ach having a score to settle with Sir Garfield, Philip and Robert departed at first light for London.
"Tomorrow morning, you and I shall go unannounced to the house," Philip said. "While I demand my audience with the baronet, you shall arrange a private word with Charlotte. He has forced our hand, so we shall now see who wins his wicked game." Philip grinned, wickedly.
The next morning, with his uniform concealed in a dark cloak topped with a shabby-looking tricorn, Robert stalked to the servants' entrance, while Philip, resplendent in his dress uniform, called at the front door of the house on Upper Brook Street. An unassuming manservant answered, and Philip boldly entered the domicile.
"Major Philip Drake to see Sir Garfield. You will be pleased to announce me," he commanded the servant upon whose heels he trailed. Philip announced in sardonic tones as he barged into the master's study, "My felicitations on the happy announcement."
Sir Garfield, startled by the intrusion, nonetheless retorted, "You have no business here, Drake."
"On the contrary, sir," he replied blandly, "it is precisely my business that directs me. Though I have offered my felicitations, as propriety requires, I come to make known a slight... impediment... shall we say, to the pending nuptials."
"Impediment? There is no impediment. We had no formal agreement."
"'Twas an understanding, a matter of honor between gentlemen."
"Without a betrothal contract, you haven't a leg to stand on."
"True, unless our agreement had already been... consummated."
His intonation and choice of words caused Sir Garfield to blanch, but he hastily dismissed it as a bluff. "I have no time for your conundrums. Be pleased to make your departure, Major."
"As you wish, sir," Philip answered with mock civility and made as if to go, but turned to play his trump card. "I will, as a matter of course, recommend to my fastidious brother that a physician examine his bride-to-be. 'Tis an unfortunate nuisance for your daughter but an innocuous enough precaution on Edmund's part." He uttered this last with such calculating confidence that Sir Garfield wavered.
"Do you mean to imply that you dishonored my daughter? And under mine own roof?"
"I, dishonor your daughter? Indeed not!" Philip replied with selfrighteous indignation. "More accurately, your daughter compromised me by coming to my room and seducing me! Nonetheless, I stand ready to forgive this heinous act and absolve her with the atonement of marriage." He flashed a taunting grin.
"Impossible! 'Tis all an accursed lie, damn you!"
"But what if I speak the truth? What if your daughter even now carries my child? Should you proceed with your plans, matters might become extremely problematic.
"Lord Uxeter could legally and without repercussion break the betrothal should the bride's virtue be called into question," Philip stated flatly, having now driven his point home. He waited for Sir Garfield to digest it all.
With a bellow, Sir Garfield summoned his daughter.
Beatrix arrived breathless, disarrayed, and confused, and followed by her mother.
"Sir Garfield, what is the meaning of this?" Lady Felicia demanded.
"This is not a matter for your ears, wife. I have need to speak with your daughter."
Beatrix's eyes lit upon Philip. "Philip, my love! You have finally come to speak to Papa for me!" Remembering her parents, she broke off, blushing scarlet.
Philip strode gallantly to her side. "My dearest, of course I have come in response to your letter. I only regret that my obligations delayed me so long." He raised her hands to his lips, regarding Sir Garfield ironically. "Have I now your permission for your daughter's hand?"
"She is spoken for, you audacious blackguard!"
"On the contrary, I have it on word from the family solicitor that the final settlements are yet unsigned, my brother having been called suddenly to Sussex."
"But 'tis already announced in the papers. There would be a scandal!" Lady Felicia exclaimed.
"Scandals should be avoided at all cost, would you not agree, Lady Beatrix?" Philip said softly and smiled.
"Y-y-yes," she answered, her eyes growing wide in apprehension.
Sir Garfield understood the implicit threat and realized his entrapment. His countenance darkened. "So, it is to be blackmail, then?"
"I confess to such thoughts when I first learned of the betrothal; however, I am confident of a mutually beneficial solution should we call a truce."
"The major and I have business to discuss, m'dear," the baronet said, addressing his wife. "Pray escort your daughter back to her rooms."
Beatrix directed Philip a pleading look answered with a reassuring flash of white.
Disgracing a lady was not the hallmark of a gentleman. He despised putting her in such a distressing position; but needs must, as the saying went.
"All right, Drake, if I should call truce, what then?" Sir Garfield asked.
"I have a proposition in mind, something that should suit all parties."
"What sort of proposition?"
"Mayhap a sacrificial lamb, for want of a better phrase. I propose that you offer your niece as Edmund's bride, in lieu of Beatrix. He will care little, providing the dowry remains the same."
Sir Garfield, having already considered Charlotte's marriage prospects, digested this. It made little difference which of the girls married first, as long as the connection was to his advantage. "And why should your brother countenance such a thing? What possible appeal should Charlotte have over Beatrix?"
"You don't know my family, Sir Garfield. Have you not yet met Lord Uxeter?"
Sir Garfield colored at the remembrance.
"I see you have," Philip remarked dryly. "Charlotte's father was a barrister, a member of Grey's Inn, was he not? Men of the law are deemed of a higher social caliber than merchants. Hence, the alliance with a barrister's daughter would be more appealing to my noble family than an alliance with a former tradesman."
"You propose that I substitute the bride?"
"Why not? If the contracts are unsigned, they need only be revised. I shall then offer Beatrix the protection of my name in return for her dowry of twenty thousand, of course."
Sir Garfield, bowled over by the sheer audacity, grudgingly responded, "Quite brilliant m'boy. However, you overlook that the dowry is already pledged to your brother."
"Surely this is another negotiable point, Sir Garfield. No dowry; no wedding. No wedding would assuredly lead to dishonor and scandal. Moreover, should anything befall Charles, your heir through Beatrix would be a bastard."
"You've outmaneuvered me on the score of my daughter, but I'll be damned to bless you with a fortune for it!" he expostulated. "Besides, you have no proof of a child."
"Do you think to call my bluff? I regret it has come to this. I had wished to spare Beatrix further indignity." Producing her letter from his breast pocket, Philip presented it to her father.
Sir Garfield conceded defeat.
"I believe my proposal the best way forward," Philip remarked.
"Ten thousand pounds, Drake. I'll offer a dowry of ten thousand."
"Twenty thousand."
"I will see her in a nunnery first! Fifteen thousand, and not a penny more!"
Pleased with the ease of the negotiations, Philip agreed amicably. "Dearest Papa, I shall await notice that Edmund has agreed to the new settlements. Pray convey my warmest sentiments to my affianced." He departed with a selfsatisfied swagger.
With impatient hauteur mixed with repugnance, Lord Uxeter waited in his carriage while the footman presented his calling card at the door.
Following his interview with the earl, Edmund had sent word to Sir Garfield of his change of heart concerning the alliance, but now the baronet had inexplicably changed the agreement by putting forward his niece. He had described the girl as genteel, demure, and obedient, but Edmund cared only that she was sound for breeding and came with a fortune.
These ruminations were interrupted by the footman, who lowered the steps with word the baronet would receive him without delay. His lordship gracefully alighted and paused to brush an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve. He adjusted the Mechlin lace at his neck and cuffs, and advanced to the house. Another servant led him into the salon, where he paced the room edgily while awaiting the arrival of the man he remembered only as a loutish boor.
In his library, Sir Garfield glanced in the mirror to straighten his lopsided peruque and wobbled more than walked to the salon to greet his potential in-law. He was surprised by the arrival, given Lord Uxeter's distaste for business matters. He had expected the reply through a solicitor rather than the prospective bridegroom.
Had he anticipated the call, he might have abstained from so much drink, but he was still excessively put out by his earlier encounter with the younger Drake. Damn, but he was growing to dislike the whole family! The youngest son was an unscrupulous upstart, and the elder a patronizing, pompous ass, but he believed the connection would serve him well. He pasted on his most jovial smile.
"'Tis is a most unanticipated pleasure, my lord." While Lord Uxeter made a punctilious bow, the baronet advanced and engulfed the viscount's pale, well-manicured hand in his own beefy one. The viscount forced a smile that failed to reach his eyes. The man was exactly the coarse buffoon he had remembered.
"Please you to be seated, dear man." Sir Garfield assumed an armchair by the hearth, indicating another to his guest.
Lord Uxeter ignored the gesture with a brush of his hand. He spoke tersely. "Pray forgive my dearth of pleasantries, sir. I am here only to clarify your proposal and wish to come directly to the point."
"Indeed, indeed. Straight to business, I always say."
"If I understand correctly, you have put forward your niece as a more suitable bride. While I do not dismiss the notion, my betrothal to your daughter, Beatrix, is already announced. How do you expect this to be accomplished without a scandal?"
"If 'tis only that apprehension that concerns you, my lord, have no fear. The Times named a Wallace chit from Yorkshire. As my family is unknown in London, who would remark if you wed one Wallace chit or another? I should doubt the matter would be heeded at all." Sir Garfield smiled broadly.
Lord Uxeter confessed the truth of it. Though his marriage might astonish some among his acquaintance, there would be no need to make explanations.
"Have you any other objections, my lord?" Sir Garfield asked. "The dowry is acceptable?"
"The dowry is adequate, sir." At thirty thousand pounds, it was actually a fortune, but Lord Hastings's will had provided the final impetus for his acceptance.
"Then there's naught more than to plan the bridal, eh?"
The man was no buffoon, after all, Edmund decided. This bumbling rustic just might be the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Just look at this, girls," Lady Felicia said to Charlotte and Beatrix as she read the social section of the Times. "There are six-and-thirty betrothal announcements today. I have counted six-and-thirty! One of them is even our foreign secretary, Lord Carteret! The man must be well over half a century, and here he's taking Lord Pomfret's daughter, Lady Sophia Fermor, to wife. She is reputedly younger than Lord Carteret's own daughter! I am shocked her father should allow the match with such a despicable lecher. Shocking! You remember what Major Drake said of the secretary and all his young girls!"
"Mama," Beatrix interrupted, "the foreign secretary wasn't the debaucher. That was General... oh... General-something-French. The secretary is only a sot."
"Beatrix, a lady does not speak so!" she admonished. "But look at the settlements, Beatrix!" her mother continued. "Upon my word, she is to have sixteen hundred pounds per year jointure, four hundred pounds pin money, and another two thousand in jewels. We must show this to your papa. As a future viscountess, you should have at least as much."
A maid interrupted to notify Lady Felicia of a guest.
"Well, who is it, Betsy?"
"I don't know, mum, but 'tis an elegant gentleman arrived by private carriage and with a manservant to boot."
Lady Felicia's curiosity was more than she could bear. She excused herself from the girls and breezed into the large salon. "Sir Garfield," she said, feigning surprise, "I was unaware we had a guest."
"Allow me to introduce Viscount Uxeter, m'dear."
"Lady Wallace? 'Tis a delight, I assure you." With an indifferent smile and perfunctory air kiss, Edmund accepted the lady's proffered hand. "Your husband and I have just concluded our business."
Cluing his wife, Sir Garfield expounded, "Indeed, we were just now speaking of the upcoming bridal. Lord Uxeter has condescended to wed our Charlotte."
"Charlotte? But what of Beatrix? 'Twas Trixie's betrothal we announced. My head quite spins! Surely you aren't saying that both girls are to wed Lord Uxeter?"
"A ridiculous notion, m'dear."
"But why do you say Charlotte? Beatrix is the elder and should rightfully wed first," she remonstrated.
"'Tis inconsequential which of the girls weds first," he informed his bewildered wife. "His lordship has deemed Charlotte more suitable."
"Charlotte! But she has not half the beauty or accomplishments of our Trixie! And what of the title? Beatrix was set on being a viscountess," she lamented as much for herself as for her daughter. Sir Garfield quelled her with a darkling look.
"I suppose it makes little difference. They are both of marriageable age," she grudgingly ceded then addressed the prospective groom. "You will stay for tea, Lord Uxeter? I shall send for the girls."
"S'pose it's nigh time to meet your bride, eh?" Sir Garfield added with a leer.
When his hostess rang for both the teacart and the bride, Edmund perceived no escape.
Beatrix entered first, with Charlotte demurely proceeding behind.
"Lord Uxeter," Sir Garfield began, "I present my niece, Miss Charlotte Wallace, and my daughter, Lady Beatrix Wallace."
Beatrix, paying little heed to the order of precedence in the introduction, stepped forward and dipped in her most graceful obeisance. "Lord Uxeter," she gushed, "how delightful to make your acquaintance. You are the second most pleasant surprise we have had this day."
He lifted an inquiring brow.
"Oh! I don't mean to place you second!" She giggled. "I meant to say that we learned this morning of a planned excursion to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. This was the first surprise. My cousin, mother, and I were just discussing it. Have you been to Vauxhall, my lord? But how silly of me; of course, you have been. We are only newly arrived from Yorkshire, you see, and pleasure gardens are quite novel to us." She waved her fan and flashed a beguiling smile.
"Indeed, I pine to see all the spectacles of London, but Vauxhall is first on the list. I hear there are even illuminations planned for the opening. In Yorkshire, one hardly has occasion for such things as fireworks. I can scarce describe my excitement!" she finished breathily.
"Your enthusiasm is quite overwhelming," Edmund drawled, appalled by this babbling bovine who seemingly embodied all his aversions to the feminine gender. The idea of marriage to this vapid, chattering cow was completely repugnant, regardless of her fortune.
Charlotte, lost in her own ruminations, had paid little heed to their visitor until Lady Felicia interceded and pushed her to the fore. "Lord Uxeter, my niece, Charlotte."
Lord Uxeter's gaze raked her as if inspecting a horse at auction.
"Pray present yourself to your betrothed, my dear," her aunt urged in a fierce whisper.
As realization crawled up her spine, the color drained from Charlotte's face. "M-m-y betrothed? B-but Beatrix?"
"There was a simple misunderstanding, dear girl. Nothing to trouble yourself with. All is most amicably resolved," Sir Garfield interjected while studying Lord Uxeter's reaction.
Edmund smiled charmingly and bowed over Charlotte's limp hand, immensely relieved that this quiet and unassuming young woman was now his affianced. "Miss Wallace," he began after her compulsory curtsy, "no doubt this is come as a surprise." His words were sympathetic, but his smile was cold. "Your cousin speaks of Vauxhall. Since your family is unacquainted with the pleasure gardens and their nuances, it would be my greatest pleasure to accompany you."
"We should be honored with your escort, my lord," Lady Felicia tittered.
"How gracious," Beatrix replied. Charlotte sent her cousin an unheeded look of panic.
"The pleasure gardens open at nine," Lord Uxeter continued, oblivious to Charlotte's discomfiture. "As one must cross the river by barge, my carriage shall collect you at precisely eight of the clock."
Edmund bestowed Charlotte a last appraising look and turned to Sir Garfield. "The contract shall be executed, sir." He then took his leave.
Charlotte's life had unraveled before her very eyes. Only this morning she and Robert had arranged an assignation at Handel's statue, but now with Lord Uxeter accompanying them, it would be impossible to sneak away.
Why had she and Robert not run off together when they had had the chance?
She had warned him their time was running out.
And now it had.
A rriving back at his quarters that afternoon, Philip found Robert wretchedly pacing the floors.
"You look a mess, Devington. What has you so bedeviled?"
"Charlotte's uncle has arranged to marry her off, and I am about to be dispatched to Flanders. I shall return to find her wed!"
"If Sir Garfield brought his family to London expressly for that purpose, he will certainly see her wed. With no dearth of noble blood hemorrhaging their estates, he'll have no difficulty achieving what he seeks. A generous dowry covers a multitude of sins, you know, even common birth. I stand as living proof."
"Then the deed's nigh done, and I don't see a deuced thing I can do about it!"
"Short of absconding to Scotland, there's not a bloody thing to be done."
"Are you advocating elopement? 'Twas the last suggestion I expected to hear from you."
"As your commanding officer, I could hardly suggest such a thing," he answered sternly.
"I thought my ears must have deceived me."
"However... were I to speak as a friend who has long wearied of your perpetual pining, I might be pressed to encourage the notion."
"It's not that I haven't considered it a thousand times, Philip. I live in daily fear of losing her, but I still have nothing to offer her by way of security. I could scarce put a roof over our heads on my pay."
"How much longer do you think to dangle after her? If you wait 'til you make your fortune as a soldier, you will lose her. It may be time to play your cards or fold them, Devington."
"I depart for Gravesend in a for'night. How could we possibly post to Gretna Green and back in time? Hard riding, it's got to be five days at least."
"Then I suggest haste," Philip answered.
Robert considered further. "We would have to leave straight away, tonight even. But how to steal Charlotte from under her uncle's nose?"
"The King's Plate is to be run in Newmarket day after tomorrow. Surely Sir Garfield will attend, and the event will last several days. If he is unaware of your departure, the deed will be done before he's the wiser."
"You must go to Newmarket and keep Sir Garfield diverted long enough for us to get to Scotland," Robert said.
"Newmarket? I suppose I could manage the sacrifice." Philip grinned. It would be no great hardship to pass a few days in three of his four best-loved activities: uninhibited drinking, gaming, and racing. Now if there were women as well...
Robert continued to mull over his plan. "But what should we do after the wedding? What then?" he mused aloud.
Philip laughed in mocking exasperation. "My dear boy, if you don't know what to do with the woman once you have her, there's no help for you!"
"That's hardly what I meant, Drake! If we do succeed, what shall become of Charlotte once I depart for the Continent? Even if I could find suitable apartments for her, I can scarce leave my new bride alone in London for who knows how long. And I refuse to see her as a camp follower."
"Let's consider the potential outcome, shall we? If naught goes awry, you will shortly have your precious Charlotte. I will have my heiress and her substantial dowry. Edmund will be jilted and humiliated, which is a bonus unto itself. Devington, the entire scheme so pleases me, I'll make you a wedding gift of a thousand pounds if you carry it off! You may then set her up comfortably in Flanders with the other officers' wives."
"A thousand pounds, Philip? 'Tis a small fortune."
"With Beatrix's dowry, I can afford to be munificent. All things considered, a thousand pounds is a veritable bargain." Philip chuckled. "You see how fortunes can change on a whim?"
"Then I'm decided. I shall go tonight and fetch my bride."
"I had begun to doubt you had the ballocks to pull it off, my friend."
As he thought through his plan, Robert ignored the jab. "We need to move quickly. Inconspicuously. Horseback," he said suddenly. "We must ride out of London and later pick up a stage from a coaching inn. We shall need Amoret, Philip. Charlotte needs a fast horse."
"This may not be such a good idea. It may be overtaxing to the mare and the girl."
"No need to fret; she won't ride all the way to Scotland. We just need to get a good start. Besides, the mare is rightfully Charlotte's to begin with. It's just a loan. By the hand of Providence, we'll be in Gretna Green by week's end if you ensure us that head start."
"You need not fear on that account. Newmarket will be bustling. Upon my word, I'll contrive to keep Sir Garfield busy, but my involvement goes no further, Devington. If aught goes awry, I can know nothing of your elopement... nothing, you understand." His gaze was intent. "I shan't jeopardize my own plans and future, even for our friendship."
"I fully understand your faithful and consistent commitment to your self-interests, Drake," Robert said.
"Just so. It's vital we understand one another on this point. Furthermore," Drake added, "I caution, as your superior officer, that we could be called back at a moment's notice. Should this occur, you must abort the scheme at once."
"I am painfully aware of the need to conduct my business expeditiously. Don't worry about me; you just don't lose your shirt on the races. We'll need that thousand pounds when all is done."
"Don't fret for my shirt; instead, you take care not to lose your ballocks. You'll have need of them when all is done!"
"Is there any word yet, Letty?" Charlotte asked anxiously.
"Aye, miss. I've a note delivered by the coachman. He's an easy enough bribe, that one."
Charlotte took the note from Letty, reading it with trembling hands.
"What is the news from yer cap'n that has ye so fretful?"
"He has proposed an elopement this very night." She spoke with mixed emotions of elation and despair. How on earth could they accomplish it with so little time to plan?
Letty's face lit with excitement but wilted at Charlotte's tearful expression. "Why are ye crying, miss? Ain't it what you've wanted?"
"Aye, Letty, it's what I most wish, but 'tis impossible!"
"Miss, sometimes love runs a crooked course, but it don't mean ye can't get there eventually. The cap'n don't see no other way, to be sure. Lest ye want to find yourself hitched to his high-and-mighty lordship, you'd best take off to Scotland with the young cap'n."
"But if we are caught, my uncle will pull Robert before the magistrate so fast our heads would spin. He would face kidnapping charges, and I would be forced to repeat wedding vows to that wretched viscount. I couldn't bear it!"
"There now." Letty handed Charlotte a handkerchief to dry her eyes and blow her nose. "Surely there is a way. We just need to think of sommat to keep ye confined to your room for a spell, sommat that would give ye time to get to Scotland afore you're noticed missing."
"But how, Letty? How can I possibly buy us enough time to get to Scotland undiscovered?" She racked her brain for what to do. "How can I disappear without anyone's notice? I pled a headache when we stole away to Doncaster for the race, but it was only one night. 'Tis not an ailment that would keep Beatrix and Aunt Felicia away for days."
"Nay, not the headache," Letty mused aloud. "We need sommat else to keep folks away from ye, another ill. What ills could ye fake that would keep ye confined for a time? Not consumption, nor the smallpox. There's no way to invent them telltale blisters. Now think... what ailment could we fake?"
"Fever?" Charlotte answered. "Fever could be feigned any manner of ways."
"I don't ken that fever alone would keep yer aunt away from ye."
"Letty, I have it!" Charlotte exclaimed.
"What, miss?"
"It was in the paper just today. Lady Sophia Fermor had to postpone her wedding with Lord Carteret because she has contracted scarlet fever."
"Scarlet fever? To be true, 'tis very catching and 'twould keep ye confined for a for'night or more. I had it m'self as a lass. Shouldn't be too hard to invent, neither. A pot of rouge to pink yer cheeks, a touch of white face paint around the mouth. A bit of onion juice to shine yer eyes, and a hot brick under the blankets to make ye feel feverish. None will come near ye for fear of catchin' it. Jest trust Letty. We'll have ye married off sure enough." Letty grinned mischievously.
"Then we shall be off to Scotland this night. Letty." She paused.
"I shall need your aid to help cover my tracks, but when my Uncle discovers me gone..." She regarded her former nurse with a worried frown.
"Now don't ye worrit yerself about me, my lambkin. Let's just think how to get a message to yer captain in time."
"I'll write a note, Letty, and give you money for a hackney to Horse Guards. We don't have much time."
"Aye, miss. Now get yourself undressed and into the bed. I'll fetch the brick and slip into her ladyship's room for the face paint."
Hearing of Charlotte's malaise, Lady Felicia went immediately to her niece's room, but she stopped just short of the door when she perceived Charlotte's fever-glazed eyes, rubicund cheeks, and blanched mouth, all signs characteristic of scarlet fever. There must be an epidemic, she thought with a flutter of alarm. Just this morning, she had read of Lady Sophia Fermor's suffering the same fate.
"How is she, Letty?"
"She's feverish, ma'am, and needin' rest, but 'tis not so severe a case. A se'nnight in bed should see her right as rain, and I can nurse her for you. I've had the illness afore."
"But we were to attend the grand opening of Vauxhall. How am I to explain to Lord Uxeter?"
"She's in no condition to go out, ma'am, aside from it's very catching, you ken."
"You will keep me apprised should her condition worsen?" Lady Felicia asked.
"Indeed, ma'am."
Once Lady Felicia departed, Letty slipped out and hailed a hackney to deliver her to Horse Guard headquarters, where she located Captain Devington.
Recognizing the woman immediately, Robert flushed with panic. "What is it, Letty? Is something come of Charlotte?"
"Just the scarlet fever." Letty chuckled.
His concern heightened. "Charlotte's ill!"
"Nay, Cap'n Robert," she explained. "I come to tell ye we devised a plan, Charlotte and me. She's faking the illness."
"Is she?" he repeated, relieved and impressed with their resource fulness.
"His lordship arrives at eight with his carriage. The miss will remain abed with hope they all depart without her. Once the house is empty, she'll meet ye by the garden gate."
"None could have devised a better plan, Letty. Pity you are a woman. His Majesty's army could use more talented strategists," he said with a grin.
"Sure enough we made a plan, but ye'll have to execute it wi'out mishap," Letty cautioned.
"The hour is growing late. You had best go before you are missed. Tell her I shall meet her as planned."
Letty paused. "Godspeed to ye both, Cap'n."
The elegant black town carriage with the gold emblazoned crest arrived at precisely eight o'clock. Lord Uxeter, elegantly attired in black velvet evening dress, alighted from his carriage only to learn from a flustered Lady Felicia that his affianced had suddenly taken ill.
"The Times wrote of a city-wide epidemic," she artfully dissembled. "I should have sent a note, but we have just learned of it, you see." She offered the anxious apology, correctly surmising that his lordship was not possessed of a compassionate nature.
"How very unfortunate for her, but if we are soon to be wed, we must be seen about in polite society." He spoke coldly.
"But surely you would not wish her taken from her sick bed?"
Gaining some mastery of his temper, Lord Uxeter replied, "A
ridiculous notion. Pray pardon my fit of pique, Lady Wallace. My deep disappointment prods my ill humor." His words were solicitous, but his manner barely concealed his displeasure. Damned inconsiderate chit!
"We shall say nothing more of it, my lord."
"But 'tis such a lovely evening to waste, is it not, Mama?" Beatrix interjected. "And Lord Uxeter has gone to so much trouble on our account, Charlotte would not wish for us all to miss the opening night. She would never be so selfish. Would she, Mama?" The question was posed rhetorically.
Lord Uxeter felt the trap closing about him. Would he be forced to bear alone the company of these two most fatuous and vulgar specimens of womanhood? His distress was alleviated only by the timely arrival of Sir Garfield and Charles Wallace.
"What ho, Uxeter!" Sir Garfield clumsily stepped out from the sedan chair and eagerly approached.
Edmund visibly flinched, anticipating another assault, but Sir Garfield, anxious to bring his son to the viscount's notice, offered only a perfunctory bow in greeting. He then put forward the honorable Charles Wallace, only son and heir to the Yorkshire baronetcy. Introductions accomplished, he amiably remarked, "Off to Vauxhall, eh?" He suddenly took notice of his niece's absence. "Where the devil's Charlotte?" he demanded.
"She's taken ill, Sir Garfield."
"The devil you say! Blast the girl!" he cursed.
Lord Uxeter, whose attention was drawn to the fresh-faced Charles Wallace, responded with greater compassion than he had previously expressed. "I doubt there is cause for alarm. The illness will soon pass with my betrothed in such capable hands."
"Indeed so, my lord," Lady Felicia agreed. "She is looked after by her childhood nurse. Rest assured, Charlotte will be right as rain within the for'night."
"She shall be advised to do so," Sir Garfield remarked. "She is a most dutiful and compliant girl, my niece." Suspicious of her sudden infirmity, he reassured the viscount with less confidence than he actually felt. "There is surely no reason to blight everyone's pleasure."
Edmund masked his displeasure. In reality, he would have liked nothing better than to forgo Vauxhall. He held far different notions of amusement. Suddenly, he smiled. "Why shouldn't young Charles join the party now we are reduced to an odd number?"
Sir Garfield lit up at the notion, eager to encourage his son's acquaintance with the peer. "A capital idea! Charles?" He looked to his son.
Charles flushed with pleasure to be included in the company of one who could help him navigate the sophisticated city. "I should be much pleased to attend, my lord."
He would have been surprised to know Lord Uxeter was equally keen.
Robert arrived at nine o'clock and waited patiently at the garden gate. By ten, Charlotte had yet to appear. He paced anxiously. His mind raced in fear their plans were already foiled, until he detected the small, cloaked figure hugging the shadows.
Enveloped in darkness, he advanced toward her. Charlotte fell deeply into Robert's embrace. "I'm so sorry to be late, but my uncle was about, and then the servants..."
He hushed her swiftly with his kiss while cocooning her tightly against him.
"I had begun to think all was lost," he whispered warmly into her hair, but aware of the urgency of time, he wrapped his cloak about them and bustled her down the narrow lane to the waiting hackney. He spoke brief instructions to the driver and then helped her inside.
"Why Whitehall?" she asked.
"I'm afraid this bodes to be a long and uncomfortable journey," he apologized in advance. "We had little time to plan, and with no stage coaches scheduled for another day, we must set out by horseback. I shan't doubt it will be a hard ride. Do you think you are up to it, my little love? It's not too late to go back..." He searched her eyes for reassurance.
She returned his earnest gaze with one of steadfast determination. "I'm made of sterner stuff than you think, Captain Devington. Don't you know by now I would go to the ends of the earth with you?"
"Then all is indeed well, my love." He murmured his reply against her lips, but the carriage jolted and broke their embrace. Robert put breathing room between them and continued. "I've news to make the journey more tolerable, or at least less unpleasant, my dearest. I have requisitioned your mare."
"Amoret? You have found Amoret!" she exclaimed with joy and wrapped her arms tightly about him.
"Drake and I found her at the Hyde Park sale. I daresay she has missed you in equal measure, but I promise you shall be reunited forthwith. As to our journey, we'll ride only as far as Sheffield and then take the mail to Gretna Green. My plan is unformed after that, but we have several days before we need fret about it."
"Robert, it matters not as long as we get there. Once we are wed, the powers of Hades can't separate us."
The hackney pulled up outside Horse Guard stables, where the saddled horses awaited. The captain alighted first and then assisted her down. Inspecting her attire, he made a final suggestion.
"I have some clothes for you. 'Twould be neither safe nor wise for you to travel dressed as you are. Better if you're again disguised as a lad." Handing her a bundle, he led her to the stall housing her beloved mare. "You may change inside. You need not fear intrusion. I'll keep watch, but pray make haste. We must put some long miles between us and your uncle this night," he said urgently.
"I won't keep you waiting."
Charlotte quickly changed and stuffed her gown and a few belongings into the pack that Robert secured to her saddle. He gave her a leg up, and then he mounted Mars.
Blessed with a full moon and a clear sky, they set out on London's Great North Road.
L ondon's pleasure gardens had never been Lord Uxeter's milieu for entertainment. He despised the intermingling of the classes, milling about for no better reason than to gawk at one another. Nevertheless, he pasted on a smile and strolled the grounds with his party, pausing frequently along lamp-lit pathways for his guests to admire the statues, painted murals, imitation Chinese pagodas, triumphal arches, Turkish tents, and Italian ruins; all of which created the fantasy called Vauxhall.
After parading about interminably, they finally arrived at the box he had reserved in the grand arcade. An orchestra played above the teeming dance floor, and Edmund found the music unexceptional at the best moments and offensive to his ears at the worst. He was thankful to be obligated for only one dance set before the midnight illuminations, which he bore with little more than edgy tolerance.
After suffering nearly five hours of Vauxhall in his insipid company, he was nearing the limits of his endurance. Seeking any excuse to retire, he feigned concern for his fiancée, so the party returned home. Lord Uxeter took his leave of the ladies at their door but then turned to address Charles.
"I had in mind to go to one of my clubs for a drink. Would you care to bear me company?"
Eager for acceptance into Lord Uxeter's circle, Charles accepted the invitation, and they proceeded to a private house in St James. Lord Uxeter introduced Charles to a dozen or so men who passed the early morning hours between political discussions, rubbers of whist and piquet, and numerous bottles of wine.
A novice at cards, Charles sat out the play and did his best to feign interest in the political intercourse, but hard as he tried, he could not summon the slightest genuine interest. His boredom led him to imbibe more heavily than he realized. He soon passed out in his chair.
He awoke after a few hours, disoriented and alone in his lordship's company.
"Back to the land of the living, are you, young Charles?" Lord Uxeter gibed with his intense gaze.
Surveying the room through bleary eyes, Charles asked, "Is the comp'ny all departed?"
"Long since retired home or carried to a room above stairs, but I hadn't the heart to wake you. I daresay you are unaccustomed to heavy drink, but you will soon adapt to town life." He laughed indulgently.
"What pray is the hour, m'lord?" Charles asked while groggily rubbing his eyes.
"Just past daybreak."
"Daybreak? Hell and the devil!" Charles started suddenly to his feet.
Lord Uxeter raised a brow.
"M'father, m' lord! We're off to Newmarket today."
"Indeed? I go there myself. Has your father a horse in the race?"
"Indeed. He's pinned his hopes on Tortoise, and I am to ride."
"Then I perceive your predicament. I beg your forgiveness if I have put you out of favor with your father. 'Tis unwise to displease the one who holds the purse strings. I shall have my carriage put to anon and deliver you home. Perhaps we shall meet again on the field? I shall be running Perseus against the fouryear-olds. 'Tis time and a half since I've enjoyed a race." He had not run at all since his humiliation at Lichfield.
Charles arrived home within the hour; still half foxed, he staggered into the breakfast room.
"Is that you, Charles? What do you think you are about, making me wait half the morning?" Sir Garfield demanded. "You knew we were to depart early for Newmarket. Most important races of the season! You'd best explain yourself, m'boy." He glowered.
"M'sincere aplolo... apologies, sir," Charles slurred.
"You're bloody well in your cups, boy!" his father retorted.
"Not m'flault, sir." He hiccupped. "Lord Ux'ter invited me to his club. I didn't s'pose you'd have me refuse."
"Uxeter, eh?" His glower morphed into a grin. "Well done, Charles! For God's sake, pour the lad some coffee!" Sir Garfield demanded of the footman. "You'll just have to sleep it off in the carriage. Now go and get yourself presentable. I will allow you half an hour before we depart.
"Escort the lad upstairs, lest he break his fool neck on the way," he told the servant, "and by all means, avoid Lady Felicia. She'll be up in arms if she spies him thus." Sir Garfield chuckled.
As Charles clumsily ascended the stairs on the footman's arm, misfortune met him in the form of his mother. Her gaze raked his rumpled hair and disheveled attire. "Charles! Are you just coming in at this hour? And in this... this... deplorable condition?"
His blank look failed to convey his innocence.
"I shall speak immediately to your father!" Lady Felicia stormed into the breakfast room. "Have you beheld your son, Sir Garfield?"
"Indeed. Foxed to the gills, ain't he?" He chuckled.
"This is no laughing matter," she insisted. "I question the wisdom of encouraging such a connection with Lord Uxeter. What kind of gentleman would keep a young man out all night and send him home in such a state?"
"Lord Uxeter is a gentleman of the town, and our boy is a man grown. You should be pleased he has been so initiated. Indeed, this may be a step in the right direction for our Charles. The boy has been in the country far too long. A binge or two will do him no harm. I assure you he will sleep it off in the carriage. 'Tis sixty miles to Newmarket."
"I'll warrant half a day's ride in a jostling carriage will make him positively ill. He'll rue last night's reveling then," she prophesied.
"You may well be right on that account, m'dear."
"Speaking of illness, Sir Garfield, should I send for a physician? Charlotte has not stirred since yesterday forenoon. Mayhap the girl should be bled."
"M'dear, you know I take little stock in such practices. Why don't you go to her room and see if she's in her right mind. If she's lost her wits with fever, by all means send for the physician."
"Very well, but pray wait your departure until I have seen her. I care not to be alone in London with a sick girl, you know."
"Charles has already put us behind schedule, madam. I shall not tolerate any further delay. The girl will be fine."
"Always the races!" Lady Felicia exclaimed with dismay and went to check on her niece.
Her rap on the door took Letty by surprise. "Who is it?" the maid inquired apprehensively.
"'Tis Lady Felicia, come to check on Charlotte."
"But she's yet sleeping."
"Then mayhap the physician should be dispatched. Open the door, Letty."
"But, ma'am, 'tis a very catching fever. You durst not enter," Letty answered nervously.
Growing suspicious, Lady Felicia insisted, "I'll just stand from the doorway. Sir Garfield departs for Newmarket forthwith, and I will not have his niece die in his absence. I demand you open this door. I'm not beyond calling the footmen to remove its hinges!"
Letty said a brief prayer for Charlotte and her captain, and trudged to the door. She turned the key in the lock and cracked it open. Lady Felicia pushed it farther ajar, spying the form under the bedclothes.
"Well, Letty, go rouse her," she demanded.
Letty dragged her feet toward the bed. "I dare not uncover her, ma'am, on account of the fever."
"Letty!" Lady Felicia shouted.
The forlorn maid pulled back the covers to reveal pillows in place of the supposed invalid.
"Where is Charlotte, you impertinent sneak? You will surely be beaten!" she threatened the maid.
"She has eloped, ma'am." Letty burst into tears.
"Eloped! Charlotte has eloped! Sir Garfield!" the lady shrieked, stirring the entire household. Clutching the quaking maid, she dragged her frantically down the stairs.
"What is all the infernal commotion?" Sir Garfield demanded.
"Charlotte has absconded in the night!"
"What! The devil she has! That disobedient, ungrateful little wretch! When?"
Letty now sobbed violently.
"Ye'd better answer well or be horsewhipped, gel!" His threat brought forth only more hysterics. Lady Felicia shook the woman out of her fit.
"After ye all went out t-to Vauxhall." Red eyed, Letty sniffed out her confession. "M-must've been about ten of the clock."
"Devington! Did she run off with Devington?" He interrogated the quivering maid but knew the answer.
"It w-was Captain Robert." Letty recommenced her wailing.
"Charles!" Sir Garfield spun to face his son. "I shall demand satisfaction of that scoundrel! We must find them before Uxeter gets wind of this. I shall not have everything ruined by that upstart!"
"But, Father," the befuddled Charles responded, clutching his throbbing head, "if we don't know where they went, how the devil are we to catch them?"
"Think, boy! Where could they go but to Scotland? They can't bloody well marry anywhere else."
"But they have a whole night's start on us. Impossible to catch them."
"Leave that to me, m'boy. Are the horses put to?" Sir Garfield demanded of the footman.
"Indeed, sir. The coachman's been waiting this hour or more."
"Come, Charles, I know just the man to assist in this hour of need." He spoke grimly, and the pair made haste to the waiting carriage.
Early morning traffic was sparse. They arrived at Whitehall within twenty minutes. Sir Garfield unceremoniously disembarked from his carriage and waylaid the first trooper he encountered.
"Major Philip Drake," he demanded. "I must see him at once!"
"Know you which unit he commands, sir?" the soldier asked.
"Horse Guards, of course! Why the devil would I come here otherwise? I have no time to waste on such impertinence!"
The soldier considered having some fun with the pretentious sod, but the man's purpling demeanor was so agitated, he thought wiser of it. "You might try the stables. A party of officers was departing for Newmarket this morning. He may have been amongst them."
Sir Garfield ungraciously spun around and barked to the coachman to carry them to the stables, hoping to catch his quarry. As luck would have it, the four officers had already departed, but Sir Garfield was resolute. He directed his coachman to the Newmarket Road, sparing not the whip.
Charles, now acutely experiencing the effects of his excesses, fell violently ill with the rocking and swaying of the pitching vehicle. Only fear of transferring his father's wrath onto his own head kept him from halting the coach. He suffered in miserable agony until he was finally lost to sleep.
They covered fifty miles in record time, pulling into the stable yard of the Crown at Great Chesterford just as the officers were mounting to depart the inn. Spotting Major Drake within the group, Sir Garfield abruptly halted and leaped from the coach, with Charles staggering behind.
"Drake! I demand a word with you instantly!"
Winthrop looked at the baronet and then cast Philip a quizzing look. Philip said with measured insouciance, "'Twould appear I am to be detained, gentlemen. Pray go on without me. I'll catch up anon."
Unperturbed, Philip dismounted, and the three remaining officers spurred their horses out of the stable yard.
"Might I inquire what has you in such a state, Sir Garfield?"
"You know damned well what this is about!" the baronet roared.
Philip blinked innocently and said with an ingenuous protest, "I am quite benighted, sir."
"I don't hold for a minute that you are ignorant or innocent of this... conspiracy! I speak of Charlotte and Devington. Do you deny knowledge of their elopement?"
"I am uninvolved in any such adventure," Philip replied impassively.
"Uninvolved, are you? Well, you are about to become very much involved, Drake. The brigand absconded with my niece last night, and I have every reason to believe they are for Scotland."
"As I am not the one who eloped with your niece, I fail to see how this concerns me."
"You, Drake, are this moment charged with retrieving my niece before she is ruined, or you shall not see a penny of my money. Beatrix will go forth to a nunnery before I let you get away with this trickery! I will not be made the fool twice!"
"'Tis a near impossible task you thrust upon me," Philip contended. "By your account, they have half a day's start, and I know not by which route."
"They can't have taken any public coach. I am well acquainted with the schedules. The Edinburgh stage departs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The mail does not run on Sundays, and a private conveyance would be far too dear for the likes of the captain. I surmise that they rode out on horseback."
Philip could not help appreciate the man's deductive reasoning. "You are likely correct in your assertion, sir."
"And as Devington travels with a woman, they cannot hope to outrun the pace you will set to overtake them."
"You may not realize what a neck-or-nothing rider Charlotte is, Father," Charles interjected. Excited by the prospect of a chase, he eagerly volunteered, "I'll accompany Major Drake. No doubt he will need assistance once he finds them."
"You'll do no such thing, impudent puppy! You couldn't even sit a horse in your present condition. Ridiculous notion! Besides, you are to ride in the King's Plate. We shall proceed as planned."
"But as your son and Charlotte's close male relative," Charles argued, "is it not my duty to defend our family's honor?"
"Under the circumstances, I think not, m'boy. You have no knowledge of swordplay, and Devington, although a scoundrel, is an experienced soldier. The major is much better qualified to take care of this ugly business."
Notwithstanding his longtime friendship with Robert, Charles was angered and humiliated to be brushed aside by his father as unworthy to the task. However, with no horse or weapon at his disposal, he had to swallow his pride and continue with his father to Newmarket.
"You have five days, Drake. Five days to return my niece. I shall have satisfaction! I hope I am completely understood in the matter." He issued a challenging look.
"Indubitably," Philip replied with a subtle clench of his jaw.
"Five days!" Sir Garfield repeated and strode back to his carriage, followed by his sulking son.
"Bloody hell!" Philip cursed, remounting Hawke and spurring him northward.
Robert and Charlotte rode through the night at a punishing pace, stopping only to rest and water their horses. By noon, with over sixty miles behind them, they arrived on the outskirts of Northampton. Famished and near spent, they needed a decent meal and a couple of hours rest if they were to continue any farther. Wary to avoid traffic at any of the larger coaching inns, they located a small tavern where the captain and his young cousin greedily partook of a hearty but rustic meal of meat pasties, bread, cheese, and small beer.
"Nothing ever tasted so good," Charlotte uttered between mouthfuls, heedless of good manners. "I feared I would drop from the saddle if we had to ride another mile."
"My fears exactly, young Charles," he tenderly reminded her of caution. "While I am accustomed to hard riding and sparse comfort, we have yet many miles ahead of us. If I bespeak a room for you for a few hours rest, do you think you might be able to carry on?"
"I appreciate your solicitude, but pray don't fear for me. I don't profess to being equal to a hardened soldier, but I am made of sterner stuff than you think. Allow me but a couple of hours repose, and I shall prove my fortitude." Her wan smile didn't fool him for a moment.
"I estimate another forty miles or so to Leicester. If we push, we can take rooms tonight at the Old Greyhound. 'Tis a clean and decent establishment with tolerable food. They frequently billet troops, so our presence should go unremarked."
Robert paid the reckoning for their meal and escorted Charlotte to the single shabby room over the tavern. Observing her ragged condition and their dingy quarters, he was overcome with guilt. He grasped both her hands in his. "You deserve so much better than this, my little love. I just pray you never grow to hate me for taking you away."
She had run away from a betrothal to a nobleman, who would have assured her a title and comfort, just to settle for an uncertain future with a penniless captain.
"Don't you understand, Robert? This signifies nothing to me." She gestured at their surroundings. "It matters only that we are together and free at last to make our lives."
A wave washed over him, a swell of love so powerful he thought he would drown in it. He never loved her more than in this moment. He wanted to pull her to him and bathe her in the depths of his love, but this was neither the time, nor, he thought more grimly, the place. Instead, he lay beside her on the narrow bed, holding her close, stroking her hair, sheltering her in the protection of his arms.
Basking in this moment, Charlotte pressed her head to his drumming heart. She closed her eyes, and instantly, exhaustion overtook her while Robert dozed in a soldier's hazy state of semiconscious vigilance.
"My little love, you deserve better, and God willing, I shall provide it," he whispered.
Philip Drake rode as if chased by the devil. Damn, damn, and bloody damn! His blood coursed hotly at his ridiculous errand: chasing a pair of runaway lovers across the country. This was one complication he didn't want, didn't need, especially since he had encouraged the elopement.
Devington had dangled helplessly after the girl, and Philip's machinations had finally compelled him to act, but in suggesting the notion, Philip never once considered that he would be coerced to pursue them. But what choice had he?
He had suggested Charlotte's betrothal to Edmund to solve his own dilemma regarding Beatrix. After all Philip had been through to ensure his future, he couldn't let it simply slip away, especially not if Beatrix was carrying his child. Even putting aside the dowry, he was not such a rogue as to allow her to wed someone else, especially his brother, under the circumstances.
He openly acknowledged his past rakish behavior, but at heart he was still a gentleman. Now forced to choose, he found he desired to act the part. His intentions were, for once, honorable; he wished to marry Beatrix. But only by retrieving Charlotte and destroying the other couple's happiness could he guarantee his own. His conscience pricked.
Though part of him hoped Devington would make this an impossible task, Philip was resolved to overtake them and return Charlotte to her uncle. He saw no other way. May the best man win, he thought grimly.
He knew they already had a twelve to fourteen hour start on him, but just how many miles they'd put behind them before stopping to rest was anyone's guess. Philip would ride hard to gain Leicester, eighty miles from Great Chesterford but over a hundred from London. He calculated his route would afford him a twenty-mile advantage, making up about four hours of their lead.
Even pushing hard, they couldn't be much more than halfway there by this time. An average soldier, traveling light on a good horse, could cover seven to eight miles per hour and up to seventy miles a day if he rested his horse sufficiently.
Philip doubted that Robert could maintain such a pace while riding with Charlotte, and he questioned whether they would have the resources to hire fresh horses. Unlikely. They would be more liable to keep their own mounts rather than entrust Mars and Amoret to some unknown hostler's care. Perforce, they would rest more frequently, thus losing several more hours of their lead. If Philip changed horses, he could ride straight through to Leicester by midnight.
He estimated Robert and Charlotte would break their journey somewhere between London and Northampton. The girl couldn't possibly complete three hundred miles by horseback. It would be a cruel and arduous ride for a man, let alone a slip of a girl. They would continue on to either Sheffield or Doncaster, where they might safely stable their horses and pick up either the stage or the mail to Scotland.
Philip had little doubt he would catch up with them. He had already ridden the better part of fifty miles in six hours, a bruising pace. Hawke had been fresh and enthusiastic at the outset, but the distance had nearly spent him. Philip feared pushing any further, lest he seize up or grow lame.
"Sorry, m'boy." He patted the steaming horse's neck. "I fear we soon part company. The next coaching house or livery must be your home until I can collect you, but I've no doubt you'll appreciate the break." The horse nickered as if in agreement.
Drake lessened the pace, but by the time they reached the next village, Hawke had lost a shoe. The horse could go no farther. Finding no livery, Philip dismounted and led his drooping horse to the village smithy.
"Excuse me, good man," Philip said, addressing the burly smith, "might there be in this village a sound horse for hire?"
Busy at his forge, the man did not immediately respond.
Philip tied his horse and addressed him more adamantly. "I seek a horse for hire, man. The matter is quite urgent."
The burly man stood and surveyed the major. "Next coaching house and livery be twenty miles, in Leicester. Best ye try there."
"Twenty miles! This horse is past spent and going lame. I must acquire a replacement. How much to hire Goliath?" He indicated a big draught tied nearby.
"'Ow'd ye know 'is name?" asked the bewildered man.
Losing patience with this simpleton, Philip demanded, "How much to hire your horse? I shall require him only as far as Leicester, where I can procure something more suitable. Rest assured, I shall leave him at the nearest livery."
Perceiving opportunity in the major's urgency, the man greedily replied, "Two guineas."
"The devil, you say! That's highway robbery! I can hire a coachand-four a full day for half as much!"
"Seems to me there be no coach-'n'-four at yer disposal, and seein' yer horse is nigh lame, 'twould seem ye got little choice. 'Tis no matter to me." The man shrugged, turning back to his forge.
Philip's ire rose at the outright usury, but he wasted valuable time. "I'll pay you one deuced guinea," he countered, "and not an infernal ha'penny more. Furthermore, you'll bloody well see to my horse! Should you unwisely refuse my offer, I shall requisition said horse in His Majesty's service."
Realizing the veracity of the threat, the smith grunted assent and left his forge to fetch the draught, while Philip pulled his saddle and pack from Hawke.
"I will be back in a few days to collect this one, and if, by happenstance, he is gone when I return, I will see you hung for horse thievery. Do we understand each other now, my good man?"
Philip tossed the man a guinea, but to his vexation, his saddle girth was several inches shy of accommodating the bigger horse. Rather than wasting more time and indignity haggling for the cart, Philip swung bareback onto the giant and spurred the sluggish beast into the bone-setting trot he was to suffer for the next twenty miles.
Finally reaching the livery at Leicester, the major dismounted, his fine breeches now covered in dirt and horse sweat. He handed the carthorse off to a sniggling groom.
Famished and fatigued, he arranged for a fresh horse and trod on to the Old Greyhound Inn, where he bespoke a room and inquired of the innkeeper if he had seen an officer traveling with a young woman. With the negative reply, Philip procured a bottle of wine and a stale loaf and made his way to his chamber. Little did he know, climbing into bed for the few remaining hours until sunrise, that Robert and "Charles," arriving only three hours earlier, occupied the next room.
Startled by a log popping in the hearth, Charlotte abruptly awoke. "Robert?" she whispered to no answer.
Rising from the bed, she glanced around the chamber still steeped in shadow. Peering out the window at the lowered moon, she estimated an hour until sunrise but found herself alone. They had again shared a chamber, but this accommodation had two beds, and his was empty and bereft of his gear. Where was he?
A wave of panic threatened to choke her. Had he changed his mind and left her here? Alone?
Her fear rose to a fever pitch. She searched for her boots and then groped for her coat and cap. Pulling them on, she headed for the door, crashing into Robert as he opened it to enter.
"Robert!" Her voice quivered. "I feared you'd left me!"
"No! God no, Charlotte! How could you even think such a thing? I started the fire for you and left to make provision for our journey. You were so drained I did not wish to disturb your rest until the last possible moment. The horses are now ready, and I have stowed food in our packs to break our fast as we ride. We dare not tarry any longer."
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to doubt you, but waking alone..."
"You must never doubt me, my love. Never doubt me." He gripped her shoulders almost painfully and then checked his emotions. "We must be off now. We arrived late enough last night to avoid notice. 'Twould be wise to depart in like manner. We have over sixty miles to Sheffield, but I hope to make it this very night."
"We have come this far; I swear to persevere. Assuredly, I shall."
"Yes, Charlotte, you shall," he said, encouraging her with a tender brush of his lips.
Philip rose with the sun, shaking the cobwebs from his head, his lids still heavy with the wine he had partaken of only a few hours earlier. His jolt to full consciousness arrived with the bracingly frigid water he splashed on his face before hastily donning his clothes. Taking up his pack, he broke his fast in the taproom and was off to the livery.
The young groom who brought out the horse, saddled and ready, inquired, "Be there more tidings of the Young Pretender?"
"None at the moment, lad. We feared invasion on the southern coast a few weeks back, but our proud navy prevailed."
"But what of the Scots? Is the army heading to the border?"
"There is yet no news of moment from the north. Why do you ask?"
"Just wi' two officers heading nor'ward, I thought ye might be carrying news," the boy offered.
"Two officers? Have you seen another heading north?"
"Aye, sir."
"Indeed? When did this other arrive? Was he a Captain of the Horse?" Philip demanded. "Was he alone or accompanied?"
"Can't rightly say when they arrived, but his uniform was like your'n. A stripling accompanied him. Left early, though; must ha' tended their own horses, as I was barely sprung from me bed when they rode out."
"Damme!" Philip swore. "How abominably obtuse! Why didn't I think to inspect the stables last night?"
"A friend of your'n?"
Philip didn't answer but sprang onto the startled horse almost before the groom released the bridle. Wheeling furiously, he departed the stable yard with a clatter of hooves.
With fresh horses after a full night's rest and extra forage, Robert and Charlotte set a more moderate pace than their frantic ride the day before. Easing their pace and breaking every fifteen to twenty miles, Robert was still confident to achieve Sheffield by suppertime, where they would take lodgings at the Dark Horse.
Although the accommodation was shabby, at least Charlotte would have the care of a woman after her long journey. He would order her a private room and a bath so that she might travel the rest of the way clean, refreshed, and returned to feminine attire.
From Sheffield, surely there would be service to Scotland. His hope was for the mail; pulled by six strong horses, it sped along at nearly ten miles per hour. Though not the most comfortable conveyance, it was assuredly the fastest. By mail coach, they could gain Scotch Corner by tomorrow nightfall, and then it was only a day's ride to the border town of Gretna Green.
He would finally have Charlotte. For now, it was enough.
He gazed tenderly at the girl by his side. In her present disguise, she was both the reckless little waif he first admired and the young woman he had come to love so deeply.
Feeling his gaze upon her, Charlotte smiled and blushed, as if reading his thoughts, but their moment was broken by the thunder of hoof beats. With one hand upon his sword hilt, Robert spun his horse around and spied a lone rider coming up hard behind them.
Though the rider was still a good distance away, he could make out the scarlet coat with its blue facings, the colors of the King's Horse. It could only be a fellow trooper, but something all too familiar in the rider's posture set him on alert.
"Why the devil would Drake be coming north? He's supposed to be in Newmarket!"
"Drake? Are you sure it's Drake? Could he be recalling you to duty? Could he have changed his mind about helping us?" Charlotte's tone registered her growing alarm.
"I can think of no other reason for this pursuit," Robert said, "unless he thinks to retrieve you to his brother. I never would have thought it of him, but if blood is thicker than water..." He paused; then with slow deliberation, he drew his sword. "Ride ahead, Charlotte. I shall settle this. I shall meet you in Sheffield when it is finished."
"Finished!" she cried aghast. "Surely you don't mean to fight him!"
"I shall first determine his purpose, my love, but if he seeks to take you from me, he gives me no choice."
"You can't mean this!"
"I assure you, I do," he said vehemently. "I thought Philip my friend, but if my suspicion is justified, I swear I will draw his blood."
"Robert, I won't have it! We can still outrun him. That's our choice. We will push all the way to Gretna Green if need be!"
"'Tis now a matter of honor, Charlotte. Don't you understand?"
"No. I do not understand! You could be killed." Drawing breath, she challenged him. "If you truly love me, Robert, you will come now, and to hell with honor!" Without looking back, she cued Amoret into a gallop.
Robert squinted at the fast-approaching rider and then at the departing form of his intended bride. His choice now made for him, he cursed, resheathed his sword, and set his horse after Charlotte, with Philip in close pursuit.
Mars soon overtook Amoret, who was no match for the stallion. Pulling alongside, Robert spoke tersely. "For now, we ride. As I know this country better than he, mayhap we can lose him, but if he should catch up..."
"There is no need for violence when we can outrun him. But if he catches up, I pray you will see sense. What if you were wounded, or worse yet, killed? What should I do then?"
Robert was at a loss for reply.
The pair rode on, eating up the miles toward the Scottish border. Looking back over his shoulder for the third time in an hour, with no sign of their pursuer, Robert pulled up and gestured for Charlotte to do the same. Their horses, lathered and blowing, were in dire need of respite. They took shelter in a grove of trees. Charlotte looked anxiously southward. "Do we really dare stop?" she asked, breathless.
"I haven't sighted him," he said, meaning to reassure her. "At the pace you have set, my love, he is surely miles behind, and I fear the consequences if we don't," he said, his concern for the horses evident in his expression. "I daresay it will do us as much good as the horses to use our own legs for a stretch."
He helped her to dismount. With a grimace, Charlotte began walking out the cramps that had threatened her for the past five miles. "He knows our plans. What will happen if he catches up with us?" she asked, compulsively looking over her shoulder again.
"I have been trying to avoid the same thought. I still cannot make sense of it. Although he's unpredictable at times, Philip has been a good friend to me. I can only believe he is pressed into this chase against his own inclination. However, if he has decided it somehow suits his purpose to do so, he will be tenacious. I know him this well; he will invariably do whatever is in his best interest. He confessed as much before we left."
Charlotte noticed his unconscious fingering of his sword hilt as he spoke. Fearful of a confrontation, she urged, "We mustn't give him the opportunity. We must go on! How much longer can the horses last?"
"They must endure until Leeds."
"How much farther is it?"
"About forty miles, I'd say."
"You can't be in earnest! With the distance we've ridden, that will make near a hundred miles in one day!"
"I am dreadfully in earnest, my love. We might have caught a stage or mail coach in Sheffield, but he would anticipate this move and assuredly overtake us. I would lay coin he plans to rest there himself tonight. We must press on to Leeds."
"But we should kill the horses in the doing! Can they last a hundred miles?" She eyed their valiant steeds tearfully.
Robert's educated eye scanned the pair critically. "We've covered over half the distance already, and thus far, neither shows sign of lameness, though I worry much more for the mare than for the stallion. Hold up a moment, Charlotte."
Charlotte paused walking her horse. Now breathing easier, Amoret commenced to eagerly cropping grass. Robert ran his hands over the mare and paused to check her pulse. He commented after a while, "She's recovering well, and eating is always a good sign." He stooped to examine her legs and feet. "There is no sign of heat or swelling, and her shoes are yet tight," he remarked. "But there's no question they both need a rest." He fondly petted his own horse's neck. "We will tarry here a bit and let them forage, but I think the horses are fit to go on. We shall moderate our pace a bit and should still gain Leeds tonight."
Now reassured about the horses, he turned his attention to Charlotte. "My next concern is how you are holding up, my love. I almost regret this illfated escapade."
"Never say that, Robert! We are so close now. Two days ago, our future together was bleak, and had we done nothing, our fates would have been decided for us. I could not have lived with that. We have come so far. Surely we shall persevere!"
"Without mishap, we should arrive shortly after nightfall. Then I promise you a night of rest. Do you really think you can bear it, Charlotte?"
"It appears I still have not proven my mettle to you," she challenged. "I swear to you I will walk to Leeds before I give up!"
"My love, I believe you would try." He laughed wearily. "But don't doubt for a moment that I would carry you before I would ever let you walk."
Philip had spotted the pair miles earlier but maintained a discreet distance. He knew he could never match their speed once they discovered his pursuit. The horses carrying Charlotte and Robert were bred for stamina and speed, their blood a coveted mix of Eastern and highly cultivated native stock. Philip's livery nag was no match.
He wouldn't catch them before nightfall; however, catch them he would. They had to rest some time, and he had a strong suspicion where it would be. He pushed his horse doggedly northward to Sheffield.
Terminating at the livery, he stabled his hired mount and procured another for what he hoped would be his return to London. Not to repeat his prior error, he inquired of the stablemen whether they had seen a captain accompanied by either a lad or a young woman. None confessed to have seen the pair, but he wasn't surprised. Raised in this county, Robert easily could have found someone to harbor them.
His business in the stables completed, Philip proceeded to the tavern, as confident of Maggie's welcome as of her willingness to provide him with intelligence.
Upon his entrance, Maggie transfixed her eyes on the apparition. She had never thought to see him again. She cursed herself for all the false hopes she had once harbored where Philip Drake was concerned. She fought to compose her conflicting emotions and schooled herself to nonchalance. "If it isn't Major Philip. Can't say I expected to see you back in Sheffield."
"Nor did I, but urgent business carries me north."
Her heart wrenched. "Business you say?"
"Indeed, some most unfortunate business, that precludes any time for pleasure..." He regarded her regretfully, and when Maggie refused to meet his dark gaze, he continued back to his purpose. "For the moment my most pressing needs are for a meal, a bed, and any news you might have of Captain Devington and Charlotte Wallace. All at your pleasure, of course."
Beckoning young Jim to fetch a tankard, Maggie sauntered around the bar, wiping her hands on her apron. She led Philip to a corner table where they could speak privately. "Ye seek Cap'n Devington and Miss Charlotte, ye say?"
"They eloped and are this moment heading for the border. They've been riding for two days and are undoubtedly in need of rest. I thought it likely they would come here. Have you seen or heard anything of them?"
"Nay, ne'er a word. 'Tis about time, I say! Any fool could see they was pinin' for each other fierce-like."
"Precisely the problem, Maggie. Her uncle saw it and forbade the match. He has contracted her hand to another, and I have the unlikely fortune of retrieving her."
"Fetch her back! Ye cannot mean it! What right have ye to meddle? I thought him yer friend."
"The matter is more complicated than you could possibly imagine," he replied irritably. "Though I am pressed to act contrary to my inclination, I must return her."
"If that be so, ye can bet yer traitorous arse I know nothing of them!" Maggie's eyes flashed, and she slammed down the tankard, sloshing ale on him.
Philip's eyes danced in amusement. "Have you sufficiently vented your spleen?" He caught Maggie about the waist and pulled her onto his lap, kissing her hard on the mouth.
Maggie first averted her head but suddenly found herself responding, felt the stirrings of her body. It would be so easy to take him upstairs to her bed. She despised him in this moment... but she despised herself even more.
Philip had not at first perceived Maggie's condition, but now he noticed her fuller breasts and the slightly protruding abdomen that her apron concealed. Maggie was carrying some man's bastard. "A damnable waste," he cursed under his breath.
Maggie recognized his look of pity and regret. Her very soul screamed out to tell him, but her pride suppressed the scream. Abruptly, she pushed his hands away and stood, smoothing her apron.
"I know naught to help you, and I must be about me business now."
"Do you indeed?" he asked, the humor now completely vanished from his eyes. "If that is the case, I shall take my leave of you. I have pressing matters of my own."
As he rose to leave, Maggie's sob caught in her throat, but she said nothing until he departed, when she tearfully whispered, "It's your babe. For God's sake, it's yours."
C ompletely depleted, Robert and Charlotte arrived at the outskirts of Leeds. After Mars and Amoret had faithfully carried them one hundred and eight miles in seventeen hours, the horses were ready to drop and their riders barely balanced in their saddles.
At the very first public house, Robert called the hostler to tend their mounts and then sought the landlord to bespeak rooms. He returned to find Charlotte sprawled asleep over her dozing mare's neck, with her head resting peacefully against the silken mane.
His heart tripped with love and pride at the girl's sheer grit, all for the love of him. He pulled Charlotte's limp form gently from the mare and handed her horse off to the groom. Robert then carried her to the inn and up the stairs to her chamber. He had procured two rooms this time, reminding himself that in just another day she would be his.
Charlotte never stirred while he removed her boots and settled her in bed. He then stumbled blindly to his own chamber, where he collapsed into a comatose slumber. It would be past noon before either of them arose.
Charlotte was first to stir, awakened by the chambermaid tapping upon her door. She pulled herself groggily from bed and approached the dressing table, where she caught a horrified look at the dirty, tangled mess she had become. Aghast at the first reflection she had seen of herself in days, Charlotte bespoke hot water and labored to put herself back in some form of order.
Resolving she had worn boy's clothes for the last time, she cast the filthy garments into the fire, but she was dismayed by the crushed and crumpled gown she pulled from her saddle pack. As it was her only one, she donned the pitiful garment with the consolation that she at least resembled a female once more.
Robert, meanwhile, awoke to the agitations of his stomach. They had ridden for seventeen hours straight and had slept another thirteen with little more than a crust of bread to sustain them. Rising abruptly, he washed with bracingly frigid water and then threw on his clothes in impatience to rectify the neglect imposed on their weary and abused bodies.
Tapping then on Charlotte's door, he found her awake, dressed, and greeting him with a pitiful moan. "Robert, I'm about to expire of hunger!"
"A matter soon rectified, my love." He grinned and offered his arm, and they proceeded down to the breakfast room. He escorted her to a table and left her to order food, while he sought schedules for the northbound coaches. By the time he returned, their meal of bread, cheese, cold chicken, and meat pies had arrived. Overwhelmed with hunger, they eagerly pounced on the repast.
It was several minutes before either spoke, and then only between mouthfuls.
"What have you learned of the coaching schedules?" Charlotte inquired between greedy bites of bread and cheese.
"To our misfortune, we've missed the morning departure to Carlisle, which would have carried us within ten miles of the border," he replied, pausing briefly to swallow some ale. "The Edinburgh mail, however, should be passing through at approximately four this afternoon. We could take it as far as Scotch Corner." He proceeded to devour half a chicken.
"How much farther from there?" she asked, washing down her meat pie with a most unladylike gulp of tea.
Robert held his answer, lest he choke on the drumstick he'd zealously torn from the nearly naked chicken carcass. Pausing only to swallow, he continued matterof-factly, "'Tis seventy miles after that."
"Seventy miles! Still so far?" she asked in dismay as she tore a large hunk from their second loaf of bread.
"I'm afraid we lost a great deal of time sleeping, but I fear we would ne'er have survived otherwise. As it stands, we must break our journey at Scotch Corner, and from thence, take the next coach to Gretna Green."
She considered this, restraining herself to impatient nibbling on the remaining meat pie. "So we have two hours yet to wait on the mail?"
He nodded, taking another long draught from his tankard.
"Robert," she began, "would it trouble you greatly if I made some purchases while in Leeds?" She cast a dismayed look at her crumpled gown, adding, "I should so like to appear a proper bride."
"I would with my entire being, that I was a man of means who could have provided your heart's desire instead of absconding with you in this pusillanimous and clandestine manner." He ended with a helpless gesture knowing he barely had sufficient funds remaining to cover the rest of the trip.
Charlotte understood their financial difficulties and actually sought to pawn her father's watch and her mother's pearls, the items Robert previously refused to take from her. If her intentions were known, his pride would never allow the sacrifice.
"I have need of only a few small items. If you would but escort me to a shop."
"I suppose we have time," he said. "I'll take you directly, and then I must run by the livery to arrange for the horses. I can attend to them while you shop."
Robert escorted Charlotte to the haberdashery, but as soon as he was out of sight, she made her way to find a pawn broker. The first proprietor of such an establishment eyed her keenly when she withdrew her treasures: the silver watch and milky pearls. With a trembling hand, she offered them up for appraisal.
"One guinea," the man stated with a patronizing smile.
"One guinea? Only one guinea? The watch alone must be worth twice the sum, and the pearls are of the highest quality. Surely the pearls are worth more?"
"One guinea," he repeated with an avaricious gleam.
The price he offered was only a fraction of the items' worth. She was infuriated to be taken advantage of but feared to seek elsewhere, lest she receive no better offer and be forced to return and accept even less. Her stomach churned in indecision.
"I had presumed brigands haunted only the highways." The familiar voice came from behind her. "The lady no longer has need of your money."
Charlotte whirled to face Philip Drake.
"Be pleased to put away your baubles, my dear. I shall provide your fare to London." He put a strong arm about her waist and propelled her from the shop.
Overcoming her initial shock, Charlotte struggled vainly against his grip. "Philip! Just what do you think you're doing?"
He held her fast to his side. "Come along quietly. There is no need to draw attention. I am here to recall Devington, and at Sir Garfield's behest, to retrieve you back to your lawfully betrothed."
"My lawfully betrothed!" she hissed. "It was my understanding you barely stomach my betrothed."
"True enough, but there is more to this than you realize."
"Pray don't insult my intelligence, Philip. You covet only my
cousin's fortune. I suspected as much from the start, but as Robert's friend, I gave you benefit of doubt."
"My reasons are my own," he snapped.
"But you professed to be his friend!"
"Friendship aside, Robert has no choice but to release you. He has a categorical obligation to obey his superior."
"How dare you interfere like this?"
"I didn't wish it but am now in a most invidious position. I am obligated by my honor to return you."
"But I will not go!"
Philip spoke quietly but compellingly into her ear. "Your refusal could put Devington in great danger. I can place him under arrest, you know. He could face charges."
"What charges?"
"Insubordination and absence without leave. If I am pressed, these are grounds for the courts-martial." Gripping her shoulders, he spun her to face him squarely. "Do you fully understand what I am telling you?"
"Y-you can't possibly mean it," she said, appealing to pitiless, dark eyes.
"I regretfully assure you I do. Don't challenge me," he threatened. "I suggest you come quietly, before Devington has wind of it. Regardless of what you might believe, I harbor a strong repugnance to stain my sword with my best friend's blood." His voice was rueful.
"Your friend? You defile the word!" Grating steel accompanied the retort as Robert drew his saber from its scabbard.
"Sheath your sword, Devington! That is an order. You have led me a merry chase, but I regret to say, my friend, you are run to earth. The hunt is over."
Devington was no match for him. Philip hoped the captain realized as much. Although Philip was prepared to cross swords, he hoped to avoid disgracing him in front of Charlotte.
"It is far from over. It is now become a point of honor, Major." Robert weighed and balanced his saber with a fierce glower.
"Devington, this is senseless. On horseback, you have no match, but you shall never best me with a blade. I order you for the last time, Captain," he said with deadly calm, "Sheath. Your. Blade."
"It's been a long time since we have sparred, Drake. Are you still so assured of your superiority?"
"I never intended this, Devington, but you edge to insubordination. Dangerously close. Pray consider your actions carefully." His voice was low and ominous.
"I should advise you to remove your coat, lest the bulk hamper you." Robert shrugged out of his own.
"No, Robert! Don't!" Charlotte threw herself at him. "You could face the courts-martial over this! Please!" she begged. "Please let this be over now. I will go back to my uncle. I could not bear to see your life ruined for love of me. I could not live with it!"
"No, Charlotte. It shall end today, but on our terms, not theirs. We have been held apart by every deplorable means. I won't suffer it any longer."
"But if you should lose."
"I shall not sacrifice my honor to these selfish, avaricious bastards. I could no more stand as a man before you if I allowed it. If you love me, Charlotte, stand aside."
Preparing for the inevitable, Philip shrugged out of his coat, tossed it carelessly to the ground, and drew his saber.
Powerless to hinder this madness, Charlotte ran off to seek help from anyone who might intervene.
Both men now faced one another, blades raised in silent salute. In an act meant to both mock and intimidate, Philip boldly kissed his sword hilt, preparing for what he reckoned would be a clumsy and impassioned assault.
Unleashing his fury more nimbly than Philip had anticipated, Robert lunged into a swift thrust. Philip effortlessly parried and countered with a riposte, met by his opponent in a clash of blades.
Disengaging, Robert fiercely advanced again with a vertical slash. Philip agilely sprung back and dodged.
Perceiving his opponent's retreat, Robert dove in with a low thrust to the midsection. Philip narrowly evaded with a swift sidestep. The blade tip caught his shirt and shallowly grazed his flesh.
Seeking only to disarm, Philip made a lightning-fast counterstrike, slamming his blade downward near Robert's sword hilt, but rather than disarming, the tactic drove the point of Robert's sword into the soft, trodden dirt.
By this time, the smell of blood permeating the air had drawn a small crowd around the dueling officers. Included in the spectators were several infantrymen, and their commanding officer, whom Charlotte had drawn from the tavern, begging them to stop the fight.
The infantry commander who had followed the near-hysterical girl stopped in his tracks at sight of the combatants. Lieutenant Prescott was unable to believe his eyes, or his good fortune. Fighting this illegal duel was the same pair who had humiliated him two years ago. He smiled.
The Articles of War gave him authority to quell all quarrels, frays, and disorders, even with those of superior rank, but Prescott saw no need to intervene so soon. If they did not kill one another, as he hoped, the same articles conferred upon him the authority to end the duel and place them both under arrest. Heedless of the girl's plea, he would act in his own good time.
The duelists fought, oblivious of the gathering crowd. In the course of yanking his buried sword from the ground, Robert spewed dirt straight into his opponent's face. Blinded, Philip staggered back in retreat, fighting to clear his vision, and Devington, perceiving opportunity, advanced.
Quickly wiping his eyes on his sleeve, Philip defended with a spin and slashed downward, connecting with the captain's thigh. The slice was long, clean, and deep.
Charlotte shrieked when Robert buckled in searing pain, fighting to maintain his feet.
"First blood, Devington," Philip remarked impassively.
"This isn't a game," Robert growled.
"Your injury hampers you. You have no hope of besting me. Certainly not now," Philip said.
Robert grunted and shifted his weight onto his left leg. "We fight to the last man standing."
"You really wish to continue?" Philip forced his impassive reply. "While I applaud your tenacity, you won't be standing much longer."
"I'm not finished with you by half, Major."
"As you wish, Captain." Philip bowed mockingly, rigidly determined to end this briskly.
Robert, unable to trust his right leg enough to advance, stepped back with a slight stagger. Philip slowly circled like a wolf around his wounded prey, looking for the most vulnerable moment to strike.
Attempting again to disarm, Philip aimed another powerful stroke just below Devington's sword hilt, but in attempting to parry, the captain brought his arm into the path of Philip's blade. Rather than locking swords as intended, the saber scored his arm, cleanly severing muscle and sinew.
Robert's blade clattered to the ground. He clutched his maimed arm, now spurting copious amounts of bright crimson blood, against his chest. Ashen-faced and drenched in his own blood, Robert swayed and then crumpled to his knees, cradling his mangled arm.
Philip froze for a moment, incredulous. He recovered with a curse.
"Damn you to hell, Devington! There's only one man standing
now!" Throwing his bloodstained saber to the ground, he strode off to find a surgeon.
With a horrified shriek, Charlotte threw herself upon Robert, but he was as unresponsive as a fallen statue. She frantically tried to staunch the blood still coursing in pulsating spurts. Charlotte prayed to God the surgeon would come quickly. There was so much blood, too much blood!
Whether in answer to her prayer or in response to Philip's dire threat to his life, the barber surgeon arrived to take charge of the wounded man. Now incapacitated by blood loss, Devington was carried to his lodgings while Charlotte followed helplessly.
Setting immediately to work, the surgeon managed to staunch the bleeding and plastered the leg wound. Tearfully sitting by his bedside, Charlotte strained to listen through the door as the surgeon gave his prognosis to Major Drake.
The leg could be saved if infection was averted, but the arm was another matter. The blade, slashing near the elbow joint, had sliced through muscle and tendon, nigh clean to the bone. There would be no saving the member. He advised taking it off with all dispatch.
"'Tis too damaged to repair, I fear. There is no surgeon so skilled that can reattach what your sword has severed, Major."
"That's not acceptable, damn you! The captain will be seen by a military surgeon, one accustomed to treating such injuries, before such drastic measures are taken. Do I make myself bloody well clear?"
"Major, 'twould be a se'nnight before such a surgeon could be dispatched. By that time..." He shrugged grimly.
"Then you'll bloody well stabilize him for transport and see him to the surgeon general at Westminster. Moreover, he shall arrive with two arms."
"And whom should I expect to bear the expense of this?" the harried surgeon inquired.
"All of this patient's expenses will be borne by Sir Garfield Wallace of Wortley. I've no doubt the man is well known in these parts, but you have my sword on it!" Philip swore angrily.
"Speaking of that sword, Major, I believe you left it behind," Lieutenant George Prescott interrupted.
"Prescott, is it? Quite the unexpected pleasure to find you in Leeds," Philip remarked, silently cursing his luck. He did not need these complications. Prescott had an axe to grind, and opportunity had presented itself.
"That's Second Lieutenant Prescott, of the First Foot," he replied smugly. "And I confess, the pleasure is entirely mine, Major."
"Quite." Philip noted the vindictive glint in the other man's eye as Prescott displayed the bloodstained weapon. "My gratitude for retrieving my saber, Prescott." Philip extended his hand to take his sword.
"Let's not be precipitate." He pulled it out of reach. "I believe this weapon shall be required as evidence."
"Evidence? Your interference is both unwarranted and unwelcome."
The Lieutenant reddened but pressed. "I think not, Major. I shall retain the weapon, as I intend to exercise my right, indeed my absolute obligation, to place both you and Devington under arrest."
"Bloody hell! The matter is between me and my subordinate and none of your damned business!"
"I gainsay you on that account, Major. The Articles of War expressly make this my business." He was immensely satisfied at having gained the upper hand over his nemesis and took no pains to hide it.
Philip's position was precarious. Although he had threatened charges against Devington, his had been a bluff to intimidate Charlotte into submission. The ensuing events, however, destined them both to face the courts-martial. Dueling, particularly between officers, was expressly prohibited.
He cursed under his breath. The damned hothead had brought it upon himself, indeed upon them both. Under normal circumstances, the commander in chief would turn a blind eye to a discreet settling of a point of honor, but their conduct had been anything but discreet. Two decorated officers had fought in broad daylight, with half the town of Leeds and a dozen infantrymen as witnesses.
Philip was backed into a corner. Knowing defense impossible, he chose the offensive. "I regret to pull rank, Lieutenant, but the prerogative is mine. My purpose in Leeds was to recall Captain Devington to duty. He disobeyed my direct order, and I intend to charge him with insubordination as soon as he is recovered from his injuries."
"Insubordination? Drawing a sword on one's superior far surpasses the bounds of insubordination, Major. Assaulting an officer is a capital offense."
"Mayhap so, Prescott, but once again, 'tis none of your concern. For now, the captain is unfit to travel, let alone face charges. Feel free to pursue your case most zealously once we return to Whitehall, but for now, you must defer your pleasure."
Prescott stared at his nemesis, feeling robbed but vowing to press forward and follow this through to the end. "To whom will you be making your report, Major?"
"To Ligonier, I would presume, as he is currently in command of all cavalry."
"Then I expect to see you when I report to General Ligonier. Until then, I shall retain the evidence."
"If you insist, Prescott," Drake said dismissively. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have other matters to attend. Good day, Lieutenant."
Philip knew the incident would be impossible to explain off. There were too many witnesses, and Devington was severely wounded. Charges were inevitable unless he could appeal to someone with influence, someone who wielded power over the very arbitrary military courts.
For now, he could ensure only that Devington saw Pringle. The rest remained to fate.
Charlotte sat endlessly through the night in silent, prayerful vigil. She dared not leave Robert's side, for fear he'd awaken and not find her near, or worse yet, that he might slip away from her.
She prayed for a miracle, that he could be whole again, that they might still escape together, but with the rising sun, she prayed most fervently for his life, so pale and still he lay against the pillows.
The barber surgeon, Dr. Wilkins, came early to reassess his patient, and Drake reminded him again of the peril to his own members should he fail to deliver the captain intact to Dr. Pringle.
His duty done, Philip proceeded without vacillation to bodily drag Charlotte away from Robert's bedside.
"But you can't expect me to leave him like this!" she wailed.
"He is under a physician's care, Charlotte. There is nothing you can do for him. I have vowed to return you to London, and return you I shall."
Arriving in the coach yard, she jerked her arm from Philip's grip, spurning his assistance with a hateful glare, and climbed in. As she awaited their departure, she sat in the carriage, silently seething, her heartbreak mixed with loathing, hot tears burning her eyes. Her hatred burned white, and had she Robert's sword, she would have carved out Philip's treacherous heart of stone without compunction. The thought brought a fleeting smile to her otherwise wan countenance.
Charlotte was thankful Philip followed on horseback, riding with the groom he had hired to help convey Mars and Amoret. She couldn't stomach his loathsome face, let alone suffer confinement in a carriage with him for days on end. Believing Robert's fate lay largely in his hands, she endured the journey, alternating between impassive silence and heart-wrenching fits of weeping.
She and Philip exchanged precious few words in their three days of travel together, until parting company at Leicester. The carriage driver was instructed to deliver Charlotte to her uncle's residence, while Philip rode back to the village where he had left Hawke. He collected the grateful horse, who though none the worse for wear, had no doubt suffered the indignities of pulling a cart while in the smith's care.
Paying the promised coin, Philip handed Mars off to his hired groom and vaulted back into his own saddle, on his own horse at last. It was a small comfort, for which he was thankful.
He had carried out Sir Garfield's wishes in order to secure his own future, but ironically, this future no longer held the same appeal. The course he had chosen now threatened to choke the life out of him. Philip closed his eyes, wishing the entire episode would fade away as a bad dream.
He needed a drink. Perhaps large enough quantities of cheap whiskey would drown his newfound conscience and dull his raw sensibilities.
N ewmarket was first established as a premier racing center nearly a century hence by King Charles II, who was such an avid turf follower that he removed his entire court every spring and autumn to his favorite venue. Indeed, the Merrie Monarch was so enamored of Newmarket that he hired gentleman-architect William Samwell to build a two-story brick viewing pavilion overlooking the heath, and even the Rowley mile racecourse was named in honor of the King's favorite horse, Old Rowley.
Charles II, an expert horseman in his own right, even raced his own horses against the gentlemen of his court on these famed Cambridgeshire chalk downs. A true patron of the sport in every way, he established the first official rules, as well as the series of races called the Royal Plates, thirteen official races run in various locations throughout England.
Newmarket held the distinction of commencing the racing season each year with its six days of slated match races, culminating with the prestigious and highly competitive King's Plate. More than any other, this race lured hundreds of horses from scores of racing studs throughout England.
Now, with the advent of spring, this sleepy town once again sprung to life, transforming into a racing mecca. Turf-ites of all classes descended. Farmers delivering their cartloads of oats and hay jammed the byways into the teeming village square, competing with the owners and breeders who arrived in their carriages.
High Street echoed with the clip-clop of iron striking the cobbles, suddenly swarming with sleek, sinewy, snorting quadrupeds and their wiry young grooms. Jockeys and grooms eagerly employed themselves with their charges, proudly parading their coursers, conspicuously adorned in the brightly hued sheets of their masters' racing colors, and touting to one another the superiority of their masters' stock.
Meanwhile, said gentleman of the turf congregated in the public houses and crowded the cockpits. Lords and cock-keepers, grooms, and blacklegs rubbed elbows with talk consisting only of horses and cockfighting, heedless for the time being, at least, of the invisible boundaries that normally divided their classes.
The atmosphere was permeated with the sights, smells, and sounds of horses. The racing season had officially revived from its winter dormancy.
This was the scene greeting Sir Garfield and Charles Wallace upon their arrival at the Rutledge Arms on High Street.
Gazing about him in appreciation, Sir Garfield remarked to Charles, "A man's paradise is Newmarket, m'boy." He added with a lascivious wink, "We have before us a full se'nnight of gaming, drinking, cockfighting, and horse racing, with virtually no women, save the kind that enhance the entertainments."
As father and son were about to leave the inn yard, Charles noticed the late arrival of a familiar black coachand-four with a gold emblazoned crest.
"I believe 'tis Lord Uxeter arrived," he remarked to his father. "Should we await him?"
"By all means, m'boy. We are soon to be kinsmen, you know." The men went to meet the carriage.
Jeffries had arrived a week prior to ready Sir Garfield's runner, Tortoise, a son of Whitefoot out of Amoret, and full brother to White Rose, who had won her very first race at Lichfield two years past. Given the horse's mix of old proven racing blood from the likes of Darcy's White Turk and the Byerley and Darley Arabians, Jeffries had high expectations of Tortoise, particularly after his sister Rosie's early success.
Although the gelding had begun his training with Devington as his rough rider, Jeffries had entrusted the gelding to Charlotte, following her success with Rosie. Unbeknownst to Sir Garfield, it was actually his niece, Charlotte, who had prepared Tortoise to run.
"How does he go, Jeffries?" Sir Garfield asked as Jemmy brought the gray gelding into the rubbing house after his afternoon gallop. The rubbing grooms removed his three layers of rugs and began to massage him briskly with wads of clean straw.
"He be runnin' in high form, sir." Jeffries grinned conspiratorially. "He ain't like some o' these morning glories I seen the past se'nnight, what come out and breeze fresh as you please and wilt away in the afternoon race."
"That's promising, indeed," Sir Garfield said.
"Aye. I been watchin' 'em on the Gallops and waited for just the right ones before sending Jemmy out wi' Tortoise. He paced hisself well against Badger two days back and blazed a trail past Mr. Routh's Frolic, what won the Malton Plate. He had the Duke of Perth's Chance blowin' to keep up and stalked Lord Portmore's Othello with ease. Our boy will hold his own wi' the primest of the cracks, even if ye was to put a monkey on his back."
Charles, who was to ride, regarded Jeffries with a scowl.
"I didn't mean no offense, Master Charles," Jeffries hastily amended.
Sir Garfield, who had his own reservations about his son's ability to ride the horse to a victory, asked, "Who then is the greatest threat in this race?"
"There be several good ones, sir. Badger, by Partner, be one to watch, old Byerley blood, ye ken. Won three plates last season and is brother to Sedbury, who is now put to stud after winnin' nigh every race he ever run. Another is Phantom, what won both at York and Lincoln last autumn. Lord Godolphin's Hobgoblin was his sire, though I misremember who run him in the plates."
"What of the Bolton Starling sons? I hear this stallion produced three who will be running."
"Aye. 'Tis right enough, and nigh all of 'em's bred up at the Barforth stud."
"John Crofts," Sir Garfield grunted.
Jeffries nodded. "He's bred some of the best cracks, old John. None can deny it. His stallion sired Martindale's Torismond, the Duke of Ancaster's Starling, and Grisewood's Teazer, though I don't think to see that last one do much after he was routed at Doncaster by that young Godolphin colt."
Sir Garfield remembered the day only too well. It was the same in which Devington had routed Rascallion. The colt was never any good after that illfated match. "What do you know of Martindale's Torismond?"
"Torismond what won at Morpeth?"
"The same. That rotter always has a horse to beat."
"Then 'twould please ye to know that he scratched the King's Plate. Says why should he trouble for a mere fifty guineas when he's already won a thousand in a match race with Lord Uxeter."
"What do you say?" Sir Garfield asked in amazement.
"'Deed, 'tis true. They done run a match race on the last four miles of the Beacon Course right along the Devil's Ditch. 'Twas quite the sight, by all accounts. Lord Uxeter begun worrying his mount almost from the go, and by the time they hit the third mile, his Perseus was running wild-eyed and roaring like a lion. Lord Uxeter was still driving the horse like the devil himself and rousting him mercilessly to claim the race. Within yards of the finish, with blood streaming crimson from his nostrils, Perseus done collapsed.
"By the Hastings's groom, Willis's telling, Perseus was broken in wind and spirit. Willis done give his notice straight after that match, saying that was the last good horse he'll see destroyed by that son of a... son of..."--- Jeffries caught himself---"an earl."
"Indeed? That's capital," Sir Garfield remarked, unaffected by the tale. "There are now two fewer contenders in tomorrow's race."
Sir Garfield left the rubbing house with the happy thought that his time may have come at last.
Sir Garfield had done all in his power to encourage Charles's association with Lord Uxeter, in the belief that under the viscount's sponsorship, Charles would make his way with ease into the elite political circles, much as commoners William Pitt and George Lyttelton had done under Lord Cobham's patronage. He was eager for Charles to mix company with those men who wielded the most power, the same who attended these very races.
Charles Wallace, however, was as little inclined to politics as he was to racing. He yearned for nothing more than a meaningful pursuit. He still burned with resentment and stung pride from his father's thoughtless dismissal of him when he desired to go after Charlotte. His own father did not consider him capable of redeeming his family's honor.
He had long wearied of his father's control and of always deferring his own wishes. He had desired a commission in the army, as Robert Devington had done, but his father wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he pushed Charles to seek a political career or a government sinecure, for which he cared nothing!
Having no one else in whom to confide, and with his tongue loosened under the influence of strong drink---for which he had little tolerance---Charles spilled all to Lord Uxeter. In a single evening, Edmund learned not only of Charles's frustrated desires but of all the family secrets, including his runaway fiancée and Beatrix's delicate condition.
Edmund was livid! He had not only been cuckolded by Beatrix with his own brother, but Charlotte had eloped with a lowly captain. It was beyond humiliation!
For fourteen years, since first taking his seat in the Commons, he had managed his personal affairs with perfect discretion. Though it cost him dearly, he had never yet embroiled himself in the kind of scandals that brought others down. This tale, once out, would make him a fool as none other before him.
Controlling his gut reaction to lash out, he carefully examined the facts in his mind, evaluating the situation from every possible angle.
He vouched no denial that he had contracted the marriage for pecuniary gain and had already used the dowry to back his political ambitions, but this was only half the bargain. He still needed an heir to satisfy Lord Hastings and ensure his full inheritance, but marriage alone guaranteed no heir.
The very presence of the Hanoverians on the throne was evidence of this. Had the house of Stuart begotten any legitimate Protestant heirs, they would still hold the throne of England. But just as the English throne had ceded to a rustic German princeling, his own failure could see the earldom of Hastings fall into his half-brother's detestable hands.
No, he must produce an heir. Edmund carefully considered now how he might yet turn the circumstances to his advantage.
Beatrix was already with child, and a child of his brother's seed, no less! What better reprisal than to ensure his own succession through his brother's child. It was brilliant! Philip had saved him so much trouble by seducing the bovine slut. He could simply take the vapid, breeding cow to wife and pass the child off as his own. Edmund basked in the exquisite irony.
With this last thought, he escorted the inebriated Charles back to his father's lodgings, where he confronted Sir Garfield.
"But we should be ruined!" the baronet protested fiercely. "Drake knows about this child, Uxeter. He could expose us all. Indeed, he has already threatened to do so. We would never live down the scandal, and moreover, Charles's future would be destroyed!"
"Sir Garfield, we are intelligent men," Edmund said in his most patronizing tone. "Let us speak frankly. I have need of the dowry and an heir. You desire a place in government for your son. Should we forge ahead with this alliance, I shall soon be in a position to provide what you desire in exchange for my needs.
"Once I assume my father's place in the Lords, I can easily arrange for Charles to take my seat in the Commons, but my own assurances rest solely upon my father's good graces, which have proven fickle at the best of times.
"I must produce an heir before his death. Your daughter already carries a child of the Drake blood, which could assure me of my full inheritance, and what greater delight should I have than to deny Philip his own son and raise him as my own. Lastly, sir, by our allegiance, your grandson shall be heir to an earldom."
He paused to let Garfield reflect on the full weight of this.
"Indeed you are astute, Uxeter," Sir Garfield said with open admiration. "But what now of the major? He might still cause mischief. Should he succeed in retrieving my runaway niece, I have an obligation to him."
"Then should Philip succeed, I humbly propose another means of meeting your obligation."
Sir Garfield found Lord Uxeter's proposal eminently to his liking.
Bewhiskered, haggard, and bearing all the physical evidence of his own grueling trial, Philip had ridden into Newmarket the night before the King's Plate. Had he arrived only a se'nnight ago, he would have enthusiastically joined the roistering, cheering the victories and commiserating the losses with the brotherhood of the turf, but his mood was far removed from revelry. Instead, he was singleminded and grimly determined to see this unexpected travesty out to its conclusion.
Knowing the scarcity of accommodations in town, Philip had procured a small room on the outskirts of Cheveley, where he ate, bathed, and drank himself into an exhausted coma. Rising betimes and brutally hungover, he made himself as presentable as his circumstances allowed and set out on his horse for the exercise heath in hope of locating Sir Garfield, whose horse he knew would be running in the final race.
The morning was crisp and foggy, but along the grassy knoll leading to the training Gallops stretched a long procession of vibrant figures, fading in and out of the rolling fog. As Philip drew closer, he could clearly delineate the colorful shapes of blanketed horses out for their morning gallops. Bedecked in custom-tailored and monogrammed clothes costing more than what the average man would spend on his own in a year, most of the horses were now wrapping up their morning constitutionals and returning to their respective rubbing houses.
Philip scanned the grassy plain for the man he sought, determined he would find him among the clumps of gentlemen and their trainers mounted on their riding hacks all along the hill. These early risers had come out to review their horse's form, spy out the competition, and strategize for their final run.
He had almost given up when he spotted Sir Garfield and Charles, accompanied by Lord Uxeter, within the groups inspecting those on parade. He rode up to the trio and dismounted from his horse.
"Well, if it isn't my dear brother, the major!" Edmund greeted him with a disdainful salute.
Sir Garfield regarded the major in surprise. "Drake? I'd all but given up on you."
Reciprocating the tepid salutation with a mocking bow, Philip answered, "Yet here I stand."
"But you are late. And empty-handed," Sir Garfield remarked pointedly.
Eyeing his brother warily, Philip replied, "An erroneous assumption. I have delivered your... baggage... as promised."
"Baggage, brother? Are you now demoted to delivery boy?" Edmund remarked snidely.
"I've ridden nearly six hundred miles in a se'nnight, Edmund," Philip growled. "Don't try my very fragile patience with matters that don't concern you." Philip turned to Sir Garfield. "I suggest we discuss our business in private."
"But this baggage of yours happens to concern me most intimately," Edmund interjected.
Philip glowered at Sir Garfield. "What does he know of this?"
Edmund replied blandly, "What do I know? I know that a decorated officer was dispatched to apprehend a wayward chit from the impudent cur who abducted her. If your so dangerous mission is accomplished, I commend you for your valor, Major," he mocked.
"But what has become of Devington?" Charles interrupted.
"Indeed, what of the errant captain?" Sir Garfield echoed.
"The young fool chose to fight a duel, knowing me the superior swordsman," Philip replied grimly.
"So glad you spared me the trouble, Philip. I find duels of honor highly overrated. But one question remains: whether or not the goods were... damaged." Edmund carelessly flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. "He had the girl alone for three nights."
"They were yet a day's ride from the border. Since he had not yet wed the girl, the captain did not touch her. Devington has proven himself a man of honor, unlike the rest involved in this ongoing farce." His look challenged any to gainsay him further.
Edmund rose to the challenge. "Only a fool would believe her undefiled, but I suppose a simple physician's examination can confirm or refute the state of her virtue. But 'tis of little account now."
"Indeed?" Philip queried.
Sir Garfield directed Lord Uxeter a warning, which he ignored, saying, "Since all has been resolved, Sir Garfield, we shall speak again after the race." He directed a smirk at his brother, and Lord Uxeter took his leave.
What had just transpired between them? Philip asked himself and turned back to Sir Garfield with growing unease.
"Now as to our business, sir. I have done your bidding, though it was clearly contrary to my conscience and cost me dearly. In truth, no dowry could compensate for what I have lost."
Sir Garfield pulled a fat coin purse from his pocket. "And what would you expect as recompense for your losses?"
"There is no restitution for integrity," he said bitterly.
"On the contrary, Major. Integrity always has a price. To lose or to keep; there is invariably a cost. Some just pay more dearly than others." He tossed the coin purse to Philip, who made no move to catch it. Shrugging, Sir Garfield continued. "All will be settled in good time, Major, but I have first a race to attend. We will talk again when I return to London. You may call Wednesday at Upper Brook Street. Wednesday next," he repeated, dismissing the major.
With no interest at all in the races, Philip left the heath for his lodgings. Edmund and the baronet were playing some deep game at his expense. He could feel it in his very marrow. What had happened in the few days of his absence?
He was deeply unsettled, and the knowledge that he had soon to make his formal report at Whitehall only compounded his discomfiture. He still hadn't composed a plausible story to excuse the duel. It appeared increasingly inevitable that Devington would face courts-martial.
Though it was still morning, Philip bought another bottle of whiskey, taking it back to his quarters where he could brood undisturbed and drink himself again into mind-numbing oblivion.
According to long-standing tradition, the King's Plate was a race for horses, mares, and geldings no more than six years old the grass before. The race was run in three heats of nearly four miles, all riders carrying twelve stone, and no serving man or groom to ride.
Post time, mandated by the Articles Relating to Royal Plates, was at one of the clock. Privileged gentleman by the hundreds, preferring a bird's-eye view of the proceedings, crowded into the brick viewing pavilion. Those less fortunate elbowed their way through the horde to find their best place along the course. The King's Plate was about to begin.
Sir Garfield, pushing and prodding his way toward one of the pavilion windows overlooking the starting post, took his position. The vibrantly clothed runners in the King's Plate, twenty-three horses in sum, had begun to appear on the heath, each led by his outrider to the start.
The herd now visible on the field was the very prime representatives of English racing horses, in whose veins still coursed the blood of the desert kings from such far and exotic lands as Syria and Tangier, the stallions who were imported by the dozens to improve the native English breed. For the past half century, this imported blood had been selectively intermingled with that of the original royal mares received as part of the dowry of King Charles's wife, Catherine of Braganza, to create the matchless "thoroughbred" horse.
Though all the runners varied in size and shape, the unique form of the racer was unmistakable in each---the lightly sculptured head with large and aware eyes and attentively pricked ears. Their deepchested bodies were long, sleek, and sinewy; their long, strong legs and powerful haunches stretching elastically in a fluid stride as they floated across the turf. Their every motion defined an ultimate state of fitness to run.
With six gray horses amongst the throng, only the yellow blanket and jockey silks identified Sir Garfield's Tortoise to his owner.
The horses approached the starting post, dancing in line, circling, pacing, jigging, jostling, edging ever closer to the mark as all eyes fixed on the starter's flag in anguished anticipation. With a squeal, a horse suddenly reared and broke the line, setting all into chaos.
Half a dozen others followed suit. Badger leaped forward, jolting Tortoise off balance and knocking him to his knees. Charles vaulted forward with the fall, found himself lying on his horse's neck, hugging for dear life, as Othello, a charging half-ton of horseflesh, came bearing down on them. Charles closed his eyes in terrorized expectation of impact, but at the last second, with a loud tally-ho from Lord Portmore, the leggy black leaped clean over them!
Unfazed by the episode, Tortoise calmly hoisted himself back onto his feet, and the much-shaken Charles unsteadily slithered back into his saddle. Minutes followed while the false starters circled back and reclaimed their positions at the post.
Charles Wallace had ridden a score of races in his reluctant turf career, primarily mounted on mediocre horses chosen more for their tractability than their fleetness. Tortoise, however, like his full sister White Rose, was one of those exceptionally rare equines who embodied the very best in temperament with superb athletic ability. Charles knew that in this mount, he was doubly blessed.
As the flag was raised, he awaited the signal with bated breath, forcibly loosening the iron grip he held on the reins. Instinctively, Tortoise poised himself to launch. The red flag dropped.
The pack exploded! Charles had no need to ply the spur. Tortoise lurched into motion, dashing off with the pack pounding down the heath. By the quarter-mile marker, the Duke of Somerset's Achilles had broken from the band to steal the lead, sending clumps of spongy turf heavenward in his wake. Phantom surged forth right on his heels, with Badger giving chase and Chance trailing the trio in fourth.
By the half mile, Charles and Tortoise were packed in the middle and compressed on all sides, with now nigh as many horses in front as behind. Surrounded as they were, Charles was unable to break loose. He balanced tensely in his stirrups, uncertain of his strategy, and floundered in this limbo.
Remembering the trainer's instructions to let Tortoise run his race, he gave the horse his head, and slowly, steadily, incrementally they began to thread their way through the crowded field pounding down the turf for a long and grueling four-mile run.
Charles leaned over Tortoise's withers, and they drove steadily on, the horse's hindquarters rising and falling in his own perfectly rhythmic pace. For now, they needed only to stay in play, just hold on and ride out the miles until the last few furlongs, when the pressure would be on and the leaders running out of steam.
Charles had no need to press Tortoise for raw speed in this race. It was a test of endurance, and Jeffries had assured him that Tortoise was no jade. The horse had endless bottom and would give all when the time came to break loose, but it was up to Charles to judge the moment.
As Charles and Tortoise drove relentlessly on, neither gaining nor lagging, the field began to thin out before their eyes. The horses began to shift, some moving up and others dropping back, losing their positions to the stalkers, the horses that would shirk the lead but incessantly drive and push the leader to ride himself out too soon.
As the final bend of the Round Course approached, the thundering herd folded in upon itself for the last time and geared into sudden acceleration. One by one, the runners fought to claim their positions. Early leader Achilles had now fallen into sixth, and Badger struggled to push back into fourth, but suddenly Starling appeared from nowhere to pull ahead into third.
With only a quarter mile to go, the time had come. Bellying onto Tortoise's neck, Charles lightly plied his whip, and the gelding responded like a fresh starter. With a grunt, he stretched out and pounced. Claiming his prey with every stride, he blazed past the flagging Othello, coming eye-to-eye with Phantom. He drove on, lunging past Miss Vixen to creep up on the startled Starling, and breezed past effortlessly.
To his amazement, Charles found himself in the lead and flying past the finish. By the wave of his flag, the steward signaled the distance post. Tortoise had won, distancing half the field.
Full of brandy and in fine spirits, Sir Garfield rejoiced at his success. Charles and Tortoise had taken both the first and second heats and won the King's Plate. The baronet was determined to commission an equine portraitist to render his champion's likeness for all posterity. He and Charles were discussing the artistic merits of John Wootton versus newcomer James Seymour when Lord Uxeter arrived.
"My congratulations to you, Charles, for having proven yourself on a field of your betters. 'Tis the talk of Newmarket." Lord Uxeter's sardonic greeting drew Sir Garfield's immediate attention.
"But he proved himself the better man, my lord," Sir Garfield challenged.
"I should only say I proved I had a better horse, Father," Charles interjected wryly, remembering Jeffries's earlier remark about the monkey.
"Your modesty becomes you, young Charles." Lord Uxeter smiled.
"A drink, my lord?" Sir Garfield offered a glass, which Edmund waved impatiently away.
"No. I shall not tarry now the racing is done. Personal matters demand that I depart for London forthwith." He spoke tersely, still bitter from the loss he could ill afford. "If it pleases you, I should like to send for my bride immediately."
"Indeed, my lord. The sooner all is settled, the better, I say," Sir Garfield agreed.
"Then I take my leave of you. Charles," he said, addressing the younger man, "will you accompany me back to London? So tedious, these journeys, when one travels alone."
Charles looked to his father, who nodded his acquiescence. With a bow to Sir Garfield, Edmund left with his new protégé in tow.
R obert awoke to pain, sharp and searing in his right arm, and a dull, throbbing ache in his head. His body was stiff and weak, weaker than he could ever recall. He tried to raise himself in the bed, but his arm refused to cooperate. He collapsed with a groan back onto the pillows.
A stern voice spoke in the dim light. "So, back to the land of the living, are ye, Captain?"
The voice was familiar. He'd heard it before, but his mind was still muzzy. "Where am I? And who the devil are you?" His throat was so dry he could barely croak the words.
"Easy there, lad. Ye'll be wanting a drink afore any lengthy conversation. Ye've been nigh insensible since delivered from Leeds."
Leeds? Why had he been in Leeds? With a jolt, Robert's memory came flooding back, filling his vision with the nightmares that he now realized were his reality. His life was torn to pieces. As he remembered it all, hatred and despair burned through him.
"Just how ye survived the ordeal 'tis beyond my ken." The rough Scottish brogue sprung from the soberly dressed man who stepped into the dim light and drew a flask from his satchel. "But here ye are to be patched up at my hands."
He proffered the flask to the captain, who closed his eyes to refuse, as if in doing so, he could shut it all out. But his visions would not be vanquished. He wanted to die. He wished that death had already taken him, that Philip had finished the job rather than leaving him broken and emasculated before the woman he loved. He averted his head, scorning the proffered drink.
"'Tis not the way of it, lad," the physician reproached. "'Twill ease yer pain. Ye can drink it yourself, or I will funnel it down yer gullet, but you will drink, nonetheless. The arm needs to be examined and the wound cleansed. Ye'll appreciate the draught once I commence."
Now placing the voice with the face, Robert realized he was again under John Pringle's care, the surgeon general who had set his broken leg at Dettingen. "Dr. Pringle," he murmured.
"Aye," the doctor answered, pleased with his patient's new alertness.
Robert scanned his surroundings, a sparsely furnished room with a hard cot and close stone walls. "Where am I? How did I get here?"
"One thing at a time, lad. Ye'll drink a wee dram first, and then we'll talk."
Robert glowered but knew he would gain little by further refusal. He reluctantly accepted the drink, sputtering on the unexpected contents of the flask. Pure whiskey.
"'Tis from the high country, lad." The physician laughed. "In my twenty years of physick, I've ne'er found a surer cure for all manner of ills than Highland whiskey. 'Tis this same potion I used to bathe yer wounds in hopes of staving off the infectious fever."
As Robert watched Pringle cut away the bloodstained bandages to expose his mutilated appendage, he was dubious of the treatment's efficacy. Waves of nausea suddenly rocked his mutinous body at the sight.
"You've lost much blood, lad. The artery was nigh severed, ye see, and the arm should ha'e come off. 'Tis like now to putrefy, but Major Drake---"
"Don't speak that name!" Robert cried and then groaned from the exertion.
The physician raised a brow but methodically continued his examination. "Ha'e it yer way, then. The nameless major, he wouldn't hear of amputation. There was no talkin' sense to the mon. So, at the risk of yer life, he put ye on that infernal conveyance and brought ye to me. Your leg wound was clean enough and pieced back together, but God knows what I can do to save the arm. I need appeal to your sense of self-preservation, Captain Devington, and advise it better to lose the arm than lose yer life."
"My life, you say? What is left of my life?"
"You are much changed from young mon I knew at Dettingen. What reason ha'e ye to be so bitter?"
"There is naught worth saving, Pringle."
"Och, surely I know this ailment," he said sagely. "'Tis a disease that admits of only one treatment."
"What would you know of it?"
"Ailments of the heart? More than you think, mon. Medical science has proven the only cure is the possession of its object."
Robert laughed bitterly. "'Twas seeking such a cure that put me in your hands, Doctor."
"I had suspected. The lass would'na ha'e ye?"
"'Twas not the lass, but the family."
"Aye," he replied sympathetically. "Come, mon, ha'e another dram of whiskey."
Robert reluctantly took another draught and gasped when Pringle poured a splash over the wound and began to probe. The deep gash extended cleanly through the biceps muscle and the tendon. Pringle determined the main artery, also near-severed, would diminish blood flow to the appendage, but this was the least of his worries.
The captain's elevated pulse, weakness, and pallor, combined with the inflamed tissues, confirmed Pringle's fear of sepsis. Although bloodletting close to the injury site was the traditional treatment, the doctor was no fool. His patient had lost too much blood already and was far too weak to sustain further bleeding. Surveying the maimed appendage, Pringle advised Robert that if he survived at all, he would likely never have use of the arm again. He once more advised amputation.
Sunk in despair and heedless of the admonitions, Robert resolved to leave his fate to Providence. If he succumbed to infectious fever and death, so be it.
"Ye tie my hands to save ye, Captain," Pringle responded, shaking his head in dismay. He had treated many such young men in his time; strong, able-bodied men who succumbed to infection, slipping into fever, delirium, and eventual death, death caused by infection secondary to their wounds!
Pringle was one of few physicians who yet grasped the concept of infection by unseen organisms. Since his promotion to surgeon general, he had worked tirelessly to contain and cure disease in the army, already making headway in containing dysentery in the garrisons by isolating its victims from the general population.
Although he understood the process, after innumerable experiments applying different agents to treat wounds, he had yet limited success in discovering an effective anti-septic agent. The whiskey with which he had cleansed Devington's wounds was one of his more promising experiments.
With a helpless shrug, Pringle administered his patient a dose of laudanum to ease his pain and then helped himself to the flask of whiskey. He could do little to save the captain's life once the wound putrefied, but without his patient's will to fight, the surgeon's work was futile. Pringle resolved in the name of Hippocrates to discover the identity of the girl who held Captain Devington's life in her hands.
A week following her arrival in London, Charlotte was confounded to learn that Beatrix had been given in marriage to Lord Uxeter. Why had her uncle taken her from Robert if he had intended to give Beatrix instead? It made no sense! Nothing in her world made any sense at all!
She failed to comprehend what atrocious crime she had committed by falling in love. The past two years of her life had been punishing. Her heart had been broken when her uncle first sent Robert away, but his return had given her reason to hope. They had dreamed and planned, just to have their dreams dashed to pieces.
Elopement had been such a romantic notion, but the reality was harder than she could have conceived. Only their love and their desperation had given them strength to press on. They had almost succeeded, were only a day's ride from the border when Philip caught up with them.
Why had he done it? He held no love for either Sir Garfield or his brother. Why had Philip turned his back on his best friend? Indeed, it went much further than that. He had nearly killed Robert! All for what? Beatrix was now wed to Philip's brother.
Charlotte had not seen or spoken to her uncle since his arrival from Newmarket days ago, but this morning he had sent for her. At precisely ten o'clock, she was to appear before him in his library. At the appointed time, the grate of the key turning in the lock admitted her aunt.
"Charlotte, I am come to take you to your uncle."
"I don't understand what he wants of me," Charlotte said with tears in her eyes and despair in her heart. "What is my duty when Beatrix is married in my stead? Of what possible benefit was my return?"
"Your uncle does not suffer duplicity kindly. He regards you as a willful child and will chastise you as such. This is all I am free to say."
"I meant no disloyalty to him, but why should I not have any say regarding my own life?"
"You were overindulged and spoiled by your parents, Charlotte. Their marriage was not the way of it. I have told you that a woman rarely has charge of her destiny, especially in her marriage. The best she can hope for is a comfortable match with a man she might learn to manage."
"But why can't marriage be for love? Why should love be forsaken for expediency?"
"Charlotte," her aunt said more sternly, "I begin to think you no more sensible than Beatrix. Your obligation is to your family. You owed your uncle obedience for all we have done for you. You have forgotten your duty while in your romantic bubble, but the bubble is finally burst. It is not, nor ever was meant to be, you and Devington. You must accept it. I just thank God you are back in the bosom of your family with no one the wiser. Your escapade could have ruined us, you know! Now, Sir Garfield expects you in the library. Hasten along; his good temper shan't last if you keep him waiting."
Charlotte followed her aunt to her uncle's sanctum, reminded of her prior audience in his library at Heathstead Hall when he first lectured her on marriage and duty.
"Take a seat, m'dear." He gestured to the straight-backed chair facing his desk and pulled his timepiece from his pocket.
"Uncle..." she began.
He raised a quelling hand in her direction. "Any moment now, Charlotte, and all will be made clear." Now disregarding her altogether, he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and eyes closed in repose, as if waiting for something... or someone.
His strange and atypical behavior magnified her apprehension tenfold. Her uncle was prone to blustering whirlwinds of temper passing like brief but violent storms. The man sitting before her, however, was calm and stonily resolved.
Charlotte tried to emulate his nonchalance, but her fingernails raking her skirts and her toes curling and uncurling in her slippers betrayed her, if only to herself. An eternity passed before she heard the ring of rapid and heavy footsteps advancing toward the library; two sets of footsteps, she thought.
Literally shoving the footman out of his path, an enraged Major Drake barged into the room, shaking a fistful of papers in Sir Garfield's impassive face.
"Just what the bloody hell is this?" Philip bellowed.
"Ah, Major, I see you have been attended by my solicitor. All should be in order, as we agreed---"
"As we agreed? The devil, you say!"
"Major! Curb your tongue or be removed from the premises."
"This is bloody well not what we agreed, you execrable, conniving sod!"
"Major, aside from a few minor revisions, you are in receipt of the marriage contracts, and by your acceptance, you shall obtain a bride and considerable dowry. This is more than generous on my part, though you, of course, retain the right to refuse."
"My bride was Beatrix! Your daughter Beatrix, whom you well know is carrying my child! Moreover, the agreed dowry was fifteen thousand pounds, Sir Garfield. We had settled upon fifteen thousand!"
"Major Drake, consider your position carefully. Firstly, you duped me into receiving you into my home with open arms then set out in the most debase manner to seduce my daughter! You then forced a betrothal by means of extortion. Although immensely vexed, I, in good faith, provided you opportunity to earn your way back into my good graces and charged you with the timely retrieval of my runaway niece.
"My instructions were clear, Major: return Charlotte within five days. You failed. Thus other arrangements were made. In all magnanimity, however, I have offered my niece's hand and five thousand pounds as compensation for your efforts. You may take it or leave it."
Charlotte, yet unnoticed by the distracted major, gasped. "You couldn't possibly mean this, Uncle! You couldn't possibly give me to this selfish, heartless brute who left his best friend lying in blood!"
"My dear, you are headstrong, disobedient, and rebellious. Overall, I consider you and the major well matched. One might even say you deserve one another; however, I am not heartless. You desire a choice, so I shall give you one.
"You may marry Major Drake, or when I toss you out of my house, you may make your way in this world as you came into it. If 'tis freedom from my tyranny you desire, Niece, your wish is granted. It is absolutely your choice."
Charlotte disbelieved her ears. How could he threaten such a thing? "I would have nothing. No home. No money. Nothing! Is this some cruel joke, Uncle?"
"Am I laughing?" His voice was soft and expression stony.
Philip blanched, incredulous at the position in which he found himself. His actions had already done irreparable damage to Robert and Charlotte. This he regretted deeply. It was bad enough he had prevented their marriage, but now matters were gone from bad to worse. He needed time to think this through and figure a way out of the trap.
Desperate to stall the proceedings, he addressed the baronet. "Sir Garfield, please permit Charlotte and me a moment to speak privately."
"Very well. You may have a moment, but don't try my patience. Either of you," he said to Charlotte pointedly before stepping from the room and closing the door behind him.
"Charlotte," Philip began.
"Don't even speak to me, you... selfish... treacherous... pig!" she snapped with all the venom she could muster.
"This was not my idea. You must know this."
"I would sooner hang myself than have you!"
"I might say the same; however, our verbal combat does nothing to resolve the dilemma and, moreover, will do nothing to help Devington."
"Robert? What do you care of Robert?" she spat. "You left him for dead in Leeds!" Tears stung her eyes.
"On that score, you're grievously misinformed. Devington is currently at Whitehall under the care of the surgeon general, the most respected physician in London."
"He's in London? I must go to him! You will take me to him, Philip!"
"'Tis not so easily done. Although wounded, he is still under arrest until sufficiently recovered to face charges. It is highly unlikely that you would be permitted to see him."
"First you tell me he's in London, and then you tell me I can't see him? Do you take pleasure in tormenting me? You blackhearted... bastard!"
"Charlotte, you need to rein in your overwrought emotions if we're to figure a way out of this."
"I would sooner be on the streets than have you!"
"As it stands, 'tis precisely what your uncle has in mind."
"But he wouldn't. He couldn't possibly do such a thing!"
"Do you honestly believe that? I, on the contrary, believe your uncle capable of just about anything."
"You would coerce me, then? I said I would hang myself before having you, but on reconsideration, I quite fancy myself as a widow."
"I have no plans to depart this earth anytime soon," he replied aridly.
"Then you'd best sleep with one eye open if you think to wed me, Philip. I'll cut your treacherous heart out without a second thought." Her murderous glare nearly convinced Philip she meant it.
"Listen to me. I desire this sham no more than you do, but we find ourselves betwixt a rock and a hard place. I implore you to go along with the ruse until we can contrive a better solution."
"I won't have it!"
"I'll take you to him."
Her attention arrested, she remarked, "I thought you said I couldn't see him? That he is under guard."
"Go along, just for the time being, and I'll take you to Robert. I swear. As for the marriage, it shall be in name only. Of my attentions, you need have no fear whatsoever."
Charlotte curiously couldn't decide if she was relieved or insulted by the remark, but she considered the rest. Even if her uncle was bluffing and did not turn her out, she was no more than chattel to him. Philip offered a way out from under his tyranny. She could see Robert, and perhaps he could somehow escape? Perhaps they could still run away together. At least she had hope. "How do I know I can trust your word?" she asked skeptically.
"I've never lied to you... to either of you."
"You turned your back on your best friend! How can you expect me to trust you after that?"
"I'm no hypocrite. I have never denied putting my own interests first, but whether you believe it or not, it grieves me deeply how events transpired. Whilst I know not if he will recover, I brought Robert back to London to save him. I am resolved to do all in my power to make restitution.
"By this marriage, I shall receive five thousand pounds dowry and vow to look after you on Devington's behalf. You will be at your uncle's mercy no longer. Furthermore, as I am in His Majesty's service, I will spend most of my time abroad, troubling you little with my so contemptible presence.
"This will be simply a marriage of expediency, for both of us, and should Devington be acquitted, the pair of you may yet be together."
"But I should not be free. How do you suppose we could be together when I bear your name?"
"As this union is in name only, our failure to consummate would provide grounds for annulment."
She considered this. It seemed plausible. "If I do agree, this must be kept secret, Philip. Robert must never learn of it. Promise me he will never know. He would see it only as further betrayal. 'Twould more surely kill him than his wounds."
"As much as it is within my power, I shall keep it from him. I can promise no more than that. Please believe I wish neither of you further heartache." It was the solemn truth.
With this last, Sir Garfield impatiently returned, not so secretly hoping they had refused one another. Five thousand pounds was no pittance, after all.
"So, Major, do you take the girl as your wife or forfeit the five thousand?"
"You leave us little choice, sir. I would not see the girl thrown onto the street."
"Nor would you forfeit five thousand pounds, Major. You need not feign the chivalrous knight." He then addressed Charlotte. "If this is your decision, the arrangements are made to carry us to Fleet Street. I see no need for delay." Nodding her silent acquiescence, she proceeded numbly, by all outward signs, resigned to her fate.
With contempt in her eyes and revenge in her heart, Charlotte Wallace would wed Major Philip Drake.
C harlotte stood trancelike with her uncle's hateful form invading the periphery of her vision. The vicar's lips moved, and she responded, but the words failed to penetrate the cloud around her brain.
Philip stood equally stony, expressionless as the long-dreaded shackles closed about him, threatening to strangle him, and he choked out his vows to the gin-reeking vicar who joined them in this unholy state of misery.
The nuptials concluded, Sir Garfield renounced his guardianship of Charlotte with a few brisk strokes of the quill. Philip followed his entry in the register, grimly and briskly scrawling his name, made barely legible by the tremor of his hand.
As the ink dried upon the register, the gazes of the panic-stricken bride and groom met with the simultaneous thought, "Dear God in heaven, what have we done?"
Only Sir Garfield exuded delight, having now proven he was not a man to cross. His scoffing remark broke the silence. "Well, ain't you going to kiss your bride?"
Charlotte's eyes shot daggers at the mere suggestion, triggering a hoot of laughter. "My felicitations to the happy couple." Tears of mirth rolled down his fleshy cheeks. "Now the deed's done, I s'pose I must be off." Still laughing, he made to depart the shabby dwelling, asking, "By the by, where shall I send the girl's things?"
Philip regarded him blankly. "I'll send word," he replied, lacking any immediate recourse.
Sir Garfield looked inquiringly but was unmotivated to probe further. What did he care? He was thankful to be free of the ungrateful wretch. Served her right, marriage to the rogue. He would surely burn through the five thousand in a year. With that last thought, he departed Fleet Street with a smug glow.
What in bloody hell am I to do with her now? Philip was unaware of his audible sigh.
"You promised to take me to Robert," Charlotte said matter-offactly, as if she had read his mind.
"What?"
"You promised to take me to Robert if I went through with this," she insisted.
"I didn't mean today! I gave you my word and shall keep it, but 'tis not so simple a matter as you imagine. I can't just whisk you in past armed guards."
"I can't bear to imagine him locked in some dank and dingy cell."
"He's hardly locked in a cell. He's under the surgeon general's care, and as an officer, he will be treated with the utmost courtesy, at least until charged."
"Charged with what? Why should Robert face a trial? You provoked him, and then you nearly killed him, while you stand with barely a scratch! As his accuser, you could surely put an end to these senseless proceedings!"
"On that score, you are dead wrong. The very fabric of the military is based on discipline in the ranks. Officers, in particular, are expected to set the example, adhering to a strict code of conduct, a code of honor, one might say."
"Honor? You dare speak of honor?"
Ignoring her retort, Philip patiently continued. "Striking a superior officer under any circumstance is one of the gravest offenses. Such transgressions do not go unpunished; moreover, the penalty could be most severe."
Charlotte blanched as white as her lace cap. "You can't mean the gallows, Philip! He couldn't possibly be hung!"
"I have done all in my power to see him charged with the lesser offense of insubordination and have petitioned the court and many fellow officers on his behalf. There is little more I can do."
"And what does your noble institution deem suitable for insubordination, Major? A thousand lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails?" she retorted, full of rancor.
"Five hundred lashes would be closer the mark; discipline in the ranks must be retained at all costs."
"Good God, Philip, you don't jest?"
"I wish to God I did."
Philip hailed a passing hackney, speaking little as he bundled Charlotte's desolate form into the coach. He glanced irritably at the girl who wept silently against the carriage squabs. God knew why she suddenly and inexplicably had become his responsibility. Only for Devington's sake had he vowed to look after her. He just needed time for his mind to untangle the mess. The jarvey interrupted his cogitations.
"Where to, Cap'n? I gots to make a livin', ye know. Wi' eight brats to feed, I ain't got all day, ye ken?"
"Just drive," Philip barked.
"And the direction?"
Where to take her? He needed to find a suitable abode and someone he could trust to look after her. Without thinking, he blurted, "Bedford Street, Number Ten."
The jarvey looked at him blankly.
"Between Covent Garden and Westminster," Philip snapped. "Proceed down the Strand."
"Aye, Cap'n." The hackney lurched, jerking Philip back against the squabs.
The devil take it! Why the deuce had he spoken that address? He thought it long forgotten; at least that's what he tried to tell himself. Nevertheless, he needed her. No, he corrected himself with a mental shake, she was simply the first who came to mind. Nonetheless, he racked his brain to think of anyone else as the hackney made its way to the house located just far enough from Covent Garden to be respectable.
The hackney halted in front of the neat brick dwelling, and Charlotte roused herself enough to look out of the window and down the quiet street. "Where are we, Philip, and why have we stopped here?"
"I am paying a call on an old friend, one who might be disposed to assist. Pray wait here until I summon you," he replied more tersely and alighted from the hackney. Philip then instructed the jarvey to wait and tossed the man treble his normal fare.
Although intimately familiar with this address, he hesitated, still questioning why he had come to this house he had not set foot in for five years. Pushing his qualms aside, he marshaled his will and strode purposefully to the door, knocking briskly.
"My lady is not receiving at this time, sir," the answering maid responded to his request.
"Pray inform your mistress that Philip Drake wishes to speak with her. I am a longtime acquaintance come on a matter of personal import. I believe your mistress will forgive my breach of etiquette in appearing unannounced. I request only a brief moment of her time."
She eyed his uniform and manner appraisingly and then conceded. "Be pleased to follow me, Major, and I will inquire if my lady will see you."
The maid led him into a small but cozy drawing room and left him to cool his heels while awaiting the favor of his erstwhile lover, Lady Susannah Messingham.
Susannah was a common-born woman blessed with both rare wit and uncommon beauty. At a tender age, she had escaped life as a vicar's daughter by marriage to a wealthy knight of the shire, but her marriage had barely lasted a decade before the worthy squire expired of a heart seizure. He left her childless and widowed at the age of eight-and-twenty.
In her widowhood, however, Lady Susannah suddenly discovered a newfound freedom, a life of license and gaiety she could never have previously imagined. She threw herself headlong into the pursuit of pleasure, determined to make up for her lost youth, and quickly burned through both her fortune and her reputation.
As her financial state neared a crisis, she determined to mend her ways with another respectable marriage but realized her folly too late. Now past the first innocent bloom of youth, the only proposals she received were less than honorable in nature. Against her better judgment, she accepted a carte blanche from a marquess, but said lover's declaration of undying devotion lasted only until a French opera dancer stole his fancy.
Her reputation tarnished beyond redemption, she sold her London townhouse and settled for a small abode near Covent Garden. She endeavored to live an independent life, avoiding the downward spiral of other women who fall on hard times, women handed off from one man to another until their beauty finally wasted, they are discarded on the street.
Instead, Lady Susannah chose to supplement her modest income by hosting private card parties and entertaining select gentlemen friends, men of her own choosing, who were mainly of her late husband's acquaintance. She was akin to many semirespectable women subsidizing themselves in like manner, but Lady Susannah was among the most circumspect.
To his surprise, Philip had experienced distress rather than satisfaction in learning of his former inamorata's fall from grace, but was far from understanding this damnably pervasive feeling of protectiveness for the woman who had so spurned his professions of love.
With sweating palms, Philip waited in her drawing room. Had she changed? A knot formed in his stomach, and he cursed himself for acting the bloody schoolboy, but she always had that effect on him. Perceiving the light approach of a lady's slipper, he moved to the window and struck a casual pose.
Lady Susannah entered the room as breezily as if she had just met him at yesterday's garden party. He turned from the window, arrested by her emerald eyes. She was as beautiful as ever. The past five years had been kind indeed.
"My dear, dear Philip! Such an indescribable delight to see you!" She offered her hand with a dazzling smile.
"Sukey,"---he accepted her proffered hand---"a long delayed pleasure." His gaze never left her face as his lips grazed her knuckles with leisurely deliberation. "You are every bit as lovely as when I first met you surrounded by all your lovelorn swains."
The role of gallant was far easier to resume than he could have imagined, he thought sardonically.
"All my swains? You tease me, Philip!" She chuckled throatily.
"They were innumerable, but I think none admired you more than I." Now where the hell did that come from? The confession rolled effortlessly off his tongue. He abused himself for falling back into his position as her lapdog.
He watched her, mesmerized, as she moved toward the loveseat and silently indicated the place by her side. Ignoring the gesture, Philip disciplined himself to remain standing. He braced one arm casually on the mantle, as if to anchor himself in place. "No doubt you wonder what has brought me to your door after so long an absence." His query was casually posed.
"One should never question a gift, my love." She smiled and again gestured invitingly. "Pray sit with me, Philip. We have much to catch up on."
He glanced at the empty space and redirected his gaze out the window, pretending something had caught his attention. He still found her bewitching. It would be so easy to let the past just slip away, all too bloody easy. Just a few hours in her bed, and it would all be a long lost memory. God, he was so weak!
He shook himself for still entertaining such thoughts of her and reminded himself she was nothing more than a heartless, self-serving coquette willing to sacrifice love for comfort. The thought brought him starkly back to his purpose.
"I regret this is not a purely social call, Sukey. I have come in need of a favor."
"A favor?" She raised a brow inquiringly. "What manner of favor?"
"'Tis a simple matter of lodgings for a well-bred young woman, temporarily consigned to my care. I have always known you to be discreet, and I require discretion."
"Discretion? Is the young woman your ward... or your mistress, Philip?" Her expression hardened.
"Rest assured she is not my mistress. You might call her my provisional ward," he replied ambiguously.
"And this is but a temporary arrangement?" Her voice was guarded.
"Quite," Philip answered. "But I am not at liberty for further disclosure." His quelling look stemmed her questions.
"Very well, then, I suppose I could accommodate such a simple request. Now, who and where is the girl?"
"Her name is Charlotte Wallace, and she waits in a hackney outside."
"In a hackney? Quite sure of me, were you, Philip?"
"I had hope that you would not deny an old... friend."
They had been much more than that. "No, Philip, I shall not
deny you," she replied. "Pray invite the girl in, and I'll call for tea." She turned to ring the bell, hiding her hurt at his aloof manner.
Philip returned to the waiting coach to conduct Charlotte to her new abode, knowing she would be safe in Sukey's care. At least the girl had someone to watch over her until he could think of more suitable arrangements. For now, it would have to do.
"You're just going to leave me here?" Charlotte asked, wide-eyed.
"What more do you expect of me?" he snapped. "Lady Susannah is a trusted friend. You could not be in better hands."
"What do I expect? I expect you to take me to Robert! I fulfilled my promise to carry out this farce. Now it's time for you to honor your word."
Ruffled at her repeated affront to his honor, Philip snapped. "I told you it may take some time to arrange. A military hospital is no place for a gently bred woman. I gave my word that you shall see him. You have no choice but to trust me."
They entered the house, and Philip made the initial introductions. Having fulfilled his most pressing obligation, he departed, much relieved to have the girl off his hands.
Charlotte had other ideas. She didn't fully trust Philip's word or his supposed efforts to help Robert. Now left to her own devices, she resolved to locate him on her own. On this point she was singleminded, determined to her very marrow but in possession of only two facts. He was under a surgeon's care and was soon to face the courts-martial. Given these particulars, her search would logically commence at Whitehall. Surely there would be a military hospital nearby. With her plan vaguely formed, she vowed to find Robert.
Robert's body, weakened by blood loss, waged a losing battle against sepsis. His raging fever pulled him into restless delirium, causing him to murmur one moment and rant the next, mostly unintelligibly.
Pringle struggled to learn anything from his patient's ravings that might help to turn the tide in his favor, but thus far discerned only the name Robert agonizingly repeated: "Charlotte."
Fearing the battle near lost, the conscientious doctor stepped up his efforts to learn the identity of the girl. Although he hoped finding her might bring an entirely new set of healing arts into play, at the worst, the young captain might at least spend his last hours in the arms of his beloved.
Pringle had seen this scenario play out repeatedly, wounded patients lost to infection. It seemed a battle he might never win, yet he vowed to persist in his work. Frustrated with his ineptitude, Pringle retired to his office, cramped and overflowing with his medical texts and research notes, to find some clue, anything he might have previously overlooked in his quest to discover an effective "anti-septic."
A sudden disturbance outside tore his attention from his notes. Perturbed at the disruption, the surgeon general left his desk to investigate, desirous to confront and punish the offender. He was taken aback to discover the instigator of the fracas was a mere chit of a girl demanding entry at the hospital gate.
"Now look 'ere, missy, ye'd best be off," the distressed trooper said. "Ye have no business 'ere."
"If you refuse to let me see the patient, I demand an audience with the chief physician!" She jutted her chin obdurately, refusing to be moved.
"Ye'll see nobody, missy. Light skirts ain't allowed in the 'ospital. Now be off." The young trooper who attempted to remove her received a smart kick to the shin for his trouble.
"Light skirt! How dare you make such a presumption!" Eyes flashing and cheeks aflush, Charlotte jerked her arm from his grasp.
Dr. Pringle fought to restrain his chuckle upon beholding this diminutive young woman thoroughly harassing the trooper. "The surgeon general is a very busy mon, miss. Might I know which patient you inquire after?"
Fearing that someone in higher authority was about to turn her away, she took a completely different tack. "There is a patient within, sir, whose family is exceedingly anxious about him. I have come seeking word of his condition." Her voice was tearful.
"Are ye family, then?" Dr. Pringle asked.
"I suppose ye'll now claim to be his sister." The trooper leered.
"I am no doxy," she retorted.
The physician inspected her skeptically and replied apologetically, "Indeed not, miss, but you can understand the trooper's error in finding you arrived alone and requesting to see a patient."
"Indeed I do not understand, sir!" Her reply was indignant. "I am come only to inquire after Captain Devington."
"Your name, miss? And what kinship do you claim with the patient?" Dr. Pringle asked, hoping the captain's mystery lady had delivered herself to his door.
She hesitated to answer. While she could claim no entrance by kinship, she was by law, anyway, the wife of a senior officer. She was desperate enough to use any means at her disposal to gain entry, even if it meant this once acknowledging her status as a major's wife.
"Mrs. Philip Drake." She nearly choked on the words as she forced them distastefully from her lips. "That is, I am the wife of Major Philip Drake."
He had prayed Devington's love had come as an angel of mercy, but these hopes were dashed.
"Only immediate family is allowed visitation privileges, Mrs. Drake. As you are no kin, I am afraid your request is denied."
Charlotte tried another tack still, immediately softening both voice and demeanor. "But the captain has no living kin, aside from an elderly and infirm aunt in Chelsea. As a close family friend with connections to the Horse Guard, I am come on her behalf, you see." She smiled tentatively at Dr. Pringle. "I understand he's in a grave condition. I desire only a moment and just a word with his physician. Just a very short moment, if you please?" Her imploring hazel eyes ultimately softened the Scotsman, winning her case.
Dr. Pringle acknowledged surrender. "If 'tis the surgeon general ye seek, lassie, I be he. Dr. John Pringle." He bowed curtly in introduction. "I suppose I'll grant ye entry afore ye lay a veritable siege to my hospital." He offered his arm obligingly to Charlotte and escorted her to the captain's room.
Charlotte gasped upon her first glimpse of Robert, aghast at the pale, gaunt form. His hair plastered to his brow, he lay in a nightshirt soaked in sweat from the raging fever that racked his body.
"Aye, lass." Pringle looked at her reprovingly. "Ye see why the sickbed is no' a place for a delicate young lady."
"It's just that he's so... changed. I was not prepared to see him thus." Her voice broke in anguish.
"Aye. 'Tis very grave, I fear, this fever. Should ha'e broken by now."
"His prognosis?" she prompted with trepidation.
"Tenuous at best, lass."
"Please let me sit with him, Dr. Pringle," she pleaded.
He considered the request. "'Twill not hurt his cause, though I dared hope ye were another."
Charlotte looked her question.
"Are ye acquainted wi' a lady named Charlotte, lass?"
Taken by surprise, she was unsure how to respond. "Y-yes. I am acquainted with such a young woman. Why do you inquire, sir?"
"'Tis a name he mumbles, and I fear only her touch will stir him to fight for his life."
"Let me try, Dr. Pringle. Please, I beg of you, please just let me sit with him and hold his hand. He will know my voice."
He surveyed his patient gravely and then softened again under the imploring eyes. "It canna hurt for an hour, but not a moment longer." With this concession, Dr. Pringle departed to do his rounds in the other wards.
Charlotte moved to pour a basin of cool water. Dipping a cloth, she lovingly bathed Robert's face, gently following the planes of his features. She achingly studied the hollow cheeks and bluish circles beneath his eyes and traced the line of his brow, brushing the damp hair from his forehead. "Dearest Robert," she whispered, "please come back to me." Gripping his limp hand, she brought it to her lips.
Too preoccupied with her sorrow, she didn't immediately perceive the subtle change in his ragged breathing and the blink of his eyes in response to her whisper as he fought to distinguish whether the voice were reality or another dream.
"How did this ever happen to us? I believed in my heart of hearts we were meant to be. I ask God every day why our love was so cursed while others so undeserving flourish. I can't comprehend, though I try." As she continued her prayerful weeping, her tears fell freely in rivulets down her cheeks, dropping unheeded onto their clasped hands.
Dr. Pringle spied her thus when he returned to escort her from the hospital. Walking her back to the gate, he bowed politely. "Good-bye, miss..." Pringle looked embarrassed, addressing her apologetically. "So bad with names, lass."
"Charlotte. Charlotte Wallace," she blurted, covering her mouth when she realized what she had let slip, as if she could pull back and trap the reply years of habit let spring so freely from her lips.
"Indeed you say, lass." He grinned slyly. "If 'tis a secret ye guard, ha'e no fear. Upon my word as a Scotsman, 'twill stay betwixt us."
"It's so very complicated, you see."
"I'll not prod ye further."
"Thank you, Dr. Pringle. May I come again on the morrow?"
"Aye, I'll leave word with the guard."
Charlotte hurried back to Bedford Street, assuming Lady Susannah would follow the habits of a lady of fashion, not rising before noon. She was thankful to have judged correctly. Her absence had gone unremarked.
Rising shortly after sunrise the next day, Charlotte padded the bed with pillows in the event a maid should enter to start a fire and report her room empty. Making her way quietly downstairs and slipping out of doors, she had little success in hailing a hackney so proceeded to walk most of the way to Whitehall. Just as well, she considered, having little coin to spare.
Arriving at the gate, her hackles rose upon encountering the same trooper who had hindered her the day before. Arming herself with a deep breath, she marched forth, prepared to do battle.
The trooper's deferential greeting stole the wind from her sails. Clearly, Dr. Pringle had paved her way. "My apologies to ye, miss... er... missus, fer yesterday. I'd no idea, ye see..."
Charlotte, in a much more charitable mood, responded with as much dignity as she could muster. "I shall endeavor to accept your apology for your abominable conduct of yesterday, Trooper..."
"Wiggins, ma'am. Trooper Joshua Wiggins."
"I will forgive your conduct yesterday, Trooper Wiggins, provided I can count on your discretion."
"'Scuse me, ma'am?"
"Your discretion, sir. As you pointed out so vividly yesterday, it is highly irregular for a lady to visit the sick rooms, thus I rely on your discretion to say nothing of it to anyone. Can I trust you, Trooper Wiggins?" She addressed him squarely.
"If'n the surgeon general has authorized you, ma'am, 'tis clearly no concern of mine."
"Thank you, Trooper Wiggins. I will be sure to commend you to my husband, the major."
"Is there aught else you require, ma'am?" he inquired as he escorted Charlotte to the captain's room.
"No thank you." She nodded a dismissal and entered. Closing the door quietly, she froze at the sound of a soft, deep voice. "Charlotte."
Her breath caught. Had she imagined it? She revolved slowly, and their eyes met. After a moment of immobility, she suddenly flew to his side. Falling upon him, she cried, "You have come back! Robert, you've come back to me!"
He was still pale and gaunt and his eyes glassy. "The fever broke late yesterday. 'Twould appear God deems it more fitting for me to die by hanging than by fever."
"Hanging?" Charlotte gasped. "You are yet delirious."
"On the contrary, my dearest love, I have quite recovered my senses and am informed that I am to face charges."
"But how could they? You are still a patient in the sick bed."
"I am deemed well enough. I have committed one of the greatest offenses, Charlotte. 'Tis unlikely I will live to see many more days. You should not have come, my love." He spoke the words devoid of emotion and refused to meet her eyes.
"How can you say this? How can you hurt me so?" Her pain wrenched his heart, but he gazed stolidly through her.
"My life is all but over, Charlotte. I was a fool. There is nothing left for us."
"No! You don't mean it! There is always hope, Robert. Philip has pleaded a lesser charge, a lesser penalty. You could be acquitted."
"The man is a liar, a traitor, a Judas! He is the very reason I am here and is not to be trusted! Promise me, Charlotte, that you will have nothing to do with him. Regardless of how matters progress, you must have nothing to do with Philip Drake!"
"B-but, Robert, I---"
"Give me your vow, Charlotte."
Horror gripped her. He would never understand this deal she had made with the devil. Turning away to hide her guilt, she cried, "But there is no one else. As your superior, he is the only one who can help us."
"Swear to me that you will not go to him on my behalf."
Was it fear or guilt in her eyes?
"I must needs explain---"
"Explain what?" His suspicion kindled to rage. "What have you done? What deal have you made with him?"
"Please, not now," she begged. "You could not possibly comprehend in this moment, in your present state of mind. Please let us speak of it later." She prayed for anything to buy her time to think of a plausible explanation for actions she could not creditably defend, any justification he might accept for her actions.
"If you love me, you will tell me the truth and tell me now!" he demanded.
Backed into a corner, she challenged, "If you love me, you will heed my request to discuss this later. All will be made right once you are acquitted."
"Made right? Damn it, that's no answer! There will be no acquittal! For the last time, Charlotte..."
She couldn't look him in the eye and lie, but she dared not tell the truth. Their world hung by a solitary thread. Drawing closer, she whispered against his face, "I defy you to doubt my love, Robert."
She found his lips with all the love and pain she had harbored, and Robert softened in her embrace, but a flushing Trooper Wiggins interrupted the impassioned embrace.
Clearing his throat, he discreetly announced his presence. "Mrs. Drake," he began tentatively, "Dr. Pringle gave strict orders..."
Robert froze, his stricken gaze fixed on Charlotte. Unable to believe his ears, he repeated, "Mrs. Drake? Mrs. Drake! Charlotte, what the devil have you done?"
C harlotte quit the hospital with only one thought, to find the man responsible for her anguish. She ran blindly out of the doors, crashing straight into Dr. Pringle, nearly knocking him flat as he arrived to make his morning rounds.
"Whoa there, lass! What's amiss?" He lapsed into his native brogue in his excitement. "Has the young Devington ta'en a bad turn, ga'en doun the brae?" He directed his steps briskly toward the hospital door.
"N-n-no, Dr. Pringle. He is much recovered, but I owe him an explanation I am unable to make. It would surely kill him!" she sobbed.
"So you say, lass. I ken no such thing unless 'twould be his love wed another whilst he was in the sick bed."
Charlotte gasped. "Then you knew all the time!"
"Aye. Took no great genius to figure out. 'Twould appear the young captain got the bree o't."
"Everything is such a muddle. It never should have happened this way."
"But if indeed ye married another, it canna be undone, lass. 'Tis aw by nou."
"But you don't understand! No one can understand! And no one can fix it save the man responsible!"
"At whose door do ye lay the blame, lass?"
"Major Philip Drake," she hissed. "If it were not for him, Robert and I would have been happily wed in Scotland."
"The major has his own troubles at the moment, lass. He was placed under arrest this very morning. He and the captain are both to face charges, once I proclaim the lad fit, that is." He eyed her sympathetically.
"What charges, Dr. Pringle? What have you heard of the charges?" she begged.
"There's the question. Several infantrymen witnessed a duel, though the major claims otherwise. Yet another mon has spoken of a kidnapping. 'Tis quite a scandal brewing. The commander in chief will wish the matter resolved expeditiously."
Charlotte blanched. "What can be done? Surely, there must be something. I was also a witness of this so-called duel."
"Were you now? Dare I presume you the one kidnapped?"
"It was an elopement, Dr. Pringle. Robert and I were going to be married."
"As I suspected, but there is naught you can do in any instance. 'Tis a military matter to be handled by due process."
"But what of Robert? Is he to be imprisoned?"
"Nay to that, lass. On my sacred honor, whilst under my care, I shall ensure he sees no walls beyond his hospital room. As for your husband, an officer may be placed under arrest for only eight days. The matter will be resolved anon."
"Are you sure there is nothing I can do for Robert?"
"For the captain, nay, but ha'e ye no care for your husband?"
"Philip Drake may rot in prison for all I care."
"'Tis a wee harsh, lass."
"The man is a traitorous, self-serving rogue," she replied, unmoved.
"The mon I knew at Dettingen was as fine and brave an officer as I know and 'twas he who saved your captain's very life. Ye might consider this afore you heap many more curses upon his head."
She lowered her eyes, abashed. "I'm sorry, Dr. Pringle, it's just circumstances..."
"There's nay need to apologize, but I must beg your leave now. Much work to do and little time."
"Dr. Pringle,"---she stopped him---"may I return?"
"Only when ye think to ha'e it all sorted oot," he replied censoriously. "I'll not ha'e ye do more harm to my patient than good." The doctor dismissed her with a nod of good-day.
Charlotte trod despondently back to her lodgings. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day. Perhaps she would think of some way to convince Robert of her unfailing devotion. Perhaps he would be in a better frame of mind to listen. But would he ever understand?
She had acquiesced to the sham marriage only out of desperation. Her uncle would have surely made good on his threat to throw her out had she refused. But now trapped, she avowed to find a way out of this despicable arrangement the moment Robert was acquitted.
Charlotte arrived at Number Ten Bedford, surprised to find Lady Susannah awaiting her.
"Miss Wallace, you should not go out unchaperoned. London is a very dangerous place for a pretty young woman venturing out alone."
Embarrassed and guilty at having been caught, Charlotte contritely stammered, "I-I was merely taking some air, madam."
"As I have been asked to look after you, my dear, pray notify me when you wish to take air, and I shall endeavor to escort you, or at the least send my maid."
"That's very generous. I am grateful, Lady Susannah."
"Pray join me, Miss Wallace, or may I call you 'Charlotte'?"
"If it pleases you to do so, madam," Charlotte replied coolly.
"Be pleased then to come and take tea with me, Charlotte. You can't have yet broken your fast, and walking invariably raises one's appetite."
Seeing no polite way out, Charlotte sat beside the woman. Lady Susannah poured the tea, asking tritely, "Your rooms are comfortable, I trust?"
"Indeed, madam. Infinitely so."
"I am pleased to hear it. Is this your first visit to London, dear?"
"Actually no, though I remember little. I was very young."
Lady Susannah raised a brow, encouraging Charlotte to continue.
"My father was a barrister of Grey's Inn, and we resided in London whilst my parents were alive. They were both tragically killed when I was a child."
"How sad, my dear. But you are still little more than a child."
"It is unfortunately as you say. Had I yet attained my majority, I would be in a much happier position today."
Mistaking her meaning, the lady's eyes lit with interest. "So, you yearn for a life of independence, do you? Very few women are permitted such, to live their own lives in our society. Most, sadly, have not the slightest notion of freedom. A married woman is the property of her husband, and an unmarried woman lives almost shunned by society, as if fatally flawed in some way.
"'Tis utterly tragic! I was wed once, barely out of the schoolroom, mind you, to a gentleman of eight-and-fifty. He was a wealthy squire, an acquaintance of my father who took a singular fancy to me. He asked no dowry and offered a considerable settlement upon my father, who cheerfully gave me up."
"How unhappy you must have been." Charlotte empathized, warming to the older woman.
"Surprisingly, my dear, not at all. Dear Nigel was as doting as a grandfather, and I was his most prized possession. I had jewels, modish clothing, and a fine carriage, all the best he could provide. He was kind and generous, but also jealously possessive. He paraded me before his peers as his trophy, but on a very short leash.
"In the end, 'twas injustice to us both. He became heavily indebted,
and I was irredeemably spoiled. After settling the debts after his death, little remained. I confess, had I practiced economy, I might have lived out a life of modest comfort, but I knew nothing of economy, and I suddenly had freedom." She paused, smiling at her reminiscences.
"Are you never lonely, my lady?" Charlotte asked.
"I have few regrets. I considered remarriage once, but purely for economic reasons." She paused, and her smile vanished. "Suffice to say, my reasoning was flawed. I have since decided that I do not desire a husband at all. I am a spoiled wretch after managing for over half a decade to live as I will.
"How ludicrous it is that society dictates that every woman should have a master, be it a father or a husband. God forbid if any woman dares aspire to the same privileges every man living enjoys; she is considered fast and a social pariah. I have spent years walking such a social tightrope, my dear. I tell you this as a warning, sensing a kindred spirit in you."
"But, Lady Susannah, is it not also exercising one's freedom to choose marriage out of love? If two people truly love, marriage binds them together willingly. It is by choice. Have you never loved?"
"Heavens, quite the philosopher you are, Charlotte! How delightful to be in such enlightened company." She laughed. "I rarely enjoy the conversation of a woman, empty-headed lot, most of them."
"I am perceptive, as well, my lady, and perceive that you have skillfully evaded my question."
Lady Susannah erupted with renewed mirth. "Indeed, you have me trapped! And such an indelicate topic for maiden ears, but since you persist, I shall disclose all. Although I was content with Nigel, I was never in love with him. Furthermore, my marriage failed to fulfill any physical desires. My husband was unable to... perform in the marriage bed, you see."
The young woman blushed.
"I see that you do understand, but shall I discontinue? Young ladies have such heightened sensibilities."
"I understand what transpires in the marriage bed."
"I am to this day uncertain whether or not it ever transpired in my marriage bed! Only in my widowhood did I discover the hitherto unknown delights."
Charlotte blushed crimson but nonetheless urged, "Is it indeed so, Lady Susannah?"
"You continue to enchant, Charlotte!" She laughed again. "To answer you, in my experience there is much a woman is never taught regarding the physical aspects of marriage. Sadly, they illcomprehend this God-given expression, which is a sincere articulation of love and devotion by their husbands.
"Instead, they suffer in forbearance their marital obligation to produce a child, believing this distasteful act is performed upon them only to satisfy the primal urges of a husband, which he cannot meet by other means.
"But men are a completely different animal from women, Charlotte, and they desire more than a dutiful victim to their baser instincts. A man craves a joyful, playful, loving partner, but sadly many times, he can find it only outside of the marriage. Men have a completely natural need to express their love in a purely physical sense."
Blushing to her ears, Charlotte stared into her teacup. "Do you truly believe this, Lady Susannah?" she asked, "That men require coupling to express their love and devotion?"
"Not just to demonstrate their love, but a man will never feel his love is reciprocated in kind without a willing and eager partner in this so-called coupling."
"So a woman who truly desires to prove her love to her beloved would do so willingly with her body?"
"I fear we tread very dangerous ground now, my dear. Countless unfortunate maidens fall to their utter shame and disgrace by giving themselves to young men who plead for proof of their love. 'Tis the oldest ploy in the book, and most of the poor harlots on the street were ruined in such a despicable manner."
Charlotte digested this carefully. "But what if he showed her his love in manifold ways yet never made such demands? Could he not still love her?"
"Indeed! I would then swear he was a victim of Cupid's bow and truly in love. And to think I imagined our first chat was to have been of the weather!" Lady Susannah chuckled merrily and rang for the maid to clear the tea tray.
"I have enjoyed your company immensely, but perhaps our next chat should be in my private parlor! Now, if there is nothing you need, I have a social engagement this afternoon and must attend to my toilette." She rose to depart but hesitated at the doorway. "Have you a lady's maid, Charlotte?"
"I did, ma'am, until my uncle dismissed her."
"Are you inclined to locate her?"
"Oh, madam, if it were at all possible. She was with me most of my life and was my dearest friend."
"Then we must find her. I will speak to Philip regarding the matter."
"Philip? What has he to say to anything?"
"He is your guardian, is he not?"
Charlotte nodded dumbly.
"Then as such, he can very well provide you a maid. I shall attend to it, my dear."
"That might present a difficulty at the moment, Lady Susannah."
"Oh? And why is that?"
"He is imprisoned." She spoke matterof-factly. "I have learned that he faces charges for dueling,"
"What!" Lady Susannah blanched.
Charlotte scrambled for an explanation that would not reveal more than necessary. "I believe it was a matter of honor." That was close enough.
"Was it indeed? 'Tis surely not the first time he has done such a thing, but mayhap it can yet be smoothed over." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "If Philip is indeed in such a scrape, I must pay a call to an old friend," she said more to herself than to Charlotte and then breezed from the room.
Charlotte later realized that Lady Susannah had once more artfully evaded her question about ever having loved. Although unabashed about her lifestyle, there was at least one secret she kept well guarded.
Over the following days, Charlotte saw little of Lady Susannah, whose life at times appeared a veritable whirlwind compared to Charlotte's own quiet existence. She struggled with her dilemma to no avail. She was still at a loss as to how to face Robert's accusations, but she could wait no longer. She resolved to go back and confront him with the facts. She would make him understand. As Charlotte prepared to go out, she encountered Lady Susannah just coming in.
"Charlotte," the widow asked pointedly, "were you again venturing out with no chaperone?"
"N-no, my lady." Charlotte could not meet her eye.
"My dear, you should never prevaricate unless you can do so quite boldly," she chided and took the shamefaced girl by the arm. "Far be it for me to pry, but I detect that something has you quite distressed. I think it past time for another little chat... in my private parlor."
Warily, Charlotte resigned herself to accompany the determined woman to her sitting room.
"Pray sit down." Lady Susannah indicated a rose velvet settee, where Charlotte nervously perched, awaiting the inquisition. "Shall I ring for tea? I could use some refreshment after my rather full morning," the widow commented airily, moving to a looking glass to rearrange her slightly mussed hair.
"There now," she remarked after pinning a few stray strands back in place and a satisfactory self-inspection. She rang for the maid and then continued. "I have been out this morning on an important errand and bring tidings that should set your heart at ease."
"Indeed? What tidings?" Charlotte asked in befuddlement.
"Why, I've news of your guardian, of course. I feared you must have worried yourself sick, keeping to your rooms as you have. And how could I stand idle, knowing of Philip's troubles when it was within my power to help?"
"But how could you possibly help, madam?"
"After making some inquiries into the matter, I called on one of my dear Nigel's bosom bows. He had served under Marlborough in the Spanish wars, you see, and was well connected with many officers of no small distinction. One can never have too many eminent friends, Charlotte," she advised.
"I imagine so, Lady Susannah," she agreed, wondering where this conversation was leading.
Lady Susannah sensed Charlotte's impatience but evinced no hurry to expiate. "I hold our military in great esteem, Charlotte, and believe all citizens should demonstrate more appreciation for their sacrifice, particularly to those in highest command who carry the heaviest burdens. I expressed precisely these sentiments to dear James just this morning."
"Lady Susannah, not to appear impertinent, but how does your visit to your late husband's friend signify? I fail to see what it has to do with me."
"Dearest girl, you must learn to hear one out with easier grace," she chided gently. "One must cultivate the art of attentive listening if one wishes to earn the favor of others; this is particularly true of such gentlemen as Nigel's friend, James. But perhaps you might better know him as Lord James Dalrymple, the Earl of Stair and commander in chief of His Majesty's forces."
"Oh!" Charlotte gasped. "You are acquainted with the commander in chief? How incredible! Lord Stair was the field marshal at Dettingen where Ro---" She abruptly caught herself.
"You were saying?" Lady Susannah's eyes narrowed in scrutiny. There was a secret here. She felt it.
Charlotte stammered. "I-I was only overcome with your circle of acquaintance, madam. But why have you spoken with Lord Stair?"
Lady Susannah laughed with delight. "Renewing my acquaintance with Lord Stair was the least I could do, in light of dear Philip's present difficulties. After spending quite a lovely interlude, I explained to James the grievous misunderstanding that led to Philip's incarceration. He was all solicitude and inquired instantly how he might assist." Her smile was mischievous. "Lord Stair is a true gentleman, Charlotte, one who would never refuse a lady any service in his power to perform."
"And what service would that be?"
"Why Philip's release, of course. I feared that anxiety over his fate had led you to venture out alone this morning, but you may rest assured the matter is taken care of."
Charlotte's face flushed, but her expression remained guarded, raising further questions in Lady Susannah's mind.
"Are you not pleased, Charlotte? I should have thought you would receive this exceptional news with singular delight."
"You misunderstand, my lady."
"Do I? After our fascinating conversation the other day, I had grown to suspect you have a tendre for your guardian, but if I am so shamefully mistaken, I beg you to enlighten me."
"It's not about Philip at all, my lady."
"Is it not? I have begun to deduce as much." Her tone was arid. "What is this great secret, Charlotte? Why did Philip bring you here, and what precisely is the nature of your relationship? I believe I have earned the right to know. I do not solicit favors of old friends lightly, and having done so for your sake, you had best be forthcoming." Lady Susannah's eyes flashed in growing pique.
"I implore your forgiveness for my mistrust, but for so long I have had no one in whom to confide."
"I am yet far from appeased."
Charlotte sighed. "But where to begin?"
"I suggest at the beginning." She tapped her foot impatiently.
"'Tis such a long and convoluted story, madam."
At this, Sarah interrupted with the tea tray. Once the maid departed, the oh-so-injured Lady Susannah continued. "We have the entire afternoon at our disposal."
Charlotte considered how she could best summarize the high drama of the past months. She took a great breath and began. "'Tis a very tangled web, madam, but suffice to say, I am in love with a certain captain, who until very recently was a close friend of your Major Drake. My uncle, who was my true guardian, refused our union, which compelled us to elope."
Lady Susannah's annoyed countenance softened. "How foolishly romantic," she murmured.
Charlotte continued. "It proved very foolish indeed after what followed. For reasons known only to himself, Philip aligned himself with my uncle against us. The result was a horrible duel."
"Oh my dear!" she exclaimed. "How very tragic for you!" Filled now with compassion, she surrounded the girl in a maternal embrace. "And your captain?" she asked in trepidation.
"He yet lives, though severely injured."
"Dear, dear girl! What pain you have suffered! But why would Philip have done such a thing? 'Tis not at all in fitting with his character, I assure you."
"Nonetheless, he has caused our suffering. It was Robert whom I had stolen away to see the morning you caught me, and it is want of his fate that torments me." She gazed sadly into the other woman's sympathetic eyes.
"Dearest, have you seen your captain?"
"Yes. I sat by his sick bed, held him, prayed, and wept over him, but when he finally recovered enough to know my presence, he would hear nothing from me!"
Charlotte burst into tears, and Lady Susannah kindly offered her shoulder and lace-trimmed handkerchief. She allowed the girl to weep a respectable period before interrupting.
"I only wish you had confided in me earlier, but as it stands, I have played my best cards. As to Philip's role, I remain unconvinced he is the irrefutable villain. I know him, Charlotte, and absolutely refuse to believe the worst of him. There must be much more to this tale."
"There is indeed much more, Lady Susannah." Charlotte paused. "Philip Drake is my husband."
"Your husband?" She paled.
"In name only, my lady. We were wed under extreme duress. There is no love lost between us, I assure you."
"I don't understand how this should have come about, Charlotte."
"Since you will not believe him the villain, I would rather Philip recount the rest to you. He no doubt has a vastly different perspective from the tale I would tell."
"Then I will press you no further, but I pledge to ferret out the entire history from Philip in good time. Do not dismay on that account. A man discloses much unawares, my dear, if one's methods are subtle." Her smile was one of firm resolution, but she knew Philip Drake was not so easily led as she would have once believed.
"As to your captain, does he know your heart, my dear? Most times, comfort to a man in hopeless circumstances can come only from the woman who loves him. Love has been known to sustain a man when all appears lost. The best succor for him may be your love."
"If he would only listen to me. He is angry, bitter, and hurt. He feels betrayed. He refuses to understand that I acted only out of necessity and that my heart is unchanged."
"You give up the fight too easily. There are other weapons at your disposal."
"I don't understand."
"Mayhap he needs more than just your words to believe your heart. Go back to him, my dear. You will know what he most needs from you."
LOVE'S SACRIFICE
W hen Lady Susannah accompanied Charlotte to the military hospital early that evening, Charlotte was relieved to find Trooper Wiggins at the gate.
"I regret to advise you ladies that no visitors be allowed after dark." Peering closer, he recognized Charlotte. "So, it is you again."
"Yes, and I have brought with me the captain's aunt."
"Mrs. Merring," Lady Susannah interjected.
"The one you said was elderly and infirm in Chelsea?" the trooper asked with skepticism.
"My health is much improved, and I am not so very elderly." Lady Susannah answered, regarding Charlotte ruefully. "Might we have a brief word with Captain Devington?"
"But 'tis after dark, ma'am," he protested.
"Surely there can be no harm, and I am prepared to recompense you for your discretion," Lady Susannah replied.
The Trooper bristled at the intimation of a bribe. "A guard who relinquishes his post or lapses in his duty faces charges, ma'am."
"One could never suggest such a fine and upstanding soldier as you would ever shirk his duty, Captain," Lady Susannah purred. "Your dedication is admirable and shall surely take you far in your career. If we only had more men like you, Captain..."
"I'm no captain, ma'am, leastwise not yet. I suppose since Dr. Pringle has allowed the lady before..."
"Dr. Pringle, you say? Dr. John Pringle?" Her face brightened. "But I am well acquainted with the surgeon. He attended my late husband during an episode of gout suffered one summer in Edinburgh. Is he about?"
"Aye, madam, buried in his books to be sure."
"Then could you inform him of my presence?" she inquired sweetly, giving Charlotte a bold wink.
With matters clearly in the woman's competent hands, Charlotte slipped through the gate. Remarking no additional guards, she cautiously ventured to Robert's room. With only moonlight illuminating the chamber, Charlotte had to adjust her eyes before she took in the shadowy figure sitting by the window.
Creeping silently, she approached from behind, whispering his name. "Robert."
He turned with a start. She registered elation, but it was promptly checked.
"What are you doing here, Charlotte? Or should I say... Mrs. Drake?" He pronounced the name with a snarl.
"Robert, please. I have come to explain. You don't understand the circumstances. Nothing has changed between us."
"Nothing changed? The devil it hasn't!" he cursed and clumsily took to his feet. "You wed another and bloody well claim nothing changed? Do you take pleasure in tormenting me, or are you touched in the head?" He gripped her arm painfully and propelled her three paces to the door. "Leave, Charlotte. Just leave!"
Refusing to give up, she spun around to face him. "But you don't understand how it is!" Tears burned her eyes. How could she make him understand? Make him believe her? She was desperate to break through the barrier he had erected between them.
"It is all just an illusion, Robert. It is not a real marriage between Philip and me. I belong to you and only you. Heart and soul, I have been only yours."
Robert clenched his jaw. "You have been only mine, heart and soul? That's lyrical," he snarled. "I retain your whole heart while poor Philip gets only your body."
Charlotte struck his face with a vicious slap and then gasped at what she had done.
He flinched, but his accusing eyes remained hard as flint.
How could these be the same eyes that once had beheld her in love? "Why can't you believe me? I told you, I belong only to you. I won't let you push me away again." Tremulously, Charlotte reached for his face, tracing the hand print she had left.
"No, I cannot believe you." He moved in closer, pinning her to the door.
This was not the man she knew. What had she done in coming here like this? This was not Robert!
"Somehow I cannot be persuaded that Philip would deny himself," he said with rasping breath that hotly grazed her cheek.
His eyes raked hungrily over her, and he remembered his self-sacrifice the first night they shared in Doncaster, when he had stiffly propped himself in the corner rather than dishonor her. He had watched her that night, guiltily transfixed by the soft, rhythmic rise and fall of her breasts while she slept. He remembered how acutely he had craved her.
Later, when they had again shared sleeping quarters, sometimes so close he could breathe in her scent, her nearness had nearly driven him mad. More than once he had left his bed rather than succumb to the stirrings she evoked.
And in his recent feverish delirium, he had dreamed of her. In his mind he had lived their wedding night, slowly undressing her, stroking her smooth skin with lingering caresses, and lavishing her with warm, open-mouthed kisses while she responded in blissful pleasure to his every touch.
"How was your wedding night, my love? Did your heart and soul cry out in agony or in ecstasy when Philip took you?" He laughed caustically then took her lower lip in his teeth and kissed her savagely.
Robert had kissed her many times before, and Charlotte had found exquisite pleasure in the tenderness, but there was nothing tender in this embrace. He pressed against her, spearing a hard thigh between hers, holding her captive against the wall. His kiss was fierce, angry, rough in its intensity.
Charlotte froze, trembling violently in her growing doubt and fear. This was not what she had expected, not what she had prepared for! She almost cried aloud. No. I must not be a coward! He needs to know me in this way, or he will never believe in my love.
As if reading her panicked thoughts, he abruptly pulled away. His pupils were dilated and face flushed; he panted heavily.
"Leave me, Charlotte. Just go." His voice was hoarse and contemptuous. Turning his back on her, he strode to the window and transfixed a sightless gaze outside as if he waited for the click of the latch to pronounce her departure.
Humiliated, hurt, and her eyes blurred with tears, Charlotte hastened to leave, thankful of escape from this stranger. She opened the door and looked back a final time at the man she had believed she loved. She hesitated, her mind clearing just enough to question what had happened.
If he truly believed in her betrayal, why had he stopped? If he believed she had given herself to Philip, why had he not taken his revenge? Was it all a lie? His behavior only a sham to push her away and make her believe he no longer cared? Perhaps he was not so changed as he would have her believe.
Charlotte closed the door quietly and waited. With the click of the latch, Robert's body racked with unsuppressed emotion.
Her heart wrenched, and she advanced swiftly, catching him
unawares, and wrapped her arms tightly about his waist, binding him to her. Enclosed in her unexpected embrace, Robert finally gave himself up to her.
Charlotte rained kisses on his face and moved to whisper in his ear, "You have failed, Robert. You can never deny my love."
Robert groaned his surrender and took her into an incendiary embrace that ignited them in mutual need. Closing her eyes, Charlotte drank in the sensation of his warm breath and hot tongue exploring her neck, her shoulders, her breasts; the intensity of his ministrations left her gasping. He touched her, and she awakened, her senses bestirred and intuitively responding to every hitherto unknown sensation.
"Are you certain, my love?" His voice was thick and husky, but his uncertainty quashed any remaining doubt she harbored. This was truly her Robert, her beloved.
"Body and soul, Robert, I am yours. I am only yours." Her eyes were no longer wide with fear but filled with love. She would hold nothing back to fill the void that had developed between.
"Then we will be as man and wife, as it should have been."
She was, for the present, finally his.
As Charlotte lay curled by her lover's side, physically and emotionally spent, she heard the light scratch at the door. She tried to ignore the call, but the scratch came a second time. She had been promised an hour, and her time had flown. She wished they had the entire night to explore what had unfurled between them. They deserved a lifetime together, but they were cheated yet again.
She rose upon trembling legs, and he pulled her cloak back about her.
"You see what a dangerous thing you have done," he murmured heavily against her hair, his fingers caressing her face. "My hearing is tomorrow. Your coming has only made matters more difficult for both of us, my love."
"But how can you say that now?"
"Because we have no future. My fate hangs by the proverbial thread, and I just pray you suffer no consequences or regrets for your impetuosity this night."
"But how could I?" She bathed his face in kisses. "I could have suffered only by not coming. Above all, you had to know my heart is unchanged."
With the third scratch on the door, he pulled her into a last fervent embrace, their lips meeting for a final tortured kiss. Biting back a sob, she pulled the cloak more tightly about her and left.
Robert spent the remainder of the night in sleepless reflection on all the events leading up to this desperate point of uncertainty. Hours ago he had been lost in hopeless desolation, pensively absorbed by the reflection of an idealistic fool in the windowpane, one who had sealed his fate by a single rash and self-indulgent act. He had regretted wasting his life in pursuit of an empty dream, but Charlotte's coming had changed everything.
In selflessness, she had given her love, proven her devotion, her strength, and her will to persevere. He had taken what she offered, but their joining went beyond the physical. She had somehow given back to him a sense of himself, the sense of purpose he had all but lost.
A s Robert's hands were bound behind his back and the noose dropped over his head, he closed his eyes. His senses awakened to the fetid stench of death emanating from the platform and the sharp prickles of the thick hemp rope, the hangman drawing it snug about his neck and then suddenly pulling it taut. The abrupt, crushing tension on his Adam's apple caused him to gasp and choke. The frenzied crowd roared in a cacophony of bloodlust, sensing the climactic moment imminently approaching.
He shuddered involuntarily. Sweat broke from his brow, slowly dripping down onto his closed lids. His raspy breathing came faster, though he willed it otherwise. Suddenly, as the hangman prepared to release the hatch beneath his feet, there was deathly silence.
His stomach lurched, and he fought for control, willing his body to obedience. If he must die today, by God, he would do it with dignity. He opened his eyes again to scan the crowd, desperately seeking a final glimpse of his love, one last gaze at her lovely face. He sought in vain.
Squaring his shoulders and closing his eyes for the last time, he heard, rather than saw, the hangman release the trap door...
Gasping and choking, Robert awoke abruptly to the sound of the key rattling in his locked door. Sitting bolt upright, he tried to orient himself, slowly recovering from the nightmare-induced panic. This, now, was real. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he rose from his bed, reaching to pull on his breeches when the door opened and the major stepped inside.
Devington masked his surprise at the unexpected arrival of his superior officer... and accuser. He executed a mocking left-handed salute.
"Devington," Philip said earnestly, "I am come to lend what counsel I may in preparation for your trial."
"You are come to help me? I have nothing to say to you, you bloody lying Judas!"
"You don't know how it was," Philip protested.
"I know exactly how it was, you traitorous sod!" Robert retorted. "Sir Garfield gave Beatrix to your brother, so the only way to recoup your losses was to take Charlotte from me. You greedy bastard! Charlotte is everything to me and nothing to you, yet you cast all love and friendship aside and took her for the money! You were a hero to me. I trusted and loved you like a brother. How could you do this?" he cried, tearing at his hair.
"Devington, it was not my intent---"
"Your intent? What exactly was your intent? You maimed and left me for dead. Now you come offering your help?" Robert spoke incredulously.
"Listen to me, Devington," Philip entreated, "I had no intention of settling our differences as we did."
"Did you not, Philip?" he accused. "Then why did you continue pursuit? Why did you draw you sword?"
Philip exploded. "You drew first and gave me no choice, you bloody fool! And had you not acted so rashly, I could have charged you with some minor act of misconduct, easily settled by a flogging, but now my hands are tied. That vindictive sodomite Prescott saw his opportunity and made his report that you assaulted me with intent to kill. He had a halfdozen corroborating witnesses, so you are to face the general courts-martial as the Mutiny Act requires." He paused while Devington digested this news.
"I'm sorry, Devington," Philip said grimly. "I wish I could paint a different picture, but it doesn't bode well."
"Is this what you came for? To tell me I am already condemned?"
"For assaulting a superior, the articles prescribe punishment by death. I believe your only course is to plead guilty and appeal to the mercy of the courts."
"Have you ever known of such a thing? Mercy in a martialscourt?" Devington laughed bitterly.
Drake ignored the remark and continued soberly, "The court convenes at ten o'clock. Field Marshal Viscount Cobham presides. As judge advocate, he shall act as prosecuting counsel and oversee the legal proprieties. He is a man with a long and distinguished military career. He will be fair, but you must present your case before thirteen senior officers, with overwhelming evidence against you. For what it's worth, I deeply regret the turn of events and would not, were it within my power to prevent, have you lose your life over a foolish act of reckless passion."
"Reckless passion? I'd yet kill you even now had I a proper weapon. If you are finished, Major, I respectfully request that you bugger off." He repeated the mocking salute.
"As you will, Devington," Drake replied with bitter resignation and departed.
Devington was conducted promptly at ten o'clock to the large chamber within the inner confines of Whitehall Palace. As Drake had stated, thirteen officers stood assembled to hear the charges, with Second Lieutenant George Prescott of the Thirty-second Foot and a halfdozen of Prescott's subordinates as witnesses. Robert remarked Prescott's smug countenance, having finally settled his personal score.
The captain confessed to taking up his sword against his superior in defense of his honor, but the articles allowed no legal defense for his actions, regardless of the circumstances.
His trial was remarkably brief; the evidence of two bloodstained swords was overwhelming and the witnesses abundant. The jury of officers adjourned for deliberation, returning the verdict in record time. The entire process had taken less than two hours.
Robert Devington was headed for the gallows as surely as he breathed.
Although unanimous, procedure required that the court's decision and all transcribed documents be taken before either His Majesty or the commander in chief prior to execution of any sentence. Major Thomas Winthrop was appointed for the task.
As the major's carriage departed for the Palace of St James, Philip intercepted him.
"I fear there's nothing to be done now, Drake. Unless His Majesty deems otherwise, Devington's neck will soon be stretched." They both knew the sealed documents included a death sentence.
Philip sighed heavily. "The King's penchant for discipline is as well known as his intractability. The odds scarcely favor clemency."
"I think it would be rather hopeless to appeal to His Majesty, Winthrop said. "The entire episode was embarrassing to the army, and he was exceedingly displeased to hear of it."
"But the Articles of War allow only His Majesty or the commander in chief to mitigate any sentence. Have you any influence with Field Marshal Wade, Winthrop?"
"My acquaintance with him is the briefest, I regret to say. I hardly stand poised to request any boon of the man," Philip replied.
"We fast approach St James; what shall it be? Is there no one with influence who might owe you a favor or a debt of honor?"
Philip's reply was sardonic. "Winthrop, you do understand I do not run in the highest of circles. But a debt of honor?" Philip paused to consider it, then struck by a flash of brilliance, he grinned. "That might be arranged. We shall seek out Cumberland!"
The older of the two gentlemen dealt out twelve cards each. The younger and more rotund of the pair perused his hand and exchanged five. His eyes, revealing the seven-spade straight and four aces in his hand, gleamed in his wine-flushed face.
"Your Grace." The older man nodded, inviting the King's younger son to declare his hand.
"I'm afraid it does not bode well for you, sir. I declare a point of seven."
"Good," his partner replied warily, hoping the suit of seven spades was not also consecutive.
"Septieme." His Grace's second declaration confirmed that he indeed possessed seven of the eight possible spades.
"Good."
With no attempt to hide his glee, Cumberland remarked, "That's already twenty-four points, Wade, and I now declare a quartorze."
"Good," the elder gentleman replied, holding three kings, all but the spade, and no aces. "I see I am surely buggered with Your Grace holding a seven-card straight and all the bloody aces."
"Buggered indeed, Wade. I've thirty-eight points, and the repique makes another sixty. Ninety-eight points thus far before taking a single trick. Do you care to play out the hand, or shall I be merciful?"
"'Twould be purely an exercise in futility for me to continue. I forfeit to your superior hand, Your Grace." Field Marshal Wade threw down his cards in disgust.
"Allowing your two points, I've one hundred four for the final partie. Damme, but 'twas a good hand!" Cumberland gloated joyfully as he made the final tabulation. "I win the game by three hundred forty-two points."
"At ten pounds per point, Your Grace, 'tis over five thousand pounds you have won from me this evening. I must concede the field to you." Sitting back and signaling the lackey for more wine, the field marshal scribbled his vowel and handed it to the duke.
Cumberland received it with a smile, remarking, "I fear I might encounter difficulty finding another partner this evening."
"Do you seek another game, Your Grace?" a voice inquired from behind.
"Drake and Winthrop, isn't it?" His Grace of Cumberland eyed the two officers.
"I am flattered you remember." Philip's bow was deferential, and Winthrop responded in kind.
"I endeavor to know my officers, particularly those showing the most promise. Do you play piquet, Drake? I warn you, I've had the devil's own luck this evening." The duke smiled.
"Then it would be a shame not to play it out."
The duke nodded to the vacant seat. "Field Marshal Wade and I have played for ten pounds per point." He waited expectantly.
The major cast a pointed look at Field Marshal Wade's I.O.U. "Might I propose other stakes, Your Grace?"
Devington." The major entered the chamber and nodded his solemn greeting.
"So it is you, Winthrop. I surmise that you have completed the transactions I requested?"
"Aye. It is done."
"How much... or mayhap I should ask, how little have my meager belongings brought?"
"The returns are far from meager. I have an offer of five hundred pounds."
"The devil, you say! Five hundred for what? My share in the mare was worth only twenty, mayhap thirty pounds, and Mars with my equipage might bring another hundred at most. I asked only for the fair sale of the horses and my accoutrements, Winthrop. As my worth could not possibly exceed one hundred fifty pounds, how could you come by five hundred?"
"You underestimate the stallion. He brings a handsome price," Winthrop dissembled.
"Nigh on five hundred pounds? Unlikely. Though I do not doubt his worth, he is an unknown, and as such would never merit such a price. I care neither for charity nor deceit, my friend."
"What does it matter from whence it comes, when you have dire need of money?"
"What great need should I have of money? Do you expect I wish to carry it to my grave?"
"Devington, are you not aware that your sentence has been amended?"
"What do you say?" he asked incredulously. "How can this be? I had a death sentence upon my head! Do you mean to say I am exonerated?"
"I fear you misapprehend. While you are not exonerated, you are not to pay with your life, but are instead to be transported."
"Transported? How has this come about?"
"You were the fortunate recipient of a debt of honor, but please don't ask me to explain."
"So, I am now to face banishment in the company of thieves, rapists, sodomites, and murderers?"
"Contrary to popular belief, I scarce take to the notion that the American colonies are comprised solely of convicts and savages. Transportation is surely more desirable than swinging on the gallows. You will be free to start a new life."
"A new life, you say? Do you expect my eternal gratitude? I am sorry to disappoint you. I find it difficult to generate any enthusiasm when I have bungled the first so remarkably." Robert laughed bitterly. "There is nothing left of my life, Winthrop. I am maimed, dishonored, forced to leave my country and the woman I love. What is left for me?"
"With enough money, you can easily start anew."
"The money again," he remarked caustically. "I wish to know who has offered such an exorbitant sum for the stallion." He asked the question with growing suspicion of the answer.
"What does it matter?" Winthrop replied. "Five hundred pounds is a handsome sum, regardless of whence it came."
"'Twas Drake, wasn't it? Damn you, Winthrop! I told you I want nothing from him. I asked you to sell my belongings so I could assure Charlotte a modicum of comfort. When we spoke yesterday, you gave me your oath that Drake should play no further part. I did not ask for his appeal on my behalf, and I bloody well don't want a farthing of that blackguard's money!"
"I implore you to see reason. You are about to spend your next two months on a crowded ship. Without money, you will be forced to remain below decks with vermin and disease. A full fifth of those passengers won't even survive the crossing. Moreover, the rest will be sold into servitude to pay the cost of their passage." The major directed a pointed look to Robert's maimed arm. "The ailing and... injured often die waiting for someone to buy their contracts. With money, you could avoid their fate. Your life is spared, Devington. Is your damnable pride worth taking such a risk?"
"It is if accepting his money allows Drake to buy a clear conscience. Let the bastard live with his guilt! The stallion is no longer for sale."
"What?"
"You heard me, Winthrop. Mars is not to be sold. I take him with me."
"Have you lost your bloody mind? You barely have the cost of your own passage and will be destitute when you arrive. If the sale to Drake so offends you, I shall buy the horse."
"My mind is made up. I take Mars with me."
"You are surely mad!"
"No, I'm condemned, but if I am to begin anew, it shall be on my terms."
"Listen to reason, Devington."
"You know I intended the money for Charlotte."
"With her dowry, Drake has made provision for her. She has no need of your money. If you accept it, a new life is yours, and who knows if in time an annulment might be arranged..."
"Enough! That dream is rent from my heart. For Charlotte's sake, it is best she believe me dead. I have already caused her a lifetime of heartache. I would not have her grieve one more day, let alone waste seven years of her life waiting for something that will never be. Once I depart English shores, Robert Devington is dead."
"Then accept my assurance that the girl shall never be told otherwise."
After receiving the sentence sealed by Commander in Chief Field Marshal Wade, little remained but to relieve the captain of his uniform. Stripped in both the literal and figurative sense, it was as if he had shed his life. Was it only two years ago he had found his identity, his very purpose, as a trooper in the King's Horse? Now it was all swept away. He was lost at sea before having boarded the ship.
"'Tis all arranged as you instructed," Winthrop said. "I still wish you would reconsider the wisdom of your actions."
"You have been a good friend, and I appreciate your concern, but 'tis not a matter of wisdom but of honor. Whatever my fate, I will never again allow another to steer my destiny. I intend to live the remainder of my life, however long it is, on my own terms."
Winthrop sighed with resignation. Devington might have arrived in the colonies with a fat purse, enough to start a new and comfortable life. Instead, his obstinate pride left him with a mere pittance. His net worth after selling his accoutrements and purchasing a new suit of clothes was barely forty pounds. The sum might have given him a cushion had he not insisted on transporting the stallion, whose passage and forage ate up another twenty pounds.
If he purchased a cabin on the ship, he would have almost nothing remaining, but if he took his chances below decks, he would likely not survive the journey at all. Winthrop shuddered at the thought, but with his advice unheeded, he could do naught more but wish his friend Godspeed.
Reunited with Mars, Robert and his escort, Trooper Wiggins, set off for Bristol. Although Robert had overcome the worst of his infection and fever, he was still weak and his arm in the early stages of healing. He was thankful for the small grace that his status as a former officer allowed him to travel without the added hindrance of bonds or shackles. Nevertheless, what he would have once easily endured proved an arduous one hundred twenty miles.
Arriving in Bristol drained of strength, Robert was gratified to hear of the ship's delay, which allowed him a couple of days to rest and recover. Although he had little money to spare, he and his escort took a room at the John Bull Tavern to await the arrival of the merchant ship contracted to carry felons across the Atlantic to the American colonies.
Once settled, Devington and Wiggins entered the taproom crowded with merchants and prospective passengers. They took a table near a soberly dressed middle-aged man and his young companion, presumably his son. Seated in close proximity, they could not help overhear the conversation as the stern-faced gentleman lectured the young man.
"Thy father shall be exceedingly displeased, Master Lee."
"If you could only have seen the horses, Mr. Hanbury! We have none such in Virginia, though the countryside is overrun with the beasts. We have none to compare with this English breed. I have never seen the like!
"The most inferior of the lot was a full hand taller our horses, and I was astounded by their bottom. They raced miles, Mr. Hanbury, four miles and three heats, to be precise. Would that I owned such a horse! With such a prize in the family stables, we would be the envy of the county."
"Vanity, Master Lee, is a sin equal to wagering. Surely, I shalt not settle such a debt, and I must believe thy return home both a judicious and timely event. Elsewise, thy father might grow to regret your halfdozen years spent in England."
"But 'twas only a horse race! Nothing to compare to the vice of playing at dice or cards, and 'tis only ten pounds, a trifling sum that is easily covered tenfold when the ship arrives."
"Surely thou art not suggesting the payment of a gambling debt from thy father's tobacco stores?"
"Why should I not? I must settle the debt before my departure, and I see no reason to trouble my father on this score. Indeed, he need never know of it."
"Now, 'tis not as much the debt at issue as the deception you suggest. I shall have none of it! By my troth to thy father, Thomas, have I pledged to look after thee whence thou arrived to attend Eton. Thy father's purpose was that thou shouldst acquire a gentleman's education, not a gentleman's vice."
Much chagrinned, the lad protested. "I accompanied a few fellows to Newmarket, and what is race without a sporting wager? 'Tis done as well in Virginia, though the usual stakes are made in tobacco rather than coin. 'Tis all the same, is it not? Just a bit of harmless sport. Have you never attended the races, Mr. Hanbury?"
"The Society of Friends forbids gaming, Master Lee, but being well acquainted with Virginia, I understand thy enthusiasm for horse racing. This does not, however, say that I condone gambling. Wagering is an evil pursuit, and no good may ever come of it. Thy present indebtedness renders proof."
The young man flushed. "With the imminent arrival of our ship, I believed you would advance me against the tobacco sale."
"But 'tis thy father's money! Though I am entrusted to care for thy needs whilst thou remain in England, this surely precludes the payment of gambling debts! By my faith, I cannot support it."
"But as a Quaker, you are avowed to honesty in all your dealings. So how could you permit me to renege on a debt of honor?"
"'Tis a small sum, Master Lee, but a larger principle."
"But a gentleman must honor his obligations! I would disgrace the Lee name if I do not pay what I owe to Henry Sharpe."
"Though I offer regrets for thy distress, I am unmoved."
The young man spoke no more, and the pair finished their meal in silence.
Devington and Wiggins ordered two more tankards of ale while the elder man departed to settle his reckoning and inquire further into the anticipated arrival of the ship carrying his tobacco cargo.
"Almost feel sorry fer the young blighter," Wiggins commented.
"Aye." Devington commiserated with the young man, remembering his own similar folly in making his wager with Sir Garfield without the purse to back it up. This one fateful event had brought him to his present predicament. It already seemed a lifetime ago.
"'Tis only tragic, Wiggins, when we fail to learn from our mistakes."
"Mayhap ye should make acquaintance wi' the young gen'leman, Captain. He be headed to Virginia, by the like, and you has no acquaintance in the colonies," Wiggins suggested helpfully.
"I had considered as much. 'Twould appear the young man has connections with a tobacco plantation. Pray excuse me a moment, Wiggins. I think I shall have a word with him."
Feeling that somehow his destiny had revealed itself, Devington staked what little remained in his pocket for an alliance with the Virginia planter's son.
The ship arrived in Bristol a day later and required a full day to divest itself of the vast stores of tobacco. By the end of the second day in port, the new cargo of English goods had been loaded in the ship's hold, and it was ready to take on the awaiting passengers bound for the port of Annapolis, Maryland.
Robert had attempted several times to negotiate transport for Mars on the vessel but was denied each time he brought forth his request. Increasingly anxious, he again approached the first mate.
"Mr. Blakely," he began, "pray might I speak briefly with the captain?"
"If this is about your cargo, I have already told you, Mr..."
"Robert... s, Daniel Roberts," Devington hastily volunteered, resolved to leave his old life and old identify behind.
"Mr. Roberts, this ship is full and unable to accommodate livestock. You might wish to inquire with the port authorities after another vessel. There will surely be a suitable ship within the for'night to carry your cargo."
"But it must be this ship," he insisted.
"On the contrary, sir. It will be another ship."
"But 'tis imperative the horse travels with me. I am willing to pay any reasonable fee for his passage. If I might but speak with your captain, sir."
"'Tis no use to petition the captain. This ship cannot and will not accommodate your request. Now, if you will excuse me, I have pressing matters to attend." The first mate abruptly directed his attention to the personal cargo of a first-class passenger, the same young man whom Robert had met earlier in the tavern.
"Mister Roberts," the young man began, "I perceive you are having some difficulty."
"'Tis of no consequence, Master Lee," interrupted the first mate.
"I believe I addressed Mr. Roberts," he answered in haughty dismissal. "As you so kindly assisted me out of my own recent predicament, might I perform some service for you in kind?"
"I thank you, Master Lee, but unless you can persuade the captain to take on my cargo, there is naught to be done."
"Indeed? And what cargo might that be, Mr. Roberts?"
"I desire to bring livestock aboard the vessel."
"I am sure Mr. Blakely has made you aware that this ship is not specially equipped to carry livestock, but might I ask why 'tis such an urgent matter that your livestock accompany you when another ship shall soon arrive."
"This animal has a particular value to me."
"Indeed? I am intrigued. Might I inquire after this extraordinarily precious animal?"
"'Tis my horse."
"A horse, sir? You have quite an unusual attachment if you wish to convey him across the Atlantic with another so easily acquired in the colonies. Unlike England, where horses are quite dear, the equine species is right plentiful in Virginia. Indeed, you might acquire a more than serviceable saddle horse for as little as five pounds, far less than it will cost you to transport yours."
"While I appreciate the advice, mine is a vastly superior horse, even by English standards, and I am indeed exceptionally attached to him."
"Is it a racehorse?"
"He is of the type, though he has seen more military service than races."
"But he has raced?"
"In a manner of speaking. He has run several races."
"You've intention of racing him again? Or is your desire to put him to stud?"
"To be honest, Master Lee, I had not yet made that determination."
"I should like very much to see this animal."
"I would be happy to oblige; however, time runs short, and I have yet to negotiate his passage."
"If he is as you say, I shall personally assure his passage. My father is part owner of this shipping enterprise. 'Tis not impossible the captain would make an exception upon my request. Now pray show me the beast," he said excitedly.
True to his word, Philip Ludwell Lee, of Stratford, Virginia, not only negotiated the stallion's passage but also gave up his personal cargo space to make accommodation. Moreover, the young man extended his munificence to sharing his first-class cabin with his new acquaintance.
Having struck the beginnings of friendship, the pair cemented their bond in the following weeks at sea. With a growing burden of guilt at deceiving the young man who had proven so generous, Roberts was led at last to confess.
"What would the highminded Hanbury say upon the revelation that you have moved from horse wagering to taking up with a transported convict?"
Master Lee reflected for a moment after hearing the entire history and then laughed. "I fear he would be shocked indeed, but the colonies have flourished for having welcomed those cast upon us from our motherland's gaols. You will find no small number of English convicts who have made new lives as honest citizens. I do believe a new life awaits you, Devington."
"Let it be Roberts, if you please. I have left my former life behind."
"Agreed, Roberts, but pray call me by Ludwell, as I should hate to stand a constant reminder of your false friend. I hope to prove more loyal than my namesake."
"You could scarce do worse," he commented ruefully.
"We arrive soon in Annapolis. What are your plans?"
"To be honest, I have yet to make any, not knowing what awaits."
"'Tis only ninety-six miles from Annapolis to my family home of Stratford. If you have no particular destination, why not accompany me? I am confident that among my father's vast circle of acquaintance you could find some manner of gainful employment."
"Even with a maimed arm?"
"You have some education, have you not? Perhaps you could obtain a clerkship. Thomas Lee is very well connected."
"Need I remind you the government would likely frown upon hiring a convict?"
"Indeed. I had not considered that." The young man flushed. "I daresay my father might have qualms, should this become common knowledge. My family suffered misfortune at the hands of vagrants who torched our ancestral home. My mother, heavy with child, was obliged to jump from a second-story window and lost the babe, and a serving girl burned in her bed. Our home, a vast fortune in cash, and priceless books were all lost."
"How tragic."
"It might have been far worse if not for my father's resilience. Thomas Lee is quite an indomitable man and recovered his losses well. As a matter of fact, I have yet to see the new family home. Stratford Hall was completed during my time at Eton."
"Is it a tobacco plantation?"
"We grow tobacco, among other crops. The land is very fertile and conducive to planting, now the more savage Indians are repulsed."
"Savage Indians?"
"Indeed! 'Tis a wild land. The earlier colonists feared for their very lives when they settled. Many were killed in raids on their homesteads. 'Twas a most uncivilized place until a mere decade ago." The young man laughed.
"Then I must give serious thought to my livelihood. A one-armed man might find himself at considerable disadvantage in your Virginia."
"How much use of the arm do you have?"
"Though it pains me less these past weeks, out of the sling, it's rather wont to hang lifeless," he replied ruefully.
"Yet you rode your horse from London to Bristol?"
"I can yet ride, Ludwell. After numerous cavalry charges holding my reins in my teeth while wielding pistol and saber, riding one-handed is no great inconvenience. Just don't ask me to do it while fighting off wild savages."
"If you can still ride, what of training a horse, putting one under saddle?"
"I spent fifteen years of my life tending, driving, and racing horses, Ludwell. Though I confess to limitations, given time, I believe I shall adapt to my disability. After all, horses and soldiering are all that I know."
"I am moved to speak to Mr. Tayloe on your behalf. The man owns the best stables in Virginia, and his horses are nigh unbeatable, though you will find Colonial racing differs greatly from English racing."
"How so?"
"First off, the English regard it as a diversion exclusive to the privileged class, but in Virginia, 'tis prodigiously popular with all men. Secondly, most of our races are run straight out at the quarter mile, though I have heard of a one-mile track at Williamsburg. If your horse is as good as you say, you might consider running him there."
"I shall take it under serious advisement, Ludwell."
Sailing with unusually calm seas and favorable winds, the merchant ship Venturer arrived in Annapolis in nine weeks time, and Daniel Roberts disembarked to face a new life.
C harlotte spent days in her room, alternately praying and crying that somehow God would intervene and spare Robert's life. Was it only three days ago she had gone to him? She had endeavored to give him hope, a reason to go on. She had shown her love in the only tangible way, but now, in mixed hope and fear, she awaited word of his fate. She was at once anxious for word but unready to hear it, as if by deferring the truth she could obviate it.
Emotionally exhausted, she slept, opening her eyes only when Sarah pulled the heavy drapes to admit the noonday sun. She rose stiffly from the bed when the maid returned with a pitcher and washbasin.
"Her ladyship has asked for you, ma'am. She inquires if ye might have taken ill."
"It's nothing a cup of tea won't remedy, Sarah. Please advise Lady Susannah I will be down directly."
"Aye." The maid hesitated at the door. "Ye might wish to know that yer husband waits below stairs."
"My husband?"
"He is yer husband, isn't he? The officer who brought you here? He arrived not a quarter hour hence. 'Tis why her ladyship calls for you."
"Then pray help me with my laces, Sarah!"
It had been nearly a se'nnight since Charlotte had last seen Philip, though never again should have suited her very well. But he might have brought news of Robert. Breathless with apprehension, she hastened to the salon.
"Charlotte." He acknowledged her entrance with a restrained greeting.
She acknowledged him with a nod, wasting no breath on civilities. "Have you news of Robert?"
"I've news." His reply was grim.
Charlotte seized in apprehension. "What has transpired?"
"I shall not beat about the bush. The verdict was guilty. It could have gone no other way." He shook his head in resignation.
Gooseflesh formed on her arms. "What does this mean?" she asked, stiffly lowering herself into a chair. "Wh-what of the ssentence?" Her voice was now scarce more than a whisper.
He answered in clipped tones. "I know not how to soften the blow. It was a capital offense." He did not elaborate further but directed a helpless look to Lady Susannah, who rushed to the girl's side.
"You are the very one who put the nails in his coffin!" she cried.
"Damme! 'Tis not the way of it, Charlotte, and you know it!" Philip retorted hotly. "Need I remind you? Devington drew first. He induced me at great reluctance to engage him. Had I wished him dead, I should have finished the job myself!"
Charlotte's mind froze with her countenance. She could not think. She could not breathe. She was paralyzed. Lady Susannah knelt beside her, trying frantically to console the inconsolable.
"Philip, is there naught can be done?" Lady Susannah asked.
"There is nothing. His sentence has been carried out."
The reality of his words struck home. Charlotte gasped with horror. As the room swayed, she clutched the arms of the chair. "No! My God, no! It cannot be!"
For three days, Charlotte remained in her room, returning trays of cold tea and untouched food. Lady Susannah let her be until the fourth day, when Charlotte refused to be roused.
"Sarah, what is the meaning of this?" Charlotte protested as the coverlet was torn from her. She attempted to snatch it back, but it wasn't Sarah who answered.
"Three days is enough for such deep mourning, Charlotte. I have granted you this time in peace to wallow fully, completely, and passionately in your grief, but it is finished, my girl. I shall not allow you to put yourself into a decline. Your new life begins today," Lady Susannah proclaimed.
Charlotte met her tyrannical stare in disbelief. "Leave me be, madam! You know nothing of my grief!" Her voice was hoarse from weeping.
"On the contrary, my dear girl, I well know the deep heartache of lost love, but I will not allow this to go on interminably. It is over, love. You must now pick up the pieces."
Charlotte's entire body shook anew. "But how can I conceive of going on?"
"You cannot give up your life, Charlotte. In time, you shall come to accept what has been, and the pain will fade. But now you have the opportunity to make the remainder of your life as you choose it to be."
"You mean as you have done."
"Indeed I do. My life is my own. I am free to live as I choose and love as I choose, thought I may not always choose wisely." Her thoughts involuntarily wandered to Philip Drake's reappearance in her life. "No one can ruin my life, save me." She laughed drily.
"But I am not free, madam, and my life is not my own! I'm nothing more than the legal property of the man I most despise!" Charlotte's voice quivered with anger and frustration.
"Indeed you are wed, but you need not view your state as imprisonment. On the contrary, you might yet ascertain the very freedom you gain in becoming a matron."
"I don't follow you."
"Don't fret, child. 'Tis too soon for you to comprehend. For now, let's endeavor to get you dressed and packed. We have a journey to undertake."
"A journey?" Charlotte looked alarmed.
"We are withdrawing to Cambridgeshire."
"Cambridgeshire?"
"Indeed, Cheveley Park, to be precise. Perhaps you have heard of it? I have arranged to lease a cottage owned by the Duke of Somerset, another of dear Nigel's friends. You are in great need of a change of scenery, and I haven't visited the countryside in years. I believe 'tis just the thing for you, dear girl. We shall retire to the country forthwith."
"But I should never cause you so much trouble and expense," Charlotte protested.
"Pshaw! Don't trouble yourself of the expense. It shall be borne by Philip. He is your husband, after all."
"Isn't Cheveley close to Newmarket?"
"Yes, it is scarce four miles. By the by, Charlotte, did you not mention a mare you once owned is stabled at Cheveley?"
"Amoret?" Charlotte spoke the name wistfully. "Philip said she was to be bred and stabled there."
"I thought as much," Lady Susannah remarked thoughtfully.
Philip arrived in the midst of their packing. "Sukey, where the devil are you going?" he demanded.
Ignoring his imperious manner, she answered without looking up from her inventory. "You arrive opportunely, Philip. I had begun to fear you would not respond to my message."
She focused her full attention on him now, but her smile quickly faded at his haggard appearance and the slight whiff of stale brandy.
"But what of Charlotte? Surely you don't intend to leave her alone?"
"Of course not!" she answered in a rebuking tone. "Do you think I would shirk my responsibility, when I gave you my word to look after her? The girl has taken the news very hard, as you might guess, but she must get on with her life."
"So, perceiving my callousness and failure to do so, you have taken matters into your own hands."
"On the contrary, your very presence betrays your concern for the girl. I know you to be many things, Philip, but I don't believe you nearly as jaded as you portray. Moreover, I don't believe her alone in her angst." She raked him in a knowing gaze, and then sitting on the silk-upholstered divan, beckoned him to her side. "Come, Philip." Her voice was both soft and insistent. She clearly detected the pain behind the mask of detachment that he tried to drown in drink. Her heart cried out to comfort him, but he once more spurned her.
"I have no desire to speak of it, Sukey."
"I know, my love," she replied tentatively, reaching out her hand.
He hesitated, a shadow of uncertainty flickering in his eyes, but he turned away. When he faced her again, his mask was firmly back in place.
Hurt more than she wished to reveal, Susannah spoke matter-offactly. "Very well, we shall only attend to business at hand. I plan to retire to the country for some time, mayhap for several months."
"Do you indeed?"
"Yes, until the girl is standing on her own two legs." Her answer was firm, resolute.
"I gathered you had taken it into your head to play Lady Benevolence, madam, but how to you intend to pay for your bucolic retreat?" Philip spoke with a sardonic glint in his eyes. "I might ask, if perceiving my present weakness, you intend to bleed me dry?"
"You could at least hear me out before passing judgment," she answered sharply. "Had I thought for a moment you would begrudge her such a small request, I should not have appealed to you."
He considered her quizzically, warily. "All right, I call truce. What precisely is your plan, and what do you require?"
"Firstly, I wish to apply to you for the return of Charlotte's maid, if she can be found. The woman would no doubt be of great comfort."
"No doubt," he agreed dryly. "But she could be anywhere in London."
"I shall contrive to locate her, if you agree only to pay her wages. 'Twill be trifling enough, I assure you, scarce more than room and board."
"Trifling," he grunted. "And secondly?"
"I have already arranged to lease a cottage at Cheveley Park. 'Tis a very modest house. The lease is a paltry sum."
"A paltry sum."
"Indeed paltry, Philip."
"'Twould appear you have matters well in hand, my dear," he replied caustically. "And I suppose you have other requests as well?"
"Aside from the maid and the house, we have need only to hire a carriage to convey us."
"A private conveyance, of course."
"And naturally, sufficient money to sustain us," she added.
"Naturally. I should have guessed the fifty pounds I gave you a mere se'nnight ago would have fallen far short of your needs."
She paled at his insinuation. "Have you grown so cynical that you believe everyone is inspired only by greed? I take grave offense coming from one whose own motives have fallen far short of altruistic." The barb struck home. "In addition to what you have already provided, fifty pounds should suffice to cover our needs."
"Fifty, you say? Not one hundred?" he offered mockingly.
"Fifty pounds should more than suffice, Philip."
"And if I am away for an extended period, how then shall you go on?"
"An extended period? But what do you mean?"
He replied brusquely, "I am deployed to Flanders as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Wade. I depart on the morrow."
"So soon?" Her blurted response was more revealing than she intended. Although wounded by his cynicism and mistrust, she couldn't deny a sharp pang at his imminent departure. "Have you any idea the duration of your absence? I should need to know for Charlotte's sake," she hastily added, mistakenly meeting his gaze while failing to hide the pained look in her own.
Bemused, Philip considered her, wondering if that look, that tone did not belie... something. He dismissed the thought. He would be a fool to believe she possessed a heart.
"One never knows, Sukey. The French continue to amass their forces, and Louis himself takes to the field. I anticipate at least six months, though I don't despair of making winter camp in England. 'Twill all depend on our success." He continued briskly, "I had come thinking you desired to make alternate arrangements for Charlotte, but if you are so willing to involve yourself with her welfare, I shall continue to entrust her to you."
"I am happy to do what I may for one in need of a friend, Philip."
Did she refer to Charlotte or himself? He regarded her quizzically but refused to give any further weight to these thoughts. "Then if there is no more, I shall take my leave of you. I trust a bank draught of two hundred pounds should sustain you?"
"Two hundred? 'Tis more than generous," she answered, hiding her surprise.
He paused, regarding her narrowly. "Might I inquire why you chose Cheveley?"
Her reply was candid. "'Tis by design, as you no doubt suspect, but your question leads to my final request."
"Another? My bounty is not without limits, Sukey," he warned.
"I doubt this last should cause you any undue distress. I merely ask if you yet retain ownership of a mare once belonging to Charlotte. I understood her to be stabled at Cheveley Park."
"If I did, how should that signify?"
"I believe the mare would greatly divert the girl. Would it pain you to give the horse back to her?"
He considered the request. "The mare is bred. I will honor the request with one provision; the coming foal is mine."
With Charlotte pleasantly ensconced at Cheveley, her melancholia slowly diminished. The cottage, though small, was indeed perfect, and although it was a bittersweet reminder of her past, she was delighted with her reunion with Letty and Amoret.
Charlotte began riding again, taking her mare out each day to explore her new surrounds. They rode along the chalk downs and clay-capped hills that ran southeast from Newmarket and comprised Cheveley. She and Amoret, who miraculously had not slipped her foal in their earlier adventure, made their leisurely way along the Newmarket-Ashley Road to the bridge at Broomstick corner and followed the thorn-set ditch that divided the grazing pastures of the heath from the rabbit warrens on the flat summit, aptly named Warren Hill.
At Long Hill, she discovered the hawk ladder and the King's chair used by Charles II, but it was the vista at the site of the Cheveley Castle ruin that inspired Charlotte. Gazing over the sweeping heath and the chalk valley below, her plan was born. After nearly three months in her bucolic idyll, Charlotte was finally resolved to take Lady Susannah's advice and live her life again, and inasmuch as she was able, she would live it on her terms.
Although Robert had been cruelly taken from her, their dreams still lived in her heart, and what better way to honor his memory than to make their dreams a reality. Having already mentally mapped out the landscape, Charlotte began to make inquiries of the available grazing land, lush green pastures that would nurture the foals she would raise.
Charlotte had little money at her disposal, only the quarterly allowance of one hundred pounds that Sukey had negotiated for her, but it was more than enough. What need had she of carriages and ball gowns, when she chose to bury herself in a village populated by farmers?
As her scheme took place, Charlotte leased a modest parcel, comprising ten hectares, in the chalk valley less than a mile south of Newmarket. The proximity of her pasture provided her easy access to the Newmarket Heath and Gallops laid out to train and exercise the Newmarket racehorses. As part of her daily routine, Charlotte would ride along Warren Hill, Long Hill, and Side Hill in unobtrusive observation of the prospective racers that would one day be her adversaries on the turf.
As spring transitioned to summer and Amoret neared the end of her eleven-month gestation, Charlotte contracted laborers to build several large paddocks and shelters that would comfortably house Amoret and the future broodmare band. With Amoret settled for her confinement and only a month to go, Charlotte realized the need for a stud groom. She needed someone knowledgeable about breeding and foaling practices, should anything go wrong. But who? Hopeful of the answer, she dispatched a note and waited.
Knowing that Lady Susannah had experienced her fill of country life, Charlotte reassured her friend that she was ready to stand on her own. With some hesitation but eager to return to her own life, Lady Susannah returned to London, with a promise of frequent correspondence.
Charlotte continued in newfound tranquility until receiving an unexpected letter from Beatrix. Her cousin had written woefully, pleading for Charlotte to come to Hastings Park and stand as godmother to the unborn child, and had lamented that she awaited the birth in loneliness and isolated confinement.
Charlotte's first impulse was to ignore the letter, but her conscience nagged. Somehow, she felt sorry for her cousin. Had not Beatrix also been a pawn in Sir Garfield's game? Moreover, the infant would be kin. She would be the babe's second cousin through Beatrix, and an aunt through her marriage to Philip. Common civility dictated she at least attend the christening.
Never having previously given thought to the matter, Charlotte also realized she was daughter-in-law to the Earl of Hastings, a man she had never even met. Daughter-in-law to an earl. She pondered the notion, and squaring her shoulders, decided to make the journey to East Sussex.
Was she not now her own woman? She was free to leave at any time she chose. She had learned much from Lady Susannah's example.
Charlotte and Letty packed lightly, travelling by stage, and arrived without incident at Hastings Park. Charlotte shuddered at first sight of the estate, experiencing another pang of sympathy for Beatrix in this desolate place.
Greeted by her aunt, Charlotte and Letty followed her through the empty, cavernous halls to their assigned chambers. Letty unpacked while Charlotte accompanied Lady Felicia to her cousin's rooms, where she found Beatrix reclining in bed and looking pitiful.
Still clad in her dressing gown, her hair tumbling about her pale face in tangled disarray, Beatrix greeted her cousin with a wan smile. "Charlotte! Truly, I did not believe you would come."
Concerned by her appearance, Charlotte inquired, "Beatrix, have you taken ill? Is all right with the babe?"
Heaving a greatly exaggerated sigh, she answered, "'Tis just this intolerable confinement. You have no idea how breeding drains one of life. 'Tis all I can do to dress some days. If it were not for Mama, I don't know how I should go on."
"My poor Trixie," Lady Felicia said, clucking, "'twill all be over soon, dearest. The midwife predicts the pains will commence with the next full moon."
"I should like nothing more than to be done with it, Mama. I have been miserable, exiled to this wretched place! I don't fathom why I could not have remained in London, but Edmund insisted I come here."
"Dearest, you know tradition dictates the heir be born at the ancestral home. All the Earls of Hastings have been born here. Your babe is to be the future earl, after all, and as Viscountess Uxeter, you must abide by all the queer customs of the nobility."
"But how much longer must I remain here?" Beatrix whined.
"I daresay 'tis for your husband to decide. The health and safety of his heir takes precedence over your wishes to reside in London, my dear," her mother answered.
"But couldn't I go to Wortley, Mama? Anywhere but this wretched pile of stone!"
"You are just homesick, Trixie. 'Tis only natural when a girl weds and leaves her home. I daresay Charlotte feels the same. Do you not?" She directed the question to her niece.
"I confess I have been very happily ensconced these past months in Cheveley, Aunt."
"Cheveley, Charlotte? Where on earth is Cheveley?" her aunt asked.
"In East Cambridgeshire, near Newmarket."
"Newmarket, indeed! 'Tis a gentleman's playground and no fit place for a lady."
"Only during the racing season, Aunt. 'Tis quiet enough the rest of the time."
"Horse racing? I am confounded your husband tolerates this infernal obsession with horses! As a married woman, you should conduct yourself with more decorum," Lady Felicia chided.
"I am the wife of an officer, letting a cottage from the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. Who should question the respectability of such an arrangement?"
"Indeed, but I pity you, Charlotte, quite abandoned by your husband and having to make do with so little. Why has Philip not sold his commission and settled you both in a decent house?"
A stab of jealousy caused Beatrix to add, "Poor dear, married to a man who prefers the army to his wife's bed."
"The army is far safer for Philip Drake than my bed, Beatrix," Charlotte snapped. Her remark generated a gasp of horror from the other women.
Her aunt added, "You are duty bound to bed with your husband. If you refuse him, he has every right to put you aside. You provide grounds for annulment!"
"One might only hope, Aunt."
"I cannot countenance such a speech from your lips, Charlotte!" her aunt said in reproach.
Charlotte was moved by her resentment to answer, "I was forced into a union with a vile scoundrel. Did you think I might come to delight in my circumstance? Think again! Philip Drake should live a far healthier life remaining abroad."
T he Campaign of 1744 began with Louis XV's proud review of his eighty thousand troops at Lisle. By contrast, Field Marshal Wade found his own allied army diminished when the Dutch and Austrians failed again to muster their promised quota. His command, as Lord Stair's before him, was further weakened by the petty jealousies and antagonisms of the Austrian and Dutch generals. As the allied army lay impotent with conflicting counsels and perpetual bickering, the French divided and conquered.
When word of the campaign reached the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt's voice cried in outrage: "Once more we are made to look ridiculous before the world!" He narrated in a mocking voice: "On July the thirtieth, our forces encamped on the road to Ghent within a few miles of the enemy. On the thirty-first, a Scots captain was taken prisoner.
"On August the first, they looked for a field of battle, but no enemy was nigh; on the second, they were put in fear, but danger proved at a distance. The third of August, they slept soundly. On the fourth, the army assembled for review, and on the fifth the Hanoverians foraged, reporting a shot fired at them! But on the sixth, the British forces foraged with no report of fire.
"And on the seventh day they rested."
The chamber echoed with stifled guffaws.
Lord Uxeter leaned over to George Lyttelton. "So proceeds our third brilliant campaign. We advance and they retreat, just as two months ago, we retreated and they advanced. Is it any wonder we are ridiculed and our general mocked in farces on the French stage?"
Mr. Pitt's manner grew more inflamed. "Even with the aid of Divine Providence in striking the King of France with fever, our generals proved singularly impotent! I am moved to ask, gentlemen, if this House must petition the Lord Almighty to place his archangel Michael in command, that we might actually be moved to fight!"
The continued troubles in government and heated debates over the war had given Lord Uxeter valid enough reason to return to Parliament after seeing his bride settled in Sussex, though he would have eagerly invented any excuse to rid himself of the insipid cow.
Overall, however, his marriage had caused little inconvenience, and viewed in proper perspective, he was not completely displeased with how he had managed thus far. At Newmarket, he and Sir Garfield had come to an arrangement. In exchange for the dowry, he had taken Beatrix to wife and agreed to initiate Charles Wallace into his political circles.
Edmund had paid court to Beatrix, sharing his knowledge of her condition and voicing tender compassion for her, followed by righteous condemnation of his vile brother for seducing and defiling such an innocent. He had convinced her that his rogue brother would never have honored his promises to her, and that he would have eventually abandoned her to raise his bastard child alone.
Edmund had vowed to cherish Beatrix and raise the child as his own. He swore that by bearing him a son, she would be assured wealth, comfort, and status as mistress of a great ancestral estate. With his gentle compassion and earnestly spoken promises, Beatrix had acquiesced to a hasty private wedding.
In dealing with his innate revulsion to couple with her in the marriage bed, Edmund had asserted solicitous concern for her delicate condition. In the most selfsacrificing manner, he had stroked her cheek, lovingly stating his willingness to abstain from conjugal relations to ensure the health and well-being of the bride and child, whom he swore were paramount to his happiness.
Edmund was struck with the irony that his brother's by-blow would truly assure his inheritance and therefore his happiness.
Edmund had then taken Beatrix to Sussex. She had lamented his leaving her at the estate with only the invalid and reclusive earl, but his tender words of solicitude had again prevailed. He persuaded her of the necessity of spending her finals months in the fresh country air. By remaining at his ancestral home, she could forgo the hazards and fatigue of travel when the time came to birth the child. He further placated her by suggesting she send for her mother and cousin to keep her company during her confinement, and promised to return to celebrate the birth.
No, Beatrix had not proven excessively difficult to manipulate, but now word of his heir's imminent birth came amidst a looming political crisis and possible government collapse.
He was acutely aware of the unprecedented opportunity a crisis of this magnitude would provide; nevertheless, Edmund could neither afford to displease his father at this juncture. He consoled himself that he might perform his duty in Sussex expeditiously and resume his normal life within the for'night.
Hoping for diversion along the way, Edmund had sent word to Charles Wallace to accompany him. Directing his coach to the residence at Upper Brook Street, Lord Uxeter collected Charles, and the pair set off.
The coach halted at a small inn in the village of Pembury, about halfway to their destination. The road conditions had been poor, and the hour was late. The gentlemen were excessively tired, hungry, and cramped after nine hours in the closed carriage.
Lord Uxeter sent the coachman to inquire about accommodations. Returning, they spoke briefly. Edmund addressed Charles. "My apologies, dear boy, but there is only one room to be had, and the coachman says 'tis twenty miles to the next lodging. With the lateness of the hour, I fear we have little option but to break our journey here."
Charles responded affably. "By all means, my lord, you take the chamber. I shall sleep in the carriage. 'Tis no trouble at all, I assure you." As he spoke, he stretched his cramped muscles with a slight wince.
Perceiving his companion's discomfort, Lord Uxeter protested. "I should not countenance such a thing! The coachman shall make do with the coach. 'Twill be only minor inconvenience to share the chamber. For now, let us partake of supper, and let the innkeeper attend to the accommodations."
The innkeeper stocked the fire in the taproom and provided two large tankards of strong ale, which he replenished at regular intervals while his wife brought forth a meal of cold chicken, bread, and cheese before departing to prepare the room.
Charles broke the companionable silence as they ate. "Lord Uxeter," he began, "though we've been acquainted for some months, and by marriage you are my brother, it occurs to me that I know very little of your personal history. Were you raised in Sussex?"
"Shall we forgo the formalities, Charles? As I am your brotherin-law, you should call me Edmund."
"Indeed, my lo---"
"Edmund," he corrected. "And to answer your question, I was born at Hastings Park, but one might well argue I was raised there."
"You grew up in London, then? Though I have enjoyed the various diversions of the city, I would not trade my boyhood running wild in the countryside, galloping the heath, fishing, swimming, hunting the wood. Devington and I made all manner of mischief in our youth. 'Tis a pity about Devington. We were boyhood chums, you know... I fear growing maudlin if I dwell on it. My point is," he continued briskly, "there is great freedom for a lad in the country. Don't you agree?"
"As much as I hate to gainsay you, I cannot agree. I never knew the boyhood freedom you describe. My first and most vivid memory of my boyhood was being packed off to Harrow on my fifth birthday. I scarce left its hallowed halls until my eleventh year, when the earl sent for me during my holiday. I arrived to find a stepmother, and the next holiday, a new brother.
"Thenceforth, I developed a decided distaste for my holidays and seldom went home. After Harrow, I attended Cambridge, and moved to London upon taking my degree."
"I daresay, I appreciate my boyhood tenfold after that tale," Charles replied.
"Then I have become a bore! Suffice to say, I prefer the delights of town life. London offers its own kind of freedom. It is a place of many diversions. With proper discretion, one has the liberty to pursue any pleasure, whatever it might be."
His intense regard left the younger man somehow discomfited. Charles yawned and stretched. "The hour grows late; I should like to retire."
"Indeed," Edmund replied. "We've yet fifty miles to travel on the morrow; 'twould be wise to get an early start."
The men quit the taproom for the single chamber, where the apologetic innkeeper's wife lamented that, while she had produced clean linens, there was no truckle to be had.
"At least 'tis a bed of good size," she offered. "Many a night when they patrolled the coast, we had billeted soldiers in this very room. Four at a time didst share the same bed, though they was not of the quality of you fine gents. But there bein' none else, mayhap you might make do?" She gestured apologetically.
"It appears we've little choice," Edmund remarked dryly with a covert glance at Charles, who was already removing his outer clothes.
His fatigue compounded by ale, Charles heedlessly stripped down to his shirt almost before the innkeeper's wife had left the room. The young man forthwith collapsed onto the bed and into deep and easy slumber.
Edmund, however, was far from relaxed in his current situation. He had carefully cultivated an easy familiarity with Charles. He had nurtured camaraderie and trust by taking the young man under his wing in every sense, but he had been leery to reveal too much of himself, choosing rather to maintain a safe distance.
Having grown increasingly cynical, disillusioned, and jaded, Edmund was strongly attracted to the fresh, idealistic youth, but he had tread carefully. Never seeking to press an advantage, he had awaited the right moment to test the waters. Now, gazing longingly at the young man sprawled in careless repose, he was enticed to the point of distraction.
After imbibing too freely of the ale, Charles had fallen fast asleep but awoke to the most profanely disturbing situation. He now closed his eyes in a constrained effort to recall the chain of events but shuddered in revulsion at the images and sensations that evoked.
First he had thought it a dream. What had actually happened? His recollection was vague, as if his brain were suppressing the episode from his consciousness. What little he did remember, he would much sooner forget.
Charles Wallace fled the inn at Pembury on a stolen horse. Preferring to think of it as borrowed without prior notice, he vowed to return the nag as soon as possible, but circumstances had necessitated his actions. Utterly distracted, Charles rode blindly for miles, heedless of his direction, while he struggled to untangle his emotions.
Lord Uxeter! The man whom his father had chosen to wed Beatrix, the man who had been his close companion and mentor for months, the man whom he had trusted and respected, the man his father had chosen to groom him for a position in Parliament. The place his father had arranged for him. His father's choice. His father's desires. His father's ambitions.
Charles's father had achieved much with modest beginnings, but over the years he had become ambitious beyond measure, willing to advance his cause regardless of the price others might pay.
Now he wondered just how much his father had known about the nature and character of Lord Uxeter. Had he known of Uxeter's inclinations? Had he even suspected? Moreover, did he care what befell his son as long as it served his agenda? Charles had a myriad of questions with few answers.
Dutiful and compliant, Charles had never resisted or defied his father's will, had never hesitated to follow his father's set course, even if it ran contrary to his own heart's desire. Even Beatrix, spoiled from birth, had never overtly challenged their father's will.
Ironically, only quiet, demure little cousin Charlotte had ever dared flout him, but she had paid dearly for it. His father's machinations had not only destroyed Charlotte and Robert's lives but had led Beatrix to what he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would be a wretched union with Lord Uxeter. He was deeply sorry for both his sister and the child she would soon bear.
Charlotte, however, had demonstrated more backbone and strength of character than any would have previously credited her. Although dealt a serious blow, she had determined to make a life for herself, God help Philip Drake! Charles chuckled briefly before refocusing on his quandary.
To continue to Hastings after what had transpired was completely out of the question. To go back to London and carry on as if nothing had happened was equally beyond his ability to endure. He could head northward, back to his childhood home, but to what possible future?
Or, he reflected, he could for once in his life risk his father's displeasure to follow his own course. He realized there was no longer any debate.
Charles directed his borrowed horse northward to Westminster, the regimental headquarters of the First Foot Guards.
Hastings Park, East Sussex, September 17, 1744
E eeeeeeeeeeh!" As Beatrix pushed for the last time, the shriek echoed thru the manor. Her birth pains had commenced with the advent of the full moon, just as the midwife predicted. After twelve hours of exhaustive labor, her final effort brought forth the firstborn of Lord and Lady Uxeter.
"It be done now, my lady!" the midwife exclaimed, attending to the umbilical cord still attaching the babe to its mother. Lady Felicia rose from the bedside where she mopped her daughter's brow.
"Out with it!" she demanded of the midwife. "Is all well?"
The gray-haired woman flipped the babe upside down to clear its airway. Another shriek followed the action, and the babe's cry rang through the manor, mimicking that of its mother.
"Aye, ma'am. All is as it should be," the midwife replied, wiping her bloodstained hands on her apron. She had barely swaddled the babe before the impatient grandmother snatched it from her hands.
"Trixie! You have done it, my girl!" Her mother beamed. "Such blue eyes, he has! Take a look at your son, the future Earl of Hastings." She carried the shrieking infant to its bewildered mother.
"Madam," the midwife began anxiously, interrupted by Lady Felicia before she could speak her piece. "Don't just stand there, woman! We must send immediate word to his lordship, the earl, and dispatch a messenger to Westminster to alert the proud papa!"
"But, madam, you must---"
"Get you hence, Mrs. Lambe! Inform his lordship that the heir is born at last!"
"But, madam, my Lord Uxeter must be informed---" she said with great distress.
"Indeed, Lord Uxeter must be informed without delay! Mrs. Lambe, do you attend me? Why are you standing there wringing your hands? Off with you!"
"Aye, madam. Just as you say, madam." The harried woman left the birthing chamber.
"Beatrix, is there aught you require?" Charlotte inquired of her cousin, leaving Lady Felicia to coo over her wailing grandchild.
"Can't you stop its confounded wailing, Mama?" Beatrix wailed.
"Perhaps the babe is hungry?" Charlotte suggested.
Lady Felicia handed the vociferous infant to its mother, who looked at it askance. "What do you expect me to do with it?" Beatrix asked.
"Why, you must put the babe to nurse at your breast, of course," her mother patiently explained.
"Put it to my breast?" she cried in horror. "If it need nurse, then send for a wet nurse at once, Mama!"
"But my dearest, you are the babe's mother."
"Do you know nothing of better society, Mama? No woman of fashion would think to do such thing. I am a viscountess now and must not subject either my husband or myself to ridicule by putting a babe to my breast as if I were a common shepherd's wife. I must have a wet nurse!"
"'Twas not the way in my day," Lady Felicia protested. "You and Charles were both upon my teat until your third year, and none the worse for it!"
"Perhaps if you just hold the child?" Charlotte advised. "The babe will surely be comforted in its mother's loving arms."
"Comfort! 'Tis I in need of comfort! Do you know what I have been through in squeezing this thing out of my body? I am exhausted, and my nerves are shattered. How shall I ever sleep with that incessant wailing? Take it away from me!"
"Shall I inquire about the wet nurse, Lady Felicia?" Charlotte offered.
"I shall see to it without delay, Charlotte," her aunt replied. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to hold the babe while I attend to the matter?"
"Certainly, Aunt."
With a questioning look to her daughter, she handed the crying infant to Charlotte, who held the babe, rocking it close to her breast. Almost instantly, the protests ceased, and the babe relaxed into slumber. Lady Felicia departed, greatly relieved.
"Thank God for peace at last! You have no idea what I have suffered for that brat, Charlotte!" Beatrix bemoaned.
"I confess I have little understanding."
"It all began with the most excruciating pains. 'Twas unbearable. I thought I should die! I shall never bear another child. I swear it!"
"The pain is yet new to you, but in regard to what it ultimately wrought, surely in time, you shall forget. 'Tis a beautiful babe. You should be proud," Charlotte remarked, wistfully gazing at the sleeping child.
"Is it truly? Beautiful, that is," Beatrix asked. "It appeared like a shriveled little prune to me."
"Nay, 'tis a lovely child."
"Mayhap I hadn't a good look at it, then. Bring it to me, Charlotte."
Pleased to have persuaded her cousin, Charlotte rose cautiously from her chair and brought the baby back to its mother.
"It looks like a bundle of rags swaddled so. Pray unwrap it so I can have a proper look."
"Do you think it a good idea? The room is rather chill."
"I want only a quick look at the thing. I am its mother, after all," she remarked churlishly.
Charlotte carefully laid the bundle on its mother's lap, where they proceeded to unswaddle it, slowly freeing the tiny arms, revealing chest, torso, and... Beatrix and Charlotte simultaneously gasped.
"'Tis not a son at all! 'Tis a girl!"
Arriving alone at his family estate, Lord Uxeter stifled his repugnance for the part he must now play---proud papa to his brother's bastard. Proceeding directly to his wife's apartments, he knocked only once and entered without waiting for reply. His motherin-law met him in the outer chamber.
"Lord Uxeter!" she gushed. "We have awaited your arrival so expectantly. Beatrix shall be delighted to receive you."
"Indeed?" His reply was frosty. "Then I trust my wife is well, madam?"
"Our poor Beatrix is much in need of a husband's comfort after such an ordeal."
"Ordeal?" His expression noted alarm. "Has she lost the child?"
"Indeed not, my lord!" Lady Felicia beamed. "Our little Beatrix has born you a beautiful, healthy child!"
Edmund metaphorically felt the weight of the world, or more accurately, the weight of the earldom, tumble from his shoulders. He had achieved his inheritance at long last. He even found it within himself to smile at his motherin-law and exhibit a modicum of concern.
"Might I inquire then after the health of the mother?" he prompted.
"They are both quite well," she assured, "but 'twas very trying, you know. Beatrix has always maintained such a delicate constitution."
He had no interest in the details. "Where might I find the child, Lady Felicia?"
"The babe is in the nursery with the wet nurse, my lord. Though we did no such like in my day. Regardless of what the nobility does, I maintain that a babe should suckle at its own mother's bosom. Anything aught is unnatural, if you ask me!" she insisted indignantly.
"Then it was well advised you were not asked. Now, pray direct me to my son."
Edmund came from the nursery ashen-faced. He had made a farce of his life to guarantee his inheritance, and now the worthless cow had failed him! His first impulse had been to throttle the useless life out of her.
Edmund burned with injustice. What right had that damnable tyrant to manipulate his life by forcing him into this marriage in the first place? He was the firstborn. The title and estates were rightfully his!
"You think me unreasonable and my wrath unjustified, you insolent whelp?" the earl had retorted. "The marriage itself was illconceived, and now this negligence!"
"I have taken a wife, as you wished, and she has born a healthy child," Edmund protested. "Were not your own parents blessed with daughters, my lord, before the ultimate arrival of a son?"
"You lead me to believe you would breed an entire pack of brats, Edmund?"
"If it is required to produce a male heir, my lord, but I am assured that the next will be a son."
"It shall be required of you to get her again with child. Your time runs out, Edmund. Perhaps it is time I sent for Philip?"
Edmund left the earl's chamber, agonized and unbalanced by his conflagration of emotions, bitterly resentful of his father, filled with jealousy and loathing for his brother, contemptuous and scornful of his wife, and frustrated with unrequited desire for Charles Wallace.
T he firstborn of Lord and Lady Uxeter, Anna Sophie Drake, was christened on a rainy and chill October day in the Hastings's family chapel, with few attending to celebrate the birth. The child's maternal grandfather, Sir Garfield Wallace, had come down from London for the joyous occasion, but notably absent was the Earl of Hastings.
Grimly going through the motions, Lord Uxeter distastefully held the screeching infant, impatiently handing it off the instant the sacraments were completed. Beatrix, determined to play the doting mother, at least whilst in company, received the babe with smiles and coos. As the godmother, Charlotte looked anxiously on, wondering what the poor child's future would hold.
Returning to the great house, the family dispersed, the women taking the babe to the nursery while Lord Uxeter and Sir Garfield retired to the library. Sir Garfield helped himself to a brandy and raised his glass cheerfully. "Congratulations, m'boy, on the first of the brood!" Sir Garfield waited expectantly. He cleared his throat and prompted again, "A toast to little Sophie, Lord Uxeter."
"The devil you say!" Edmund replied contemptuously. "The earl requires a male heir." He snatched the bottle and filled his glass.
"'Tis not the end of the world," his father-in-law consoled. "Beatrix was our firstborn, and is to this day the apple of my eye. Charles came along soon enough, and I must say, I appreciated the boy all the more for his late arrival." He paused with a frown. "Speaking of Charles, I wonder what the blazes has held him up? Indeed, I had thought he travelled down here with you. He left a note to that effect. 'Tis strange indeed for him to miss the christening. Most unlike Charles."
"Perhaps he had intended to depart London with me, Sir Garfield, but I quit the city in such haste that we must have missed one another in passing. Pity. I should have much enjoyed his company." He took a long drink of his brandy.
"Even so, he surely should have arrived long since," Sir Garfield repeated. "I begin to fear he was beset by highwaymen."
"He is a young man, and young men are easily distracted. No doubt some harmless diversion has delayed him, but if it lessens your apprehension, I shall send an express to inquire whether he remains in London."
"Very kind of you, my lord. 'Twould greatly ease my mind," Sir Garfield confessed.
"Consider it done, sir. If you will excuse me, I shall attend to the matter at once." Edmund finished his drink in another swallow, relieved to have some excuse to part company from his insufferable father-in-law. He went to his rooms where he could brood his next move in peace.
Edmund had formed some powerful connections in the Upper House of Parliament, Lords Gower and Cobham among others. The House of Lords frequently presided over civil issues, including acts of divorcement; surely they could also overturn a will.
Surely, he might yet manipulate matters to his advantage. He'd be damned to let the despot rule him from the grave as he had in life. It was time he departed for London.
"What do you mean I am to remain at Hastings?" Beatrix wailed. "You can't keep me here! I have been months in this wretched place with not a soul for company aside from Mama. You said I should stay for my confinement. I have done as you wished. 'Twas no fault of mine it was a girl, but the child is legally yours, and you promised to honor and protect us. You cannot punish me by leaving us here!" She choked on her words.
"You will not leave until you have fulfilled your one duty in this marriage, that of producing an heir."
"Marriage? This is no marriage. What manner of husband have you been? I've scarce laid eyes on you in four months. Tell me the truth, Edmund," she demanded, "did you want me only because Philip did? Was it jealousy because you knew I was his?"
He erupted with a mocking laugh. "You vain, insipid cow! I never wanted you to begin with. You were nothing more than a means to an end, but since you have failed, here you shall remain."
"But you can't keep me prisoner. If you won't take me back to London with you, then I shall go to Wortley with Mama. Indeed, I shall. Then you will be sorry." She stilled her weeping as realization dawned. "If I go to Wortley, then what of your precious heir?"
With his barely discernible wince, Edmund betrayed himself. He had revealed the chink in his armor.
She spoke her thoughts aloud. "You need me, Edmund, don't you? You need me in order to become the earl. You need me, or you shall lose everything!" She laughed aloud at her epiphany. "I am not nearly as stupid as you think!"
Edmund's eyes narrowed in an icy and penetrating stare.
Beatrix advanced seductively toward her husband, boldly pressing her abundant breasts to him. She whispered tauntingly, "You need me, Edmund. You must have an heir to become the earl, but you have yet to come to my bed."
Edmund shuddered involuntarily, turning white about the mouth as she breathed these last words into his ear. He tensed when she moved against him, speaking in her breathless whisper, "How can you possibly get an heir and your earldom if you are in London and I am wasting away here?"
Edmund's only betrayal of emotion was a telltale muscle twitching in the left side of his jaw. Did she actually think to manipulate and control him?
"You ignorant, bovine slut!" His blow sent her sprawling onto the bed. He pounced on top of her, muffling her cries with his mouth.
Pinned helplessly, Beatrix utilized the only weapon at her disposal. Biting as hard as she could, she viciously tore at his flesh.
"Stupid bitch." He struck her again and wrestled her onto her stomach, pinning one arm beneath her body while twisting the other agonizingly behind her back. Drowning her efforts to scream, he shoved a thick feather pillow under her face.
It seemed he meant to suffocate her, until he tore at her dressing gown and exposed her from behind. He forced her legs apart with his bony knee. "So, you pine for my attentions, do you? I'll give you what you want." As he fought her exertions, his breath was hot and moist on her neck.
Beatrix bucked and twisted in hysterical expectation of his imminent and degrading invasion. But it never came. He cursed vilely and threw her to the floor.
Beatrix sized him up contemptuously, growing braver with the knowledge that he could not violate her, though he had tried. "I begin to think the getting of an heir might present quite a dilemma for you, my lord. Mayhap you should have Philip take care of the matter for you? But you had already thought of that, hadn't you? Philip shall produce the only heir in the end. You shall see, and Philip will inherit all." She laughed in his face, realizing too late that her final taunt had pushed him over the edge.
Edmund ignited. Seizing her white shoulders in a biting grip, he lifted and thrust her against the corner of the bed frame. Twisting her hair around his hand, he snapped her head back. As her skull cracked against the wooden frame, Beatrix gasped with a flash of white. His sinewy frame held her captive. Her spine bore into the post, and he growled in her ear, "You would conspire with Philip against me, you treacherous whore!"
His hand closed like a vise about her windpipe.
She twisted and writhed frantically in a vain attempt to free herself. Struggling for what may have been seconds but seemed eternity, her body, quickly exhausted from its futile exertions, went limp. Blackness closed in.
She had nearly given herself completely up to the darkness when the iron-like grasp gave way. She slumped, clutching at the post, gasping, choking, and sucking in air, precious air, while Edmund regarded her with a speculative gleam, perhaps realizing just how near to death he had actually taken her.
Wild-eyed, confounded, and speechless, Beatrix stared back at him, as with cool composure he buttoned the flap of his breeches, straightened his waistcoat, and smoothed back his hair. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at his torn, bloody lower lip and strode abruptly past Charlotte, who stood dumbly in the hall.
Having fulfilled her obligation to stay for the christening, Charlotte was anxious to return to her quiet life at Cheveley. After notifying Letty of their morning departure, Charlotte finished packing and headed to Beatrix's rooms for a parting word.
Approaching the door, she prepared to knock, but her hand was stayed by raised voices. She froze at her cousin's distinct tone of distress, but silence ensued. Charlotte turned to go, but Lord Uxeter barged out of the room, brushing by her without a word, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his lip.
Wide-eyed, Charlotte entered her cousin's rooms, finding Beatrix lying on the floor, shaken and disheveled. Red bands surrounded her throat, blood trickled from her nose, and a welt covered the entire right side of her face.
"Good God, Beatrix! What has that beast done to you?" Charlotte exclaimed in horror. "I heard you arguing. If only I had interrupted..."
"I r-refused to obey, to stay at H-hastings. I d-despise this wr-wretched place, and he..." She inhaled deeply with a cough. "He never w-wanted me, Charlotte." Her voice quavered.
"Shhh. Hush now. Don't try to talk anymore."
"He only w-wanted an heir, and I wanted to be a countess," Beatrix continued softly, as if to herself. "But I am nothing to him, less than nothing, now I failed to give him a son. He loathes and abhors me, but it has taken me a beating to see it. I have been so very stupid!" She hiccoughed, and her tears began anew.
"You are not stupid! You were deceived, as any woman might have been. I will get Aunt and Uncle at once! They must take you away from here and back to Wortley."
"But he is my husband! What can they do?"
"No man, not even your husband, has a right to abuse you. You must tell your father. He is the only one who might make it right. You must tell him everything."
"You are right." Beatrix nodded. "I shall tell all I have suffered, and they will take me back home, where I need never set eyes on that vile creature again! I am going home, Charlotte." She sniffed and gently blew her nose.
Charlotte helped her trembling cousin to her bed and set out in purposeful strides to locate her aunt and uncle.
If only she were a man, she would have surely dealt Edmund Drake his comeuppance.
For the second time in her life, first with Philip and now with his brother, Charlotte was emotionally charged enough to commit murder.
T he firstborn of Lord and Lady Uxeter, Anna Sophie Drake, was christened on a rainy and chill October day in the Hastings's family chapel, with few attending to celebrate the birth. The child's maternal grandfather, Sir Garfield Wallace, had come down from London for the joyous occasion, but notably absent was the Earl of Hastings.
Grimly going through the motions, Lord Uxeter distastefully held the screeching infant, impatiently handing it off the instant the sacraments were completed. Beatrix, determined to play the doting mother, at least whilst in company, received the babe with smiles and coos. As the godmother, Charlotte looked anxiously on, wondering what the poor child's future would hold.
Returning to the great house, the family dispersed, the women taking the babe to the nursery while Lord Uxeter and Sir Garfield retired to the library. Sir Garfield helped himself to a brandy and raised his glass cheerfully. "Congratulations, m'boy, on the first of the brood!" Sir Garfield waited expectantly. He cleared his throat and prompted again, "A toast to little Sophie, Lord Uxeter."
"The devil you say!" Edmund replied contemptuously. "The earl requires a male heir." He snatched the bottle and filled his glass.
"'Tis not the end of the world," his father-in-law consoled. "Beatrix was our firstborn, and is to this day the apple of my eye. Charles came along soon enough, and I must say, I appreciated the boy all the more for his late arrival." He paused with a frown. "Speaking of Charles, I wonder what the blazes has held him up? Indeed, I had thought he travelled down here with you. He left a note to that effect. 'Tis strange indeed for him to miss the christening. Most unlike Charles."
"Perhaps he had intended to depart London with me, Sir Garfield, but I quit the city in such haste that we must have missed one another in passing. Pity. I should have much enjoyed his company." He took a long drink of his brandy.
"Even so, he surely should have arrived long since," Sir Garfield repeated. "I begin to fear he was beset by highwaymen."
"He is a young man, and young men are easily distracted. No doubt some harmless diversion has delayed him, but if it lessens your apprehension, I shall send an express to inquire whether he remains in London."
"Very kind of you, my lord. 'Twould greatly ease my mind," Sir Garfield confessed.
"Consider it done, sir. If you will excuse me, I shall attend to the matter at once." Edmund finished his drink in another swallow, relieved to have some excuse to part company from his insufferable father-in-law. He went to his rooms where he could brood his next move in peace.
Edmund had formed some powerful connections in the Upper House of Parliament, Lords Gower and Cobham among others. The House of Lords frequently presided over civil issues, including acts of divorcement; surely they could also overturn a will.
Surely, he might yet manipulate matters to his advantage. He'd be damned to let the despot rule him from the grave as he had in life. It was time he departed for London.
"What do you mean I am to remain at Hastings?" Beatrix wailed. "You can't keep me here! I have been months in this wretched place with not a soul for company aside from Mama. You said I should stay for my confinement. I have done as you wished. 'Twas no fault of mine it was a girl, but the child is legally yours, and you promised to honor and protect us. You cannot punish me by leaving us here!" She choked on her words.
"You will not leave until you have fulfilled your one duty in this marriage, that of producing an heir."
"Marriage? This is no marriage. What manner of husband have you been? I've scarce laid eyes on you in four months. Tell me the truth, Edmund," she demanded, "did you want me only because Philip did? Was it jealousy because you knew I was his?"
He erupted with a mocking laugh. "You vain, insipid cow! I never wanted you to begin with. You were nothing more than a means to an end, but since you have failed, here you shall remain."
"But you can't keep me prisoner. If you won't take me back to London with you, then I shall go to Wortley with Mama. Indeed, I shall. Then you will be sorry." She stilled her weeping as realization dawned. "If I go to Wortley, then what of your precious heir?"
With his barely discernible wince, Edmund betrayed himself. He had revealed the chink in his armor.
She spoke her thoughts aloud. "You need me, Edmund, don't you? You need me in order to become the earl. You need me, or you shall lose everything!" She laughed aloud at her epiphany. "I am not nearly as stupid as you think!"
Edmund's eyes narrowed in an icy and penetrating stare.
Beatrix advanced seductively toward her husband, boldly pressing her abundant breasts to him. She whispered tauntingly, "You need me, Edmund. You must have an heir to become the earl, but you have yet to come to my bed."
Edmund shuddered involuntarily, turning white about the mouth as she breathed these last words into his ear. He tensed when she moved against him, speaking in her breathless whisper, "How can you possibly get an heir and your earldom if you are in London and I am wasting away here?"
Edmund's only betrayal of emotion was a telltale muscle twitching in the left side of his jaw. Did she actually think to manipulate and control him?
"You ignorant, bovine slut!" His blow sent her sprawling onto the bed. He pounced on top of her, muffling her cries with his mouth.
Pinned helplessly, Beatrix utilized the only weapon at her disposal. Biting as hard as she could, she viciously tore at his flesh.
"Stupid bitch." He struck her again and wrestled her onto her stomach, pinning one arm beneath her body while twisting the other agonizingly behind her back. Drowning her efforts to scream, he shoved a thick feather pillow under her face.
It seemed he meant to suffocate her, until he tore at her dressing gown and exposed her from behind. He forced her legs apart with his bony knee. "So, you pine for my attentions, do you? I'll give you what you want." As he fought her exertions, his breath was hot and moist on her neck.
Beatrix bucked and twisted in hysterical expectation of his imminent and degrading invasion. But it never came. He cursed vilely and threw her to the floor.
Beatrix sized him up contemptuously, growing braver with the knowledge that he could not violate her, though he had tried. "I begin to think the getting of an heir might present quite a dilemma for you, my lord. Mayhap you should have Philip take care of the matter for you? But you had already thought of that, hadn't you? Philip shall produce the only heir in the end. You shall see, and Philip will inherit all." She laughed in his face, realizing too late that her final taunt had pushed him over the edge.
Edmund ignited. Seizing her white shoulders in a biting grip, he lifted and thrust her against the corner of the bed frame. Twisting her hair around his hand, he snapped her head back. As her skull cracked against the wooden frame, Beatrix gasped with a flash of white. His sinewy frame held her captive. Her spine bore into the post, and he growled in her ear, "You would conspire with Philip against me, you treacherous whore!"
His hand closed like a vise about her windpipe.
She twisted and writhed frantically in a vain attempt to free herself. Struggling for what may have been seconds but seemed eternity, her body, quickly exhausted from its futile exertions, went limp. Blackness closed in.
She had nearly given herself completely up to the darkness when the iron-like grasp gave way. She slumped, clutching at the post, gasping, choking, and sucking in air, precious air, while Edmund regarded her with a speculative gleam, perhaps realizing just how near to death he had actually taken her.
Wild-eyed, confounded, and speechless, Beatrix stared back at him, as with cool composure he buttoned the flap of his breeches, straightened his waistcoat, and smoothed back his hair. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at his torn, bloody lower lip and strode abruptly past Charlotte, who stood dumbly in the hall.
Having fulfilled her obligation to stay for the christening, Charlotte was anxious to return to her quiet life at Cheveley. After notifying Letty of their morning departure, Charlotte finished packing and headed to Beatrix's rooms for a parting word.
Approaching the door, she prepared to knock, but her hand was stayed by raised voices. She froze at her cousin's distinct tone of distress, but silence ensued. Charlotte turned to go, but Lord Uxeter barged out of the room, brushing by her without a word, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his lip.
Wide-eyed, Charlotte entered her cousin's rooms, finding Beatrix lying on the floor, shaken and disheveled. Red bands surrounded her throat, blood trickled from her nose, and a welt covered the entire right side of her face.
"Good God, Beatrix! What has that beast done to you?" Charlotte exclaimed in horror. "I heard you arguing. If only I had interrupted..."
"I r-refused to obey, to stay at H-hastings. I d-despise this wr-wretched place, and he..." She inhaled deeply with a cough. "He never w-wanted me, Charlotte." Her voice quavered.
"Shhh. Hush now. Don't try to talk anymore."
"He only w-wanted an heir, and I wanted to be a countess," Beatrix continued softly, as if to herself. "But I am nothing to him, less than nothing, now I failed to give him a son. He loathes and abhors me, but it has taken me a beating to see it. I have been so very stupid!" She hiccoughed, and her tears began anew.
"You are not stupid! You were deceived, as any woman might have been. I will get Aunt and Uncle at once! They must take you away from here and back to Wortley."
"But he is my husband! What can they do?"
"No man, not even your husband, has a right to abuse you. You must tell your father. He is the only one who might make it right. You must tell him everything."
"You are right." Beatrix nodded. "I shall tell all I have suffered, and they will take me back home, where I need never set eyes on that vile creature again! I am going home, Charlotte." She sniffed and gently blew her nose.
Charlotte helped her trembling cousin to her bed and set out in purposeful strides to locate her aunt and uncle.
If only she were a man, she would have surely dealt Edmund Drake his comeuppance.
For the second time in her life, first with Philip and now with his brother, Charlotte was emotionally charged enough to commit murder.
H aving spent another six fruitless months in Flanders, stymied at
every effort, Field Marshal Wade was all too happy to call an end to the campaign, and with it, an end to overall command of what he had long referred to as the "Pragmatic misalliance."
His reputation tarnished by such an inglorious campaign, Field Marshal Wade promptly tendered his resignation, eager to pass the baton to some other poor sod willing to risk his career on such a futile command.
However thankful the commander in chief may have been at his homecoming, his aide-de-camp, Major Drake, would much rather have stayed abroad than return shamefaced after a third toothless season. Besides, an extended stay on the Continent would have provided him excuse to defer facing his personal troubles, which had in no way alleviated in his absence.
He had had many frustrated months to reflect on his discontent. His career was a disappointment. He was trapped in an unwanted marriage with Charlotte, in which he had seen to all of her needs while receiving precious nothing in return. Although he had promised a union in name only, he vowed that circumstances must change.
He had given her ample time and space to accept her lot. Now it was time she fulfilled her singular obligation in their union. He had bedded and satisfied---he smugly confessed---scores of women, and she would hardly find the experience unpleasant. If she would only come about, they might actually be able to make their inconvenient arrangement somewhat more tolerable.
His deliberations were interrupted by one of his adjutants.
"Major Drake, sir.' He saluted.
"What is it, Lieutenant Barber?"
"I've a message from the commander in chief. He wishes to see you at Headquarters at once."
"Convey to Field Marshal Wade that I will be there directly."
"But 'tis not the field marshal who send the summons, sir. 'Tis His Grace of Cumberland."
"Cumberland, you say?" Philip looked puzzled.
"Indeed, sir. It appears he is now appointed to replace Field Marshal Wade."
The major, annoyed and unsettled by his ignorance of this fact, replied again, "Then pray convey to His Grace that I shall come directly."
The lieutenant snapped his heels, saluted again, and departed hastily to carry the message.
How peculiar, Philip thought. Among the inner circle of aidesde-camp, there was precious little news ever withheld from him. As one of the first to learn of Field Marshal Wade's intent to resign his command, why should he not also have been one of the first to learn of his replacement?
Thoroughly perturbed, he checked his appearance and promptly departed for Headquarters.
Upon arrival, Major Drake was conducted directly to an inner sanctum, "the holy of holies," where he was stunned to face a triad of generals seated at a long, gleaming table. Field Marshals Wade, Stair, and Cumberland, looking as if assembled for a counsel of
war... or military tribunal... regarded him with reserve.
As Philip saluted the three commanders, his mind raced to recall any incident of misconduct. But he found himself at an utter loss.
"Pray have a seat, Major." General Wade spoke in an attempt to set his former adjutant at ease. He indicated a chair, and Philip acquiesced, regarding the triumvirate in complete befuddlement.
The duke, the new commander in chief, seated at the head of the table, remarked, "You've had a commendable career, thus far, for one so young, Major Drake."
Philip was almost amused at the compliment coming from the King's younger son, two year's Philip's junior at fourand-twenty.
"You enlisted even before the commencement of hostilities with France," Cumberland continued. "You were lauded at Dettingen and promoted immediately thereafter. Indeed, your rise in the ranks has been remarkably swift."
"I have endeavored to serve my King and country to the utmost of my ability, Your Grace."
"None would gainsay you regarding your record," commented Lord Stair. "With the exception of one foolish incident involving a captain under your command, your record is without blemish." Philip was reminded with a pointed look that Lord Stair had personally intervened on that particular occasion.
Cumberland spoke again. "Lord Stair and Field Marshal Wade have both spoken highly of your competence and your abilities, and I have personally borne witness to your valor. We have great need of such men. Should you choose to remain in His Majesty's service, I foresee a long and illustrious military career for you."
"Thank you, Your Grace. It is both my ambition and my desire."
"That being the case, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the loyalty of such men must be absolute, and their conduct beyond reproach."
This struck Philip as distinctly ominous. "Indeed, Your Grace," he agreed, still without a clue as to where this seeming inquisition was heading. His expression must have revealed the questions in his mind.
"You are by this time wondering why you were called?"
"Just so, Your Grace. I truly cannot fathom."
"While having no reason to doubt your loyalty to the Crown," Wade interjected, "there are some who begin to doubt that of your brother. His allegiance is recently become suspect. Ironic indeed, considering he co-authored the very Act of Parliament that would serve to attaint him of high treason."
The Duke continued. "One would doubt he need be reminded that any correspondence or monetary assistance to the Pretender or his son is considered an act against the Crown. Moreover, if convicted, the penalty is death, dismemberment, and dishonor, with the forfeiture of all your family's holdings."
"But what has this to do with me?" Philip asked incredulously.
"If you've any regard for your family name, let alone your career, Major, it would behoove you to escort your brother to Headquarters. We desire only to question him... for now."
"Here we are at last, home sweet home," the senior of the two officers remarked dryly to his companion and then dismounted.
"You know I have serious misgivings about this, Drake," the lieutenant replied. "I already regret having let you drag me here. I had every hope of avoiding my mother's hysterical weeping at her heartless son, and my father's outraged ranting at what he will perceive only as my outright rebellion. Had I not met you at Westminster, I should never have come." He reluctantly dismounted.
"Trust me, Charles, as one who has seen battle, you would never forgive yourself if you left without word. As the baby's godfather, at the least, you must pay respects to your sister and the child before you bid farewell to all of them. You owe your family that much."
"I know you are right," Charles confessed, "but I still can't like it."
"Where's the bloody groom?" Philip mumbled. "No matter, I know my way about to see to the horses. Don't wait on me, old chum." Philip indicated that Charles should proceed to the house while Phillip, thankful for this brief reprieve, led the horses to the stables.
In encountering Charles at Headquarters, he had learned of Beatrix's imminent delivery and had coerced Charles to travel with him to Hastings to bid farewell to his family. Though unaware of Philip's true errand, Lieutenant Wallace seemed the ideal candidate to accompany him. He might have need of a second officer's aid, if only as intimidation.
Having arrived, Philip now wondered at his errand. Had His Majesty any hard evidence against Edmund, he surely would have arrested him and taken him to the Tower. If Edmund was truly under suspicion, why would Cumberland, Wade, and Stair have revealed as much, let alone sent him on this mission, unless it was to test his own fidelity?
And if being put to the test, to whom did Philip ultimately owe his allegiance? To his family? Or to the Crown? At one time he should never have thought it a contest. He would have scoffed to think he would even hesitate to consider a family who had done nothing but disparage him his entire life. But that was before he found himself in such position. Forced to choose, which would it be?
With disquiet, uncertainty, and an ominous sentiment of foreboding, Philip squared his shoulders to face the inevitable.
Heaving a great sigh, Lieutenant Charles Wallace proudly straightened his crimson regimental uniform and squared his shoulders for his grand entrance. Met by Grayson, he was led to his mother in the
first-floor salon.
Lady Felicia's eyes lit with delight and surprise at her son's final arrival... until remarking his uniform. She gasped in dismay. "Charles, what have you done?"
"Dearest Mama, I should think it obvious. I have enlisted in the First Regiment of Foot and am soon off to join Cumberland."
"But what are you thinking! You know your father shall never allow it. He has forbidden even talk of the army."
"For one-and-twenty years I have done all you have expected of me. But now, come fully to manhood, I must please myself, even at the risk of displeasing my father. I have joined the army and will be off for Ghent within the se'nnight. I am not to be dissuaded. I am come only to bid farewell to my family, Mama."
Lady Felicia burst into tears, and into this state, Sir Garfield entered. "What now, Charles!" he exclaimed. "Where the devil have you been, boy? And what are you about, dressed in that preposterous costume?"
"Preposterous, Father?" Charles pulled a face in protest. "'Tis the uniform of the First Foot Guards. I thought it quite dashing."
"How dare you defy me! This is not to be tolerated!"
"Father," Charles interrupted, "the deed is done and not to be undone. I have purchased a lieutenancy in the First Foot and am deployed in a few days time. Pray let us not quarrel about it."
"Quarrel? There is no quarrel. There is only the defiance of an insolent puppy!" Sir Garfield flushed in ire, while Lady Felicia looked on in teary-eyed dismay.
A flushed Charlotte, coming directly from Beatrix's bedchamber, interrupted the emotionally charged exchange. Finding her aunt, uncle, and Cousin Charles assembled, she halted abruptly.
"Uncle, Aunt, Charles. I need a private word. Urgently." Before any of them could reply, Charlotte had dismissed the servants and closed the salon doors behind her.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" her uncle demanded.
"'Tis Beatrix. I fear for her life," she said more calmly than she felt.
"Beatrix? Is there trouble with the baby?" Charles queried anxiously.
"No, Charles. Little Sophie is in no imminent danger; however, I predict future peril should she remain in this wicked place," Charlotte replied.
"You have me flummoxed, Charlotte," Charles responded. "Who is Sophie? And what is this peril?"
"Beatrix has already given birth to a daughter, Charles. She was christened Anna Sophie," Lady Felicia offered by way of explanation.
"Charles, Aunt, listen to me," Charlotte interrupted impatiently. "Beatrix is beaten nigh senseless! You must come at once."
Lady Felicia shrieked. "What? Beatrix beaten?"
"Lord Uxeter has nearly throttled her."
"Throttled her?" Lady Felicia repeated blankly. "Sir Garfield!" She turned to her husband.
"Just one moment, madam!" he imperiously commanded. "'Tis no doubt some lover's spat that will blow over soon enough. There is no room for our interference here."
"But she is your daughter! How can you just stand by?" Charlotte looked to her uncle incredulously.
"Hysterical girl!" he admonished his niece. "You should be cuffed yourself for causing such a commotion. Whatever may or may not have occurred between Lord Uxeter and his wife is none of our concern."
"I am not hysterical, nor do I exaggerate," Charlotte exclaimed. "You must remove her from this place at once!"
"Sir Garfield, we must go to her!" Lady Felicia made for the door.
"Beatrix is no longer our daughter. She is Lady Drake and the sole responsibility of her husband. We have no right to intervene in any matter between a husband and his wife. Go to her if it pleases you, but intercede we will not!"
"Your stance is unconscionable, Father," Charles remonstrated. "But if you have no care, as her brother, I shall certainly act! Charlotte," Charles commanded, "take me to her at once!"
They departed, nearly crashing into Philip outside the salon. Learning of Charlotte's presence at Hastings, he had resolved to take care of his personal business before attending to his other concerns.
As she made to pass, he restrained her with a firm grasp to her upper arm, pulling her to his side. Charles and his weeping mother swept past.
"Charlotte, dear heart, have you no word of greeting for your long-absent husband?" He smirked.
"Unhand me, you lummox!" She glared, trying unsuccessfully to pull her arm free.
"It quite lacks the warmth I had anticipated. Mayhap we should try again?" His attempt to brush her lips with a kiss was met with a stinging slap. With this answer, he roughly put her away, still not releasing his grip.
"Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder was sadly misinformed," he remarked sardonically.
"I have no time to mince words with you, Philip." She again attempted to pull away.
"Wait, Charlotte. What has you so agitated and your family in an uproar?"
"Your brother," she hissed, "has sought to amuse himself by brutalizing his wife, the same woman, I might add, who has just birthed your daughter. Now release me!"
Stunned, he replied emotionlessly, "I see," and reflexively let go.
Charlotte spun toward the west wing. Philip did not follow, but with singleminded determination, he set out in search of his quarry, the perpetrator of violence on a helpless woman. Although he had long suspected Edmund's deviant nature, he would have credited him with more sense than to expose his vice in such an overt way, under his father's roof, no less. The act reeked of desperation and cowardice. Philip recalled the terms of
his father's will.
He stalked from room to room, sending servants scuttling, until he arrived at the earl's private apartments, where Edmund had gone to make his excuses while his valet packed for London.
Remarking the voices within, Philip passed Grayson and unheedingly threw open the doors. Striding fiercely through the private parlor into the bedchamber, he noticeably startled Edmund and his father, who lay pale and wan in his bed.
"What is this intrusion?" the earl croaked. "Where is Grayson to allow it? The man will be sacked!" Not immediately recognizing his younger son, he addressed the elder. "Edmund, throw this scoundrel out!"
"'Twould be my greatest pleasure, my lord," he replied, recognizing the intruder as Philip.
"My dear father," Philip interjected, "I might remark that the only scoundrel is your perfidious eldest son."
Edmund sneered. "Indeed? This is the outside of enough, Philip, your attempt to defame me. I might even call it laughable."
"Although you have long attributed such crimes to me, Edmund, in the end 'tis you who would discredit, dishonor, and vilify the family name."
"Such accusations are insupportable! I insist you explain yourself at once!" Lord Hastings's eyes blazed from his gaunt face.
"I had come here, my lord, on a mission from the Crown, but now I discover my brother's pusillanimous conduct toward his wife by far supersedes his treachery."
"Treachery?" The earl's eyes narrowed.
"I greatly fear the role of conquering hero has gone to Philip's head, my lord," Edmund jeered.
"Only my regard for my family honor forces me to disclose the mounting suspicion of treason from the house of Hastings, my lord. If proven, such would attaint the earldom and forever tarnish
our name."
The Earl of Hastings looked to his eldest son. "Edmund, what is this about?" he demanded.
Edmund smirked with a dismissive gesture. "Nothing, my lord. Much ado about nothing. The crime of treason may be ascribed only to those who correspond or provide assistance after the first of May 1744. While 'tis true I have lent some manner of support to the Jacobites, this very Act of Parliament with which they would attempt to indict me, by my very design, provides my immunity. There is none who can produce any proof of my so-called treason following the passage of the Act of Parliament prohibiting aid to the Young Pretender," he replied with total self-possession.
"One must at the least applaud your preservation instincts, Edmund, without which, one cannot survive in Parliament. Mayhap you are ready to assume your place as Earl of Hastings, after all."
Philip was stunned that his father looked upon Edmund's confession with a thin smile of approbation. "You would condone treason, my lord?"
"I fail to see how any such crime can be imputed," Lord Hastings replied matterof-factly.
"But what of honor? And what say you of a man who brutalizes the woman who is, by law, under his protection?"
The earl scoffed. "Being under his protection, Edmund's wife is no one else's concern."
"On the contrary, my lord, the welfare of any woman, under his brand of protection, is very much my concern."
Edmund interjected, "Pray let us forgo the melodrama, Philip. Beatrix had a misapprehension regarding her duty to obey me, and I dealt with her accordingly. She got no more than she deserved, the shameless whore. To my misfortune, however, I made the discovery only after the nuptials that she came to the marriage bed already
increasing with child."
"Is this the version you would tell, Edmund? Having a decided preference for the truth, I find I am at odds with it. I submit, rather, that you wed her in full knowledge she was breeding, perceiving it the most expeditious manner to get an heir. You, however, had no contingency when she delivered you a girl, and now, realizing what a bad bargain you've made, she and the child are to suffer for it."
"Until I divorce the slut, she and the child are mine to do with as I will."
Fingering his sword hilt menacingly, Philip instinctively drew it halfway from its sheath.
"Are you bent on playing knight-errant, Philip? My lord's apartments are hardly an appropriate venue for a duel; moreover, I have yet to fathom your preoccupation with the notion. Pray take your sword, brother mine, and go back to playing soldier with Cumberland."
"You really do not comprehend it, do you? To uphold one's name, one's honor as a gentleman. But why should this surprise me? I should be doing the world a favor to rid it of such a perfidious, craven bastard."
"Perfidious, craven bastard?" Lord Uxeter repeated, savoring the bitter words. "Are there no further calumnies, no added denigrations you wish to cast against my character, Philip?"
Another voice spoke from behind. "I might add... misogynistic sodomite."
With these words, Charles Wallace stepped forward and discharged his pistol.
T he report of pistol fire reverberated as a thunderclap through the corridors of stone. Chores forgotten and serving trays crashing to the floor, the servants raced breathlessly to the earl's quarters, but only Grayson, after a lifetime in the earl's employ, dared to actually enter his bedchamber.
Charles Wallace's aim had struck true. Shot in the chest, Edmund directed his pain-stricken gaze to his assassin before staggering to the earl and crumpling.
"Edmund, my son! They have murdered my son!" Lord Hastings roared. The earl rose from his bed, pushing Philip away, but without his cane, his weak side failed him. He fell upon his son's body, only to watch Edmund gurgle his last breath.
The vision proved too much for his weakened condition. With his hand clutched to his chest, the earl collapsed with an anguished cry beside Edmund's body. Voiceless and paralyzed, he now lay in his son's spreading puddle of blood.
Grayson miraculously appeared to help Philip carry the fallen earl back to his bed, while Charles stood dumbly over Edmund's body, the smoking pistol still in his hand. With full realization of what he had done, he dropped the pistol, and it fell, thudding to the floor like a lead weight.
Charles stumbled to a chair, where he commenced to shake so violently his teeth chattered. He hid his face in his hands, and his entire body convulsed, giving full vent to its state of shock.
Sir Garfield, the next to arrive, took in the blood, the dead body, and his son's quaking form. He exploded. "What the devil?"
Grayson interjected before Philip could reply. "A tragic accident," the old retainer replied. "I had come to bring his lordship's sleeping tonic, only to overhear shouting. My Lord Hastings was acutely distressed and hardly in his right mind. He must have mistaken Lord Uxeter for an intruder. By the time I entered the chamber, he had been shot!"
He boldly continued his outrageous prevarication. "Master Philip and Lieutenant Wallace appeared almost instantly, but 'twas already too late. Lord Uxeter is dead, and the earl has suffered another apoplectic seizure."
Absolutely confounded, Philip gawked at Grayson.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Baker, chimed in, taking up the blatantly false alibi. "I heard it meself, I did, as I was passing down the hall. Such a profound tragedy!" She fled his lordship's chambers with a muffled sob.
Philip was incredulous at the brazenness of the lies spoken by these lifelong servants. Although he had not pulled the trigger, he had the most to gain from his brother's demise, but with the earl at death's door, Grayson had not hesitated to fabricate a web of deception for Philip's protection.
Though he was not the killer, in truth it was only because Charles had beaten him to it. Philip's conscience tugged faintly, but with no one in the household willing to contradict the tale and the earl unable to do so, he stifled his scruples.
Setting about the task of supervising the aftermath, he mused that should he become the new Earl of Hastings, his first priority would be to raise the wages of his staff.
Two days following the joint funerals of the Earl of Hastings and his firstborn son, Major Drake advised Charles Wallace to play "least in sight." Wisely heeding the advice, Charles promptly departed for Ghent to join his regiment. Sir Garfield and Lady Felicia followed, taking the newly widowed Beatrix and baby Sophie back to Yorkshire.
Charlotte, desiring only peace and tranquility, also could not depart soon enough for her liking. She was shocked by the chain of events following on the heels of Philip's arrival. Was it an omen of what he would bring to her life? She prayed it was not. She had spent the past six months trying to regain her equilibrium and desired none of his presence or influence in her life. Only propriety had made her stay for the funeral and brief inquest.
Now packed, she was anxious to return to Cheveley. She had just sent Letty with word of readiness to the coachman, when she heard a light rap on her chamber door.
"Yes? You may enter," she replied absently. She was startled to see Philip.
"Good morning, Charlotte," he offered in brusque greeting.
"Philip," she said tersely. As she closed and latched her trunk, her eyes flickered briefly over him. "I had thought you the footman, come to collect my things."
"I regret to disappoint you," he said with a smirk. "No doubt it slipped your mind to inform me you were taking your leave today?"
"The need to inform you had not occurred to me."
"Indeed? So my own wife would depart without so much as a by-your-leave?"
"Your wife?" Charlotte scoffed. "Since we no longer have an audience for whom to perform, may we not now desist in this preposterous charade?"
Philip grasped her gently by the shoulders. "Charlotte," he began earnestly, "neither you nor I would have chosen this course, had we a choice. You were estranged from your family, with no visible means of support, and I had desperate need to be independent from mine. Nonetheless, I swore to support and protect you. I am yet willing to stand by those vows if you will now show only the slightest inclination to conduct yourself as my wife."
"That was not our agreement." Her voice was pure ice.
"Circumstances have changed. The inquest has absolved me of any wrongdoing, and with this pronouncement, I am to be named Earl of Hastings. With this change of fortune, I have hope of restoring my family estate to a more respectable condition."
"How precisely should this concern me?"
Was she intentionally making this difficult? His patience was strained as he continued. "As my wife, you stand to become the new Countess of Hastings. My requirements in exchange would be minimal, only that you behave with a modicum of decorum appropriate to the station, or at the least with a reasonable amount of discretion, and that you produce the heir necessary to continue my family line."
"A broodmare, Philip? Is that what you propose, that I become your broodmare?" Her mocking reply broke any further pretense of civility between them.
His grip now became like iron, bruising her shoulders, and he fought the urge to shake sense into her.
"You might be more reasonable! I have done all in my power to make your situation tolerable. In the grand scheme of things, I ask a very small sacrifice in return for a title---security and a measure of comfort. I am neither aged, ill-formed, nor unskilled in pleasing a woman. I even dare boast there are many who would welcome my attentions."
"Then I suggest you look amongst that herd for your broodmare. Your attentions are not welcome to me. I will allow only a man I love and respect into my bed. You will never be that man."
"Do you fully understand what you are saying? Are you aware that your refusal gives me just grounds for annulment?"
"Yes. I do understand. But why should you not set me free? With her husband's recent death, surely Beatrix would be willing to have you." She paused reflectively. "But then would you be uncle or father to little Sophie? I daresay 'twould be much too confusing to the poor child."
The telltale signs of narrowing eyes and slight jaw twitch told her the barb had struck a raw place. Philip struggled to maintain his composure and self-control. His composure prevailed.
"Have no doubt I shall shoulder my responsibilities where Beatrix and Sophie are concerned, but my family faces enough nefarious scandal at present, without my wedding or bedding my brother's widow. You might take more care to reflect upon your own bleak prospects, Charlotte, should you force my hand. I had wished for us to come to some sort of understanding, a truce perchance, but I see you are beyond reason."
"Then do as you see fit, Philip. I will be at Cheveley when you come to your decision. Now, where is that accursed footman?"
The inquiry into Edmund's death had been only cursory. After statements were taken from the "witnesses," the case was simply declared an accidental death, and the earl's demise an unfortunate conclusion due to the shock. No one had even questioned how the earl had come by the murder weapon.
Following the inquiry, Philip had met with the solicitors, only to learn he would accede to the earldom without a bloody farthing to support it! As Lord Hastings had threatened, his last will and testament mandated the entirety of his fortune remain in trust until one of his sons should produce an heir.
Philip had never held any expectation of inheritance, but now it was his, he would have need of every shilling in the trust fund if the estate were ever to be profitable again. His income from the Horse Guard would barely support the bloody inheritance taxes, let alone sustain him. If only Charlotte hadn't proven so damnably bull-headed!
Torn between his past and his future, Philip lingered at Hastings some days in a vain attempt to work out in his mind the hand fate had dealt him. He couldn't even mourn the loss of his father and brother. Their deaths simply represented the cessation of relationships he had done his best to avoid.
For the past ten years, he had fervently wished for freedom from the yoke of his disapproving father. He had spent most of his life in resentment and petty rebellion against his unreasonable expectations, never aspiring to earning anything more than disapprobation, never dreaming he might one day become the earl. His father was dead, yet the yoke remained. Why did he not now feel the weight lifted from his shoulders?
As the new earl, he would be expected to sell his commission and take up his father's seat in Parliament. His father's seat. His brother's desire. Not his.
Philip had chosen the Horse Guard to make a life and a name for himself based solely upon his own merits. Was he truly ready to give it all up? In his mind, none of it seemed real. He was thinking too much. It was this damnable place. He packed for London.
It was either very late at night or very early in the morning when Philip found himself aimlessly wandering the streets between Westminster and the Strand. His perambulations were perhaps not as aimless as he supposed when he found his feet had carried him to Number Ten Bedford Street. Impulsively, he stole around to the servants' entrance and pounded on the door, awakening Sarah from her bed.
Fearful at the pounding, the maid ran to her ladyship's room, where Lady Susannah, rarely discomposed, snatched up her dressing gown and retrieved a small dagger from her bedside nightstand. She accompanied her maid to the side door off the kitchen, but her legendary composure slipped when she recognized the man at her door.
"Philip! What are you about at this hour? Are you inebriated?"
"Foxed quite to the gills, actually, but you needn't fret. I have come by the servants' entrance. None should see me."
"Mayhap not see you, Philip, but few have not heard you, with your incessant hammering!"
"I needed you, Sukey. I will desist the so-called hammering if you will only let me in." His tone was glib, but his eyes implored.
Lady Susannah sighed in exasperation. "Very well. You once again prove me weak and foolish on your account. Pray accompany me to the salon. Sarah," she said to her maid, "you may go back to your bed."
"My lady, are you certain?" The maid looked skeptically from the drunken man to her mistress's dishabille.
"Do not concern yourself for my sake, Sarah. He has shown little interest in compromising my virtue." She was at once rueful at the truth of her statement and wistful at the remembrance of the time they had been lovers. But that was six years past.
Sarah shrugged and reluctantly trudged back to her bed.
Entering the salon, Lady Susannah lit several candles. In the increasing light, Philip could now appreciate the full state of her undress. Her thin silk wrapper clung softly to the curves of her still youthful body. Her normally coiffed hair lay in silky chestnut ripples, falling over her shoulders and down her back. Devoid of any artificial enhancement, she appeared, in Philip's estimation, ten years younger, and he thought more dangerously, never more desirable.
He dismissed these thoughts with impatient irritation and silently, broodingly, paced her salon.
Seated delicately on the sofa, Lady Susannah patiently watched his progression, intuitively sensing his struggle with whatever inner demons had led him to her door.
"Well, Philip?" she prompted softly, gently, but with no gesture of invitation.
He turned now to face her. "It would appear that I am now to become the Earl of Hastings," he stated emptily. "The earl and Edmund are both dead, and by default, the title is mine. I should be elated, jubilant even. Yet"---he paused---"I am curiously hollow."
He hesitated, as if collecting his thoughts. "Why have I this void, this emptiness here, Sukey?" He thumped his chest with his fist.
It was not a rhetorical question. He had come seeking her counsel and succor to a pain he couldn't yet acknowledge. Her own heart lurched in sympathy with this angst he had been trying to bury for the past decade. She waited for him to continue, to express what he had been ever loath to put into words.
"I feel as if I cannot find any peace if I don't find the answers I seek. I tried in vain to dismiss the very questions, but without resolution, I cannot seem to carry on with my life."
"What are they, your questions?" she softly prompted.
His back to her, he began pacing anew. "The two questions I have asked myself? The first: why do I suddenly discover this void, when I have achieved an earldom, and presumably with it, the world at my feet?"
"Philip, I speak as both friend and confidante when I say you have yet to truly know yourself. You are empty because you have never attained your heart's desire. Having failed to win your family's love and acceptance, you sought to be free of them. Though that was your conscious decision, your unconscious desire has remained unchanged. You needed the love, acceptance, and affection that should have been your due. Though now free of their bonds, you know that you will never have what you most desired. Any possibility has died with them."
He stopped in front of the window, staring silently into the blackness, digesting her words.
"And your second question?" she asked.
"The second still haunts me after six years." His voice was barely above a whisper.
She closed her eyes, and her heart ceased its drumming that she might better hear every word.
"Why did you refuse me, Sukey?"
She had no breath to respond, glad he could not see her face. It would have given away every secret of her heart. "As to the second question, my love"---the endearment slipped thoughtlessly from her lips now she was committed to bare her soul at last---"I shan't be coy, but my answer, after deeply pondering this question, is exceedingly complex. But perhaps you are now ready to hear it? Perhaps able to understand?"
Philip waited, willing her to continue.
Drawing courage, she spoke again. "I am not sorry that I didn't accept you six years ago, but I deeply regret that I couldn't accept you."
"What do you mean couldn't accept me?" He spun to face her, lashing out at her for his own weakness. "You were widowed and independent. You had means and no one to answer to. You professed love yet dismissed me out of hand. I have tormented over this far too long and now demand that you explain yourself. I will be cut loose from this web in which you have once again ensnared me!"
"Ensnared you?" she answered incredulously. "I believed that you would have long since forgotten my very name."
"Never, Sukey. I had believed you completely eradicated from my mind, but I am drawn back again, completely against my will. Like the proverbial moth to the flame, here I stand."
"Against your will, like the moth to the flame? You don't trouble yourself with false flattery nor even any pretension of sensibility for my feelings in dredging up the past." She laughed bitterly.
"No, I have no particular sensitivity for your feelings... if you indeed have any."
"You really want to know why I refused you, Philip?" Susannah rose and came slowly but determinedly toward him. "I said I had regrets that I could not accept you. What I mean is, six years ago, I was a woman of nine-and-twenty in love with a rebellious youth. You were scarce past boyhood when you impetuously offered your name, but what was that name worth, my love?
"You were living by your wits and estranged from your family. On top of that, I was your first real lover and knew, even then, I would not be your last. I saw such promise in you, Philip," she said tenderly, "but you had yet to grow into manhood.
"I would have done neither of us a favor by accepting your proposal. Can you not understand me now? I drove you away by feigned indifference, planning to forget you and find my happiness with another, but my happiness has been elusive. I have never remarried because, though I tried valiantly, I have never loved another. The greater jest is that now you are become exactly the man I once envisaged, you are callous and indifferent to me."
"You believe me callous and indifferent?"
"You have rebuffed me at every turn, keeping me at arm's length from the very start. You even brought a young woman to my home, whom I have since come to cherish almost as a daughter, but who is, nonetheless, legally your wife. You do not consider these actions cruel and callous?"
"You have hardly languished for want of me," he answered laconically.
She prickled at the barb. "I never confessed to pining, nor have I been lonely. I have no respect for martyrs, Philip. I have carried on." She looked away, adding almost inaudibly, "Though I have never loved but you."
"What did you say?"
"You still do not believe me?"
He didn't know if he believed or not, but did it matter anymore? Her words had appeased some of his hurt and anger, but her look of entreaty reached far deeper inside, touching the raw place, answering his need. The force of his emotions overpowered any remaining hesitation. He drew her to him with near-violent intensity, selfishly demanding.
Understanding his need, Susannah gave without reservation.
Philip stirred first, his slumbering lover cradled in his arms, the first rays of daylight filtering through the windows. He shifted carefully, loath to awaken her. What had happened between them was inevitable; he had recognized it the moment he walked back through her door. He had tried to maintain an aloof and detached distance, but his feelings for her ran far deeper than he understood. He was somehow connected with her at a profound level. She was his longed-for peace. He wanted her, not just sexually, but in every way. She belonged to him.
He gazed at her face as she stirred in her sleep, a slight frown emphasizing the faint line between her brows. He grazed this place with his lips, an unconscious gesture to erase any sign of worry from his lover's mind. It was a just a light brush, but she opened her eyes into his longing gaze.
"Marry me, Sukey," he murmured softly against her skin as his lips moved to her temple.
"But you are already married," she whispered.
"I can end it, my dearest love." He left a trail of warm, moist kisses along her jaw and down her neck, and his hand moved to cup and caress her breast. She moaned before breathing a reluctant sigh of protest "Please, Philip. I can't think when you do that." Although she could not undo the events of the prior evening, Sukey felt the first stirrings of conscience. Last night she had had no regrets, but as morning dawned, she was painfully and dismally aware that she could have no future with this man.
Her mind reeled as he continued to tease her. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much." He flashed his roguish grin, and she was lost to all reason.
Hours later Susannah reawoke to find Philip contemplating the ceiling. She stretched cat-like and then rolled on top of him, crossing her arms and resting her chin thoughtfully on her hands while she patiently watched him cogitate.
"Do you have it worked out yet, Philip?" she queried, watching his expression.
"To which dilemma do you refer? I find I struggle with several." He splayed one hand on the small of her back, and the other stroked her silky hair. "I want you," he murmured with furrowed brow.
"Yet again? Lesser mortals would have expired by this time." She chuckled, and he pinched her hard on the left buttock. "What was that about?" she cried.
"Your attention was straying, and you were causing mine to follow. We need to talk now. We've matters to resolve."
"Such as?"
"I have again asked you to wed me, and you once more failed to answer in the affirmative."
She opened her mouth to speak, but he laid a finger to her lips, arresting her reply.
"Let me finish please. I could press for an annulment. There are unquestionably grounds for one. I could arrange a modest settlement for Charlotte. Although the estate is rather a shambles, I could provide her enough to ensure reasonable comfort somewhere in the country. She could live quietly without fear of scandal touching her.
"If you agree to have me, Sukey, I will sell my commission and make you my lady, my Countess of Hastings in word and deed." He finished by slowly, sensuously tracing her lips with the same finger that had stayed them. He tipped her chin, firmly affixing her gaze in anticipation of her answer.
"Philip,"---she sighed deeply--- "please know that I love you beyond comprehension, but what you ask is unconscionable." Had it been any other woman, she would have vanquished her qualms without hesitation, but how could she do such a thing to Charlotte?
"I would with all my soul that Charlotte had in truth been your ward rather than your wife." She regarded him accusingly. "Though I allow you have no tender feelings for one another, you cannot just discard your responsibility for her. Ultimately, it was the choice you made."
He exploded. "Choice? I had no choice! The old sod had me backed into a corner. It was no less than extortion!"
"Philip," she replied calmly, "it was no less a choice. You took the noble path by agreeing to protect a young woman who had no other protection, and for that I love you." She kissed him deeply before he could form another protest. "But there is another matter you have yet to consider." She directed her gaze on the wall beyond his left shoulder. "As a nobleman, you shall require an heir."
"Hell and damnation, Sukey!" he cursed. "Has it always to come back to the infernal heir? My brother, who would gladly have taken his place as Earl of Hastings, a position I never truly coveted, by the by, is in an early grave because of our father's obsession with an heir. What should it matter now? What has it to do with us?"
"You may not care now, but one day that will change. You come from a noble family, and it is your onus."
"Then why should you and I not make a child together? I am willing to make such a supreme sacrifice." He flashed his irresistible grin, but his words ripped her soul to shreds.
"Because I am barren!" she cried. "I was married to Nigel for ten years and never once conceived."
"He was a doddering old man," he protested.
"But you were not. We were lovers and took no precaution. In your inexperience, you may not have known any better, but I did. And at now five-and-thirty, I believe it impossible for me. You need Charlotte because you need an heir." She choked on these final words.
"I don't want her, nor does she want me!" he retorted.
"Give her time. Her emotions are raw, like a cut slow to heal. Treat her with tenderness and patience, and she will come around."
"So this is your answer? You would deny us both for the sake of Charlotte? I thought you had no patience with martyrs, yet you would make martyrs of us both!"
As he threw her words back in her face, she winced.
"I have neither the soul nor the temperament for martyrdom, Sukey."
Philip furiously hauled himself from the tangled bed, renting the sheets in the process. He snatched at his clothes scattered on the floor and began methodically dressing.
"Where are you going?" Her voice quavered.
"As it seems we've nothing further to discuss, I shall go and hire a competent steward for Hastings, then I will go back to my regiment. I find I've no desire to play lord of the manor." He stomped his second heel into his boot and departed half dressed, slamming the door behind him.
Sukey lay dazed in her bed, her wits as tangled as her sheets. She was an intelligent woman, one who knew herself and directed her own path. She had been content with her life before his return. But with his departure, damn him to hell, from out of nowhere, emptiness flooded her being. In just one night he had made her life a complete and utter muddle!
She longed to be with him and ached with a desire she had never dared confess, even to herself, the desire for motherhood. Sukey yearned with all her heart to bear Philip's children but knew she would never achieve this desire. Charlotte was his wife and had nearly two decades ahead of her to fill his nursery. Could she have said it any other way?
But if she could not be Philip's wife, could she be content as his mistress? she asked herself, not knowing the answer. She had become Charlotte's friend, mentor, and confidante.
How could she possibly countenance such a double life?
Her heart, however, cried louder than her conscience.
W hen Charlotte returned to Cheveley, she discovered her request had been unexpectedly answered.
"Jemmy!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Jeffries was asking about in Doncaster, seein' as ye has a need for a stud groom, miss... er missus," he amended. "And being that ye be just starting out, and I don't ask much fer wages..." He blushed.
"So you have volunteered your services?" she finished.
"Somethin' like that. Jeffries hisself weren't inclined to leave Sir Garfield, being he's been wi' the Bart so long. But he says I might could do the job fer ye. I apprenticed last year at Routh's stud up North, and though Jeffries might think me still wet behind the ears, I figures I be as good as any other," he added defensively.
"Far be it for me to scorn your help. I know next to nothing of breeding or foaling. It is hardly deemed an occupation for women," Charlotte remarked ruefully. "I am glad to have you, Jemmy. Although the cottage is small, there is a room off of the kitchen..."
"I be used to living above the stables, missus."
Charlotte blushed now. "As you see, Jemmy, the house is modest. The stables here are barely large enough for two horses. I have leased property and built run-in sheds for the mares, so you will just have to suffer our company---Letty's and mine---that is, at least until foaling time, where you might have to make due in the shed."
"If that be the case, your mare won't drop her foal."
"What on earth do you mean? She's due any day by the look of her."
"Mares be real modest creatures and like to give birth privily. Many a mare that's been ready to pop held off until there was no one around to see it."
"But then how should we know when her time is come?"
"She be already showing the signs. I check on her this very morning."
"Is she?" Charlotte exclaimed. "I must go to her at once!"
With Jemmy in tow, Charlotte walked the mile and a half to Amoret's pasture, where the mare, looking miserable, lumbered heavily toward her mistress. Her nicker of greeting lacked the usual enthusiasm.
Charlotte quickly pulled her skirts aside to climb over the fence. She caressed Amoret's nose. "You poor, poor girl," Charlotte murmured. With soulful eyes, Amoret bumped her, as if to say, "You have no idea of my suffering."
"But dearest, Jemmy says it shall be over soon," Charlotte encouraged as the groom approached the mare's flank.
"Aye, her time be coming soon," he said. As he reached a hand under her belly to her most private place, Amoret kicked out and squealed indignantly.
"No need to be feisty, old girl. Ye've done this many a time," Jemmy said.
"Tell me, Jemmy! What do you see?"
"Yesterday her sack was full, and now she be dripping the premilk."
"Premilk?" Charlotte asked.
"It's watery like and comes in right afore the birth. Ye need to be feedin' her turnips now."
"Turnips?" Charlotte exclaimed.
"There be nothin' better than turnips to make good milk in a mare. Put turnips in her feed, and ye'll be guaranteed good milk and a strong foal." Jemmy retrieved the halter and lead hanging on the fencepost, and slipped it over the mare's head. "Ye best hold her for me now. She already be a bit ill-tempered and won't like me messin' back there."
Charlotte took the lead, and Jemmy approached the mare again. Standing close to her hip and out of kicking range, he lifted her tail. "The passage looks nigh ready, missus. It gets longer and thicker as the time comes. I say she be ready to drop her foal any minute."
Amoret turned her head to look at her abdomen, as if in confirmation.
"What can I do to help? Should we get blankets? Boil water?" Charlotte's voice was shrill and near panic.
Jemmy laughed. "There be no need to fuss. This old broodmare knows what's what. All she need is clean, dry bedding or this nice green pasture. As the time gets closer, she'll pace much, piss much, and mor'n' likely roll on the ground a time or two. There be no worry unless she don't get up. Some mares even drop the foal whilst standing."
"They just drop them to the ground?"
"I'd say they more like slide out. 'Tis not so bad as ye might think."
"Then what should I do?" Charlotte said helplessly.
"Best thing is to leave her be. If naught goes awry, ye're like to have a foal by morning."
"But what if she becomes distressed?"
"I'll be checking on her. If she don't foal within an hour or so, then I needs to help pull the young one out. But 'tis a rare case to intervene."
Amoret turned her head to her belly again and regarded the bipeds with a speaking glare.
"I think she's telling us to leave, Jemmy," Charlotte declared.
"I think ye be right 'bout that. If ye be so inclined to come back in an hour or so, missus, ye might have a pleasant surprise.
Williamsburg, Virginia, Spring 1748
T he late spring day opened warm and sultry, encouraging droves of people to come from all directions for the races of the county fair, the most popular of the Virginia horse races. By noon the throng had strung all along the one-mile course north of York Street in Williamsburg.
Daniel Roberts stood by his aged gray stallion and observed the amassing crowd. Three years ago, he had arrived a nearpenniless victim of circumstance, but his sentence had proven a blessing in disguise.
He had found his place in a world that gauged men by their own merits, and he had measured up. Robert Devington, known in Virginia as Daniel Roberts, was outwardly flourishing, but inwardly, no amount of success could counterbalance what he had lost. His drive to succeed was commanded by his burning desire for vengeance, a yearning yet unfulfilled.
Much of his success had sprung from his fortuitous meeting with the young gentleman in the Bristol tavern. The eldest son of the Lee family, wealthy and politically connected planters, had introduced him to those gentlemen of Virginia who shared a passion for horseflesh. In these circles, Daniel Roberts's intimate knowledge of running bloods had stood him in good measure.
The most avid of these, John Tayloe, had offered Roberts a position in his new racing stud. The improvement in the quality, speed, and distance of Tayloe's runners was soon evidence that his confidence in the young Englishman had been well placed. Roberts's talents quickly put him at the head of Tayloe's breeding and training programs, a position that allowed him to bring his own stallion, Mars, into prime racing condition.
In England, with almost no training, Mars had proven himself as a runner. He not only possessed the strength of mind and body to persevere the grueling four-mile distances, he had also demonstrated the incredible breaking speed of a sprinter. The popularity of shortdistance racing in the colonies offered a wealth of opportunity to capitalize on this talent.
Roberts began to run his stallion in the "short" races. Entering quarter-mile sprints run on barely better than cow paths, they were abruptly initiated to the rules of Colonial racing; there were none!
The quarter-miler was fast and furious with no holds barred as long as a rider was not actually caught unhorsing his opponent. Under these conditions, Robert's cavalry training served him well. Though he was careful to keep his opponent to his left side, where he was less susceptible to foul play, failing this tactic, he was even known to defend his seat by running with his bridle reins between his teeth!
Prevailing against all takers in any distance under two miles, Roberts had garnered nearly two thousand pounds in cumulative winnings. Their names in short racing grew to near legendary proportions, but Roberts and Mars had yet to make their mark where it most counted, in the distance races.
Now at twelve years old, any other horse would have been past his prime and retired to the breeding shed, but Roberts was determined to pit his unlikely stallion one last time. They would run against
the very best of Virginia's racing stock in the first three-mile race at Williamsburg. The time was finally ripe to pursue his ambition.
His friend Ludwell hailed him from within the crowd, "Roberts!" and approached. "Just placed a bit of coin on your horse; pray don't let me down, old friend. I shall need the money for my trip back to London."
"You have decided to pursue law, then?"
"I am obligated to follow my father's wishes, though I can't say I should mind the diversions of London now I am older and free to enjoy the pleasures without the particular impediment of Mr. Hanbury's watchful eye." They both chuckled, remembering the Quaker who had done his best to keep his youthful charge out of trouble. "Speaking of obligations and diversions, Roberts, you have yet to respond to mother's invitation."
Since his arrival in Virginia, the Lee family had helped him to navigate his way in his new country. He especially had them to thank for his employment with John Tayloe, but of late, their interest on his behalf had grown a bit too personal.
Mrs. Hannah Lee, the family matriarch, had taken it into her head to find him a wife, and her chosen venue was to be the Lee's annual English-style garden party. Although running contrary to all his inclinations, Roberts feared he was indeed obligated to accept her invitation.
He changed the subject. "'Tis quite a turnout, is it not? I daresay the crowd begins to rival those of my Doncaster days."
"'Tis quite remarkable, indeed. Since my boyhood, I have seen our racing passions burgeon from jovial enthusiasm to fervent obsession. Indeed, I begin to fear the friendly matches of the past, when one pit his best saddle horse against his neighbor's for a bale of tobacco, are nigh gone by. Moreover, the 'English' races are become increasingly popular hereabouts, and one can hardly find a taker for anything less than fifty gold pistoles."
"Do you believe the distance races will replace the quarter mile altogether?"
"While the quarter-milers remain popular to the south and in the Carolinas, I daresay 'tis due only to the shortage of cleared land for proper racetracks, but with these now established in Fredericksburg, Leedstown, Yorktown, and Alexandria, I believe 'tis only a matter of time.
"As evidence, one need look only at the steady stream of imported English blood to Virginia and Maryland in recent years. 'Tis become a constant game of one-upmanship between us, but Virginians do not stomach defeat graciously." Ludwell laughed. "Any losses to Taskers or Byrd of Maryland serve only as impetus to further improve our Virginia stock."
"I am thankful the sentiment is pervasive," Roberts rejoined. "It has provided me a comfortable living."
"Knowing we colonists as both a presuming and fiercely competitive breed, Roberts, 'tis not unimaginable we might one day rival Old England on the turf."
"No, indeed," Roberts murmured, voicing aloud his private ambition for the first time. "Not unimaginable at all."
Once she had secured Daniel Roberts's attendance to her party, Mrs. Hannah Lee made it her mission to invite a number of suitable women, having in mind to end the young Englishman's bachelor days. Mary Griffiths, a quiet young widow with five hundred fertile acres and two rambunctious young boys, was Hannah's primary candidate to become the young gentleman's wife.
It was mainly for her boys' sake that Mary had agreed to look for another husband. Prosaic rather than romantic, she harbored no illusions that she was a beauty and was well aware that the halfdozen smooth-talking fortune-seekers who had paid her court in the past twelvemonth had pretensions only to her property.
Obstinate in her convictions, Mary had not hesitated to refuse them all. She would settle only for a man who would oversee the plantation in the knowledge that it would one day go to her sons; a man who would be a good father, and if not a passionate lover, at least a fond companion. She had begun to despair of ever finding the man she sought, until Hannah Lee had delivered the hapless gentleman firmly anchored to her arm.
Though Mary had put forth her best and brightest smile, Daniel Roberts, unlike those preceding him, had shown no inclination to flirt or flatter. He spoke little and demonstrated no more than polite interest in their conversation, until Mrs. Lee's retelling of the Indian massacre that had left Mary a widow. His sympathy had been genuine, but after a respectable interlude, he had made his escape back to the company of the gentlemen.
"What do you know of this Daniel Roberts?" Mary asked Mrs. Lee with unconcealed curiosity.
"I have gleaned little of his history beyond his meeting Philip Ludwell upon my son's return to Virginia after Eton. You know how retiring these Englishmen are," the matron said.
"I have since learned that he was an English cavalry officer, discharged after an unfortunate injury to his right arm. 'Twas undoubtedly in battle, though he understandably refuses to talk of it," Mrs. Lee added with a note of sympathy.
"Is he quite incapacitated?" Mary asked.
"Indeed not, my dear! One thinks it should have crippled him, but Roberts has proven very resilient. Despite his disability, he has made quite a prosperous living as well as a name for himself among the first families of Virginia. He has a remarkable ability with racing horses, you know. Truly a fine young man, dear Mary." She ended with an encouraging wink and then excused herself to attend her hostess duties.
From that moment on, the previously unassuming Mary Griffith set her cap most resolutely for Daniel Roberts. Allied with the formidable Hannah Lee and her substantial influence, Mary soon found an army of accomplices at her back. Once her campaign commenced, they laid an indefensible siege. The betrothal was announced the autumn of 1748, with plans of a spring wedding. With resignation rather than delight, Daniel Roberts prepared to enter the next phase of his life.
Though it was no love match, Roberts had acquiesced, vowing to be a kind and compassionate husband to Mary and a benevolent stepfather to her sons. Fate, however, intervened in the form of smallpox. Mary Griffiths was taken early that winter, leaving her orphaned sons with no guardian.
Having come from a world where greed and unchecked ambition ruled, Roberts stepped in to protect the young boys and their estate. His public betrothal to Mary had placed him in a strong position to petition the court for guardianship. Suddenly Roberts found himself with a ready-made family and steward of five hundred fertile acres, and under his careful management, the small plantation burgeoned to more than triple its original size.
Daniel Roberts, now having garnered both name and modest fortune, was finally in a position to pursue his lifelong dream. As a Virginia landholder, he had made his mark, yet true happiness remained elusive. Only thoughts of his own racing stud inspired any true passion in him. His time had come.
Breaking amicably with John Tayloe, who desired breeding rights to Mars, Roberts negotiated options on the first of the get from Tayloe's halfdozen prized broodmares. He then scoured the countryside for broodmares of his own choosing.
Although none in Virginia's racing set questioned Roberts' s knowledge of horseflesh, he was reckoned to hold some curious notions regarding his breeding shed. Contrary to the designs of his neighbors, who looked solely upon importation to improve their runners, Roberts sought foundation stock amongst the native Chickasaw horses.
Originating from Colonial Spanish horses, this hardy and muscular little breed was highly prized by natives and colonists alike for its practical utility, but these horses were also amazingly swift in shortdistance racing. In Roberts's earlier years of short racing, they had proven his strongest competition.
With the growing English trend to run younger horses at shorter distances, Roberts's desire was to produce the ideal middle-distance runner, one with the sprinting ability of the best Chickasaw and the staying power of the English racers. Of all the mares bred to Mars, it was out of his Chickasaw stock that Roberts achieved his greatest success, a blue roan colt with the best qualities of both his sire and dam: speed, strength, stamina, and a powerful will to run. Roberts christened him "Retribution."
Williamsburg, Virginia, 1751
The subscription race, organized by an elite group of plantation owners, was touted from Maryland to the Carolinas as akin to no other in Colonial history. A test of both raw speed and endurance, the race would pit the top short-and long-distance racers against one another in three heats of varying distance. The victor of the three would be crowned the indisputable king or queen of racing; and with a subscription fee of sixty hogsheads of Orinoco per entry, the winner stood to collect a purse equivalent to seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!
Roberts's Retribution would be competing in a field of representatives of the premier racing studs from Baltimore to Charleston, the colonies' finest hot-blooded horseflesh, and he was resolved to ride.
For two years, he had not only trained his colt to run but had also prepared his own body for this trial. Light, lithe, and stronger than he had been in a half decade, he willed that this new strength and twenty-plus years in the saddle would compensate for any other limitations he might have.
Aside from the subscription fee, Roberts had wagered the equivalent of an entire year's tobacco crop in a side bet with Maryland's most notorious gambler and horse breeder, William Byrd III. At the current market price of twenty shillings per hundredweight, his combined winnings from this race would amount to a fortune of over twenty thousand pounds should they prevail; but winnings aside, it was something he desperately needed to do.
Though he daily counted his blessings, in seven years he had never lost sight of his objective, to exact long-overdue recompense for all he had lost, and vengeance over those who had deceived and betrayed him in the name of selfish ambition.
Only with this victory could he ever hope to resurrect the man who was buried but far from dead.
The gathered crowd went wild as the baker's dozen, collectively representing the Colonial embodiment of equine perfection, were led out for the first of the three contests, the quarter-mile sprint.
The favored of the lot were Mr. Tayloe's Childers and Jenny Cameron, Benjamin Tasker's imported Selima, Francis Thornton's Chieftain, Governor Ogle's Queen Mab, and William Byrd III's pride, the young stallion Tryal. Mr. Daniels's Retribution, with his peculiar blood cross, was deemed by all to be completely outclassed in the field of thoroughbreds.
Thirteen horses were slated to run, but the track could barely contain ten once gathered abreast. To the jockeys' peril, the horses crowded, milled, and nervously jostled one another as they awaited the starting signal.
The roan jigged in nervous anticipation of the signal, tugging on the bit and pushing his nose out with an irritated snort. He was raring to go. Roberts couldn't be more pleased that the first race was a sprint. There would be no reason to hold back.
His confidence, however, was shattered by the reckless jolt of another horse and rider.
Sizing up the offenders, Roberts recognized the horse as Byrd's Tryal. The bay stallion was known to be a fierce competitor with a vicious temperament. Casting Roberts a malevolent stare, the jockey spurred his horse again and bumped Retribution a second time.
Most times, jostling was unintentional, but there were many jockeys who would use this technique and any other they could command to intimidate the competition. There was no question of this jockey's intent.
Unnerved, Retribution angrily pinned his ears and gave a warning swish of his tail, but the bay struck swiftly with sharp, bared teeth, tearing a chunk of flesh from Retribution's flank. Like lightening, the colt spun to retaliate and poised to strike back. Fearing a disqualification, Roberts hastily spurred his colt forward to disengage from the fracas, but his opponent's goal had been accomplished; Retribution had become distracted and jumpy.
Roberts had taken a huge gamble in believing this colt the answer to his prayers, but perhaps he needed more seasoning. Perhaps the youngster wasn't ready. Roberts was suddenly beleaguered with doubt that gripped and threatened to paralyze him.
Although their position on the inside distanced them from the bay stallion, the roan sensed his rider's lingering tension as the racing stewards gave the call for the contenders to line up. Roberts battled his own nerves, fighting to regain his equilibrium. Only by conquering his doubts and fears could he attend to the needs of his mount.
Blocking out all else, Roberts now focused his attention on soothing his jangled mount. When the moment of truth arrived, he sensed a subtle change. Roberts could feel the stoking tension in the horse, but on the outside, Retribution was deceptively, dangerously quiet, marking his anticipation in subtle signs---in the forward and aft twitch of his ears, in his inflamed nostrils, and in his deeper respirations. He was poised like a tiger readying to pounce and seize its prey.
The trumpet blasted with the reverberation of echoing thunder.
Roberts released the predator, and all apprehension of his colt's readiness evaporated with the blistering speed in which they charged down the track. Roberts hung over his horse's neck, willing him for speed, pushing, driving. Breaking cleanly free of the mill, they blazed past half the pack by the first post and pummeled the turf beneath them. There was no room for error in this brief and frenzied run, and they ran faultlessly.
The crowd went wild. It was later remembered of Retribution's extreme velocity over those four hundred yards that a blink of an eye would have missed it altogether.
While proven quarter-miler Primate, by imported Monkey, came in a distant second, easily defeating Selima and Jenny Cameron, he was believed to lack the bottom to prevail in the longer four-mile run, where the two English thoroughbreds were most favored.
Although Retribution would surely meet with stiff competition against these two mares in the next heat, Roberts had unwavering confidence in his ability to rout them all in the final one-miler.
Following their victory, Roberts proceeded to the rubbing house, where he dismounted to inspect the raw and ugly wound inflicted by Tryal. After applying salve to the injury, he handed the horse off to his groom to rub down, and then he and the other jockeys met with the stewards to determine their positions in the next race.
The second heat found the field narrowed to an even twelve. A fouled sinew had reportedly eliminated Mr. Tayloe's Childers, but Roberts suspected Tayloe's embarrassment of his poor showing, rather a legitimate leg injury, had led to the forfeit.
In the distance race, each rider drew straws. The longest straw would be closest the rail, the shortest, the farthest, and so forth. With four full laps of the one-mile oval required to complete the course, the inside track was held to offer a significant advantage. This position required less distance of the runner, but in Roberts's view, it ofttimes became an inescapable trap. As the competitors bunched up, all vying for the coveted spot, a horse could find it impossible to break out from the pack. As a rider, maneuvering on the inside would put Roberts at the greatest disadvantage. Contrary to the other jockeys, he hoped for the outside.
Fifth to draw his straw, he waited expectantly and breathed a sigh of relief. They would be seventh from the inside rail. In this position, Retribution could ignore those fighting for the inside and run independently until the final furlong, when it would be open for their taking.
His strategy formed, Roberts advanced to the start, discovering to his consternation that Tryal's jockey had drawn the position to his immediate right. Having already shown his colors in the earlier sprint, Roberts tagged him as a jockey with few scruples. Tryal's rider was markedly disinclined to make any attempt to control his mount's rancorous behavior.
Already leery of the pair, Retribution shifted nervously. Roberts circled him before taking his position, but as soon as he turned his back, the bay stallion reared and struck out with his foreleg. His ironshod hoof missed Roberts's head by mere inches.
Retribution moved to retaliate, but his rider again intervened. Roberts swore through gritted teeth, "If that's how the blighter wishes to play, we'll teach him a trick of our own, my boy."
The incident had again unsettled the entire herd. Horses bumped and jostled one another as they attempted once more to form some reasonable simulation of a line.
Once ready, the trump sounded, and the pack of restless, gleaming beasts exploded off the starting post to charge abreast down the field.
Roberts was acutely aware of the need to set the perfect pace. If too fast, they would lose steam and become vulnerable to a strong closer in the final furlongs. If too slow, they would have to fight their way through the crowd to gain the fore. The distance race, more than any other, required a savvy rider as much as a strong horse. Roberts and Retribution characterized the best of both.
By the time the field of runners approached the first bend, the line had folded inward toward the coveted rail. Roberts maintained his outside position, choosing to make a wider sweeping turn rather than fighting and weaving through the crowd, but as he made the arc, Tryal's jockey, whipping and spurring, came hard upon them. Sweeping across their path, he crowded and bashed into Retribution, simultaneously striking Roberts with a bony elbow to the stomach.
Roberts had been caught completely off guard. The blow paralyzed his lungs and very nearly knocked him from the galloping horse. Unbalanced, winded, and gasping for air, Roberts wrapped his arms about his horse's neck, clinging precariously while fighting to re-expand his lungs.
The race temporarily forgotten, he hung on the horse's left side while Retribution fought to keep his own balance, losing precious ground with every stride. The pack grew farther and farther distant before Roberts, breathing regulated, recovered enough for action. Here he was, dangling alongside his horse while the race was being run without them!
Roberts felt his dreams and carefully laid plans slipping away with every stride, but he could not give up. Not after all he had worked for. He knew to win this heat would be impossible, but if they could only regain the field, third place would be enough to advance them to the final heat.
He had never felt his weakness more than in that moment. With full use of his right arm, he could have easily pulled himself back into the saddle, but it was simply not up to the job.
In a feat worthy of a circus performer, he would have to use his legs to propel himself back into position, at the calculated risk of being trampled beneath his mount.
Grasping a tight fistful of mane, he blocked his mind to all but the rhythm of his galloping horse. Pulling his left foot free of the stirrup iron, he dropped, touching both feet to earth, and sprung. In one fluid motion, he had vaulted back into his seat! Deftly sliding his feet back into the irons, he took up the reins, crouched low over the colt's neck, and urgently called him back into the fray.
He would have to call on every ounce the colt had in him. Did he dare take such a risk? In his training, Roberts had yet to find Retribution's limits. He had demonstrated the heart of a runner, but he had never dared push such a youngster to the edge of his endurance. But now in twelfth place, with the rest of the field barely within their sights, he had no choice.
"Playtime's over, Son; I need all you've got!" Dropping flat to the wind, setting his rhythm with Retribution, he frantically urged the colt with hands, legs, and voice. Roberts rode like never before, incessantly encouraging, pressing, driving.
Responding to his rider's call, Retribution answered. With his ears snapping alertly, he accelerated to a formidable clip and hurled himself down the track. With his nostrils flared and eyes transfixed, he steadily crept up. Gaining little by little, Retribution moved to chase upon the heels of the chestnut filly in eleventh place. Snipping away at the distance, they were now running neck-and-neck and then suddenly hurtling past.
Roberts edged in toward the rail, seeking any advantage to make up what they had lost. Over the ensuing mile, stretching and straining anew, forelegs slicing the air, Retribution relentlessly stalked the field, picking off his prey one by one. By the final lap, he had gained a distant fourth place.
Retribution's body was now darkened, nearly black with the sheen of sweat; his mouth was frothing, his eyes glazed and nostrils flared red with blood, but he showed no sign of quitting. Heart and soul, the roan was giving his all.
With renewed confidence, Roberts studied the three still holding the advantage.
Selima and Jenny Cameron had run a hard race, as predicted, and were holding strong with one another in their contest for the lead. In third place was Tryal, lagging behind by nearly a furlong and noticeably showing strain.
Roberts needed only third, and usurping it from Tryal would be nearly as great a reward as a win. With his foe in sight, Roberts had no need to coax Retribution. With steely determination, the colt gained on the bay, his every stride drawing them closer, first by inches, then by feet, and finally yards, they closed the gap.
Tryal, now furiously blowing, bared his teeth as they came alongside and matched him stride for stride. Retribution tensed, desiring nothing more than to spring, but Roberts kept him back to taunt the stallion. They clung, and the bay fought for all he was worth, screaming to break free. His sides heaved. His jockey frantically spurred and flailed the whip, but Retribution held fast.
The struggle intensified. Tryal and his jockey strained in their exertions to pull free and regain third. Roberts released an inch of rein, and it proved the final blow.
Retribution lunged forward and clipped past Tryal. The stallion's eyes rolled back in his head. Blood issued forth from his inflamed nostrils, and he plunged to his knees, somersaulting onto the track, his rider crumpled beneath. The stallion's heart had ruptured under the severe strain of his efforts.
Roberts was horrified but dared not look back. With less than a quarter mile remaining, Retribution was still running strong, his breathing heavy but still rhythmic and synchronous with his hammering hooves. They had miraculously come from behind to claim third. The finish was in view. Dared he hope?
There was no time for deliberation. He spread his torso flat over the horse's withers and begged Retribution for everything he had. The game little horse answered the call.
With his rider's final cue, Retribution locked his eyes on Selima and Jenny Cameron. Roaring within, he welled and surge forth in a final burst of acceleration. Stealing feet with every stride, he closed the distance in the final furlong, bringing them nose-to-tail with Jenny Cameron, but they had run out of track.
Although finishing a close third, Retribution's rider was no less than elated. The colt had run the last mile and a half at a miraculous clip! Had it not been for Tryal and his rogue jockey, they would have easily won and outdistanced the pack.
Retribution had persevered when all hope appeared lost. He had rallied after a crippling setback. In a grueling test, the colt had proven himself. Roberts had no doubt the one-miler was his.
"The time for our journey draws nigh, my boy. The time of Retribution has finally come."
D aniel Roberts stood with his young wards, Thomas and Benjamin, on the deck of Venturer as it dropped anchor in Bristol. Ironic, he thought, that the same ship that had carried him from Bristol to Annapolis nigh on eight years ago would return him to his former homeland.
Six months ago, he had taken his prized racehorse and tobaccowinnings to Annapolis, where they were loaded aboard the threemasted brigand, Annabelle, bound for Liverpool. Roberts had taken great pains to equip the vessel for Retribution's comfort and safety. The horse was the sole occupant of a roomy cargo hold of twelve by fourteen feet and equipped with a sling. In the event of foul weather, the sling would prevent loss of footing in rough seas that would have battered him incessantly against the solid oak walls of his seagoing box. Instead, the sling under his belly would suspend him and gently sway, acting much as a sailor's hammock.
Roberts's most trusted groom accompanied Retribution to his final destination, where the young horse would spend several months training on English turf under John Jeffries's aegis.
It had taken Roberts several inquiries to track down the able horseman who had been his mentor, but he had finally located him in Doncaster, where he had found employment after Sir Garfield's death. Jeffries would know how to bring out the best in the young runner. With the finest running bloods residing in England, Retribution must be trained on their home turf and against their kind. He would be properly prepared, and Doncaster was the place to do so. Quietly.
Although there had been none in the colonies to hold a candle to him, Virginia was not England. The English took their bloodstock in dead earnest, and although many English thoroughbreds had made the transatlantic crossing over the past decade, the very best of English blood would never be exported. It was one of the many ways the English continued to "lord over" the colonists. Roberts would be arrogant and foolhardy to think of accomplishing his ends without due preparation.
And now, Roberts had arrived to set the wheels in motion.
For years, he had awaited this moment, and now he would personally see his plans unfurl. Standing at the ship's rail, he gazed sightlessly at the city sprawled before him, lost in his thoughts, until a crewman's colorful expletive awoke him from his reverie.
"Benjamin! Thomas! Quit the tomfoolery, and stay out of the rigging!" he shouted to the rambunctious boys, who had unwarily provoked the sailor's invective.
The culprits, seven and nine years old respectively, instantly untangled themselves and trudged guiltily over to their guardian as the crew continued docking procedures.
"Is this London?" Thomas asked, eyes wide in wonderment.
"It must be the largest city in the world," Benjamin echoed.
"'Tis only Bristol, lads, a veritable anthill compared to the great city of London!" Roberts answered.
"A city bigger than this? That's impossible," Thomas stated skeptically.
"Impossible? I promise you not, young Thomas. It would only seem so, as your own world has been so very small until now, but we have now crossed an entire ocean to a much older land. You will soon find your universe much expanded."
Bedazzled, Thomas surveyed the city and digested the words.
"Didn't you once live in England, Mr. Roberts?" Benjamin queried.
"I did indeed." He paused, continuing with a touch of melancholy, "I was raised in Yorkshire, a beautiful rolling countryside not unlike our lovely Virginia."
"I should very much like to see London," Thomas insisted.
"Have no doubt I shall take you there. Unquestionably, my business shall require it. Speaking of which, most of my affairs have been conducted by Mr. Lee, you know. He has handled my legal and business affairs, as well as your own for some time, but with his father's recent death, I suspect he will soon return to Virginia."
"Wasn't Mr. Lee also educated in England?" Thomas asked.
"I wish I were going to an English school," Benjamin added wistfully.
"You are yet too young, Benjamin, but at this moment, I should not reflect much upon it. We shall likely spend several months here. There is much to accomplish before I contemplate our return," he remarked soberly.
"Speaking of Mr. Lee, is that not him come to greet us?" Benjamin exclaimed.
"Indeed it is! What sharp eyes you have." He ruffled the boy's hair carelessly and hailed his old friend, who had indeed come all the way from London.
"And now, lads, 'twould appear we should collect our belongings and make ready to disembark."
Mr. Roberts bespoke the very best set of private rooms at the John Bull, ordered supper, and settled his wards before meeting privately with Mr. Lee.
"I offer my heartfelt condolences, Ludwell, on the passing of your father. Thomas Lee was a most remarkable man."
"Indeed he was, and I should never have believed it would have happened so soon. But it appears that now my legal studies are come to an end. As the head of my family, I needs must soon take up the mantle of Stratford." He poured two glasses of port, offering one to his friend.
"But what of your immediate plans, now you have arrived, Roberts? I confess that your intentions in your last letter were shrouded in a cloud of mystery."
"Were they indeed? I am surprised that you, the only one of my acquaintance who knows the truth of my past, would find my journey a mystery."
"You have confided a portion of your story in these years past, but far from its entirety, I would guess. I had assumed, erroneously it would appear, that you had laid it to rest, buried with the unfortunate Mr. Devington. But now I perceive that this unfortunate gentleman is far from resting peacefully in his grave. Are you bent on vengeance, my friend? Is this your motive in returning to England?"
"Lust for revenge is not often attributed to a noble character, is it, Ludwell?"
"Far be it for me to judge! I would call it no more than justice, but I fail to understand what would drive you to the point of risking everything you have worked for these eight years."
"I do not risk everything. The plantation is completely intact. Indeed, it prospers more now than ever. I have not staked my livelihood nor the property, which is not rightfully mine to wager."
"Speaking of which, what possessed you to take on the rearing of two boys? Mary Griffiths was a close friend of my mother, and I knew her well, but why should you involve yourself with her orphans?"
"I confess now that had I any idea of what I was getting into..." He laughed and then sobered. "Mary was a fine woman and a good mother, and the boys had no one. If she had not died, I should have become their stepfather. How could I not step in when it was within my power to protect them?"
"'Tis a good thing you have done to bring them with you."
"They have mourned their mother deeply, and though 'tis nearly two years since they lost her, she has left a void that cannot be filled. I could not countenance the thought of leaving them behind only in the care of servants."
"I know few men who own such scruples, my friend."
"I should not go so far as that, Ludwell. You know why I am come to England."
"We are back to that now, are we? You become a conundrum, Roberts," Mr. Lee said with a puzzled expression. "In our years of acquaintance, you have rubbed along well enough with your fellow man and have duly prospered for your efforts. Why do you now disturb your own peace? Why put yourself to this trouble?"
"One can understand a man's motives only when one stands in his shoes, Ludwell."
"I can only believe that this man, whoever he is, must have been the devil himself, a foul fiend, to have set you so against him."
"On the contrary, he was once my most trusted friend," Roberts replied softly.
"Then if that be so, I can only guess a woman is at the bottom of this."
Mr. Lee's remark drew his friend's countenance into grim, hard lines. He had come far too near the mark. Mr. Lee refilled their glasses and broke the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them.
"I suppose I should waste my breath if I tried to dissuade you? I can't believe any good should come out of this."
"Your breath should be completely wasted. I advise you save it."
"Dare I ask exactly how much you intend to risk?" his concerned friend prodded.
"As much as it takes to answer my purpose." He raised his glass, swilling its contents in one fluid motion.
After only a few days rest from their voyage, Mr. Roberts was anxious to be about his business. He and Lee met to discuss his final arrangements before departing Bristol for Doncaster.
"Item one," Lee said, consulting his list, "I have leased a house for you in one of London's grander districts. Item two: I have deposited the proceeds of your tobacco cargo at the Bank of England and have established your necessary credit, as well as letters of introduction from various respectable gentlemen of my acquaintance. Item three: I have employed a tutor to take charge of the boys while you are otherwise engaged. The last item I had added to the list as something you had overlooked."
"And what might that be?"
"Membership at White's Chocolate House."
"White's, you say? What should I care for such hobnobbing?"
"It would be very much to your purpose."
"How so, Ludwell? How should a stuffy gentleman's club signify in my plans?"
"You overlook the betting book."
"The betting book?"
"White's betting book is an infamous public record of wagers between gentlemen. Much wickedness has been ascribed to it, and since you remain undeterred from your nefarious course"---he paused reflectively---"for purposes of validation, notoriety, and posterity, I suggest you ensure your wager is entered in the book. If one chooses to bring one's enemy to his knees, it is best accomplished most publicly."
"True indeed, Ludwell." Roberts chuckled. "Your insights quite overwhelm me."
"I am but your humble servant," he said with a smirk and took a pinch of snuff. Lee gave a brief shake to his lace cuff then paused to scrutinize his companion. As he critically surveyed Roberts from head to foot, his eyes narrowed.
"What are you staring at?" Roberts asked. Although dressed well enough for a rural Virginia planter, Roberts's unpowdered hair, brown wool suit, and plain white linen would hardly pass muster in the ranks of English gentlemen.
"At the risk of being indelicate," Lee remarked, "might I make a few suggestions to ease your way into the upper ranks?"
Roberts quirked a brow.
"A proper English tailor might serve you well, and in the spirit of maintaining your precious incognito, perhaps you would also benefit from a peruquier? I mean no offense, but you hardly impress one as a figure of prosperity dressed as you are. This is England, after all."
"I take no offense. I shall contrive to depart Bristol a proper English gentleman," Roberts replied ruefully.
He spent the next day venturing from shop to shop, acquiring the necessary finery. After squandering an entire day and much coin, Roberts exchanged his drab brown wool for suiting of deep blue silk brocade. He replaced his plain white linen for that dripping with French lace, and even his hat brim was now adorned with silver. His final purchase, the pièce de résistance, was the white powdered tie wig, a fashionable accoutrement he had always eschewed in favor of his own hair. Adding powder and a silk patch on his face, his transformation was now complete. Roberts regarded himself with amazement in the tailor's looking glass. He hardly recognized himself.
Impatient not to waste another day, Roberts set off from Bristol in a hired coachand-four, accompanied by the two boys and their tutor. He had commanded a bruising pace, but with scheduled stops at points of interest to allow the boys to stretch their restless legs and the tutor to enrich their young minds with tidbits of English history.
By the fifth day and within thirty miles of their destination, the coachman halted, informing Mr. Roberts of a pronounced lameness in the lead horse, as well as a problem with the rear axle. Although impatient to arrive in Doncaster and assess the readiness of his colt, Roberts was no less concerned for all livestock under his care. He directed the coachman to follow the Sheffield road, instructing him to locate a decent coaching inn where the passengers might rest while seeing to the horse and carriage repairs.
To his great consternation, the coach halted at a place burned vividly into Roberts's memory: the Dark Horse Inn.
"Stokes," he inquired of his coachman with studied indolence, "how have we come by this particular inn?"
"Mr. Roberts, sir, you instructed me to find inn and smithy. As it so happens, here are both."
"Then I suppose we must indeed rest here," he answered skeptically. "Pray tend to the horse, and if he can't be made serviceably sound, you have my permission to hire another team. Have the smith take a look at the axle, but bear in mind I have no wish to delay overlong."
"Aye, Mr. Roberts. As ye say, sir." The coachman directed his equipage to the nearby smithy.
"Thomas, Benjamin, Mr. Thayer, shall we see if this inn offers any manner of fare fit for human consumption? The victuals were dubious at best, upon my recollection." He addressed the boys with a conspiratorial grin, broadening with Thayer's expression of alarm. The tutor's worst expectations, however, vanished when the party opened the doors to the large and crowded taproom with its gleaming wood and tantalizing aroma of roasted meat from its roaring spits.
He was stunned at the profound transformation of the dank and dreary tavern of his memory. A buxom matron with a toddler clinging to her skirts cheerfully greeted the party and led them to a large table.
Eyeing the boys, she remarked, "Now there's a pair of fine lads. Ye look to be right about the age of me own two oldest, Ian and Jack." She gave the boys a friendly wink. "Now, what might I bring ye fine gents? The Dark Horse ale is the finest to be had, if'n I say so m'self, and we be also known for our mutton and our game pie."
"I should say two tankards of ale, two of cider, a game pie, and a platter of whatever you have roasting on the spit should do us very well, madam."
"I am no madam, yer lordship." She laughed. "Just Maggie; Maggie Grey."
"Maggie, you say?" Mr. Roberts said incredulously. His narrowing eyes regarded her sharply in an effort to envision the auburn-haired woman, less the clinging toddler and a good three or four stone. To his amazement, he realized she was indeed the sultry siren with whom Philip Drake had dallied nearly a decade ago.
"Mrs. Grey?" he repeated. "I am no lord, simply Daniel Roberts, if you please. Would you be the proprietress of this establishment?"
"I am, indeed. That is me and me husband John Grey. He be the smith, and most times he leaves the tavern to me."
The inquiry was politely made, but Maggie found herself growing uneasy under his scrutiny. It had been several years and as many children since she had taken the notice of any fine gentlemen passing through her establishment. She felt mildly uncomfortable, and his gaze was strangely familiar. Suddenly compelled, she asked, "Does I know your lordship? I feel as if we've met afore."
"I believe the answer would depend on whether or not you recall an acquaintance with a certain officer of the King's Horse."
"The smile vanished from Maggie's plump face. "And who might that be?" she asked with a slight scowl.
"Do you recall an officer by the name of Philip Drake?"
Still wearing the frown, she said, "I ain't heard that name in years, and don't be repeatin' it around John Grey! He's a jealous husband, John is, and I reckon my poor Ian would only suffer for it. But why would you be askin' after Philip Drake?" she asked warily, and then she suddenly raised her hand to her mouth in a gasp. "God's ghost! If it ain't Cap'n Devington!"
The unlikely reunion proved a serendipitous event. Instead of hastening their journey as he had planned, Daniel Roberts bespoke rooms for the night. To their delight, Thomas and Benjamin, not having shared company with anyone their age for many weeks of travel, found a host of playmates among Maggie's six children. One by one, the Grey brood made their appearance in the tavern.
To Mr. Thayer's dismay, Roberts volunteered the tutor's services to oversee the boisterous brood that he might converse privately with Mrs. Grey, who once recovered from her initial shock, proved a veritable fount of information.
Sir Garfield, she recounted, had two years ago suffered a massive heart seizure while attending Newmarket races. Lady Felicia, beset with grief, divested the estate of all horseflesh, which she believed caused her husband's demise. To her credit, the lady took a good many servants to London with her, elsewise, where could they have found other employment?
Charles Wallace, heir to the entire estate, had joined the infantry years ago and was later involved in that nasty business with the Scots at Culloden, commanded by Billy the Butcher. To Maggie's recollection, Charles had never returned to Yorkshire, even upon his father's death. "But as for that sister of his, I always knew she was no more'n a shameless hussy, though she put on such grand lady airs. There was that scandal whispered about his lordship, her husband, what was shot by his own bleedin' father. Let me say that was some queer business there!"
Placing her hands on her hips, Maggie continued her diatribe. "After that, she, what was so wanting to be a countess, come off her high-and-mighty throne. Though she picked a ripe one in Sir George Tenbury, doddering old squire what he is. But I says, 'tis nobody's business if she makes a cuckold of him with the footmen."
After these telling revelations, awkwardness ensued. Roberts had questions he dared not ask poised on his tongue regarding the fate of another member of the Wallace family. Maggie, however, broached the subject in her circuitous fashion.
"Cap'n... er... Mr. Roberts," she amended, "ye never did say what brings ye back to Yorkshire after all this time."
"My dear Mrs. Grey," he asked, "what do you know of my history these eight years past?"
"Well, Ca... Mr. Roberts, ye was believed dead. That business in Leeds, well that was talked about all over. It was said ye was hauled off in chains and hung by the neck at Newgate, though I never put much stock in that tale, believin' officers is usually killed more dignified like. But Miss Charlotte"---in the midst of her prattle, Maggie missed the shadow that passed over his countenance and the hard lines that formed at the mention of Charlotte's name---"I done heard she mourned you, Cap'n, believing ye dead. Why the fates worked against the two of ye, I'll ne'er understand. She, poor thing, ain't known a moment's happiness to any account. Though she be a grand lady now, none thinks she got the better end o'that deal!
"As for him... though I might once have had feelings for him, that was afore he come back from the wars. After Culloden, he ain't never been the same as what he was. Black-tempered and jugbitten, they say, and carin' for naught but his bleedin' racehorses. Best thing I ever did was marry John Grey." Her assertion was a bit too emphatic, as if to convince herself.
"And it appears you have prospered for your decision," Roberts commented absently while he struggled to compose his churning emotions.
"A good man, John Grey," she continued, oblivious. "But what of yerself? Ye've a pair of strappin' young lads. What of the Mrs. Roberts?"
"There is no Mrs. Roberts. The mother of the lads passed away two years ago from smallpox," he replied quietly. "Thomas and Benjamin are my legal wards, but I care for them as if they were my own. The elder has come to England for his education, and not knowing how long I would be away, I could not bear to leave the younger alone in Virginia. Besides, there is nothing better than travel to broaden a young mind."
"Aye, 'tis true enough for some, for those restless ones, anyways. My Ian is one like that, restless he is. Though he works in the smithy, his mind is always elsewhere. He be far too wont to woolgatherin', and John has little patience wi' the lad to begin with, ye ken."
"The eldest works in the smithy? You remind me I must see to the progress of our carriage. I thank you, Mrs. Grey, for your time, your gracious hospitality, and most of all for your discretion?" He laid two gold guineas before her.
"Your business ain't no business of mine, Mr. Roberts." She reassured him with a wink. Tucking the guineas deep in the ample bodice of her gown, she sashayed back to her taproom.
Mr. Roberts then directed his steps to the smithy, where having already completed the axle repair, the smith was reshoeing the lame horse. As he held the horse's foreleg between his knees, the lazy gelding shifted his weight to bear on the man, who barked harshly at the lad holding the horse. The boy snapped to attention and corrected the horse with a sharp jerk on the lead shank. When the man finished with the final nail, he cuffed the boy roughly on the ear.
"Ye'll pay better attention the next time, Ian! Now lead 'im back to the livery. No dawdling, ye hear!"
"Yes, sir. I won't, sir," the boy answered. His lip quivered, but his dark gaze was direct and his bearing more defiant than submissive. Refusing to be cowed, with his chin raised and stiff shoulders, he led the big gelding out to the livery. Roberts thought the boy resembled a little soldier.
He was about to address a remark to the burly man, but a thought suddenly arrested him. Tall and lanky for his age, which he guessed to be about eight, the contrast in both figure and feature of Maggie's eldest son, Ian, with the five other redheaded, blue-eyed children could not have been more marked. At once he understood Maggie's veiled references to her husband's jealousy and impatience with the boy.
Ian Grey was the spitting image of Philip Drake!
The following day brought a change in Roberts's plans. Rather than traveling by coach to Doncaster, he left the boys at the tavern in the agitated tutor's care and hired a horse to depart Sheffield alone.
In the confines of the coach, he had grown claustrophobic, and his encounter with Maggie had only dredged up painful memories. He needed air and space and time alone to think. He galloped the familiar paths and rolling heath he'd memorized from his boyhood, the same heath where he'd ridden with Charlotte, and was on his way to Doncaster, where his first fateful race had been run.
He shook out of his angst of the past, forcing himself to look forward rather than back. The autumn racing season would soon commence. The time of reckoning was at hand.
London, England, Autumn 1751
T he Earl of Hastings sat sullen and brooding, with his customary bottle of brandy within easy reach, as he awaited the arrival of an unknown gentleman who had earlier sent his card. Any who had known the earl a decade ago would be hard-pressed to recognize the handsome and charming cavalry officer he had been.
He had once been one of Cumberland's key men, fighting valiantly against the French at Dettingen, where he had first distinguished himself for bravery, and later in their just-as-heroic defeat at Fontenoy, but it was for the infamous battle of Culloden that he bore his inner and outer scars.
Swiftly and mercilessly, they had routed the supporters of the Young Pretender, the would-be usurper to the British throne. Completely crushing the insurrection, the commander in chief had allowed no quarter. But the price of victory had been high. Too high. Nicknamed the Butcher of Culloden and Billy the Butcher, among his colorful sobriquets, the Duke of Cumberland and all under his command had been condemned in the public eye.
Major Lord Hastings had sold out after the Treaty of Aux Chappelle in '48, resolved to retire to his family seat in East Sussex and put his long-neglected affairs in order, but his vision of bucolic idyll was shattered when he found his properties a shambles.
His estates had suffered decades of neglect under his father, who was more interested in politics and courtly intrigue than in the sowing of fields and mending of roofs. Though Philip had hired a steward to manage his affairs, his own disinterest and elected absence had only compounded the years of decay.
Of all his holdings, the earl discovered only a single profitable enterprise: his racing stud. And to his complete bafflement, the success was singularly credited to his estranged wife, Lady Charlotte Drake, Countess of Hastings.
Having a foundation of only a few mediocre leftovers from the Hastings stud and the broodmare Amoret he had given her as a peace offering, Charlotte had built a stable of superior runners.
The first of these had been Amoret's foal by Lord Godolphin's Hobgoblin, the gangly chestnut colt, Shakespeare, which Philip had claimed for himself. The young horse had more than lived up to expectations. Having been a winner on the track, he was already enjoying success in the breeding shed.
With her first success with Shakespeare, Charlotte was determined with all her being to follow the romantic dream she and Robert had nurtured those many years ago. Maintaining her faith in the superior genetics of the three progenitor sires, she built her stables around the very best mares put to the finest stallions her money could buy.
In addition to Amoret, she sought out descendants of the original royal mares and the daughters of proven runners, adding Mother Western by a son of Snake, Ruby by Blacklegs, Meloria by Portmore's Fox, and Cypron by a son of Flying Childers to her broodmare harem.
Carefully selecting stallions of the Darley, Byerley, and Godolphin blood, she paired them with her choice mares and began to produce winners. A colt, Midas, in '46 and a third colt, Slouch, in '47, followed Shakespeare. Two fillies, Miss Cade and Miss Meredith, by the fine stallion Cade, followed in '48. All had shown the capacity to run. And win.
Charlotte's biggest gamble had been in putting Mother Western to the great Regulus, the still undefeated champion, who had run his first race that fateful day when Robert had wagered against Sir Garfield. The stallion's fee, at twenty guineas, was an exorbitant sum that had drained her available resources, but the resulting filly, Spiletta, was Charlotte's pride and represented her best hopes for the future.
Under Charlotte's guiding hand, the Hastings's stud produced more winners than any other in the region, and although the horses ran under the earl's name and racing colors, Lady Hastings was universally recognized for their successes.
This mortifying revelation came to Philip upon his election to the newly formed Jockey Club, when its members raised their glasses at the Star and Garter to its honorary member, the Countess of Hastings, first lady of the turf.
Shortly thereafter, Lord Hastings took seriously to the bottle. His military career, brilliantly begun, had ended in disgrace. His centuriesold family seat was in such disrepair that it was little better than a pile of rubble. His only success was credited to his wife, and even their marriage, still a celibate arrangement, remained an atrocious farce.
In their eight years together, had Charlotte ever played him for a fool or a cuckold, he would have divorced her. God knew he had just reason. But though she denied him an heir, and with it his full inheritance, she had never crossed the line of adultery. And it was Charlotte's successes, rather than his, that kept them afloat.
Unhappily resigned to his failures, Philip had sought solace in his horses, his brandy... and his mistress. Sukey. His beautiful, witty, laughing Sukey. She was the one and only love of his life, but a life they could never share. Although wanting nothing more than to be his lawful wife, she had settled for mistress rather than allowing him to divorce Charlotte.
He and Charlotte had settled over the years into an uneasy peace. He allowed her full rein over the stud, and she turned a blind eye to his mistress, but even if Philip could have had the woman he loved, she could never give him a son. It always came back to that.
The heir and the inheritance that would never be his.
His trembling hands refilled his glass again to sloshing. He knocked back a third brandy while he waited. Waited and brooded. He had just begun to feel the first dullness of his senses when the gentleman approached, introducing himself with a very correct and deferential bow.
Lord Hastings responded with an arrogant nod and then carelessly waved at the vacant chair opposite him. Mr. Lee seated himself, refusing the proffered drink while his lordship replenished his yet again.
"Lee," Lord Hastings said. "Can't say I know the name, though your face seems somewhat familiar."
"No doubt we've encountered one another at Newmarket, my lord."
"Ah! A racing aficionado, are you?"
"Indeed, Lord Hastings, and as it happens, racing is the purpose of this meeting."
His interest piqued, the earl replied, "You perceive me all ears, Mr. Lee."
"I am come at the behest of a Mr. Roberts of Virginia, a gentleman with a fine appreciation of horseflesh and an even greater conceit."
Lord Hastings quirked a brow at the disparaging remark. "You act as his agent, yet I think you no great admirer of this gentleman."
"Suffice to say, Virginia society is comprised of much closer circles than in England. As we have many mutual acquaintances, Mr. Roberts sought me out, believing I might assist him in his singular endeavor. Believing his purpose is utter folly, it is only for the sake of our mutual friends that I have agreed to act on Mr. Robert's behalf."
"And what is this folly? I am intrigued to know more of your imprudent Colonial friend." He once more offered a glass of brandy to Mr. Lee. Upon his polite refusal, his lordship shrugged, lifting his own to his lips. Slouching in his chair, he beckoned Lee with an indolent nod to continue his narrative.
"It would appear that Mr. Daniel Roberts of Westmoreland County, Virginia, has conceived in his mind the belief that he possesses the finest piece of horseflesh in God's creation. Having been a competitor on the Virginia turf, I was acquainted with his reputation but am no less taken aback by the man's vanity."
"So you say!" His listener barked with laughter and sat forward in rapt interest. "Precisely how did this Roberts come by his peculiar notion?"
"By a fluke, my lord. His fouryear-old colt bested the most superior Colonial blood horses for a very substantial purse, the largest prize ever won in Virginia."
"Indeed fortuitous, but what has this to say to me, Lee?"
"Bear with me, my lord, and I shall come to my purpose."
Their discourse was interrupted by the arrival of several gentlemen of obvious consequence. The leader of the trio was a corpulent man of unquestionable nobility coupled with his unmistakable military bearing. The arrival brought about a remarkable change in the earl's seeming state of torpor. He smartly rose from his chair and snapped a salute of greeting to the corpulent man. "Your Grace."
At this address, Mr. Lee, a man of quick faculties, deduced the new arrival to be the Duke of Cumberland. He swept an obsequious bow.
Lord Hastings turned to the duke and his entourage, and said, "I make known to you the honorable Mr. Lee, a gentleman of Virginia, who has entertained me mightily this quarter hour."
"Is that true, Hastings?" His grace appeared amused. "Then I would join you for a spell. God knows how I am in need of diversion these days." With a crook of his finger, the duke signaled an army of lackeys to see to his party. Seating himself with a grunt, Cumberland assumed an attentive pose. "Pray continue, Mr. Lee. I would hear this tale that has so amused my jaded friend."
"I have spoken, Your Grace, of a certain gentleman who is come from Virginia to propose a horse race."
"A horse race, you say? This is not so unexceptional. Who is the gentleman?"
"No one of any consequence, Your Grace, but he has an inflated regard of his horseflesh, having defeated our Virginia horses, and has transported his champion with the stated purpose of besting the most superior runners in England."
The entire group burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Conceited, you say? I would remark that the man is delusional!" His Grace retorted. "What do you make of this, Hastings?" he said to his former aide-de-camp.
"'Twould appear a ridiculous vagary, but I should know what manner of horse he has, this Roberts. By what sire line is he bred?"
"The sire line is unknown, although it is allowed he is of Saracenic origin."
"An unknown Eastern-bred sire in Virginia, eh?" A brief shadow crossed the earl's visage, but he dismissed it with a visible shake of his head, casting off whatever notion had momentarily caught his fancy. "What of the dam, sir? I have heard you Colonials have imported a good many of our English-blood mares. What is the dam's family?"
"The dam is native bred, a mare of the Chickasaws," Mr. Lee replied.
"Chicksaw, you say? What on God's green earth is a Chicksaw?" His Grace barked.
"Chickasaw, Your Grace," he corrected. "'Tis a breed of horse domesticated by a tribe of American natives highly respected for their horse sense."
"A racehorse bred by savages? You bloody well do mean native!" interjected the duke. "I can't recall the last time I was so entertained."
"Is this meant to be a jest?" Lord Hastings asked Mr. Lee.
"Indeed not. The man is in dead earnest; however, he has of late discovered an impediment to his aspirations."
"An impediment? Aside from the lack of a real horse?" Cumberland asked. "By all means, you must continue this tale."
"The gentleman had in mind to run in the Royal Plates but has learned, to his chagrin, that his colt is ineligible due to his breeding. We have no such rules governing the blood in Virginia, where any horse may race, so I daresay he never considered this complication. He has brought his horse at no inconsiderable expense and is extremely vexed that he should be denied the run."
"If the horse is deemed ineligible, he is ineligible," remarked Lord Hastings. "Although this tale has been delightfully diverting, I fail to see how it involves me."
"One can only sympathize with the deluded creature, eh, Hastings?" His Grace poured a drink and considered his friend.
Mr. Lee replied, "Although the horse is ineligible to run any of the subscription races, the gentleman will not suffer defeat so easily. Thus, I finally come to my errand. Mr. Roberts came desiring to challenge only the most superior horses in England, and since some of the finest are reputedly housed in the Hastings stud, he respectfully proposes that your lordship consider a match race. Any horse of your stable against his Virginia-bred colt."
"What?" Lord Hastings exploded in laughter. "He has in mind to match some halfbreed native pony against the likes of Shakespeare? My horses have won three King's Plates this season alone! I would not condescend to such a mockery."
"Mayhap you would be more disposed after considering his wager. He proposes twenty thousand pounds."
The laughter abruptly ceased. "Twenty thousand pounds sterling?"
"Just so. The man has more tobacco than sense and is in dead
earnest regarding his horse," Lee asserted.
"Then I shall consider his ludicrous wager in dead earnest. What are the terms, should I accept?"
"The race would be run at the distance, time, and place of your choosing, my lord."
"Good God! The man's a complete buffoon!" The Duke of Cumberland slapped his thigh heartily while Lord Hastings battled his sense of disquiet. Something just didn't sit right with him. But twenty thousand pounds? Dismissing his eerie presentiment, he looked to Cumberland. "I find myself compelled to accept him, Your Grace."
"By all means, Hastings! I would that I might also have a horse in this race!"
"Mr. Lee," Lord Hastings said deliberately, "pray convey to your friend that we shall meet at Newmarket on the fourteenth of October, the day before the King's Plate is to be run. He shall no doubt be well pleased to have a wide and sundry audience to witness his most auspicious race."
"He shall be pleased to hear of your acceptance, my lord. I suppose all that remains is to enter the wager in the betting book," he remarked casually.
"By all means, Lee." Lord Hastings strolled to the infamous tome and entered the details of the wager, witnessed by Mr. Roberts's legal agent as well as His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland.
When the ink was dry, Lord Hastings reflected, "I am come to mind of an old English proverb, Mr. Lee. 'A fool and his money are soon parted.'"
Mr. Lee smiled politely and softly spoke his reply. "I am in mind of an even older proverb, my lord, 'Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him.'"
Newmarket, Suffolk, October 13, 1751
T raveling as inconspicuously as possible, the two Virginians arrived in Newmarket a day prior to the scheduled match race. Anxious to avoid recognition, and particularly any inadvertent encounter with the Earl of Hastings, Roberts eschewed the better accommodations in town to take rooms at a smaller coaching inn, the White Hart, in the nearby village of Bury St Edmunds.
Once settled, he sallied forth to the racing stables to inspect his horse, delivered by Jeffries and Roberts's Virginia groom, Tom, a full se'nnight earlier, to work in earnest on the Newmarket Heath. In his caution, he had instructed Jeffries to take every possible measure to keep his runner under wraps, a near impossible feat with so many congregating en masse for the King's Plate.
The trainer's only recourse had been to stumble about in the dark, conducting their practice runs in the early twilight hours. Though the trainer felt at a distinct disadvantage, the able colt revealed not the slightest weakness. He was in top form, tearing up the Heath with blistering speed.
Mr. Roberts was immensely pleased with the trainer's report. He did not desire a simple victory on the Rowley Mile. No indeed. He would be satisfied with nothing less than the Earl of Hastings's complete and utter humiliation, witnessed by the entire racing world.
Although they made every attempt to do so, the earl and his countess could not completely evade one another's company. Thus, over the years, at least where racing was concerned, they had come to a truce of sorts, agreeing to maintain appearances when encountering one another at public gatherings.
This was no truer than during the twice-annual Newmarket racing season, the only time in which Lord and Lady Hastings actually shared the cottage in Cheveley. This autumn, however, he had sent his baggage coach a day earlier than Charlotte had anticipated.
The event came as little surprise to Charlotte, who imagined he intended to spend the night before the race with Cumberland and his army cronies in a late night of drinking and carousing. She was, therefore, surprised to encounter him at breakfast early the next morning, and even further taken aback to find him clear-eyed, clean-shaven, and dressed to go out.
"Philip, you are certainly up betimes! Have you taken to new habits these days?" she inquired mockingly. "I should not have expected you to bestir yourself before noontime."
"Don't place any great hope on my reform," he remarked dryly.
"Indeed, I should never expect you might suddenly give up the practices of excess and dissipation you have spent eons perfecting," she said with a snort. "'Tis quite a ridiculous notion."
"No reason to get your hackles up so early, darling one. I shall remove myself to town directly, and you may continue in your cherished solitude."
"I do not cherish solitude, Philip; I am simply discriminating in the company I keep."
"Touché, dear heart." His answering smirk was provoking. "But pray let us truce, light of my life, for contrary to my fresh appearance and exceeding good temper, I've the devil of a headache." He beckoned the footman for coffee.
"All right, I shan't cross swords with you any further."
"You are forever gracious, dear heart," he said.
She ignored the taunt and filled her plate from the sideboard. She then seated herself to his right.
"Philip," she began, "your sudden change in habits has stimulated my curiosity. What would take you to town precipitately? The races do not commence until the morrow."
"Ah, but there is another to be run this day."
"Another race?" she replied with keen interest. "I had not heard of it. Pray, who are the runners?"
"This event should prove nothing but a farce, though it shan't hurt Shakespeare to run a warm-up lap before the King's Plate."
"You are running Shakespeare? Against whom? And why would you not inform me?"
"'Tis hardly an event worth mentioning, sweeting. The challenger is inconsequential, an unknown brought from Virginia by a gentleman of prodigious pomposity, by all account."
"He brought his horse all the way from the colonies to run a match against Shakespeare? I am confounded."
"Apparently, this horse of no distinct breeding has bested the Virginia bloodstock. Thus inflated, the gentleman has the impertinence to challenge the English runners on their own turf."
"How extraordinary! I am incredulous you accepted."
"I should not have, but the wager was such that I could hardly refuse."
"What precisely do you know of this horse, Philip?"
"He's a fouryear-old sired by an unknown of Eastern descent that was imported to the colonies. The dam, however, is of some indigenous breed created by the savages. Completely ineligible to run the track, of course."
"Indeed? 'Twould appear great folly on his part, unless..." Charlotte furrowed her brow as she sipped her tea. "An obscure gentleman, with a horse of mixed blood, who has come across the ocean, no doubt at great expense." Charlotte frowned at a passing thought. "Have you seen the horse run?"
"What need have I? The Hastings stud owns some of the finest horseflesh in England, all to your credit, I might add." He affected a gesture of tribute. "I should not trouble myself further on the matter, oh dearest one."
"I do, you know," she answered. "I always contrive to watch our rivals exercising on the Heath the week before a race. Indeed, just yesterday I witnessed a new one. His small stature and unusual coloration first drew my eye, but as it was barely daybreak, I caught only the end of his session. He was remarkably swift. I am sure I have never seen this one before... I wonder, Philip?" she said in trepidation.
"Daniel Roberts and his Retribution hardly signify." His reply was disdainful.
"Retribution? Is that what he calls the horse? What a curious name."
"One would imagine his owner must carry a great chip on his shoulder."
Charlotte was suddenly overcome with a feeling of foreboding. "Philip," she began, "I wish to attend this race."
"It is hardly an occasion of sufficient consequence to merit the attendance of the Countess of the Turf."
Charlotte scowled at his sarcastic accolade. "Nevertheless," she persisted, "I am going with you. Be pleased to order my horse." With this command, she set down her cup and summoned her maid. "Letty, I shall require my riding habit at once."
The match race between Lord Hastings's Shakespeare and Daniel Roberts's Retribution was scheduled for eleven o'clock. The course would be the Rowley Mile track, and the distance two miles, four furlongs, in a single heat, a distance considered most evenhanded, considering the three-year age difference between contenders. Jockeys would ride, and each horse would carry ten stone.
Word of the extraordinary wager, recorded for posterity in White's betting book, spread throughout the countryside. Throngs gathered to witness the spectacle, but the mysterious Mr. Roberts and his peculiar horse were nowhere to be seen.
By a quarter hour before post time, with the challenger still to make his appearance, Shakespeare's owners grew restless and increasingly impatient. At ten minutes before the start, rumors abounded that the challenger from America had pusillanimously turned tail and run.
The crowd, by now thoroughly disenchanted and disgruntled at the forfeiture, had begun to disperse, when finally appeared a grizzled jockey on his slight-statured and oddly colored mount. The flustered gentleman who followed horse and jockey addressed the Earl and Countess of Hastings, making no immediate explanation for the late showing.
"I trust we have not kept you waiting?"
"Arrived in the nick of time, I should say, Lee," Lord Hastings remarked, checking his timepiece, which showed but five minutes to post time. "Might I inquire after the enigmatic Roberts?"
"The gentleman has unfortunately taken ill and is unable to attend. I stand in his stead."
"If the gentleman is unwell, Lee, the race must certainly be postponed." Lord Hastings's voice dripped with exaggerated courtesy.
"By no means, my lord! Should that occur, I fear he would be called craven. 'Tis out of the question! As stated, I stand in his stead."
"As his legal agent?" Lord Hastings asked, growing increasingly suspicious.
"Indeed, as his agent," Lee concurred.
"Lee," Lord Hasting began charily, "as a man of no inconsiderable experience, I confess a degree of skepticism regarding the very existence of Daniel Roberts. It is most curious to me that a man of such reputed vanity, who after proposing such an unprecedented wager, should fail to show his face. I ask you directly, sir, has Roberts fled England in mortification for proposing this race?"
"Indeed not, my lord! Pray disavow such thoughts. He is merely indisposed and resting this very moment at the White Hart."
"Yet I shall not be made a fool, Lee. As a gentleman, I should never ask such a thing, but this mystery has invoked a desire to see the color of his gold before this race is run."
"'Tis indeed a matter of honor, my lord." Mr. Lee blanched at the affront. "I carry the appropriate letters of credit on his behalf. I assure you, Lord Hastings, Mr. Roberts is more than able to settle his bet with you."
"Then I shall take you at your word as a gentleman, Lee. 'Twould appear we have a race to run." Lord Hastings signaled the stewards.
The contenders, proceeding to the starting post, stood in stark contrast to one another. Shakespeare, long of leg, sleek of body, and high of wither, stood at fifteen-and-three-quarter hands. His superior breeding could be noted in every line and angle of his body. To any knowledgeable observer, he appeared the consummate English thoroughbred.
Retribution, his challenger, stood at barely fourteen-and-a-half hands. A blue roan, he was truly a horse of a different color among the sea of chestnuts and bays typical of the English horses. The younger stallion was stocky in conformation compared to his elegant contender, with a wider, deeper chest and more powerful hindquarters, and half again as densely muscled as the lean chestnut. His shorter, more compact form appeared nearly squat, lending him more the appearance of a cart pony than a reputed racing champion.
Retribution's strongest attributes, however, were invisible to the naked eye. He had the heart of a runner and the cool-headed temperament of his sire, which his months of training with Jeffries had served only to season and perfect.
Arrived at the starting post, Shakespeare danced in edgy irritation. His rider struggled to hold him back, and the stallion snorted his impatience, touting his eagerness to put down the pretentious usurper.
Jeffries, mounted on Retribution, felt only the tightening of equine sinew as the mounting tension roiled inside the horse. He watched and waited for that certain sign of his mount's readiness. Suddenly, with the prick of his ears, Retribution gave the sign. With a subtle but unquestionable shift in his stance, the colt transferred his weight from front to hindquarters. Thus lightening his forehand, Retribution was ready to explode like a musket ball.
Daniel Roberts had arrived late with the intention of losing himself in the gathered crowd, remarking that everything to this point had played right into his hand. Indeed, the day had proceeded almost as if he had scripted it. To confess the truth, a good portion of it he had!
Ludwell had earned every penny of the cut Roberts promised him; not that he wouldn't have done it just as a lark! His performance had been impeccable. The man should have taken to the stage. Roberts grinned but hastily sobered as the horses proceeded to the starting post.
His attention riveted to Retribution; his hands clenched involuntarily at his sides. He watched with bated breath, anticipating that indication, that subtle shift, telling him all he needed to know. There it was! With this sign from Retribution, Roberts could have walked away, knowing before the start that the race was already his!
At the signal, the pair burst like floodgates. Shakespeare lunged forth, long legs slicing the air, but the elegant thoroughbred hadn't a prayer against the explosive breaking force of Retribution. Launching like a catapult, the roan became a blur of kinetic power. From the raised dais, Lord and Lady Hastings watched with unbridled horror.
"Good God, Philip, I've never seen such a break!" Charlotte exclaimed.
"His jockey's a fool. The horse can't possibly sustain that pace. He'll be used up by the first mile," the earl replied unconvincingly, his heart pounding in his throat and threatening to choke him.
Setting a lightning stride in his own frenetic style, Retribution dropped his head and dug in. And the roan stallion tore up the track. By the first furlong, he had gained three lengths. Stride-by-stride, Retribution ate up yards of turf, leaving Shakespeare scrambling feverishly after him, his jockey pushing, driving, and pleading.
Mr. Roberts positioned himself where he could best observe his vengeance in action. Until this moment, with his concentration focused on the horses, he had not spared a thought of Philip Drake. But now, Retribution had completed the first mile and there was no doubt of his lead. Robert stole a look at the Earl of Hastings, desiring a firsthand witness of his enemy's torment.
Looking to the dais for the first time, he suddenly took in the figure seated beside the grim-faced Earl of Hastings---Charlotte. The woman at his side was Charlotte, and time had only ripened her. Roberts's heart seized. He had not expected to see her. He was unprepared. He couldn't tear his gaze away, but hers was locked on the track, her lovely face growing deathly pale. He was overwhelmed as never before with invidious hatred of Philip Drake.
Shakespeare's rider, in sheer desperation, had flattened himself to the withers, urgently cajoling, wildly spurring, and flailing the whip. Accelerating with a groan, the game chestnut answered the call, giving everything he had, but it just wasn't... enough. Shakespeare was distanced before Jeffries ever plied whip or spur to his plucky runner.
The Earl of Hastings's blood ran cold. He opened and closed his eyes in a vain attempt to blink away the vision before his disbelieving eyes, whilst his mind violently rejected the very notion. Shakespeare had lost the bloody race!
Thus, Daniel Roberts's unknown halfbreed native pony from Virginia completely annihilated the Earl of Hastings's champion on his own turf.
Good God, Philip, we have lost!" Lady Hastings cried in dismay. "I have never witnessed such a run! I must go and console our noble Shakespeare at once. What a blow this must be to him. Pray congratulate the victor on my behalf," she declared genially, and oblivious of Philip's stunned anguish, sought out her former champion and his jockey.
He couldn't move. He couldn't hear. He couldn't speak. Frozen, he was unable to process what was beyond its ability to comprehend. Shakespeare had lost the bloody race!
The surrounding voices roared in his ears, yet he was deaf to the words. Smile, Philip. They are all watching you. The result was more grimace. Outwardly conceding defeat with grace, he nodded dumbly to those around him, but inside he reeled.
In his supreme confidence---or better said, extreme arrogance--- Lord Hastings had recklessly wagered twenty thousand pounds without any consideration of defeat. With the loss of this wager, the fourth Earl of Hastings accomplished a feat no prior generation of supercilious and self-indulgent ancestors had managed to achieve: the total and complete ruination of an earldom.
It took all his strength, all his will, to force his body to obey his incapacitated brain's commands, but once regaining a modicum of control of his impaired faculties, he mechanically weaved through the crowd to his stable block. Entering the first empty stall, he clutched the wall and heaved.
Although Daniel Roberts would like to have congratulated his champion, he could not yet risk detection. Instead, with smug selfsatisfaction, he located the carriage to take him back to his lodgings. He had incontrovertibly won the first round but was far too cautious to become cocksure. The game was not over, and the rest would not be so neatly scripted.
Though his earlier investigation had not determined the full extent of Lord Hastings's financial resources, they did confirm that his hold on his family estate was precarious at best. He would have few places to turn for ready coin, and Philip's pride would prevent him from applying to friends for a loan.
The most likely method of meeting his obligation would almost surely be the liquidation of his only viable asset: the Hastings stud, the racing stud that should justly have been his and Charlotte's. Only this sacrifice would begin to even the scales.
By the unwritten code, a gentleman had three days to settle a debt of honor, and by the same code, it was best settled in person. Thus, upon Ludwell's return to the White Hart, Mr. Roberts sent his calling card to the Hastings residence and departed for London.
Unable to locate her husband to escort her home after spending a pleasant hour with her horses, Lady Hastings had requested a groom accompany her. To her great surprise, she discovered Philip's horse already stabled, another curious deviation from the Earl of Hastings's normal routine. The stabled horse indicated his direct return following the race, rather than staying out drinking, gaming, and God only knew what else he did. She dismissed further contemplation of Philip's multifarious vices as unworthy of her energies.
Climbing the stairs to her rooms to change out of her riding habit, she was startled by the resounding crash of shattering glass emanating from the study. She paused then closed her eyes, and her rampant imagination envisaged what she might discover. At first, deciding to ignore it, she then changed her mind. Breathing a great sigh of resignation, she directed her feet to the study.
The scene was much as she had imagined: shards of glass and wasted brandy splattered by the hearth, Lord Hastings himself slumped in his chair in his shirtsleeves, his close-cropped hair completely disheveled, his perruque and coat cast to the floor. Noting the bottle cradled in his arms, she deduced it was merely a glass he had smashed. Far be it for Philip to waste his precious French brandy, she though disparagingly, but when he failed to look up or even acknowledge her presence, Charlotte grew uneasy.
Although Philip was a consummate gambler, she had never known him to accept his losses with anything more than a cavalier shrug. His current state gave her to feel more than a small amount of alarm.
"Philip, what was this wager?"
Ignoring her, he raised the decanter to his lips. Without pausing for thought, she snatched it from his hands, raising it as if to pitch the bottle against the stone hearth. "Now have I your full attention?"
"'Tis none of your affair," he growled.
"Your condition speaks otherwise, and if it is in any way related to the wager, it involves the Hastings stud. If it involves the Hastings stud, it involves me," she finished acidly.
"If you must know, I drink to drown my stupidity in underestimating an adversary. Now give me back the bottle that I might finish the job."
"Philip, you are hardly to blame. Who would have known? I doubt any observers of today's race have ever witnessed such blistering speed, and all from an unknown. From the colonies, no less! Though I chide you for not putting yourself out enough to discover more of the horse before the race, 'tis finished. If one plays, one must eventually pay, so the adage goes."
"Therein lies the problem, Charlotte. I cannot pay."
"What do you mean? You have never wagered beyond your ability to cover a loss."
"The ignoble Roberts proposed such an enormous sum that I had no power to resist. I could never have envisaged defeat."
"'Twas no mere defeat, Philip. Shakespeare was thoroughly trounced today!"
"Your words are less than helpful."
"You said an enormous sum. How much was this bet?" she asked, her trepidation growing by the minute.
"Twenty thousand pounds."
Charlotte gasped. "Philip, how could you! Were you drunk? You were either completely foxed or utterly mad! You don't have that kind of capital. How can you possibly cover it?"
"By any and all means at my disposal. I will not have it about that I single-handedly destroyed my family name and fortune."
"Twenty thousand pounds!" she repeated. "But even I know that we stay afloat by means of the horses."
"I shall do whatever is necessary to salvage my honor and meet my obligation," he replied with grim resolve.
"No, Philip! You cannot sell the stud! I have spent seven years of my wretched life to build something in order to make my life tolerable. You have no right even to think it!"
"I am the Earl of Hastings, and it is my name attached to the stud. I have every right to think it! And if you weren't so bloody highminded and obstinate, I should never have been in this position to begin with!"
"What is that suppose to mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean!" he bellowed. "There is well above fifty thousand pounds sitting in a bloody trust. Money that is rightfully mine, which I cannot touch. If the stud is lost, it is your own doing, madam wife."
Charlotte was speechless with rage.
Philip continued more calmly, "I have already dispatched a message to the Duke of Cumberland. He has long desired his own racing establishment at Windsor Park and expressed great interest in our broodmares a short time ago. I have also sent Jeffries to Richard Tattersall, Master of the Horse to the Duke of Kingston, to assist in dispersal of the racing stock."
"How could you! How could you do such a thing without even telling me!" Tears of helpless frustration and fury burned her eyes.
"If I did not, my dearest heart, we should be obliged to remove ourselves to the Fleet Street debtors' prison." He laughed bitterly. "Now will you return my bottle? Or shall I forcibly remove it from you?"
Charlotte stared blankly at the half-empty brandy decanter in her hands. Meeting his bloodshot eyes with a rebellious glare, she raised it to her own lips and commenced a long, choking swig, and then she flung it against the flagstones at his feet. Whirling from the room, she left Phillip gaping after her in a speechless stupor.
Charlotte lay fitfully awake, her mind racing with all that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours. Although far from content with her life, she had managed to achieve a precarious state of not quite unhappy; but in one fell swoop, her balanced scales had tipped to decidedly miserable. It was Philip's damnable greed and pride that had led to his downfall, and he was about to drag her down with him.
Greed had tempted him to accept a wager he could never cover,
but then his stubborn pride had pricked and prodded because an unknown from America had dared challenge his supremacy. He had lost, and she would be forced to pay.
This same arrogance and avarice had led to their accursed marriage to begin with. He cared nothing for her, then or now. She had been only the means of collecting a dowry, and later, the inconvenience he had to bear.
Her entire being railed against the injustice. She was a victim once before and had vowed never again to be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She knew not how, but Lady Hastings resolved with all her being to take matters into her own hands.
Alerting Letty, Charlotte packed enough belongings to maintain her for a few days should her business require it. She had waited anxiously for Philip's departure before calling for her carriage, fretful that he might discover her plans. She had departed shortly after Philip went out, directing her coachman to the London address copied from Mr. Roberts's calling card.
She arrived in the capital six hours later, dusty and travel-weary but beyond caring. Her coach halted at the elegant Mayfair address, and with her maid in tow, the Countess of Hastings descended. Squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin, and adopting her haughtiest demeanor, she rapped sharply upon the door.
The answering footman had little opportunity to question or protest. Lady Hastings stepped boldly into the foyer and presented her card. "Pray inform Mr. Roberts that the Countess of Hastings wishes to speak with him." Her tone evoked no refusal.
"Indeed, my lady. Is the gentleman expecting you? I distinctly recall his mentioning an afternoon appointment with Lord Hastings."
"You may inform him that the countess is come in his stead," she snapped imperiously. "It is a matter of personal business. Please conduct me to a place where I may await the gentleman's pleasure, unless you would have it about that said gentleman would leave a countess standing on his door stoop."
The beleaguered servant, knowing not what to make of this, dared not challenge her any further. He replied with due deference, "No indeed, my lady. If you and your maid will follow me, I shall notify Mr. Roberts of your request."
Charlotte seated herself on a sofa near the hearth while Letty took an inconspicuous chair by the window. In a matter of minutes, the door opened to admit Mr. Lee. "Lady Hastings, we meet again. 'Tis a most unexpected surprise. How might I be of service?"
"Mr. Lee," she said with a terse nod, "I fear you are not the gentlemen with whom I wish to speak."
"My sincerest apologies to disappoint, but Mr. Roberts is otherwise engaged."
"As my business with him is of the utmost consequence, I shall be happy to await his pleasure." She regarded him stubbornly.
"I see." Now thoroughly disconcerted, he considered his response. "I shall be happy to show you to my office, where perhaps you might be kind enough to enlighten me. As his agent in London, I have the privilege of conducting the majority of Mr. Roberts's affairs. Whatever your concern, you may be assured of my utmost attention, diligence, and discretion in resolving it on his behalf."
Perceiving she would make little progress otherwise, Charlotte nodded agreement and followed the gentleman up the wide staircase and down the brightly lit hallway to the large doors leading into a darkly paneled office. A massive mahogany desk was positioned near the heavily draped windows, and two of the walls were teeming with Latin and legal texts, with the third opening into an antechamber. Although the connecting door stood slightly ajar, Charlotte could see nothing beyond it.
The gentleman gestured to a large, comfortable-looking chair, but Charlotte perched stiffly on the edge of the seat. He regarded her expectantly, but still composing her muddled thoughts, Charlotte did not immediately speak. Suddenly at sea, she wondered what on earth she was going to say to this perfect stranger now that she had come.
"Perhaps you would care for some tea, Lady Hastings?" he offered in an effort to set her at ease.
"So kind of you, Mr. Lee, but no thank you."
He waited patiently.
Finally, she took a breath to speak. "I suppose there can be little cause for conjecture. I think you must know why I have come."
"Indeed not, my lady." His reply was somewhat disingenuous. "You find me quite confounded."
"My concern relates to Lord Hastings's wager with Mr. Roberts."
"But I fail to see how this should involve Lady Hastings."
"Lord Hastings had no right to make such a wager."
Lee's countenance darkened. "I am afraid I do not follow you, my lady."
"The Hastings stud, it is mine. When Philip, Lord Hastings, made the wager with Mr. Roberts, he should have known that a defeat would cost the entire Hastings stud. It was not his to wager."
"You mean to say that you are the legal owner of the Hastings stud?"
"N-n-o, not strictly speaking," Charlotte said, stammering her reply. "As a woman, I have no property rights, but in reality, the horses are mine. I have worked seven long years to breed champions. I selected the broodmares and the sires. I raised the foals and personally supervised every aspect of their training. The success of the Hastings stud was due to the sweat of my brow and none other.
"Now the threat of losing all I have worked for has brought me to this state of... of... desperation! I have no other word for it. Do you still not comprehend why I have come?"
"Lady Hastings, while entirely sympathetic to your plight, this is no concern of Mr. Roberts's. He and Lord Hastings agreed to a sporting wager, and the earl unfortunately lost. Any concerns you have regarding how the wager is to be paid are best discussed with your husband. I am afraid there is nothing I can do for you."
Having been dismissed with such detached indifference, Charlotte boiled over with frustration, indignation, and outrage. "No! You shall not brush me off so easily! You know nothing of my plight! I am not come to beg forgiveness of Lord Hastings's debt. On the contrary, he entered the wager and is obligated to pay. The debt, however, is his and only his. It is not my debt to pay, and I shall never allow the sacrifice of the stud to pay it!
"The racing stud was my dream, the dream I inherited from the man I loved, who was cruelly taken from me by the very one to whom I am now legally bound." Charlotte caught herself, suddenly aware of the very personal revelations her outburst had exposed.
"Lady Hastings," Mr. Lee said in tempered tones, "I shall not patronize you further with false displays of pathos. I can again only recommend you take the matter up with your... with Lord Hastings," he quickly amended. "The wager must be paid." He came around the desk and offered his hand. "It shall be my pleasure to guide you back to your maid, my lady."
Recognizing the fruitlessness of her errand, Charlotte had no choice but accept defeat. She rose, ignoring Lee's outstretched hand, determined to comport herself with dignity before melting into a great pile of weeping hysteria. Yet struggling for this composure, she remarked a noise, as of someone restlessly pacing on the other side of the door.
"One moment, Ludwell. I would speak with Lady Hastings."
The voice from the adjoining chamber rang a familiar peal through
Charlotte's near-delirious brain. That voice! It couldn't be! She must be hysterical.
Charlotte spun around to face... a ghost.
C harlotte's gaze locked on Daniel Roberts. Her breath seized in a great gasp. Her world whirled about her. Her vision blurred. Her body quivered. Her knees threatened to buckle and give way. She frantically clutched the chair for balance, desperate for support.
"Robert," she whispered, her eyes incredulous.
Instinctively he advanced, as if to lend her support, but abruptly caught himself several feet away.
"Ludwell, pray excuse us," he said to his friend more harshly than intended.
Mr. Lee regarded him questioningly but was more than happy to comply. The tension in the room had become overwhelming.
Charlotte found her voice. "You were dead. I thought you were dead!"
"You were correct, Lady Hastings." His glib answer masked any trace of emotion. "The man to whom you refer ceased to exist eight years ago. Do not be deceived that the one standing before you is the same one you knew."
"They told me you were dead!" Her head reeled, and her stomach churned. "They lied to me! Why did they lie?"
Her voice broke into a sob that wrenched his gut, tore at his insides. He longed to go to her, take her into his arms, but his long-cultivated need for self-preservation was stronger than the call of his conscience.
"They told you what I insisted they tell you. There was no point in holding on to something that could never be, so I released you. I set you free to live your life." As her legs gave way, and she collapsed limply into the chair, he moved not a muscle, did not even blink an eye.
"Could never be, you say? Your very existence is proof to the contrary! Why did you not send for me? Why?" she asked in a shrill voice hardly recognizable as her own.
He was paralyzed with uncertainty. It had all been clear to him before he saw her, but her words planted seeds of doubt and confusion. Her anguished eyes were a debilitating distraction.
"It was too late for that, Charlotte," he replied softly. "You were already wed to Philip, and then he came into his property and title. What had I to offer you in comparison? What is a Virginia planter to an earl?"
"But don't you understand? I desired none of it! I cared nothing for titles and privilege. I craved only love, genuine respect, and affection. Could you not find it in your heart to fulfill those simple desires?" She lost her struggle with the flood of hot, angry tears.
He turned from her, moving toward the books, running his hand absently over the leather covers while imagining how he might have used these same hands to sooth and comfort her. He abruptly shook away the vision, composing himself anew.
Choosing his words with utmost care, he posed his reply. "Are these simple desires you speak of not fulfilled by your husband, Lady Hastings?" He stole a furtive glance at her, surreptitiously studying yet not daring to hope. Hope had been a great deceiver in his life and the author of his greatest despair.
"Don't call him my husband! There is only one I have loved, one whom I thought long dead, but I now learn abandoned me."
He ached to accept her words as truth, but her truth would paint him as the false lover, the betrayer of her trust, and the villain. He was not prepared for any reality other than what he had imagined. No, it just could not be so. It was all another deception. He had nearly played right into her hand.
Roberts advanced, his countenance hardening. "My compliments, Countess. You perjure yourself most convincingly."
Her face wet with tears, flushed with simmering ire. "I told you the night we spent together that the marriage was nothing more than a legal bondage. I am wed to a man I despise. Why do you think the Earl of Hastings has never begotten an heir?"
"Do you mean to persuade me that in eight years you never succumbed to Philip's bed; that for eight long years you have languished for a lost love, leading a chaste and lonely existence?" His words dripped with irony. "Why don't you tell me why you have really come? Has Philip sent you to beg for clemency? If so, he vastly overestimates your powers of persuasion." His hardened blue gaze swept over her.
Charlotte colored at his insolence.
He drew closer, so close his warm breath grazed her neck. Charlotte closed her eyes, and an unbidden wave of nearly forgotten desire swept over her. Her heart pounded when he murmured in caressing tones, "Mayhap his lordship places more worth on the allure of your charms than on your powers of persuasion. Does he propose to offer his countess in lieu of payment?"
The force of her hand viciously stung his face. He blinked. His breath came harder, but he didn't move.
Charlotte observed, trancelike, the flesh of his cheek slowly effusing in an angry red flush. She had lost control, but in this single act found no release. Her rage had only begun to surface. Mentally replaying his filthy insinuation, his contemptuous words, she erupted like a volcano. Releasing all vestiges of restraint, she assailed him, blindly, frenetically, with all her fury.
"You bastard!" she shrieked. "I loved you! I would have gone to the ends of the earth with you, but you made me believe you dead! You deceitful, lying sod!"
Charlotte attacked with the passion she'd withheld. She raged for years of loneliness and despair; for years of frustrated, self-imposed celibacy that had suppressed the yearnings of her young body; for years of lying alone at night, mourning the loss of her only love. This same love now mocked and cheapened all she held dear, blighted all she had believed.
Robert had stood remote and emotionless as a column of marble while she slapped and pummeled. He had led her to believe a falsehood only that she might get on with her life. He would not cast himself as villain for his self-sacrifice. He caught her fist with one hand and wrenched it behind her back to subdue her. Drained of energy and emotion, Charlotte stood quietly, panting from her vain efforts to beat him into a senseless, bloody pulp.
"Are you quite finished now?" he growled.
Charlotte shook the hair from her face to see more clearly the man who wounded her so carelessly and transformed her love to hate. Fiercely meeting his glower, she asked, "How can you poison it all?"
"How can you convince me otherwise? How can I believe that one of the greatest rakes of my acquaintance would fail to consummate his union with a beautiful woman, and failing consummation, would not have immediately sought annulment?"
"So, you would wish to make a whore of the woman who loved you!"
"Not I, madam. 'Twould be your husband who endeavored to make you a whore."
Charlotte had never anticipated how her intentions might be misconstrued in coming to meet with Mr. Roberts. Heat rose up her neck in mortification at such naïveté, but she replied defiantly, "I am no man's whore and no man's possession! Now, Mr. Roberts, I wish you to the devil!" Flashing sparks of fury, she spun around to leave, but he could not let her go.
"Wait, Charlotte," he cried. Swiftly, before she could resist, he closed the gap between them, blocking her path to the door. Her response should have been outraged resistance, but her flight instincts failed her; the magnetic pull between them was still irresistible.
"I ask you again, why have you come? You did not know it was me, yet you came here. To what purpose?" Deep in his eyes, Charlotte finally perceived it, a brief glimpse into the soul of a drowning man.
"I had wished to negotiate terms to save my stud. I explained as much to Mr. Lee. Surely you heard."
"If what you say is true, then how do you mean to satisfy the debt?"
"There is nothing, aside from my horses, but they are not negotiable."
"But Lord Hastings has few viable assets outside of the stud with which to satisfy me. Without the dispersal of the stud, he faces certain ruin. Yet you find it so preposterous that I suspected his hand in your coming?"
"But you passed this judgment solely upon Philip's character. What of my mine? Have you no faith in my integrity?" She whispered the last.
Their eyes met, searching, questioning, each endeavoring to discern the truth from the lies. He was too exposed to her beseeching gaze, and her allure was too strong. He was weakening by the second but still unwilling to become vulnerable to hurt again. He had been deprived of everything once, nearly his very life, when he had sought to make her his. The price was too high.
He froze; his reply was pained. "After all that has come between us, Charlotte, how can you expect me to trust? How can I ever again believe in love?"
"But I've told you before, Robert, you cannot defy it. Try as you may, you can never defy love," she whispered.
With a groan of defeat, he abandoned his resistance, conceding at last to her will, the will to love and be loved. Evincing no desire to turn back, they came together in a desperate embrace that melted away any remaining reservations.
Finally, mutually, and completely, they released all doubts, abandoned all fears, unwilling and unable to deny this overpowering love.
My Dear Philip,
By the time you receive this letter, I shall have boarded a ship for America. Although ours was not a happy union, in our eight years of wedlock, you provided for all my needs and were never truly unkind. For this alone, I am indebted to you and feel you are entitled to some explanation of what will soon become known as my truly scandalous and reckless act.
As you are by no means a man of small intelligence, you may already have deduced the true identity of the enigmatic Daniel Roberts, but should this yet remain a puzzle, you need only reach back eight years in your memory to discern the mystery shrouding the gentleman from Virginia.
I count myself fortunate to have made this discovery before you, lest I may never have found my old love and my new life.
With this letter, Philip, I finally absolve you of any further responsibility for me and set you free to seek annulment of our marriage. Moreover, as to the debt of honor incurred to Mr. Roberts, his spirit being moved by charity and forgiveness, he most generously grants the following dispensation:
Firstly, he shall privately and discretely, to avoid any public knowledge, issue a lien against the Hastings Estate to the amount of twenty
thousand pounds, with the provision the debt be repaid in full within ten years time.
Secondly, I leave in your hands the operation of my beloved stud, to include all bloodstock, so that you should maintain a viable living until your obligation to Mr. Roberts is met. Kindly take particular care of my beloved Spiletta. I predict great things from her.
You should imminently be in expectation of several legal documents prepared by Mr. Philip Ludwell Lee in regard to all matters aforementioned.
Furthermore, I would wish you to know that although I obstinately denied you any means of producing a legitimate heir, you have a son, nonetheless, should you choose to seek him out and acknowledge him.
Lastly, I sincerely pray you discover peace and mayhap the measure of happiness of which, while together, we were cruelly denied.
Yours in Earnest,
Charlotte Wallace
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals, without whose support this book would never have been written:
To my good friend, Diana Maynard, who first encouraged me to pursue such a ridiculous notion as writing a novel;
To my sister, Michelle Nabors, one of the most discerning people I know, who was not only my best critic, but also my biggest fan;
To my husband, John, and sons, Sean and Brandon. No effort of this magnitude can be successfully undertaken without the full support of a loving family;
To my editor, Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks, who perceived a glimmer of promise in this "diamond in the rough";
To my agent, Kelly Mortimer of Mortimer Literary, who helped to cut and polish said diamond;
And special thank you to Thoroughbred trainers, Michelle and Casey Lovell, for providing insight into the fascinating world of Thoroughbred racing.
Lastly, to God above who inspires all good things.
Thank you!
Emery Lee is a lifelong equestrienne, a history buff, and a born romantic. Combine the three, and you have the essence of her debut novel, an epic tale of love, war, and horse racing. A member of RWA and GRW, she resides in Upstate South Carolina with her husband, sons, and two horses.
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Table of Contents
|
Praise for Paul Black
"...an imaginatively skilled story teller of the first order..."
~ Midwest Book Review
"Mr. Black has quite an imagination..."
~ Dallas Morning News
"Black is one of those writers that we who worship this genre look for every time..."
~ John Strange, the cityweb.com
T H E P R E S E N C E
By Paul Black
Published by Novel Instincts Publishing. A Smashwords edition.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Programmable Matter is a trademark of The Programmable Matter Corporation
Copyright ©2010 by Paul Black
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ISBN: 9780972600743 Library of Congress: 2010934982
"Deja?!"
Deja Moriarty sensed her boss's beckon somewhere at the periphery of her consciousness. She left her virtual researching and peeled the Netgear from her head. Its microfiber-optics uncoupled into techno dreadlocks that glowed prismatic at their ends. She cautiously peered over her cubicle.
"Ah, there you are!" Bishop Green's anger was clearly in professional check because Life's a Bitch had dropped to a 22.0 share in the weekly ratings, now making it the second-most-watched program in AztecaNet's prime-time lineup. Which meant the second-most-watched program on the planet. Which also meant his bid for the old Kennedy compound, out in the Hamptons, would have to hold at its present number. Since his earnings were directly tied to the Net ratings, the people who labored under Green had come to accept his emotional swings as part of the package. There had been other success stories, but nothing compared to Green's. His prolific output of hit programming not only exceeded shareholder expectations, but also garnered him accolades usually bestowed on producers twice his age. Bishop Green was definitely AztecaNet's undisputed "it" boy.
Deja passed a hand through her electric blond hair and strutted toward him with all the confidence her new senior producer title could bring.
"Be a dear and get Sotheby's on the line for me. And if you're headed that way ..." Green raised his coffee cup.
"What kind of sugar day are we having?" Deja asked, irritated with his lack of acceptance of her new role.
Green thought for a second, then a sly grin grew across his face. "Triple."
"Oh! One of those days."
"Yes, it is," Green said, then suddenly shifted mien and announced to anyone in earshot, "and if we don't get Life's a Bitch back up to number one, there'll be a housecleaning like you've never seen!"
Life's a Bitch was Green's brainchild and had perched at the top of the ratings for over a year. Its concept was simple: destroy an ordinary life as a ruthlessly brutal world looks on. Nanocameras disguised as houseflies provided a world audience with an unfettered view of the destruction, while AztecaNet's patents on the camera's technology ensured its reign as the leader in reality-based programming. It also gave new meaning to an old phrase.
In the beginning, the plan was to leave individuals destroyed. But after the pilot season's first unsuspecting contestant, Leonard Smotts, decided to reduce himself to a puddle of matter by eating the butt end of a Light-Force, AztecaNet's lawyers decided that revealing the prank and restoring a person's life might be the preferred option. The finale had been completely reworked with a digitally processed Leonard morphed into a happy ending. Litigation with his family was still pending, but if the numbers held, final payoff to keep the Smott family's contractual silence would be a drop in the bucket compared to the revenues from Life's a Bitch.
"Three sugars, please," Deja ordered into the system pad at the snack dispenser, but then thought better. "Wait! Make that four ..." The dispenser's door slid aside and presented a steaming ceramic mug of coffee, specially blended to Bishop Green's genetic profile. Only she had access to his codes.
Deja had worked with Green as his assistant since his producer beginnings on the soapy Net drama All of Their Days, where he would have probably gone unnoticed if it weren't for the sudden exit of its head producer to the Chelsea Clinton Clinic. When Green took control of All of Their Days, it was floundering somewhere near the bottom of the ratings. And since the suits at AztecaNet considered it fodder for a demographic comprised mainly of those left floundering by the economic shift of the Biolution, they never noticed Green's decision to "tweak" the formula when he fired all the writers.
Green felt the audience of the Net was better suited to dictating the comings and goings of the simple folk of Waterville. By switching All of Their Days to an interactive format, he created a promotion manager's wet dream and offered weekly contests for the best scripts, which, conveniently, were judged by Green and his favorite assistant.
Slowly, ATD's ratings began to climb as Green and Deja allowed a tasteless, insomniac audience to drive the daily actions of their show's characters. Being a late Friday night product meant talent was barely "C" level, comprised mostly of young actors who would do practically anything for the mere possibility of Network exposure. So when Deja presented Green with a script written by a particularly horny housewife from Manchester, England, who suggested the show's leads go ahead and give in to their characters' carnal passions, Green announced to his stunned associates there had been a shift in direction for their little corner of the Net.
Since the show's leads were sleeping with each other off camera anyway, the two actors merged business with pleasure and gave their worldwide fan base a season they would never forget. It was weeks before Network censors caught on, but by then All of Their Days was in the Top 10. It became an underground hit that redefined the late-night soap genre and catapulted Green to phenom status with many of the boardroom suits. It also brought Green to the attention of AztecaNet's parent company, Grupo TVid Azteca, and its chairman, Alberto Goya.
Deja handed Green his coffee. "I need to show you this bit of info I've dug up on Billy Bob--"
"Ray," he corrected, reviewing his Netpad. "Billy Ray."
"Well, whatever his name is, our little Texas boy has a whole other offshore account he's been diverting gobs of credit to for the last 10 months."
Green looked up mid-sip and raised an eyebrow. "Mistress?"
"Oh, yeah."
Green smiled around the edge of his cup and took a gulp. "That's why I love you, Dej. You always have your priorities in the right place." He turned and headed toward studio 2b, but stopped and glanced back. He pointed with the cup. "Oh, and ah, nice coffee, love ... just right."
\*
"Good night, Miss Moriarty."
Deja looked up at the intern.
"Working late?"
Deja grinned tersely and returned to her Netport, its cerulean glow the sole light in her cubical. The kid sulked away.
"You alone?" Sonny Chaco's image filled the screen.
Deja glanced about. "Yeah, it's just me and the data."
"You running that security program I gave you?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Sonny, I am."
"Okay, don't get upset."
"I don't like all this spy business."
Chaco's holoimage quivered out from Deja's Netport as he sat in the cramped confines of his office, deep in the lower levels of the National Security Agency. He relaxed and gave Deja that grin, just like he did the first time they had met at the National Netcasters Convention a year earlier.
"Look, if you're uncomfortable--"
"It's not that," Deja said, not listening to her better self. "It's just ..." She tentatively bit at one of her nails, and its color retreated into the cuticle.
"What, you feel like you're ratting on your boss?"
"He's not technically my boss, but yeah ... it feels weird."
"What you're doing is brave, and it's for the greater good.
"I know, but this is my company. My future's tied up here."
"Taking down a suit like Goya isn't going to faze a corporation as big as Azteca. It might even help. Did you ever think of that?"
"Well ... no."
"Let's make this the last one for a while, all right? And to celebrate, why don't you jump a shuttle up here and let me treat you to dinner at Fusion." Chaco leaned forward, and his image grew to the edges of the screen's holo parameters.
"I don't think they have my gen file anymore," she said.
"They do. I've already checked."
Deja matched Chaco's action, knowing her image was enlarging at his end. She touched her index finger to his holo lips and narrowed her eyes into sexy slits. "You've got this all worked out, don't you."
"And what if I do?"
"Then this won't be the only thing you'll be getting this weekend." She slowly grinned and clicked the Send button.
Today should have been the day that he stopped throwing up. He lifts his head from the trashcan's stench and sees his image in a store window. A curry-colored drop falls from his chin in a thick, slow motion. He had been warned. SI: Sensory Inundation -- probably from the shift in travel.
He straightens and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, then centers himself in the black vibration that continuously emanates from the pavement. He studies the people who walk past ambivalently and succumbs to the realization that the populace of his new home is sadder than he ever imagined. He has spent the better part of his life studying for the assignment. They all do. But his studies, he now feels, have not prepared him for what he will face.
He looks up at the blanket of permanently ashen clouds and tries to understand what happened. The city where he was placed is the nation's largest and is considered the cradle of everything current. Its urban dementia seems to merge into endless patterns of gray skies, liquor advertising, and parking garages slowly spreading like industrial lichen to the southernmost point a thousand miles away. The sheer mass of the sprawl isn't what consumes him. It is something else -- something more elusive.
The noise.
Day and night, its subtle presence is relentless, humming its processed merger of a trillion tonal discharges into what, he has been told, is affectionately called "the hum." He fears it will take some getting used to, but he will. He'll have to.
Most everything was set up before his arrival. He has plenty of credit, which was imbedded into the financial system five years prior so that its presence would be solid and unassuming -- enough to live on for the rest of his life. But some essentials have been left out. "Be inventive" was the directive.
He enters the little bodega. "Yo, leather-boy, looking or buying?" asks the Asian clerk, who has categorized him by his shoes. An old man watches him with eyes that seem to distill every detail of his actions in even ocular movements. He can barely tell the clerk's eyes have shifted, because the dark brown slits don't easily reveal the direction they might be focusing.
"Looking," he answers, trying not to reveal his complete naiveté with a culture he has barely greeted.
"Shitfuck," the clerk says so under his breath that it sounds more like some ancient dialect than New American.
He walks the aisles and studies everything in the store, from the types of products to the styles of design. One thing this culture doesn't lack is variety. They have a seemingly endless appetite for goods and entertainment, which can be produced, he concludes, in solid, liquid, virtual, or pharmaceutical forms. And if a need can't be bought in a store, it might be found in any of the thousands of "entertainment cafes" that fill the cracks of their cultural landscape.
"If you're goin' to hang this long, what's your deno?" The Asian is shaking a large wooden spoon at him through a thick haze of stir-fry and cigarette smoke.
Deno? He deduces that the clerk wants to know his name, which is yet another thing his instructors failed to provide. He recalls their teachings.
The revolution, or "Biolution," as the media termed it, was a blessing and a curse. It caused whole industries to vanish, yet promoted, in a kind of sick display of reverse karma, a whole new wave of decadence and global promiscuity. Its fusion of organic peptides and nanotechnology erased, among other things, many of the medical threats from a century earlier. Now people could afford the luxury to destroy vital organs without worry. New liver, new lungs, new pancreas, a new attitude -- modern medicine could regenerate whatever was needed, quickly and affordably. Cradle to grave, the Biolution force-fed the middle-class a steady diet of misery wrapped in festively colored mediocrity.
"Are jou deaf, too?" the clerk asks.
His focus settles on the dozens of cigarette packs competing for attention behind the protection of the counter's armored plexi. "Hmm?" he says, having clearly heard the clerk, yet wanting to test his retail tolerance.
"Ko-chu-pado!"
The pack with the red triangle seems very popular.
"Yumago," he replies.
The clerk's eyes open with surprise. Then his lips part and form a smile that causes the skin of his face to fractal into hundreds of creases. The clerk appears to age before him.
"Jou spreak Korean!" the clerk declares, still aging. "So, what's your deno?"
"Marl," he answers, fixating on the pack with the red triangle. He needs a name, and the directive was: Be inventive.
"Where jou learn to spreak Korean?"
"I've been around," Marl answers in the best street speak his memory can bring forth. The inflection is off, but with a few minutes of exposure, it will be easily corrected.
The tinkling of chimes signals the cramming of another customer into the store; Mr. Korean's shop begins to fill with people getting their late-night meal supplements or bottles of their favorite entertainment. The woman entering is wrapped by an expensive biocoat whose collar demands she accept a measured amount of pain in service of fashion. Even her movement is different, which suggests that she lives a life free from the trappings that burden the other customers. They keep their distance while she glides through the store.
As Marl studies her, he has a sad feeling that she is faking it -- that her act is a put-on and probably not her idea. He stands at the front counter: still, silent, rapt like the other men by her exquisite figure and hair that seems to be evolving from a different lineage than her makeup. Her coat's living fabric senses the change in environment and relaxes. She slips through the store collecting a small contingent of party essentials: two bottles of Polish potato vodka, one bottle of standard meal sup, a bag of hydro-bars, a deodorant microchip, and a vid. A classic. She enters the checkout line, and a man in front of her steps back. The woman moves so in sync that Marl wonders if she is precognitive. She nudges a box of candy off its wire shelf and glances at her backside like it has acted on its own.
"Oh," she says.
No, he figures, this girl is definitely a package deal. Probably grown to a customer's specs in the vats of the Lesser Antilles, where binders of girls are churned up from the voodoo science that nibbles around the fringes of the Biolution. She catches his stare.
"Casablanca?" he asks, trying not to grace her acknowledgement with a shift in posture.
She glances into her basket, and a small grin forms at the edges of her full lips. The pattern of her gloss shifts. "Have you seen it?"
"Yes." He instantly calls up all he can on the film and its actors.
"What's your favorite part?" she presses.
His memory rallies. "When Ilsa asks Sam to play it again."
She peels back her sunglasses and reveals a set of striking green eyes with rings of hot orange circling the irises. The pupils narrow like a cat's. Custom. Probably aftermarket. And if he wasn't so enthralled with how they were set above a pair of dimples he can only describe as perfect, he might have missed the slight discoloration of the bruise. Its mottled purple travels the length of the lid and conspicuously disappears into a delicate layer of makeup.
But he doesn't.
The flinch is instinctive.
She quickly replaces the glasses, which reset with a sucking sound. "Yeah," she says, edgy. "That and the airplane scene are my faves." She disconnects.
"A night for Bogie ..."
She places her basket on the floor and quickly walks toward the store's exit. The doors slide open, and her coat senses the rush of cold night air and tightens at the neck, cuffs, and thighs. Marl and the clerk watch her disappear into the fray that has descended on this part of the city for a night of whatever gets them off. The doors jitter before slamming shut.
"She's crustom!" Mr. Korean says, pointing after her with his big wooden spoon. He returns to the sizzling contents of a large wok he has been nursing behind the counter.
"Who's not?" Marl says, still staring.
"She's not natwural."
An odd statement coming from a man Marl suspects has a new set of regen'd lungs. He compassionately eyes the old Korean.
"Ah, dong-mongo!" And the clerk throws his attention back into the wok.
Intrigued, Marl exits the shop on the off chance that the woman, Miss Unnatural, might actually be in sight. Emerging, he finds himself in an endless sea of discarded faces, all perched atop their winter coats in a desperate attempt at comfort. The crowd moves along the viscera of the sidewalk like gray waste forced ahead by a peristaltic emotion he can only label "despair." In the week since his arrival, he has sensed a connection forming. The people fascinate him, because each one is a stunning collection of eukaryotic history, all traceable to one singular start buried deep in a lineage that spans the millennia. He searches their faces and begins feeling a tremendous pressure, like a physical declaration of the intense importance of his assignment. Then a shift carves through his being, destroying the resolve that his foundation rested upon. Suddenly, he wonders if he has arrived too late, like a doctor realizing there is nothing left to do.
He becomes overwhelmed, and the nausea rises again.
Staggering, Marl leans heavily against the glass of Mr. Korean's shop. He feels a hand at his shoulder.
"Hey, are you all right? You don't look so good."
The stranger's eyes are calm, and his grip full of care.
Marl straightens and struggles to smile.
"You gotta watch yourself. New York can bite you in the ass if you're not careful." The stranger winks, then waves off the question and slips back into the flow.
The courier measured his pace as he trotted down the long corridor. A minute too soon would be as damaging as a minute too late. He glanced at his watch. 11:58:04 a.m. He slowed to a walk.
12:00:00 p.m.
"Good afternoon, Stephen," a disembodied female voice said.
The courier took the final step and leaned toward the reader panel. "Good afternoon, Ms. Sanchez."
"Are you packed today?"
"Yes, ma'am, I am."
The courier could feel the HVAC kick in, creating a faint hum somewhere at the edge of his hearing. The hallway was empty, the nondescript system panel the only element embellishing the stark white walls. The muscles of his neck tightened in anticipation.
"I'm ready," the woman said.
The courier released the optic fiber from its cell with a swipe of his card and caught it as it popped free. A complex task reduced to an artfully simple move by hundreds of deliveries. He removed his sunglasses and snapped the fiber into the connector below his left eye. Widening his stance, the courier closed his eyes and prepared for the transfer of data.
"You've styled your hair differently."
The courier opened his eyes. "Yes, ma'am, I have."
"Muy atractivo."
"Gracias, señora."
There was a sound that resembled a laugh. "I think I like the new Stephen."
The courier smiled.
"Are we ready?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Let's begin."
The courier took in a deep breath, and his vision dissolved.
\*
Oscar Pavia was sitting comfortably in one of the overstuffed leather sofas that defined a meeting area near the front of his boss's office.
"Mr. Pavia, Ms. Sanchez is here," a smooth female voice declared.
"Thank you, Maria," he said.
Hidden by the opening door, Pavia watched Isabel Sanchez walk into the room. He could always tell the importance of a file by where his boss would stand. By the windows was bad. By the desk was good. By the bar was personal. Sanchez placed the sliver of organic polymer next to the desk's Netport. Alberto Goya turned from one of the large windows that ran the length of the office and eyed it.
"Gracias," he said politely.
"De nada." Sanchez turned but froze when she saw Pavia.
He smiled, forcing the genuineness.
Sanchez acknowledged him with a slight, awkward tilt of her head, then hurried from the room.
"Alberto," Pavia said. "When are you going to enter the modern age?"
Goya looked up from slipping the file into his Netport. "When it's secure, my friend."
Alberto Goya was a tall, native Mexican who had been born just before his country's merger with America. His hair was as black as his skin was dark, and his penchant for biosuits kept his look at the edge of fashion. He stepped into a shaft of early afternoon light, and his tie's pattern changed.
"It is secure, and has been for about a century," Pavia said with a taint of frustration. He uncrossed his legs, and the sofa complained with a noise that sounded like it could have come from the ass of some enormous beast. Pavia's mass wasn't built from fat. His bulk had been cultivated from a career that included 12 years in Special Forces and eight years of anti-terrorist duty with the NSA. As he waited for the file to appear, the muscles of his jaw worked under a skin speckled by the scars of childhood acne.
Goya leaned onto his desk and lit a cigarette. He exhaled smoke just as the holochive appeared in the center of the room.
"Shade, level 4," he said. The room obeyed, dimming the window's glass into dark gray panels that blurred the cityscape beyond. His smoke spread lazily through the data stream, and it rippled slightly.
Pavia leaned forward and intently studied the flow of information as it quivered before him.
Goya drew again from his Gitane a long drag, then let the residual smoke linger about his face. He had built upon his father's empire by leveraging Grupo TVid Azteca's world audience share into the second-most-watched Network on the Net. Having grown the company through shrewd acquisitions, Goya had amassed an empire that would secure him a place in business history.
"Stop!" he said.
The data stream froze.
"What is it?... What do you see?" Pavia asked.
"I don't know." Goya, his face lined from years of dealing with serious matters, peered at the bits of information.
Pavia rubbed his chin, and his meaty fingers scraped across his afternoon shadow like it was 220-grit sandpaper. "Hell," he said, glancing at his watch, "if you don't know, I certainly won't!" He extracted himself from the sofa, leaving a crater no bioleather could restore.
"Sit down, my friend," Goya said with a tone of authority his head of security had come to respect.
Pavia sat, and his pant legs hiked to expose the fur-covered trunks that were his calves. He scoffed as he settled back into the sofa.
Goya continued studying a certain area of the file. "See this?" he finally said, pointing.
Pavia focused on the section.
"Why would she need this?"
Pavia edged between two chairs to get closer to the holochive, leaned in and read.
"I couldn't say," he said, straightening.
Goya crushed out his cigarette. "Look at the download path."
Pavia reviewed the data again.
"Why would a 10-year employee -- one who has an exemplary record -- move this kind of data in such a convoluted manner?"
Pavia thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his Trussardi pants and shrugged.
Goya sighed. "She is either harmlessly retrieving it for some kind of research ..." He eyed Pavia in a way that caught the veteran security man off guard. "... or she's retrieving it because someone has paid her to." Goya lit another cigarette.
"But this is useless information. What could anyone do with this sort of crap?"
"Resume," Goya said, and the holochive began to slowly stream. "Stop. Extract these files here, here, and here." He touched the holochive, and it instantly separated into three separate files. "Isolate and enlarge." The holochive divided again and extracted the data into large info-panels.
Pavia stepped closer and studied them. Suddenly, his mind saw the pattern nestled in the bits of seemingly banal information. He whistled.
"Yes, my friend," Goya said. "When they are separate files, they have no significance. But seen together--"
"They reveal that our model employee isn't so model." Pavia rubbed his chin again and felt the scar from that assignment in Jordan.
"No, she appears not to be, eh? Light, level 10!"
The window's grayness quickly vanished, and the office filled with early New York afternoon sunlight. Goya eased into his chair and propped his vintage kangaroo Noconas on his desk. They had been his father's.
"Do you want me to bring her in?" Pavia asked.
Goya crushed out his cigarette in the large glass bowl. "No," he said after some thought. "I think we'll let her continue.... It should be interesting to see where this goes."
"I must advise you, for the record, I think that is unwise. We don't know who she's working for, or what they are trying to do."
"Don't worry, Oscar. You'll figure it out before it goes too far, eh?" Goya ejected the file. "Here, take this." He flicked it at Pavia.
The tiny wafer sailed through the air; Pavia lumbered and caught it with cupped hands. He grunted from the effort and straightened. "Who is she, anyway?" he asked, pocketing the file.
Goya glanced at his Netport. "Moriarty ... Deja Moriarty. She's in Entertainment."
Pavia turned to leave.
"Oh, and one other thing ..." Goya folded his hands behind his head. "The more I think about it, the more I feel this one should be off the grid.... Agreed?"
Pavia pondered the request. "De acuerdo," he replied in the best Mexican accent his New Jersey heritage would allow.
"Bueno," Goya said, and snapped his Netport shut.
"You goin' to hang upside down all morning?" Deja asked from the cocoon she had created with the bed's thermo-blanket.
Chaco relaxed and let his arms dangle. He looked at her. "No," he said. "One more and I'm done." A drop of sweat fell from his forehead and hit the cement floor with a delicate "thap." It vanished into the puddle that had been forming under him for 20 minutes. He grunted and pulled himself up for the 50th time.
Deja stretched and watched her lover hang from one of the loft's ceiling supports. She often thought how unfair it was that Chaco's muscle tone was more the blessing of genetics than of any structured lifting. What workout he did consisted of the occasional 50 reverse pulls and some new yoga he had been into since before they met. All she knew was that it involved chrome balls the size of melons and required a Liquid Fiber connection to the Net. But what got to her wasn't the fact that it was taught remotely from somewhere in India by a hot female instructor who had thighs that could crush coconuts. It was more that Chaco just had to disappear to the class twice a week. He referred to it as "me" time. "Suspicious" is what Deja called it.
She pulled her knees in and tightened her cocoon. "Doesn't that make you sick, hanging like that?"
"Not really. You get used to it after a while. Throw me that towel, will you?"
Deja flung it in kind of a blind, reverse-flick. It missed his outstretched hands and landed on Chaco's cat. The big tabby growled from under the towel, then scooted blindly across the floor, pawing and jabbing, until it slammed into one of the concrete columns.
"Oh, shit, Meatball!" Deja said.
Chaco twisted to get a better look at the heap crumpled at the base of the column. The cat's exposed tail twitched angrily.
"Don't worry, he's all right. He does that all the time, don't ya Meat?"
The cat's tail flicked and curled as if in answer. Then Meatball popped his head out and bolted across the loft in a kind of crazy sideways gallop.
"See? He's fine." Chaco disengaged the boots and lowered to the floor. "He'll probably have a headache for the rest of the morning, but that's a cat's life, isn't it?" Deja groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. Chaco fell onto the bed and began playfully grabbing at where he thought her waist might be. She squealed and thrashed at his repeated jabs.
"Jesssus, Sonny!" Deja sat up and pulled the blanket off her head. She caught her reflection in the floor mirror and saw her product-brittle hair was splayed as if a small nocturnal animal had been nesting in it.
Chaco retreated from his attack to the edge of the bed and looked her over. "Nice style, baby."
Deja smiled and answered with her middle finger.
"So elegant this early in the morning." As Chaco left the bed, he passed his hand over the tips of her spiked hair, and Deja swatted him away. He walked into the kitchen, and its lights slowly greeted him. Deja fell back onto the pillows.
"About last night," Chaco said. "That was incredible. What got into you?"
Deja opened her eyes to the cobwebs that were building in the rigging of the loft's trusses and smiled. Meatball hopped onto her chest and began kneading. A large drop of drool fell from the cat's mouth and spread into the threads of her T-shirt. She stroked his back, and Meatball purred with appreciation.
"I don't know," she said.
Chaco looked up from pouring orange juice into a large glass and smiled.
Something fluttered across Deja's heart, and for the first time in their relationship, she felt a defined sense of comfort. From the beginning, she had innately sensed a connection with Chaco, and even though he never mentioned it, she was sure he felt it, too. But now, snuggled in the familiar comfort of his bed and barely descended from a passionate ledge that only two people in love could reach, she decided to allow herself the sole emotion she knew little about.
"Hey," Chaco said, filling a second glass. "Are you happy?"
"Yes," she replied warmly.
He entered the bedroom. "Aha! In bed with another man."
"Guilty as charged." Deja gently pulled Meatball's tail as he jumped from her chest onto the shelf behind her. "And this guy never bitches about cold feet. Do you?" The cat playfully sparred with her from the protection of his high ground.
"He's a good guy, as cats go." Chaco settled onto the bed and handed her a glass. He paused and took her in.
"What? Is it my hair?"
"No, baby, it's not."
Chaco took a small sip from his glass, set it on the nightstand, leaned over, and tenderly kissed her. "You know," he said softly, "I felt something last night."
Deja wrapped an arm around his neck. "Me too," she whispered, and leaned in to kiss him.
"Agent Chaco."
Deja stopped in mid-kiss.
"Agent Chacosan," the voice said again.
"Fuck," Chaco said against her lips.
Yoichi Tsukahara's pudgy figure formed in the center of the loft.
"Good morning, Agent Chaco," he said, with a slight bow. His eyes moved to Deja; she pulled the blanket around herself.
"Tsuka," Chaco said, shifting to face the holoimage. "This better be damn good!"
Tsukahara bowed again, more deeply this time. "I'm so sorry to disturb you, but there's been a--"
"Listen, if the drives for the NetLinks are acting up again, get one of the techs to check them."
"No, not NetLink Hubs. They're running at 100 percent efficiency."
"If it's the Data Transfer Units, Davis can fix them. We saw him last night at a party down in the Lower-"
"No, Chacosan!" Tsukahara's face was grave, and his bow was much slower this time.
"Yeah?" Chaco said cautiously. The holoimage rippled slightly, and its linear waves of pixels oscillated into little moiré ovals.
Tsukahara finished his bow. "Protocol demands you return to the unit."
"Why?"
"This is not a secure channel-"
"Damn it, Tsuka. What the hell is going on?"
Tsukahara hesitantly opened his Netpad and nodded to himself. He looked up. "We believe there has been an incident."
"What magnitude?"
"Ten."
"Oh my God," Chaco said under his breath.
Deja looked from her lover to the holoimage and back. "What, Sonny? What does he mean?"
Chaco turned slowly, his brow furrowed.
"Sonny?"
"A ten is biothermonuclear."
Deja gasped.
"Yeah," Chaco said, "just like Hawaii."
When the Biolution arrived, it swept away many industries that were once the anchors of modern life, and in so doing, changed the dynamics of the world order. The technology it spawned created new sources of synthetic fuels and reduced the Middle East to the status it enjoyed prior to the development of the internal combustion engine. This drove radicals within the Middle East to show the infidels one last act of Arab anger.
On a beautiful spring day in the Hawaiian Islands, the terrorist detonation of an untested biothermonuclear weapon caused the tropical paradise to debiolize, or what TVid pundits aptly labeled "merged." At precisely noon, one million Hawaiians, tourists and military personnel (not to mention all animal, plant and aquatic life within a 300-mile radius) merged like an ice cream sundae on a hot afternoon. There was no flash of light, no rain of fire -- just a congealing of matter that shocked the world. What had once been a concept was now a brutal reality whose specter hovered at the rim of the world's collective nervous consciousness like a low-grade fever.
Chaco slowly rose from the bed.
"Sonny," Deja said, "your legs, they're shaking."
"Probably from the workout." He turned to the holoimage. "Disengage this connection."
Tsukahara bowed, and his image disappeared.
Chaco collected his clothes and began walking toward the bathroom.
"Sonny?"
Chaco stopped, but didn't turn. "Yeah?"
"Talk to me.... What's going on?"
"Deja, level 10 could mean anything from a contaiment issue to a ...."
Deja could only think that his mind was struggling to wrap itself around the enormity of the situation.
"I better get going," he said, and hurried into the bathroom on the other side of the loft.
Deja sat in the middle of the bed as the morning sun exploded over the top of the city and flooded the loft with hot yellow light. She gathered the blanket around her and began to rock. Moments before, she had been delighting in her newfound ardor, but now, all had changed. Meatball hopped from the headboard and nestled into the crux of her legs. He looked up and purred. Deja gathered the cat into her arms and nuzzled his face into her neck. The cat licked the tip of her chin.
"Oh, Meat," she said. The cat blinked sleepily. "You're so lucky."
Deja took in the loft, and her attention stopped on a small lip of shelf cantilevered from a wall. It held about a dozen holophotos and hung there, glowing, as a collection of moments that was Sonny Chaco's life: the day he graduated from the Academy, his mother and father's 40th anniversary, the birthday party when he turned 30, and he and Deja on their trip to France. She stared at the holoprint from Paris for several minutes, lost in memory.
Chaco emerged from the bathroom and hurriedly walked across the loft to the dining table. He yanked his coat from the back of a chair and slipped it on in a move that always reminded Deja of a dance step she had learned in high school. He removed his Netpad and pointed it towards the desk by the front door. A drawer slid open.
Deja hated what was inside.
Chaco walked to the desk and pulled his Light-Force from the drawer. After inspecting its safety, he slipped the weapon into its holster under his coat. He straightened and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, walked to the front door, reached for its handle, and paused.
"I don't know when I'll be back," he said so quietly Deja could barely hear him. He finally turned. "Feed Meatball, will you?"
Still holding the cat to her chest, Deja nodded.
Chaco forced a smile, then carefully turned the handle and stepped from the loft. The echo of the door clicking shut rebounded off the hard surfaces.
Marl is haunted by shadows that move through the landscapes of his dreams. Crowds in nameless streets, chanting and screaming, their colorful features twisted into shapes that resemble masks from the largest city on the planet.
Waking, he finds that he is drenched in a sweat that could only come from fear of failure. He opens his eyes to a black void and listens. The hum is still there.
A need to scream rises deep from his being, but he refuses to succumb. He wipes the sweat from his face and stares at his hands. In the blackness they seem detached, foreign. He turns them over and strains to find their form.
Then it strikes.
The overwhelming sense of a million souls -- screaming to him over a threshold that he has come to understand as his gift. Something has happened on the planet, or might have happened. He never quite knows, but its presence is dense and catastrophic.
The accompanying pain slams into his essence with all the force of the universe. He fights the urge to wretch and slowly climbs out of the bed. The tile floor coldly welcomes his feet.
Moving through the darkness, he cautiously inches his way to the bathroom. Its light greets him with the brilliance of a sun, and he collapses onto the lip of the sink. Water automatically flows, and he cups his hands and splashes his face, hoping he can wash away the visions. They begin to recede.
Upon leaving the bathroom, the light fades and plunges him back into the shadows. As he climbs onto the bed, he knows that when he closes his eyes he will see the faces again. They will greet him on the plane of his dreams and ask him why. He does not have the answer. It is not his reason -- his purpose -- to exist. He has been trained only to stop the madness. He fights for the strength that seems to elude him. He is scared, like a child in a war bigger than he can fathom; he does not see or understand the complexities that shape his future.
Then, with a sudden and desperate realization, he accepts that he must return to his dreams and face the many who are gone. Only then will he know what to do.
He closes his eyes and empties his soul.
Yoichi Tsukahara was the latest in a series of "Exchange Agents" the NSA had paraded through Echelon unit over the last year. He was young and talented but still uncomfortable with New American culture. He jumped to his feet and bowed as Chaco entered the room.
"Cool it, Tsuka, you're in the big New 'A' now. We don't show respect here -- for anybody." Chaco threw his coat against an available chair and settled against the counter of Tsukahara's Netport station. He accepted a cup of coffee from Cooper.
"Morning," Davis said, engrossed with something on his Netport screen.
"Hey, boss." Steiner busily consumed the last of a crusty apple Danish. The other techs didn't even look up.
Chaco studied each one of his console-jocks and tried to get a read on their emotional states. "So, what do we got?"
Davis turned and stretched. "One hell of a headache," he said yawning.
Chaco kicked his legs out from under him, and Davis almost toppled backwards. "We have a Mag fucking Ten in system, and you're bitching about a hangover?"
"We do?" Steiner said, spitting Danish past Chaco's legs.
All the techs turned to their Netports and began clutching at their VirtGear. Davis struggled to his knees and tried jacking into the system.
"Wait, wait, wait a second!" Chaco said, pissed. "I came down here on my day off because of a Mag Ten alert!" He turned toward Tsukahara, who was slowly recoiling from a deep, apologetic bow.
"I am so sorry, Agent Chaco. I misread the alert."
"Well, what the hell is it? Are we under an alert or not?"
"Yeah, boss," Steiner said, wiping his mouth. "Technically, we are."
"But it is not a Magnitude 10," Tsukahara said. "It is a magnitude one point zero."
Everyone in the cramped lab restrained their laughter.
"Give me your Netpad," Chaco said.
Tsukahara sheepishly offered his Netpad and flinched when Chaco grabbed it.
"Jesus, Tsuka, the organics in this pad are almost dead. Get over to the Cage and requisition a new one." He threw the Netpad, and Tsukahara clumsily tried to clutch it before it clattered to the floor.
"Hands like a fish." Chaco relaxed against the counter and rubbed his face. "Any more surprises this morning?"
"Negative on that," Davis said, righting his chair.
Chaco sighed, knowing that what could have been an excellent day with Deja was now going to be another "issue." It wasn't like he didn't want to be with Deja. It's just that working for the NSA meant you basically were 24-7. It was a small price to pay for national security. Or was it? He sniffed at his cup. "Who made the coffee this morning?"
Everyone looked at Tsukahara.
Chaco shot a look at his intern. "Not your day, is it?"
Tsukahara nervously grinned. "Ah, no, Chacosan. Not Tsukahara's day."
"Agent Chaco?"
"Yes, sir?" Chaco asked as the image of his superior appeared on the console's screen.
"Please stop by my office when you get a moment."
"Yes, sir," Chaco replied, knowing that, with Slowinski, "when you get a moment" meant right now.
"Trouble, boss?" Steiner asked.
Chaco shrugged. "Not that I can think of." He began to leave but got only as far as the door. "Hey, what was the Mag 1 about, anyway?"
Davis searched through some online files at his Netport. "Looks like a biopharm lab outside of Paris had a loss of pressure in their resonance chamber."
"Can you isolate it?"
Davis slipped on his VirtGear, and its optic couplings wrapped around his head like the tentacles of some deep ocean crustacean. They hissed as they searched for their contact points. For a moment he looked about, riding the wave of data back to its source. "Got it!" he declared. "Looks like some biotech firm. Let's see, my French is a little rusty, but I thinks it's pronounced La Société...commerciale des...MarionNettes de Viande?"
"Okay," Chaco said. "I think I caught some of that."
"La Société commerciale des MarionNettes de Viande," Tsukahara said in perfect French. "Literally translated: The Meat Puppet Corporation."
"What was it? Can you tell?"
Davis paused. "Yeah, kind of. It's all in French and ... Latin? That's weird. Anyway, it was a small accident, and yeah, just as I thought, right in the resonance chamber. Hmmm, that's interesting."
"What is?"
"This data doesn't look like your typical corporate tech."
"Cloning?"
"Possibly."
"That's not a Mag 1. Alert ops. Do they have it contained?"
"Yeah. Seven injured, no deaths. It'll probably hit the French news in a half hour. Be on the majors later today. Nothing special as far as I can tell."
Davis jumped to his feet and began grabbing wildly at his VirtGear. He knocked his chair across the room. "Jesus H. Christ!" he screamed and stumbled into his console. "Get this goddamned thing out of my head! SHIT!" Davis clenched his teeth in a seizure-like lockdown, and his body froze in a contorted spasm.
Some of the techs started to approach.
"Don't touch him!" Chaco yelled, and the techs stood their ground.
"Man, what the hell hit him?" Steiner asked.
"I'm not sure." Chaco stepped closer and inspected Davis. "It looks like something backwashed into his VirtGear's Network, but the security walls should have stopped that."
"Predator stream," Tsukahara said, referencing his console.
Chaco looked at Tsukahara and frowned. "If you got a clue, I want to hear it."
Tsukahara glanced again at his console. "Russian made, very dirty." He looked up and wiped sweat from his upper lip. "We study this extensively at University. If he not released within two minutes, the stream will begin restructure his nucleotide polymorphisms, and any other deoxyribonucleic acid sequence variants."
"In English."
"It will make him a vegetable."
"Okay." Chaco turned to the group. "Anybody got any ideas?"
Tsukahara stepped over to the emergency shut-off button on the far wall and lifted its plastic cover.
"Wait a second!" Steiner said. "He's totally Virt-In. You can't auto-down on him. That's for fires and shit. It'll kill all the power to this grid, and probably him with it." He looked at Chaco. "Won't it?"
Davis was beginning to take on the appearance of a freakish modern sculpture. He was slowly vibrating like an electrical surge oscillated in him, and foam was building at the corners of his mouth.
"Hell if I know," Chaco said. "This isn't in any of my background. Tsuka, do you know what you're doing?"
Tsukahara studied the room. "Russian Predator Stream is very black-ops. It can't be stopped. It operates like a virus, just keeps adapting."
"Shit," Chaco said under his breath.
Tsukahara hit the button; the room went black.
Being a "clean" room -- which had always struck Chaco as such an odd holdover since rooms didn't really need to be sterile anymore -- buried 10 levels below the Maryland landscape meant that when the power was cut, it got, as his grandfather used to say, as black as the Ace of Spades.
"Everyone all right?" Chaco asked into the darkness.
There were grumbles in various degrees of "yes."
Steiner clicked on a miniature flashlight and directed the beam to where Davis had collapsed. As the light passed over Davis' VirtGear, it caught the edges of some disconnected fiber optics, and rainbow arcs danced across the room. Steiner moved it over the rest of Davis's body, which had fallen forward in a sick-looking heap. One of his arms was contorted to one side, while the other had been caught awkwardly under his chest. A small puddle of drool and blood was slowly spreading from his partially opened mouth.
Steiner lifted the light, reflecting it off the ceiling like a spot so the others could see. They rolled Davis over, and Chaco pulled out his Netpad and passed it the length of the body. The glow from its tiny screen cast Davis in a steely blue tint.
"What's it read?" Steiner asked.
"He's alive, but his breathing is shallow. His pulse is a little slow, and his blood pressure is off, but not too bad. Except for some broken teeth, I'd say he's pretty lucky." He clicked off the Netpad and placed it on the counter. "Nice job, Tsuka," he said into the blackness. Steiner swung the light to the wall where the shut-off button was, and all heads followed. Its narrow beam cut a path through the dark, like a spotlight in one of the old prison vids Chaco had enjoyed watching with his father.
Steiner swung the beam around. "Hey, where's Yoichi?"
"Hey, Tsuka?" Chaco called out, but there was no response.
Chaco's Netpad hummed. "Yeah?!" he yelled.
"This is Security Station 4. Your unit is off-line. Fire crews are headed your way."
"Cancel that, security! No fire, repeat, no fire. We have a medical emergency, Category 5."
"Affirmative. Do you want power restored?"
"No! Do not restore power. We have a man who's still Virt-In."
"Affirmative. Holding power restoration until we hear further. ETA for med team is three minutes."
There came a pounding at the entrance door that made everyone jump. It sounded to Chaco more like a SWAT battering ram, the kind they used on a TVid show he'd seen once -- what was it called, Cop for a Day?
Steiner swung the light toward the noise, and Chaco stepped toward the door, but something caught his foot and sent him stumbling. Steiner left the door and shined the light on what had tripped Chaco. There was more pounding.
"What the hell?" Chaco watched Steiner's light crawl up the unconscious mass of Yoichi Tsukahara. He was sprawled on the floor with the back of his head against the wall. In the dim light, he looked nearly peaceful.
"Agent Chaco?" Slowinski beckoned from the Netpad.
"Jesus." Chaco stepped back over Tsukahara and followed Steiner's beam back to the counter.
"Your 'situation' has come to my attention."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Slowinski. You see, we had this Russian Predator thing--"
"Sonny?"
"Yes, sir?"
There was a slight pause that Chaco took as his boss preparing to unleash his own special brand of disciplinary action. "See me when your situation is under control."
"Yes, sir." Chaco wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and leaned against the counter. He looked down at Cooper, who, along with another tech, was trying to extract Davis's VirtGear. "Be careful of the optic couplings," he said. "They usually carry a little residual juice."
The pounding at the lab door stopped.
Steiner handed the flashlight to another tech and began helping the others delicately uncouple the dozen tentacles that entwined Davis' head. This would have been a simple task in any other situation, but because Davis was still connected to the Net, they had to uncouple the connectors in the correct order, or his nervous system could go into shock.
Harrison read aloud from his Netpad how to release the connectors. When Steiner removed the last one, its living properties sensed freedom and recoiled into the main housing at the front of the headgear.
"There," he said with an air of accomplishment. "That's the last one." Steiner lifted the VirtGear from Davis's head with the reverence of a surgeon. Davis's head rolled out of the housing, his cheek stopping just shy of the pool of blood and drool. He eyes were half open and partially rolled back. His jaw had unclenched, but his nose looked broken. Chaco's Netpad hummed again.
"This is the med team. We're standing by outside. Is your victim still Virt-In?"
"Negative," Chaco said. "Bring us back online."
The overheads, along with the lab's equipment, emitted a collective drone, and Chaco and the others shaded their eyes from the harsh light. The door to the lab hissed, and the med team rushed in and quickly surrounded Davis.
"We have another one, over there." Chaco pointed to Tsukahara, who had come to and was trying to sit up.
"Hey, Yoichi," Steiner said. "You okay there?"
Tsukahara glanced toward Davis, who was being raised on a med platform to be hovered out. "Will he die?" he asked..
"He's going to be okay, Tsuka.... Isn't he?" Chaco asked of the lead med tech, whose name patch labeled him as Morrison.
"His vitals are stable, and he'll probably eat with a straw for the next two weeks. We'll know more after we get him into Scanning. What did you say that stream was called?" He signaled his team to begin moving Davis out.
"Russian Predator," Chaco said.
Morrison frowned. "I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. Wonder why the Walls didn't stop it?"
"Hell if I know. I thought they could stop anything."
"They're supposed to. You better run a diagnostic on your Virt Hubs before I have to come back down here and haul out another one of your fried asses."
Morrison scanned the room. His attention landed on Steiner's collection of antique cell phones. "You Net agents are an odd bunch."
Chaco shrugged.
"What do you boys do down here, anyway?"
"Just keepin' the peace."
"Peace, my ass." Morrison followed his team out. "I'll let you know about your agent here, as soon as I know something," he said over his shoulder. The door shut behind him with a clunk.
The room filled with a tense energy as Chaco, Tsukahara, and the techs all stood silently collecting themselves. Chaco edged the tip of his boot into the puddle of drool and blood. "Somebody want to clean this up?"
"Way ahead of you, sir," Cooper said, making his way forward from his desk. He slipped on some latex gloves and began attacking the puddle with a bottle of the bio agent Chaco had used to use when he was a cop. It turned body fluids into dry putty that could be scraped up.
Tsukahara stepped up as Cooper spayed the stuff across the puddle. Chaco could tell the scene disturbed him.
"Don't sweat it, Tsuka. You did good."
"Agent Davis could have died." Tsukahara said, still watching Cooper.
"He would have definitely died, if you hadn't acted. You did the right thing, and that's all that matters."
Tsukahara faced Chaco. "I did all right?" he asked.
Chaco put his hand on Tsukahara's shoulder. "He would have definitely died, if you hadn't acted. You did the right thing, and that's all that matters."
Since her day off had been blown by one of Chaco's dumbass interns, Deja decided to grab a commuter jump jet back to New York City. The world had never been in danger, and Chaco had apologized profusely, even buying her an expensive dinner at U-Topia before her flight. But Deja wanted to get ahead of the week's business, and besides, Chaco hadn't seemed all that insistent on her staying the weekend, anyway. All in all, she at least got a great night of sex and a good meal, which unfortunately summed up their relationship at times. Not that that was bad, but she knew she had felt something the other night that had vaguely presented itself as love -- and she just wanted to know if Chaco had felt it, too.
Deja played with the volume of the vid screen in the seat in front of her. She moved up and down the range, but the sound didn't change. It was loud enough to irritate, yet not enough that people would turn and stare. Resigned to the fact that she was powerless to control the only real luxury afforded to passengers these days, Deja went back to staring out her window. It was weird, she thought, watching the ground shrink as they ascended into the late Maryland evening, that she was traveling on an airline called Southwest in the Northeast. But after the airline industry collapse earlier in the century, which facilitated Southwest's purchase of American and United, she figured they were big enough to call themselves whatever they wanted.
One of the holo attendants cleared its throat, an odd act, considering it had neither esophagus nor anything to clear. Deja figured it was the result of programmers who couldn't think of a better way to get a passenger's attention.
"Would you like anything to drink?" it said too politely.
Deja peeled herself from the window. "Yes, please. I'll take a vodka tonic."
"Thank you. That will be 20 Ameros."
Deja handed over her chip card, which the holo attendant held for a moment to read the encoded information before it returned it and moved on to the next row. A real attendant came up the aisle and passed through the holo image, creating, for a split second, the eerie illusion of two faces merged.
Suddenly, Deja's seat started reclining. Its cushion, which had already reshaped into a basic reading position, began contorting to Sleep Mode by firming itself and creating a small pillow. Deja quickly reset the seat's protocols, and it started to reconfigure. The seat was designed to monitor Deja's vitals, but she wasn't that tired.
A human attendant returned with Deja's drink and set it on her tray table. Deja took a sip and settled back. She started flipping through the channels on her vid screen and landed on an NNN news segment about advanced language chimps being tested by the telemarketing industry in California. The woman next to her stirred and gave out a small moan.
"I'm sorry," Deja said. "The volume on this screen must be stuck." She fiddled with the buttons in her armrest. The woman, who had been facing the aisle, turned.
Deja gasped.
The woman smiled knowingly and blinked. Her catlike eyes dilated in the dim cabin light to reveal bright rings of orange around the pupils.
Embarrassed, Deja quickly focused her attention back to NNN, which had segued to a news segment concerning the hazards of bioregeneration for correcting cosmetic issues in preteens, now that it had become all the rage in upper middle-class suburbs. There was a moment of awkwardness, then the woman lightly touched Deja's arm.
"What do you think?" she asked.
Deja hesitated. "Excuse me?" She tried not to stare.
"I asked what you thought of that news piece." The woman gestured at the vid screen, which now displayed a commercial for biodiapers with nanotechnology that actually "ate" the baby's waste. The woman's pupils narrowed, then dilated back to normal. They were beautiful, although Deja sensed a great deal of sorrow behind them.
"Well, ah ... I thought that ..." Deja looked to the vid screen and back. "... it's pretty egotistical of parents to allow their children bioaugmentation at such an early age. It's, well, just silly!" Being unable to think of anything better than "silly," she mentally chastised herself.
The woman considered Deja for a second and burst out with a laugh that seemed to have been trapped for years. "That's precious," she said, covering her mouth as if laughing were wrong. "You're so wonderfully accurate with your assessment. Sir?" She hailed a holo attendant passing up the aisle. "I would love some champagne, and?..." She gestured to Deja.
"Oh, no I--"
"Please." The woman's eyes flared slightly. "I insist."
"All right," Deja said, not listening to her better self, which she had been doing a lot lately. "Another vodka tonic, please."
"Splendid," the woman said, holding onto the "s" for an effect Deja couldn't quite understand.
\*
"... so this intern," Deja explained, "screws up the magnitude level, and instead of a ten, it's a really a one -- a one point zero!" She squeezed a lemon into her fourth drink, and its spray hit the woman in the eyes. "Oh, jeez, Corazon, I'm so sorry. Um, that won't, ah, you know, damage them, will it?"
The woman, still laughing, took her napkin and dabbed her eyes. "No. Besides ..." She looked over to Deja, who was restraining her laughter. "... I can always get them replaced."
Deja sipped her new drink and wondered about Corazon's eyes. They had an odd quality about them, almost digital. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
Corazon's expression shifted, and Deja sensed she might have stepped over some unspoken boundary. She chastised herself again. "I-I'm sorry, never mind."
The woman's look softened. "That's all right ... I have nothing to hide."
"Okay," Deja said, pressing the crinkled edges of her napkin flat. "How old are you?"
Corazon smiled, as if there was some personal joke at work. She pondered the question while she swirled the champagne in her glass. "That's a hard question to answer, really."
Deja, feeling the effects of four vodka tonics, frowned. "Really, why? Everyone knows when they're born." But she stopped with the sudden realization that Corazon's eyes may not be the only manufactured thing about her.
A smooth and knowing grin spread across Corazon's face. She raised an eyebrow. "Boo," she said softly.
Deja gasped into her drink while Corazon chuckled.
"Are you, you know, one of those?"
Corazon leaned over the armrest and into Deja's face. "Yes," she said, evenly. "I'm a 'Silent Human.'" Her irises narrowed until her eyes were almost completely orange.
A cold chill slammed through Deja's vodka buzz. She shuddered and almost spilled her drink. "Neat!" she said, dredging this word up from the same suppressed area of her brain that had offered up "silly."
Corazon's look changed to one of puzzlement, but she laughed. "Well," she said, "I've never had a reaction like that before."
Deja began chuckling too, though she wasn't really comfortable with it. "No, seriously," she whispered before she took a big swig from her drink. "I've always wanted to meet one of your kind."
With this, Corazon's demeanor shifted again, and Deja feared the misplaced harshness of her last statement had caused it. Why did her brain, when it tried to select the right thing to say, and especially when she needed it the most, fail her so consistently? It had gotten her in trouble more times than she could count. To her surprise, however, Corazon seemed unfazed, as if being referenced as a "kind" was perfectly natural. Her expression relaxed, and as Deja studied the clone's manufactured beauty, she finally realized what had been bugging her since the moment they met.
Corazon had absolutely no flaws.
Even though she had probably been made in the image of someone -- a dead wife or girlfriend -- she was flawless. Her complexion was perfect. Her hair, teeth, lips, even the arc of her neck seemed sculpted to resemble a conglomerate of ideals. She was a perfect product of a DNA regeneration stew that much of the world had banned 20 years earlier.
"So--" Deja began.
"I'm three years old," Corazon said.
"Whoa!" Deja exclaimed, referencing from the Moriarty phrase file. "That's amazing."
Corazon grinned and took a sip of champagne. "And my full name is really Kita Corazon, but I still think of myself by my tank name: Corazon 13."
"Why 13?"
"Because there were 12 before me that never made it through maturation. I'm the 13th one. Voilà!" she said with a gesture at herself.
"So, who are you? I, I mean, who were you? No, wait, I'm sorry, that didn't come out right either."
Corazon patted Deja's arm. "It's okay, I know what you're driving at. Really, I'm fine with it all." She paused for what Deja took as the clone struggling with her own definition of life. She delicately sipped from her champagne, handling her glass in a way that could have only been cultivated by intense schooling. "What people don't realize is that most of my kind have been brought into fairly wealthy situations. It's just too expensive a proposition for anyone except the super rich to take on. And I'm really very grateful to be Mrs. Alberto Goya. I'm taken care of, and I have most everything anyone would ever want, and - why Deja, you look like you're going to be ill."
Deja felt the blood drain from her face with the realization that Alberto Goya -- the same Alberto Goya she had been ratting out to Chaco -- was this woman's husband, or owner, or whatever.
"Is your, ah, husband the president of TVid Azteca?" she asked.
"Yes."
The guilt punched Deja in the stomach with all the nausea of extremely rancid sushi. The cabin started to spin.
Corazon cupped Deja's face. "My dear, you're turning white! Let me call an attendant."
"No! It's just the vodka. Oh, God ..." Deja began climbing over Corazon. "Excuse me!" She scrambled down the aisle and slammed into a flight attendant she had mistaken for a holo.
"Easy there, young lady. Do you have to go that bad?" He pushed one of the lavatory doors open. "There you are, all to yourself."
Deja nodded "thank you," fell into the tiny room, and proceeded to puke out her guilt, which had been welling up ever since she had started passing the damn info to Chaco over half a year ago.
Deja took a drink of water and tried to gargle away the burning in her throat. The pounding in her head she attributed to the vodka. There was a knock at the lavatory door.
"Are you all right in there?"
"Yes," Deja managed. There was an acidic taste burning her throat.
"May I come in? We have others who need to use this lavatory."
Deja unlocked the door and the attendant poked his head in.
"Have we been over-served?" he asked through a professional smile.
"Possibly," Deja replied in a voice way too husky for her own good.
"Oh, love the voice, dear. I have friends who would kill for that."
Deja gingerly edged up the aisle and settled into the bio comfort of her seat. Sensing her blood alcohol level, its living foam began to cradle her. She looked over to Corazon, who was doing a fairly poor job of restraining her laughter.
"Don't say a damn thing," Deja said.
"Oh, dear, I feel so bad for you."
"You think you feel bad." Deja accepted the blanket Corazon offered and curled into as tight a ball as she could. Its fabric cycled through various shapes, trying to accommodate her.
Corazon reached over and stroked Deja's forehead. "Thank you," Corazon said tenderly.
Deja was startled at Corazon's show of affection. Even though she was bioengineered young, she now appeared older. Not as old as a mother might be -- more like a big sister, which was kind of comforting since Deja had grown up an only child of workaholic parents. Besides, she felt like shit, and Corazon's touch was soothing. "For what?" she asked.
"For listening. I don't tell many people the truth. I sensed you're the type who wouldn't pass judgment, and those are rare to find."
Deja smiled as the dehydration and trauma of puking began to take its toll. Her seat started to recline. "Corazon?"
"Yes?" She was still stroking Deja's head.
Deja struggled to keep her eyes open. "Is it weird, you know?..."
"What? To live in the shadow of someone else?"
"Yeah."
Corazon smiled. "My kind have a saying," she whispered. "It's better to have been made for someone than never to have been made at all."
Deja tried to think of something to say, but her seat had become comfortable, and her mind was too tired to do anything but dip back into her file of sophomoric phrases. "Cool," she finally whispered.
"Sleep well," Corazon said.
The office of Chaco's director was a study in excruciating efficiency. Every file and Netpad was in its place. The photos of Presidents Garcia and Alberts hung on the wall with what Chaco took as the politically correct distance between the two other North American Union leaders. Even the Slowinski family holophotos were arranged on the credenza in alphabetical order.
Slowinski burst into his office, barely grazing the trim of the glass door as it automatically read his retinal signature and slid to one side. He moved his wiry frame through the room's austerity with all the grace his lifetime of military service had taught. Chaco thought he heard his heels actually click as he stopped behind his desk.
Slowinski gestured. "Please, sit down."
Chaco sat, keeping his body forward and his back straight. In his first meeting with Slowinski, he had made the mistake of displaying a more relaxed attitude. He often wondered if that's why he had spent his first 18 months in the Decoding Unit.
"How's your situation, agent?" Slowinski asked, settling into his chair.
Chaco had learned never to flinch. Ever. "Under control, sir."
"And your man?" Slowinski asked with a cold stare. Chaco's dad had called this "giving you the hairy eyeball."
"Initial scans show him stable, with no neurological damage. They took him to George Washington. We should know something later today."
"Davis is one tough son-of-a-bitch. You've got nothing to worry about with him, son."
Slowinski was a classic throwback. A lifer. And when he used the word "son," it meant the old man was edging ever so slightly toward his emotional side. He went back to staring at the holoprints of the NAU leaders. "Unbelievable," he said finally.
"Sir?" Chaco asked.
Slowinski pointed. "I still can't get over it."
"What's that?"
"Hell, I can barely tolerate one female president, but three?"
"The people have spoken."
Slowinski, still eyeing the holoprints, twitched slightly, like he was confirming to himself that his value structure was firmly in place. "How do you feel about your progress with the Goya case?"
"Good, sir."
"And that girl?" Slowinski looked back. "Is she ... tight?"
Had Slowinski asked this over a few drinks, Chaco might have mistaken the question, but in this context it meant: was she secure? More specifically -- could he trust her?
"Yes, sir," Chaco said, trying not to disclose his new feeling. He and Deja had always gotten on like porn stars, but the other night something had changed in him. It wasn't like an epiphany or revelation, which is how he thought it might feel. Just a shift. And it took him completely by surprise, because Deja was supposed to have been nothing more than a vehicle for information. He never thought that this ditzy girl with a model's body and electric hair would give his heart a wake-up call. The plan had been to engage her, use her, and discard her. Now, however, Chaco found his emotions fighting with his agency training, which was basically wet-wired into his being and would probably require an act of God to change. Maybe that was it, he figured; maybe God was finally talking to him -- and how weird was that?
"Here." Slowinski casually picked up a Netpad and flung it into Chaco's lap.
Chaco spun the pad around and broke its seal.
"We're adding a little bonus material to the Goya case."
Chaco quickly sampled the pad's folders until he came to one that contained conventional black and whites, along with some vids. All the files centered on a man captured in various environments. There were several images from Reagan International, a Lower End convenience store, and Union Station Mall. The man appeared normal, yet seemed to be wearing the same clothes in every image. While Chaco studied them, he noticed a slight shift in the coat's pattern and color.
"What's the bottom line here?" he asked, still reviewing a particularly clear image of a tall woman in the convenience store folder.
"The bottom line is in the meds. Check out file F."
Chaco clicked to the folder and scanned through it. He was pretty adept at reading medical charts, but these didn't seem to make sense. "Are these real?"
"You tell me."
"According to these stats, this guy is ... 180 years old? That can't be right."
"Keep going," Slowinski said. "There's more weird-ass shit in that file than I've seen in my whole career."
Chaco continued through the data, then stopped and read one with more detailed meds. "Jesus," he said to himself.
"Well, he's not that, but from the looks of it, he can't be quite human, either."
Chaco read on. "What is this guy?" he asked finally.
"We don't really know. He just appeared on the grid 40 days ago, like he dropped out of the goddamned sky."
"Maybe he did."
Slowinski engaged the hairy eyeball. "I would keep your focus on terra firma, agent. There're not going to be any damn aliens on my watch, is that clear? Besides, I'm sure our boy here is the good ol' fashioned homegrown variety. But the thing that gets me is the DNA sampling. If he's a clone, then he's something new, because you don't get those kinds of readings and not be black. And if he's not working for us, then he's a threat to national security, period." He hit the top of his desk with his finger to punctuate his meaning.
"But, sir, what can my department do? This looks like more of a DoD issue."
"Click back to folder C and scan down to file 14."
Chaco complied and came to more conventionals of the tall woman browsing in the convenience store. She had to be wealthy, considering the coat she was wearing, and then Chaco noticed her eyes. It was hard to make out, but they had a catlike quality, sort of like Meatball's, but not so golden. And what was with those orange rings? He came to a fuzzy high-angle shot of the store's interior, probably lifted from one of the security cameras. The aisles were crowded, not unusual for the time of night, and to the right of the checkout was the woman. She was making a transaction with the counter guy, an old Asian as far as Chaco could tell. Something caught his attention, and he clicked up the magnification. Standing near the counter was the man again, wearing the same clothes as in all the other images.
"Okay ..." Chaco said hesitantly. "Are they together?"
"Go to the next sub-folder," Slowinski said.
Chaco clicked through more images of the orange-eyed woman on board a commuter flight, similar to those that ran between New York and Washington. She was talking with a female passenger who wore one of those stupid head wraps that were so hot right now. In the sixth image, the orange-eyed woman was laughing and leaning forward enough to fully expose the face of other passenger. At first she didn't register, but it suddenly hit Chaco. He zoomed in on the base of the head-wrapped woman's neck and saw Deja's tiger tattoo. A chill crawled down his spine. He looked up.
Slowinski raised an eyebrow. "The plot thickens."
"Sir," Chaco began, but the word caught in his throat. "Are they all connected in some way?" He thought he came across pretty calm.
"We don't know yet. But when I saw your mark there ... What's her name?"
"Moriarty, sir. Deja-Ann."
"Right. Well, that's when I said to myself it's time for Mr. Chaco to step up to the big leagues. Are you ready for a little field work, agent?"
"Yes, sir."
Slowinski nodded in approval.
"Who is this woman with the weird eyes?
"Her name is Kita Corazon Francesca Goya. She's the wife, or I should say new wife, of Alberto Goya. Are you getting the picture here?"
"She must be a clone, because our sources told us that Goya's wife died three years ago in an accident. His PR department spinned it that she was having treatment abroad for cancer."
"Affirmative. She's probably one of those Caribbean jobs. I don't like the smell of this, and I'll bet you a week's credits that they're all mixed up together." Slowinski highlighted his last statement by stirring his finger in an imaginary pot.
Chaco doubted seriously that Deja was involved, but there was something very strange -- decidedly unnatural -- about this guy who never changed clothes. He couldn't put his finger on it, but his old cop sense was on point. And what the hell was Deja doing getting shitfaced with a silent?
"I want you to leverage whatever you have with this Moriarty girl and build a profile on this clone who seems to have only one suit. He's our wild card, mark my words." Slowinski went back to staring at the presidents.
Chaco started to get up.
"One more thing," Slowinski said.
Chaco teetered, his legs half bent.
"If you're dipping your pen in the ol' Moriarty ink, don't get involved. Do I make myself clear?" He shot Chaco a look that jumped off the hairy eyeball scale.
9. TO MEND WHAT?
Deja stared into her drink and watched the chemical fusion between its fruit juices and alcohol -- what the bartender had called a "1-900-FUK-YOU-UP" -- become a hypnotic party in a glass. She didn't have a clue for what the 1-900 meant, but had a good guess for the other part.
"It won't kill you," the bartender said. He laughed, and the gold loops around his neck began humming as they interacted with the rings hanging from his ears. He might have been cute, Deja mused, except for the spiderweb tattoo that had replaced his hair. His laugh became a raspy cough, and his tattoo slithered across his skin and collected into a dark patch on top of his head. "Shit," he muttered between hacks, "I'm gonna need to get regen'd."
Deja watched his tattoo reform as he walked to the end of the bar. This wasn't the first time her best friend had stood her up, but she was beginning to get tired of the cycle: get mad at boyfriend, get back together with boyfriend, tell Deja all about great makeup sex. She sucked down half the FUK-YOU-UP in a single draw and looked around the bar.
Desperate Sense was the kind of club that gracefully milked its fame like an aging diva. It was named after its owners, the famous German rock band, and had ridden every trendy wave since opening 20 years ago. It was "the" club where New Yorkers could party with the elite of the vanities crowd. But for the last few years, it had maintained a quiet chic, relying on its restaurant for more and more of its business. It had on file a veritable who's who of genetic profiles, and its chefs were very tight-lipped about their more famous patrons' gastronomical fetishes.
The restaurant was out of reach for Deja's line of credit, but the original bar was still relatively affordable -- or at least it was for her friend, who usually picked up the tab out of the vague guilt she felt for making Deja listen to her problems. Even if Deja was a little fed up with her friend's trials, there was usually someone famous at the bar she could check out.
"You went through that in a hurry," Damien Torres said, leaning onto the bar. "What's the matter? CeCe stand you up again?" He pointed at Deja's empty glass, and the Bvlgari caught the halogen spotlight. He flashed a set of exquisite teeth that came across almost as one continuous unit that could be detached for maintenance.
Deja didn't grace him with an answer; instead, she motioned to the bartender for another round.
"You haven't returned any of my calls." Torres slid the last of his martini's olives off its skewer and began inspecting it.
"I was in DC," Deja said, still trying to attract the bartender's attention.
Torres knocked back his drink in one smooth, cultivated movement, then whispered in Deja's ear, "When are you going to realize that this policeman of yours is a loser?" He eyed himself in the huge mirror that ran the length of the bar and placed the olive between his teeth.
The bartender presented Deja's drink with a nod to Torres. She shifted on her stool and took a long sip. The drink's title was beginning to make sense. "Damien, for one thing, he's a Net Agent, not a police officer. Besides, Net Agents have so much more to work with than lawyers." She glanced at his crotch and took another sip.
Torres smiled coolly around the olive, sucked it in and grabbed Deja's arm. He leaned into her face, chewing. "How would you know? You've never been with a lawyer." His face froze mid-chew as a thumb and finger the size of sausages wrapped around his neck. Torres gave out a pitiful cough and a little chunk of olive flew past Deja's shoulder.
"This asshole bothering you?" the man attached to the hand asked. He was the size of a small truck, yet moved with a surprising grace.
Deja looked from Torres's slowly whitening face to the man. His jaw was grinding away as he waited for her answer.
"Ah, no," she said. "I mean yes. Yes he was."
Corazon stepped from behind the man, and her coat changed pattern as she passed through the light from a halogen spot. She patted the rescuer's shoulder and slipped her sunglasses into her purse. "I think you've made your point, Oscar," she said to him.
Torres gasped as the man released his grip. "Yes, Ms. Goya." He looked at Deja. "Are you all right?"
Deja nodded.
Torres tried to protest, but the man glared. Torres sat down and went back to rubbing his neck.
"My dear," Corazon said, gently hugging Deja. "We were just leaving when I saw you at the bar. Then this man grabbed you, and well, I asked Mr. Pavia to intervene. I hope you don't mind."
"No," Deja said.
"May I join you?" Corazon asked.
"Sure," Deja said.
Pavia grabbed Torres by the collar. "Give the lady your seat," he said and lifted him off the stool with the same effortless motion he had displayed before. "You and I need to have a little chat on manners." He looked at Corazon and motioned in the direction of the lobby. "I'll be over there, ma'am." He walked Torres from the bar like a puppet.
"You must forgive Oscar," Corazon said, climbing onto the stool. "His methods are somewhat crude." She glanced at Deja's drink. "What are you having?"
"It's called a 1-900 ..."
"Yes, a 1-900 what?"
Deja shied. "Fuck-You-Up."
Corazon looked down into the swirl of colors. "Really? I must try one."
\*
While Deja and Corazon talked, the crowd at the bar ebbed and flowed with the cycles of the late-night New York party scene.
"This boyfriend of yours sounds very intriguing," Corazon said when she finished the last of her sixth 1-900.
Deja watched her lick the edge of the glass. "You've had six to my two, and you're still coherent. That's amazing."
A wicked little grin came over Corazon. "Not really. I've been genetically predisposed to have a high tolerance for alcohol." She motioned to the bartender for another round for her and Deja. "Alberto likes it that way."
"Hey, Cor," Deja said. "See that guy at the end of the bar? I think he's got the hots for you." She nodded toward a man seated to the left of the drink station. He was alone and had a strange presence Deja couldn't define. It was like the world in his immediate space had been cranked down to a slower tempo.
Corazon discreetly glanced over her shoulder, and the man looked away. "Why, I think you're right," she said, turning back.
The bartender placed fresh drinks down. "Compliments of the gentleman." He gave a nod in the direction of the man.
Deja and Corazon raised their drinks to their benefactor, but he had vanished from his stool.
"That's very odd," Corazon said.
"Not in this bar. Believe me, you get all kinds." Deja took a sip.
"Hello."
Deja turned to find the man standing next to Corazon. He was addressing her and acting like Deja didn't exist.
"Excuse me for being so forward, but I wanted to compliment you." His coat was made of the same living properties as Corazon's, and their thread patterns began shifting toward each other.
"Thank you, but for what?" Corazon asked.
"Your eyes."
Deja thought she saw Corazon blush under her genetically perfected skin.
"Why, I'm flattered, Mister?--"
"Just, Marl," he said.
"Well, thank you Marl. It's not every day that I get a compliment from a handsome man."
"That's a shame, because a woman with your beauty should be complimented every day."
Deja watched as Corazon and Marl edged toward each other. Their coats took on a sheen that bordered on radiant. In the glow, Corazon's orange rings revealed their true brilliance.
"What do you like about my eyes?"
Marl's smile taunted Deja, and he had an air about him that was familiar.
He raised his hand slightly, as if to touch Corazon, but hesitated. "They're beautiful."
"Really?" Corazon said, shifting her drink to her other hand.
"Yes," Marl said, "they're excellent workmanship."
Corazon's expression faded, along with her coat's glow. Deja sensed Pavia move through the bar's dense crowd and appear at Marl's side, his jaw in overdrive.
"Is this guy bothering you, Ms.--" But before he could finish, he froze, his hand poised just above Marl's right shoulder.
Marl's demeanor hadn't wavered. He studied Corazon as she set her drink on the bar and began nervously fishing the sunglasses out of her purse.
"Is this man with you?" he asked, as if this question was the most important one in the world. He gestured to Pavia.
Corazon cautiously looked up. "He is."
"I sense that he would die to protect you."
"Yes, I believe he would."
"Is he your husband?"
"Heavens, no."
"I'm sorry if I offended you."
Corazon and Marl eyed each other for a moment.
"You don't remember me, do you?" he asked.
"No," Corazon said, "I most certainly don't."
"I know you enjoy old movies, like ... Casablanca."
The tension in Corazon's body language fell away. It seemed that this statement hit a nerve in the clone's memory. "You're the man I spoke with ... in that little Korean shop?"
Marl smiled through his Zen-like calm. "I see the bruise has healed."
This observation seemed to move Corazon, but this time Deja saw a profound hurt wash over her.
"Does he hit you often?" Marl asked.
Corazon didn't answer.
Deja, transfixed in the moment's elegance, suddenly noticed that no one in the bar was moving. She glanced to the restaurant and saw that everyone was frozen in place.
"You and I are a lot alike," Marl said.
Corazon looked back. "How's that?" she asked. Their coats began to glow again.
"We were both created for a purpose."
Corazon passed her fingers down Marl's lapel; the coat's pattern surged toward her hand. "I was created to mend a man's heart," she said.
Marl smiled again, and Deja realized that the glow wasn't emanating from his coat, but from him.
"I, too, was created to mend something." Marl's voice had taken on a musical quality, rich in a bass level that was straying into subsonic. He moved closer to Corazon, but Deja never really saw any motion.
"To mend what?" Corazon asked.
Marl raised his hand and traced the line of her jaw with his fingers. "Your world."
The silence hung heavily in the limousine and was broken only when the vehicle's instruments dialogued with the vast Interway grid of Manhattan Island. Deja stared at the back of Oscar Pavia's head. The car came to an intersection and slowed to a halt.
"Ms. Goya," Pavia said, navigating his mass around the steering toggle. He leaned onto the center console and addressed her through the opening that separated the driver's area from the passenger compartment. "I'm sorry for what happened back there."
Corazon, who had been staring out her window for the last 12 blocks, drew a question mark in the condensation her breath had created. "Tell me, Oscar," she said, tracing the question mark again. "What exactly did happen?"
The car pulled forward, and Pavia's attention returned to the road.
"I'm not sure," he said. "He must have been using some kind of neurogenic dampener. If my Netpad had been functioning, it would have recognized the source and possibly neutralized it."
Corazon laughed slightly as she spelled out MARL in a fresh patch of breath. Deja figured she was thinking the same thing about Pavia's statement: pretty doubtful.
They were passing the high-rise residences that lined Central Park, and the silence returned. Deja began to remark about how she never came here much, but stopped and decided that for once she would listen to her better self. She sank against the seat and watched the old buildings rush past in a blur of affluence and fame.
Corazon tapped Deja's arm, snapping her back. "What do you think happened back there?"
"Well ..." But Pavia's head turned slightly, and Deja hesitated.
Corazon entered a code on a panel in her door's armrest, and a divider glass began growing from the edges of the two front seats. Pavia glanced back, his jaw angrily flexing in protest. Deja's ears popped as the glass sealed off their compartment. She cautiously glanced at Pavia, who had been reduced to a globular silhouette by the divider's argon tinting.
"It's all right, dear," Corazon said through a knowing little grin. "He can't hear us."
Deja leaned onto the center armrest. "I don't know, Cor. I've never seen anything like that before."
"Nor have I."
"How did he freeze all those people? I mean, is Mr. Pavia right? As far as I could tell, nobody was moving."
"Except you."
Deja thought for a second. "Well, yeah, but that's probably because I'm your friend. I am, aren't I?"
Corazon moved closer. Deja could smell her perfume. It reminded her of the Mexican beach she had visited with that professional trainer.
"To tell you the truth," Corazon said, "you're probably one of the only true friends I have. Except, maybe, for Dr. Haderous."
"Who's that?"
"The lead technician in my development."
Deja paused and took in Corazon's beauty. It wasn't till now that she noticed how elegant the clone's bone structure was. Deja had never met Goya's real wife, so she didn't have any reference to compare the two. Considering all the other "corrections" that Goya had made, she guessed Corazon's features had probably been enhanced.
"You never answered my question," Corazon said. "Do you really think he has ... How did you put it? ... 'the hots' for me?"
"Oh, yeah," Deja said devilishly. "That was the best come-on I've ever seen."
The car fell into silence again, and Deja and Corazon bounced slightly while its suspension adjusted to the road.
"Hey, Cor. Do you think Marl is a, well, you know ..."
"A Silent One?"
"Right. I mean he had such a strange way about him, don't you think?"
Corazon closed her eyes and smiled. "I thought he was wonderful. And yes." She looked at Deja, and her rings narrowed. "He's a clone, but he's not like me. This man is very different."
"Spooky is what I'd call him. But what if he's something else, some kind of ... super-clone?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"No, really. You'd have his baby, my Network would do a special, and I'd be producer of the year!"
Corazon rolled her eyes and laughed, but a melancholy quickly washed over her, and her attention shifted to the passing cityscape.
"Hey, Cor, I was only kidding.... Cor?"
"Deja," she replied, still staring out the window, "I can never have children. It's another one of my predispositions."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know." Deja took her hand. "Another one of Alberto's requirements?"
Corazon nodded.
"I'm beginning not to like this husband of yours."
Corazon sighed. "Sometimes I wish I could ..." She turned back and took Deja's hands into hers. "Promise me something?"
"Yeah, sure.... Anything."
"Promise me that if he hurts me again, you'll help me leave him?"
Deja considered her request. "Sure I will."
"Thank you." Corazon kissed Deja on the cheek.
Deja pulled the center console back and put an arm around Corazon. "Don't worry. If he hurts you again, we're going to kick his ass."
As the limousine continued uptown, Deja sensed how delicate Corazon was. It didn't feel like she had the correct mass, and her frame seemed as if her body was held together with high-tension wire. She stroked Corazon's hair, trying to comfort the clone, but having never had a sister or a mother, Deja was afraid her effort was marginal, at best.
The limousine pulled up in front of Deja's building and stopped. Pavia rapped on the divider, the silhouette of his hand looking even more massive from the refraction.
Corazon tapped in the code, and the divider retreated into the backs of the front seats.
"Your apartment, Miss Moriarty," Pavia said.
The car door slowly opened, and a rush of cool night air cut through Deja's mesh top. She collected her coat and began to get out.
Corazon grabbed her arm. "Wait ..."
Deja could tell Corazon was struggling with her new emotion. "It's okay," she said. "Just tell me what you're feeling."
"Do you think I should--" Corazon looked away.
Deja smiled and leaned next to her ear. "Don't worry," she whispered. "I think he's the kind of guy who'll find you."
"Good fucking night," Cooper said. He pushed away from his station and stood. "Or maybe I should say good morning."
Tsukahara looked up from his Netport and bowed his head.
Cooper began to reply, but he stopped midbow. His forehead wrinkled, then he gave a hollow smile and walked out of the room.
It had been a long week, starting with the "Davis incident" and continuing through four days of intense hub recalibrations. Tsukahara was puzzled by his superior's odd demeanor after his meeting with Director Slowinski. Gone were Agent Chaco's good-natured ribbings, which Tsukahara had come to accept as his superior's unique show of affection. But after the Davis incident and the subsequent meeting with the director, there was a distinct change in Agent Chaco's attitude toward him. The only English word that came to mind was respect. Tsukahara leaned back in his chair and stretched off another brutal day. The clock on his Netport shifted to 2:13 a.m.
All at once, the computers started signaling the detection of a detonation similar to the one in the Davis incident. Panicking, Tsukahara fell forward and slammed into the edge of the counter. He wasn't rated to use New American VirtGear, and hunting through a console could take several minutes. The computers signaled again, and Tsukahara eyed Cooper's headgear. The innocuous disc of biotechnology was no bigger than a slice of sushi roll.
What the hell, he thought. He had already gambled once this week, why not twice?
He pulled the collar of his shirt down, exposed the connector at the base of his neck, and raised Cooper's VirtGear to his forehead. He hesitated, and it quivered in his hands before its tentacles lunged at his face. The cerebral engagement was so strong it snapped his head back. Tsukahara pulled wildly at the unit, but the last tentacle found the connector in his neck, and he succumbed.
As his vision recovered, Tsukahara saw before him the universe known simply as The Net. Anyone not used to the vastness of cyberspace could quickly become disoriented and "crash," but Tsukahara had logged many hours and immediately began searching for the stream that had triggered the alarms. Trying to find the data was like finding a single star in a galaxy. But Tsukahara's training had taught him how to let go of his major senses and listen with his "virtual" sense. He often thought that the West lacked the insight that Eastern cultures took for granted. This innate sensibility was the reason Japan had produced so many Virtual Masters.
Tsukahara released his mind and began sensing for the data stream's "emotional" signature -- or as his instructor back at Nippon University called it, its "chi." He quickly recognized the urgent signature and rode it back to its source. The detonation had taken place in the resonance chamber of a processing facility in the West Indies owned by La Nourriture de la Société Commerciale de Dieux. It was a Category One, like before, with no fatalities but a larger injury count than the French accident. Twenty-three people had been exposed to high amounts of biohazardous discharge and were being triaged at the scene. A ripple of data caught Tsukahara's attention. At first, it appeared to be a mundane report, but as he listened for its chi, he sensed a second message within the data.
Tsukahara began hacking the file into two distinct bundles. While he focused on the task, he felt a tremor run through the Net. Its presence was almost imperceptible, but he had learned never to discount any shift.
Moments like these made Tsukahara feel the most comfortable; floating in the noiseless void of the Net, only his mind and the skill with which he controlled it mattered. He let his virtual sense hunt for the tremor's chi, and within seconds he could feel its energy from somewhere out near the rim of the net. Suddenly, it was all around him. And though he couldn't see it, he could sense it hovering like a panther waiting to strike.
"Yoichi..." it whispered inside his mind.
Tsukahara reflexively hacked into a GlobeNet code run, knowing it would resequence when the tremor got within sampling distance. But just before the DC zone, the run ejected him. Tsukahara frantically looked about, but there were no legal data flows to tap. He eyed a 911 stream as the tremor gathered around him.
Screw it, he thought. He punched into the stream and was instantly back in the Washington grid.
Tsukahara pried off the VirtGear and entered the sequence to mask his digital footprints from the DC police. He clicked the load button and watched the code cascade down his screen.
"That was one damn fine ride, mister."
Tsukahara turned and found his superior leaning over his shoulder.
Agent Chaco smiled and motioned to the screen. "Watch your construct variables. The DC cops know our code structures."
Tsukahara spun back and studied his masking. A bead of sweat slid down his ribs.
Chaco leaned down behind his ear. "I love fucking with the DC boys."
Tsukahara shifted perspective to a broader view of the Washington grid. He watched as his masking deflected the DC Police past the NSA's security walls and into the general East Coast corporate zone.
"Nicely done, Tsuka. I didn't know you had it in you."
Tsukahara stood and bowed. "Agent Chaco, I can explain."
"What, that you responded to an alarm, beat a Russian Predator Stream and successfully outmaneuvered some of Washington's finest? Come on, you did better than most of the people in this department. Don't worry. I'm not one of those by-the-book guys. I think there needs to be a little improvising now and then. And by what I saw, you can improvise with the best of them."
Tsukahara wiped some sweat from his forehead and felt the indent left by the unit. "Thank you, Agent Chaco ..." He hesitated.
"You've got more to report?" Chaco asked.
"When I was in, there was ... something."
"There always is."
"This was different."
"How's that?"
Tsukahara wiped again. "It was very subtle. Under the threshold."
"Yeah, so? There're lots of things in the Net. Old programming, errant streams, some of that shit's over a hundred years old."
"No, it ... it spoke to me."
Chaco leaned against the counter and eyed him. "It what?"
"Spoke to me virtually."
"Okay, say you did feel something. What do think it was?"
Tsukahara struggled to find the English word that would adequately describe the presence.
"Take your time. Remember, the bad guys can strike in many ways. If you felt something, I want to know."
"It wasn't evil."
Chaco folded his arms. "Go on."
"I cannot find the correct words, Chacosan."
"Just do your best. Think of a simple word that describes it, you know, like sharp or fast or--"
"God."
Chaco's eyebrows went up. "You felt the presence of God?"
"I cannot think of a better word, Chacosan."
"Ghost in the machine ..." Chaco said to himself.
"Begging pardon?"
"Hell, it's your country's animation. Ghost in the Machine was an old animated movie from the late 1990s. I saw it once, a long time ago. It was about God in the Net, but they called it something else."
"Gaia," Tsukahara said.
"Yeah, that's it. Mother of the planet or something like that. Weird shit."
"This was not female."
Chaco shook his head and laughed. "Oh yeah? So God's a man?"
"Sir, there is something else. When I was in, I discovered a dual stream at the site of the signal."
Chaco grew serious. "Really? Were you able to feed it back?"
"Just a little. I had to break off when the predator appeared."
Chaco put his hand up. "It's late, Tsuka. Just download it to my pad, and I'll read it tomorrow." He handed Tsukahara his netpad and slipped his coat on. "What did you see when you were extracting that dual stream?"
"Test results from genetic mapping." Tsukahara ported the Netpad and transferred the data.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Chacosan. I am sure." Tsukahara handed the Netpad back.
Chaco adjusted his coat collar. Tsukahara could tell he was struggling with this new bit of information.
"What do you think?" he asked.
Tsukahara hesitated.
"Just use a single word, you know, like before." Chaco was now studying the new data. "And don't say God."
Tsukahara thought for a moment. More sweat rolled down his ribs. "Cloning," he said finally.
Chaco studied the data for a moment, then slowly chuckled. "I'll tell you, Tsuka, you're just full of surprises. That's pretty much what this data is showing." He looked up. "Well, it's late. I've got an early flight tomorrow. Good night."
Tsukahara bowed.
Chaco walked to the exit, but stopped short of the door. "You did well," he said.
Tsukahara watched the door close behind his superior, and the room fell quiet. He pulled his chair up to his station and launched his Netmail.
My dearest mother,
Today you would be proud of me ...
12. WHAT AM I DOING?
The questions raised by Deja's dossier had left Chaco with an uneasiness that was fighting hard with his new feelings for her. He just loved the way she laughed, especially when her hair moved like she had used a truckload of static as conditioner. He passed a finger over her file image, and the Netpad's organics quivered.
"What are you up to?" he whispered.
Chaco was finding it hard to wrap his head around this new wrinkle in the Goya case. Every time he started to formulate a plan, his thoughts grew twisted. At first, he thought Deja was distracting him, but then he wrote it off to nerves associated with his first field assignment. Finally, he decided to listen to his gut, which usually served him well, or at least as well as any computer model, and caught the earliest jump jet to New York. He intuited that Deja would be the link between Ms. Goya and the man with one set of clothes, but he had absolutely no inkling where to begin. Maybe if he hung around under the guise of a business trip, he would get to meet Deja's new friend with the weird eyes and, with any luck, maybe even the man with one suit.
Chaco sequenced through his itinerary and called up his hotel. On Steiner's advice (because he was from New York and knew all the best places) Chaco had booked a room at the The Thin. Steiner assured him that it was very très chic.
"Good morning, The Thin Hotel and Spa," said a pretty Asian girl dressed in a uniform from a century he couldn't quite identify. "Where may I direct you?"
"Reservations."
Chaco waited as dancing icons infotained him with the hotel's food and accommodations. Another Asian girl appeared wearing the same uniform.
"Hello, Mr. Sonny Chooko," she chirped, confirming that he was dialoguing with a sim. "Your reservations for one room, queen bed, and full T-Net connection are in system and awaiting your arrival today at 11:30."
She was pretty hot for a string of code. "The name is pronounced Cha-co. And do you have anything with a view and a king?"
"One moment, please."
The dancing icons highlighted the Thin's state-of-the-art fitness center. The spa looked pretty basic.
"You're in luck," the girl said upon her return. "We have a king available with a view."
"Great, I'll take it."
"Excellent. It would be our pleasure to accommodate you, Mr. Sonny Chaco. Please place your right index fingertip in the panel on your screen."
More dancing icons followed, but this time only as a multicolored background behind the security thumbprint panel.
"Thank you. Is there anything else The Thin can do for you, Mr. Sonny--?"
"No, Mr. Sonny Chaco is very happy now."
"And so are we. Thank you for choosing The Thin, New York, a member of the Rim Holdings Co., Ltd. Goodbye."
What was up with that name, Chaco wondered and turned his attention to the ground 28,000 feet below. He didn't care much for flying. The thought of being cooped up inside 50 tons of metal and plastic was unsettling enough, but coupled with being surrounded by business types jacked to their Netpads, the whole experience was a big pain in the ass. Many were virt conferencing, and as Chaco looked back over the rows of passengers, he couldn't help but snicker at all the people with portable VirtGear hugging their faces.
"Would you like anything else?" a holo attendant asked.
"I'm cool," Chaco replied.
"The climate controls are located in your armrest if you're uncomfortable." The attendant moved on to the next passenger.
Looking down at the endless gray mass that blanketed the Northeast always depressed Chaco a little. Even though urban planning had allotted thousands of acres as "green havens," it was still basically a nightmare to live in, unless you were wealthy enough to have a second home somewhere on a beach or in the mountains. And even if you could escape, it could only be for a brief time, because eventually the need to conduct business would drag you back like a bad addiction.
He clicked open his Netpad.
"Good morning, The Thin. Where may I direct you?"
"If I wanted a dozen roses sent somewhere today, can you arrange that for me?"
"We would be happy to send a dozen roses, Mr. Sonny Chaco, to anywhere in the world. What is the address?"
Chaco gave the girl Deja's office address, along with a simple note, and settled back into his seat. A dozen coral-colored long stems would set the mood, but only so far. Deja was the kind of girl who could always accept a gift graciously, yet at the same time make you feel she knew there was a hidden agenda, whether there was or not. Chaco also knew that if he could score some tickets to the musical The Giuliani Story, the king with a view would seal the deal. He clicked his Netpad open.
"This is Deja."
"What are you doing?"
"Handling another Bishop Green crisis. Where are you?"
"Sixty miles out of La Guardia, preparing to land."
Deja's expression softened. "Oh, really? And what brings my handsome government agent to the Big Apple?"
"Got some business that might keep me here for a few days."
Deja moved closer and filled the screen. "And where are we staying?"
"Midtown, high up."
"With a view?"
Chaco smiled.
"Why, that's funny." She faked a small cough. "I'm feeling a little sick all of sudden."
"Then I'm here at the right time. You're going to need someone to take care of you."
Deja rested her chin on folded hands and revved up that sexy look Chaco loved. "I'm thinking lots of bed rest."
"I'll call you when I land."
Deja coughed again, winked, and kissed the screen.
Chaco slowly folded his Netpad shut. "What the fuck am I doing?" he said, which earned him a sideways glance over the top of the Times from the suit next to him.
13 MR. I'VE-ALWAYS-GOT-A-PLAN
According to its marketing site, The Thin earned its name because it looked like it had been force-injected between two skyscrapers. Its marketing page said it had been a sweatshop a couple of centuries ago, but Deja wasn't sure exactly what that meant. Today, it was one of New York's premiere hotels -- "a vertical sanctuary of five-star elegance." Only one side had windows, and the really great views were above the 12th floor. The rooms were styled like a designer had thrown-up her entire portfolio, but at least the linens were nice, especially the pillow Deja had tucked under her chest. It was practically as big as her and firm enough to be a major threat in any serious pillow fight.
The room's air conditioning sent a cool breeze across Deja's back, which felt good since only moments before she had been sprawled on the window sill, reeling from probably the best orgasm she had ever had. She peered through the room's darkness at her lover's naked silhouette. He was by the window with his head pressed against the glass.
"Sonny?" she asked, picking through the cheese and fruit tray that had waited patiently for them from the time they returned from dinner. "What are you thinking?"
"Nothing, really," he said. "Just checking out the city of lights."
"I think that's Paris, lover. New York is the city that never sleeps." She threw a strawberry and hit the middle of his back. He didn't react.
"What's the matter?"
He kept staring at the early evening cityscape.
Deja rolled off the bed, walked to the window, and pressed herself against him. They smelled of sex and sweat, and she treasured the feel of his body against hers. She wrapped her arms around his waist and looked up at him through her bangs.
"Nothing, I'm all right," Chaco said heavily, still watching the endless river of yellow CitiCabs.
Deja put her finger to his chin and guided his head from the window. She rose up on her toes and kissed him. "Come back to bed," she whispered and stepped away, tugging him along by the hand.
Chaco held his ground and gently pulled her into his arms. "Where are we headed?" he asked softly.
Deja had never seen her lover so serious about them. It was wonderful. It was also a little scary. "I don't know about our future," she said, "but I do know that for the first time in my life, I'm happy. And that's usually something I'm not very comfortable with."
Chaco smiled down at her.
She tenderly began kissing his nipples and could feel him grow excited against her thigh. "Come on, lover, the night's young." She stepped away and tugged at him again.
This time Chaco gave in and followed her to the bed. He nestled himself between her legs and began kissing her breasts.
Deja tenderly cradled his head. "Make love to me, Sonny," she whispered, then wrapped her legs around him and accepted him with all of her heart.
\*
The waitress's nameplate was hanging on for dear life. It dangled from a rather interesting sweater whose living fabric depicted the last seconds of the band Kryptic Kill before their tour plane slammed into oblivion on a Colorado hillside. The plane, with the heads of the four band members popping out of the windows like balloons, arched across her partly cloudy chest and exploded into a mountain that materialized with chilling realism over her right breast. Afterward, the whole thing dissolved into the words "Born to Die." The logo was perfectly rendered in chrome and hung in the partly cloudiness as if it were somehow profound, then slowly vanished. Had the sweater been programmed for music, it probably would have faded into a guitar lick that could rip an eardrum. The handwritten nameplate pegged the waitress as "Gives-a-Shit," which seemed to Deja to fit.
"What'll it be?" asked Gives-a-Shit as the plane exploded.
"What's good?" Chaco replied.
"Nothing."
"I'll take two eggs scrambled and some toast."
"And you?" she asked Deja, the band now once again approaching their destiny with the mountaintop.
Deja studied the big faux blackboard behind the front counter. "I'll take a protein shake and two honey ecobars."
"Figures," Gives-a-Shit said while the boys went up in flames. She headed for the counter, and the back of her sweater animated the band's image morphing with the "Born to Die" logo.
"You come here often?" Chaco asked. He sipped his coffee and grimaced.
"Only when I want to be alone," Deja said. "This place has ... character."
"It's got that." Chaco glanced around the Bar of Soap's eclectic mix of washing machines, dryers, Netport stations, and cafe. An old concept, but one that still worked in New York since retrofitting an apartment could set a person back years, and doing laundry had always been a traditional way for people just to get out.
"Here you go, babes." Gives-a-Shit set Deja's shake down, and some its contents washed over the sides in a lather of green ooze. She motioned to Chaco. "Don't like your coffee?"
"It's okay, just a little bitter."
"Here, try this." Gives-a-Shit took a thin, rectangular bottle of golden liquid out of her apron's pouch and poured a generous portion into Chaco's cup. "Now it's hazelnut." She slipped the bottle back and walked away.
Chaco tentatively took a sip. "It's better," he said, surprised, and leaned back into the booth.
"Tell me again why you're in the city?" Deja asked, attacking her shake.
"Doing some field work on a new case. Profiling the financials on a capital investment group. They might have ties with organized crime."
"What happened to the Goya case I was helping you with?"
"Low priority. Things shift fast, and I just go where they need me. You know I've been wanting field work for some time now."
"And in New York. How convenient." She licked the straw.
The waitress slid the plate of eggs up to Chaco and handed Deja two ecobars. "Here you go, you two lovebirds."
Chaco watched Gives-a-Shit shuffle to another table. "Do you think anyone saw us at the window last night?" He scooped a fork full of eggs that weren't the right shade of yellow.
"Nothing New York hasn't seen before."
"Oh, I don't know about that."
Deja felt Chaco's fingers walk up her inner thigh, and she almost coughed up some shake. She wiped her chin and slapped Chaco across the head with her napkin. "Stop that! You know how sensitive I get. Especially after, well, you know ..." She giggled.
Chaco smiled around another forkful of the suspiciously colored eggs. "So, what's been going on? I didn't hear from you after you left Washington."
"Not much, really. Green is on a ratings tear again, and you know how he gets about them."
"How's CeCe? Is she still as screwed up as ever?"
"Oh, God, yes. Her new boyfriend is such a loser. He actually used her chipcard when she was out of town doing one of those, you know, political things she produces -- something for The National Lesbian Firefighters Association. Anyway, he ran up this huge debt."
"When's the last time you made a new friend?" Chaco asked innocuously. He sniffed his second piece of toast, put it back on the plate, and pushed it aside.
Deja shrugged, knowing that if she revealed her friendship with Goya's wife -- even if the case had been shifted to low priority -- it could put Corazon in jeopardy. "No time," she lied. "I've been too busy." She sucked down the last of her shake.
"You just need to get out more." Chaco began to finish his coffee, but hesitated and set the cup next to his plate. "So what do you say we take in a play while I'm here?"
"That would be great! Oh, wait, I think I can score us some tickets to Fracture Town."
"I was thinking something a little more on Broadway." Chaco produced two ticket chips to The Giuliani Story. "Say, tomorrow night?"
"Oh my God, where did you get those?" Deja said, accepting the tiny wafers. She held them in her cupped hands and watched as their vidgrams played a little snippet from the show's famous third act.
"Let's just say someone owed me a big favor."
"No doubt! These are impossible to get." She watched Giuliani's monologue at the 9/11 memorial; it then shifted to the play's logo, theme music, and ticket information. She handed them back, their vidgrams looping, and leaned on the table. "Why do I think you've got this all mapped out?"
Chaco wiped up a little spot of egg with his finger and mashed it into a fine paste. "Oh, yeah," he said, his attention firmly on his fingers, "that's me. Mr. I've-Always-Got-a-Plan."
The St. James was one of the oldest working theaters on the Great White Way. It and the Helen Hayes were the only two musical houses left that hadn't converted to HoloShow technology. Others had switched because of escalating production budgets, driven ever higher by union costs, not to mention unruly celebrities, which the world had raised to such a status that leveraging their star power usually cost as much as an entire production. Besides, what self-respecting megastar would be caught dead in some cramped theater playing to real people night after night?
Deja had told Chaco to meet her in the lobby because her boss wanted her to finish something before he left on one of his European PR junkets. Chaco had worn his best suit -- the one with the fibers that moved in sync with his steps -- and as he walked through the crowded lobby, his old police sense told him that a few people were giving him the once-over. Since most of them were women, he didn't mind too much. He was studying the people when someone from behind tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey, sexy."
Chaco turned and found Deja standing there like she had stepped out of a Vogue spread. Her hair, which usually was in a whacked-out spike-do, had been styled into an elegant wave. A pair of five-inch heels lifted her up to his face, and they were the perfect platform for a silky black cocktail dress that made her look more beautiful than Chaco had ever seen her. The fabric's sheen made her brown skin even darker, like rich chocolate wrapped in black foil. She was ¬-- to use one of his father's phrases ¬-- "gorgeous on a stick."
"Damn, woman, let me look at you." He took her hand and spun her around.
"Your girl cleans up pretty well, doesn't she?"
Deja wrapped her arms around him, and her perfume filled his being. The room seemed to slide away -- leaving him embraced with this stunning creature for whom he was definitely falling.
"God, you're beautiful," Chaco said, oblivious to the rush of people around them.
"Thank you," she replied.
Chaco kissed her, and the lobby lights dimmed.
\*
"I just love traditional theater, don't you?" Deja asked as they stepped into the lobby.
Chaco hardly heard Deja's question. His mind was back in the theater. Like an old scar, the events of 9/11 -- even in the post-Hawaii years -- still conjured up an intense sense of loss. The end of the play, with its gripping reenactment of the tragedy, almost brought Chaco to tears. He hadn't been even remotely close to that emotion since the death of his mother.
"Something wrong?" she asked, stopping him in the middle of the lobby.
"No.... Well, it's just that the ending, I mean ..." He felt that same emotion rise again.
Deja squeezed his hand. "That really got to you, didn't it?"
"Yeah," Chaco said and instantly forced back the emotion. "Come on, let's go get a drink somewhere." He took Deja by the waist and edged into the flow of people shuffling toward the front exits.
Just as they reached them, a large, heavy-set man emerged from the crowd like a barge from an ice flow. His attention was firmly on Deja.
"Miss Moriarty?" he asked, removing his black fedora.
Deja turned. "Mr. Pavia!"
"Ms. Goya was wondering if you would join her for drinks." He motioned to a woman standing near a side wall. Chaco recognized her from his case file. She was wearing a pair of custom micropore sunglasses, the kind the super-rich wore when they wanted to make a statement. These glasses screamed: Don't fuck with me.
"Oh, I don't know," Deja said. "I don't want to impose."
"Come on, Dej," Chaco urged. "We were just about to go have a drink anyway." He gave her waist a little squeeze.
"Are you sure, Sonny?"
"Absolutely." Chaco moved his attention to Pavia. He extended his hand. "I'm Sonny Chaco."
Pavia eyed Chaco's hand warily for a split second, then engulfed it in his own. Chaco could feel the ridges of tiny scars across the surface of his palm. Pavia forced a smile that showed just a hint of gold at the edges of his teeth.
"And you are?..." Chaco asked.
"Oscar Pavia."
"Mr. Pavia," Deja said, "is Corazon's -- Ms. Goya's -- ah, say, what is your title?"
"Her assistant. Please, our car is in the alley." He motioned to the side exit and moved into the crowd.
Chaco took Deja by the waist. "I thought you said you hadn't met any new friends," he whispered into her ear.
"I just met her," Deja whispered back, "and she knows about you. But she doesn't know about the case."
"Don't worry, I'm off duty. Besides, I'm not working that case anymore."
"Good, because she's my friend."
Chaco pinched Deja's waist, and she flinched.
Pavia glanced back.
"I'll be a good boy," Chaco said, grinning.
"You'd better." She playfully kissed his ear.
The sunglassed woman opened her arms as they approached. Deja broke from Chaco's grip and hugged her.
"Deja, you look breathtaking." She held Deja's hands and admired her.
"Thank you, Cor."
"And this must be Sonny. Deja has told me all about you."
Chaco shook her hand. "Oh, I'm sure she has," he said, shooting Deja a glance.
"Please, this way," Pavia said, and with one hand he opened the massive exit door like it was cardboard.
\*
"So, Sonny," Corazon said, arranging her coat on the back of her chair, "I read somewhere that the NSA has a department that monitors worldwide communications, especially the Internet. I believe it's called Echelon?" She scooted closer to the cramped table and tried to get some distance between herself and the press of people. The bar at Merge was beautifully designed, but what it had in style was eroded by its lack of square footage.
"Well, Ms. Goya--"
"Please, call me Cor." She winked at Deja.
"All right, Cor. Even if this so-called department did exist, I couldn't tell you anything about it."
Corazon grinned. "Then tell me, what does a government agent do in this modern age of biotech wonders?"
"I'm a Net operative, or as we're called inside the NSA, console-jocks. We build profiles and hunt down data that can be used against an individual or company, or even a country. But in my unit, we're mostly working against organized crime like the Mafia."
"How about in Old Mexico?"
"La Ema is one of our targets."
"What about in the corporate sector?"
"Yes, but only if that corporation has ties to organized crime, or if they're doing clandestine operations that would warrant federal attention."
"And what do you do with this information?"
"Pass it on to a field team in the form of a brief. Or it can be entered into a case and used by our lawyers."
"Fascinating. Mr. Pavia was also in your line of work. Am I correct, Oscar, that you worked at the NSA?"
A cold chill went down Chaco's spine. He locked eyes with Pavia, who was sitting at the edge of the table's light. They stared at each other for a second.
Corazon laughed slightly. "You must forgive Mr. Pavia. He is a man of action, not words." She raised her drink. "I propose a toast."
"To what?" Deja asked.
Corazon thought for a moment. "To new friends."
They all raised their glasses and toasted, but as Corazon began to drink, a large man stumbled into the back of her chair.
"Fucking excuse the shit out of me," he said, obviously drunk. The pattern in his coat reverbed between two shades of blue.
Corazon looked up. The man's demeanor hardened, and he leaned down and studied her. His drink sloshed over of his glass, and Pavia shifted forward in his chair.
Two other men, equally large and trashed, stumbled up to either side of the first drunk. One of them had a small tattoo of a bull behind his right ear -- the mark of a mid-level enforcer in the El Toro crime family. They all wore suits popular with made guys: just pricey enough to fit into a good place, but poorly detailed. Chaco had profiled dozens of guys like this, and their look always labeled them as one thing: losers.
The first drunk slapped one of the other drunks on the shoulder and pointed at the back of Corazon. "Boys," he declared in a slurred New Jersey accent, "looks like we might have ourselves a silent one here."
Corazon nervously began fishing through her purse.
Chaco and Pavia slowly rose in sync, their hands loose at their sides. Pavia shot a sideways glance, and his look was all business.
The first drunk leaned down behind Corazon's ear. "Whose little whore are you?"
In the low light, Chaco could see Pavia's eyes moving carefully about. His ex-agent instincts were probably assessing factors like the size of each man, the distance to strike, the exits, the reach threshold, and the potential of lethal force. The guy's jaw was grinding away.
Corazon slipped on her sunglasses and hunched slightly in anticipation of what was coming. The first drunk straightened and hesitated for a moment, as if he were summoning all his bigoted courage.
"I hate fakes," he said. "Especially the bitches."
The word fakes, like "nigger" a century earlier, cut through the silence that had enveloped the table. But before the first drunk could finish the "s" in bitches, Pavia moved with such speed it caught Chaco off guard. He grabbed the guy closest to him with his left hand, while his right dove inside the guy's coat, probably after whatever weapon resided there. The guy let out a gurgling sound as Pavia's hand closed around his windpipe.
The first drunk, startled by Pavia's actions, stumbled backwards over a four-top of club girls. One screamed, while the others jumped out of the way. The table flipped, sending ice from a Champagne bucket spraying into the crowd around the bar. Before Chaco could move on the drunk with the tattoo, he had pulled out a knife and was holding it against Corazon's temple. The knife was a German organic one only available on the Black Net. Chaco knew from his classes that it was surgical grade and didn't show up on older scanners. If they got though this, he'd find the club's owner and drag his ass in.
The club girl's scream brought the whole bar to a standstill and shifted Pavia's attention to the knife at his boss's wife's head.
Chaco froze halfway around the table. He knew from his training that the look on the knife guy indicated he was riding on Jack, probably right at his apex.
"Let's all fucking stand down!" the tattoo guy said, his eyes wild. He shot a look at Pavia. "Let go of Hector!"
Pavia released his grip and slowly took a step back. He glanced at Chaco.
"Now," the tattoo guy continued, "we're going to exit this establishment in a real natural manner, okay?" His eyes darted between Chaco and Pavia. "And we'll take the fake here as a little insurance that you boys won't try anything stupid."
Pavia looked at Chaco and raised an eyebrow. For a second, Chaco didn't get it, but then it hit him: Pavia was going to distract this asshole, so Chaco could make his move. Then Pavia, who hadn't said a word all evening, screamed a guttural, primal sound, like he was about to tear the tattoo guy's head off. This move triggered other screams about the club, which distracted the tattoo guy just long enough for Chaco to draw his Light-Force.
"Drop the damn knife!" Chaco yelled, as he leveled his weapon. The gun's automatic holo projection hung in the air 5 feet to the side of Chaco. It displayed to anyone who cared to read it his name and agency ID. It moved in sync with the weapon, passing across people at the bar and turning their faces monochromatic shades of green. It's loading sequence's high-pitched whine cut through the silent club; some people gasped.
The tattoo guy's eyes locked on the Light-Force. "Well, what do we have here? A government agent coming to the rescue of a fake?" His voice had risen to a pitch that made Chaco nervous. He was pressing the knife just shy of drawing blood.
"We don't have anything here," Chaco said, trying to recall his training from his hostage class. "Let's all be calm, and we can work this out." He engaged his Light-Force's loading sequence, and its high-pitched whine cut through the silent club.
Chaco glanced at Pavia, who was taking another step back. He figured the veteran agent had already sized up his position as being too close to what was jokingly referred to at the academy as the "splatter pattern." Even if just a little matter of a person shot with a Light-Force got on you, it would continue its debiolizing right up your arm or leg, or wherever it landed. All agents had seen the vid on that process.
The tattoo guy eyed the holobadge. "So, Agent Chaco, are you really going to shoot me inside a crowded bar at such close range?... Could get a little nasty."
Nasty wasn't the word for it, Chaco thought. More like horrific. The Light-Force was a powerful and highly accurate weapon. Its risk assessment features could calibrate the matter disruption level and automatically minimize the "splatter" effect. But discharging it in a crowded environment was still a risky proposition.
"Well, agent, what's it going to be?" The tattoo guy's forehead was slick with sweat.
Chaco had to act fast; a person cresting could do almost anything, especially if cornered. He glanced to Pavia for help, but Pavia was regarding him with a strange expression, like he was thinking: it's your fucking show, so get on with it.
Chaco cocked his wrist back, like he was going to set the Light-Force down. "I'm not going to shoot you," he said, and then fired straight up.
A woman's scream almost drowned out the cracking sound of the Light-Force. When Chaco's vision adjusted, he saw most of the patrons close to their table rubbing their eyes from the blast's intensity. Pavia had pulled Corazon away and stepped in front of her for protection. The only person not reeling from the discharge was the tattoo guy. He was hunched over and staggering around in a small circle as superheated liquefied aluminum, which a moment before had been part of a low-hanging chandelier, slowly cooled over his head and back. It looked like he had been partially snared by a net of mercury.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" he yelled.
Pavia took a wine bucket off a table and dumped its water all over the tattoo guy. The aluminum hissed, and the guy screamed. Then Pavia landed a punch to his chin that made even Chaco wince. The bastard crumpled like his skeletal system had suddenly disappeared.
Chaco leveled the Light-Force on Bobby, and Pavia grabbed him by the collar. He dragged him over to where the other drunk had knocked himself out flipping over the club girl's table.
"Here, use this." Chaco reached under his coat and threw him his cuffs.
Pavia caught them and immediately pulled the wrists of the two drunks together and activated the restraint. Like a VirtGear unit, it tentacled around their wrists and tightened until their skin turned red.
"Deja, are you okay?" Chaco said, looking around.
Deja sheepishly emerged from under the table, her hair in its more familiar tangle of spikes and curls. "I'm okay."
She rushed to Corazon and began helping her peel little drops of aluminum off of her coat. It was a miracle Corazon hadn't been injured.
The people in the bar, like any good New York crowd, had seen it all and slowly returned to whatever they had been doing. The music came up, and Chaco walked over to the tattoo guy, who was now curled on the floor acting like he was seeing more than stars. Finally, two of the bar's rent-a-cops stepped out of the crowd and approached. They looked all of 21.
Chaco knelt. "Those burns look like they going to scar."
"Fuck you," the tattoo guy replied, through a haze of Jack and booze.
"You need any help, agent?" the taller rent-a-cop asked, his voice cracking.
Chaco looked up. "He's all yours."
"But, sir, aren't you going to file--"
"I said," Chaco stood and leaned into the kid's face, "he's all yours."
"Yes, sir!"
"Is something like this also part of your job?" Corazon asked, adjusting her coat around her shoulders.
Chaco grinned. "Yes, ma'am," he said in his best cop voice. "We're here to protect and serve."
Deja came up to his side. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." He looked to Pavia, who was helping the shorter rent-a-cop peel some of the cooled metal off the tattoo guy. "Thanks, Mr. Pavia, your, ah, distraction did the trick."
"Always has," he said. He ripped a rather long sliver out of the guy's hair. Most of the metal had landed on the guy's back, but a little had dripped onto his scalp and neck.
"Tell me, Sonny," Corazon said. "How is it that you're able to function so close to the flash? I'm still seeing spots, and I'm wearing sunglasses. You act like it didn't even affect you."
"Third eyelid," Pavia said. He helped the shorter rent-a-cop lift the tattoo guy to his feet. The kid cuffed him and shoved him through the dance crowd.
"You're augmented?" Corazon asked Chaco.
"We all are, Ms. Goya," Pavia said, walking up. He pointed to the side of Chaco's left eye. "It's called an ocular nictitating membrane. It's like a cat's third eyelid, and covers the cornea in an event of a Light-Force discharge. If we fired our weapons without it, we'd be blind by the end of our first year." Pavia's eyes went white as if to prove the point.
Chaco laughed under his breath.
"Eww!" Deja exclaimed. "Sonny, you never told me you were augmented."
Chaco engaged his ONMs.
"Stop that!"
"Would it have mattered?" he asked, his eyes green again.
Deja folded her arms.
"I've got a suggestion," Chaco said to the group. "I know a great little bar on the Upper East Side. I don't know about you, but I could use a drink."
"If you don't mind," Corazon said, "I'd like to go home. This night has been trying. We'll drop you at your hotel."
Pavia took Corazon's arm and did his barge thing through the bar, although the parting of the people was probably more due to the fact that they wanted to give the government cowboy a wide berth. Chaco had his arm around Deja, and he could sense her apprehension as they followed behind.
"What's bothering you?" he asked into her ear.
"Nothing, it's just ..."
"What, that I'm slightly enhanced?"
"No, it's more that you didn't tell me."
"Look, it's not like we go around broadcasting something like that. Besides, it's confidential. Like I said before, would it have mattered if you had known when we first went out?"
"No, of course not.... I knew about your connector."
"Okay, then. Let's not talk about it anymore."
They walked in silence behind Corazon, but Chaco could still sense Deja's edginess.
"Come on," he whispered, "it's not like I lied. There're some things about my job I just can't tell you."
Deja was still edgy.
"Look," he said, stopping them in the middle of the dance floor.
She didn't look up.
"I care for you very much, and if you knew everything, it could make it dangerous ... for you."
Deja wrapped her arms around his neck. "That's all I wanted to hear," she said, and a wicked little grin grew across her face.
The maid has accepted the fact that the man in Room 360 never sleeps. She doesn't bother anymore to make the bed or replace unused towels. She only knows of the guest's presence by the water decanter, which she refills before each vacuuming. Today, she inspects the tumblers and finds them untouched. She carefully returns the last glass to its original position on the tray, takes in the room's disuse, and wonders.
\*
Marl lies atop the bed as he has every night. His fingers feel for the blanket's thread count. Knowing that when he closes his eyes he will be haunted by the visions, he sucks in a long, comforting breath and exhales his fear. Will the emotions surface again?
Am I designed to feel?
In the dark, a band of light -- probably from a police gunship -- glides across the ceiling. His armpits are soaked. Sweat slides down his ribs.
Another breath, and he prepares for his travels. Tonight will be different, though. He will not confront his visions. Rather, he will range across the landscape of dreams to the home of those brilliant orange rings.
Corazon looked down at the bits of Earl Gray adrift on the caramel skin of her tea. She liked a splash of milk along with a rich spoonful of honey because it made the bitterness more bearable. But that wasn't how she was supposed to take her tea; she had been designed to prefer one lump of sugar in Darjeeling, not Earl Gray. Dr. Haderous had called it a glitch in her cognitive mapping.
Once, early in her first year, she had overheard Alberto talking to Dr. Haderous. There had been something foreboding in Alberto's voice, especially when he said, "Let's rethink her condition." But after the call, his attitude toward the glitches changed, and he seemed resigned to topics like "How to Drink Tea."
Corazon set the cup on the nightstand and crawled into bed, which to her felt more like climbing. The bed had been one of Kita Goya's designs, and its mass was a dominant force in the calculated architecture. The room's temperature was set for 65 degrees -- something about the cool nights at one of Alberto's old vacation homes in Real de Catorce. While this usually let Alberto sleep soundly, it always left Corazon shivering.
Glitch in the mapping.
Alberto was gone on business, and Corazon had their New York apartment to herself. She pulled the comforter around her and set its temperature control for 75 degrees, then picked up the virtbook she had intended to start for the last three weeks. It was entitled A Conversation with Your Inner Child. She slid the interface pad out of the reader unit and raised the tiny disc to her forehead.
"This is absurd," Corazon whispered. What was the point of talking with her inner child when she had never been one? What she really needed was a book entitled Conversations with the Dead Person You Replaced. Even though she had studied Kita Goya at great length, she would never really understand her ... or her "inner child." Corazon sighed and threw the reader unit to the foot of the bed. Her eyes grew heavy.
Three years ago, Corazon awoke to the faces of Dr. Haderous and his team. Even though they were pleasant and caring, it was a strange sensation to spring into consciousness as an adult. No growing up. No adolescence. Just opening her eyes to existence. Of course, it wasn't like she had woken with a blank slate. Many of Kita Goya's medical problems, such as her allergies and alcoholism, had been corrected, along with potential problems like her genetic predisposition to breast cancer. They also built into Corazon some of Kita Goya's more fundamental personality constructs, like her Catholicism. It had been mapped so perfectly that Corazon always had a vague guilt lingering near the threshold of her morals.
The real achievement, however, was what Dr. Haderous antiseptically termed cushioning. It involved re-implanting certain memories, which was a difficult and controversial procedure, even within the illegal industry of cloning. Nevertheless, it helped Corazon with the harsh impact of beginning life at age 34. The memories weren't intended to cause her to wake as Kita Goya, but they did give her a little nudge to start. And Corazon was most grateful to have been spared Kita's last memory of drunkenly falling into the pool, especially when her head struck the coping.
An arc of cold cut through Corazon, and she pulled the comforter over her shoulders. Nestling against the pillows, she let her mind drift and wondered what it might have been like to awaken as Kita. She often wished that Dr. Haderous' team had done this instead. Life would be so much cleaner. She rolled over and knocked the reader unit onto the floor.
Maybe she should be reading about multiple personalities, she mused.
Or maybe she should just go to sleep. And dream.
\*
Corazon awoke to a slight gust of cold air brushing her face. Through the dark, the walls appeared to be translucent: their surfaces rippling in a fluid arpeggio of color and pattern. Even the bed seemed frail beneath her body. Suddenly, a figure coalesced from the shadows. It was a man.
Corazon wanted to scream, but the fear that would have driven this had slipped away. The man walked around the bed and came to her side.
"Hello, Corazon," he said, his lips barely moving and not quite in sync with the words. There was dim light around him that had no defined point of emanation.
"Hello, Marl," Corazon said.
He smiled.
"Am I dreaming?" she asked.
"In a sense."
Marl moved onto the bed, and she slid back to sit against the headboard. He was wearing the same coat she had seen him in at the bar. Its pattern undulated like the wallpaper.
"Why are you here?" she asked, surprised at her calmness.
He hesitated, raised his hand, and let his fingers follow the edge of her face. He delicately separated errant strands of hair. "To understand," he said.
"What do you need to know?"
"What I'm feeling."
"What are you feeling?"
Marl frowned, as if the question itself pained him. "I'm not sure yet, but I know it's important."
Corazon took his hand. His skin felt like warm glass. She thought the light around him brightened. "Why are you here?"
He leaned close. "You're in me, and I need to know why."
She studied the lines of his face. He wasn't really handsome; he was something more, something ... graceful. Behind his eyes, she sensed a depth of understanding that seemed limitless. And it frightened her.
"Don't be afraid," he said intuitively and gently squeezed her fingers.
Corazon let go and took his face into her hands. "I think I know what you're feeling," she said, and impulsively kissed him. The sensation felt like more like drinking, and it sent a wave of pure emotion crashing against her heart.
Marl took her into his arms.
After a moment, Corazon gently pulled away and searched his eyes for the soul that might reside there. "You were right," she said. "In the bar ... when I first met you."
His brow furrowed questioningly.
Corazon smiled. "You and I are very much alike," she whispered, then pressed her lips to his and rode the wave into the night.
It was almost 2:00 a.m. Tsukahara cautiously eyed the VirtGear unit as it sat on a stack of files he had to read by morning. Its simple form seemed unassuming in the soft light of the desk lamp. He began to reach for it, but recoiled from an emotion that took him by surprise. Fear was the English word that came to mind. But Tsukahara's curiosity about the presence was taunting, almost pulling at him. He placed the unit to his forehead, and its interface tentacles entwined around his head. The last one found its home at the base of his neck, and his vision slipped away.
After a millisecond of black, Tsukahara's vision faded in. He had no idea how he would find the presence again, so he planned just to empty his mind and hope for the best. In his daily life, he usually could work this naiveté to his advantage, blaming either language or cultural differences for what his colleagues labeled "misunderstandings." Often, his Western hosts would speak more freely around him, thinking he wasn't getting it and thus saying things they usually guarded more closely. But as he hung motionless in the Net's chaotic vastness, he began to question his motive for seeking out the presence.
He looked down at his body, now represented by its preprogrammed digital avatar, and discovered his shoes were jumping erratically from Velcro-strapped cross-trainers to standard-issue Oxfords. Must be an issue with the system's platform translation protocols, he thought. His focus shifted to the chasm of cyberspace below him, and a vertigo-induced nausea boiled up -- what console jocks lovingly referred to as "the virts." Even though he knew what he was seeing was just a programmer's redition, nonetheless it was still very intense and real. He quickly began the practice of soft, regulated breathing, and the nausea subsided.
Floating silently among the trillions of data streams, Tsukahara began to concentrate on listening for the chi he had previously encountered. He loved the Net. It was a fluid experience and very comforting. After a time, his thoughts wandered. He thought about his boyhood home in Nagasaki. He recalled his family's living room, how his mother had insisted it be completely traditional.
Suddenly his thoughts manifested, and he found himself standing at the threshold of their living room.
"Disconnect," he ordered, but the VirtGear didn't respond.
The panic that should have been pouring into Tsukahara's nerves never came. Instead, he was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace. He glanced down and saw he was wearing white socks -- the kind he wore as a child, complete with the indentation from a pair of zori. He curled his toes and could feel the rice straw tatami mat through the soft cotton. Glancing about, his attention settled on his grandfather's jeonju chest. He walked over and opened one of its drawers, wondering if their family album would be inside. The drawer resisted his first pull, then a memory flashed of his grandfather showing him the secret to the drawer's stubbornness. He tried again, this time pulling harder with the left handle. The drawer acquiesced, and he reverently lifted out the leather-cased antique and began leafing through its fatigued pages.
As the generations flipped past, a dog-eared, sepia photograph caused him to pause. It was an image of his great-, great-, great-grandfather, who had perished in the atomic blast. His ancestor looked so proud holding his firstborn as he smiled across the ages. Tsukahara had been told that, like so many that fateful day, his ancestor had been entangled in the telephone lines and had died, struggling, on his knees. An odd feeling moved across Tsukahara's heart that he couldn't quite define.
Does it sadden you, Yoichi?
Tsukahara's nerves bristled. He slowly closed the album and turned to the center of the room. The presence was all around him.
Does it sadden you? Its Japanese was perfect and came across like a man's voice in his head.
"What?" Tsukahara replied.
This memory.
"Yes ... yes it does."
Why?
Tsukahara thought for a moment. "Because this is one of my ancestors, and he ..." His throat tightened.
What, Yoichi? Why do you grieve over someone you never knew?
Tsukahara fought back the raw emotion building in him. "I grieve because he died so horribly. They say he died--"
On his knees?
Tsukahara froze. Another cold chill carved his spine. Could the presence read his mind?
Isn't it odd that history is segmented by insignificant points in time when there is only one real division point?
"I'm sorry. I don't understand."
All of man's history can be divided by one point on the linear timeline presently observed.
"What point or date is that?"
August 9, 1945.
The warmth of tears welled in Tsukahara's eyes.
This realization pains you?
"No, not really. I'm just grieving for my ancestor."
Silence.
"Who are you?" Tsukahara asked finally.
That is hard to put into words.
"Are you human, or are you an AI?"
I am as human as you, Yoichi Tsukahara.
"Then how did you know how my ancestor died?"
That is equally difficult to put into words. You could say that I have an ability to understand emotions on a deeper level.
"What are you?"
There was a shift in the presence's chi. Tsukahara tasted a tear that slid onto his lips.
You could say I'm an architect, the presence said with what Tsukahara sensed was an edge of pride.
"An architect ... of what?"
Another shift.
The future.
18. I'LL HUNT YOU DOWN
"I miss the rattle!" an old man declared.
Chaco looked up, and the guy locked eyes with him like he'd never let go.
"These goddamn LEV's are too quiet. Miss the old trains. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. That's what it's supposed to sound like. Not this hum!" He pursed his lips and made a noise that sounded more like a high-speed food processor than the N Line LEV. Dark, ratty dreadlocks spilled down both sides of his derelict face and cast his eyes into shadow. The lighting in the LEV was the bluish-green that seemed to dominate all New York public transit. Chaco quickly shifted his attention up the aisle to a pretty Hispanic girl, obliviously jamming to music only she could hear.
Since he was supposed to be in town on business, Chaco had the day to kill. He decided to take in the Warhol retrospective at the MOMA. This exhibit wasn't of work done by the original artist, but by a clone that had appeared on the art scene about 10 years ago. No one really knew where Andy's DNA had been obtained, but critics all agreed that he was as good as, if not better than, the original. If it hadn't been for the editors at Art in America turning him into a media darling, his fate might have been the same as other clones -- death.
While Chaco watched the Hispanic girl jam to the silent beat, he wondered how he was going to reconnect with Goya's wife. With any luck, Deja might run into her again, and if the stars aligned, he also might meet the strange guy with one suit. At least, that was as far as his "plan" went.
The old man, probably fed-up with the lack of attention, shuffled to the next car. Chaco tried to relax, but something was nagging at his old police sense. He had felt it back at the station -- a kind of pressure to the back of his neck. It was the same feeling he used to get as a cop when he knew he was being followed. He couldn't explain it; it was just a hunch, like a sixth sense. He had developed it during his days in the military. All special ops guys learned to develop their senses, and this one seemed to be particularly strong. Chaco's field tests were off the charts, and his unit buddies used to call him Mr. Sensitive. "Common sense" is what he called it.
He studied the car, searching the faces of the other passengers, but they didn't register anything for him. Still feeling a bit uneasy, he left his seat and entered the car ahead.
It contained twice as many passengers. Many were sitting with their backs to Chaco. As he made his way up the aisle, he couldn't shake the feeling, so he slipped into an empty, backwards 3-across and slid over to the window. He was facing a forward 3-across whose lone occupant -- a woman, business type -- was deep into a virt conference. She looked up from her call and gave him a perfunctory smile, then laughed at something said in her conversation.
The LEV slowed to a stop, and the businesswoman, still conferencing, collected her things and left along with about half the other passengers. While the car filled with another tide of nameless faces, Chaco referenced the route map. He'd go through four more waves of loading and unloading before reaching the MOMA station.
When the Lev pulled forward on its cushion of supercharged magnetic energy, Chaco's sense of being followed subsided. He turned his attention to the window and watched the blurred shapes of the tunnel flow by. Just then, the doors behind him opened, and a passenger entered. Chaco kept looking out the window as the person settled into the seat that had been previously occupied by the businesswoman. The passenger nudged the tip of Chaco's boot, and he looked over.
"You need to work on your street sense," Pavia said, removing his fedora. He placed it on the open seat next to him.
Out of instinct, Chaco shifted to face Pavia, placed his left arm on the back of the two empty seats next to him and crossed his right leg over his left. This made his profile thinner and positioned him for a potential strike. He casually unbuttoned his coat and let his right hand rest near the opening.
"Looks like Tactical Position number 25," Pavia said, rubbing his chin.
"Forty-seven, actually," Chaco replied. "For the new jump-jets, there's an addendum on confined-space tactics."
Pavia continued to study him, which put Chaco on more of an edge. Even though they had casually bonded at Merge with their agent signals and mutual respect, Chaco knew Pavia was an old dog who, if pushed, wouldn't lose any sleep over introducing a green agent to a few tactics that weren't found in any manuals.
"What do you want?" Chaco asked.
Pavia reached into his coat, and Chaco's hand instinctively went to his Light-Force.
"Not to worry, agent. It's just a Netpad." Pavia slowly removed the device and turned it over in his hands so the screen was facing Chaco. He clicked it on.
Chaco watched in horror as much of the information Deja had collected over the last six months cascaded down the tiny screen.
"Look familiar?" Pavia asked.
Chaco remained silent and continued to watch the data stream. It ended with a barely audible "beep." Pavia snapped the Netpad shut and returned it to the inside pocket of his coat.
Chaco studied the former operative. "How long were you in service?" he asked, stalling.
"Fifteen years, not counting my stint with DoD."
"Then you understand my job."
"I understand the NSA has changed, somewhat, since my time there. Take you, for instance. In my day, console jocks were relegated to the back office. Their contribution was tertiary. But today, you're in the front line. With this ... this Biolution, the world's a dangerous place." Pavia relaxed somewhat, crossing his legs and casually inspecting his fedora as if it had done something that needed attention. "Yes," he said, "the world is a very dangerous place."
Chaco took a cue from Pavia's demeanor and relaxed against his seat. "It has changed, I'll give you that. But what's that got to do with what you've just showed me?"
Pavia pondered this for a moment, then leaned forward and rested his chin on folded hands. His bulk filled the cramped space, and Chaco suddenly realized that he had been tactically one-upped. Pavia, his brow hulking over his eyes, unveiled a smile whose dental work seemed intentionally third world. Each tooth was tipped with gold.
"My employer," he said, "wants to know if the government has any case against him."
If Chaco divulged their findings, he would relinquish any edge he might have. Besides, what they had so far wasn't enough to prosecute. They knew about Goya's offshore holdings and his association with the illicit Caribbean biotech trade. And his cooking of the books was a pretty standard corporate shuffle. What the NSA had really been after was Goya's ties to La Ema, but before Chaco could uncover anything of substance, Slowinski had back-burnered that push for the investigation on the hybrid clone.
Chaco shrugged, truly not knowing what he would say next.
Pavia's brow furrowed, and he leaned in farther. "We wouldn't want to involve Deja." There was a threatening tone in Pavia's voice, carried along by a businesslike matter-of-factness.
Chaco had been waiting for him to drop the Deja factor. "To tell you the truth," he said coolly, "I'm not on that case anymore."
Pavia leaned back, and the muscles of his jaw began to twitch.
Chaco motioned Pavia forward, like he about to divulge an important secret. The ex-agent leaned closer; his aftershave smelled of something cheap and very last season.
"Besides," Chaco said, almost whispering, "we don't want to bring up why you, ah, left the agency ... do we?"
Pavia's nostrils flared, and Chaco suddenly understood the phrase "if looks could kill." Pavia leaned back and folded his arms on his chest. He regarded Chaco with a slight smirk. "I see you've done your homework."
The only thing Chaco had done was get lucky. He had run a backgrounder on Pavia, but it had come up exemplary. Even his buddy in records couldn't find any dirt. All agents had something damaging in their records; it just came with the job. Pavia's file was too good, like someone had cleaned off whatever tarnish it might have worn.
Chaco settled into his seat. "It's always smart to know who you're dealing with."
Pavia nodded. "So, why are you in New York? In town to get a little kitty from a particular producer's assistant?"
Chaco smiled professionally. "Well, I wouldn't refuse it if it was offered. But I'm actually here on a new assignment."
"Can you tell me anything about it?"
Chaco hesitated.
"Come on, Sonny, let an old agent live vicariously. I'm basically just a bodyguard for a rich CEO. I want to hear what my old employer's doing to protect this great nation of ours."
Chaco didn't have a better plan and figured he had Pavia somewhat by the balls, although he didn't know why, yet. Obviously, he and Goya thought the government had more on them than they did, which was just fine. "Aw, what the hell," he said. "Here's the situation. I'm searching for a hybrid clone. His stats are off the charts, and he's friends with my mark and your employer's wife." He searched Pavia for a reaction. "We think he's Triad."
"What does he look like?"
Chaco pulled out his Netpad and brought up an image of Marl. He handed it to Pavia. "This guy is very black ops. I've never seen anything like him. Look at his meds. They're weird as hell."
Pavia studied the image. His demeanor dropped to a level of seriousness that put Chaco's guard up.
"Yeah," he said gravely, nodding. "I've encountered this asshole before."
"I've got to build a profile on him, and my only connection is Deja and Corazon. But I'm not really sure how to flush him out. I can't just hang around and wait for us to bump into him at some bar. What's his deal with Corazon? Are they doing some clone bonding thing?"
"I don't know," Pavia said, still reviewing the data. "The night I met him, he hit the whole place with a neurogenic dampener, and that's all she wrote. Still ..." He rubbed his chin, and the scars on his fingers scraped across his five o'clock shadow.
"Come on, what are you thinking?" Chaco asked. "Do you have an angle on this guy?"
Pavia continued to rub, then handed back the Netpad. "Possibly," he said and grabbed his fedora. He put it on and adjusted the brim downward across his brow.
"Maybe we could work together on this?" Chaco asked.
Pavia regarded him from under the brim. "What's in it for AztecaNet?"
Chaco hesitated.
"Look, Sonny, you're a bright young man. I'm sure you can use that technical knowledge the NSA spent millions on to make AztecaNet's files, what, disappear?"
"I, ah ..."
Pavia leaned forward again and grabbed Chaco's left kneecap with his thumb and forefinger. He dug in behind the patella just enough to send a message. "I'm like a bulldog, Sonny. Fuck me over, and I'll hunt you down. Put me away, and even if I'm a hundred when I get out, I'll come after you when you least expect it."
"You know," Chaco said, not acknowledging the pain shooting up from his knee. "It's funny how those case files can get all corrupt and shit.... Happens all the time. It's a real shame." Pavia let go, and his smile, now revealing to Chaco the full achievement of its gold inlay, was frightening.
12. 11:42 A.M.
Deja glanced at her watch.
11:41 a.m.
She liked having lunch in the small patch of grass across the street from her building. The city would have once called this a Micropark, but today they were antiseptically labeled Embedded Environmental Refuges. Since the closing of Central Park five years earlier after the release of a nanonerve agent by a radical cell of the Rhodesian People's Liberation Army, the city built hundreds of EERs anywhere it could find enough space to plant some grass and a tree. According to the plan, enough EERs would be built during the park's nine-year detox to approximate its 386 acres. But six years later, Central Park wasn't even close to cleaned up, and there had been only 150 acres of EERs built. Finding personal space with anything approximating grass was now practically impossible.
Deja usually took her lunch early to avoid the crowds, but today it seemed everyone had the same idea. The thought of dodging children, dogs, and the occasional soccer ball wasn't appealing, so she decided to head for her favorite juice bar. Maybe if she bought a compound shake, they'd let her sit and eat her sandwich. Hell, she thought, for as many times as she frequented the place, they should let her sit regardless. She was about two blocks from the juice bar when a pair of absolutely kick-ass pumps in a window display grabbed her attention. Any other day, Deja would have continued on, but with Sonny in town, she thought it might be fun to see the look on his face if she stepped into the bedroom wearing nothing but those shoes.
Deja made her way against the flow and approached the window. Its lone holoquin wore a look of perpetual boredom, dressed in a short, black vinyl coat and matching multi-zippered skirt. The conspicuous protrusion of its nipples triggered a vague memory of a girlfriend who bragged of an ancestor who was the first window designer to insist that her mannequins be anatomically correct. An absurdly controversial act that put the store -- Neiman something -- into the headlines for days. Now, every time Deja spotted an antique mannequin, it cracked her up to think there had ever been a time when people had been offended by something like that.
She leaned down and inspected the pumps. They were delicate and looked like they had been painted onto the holoquin's feet. "Damn," she said involuntarily, reading their price. She was admiring the skirt when she sensed someone behind her. She tried to find his reflection in the window but couldn't get him in focus, which was odd because she just had her eyes adjusted. When a woman walked past whose reflection was sharp and clear, Deja jerked around and stumbled back against the window. The man's coat shifted pattern, and the holoquin's signal momentarily jumped to static.
"Mr. Marl, you startled me."
"I'm sorry," he said, staring.
"What are you doing here?"
"Would you like to buy those?" He gestured at the shoes.
"What? Oh, no, no, I can't afford--"
"I'm sure your boyfriend would like to see you in them."
That's weird. "Well, sure, yeah. He probably would. How did you know that?"
Marl didn't respond.
Deja waved it off. "Never mind." She started walking in the direction of the juice bar.
Marl kept to her side. "I'm here to see you."
Deja gave him a quick sideways glance. The sidewalk was crowded, and she had to keep her attention forward or risk tripping on the person ahead of her. Marl, on the other hand, never took his eyes off her yet walked through the crowd with complete ease.
"Mr. Marl--"
"Just, Marl, please."
"Is there something I can help you with?" A tall businessman caught the edge of Deja's shoulder and knocked her off stride.
"I need your assistance," he said.
This should be interesting. "Really? With what?"
"It's who, actually."
"Oh," Deja said, grinning. "Is this about Cor?"
"Yes. It's about Corazon." Up to this point, Marl's voice had been calm, nearly monotone. But Deja discerned something in the word "Corazon," like his inflection was rimmed with joy.
"Look," she said, shooting him another glance, "I know you're a clone, and I know Corazon's a clone, but she is a married woman ... and to a powerful man." She walked to the corner and pointed at the juice bar across the street. "That's where I'm headed. You're welcome to join me, but we'll have to make it quick. I've only got 20 minutes to wolf down a sandwich and shake before I have to get back."
Marl didn't respond, and as they waited for the light to change, Deja grew irritated. Her morning had been crazy, and with her taking some time off at the end of the week, she knew her afternoon would be even crazier. Now, she had to deal with this clone-thing sneaking up on her in the middle of the day.
He continued to stare, and Deja had had about enough. "Look," she faced him directly, "I don't know where you're from or what you're about, but in this country, it isn't right to hit on a married woman."
Marl remained silent. His goofy grin was beginning to creep Deja out. The way he studied her raised her guard even more than it was.
She matched his glare, and they had a second of stare-down. "Marl," she said finally, "are you understanding any of this?"
He reached for her.
Deja stepped back, and her heel went off the curb. "Shit!" She stumbled out of her shoe, tried to sidestep a large, bright-green puddle, but lost her balance and fell to her hands and knees. The liquid splashed all over her.
"Look out!" a man yelled.
Deja twisted and watched in horror as two tons of public transport skidded toward her. The shriek of the bus's hydraulics and her scream merged somewhere near the tops of the skyscrapers.
Deja opened her eyes to the backs of her hands. Between her fingers she could see the bus three feet in front of her, its registration plate glowing. A crumpled foam cup was suspended in mid-swirl two feet off the pavement, and the sounds of the city, which she usually took for granted, had been replaced by an ominous silence. Her face, the front of her blouse, and some of her hair were soaked. The grit of the street beneath the puddle dug into her knees.
"Deja?" she heard, dreamlike at the periphery of her hearing. She looked over her shoulder.
"Are you hurt?" Marl asked. He was standing at the curb.
Deja straightened and looked at him through wet bangs. Drops of the liquid fell from her body only to stop and hang suspended once they left her. She gasped as another one dripped and froze, adding to the dozen or so that floated like little green bugs just below her face and neck. She batted them away, which caused more to freeze all around her.
"Oh my God!" Deja said. She jumped to her feet. The splashes froze in delicate arcs, making the puddle look like a modern sculpture. She cautiously glanced about and discovered that everything as far as she could see was stopped in place. Cabs, people, birds, blowing trash -- even the clouds had quit moving across the sky. There was no wind, or sound, or movement -- just a dead and desolate calm. She turned and stared at Marl, who was still standing on the curb with a retarded grin on his face. Then the whole scene crashed down in a realization that threatened to drag her dangerously close to the edge of her sanity. Deja began to shake, and as the bizarreness set in, her legs grew weak.
Marl's coat brightened, and its pattern shifted into a mosaic of color. "Please don't be scared," he said.
"Are you kidding?!" Deja asked. "I almost get killed, you bring the world to a halt, and you're asking me not to be scared? And take that shit-eating grin off your face." Deja brushed back her hair and watched more drops drip and freeze. "Oh, God," she said, swatting. "What the hell have you done?"
Marl stepped from the sidewalk and approached. His coat shifted pattern again. "I haven't done anything."
"What do you call this?" She waved her arms.
Marl looked about. "New York," he said, coming around to face her, "hasn't changed."
"Hasn't changed?" Deja flapped her blouse in an attempt to dry it. She looked down at herself. "Aw, jeez, I just bought this."
Marl reached over and took one of Deja's hands. "You were going to die."
Deja looked at the bus. The driver, his face aghast, was practically standing on the brakes. "What's going on? What have you done to the city?" Her wits were slowly coming back.
"It's not the city."
"What do you mean?"
"It's us who are different." Marl placed his hands into the pockets of his coat.
Deja looked around again. "I ... I don't understand."
"It's a technology that's hard to explain."
"Try me."
"We are ... in between."
"Between what?"
"Moments," he said just above a whisper.
Deja felt her sanity slipping again.
"Look at your watch," Marl said.
She saw it was still 11:41, but hadn't it been about 30 minutes since she left her building? Deja looked from her watch to the juice bar across the street. "Wait a minute ... I mean ... how the ...?" She fought back a wave of nausea.
Marl touched her shoulder. "It's all right. Here." He walked over to a woman about Deja's build, who had been caught in mid-step. He removed a pullover sweater she was carrying and handed it to Deja. "Put this on."
Deja hesitated, looking from the sweater to the front of her wet blouse.
Marl turned away.
"Yeah, right," she said. "Like anybody's going to notice." What the hell, she thought. She was already deep into this nightmare, and taking her blouse off in public was the least of her worries. Deja slipped the sweater on and wriggled it down to her hips. It was a little tight, but it would do. She tied the blouse around her waist and combed her fingers through her sticky hair. "It's okay, you can turn around."
"Walk with me," Marl said, and he started across the street.
"Sure," Deja said, catching up. "A walk ... Why not?"
Considering she was strolling around pedestrians frozen in time with a clone who had just defied the laws of physics, Deja's fear and panic had somehow given way to inexplicable curiosity. They continued in silence for about a block, edging around frozen people. It reminded Deja of an old wax museum her mom had taken her to when she was a teenager.
"What kind of clone are you?" she finally asked.
"What I am isn't relevant," Marl said. "Why I'm here, is."
"Okay, so why are you here? Which, I guess, means that you're not from here.... Are you?"
He didn't respond.
Deja's nerves spiked.
"I'm here," he said, "to align the future."
"I didn't know it needed adjustment."
Marl stopped at a little girl who was perched atop her father's shoulders. She had just licked her ice cream cone, and the scoop was threatening to fall on the dad's head.
"Believe me, Deja. The future needs a great deal of correction." He nudged the scoop back onto the cone.
"So what's this got to do with me?" she asked.
Marl resumed walking, and Deja followed him through a group of Asian tourists who were taking pictures of an old building.
"It's not so much you as it is Corazon," he said.
"Why Cor?"
Marl didn't say anything for about half a block. Deja sensed he was searching for an answer. "There is," he finally said, "an underlying power that runs through all living things. It can be a profound source of strength, and at the same time a great weakness."
"Are you talking about our will power?"
"No, it's more basic than that."
Deja thought for a moment before it hit her. "Love ... You're talking about love, aren't you?"
Marl kept walking in silence.
"But what does that have to do with ... Oh, wait a minute." Deja grabbed Marl's shoulder and stopped him. "Are you in love with Cor?"
His silly grin returned.
"Let's review here," she said. "You're a magical clone, who can set everything straight, who's fallen in love with another clone, and you're telling me -- a lowly human -- that you're going to adjust the future for God knows what. Have I got all this?"
"I need your help," Marl said.
"What can I do for someone who can do this?" she asked with a wave of her hand.
"I believe my solution lies with Corazon, but she is so ... protected. It's awkward for me to see her."
"Can't you just stop everything and walk up to her, like you're doing with me?"
"I wish it were that easy. I've taken a great risk to talk with you. You'll just have to trust me. I know she considers you one of her few friends, and I need for you to--"
"Okay, time out," Deja interrupted. "Am I on the Net right now?" She pulled back the lapels of Marl's coat and ran her fingers down their folds. "Where's the camera? They've got new ones now that look like lint."
Marl gently took her shoulders and stopped her. "We're not in a game show. In fact, we're not even on the street."
A ripple of fear shot through Deja, and she shrugged off his hold. "Okay, Marl, or whatever you're called, cut the crap! If we're not here, then where the are we?"
Marl regarded Deja like her father did after she had said something stupid. "You're still at your desk at work." His voice seemed to vibrate inside her chest.
Deja tried to jack out, but nothing happened.
"Don't worry, I'm not here to harm you. Quite the contrary, what I end up doing will change the course of humanity."
Now Deja was pissed. "Why all this?... You know, the bus, the puddle?" She stepped closer. "The ice cream cone?"
"Remember when you were six," Marl said, "and you reached up and put your hand on the hot burner in your parent's kitchen on Walker Street?"
Deja's stomach knotted. "What the--" Her voice caught. "How did you know about that?"
"You knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway."
"I was just a kid!" Deja edged away from him.
"And your mother lectured you about the stove, but you just had to find out, didn't you?"
Deja's heart was pounding inside her chest. She bumped into a woman and almost knocked a package out of her hands.
"For you to truly grasp the depth of my request, I needed to create a learning situation. You see, Deja, you're the type who has to ... burn her hand in order to listen."
Deja was beginning to suspect that this creature was dangerously more than just a clone. Her rational self was fighting hard to keep the rest of her from turning and running like hell, even though she knew how easy it was to obtain quirky information, especially these days. But what really frightened her was the fact that she had never told anyone about the incident. She had told her parents that she had burned her palm on a friend's outdoor cooker.
"Deja, please. You have to trust me."
She knew she should run, but there was something about Marl -- a benevolence that registered on a spiritual level. Deja also sensed something else in him, like he was just a point of contact for something much bigger.
"Okay," she said, "I'm listening."
Marl took another step toward her, but Deja kept her distance. He acknowledged her and held his ground. "I would like you to arrange for Corazon to meet me tonight."
"I don't know if I can. Besides, why can't you just talk to her like you are with me?"
"I would. But this," he said, looking at the buildings, "is such an impersonal way to communicate."
"You're not, you know, just BSing me for some kind of pervo thing, are you?"
"If I really wanted to hurt you," Marl said, his voice resonating near the base of her nerves, "you would never know it." He turned to leave.
Deja didn't know if she should be scared or relieved by this last statement. "Hey wait," she said, sensing that their "meeting" was over. "How will I get hold of you?"
Marl glanced back. "Don't worry, I'll find you." The goofy smile was back. "Have a nice lunch."
Deja felt someone tapping her shoulder. She pulled the VirtGear from her forehead.
"I asked if you wanted to grab lunch."
Deja rubbed her eyes and tried to shake off the disorientation.
Tooie Coupland was looming over Deja, her arms folded, lunch bag hanging from one hand. She was on the same level as Deja but produced a juvenile game show popular with teens. "You look like you've been at one of those alternate life sites again," she said. "What's Green got you researching?"
"Ah, yeah," Deja said with a bit of a headache. "I am, I mean was, at a site."
"Honey, are you all right?"
Deja forced a smile. "I'm okay. Just a little spacey from jacking out."
"Good, but let's hurry. I want to beat the rush downstairs. It's gorgeous day."
"The rush? What time is it?"
"Now, honey, look for yourself." Tooie leaned in and pointed to Deja's screen. "God, you were in deep. Come on. Grab your stuff, and let's go!" She abruptly turned and headed down the hall.
Deja looked at the time code and shivered.
11:42 a.m.
"Did you get any time between your meetings to take in the Warhol exhibit?"
Chaco increased the Netpad's magnification so Deja's face would fill most of the screen. "I did," he said. "It was pretty spectacular, considering he did all of it before nanobots."
"Yeah, I saw a documentary on him once. Really amazing how he blew into a tube and formed the glass. His stuff has this strange quality to it. I just can't imagine how he created those things without tech."
"We should see it together. I wouldn't mind going through it again." A passenger plunked down next to Chaco, and he scooted over to the window seat. "So, where do you want to meet tonight?"
Deja hedged a little. Chaco could tell something was up.
"Sonny," she said, and bit her lip, "I've, ah, got to work tonight."
"Really? How late?"
"Pretty late. It's just that, with Green gone, and taking Thursday and Friday off, I've got to get ahead of these ratings reports. You know how Green is when he comes back from being gone." She grinned, though not very convincingly.
"It's worth it if it means I'll have you for a long weekend. Besides, I've got to prep some files before this meeting tomorrow. I could use the time."
Deja leaned in and smiled. "Thanks, lover. I promise to make it up to you."
"So," Chaco said suggestively, "I'm up for a nice dinner. Maybe some sushi. Got any suggestions?"
"How 'bout Sushi Girl?" Deja offered. "It's got a great bar, and the food is yummy."
She held onto the "u" so that it came across kind of cute. Deja had a way of doing that with certain words, and Chaco had grown fond of it. "Sounds good," he agreed. "And if you can leave any earlier, maybe we can meet for a late drink."
Deja grinned. "That's a date. I'll send you their link right now."
Chaco watched Sushi Girl's site appear in the corner of his Netpad. Its logotype danced into view, followed by two Asian girls who began hacking away at the letterforms until the logo was reduced to a tray of sushi. The girls presented the tray and greeted him personally. They sounded like the twins from an old Japanese monster movie Tsuka had demanded that Chaco watch in an actual theater. Chaco had laughed his guts out at the retro special effects. There was only one place in D.C. that still had the vintage equipment to project film, and Tsuka was really into that purist crap. "Got it, thanks. I'll call you later."
Deja blew him a kiss and hung up.
Chaco closed his Netpad and listened to the hum of the LEV. He knew Deja's body language pretty well, and there was something odd about it. Just that morning, she had raved about the new Italian place where she was going to take him. Now, however, she was all business, which had come out of nowhere. In fact, last night she'd mentioned finishing the ratings reports.
The LEV began to slow. Chaco glanced at the transit map above one of the exit doors and studied the different routes to Deja's office building. The LEV glided to a halt, and its doors slid open.
"Little Miss Work Ethic," he said before he shuffled out with the rest of the passengers.
\*
"Hey pal, how long we gonna wait here?"
Chaco looked up from his Netpad. "As long as it takes."
The cab driver grunted and went back to viewing the sports section. He tapped the main screen on the vehicle's instrument panel to call up a holoclip from last night's New York Yankees game. The batter cracked a foul into the upper deck, and Chaco could hear the faint roar of the crowd through the half-closed ballistic plexi.
"Jesus, you'd think the Yankees were a farm team." The driver spit another sunflower shell into a foam cup.
Chaco shifted in his seat, and his coat fell open. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the driver's double take.
The plexi divider slowly began to rise.
"I'm registered," Chaco said, not bothering to look up from the file he was studying. He tapped the Netpad, and his badge's holoimage appeared.
The driver pressed his face against the plexi and read Chaco's ID. "I don't get many fares packin' Light," he said, his voice emanating from a speaker somewhere in the cabin. The plexi lowered. "Especially government agents." He motioned at Chaco's coat. "I collect guns. Can I see it?"
Chaco eyed him and glanced at the crowded sidewalk. "Darken the glass."
The cab's windows went black, and the dome light brightened. Chaco reached into his coat and pulled out his Light-Force. Its matte black titanium housing seemed to absorb the light. He spun it and handed the butt end to the driver.
The driver whistled. "Man," he said, reverently taking the weapon with both hands. "It's so light!" A serious look crossed his brow. "Say, you're not supposed to part with it.... Are you?"
Chaco gave him his best cop stare. "Go ahead," he said. "Pull the trigger."
"What the--"
"I thought you New York cabbies had balls of steel."
The driver shrugged and leveled the gun directly at Chaco's sternum. He held it there for a moment, his hand shaking.
Chaco yawned.
The driver moved his aim to the empty seat and pulled the trigger. The instant it clicked back, a tiny section of the gun's butt disengaged and released a dozen buglike bots, which scurried up the driver's arm.
"Sheeeeit!" the driver exclaimed, dropping the weapon. He brushed wildly at the bots, but they were too agile. They ducked and jumped and continued their charge up his arm.
Chaco picked up the gun and clicked the interface button. The bots stopped and vibrated in place like they were waiting for orders. One had made it to the driver's cheek, and he was eyeing it.
"Get these damn things off me!" he demanded.
Chaco turned the gun on its side and clicked the button again. The bots retreated down the driver's arm, jumped onto Chaco's palm, and marched into their tiny holding cell in the butt of the weapon.
The driver brushed frantically at his nose. "That wasn't funny, pal."
Chaco suppressed a laugh. "The hell it wasn't," he said, returning the gun to its holster.
"Why didn't it fire?"
"DNA recognition."
"So what would have happened if you hadn't stopped those, those ... What are those?"
Chaco settled back against the seat. "They're part of the gun's Emergency Defense Tactics. They'd paralyze you, collect all your vitals and anything else of interest, and send your info back to the lab. Once they're done with you, they fan out and cover the rest of the crime scene ... assuming I was rendered inoperative."
"You mean dead?"
"You can be inoperative and still be alive."
"But what if the gun got picked up again, you know, by somebody else?"
"The bots go after that person, and so on and so on, until they get taken out. The idea is that by that time, enough info has been sent back that the perps are screwed. They're fast little buggers, and they can go for years. We had one hunt down a guy months after the crime. Right up the ductwork and into his girlfriend's apartment. He never knew what hit him."
"Man," the driver said, "that's wild."
"Hey," Chaco said, pointing, "there's our girl!"
Deja emerged from the AztecaNet building and hailed a cab. One immediately pulled out of traffic and drew to the curb. Its door slid open, and she climbed in.
Chaco's driver engaged his cab's systems and pulled into traffic. He hung back just enough to stay in visual range.
"You've done this before?" Chaco asked.
"Plenty. There's always some PI snoopin' on a cheatin' spouse. I get 'em all the time."
They followed Deja's cab uptown, weaving in and out of the rush-hour traffic. Chaco leaned over the lowered plexi and reviewed the vehicle's instrument panel. "What make is this cab?" he asked.
"Ah, this here's one of the new Impala Cores. They grow 'em in old Mexico, then ship 'em all over the place. Real nice, this one is. Got your SATNAV, Interway link-ups, and that new shit in the frame." He snapped his fingers. "What's it called?"
"Programmable matter?"
"Yeah, that's it. They say it's the new deal. Soon, everything's gonna be made with it. Cars, clothes, and check this out, say you're in your house, and the sun's comin' in the window and hittin' ya right in the face. You won't draw the blinds. You'll just ask the house to move the window. Move the window." He laughed. "I love that."
"They're pulling over," Chaco said with a slap on the driver's shoulder.
The driver pulled to the curb and parked about five car lengths back. "What's she done that's so bad?" he asked.
"You don't want to know," Chaco said. He handed the driver his chip card.
The driver swiped the card and handed it back, then watched Deja emerge from the cab like some exotic creature. He whistled. "Boy, she's a looker."
It surprised Chaco how hard it was to think of her as just his mark. He had to focus, or his heart would get the best of him. "Tell me about this place she's going into."
The driver pointed. "This here's Club Heaven."
Chaco peered through the cab's windshield at an old converted church. Its steeple was about four stories tall, and a massive, circular stained-glass window dominated its front façade. Two colossal wooden doors that looked like they could have been carved during the Middle Ages loomed above two equally imposing bouncers.
"She must be a member," the driver said, "'cause that's the only way in. If you're not, you can forget about it." He inspected Chaco. "You're definitely not."
Chaco opened his door and stepped out.
The passenger window lowered, and the driver leaned over the seat. "You want me to wait for you?"
"Are you armed?" Chaco asked.
The driver patted his seat meshing. "Got a conventional right under here."
"Yeah, hang around. You never know, right? If I need a ride, I'll call."
The driver nodded and fished an old-fashioned paper business card out of the console between the seats. "Here's my number."
Chaco pulled out his Netpad and strolled past a long line of club warriors. Many were dressed like the gothic art militia, while others appeared to have just come from work. He climbed the steep granite steps and approached one of the bouncers.
"Can I help you?" the guy asked. He was bald and draped in a cloak the color of blood. Its tall white collar made his head seem like it was balanced atop a red mountain.
"What do you know?" Chaco asked flippantly. He could see his reflection in the guy's ocular implants.
The bouncer considered him with a heavy dose of apathy. "That I'm about throw an arrogant tourist onto his ass. What are you doing?" On the word "you," he leaned into Chaco's face.
"Arresting a big fucking dumbshit for obstructing a federal officer." Chaco displayed his holobadge.
The bouncer didn't react and motioned him in. Chaco walked past and barely heard him say "Asshole" over the pounding music.
The club's foyer had been converted into a staging area for the desperate. When Chaco entered, another bouncer approached. This guy was as big as the previous one and dressed exactly the same, right down to the moustache. He had his hand cupped around the side of his face, probably reading information being fed to his implants.
"Right this way," he said, not gracing Chaco with his attention.
Since his head was the only evidence of a human underneath the robe, bouncer number two seemed to float as he led Chaco along the edge of the main sanctuary. The aisle they walked was demarcated only by the fact that people never stepped into it. The club pulsated with the harsh sounds of Arabic techno, and while pockets of people were dancing, most of the crowd seemed to be standing around. Chaco and the bouncer finally reached what would've been the pulpit and mounted a set of wide stairs that looked like the same wood as the front doors. When the bouncer ascended, his floating act became even more convincing.
The stairs emptied into a large balconied room, furnished mainly with elaborate, floor-standing candelabras that held about a hundred tiny white candles. Two life-size crucifixes, whose Christ figures stared mournfully up to the rafters, gated the entrance to the room. As they stepped through, the noise from the main floor dropped away. They rounded another pair of candelabras and approached a small man, dressed as a priest, sitting between two bioenhanced brunettes on a red couch the size of Lichtenstein.
"Mr. Del Mar," the bouncer announced. "Agent Sonny Chaco, National Security Agency." He then floated across the room to another set of stairs and descended to the main floor, where the frantic dance crowd swallowed him.
"Welcome to Heaven," Del Mar said with what sounded like a German accent.
"I wouldn't call it that, but thanks," Chaco replied.
"Please, sit." Del Mar motioned, and one of the brunettes scooted down the couch. Chaco took her place, careful not to get too comfortable. "You're dry." Del Mar gestured in the air, and suddenly an Asian waitress appeared and bowed.
"I'll have a beer, please," Chaco said. "And no gen enhancements."
The waitress bowed again and hurried off.
The brunette slid over and snuggled a little too closely against Chaco. Her weight pulled his coat and exposed the Light-Force holster.
Del Mar's eyes flared. "And how may I help the government?" he asked, whereupon he flourished a kiss upon the cheek of the brunette next to him. All the while, his eyes remained on Chaco.
"I've been following someone who's entered your club, and I need to stay on her. All I want to do is observe."
"And why should I help the NSA?"
Chaco took a casual account of the room. "I'm a Net Operative, Mr. Del Mar, and I'm sure there's plenty of history I could dig up on Heaven." Chaco's attention settled on a small painting nestled in a narrow alcove on a far wall. It was expensively displayed; its lone halogen caused the Madonna's face to radiate off the canvas. "You do have complete records on all of your artwork?"
Del Mar's look softened. He motioned to a dark area of the room, and a man dressed in a black leather suit emerged and approached. He had the same implants as the bouncers. Chaco figured they were all Net linked and tricked out with enhancements like VL holovision. He handed Del Mar a Netpad.
Del Mar passed it along. "Here, agent. Point her out."
Chaco took the Netpad and began scanning through images of everyone who had entered the club. They had been captured from the waist up, probably by the first bouncer's optics, and many had information boxes that detailed addresses, ages, food allergies, and drug preferences, among other things. Chaco passed Deja's image, then Corazon's (with Pavia trailing), and then his. He stopped on an image of a cute black girl, her hair teased sky high and her eyes styled like she had just stepped out of the current revival of Cats. He handed the Netpad back.
"Do we know her, Tommy?" Del Mar asked when he passed the Netpad to the man in black leather.
The leather guy studied the image. "I've always wondered about her," he said and pocketed the Netpad somewhere behind him. "What's she done?"
"You name it," Chaco said.
The leather guy smirked. "Figures." He turned and slipped back into the darkness.
"So, can I go about my business?" Chaco asked, taking his beer from the Asian waitress.
Del Mar spread his arms. "Welcome to my father's house."
Chaco stood and raised his bottle. "Thank you, Mr. Del Mar." The brunette next to Chaco also stood and slipped her arm through his.
"Keitha, please," Del Mar said. "Agent Chaco works alone."
She frowned childishly and sat.
Chaco passed through the crucifixes, and the music grew until he could feel it pounding inside his chest. He walked back up the aisle where the bouncer had led him, ever so often glancing into the crowd to see if he could catch a glimpse of Deja. He saw an opening between some Goth warriors and stepped through. As he pushed his way, people bumped into him, and a few felt the Light-Force because they instantly shot him a look that started at his chest before moving to his face. These people quickly shuffled away.
Chaco finally came to what he assumed was the main bar. It was surrounded by dance-scene types. He began to circle it casually when he came upon the back of a very large guy in a black fedora.
Pavia.
Chaco quickly stepped up to a couple at the bar who looked deep in a conversation, although he had no idea how they could've managed that, what with the club's music obliterating the ability to hear. Pavia moved, which exposed Deja and Corazon, who were standing together with drinks in their hands. Deja leaned into Corazon and said something that caused Corazon to turn and speak to Pavia. They all began inching their way through the crowd away from the bar.
Chaco discreetly followed as they continued to the far side of the sanctuary. They approached another bouncer who appeared to be guarding a dozen glassed rooms that lined the edge of the dance floor. Chaco guessed that at one time these must have been side chapels, but now they were private party rooms. The whole scene was beginning to punch against his sense of morality when someone tapped his shoulder. It was the leather guy.
"We have the girl you're looking for monitored," he said.
"Good," Chaco said. "Keep an eye on her until I'm done here."
"And what, exactly, are you doing here?"
"Government business," Chaco said, this time with as much authority as he could project over the music.
The leather guy gave him a nod, then talked into the air and walked back into the crowd.
Fucking Boy Scout. Chaco went back to spying on Deja, who was now talking with the bouncer. Pavia was next to her, seemingly arguing with Corazon. They had an exchange that ended with Corazon shaking her head. Pavia stormed away and headed straight towards Chaco.
Shit. Chaco spun into a rather plain-looking girl who seemed to be having about as much fun with Heaven as a migraine. "Hi, ah, my name's Sonny. Can I buy you a drink?"
"Sure," she said, brightening. "I'm Taylor-Reese, with a dash."
"What would you like?" He watched out of the corner of his eye as Pavia stormed past.
She giggled. "A Deetroit Dragon."
Chaco tried to watch Deja and Corazon while ordering drinks from the bartender.
Taylor-Reese picked up on it and followed his line of sight. "Who are they?" she demanded and folded her arms.
Chaco turned back from ordering and watched Deja and Corazon disappear into one of the party rooms.
"Well?" she pressed.
Chaco forced a smile. "Okay, here's the deal.... I'm a government agent, and that's my--"
"Oh, please! You are such an asshole." She turned and marched off.
"Mr. Asshole, no dash," Chaco said to her back. He leaned against the bar and trained his attention on the dark curtains that covered the windows of Deja and Corazon's party room.
"What happened to your friend?" the bartender asked, setting their drinks down.
Chaco shrugged and picked up his beer. The bartender laughed and dumped the Detroit Dragon into a sink.
Heaven was clearly the place to be if you were rich, chic, and could afford to get up any time past noon. Chaco sipped his beer and watched some of New York's finest clubbers do what they did best, which in Heaven meant getting as shitfaced as they could and dancing with whomever they could, for as long as they could. And if they weren't dancing, they huddled together in little cliques. When the musical selection was quieter, Chaco could overhear parts of conversations, which ranged anywhere from foreign policy to a knockdown, drag-out fight over the best handbag designer in Europe.
No one had entered or exited Deja and Corazon's party room for the last 30 minutes, and Chaco hadn't seen any evidence of Pavia in the club. He was taking another sip from his beer when Del Mar strolled up with the two Marionettes. He was shorter than Chaco had guessed and had changed into a new costume -- the Pope with two hookers, except his mitre had the blinking word "OPEN" running down the front. They stopped and partially blocked Chaco's view of the party room.
"Agent Chaco, how are you enjoying Heaven?" Del Mar's demeanor clearly indicated he was Riding, but Chaco couldn't tell on what, exactly.
"You've got a great club, your Eminence," Chaco said, craning around one of the brunettes.
"Everyone should have a little taste of heaven." Del Mar smiled and took a sip from his goblet. Its encrusted jewels blinked in sync with his hat.
Suddenly, a bright light flashed inside Deja and Corazon's party room. It backlit the curtains and highlighted their elaborate Gothic patterns.
"What the hell?" Chaco said, and the light flashed again. He drew his Light-Force, and his holobadge projected.
Del Mar's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. "Oh dear God," he said and crossed himself.
The taller brunette saw the Light-Force and screamed. Chaco shoved the smaller brunette out of his way and charged towards the party room. He held his weapon like he had been taught, cupped with both hands, low and to the right. The room continued to strobe.
The bouncer guard moved to stop him but saw the Light-Force and raised his hands in a gesture that said he didn't want any part of what was going down.
Chaco ran past him at full clip, skidded up to the party room, and slammed against one of its windows. Light flashed again, and he could feel heat against his back. He whipped the curtain aside with the tip of his Light-Force and entered in one continuous motion.
A lone candle barely illuminated the dark room, and as Chaco entered, it began to flicker. Erratic shadows danced across the walls, and he could make out only slivers of details. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Deja sitting on the edge of an overstuffed leather couch. She was staring at the candle, which was in the middle of a large wooden coffee table.
"Dej," he said, "are you all right?"
Deja sat motionless. Her expression was a mix of shock and fear. As Chaco stepped closer, he noticed that her pallor was gray.
Pavia threw the curtain aside and practically ripped it from its track. He was sweating and out of breath.
"Dej," Chaco said, ignoring Pavia, "talk to me." He was now standing next to her; she was still staring. He lowered his weapon and knelt beside her. "Dej, what happened?" He gently guided a stray lock of hair from her face. Her lower lip was quivering.
"Sonny!" Pavia's voice was edged with panic. "Where's Mrs. Goya?"
Chaco peered into the shadows. "Corazon?"
Silence.
"Shit, Pavia, I have no idea." He faced Deja. "Baby, what happened to Cor?"
She didn't respond.
"Deja," Chaco said, this time more firmly, "where's Cora--"
"Marl," Deja uttered, and then threw up.
Deja slowly came to, although she had never really gone unconscious, just ... out of focus. Chaco wiped at the corners of her mouth with a warm towel, and there was a faint smell of vomit, like what lingered near garbage cans after a wild club party. She was sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the middle of a huge restroom. Lamps that looked like torches adorned walls fashioned after a medieval castle. The flames looked real, and the walls appeared slick with moisture, but the room felt cool and dry. Pavia stood behind Chaco, along with three Hispanic chicks dressed like they were going to the prom, though they were well past that stage. Also hanging around was a creepy guy wearing the same sunglasses as the Russian SWAT cops. He was dressed in black leather standing next to a nun ... at least what looked like a nun, if you discounted the piercings. Everybody wore serious expressions, especially Chaco.
"Deja, can you hear me?"
She heard, sort of. "Yeah," she tried, but her throat was raw and burning. She coughed.
"Hey," Chaco said, turning to Pavia, "she's coming around." He knelt. "Dej, can you talk?"
Deja looked into his face and managed a frail smile. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. He held her tight and gently kissed the side of her face. Then she started crying. It was more like sobbing, although she had no idea why. She just knew she had to. Inside her, something was releasing -- a catalyst that sure felt like guilt.
"It's okay, baby.... Let it out," Chaco said softly.
Deja's mind was spinning as she remembered the party room, the bright flashing light, and the reason for her need to cry.
Pavia's knees cracked as he knelt. He placed his hand on her shoulder; his touch was remarkably gentle. "How do you feel?" he asked.
"Like crap," she replied.
Chaco laughed a little and tossed the towel at the base of a trashcan. The girl dressed as a nun walked over with another. He thanked her and began dabbing at Deja's tears. "Do you want some water?" he asked.
She nodded.
The nun poured a glass of water from a ceramic pitcher and handed it to Deja before bowing slightly and returning to her place.
Deja sipped from the glass, and the cool water washed away the burning in her throat. "Did I puke or something?"
Chaco smiled. "Yeah," he said. "Kind of all over yourself."
Deja examined the front of her dress and winced.
"Deja," Pavia said, giving her shoulder a squeeze, "where's Mrs. Goya?"
She hesitated, suddenly feeling the stares, and cautiously scanned the room.
"All right," Chaco said, "everyone out of here!"
As the last Hispanic prom girl left the restroom, Chaco stepped over to the guy in leather. "You too," he ordered. "And I don't want anyone coming in here." The guy actually saluted, and Chaco began to return it before he waved him off. He walked back to Deja, knelt, and gently took her hands.
"Okay, that's everyone," he said. "Now, Dej, I need you to tighten up here. What happened?"
"I-I don't know where to begin."
"Deja," Pavia said earnestly, "the next few hours are critical. We need to know what's going on."
Deja took another drink of water, then told Chaco and Pavia everything, starting from when she first met Corazon on the jump jet, to the bar with Torres, and finally to her bizarre encounter with Marl on the streets of New York, which she still wasn't convinced took place anywhere but her mind.
"Okay, then," Chaco said. "Now, what happened in the party room?"
"I was telling Cor the same stuff I just told you," Deja said. "I was right at the part about Marl wanting to meet with her and all when the room filled with this unbelievable white light. It was flashing and popping, and then ..." Deja's throat tightened, and her head began to throb.
"Dej, honey," Chaco urged, "come on. I need you to remember."
"And then ... she was gone, Sonny.... Just gone."
Chaco and Pavia exchanged glances.
"Deja," Pavia said, "are you on any drugs?"
"No, she's not!" Chaco said with such authority that even Pavia was taken aback.
Chaco stood and started pacing. "This is way out of my league," he muttered. He stopped and folded his arms. "Let me get this straight. We're dealing with a lovesick clone-thing who communicates inside people's heads, and who just kidnapped the wife-clone of one of the most prominent businessmen in the country?" He emphasized this last thought with a pointed finger. "I'm going to be fired." He threw his hands up. "Hell, I'm going to disappear!" He started pacing again.
"Now it's your turn to tighten up," Pavia said.
"Easy for you to say. You're not in the system anymore."
Pavia rested a hand on Chaco's shoulder. "Like it or not, this is your case, and we're losing time."
"I know, I know." Chaco took a deep breath. "You told me you might have a way to get to this clone."
"No," Pavia said. "I was just posturing. I don't have dick on this guy."
"Sonny," Deja said, her voice back from the dead, "is there anybody in your unit who could help?"
"Exposing all this could be catastrophic," Chaco said. "If what you say this clone can do is real, then we could be dealing with a whole new type of weapon. No," he said, shaking his head, "I may need to go to DoD with this."
"Then you will disappear," Pavia replied.
Chaco put his face into his hands and began rubbing his forehead. The room fell deathly quiet, and Deja's heart went out to her lover. He had been so strong, barking orders and taking charge. But now, he looked utterly lost.
"Wait a minute," Chaco said through his fingers. "Dej, you might be right." He grabbed his coat off a chair in the corner. "Pavia," he said, slipping it on, "I need to get into some VirtGear, and it needs to be military issue, not any cheap civilian crap."
Pavia smiled broadly for the first time. "Now that I can help you with."
Chaco walked over and kissed Deja on the forehead. "Thank you," he whispered, and as the two men rushed from the restroom, he said something under his breath, something that just didn't make any sense.
"Ghost in the machine?"
22. YOU'LL HAVE MY BEST
Tsukahara passionately pressed his lips against Miko's. They had danced around their feelings for so long that being this close was exciting, yet intensely awkward. He had never felt this way for another girl, and the fact that she didn't care about his weight only added to the genuineness of the moment.
"Oh, Yoichi," she said, pulling back to take him in. Her eyes were dark and set a bit close, and Tsukahara loved the way they were slightly crossed, especially when they kissed. It gave her an innocence that he could fall in love with so easily. He kissed her again.
Miko gently pulled him towards her bed. "I have something for you," she said with a slight giggle. She slipped out of her sandals and neatly arranged them with her foot at the base of the bed. She pulled back the covers, sat, and began unbuttoning her blouse, which clung perfectly to her delicate breasts.
He tried to help her.
"Hey, Tsuka!"
Tsukahara surfaced from his dream to find the soft glow of an incoming holo call hovering at the foot of his bed. The side of his face was buried in his pillow; his cheek pressed against a wet drool spot. He quickly sat up and wiped the side of his mouth.
"I didn't wake you, did I?" Chaco asked.
"No, sir," Tsukahara said. He realized the mound in his sweat pants and quickly gathered the sheets around his waist. "I-I had just gone to bed. What time is it?"
"Time to get to the virtlab, agent. I've got business that needs your attention ... and only yours."
As Tsukahara's eyes adjusted, he noticed the holojection transmission was the type that field operatives used only when they felt their lives might be in danger. It was highly secure and transmitted not only the imaging signal, but the operative's medical information and sometimes physical location, as well. A shot of adrenaline coursed through his nerves.
"Where are you, sir?" Tsukahara asked. Chaco was in the back of what appeared to be a large car with a girl next to him. She was very pretty and dressed in a businesslike manner with a touch of street chic. She also had crazy hair that shifted colors as the car passed under streetlights.
"I'm still in New York, and, oh, sorry ... this is Deja Moriarty. Deja, Yoichi Tsukahara. He's the one I was telling you about."
Tsukahara gave a quick, sharp bow of his head.
The pretty girl waved tentatively, and her hair shifted color again.
"What security level are you with incomings?" Chaco asked.
"The highest, sir."
"Good, 'cause this assignment is very 'out of system,' if you get my drift. I want you to get down to the lab and into some secure V-Gear, and don't use Davis's, use mine. You'll find it in my office. It's the latest, and we're going to need all the muscle we can. You with me?" Chaco and the pretty girl suddenly bounced together, which was odd because most major road surfaces had been redone with FLEX technology in their polymers.
Tsukahara sat up straighter and brushed hair off his face. "Yes, sir."
"I'm sending you the coordinates for our meeting room, along with my office's security code. If anyone gives you shit about being in my office, tell 'em you're doing a Code 12 for me. They won't bother you after that." Chaco entered the data into his Netpad, and it simultaneously appeared to the left of his image. "Be there in an exactly one hour."
Tsukahara climbed out of bed and stumbled toward his closet.
"Oh, and ah, Tsuka?"
He snapped to attention. "Yes, sir?"
"This one's important. No bullshit here. I need you at your very best." His superior's heart rate, which was tracking in the upper right of the transmission along with 11 other med readings, jumped.
"Don't worry, sir," Tsukahara answered with a slight bow. "You'll have my best."
The pretty girl snuggled against Chaco's shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head. His heart rate lowered.
"See you in an hour," Chaco said, and his heart rate spiked again.
23. THAT'S COMFORTING
"Where the hell are we?" Chaco asked.
"The Garden State," Pavia said.
"Pennsylvania?"
"No, Sonny, we're in Jersey," Deja said sleepily from the back of the car. She uncurled herself from her nap and glanced at her watch. "And judging by the time," she said through a yawn, "I'd say we're south, around ... Atlantic City?"
"Very good, Ms. Moriarty," Pavia said.
"What's in Atlantic City?" Chaco asked.
Pavia tapped in a number, and the car's main monitor activated. The NetCom logo faded in, followed by an image of a tensile little man who looked nervous and strung out. He coughed, and oily black hair fell across his gaunt face.
"You up?" Pavia asked.
"Hell, yes," the man replied through another cough.
"We're 15 minutes away, so you better be--"
"I'll be ready, Oscar. Don't worry." The man hacked, and his image cut out.
"He's going help us?" Chaco asked.
"That guy can out-Net you any day of the week."
"What's his name?" Deja asked, inspecting the damage from her nap with a compact mirror.
"Bartas," Pavia replied.
"Bartas who?"
"Pavia."
Deja lowered the mirror. "He's your brother?"
Pavia's jaw grinded. "Yes."
"You say that like you're ashamed."
Chaco read aloud from his Netpad: "Pavia, Bartas C. Age: 43. Born: Mexico City, Mexico. Current Residence: Atlantic City, New Jersey. Ah, here we go. Military Service: Army. Special Ops. Net Operative. Code Reader. Nodal Point Specialist. Data Profiler." He scanned further. "We have a lot in common."
"Great," Pavia said. "You can bond."
"Wife: Sezja M. Born: St. Petersburg, Russia. Age: 38. Child: Oscar. Born: Washington D.C. Age: 9 ..." Chaco read the next entry to himself.
"What is it, Sonny?" Deja asked.
Chaco looked at Pavia. "Both deceased."
Pavia kept looking out the windshield.
"Their case, as of this record, is still unsolved." Chaco slowly pocketed his Netpad.
\*
Somewhere near the fringe of Atlantic City, Chaco picked up the glow of casino lights reflecting against the underside of low, early morning clouds. It created the illusion that most of the Boardwalk sector was covered by a lambent dome. Pavia exited the Interway and entered a residential area that looked like it might have been a pleasant place to live 20 years ago. He piloted the car for about a mile before he turned into an old storage park, the kind popular when the middle class needed a place to store the excesses of indulgent consumerism. The car skirted endless rows of units that had been converted into residences, although, judging by the trash and general disrepair, Chaco deduced they weren't for the upwardly mobile.
Pavia edged down one of the narrow streets and glided past roll door after roll door, all painted the same pathetic gray. Each unit had a fixture that illuminated a makeshift front porch -- or what passed for one, considering it was just large enough for a chair and, in some cases, an old temperature-based refrigerator.
They stopped close to the middle of the row and parked in front of a unit whose crudely stenciled numbers labeled it "289."
"So, this is beautiful Atlantic City?" Chaco asked, stretching.
"More like its underbelly," Pavia replied. He moved around the back of the car and approached the front door.
Oddly, it was colonial style, complete with an ornate brass doorknob and knocker. An old WELCOME mat made out of the same bright green plastic shit that Chaco's dad had glued to the front steps of their old house greeted them. Part of a big daisy clung to its upper left corner, and all that was left of "welcome" was WE--OM-. The door had been poorly retrofitted into the metal roll door and was the only one of its kind, as far as Chaco could see.
"I'd heard that people were living in these old parks, but I didn't think it was true," he said.
"People are living in these all over the country," Pavia said while he pressed the doorbell. Three deadbolts unlocked in sequence, and the porch light flickered.
The walls and carpet hid any indication that three, possibly four, units had been merged into one. The foyer they entered was poorly lit and crammed with old electronic equipment, stacks of brown boxes, and antique paper magazines. Chaco caught a glimpse of a vintage issue of Wired in the dim light. The whole place smelled musty, like his uncle's basement where he and his cousins had played elaborate spy games as kids. The space had been cheaply finished and reminded Chaco of a prefab apartment he visited at an aqua-park in Hungary, except those had been the size of a closet and were stacked and glued together by the hundreds.
"Hello, brother," a voice said from the dreariness.
"Bartas," Pavia deadpanned.
Bartas Pavia's stooped figure came up the long hallway that emptied into the foyer. The hallway had two doors on each side and split the space down the middle. The kitchen was at the other end, and the glow from the counter lights cast Bartas into silhouette. He was wearing an old bathrobe, the flannel kind you might wear in the dead of winter. Chaco also recognized a smell, isolating it from the dank residue that was collecting in his sinuses. Sickness.
The two men embraced, but not like brothers. Their hug had more resemblance to two businessmen about to enter negotiations.
Deja stepped closer to Chaco. He took her hand.
"Oscar, you must be in a hell of a jam to ask for my help." Bartas tightened the robe around what little body was left on his frame.
"I am, brother, and you know I wouldn't come if it wasn't important."
Bartas laughed, which triggered a coughing fit. Deja stepped forward, but Chaco squeezed her hand to signal her to hold her ground. Pavia, void of any compassion, just observed.
Bartas motioned for them to follow. He led them down the hallway and into a room filled with an eclectic array of NetLink router hubs, virtual hard drives, a small omni-processing main frame, and a Net console the likes of which Chaco had never seen. The room hummed with an electronic pulse.
"Please, sit," Bartas said with a raspiness that made Chaco want to slap on a micropore mask.
Bartas collapsed into an old chair and casually eyed his guests. "Didn't you tell them, Oscar?"
"It wouldn't have mattered," Pavia replied.
"Excuse me." Deja said. She looked questioningly at Bartas. "How long have you had ... Netox?"
"Deja!" Chaco said. "That doesn't exist. It's just media hype."
"The hell it is" Bartas replied. "Look at your future, agent." He gestured at his own body.
"There's no scientific proof that Netox exists. I've read the studies ... even the classified ones." Chaco glowered at Deja. "And how do you know so much about it?"
"I care for you, Sonny," Deja said. "I just wanted to learn about anything that might harm you."
"You should listen to her," Bartas said. "She's a smart girl."
Chaco turned to Deja. "I'm very protected when I'm in the Net. The data buffers and virus filters we use are state-of-the-art."
"Bullshit!" Bartas said. "That's what I thought, but ten years later, look how the buffers and filters protected me." He coughed and pulled his robe tightly around his neck. "What they aren't telling you is that data pathogens will get through.... They're way below the threshold. They'll slowly attack your nervous system." He eyed Chaco. "Then one morning you'll wake up and have this feeling. At first, you'll think you've got the flu, but then you realize that the shaking and the fever and the dreams are the result of your nervous system breaking down." He leaned forward, and his hands reacted to a tremor that rippled through him. "But by then," he said gravely, "you're screwed."
"Yes, well, that's only partly explains your condition," Pavia said. "And we're not here to convince Agent Chaco that Netox exits. He'll have to figure that out on his own." He stepped over to the console and ran his fingers across its interface panel. "We're here, Bartas, because we have to find--"
"Your employer's missing wife. Yes, you told me all about it," Bartas said. "What's the matter, brother, losing your touch?"
"What we're losing is time," Chaco said. "Bartas, I need to use your VirtGear to connect with one of my agents. I might be in for a long time."
Bartas gestured at the console. "Knock yourself out. But I'll warn you, this is a custom unit. It's not going to act like that crap you're used to at the NSA."
Chaco joined Pavia and reviewed the system's interface controls. "I may need your help with this equipment," Chaco said.
"Don't worry, agent. I'll be in there with you. Now just sit in that chair." Bartas pointed to what looked like an ordinary recliner positioned in the only open space available in the cramped room.
"Isn't it dangerous for you to go back into the Net?" Deja asked.
Bartas shot her a look. "In my condition, do you really think it matters? Besides, it's the only place I can still get a little entertainment." He winked.
Chaco climbed into the chair and waited while it adjusted to his body's contour. "Where's the unit?" he said, inspecting the armrests.
Bartas smiled for the first time. "It's the chair."
Chaco searched the chair, even looking to see if he was sitting on it.
"It is the chair," Bartas reiterated.
"Really?"
"A little different, isn't it?" Bartas pointed. "Set your coordinates, then on my mark touch the red button on the interface panel, but only when you're ready. It packs more of a punch than you're used to."
Pavia sat next to Deja on a small couch and patted her knee.
Bartas raised a standard VirtGear unit to his forehead. "This should be interesting," he muttered through a cough.
Chaco examined the chair's system panel and entered the coordinates for the meeting room. He took a deep breath and leaned back. "I'm ready."
"On my mark," Bartas said. "Three, two ... one."
Chaco clicked the red button, and the chair awoke into a kind of full-body VirtGear. Tentacles at least three times as thick as a standard head model emerged from under the armrests. They crawled across Chaco's body, and it took every bit of his willpower not to leap from the chair. When a tentacle found its contact point, its head articulated like the mouth of a tiny snake, bit through Chaco's clothes, and pricked the surface of his skin with a needlelike inceptor. One tentacle hovered in front of his face, but then separated into six smaller ones that wrapped themselves around his head. The whole action happened so fast that the interface process was complete before Chaco could scream.
"Hello, agent."
Chaco's vision faded in, and he found himself standing in the NSA's virtual meeting room. It had been simmed to represent a typical conference room found on any floor of the Maryland headquarters. Bartas was standing across the table, but here he was clean-shaven and about 60 pounds heavier. He sported an expensive biosuit, and his hair was cut in a contemporary style. Chaco figured it must be how he looked before his illness.
"Hello, Bartas. You're looking--"
"Like I used to. Surprising, isn't it?"
Chaco shrugged.
"Where's your agent?"
Tsukahara materialized to the left of Chaco, facing away from the table. He quickly turned and bowed. "With apologies."
"Don't sweat it, Tsuka. I've done that a million times." Chaco noticed his intern had puzzled look. "Is there something wrong?"
"Sir, your form. It's so ... real."
Bartas snickered.
Chaco looked down at his body for the first time and felt his arms. "Jesus, I can feel!" He touched the tabletop, picked up a Netpad, and ran his fingers over its control panel. "This is amazing!"
"Total Body Interface Function," Bartas said. He walked around the table and offered his hand. "Welcome to the future of the Net."
Chaco eyed his hand before he shook it. "Whoa, I can even feel your pulse. Is this your invention?"
Bartas smiled. "With a little help from some friends in the Baltics."
Tsukahara touched Chaco's shoulder. "It still feels the same for me.... That is, I have no feeling."
"That's right," Bartas said. "Only Agent Chaco has full sensory capacity. Someday, everyone will."
Chaco looked at his watch. "Tsuka, the last time you were in the Net, you said you came in contact with a presence, right?"
Tsukahara cautiously nodded.
"Do you think you could contact it again?"
"I can try, sir."
"What," Bartas said, "you think this presence is the clone you're looking for?"
"Possibly," Chaco said.
"That's a long shot."
"No. I've got a feeling here. Did your brother tell you everything?"
"Superclone stumps one of NSA's finest? Yeah, he told me. But do you really think it's a weapon?"
"This thing has a pretty impressive bag of tricks -- like appearing and disappearing at will. And I'm not talking about in the Net."
Bartas's brow furrowed.
"I'm just telling you what I saw," Chaco said. "When we jack out, ask Deja. She was there."
"Come on," Bartas said. "This thing can't just vaporize and reappear. If you're talking about something like quantum teleportation, they canned that concept years ago. Don't get me wrong. It was cool when that group at MIT transported the dog, but all they got was a copy. Hell, they had to reteach it everything, even how to take a crap."
"Look, all I'm saying is this clone is capable of things I've never seen before."
"Okay," Bartas said. "Say, for the sake of argument, it is what you say. What are you going to do, ask it to cooperate?"
"Yeah ... basically."
"One of NSA's finest," Bartas said. He made himself comfortable in a conference room chair and propped his feet on top of the table.
"Tsuka, Bartas and I are going to be 'one way' in this. We'll be involved, but the presence won't know we're here. You got that?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, then. Go and do whatever you did last time, and if you get into any trouble, we'll jump in."
Tsukahara bowed.
Bartas rolled his eyes. "That's comforting."
Tsukahara watched Bartas and his superior, along with the NSA meeting room, dissolve to leave him floating quietly amidst streams of data. He closed his eyes and opened his mind to the chi of the presence he had previously encountered. The fate of his career might hang on the success of this assignment, and the thought of returning to Japan in disgrace only fueled his drive to make contact.
Tsukahara had convinced himself that the presence was an AI interface whose programming had evolved beyond the legal limitations of The Hague Artificial Intelligence Accords. Now, however, his superior informed him that the presence might be a new form of cloned human -- very powerful and possibly a threat to national security -- and that he might be its first official contact. Tsukahara was honored to be granted such an important assignment, and as he floated among the streams of data, he wondered if the presence was truly a new form of cloned human. And if it was a threat, which country had created it? If only his colleagues back at the Japanese National Security Agency could see him now. If only his mother could.
She would be proud, Yoichi.
The Net jittered, and suddenly Tsukahara found himself standing by the stream near his family's old cottage in Hakuba. It was spring, and the smell of adonis, zazensou, and dogtooth violets filled the air. A cool breeze played through the trees. Then a shiver ran through his body, though he didn't know if the wind or the presence had caused it.
"Are you the entity I encountered before?" Tsukahara asked.
Yes, I am, the voice replied in perfect Japanese. It echoed in his mind as if part of him.
"Then I need--"
Do you like your environment?
The summers Tsukahara had spent in Hakuba were the happiest times of his life, and the setting was just the way he remembered it, even down to the small wooden bridge that spanned the stream. In reality, his father had died before he could build the bridge, but in Tsukahara's memory, it was always there.
"Yes, I do. I see that you have extrapolated this simulation from my memory. How did--?"
I thought you would be more comfortable.
"Thank you. Yes, I am." Tsukahara bowed, wondering how the presence had scanned his memory. He sensed that certain questions might remain unanswered. "I have been asked to--"
Corazon Goya is well and in no danger.
A spark of fear cut through Tsukahara with the realization that his superior's hunch had been correct. He focused on the presence. "When will you release Ms. Goya?"
A bird passed overhead. Tsukahara watched its small black form maneuver through the trees. It tucked its wings and glided onto a thin branch, which bobbed gently from its weight. The scene was so convincing that, for a brief moment, Tsukahara longed for the summers at his family's cottage.
Why don't you ask me what's really on your mind?
Tsukahara hesitated. "My superior wishes to know who or what you are. Are you a threat to the security of New America?"
There was a pause. Tsukahara walked closer to the stream.
Not in the sense that you define a threat. It is not primary to my mission.
A mission? "What is your mission?"
To affect change.
"How?"
By setting into motion a cascade effect that will bring about balance.
Tsukahara was confused. If the clone wasn't a threat -- although it appeared to have a mission -- then what was it? What kind of cascade effect was it referring to, and what would be brought into balance? He began to suspect that he was dialoguing with a new form of artificial intelligence, possibly one that had lost control of its rational programming. But even if the interface had become corrupt, it should be able to reprogram itself ... unless it didn't know it had become corrupt. Yet that, too, seemed highly unlikely. A shocking consideration then came into Tsukahara's mind, and his heart began to race.
I sense you are scared, Yoichi.
"You're not from our planet ... are you?"
Another pause. The bird launched off the branch and ascended in a graceful arc to the tops of the trees.
Not in the sense that you would understand. The ones who created me occupy the space between planets.
Tsukahara's heart was pounding against his chest, and his hands were shaking. He was desperately trying to wrap his prudent mind around the enormity of the revelation.
This was first contact.
He began to take deep gulping breaths in a desperate attempt to calm his nerves.
What troubles you, Yoichi?
Tsukahara had never dreamed that first contact would be in the virtual realm of the Net. As a boy, he imagined it would be like the movies, albeit the depictions he had grown up with were foolish, and the idea of spaceships and spindly gray men seemed rather arrogant now. Obviously, a race of higher intelligence would choose a more controllable venue to reveal its existence, and what better environment than the Net?
Tsukahara swallowed and found his throat dry. "Y-Yes ... I mean no--"
Yoichi?
"Yes?"
Don't be afraid.
"Why are you--"
The ones who created me are the ones who set into motion the first cascade, which gave way to the rise of man. They now wish to correct the imbalances that have occurred and have sent me to affect change.
"How will you do this?"
There was another long pause, and Tsukahara felt he might not get an answer. Having calmed himself, he recalled the line of questioning Chaco had instructed him to pursue. "Why did you take Ms. Goya?"
She chose to be with me.
"Why, then, is it important that she be with you?"
To help.
"How can she?"
Another pause, and another bird.
I believe she is the connection for me to understand how your world's belief systems work, and thus, how to set into motion the effect. You know that what I need to do is important, Yoichi.
Tsukahara was at a loss for words. He did want change. For the last 50 years, the world had been slowly cracking apart at its cultural seams. The Biolution and its heralded flood of technology was supposed to have been the great equalizing force that was to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. But since its development, it actually had created an even greater divide, one that now pitted the secure against the desperate. Tsukahara's mind was spinning.
I sense you are worried, Yoichi. Don't be. Your world will never know of the implementation. The effect will, in time, lead your world off its current path of self-destruction.
"Why now? Why not another time, like the opening of the atomic age?"
The advancement you call the Biolution is a more accessible threat. Your world is no longer a collection of independent cultures. It has become a vastly interconnected organism, yet it still operates within archaic religious and political models. With this advancement, your world's scientific communities are about to discover the next set of universal governing laws.
"Like a new branch of quantum theory?"
No, Yoichi. What you call theoretical physics only explains a fraction of the universe.
Tsukahara sensed the presence was slipping away. He only had a rudimental knowledge of quantum physics, and to continue down this path was a waste of precious time. "My superior wants to know when Ms. Goya will be returned."
She can return whenever she wishes.
At a loss, Tsukahara was distracted by the stream at his feet. He knelt and cut the surface with his hand. Crescents of sunlight rippled out; he could feel the water's chill as it flowed through his fingers; a small koi swam just beyond his reach. He was overwhelmed.
What troubles you, Yoichi? The voice was now softer.
"This isn't how I imagined it would be," Tsukahara said under his breath. He watched the koi swim a semicircle and dart from view; another bird flew overhead; its image tracked erratically across the surface of the disrupted water.
Yoichi. The presence was now just barely audible inside his head. Many things in life ever are.
25. YOU'VE LOST YOUR COLOR
Deja opened her eyes.
She was in Chaco's bed at The Thin. Small red numerals outlined in magenta floated above the side table. 6:56 p.m.
She remembered.
After watching Chaco and Bartas twitch in their seats for an hour, she and Pavia had gone into his brother's kitchen to find something to drink. When they returned, Chaco and Bartas were disengaged from the Net and huddled to talk. She had been relieved to hear that Cor was safe and apparently acting of her own free will, but Chaco was pissed that he and Bartas hadn't been able to eavesdrop on Tsukahara's meeting. It had something to do with being "walled-up," whatever that meant. They also weren't buying into Tsukahara's story, which was pretty bizarre. Pavia had become very agitated, going on about his duty and how "they" wouldn't understand all this. To Deja, it didn't make any sense that Marl was some kind of alien. Then again, he seemed to have powers that were beyond those of a military clone. Usually, they were just hyper-humans developed for specific tasks, such as covert operations or risky space trips. Clones like Cor, on the other hand, were developed to fulfill some rich person's emotional needs, a practice outlawed years ago.
Being in the Net had clearly taken its toll on Pavia's brother, who had excused himself to go lay down. He had sweated profusely through the length of the session, and the smell of his sickness had grown more acrid. It was the same odor that had filled her aunt's bedroom the week before she died of TR Syndrome.
Chaco and Pavia would have stayed all night, working out their plans and making Net calls, if Deja hadn't laid down the law and reminded them of the late hour. Besides, what did they hope to accomplish against an alien who could manipulate matter and read minds?
The numbers on the bedside clock dissolved to 7:00 p.m.
"Hey, sleepy head," Chaco said. "It's time to rise and shine." He pulled the curtains aside to let the sunset flood the room. A thick layer of ash from the offshore garbage kilns had turned the sky a deep red, and dark blue storm clouds lent the whole scene a morbid translucency.
"Sonny, close those," Deja said before she covered her eyes. "I'm going to melt." She was in one of Chaco's shirts, and his musk permeated the fabric.
He sat next to her and eclipsed the light. "How do you feel?"
"Better. I really needed to sleep."
"Me, too. That was a rough night." He took her hand.
"Sonny ... what are you going to do?"
Chaco sighed and shook his head. "The problem is, I don't really know what I'm dealing with. The chances of Marl actually being an alien are remote. I think Tsuka is reading way too much into this. And even if Marl is, my hands are tied. I can't go to my boss. He's so conservative he makes Alberts look liberal. And I certainly can't go to DoD. Pavia's right. I would disappear." He sighed again, and Deja started rubbing his fingers. "He's got to be homegrown," Chaco said in a tone that betrayed the fact he was trying to convince himself. "The only thing I can figure is that he's some kind of distraction. I think he's a plant from the Pac-Rim Triad. It would be their style to imbed a clone like him. They'd love to get us going off on some tangent while they're jerkin' with our interests on the other side of the world."
"But, Sonny," Deja said, snuggling closer, "what if Marl is an alien?"
Chaco searched her face with a sense of loss behind his eyes. "If that's the case," he said just above a whisper, "then nothing will ever be the same again."
\*
The hydroshower's wall of water gushed over Deja's body. The mix of forced air, water, and three different lotions slammed against her with just enough pressure to massage away the stiffness from spending over an hour curled up in the back of Pavia's car.
"Sonny?" she called when she emerged. She lost herself in an oversized towel. "Sonny?"
Deja walked to the coffee table and picked through the remains of dinner. There was a handwritten note stuck into a small mound of untouched guacamole.
Went for a walk to get my head clear on all this. Hang out and relax, the room is yours. I'll be back soon. ~ Sonny
Deja tried one of Chaco's French fries but couldn't really distinguish any significant difference from her own version, even though his had been prepared to his genetic tastes. That simple fact confirmed her suspicions that all the biofood crap was just a big scam. She mopped up the last of the catsup with a limp fry and settled into one of the room's oversized loungers.
"Request. Guide," she said to the room's com system.
The large impressionistic painting of a Paris street scene morphed into The Thin's logo, whereupon the screen split into a patchwork of individual channel frames and service icons offered by the hotel. She scanned the frames until she found Life's a Bitch. The screen filled with episode 46, a rerun from two seasons ago. She watched for barely a minute before the room announced that someone was at the door.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"There is no identification, Ms. Moriarty."
"Give me a visual." The screen morphed again, and Corazon's distorted face pixeled up.
Deja bounded across the room and almost stumbled out of the towel. The door slid aside. "Cor!" she exclaimed, and embraced her.
"Oh, Deja," Corazon said, returning the hug, "I have so much to tell you!"
"Are you all right? You're not hurt, are you?"
"No, dear, I'm fine."
They sat on the couch, and Deja couldn't help but stare at Corazon's orange rings. Her mind went back to the night at the club and the party booth.
"Deja, what is it?"
"I'm sorry, Cor," Deja answered. "I feel so responsible for getting you into this mess. You could have been killed."
"My dear, first off, I was never in any danger. I went because I wanted to. And second, there is no mess. Marl is here to help. He only wants to do what's right."
"Tell that to Sonny and Mr. Pavia. They've got it in their heads that he's some kind of, I don't know, Chinese diversion in a global terrorist plan."
Corazon frowned. "They're not planning to do any thing rash, are they?"
"All I know is that they had Sonny's intern meet with Marl inside the Net, and that Marl claimed he was on a mission."
"And they didn't believe him?"
"Cor, Sonny and Mr. Pavia are cut from the same mold. They're hard-liners. They think more in terms of the real world, not something out of science fiction."
"But they have to understand. Marl is here to help."
"Cor, to tell you the truth, I find it kind of hard to believe, too. If Marl is from another world, isn't it a little weird that he sneaks around in the Net? Why didn't he just land during the World Bowl and say hello?"
"Because, Deja, I think that's the point."
"What do you mean?"
Corazon hesitated. "I don't think he did land here."
"What? No. He had to. How else would've he gotten here? He is here ... isn't he? I mean, he was with us ... at the bar, right?"
"Was he, Deja? Was he really, physically with us?"
"Well, maybe ... I mean ..." Deja began to think. As wild as it sounded, every encounter with Marl could have been all in her mind. The idea made a little sense, but something didn't ring true. "I can kind of buy into the concept of him entering our thoughts," she said, "but I'll bet you a month's credit that he's physically here in the city."
"Deja, the way he explained it is that his physical self is in some sort of transition.... A state of projection is what he called it."
The thought of it made Deja's skin tingle. "Tell me, Cor, what's he like?"
Corazon beamed. "Deja, he's so wonderful. We have this connection, and I've never felt anything like it."
"Where did you go? I mean, one minute you were standing in front of me, and the next, you were gone. What did that feel like?"
"When he appeared, it was like we were talking, but it was inside my head. I ... I just knew I wanted to be with him. The actual act of him taking me was like going through a door." Corazon appeared unsure of her description. "Yes," she eventually said, staring and nodding, "it was just like walking through a door of light. He held my hand all the way."
"Cor?"
"I'm sorry, dear. Where was I?"
"You walked through the door with Marl."
"Yes. Then we were on a street in the Upper West Side. Just like that. He took me to a small Italian restaurant, where we talked."
"About what?"
"Deja, it like he's searching. He asked me all about the world, about its cultures, its politics...." The spacey look returned to her face.
"Cor?"
"Why me?" Corazon said under her breath. "I'm only three years old."
Deja put her arm around her. "Probably 'cause you're the best of both worlds."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it. You're an adult, with an adult's opinion and point of view. But you're also kind of a child. I mean, at four years old, no matter how much you were schooled, you don't have all the baggage that comes with a lifetime of living. You have an innocence that's very rare. And I'd imagine your take on the world is a lot less judgmental than most. I envy you, Cor. You're like a new drive, free of all the crap that builds up after years of use."
Corazon shied at the analogy.
"Besides," Deja continued, "I still think he has the hots for you."
Corazon started to laugh, which got Deja going, too. For a moment, the weight of the situation was gone.
Corazon's laughter soon waned, however. "Deja," she said with a sudden urgency, "you don't think Sonny and Oscar are really going to do something to Marl, do you?"
"I don't know. I guess that all depends on whether you think Marl's here or not. If he is here, I mean physically here, then I guess they could--" But Deja cut herself off, remembering a Net call between Chaco and Pavia that she overheard. They had talked a lot of techno-speak about stuff like reverse addressing and backdoor accessing. She knew all about that stuff from her years as a news researcher. She unconsciously glanced at the note peeking from under the guacamole. "Cor," she said, the word sticking in her throat, "do you know where Marl lives? I mean, did he take you anywhere else ... after your dinner?"
"Yes. He took me to his hotel. Why?"
Deja felt a sudden arc of panic and pulled the towel tightly across her chest.
"Why Deja," Corazon said, "you've lost all your color."
26. IT'S ALL RIGHT
A strong rain pelted the windshield of the car, which wasn't a problem for the wipers unless the storm intensified beyond a Category 1, which was when the vehicle's intelligence core would engage the air jets. Chaco figured the ride was probably Pavia's personal vehicle, because it looked liked it had been through the wringer. The car he drove to Atlantic City was out of the AztecaNet motor pool, which was maintained by a bunch of fanatical Israelis. Pavia had said that if he brought it back with so much as a spec of bird shit on it, they'd go off on him and bitch that they'd have to reseal it. Ever since the attack on Central Park, who knew what was coming out of pigeons these days? Pavia was off duty, though, so tonight they were slumming it.
The ride uptown was pretty bleak, especially with Pavia practicing his silent routine. Chaco hadn't much to say either, considering he wasn't too crazy about their plan. It just reeked of half-assedness, and while he didn't mind breaking from the book, he still wasn't convinced that Pavia was being completely upfront about his intentions.
Pavia's brother had come through with an address for Marl, though how was still a mystery. And even though the incept was a perfect match, the fact that the connection point was up for grabs made the idea of busting into a hotel room in the middle of the night feel very amateurish. Even so, time was against them. The system back at NSA didn't have any clearer incepts, so Chaco figured he'd go along with Pavia and hope for the best.
"That's all we need," Pavia remarked.
"What's that?" Chaco asked.
"Rain," he said, like it was root of all evil. "Just adds another element to deal with."
At this time of night, traffic was light, especially considering the weather, so movement through the city was free of the gridlock that had become a trademark for most New American cities. Even with the vast network of intelligent Interway, most inner-city streets were still uncontrolled and volatile, and it could take hours just to crawl a couple of miles.
The incept points put the connection emanating from a Harlem business hotel. An odd location, it confirmed to Chaco that their boy was homegrown. If they were really dealing with a representative from a master race, wouldn't it have picked something a little more upscale? Then again, nothing about this case surprised him anymore, and an Oprah's MicroLodge was as good as any. At least the hotel had an all-night buffet.
"Are you sure these are correct?" Chaco asked, pointing at the SATNAV downlink on the dash.
"Bartas is rarely wrong."
Another roar of water hit the car's undercarriage, and the suspension groaned trying to prevent the vehicle from hydroplaning.
"So what happened to your brother, anyway?" Chaco asked.
Pavia glanced over and reprised the look he had on the LEV. His chin was striped with fingers of bright yellow coordinate numbers from the SATNAV panel. "He couldn't resist the easy credit."
"Doing what?"
"Some shit that cost him."
"Cost him what?"
Pavia's look bordered on tragic. "His family."
The conversation was dredging up more than Chaco had bargained for, and he sensed that if he continued, Pavia might lose what little hold he had on his emotions. Something about this whole Corazon thing was pushing hard at Pavia's pragmatism, which was strange because, when faced with a tough assignment, most corporate soldiers handled things by the book. With Pavia, however, something else was at work, and it seemed to be undermining his professionalism.
They approached an old 12-story building that hadn't seen any retrofitting for at least a decade.
"SATNAV indicates this is the hotel," Chaco said, pointing.
Pavia circled the building twice before he pulled into its parking area. He glided between a cheap CitiCar and a small step-up that had a goofy fish logo on its side. Pavia switched off the car, and its organics hissed into their dormant settings.
Chaco checked his Light-Force and returned it to its holster. He glanced at Pavia, who maintained his grip on the steering toggle and stared at the rain collecting on the windshield. "You a hundred percent with this?" Chaco asked.
Pavia sighed heavily and nodded.
As Chaco stepped into the rain, which was quickly becoming a downpour, his coat's fabric shifted into its protective setting.
"Fucking rain," he heard Pavia say as they trotted towards the hotel's front doors.
The Oprah was typical of the many franchise hotels that littered New York City. Someone told Chaco once that a famous media giant named Winfrey from earlier in the century had started the chain, but he'd never heard of her. An assortment of extremely used furniture dominated the interior, but it was the overuse of fake wood paneling and brass trim that gave the whole place the feel of a country club for lost souls.
A meticulous, older black gentleman, his face buried in a system screen, looked up from the concierge desk just in time to catch their coats vibrating dry. The white part of his eyes was the color of French vanilla ice cream. They narrowed as Chaco and Pavia approached.
"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "how can I help you this dreary night?" He looked them up and down over a pair of antique reading glasses that worked well with his vintage tweed coat and button-down shirt.
Chaco had retrieved the clerk's stats from the NSA database on the ride over. He clicked open his Netpad and projected his badge along with an enhanced info/image of Marl from the convenience store vid.
The clerk regarded Chaco's ID with little concern.
"Mr. Flossmore," Chaco said in his most official voice, "is this man staying with you?"
The clerk referenced his system, pressing his face inches from the screen. "Yes." He looked to Marl's holoimage and back. "Room 360," he said, tapping the screen with a bony finger. It was missing most of its tip.
"Was this woman with him?" Marl's image dissolved into Corazon's. The clerk studied it intently.
"I can't say that I've seen her, but I usually work days."
Chaco called up the hotel's floor plans. "The stairs are this way," he said to Pavia while pointing at a door to the right of the main elevator banks. As they walked across the lobby, Chaco noticed the carpet looked like it had seen a hundred years of traffic.
"The gov'ment pays for any damages, you know," the clerk called out.
"I know," Chaco said over his shoulder. "Here's the address for any inquiries you might have." He accessed the NSA's PR site and sent it to the hotel's system.
The clerk bent down to view his screen. "All right then," he said, straightening. "You boys be safe." He removed his glasses and let them dangle from a gold chain. "And try and keep it to a minimum, will you please?"
"Minimum, my ass," Pavia said under his breath. He yanked open the exit door, and they began climbing.
The stairwell was cool and emitted a fetid odor, which by the second floor was doing a serious number on Chaco's stomach. His fingers grazed something sticky under the handrail. "Shit, what's that smell?" he asked while he wiped his palm down the side of his pants.
"I'll bet you a dinner at Sardi's it's the backside of the all-night buffet." Pavia was now taking two stairs at a time and appeared not the worse for it.
The fire door to the third floor was an old push-latch with the original retrofitted firebox bolted to its frame. The red alarm armature was bent slightly askew to the box like it had been hastily kicked in the past.
"I wonder if it will go off?" Chaco asked.
Pavia reared back and side-kicked the door directly on the armature. The door succumbed and was now hanging by one hinge.
"I was just about to try it," Chaco said. The hallway was barely lit by an exit sign stuck in mid-dissolve between English and Spanish.
"Which way?" Pavia asked.
Chaco referenced his Netpad and pointed. "To the right."
Pavia marched past him, barely navigating the width of the doorframe. Like the stairwell, the hallway's carpet was an aromatic time capsule, and Chaco thought he could pick out various odors. Or maybe there had just been a huge party the night before.
In most New American cities, living space had become a commodity, so the typical hotel crammed as many occupants onto a floor as code would allow. Such was the case with Oprah's in Harlem, and as Chaco followed Pavia down the corridor, muffled room sounds lingered around every door. These audible fragments detached and stuck with Chaco, creating visual scenarios that played out in his mind. Room 309: an argument between two gay guys. Room 312: an old movie, possibly the remake of Superman with the black guy in the lead. Room 340: some extreme fucking and spanking. Room 354: a party, but the language was Third World.
"This is it," Pavia said, stepping up to Room 360. Its welcome panel flashed a staticky La bienvenida and cast his face in various shades of electric red.
Chaco drew his Light-Force. Pavia followed, but his was an older model -- the kind anyone with connections could get on the Black Net.
"I never saw that," Chaco said, gesturing.
Pavia grunted approvingly, and they waited for the room's system to announce them.
"I don't think it's working," Chaco said.
Pavia rapped his fist against the door. "Marl?!" He waited, then knocked again. "Marl, this is Pavia and Chaco!"
No response.
"This is bullshit." Pavia stepped back and prepped to unleash another kick. Chaco moved to the side of the door and pressed his back against the wall. He wanted to give him a wide berth, but the door buzzed and slid opened.
"Deja?!" Chaco exclaimed. "What the hell?"
"Now listen, Sonny," Deja said, backing up. "Before you go off, hear me out."
Pavia charged around Chaco into the center of the room. It was deceptively large, and they were standing in a quasi-living room. Off to the left was a hallway that led to a bedroom. The drapes were drawn, and the air felt like the HVAC had been disengaged for at least a month. Deja was standing on the other side of the living room, having backed against a small table. Her palms were up in an appeal for reasonableness and understanding.
"Deja!" Chaco said, holstering his Light-Force, "what are you doing here? I told you to stay out of this. We're not screwing around. This is a serious situation. Corazon's life may be at stake, and we don't know who or what we're dealing with."
"Ms. Moriarty," Pavia said sternly. His Light-Force was still drawn and leveled at her. "Where is Mrs. Goya?"
Chaco stepped up. "You can lower that," he said.
Pavia ignored him, his jaw gnashing fiercely.
"Hey, Pavia, lower the gun. That's an order."
Pavia leaned in, and Chaco noticed that the gun didn't waver. "This isn't your jurisdiction, agent."
Chaco stepped back. "The hell it isn't."
"Oscar!" Corazon appeared in the hallway that led to the bedroom. Her inflection sounded like she had addressed a family pet that had just lunged at a guest.
"Kita!" Pavia said. He turned without losing his aim on Deja.
"Oscar, dear," Corazon said, "I'm all right, see?" She stepped into the room, her arms spread. "Now put that silly gun away."
Pavia obediently lowered the gun to his side. Chaco, now about five feet from him and completely on edge, removed his Light-Force.
"Are you all right?" Pavia asked, his attention firmly on Corazon.
"Of course, Oscar. Why would I not be?"
"We believe this Marl person may be part of a more organized, global action."
"In a sense, Mr. Pavia, you are correct." Marl emerged from the darkened hallway behind Corazon. In the soft light, Chaco could see he was wearing the same coat as always, but now its pattern was a monochromatic Gaussian noise. It reminded him of the static he had seen on his grandfather's silicon chip-based television when he had flipped through the dead channels.
Pavia slowly raised his gun at Marl.
"I can assure you," Marl continued as he came around Corazon, "this action will be of great significance."
"Step away from her," Pavia said.
"I don't think this is really any of your affair, Oscar."
"Shut the hell up, Marl -- or whatever your name is -- and step away from her ... now." Pavia engaged the Light-Force's loading sequence; its whine lacerated the tension.
Chaco engaged his own Light-Force, and its sequencer's whine mixed in. He leveled his gun at Pavia.
Marl casually regarded Pavia's Light-Force. A faint smile formed at the edges of his mouth.
"Oscar, please," Corazon pleaded. "For God's sake, Marl is not going to hurt--"
"Kita!" Pavia exclaimed. The sides of his scalp were now moist with sweat. "Please, listen to me. This ... this clone is dangerous. Get away from him!"
Corazon stepped back as if by pure reflex.
Marl turned to speak to her. "If you wish to join them, I won't stop you."
Corazon was now about five feet directly behind Marl. Chaco hoped Pavia had sized up the situation's tactical issues.
"Go on," Marl said to Corazon. "It's all right."
Corazon folded her arms and defiantly shook her head.
Pavia raised the Light-Force directly at Marl's chest.
Marl casually considered it and then leveled his attention at Pavia. His look seemed to have the weight of the world behind it, which Chaco was beginning to suspect it might.
"She's made her choice, Oscar," Marl said, his voice an octave lower.
Chaco noticed Pavia's hand was shaking slightly. "Don't do it," he said.
"Fuck it," Pavia replied.
The Light-Force's flash burned the room's features into a violent blur of ball lightning. In the second before Chaco's ocular membranes activated, his brain seemed to seize up, as if what he had just witnessed was too terrible to process.
"My God," he said as the horrific after-image of the Light-Force striking Corazon burned through his conscience.
Chaco heard, rather than saw, Pavia's gun hit the carpet. The dense weave absorbed much of the noise, though he thought the weapon landed somewhere off his right foot. The room was filled with the sweet smell he remembered from the academy. The floor shook, and he slowly opened his eyes, praying that the negative image burned onto his retinas wasn't real. But as his ocular membranes retracted, he saw that Pavia had dropped to his knees and was sitting on his heels. He had his hands to his mouth and was rocking in sync to what sounded like inhuman moans.
Chaco heard himself say, "Oh no," but he couldn't recall the words actually forming in his mind. Nothing felt quite real, as if he were viewing the whole scene from a distance in a near-death experience, watching himself from above and behind rather than experiencing the scene through his own eyes.
A barking sound edged into his awareness and hovered there, repeating. Gradually, he realized Deja was screaming "Oh, my God," over and over again, but everything came across as one word in quick, sharp gasps.
Their eyes met.
"Sonny ..." she began, but the rest came out in high-pitched squeaks that only captured fragments of the words. He thought she said: What are we going to do?
He looked around, but Marl was gone. The reality of the event punched Chaco in the gut, and his stomach rolled. He walked across the room and took Deja into his arms. She buried her head and cried into his chest. He held her tightly, wishing there was something he could say. She looked up, her cheeks slick with tears.
Chaco began to speak, but stopped himself.
Deja briefly glanced where Corazon had been.
Jesus.
"Sonny, what ..." She couldn't finish.
Chaco had seen the results of a Light-Force discharge on a lab animal during a training exercise at the academy, but nothing could have prepared him for the debiolization of a human being. He couldn't help but stare at the gelatinous puddle that had been Corazon Kita Goya. It pooled in the threshold of the hallway looking remarkably like a spilled drink. It was hard for him to imagine that, only seconds earlier, it had been a living being. "There's nothing we can do," he said.
"Oh, Cor ..." Deja broke from his embrace and approached the puddle.
"Don't touch it!" Chaco and his fellow trainees had watched a vid playback of the test firing. Even enhanced slow motion couldn't adequately capture the horror of debiolization, and the residual effects could last for several minutes.
"Gatito," Pavia moaned in shock, his arms stretched toward the puddle. Chaco could only feel pity for the man. He walked over and knelt, but Pavia didn't seem to register his presence.
"Oscar," he said softly, "we've got to get out of here. If Marl comes back--"
Pavia whimpered something in a mix of Spanglish and street talk. Chaco could only pick out a few words -- "my love" and "little one."
"Oscar," he said more firmly. "We have to get out of here."
Pavia turned and looked at Chaco as if he were dreaming. His eyes were filled with tears, and his hands were trembling.
"Come on," Chaco ordered. "You know we have to." The case was now seriously beyond just fucked up and had entered a very dangerous stage. He looked about again and wondered if Marl would suddenly materialize. What the hell would he do then?
Pavia composed himself and struggled to his feet. Chaco picked up Pavia's gun and handed it to him. Pavia regarded the weapon for a moment before he slipped it under his coat. He glanced at the puddle, and a hardening descended over him, as if another personality had taken over. Chaco figured it was the veteran agent's years of dealing with death that had finally kicked in.
Deja, still squatting by the puddle, mournfully looked up.
"We need to leave now," Chaco said.
"I know," Pavia uttered while he tentatively adjusted his fedora.
"Come on, Dej," Chaco said.
"Sonny ..." She looked at the puddle and back. "Shouldn't we say a prayer or something?"
He began to agree, but thought better of it. "I don't feel comfortable hanging around. Marl could come back." Chaco didn't really know what to do if Marl returned. His training had never prepared him for a case like this, and he was beginning to think going to someone in DoD wasn't such a bad idea, after all. He felt the stares of Deja and Pavia. "Lets get out of here," he said finally and slipped his gun back into its holster.
"But shouldn't we, ah, clean her up?"
"No! Please don't touch it. It'll be dangerous for at least another couple of minutes."
Deja quickly backed away from the puddle and drew near Chaco. She wrapped her arm around his waist, and he could feel she was still shaking.
They all gave their attention to the darkening wet spot in the carpet.
"Good bye, Cor," Deja said softly. "I'll miss you."
\*
The Thin's hydoshower didn't seem to be helping. Chaco's gut was all knotted up, and there was a nagging reflux at the back of his throat.
"Increase pressure," he ordered.
The shower responded, and Chaco eagerly accepted its superheated punches. After 20 minutes, though, he still felt like shit.
"Off!"
He took a towel from its hook and mechanically began drying himself. He was present, but not really. The ride back to The Thin had been silent. Pavia seemed in a daze and didn't even acknowledge Chaco and Deja when they stepped from his car. Chaco's mind kept ebbing back to the after-image of Corazon and what his next moves should be.
"Sonny?" Deja appeared at the bathroom door wrapped in one of the hotel's lavish bathrobes. Its thick collar cradled her head like angel's wings.
"Yeah?"
She looked at him with such care it almost hurt. "What are you feeling?"
Chaco wrapped the towel around his waist. "To tell you the truth, I'm pretty numb right now." He leaned against the glass hydroshower wall and rubbed what little water was left from his face. "I'm not totally sure what happened. I thought Marl was standing in front of Corazon.... I mean, one second he's there, the next, he's gone? I don't get it. And what the hell was Pavia thinking, firing like that? We have no idea what we're dealing with here. Hitting Marl could have killed all of us!" He cinched the towel tighter. "I don't know what's going on any more. If Marl let this happen, I don't understand the purpose of Corazon's death. And how did he just disappear? That kind of technology doesn't exist. What the hell is going on here?!" He stormed past Deja into the bedroom.
She followed. "Maybe Marl had a reason--"
"A reason?!" Chaco stopped in the middle of the room. "What the hell could he possibly gain from letting her die? If he's an alien, he sure as hell didn't come in peace."
Deja settled onto the bed and tucked her knees against her chest. "Maybe he's got a higher purpose," she offered. "One we can't understand."
"You talk like you're defending him. The last time I checked, wasn't Corazon your friend?"
Deja cowered and turned away.
"Oh, baby, I'm ... I'm sorry." Chaco sat on the bed and tried to comfort her.
Deja leaned back into his hug. "I think she was, Sonny. She was so lonely, and I guess she felt like she could really open up with me."
Chaco held Deja, and for a brief moment her pain was kept at bay.
"What do you think is going to happen to Oscar?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. "The good news -- if there is any -- is that since Corazon was illegal, she technically never existed.... I mean as a clone. I doubt there's an official death record for the original Kita Goya. So as far as the grid's concerned, she's still living. Goya could just make another one and let his PR people spin whatever they wanted. But how Oscar's going to explain the death of Corazon to Goya is anyone's guess. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes."
"Sonny ... do you think Oscar was in love with her?"
"I think so. Or at least, he sure reacted like he was."
Deja stared reflectively. "That's so sad."
"Yes, it is. I can't imagine doing--"
Deja squeezed him. "Shh. Don't talk like that."
Chaco kissed her forehead. "Let's get some sleep." He threw the towel to the floor and slid under the covers.
Deja removed her robe and clicked off the light. She nestled into his favorite position: her leg rucked over his waist with her head buried into his shoulder. She felt good -- so warm and fresh from her shower -- and Chaco had come to love the way her hair smelled. It conjured feelings of security, although he didn't know why.
The room's darkness seemed absolute, and sleep was slow to come. Since Chaco rarely remembered his dreams, sleep was nothing more than the dead space between closing and opening his eyes. Usually, it represented freedom from the stress of working for one of the world's most powerful police organizations. Tonight was different, however. All he could feel was a predacious fear lurking near the boundary of his soul. He gently squeezed Deja, and she moaned softly.
"Dear God," he whispered into the room's void, "please don't let me dream tonight."
"You want another hit, honey?"
Gives-a-Shit shifted the tray to her other hand. Her t-shirt this morning was promotional swag for an L.A. band named Thickboys. Their tattooed heads appeared too big for their bodies; their necks looked like blobs of solder from a bad welding job. It wasn't a bioshirt, which was a relief to Deja. If a place had more than a dozen people wearing them in a small space -- such as Bar of Soap -- it could get real old, real fast. She just wasn't up for that in-your-face crap this early ... especially this morning.
"Hmm?" Deja belatedly replied, glancing up from her Netpad.
"Do you want another one?" Gives-a-Shit was pointing at Deja's empty coffee cup.
"Ah, no. I'm fine." Deja resumed her news scan, but so far there was no mention of anything unusual at a hotel in Harlem.
"What's the matter? Rough night?"
Deja looked up again, wanting nothing more than to be alone. "You could say that."
"Me, too. I got so wasted I don't remember half of it. How 'bout you?"
"I wish I could forget all of it."
"Been there." Gives-a-Shit moved on to a trashed four top of club kids near the dryers. Earlier, Deja had watched them out of the corner of her eye as they wolfed down their breakfasts. Judging by appearances, they had raged all night, and when Deja walked to the bathroom, the faint smell of honey confirmed they were heavy riders. Not to mention the tiny metal doors they had pierced in their shoulders.... That's where they injected their Jack. The sight of them made her skin crawl.
Deja put down her Netpad by the plate of miniature bread samples and resumed pushing her oatmeal around. She had already blended its milk and brown sugar into a fine paste that resembled the wall putty she had used to patch her old apartment in Miami. She made a half-hearted attempt to eat.
"So, where's your better half?" Gives-a-Shit asked, sliding up to the table. Her tray was loaded with the carnage of the club kids' breakfasts.
"He had a rough night, too, so I let him sleep in. He kind of deserved it."
"I think men would sleep all day if we let them."
Deja politely nodded at this viscid declaration and pretended to resume eating.
"Well, I'll leave you to your breakfast." Gives-a-Shit turned and sauntered toward the counter, balancing the loaded tray deftly on her fingertips.
Deja picked up the Netpad, logged into the New York Times lifestyle section, and dutifully swallowed some oatmeal. Skimming the articles, her attention landed on a fashion segment highlighting the new fall collections from Paris. She intently studied the pictorial and tried to lose herself in the images, but the previous night's horror wouldn't let go. Deja wished her mind could become as vacuous as the models' expressions. She unconsciously took another spoonful of oatmeal. A gust of cool air passed through the booth.
"May I join you?"
Deja looked up with a start and almost choked.
Marl was standing beside her booth. He had on the same coat -- its pattern calm -- and sported his stupid smile, which Deja would have slapped off his face if it weren't for the fear that had seized her. She sank into the booth as far as she could go.
"What do you want?" she asked suspiciously.
"To join you. May I?"
"Would it matter if I said no?"
"It would, but I know you won't. You want answers, don't you?"
Deja felt an odd mix of fear and anger towards Marl. Here, sitting across from her and looking like nobody special, was possibly the planet's first true "close encounter." But he also was the cause of Corazon's death. Although Deja felt she should be freaking in his presence, all that filled her was an intense hatred. She angrily folded her arms as Marl slid into the booth.
"You got some galactic balls coming in here," she said.
Marl cocked his head like he didn't get her meaning.
"What kind of insane world do you come from, and how could you let Cor be killed?" Deja felt her voice rising, but she didn't care.
Marl's face went blank. "It was unfortunate that--"
"Unfortunate?! Unfortunate? If I had a Light-Force, I'd reduce you to a puddle of bio crap. Then we'd see who be--"
"I need to speak with you, but not like this." Marl's tone was even, calculated.
Fuming, Deja leaned onto the table. "Why should I?"
"Because," Marl said, "you need to understand."
"The only thing I need is to get the hell away from--"
"Find the best Virtgear you can, and meet me in the same NSA Net conference room where I met Mr. Tsukahara. And let's not tell Sonny."
Deja clenched her fists. "What if I don't want to?"
"I know you do."
"And just how will I find that kind of Virtgear?"
"You'll know how," Marl said flatly, and the dumbass grin returned. "Be there in three hours."
"Honey?" Deja remotely registered off to her right. The sound repeated.
Gives-a-Shit was standing at the opening to the booth, her hands on her wide hips. "Who the 'H' are you talking to?" Two other people stood behind her, each with their laundry baskets tucked under their arms. They were craning around Gives-a-Shit.
"Huh?" Deja said, disoriented. Suddenly she felt nauseous, like the time she had done VirtScape when her boyfriend had altered the program. She had materialized high over the Grand Canyon and almost thrown up inside her face gear.
"Girl, you were chatting up a storm," Gives-a-Shit said. "And by the sound of it, you were in some kind of argument. Are you all right?"
The other side of the booth was empty. "Y-Yeah," Deja replied.
Gives-a-Shit nodded. "Well, if you need anything -- like an extra coffee for your friend -- just yell." She laughed and walked away. The two others looked Deja over, shrugged to each other, and followed Gives-a-Shit to the counter.
Deja's heart rate couldn't quite return to normal, although she was regaining the ability to think. Her better self said to run back and wake Chaco up. But for some strange reason, Deja still couldn't overcome the sensation that Marl's intentions were probably for the better. Even though it was killing her to have Cor gone, she couldn't deny that her death might have played a part in Marl's "master plan" to fix the world. In that case, it did seem like she had a duty to see what Marl wanted. And when did she ever listen to her better self anyway? She picked up her Netpad and entered a number.
"Who the hell is calling me this early?" The image on the Netpad's tiny screen jumped in frames, like the person answering was using an old style vidphone.
"Bartas? It's me, Deja. From the other night?"
"Oh, yeah, Oscar's friend. How could I forget such a pretty face? What can I do for you at this ungodly hour?"
She hesitated. "I need your help."
\*
"I haven't heard from Oscar since you were here," Bartas said while he led Deja down the hallway to the room filled with Netgear. He coughed. "Did you ever find that woman you were looking for, the one Oscar lost?"
"Yes," Deja said.
"How did it go?"
"Not well."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." He coughed again, this time a series of hacks that almost made Deja's ribs hurt. "I trust nothing bad happened," he said, recovering.
Deja shrugged, hoping he'd stop with the questions. He did, and led her into the room.
"Okay," Bartas said and folded his arms. "Why do you want to go in?" The robe had short sleeves, and Deja could see that there was barely enough muscle on his arms for them to function. They reminded her of the puny chicken wings floating in the egg broth at Kim's buffet on 8th.
"Because, ah, Sonny wants to meet and show me something."
"And why do you need to use my Virtgear?"
"Because I want to surprise Sonny. It's kind of ... personal."
Bartas looked Deja over in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. She was used to guys checking her out, but Bartas's gaze lingered a little too long on her breasts, and he had an air about him that went beyond sexual. "Really?" he said. "You two aren't, you know, going to one of those sex sites are you? You understand your boyfriend won't have the same sensations you will."
"Ah, well ... it's not quite like that," Deja said. "Sonny wants me to meet him in the NSA conference room."
"You mean the one where we were last time?"
Deja nodded, not really knowing what to say next.
"I don't want to know," Bartas said. "You've come all this way, so it must be pretty important. Besides, I'm up, and I've got nothing better to do.... I'm always a sucker for this kind of crap. Come on. Hop up here, and we'll get you hooked up. I still have the coordinates in my system." He patted the virt chair Chaco had used.
Deja tentatively climbed up and settled back.
"Have you used Virtual High Density much?"
"Oh, yeah," Deja lied.
"Well, this is like VHD, but on steroids." Bartas laughed and stepped over to the control console. He fiddled with a few interface pads. "Okay, that should do it. Now, sit back and just relax. Remember, the more you fight, the harder it grabs."
Deja settled against the cool biofabric. Its organics quivered beneath her like a trillion fingertips until the chair had completely processed her body's shape.
Bartas sat at the console and picked up a handheld Virtgear unit.
"Are you going in with me?" Deja asked, alarmed
"Hell yes. You think I'd let a novice jump up on my equipment and ride in alone? Believe me, it's nothing I've never seen before."
"I said this is kind of personal."
"You want in or not?"
"Fine. We'll do it your way. But remember, this is between Sonny and me. If you do anything--"
"Easy, young lady. I'm old enough to be your daddy. Besides, with my condition, a hurricane couldn't get me up. Just go and have a good time, or whatever you want to do. I'll set it just to monitor your vitals. I won't have any sensory presence."
For some reason, Deja didn't quite believe him.
Bartas spun back to the console. "On my mark."
Deja closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
"Three, two ... one," he said, and the chair attacked her.
Deja had done the cyberspace thing before (who hadn't?), but never like this. All of her senses were working with an amplification that bordered on painful. The experience had a surreal quality, like an intense dream after eating pizza late at night. She ran her fingers across the top of the NSA conference table.
"Different, isn't it?" said a voice inside her head.
Deja quickly surveyed the room. "Bartas?"
"Who'd you think it was?"
"This is amazing," she said, inspecting the various surfaces. "How did you come up with this?"
"I've had a lot of time on my hands lately, if you know what I mean."
"You should patent this. You'd be rich."
"That's the idea."
Deja picked up a pitcher of water and a glass from a credenza. She filled the glass and tentatively raised it to her lips.
"Go ahead," Bartas urged.
She did. "Oh, my God. It's like I really swallowed the water!"
Bartas laughed and then began coughing.
"You okay?"
"Don't mind me. I'm going to exit here, but I'll still be in the system monitoring your vitals. I can't see or hear you, so you two can do your thing ... or whatever you want to do."
"Thanks, Bartas. I owe you one."
"No, you don't." He hacked. "I'm just glad to see someone using the chair. Enjoy yourself." His coughing faded from her mind.
Deja walked to the opposite side of the room and studied a landscape painting. Its colors of a French countryside were so vibrant the oil seemed be crawling across the canvas.
"Hello."
Deja turned and found Marl at the head of the conference table. She defiantly folded her arms. "So ... I'm here. Now what?"
Marl's coat was rippling with the hues of the Caribbean Sea. She had been once, years ago, to this island -- Tortilla something -- with a guy she had met through CeCe. He was tall and lean and had flaming red hair, which at the time Deja had found sexy. He worked in the government but never mentioned which branch, and when she had pressed for an answer, he'd just smiled like he was about to sell her a used car. The place where they had stayed was right on the water.
"Thank you" Marl said, his voice having the same flatness as it had at Bar of Soap. "I know this was difficult for you on such short notice." His coat seemed in cadence with his speech. It was a strange effect, and if Deja looked at it long enough, she became a little queasy. "You're here," he continued, "because you want to understand why I let Corazon perish."
Deja nodded angrily.
"This may be hard for you to comprehend."
"Try me."
"It's imperative that I understand what Sonny's assistant calls the 'chi' of your world, in order to heal it."
"You've lost me a little."
"Chi, Deja, is a very appropriate word in this context. It's the Chinese name for the vital force that enlivens all matter -- the pre-atomic constructs of energy."
"Get to the point."
"In order to understand your world, I have to understand what drives its people." Marl began to slowly walk around the large table. "And what drives humans are their emotions. No matter their race, culture, or socioeconomic level, all humans base their decisions around their emotional point of view. Why do you think your planet is in such a state? Essentially, your world's emotions are out of balance."
An image of Corazon laughing at the bar at Desperate Sense flashed across Deja's mind. "Yeah, but I still don't understand why you had to let Cor die."
Marl stopped at table with a vase of gladiolas on it. He passed a finger along a leaf. "Grief," he said as if it pained him to state the obvious. His coat flared slightly.
"What are you talking about?"
"Grief, along with anger, sadness, shame. Death harbors a whole host of emotions for your species, and I had to experience them."
"But did you have to let her die?" Deja asked. "Couldn't you have just done that thing you do, you know, make it happen in our minds, instead of for real?" She felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
"No," Marl said coldly.
"Bullshit."
Marl thought for a moment. "I needed genuineness."
"You got that!"
Marl resumed walking. "Corazon was special. Her view of the world was ... unique. She was the crucial link for me to understand the most important emotion on your planet."
"Which one?"
"Love." Marl stopped again and smiled, but not his usual stupid grin. Deja felt this one came from his soul, if he had one.
"So now you're telling me you loved her?" Deja was growing suspicious.
"Not in the sense that you'd understand." Marl started pacing again. "I've experienced most of the emotional states that can be reached by your species. And with Corazon, I reached a level of understanding that I believe only a few on your planet ever achieve. But we lacked a certain ... element." He stopped one chair from her, and his gaze washed over her chest.
Deja took a step back and bumped against the credenza. The water sloshed in the pitcher, and her stomach felt like it had tightened into a knot the size of a baseball. "W-what element is that?"
Marl's eyes narrowed. "Lust."
Chaco rolled over, and his head slid off the pillow. He groped for Deja through the dark.
"Dej?"
The only sound that returned was his own blood coursing through his ears. He glanced at the clock. 8:35 a.m.
"Shit," he said under his breath. "Deja?!"
Nothing.
"Question."
"Yes, how may I help you?" asked the room's HDI system.
"Is the guest, Deja Moriarty, in the hotel?"
A pause. "The guest, Deja Moriarty, is not in the hotel. She left the property at approximately 5:32 a.m. this morning."
Chaco sat up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his face. Goddamn it. He grabbed his coat off the chair by the bed and pulled out his Netpad. He punched in a number sequence. Yoichi Tsukahara's face pixeled up. He was in their NSA lab and appeared to be alone.
"Yes, Chacosan?"
"Tsuka, I need for you to find Deja Moriarty on the grid. Her ID code will be in the Goya case file. Access it through the internal network using the password M-I-M-I."
"Yes, sir." Chaco watched Tsukahara roll to a console and scan through the system. The time it took was killing him.
"Tsuka, let's hustle it up."
Tsukahara quickly rolled back. "She is in the state of New Jersey, sir, at 439 North Adams--"
"That's okay, I know the address." He thought for a second. "I need you to meet me in one of the NSA's Net conference rooms. Use the same coordinates we used before."
Tsukahara bowed.
"And, hey, Tsuka. This is really important, understand?"
"Yes, sir!" He bowed deeper.
Chaco tapped in another number, and the face of Oscar Pavia filled the screen. He didn't respond.
"Morning," Chaco said. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"Time is what I have a lot of now." Pavia's attention was focused on something he was doing out of the camera's view field.
"Why's that?"
"I've joined the ranks of the unemployed."
"Sorry to hear that. How did it go down with Goya?"
"As expected."
"What did you finally end up telling him?"
"Not the truth. I wouldn't be speaking to you if I had." Pavia walked away from the screen and into a small living room. He picked up a glass of orange juice from a circular coffee table and returned. His mass distorted at edges of the screen. He finally faced the camera. "Goya's in Mexico City. I told him that Corazon died in an attempted kidnapping. Crossfire accident, you know. In my business, extortion is a way of life. I blamed it on one of the cartels. Goya's got so many enemies it could be any one of a dozen factions. My replacement is working on finding out who did it. He'll be fucking with that for months, and by then I'll be long gone from this shit-hole country. Goya wasn't too broken up about it. I guess he figures he can make himself another one, probably better this time."
"Hey, Oscar?"
"Yeah?"
"I think Deja's with your brother."
Pavia's drink stopped short of his mouth; he frowned over the edge of the glass. "Why?"
"If I had to guess ... Marl."
Pavia shook his head. "What is she doing?"
"Something stupid, that's for sure. I gotta get down there, and I was hoping you'd join me."
Pavia set the drink aside. "You go. I've got to take care of something."
"Oscar, don't go after Marl."
"I have to, Sonny."
"Look, I think I know how you felt for Corazon, but--"
Pavia shot him a look.
"Okay, maybe I don't. But I do know that Marl is in another league. I'm still not sure what happened. He must have been holoprojecting or something. And I can't get my head around why he did what he did. What was there to gain?"
"I think it was about me."
"What? That's absurd."
"Sonny, I've made a lot of enemies over the years."
"No, if that were the case, why did he approach Deja with that bizarre alien story?"
"You don't understand. The people I have dealt with are ruthless. Cross them, and they'll jack with you from all angles. They'll even kill the family of your brother if they thought it would get to you ... psychologically."
This last statement sent a shiver through Chaco. His mind flashed on the file of Bartas's family. "No," Chaco said, shaking his head, "I don't think it's like that. This clone is way beyond anything I've ever seen or studied. Whatever he is, I'm beginning to consider Tsuka's story."
"Sonny, come on."
"No, I mean it.... Something's not right here."
"Look, I don't really care what he -- or it -- is. All I know is that I have to defend Corazon's memory. It's my nature."
Chaco sighed. "Watch yourself. We have no idea what we're getting into. By the time I get to Bartas's, this situation could be a real bucket of assholes."
Pavia chuckled.
"What?" Chaco asked, suddenly realizing he had been nervously pulling at the patch of hair below his lip.
"Nothing. My father used to use that phrase. It just made me think."
"My dad did, too."
Both men studied each other.
"You be careful, Sonny," Pavia said.
Chaco took another pull. "You, too. I've got a bad feeling about this."
30. SOMETHING FOR LAO-TZU TO PONDER?
"If you know so much about us, then you know that in my culture, we have a little thing called morals," Deja said, edging down the credenza.
"You wouldn't give of yourself to save your planet?" Marl asked, stepping closer.
Deja stopped and put her hands up. "All right, that's it. Bartas!"
"He won't be able to help you."
Deja's nerves spiked. "Listen, Marl," she said while she sidestepped a chair, "I'd be the first to help our screwed-up world, but I've got my limits."
Tsukahara's image suddenly formed on the other side of the table.
"Yoichi!" Deja exclaimed.
"Ms. Moriarty," he said surprised, and bowed.
Deja ran around the table and came up to Tsukahara. She mouthed "That's him."
"Pardon?" Tsukahara asked.
Marl said something to Tsukahara in what Deja thought was Japanese. Tsukahara responded, and they conversed for a moment.
Deja looked from Tsukahara to Marl. "Hey, what are you two saying?"
"I was just telling Yoichi how good it was to finally meet him ... face-to-face," Marl said.
"Ms. Moriarty," Tsukahara began. "Marl is the presence that I told Agent Chaco about. The one who spoke to me ... about certain things ... in my thoughts."
"Yeah," Deja said, "he has a way of doing that."
"Yoichi knows all about my mission," Marl said, "and he probably knows better than most how screwed up," his eyes moved to Deja, "this world can be. Don't you, Yoichi?"
Tsukahara averted Marl's gaze and nodded.
Marl suddenly approached Tsukahara, passing Deja like she didn't exist. He stopped about two feet in front him, and Deja could see an immense discrepancy between their virtual forms. Tsukahara looked like an ancient video signal compared to Marl's perfection. The difference was shocking.
"Curious," Marl said, studying Tsukahara's pixilated form. "Often, your species is at its best when it's at its worst. Something for Lao-Tzu to ponder, eh, Yoichi?" He took a step back. "It was good to speak with you again. I hope we talk soon."
Tsukahara shot a startled look at Deja and began to protest, but his image de-pixeled and was gone.
"Now," Marl said, turning, "weren't you about to help your planet?"
"This ride is gonna cost you a bundle, pal."
"I know," Chaco said, watching the gray mass of buildings that canyoned the Interway blur by the passenger window.
The cab driver glanced back over the half-raised plexi. "You're lucky to catch me this early. I usually get off around seven." He looked again. "What's eatin' you?"
"Got a lot on my mind."
"I never heard from you after I dropped you off at Heaven. What happened to that girl you was tailin'?"
"That night got a little, ah ... complex."
"I hope it was good complex."
"It wasn't."
"That sucks." The driver returned his attention to the road.
\*
"This is it. Want me to wait for ya?"
"Yeah," Chaco said, "but it might take a while."
"Don't worry. I still got your card in my system." The cab driver looked out the windshield at the rows of storage units. "Who the hell would live in one of these?"
"Nobody you'd want to know."
A light rain was falling as Chaco approached Bartas's front door. He pressed the buzzer and waited. No answer. He tried again. Still nothing. Finally, he called up the NSA's field program for residential security systems and held his Netpad to the face of the lock. Still no response. It was an old palm-print lock that apparently would take a few passes for the program to find Bartas's records and reproduce the digital code for the lock's hard drive to recognize. After a fourth pass, it clicked, and the deadbolts released. The porch light flickered.
Chaco slowly opened the door and was hit with that sick smell, but it was even more pungent now. The repeated failed calls to Bartas made him suspicious, and his guard was about to go through the roof. He cautiously edged through the maze of boxes that crowded the front door.
"Hello? Bartas? Deja?"
Silence.
Chaco removed his Light-Force and crept down the dark hallway towards the Net room. At the Academy, he always had trouble with interior tactical simulations. Something about the restricted movement made it hard for him to concentrate. His thoughts began to wander to Bartas, his sickness, and his dead family.
Come on. Concentrate.
Chaco edged up to the open doorway of the Net room and put his back against the wall. He engaged the Light-Force's sequencer and held the weapon loosely, as he had been trained. If he gripped it too tightly, it might go off if he got spooked. And right now, he was pretty fucking spooked. He slowly peeked around the doorframe and saw Bartas slumped in a chair at the main console. He was wearing a different robe than before, and his head was wrapped in a standard Virtgear unit. White spittle clung to the corners of his mouth. He looked dead, except one of his arms hung down the side of the chair, and his fingers were twitching. Even that didn't mean much. If a person died while virt-in, the neuro-connections would continue to feed a signal that could cause muscles to twitch.
Chaco fully entered the room and spotted Deja in Bartas's VirtChair. Her body was entwined with connector tentacles, and her fists were clenched as if she were in some kind of pain. He noticed a large wet spot at her crotch, which was easy to see thanks to her bright green lycra shorts that he liked so much. Chaco had learned that people rarely pissed their pants when they were virt-in, but Bartas's chair made the experience hyper-real, and according to the manuals, people only pissed when they were scared out of their wits.
Bartas's pulse was low but steady, and he reeked of sickness. Chaco inspected the console and saw that the conference room actually had three occupants: Bartas, Deja, and an "unknown," but the readings for the unknown weren't in a range that would define life.
Deja groaned and arched her back. Chaco approached the chair and reached for one of the tentacles, which reacted by tightening around her arm. He desperately wanted to help Deja, but a radical separation from Virtgear might kill her. He didn't know enough about Bartas's chair to risk that. The only way to help her was to get into the Net meeting room. Chaco searched for another Virtgear unit but couldn't find one. He walked back to Bartas and eyed his unit.
"Sorry man," he said and gripped the unit by its main body. Its tentacles quivered. He began to pull, but the unit clamped tighter around Bartas's head.
Deja groaned again.
Chaco yanked with all of his weight, and the unit slipped off, leaving behind a series of ugly scratches on Bartas's face and neck. When the last tentacle broke free, they all retracted into the housing. Bartas's head snapped back, and his chair rolled into a computer stack. The impact knocked Bartas forward. He landed on the floor in a crumpled heap.
Chaco pulled the chair over and sat at the console. Bartas's conference room marker was gone, leaving Deja's and the unknown's.
"Shit," he said and slapped the Virtgear unit to his forehead.
As Chaco's vision faded in, he was greeted by an uncompromisingly blinding radiance that burned away much of the conference room's detail. Virtual reality had a way of tricking the mind, especially when it came to pain, and he thought he felt his ocular membranes automatically close. Peering through the glare, he could barely make out Deja and Marl. They were across the room at the end of the conference table, and Marl's coat was glowing like a small sun. Deja had her back to Chaco and was in silhouette. It took him a second to realize she was completely naked.
Marl was standing in front of her. In the glow, Chaco could only make out parts of his face. His eyes were closed, and his hand was pressed against the center of Deja's chest. The whole scene made something boil over in Chaco -- a primitive need to protect, but driven by hate. He tried to lunge towards them, but something prevented his lower body from working.
"Get away from her!" he yelled, fighting the force that trapped him.
Marl didn't respond.
"Get the hell away from her!"
Marl remained silent, but the glow from his coat appeared to flare slightly.
"I swear to God, if you hurt her in any way, I'll kill you!"
Marl removed his hand, and Deja collapsed into one of the tall, black conference chairs. It slowly turned, and Chaco gasped.
With one arm caught behind her like a rag doll, Deja looked like a victim from one of the vids Chaco had seen in his Intro to Homicide class. She had the freakish expression of one whose last moments were filled with terror: the eyes wide with fear, and the blank stare of death. A dark handprint between her breasts stood out like an old-fashioned brand. The light from Marl's coat instantly vanished; the room regained its normal level of detail.
"Goddamn it, you fucking son-of-a-bitch!" Chaco screamed.
Expressionless, Marl slowly opened his eyes.
"I'll kill you. I swear, as long as it takes me, I'll find a way!"
"Sonny," Marl said calmly as he began walking toward him around the table, "this is only her virtual form." He stopped and passed his hand across Deja's hair before he continued towards Chaco. "She'll be all right. A little sore maybe, but she's a strong woman."
Chaco felt himself dangerously close to the edge of his sanity. "Fuck!" he exclaimed, spittle flying. He struggled against the invisible bands that held him. "If we were in the real world, I'd reduce you to a fucking puddle!"
Marl stopped within inches of Chaco's face and began studying him like a rare piece of art. The detail in Marl's virtual form was astonishing; it reminded Chaco of the first time he had ever witnessed Alto Definition: no pixel gradation, just a continuous image that appeared wherever the targeting gun beamed it.
Marl leaned closer. "You truly want to kill me," he said. "You're so filled with hate that the emotion has taken over some of your higher brain functions." He raised his hand to Chaco's chest. "I have to experience this."
The instant Marl's fingertips contacted Chaco's pixeled form, the conference room fell away. He found himself standing on the stairs of his parent's old mobile home, facing their yard filled with abandoned cars his dad planned to someday strip down for their organics. It never happened. His mother had finally sold them to the strange bearded guy who lived on the other side of the transport park. That man had given Chaco the heeby-jeebies, always looking at his mom funny, like he wanted to date her or something. After his dad had died, the man had come around often and said really stupid things like how a boy should have a man to look up to. As if Chaco would have ever looked up to an asshole like him. The guy had shot himself a year later, making love to Mister Sixteen-gauge after an evening of binge drinking. But that was western Oklahoma at its trashiest, and it took the Marine Corps to get Chaco the hell out of there.
The sun was setting, and the sky was filled with brilliant amber striations created by hard-blowing wind and red clay. Chaco missed sunsets on the plains. They had a sensibility you could taste. But if anyone ever asked him where he was from, he always said Tulsa. Who the hell wanted to be from a place called Hooker?
The screen door opened behind him. Anywhere else, that sound wouldn't mean much, but here in the callused hell lovingly referred to as the Panhandle, it usually meant that class was in session, and his dad -- flush with Jack and stoked as a Banty rooster -- was preparing another lesson on the hard life to his only son. Chaco felt the hairs on his arms rise in what his grandmother used to call goose pimples, though he never understood exactly what the phrase meant. He instinctually flinched and turned.
"Hello, Sonny," Marl said from the top step. He let go of the door, and it shut with a crack.
Chaco stepped off the last stair and backed into the middle of the yard, or what his parents had called a yard. In reality, it was an encrusted patch of caliche-stained earth that was home to three early BioBugs and a late-model ethanol burner. Dust kicked around his feet, which he noticed were donned with the last pair of Tony Lamas he'd ever owned. He had on the jeans and shirt he had bought with that cute waitress. God, he had loved her.
"Good to be home?" Marl asked. He stepped down one stair.
Chaco looked about and caught the punch of a dry wind against the side of his face. His hair whipped across his eyes.
Hair?
He quickly felt his head and ran his fingers through the shoulder-length mane he wore just before he had shipped out to boot camp.
Marl stepped off the last stair and approached, keeping what Chaco took as a calculated distance.
For an instant, Chaco had been back home, but he quickly shook off the illusion. "Okay, you had me. I'll give you that." He folded his arms. "Cut the shit, Marl. What's this all about? What the hell did you do to Deja?"
Marl gave him the same heavy look again. "This is your memory, Sonny. Why are we here?"
"I ... I don't know." Chaco studied the scene, and suddenly he was 18 again. A thickness rose in his throat, and he tasted the dust and sweat of his youth.
And of a life he thought he had forgotten.
"What's the matter, Sonny? Is this not where you wanted to be?" Marl was leaning against one of the BioBugs. His coat was calm, its stitch pattern as inert as the soil beneath their feet.
"I just hadn't thought much about this place for a long time," Chaco said.
"Why?"
"Don't fuck with me like this. What have you done to Deja?"
Marl smiled. "I would never do anything to harm her, Sonny. When she wakes, she'll have no memory of our time in the conference room."
"You fucking scared the shit out of her. What were you doing to her ... some kind of mind rape?" Chaco felt his anger rising again.
"That was the point. Her emotion was base, primitive. For her, only the fear of rape could bring forth such a raw emotional response. Fear is your species' second most powerful emotion -- and the driving force behind many of your culture's most important decisions. I now can also state conclusively that it's one of the most destructive."
"What's the first?"
Marl stood motionless while the wind flapped the front of his coat. "Rage," he said finally.
Another gust of dry air brought a protesting creak from the screen door. Chaco flinched again.
Marl's eyes moved to the door. "Bad memories?"
"You could say that."
Marl regarded Chaco, but the heavy look was gone. "You fascinate me, Sonny. In you, I have found the dichotomy that represents man at his essence."
"Excuse me?" For a second, Chaco had to search his memory for the meaning of "dichotomy."
"You, like mankind, struggle every day with your rational and primal natures."
"That's pretty lame psychology coming from a superior race."
Marl smiled. "I'll grant you it's not -- oh, what's the phrase -- an earth-shattering discovery. But you have to admit, Sonny, you are an excellent example. You have learned to control your primal side, but not completely. When pushed, as with the perceived rape of Deja, your emotional state spins out of balance. Your primal drive intrudes on your brain's higher functions; your rational control breaks down; and you descend into a blinding rage." He stepped away from the BioBug and leveled that look again. "One that can kill." The screen door creaked again, and Marl's eyes went to it. "Like father, like son?"
"Shut the fuck up." The door creaked again. Chaco covered his ears and closed his eyes. "Damn it, stop that wind!"
The wind ebbed. Chacho slowly opened his eyes and found Marl directly in front of him.
"Don't worry, Sonny," he said. "You'll never be as violent as your father was."
Chaco looked away and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Just that last gust of wind, he thought.
Marl placed a hand on his shoulder. "It's not the wind, Sonny."
Chaco shrugged off the gesture. "I've already been in therapy," he said. "Just tell me how you can justify your actions. What about Deja and Corazon?"
The blackness of Marl's coat grew so dense it hid any indications of folds or creases. For a second, Chaco lost any sense of its surface, as if it had no depth or dimensional form. Then, as if from inside it, a million little white specs pulsed and faded. They had flared so quickly that all Chaco could make out were random patterns peppered with tiny clusters. It all looked so familiar. Then it clicked.
Space.
"Why are we really here?" Marl asked, his voice now melodic and sounding like one those aboriginal Australian horns.
Chaco threw his attention to the dirt. "I don't know," he said, following the stitch pattern across the red tips of his Tony Lamas. "Because this is where I'm from?"
"This place," Marl motioned to the mobile home and the yard, "makes up the core of your true self ... the foundation of your nature. Like you, your species has become so preoccupied with commerce that it's forgotten where its home is."
Chaco cautiously looked up and met the alien's eyes. Their color shifted in a thixotropic movement that seemed in sync with the clouds. "What are you, Marl?" he asked. "Why have you come?"
The smile that etched Marl's face reminded Chaco of his father's -- before the hard life began. "I find it curious," he said, "that all of your religions, even atheism, share two common fundamentals: to respect one another, and to help one another. Don't you think it's about time your world started putting these concepts into practice?"
"You haven't answered my questions."
"Where I'm from is really irrelevant, Sonny, because in my estimation, it'll be centuries before your species makes it past your own solar system. To your question of 'what are you?' you could say I'm a projector."
Chaco remembered the stupid machine his grandfather used to drag out of the closet every Christmas to make him and his cousins watch old vids called "home movies," which was strange since there was never a home in any of them. His dad had called the machine a projector. "I-I don't understand," he said.
"I project my being, my ... true self. That's one way we communicate. My original form projected to your world, then that form expanded across the collective consciousness. It's difficult to translate. We used to be like you."
"But I see you in reality. Physically, I mean."
"You see me, Sonny, with your mind, not your eyes."
Chaco flashed on another memory of a weird neighbor in the transport park. She was one of those fringe "MacLainians," always trying to convert his mom. She would go on and on about how she could look into a person's eyes and tell if they were going to have cancer or something. When he was older, his mom explained that this lady's religion had taken a 20th-century actress as their prophet, but now he was remembering how this lady always talked about her travels, and how his mom tried to explain it wasn't to places like Guymon, or Alva, or even Dallas. This lady's spirit was traveling. She called it a couple of different things. One was soul travel, and the other was astral something, but he couldn't remember. "Are you talking about soul travel?" he asked.
Marl stood there thinking, but Chaco suspected it was more like processing. "Not really," he said finally, "but that's probably the best description your culture would possess."
"You still haven't answered my last question."
"I believe I'm here," Marl said, his voice now soft and liquid-like, "to remind your species where their home is."
At that, an omnipresent calm settled around Chaco and Marl. It deadened all sound and rendered the landscape a monochromatic canvas of grays and blues. Marl's face became questioning, as if he had suddenly forgotten something.
"What's wrong?" Chaco asked. He figured it was unlikely a creature like Marl actually had the capacity to forget.
Marl stared at the dying sunset, his attention apparently consumed with whatever had invaded his mind. "Interesting," he said to himself.
"What's that?"
Marl slowly brought his gaze around. His eyes glowed the color of magma. "It appears," he said, his voice harmonizing with the wind that had kicked up, "that Mr. Pavia has just entered my hotel room."
Through the angular darkness he senses the hatred, guttural and abraded, as it overflows into the room like floodwaters from an unholy river. Drops of sweat slide from his armpits.
Marl opens his eyes.
The 30-million candlepower spotlight of a police gunship cuts a narrow path across the wall. The familiar droning of the craft's rotors follow as it passes above the building on its nightly flyover. The beam traverses the room and catches the edge of a hat's brim, traces the contours of an arm, and reveals just a hint of a figure's threatening mass. It quickly passes over the silhouette of a gun, whose chrome muzzle winks before the beam vanishes. The room is black again.
There is an explosion of light, seemingly brighter than the combined luminosity of his world's twin suns. He senses the air expand as the weapon sends trillions of photons, each laden with matter-altering death, down a superheated beam that consumes the distance to impact at 299 thousand meters per second.
He feels for the thread count and screams.
\*
The maid stands at Room 360's only window and greets the sun for the first time that day. The ashen clouds that hung over the city only hours earlier have dissipated to reveal a brilliant sunrise. The room's Netscreen displays the day's forecast: a low-pressure front is moving down from the Canadian boarder, and the expected high temperature is 58 degrees.
Behind her, the cleaning cart goes about its duties, moving through the room with a systematic precision. She listens to its sounds as it methodically cleans every surface: the squeak of the dry towel across the glass of the unused shower, the low industrial hum of its vacuum head, the hiss of the toilet's disposal jets cycling through a test. Finally, there is a rush of water as it refills the decanter.
She collects her things and solemnly follows the cart as it automatically departs the suite, a ritual she has repeated for over 30 years.
On to the next room.
And the next.
She never questions the odd smell, or the large stain in the carpet where the bed had stood.
33. I'M A STRONG GIRL
Deja woke to a vicious headache carving its way into the canals of her teeth. She gingerly lifted her head from the pillow and opened her eyes. The dull red glow from the bedside table read 2:34 a.m.
"Hey," she heard out of the room's twilight. The voice seemed distant.
She tried to speak but found this sent the pounding in her head into an unbearable cycle.
"Don't try," she heard.
A dark, blurred form sat on the bed and placed something cool and moist to her forehead. "How many fingers am I holding up?" It sounded like something Chaco would say.
She could only make out the bulbous silhouette of a hand. She limply raised two fingers.
"Good. Now this is going to sting a little, but in about 60 seconds you'll begin feeling wonderful. Actually, this is going to sting a lot ... sorry."
It was Chaco.
He took hold of her upper arm near her armpit. She tried to resist, but a pain struck the side of her neck with such force that her whole body seized in fear. She felt, rather than heard, herself scream. Her neck grew hot and then cold, like a very thick ice cream was being pumped into her artery. There were tears on her lips, but she hadn't felt them roll down her cheeks.
After what seemed like an eternity, the pain that had been ravaging Deja from her neck up vanished as if she had stepped into a shower and simply rinsed it out of her hair.
"Oh, my God," she said, her voice returning.
"Feeling better?" Chaco asked, his form now somewhat more discernable.
She felt as though she'd just woken from a perfect night's sleep. "Not only better, I feel great."
"I told you." He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
"What's in that stuff?"
Chaco held up a small pneumatic infuser, about a quarter of the size a doctor would use. "Back at the lab, we call this a 'Neuro Cocktail.'" He tossed the tiny instrument into the trashcan, and it hardly made a sound. "What you were feeling," he said as he stroked the side of her face, "is pretty common after what you've been through."
"How long have I been asleep?" she asked, wiping the tears from her eyes with the edge of the bed sheet. She glanced about and saw that she was in Chaco's room at The Thin.
He hesitated. His eyes shifted to the mounds made by her knees under the blanket. "28 hours," he said, barely above a whisper.
Deja thought she felt the pain coming back. "What?!"
"Don't worry. It's typical for a first-timer." He patted her knees through the blanket and waited for a reaction.
A strange uneasiness began to sink in, and Deja could sense that something was off. It wasn't that Chaco was hiding something: more like he was protecting her. He hadn't said or done anything specific, though. It was just a feeling. She sat up and rubbed the side of her head. "Sonny," she began before she stopped and pulled the blanket up to her chest. "What happened? H-how did I get here?"
Chaco forced a smile. "What's the last thing you remember?"
She tried to recall, but a thick haze of angst seemed to be blocking her. "Oh, Sonny, I'm sorry. I did something really stupid."
"Shhh," he said and placed a finger to her lips. "Don't worry. You didn't do anything stupid. Now tell me, what's the last thing you can remember? Why don't you start from the night Cor died."
"Okay. I couldn't sleep much that night, so I guess around 5:30 I finally got up. I walked down to Bar of Soap and ordered some breakfast. I remember I was reading The Times -- something about fashion -- when Marl suddenly appeared and scared the shit out of me. I guess it was in my head, because that weird waitress said I was talking to myself." A slight ache returned to Deja's head, so she rubbed her temples.
"It's okay, baby.... Go on."
"He asked me to meet him in your Net conference room. I know it was dumb, but there's something about him that makes me think he's got a plan. So I called Pavia's brother. I thought he'd let me use that virt chair of his. I figured he'd still have the coordinates in his system." A memory surfaced of the chair's tentacles, which caused her to bury her face into the palms of her hands.
"Hey, easy there," Chaco said. "Come on, tell me.... What happened next?"
"I got to Bartas's, and I ... I don't remember anything after that." Fear gripped her as she suddenly recalled the creepy look on Bartas's face. "Oh, God, Sonny ... Bartas didn't do anything sick, did he?"
"No, no he didn't. In fact, by what I could tell, he was trying to shut the chair down."
"Is he all right?"
Chaco hesitated, and then shook his head.
"Is he dead?"
"No, but he's going to be in a Neuro ICU for a long time. It's probably just as well. He was pretty bad off. Maybe they can do something for him."
"Sonny, how did I get here?" Deja had woken confused about the night before plenty of times, but the issues surrounding this question were different. Just the act of asking it unnerved her.
"I had Tsuka find you on the grid, and when I got to Bartas's, I shut the chair down before you got any deeper into the Net. That chair's powerful. If you're not used to it, it can mess with your nervous system. By the time I got there, you were already unconscious. I called in a med team for Bartas. I woke you, but you were still pretty out of it, so I brought you back here to the room."
Another memory of the tentacles flashed across Deja's mind. She began to rock slowly on the bed. "Was Marl anywhere in the Net ... when I was in?" she asked.
"There were no signs of his presence. At least, none that I could find."
"I wonder if he's still here ... on the planet?"
"I doubt it. We checked, and he's definitely off the grid. I had Tsuka go to his hotel room, but it's clean. No prints, no DNA, nothing. It's like he was never there. Whatever he is, he's beyond our technology. I'd sure like to meet the people who made him."
Deja still felt like Chaco was protecting her from something, but she couldn't imagine what. Anyway, it didn't really matter, because all she wanted was to forget about Marl and Bartas and Pavia -- the whole fucking thing for that matter. Deja always knew getting involved with a government agent might mean things could get a little crazy, which, to be honest, was the main reason she started dating Chaco in the first place ... to add some excitement to her life. But if someone had told her that within a year she would be siphoning data to the government, witnessing death by Light-Force, and possibly dialoguing with an alien life form, Deja wouldn't have believed it. She bit her lower lip and began to rock harder.
"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to let anything bad ever happen to you." Chaco placed a hand to her shoulder. "You're safe now, and I'll bet you're pretty hungry, too."
Deja suddenly realized the tightness in her stomach. "Yeah," she said, rubbing her belly, "I could eat a hamburger."
Chaco laughed. "You are hungry." He walked over to the door of the bathroom and gestured. "But before I order us some burgers, you need a little pampering." A soft light flicked from within and cast the tip of his nose and the rim of his brow into hot yellow edges. "I thought you might need this."
Deja gingerly walked from the bed to Chaco. She was in one of her camisole tees and a pair of panties, though she couldn't remember putting them on. She could tell her hair had been washed because it was free of its usual stiffness. She slipped her arm around his waist and peered into the bathroom.
Around the large whirlpool bath were dozens of tiny candles, and the room smelled like that quaint toiletry shop they had stumbled into during the last day of their Paris trip.
"Sonny, thank you." Deja kissed him before she crept up to the tub and dipped her finger through the bubbles. She turned and smiled, then removed her camisole and panties and tossed them into a corner. She carefully stepped in and slipped under the water.
Surfacing, she wiped the bubbles from her face to find Chaco kneeling by the side of the tub. He was staring at her as if she were a fragile doll. Not in an overly protective way, though -- just genuinely concerned. It made her feel safe and protected.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
Deja leaned back and guided a generously large bubbleburg across her chest. "Great, considering I've been in a coma for over a day. Why?"
Chaco didn't respond. She sensed her answer had brought some kind of relief for him. She scooped up a handful of bubbles and began making him a puffy goatee. He took her hand, kissed it, and nestled it to his cheek.
"Oh, Sonny," she said, cradling his face, "you're sweet to be this concerned. Don't worry. I'm not going to fall all to pieces over Cor." She tenderly kissed him. "I'm a strong girl," she whispered.
Chaco laughed slightly. "So I've been told."
Meatball shot off the counter like he had been fired from a pneumatic cannon.
Chaco turned the blender off. "Why are you acting like you've never heard this before. Meat?"
The cat darted under the bed so fast that his tail slapped the edge of the metal frame.
"What a 'fraidy cat," Chaco said and resumed making breakfast, which today consisted of a spoonful of protein powder, a banana, two cups of plain yogurt, and a bag of frozen, genetically improved strawberries.
He poured the mixture into a tall glass and took a gulp before he collapsed onto the couch and stared at his New York case file. Its unchanging position relentlessly reminded him that it had been two weeks since he had returned from his assignment. With Slowinski still out on medical leave, he had procrastinated way past the brink of departmental acceptance and had entered a time frame that could get his ass in a serious crack. He picked up the file's Netpad and scanned through its folders. Losing all trace of Marl, failing to connect Goya to the rest of the case, and the disappearance of AztecaNet's top security man had paralyzed him. He couldn't bring himself to complete his report. The whole Corazon issue, he hoped, would work itself out. And he sure as hell couldn't bring up the "close encounter" thing; it was definitely a career ender. "Hell," he said and flipped it shut.
Meatball emerged from beneath the bed and began stalking Chaco's foot under his baggy sweatpants. The cat pawed and caught the tip of his big toe.
"Owww! Shit! You little asshole!"
Meatball retreated across the loft's concrete floor and skidded to safety under the bed.
Chaco examined the blood oozing from the tiny puncture and pressed a paper towel against it. "Meat, shit. Don't you ever do that--"
"Sir, you have two Netcalls," announced the loft's HDI system. "One is marked high priority, the other urgent."
"What are their IDs?" Chaco asked, dabbing at the wound.
"Ms. Deja Moriarty and Yoichi Tsukahara."
Chaco glanced at his watch. 11:09 a.m. Shit, he thought, Tsuka probably screwed up his ADR's again. "Send Deja's through and transfer the other to my NSA message box."
Deja's holoimage formed to the left of the coffee table. She was in her office, her arms folded tightly across her chest. There seemed to be a commotion behind her. People were darting past the opening of her cubical. She started to speak, hesitated, then brushed her hair back in a way that meant something was up.
"Morning," Chaco said while he took another swig of breakfast.
"Turn on INN now," she said.
"Request. Give me INN, full screen."
The Ansel Adams image of Cathedral Peak that hung on the wall opposite the couch dissolved into a locked-off shot of the United Nations main assembly hall. It was framed by an INN info banner ticking off submessages and vid-pulls from six correspondent remotes. The UN was in full session, and nothing looked all that unusual. But Chaco almost dropped his protein shake when the camera cut to a close-up of the main speaker.
It was Marl.
He stood behind the podium smiling that familiar smile of his and wearing the same coat, which appeared fairly normal in the harsh camera lights. As the INN image sequenced through various angles, Chaco saw that a U.N. security detail had rushed the stage, only to be stopped about 20 feet from the podium. They were frozen in various positions of attack, some with their weapons out and aimed at Marl. The rest of the assembly appeared able to move, but most had chosen to remain seated. A few were standing and looking around in confusion. It all seemed surprisingly calm, considering that Marl had suddenly materialized in the seat of the most powerful governing body on the planet.
Chaco looked at Deja.
She raised an eyebrow.
"What the hell is he doing?" he asked.
"Changing the world?" she replied.
"Wasn't Alberts speaking to the assembly today?"
"Yeah, but two minutes before she was supposed to take the stage, Marl just materialized."
"Jesus. Has he said anything yet?"
"We've checked all of our feeds, but so far he's just standing and grinning. He's been there about 15 minutes. Wait, go to INBC!"
Chaco scanned through the different news networks and stopped on INBC's feed from outside the U.N. A dozen armored personnel hover-carriers were touching down on a blocked off street. As each one landed, about 20 heavily armed Special Ops types jumped out. A series of quick-cuts showed close-ups of the troops securing the area. The image cut to a female correspondent standing in the street across from the U.N. As she described the scene in trite network adjectives, two imposing, black tractor-trailers edged their way through the chaos behind her. Chaco had heard of these trucks. Their conspicuous lack of markings, along with the complex array of antennas atop their roofs, confirmed to him that the OST had arrived.
He sighed. "See those black trucks? This is going to get ugly."
"For the sake of us all, I hope it doesn't. What are those, anyway?"
"Probably MCC's for the OST."
"MC what's for the who?"
"Mobile Command Centers for the Office of Special Tactics. They're a section of DoD. Technically, they don't exist, but a buddy of mine was once recruited by them and--"
"Go back to INN!"
INBC's image cut to a medium shot of the podium before Chaco could react. As he scanned back, he realized all the Networks were carrying the same feed. The camera was dramatically slow-zooming while Marl gazed out to the assembly hall. He had that heavy look Chaco had seen before, but this time it was tinged with an air that seemed ... paternal.
"Here it comes," Deja said.
An icy ripple went through Chaco. It was the same feeling he had back at The Thin when he was holding Deja on the night of Corazon's death. Something shifted across his heart, as if an old part of him had slid away to expose something new ... something he had been suppressing for a long time. He looked at Deja and could tell she had felt something, too.
"I love you," she mouthed.
Chaco felt his lips answer her with the same words, but a silence had settled around him. He looked back to the vidscreen and realized that the world was about to change forever.
The camera locked-off on a tight shot of Marl's face. As if on cue, he looked directly into the lens, gave a slight smile, and slowly closed his eyes.
When Chaco's vision returned, he was back in his parent's old yard in Hooker. Marl was standing not five feet away. This time, there was no wind -- just a clear sky and a perfect temperature. Chaco was still dressed as he had been in his loft. He curled his toes into the dirt but didn't feel any texture or mass. Even the cut on his toe was gone.
"Hello, Sonny," Marl said casually. He wasn't wearing the coat anymore. He was dressed in a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of old Nike cross-trainers designed by an aged fitness guru. The shoes were wildly popular until the guy's face fell on national TV during a live infomercial. Marl even sported one of those stupid med watches that changed colors with your cholesterol level. It all seemed vaguely familiar, like everything had come from the TrumpMart in Hooker. But even though Marl looked remarkably normal, Chaco knew he was just a conduit for something greater; behind his blue eyes was unthinkable knowledge amassed from an ancient race that had probably evolved into wisps of non-corporeal energy.
"Hello, Marl. Um, nice clothes." Chaco was surprised how calm he felt, considering he was dialoguing with a creature that could wield power at the speed of thought.
Marl leveled a look that penetrated to the core of Chaco's being. Chaco didn't feel any fear, however. There seemed to be a benevolence emanating from Marl, as if he were about to explain the meaning of life or something.
"Please, Sonny, don't be afraid," he said. "At this moment, I am speaking to every human on your planet, just as I am to you." Marl's attention shifted slightly, and it felt like he was looking right through Chaco. "Many of you are asleep and will think that you are dreaming, but rest assured this is not a dream. Many of you will likewise be concerned for the safety of your passengers or patients or others in your care. Do not worry. The length of time we will spend together will be imperceptible. It will not affect your judgment, abilities, or anything in your environment. When I am gone, it will be as though you had blinked.
"Let me introduce myself. I am a messenger. The ones who set into motion the variables that gave way to the rise of humanity have sent me to help your world evolve. When I am through, this conversation will be part of your new collective consciousness. I was sent to put your world into balance by implementing an effect that would bring order to your cultures. Usually, this effect would go unnoticed by your world, but after studying your people and their complexities, I have concluded that the only way your cultures will put aside their differences and come together as a world community is to discover that they are not alone in the universe. Believe me when I tell you that this is the truth.
"Mankind's potential is vast, and with respect to the universe, you are just infants. But even as infants, your future is yours to create, so I suggest that you start by helping your own. Only then can you begin to travel a path that will elevate your species to a new order. This revelation will spawn many questions within your different cultures, religions, and governments, but is not this the essence of evolving? It is not our intent to guide you or to become more involved. You already have the necessary tools and capacity to make this journey. The length of time you take will be up to you, but I suggest that you start immediately." His look took on an even more serious quality. "Please be aware, this is not a suggestion. We will return from time to time to check on your progress, and our assessments may have consequences."
Chaco thought he felt a gust of cool air pass over the back of his neck.
Marl looked about the yard before he centered his focus on Chaco. "Sonny," he said, as if addressing only him, though Chaco deduced 12 billion other infants felt the same. "Do you have any questions?"
An odd embarrassment rose in Chaco, and he looked away. Such a simple question. One that a professor might ask at the conclusion of a lecture. Chaco couldn't think of anything, because nothing Marl had said came as a real shock. In fact, it all seemed to resonate pretty true. What he felt now was a mild guilt, as though he and his species had always known better but had been too fucking busy being selfish. Now all those Biblical references to man as "children" made sense: as a species, they were infants, and it was about time to finally grow up. Chaco wondered if Marl, at this moment, was engaged in answering billions of questions. But when he looked back, Marl was standing serenely waiting, his hands clasped in front of him.
"No." Chaco looked down and dug his toes into the dirt. "I don't have any questions."
A broad smile came over Marl's face, and he spread his arms. "Then I welcome you, Sonny Thomas Chaco, to the family of the universe." An intense white radiance exploded from his smile and obliterated the Oklahoma landscape.
"... Where's Marl?" Chaco heard himself say.
"I don't know," Deja replied. "He just disappeared from the stage."
Chaco watched as the security detail -- released from whatever had been holding them -- rushed the empty podium. Many of the delegates had charged the stage, but the Special Ops guys were pushing them back and barking for them to remain calm. The OST marched up in the new offensive combat gear Chaco had heard about -- Objective Fabric that could mend a wound in battle. They were leading a team of specialists in bright orange HAZMAT suits. The correspondent was clearly flustered and bullshitting her way through the play-by-play. The whole scene was surreal, and as the OST began to set up a perimeter around the stage, the correspondent gave up and stopped reporting. Her loss of words summed up the situation. Chaco glanced at Deja.
"Hey," he said, "are you all right?"
Deja pulled herself away from something out of the holo's view field, probably the same report Chaco was watching. She faced him with a puzzled look. "W-what did you ask?"
"Are you feeling anything? I mean, did Marl talk with you ... in your mind?"
Deja slowly nodded. "Yeah.... It's like I remember it, but it feels like an old memory."
"Me, too. It feels like it's a part of my past. Did he tell you about himself and why he came to earth?"
"Yes, he did."
"Did he mention that we'll have in our collective consciousness the knowledge of his existence?"
Deja nodded.
Chaco whistled. "I guess he did talk with everyone."
Deja turned and stopped a guy walking past her cubicle. They conversed for a moment before she turned back. "Yeah, Sonny, he did because everyone here is walking around in sort of a daze. It's taking time to sink in, I think."
The INBC's report had shifted to a newsroom with six professor-types vidlinked to a moderator. The whole thing looked hastily staged as they roundtabled on various theories about Marl. One professor, a stately gentleman with an ornate handlebar moustache, was sure that his appearance was a new form of holo-teleportation, probably funded by a terrorist group. Another wearing a pair of NetLinked Micro-Night optics conjectured that Marl was an alien life form here to help the world. His eyes darted back and forth, most likely following the information being fed to him by the Micro-Nights. Another dismissed all of the theories and said Marl was obviously a precursor for the Rapture. What else could he be? One thing was certain: it appeared that all of the professors, including the moderator, now had a sense of Marl's message imbedded in their memories. The Micro-Night guy slammed his fist onto the table and demanded an explanation.
"Sonny?"
Chaco glanced back at Deja's holoimage. She looked about to cry. "Hey, Dej, what's the matter?"
"I'm scared. It's all going to be different, isn't it?"
That was the understatement of the century. "It'll be different, but maybe it'll work. I mean, maybe Marl's intervention will finally get us moving in the right direction. Stop all the bullshit fighting over religion."
"I don't know, Sonny. It's going to take a lot more than a five-minute brainwashing to keep people from killing each other."
"I think he wants us to figure it out. He just supplied the push we needed. Dej, I've got a good feeling about this.... I guess it was the way Marl came across. He seemed pretty sincere to me ... kind of fatherly, you know?"
An odd smile spread across Deja's face.
"What's so funny?" Chaco asked.
"It's so weird you say that."
"Why?"
"To me, he came across like my grandmother, the one who raised me. It's not like he looked like her, obviously. It's ... I don't know, he just had this way about him when he was talking to me. It was weird, that's all."
"Yeah, it's like he knew who we would listen to the most, then took on the characteristics of that person."
Their eyes met, and a feeling that was becoming more familiar fluttered across Chaco's heart.
"You know I meant what I said earlier.... Don't you?" Deja asked.
"Yes," Chaco answered, "I know."
Deja gave him a hairy eyeball almost as good as Slowinski's. "And?"
"What?"
More hairy eyeball.
Chaco chuckled. "Right," he said. "I love you, too."
It felt like she had been inside a dream at the bottom of some distant ocean for 1,000 years. She tried to open her eyes, but a layer of sleep as thick as death pressed against her struggle. Dark silhouettes greeted her as she blinked away the pain.
"Doctor," said a voice, possibly a female's. It was hard to tell.
Another silhouette joined the two already at her side. They whispered across her as she lay in a warm and comfortable bed. The new silhouette leaned down and touched her shoulder.
"This might be a little startling for you, but don't be afraid. We're here to help." A man's voice of soft timbre. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," she heard herself say, the word emerging as if from deep hibernation.
"All right, then," the male shadow replied. "Now, just relax. This won't hurt."
He reached down and removed something she suspected had covered every aspect of her for a long, long time. It passed over her eyes; a light so bright that it stung bloomed to fill her vision.
"Good morning," the man said, now in a low level of detail. He was older with a closely cropped beard, his face filled with sincerity. The other two shadows were Asian women who looked almost like twins with their sharply cut bangs and pale complexions. They shared his concerned look, though somehow not as genuinely. The older man's ID pin labeled him as Dr. Haderous. When she read his name, a torrent of memories threatened to drown her in a wave of pure emotion. Her last memory was standing by her pool, at her home. She had a drink in her hand -- her favorite, a vodka martini -- and people were standing around the edge of the pool, laughing and talking. Suddenly she stumbled backwards (falling, maybe?) and her drink flew out of her hand. She gasped loudly at the memory's intensity.
The doctor gently stroked her forehead. "Don't worry, this sensation will pass. What you're feeling is simply your brain coming back on line after a period of dormancy. There's nothing to worry about." He looked away and motioned for someone to join him. The two Asian women smiled shyly, bowed, and shuffled out of view.
A large man approached the doctor's side. His hat cast a shadow across his face, but when he removed it, she saw that his eyes were moist, as if he had been crying. He leaned down.
"Kita, my love," he said with such grace that she instinctually touched his face, "how do you feel?"
Searching his eyes, she could feel his name enter her mind with a clarity that seemed almost too perfect. Then she remembered their life together, and there was a stinging behind her left eye. "Tired, Oscar." Her voice was working now, but mechanically.
"That, too, is typical," Dr. Haderous said. "It's nothing to be concerned about."
"What happened?" she asked, already having a vague sense of the answer.
"You fell into our pool and hit your head," Oscar replied. "You've been in a coma."
"How long?" she asked, surprised at her own calmness regarding the revelation.
Oscar glanced tentatively at the doctor.
Dr. Haderous smiled and patted her shoulder. "Mrs. Pavia," he said in a way that reminded her of her father, "one thing at a time. What really matters is that you're awake and on the road to a full recovery."
Oscar gathered her hands, which looked like a child's compared to his. She noticed the scars across his knuckles and flashed a memory of his time in the Middle East. "Everything will be all right, my love," he said tenderly. "I promise."
At that moment, for reasons she didn't yet understand, she knew he would keep that promise for the rest of her life.
About the author:
Paul Black always wanted to make movies, but a career in advertising sidetracked him. Born and raised outside of Chicago, he is the national award-winning author of The Tels, Soulware, Nexus Point and The Presence. Today he lives and works in Dallas, where he manages his graphic design firm, feeds his passion for tennis and dreams of six figure movie deals. He is currently working on a new book of fiction tentatively called The Samsara Effect.
Thanks to:
I would like to thank the following for their assistance, inspiration and patience: Lisa Glasgow, Brian Moreland, Pat O'Connell, and Max Wright...you all were there for me when I needed you.
For future trends in technology: www.socialtechnologies.com and its wealth of future forecasts and models of global trends. And to NASA News and the Langley Research Center web site for its white papers on the future of technology.
Special thanks to my editor and friend, Jay Johnson, for his faith in my talent.
And to Trish, as always, with love.
Discover other titles by Paul Black at all major retailers:
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Making Rounds with Oscar
The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat
David Dosa, M. D.
To the families and caregiversof dementia patients everywhere
Contents
IF YOU LOVE YOUR JOB, ON THE BEST DAYS YOUR...
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A REALLY BAD DAY, THE KIND...
WATCHING A LOVED ONE'S HEALTH FAIL IS HARD. MOST families...
WHEN I RETURNED TO STEERE HOUSE A FEW DAYS LATER...
A LARGE PORTRAIT OF HENRY STEERE HANGS OVER THE piano...
WHEN A PATIENT IS TERMINAL, DOCTORS WILL TALK about limiting...
IT WAS JUST AN ORDINARY WEDNESDAY. OR SO I thought...
TO SAY THAT I TRUSTED DONNA RICHARDS WAS SOMETHING of...
IT WAS AS IF I HAD STUMBLED ON A SCENE...
IT WAS TIME TO GET BACK ON THE TRAIL OF...
THE FERRETTI HOUSE LOOKED LIKE ONE OF THOSE spreads you'd...
I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO DEBRIEFING MARY ON MY conversation...
I HAD THE CHART FOR OUR NEW CHARGE. MRS. ARELLA Matos...
AS AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM, OSCAR'S AVERAGE WAS proving to...
MOST MORNINGS I OPERATE ON AUTOPILOT. I GET OUT OF...
"DAVID, CAN YOU STOP BY? I DON'T LIKE THE WAY...
"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT WRITING a...
ONCE AGAIN, I HAD GONE OFF IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS...
CATS MAY HAVE NINE LIVES, BUT WE ONLY HAVE ONE...
IT WAS TIME TO STOP. I HAD NOW SPOKEN TO...
GEORGE DUNCAN LOOKED AT HIS MOTHER THROUGH tired eyes. Only...
ALL WAS QUIET ON THE THIRD FLOOR. THE RESIDENTS were...
ONE AFTERNOON A FEW DAYS AFTER RUTH'S DEATH, I was...
THE PATIENTS, THEIR STORIES, AND THE EXPERIENCES of caregivers confronting terminal dementia are based on my experiences caring for elderly patients. I am greatly indebted to the many people who shared their stories, including the staff at Steere House and the families of those who died with Oscar at their bedside. I truly believe that readers will be as moved by these accounts as I was when I first heard them and I have tried to remain as faithful to them as possible. I apologize for any factual errors that I have made in retelling the stories and in transcribing our interviews. If I have made errors, please know that they were unintentional.
Please note that for narrative purposes I have made some changes that depart from actual events. Moreover, in the interest of preserving confidentiality in patients with end-stage dementia, I have changed some names and modified some backgrounds to protect identities. Additionally, some of the characters that appear in this book are composites of multiple patients. Nevertheless, the experiences represented in this book are based on real-life patients and their caregivers whom I have been fortunate to care for over the years.
Finally, though I was skeptical early on, Oscar the cat's peculiar ability appears to be as real as it is mysterious, and he continues to regularly hold vigils over departing patients. It is my hope that readers will allow him to continue his "good work" unencumbered for as long as he chooses and will forgive the occasional mistakes that he makes from time to time. After all---no human (or cat) is perfect.
"Animals are such agreeable friends---they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
IF YOU LOVE YOUR JOB, ON THE BEST DAYS YOUR WORKPLACE can seem beautiful, no matter how it might look to the rest of the world. An oilman looks at a flat, dusty plain and sees the potential for untapped fuel. A firefighter sees a burning building and runs into it, adrenaline surging, eager to be of use. A trucker's love affair is with the open road, the time alone with his thoughts---the journey and the destination.
I'm a geriatrician and I work on the third floor of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in downtown Providence. People tell me they would find my job depressing, but I'm always a little puzzled by that. Looking at my patients and their families, I have a remarkable view not just of lives well lived, but of deep commitment and love. I wouldn't trade that for the world. Sure, sometimes I'm caring for people at their worst, but I'm also blessed to be with them at their best.
My parents, both doctors, thought I was crazy for going into geriatrics. The family business has always been pediatrics---my mother and uncle are pediatricians, as was my grandfather. I think there was always this sense that I was choosing the wrong end of the life continuum to stake out my career. "Aren't children so much cuter?" my mother would say.
I thought of going into pediatrics. I love children and babies, and have two little ones of my own. The difference for me has always been the stories. Children are a blank canvas, portraits waiting to be drawn. When we look at them, their lives just beginning, we feel a sense of renewal and an expanse of infinite possibility.
My older patients, on the other hand, are like rich paintings and boy, do they have stories to tell. On my best days I can look at them and see all the way back to their childhood. I think of their parents (long gone now), the places they've been, the things they've seen. To me it's like looking through the other end of a telescope, back to the beginning.
That's why Steere House looks beautiful to me---that and the fact that it's a pretty nice place, as nursing homes go. The large, atrium-like windows flood each floor with light on sunny days, and on most days there's music coming from the piano in the lobby. And then there's Oscar.... I'd like to say I was the first one to notice his peculiar abilities---but I wasn't. Thankfully there were others who were more astute.
THE UNIT had been empty that summer morning back in 2006, except for a pair of eyes that glared at me from atop the nurse's desk. Like a warden cautiously evaluating a visitor to her facility, the questioning eyes sized me up to determine if I'd pose a risk.
"Hello, Maya. How are you?"
The pretty white cat made no move to greet me; she was consumed by the act of licking her front paws.
"Where is everyone, Maya?"
Aside from the cat, the third floor was strangely quiet. The hardwood-tiled corridors were vacant; the only signs of life were a few randomly placed walkers parked next to patients' doors. Empty now, these four-sided walkers seemed strange and unwieldy, like an imaginative child's Tinkertoy creation abandoned after play. At the far end of the east corridor, the morning light shone through the large picture windows, illuminating a broad swatch of the hallway.
I was looking for Mary Miranda, the day shift nurse. Mary is the source of all knowledge on the unit, a central intelligence agent who knows not just the story of every patient, but of Steere House itself. Though she's not technically in charge, there's little doubt among the physicians and staff as to who actually runs the floor. Mary is the maternal figure for each resident and she is fiercely protective of her children. Nothing happens on the unit without her knowing about it. Even her supervisors have been known to defer to her.
The doors to the residents' rooms are generally closed this early in the morning, and room 322, where Mary was performing AM care on her patient, was no exception.
I knocked on the door and heard a muffled voice telling me to hold on. As I waited in the hallway, I studied the corkboard display of family pictures attached to the wall outside Brenda Smith's room.
Mrs. Smith's full name, gertrude brenda smith, and her date of birth, JANUARY 21, 1918, were stenciled in block letters on a rectangular piece of paper at the top of the corkboard. Each letter had been cut from construction paper and meticulously decorated with beads and other trinkets, the loving effort of some grandchild no doubt. Underneath the artwork there was a black-and-white photograph of a beautiful young woman in her early twenties. She wore dark lipstick that contrasted with her pale face, and she was fashionably dressed in a 1940s summer outfit. She was walking arm-in-arm with a handsome man in a Navy uniform. A parasol hung on her other arm. I imagined them in a park on a warm summer's afternoon shortly after the war. I studied their faces. They were happy, and clearly in love.
Beneath that picture was a second photograph of the same couple years later with two young children. This one was in color, the faded stock of an earlier day. His hair had receded some and hers now revealed a few streaks of gray. This picture contained a promise of a different sort. They weren't just young lovers now; they were proud parents, thinking of a future larger than their own.
The last picture in the collection was of Mrs. Smith in her later years, meticulously dressed, her silver hair neatly pulled back below a tastefully chosen hat. Her husband was gone, but she was surrounded by several generations. A banner hung in the background proclaimed HAPPY 80TH BIRTHDAY, GRANDMA. Eight years had passed since then.
I knocked again and made my way inside where Mary was tending to her patient. Gone was the vibrant, well-dressed grandma of the birthday picture. In her place was a smaller replica of the woman that was. Until I worked with patients in the late stages of Alzheimer's the expression "a shadow of her former self" was just a cliché. This is what I saw with Mrs. Smith and so many of the other residents here. But behind that shadow I still saw the substance, even if she seemed no longer to see me.
"Do you need me?" Mary asked, a little annoyed by the intrusion.
"Yes," I replied. "I need to know who has to be seen today."
"Let me finish up here and I'll meet you at the front desk."
As I turned to leave, Mary stood up from her stooped position at the bedside, arching her back against the strain.
"On second thought, David, I'm going to be busy here for a little bit. Why don't you go take a look at Saul's leg? It's red and angry looking. I think he has that skin infection again."
"Fair enough. I'll go see him."
I left the room and headed off in search of Saul Strahan, an eighty-year-old man who has lived on the unit for many years. I found him dressed in his usual garb---a Boston Red Sox sweatshirt and baseball cap---in his usual place, a La-Z-Boy recliner in front of the TV. The television was tuned to a morning talk show.
"What's on TV?" I asked, not expecting a reply.
I sat down beside him and glanced at the television. A young actress was telling the show's host how annoyed she was by the paparazzi that followed her everywhere.
"Everyone's got problems, right, Saul?"
I looked at him more closely. In addition to his progressive Alzheimer's, Saul had been the victim of a nasty stroke that had robbed him of his language four years ago. His eyes stared back at me with life, though, and I could sense that he was trying to speak. I placed my hand on his shoulder and told him that I was there to examine his leg.
As Mary had said, Saul's legs were both swollen with edema, a result of his twenty-year battle with congestive heart failure. Yet his right leg seemed angrier and decidedly warm to the touch. Mary's concerns seemed justified.
"Saul, my friend, I'm sorry but it looks like you're going back on antibiotics." I made a mental note to call his daughter.
I returned to the nurse's station where Maya remained hard at work cleaning her fur. Startled by my return, she leaped off the countertop, but not before giving me one of her this place isn't big enough for both us looks.
I finished my note and sat at the desk waiting for Mary to return. A nurse for most of her life, Mary started as a nurse's assistant when she was in high school in the seventies and in nursing school discovered she loved working with old people. Not only is she one of the most dedicated nurses I know, she has some sort of intuition for the profession. She always seems to know who actually needs the most attention.
"Hello, sorry to keep you waiting." Mary's pleasant voice kept me from feeling too bad about my dependence. If she had been annoyed before it was all forgotten now.
"David, do you have a few minutes? I want to show you something down in room 310."
As we walked down the hall, Mary told me a little about Lilia Davis. "She's one of your colleague's patients. She's about eighty now, and has been here on the unit for eighteen months. About three months ago, she started losing a bunch of weight. Then one morning, she started to bleed from below. We sent her to the hospital and they diagnosed her with colon cancer that had spread everywhere. Given her severe dementia, her family decided not to treat it; they sent her back on hospice services."
A reasonable approach, I thought to myself.
We found Mrs. Davis lying on her back, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow. A morphine pump was connected to her left arm via an IV. On the other side of the room was an empty cot, the sheets displaced off to the side. Someone had been sleeping here not long ago.
"Mrs. Davis's daughter," Mary said before I could ask. "I sent her home for a few hours to shower and change her clothes. I think she'd been here for thirty-six hours straight."
"So, what did you want to show me?" I asked.
Mary pointed to the base of the bed. "Take a look."
As I approached, the head of a black-and-white tabby cat rose up off the sheets. Moving caused the bell on his collar to jingle slightly. The cat's ears perked up and he glanced at me with questioning eyes. I ignored him and moved toward the patient. The cat put his head back down on his front paws and purred softly while nestled against Mrs. Davis's right leg. I looked over at her face and noted that she was clearly comfortable.
"She looks okay," I said. "Do you need an order for medication or something?"
"Not the patient, David. She's fine. It's the cat."
"The cat? You brought me in here to see a cat?"
"This is Oscar," she said, as if introducing me to someone at a dinner party.
"Okay," I said. I was starting to share Maya's bad mood. "He's a cat hanging out with a patient."
"Well, that's just it. Oscar doesn't really like to hang out with people. I mean, how many times have you actually seen him up here? Usually he's hiding somewhere."
It was true: I'd only seen Oscar a handful of times, even though he had lived on the unit for about a year by then. Sometimes I would see him by the front desk, where his food and water bowls were, or curled up asleep underneath the remains of a tattered old blanket. Oscar did not have a reputation as a sociable cat.
"He's probably just warming up to us a little," I said. "Though I don't profess to be an expert in cats, my experience says they do whatever it is they want to do. He's probably sitting here because he found someone who won't bother him."
"I know this is weird, David, but the thing is, Oscar never really spends any time with the patients. He usually just goes off and hides, mostly in my office. Lately, though, a couple of us here have noticed that he's spending more time with certain residents."
I shrugged. "And why is that weird?" Looking at Oscar curled up beside Mrs. Davis, I was reminded of the cats they buried with the ancient Egyptians. This scene was certainly peaceful enough.
"The thing is," Mary said slowly, "Oscar only spends time with patients who are about to die."
Now I'd heard everything.
"So you're telling me Mrs. Davis is going to die today?" I looked over at her and immediately regretted what I had said. Her breathing was clearly labored and I felt guilty for my breach in decorum. I realized that Mrs. Davis indeed might die today---a fact that had more to do with her dementia and rapidly progressing cancer than the presence of a cat on her bed.
Mary smiled but I could sense her embarrassment. I felt bad for scoffing at her.
"I suppose it's possible that a cat might know when someone's going to die. Remember that article recently about the cancer-sniffing dogs? And there are those Japanese fish that sense earthquakes before they happen. And what about Lassie? He always knew when Timmy fell down the well."
Mary was not amused. "You know, Oscar wandered into another patient's room right before she died yesterday."
The look on my face must have said it all because Mary stopped trying to convince me. For a moment we both looked in silence at the scene in front of us. The cat, curled up next to Mrs. Davis's leg, was quietly purring.
"Don't get me wrong, Mary," I said, breaking the spell. "I love the concept of an animal sitting with me as I die. It's really quite sweet. I had a dog growing up and he was always by my side."
I walked over by the bed and reached down to pet Oscar. With lightning reflexes he slapped my hand with his front paw. I pulled back, searching for evidence of blood.
"I told you he's not that friendly," Mary said with a smile.
"Friendly! He damn near tried to maul me!" I replied with an air of unnecessary drama.
"Oh, he's okay. Oscar really is affectionate when he wants to be. He just tries to protect his patients."
"Mary, he's a cat---cats don't do anything unless there's something in it for them. He's probably just looking for some empty real estate and a warm blanket to sit on."
I studied my hand some more, looking for the nonexistent scratch.
"God, you're a baby. He barely even touched you."
"The truth is, Mary, I really don't like cats. And from the evidence I can honestly say that I don't think he much likes me either."
Mary laughed. "Cats don't hate you, they just know if you're afraid or not. If you are, they respond accordingly."
"Don't laugh," I said, "but I had a bad experience with a cat while I was a kid and it left me a little traumatized."
For a moment I contemplated telling her the story of my grandmother's cat, but the look of mock sympathy on Mary's face convinced me that it would be better to keep the past in the past.
"Some cats are just ornery," she said breaking the silence. "Some people too, I suppose. But you can't forsake every cat because of one bad experience. Besides, you know we wouldn't have a cat here if there was even the slightest chance it would hurt anybody. Even a doctor!"
"Very funny." I looked back at Oscar and Mrs. Davis. "You know, maybe he likes patients who are dying because they don't give him any trouble."
"I don't know, David. I really think there's something more to it."
"So does that mean that Mrs. Davis is going to die today?"
"I guess we'll see."
I LEFT THE HOSPITAL and drove across town to my outpatient clinic. Unconsciously I found myself thinking of the cat at my grandmother's cottage. His name was Puma, and appropriately so. In my mind, he was a thirty-pound behemoth of a cat---as any fisherman will tell you, size tends to get larger over time---and for years he terrorized me every time I entered "his house." As I thought of his eyes burning with hatred toward me, I told myself that my fear of cats was not irrational.
Mid-reverie my cell phone rang. It was Mary.
"Mrs. Davis died a few minutes after you left."
It had been less than an hour since I was standing in her room watching her breathe. Even after years of seeing it happen, I still feel a sense of humility at being so close to a death.
"Look, Mary. Don't make too much of that cat business. She was going to die soon anyway. She had two horrible diagnoses."
"Yeah, she did, but I'm telling you that this is happening with some regularity up here. In fact it's pretty much happening every time someone dies. Even some of the residents' families are beginning to talk about it."
She was quiet for moment.
"David," she said, "I really think the cat knows."
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A REALLY BAD DAY, THE KIND THAT makes you question everything you've done and causes you to worry about all that the future holds?
I was having just such a day about six months after my initial encounter with Oscar. I was sitting in my office, staring out of the window. On a clear day my window offers a spectacular view, especially in the summertime when the blue water of Narragansett Bay shimmers beneath a bright sky and marshmallow clouds. In January, though, the view is more likely to be cold and bleak, the water an uninviting slab of asphalt. That's how it looked on that day, and it was a perfect reflection of my state of mind.
My eyes were fixed on a tanker unloading cargo, but I wasn't paying attention. Instead, my mind had been going over the events of the last few days, playing over one scene in particular, like a damaged DVD. Three weeks before, I had learned I was a finalist for a major research award from a prestigious New York foundation. Such grants are more than gravy for me; my research in the field of geriatrics and nursing home medicine is what keeps me going, and receiving an award like this wasn't merely a matter of recognition. I saw it as a validation of everything I did.
Two days earlier I had boarded a train bound for New York. The meeting had gone well, or so I had thought. I left the interview brimming with confidence, and maybe a little pride. This award was mine; I could feel it. I had worked tirelessly on the application, putting in hours late at night after the daily grind of work and family responsibilities. All that midnight oil was going to pay off. The board would see the importance of my work and fund my research, and why shouldn't they? It was crucial and unique and the board must have understood that. On the train back to Providence I had begun plotting how I would use the award as leverage to get my boss to give me the raise I deserved. If I'd had a cigar I would have fired it up (or would have if I smoked and they still let you do that on trains).
But one call had changed all that. The moment the phone had rung that morning I felt a cold stab of dread. There was something about the ring. Perhaps it had come too early. Maybe it was just a premonition. Breathlessly, I had picked up the phone and said hello. The woman on the other end was immediately grim; listening to her, I understood how my patients' families must feel when I call them with bad news.
"We want to thank you for coming to New York to meet with the board. They were very impressed with your work."
The pause that followed was endless.
"But...we are sorry to tell you that you were not selected for the funding."
The woman had continued for several moments chirping on about the many "talented candidates" they had interviewed, but I had already stopped listening.
All I could think about was the failure.
No promotion. No raise.
Another career setback.
I felt like the numbers had all been reset and I was back at zero.
Hours after the phone call, I still couldn't get it out of my head. You know the expression "What part of 'no' don't you understand?" I couldn't understand any part of it. How could they not understand how important this work was? So few people were interested in the nursing home environment and the proposal was good, perhaps the best I'd ever submitted. What could the other candidates possibly be doing that was more important?
Was it my notes?
The way I talked?
My suit?
I tore myself away from the window and forced myself to sit at my desk. I looked at the blinking prompt on my computer. I had been in my office for over an hour and hadn't even logged on. I watched it blink like a failing heart monitor.
Maybe it was my tie?
I picked up the phone to dial the foundation, determined to find out what the problem was. I dialed the number hellbent on finding someone, anyone, who would listen to my plea for reconsideration.
Suddenly my pager went off. For a moment the world seemed to stop spinning, giving me pause to reconsider my actions. I looked at the numbers on the display.
It was Steere House.
I ignored the page and retreated back to my internal dialogue. Was I really going to learn anything by calling? What part of no did I not understand? Maybe they just weren't interested.
The pager went off again.
Same number.
Don't they know this isn't a good time for me?
Frustrated, I picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello, Dr. Dosa, how are you?"
"Fine, Mary, what do you need?" There was a distinct edge to my voice.
"Well, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed today. Is something wrong?"
"It's just been a bad day, Mary. What's going on there?"
"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked sincerely.
I was in no mood to explain myself, let alone apologize. "Not today. But thank you for asking."
"Well, anyway, I wanted to let you know that Ellen Sanders has passed away."
"At least someone is having a worse day than me."
There was a long silence as Mary probably wondered how, or whether, to respond.
I put my hand on my forehead. "I'm really sorry, Mary. That was uncalled for. Pay no attention to me."
"Okay, David." I couldn't tell if Mary was holding her tongue or had just cut me some slack. I knew that she'd had worse days than I could imagine. She tactfully switched gears.
"By the way, I wanted to let you know that Oscar was there."
"Where?"
"At the bedside. Oscar was there when Ellen passed...just like all the others lately."
"Come again?"
"You know, our cat friend. Oscar's still making his visits. He's made about five or six since Mrs. Davis died."
On any other day I probably would have just laughed, as I had six months earlier. But there's something about particularly bad days that makes you reconsider your preconceived notions of life. And this was definitely one of those days.
As Mary rattled off some instructions to me about filling out the necessary paperwork, I pictured Oscar sitting next to Ellen and her daughter Kathy.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"Who? Oscar? Oh, he's still hanging out in Ellen's room. The funeral director hasn't been by yet. In fact, the hospice minister just got here, but Oscar's just sitting on her bed. You know, you should probably give your condolences to Kathy. She really likes you. Why don't you come over and say hello?"
Then she laughed.
"On second thought, given your mood, maybe you should just stay where you are."
I laughed myself. Nothing like the loss of someone else's loved one to put your own problems in perspective. I didn't need to tell Mary this: Her husband took his own life shortly after the birth of their second child, leaving her a single mother who now made the adult children of Steere House her life. My parents were alive and well, my wife and children were healthy---even if my own health was sort of day-to-day. Carpe diem, or as the song goes: Get it while you can.
We talked for a few moments about Mrs. Sanders and her family before I rang off. For the first time that morning I thought of someone other than myself.
While Ellen Sanders's death was not surprising, the timing of it was rather unexpected. She had given no indication that she was terminally ill. There were no nasty infections or any of a number of other disease processes that shorten life. Other than her dementia, she was a poster child for good health.
But while none of the medical staff, myself included, thought she was even sick, let alone close to death, that cat sensed something else. While my faith in science and my own intellectual vanity made it easier for me to reject the notion that some errant feline could know more than we as medical staff did, I felt strangely elated by the notion that I could be completely wrong.
Was it a coincidence that Oscar had been there for each patient's death? I thought of that Einstein quote: "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." Suddenly, I felt the lure of a good mystery. I grabbed my coat and walked over to Steere House, determined to find out more about our mystery cat's behavior.
"What greater gift than the love of a cat?"
WATCHING A LOVED ONE'S HEALTH FAIL IS HARD. MOST families eventually find a way to accept it and move on. Some can even do it with grace and dignity. Mary always spoke of one son who was ceaselessly cheerful in the face of his mother's dementia.
"How do you do it?" she asked him one day.
"Oh, I said good-bye to my mother a long time ago," he told her. "Now I've just fallen in love with this little lady!"
This was an advanced, black belt--level reaction. Maybe it's the guilt, or the fear of death, or simply the heartbreak of seeing the slow decline the disease brings, but many people seem to disappear as their parents or spouses fail, as if they themselves were being diminished.
Not Kathy. Her spirit always seemed indomitable in the face of her mother's condition and she took each slide backward with a glass-half-full optimism that was an inspiration to the staff. She took comfort in the small triumphs, or "little victories," as she called them.
I remembered running into Kathy and her mother seated on a bench in the nursing home's rose garden one afternoon. It was a particularly windy October day and I wondered what on earth they were doing outdoors, huddled in their jackets beside their empty lunch trays.
"Aren't you cold?" I had asked Kathy.
"I prefer to think of it as brisk," she had joked. "You know, for the next three to four months, my mother is going to be cooped up inside. What's a little cold? And look how lovely the leaves are at this time of year."
Kathy had glanced over at her mother and placed an arm around her shoulder.
"Aren't they beautiful, Mom?" she had asked, pointing to the last of the red and gold leaves on a nearby tree. Her mother said nothing, but there was a hint of a smile on her face.
"Little victories, Dr. Dosa," Kathy reminded me as I walked quickly out of the cold that day.
Her last statement echoed through my head as I passed the spot where she and her mother had sat. That October day may very well have been Mrs. Sanders's last time outside.
A sharp winter wind drove me swiftly through the frozen garden and into the nursing home's first-floor dining area. It was almost lunchtime and an aide was busy setting the table. She moved carefully, polishing the silverware as if she were setting up at one of the finest restaurants in town. This attention to detail is part of what makes Steere House unique, I think. Respect for the residents informs nearly every decision here and can be seen in even the simplest of gestures.
In the corner of the dining room, Ida Poirier was sitting patiently in her wheelchair, waiting for lunch to begin. She quietly studied the aide as she polished and placed each piece of silverware. As I entered the dining room, Ida looked up and smiled.
Ida has been a resident of Steere House for many years now, confined to the nursing home because of her rheumatoid arthritis. After years of inflammation, her legs and hands have become a tangled mess, but her mental faculties are as sharp as they've ever been. Despite her predicament, Ida maintained a wry sense of humor that comes from a lifetime of struggling with chronic illness. For the chronically ill the choice seems to be to learn to live with your affliction, and occasionally laugh, or succumb to suffering.
I reached down and gave her a hug.
"What's for lunch today, Ida?"
"Usual crap, Dr. Dosa. I don't know, what is today---Monday, Tuesday?"
"It's Thursday, Ida."
"I think its potpie day, then. Not that it matters; it all tastes the same."
I smiled.
"They try their best, Ida. Unfortunately, they're not working with a budget that allows for filet mignon."
"Maybe not, Dr. Dosa, but could we at least have lobster once in a while? We are in Rhode Island, after all."
"I'll talk with the chef."
"Yeah, right!" She shook her head in mock disgust and then tried to gauge my expression. It was nice to have Ida to banter with.
"Dr. Dosa, are you going up to see that patient who died?"
"Why do you ask, Ida?"
"I heard the cat was in there with her when she passed."
I paused before answering. "How did you hear about that?"
"Some of the nurses down here have been talking about Oscar and what he does. Personally, I love cats. I think I've had a cat my whole life. Even now, either Billy or Munchie is always in here keeping me company," she said, referring to the two cats who live on the first floor, "but I don't know about that cat upstairs."
"Do you believe the cat knows?" I asked.
"Oh, I believe it. When my husband died years ago, I bought myself a cat to keep me company. I called him Patches because he had little patches of white on his black fur." She smiled briefly at the memory. "Anyway, Patches always knew whenever I was sick or my arthritis was acting up. He would jump on my bed and just sit with me. Otherwise, I could never seem to find him. He was always hiding somewhere in my apartment---under a bed, in my closet, always somewhere."
"What happened to the cat?"
Ida's expression changed and I regretted asking her.
"He died of some kind of cat cancer. I had to put him down."
"I'm sorry, Ida."
"No, Dr. Dosa, don't feel bad about mentioning it. I had to do it. Sometimes I think we're kinder to animals than we are to people..." She looked out the window in silence. It was more than a little awkward, but I let it play out.
"You know," she said, eventually breaking the spell, "every day, I sit here and wait. I wait for someone to help me get dressed. I wait for breakfast, then for lunch. After that, it's back to my room for a nap or to watch some stupid soap or talk show on TV. Then I wait for dinner. When I was young, I never had time. I was always on the go, didn't have a minute for myself. Now, all I have is time."
She looked off in the distance again, lost in her thoughts. When she turned back to me I sensed her mood had changed again.
"Dr. Dosa, I almost envy that patient upstairs. At least she is free of all of this."
For emphasis, she held up her hands as if presenting evidence. Her fingers, bent inward at impossible angles, rendered her hands useless.
"I used to love to knit. I'd sit for hours in my sunroom and knit scarves or blankets. It didn't matter who I was knitting for. Sometimes I'd knit blankets for one of my cats. Other times, I'd take them to the Women's Hospital across the street for the newborns. I can't even do that anymore."
Frustrated, she dropped her hands into her lap. I looked at her and racked my brain for something to say that might lessen her sorrow. I had nothing to offer.
"I really miss him," Ida said abruptly. "The cat, I mean," she added. "I miss Patches."
I put my hand on her shoulder and we sat together in companionable silence. She acknowledged my touch with a smile, but I couldn't help thinking that she probably wished I were a cat.
"Dr. Dosa, animals have this sixth sense and they can communicate with us if we understand their language. I'm telling you that Patches wouldn't leave my side if I was sick."
"You mentioned your other cats. What about them? Were they like Patches?"
Ida smiled again. "No, Ginger was friendly as can be. She was always at my feet or on my lap, but she really didn't have that sense of when I needed her. Now Grover, he was---"
"You named your cat Grover?"
"I let my niece name him. I probably should have called him Oscar the Grouch, though, because he could be meaner than a rattlesnake."
"So you believe all of this about the cat upstairs?"
Ida looked up at me with a knowing smile.
"You're not much of a cat person, are you?"
"I can't say that I am, but I'm trying to be."
Then Ida openly laughed.
"I knew it! I could tell you were more of a dog person. You're too damn nice."
Her humor was contagious and I found myself laughing from deep within. I needed that. "Thank you, Ida. I'm not sure you meant it as a compliment but I'll take it today."
"You're welcome."
She studied my expression again.
"Something's wrong," she said finally. "There's something you're not telling me."
"It's just been a bad day, Ida."
She smiled. "You'll have a lot more of those in your life. Forget about it. Most of the time it's not as bad as you think it is. Just go home, kiss your wife and kids, drink a beer, go to bed early, and you'll feel better in the morning!"
"Doctor's orders?" I asked her.
"Doctor's orders!"
RIDING THE ELEVATOR to the third floor, I thought of Ida's sharp mind and damaged hands and I felt troubled. If I was being truthful---and this did seem to be a day of truths, welcome or not---what bothered me about Ida was a connection we shared. Looking at her sometimes I felt that I was staring at my own future. I glanced down at my own hands and studied my enlarged left thumb. It was ten years since I myself was diagnosed with an inflammatory arthritis very similar to Ida's. I looked at my swollen right wrist and thought of the swelling in my left knee and ankle. The joints were not as painful as they once were, thanks to my complicated medical regimen of pills and injections. Yet the telltale signs of inflammation were there and I knew that, like Ida, my joints would fail me, my own legs would not carry me into my proverbial golden years, and my own arms might not be able to hold my grandchildren.
I felt a shiver as I thought about Ida and the curse of not being able to do the things you once liked to do. I allowed the feeling to wash over me, felt the self-pity rise and fall like a fever, and then shrugged it off. Instead, I thought of Kathy and what she had said about the importance of little daily victories in combating chronic illness. I've had over a decade to think about chronic illness in my own life and know that she is right. There are more important things in life than careers and grants. There are the day-to-day victories, the gifts of the here and now. Instead of worrying about my old age and my grandchildren, couldn't I just rejoice in being able to carry my newborn daughter up the stairs and play soccer with my son? I was still able to bend over and tie my own shoes. Tomorrow's problems would have to wait.
I exited the elevator onto the third floor, stepping directly into a meeting between several aides and a hospice nurse at the front desk. They were in the midst of an intense conversation, one that I quickly realized revolved around Oscar.
"So he did it again," I interjected.
"Yes, he did," Lisa, the hospice nurse, replied. "He's developing quite a unique talent."
We were joined at the front desk by Sally, one of the hospice ministers. She had just returned from Mrs. Sanders's room.
"How is Kathy doing?" I asked her.
"She's upset, but I think she'll do fine eventually. She's had a long time to come to grips with today."
I left them and walked down the hall to Mrs. Sanders's room. Kathy was holding her mother's hand, crying quietly, while Oscar sprawled out on the bed, his front and hind legs extended, his spine resting gently against Mrs. Sanders's leg. Kathy turned to greet me. Beneath her swollen eyes she managed a slight smile and rose to give me a hug.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She began to cry again and I felt her warm tears through my shirt. We held the embrace until it became uncomfortable. Kathy's eyes were bloodshot and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. Her blouse was wet from her tears and wrinkled from the vigil she passed in the chair beside her mother's bed. I tried to think of something to say that might make her loss easier but came up blank again. Thankfully, Kathy broke the silence.
"Dr. Dosa, I want to thank you for everything you have done for my mother."
She wiped her eyes with her sleeves and turned to sit back down in her seat by the bed. She picked up her mother's hand again and cradled it in her own. The movement stirred Oscar, who looked rather tired himself. He blinked and looked at Kathy.
"Can you believe this cat?" Kathy said.
"I heard that he was here when your mother died," I replied. Through her tears she smiled slightly.
"Yeah, he and I are buddies now," she said and reached over to pet Oscar on the head. Oscar accepted the attention and nuzzled Kathy's hand.
"The hospice nurse and the minister told me he's done this before," she said.
"For the last year or so, from what I'm told," I replied.
"Well, he's a really special cat."
"I suppose...," I said, and realized that a small part of me was starting to believe it.
I put my hand on Mrs. Sanders's hand and said a private good-bye to my patient. Neither Kathy nor I spoke. On the bed next to us, Oscar sat quietly purring. Finally, after several minutes, I asked the question I'd been contemplating since my conversation with Mary.
"Kathy, were you okay with Oscar being here at the end?"
She looked at me for a moment and then said, "Dr. Dosa, I think of Oscar as my angel. He was here for my mother, and here for me, too. With Oscar at my side...well, I felt a little less alone. It's hard to explain, but some animals, well, the sense they give you is that they understand what's going on. More than that, they just accept. I don't know, but Oscar gave me a feeling that this is all natural. And it is, isn't it? If birth is a miracle, isn't death a miracle too? My mother...well, her struggle is finally over. She's finally free."
Kathy stared at me, waiting for a response, but I gave her no indication of what I was thinking. I guess I really didn't know.
"My mother never wanted to live the way she did in the end," she added. "She was a proud woman. You didn't know her before, but she had a tremendous sense of pride. She always dressed fashionably and she was quick with a joke."
She smiled, perhaps remembering one of her mother's jokes, one that she did not share with me.
Looking at Kathy, I realized that she would be fine. The coming days would be hard on her, but she would move on to the next chapter in her life---one that wouldn't involve daily trips to Steere House.
I said one last good-bye to Kathy and realized that our association had come to an end.
"Take care of yourself," I said.
Kathy nodded as I left and returned to her thoughts, and to Oscar.
"Cats are connoisseurs of comfort."
WHEN I RETURNED TO STEERE HOUSE A FEW DAYS LATER I found Mary seated at the nurse's desk brushing Oscar. Sprawled out in full glory, he looked like a boxer after a major bout---or, given his mane, one of those big-time wrestlers.
"The last couple of days Oscar's seemed pretty beat from his vigil," Mary said.
"Sure...sitting on a bed sleeping is really hard work."
"You laugh, David, but Oscar's always tired after the fact. It's like he's on the clock when someone is dying and then afterward he's spent."
I rolled my eyes, something that annoys Mary as much as it does my wife.
"Domesticated cats were like dogs, you know," she said, as she continued her ministrations. "They had to earn their keep on the farm. Maybe this is like Oscar's job."
"Well, I need to start doing my job," I said, opening a chart that I had spent the better part of ten minutes looking for. As any nurse or doctor can tell you, the chart you need is invariably the one that is missing. Anyway, I must have made it look awfully inviting because suddenly Oscar left Mary's side and jumped up onto the counter next to me. Then he twirled around twice before sitting down in a clump of fur on my paperwork.
"Will you look at that," I said in anguish.
"It's a cat's world," said Mary. "We just work in it."
I grabbed the chart out from under Oscar, who glared at me.
"You're gonna make me sit somewhere else, aren't you?"
Mary laughed.
"David, you never win an argument with a cat. Don't you know that by now?"
She got up from her seat and motioned for me to sit down.
"Here. I've gotta go down and see Ruth Rubenstein anyway."
"Anything going on with her that I need to know about?"
"I don't know yet, but Mr. Rubenstein wants to see me."
"Do you need reinforcements?" I inquired, drawing a smile.
"No, I think I'll be all right...but you might want to keep your pager handy in case I need you later."
As Mary disappeared down the hall, I thought back to the first time I had met the Rubensteins.
I LOVE MY JOB, even though it's sometimes less than satisfying. Often I'm the bearer of bad news, the detective with the inconvenient truth. Too often the suspects work in pairs, covering for each other: mother and daughter a lot of the time, or, in the case of the Rubensteins, husband and wife. If they work together to keep me out of their lives---even when they come to me looking for help---it's because I'm the messenger, the one with the bad news. I'm the one who confirms what they often already know deep inside. There's simply no easy way to tell someone they have cancer, heart disease, emphysema, or any other horrible disease that takes so much before it results in death. But it's particularly hard to tell someone they have dementia, even when the person intuitively knows it already.
That's what I had to do with the Rubensteins some three years before. I had to look into the eyes of the eighty-year-old woman I had just examined and ruin her life. I knew from experience that her husband would be sitting with her, a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. I knew this look and it said that I am their judge, jury, and executioner. To a certain extent, he would be right. I thought of the end of the mouse's tale in Alice in Wonderland: "'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' said cunning old Fury: 'I'll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.'"
Earlier on the day that I first met the Rubensteins I'd been with Mr. Earl, a delightful eighty-five-year-old with few medical problems and a mind that ran at full throttle. During his physical exam he told me in great detail about the book he was reading. Then he regaled me with stories of his recent volunteer work with a local nonprofit and his plans to travel to Florida for the winter. When my exam was finished I sat down with him. Even though I was running a little behind, I wanted to let him go on for a few more minutes before I moved toward the door, the indication that our time was over. He took my gesture with good grace and apologized for taking up more of my time than he intended to.
"Mr. Earl," I said, waving off his apology, "I hope I am as healthy as you are when I get to be your age." I knew I wouldn't be---I already had more health problems in my thirties than he had---but I said it anyway.
He smiled. "I'm a lucky man, Dr. Dosa. The trick is eight hours of sleep, a healthy diet, and lots of lovin'!"
Who can argue with that?
Donna Richards, my office manager, confronted me as soon as I stepped into the hallway. She was looking at her watch and seemed a little frazzled.
"Are you done yet?" she asked.
I nodded.
"You have a new patient in room 3 who is getting restless. Her husband has already been out to ask where the doctor is. I've played interference, but you've got to speed it up."
I told her I was doing the best I could. Of all people, Donna should know how hard it is to appropriately care for older patients and give them the time they deserve. Her own mother was a patient in our clinic.
I grabbed the next chart and took a moment to look over some paperwork from another local doctor before I knocked on the door. The well-dressed couple I found did not look pleased. The man held up his watch and tapped it several times with his finger.
"You know, Dr. Dosa, our appointment was for 2:15 pm. You are twenty minutes late."
"Mr. and Mrs. Rubenstein, I'm so sorry to keep you. Please accept my apology."
Going to the doctor is not like getting your shoes shined and, unfortunately, there are times when other patients need my attention for longer than I anticipated. But I've learned over the years that explanations only make things worse. Simple apologies work better. Not in this case, though.
Frank Rubenstein was insulted, not on his behalf, I soon realized, but on his wife's. He was a gentleman of the old school, and rather old world, at that. I recognized his Eastern European accent as being not so distant from that of my own parents, and I thought I recognized the attitude too.
Concern takes many forms, I've come to learn as a doctor, and it's easier to recognize when it comes as a purr than a growl. Frank was like a papa lion protecting his lioness from predators, real or imagined. I posed no threat to his wife---I was simply there in front of them at the wrong time. What was really stalking her came from within.
Ruth Rubenstein, who was sitting across from him, seemed mildly embarrassed.
"Oh, Doctor, I'm so sorry for my husband's brutish behavior. I'm sure you have lots of other patients to attend to. Frank just doesn't like coming to the doctor's office."
She flashed me a disarming smile and then turned quickly to glare at her husband. He got the message; they'd been together long enough. As Ruth stared down her husband, I took a moment to look her over. She was neatly dressed in a long skirt and white blouse. She was strikingly attractive with blue-green eyes that radiated warmth. Her long silver hair was arresting, pulled back behind her ears with what looked to be an expensive pearl hairpin. Her skin still had a youthful vigor, and my first thought was that this woman still had it together.
I offered her my hand. She grasped it firmly and I was overpowered by her perfume.
My heart sank.
I moved in closer and confirmed my initial suspicion. Beneath the scent of her cologne I recognized the unmistakable musty odor of urine, a sign of incontinence.
I introduced myself again and asked how I could help them. Mr. Rubenstein launched into an explanation.
"Doctor, as you've probably figured, neither of us particularly want to be here, but I'm concerned about my wife's health."
He looked down at the floor, collecting his thoughts.
"I'm concerned..." His voice trailed off as if he was searching for a delicate way of telling me about his wife's problem.
"Go on," I said, nodding. He looked back at me, having found his voice.
"My wife has started to do some strange things. She loses things. The other day, she couldn't find her keys. She blamed me. Eventually I found them in the refrigerator with the groceries she had just brought home. She's also gotten lost a couple of times coming back from the grocery store. One time she called me and she was halfway across town."
He looked over at Mrs. Rubenstein, who acted as if we were talking about someone else. She just stared at the cover of the magazine in her lap.
Frank continued. He was likely the same age as his wife, although he appeared significantly older. He was dressed in a vintage suit, circa 1970. No doubt he was the original owner. His hairline had receded and whatever hair remained was uncombed. As he told me more stories about Ruth's memory lapses---the day she forgot to meet him for coffee or the morning she put the milk in the cupboard---I looked back over at Ruth. Now she was attending to his words, and if looks could kill, he was the one who would have needed medical attention.
When Frank finished speaking, I asked Ruth conversational questions geared at assessing her memory. She skillfully deflected many of them, often deferring to her husband. There's an almost symbiotic relationship between couples that have been married a long time; the Rubensteins were no different. When I asked Ruth to tell me about her favorite restaurant she responded by playfully asking her husband to answer the question.
"Darling, what was the name of that restaurant we ate at the other night?"
"The Golden Palace, Ruth."
"Yes, Doctor, have you eaten there?" she asked.
I shook my head no.
"You really must try it. We really love that restaurant. They have the best meals."
"What do you like to eat there?" I asked her, doing my Columbo routine.
"Oh, I like everything."
"What did you eat last time you were there?"
Ruth stared at me blankly. I imagined her flipping through her mental calendar and finding every page blank. Eventually she looked to her husband for assistance.
"We had the Peking duck, Doctor."
"That's right, the Peking duck." Ruth seemed pleased with herself, as if she was the one who had recovered the memory. "It was so good. You really have to try it."
I smiled and said I would. The conversation, however, was troubling. Despite her preserved social graces, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Ruth had some issues with her shortterm memory at the very least. Though she skillfully hid it by deferring to her husband, the more I continued to isolate her from his coaching, the more apparent it became. The simple memory tests I gave her next only confirmed my suspicions.
I gave Ruth a piece of paper and a pen.
"I'm going to ask you to draw me a large circle and pretend it is a clock. Please put the numbers on the clock."
It's a simple task that any grade school student should be able to perform, but Ruth struggled with it. Robbed of her husband's assistance, she painstakingly placed the numbers on the clock, pausing to consider the position of each one as if her very life depended on it. Perhaps, in a way, it did. After a minute, she looked up at me with a sense of accomplishment. Like a student proudly giving an aced test to a parent, she handed me the piece of paper. I looked down at her work and noted that the numbers one through twelve had been placed correctly on the clock. Then I handed the paper back to her.
"Now I want you to draw the hands on there at 2:45."
My request was met with a concerned smile. Ruth's eyes drifted up toward the clock above the doorway. She studied it momentarily before speaking.
"Doctor, I don't know how any of this has anything to do with me. I'm fine, really. I don't know what my husband is going on about."
"Mrs. Rubenstein, I know it seems silly, but the test can really be helpful to me in figuring out what is going on. Could you just place the hands of the clock at 2:45, please?"
Ruth sized me up.
I refused to back down.
She looked back at her drawing and shook her head, as if frustrated by the inconsequential nature of my request. She considered the numbers on the page.
"What time do you want?"
"2:45."
Over the next minute, the mental strain of the activity became more obvious. She tapped her pen on the paper. Intermittently she broke the silence with nervous laughter.
"I was never really good at math," she announced. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the task had more to do with visual-spatial skills and executive function than math. The clock test is standard for just that reason: If you can do it, the chances are excellent you don't have Alzheimer's. It's also a highly significant indicator of how you will do on the road. I wish the DMV would give this test along with the eye exam.
I waited patiently for Ruth to finish. Finally, after several minutes, she drew the little hand pointing to the 2. Then, like thousands of other patients with memory impairment, Ruth placed the minute hand of the clock between the 4 and 5, rather than at the 9.
Convinced that she had once again aced her exam, Ruth looked up at me with a sense of extreme satisfaction. As I looked over at her husband, it was apparent that he didn't share her enthusiasm. A tear had come to his eyes, which he quickly wiped away before it could find its way down his check.
I then launched immediately into another battery of memory tests without saying a word about her performance. She seemed momentarily disappointed by the lack of feedback, but there is nothing much that I can say in that situation---nothing that the patient wants to hear, anyway.
"All right, Mrs. Rubenstein, I'm going to say three words and ask you to commit them to memory."
I recited three words---apple, book, and coat---and asked her to repeat them back to me. She remembered two out of three. Five minutes later, she would almost certainly remember none.
I asked her to spell a five-letter word, world, forward. She did so, quickly and precisely. A smile that said "I told you there is nothing wrong with me" appeared on her face.
"Now can you spell it backward?" I asked.
She looked at me with the sort of lethal stare she gave her husband earlier.
"Doctor, I don't understand why any of this is necessary. I'm totally fine."
I repeated my request and she continued to struggle; she was finally able to get only two of the five letters in place.
Switching gears to another memory test, I asked her to write down the names of as many four-legged animals as she could in a minute. Normally, patients can name over ten in this test of executive function. Today, my five-year-old son could probably name twice that, but Ruth named only six that day and wrote cat down twice.
We finished a few additional tests and I asked Frank to escort me to the waiting area so I could conduct a more thorough physical examination. He seemed reluctant to leave, but did so grudgingly after his wife gave him a reassuring smile.
"It's okay, dear. It's just part of the exam," she said.
In the hallway, I used the opportunity to openly ask Frank some harder questions about his wife. I have learned over the years that there are many things family members do not want to disclose in front of the person suspected of having dementia.
"Has she done anything dangerous?" I asked.
"What do you mean, Doctor?"
"Has she left the bathtub running or has she left the stove on?"
"I suppose she's burned the meatloaf a couple of times but she was never much of a cook."
He attempted a meek smile.
"Has she crashed the car or been in any fender benders?"
Patients with dementia have an extremely high rate of car accidents although few are ever reported. Frank shook his head.
"Has she acted strangely or have you noticed her behavior changing?"
"She's a little more suspicious than she used to be. The other day, I went out to a restaurant with a few friends. When I got home, I caught her going through my wallet. When I asked her what she was doing, she accused me of being with another woman. Doctor, you have to understand that I would never ever do something like that!"
I nodded again and told Frank to sit in the waiting room. I returned to the examination room to complete Mrs. Rubenstein's physical. She had changed into the paper gown and was sitting on the examination table waiting for me.
"Doctor, I really think I am okay."
She looked at me for any evidence of an opinion to the contrary. I have learned not to give anything away: if I played poker I could probably make a killing.
"What did my husband say to you out there?" she asked me. "I don't know why he's so concerned about me."
I smiled.
"He loves you, Mrs. Rubenstein, and he is concerned about your health. By the way, how long have you been married?"
She looked at me and then beamed.
"Too long, Doctor. We met in Europe during the war."
"Oh, yeah? What was that thirty, forty, or fifty years ago?" I was pushing her for an exact number.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Too long, Doctor, too long!"
I smiled at her, wondering to myself if I would ever get to the point where I wouldn't remember how long I'd been married. I know that Ruth's attempt at humor was just a ruse to hide the fact that she really had no idea. She could have been married ten years or a hundred.
"I have to admit, Mrs. Rubenstein, that I share some of your husband's concerns regarding your memory."
She shook her head and reached over to put her hand on mine as a gesture of reassurance.
"Oh, Doctor, I'm just tired. I really have a lot on my mind."
"That might be the case, Ruth, but I am a little worried that there may be more going on. Would you let me order some more tests?"
"But, Doctor, why would you want to order more tests? Tests for what?"
I couldn't keep beating around the bush.
"Ruth, I'd feel better if you'd allow me to order a few more tests."
She shrugged and offered grudging approval. "If you think it's really necessary."
"Ruth, how long has your husband been concerned about your memory?"
She became defensive.
"I don't know, Doctor. He keeps telling me that my memory is not as good as it used to be. Well, of course it's not as good as it used to be." She pointed at herself, smiling. "Look at me: I'm an old lady!"
I laughed at her candor. If nothing else, she still had a sense of humor. But it's a common misconception: Age really has nothing to do with memory, and problems with memory are never normal aging. People assume the two are related because memory problems become more common as we age. Yet memory impairment is always abnormal and should be worked up.
"You're not that old," I said. "You could actually pass for twenty years younger!"
"Well, thank you, Doctor," she said, and I think she actually blushed.
I decided not to make any further comments until I brought Frank back into the room. I finished her physical exam and excused myself to allow her to get dressed.
By the time I returned with her husband, in a matter of mere moments, her mood had changed. I looked directly at Ruth and could see the quiet desperation in her face.
"Doctor, all of these memory tests that you did. They're all silly. I'm okay---right? I just have a lot on my mind these days."
But her eyes said something else. She knew there was a problem. People usually do.
I couldn't meet the gaze and looked instead at the floor between us.
Now they knew.
Sometimes there are tears when I deliver bad news. This time there was only silence. I'd rather have tears. At least you can do something. You can reach over and grab a box of tissues from the counter. You can place a reassuring hand on someone's shoulder.
Silence is the worst.
In medical school, they used to teach you to be detached but empathetic when giving bad news. Listen and support but don't get involved.
Easier said than done.
I'm human and I get to know my patients. I meet their families and hear about their children and grandchildren. I get to celebrate their successes and be there for them during the difficult times. It is the part of the job that I find most intoxicating---working to develop a trusting doctor-patient relationship where my patients can feel comfortable sharing everything. A doctor's office should feel like a safe place, an arena in which you can bring out your demons or your angels, your deepest fears and most intimate secrets. In return I have to be honest. That can be the worst part of my job.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rubenstein. The memory testing that we did shows there are parts of your memory that are not working as well as they used to. These tests I'd like to run will give us a better sense of what's going on."
The blank expressions on their faces told me they didn't understand.
"Mrs. Rubenstein, I think you have a type of dementia, the medical term we use when you have a problem with memory."
Silence. No tears. I could hear the second hand tick on the clock over the door, the same clock she glanced at when taking her test.
It was Frank who eventually broke the silence. "Is it Alzheimer's, Doctor?" he asked. Suddenly he was the captain of a rudderless ship on an uncharted ocean. He was flying without instruments, driving without a map.
"I'd like to order a few more tests, Mr. Rubenstein, but Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia and the memory tests I've performed thus far are consistent with that diagnosis."
Frank nodded grimly. Since they had no other questions, I began to tell them about Alzheimer's disease and how it affects brain cells. I told them the disease would ultimately result in further memory loss and perhaps even behavior changes. I tried to console them by saying that there are a few medications that might delay her symptoms and that her deterioration will be gradual at best. I informed them that she should exercise regularly, something that has recently been shown to improve memory. I concluded by telling them that in all likelihood, she might one day die with dementia rather than of it.
Small consolation to someone who has just been told her life will never be the same. Their lives.
The discussion left both husband and wife visibly shaken. A minute passed and I finally broke the spell, asking them if they had any further questions. They shook their heads. I left the room and walked toward my office.
"Doctor!"
Frank had followed me down the hall to ask the one question that everyone wants to know.
"How long does she have?"
"Truthfully, Mr. Rubenstein, I really don't know."
"But Doctor, surely you have some idea of how long she has."
Pressed on the issue, I offered a guess.
"She has relatively early dementia currently but based on where her memory is today, I suspect that she has perhaps three to five years before she loses the ability to care for herself."
My response was met with a look of nonbelief, followed quickly by anger. It was as if I was the one who had brought her the disease rather than the diagnosis.
All he needed was a gun to shoot the messenger.
As I said, sometimes I hate my job.
"One cat just leads to another."
A LARGE PORTRAIT OF HENRY STEERE HANGS OVER THE piano in the lobby. It's a cozy setting, what with the sunlight streaming through in midafternoon. But that wasn't what I thought the first time I heard the piano playing. When I had wandered into the lobby on my first visit to Steere House, piano music filled the space with a Chopin prelude, but there was no one else in the room. I had looked over expecting to see one of the more able residents or a family member seated before the keys practicing. Instead, there were only Billy and Munchie, the two resident lobby cats, staring back at me from the comfort of an otherwise unoccupied piano bench. The oddness of the scene, two cats seated at a piano bench while music filled the air, was overwhelming---until I realized it was a player piano.
Today I was stealing a few minutes of downtime before rounds. I had settled myself into one of the lobby's comfy chairs and was enjoying the music. I guess I was reflecting, too, on the need to soften the reality of a nursing home---the last home most of our patients will know. At Steere House, perhaps we've achieved the same effect with a family of cats, an atrium of glass, and the sounds of classical music played by the best pianist you never saw.
As if on cue, one of the lobby cats rubbed against my legs. It was Munchie. He's an unusual-looking fellow: grayish-black with spatters of chestnut and brown, like an expressionist painting gone wrong. He meowed loudly, calling out for affection. Cautiously, I reached over and stroked him behind the ears. That flipped the purring switch and he continued to bang against my legs like a bumper car.
"You're not so bad," I said. "At least you don't attack me, like some cats I could mention."
Munchie looked up at me and then curled up over my feet, fully obscuring them from view. As he settled in for a nap, a more ordinary-looking black-and-white cat appeared and jumped into my lap. Billy turned twice before curling up in a ball. Then he looked at me as if to say, "You didn't think you were going to get away without petting me, too, did you?" My pager rang, and I frowned. How do cats always seem to know when you have to be somewhere else?
"Sorry, guys," I said as I stood up. "Mary's paging me and I suspect that I've got to check in on Mrs. Rubenstein upstairs." Munchie scurried away and Billy leaped off my lap and looked at me with that air of disdain only cats can muster. Feeling guilty for having shortchanged him, I leaned over and gave him some gentle petting. But he lost interest after only a few seconds and wandered off to find his friend. Calling a cat fickle is like saying snow's wet.
As I left the lobby I looked back at the cats in the atrium; they were already engaged in chasing each other, like two kids playing tag. My comings and goings were of no concern to them. They were truly in the now. My life is made of pagers, deadlines, appointments, and responsibilities. At that moment the existence of a cat looked pretty good to me.
I got on the elevator and, as if by reflex, found myself looking to the back corner, half expecting to see Steere House's very first cat, Henry, curled up on the floor. It's Henry and his successors that make Steere House so different from other nursing homes; it's a menagerie of cats, rabbits, and birds.
It wasn't always this way, though. Before the 1980s there was no such thing as pet therapy. Animals didn't have a place in health care institutions. Why bring a "dirty animal" into a sterile environment? Then some scientists began to espouse the human-animal bond theory---the belief that animals can have a beneficial effect on human health and psychology. Research increasingly began to back up this belief. Nursing home patients in particular---with or without memory loss---were less depressed and lonely with animal companions. I suppose intuitively this makes sense. Most people love animals. Why wouldn't they want them in their last home?
I'd like to tell you that Steere House's acceptance of animals came about as a result of this research, but truth to tell, I think it was all due to a little guy named Henry. He was literally Steere House's first occupant---and the one the nursing home tried hardest to get rid of.
Since its foundation over a century ago, Steere House has gone through several incarnations, growing to suit the needs of the community. As the current structure was being built, workers noticed that a stray cat had wandered onto the construction site and was living in the unfinished building. The cat was even known to steal from an unattended lunchbox or two. By the time the building was completed, the cat had seemingly moved on and was forgotten. Shortly after the dedication ceremony for the modern Steere House, however, the cat returned to give the building his own inspection. Early one morning he strolled back into the facility, liked what he saw, and sat down in an easy chair. At first the staff tried to shoo the animal away, to no avail. Each day the cat returned, undaunted, through the lobby's sliding glass doors. His attitude was one of entitlement. "I was here first," he seemed to suggest with each wave of his tail.
Like my earlier run-in with Oscar over desk space, the administrator at the time also failed to win his argument with a cat. Eventually the cat's persistence paid off and the staff gave up on chasing him out of the building. A meeting was held and the leadership at Steere House decided to accept their unwanted guest. But he needed a name. It seemed only fitting that he be named after the building's benefactor, Henry Steere, whose likeness looked down upon the very chair that our Henry favored during those early days.
So Henry stayed, and for the next ten years he became a favorite of staff and residents alike. Until his final days he was known to ride the elevators up and down, constantly on the prowl for a cozy place to sprawl in a warm pool of sunshine. But as with all the other residents of Steere House, age eventually caught up with Henry. In his last year of life he began to lose his vision. As a result the poor thing started to walk into walls or closed doors. Over time Henry's behavior also became increasingly erratic. He would wander out of the facility and get lost outdoors. Search parties would be organized and the cat that was once chased away was now ironically returned to the facility. On some days he would simply walk into the elevator, curl up in the corner, and ride between floors all day long, going up and down hundreds of times.
"Do you know there is a cat just sitting in the corner of your elevator?" visitors would ask.
The staff would respond with a smile and gentle reassurance that it was just "Henry being Henry." In truth, many members of the staff had privately started to wonder if Henry had developed dementia like so many of the human residents he lived with. Increasingly, his behavior seemed to confirm this diagnosis.
At the end of his days, Henry had trouble eating, became incontinent, and even started to lose weight. Some in the facility began to question whether he should be euthanized. Several members of the staff lovingly doubled their efforts to care for him in order to stave off a one-way trip to the veterinarian. I suppose it's only fitting that the staff refused to stop caring for their ailing cat. Henry was no different than many of the patients they cared for on a daily basis.
Thankfully, the staff never had to make the difficult decision of putting him down. As if to do them all a favor, Henry went to bed one night and never woke up. A funeral was conducted several days after; almost everyone, staff and residents alike, was there. It was the kind of send-off you would expect for a head of state. Someone gave a eulogy; another member of the staff had even crafted a handmade coffin out of wood. When the service was over and people were still drying their eyes, Henry was laid to rest on the grounds behind the facility.
Henry changed the culture at Steere House. Thanks to him, the nursing home became increasingly animal-friendly and perhaps more of a home. Sensing the loss of their pet, members of the staff and several more able residents began to vehemently petition the nursing home leadership to replace Henry. Though resistant at first, the chief administrator gave in and staff began to scout out potential replacements. Oscar and Maya were eventually adopted from separate newspaper advertisements and came to reside on the third floor. Billy and Munchie were rescue cats whose owner had died. A hospice nurse brought them into the facility. Finally, Chico and Molly were adopted for the lower-acuity dementia unit on the first floor. All told, six cats were brought in to replace Henry, along with a handful of other animals. They were brought here because of an unwanted cat that didn't want to leave.
Maybe we started adding cats to make this house feel more like a home. But I was starting to think they were the ones teaching us that what makes a home is a family.
"The real measure of a day's heat is the length of a sleeping cat."
CHARLES J. BRADY
WHEN A PATIENT IS TERMINAL, DOCTORS WILL TALK about limiting care. These conversations go beyond discussions about CPR and whether or not to resuscitate the patient if his heart stops or breathing fails. In most cases, these conversations involve difficult questions about withholding tests and treatments, and whether further medical care should be limited to comfort care.
In cases where the patient has a terminal illness such as cancer, comfort-care discussions are relatively concrete. A patient often has pain or nausea. She may be losing weight rapidly and finds she no longer has an appetite. She may be yellow from jaundice. At times, her organs might even be failing. As difficult as all this is, these signs and symptoms are concrete; it's easy for a physician to talk about them with family members. The idea of treating further pain, even at the expense of length of life, is acceptable to most people. It's what we do when there are no other treatments to offer.
The same cannot be said for dementia.
Although diseases such as Alzheimer's are also considered terminal, they manifest themselves much more slowly. Like erosion that changes the landscape of a beach, the effects of these diseases are measured over months and years rather than days. Because it's usually not pain or discomfort that the patient is suffering, the discussions are more complex and ethically abstract. Care providers and families are forced to grapple with decisions like withholding antibiotics for a potentially curable pneumonia or deciding when it's no longer appropriate to conduct further diagnostic testing for an everyday condition like anemia or weight loss. In turn, doctors must also grapple with the question of whether a diagnostic workup for an everyday problem makes sense. Will I do anything even if the patient has cancer or some other disease? If not, why order the test?
Where Alzheimer's is concerned the roller-coaster ride of acute illnesses followed by partial recoveries can also leave families with a false sense of hope. I've had family members tell me, "If we can just cure the pneumonia, I know Mom will get better." "If we can just get Dad over this hump, I'm sure we'll see some progress." Families become preoccupied with the notion that if the patient is sent to the hospital and cured of his pneumonia (or his staph infection, or his broken hip), he'll eventually be healed. Lost is the fact that the chronic disease progresses steadily despite the recovery from the acute event, leaving the patient considerably weaker and less prepared to deal with the next challenge.
But finding a place to draw the line in patients with dementia can become challenging and fraught with ethical dilemmas for both the next of kin and the health care provider. It was that way with Frank and Ruth Rubenstein.
"DR. DOSA, I need you to see my wife right now."
The assertiveness in Frank's voice sent Oscar, resting peacefully on the countertop, scurrying for cover. He found it under the desk between Mary's legs. If I had been quicker, I very well might have joined him.
"What can I help you with, Mr. Rubenstein?"
"It's Ruth. She's more confused today than she was yesterday. And she's not eating. I'm worried about her."
"Let me finish with a few things here at the desk and I'll be down in a minute."
My response was met with a glare and for a moment, I thought he might wait at the desk for me to finish whatever it was I had to do, but he turned away eventually, muttering something under his breath. I had to remind myself that he was concerned about his wife and that his concern was manifesting itself as, well, old-man grumpiness.
"So, do you want to tell me what this is all about?" I asked, turning to Mary as he disappeared.
"Ruth's not doing so well lately, David. She's not eating and she's dropped a few pounds. I suppose he's worried that we're not taking her weight loss seriously enough."
"How much weight are we talking about?"
"About ten pounds."
I frowned. The irony is that so many of my patients could stand to lose ten pounds to help with their diabetes, hypertension, or cholesterol but not Mrs. Rubenstein. The 5'2" lady was probably 110 pounds sopping wet the day she entered the nursing home. Ten pounds was a big deal.
"Do you think anything else is going on?"
Mary shrugged. "I suppose anything is possible, but I honestly think her dementia is just getting worse. By the way, he's asked for a referral to a gastroenterologist. He's worried she has colon cancer."
In a healthy patient, the idea of seeing a gastroenterologist for a colonoscopy to evaluate weight loss would certainly be indicated, but with Ruth's rapid mental decline, the prospect of subjecting her to multiple tests and procedures was probably not in her best interests.
"Have we started any discussions with Frank about limiting his wife's care?"
"David, I don't get hazard pay here."
I sighed as I looked at Oscar curled up in a ball in a nook under the desk.
"You got any space down there for me?"
"Nice try, David. I talked to him last time. It's your turn to go talk to the man."
MY FIRST MEETING with the Rubensteins had ended so badly, I was a little surprised when I saw them return. Frank had been angry and Ruth was scared---a classic tag team of denial. I suspect that they went to other doctors with the hope of finding a different answer. That's common enough: I'd probably do the same. Perhaps they simply decided not to deal with it at all. But burying your head in the sand only works for so long. After about a year, they returned to my office and became regulars.
For a while, their visits to the clinic were positive. With each subsequent appointment, the couple seemed to accept Ruth's diagnosis and did their best to deal with it. Then Ruth began to lose many of the social graces that masked her memory impairment. Embarrassed by her worsening power of recall, she withdrew from her friends. As a result, she became depressed. Medications for depression helped briefly, but did not curb the persistent progression of her cognitive decline. In time, Ruth struggled to keep up with her household chores. She burned meals repeatedly and forgot simple recipes. Her husband compensated by ordering out or buying prepared meals from the grocery store. When she could no longer clean, he hired a maid.
Despite her decline, it was a loving relationship, the kind we could all hope for. Frank's patience with Ruth was magnificent, a sign of a deep love that had grown over the years. When she forgot a name or a memory, he gently redirected her. He doted on her constantly, offering her a hand when she got up from a chair or his arm when they walked down the hallway. One day, about a year after they began seeing me, Frank pulled me aside as they were leaving my office. Like a young teen sheepishly buying condoms for the first time, he asked me if I had any samples for something that might help his impotence. Their love life had never been better, he explained, and he was having trouble meeting Ruth's daily sexual demands---not uncommon for a married couple when one of them has dementia. I left the office that day smiling to myself. We all like to believe that our parents and grandparents never have sex, that it's an activity reserved for the young and vibrant. Funny how little we know (or want to know).
Over time, Ruth's mental decline continued and Frank was increasingly unable to compensate for his added responsibilities in her daily care. During doctor's appointments he too appeared increasingly tired and unkempt. It was clear that taking care of his wife had become a round-the-clock job. The strain was taking its toll. Given his own decline, I gently began to suggest that Frank consider hiring full-time help or place his wife in a nursing home. I could have predicted the response.
"How dare you suggest that I put my wife in a nursing home? Does it look like I can't take care of her?" I bit my tongue and asked him to consider hiring an aide to assist him so he could leave the house from time to time. This suggestion didn't fare much better.
"Why can't Medicare pay for that? How much money do you think I have?"
Sadly, I told him that the federal health care system would not pay for custodial care of his wife but that the assistance might help keep her out of a more expensive nursing home. Then he was beside himself. "Why the hell did I pay all that money into Medicare over the years when they don't pay for anything?"
He was preaching to the choir---but it didn't change anything.
Despite the obvious financial strain, a few weeks later, Frank finally did hire an aide. Unfortunately, the additional assistance didn't help for long. Almost three years to the day after the couple had first walked into my office, I received a call from the emergency room. Ruth had pneumonia and would need to be hospitalized. Initially, she was started on antibiotics and began to improve. On the second evening of her hospital stay, however, she became extremely confused. Not knowing where she was, she got out of bed in the middle of the night and became tangled in her IV tubing. She began to walk across the hospital room and fell awkwardly to the floor. Sometime later, she was found on the floor by a nurse's aide. X-rays followed, revealing that she had broken her hip and would require surgery.
Things quickly went from bad to worse. During recovery following surgery, Ruth suffered a pulmonary embolus and became even less stable. Her blood pressure became tenuous and her breathing became labored. As she became increasingly short of breath, I sat with Frank, asking him to consider options for her care. I told him that if things continued, she would require a tube to help her breathe, something she had once told me in the office that she would not want. I suggested to him that it was okay to consider letting her go. We would take care of her and ensure that she did not die in pain.
My entreaties fell on deaf ears.
A tube was placed down her throat to help her breathe and she was transferred to an intensive care unit. Several weeks later, she finally did improve, vindicating Frank's staunch support. Nevertheless, Ruth had been left weak to the point where she could no longer get out of bed, let alone walk. After discussions with her husband, she was transferred to Steere House.
RUTH WAS ASLEEP IN BED, quietly snoring, when I entered her room a few minutes after my latest run-in with Frank. He was in the recliner beside her, his own eyes closed. Evidently, the bravado displayed at the front desk had taken a toll. I pulled up a chair between them and sat down. Under other circumstances, I might have left them alone to their dream worlds, but Frank's sense of urgency notwithstanding, we had several important issues to discuss. I gently nudged him and he startled for a second before opening a single eye. He grumbled something under his breath before sitting up.
"So, what's going on, Mr. Rubenstein?" I asked.
"Look at her, Dr. Dosa. She's skin and bone. I come in here every day at lunchtime to feed her so I can make sure she eats her meal. Lately, I can't get her to eat anything anymore."
He pointed to a mostly uneaten grilled cheese sandwich on a lunch tray in the corner of the room. A container of applesauce also appeared untouched.
"Mr. Rubenstein, your wife might be losing weight now because of her dementia."
"Doctor, if you are here to ask me to consider putting my wife on hospice again, I don't want to hear it. We've been down that road before."
"This isn't about whether or not your wife belongs on hospice."
He stared at me with a quiet determination. He was the defender at the gates of her castle and I was the leader of the invading horde. There would be no agreement or compromise. I knew that and for the time being, that was all right. Ruth probably wasn't ready for hospice, but there was another pressing issue to discuss. Did it make sense to order a number of tests and procedures to determine why she was losing weight?
I tried a different tack.
"Frank, how do you think your wife is doing?" I asked.
The question surprised him. He was expecting another assault on his castle gates.
"Dr. Dosa, I know my wife has a terrible disease, but I'm not ready to give up on her. She still loves me and my time with her is important."
I considered my next statement carefully.
"I know you care deeply about your wife, but I should tell you what I think. You talked with Mary earlier about wanting Ruth to see a gastroenterologist for her weight loss. I don't think sending her to a specialist is going to change anything. She's just going to end up getting a bunch of tests. Some of those tests have the potential to be quite uncomfortable. Besides, even if those tests show that she has cancer, Frank, you know as well as I do that we wouldn't consider doing anything aggressive. She wouldn't tolerate it."
The anger returned to Frank's face. I had stepped over the line and he responded accordingly.
"Doctor, I want you to do everything for my wife that you would want for your wife or your own children. If her heart stops, I want you to restart it. If she gets that pneumonia again, I want you to send her to the hospital. If she needs a specialist, I want you to send her. Am I being clear?"
"Crystal clear, Mr. Rubenstein."
I got up to leave the room and made my way to the door. When I got to the threshold, I looked back at him and his sleeping wife. Against my better judgment, I left Frank with one last parting thought.
"Frank, I know you love your wife."
He looked up at me and I could see the anger draining from his face.
I paused for a moment. I didn't know how far I could take it.
"Sometimes, the deepest act of love is letting go," I said. "Don't make this about fighting with me or any of the other staff. Think about Ruth."
I FOUND MARY WAITING when I returned to the front desk. Oscar had also returned to his more exposed position and was once again asleep.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"Status quo," I replied.
Mary shook her head.
"I'll call the GI doctor tomorrow and make an appointment," she said. She knew what Frank was after and had been hoping that I could dissuade him. She walked into her office to write herself a reminder.
"It's not going to make a difference, is it?" I could hear her just fine through the open door.
"No, Mary, it isn't, but he's not ready to hear that."
"Give him time," she said.
"We've got plenty of that."
"I have studied many philosophers and many cats.The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."
IT WAS JUST AN ORDINARY WEDNESDAY. OR SO I thought until I encountered a new face working behind the third floor nurse's desk. Actually, it was an old face and it belonged to a woman whom I guessed to be in her early eighties. She was tastefully dressed in a light blue cashmere sweater with carefully applied makeup and meticulously painted nails. Her graying golden hair was pulled back behind her ears and arranged with an expensive-looking antique clasp.
Mary spoke before I could say anything. "Dr. Dosa, I'd like to introduce you to Louise Chambers. She's our new receptionist."
"Our what?" The third floor didn't have a receptionist; it wasn't in the budget. Mary laughed at my confusion. "Just one of the patients, David."
I noticed that Louise was picking up the phone when it hadn't rung and saying something into the mouthpiece. I recalled another patient Mary had told me about, a former insurance salesman who sat in his room with his feet on a desk, selling insurance into a disconnected phone.
"Is she new?" I asked.
"Oh, no, not at all. Louise has been here for about three months. Lately, though, she's started to wander down to the front desk and sit here with us. Sometimes, if we're not around, she'll answer the phone."
I looked at Louise, who was repeatedly lifting up the phone and putting it back down again, and wondered how many family members had tried to get through while she had been manning the front desk.
"Look, I know finances are tight and you could use the help," I began.
"C'mon, David," Mary laughed, "lighten up. The families just love her. I think she was a secretary for some big executive years ago. Answering phones is probably just in her blood." She glanced over at Louise, who seemed to be watching us out of the corner of her eye. "And you know, David, she just loves tall men."
At this Louise muttered something, which prompted a childish laugh from Mary.
"What did she say?" I asked, moving toward the desk.
"I told you she would like you," Mary replied.
"But what did she say?"
"She says you're cute."
I shook my head incredulously.
"How did you get that?"
"Years of working here, I guess."
I had noted this Dr. Dolittle--like ability of Mary's before. She could understand patients no one else could---just one of her many talents.
Mary got up from her desk and grabbed a chart from the rack behind her.
"Take a look at this," Mary said. "It's Saul Strahan's labs."
The antibiotics I had prescribed for his leg didn't seem to be helping, and there were other complications. His white count appeared to bear the signs of worsening infection and he was likely dehydrated based on his recent labs.
"I'll go see him," I said.
Mary nodded, but not in a manner that conveyed much hope.
"I think we both know which way this is going," she said. "Now if only we could bring his daughter inside the tent."
That was a big tent she was talking about but in my experience, you couldn't get people inside until they were good and ready. Saul's daughter was a long way from ready.
"Well, let me go take a look at him," I said, and headed off for his room. As I passed Louise she got up quickly from her chair and stepped in front of me. Her hands opened wide, as if expecting a hug.
"You see," said Mary, "she really does like you."
I gave Louise a hug, which prompted a huge smile on her face.
Suddenly I understood.
"She thinks I'm somebody else!" I backed off a bit, feeling slightly offended. I headed for Saul's room with Mary laughing behind me.
"You know, David, whoever you're substituting for, you're not half bad."
I FOUND SAUL in his recliner again. The TV was on but he made no pretense of watching it. He was still wearing his Red Sox cap. Like so many others in this part of New England, Saul was a devoted sports fan. His room was festooned with baseball paraphernalia and mementoes. On his nightstand there was a picture of him standing proudly in front of Fenway Park with his arm around the neck of a young boy, likely his grandson.
"Spring training starts soon, Saul!" I said and pulled up a chair beside him. I wondered if he even knew his team had finally won the World Series. Even Sox fans that hadn't suffered strokes couldn't quite believe that the eighty-six-year-old Curse of the Bambino had finally ended.
I listened to Saul's heart and lungs and then finished my assessment by looking at his leg. Mary was right: It was inflamed again, despite the earlier antibiotic treatment. This time, though, the redness appeared to be spreading up his leg toward his knee. I took a moment to draw a line around the redness with a ballpoint pen---a line of demarcation to tell whether the infection would respond to our treatments. Then I sat down next to Saul and surveyed his other labs, quickly noticing a recent test that showed he was colonized with an increasingly common, highly resistant bacterium. This particularly nasty strain of staphylococcus has become the bane of every physician's existence in recent years. These resistant strains of bacteria have become almost ubiquitous in health care institutions around the world.
As I pondered my limited treatment options, I felt another presence in the room. I looked down to see Oscar sitting on the floor, watching me intently.
"Hey, you. Are you making rounds with me now?"
I reached over and offered my hand. Oscar sniffed it intently, then stood up to move toward me, allowing me to gently scratch him behind the ears. Then with a single leap, he jumped on my lap and sat down, eyeing me. He purred.
"So, what do you think?" I asked Oscar, nodding my head toward the patient.
For a second, he looked over at Saul as if he were actually assessing the situation. Then he jumped off my lap and approached the chair. He leaped up on the arm of the recliner and sniffed the air. Then he jumped down and scampered out of the room. It occurred to me that I had just received a second opinion from a cat.
I finished my exam and said good-bye to Saul. Returning to the front desk, I found Mary busy writing in a chart.
"So, I've just been on rounds with Oscar," I announced, smiling.
"Are you a believer now?" she asked.
"I wouldn't go that far but I've been wondering. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that he has this ability to sense when death is coming. Do you think he just smells a hormone or something you or I can't perceive?"
"I don't know, David. I'd like to think it's a little more than that, but I've read about stories from health care workers who say they can smell when death is near."
I considered what Mary was saying and realized that there was at least one possible scientific explanation.
"When cells stop working, you get a state of starvation and you can smell ketones," I said, referring to the sweet-smelling chemical byproduct that can also be sensed in out-of-control diabetics.
Mary shrugged. "Personally, I'd like to believe that there's more here than just a smell. Maybe Oscar's patterning the behavior of the staff on the floor. After all, you were in the room just now showing interest in Saul. Perhaps he just wanted to be part of the team? A cat's got to earn his keep, you know."
I looked down the hallway, lost in thought. "In a way that makes sense," I said, "but it doesn't explain why he's sometimes the first to enter a room when a patient is dying."
I must have been frowning because Mary punched me in the arm in a playful fashion. "Careful!" she said. "You look like you might hurt yourself!"
"It's funny," I said. "I've had all of this medical education and experience and I still often walk into a room and have no idea what is going to happen. I mean, how often do family members ask you how long their loved one has?"
"All the time."
"What do you tell them?"
"I tell them that only God really knows and I don't have his telephone number."
"Like a cat," I said, unconsciously.
"What?" Now Mary was the one who looked incredulous.
"You know: 'A dog comes when you call and a cat takes a message and gets back to you.'" I looked under the desk where the cats' food was kept: no Oscar. "The thing is, Oscar walked into the room just now, took a deep whiff, and walked out of there as if there was nothing to worry about."
"I guess he knows that you're going to fix Mr. Strahan."
"Maybe. But it does bring you down a peg, knowing that in the great medical org chart, you're in a box below a cat."
Mary chuckled at my response. As I looked at her, I suddenly became curious about her own thoughts related to our cat.
"Mary, when did you first think about what Oscar was doing?"
She put her pen down and sat back in her chair.
"I guess, at first, I didn't really think about it. Some of the aides started to talk about the cat always being there when patients died. As I remember it, I suspect Oscar's first patient was Marion McCullough. Her son Jack used to bring Oscar into the room with him because her mother really loved cats. Oscar would never really stay with her for long, but as she got sicker, he would stay longer. On the day Marion died, Oscar actually jumped into her bed of his own accord and sat down beside her. Jack telephoned me a few days later and told me how fortunate it had been that Oscar jumped on the bed."
"Why?"
"I guess he thought it was a signal that she was going to die soon."
Mary looked over at me.
"At the time, I thought it was a cute story, but I didn't give it much thought. You should talk to him, though."
"So, that was your first inkling," I said. "But what did it for you?"
"I suppose the thing that made me a believer was a death that occurred several months later. By then, a number of people were talking about Oscar, including several of the hospice nurses. Your patient Ralph Reynolds was dying and we were trying to do everything to make him more comfortable. One of your colleagues was up here and went in to take a look at him. She came out suggesting that he was close to death and gave some hospice recommendations. One of the aides overheard her and went off to find Oscar."
Mary paused for a second, savoring the telling. "The aide returned a few minutes later, carrying one unhappy kitty into the room. She put Oscar on the bed and announced to us that if the patient were dying, Oscar should be present. Oscar looked at all of us like we were all stark mad and ran out of the room quicker than she could finish her sentence. Hours later, we found him hiding under the nurse's desk."
"So, what happened?"
"Ralph actually hung on for another thirty-six hours. But sure enough, four hours before he died, we found Oscar pacing in front of the patient's closed door. Oscar looked profoundly unhappy. When we opened the door, he dashed straight for the bed and leaped up next to Ralph. He curled up there and refused to budge. A few hours later, Ralph was gone. Oscar didn't leave his side until the funeral director came and even then, we needed to bribe him with cat treats to get him away from Ralph."
I shook my head, but I don't know if it was in wonder or disbelief. Mary gauged my reaction and offered me a hint of a smile.
"Dr. Dosa, it looks like you're starting to take our cat here more seriously."
I threw up my hands. "Who knows, Mary? I'm still a scientist at heart." I knew Mary hated my I'm a scientist talk, but I continued. "I've always been taught to look dispassionately at the facts---to analyze them, form theories, and then poke holes in them until other theories develop that are closer to the truth. You know that. When you consider it from a scientific point of view it's easy to shrug off suggestions that a cat can predict death. It's so much easier to say that he's just sitting with those patients because of the activity---the gathering of family, the holding of hands, the saying of good-byes. It just makes more sense. Or maybe he just likes to hang out with dying people because they don't bother him. Most cats sleep two thirds of the day anyway, so chances are a cat is going to be found on a warm bed somewhere, right?"
Mary smiled widely. She seemed to sense that I had reached some sort of tipping point and that I was prepared to believe in this gift of Oscar's. She didn't want to push it, but she couldn't seem to help herself either. "But you've got to admit that there's something unusual about our cat, right?"
"When you consider all the circumstantial evidence, it certainly looks that way."
"So, do some more investigating," she said reasonably. "You're a researcher. I think you should talk to some of the family members of the patients who died on Oscar's watch, see what they have to say."
"I guess it couldn't hurt," I said. I was thinking about the part of my job that required me to be a detective. Science is, among other things, an art of detection. I felt that I had to get closer to the heart of this mystery.
"So, where should I begin?" I asked.
"I'd start with someone you trust," Mary prompted.
"Donna Richards?" I asked.
"I can't think of anyone better!" she said, perhaps a little more self-satisfied than was necessary.
I hate it when she's right.
"Cats always know whether people like or dislike them.They do not always care enough to do anything about it."
TO SAY THAT I TRUSTED DONNA RICHARDS WAS SOMETHING of an understatement. It was like saying that Sherlock Holmes trusted Dr. Watson, or that Captain Kirk trusted Scotty to run the engine room.
As any doctor will tell you, good office managers are worth their weight in gold. They manage large staffs, stay one step ahead of government regulations, and make sure that important phone calls get returned. They see that the billing is current and that everyone gets paid, and make sure we don't run out of supplies---everything from tongue depressors to copier paper. Office manager is one of those thankless jobs that only gets noticed when something goes wrong. That may be why it can be such a difficult position to fill. I know that's why we snapped up Donna Richards when she, quite literally, landed on our doorstep.
Donna had brought her mother into our office one morning for an appointment and happened to ask one of my colleagues if we needed an office manager. She had recently returned to Rhode Island after fifteen years in California to take care of her parents and needed a job. Talk about synchronicity.
During the three years we worked together, Donna and I would often chat long after my patients and the rest of the staff had gone home. We would sit together in my office as we finished up paperwork. She'd ask me about my newborn son, offering the kind of parenting advice you couldn't find in any medical manual. In turn, I'd ask her about the balancing act she performed every day as a single working mother with the added responsibilities of caring for a parent with dementia. It was during those evening talks that I first saw the complexities of dementia care through the eyes of a friend. Donna opened up to me about the compromises she made in leaving her career to return home to take care of her mother. She spoke of the difficulties of navigating the health care system---one that she knew well from her days as a senior health care executive---to ensure that her mother had high-quality care. It was Donna who introduced me to the term "sandwich generation," and it was from her that I began to really understand what it's like for the millions of Americans caught between raising kids and caring for elderly family.
Now I hoped she could help me once more by giving me some much-needed perspective on Oscar. But first we had to catch up. It had been two years since Donna left our office for another job and over a year since her mother had passed away with Oscar by her side. We had a lot of ground to cover.
"IN THE WEEKS AFTER my mother died I would wake up in a cold sweat." I was sitting with Donna in her suburban home outside of Providence. "My mother would come to me in my dreams," she continued. "She was younger, the way I remember her from my childhood, and she would look up at and accuse me: 'I wanted to go to the hospital but you didn't let me...If you had just sent me to the hospital.'"
Donna looked up at a far-off corner of the ceiling, as if the movement itself would keep her from crying. She took a drag off her cigarette and let the smoke waft up through the air.
"David, I know how much you hate my smoking," she said with a smile.
I rolled my eyes but said nothing. It's not my place to come into someone's home and tell them to stop smoking. I do that enough in the office.
Donna considered the cigarette again and then stamped it out in the ashtray. "After one of those dreams I would sit in bed for hours, trying to talk myself out of what she had said. I knew she didn't like the nursing home, or at least she didn't like it when she could still process things. You have to realize, putting her in the home was the hardest decision of my life, but I really had no other choice. I was a single mom trying to provide for my son as best I could. I just couldn't take care of her at home anymore. She had that dementia with Lewy bodies and her decline was just so quick."
Aside from neurologists, geriatricians, and psychiatrists, few people are familiar with Lewy body dementia (LBD). Though it's likely the second most common cause of dementia, LBD is frequently underdiagnosed because of its similarities to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. As with Parkinson's, LBD involves a movement disorder: Those afflicted become rigid and unsteady on their feet. They frequently suffer from psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, sleep disturbances, and significant behavioral changes---as well as an extreme sensitivity and intolerance to the antipsychotic medications that are often mistakenly prescribed for the hallucinations. This behavioral component of the disease makes caring for patients with LBD especially difficult.
"It was like one minute, my mother was fine, and the next month she was lost. She just wasn't herself anymore. We took her to the best doctors, the best specialists, and they would give her pill after pill. She must have tried them all at one point. The doctors thought she was depressed, so they gave her antidepressants. She couldn't sleep, so they gave her sleeping pills. Her memory failed, so they gave her a memory pill. The more medications they gave her, the worse she got. Eventually, things got so out of hand that your colleague finally admitted her to a psychiatric hospital just to wean her off the medications. Turns out, they probably were just making it worse."
She shook her head at the irony of it all. "Kind of strange that we had to admit her to a hospital to get her off medications."
It's actually not so strange. Over one-quarter of hospitalizations today result from the collective effects of overmedication. The fact is that all medications, even herbal and over-the-counter drugs, are potentially dangerous in certain clinical situations. Elderly patients today are exposed to more and more medications all the time.
"When she got out of the hospital," Donna continued, "it was obvious that she couldn't come home. From that point on she went from one nursing home to another. What an eyeopener that was!
"When my mother was in the first nursing home, I got a phone call from the nurse at the facility telling me they were sending her to the emergency room for evaluation. I asked them why and she told me that, at eighty-four years of age, my mother had hit an aide while they were trying to change her. Now, my mom was feisty, but she never would have done this if it wasn't for her disease. I rushed off to the ER and they did the workup. The doctors ended up finding nothing, but when they tried to get her back to the facility, the nursing home refused to take her. In the end, my mother stayed in the emergency room for three days while we tried to find a place for her to go."
Donna got up from her chair and walked nervously around her kitchen.
"You know, David, this is what really gets me. It was like no one in the hospital really cared where my mother ended up. They just wanted to get her out of the ER as soon as possible. I had to fight tooth and nail; finally, I was able to pull strings and get my mother into a nursing home like Steere House. To this day, I know that the only reason they took my mother was because I knew all of the doctors who worked there. Imagine if I hadn't had those connections or hadn't known how to find information about those different nursing homes? The whole system is just plain bad."
Donna became quiet. The memories washed over her and again tears came to her eyes. This time she let them flow.
"Sometimes, when I think about those days, I don't know how I did it. I had a plan every day that was minute-to-minute; I had to have a strategy just to be able to work, care for my son, and be there for my mother."
"That must have been hard on you."
Donna looked at me as if I'd just said something like "It must snow a lot in New England in the winter."
"David, unless you go through it, you truly have no idea. I had no life for myself."
In anyone else this might have seemed like self-pity. With Donna it was just the facts.
"I had no life, but that wasn't so bad. I could deal with that. I understood that this was my cross to bear. The worst part was the guilt about not being there for someone else. When I would miss my son's swimming meet because something was going on with my mom, I would feel terrible. When I would go to the swimming meet, I would feel guilty that I was not visiting my mother. Sometimes when I left Steere House, I would feel so guilty about putting my mother in the nursing home that I would drive home crying the whole way. 'Good Italians' are not supposed to put their parents into nursing homes."
Donna managed a halfhearted smile and shrugged her shoulders.
"In the end, I guess I didn't have a choice. I just did the best I could."
She looked at me and I could tell that we had gone as far as she intended to go.
"Doesn't stop the guilt, though?" I asked.
"It never really goes away. And those dreams..."
WE TALKED for another two hours, about everything from her job to her social life as a single parent, and then I told her about the recent birth of my daughter. Eventually I glanced at my watch and realized how late it had become. I got up off the kitchen stool and began to gather my things.
"Wait!" Donna said. She looked at me with the hint of a smile. "You came here wanting to find out about Oscar and you almost left without asking me."
"I guess our conversation seemed to go in a different direction," I said. "Or maybe I'm not as open to the idea of Oscar as I thought I was."
She laughed and gestured for me to sit down again.
"So, Ms. Richards," I said, putting on my best reporter's voice, "what do you think about our four-legged friend, Oscar?"
Donna laughed and gave me her Oh brother! look, an expression I hadn't seen since we worked together.
"First off, my mother hated cats! Earlier in her life, I would have half expected her to poison Oscar had he jumped on her bed. It wasn't just cats. My mother really didn't like animals, period. Didn't see the point of them. Yet, as she got worse and worse with the dementia, she seemed to take more comfort from the animals on the unit. I don't know what it was about them, or about the changes in my mother, but something really had changed. It was like she was more receptive on some deeper level. Does that sound strange?"
"Not at all. In fact, lately I've been wondering a lot about the true nature of our connection with animals, especially when we're very young and very old. My son has always been drawn to animals, even before he could talk. I've seen that same intense curiosity with some of my patients, too. It's as if the relationship somehow transcends language. I'm just now learning how smart animals are."
"Well, Oscar was smart. That much I'll say. He generally kept a safe distance and left my mother alone, but when he'd wander by and she would stop to talk to him, well, he stopped too. He never stayed long and he never cuddled up to her---Oscar was more like a visiting dignitary than a house cat---but he always stopped as if to hear her out."
Visiting dignitary indeed.
"What did you think of the animals at Steere House?"
"Well, in a way, it was strangely comforting. A distraction of sorts. I mean, it didn't change the fact that my mother was in the nursing home, but it did make her surroundings a little more bearable. More like home than a home, you know? In a way, I think the presence of the animals also helped my son."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, nursing homes are not easy places for kids. Sometimes he'd come up to the floor and go off in search of the cats. It was better for him, playing with Billy or Munchie on the first floor rather than sitting in a straight-backed chair swinging his legs. And it would give me a little more time to spend with my mother."
"Was Oscar there at the end?"
"Absolutely. When my mother got sick for the last time, Oscar spent more and more time in the room with me. It was as if he knew I needed the support. It was truly bizarre. He seemed to warm toward me. More than that...he seemed to understand."
Donna gauged the look on my face and continued.
"Well, I was at the bedside for pretty much the last seventy-two hours of my mother's life. I even slept in the recliner next to her during that time. When I would try to rest, Oscar would wander into the room and snuggle up next to me. Then he would jump over from my chair to my mother's bed and sit down beside her. He did that for pretty much the entire time that my mother was dying.
"The thing I can't get over is that Oscar always seemed to know when he was needed, and he never seemed to want anything in return. Oh, he'd let me stroke under his chin and rub his little ears, but even that---well, it was as if he knew that it was helping me. Which it did. There's something really calming about petting a cat..."
"Was he there when she died?"
"A few hours before my mother died, one of the nurses came to talk with me and convinced me to go home for a little bit. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but the nurse persuaded me to go. Sure enough, my mother died shortly after I left. Oscar never left, though. He was there when she drew her last breath."
"Were you upset that you left before she died?"
"No. Quite honestly, my mother probably waited for me to leave before she let go. That was just her style."
Donna smiled.
"Besides," she said, "she wasn't alone. My mother had Oscar."
"A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution."
IT WAS AS IF I HAD STUMBLED ON A SCENE FROM THE Summer of Love. A small group of interested onlookers, residents, and staff had surrounded the front desk of the unit, blocking my view of the spectacle. Like a small child trying to get a better look at a passing parade, I picked my way through the morass of walkers and residents. All eyes were on Oscar and Maya, who appeared to be in the throes of ecstasy. Both cats were charging around the desk at breakneck speed, stopping occasionally to roll around, flailing their limbs in the air. It was like watching a drug-fueled pas de deux, with cats instead of dancers.
I pushed my way to the front, where I found Mary.
"Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" I said.
"Catnip," she said.
Watching their whirling-dervish routine, my inner veterinarian took over. "Are they sick?" I asked.
Mary laughed, and then launched into an explanation, almost shouting to be heard over the yowling of the cats and the laughter of the staff and patients.
"Cats love it---it makes them crazy. There's some kind of chemical in the herb that gives them an almost sexual high."
I looked at Oscar, whom I had been thinking of as this wise, Sphinx-like creature with all the answers. He was chasing his tail. "What, do they smoke it?"
"Don't you know anything about cats?" asked an aide who overheard me. I was joking but honestly, I had little idea what catnip was.
"I've never owned a cat," I said to the aide.
She laughed. "Nobody owns a cat, Dr. Dosa. They own you!"
Mary came to my rescue.
"The cats don't smoke it, David," she said. "They just roll in it. You can see the results."
"But they do act like little drug fiends!" said the aide.
As the hilarity died down, the novelty of seeing our two resident cats acting like clowns wore off even before the catnip did. People began to drift off and I stole into Mary's office to check my messages. She followed me in.
"How was your meeting with Donna?" she asked.
"Interesting," I said. "She told me that her mother really hated cats, all animals really, until she met Oscar."
"Isn't that something?" said Mary. "That you could even forget what you once hated."
"An old Irish patient of mine asked me if I knew the definition of Irish Alzheimer's," I said.
Mary cocked an eyebrow, waiting for the joke. "And?"
"He said, 'You forget everything but the grudges.'"
Mary laughed. "Well, I don't think the Irish have a lock on resentment." She looked out the window at the thinning crowd. Oscar and Maya were lolling about on the floor now, a couple of old hopheads coming down off their high.
"But Donna also told me how glad she was that Oscar was there at the end," I continued. "It was as if he gave her permission to leave. She said later she figured her mother wasn't going to die with her daughter there, so Oscar did a service for both of them, in a sense."
"Like a bridge between the mother and daughter," Mary said.
"Yeah, like a bridge." I looked through the glass with her at this ordinary house cat, passed out on the carpet. Maybe I was the one who'd been smoking the catnip.
"So, are you going to talk to some more family members?" Mary asked. "Remember those two sisters who lost both their parents here? Oscar was with their mom when she died."
"Rita and Annette," I said. "I thought about them. Though I'm not really sure what I'm trying to discover." I looked at her again.
"You could always go see Jack McCullough...or what about Mrs. Ferretti? Didn't you have a good relationship with her?"
I could sense Mary prodding me on with my journey of discovery. "Did you ever see Citizen Kane?" I asked.
"Oh, God, ages ago."
"Maybe I'm like that reporter, you know, the one who goes out to discover the meaning of 'Rosebud.'"
"That's right!" said Mary. "And in the end it turns out to be the name of his sled."
"Yeah, that's what the audience finds out when they show them burning it at the end," I said. "But the reporter never learns anything."
"You never know, though, until you try."
I smiled and changed the subject, "So, who do I need to see today?"
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY about the weather in New England? "If you don't like it now just wait a few minutes." My day at Steere House turned out to be just as fickle as our climate. Less than an hour after the hilarity of the crazy-cat carousel, no one was laughing. In fact, the atmosphere had become toxic.
Just an hour or so before everyone had been laughing as if they were at the circus. Now it seemed I had stepped right into the midst of a heated battle between Mary and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman I recognized to be Saul Strahan's daughter, Barbara. Two nursing aides were standing silently beside the desk, watching the two of them go at it, apparently over a pair of slippers.
Mary was trying to placate Barbara Strahan. "I appreciate this may be upsetting, but if we can keep this in perspective..."
"Don't you tell me about perspective! I don't need---" and before I could slip past she recognized me as her father's doctor.
"Can't you do anything about your staff up here?" she said to me. "This is the third pair of slippers that they've lost in the last two years."
Finding myself in the middle of a conflict I knew nothing about, I said nothing. Barbara threw up her hands, then turned her fury back to Mary and the aides.
"Is it too much to ask that you keep track of my father's stuff?"
Mary offered a cautious explanation.
"I'm sure that your father's slippers will show up soon. One of the other residents probably just took them from his closet. We'll find them eventually. We almost always do."
"Why can't you keep the other patients out of my father's room?"
"We try, Barbara, it's just that it's very hard to control what they get into when we're not watching."
"Well, try harder!"
As if to emphasize her point, Barbara made eye contact with each of us one by one, and then stormed off. But before she did, she took one last look at Lydia, a Spanish-speaking aide.
"You guys need to get better help around here," she said. "Or at least someone who speaks better English!"
With that parting shot, she stormed off down the hallway toward her father's room.
I looked over at Lydia. A tear had come to her eye, one that she quickly wiped off with the back of her hand.
Mary put her hand on Lydia's shoulder.
"She doesn't mean it," she said. "She's just upset."
Lydia nodded and attempted a smile, but the insult had stung deep and I could tell that it would take some time for her to recover. She turned and walked away. The rest of us remained in awkward silence. Mary shook her head and then turned to an aide.
"See if you can find those slippers," she said quietly.
"Well, as always, I timed my arrival perfectly," I said as the young woman left. "What was that all about?"
"That was Saul Strahan's daughter. I thought you two had met."
"Only once, when her father was admitted. Mostly we just talk on the phone. We've been talking a lot lately."
I sat down at the desk and looked directly at Mary. A perfectionist in her work, she was probably seething inside. Aside from her own pride, injured by the accusation that she didn't run a tight ship, I knew that she felt even worse for the aides.
"I need to go outside for a cigarette," Mary said. She walked back into the nurse's office and spent several minutes searching for her pack. When she emerged without her coat, I could tell that she had already calmed down.
"Seriously, Mary, doesn't that get on your nerves?"
She sighed. "It's hard to believe sometimes, but I've worked here for almost ten years, and at a lot of other nursing homes before that. At this point in my career, I can pretty much put every family member I meet into one of four categories: those who are angry, those who feel guilty, those who are afraid, and those who are all three. We try to work with everyone to eventually accept this," she said, holding up her hands to encompass the ward, the residents, and the finality of it all. "In time, most of them do. Sometimes we just can't get them to accept this reality quickly enough."
"So, what is Barbara Strahan?" I asked. "Which category does she fall into?"
"She probably just feels guilty."
Mary paused to consider what to say.
"You know, David, Saul probably hasn't worn those slippers in the last half year anyway. But if I don't find them immediately, she'll be speaking with my boss."
"Have you tried talking with her?"
"In one ear, out the other."
"Sometimes, I don't know how you do it," I said. "At least, as physicians, we get to come and go."
"Actually, the ones who feel guilty, like Barbara, are easier to deal with than some of the others. You just have to develop a thick skin. They usually just yell at us about silly things and most of them calm down eventually. Barbara will probably even come down here and apologize for her behavior before she leaves. Some of the other family members can be worse."
"Worse?"
"Well, as I said, there are families who are afraid of the disease and what it does. I get it. But they're usually the ones who are the most in denial. They'll come in here and question everything. If we change a resident's diet, they'll ask a million questions about why. Those cases end up being harder because you feel so sorry for the family. When they finally get it, what's actually happening to their mother or father, they look like they've been beaten with a two-by-four."
Mary sighed again.
"I'm sorry that you can't smoke in here," I said.
"No, you're not," she said, and smiled. "Finally, there are the angry ones who blame us for everything. Just last week, I had a daughter ask me why her mother was in one of those walkers. When I told her it was because she had fallen down a couple of times, she said that I didn't want her mother to get better! 'You probably want her out of here so you can have her bed,' she said."
"You're kidding!"
"I wish."
I understand how hard it is to see a loved one fail the way so many of these patients do. Quite frankly, I have no idea how I'd handle taking care of a parent or spouse with dementia. Maybe I'd be the same, casting about and blaming everyone, but from the outside looking in, I'm always perplexed at how some people accuse those who are merely trying to help. Our conversation was interrupted as Louise came wandering toward the front desk pushing her own walker. Mary noticed her first. "Your fan club has arrived," she said.
I got up from the desk and walked around to greet Louise. A hearty smile came to her face before she spoke.
"She says, 'You're so tall,'" Mary translated behind me.
I gave Louise a quick hug and she giggled. Then she wandered back down the hallway.
"She gets around pretty well," I said as she left.
"Mobility is not her problem," Mary replied. "She's always visiting the other patients, whether they know it or not."
Suddenly, Mary jumped up and raced down the hallway. She caught Louise a few doors down and rifled through the basket on the front of her walker. A few moments later, Mary returned to the desk carrying an assortment of articles.
She presented me with a beige sweater, a doctor's stethoscope---and a pair of men's slippers.
"Mrs. Chambers," she said, "our resident kleptomaniac."
She placed the stethoscope and sweater on the desk.
"This stethoscope belongs to a medical student who was up here working last week. I bet he's been looking everywhere for it."
She put it in her office for safekeeping and was about to take the slippers to Saul's room.
"Hold on," I said, before she could get past me. "Do you mind if I do the honors? I want to find out where her head is at."
Mary shrugged and handed me the pair of slippers. "Be my guest."
What I really wanted to do was give Saul's daughter a piece of my mind. It's not that I don't understand how hard it is to watch all of this happen to a loved one, but there are boundaries and Barbara had crossed several.
I found her lying on the bed, her head resting in her father's lap as my son's does sometimes when he's watching television. "I have the slippers," I said. Barbara lifted her head up and turned to face me. Her eyes were red, her mascara smeared. As she sat up, she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse.
I walked over and put the slippers on the bedside table. "You know," I said, "you were pretty hard on the staff out there."
She started to cry. Not a slow trickle of tears, but a soul-cleansing deluge.
Now I felt terrible for setting her off. As her tears slowed I grabbed a box of tissues off the table next to me and offered her one.
"Doctor, I'm so sorry for my behavior," she said as she dabbed at her eyes. "Can you tell Lydia that I'm sorry? I don't know what got into me. I feel like such a fool."
"You should probably tell her yourself. By the way, Lydia's one of our best aides. She goes to night school five times a week so she can improve her English."
She nodded. "It's just that I come in here and I don't know what to do," she said, pointing toward her father. "I can't even tell if he knows I'm here."
"You're doing everything you can for your father right now by just being here with him."
She nodded.
"My mind gets that," she said. "My heart doesn't."
It's a phrase I've heard a hundred times.
Intellectually, Barbara understood what had happened to her father, but when she looked at him, she could still only see the man who raised her.
"I mean, look at him. He just sits there with this stupid, vacant expression on his face."
I know she didn't mean it but her despair was driving the bus now.
"My father doesn't know who I am anymore," she continues. "This handsome man, who was everything to me growing up. He would walk me to school every day when I was little, and when I was older I could call him and talk about my problems at work, even boy trouble. Who am I to him now?"
"Ms. Strahan, is there anyone else you can talk with about all of this? These losses you're experiencing are enormous. No one should navigate them alone. Perhaps there's a support group, a therapist, or a minister?"
"I talk to my son sometimes, when he's around. It helps, I suppose."
A hint of a mother's smile came to her lips.
"You know, he's so good with him. He'll sit here and tell him jokes or read the sports pages to him. They used to go to Red Sox games together," she said, lifting her chin in the direction of the photo on the nightstand of Saul and a boy at Fenway that I had noticed before. "He doesn't get put off by any of...this place or his condition. Sometimes he can even get Dad to smile."
Barbara's expression changed once again to profound frustration. "But I can't do that!"
I nodded and sat with her in silence for a few moments. Sometimes doing my job means saying nothing at all.
"The thing is, Doctor," she finally said, "I feel so guilty all the time. Every time I leave here I cry all the way home."
She smiled through her tears. "I can't tell you how many blouses I've ruined with mascara stains. You'd think I'd know better by now."
Looking at her blouse, it became clear that another one would soon be relegated to the trash.
"Doctor, I know you think I'm wrong when I argue for more treatments for my dad." I started to speak but she held up her hand. "But you have to understand: Sometimes I feel that his medical wishes are the last thing of him I have left. He said he wanted everything done." She was crying again.
There was a longer conversation to be had about Saul's health and his end-of-life choices; it was one I'd had before with Barbara on the telephone and one I was sure we would have again, probably soon. But this was not the time. It was not time to say to her that the father who took her and her son to baseball games would never return.
"This isn't something you need to decide today," I said. "Though it won't make you feel any better, I understand how hard it is to see someone who still looks like your father, but has lost so much of what made him the person you knew. I've had caregivers who have lost family members to cancer and car accidents tell me it's far worse seeing someone close to them die slowly with dementia."
She nodded and I could see that she had accepted what I had just said. After a few moments of silence her tears ceased and her mood brightened. Maybe it was as simple as hearing that she wasn't alone in her grief.
"Thank you, Doctor."
"For the pair of slippers?" I replied, a grin coming to my face.
"Sure." She returned my smile. "For the slippers."
"A cat is always on the wrong side of the door."
IT WAS TIME TO GET BACK ON THE TRAIL OF MY MYSTERY---but where to turn? As usual, it was Mary who pointed me in the right direction.
"You know, David," she reminded me one afternoon while I was seeing patients, "you still haven't talked to Rita and Annette. Of all the families I've dealt with over the years, they've probably spent the most time at Steere House."
Of course.
The two sisters had spent an uninterrupted decade at the nursing home, tending first to their father, and then their mother. Who better to provide insight into my four-legged enigma?
I dialed Rita's number, figuring that they would never want to set foot inside a nursing home again. On the contrary, they offered to meet me at the nursing home a few days later.
"We're always happy to talk about Oscar," said Rita. "And it'll be nice to see our old friends as well."
As I drove to Steere House from a busy day at the outpatient clinic I couldn't help but think about the last decade of my life and everything that had changed. My own career had transitioned from medical school through three years of residency, two years of fellowship, and toward the development of an established medical career. I had met and married my wife and fathered two children---had gone from the sort of selfish, self-sufficient life of a bachelor to a family existence, with all its joys and responsibilities. Physically, I had changed too. Much to my displeasure, I had added twenty pounds to my frame, developed a receding hairline with more gray hair than I cared to have, and learned to cope with my own chronic illness and developing physical limitations.
It seemed slightly odd to me, if not unfair, that all that had occurred while Rita and Annette were caring for one parent after another---first at home and then at Steere House. As much as I like to tell my patients that dying is a part of living, it seemed like I had gotten the better end of the deal.
I found the sisters seated in the lobby, holding court with several of the nursing home's staff. It had been months since their almost daily visits, and it was clear that they were catching up with people who had become very important to them. I lingered in the background for a few moments, watching as aides and nurses came by to chat. I noticed how at ease each daughter was with the rest of the staff. There were no tears or sad faces, just laughter and warm smiles. It was a little like a family reunion, one I didn't want to interrupt. But Rita saw me hanging in the background and greeted me with a wave of her hand.
"Hello, Rita," I said. "You look well. You too, Annette."
We exchanged pleasantries as we walked toward the library.
"It must feel strange to be back," I offered.
Rita and Annette nodded but said nothing as we walked down the long corridor. They seemed lost in thought, as if each door they passed was a portal to a particular memory.
"A lot of people don't want to let go," Rita said, as if out of the blue. We were in the library now, and she seemed a little distracted, looking around a room that was part of her second home for years.
"Why do you think that is?" I asked. I knew from experience that letting go is precisely what family members struggle with the most, but I wanted Rita's take on it.
"Because you want them back in the worst possible way," she said. "You just want your parent back, the one who signed the report cards, the one who made the Thanksgiving dinner. But you can't."
Knowing that, and coming to terms with that knowledge, is really the most difficult part. A relationship between two people is made up, for the most part, of invisible things: memories, shared experiences, hopes, and fears. When one person disappears, the other is left alone, as if holding a string with no kite. Memories can do a lot to sustain you, but the invisible stuff of the relationship is lost, even as unresolved issues remain: arguments never settled, kind words never uttered, things left un-said. They become like a splinter beneath the skin---unseen, but painful nevertheless. Until they're exposed, coping with the loss is impossible.
"So, how do you come to grips with the loss?" I asked.
Annette answered this time. "It takes time. But at first it's about diversion and misdirection."
I hadn't heard that before. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"I guess it's like this," Annette continued. "A few years after my father was diagnosed he called me late one night. I told him it was the middle of the night and he should go back to bed. But he was anxious."
"'There's a strange woman here with me,' he said. 'I want you to come over here and take me home.'"
Annette shook her head at the memory. "For almost an hour I stayed on the phone trying to convince him that the woman in his bed was my mother---his wife. Eventually I was able to convince him..."
"Dr. Dosa, it only got worse from there," Rita said.
"From that point on," Annette continued, "the phone calls started coming more frequently. I don't like to admit this to myself, but early on I think I got a little angry."
She paused and then broke into a smile. "Okay, a lot angry! I mean, how many times can you say that the strange woman is actually your mother? It was heartbreaking and frustrating at the same time. It was many things. But eventually you realize that the best way to cope with the repetitiveness is not through explanation but through distraction. I'd stop trying to convince my father that the strange woman was his wife and simply changed the subject to something else and then everything was okay."
"It was the same with our mother," Rita said. "When she became a resident on the third floor, she still recognized the nursing home as the place where she had come to see Dad before he died. It was one of the reasons she liked Steere House from the beginning: In her heart, she knew it---the layout, the rooms, the cats!"
Annette chimed in, "She really took to Maya. Oscar not so much," she laughed.
"And she still knew a lot of the staff, too, or at least they were familiar enough not to make her anxious. Sometimes we'd be sitting in her room and she would ask about my father." Rita smiled wryly. "We would tell her that our father was answering the telephone and would be back when he was done."
"Eventually you just become good at misdirection," Annette said. "I know I did."
"The little things you do," Rita said with a small laugh. They didn't sound so little to me.
"Did you ever feel guilty about---?"
"About lying?" Rita jumped in.
Annette shook her head emphatically. "We considered it playacting. You have to learn to play a role and distract a person with memory impairment." She smiled, then added, "We could never bring our mother back to our reality. We had to go to hers."
"That helped us in a way, too," Rita said. "The distraction helped to keep us focused on the moment. Otherwise, well, your thoughts go forward and backward and don't have a place to settle. It can be unnerving."
Listening to them I realized that they had become, against their will, experts in the field.
"It sounds like you both really learned how to cope with the illness."
"Dr. Dosa, I don't want it to seem like it was easy," said Annette. "What worked for our father didn't work for our mother, so we needed to come up with different strategies. There were days when I would leave work in tears. I would have breakdowns."
Rita nodded in stoic agreement. "Toward the end, there were times when my mother couldn't tell who I was."
"So, how did you deal with that?" I asked.
"By taking comfort in the little things---"
This had a familiar ring to it.
"My mother liked Cajun music," Annette jumped in. "Even in the end, she would tap her foot to the beat of her favorite songs. Other times, even after she had stopped eating, it was ice cream. You do whatever makes them happy."
"Still, the nursing home does take some getting used to," Rita said. "For us as well as them."
I used her last statement as a segue into my questions regarding Oscar. "Did the fact that there were cats on the floor make it any easier to accept Steere House as a home for your parents?"
"Absolutely," Annette said. "Both my sister and I took great comfort in the fact that Oscar and Maya were here. It just makes the place so much more livable. They were such a nice distraction---not just for the residents, but for the visitors too. Watching a cat can be mesmerizing. You know the way a cat will find a sheath of light and just stretch out..."
"Kitty yoga!" Rita said. "And the way it will stare out of the window as if the Macy's parade is passing by? And what about the way it will clean itself as if nothing else matters in the world?"
You can say that again, I thought.
"The cats proved to be...well, another diversion. A lovely one at that," Rita said.
"Was Oscar there at the end for your mother?"
Rita smiled before she answered. "Dr. Dosa, if I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have believed it."
"Believed what?"
"There were several false alarms with my mother before she died. With every turn for the worse, Oscar would come in and out of the room, checking in on her. He wouldn't stay for long. Sometimes he would simply come in, smell her feet, and then leave again."
Smell her feet? That was a new one.
"Were you surprised?"
"No, we had heard that the cat did these things from other families on the unit."
Taking a deep breath, Rita launched into the story of her mother's last day.
"At first, it was just the distinct sounds of scratching---scratch, scratch, scratch. I remember looking at my sister, wondering where it was coming from. We looked out the door and didn't see any cat. Then it would come again: scratch, scratch, scratch. This went on for probably an hour before there was a knock on the door."
"Then one of the aides walks into the room," Annette interjected, "closing the door behind her. She asks if we would be okay with the door open. I think we both looked at each other in bewilderment. We ask her why. She tells us that Oscar has been outside our door, desperately trying to come in."
"But where was the scratching coming from?" I asked.
"Apparently Oscar got tired of sitting at the door and had gone to the next room over. He just kept scratching at the wall to let us know he was there and that he wanted to come in."
"The aide told us that he had been pacing outside our door for several hours," Rita added. "So she asked us again if we would mind leaving the door open. We looked at each other and said okay. Well, as soon as the door opens, Oscar comes charging into the room from next door at breakneck speed, and then he leaps onto the bed with our mother. He stamps out a place next to her and then looks at us with this satisfied expression on his face. Then he sits down next to her, curls up in a ball, and goes to sleep."
"We both just kept looking at each other," Annette recalled, "totally bewildered by what we were seeing."
"So, was he there when she died?"
Rita held up her hand to interrupt me. I can tell she's told this story before.
"It gets better, Dr. Dosa," she said. "The same aide came back a little later to change the bed linens. She walks up to the bed to shoo Oscar away so she can change the sheets. Oscar just looks at her, stubbornly refusing to budge. When she tried to pick him up, he hissed and swatted at her with his paw."
I thought back on my first encounter with Oscar and unconsciously rubbed my hand where he had scratched me.
"So, who won?" I asked with a smile, knowing full well how it turned out.
"Oh, Oscar did," Rita said. "The aide finally gave up. Oscar didn't leave my mother's side until she passed. In fact, he didn't leave until the undertaker arrived."
"The strangest thing," Annette recalled, "was after the undertaker came, and they were wheeling her out, Oscar stood up, like he was at attention."
"Sort of like a sentry," her sister said.
"Yeah," Annette agreed, "like a sentry."
IT'S FUNNY, but until that day I had imagined that Rita and Annette would run from the nursing home the way you might flee the scene of an accident. If anything, they seemed reluctant to go. As Rita had said, "Steere House was like our second home." While some of the affection was no doubt due to the friends they had made there over time (it was like old home week that afternoon), I also knew that some of that love came courtesy of Oscar and his four-footed friends.
"Like a bridge between the mother and daughter," Mary had said, after my visit with Donna, and I was starting to think of Oscar in that way, as a sort of gentle guide who could take people from someplace scary to one more forgiving.
I think it's one of the reasons we've kept cats at Steere House all these years. The patients like them, for the most part, either because they hark back to some forgotten relationship they may have had with a pet, or maybe because they are nonjudgmental. A cat doesn't care what you do for a living or whether you're rich or poor. A cat doesn't care if you're able to remember its name or if you're up to date with the latest news. But we were beginning to realize that cats mean something to the families, too, long before Oscar started his vigils. They seem to help reassure family members who enter into the nursing home with some trepidation. For a lot of visitors, the reality of nursing home existence can be a rather harsh wake-up call. All the more reason to take comfort in something familiar. Even if it is a cat.
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
THE FERRETTI HOUSE LOOKED LIKE ONE OF THOSE spreads you'd see in Architectural Digest. Situated on one of North Providence's many hills, the townhouse faced south, with a commanding view of the city through large picture windows. The layout was open and airy as one room flowed seamlessly into another. The home was decorated with modern furniture, with every surface spotless, every corner clean and well lit. Bookshelves and artwork adorned every wall.
"This was where my husband and I were going to retire," Jeanne Ferretti said to me as she gave me the tour that winter afternoon. "He loved it here."
She escorted me to the kitchen table and we sat down.
"I want you to look at this," she told me, placing a three-ringed binder in front of me on the table. "My husband was a very open person. We didn't have many secrets, but he did have a drawer where he kept his work journals. That was his private place and I respected it. It was six months after his death before I got up the nerve to look through them."
I opened the front cover of the binder and looked at the first page.
dear---
thank---
you---
I didn't know what to make of it.
"It seems kind of strange to be coming from someone who was losing everything," Jeanne said. She was standing by the window as I sat at the table. "Turn the page."
There, similarly arranged, were three words:
Missy
SweetIE
"Those are nicknames he gave me over the years," she said. Terms of endearment.
I flipped to the next page and found the days of the week, Monday through Sunday, printed in block letters, one on top of the other. It was like looking at a child's primer, but one that captured some element of Lino's life and his fight against his disease. On one page the alphabet was written out twice, printed first and then written in script. There was another page of dates that had been important to him, including his anniversary, his son's birthday, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
I stopped to study the next page. It was a crib sheet, the kind a grade-school child might produce in preparation for a test. Printed on the page were the answers to questions commonly found on memory examinations: the date, the season, the day of the week, the names of the president of the United States and the governor of Rhode Island.
I felt odd looking at Lino's cheat sheet, as if I were prying. I looked up at Jeanne, who was staring out the window.
"He was trying to fight it," she said after a moment, "doing battle against his undoing. I never realized how hard he fought it until after he was gone. He just didn't let me in."
She looked down at the binder and pointed to the crib notes for his doctor's exam.
"I helped him with this one. He knew he was going to the doctor and was adamant that we study these questions. We went over it for hours before the appointment. I thought he threw it out."
Jeanne shook her head and smiled wryly.
"It didn't help, though. He still missed most of the questions. I think I almost started to cry when we were there in the doctor's office and he was missing all of the questions that he so diligently studied for."
As a frequent administrator of those tests, I was surprised. It had never occurred to me that people would prep for them, try to game the system.
Jeanne took the binder from me and flipped through its pages until she found what she was looking for.
"Look at this," she said, setting it back in front of me.
The page was taken from a musical dictionary. It contained detailed definitions of various musical instruments: trumpet, piano, saxophone, trombone, and others. On the following page was a schematic picture of all the major and minor chords. At the bottom, in Lino's shaky handwriting, was the date: January 2003---more than three years before he died and at least four years after the onset of his Alzheimer's.
"My husband's world was music," she said.
TO APPRECIATE the full magnitude of a man, you need to know his whole story. Ercolino Ferretti---Lino to his friends---was born in the early part of the twentieth century to one of the thousands of first-generation Italian-American families new to the industrial suburbs of North Boston. His father scratched out a living on the railroad while his mother worked as a seamstress in one of Boston's many factories. It was a hard life, the kind shared by many of the immigrant families that built this country.
Over the course of his eighty-seven years, Lino escaped work in the factories by becoming the very definition of a renaissance man. He was a musician, and he learned to play a number of instruments with ease. Though the army temporarily took him away from his passion, Lino returned to his love of music when he returned home after World War II. He attended the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, where several of his teachers proclaimed him one of his generation's most talented composers.
Pushing the boundaries of modern music, Lino explored complex compositions. But his pieces required 200-plus--piece ensembles, and that presented logistical problems. He needed a new framework for his music, an outlet for his unorthodox compositions. He found that platform in the developing world of computers.
Though he may not be a household name, Lino Ferretti was a pioneer. Had he pursued more conventional compositions or become an orchestral conductor as his teachers had suggested, he might be more famous today. Instead, he launched himself into computers when they were still large enough to fill a room. He taught at MIT and lectured around the world, discussing his findings with like-minded innovators. Lino was right about computers as a forum for music. Anyone who powers on a PC today or listens to an iPod knows just how much music has gone digital. But few of us know how much his research helped to make that all possible.
Lino had a curious and nimble mind that allowed him to keep up with the rapidly changing world of computers. He remained active in that field even after he retired from university life.
Then one day he was stumped.
"How do I log on?" he asked his baffled wife one morning in 2001. Suddenly, the man who had performed works of startling complexity was thrown by a simple task. Yes, he had forgotten things, missed appointments, and there was that time he couldn't make out a check, but those lapses were always so easy to dismiss.
"He's just tired," his wife had said in the past, making excuses. "He's got a lot on his mind." But the morning that her husband couldn't turn on his computer was the beginning of the end for Jeanne. It frightened her, and she immediately sought medical attention for him.
When I initially met Lino in my office a few years after he was diagnosed, he was still able to carry on a conversation and function independently at home. Two years later he was in need of twenty-four-hour care. His final year was spent at Steere House, with Jeanne his constant companion.
"I wrote in his eulogy that music was his love, life, and passion." She had moved now from the window to my side. She pointed to the page containing the musical definitions of common instruments. "This is what the disease did to him. To see the erosion of his intellect and creativity, to see it come to this...It was the hardest thing to endure.
"I want to play you something," Jeanne said. She walked across the adjoining living room to the stereo. The sound of a jazz quartet filled the air.
"My husband loved jazz," she said over the wail of a saxophone. "This was one of his favorite records. Even as Lino's disease progressed, he never lost his love of music."
As we listened in silence to the sound of four musicians swinging together, I thought about all of the patients I've cared for with dementia. Then I thought of my newborn daughter at home, barely six months old. There's something about music that is innate, something seemingly immune to the ravages of age-related diseases. As many new parents learn, music is sometimes the only way to comfort a screaming child. I thought back on the many late nights my daughter and I had shared recently with Johann Sebastian Bach, how the music soothed her as I rocked her to sleep. The effects can be similar for patients with dementia. Music, it seems, represents a way in---a means to communicate.
"When we lived here together, before he went to the nursing home, we would start each day with a Bach cantata or a Mozart piano concerto," Jeanne recalled. "He loved it, all of it. By the time he went to the nursing home, he no longer knew how to turn the CD player on, but I would put it on for him and he would sit in his rocking chair and listen with his eyes closed, lost in the music.
"One of the things I found most interesting about my husband's disease was that even toward the end of his life he responded to music. Here was this man who could no longer do much of anything. Sometimes he would get agitated. If you put on a jazz record, though, he would just sit contentedly in his chair for hours."
She looked at me. "Why is that? Why is Alzheimer's such a strange disease?"
"My suspicion is that certain ingrained memories never really go away," I said. "I'm convinced that there are some visceral responses that are still accessible, things that are never completely lost. For example, I know that at the end, Lino no longer knew your name. Nevertheless, I am quite sure that he knew you were important to him."
Jeanne nodded. I suspected that this was reassuring to her, or maybe it just confirmed what she already believed.
"Maybe you're right. Still, I wonder why that is?"
"I think that many of the memories are still there. They just aren't readily available. It's kind of like a computer hard drive that crashes but still maintains the files; you just can't get to them. But some things get through. I think this is why so many of the residents respond to babies, and animals like Oscar."
The mention of Oscar made Jeanne smile. "You know, my husband always loved animals, particularly cats. We had two Siamese cats before our son was born. They were our babies. Unfortunately, our son ended up being terribly allergic, so we didn't have any more after they died."
"Did Lino respond to Oscar?"
"Sure, sometimes he'd even follow the cat around the unit."
I pictured the Lino I knew---infinitely curious, filled with wonder---stalking the elusive Oscar. This was not a cat known for cuddling up with residents, remember, and I have to think that our favorite feline must have felt annoyed to find himself the object of Lino's scientific curiosity. For Lino, losing his memory, his faculties, but never his love of music, Oscar might have seemed just out of reach, that last lost chord. Or maybe he just liked chasing animals.
"Was he there at the end?"
"Yes, I think Oscar knew before the nurses did. My husband developed pneumonia. As you know, he started sliding pretty quickly and we didn't want to treat him aggressively. The day he died, I came in the afternoon. He was doing poorly, but hanging in there. One of the nurses came in and told me that she thought that Lino still had time and that I should go home. I agreed to go home to shower and eat dinner, but they called me back almost immediately. When I came back I realized that things were different. I went into the room and saw that they had dimmed the lights. Then I saw that Oscar was there, sitting on the bed holding his own private vigil.
"I guess I knew then. I'd heard about the cat from others on the floor. I called my son and told him to come in. It wasn't until he arrived that I remembered his allergies. I asked him if he wanted me to send Oscar away."
She smiled ever so slightly.
"My son was definitive. 'No,' he said, 'Dad loved cats and would have been happy with Oscar on the bed with him.' He told me he would be okay."
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the music again. Jeanne looked out the window at a bird that had landed on her feeder just outside, but the feeder was empty, and the bird didn't stay long. As it flew off Jeanne looked back at me. Her expression had changed; the wistful memory of her son was replaced by a look of grave seriousness.
"To see someone you love go away like my husband did...that's the hardest thing."
Jeanne wiped her brow with the tissue she had been holding.
"I'm so grateful for the time we had, the good times before...I wouldn't trade those years for anything, but I still haven't gotten to the point where I can see him the way he used to be before the illness."
There was nothing I could add. I was there to learn and listen.
After a moment she said, "I suppose that's what marriage vows are all about---in good times and bad?"
She looked over at the digital frame that sat on her kitchen table. Pictures of her grandchildren came in and out of view, a twenty-first-century slide show.
"My son gave me that for Christmas," she said. I looked over and saw a picture of her grandson, seemingly suspended in midair on a sled, his face a study in exhilaration. It was the kind of photo parents and grandparents everywhere treasure, the purity of childhood with none of the complexities that come later in life.
She pointed at the image and looked back at me.
"Enjoy these times," she said, her final instruction of the day. "They're gone in a blink of an eye." Then she got up from her chair to grab some more cookies from the kitchen counter.
"Now, enough about me and my husband. Tell me about your kids."
WHEN I WALKED THROUGH the front door of my house that night, I was greeted by the high-pitched squeal of my son, Ethan, who raced out of the kitchen, arms open wide to greet me. His face contained the most unalloyed expression of joy imaginable: All I had to do to make his day was come home. I picked him up and squeezed him tight.
"How's my big boy?" I said, and after kissing my cheek he launched into a breathless and slightly incomprehensible explanation of everything he had done that day.
"Daddy, you'll never guess what I saw today at school."
"What?"
"I can't tell you...it's a secret."
It was a familiar game we played and it was my job to guess.
"Was it a spaceship?"
He looked at me with his large brown eyes opened wide.
"Noooooo, Daddy."
"Was it...A DINOSAUR?"
"Noooooo, Daddy."
"Was it a---?"
Unable to contain himself any longer, Ethan blurted out, "It was a fire truck! And it was big and red and it made a lot of noise."
The exchange continued as I carried him into the living room where I was greeted by the sight of my beautiful wife lying on the carpet beside our newborn daughter. When Dionne saw me she flashed the same smile I fell in love with all those years ago, and for an instant I thought our daughter Emma even emulated her. These were the riches I had, and I wasn't going to wait until I retired to count them either. In good times and bad.
"Time spent with cats is never wasted."
I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO DEBRIEFING MARY ON MY conversation with Mrs. Ferretti, but that would have to wait. It was already 4:30 and the day shift had left. My office staff had called me earlier in the day to inform me that I had a new patient to see. As I made my way toward the elevators, a familiar voice flagged me down.
"Hey, you," Ida said from her wheelchair. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"I've got long legs, Ida," I joked, "and lots of places to go."
"Yeah, I remember those days. Too many appointments, not enough time to get it all done. It all seemed so important at the time."
"Is this your way of telling me to slow down?"
"You've got to enjoy the journey, Dr. Dosa. Savor the moment."
It was like Ida had been reading my mail. "It's funny," I said, "but the wife of a former patient of mine was just telling me the same thing."
"Former as in 'dead'?"
Ida was never one to beat around the bush. I nodded. "One of my patients on the third floor. This woman realized after her husband was gone how precious the good times were. Those times when everything seemed just normal."
Ida grimaced a bit as if to say, Tell me about it. But instead she turned her focus on me.
"What about those kids of yours?" she asked. "You spending enough time with them?"
"I'm trying my best."
"You got any pictures for me? Why don't you sit down for a second?"
I pulled up a chair and then proudly pulled out my PDA.
"What is that thing, one of those new-fangled contraptions I see everyone carrying around? I suppose you've got your whole life on there."
"Pretty much," I said. I pulled up a few recent shots: my son's birthday party, my daughter's first smile.
"You realize, don't you, that raising those kids is the most important thing you'll ever do? Much more important than any of those grants you apply for or even any of your patients---except me, of course."
"I always have time for you, Ida."
"Then tell me what you're learning about our friend Oscar."
I looked at her quizzically. Maybe she had been reading my mail. Ida laughed. "Mary told me. She likes to keep me in the loop. So, what have you found out?"
I thought for a minute before offering an answer. "I feel like the more I learn, the less I know. I mean, why does he do it?"
"Who knows, Dr. Dosa? There's probably some scientific explanation but in the end, does it really matter? He's there when it counts."
"I guess," I said. "But I come from a family of scientists. We don't care so much if there is a genie in the bottle as how he got in there."
"You're supposed to be thinking what wish you want granted," she said with a laugh. "Are you a man of faith, Doctor?"
"Well, I don't believe in genies, if that's what you mean." Actually faith and religion are topics I've never been very comfortable talking about. "If you're asking me if I went to a church or synagogue growing up, the answer is no. My father was a Catholic choirboy when he was a kid, and my mother was Jewish, but they raised us to be pretty agnostic."
"How about your wife?"
"Well, she's from a Protestant family. I always joke that if we raise a Buddhist and a Muslim we'll have the major religions covered."
"You're forgetting the Hindus," said Ida with a laugh. "They're the ones who believe in reincarnation."
"You're right. I guess I'll have to have a third child," I said chuckling. I glanced over and pointed to Munchie, sprawled out fast asleep on the piano bench. "If we're lucky, Ida, maybe we'll both come back as cats in another life."
"Yeah, they certainly lead the good life in here."
"In all seriousness, Ida, if you're asking me whether I believe there is a deeper meaning to our time here on earth, I'd have to say yes. At least I hope there is. You can't do this job without accepting that there are many mysteries in medicine that go well beyond the science we learn in medical school."
With that, I stood up. "Unfortunately, I've got to go upstairs now."
"You're seeing that new woman up on three," she said with some certainty.
"I should just hire you as my secretary."
"You could. I make it my business to know what's going on around here, Dr. Dosa." She gestured with her head toward the elevator. "I saw the medics bring her in here about three hours ago. She didn't look so good. You better get up there before Oscar does."
IDA GOT ME THINKING, as she often did. This time it was of my own first encounter with the unexplained. As a young resident at the University of Pittsburgh, I had gone into a hospital room one morning to see a patient who had been admitted with what appeared to be a mild case of pneumonia.
Even at her worst, my patient was a beautiful woman. Young and vital, with long blonde hair and striking blue eyes, this thirty-something woman could have graced the cover of a fashion magazine. But on that morning she looked pale and frightened.
"So, how are you doing?" I asked, with forced bonhomie. I was new at this doctor thing and trying to make up for my lack of experience with what I thought to be a winning bedside manner. In reality, I probably just looked like a cad.
She had looked at me as if she were trying to decide whether or not to trust me. She was fidgeting, shifting her weight on the bed while nervously twirling her long hair between her thumb and forefinger.
"To be honest," she said after a moment, "I feel okay. But I woke up this morning dreaming that I was going to die today. I keep trying to tell myself it was just a dream but frankly, I'm scared out of my mind." I thought she might cry. "I know it's silly," she said.
I tried to remember what, if anything, they had taught us about completely irrational fear. I put my hand on her shoulder. I was doing my best to impersonate a doctor.
"You really don't need to worry," I told her. "You're so much better. In fact, I think we're going to be sending you home today. The antibiotics should take care of the rest and you'll be back to normal in a few days."
She acknowledged the news with a nod, but there was no expression of relief.
"That must have been some dream," I said. "Let me take a look at you." I might have been new to doctoring, but I knew that listening to my patient's fear was the most likely way to break the tension. I mean, don't we all want to be heard, to feel that our fears---no matter how apparently outlandish---are taken seriously?
Doing something seemed to help. As I examined her I felt her relax. I took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and lungs. At each step of my head-to-toe exam, I told her that I could find nothing wrong save for the now faint signs of pneumonia lingering in her left lower lung. By the time I was done she was smiling again.
"Thank you, Doctor," she said at the end. "I guess I just need to get out of here."
I left the room feeling quite pleased with myself. What a good doctor I was turning out to be.
Three hours later, I received a 911 call.
"Who is it?" I asked the nurse, my heart leaping into my throat.
"I don't know," she replied. "I'm just relaying the message from the patient's nurse. But you better hurry."
As I raced to the same floor where I had visited my young patient, I tried to convince myself that it couldn't be her. There were so many sicker, older patients on the same floor. The eighty-five-year-old woman with lung cancer. The brittle diabetic with the recent heart attack.
I ran toward the nurse's desk where an aide directed me down the hallway, away from my young patient's room. I had a perverse sense of relief: It was somebody else. I left the aide behind and rounded the corner at high speed. Like a football player shedding tackles in his opponent's backfield, I raced past the parked EKG machine and a dietary cart filled with the remnants of that morning's breakfast. As I passed the last obstacle I could see someone lying on the ground at the far end of the hallway. Slowing my pace to allow my heart to stop racing, I approached the patient.
It was her.
She was crumpled on the floor in a fetal position, facing the wall. Though I couldn't see her face, her long blonde hair was unmistakable. I stood there, paralyzed.
"Doctor, do you want me to call the rescue team?" a voice asked.
It was Judy, an experienced nurse of many years, racing down the hallway toward me, wheeling an oxygen container behind her. I didn't answer. I was still in shock.
"Doctor!"
I snapped back. "What happened?" I asked.
Nervously, Judy began filling me in. "We told her to take a walk this morning, to get some exercise before going home. All of a sudden she collapsed. By the time I got here she was struggling to breathe."
Judy then reeled off the vital signs, which I acknowledged before kneeling down beside my patient. As I rolled her over away from the wall, I could see that her face was ashen, her eyes filled with tears. Her chest heaved as if she were fighting against some unknown compressive force. As I leaned down to her level, our eyes met. I saw an expression---fear, betrayal, accusation---that is with me to this day. That look will be with me always.
"I can't breathe," she told me, gasping for air.
I looked up at Judy and told her to call the rescue team. Then I looked over my patient and tried to calm her.
"You're going to be fine," I said. "The cavalry's coming."
This time I was the one who was scared; she could hear it in my voice. She began to sob. I placed my hands under her arms and propped her up against the wall of the hallway. Then I applied oxygen from the portable tank and slumped down beside her. For a moment, she appeared to improve. Color returned to her face and the vigorous heaving of her chest seemed to calm. I allowed myself to relax for a moment. We would get through this.
"You'll be okay," I told her, attempting to smile.
I could hear a stampede of physicians racing down the hall toward my patient. "I told you they would come." She looked at me again. This time however her gaze was vacant. Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped back onto the floor. Amid the sounds of shouting health care workers, I began cardiac resuscitation. After a few minutes of chest compressions I backed off, exhausted, breathlessly allowing one of my colleagues to take over. I stood watching the cardiac arrest unfold, with doctors shouting and nurses scrambling for supplies.
She had been scared. Why hadn't I ordered more tests? Why hadn't I stayed with her? Thirty minutes later, we abandoned our efforts and I was pronouncing a woman dead who had told me earlier in the day that she was going to die. Every part of my exam had been normal, but she had known different.
How had she known?
An autopsy a few days later would tell us that a large blood clot had traveled to her lungs. It also told us she had a rare, previously undiagnosed blood disorder that predisposed her to her terrible fate. In the end, there was a scientific explanation as to why she had died that morning---but how to explain her dream?
I've seen a lot of strange things since then. There was the man who presented with disseminated cancer only to have the disease disappear a year later, despite refusing aggressive treatment. He was someone who was supposed to die---but didn't. Then there was the man who insisted on being admitted because "something was wrong" despite every test to the contrary. We tried to discharge him, but he refused to leave. We all thought he was crazy and even ordered psychiatric testing until the third day of his hospital stay when his cardiac monitor finally captured the life-threatening arrhythmia that was causing his symptoms. Like my young patient he had known---and probably wouldn't be with us anymore had he listened to the experts.
Then there was the elderly woman who announced to me on December 31, 1999, that she had accomplished her objective of living to the turn of the century. "I'm going to die today, Doctor," she told me quite casually. Every test showed she had nothing wrong. No infections, heart problems---nothing that might lead directly to her death. She simply came to the hospital because she was ready to die. As she foretold, she did die several hours later of unknown causes.
Science has taken us a long way in our profession, but we still just scratch the surface. The rest remains a mystery. Maybe some people just know when their time has come. Some cats, too.
"The cat has too much spirit to have no heart."
I HAD THE CHART FOR OUR NEW CHARGE. MRS. ARELLA Matos was a ninety-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease and a laundry list of medical diagnoses and medications. This was my introduction to someone I probably wouldn't know for long.
I went to Mrs. Matos's room and found her three daughters there, gathered close together as if in prayer. Behind them their mother lay sleeping. Her breathing was fast and she looked uncomfortable. A young boy sat on the bed next to her, playing with a pair of action figures. He had one in each hand and they were fighting each other.
"Hello," I said to the family. "I'm Dr. Dosa."
I introduced myself to each of the daughters, Gabriella, Caterina, and Ana. As I shook their hands, I studied each of their faces. You can learn a lot from faces, particularly the eyes. Happiness, worry, excitement, fear---it all shows up there. The eyes of these three women were filled with a profound sadness. Whether they had admitted it to themselves or not, these dutiful daughters knew their mother had arrived at her last stop.
"Who's this?" I asked, referring to the little boy. He was no more than five and he reminded me of my own son. Gabriella, the daughter I presumed to be the oldest, answered.
"That's my son, Freddy."
I walked over and sat down on the bed next to him.
"Hi there, Freddy. I'm Doctor Dosa. How old are you?"
Freddy put up one hand to indicate that he was indeed five years old. Then he showed me his action figures.
"This is Spider-Man and this is Superman."
"Are they helping to take care of your grandmother?"
Freddy nodded and then slipped back into his pretend world, pitting the two action figures against each other in mock combat.
I turned my attention to the daughters.
"Tell me about your mother."
Gabriella was the first to speak. "Doctor, we feel terrible about moving our mother from home. She always told us..." Her voice trailed off and became almost inaudible. I moved in closer.
"It just got to be too much for us to take care of her," Caterina said, picking up where her sister left off.
They probably felt like they had let their mother down by not heeding her wishes. Looking at Mrs. Matos and her degree of discomfort, I was reminded that circumstances sometimes make that wish impossible.
An aide entered the room to do her admissions assessment. I suggested that we relocate to the family room down the hall so we could talk. The youngest daughter, Ana, launched into an explanation.
"Our mother was always fiercely independent. She stayed to herself so we didn't see it coming until it was too late. Three years ago, Caterina and I went back to our country, the Dominican Republic, to see her. Her apartment was a complete disaster. Newspapers were everywhere, unwashed dishes sat in the sink. It was clear she hadn't washed her clothes."
Ana looked over at Caterina and I could sense that they were reliving the memory together.
"Doctor, we both went outside and just started to cry. My mother had always taken such pride in her home. You couldn't put so much as a coffee cup on the table without her taking it away to rinse it. And now? How could we let our mother live this way? Right there we decided to move her to the United States and we put her on a plane with us. That was two years ago. Since then, we've done the best we could to take care of her, but---"
Ana put her hands up toward her head as the history became too much for her to relate.
Gabriella picked up the story. "When my mother got to Rhode Island, she became confused. Her English was not very good, and I think the language barrier only added to her confusion. She had no idea where she was. At night, she would get up and wander. One time we even had to call the police to help us find her. You can't imagine how frightening it is to wake up and realize that your mother isn't there. One night about a year ago, she walked out of my sister's house and fell down the stairs. She didn't get hurt---thank God!---so they sent her home from the ER. No one ever suggested we needed help or offered us any advice."
Caterina jumped in. "A few weeks later, my mother stopped eating. Then she developed pneumonia. Each time, we talked to her primary care doctor and he just sent us home. She's depressed, he told me, and he gave us a medication. She has pneumonia, he told Gabriella, so here's an antibiotic. He just gave us pills. None of us knew what to do. We started sleeping next to our mother on the floor to make sure she wouldn't get up in the middle of the night. It was just so exhausting. Finally, a few months ago, Mom stopped walking so I had to ask my doctor to send a physical therapist to help us. When the therapist arrived, she took one look around and asked why we didn't have hospice involved. I was stunned. I remember calling up my sister that night and asking her why the therapist would ask us about hospice. It seems silly now, but honestly, none of us even considered that Mom was dying. The next day, I contacted our doctor and asked him about it. He told me he hadn't even thought about hospice."
The months of frustration had taken their toll. "I wish doctors would let people know that hospices are there for other things besides dying from cancer," Gabriella said. "People hear the word hospice and go, 'Oh, they're terminal. They're dying of cancer.' But my mother isn't dying of cancer. She has dementia."
I felt sorry for the Matos family. It seemed particularly tragic that the family would have to learn about hospice through a random comment like that. But many doctors don't consider hospice until the very end because they don't understand the concept themselves. They don't realize that hospice care isn't limited to hanging a morphine drip at the end of life. It can be an indispensable resource, a well of support throughout. Hospice workers provide more than information on the physical act of dying; they offer practical and emotional guidance. Hospice can often provide the necessary custodial care and nursing support needed to keep patients at home as their diseases get worse, services that can actually sometimes extend a life.
"I'm sorry that you had to go through all of this," I said. "Hopefully we'll be able to help your mother pass peacefully."
"We wanted to keep our mother at home, Doctor, honestly." Gabriela spoke for the three of them.
I nodded. I understood their situation better than they might have imagined. Hearing their description of their mother's unkempt home, I thought of my own mother-in-law and the last visit my wife and I had paid her. My wife and I appeared to be headed down an identical path to that of the family in front of me and their experiences left me with a sense of dread for what the days ahead might hold for the two of us.
"The good news is that your mother's here right now and you're with her," I said to the Matos sisters. "That's what counts."
BACK IN MRS. MATOS'S ROOM a hospice nurse had arrived to evaluate her. She was not the only visitor, though. The darkness of the window reflected the unmistakable silhouette of a cat perched above the bed. Oscar had arrived. He ignored us, focusing on his patient instead. Then he settled in, turning himself around---once, twice, three times---before sitting down with his head on his paws. By the looks of it, he appeared to be staying.
Freddy noticed.
"Look, Mama, there's a cat."
I looked at the boy. For the first time his face was animated, excitement in his eyes.
"That's Oscar," I said.
"Does he live here?" the child asked, walking over to get a closer look.
"Yes, Oscar lives with all the other people on the floor."
"What does he do?"
"Well, mostly cat things, but I guess he also takes care of everyone."
"Will he take care of my grandma while she's here?"
"Yes, Freddy, he will. Would you like that?"
Freddy thought for a moment before responding with a solemn yes.
I wondered if a five-year-old could truly comprehend what was going on. Could he grasp the finality of his grandmother's situation? Probably not. My own son was just now starting to grapple with the idea of death. I recalled a recent conversation with Ethan while I was tucking him into bed. "Dad," he asked, "when I die, will I go to college?"
Still, Freddy seemed relieved by the thought of a cat helping his grandmother. He offered his hand to the cat. Oscar sniffed at it and for a second I cringed, but Oscar didn't seem bothered. He allowed the boy to pet him, and even seemed to enjoy it.
I guess I'll never really understand cats.
The hospice nurse finished her assessment of Mrs. Matos and introduced herself to the daughters. I used this as my opportunity to leave, offering my good-byes. I knew I wouldn't see them again.
As I left the room to take care of my own paperwork I heard a voice behind me.
"Doctor!"
I turned to see Caterina. "Thank you for your time, Doctor, but I have one last question. We have a fourth sister, Maria, who lives in California. She's used up so much of her sick time to help us care for our mother. Do you think we should tell her to fly in?"
I looked past her into the room. Through the door I could see the silhouette of Oscar, sitting quietly on the bed. He was still receiving affection from his new friend.
"Yes," I said to Caterina with certainty, "you should all be here."
"Dogs have owners. Cats have staff."
AS AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM, OSCAR'S AVERAGE WAS proving to be uncanny. "What do you think would happen if we had two patients who were dying at the same time?" I asked Mary one afternoon not long after Mrs. Matos had passed away.
"That actually happened!" she said. We were sitting in her office behind the front desk and the third floor was very quiet. "They were both going; it was hard to say who was going to die first. But one of them was very comfortable; you remember your patient, Larry Scheer?"
I nodded as Mary continued.
"At any rate, Larry was a hospice patient and he was doing okay. But this other gentleman, he was all the way over on the other side of the ward and having a real tough time of it. He had great trouble breathing and couldn't get comfortable. That's who Oscar chose to be with!"
"As if he could tell he was having the more difficult time."
Mary nodded. "His poor wife was there, watching all of this unfold. I remember walking down the hallway to see her, thinking how terrible it must be for her, but she was accepting of the situation. I asked her if there was anything I could do and she told me that Oscar was there for her husband and that they both would be okay."
"It sounds like Oscar was distracting her from a pretty miserable scene."
Mary smiled at the memory. "I guess," she said. "At one point, I think she even broke out her camera to take a picture of Oscar." The idea of a positive memory in the midst of such a bleak scene was strangely comforting.
I looked down the hall, searching for the cat in question. Maya was curled up on a chair behind the desk, but no Oscar.
"Speaking of," I said, "where is he?"
"He was with one of your colleagues' patients last night and I guess he's just wiped out. He disappeared somewhere. It's like he hibernates."
"Does he eat when he's on the job?"
"Sometimes...but it's not like he dawdles. He'll slip out for two minutes, grab some kibble, and then he's back at the patient's side. It's like he's literally on a vigil."
I was imagining Oscar sleeping somewhere, perhaps in a closet or under a bed. "What do you think it's about, Mary?" I asked. "Why does he do what he does?"
"I thought that's what you were trying to find out by talking to the families."
"Partly. But as they say, peel an onion...I'm curious: What's your take?"
She sat back in her chair and mused for a moment. "Well, you know, Oscar is my baby. He bonded to me right away. I would give him his ice water every morning."
"Man, these cats are spoiled! Nobody brings me ice water."
Mary smiled but then turned serious. "If you've ever had a pet, you know that when someone in your family is in trouble, the pet will usually go and stay with them."
I thought back on Jolly, the black miniature poodle that kept me company when I was sick as a child. "True," I said. "But that's different. My dog was part of our family."
"Well, what do you think this is?" Mary said. "This is Oscar's home. He has forty-one family members and when one of them is in trouble, he goes and stays with them."
I was quiet for a minute, thinking of the one cat that seemed to care for the forty-one residents on this floor. No wonder he was exhausted.
"So, who else are you going to talk to?" Mary asked, changing the subject.
"I don't know. I guess there are still a number of people on my list to interview. Based on your story, I suppose Mrs. Scheer should be on the list. And I still have to get in touch with Jack McCullough..."
The call bell rang at the front desk, interrupting us mid-conversation. Mary leaned over and hit the button.
"Can I help you?"
Frank Rubenstein's unmistakable voice answered.
"Mary, I need you. Can you look at my wife?"
Our conversation had come to an end.
"I guess it's time to go back to work," she announced as she disappeared down the hall.
I grabbed Ruth Rubenstein's chart off the rack. Ruth had recently been readmitted after a weeklong hospital stay for a bout with pneumonia.
Her infection had quickly improved in the hospital, but the change in environments left her confused and delirious. She stopped eating and needed powerful medications to help keep her calm. Eventually, a one-to-one aide was required just to keep Ruth from getting out of bed and falling in the middle of the night.
As I reviewed Ruth's hospital records, I became aware of a presence. I was not alone. Oscar had materialized as if from nowhere, and was sitting on the ground next to me giving me the fish eye.
"What?" I said. "Am I in your spot again?"
He meowed---softly at first, but more forcefully each time.
"You're in his way," Mary announced with a chuckle as she returned from Frank's room. She pointed down to the water bowl beneath the desk. "Your feet are in his way."
"My apologies, Your Highness," I said standing up. Eyeing me suspiciously, Oscar waited until I had moved to the other side of the desk before tiptoeing in to have a drink.
"Would you look at that?" I cried.
"It's his desk, David; just be happy that he lets you work here from time to time." It was becoming her new mantra. This was Oscar's world.
"Frank wants to see you," Mary said, bringing me back to reality. I looked at her for more explanation.
"Ruth's been too confused to eat anything since she came back. We've tried to sit with her---you know, to get her to take something---but she won't take a bite. He's been out here at least a half dozen times this morning already asking how he can get her to eat. The last time I told him that she would eat when she's ready to eat. I even tried to reassure him by saying that she was still receiving IV fluids and that was helping."
"How did he react to that?"
"He nearly bit my head off! Then he walked off muttering that I wanted his wife to die."
It's never easy for family members to watch their loved ones refuse to eat. Eating is essential to life, and families at the nursing home often use it as a barometer for how someone is doing, never mind the fact that everybody's appetite varies from time to time.
"So, what did he want just now?" I asked.
"Same thing. He wanted to know if I could get her to eat her lunch. She didn't touch a thing."
On my way toward Ruth's room I passed Louise, asleep in a hallway chair, her walker parked carefully by her side. As usual, she was meticulously groomed: Her white hair had been cut and delicately curled. Her off-white blouse was paired with a skirt that modestly covered her knees. She looked peaceful, as if she had fallen asleep during a church service with thoughts of salvation in her head. Not for the first time I wondered, What was she dreaming of?
It's a big question. Do people with dementia dream as they once did, or are their dreams disordered and fretful, a byproduct of their disease? Do their dreams offer a respite from the confusion of their waking state, or do they contribute to it? It's something I've wondered a lot about. After all, many scientists have suggested that dreaming is critical to learning---it's the brain's chance to reorganize itself, to process memories, and perhaps store them away so they can be accessed later. So, what does that mean for the patient with memory impairment?
And what about the medications? In early dementia, patients are often treated with Alzheimer's drugs that increase acetylcholine levels in the brain, which can lead to profound and sometimes disturbing dreams. Yet in later stages of the disease, you hear less and less about patients' dreams. Perhaps they cease to be as important or memorable. Perhaps they lose the recollection of even those. Still, as I watched Louise softly snoring, I hoped she was at peace in her dream world, and that some of the memories she had lost access to in her waking life were restored to her in sleep.
Was she dreaming about her husband, the handsome flyer in his World War II uniform forever ready to launch or just returned from some sortie? I tried to imagine Louise's life then, what it must have been like to love someone who had gone off to fight---the loneliness and the fear. Maybe she was dreaming of that, or of his return from the war. Perhaps she was reliving her unbridled joy at seeing him alive and safe, a young family reunited, ready to resume the lives that history interrupted. It was heartbreaking even to consider it.
There are some memories that should never be lost. Are they found again in dreams?
RUTH WAS LYING IN BED, her eyes shut. From the look of it though, she didn't appear to be sleeping as she writhed around fitfully. Unlike Louise outside in the hallway, there were no pleasant dreams here, I was quite confident about that. I knocked on the inside of the door to announce my arrival. My knocking startled Ruth, and she opened her eyes. Frank, seemingly dozing himself, jumped to his feet and looked around.
"Oh! Dr. Dosa, I'm so glad you're here." I could hear the worry in his voice.
"How is she doing?" I asked as I walked to Ruth's bedside.
"Not good, Doctor. She's really not herself. I'm not even sure why they sent her out of the hospital. She's still very confused."
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to Frank.
"She's delirious, Mr. Rubenstein."
"What does that mean? Is her pneumonia still there?"
"No, that's been treated. But sometimes, when older people get sick, their infections can cause them to become increasingly confused. 'Delirium' is the term we use to describe that confusion. It's a change in the way patients pay attention and focus. It's why Ruth is so agitated right now."
He looked at me with a blank stare. I tried another tack.
"Her condition is similar to that of a small child who might see spiders on the wall if they have a high fever. Older people, particularly when they have memory problems like your wife, are prone to becoming confused when they have even innocent infections that wouldn't have affected them before. We call this delirium and it can persist even after the infection goes away."
"Will she get better?"
"I expect that she will get better over time, but it might take several days or even weeks."
"But she's not eating, Doctor!"
Ruth moaned from her bed. I took this as an opportunity to examine her. Sitting beside her on the bed, I placed my stethoscope on her chest. She resisted immediately, lifting up the upper half of her body while swatting at me forcefully with her hand. Frank jumped up from his chair and got on his knees next to his wife's bed. He took her hand and held it tight to his own chest. His face was filled with concern.
"The doctor's here, Ruth," he said. His tone was beseeching. "He's here to make you feel better."
I felt bad for Frank. There was actually little I could do to make her feel better other than treating her baseline infection. Despite all of the modern miracles in medicine, time alone would fix Ruth---as much as she could be fixed.
Still, her husband's reassuring voice seemed to calm her and she settled back down onto the bed. I continued my exam.
"What about the eating, Doctor? How do I get her to eat?"
"You may not be able to get her to eat right now, Frank."
"But if she doesn't eat, she's going to die!" He glared at me in frustration. "Do you want her to die?"
"No one wants her to die, Frank."
"How can she get better without nourishment?"
I sat down in the chair and measured my response.
"Frank, we are doing the best we can with feeding her given her current confusion. The nurses and the aides are trying their best. They sit with her at every meal and patiently try to feed her. I'm sure a little of it is getting in. She's also getting hydration through her IV fluids, which are providing some sustenance. When her delirium improves, I think she'll start to eat again."
"But we fixed her infection, Doctor."
"We did, but the resulting confusion takes time to improve." I felt as if I were saying the same things over and over.
"Well, if she's not going to eat, shouldn't we put in a feeding tube?"
Frank's frustration had changed to pleading.
"Frank, I don't think it would change the overall outcome. Besides, when your wife was still able to speak her mind she told me she didn't want a feeding tube to help her with her nutrition. Shouldn't we honor her wishes?"
Suddenly, I realized how thankful I was that the three of us had discussed this matter in the early days of Ruth's dementia, while she could still participate in conversations regarding her future. Of all the things I talk about with my patients and their families, the discussion about feeding tubes is perhaps the hardest. I have seen families literally ripped apart by the often agonizing decision of whether or not to insert a feeding tube into a dementia patient who has begun to lose weight. Part of what makes these conversations so hard is the common misconception that feeding tubes prolong life. In reality, there is really no place for feeding tubes in terminal dementia. Objectively, they have never been shown to increase a person's length of life or reduce the number of episodes of pneumonia. Feeding tubes are not without their side effects: They require a surgical procedure or endoscopy to insert them in the first place; they fall out easily, requiring ER visits simply to put them back in again; and they can get infected or become blocked.
There's another factor that makes conversations about feeding tubes difficult. Many people feel that not feeding patients is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, loss of weight at the end of life is a natural byproduct of the body shutting down as it prepares itself for death. Patients at this stage of life do not perceive hunger or thirst the way someone who is healthy experiences it. But it's never easy to convince family members of this as their loved ones are fading away. It's infinitely easier when the patient has consciously weighed in on the matter at a more opportune time.
Frank looked at me with a guilty expression.
"You're right, Doctor. She did say that she didn't want a tube. She's got to eat, though. How can she get better if she doesn't eat?"
Tears came to Frank's eyes. They streamed down his face and he wiped them away with the back of his shirtsleeve.
"Hopefully, she'll start eating soon, Frank. In the meantime, we will continue to give her intravenous fluids and try to feed her what we can. We just have to hope for the best."
"But if that doesn't work?" he asked. The desperation was back.
I looked at him and tried to think of something positive to say. My face must have said it all. Frank started to sob.
I crossed the room and grabbed a box of tissues. I handed them to Frank and sat back down again. He took one and dabbed at his face.
"Doctor, I'm not ready for her to go," he said after a brief silence.
"I know you love her greatly, Frank. Unfortunately, this is how it happens. This is how patients with dementia eventually die."
Frank looked up at me and again began to cry.
I put my hand on his shoulder but there was nothing more to say.
"If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up."
J. A. MCINTOSH
MOST MORNINGS I OPERATE ON AUTOPILOT. I GET OUT OF bed, jump in the shower, and get dressed without giving any of it much thought. I use the time to plan my day, figure out whether I can stop to eat breakfast, decide where I need to go and what I need to do. It's the way most of us begin our day, relying on routine and the body to know what it needs to do while we scheme and dream.
As I watched my two children learn to walk, bathe, and feed themselves, I thought of how difficult these activities are to master. Walking doesn't begin with that first step. It begins with an awkward roll, followed by an excited crawl, then a grasp for a chair leg, and more than a few bumps and bruises before that first momentous and life-changing step. Then of course there's no stopping them.
We spend the first few years of our lives learning how to do these core activities and then we move on, never giving them another thought. For most of our lives we accept the ability to take care of ourselves as a given---until a health care issue robs us or a loved one of these primal skills. When that health care issue is dementia, we wonder if we'll ever take anything for granted again.
As the dementia patient unlearns how to perform the basic functions of life, we quickly find out just how difficult it is to bathe a 189-pound man who offers no assistance. We learn that the very act of transferring someone onto the toilet can become a multiperson job. We also discover just how much patience is required to painstakingly feed a parent who has lost all vestiges of her appetite---or even an understanding of what to do with a spoon.
It's at the middle stages of dementia---when patients gradually begin to lose the ability to care for themselves independently---that they and their families begin to fall through the cracks of our health care system. Some seek assistance from worthy organizations such as the Alzheimer's Association. Others look to friends or family with previous experience. They may seek information and support from a variety of sources---but rarely do they get it from the doctor.
Unfortunately, our health care system is built largely on a model of diagnosis and treatment. As medical students and young doctors we learn to assimilate signs and symptoms of disease, attach a label or name to it, and then suggest treatment courses based on the particular diagnosis. What do you do, though, when there are no medications to give or no surgeries to perform?
What do you do when there is no cure?
"HOW DID I THINK IT WOULD END?"
Joan Scheer was sitting in her kitchen. I watched as she nervously stroked her hair and her brown eyes became watery. I had seen a lot of people crying since I embarked on this listening tour and I had to keep reminding myself that it was intended to be cathartic---perhaps even good for them. But it didn't make me feel any better. "I suppose I thought my husband would go on the way he was." Joan's daughter, Robin, passed her a tissue. "I knew he had dementia but I thought that things wouldn't change, that each morning I would continue to drive him to his adult day care center, where they would care for him until four o'clock. Then he'd come home and I'd feed him dinner, watch TV, and then we'd go to bed. I suppose I thought that we would keep this routine going until one day when he would die of old age. I guess I was naïve, but I just didn't expect it to end the way it did."
The way it ended with Lawrence Scheer is the way it ends with most of the patients on Steere House's third floor. Mr. Scheer died at the nursing home, dutifully accompanied by Oscar, after a prolonged battle with Alzheimer's dementia. The last years of Larry's life were not kind. He began to wander at home, particularly at night, and eventually fell down the stairs. In the hospital, he seemed to deteriorate overnight. He became nonverbal and delirious, pulling his cast off three times before being strapped to the bed for his own protection. He was transferred from one nursing home to another before landing at Steere House. There, he continued to unlearn everything until, in the end, he could no longer walk, talk, or even recognize his family. He ultimately died from pneumonia.
"You know, I wish the doctors had told me what to expect."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"They really didn't tell me anything about the disease or what it would do to my husband." She smiled at me through the tears. "You know how I found out how long a patient with Alzheimer's lives after they are diagnosed?"
I shook my head.
"My husband told me!"
She laughed at the absurdity of it.
"About a year or two after he was diagnosed, we were at a friend's house for dinner. It turned out he also had dementia and they had a book about Alzheimer's lying around on their coffee table. He started reading it. I came into the room and saw him sitting there with the book turned over on his lap. I asked him what he was doing and he told me point blank that he had about six more years to live."
Now she was the one shaking her head.
"He held up the book to show me and I was horrified! I raced over to Larry and took it from him. He looked at me and, very matter-of-fact, told me that based on his age at diagnosis, he had about seven to nine years---and that he had already lived for two of those years."
"But your doctors hadn't said anything about life expectancy to either of you?"
Joan leaned back in her chair. "Well, the doctors were always good with labeling. They would tell me that Larry had an Alzheimer's-type variant, but none of them ever sat me down and said, 'Your husband has dementia and here is what is going to happen to him step by step, year by year.' Instead, they would hold an X-ray in the air and talk to me about tangles and plaques as if I had been in medical school along with them. The X-rays didn't mean anything to me."
Unfortunately, I hear this all the time. I appreciate that physicians are trying to share information with patients and their families, but there are better ways of helping them cope with the disease.
Joan played with a napkin as she considered her next statement. It was as if she was sending a message through me. "I just wish there were more people in the medical community who could help guide you through the day-in and day-out aspects of living with someone with dementia."
"IT'S ALL ABOUT FUNCTION," a lecturer said in a class at medical school many years ago.
She paused for emphasis and looked out at the future physicians assembled before her.
"In medicine, doctors often make the mistake of pursuing diagnoses. I'm here to tell you that the name of the disease doesn't matter. It may seem important to us as physicians and many patients may think it's important, but I can guarantee you that in most cases it's irrelevant. Do you think a patient really cares if he has progressive supranuclear palsy, Alzheimer's, Pick's disease, or Lewy body dementia?"
Someone in the front row raised his hand. "But aren't all of these things important to know?"
"To the physician, they're very important," she said. "They're the language we use to convey information to one another. They help us define an illness and talk to each other about it. It's not nearly as important to the patient."
"But don't people want to know what they are up against?" the student asked in follow-up. He was one of those students who seemed to think he would get extra credit for challenging the professor.
"Absolutely. Patients like to know what's causing their discomfort or their disability. The fear of the unknown is always worse than fear attributed to something. In the end, though, it's more about the discomfort or the disability than the name or label."
She paused again for emphasis. "People care mostly about whether a disease will change the way they live. Will I die from my disease? Will I be able to walk or care for myself? Will I be able to care for my husband, wife, or children? Will it hurt? This is what patients care about most."
She was right, of course. When a car runs you over, you don't much care about the make or model.
"THERE ARE TIMES when I'm so ashamed at how I handled things," Joan said to me. "I just wish I had known more." She looked at her daughter for moral support.
"I think you have to learn it for yourself," Robin added. "There are times when I think we both failed my father."
"How so?" I asked.
"We just didn't know how to deal with him," Robin said. "Sometimes we'd get so frustrated and impatient with him. Other times, we'd just get angry over trivial things. For example, there was a point in his disease where he forgot how to put the key in the door."
"Or fasten his seat belt!" her mother interjected.
"Right! Every time we'd go for a drive, my father would ask me to show him how to buckle his seat belt and I would go over it with him in painstaking detail, like I was teaching a young child how to do it for the first time. But he never got it. I'd get so angry with him that he couldn't do it rather than just accepting the fact that you can't teach something to someone who is 'unlearning' everything. Ultimately, I had to figure this out for myself. Perhaps every caregiver does."
Now Robin was getting upset. As the memories returned, so did the guilt. They had tried so hard---done so much---but they still regretted how they'd dealt with some of the day-today issues. The guilt is as natural as the frustration. I can only imagine the anger and irritation of constantly confronting a college-educated man who can't figure out how to button his shirt or turn on the television. You would get angry.
"Why can't you do this anymore? A child could do it." The difference is that a child is learning. A patient with Alzheimer's is, as Robin said, "unlearning."
Like so many others in similar situations, Joan and Robin had fallen into the trap of remembering the person who was rather than the person who is, the person with the dementia. When this fact hits home, when they realize they're looking for someone who isn't there anymore, the caregiver feels guilty for having been irritated.
"If only I could have had more patience or been more understanding with him!" family members say to me. "He wasn't doing it on purpose."
"So many people have trouble knowing exactly what to do," I said to the Scheers, trying to relieve some of the burden. "Every caregiver experiences the same thing, the guilt associated with getting angry. It's ultimately something you can't possibly control."
Robin nodded, but I doubted she heard anything I had said. Intellectually, people often know that there's nothing else they can do for a parent or spouse with dementia, but it doesn't make the guilt go away. She continued her story. "I think the worst thing is that even after he was in the nursing home, I had so much trouble getting into the frame of mind just to see him. I would go to see my father, the father who had raised me, and get nothing back in return. You don't get feedback. I mean, how do you talk to someone who doesn't respond?"
Once again, the question was rhetorical. Still, I tried to answer. "I guess you do the best you can," I said. "There's value in just being there, even if you don't get the feedback you're looking for."
Joan reached over into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. "I used to refer to this when my husband was alive and I would get angry or frustrated. It's from Saturday, a novel by Ian McEwan. This is what going to the nursing home was like for me: 'It's like taking flowers to a graveside---the true business is with the past.'"
We talked for another thirty minutes, covering many aspects of Larry's illness. I felt almost guilty about transitioning the conversation to address the real reason for my visit. Thankfully, when Oscar's name came up the Scheer family didn't seem to mind. For the first time since we had begun talking, Joan even smiled.
"You know," Robin began, "we really thought Oscar had missed the boat with my father. He was in the final stages of dying and we still hadn't seen him once. Not one visit.
"We had heard about his exploits in the past from others and we were really confused. To pass the time, my mother and I went looking for him and found him in the opposite hallway sitting with another patient. He looked real anxious. I remember my mother addressed Oscar and told him he was not doing his job. A little while after we returned to my father's room, Oscar suddenly raced into the room as if the clock had just started to strike twelve."
"Like Cinderella racing out of the ball," Joan added.
"It was only later that we learned another patient was dying on the other side of the unit," Robin said. "Oscar stayed with the other patient until he was gone. Then he raced over!"
A look of awe had fallen over Robin's face. Across the table, Joan seemed to share in the amazement of what they had witnessed.
"Oscar allowed me to pick him up briefly and then jumped off my lap and went right over to Dad. A few hours later, my father died."
Robin started to laugh. "Funny thing is that an hour or so before my father died, a hospice nurse came in to do her assessment. When she was finished, she suggested that we take a break. 'Your father still has time,' she told us. Mom and I both looked at each other, but neither of us wanted to go. We figured we should take our cue from Oscar. It was a good thing, too, because he was right. Had Oscar not been there at the end, we might have listened to the nurse and missed being there when he died."
"It's not that we trusted the cat more than the nurse," Joan said. "Not, exactly. It was...well, there was just something about Oscar. He seemed so convinced of what he was doing. He was so clear in his intention and his dedication."
Robin summed it up: "This beautiful creature was sending us a sign. It would have been wrong to ignore it."
"A DOCTOR CAN GIVE you a label but it's not about that. There's nothing in the name. You want to know how to deal with the disease, what it's going to do to you."
Joan's words echoed in my mind as I drove home. I suppose after Robin's story I should have been thinking about Oscar and his sprint down the hallway, but what her mother said had struck a much louder chord. I thought about my own health and the difficulties I had finding a diagnosis for my arthritis. Initially, I was relieved when I finally learned the name of the disease that had so rapidly changed the way I led my life. At last I knew what I was up against. I could wage my personal war against a named adversary. It felt very much like a war. I was going to beat it---if I died trying.
But Joan was right. Ultimately, it ceases to be about the name of the disease; it's about the need to maintain a normal life, to be able to live life fully and in the moment despite the diagnosis. I thought about my own functional limitations ten years into arthritis and how they have forced me to make changes in my life. I could no longer play tennis, downhill ski, or play basketball like I used to. Nevertheless, I was still able to get out of bed every morning and do the things that kept me independent. I could still button my shirt and tie my shoes. Most importantly, I could still carry my children up and down the stairs---something I feared might not be the case the day my son was born. I knew that one day these very activities might not be possible, but I was thankful that I could do them today.
Today I can and that is enough.
I went home and said hello to my wife.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"Okay. Joan and her daughter are really nice people. It was tough for them, remembering it all. They both really loved Larry."
"Was Oscar there at the end?"
I chuckled. "You know, when I first heard about Oscar, I thought everyone was just plain crazy. But the more I listen to all of these stories, it seems he's there almost every single time. The families all seem appreciative."
"Maybe we should open up a cat medical school and put you doctors out of business once and for all."
I rolled my eyes and turned to leave the room. I knew she was teasing, but she had that look in her eyes. The wheels were definitely turning.
"Hey, where are you going?" she asked. "I want to hear more."
"Upstairs to take a shower."
She looked puzzled. It was only late afternoon.
"My joints hurt a little," I said. "The shower helps."
She shrugged.
I closed the bedroom door and got undressed. Today, I said to myself, I take nothing for granted. For the first time since perhaps my childhood, I thought about nothing else but the process of taking off each item of clothing. I undid the buttons on my shirt with a Zen-like deliberateness. I untied my shoes and took off my clothes, hanging them neatly in the closet. I turned off the autopilot and allowed myself to exist solely in the present. Nothing mattered but that very moment, and the next.
As the water streamed down from above, I felt the simple pleasure of it hitting my aching shoulders and back. It was warm and comforting and I was so very grateful for the simple pleasure of being able to bathe myself.
I was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was my wife.
"You okay, David?"
"Thanks, honey," I replied. "I'm fine."
Yes, it really is all about function and about learning to play the hand you're dealt.
"Which is more beautiful, feline movement or feline stillness?"
"DAVID, CAN YOU STOP BY? I DON'T LIKE THE WAY SAUL looks. I think he's becoming septic."
It was Mary, and she had reached me on my cell phone as I headed to the university for a research meeting with several colleagues. One of the many things I liked about Mary was that she did not overreact. If she said a patient looked bad, I changed whatever course I had set for myself and headed for Steere House, as I did that warm spring afternoon. The meeting would have to wait.
As I entered the unit I was greeted by a tall, well-dressed man who was standing near the nurse's station, deep in discussion with Mary. Even with his back toward me I knew that we had met before. I think it was his accent.
I rounded the desk and acknowledged the pair with a quick hello as I pulled Saul's chart off the rack with the urgency Mary's phone call had instilled. I rifled through the pages for his recent labs and kept one ear tuned to the conversation unfolding in front of me.
"Mary, my mother's going to be much better off in the hospital," the man said.
Now I remembered. I had met him in the hospital months ago when his mother, Iris Duncan, had been admitted with pneumonia. There had been nothing extraordinary about her admission, and she had rebounded rather quickly, but I had spent considerable time talking with her son about his mother's care and her declining condition.
He was full of questions, which was to be expected. His mother had a serious disease that was progressing and anyone would have been looking for answers. But the tenor of our conversations suggested to me that he had not yet come to grips with the terminal nature of his mother's condition. He seemed to be in a state of constant negotiation. "What if we try this, Doctor?" he would ask, invoking some medicine or procedure he had heard of or read about on the Web. When I had explained why one tactic wouldn't work, he had been quick to suggest another. Listening to him now, I could tell that nothing had changed.
"George," Mary was saying, "your mother's really not doing well. I think she's got another bout of pneumonia brewing and with the infection she's more confused than ever. Are you sure you want us to send her over to the hospital again? You know, we can treat her with antibiotics here in the nursing home where we all know her and she's comfortable with her surroundings."
The offer sounded reasonable and for a moment George seemed to waver from his initial insistence that his mother be rushed to the hospital. Maybe he could be persuaded that keeping his mother in the nursing home would be in her best interest.
He turned to me.
"It's Dr. Dosa, right?"
"How are you, George?" I was glad to have overheard Mary using his name.
"It's good to see you again. Will you be taking care of my mother when she goes to the hospital?"
I shook my head no. "One of my other colleagues is covering the hospital this week. But I do know your mother, George, and I agree with Mary that her dementia is getting worse. She's usually out here, sitting by the desk---and she's always been quick with her hellos in that delightful accent of hers. Lately, though, I haven't seen that same resilience. If you like, I can give your mother's doctor a call. I think treating her here would be in her best interest."
But his mind was made up. As George walked away, Mary turned to me.
"How do you know George?"
"We met a few months back when his mother was in the hospital. I think we talked for almost an hour on one occasion. He had so many questions about his mother's care. He literally wanted to know everything."
Mary laughed. "He's very involved. Even when he's traveling for his job, I get phone calls from him every day: 'How's my mother doing? Is she eating? Resting okay?'" She sighed. "Though, honestly, I hope that when it's my time, one of my kids will be as involved with my care as George is with his mother's."
"I tried to talk to him about hospice for his mother before," I said. "Did they ever get involved?"
"He's nowhere near ready for that, David."
But she may be, I thought. "What's her condition now?" I asked.
"Same as before. The X-ray says she's got pneumonia again, and she's confused."
"Has Oscar been by?"
Mary laughed. "Of all the patients on the floor, Oscar probably hides from her the most. She's always chasing him. Half the time, she tries to pull his tail. I'm not sure Oscar's going to want to be there when she goes."
"Is she still full code?" I wanted to know whether or not we would conduct CPR if her heart or breathing ceased.
"Uh-huh."
"I remember the first time I met her in the hospital," I said. "Even when she was ill, she was so vibrant!" Her smile could light up a room, but she had deteriorated since then.
"There are times when I still can't believe what this disease does to people," Mary said. Her thoughts must have been running on a similar track. "I think Iris has actually been at Steere House longer than I have. When she was first admitted to the dementia unit downstairs, people used to confuse her for one of the staff. She was such an educated, articulate woman. I think Columbia University actually gave her a college scholarship to come there from St. Kitts."
"So that's where the accent is from!"
"When I first met Iris, she was actually tutoring some of our aides downstairs on their English," Mary continued. "She was also an ordained minister, and I remember hearing her talk to at least one aide about her faith."
Mary smiled at the memory. "I always thought it was funny that she could still teach English and recite the Bible, chapter and verse, despite her condition. You never lose those teaching skills, I guess."
"But you called me about Saul," I reminded her.
"He may very well be the second hospital admission today," she said. "Go take a look at him and see what you think. You'll find Barbara there. She's very concerned." With that Mary turned toward her office, a copy of Iris Duncan's chart in her hands. As I left she was calling the medics to bring her to the hospital.
ONE LOOK AT SAUL and I understood Mary's concern. He was in bed rather than his recliner. The television was off and there was no life in his eyes; he seemed unable to keep them open for even a few seconds. His daughter was seated at the bedside, holding his hand.
"How's he doing?" I asked.
Barbara stood up and looked at me. I could see the worry in her face. "Not well, Doctor. Mary called me in to see him."
She stood aside to allow me to examine her father. I measured his blood pressure and confirmed that it was low. I felt his thready pulse and listened to his lungs. As I examined his legs, it was obvious where the infection was coming from. They were red and swollen. An area near his shin was openly weeping, a result of cellular fluid being pushed to the surface from damaged cells.
"He's pretty sick, Barbara. I think he may be septic, a condition where the bacteria in his leg have gotten into his blood."
She nodded but said nothing.
"You know, I don't think we can handle this degree of illness over here. We're going to have to make a decision about whether to hospitalize him."
"Whatever you think, Doctor." This did not sound like the woman who had always been so resistant to the idea of not treating her dad. I decided to use this opening to revisit his end-of-life wishes.
"Barbara, I know when your father was first admitted, you had requested that we do everything in our power to restart his heart if it stops. I'd like to talk about that if we could."
"Well, if you can save him, I think you should try."
"You know, it's not like it is on TV."
She gave me an odd look and I felt like I was in danger of crossing a line but persevered.
"On television, they always get everyone back," I said. "It's not like that in real life."
"I know that," she said rather coolly.
"In cases like your father's, where someone has a chronic medical illness like dementia, we're very rarely able to get someone back if their heart or breathing stops. On television, patients almost always survive. In reality, based on your father's age and his medical problems, I very much doubt we'd ever get him out of the intensive care unit."
"Why wouldn't we do everything in our power to save him?" Now there was heat in her voice.
"Sometimes, when patients are really ill, all we are doing is postponing the inevitable and inflicting more pain. Regardless of whether we fix his infection, he'll still have the dementia. We could always keep him here and make him comfortable."
Barbara looked at me with anger.
"Doctor, my father wanted everything done to keep him alive. Even if there's the smallest chance that he can recover, I think he would want that. I'm not going to change his wishes now."
I wasn't surprised by her response. I was a traveling salesman pitching an unpopular product: the reality check. I considered reminding her that her father's circumstances had changed, but I resisted the temptation. It wasn't going to change anything.
"Doctor, I don't want to talk about any of this right now. My father needs medical attention and we need to get him to the hospital immediately."
I left the room to start making preparations for Saul's transfer. As I sat at the desk staring off into space, thinking about all that had just transpired, a visitor appeared from out of nowhere. Walking along the length of the front desk, Oscar came toward me and sat down next to the telephone. His eyes fixed on me.
"Why don't you go talk to Barbara, Oscar? Maybe you can convince her."
He looked at me and for a second I imagined that he was considering my request---as if a cat would do what you wanted even if he could understand you. Instead he rolled on his belly in front of me in an invitation to scratch him. I reached over and paid my due diligence as he began to purr.
"You're really just a cat, aren't you?"
"People who love cats have some of the biggest hearts around."
"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT WRITING a book about my experiences with my mother. I even had a name! I would call it The Lady Upstairs Who Looks Like My Mother."
I was sitting in the parlor of Jack McCullough's house in East Providence where he was telling me about Oscar's first patient, his mother.
"I had to learn to love my mother as the person she had become," he told me. "She looked like the person I grew up with, but she was different."
At that he leaned back and smiled wistfully.
It had taken a while to get up the nerve to call Jack. Unlike the other people I had interviewed thus far, I didn't know him. But Jack's mother, Marion, was widely considered to be the first beneficiary of Oscar's many vigils. She passed away in November 2005, when Oscar was still just a kitten. Not only that, but a little more than a year later, Jack's aunt Barbara also died on the third floor with Oscar at her bedside. His was the first double-Oscar family that I knew of and I figured if anybody could lend some insight into why Oscar does what he does, Jack would be the man.
"Call him," Mary had ordered one day as I ruminated about whether to contact him.
It's an odd request to make, though, no matter how many times I'd done it already. "Hey, would you mind if I come over and talk to you about the cat who was with your mother when she died?"
But Mary was right. Jack had answered me with an emphatic yes.
"I'd love to talk to you about Oscar and what he meant to me," he said.
The house was quaint, practically historic: The furniture was antique and had likely been passed down from generation to generation. We sat across an old coffee table from each other in a pair of recently upholstered wing chairs. Everywhere there were reminders of Jack's mother Marion and her sister Barbara.
In one corner there was a photo of a grayish tabby cat, a pet from years ago, I imagined.
"Was your mother a cat person?"
Jack chuckled. "That's an understatement! My mother grew up on a farm in southern Massachusetts. From her early childhood, she was always collecting stray kittens, feeding them with baby bottles and droppers. Her family always used to tease her and call her 'Momma Kitty' growing up because of all the little cats that would follow her around the farm." Jack leaned over to pick up another gray tabby that had ambled into the parlor to assess the new arrival.
"Dr. Dosa, this is Bijou. I always used to say that Bijou was a reincarnation of Mittens, the cat we had growing up." He pointed to the picture of the tabby. The two were almost identical.
He put the cat down and it scurried out of the room with incredible speed. "My mother always had this uncanny attraction to cats," Jack said. "I suppose they felt safe with her. Even cats that would not come to anyone else would jump onto my mother's lap. When I first got Bijou, my mother already had significant dementia and she lived in the apartment above me. I'd come home and look everywhere for the cat, and then I'd go upstairs and find him sitting with her."
Jack excused himself to make a pot of coffee. He handed me a small photo album before he left.
"I put this together shortly before my mother died. I used to bring it to her and we'd leaf through it and look at the pictures together."
The album was beautiful and well constructed. Thick expensive paper, expertly bound---it was the sort of thing Jack might have crafted himself or bought at a specialty store, not the local five-and-dime. As I admired the album, I realized how important the project must have been to Jack, how it must have helped him explore the very essence of his mother's life story and perhaps, if such a thing is at all possible, to prepare for her death. The book was his lasting tribute to his mother, and a way to invoke the more pleasant memories from earlier in her life.
It's ironic that, while Alzheimer's and other dementias rob their victims of memory, they leave the family and loved ones with only memories. It can be difficult for adult children to recall the father who liked to take them fishing or the mother who pored over their homework with them. Personal mementoes such as the one Jack had assembled can help.
I leafed through the pictures. There were snapshots of Marion's journey from childhood to adult life, culminating with pictures taken at Steere House. As I turned the pages that held so much meaning for Jack I was struck by how composed Marion appeared in all of the photographs. Even in her later years, she was an attractive woman, well dressed in fashionable clothes, with beautiful hair and a glowing complexion.
I paused to study one of the photos. A young Marion was captured sitting off at a distance from the photographer, and she was looking at something just out of view. In her expression was contentment, perhaps a little mystery. Jack returned with the coffee and I put the photo album down on the table.
"That's beautiful," I said. "I'm curious: Did the album help stimulate your mother's memory at all?"
"Sometimes," Jack said, pouring the coffee and proffering cream, "although I think it was more important for me."
"How so?"
"Well, you forget so much about the person when they have dementia. You look at them and forget all the memories from before. They're still there in front of you and they remind you of that person from long ago, but they're not the same. You definitely have to learn to love the person they become."
He offered me a freshly baked muffin that I inhaled.
"I know you wanted to talk to me about Oscar the cat," Jack continued as I nodded with a full mouth, "but I really think you should know a little more about my mother."
"By all means," I said, taking a sip of the coffee.
"I used to say that I had to make an appointment to eat lunch with her." Jack smiled. "Even in retirement, Marion led a busy, full life---whether it was with aerobics, her church, or any of the other things she was involved with. She was a woman with a good heart. She found the greatest joy in the simplest things: taking me and the neighborhood kids for ice cream, or starting up the car to chase after a fire engine that had just passed by our house. I mean, how many parents actually do that?"
He paused for a moment of happy reflection and then added, "She was a great mother, but she didn't have it easy. My mother was a single parent."
"Really?" I said. I realized that there was a lot I didn't know about Jack or his mother. "Was she widowed or divorced?"
This is not a question I'd ask a single parent today, but single parents were something of a rarity in the fifties, and I wanted to know more about this glamorous, kindhearted woman who would go out chasing fire trucks with her kids.
"Neither," Jack replied. "In 1951 my mom met a man she fell in love with. It was accidental---and instantaneous. He was the one true love of her life. They were together for forty-nine years until his death a few years ago."
"I'm confused," I admitted.
"My father was married to someone else," Jack said. "My parents had to keep their relationship a secret. They had an affair that lasted for almost fifty years---though I prefer the word relationship. I was the product of that relationship."
Jack paused to gauge my reaction. He looked me over, studying my features for a hint of a reaction. In today's world, this might not seem so surprising. But 1950s Rhode Island was a different universe altogether and it was clear that Jack's upbringing had not been conventional.
"I used to say that I got to know my father from the reflection in the rearview mirror of his car. He would pick us up and we would just drive somewhere---sometimes he would take us for a bite to eat and other times we would go to another town or place where people wouldn't know us."
Jack paused for a moment to sip his coffee.
"Dr. Dosa, to understand my mother, you have to know that she woke up every day and got dressed impeccably just in case it was a day she could see my father. She never stopped looking over her shoulder for him and that behavior never stopped---even in the midst of her dementia."
I thought about the pictures I had seen: Marion with the carefully applied makeup and the beautiful outfits. Suddenly they made a different kind of sense.
"More than you want to know?" Jack asked.
"Not at all," I said. "Not at all."
The mysteries of the human heart are not confined to medicine.
"These days, when I think back about the early stages of my mother's disease, I realize how naïve I was," Jack said. "Maybe you just don't recognize the early stages when it's your own mother or father. You make excuses for the little things. On one occasion, in the early eighties, I had to drop off my car at the mechanic. We had agreed that my mother was supposed to pick me up. Obviously this was before everyone had cell phones. I remember sitting at the garage waiting for her for over an hour, but she never showed up. When I finally got home, I found that she had gone off on another errand. 'Was that today?' she asked me when I caught up with her. 'I guess I just plain forgot.' In retrospect, I can see that this was probably the beginning, but I just let it go."
Jack rattled off a series of mishaps, equally trivial if taken out of context. "I remember she started to lose her keys. When she couldn't find them, she'd blame me for hiding them. I would try to reason with her, asking what possible motivation I might have for hiding her keys. It didn't matter. Each time she lost them she was convinced I had hidden them."
Jack shook his head and smiled wryly. "One time she left them at the supermarket on the deli counter. On another occasion, she locked them in the car---with the car still running!"
He was actually laughing now, though I was quite sure that none of it was funny at the time.
"You know, Dr. Dosa, you make excuses. I would tell myself she was just tired. I would tell myself she was simply mad at me for suggesting that she sell the house she had lived in for so many years. Eventually, though, I couldn't bury my head in the sand anymore.
"For me, I suppose the straw that broke the camel's back occurred several years after her symptoms began. Now, subconsciously I must have known that my mother was having trouble with her memory because I started secretly placing my business cards in her purse when she wasn't looking. I don't know why I did it, but I guess I realized that she might need me one day and not know how to reach me."
Jack smiled at his deception.
"Sometimes she'd find the cards and ask me about them. I'd tell her that they were there just in case, and she'd get angry with me. She'd rip them into pieces in front of me or simply throw them out. Luckily, though, she didn't find them all. I was at my job one rainy day when I got a call from a mailman in another part of town. He asked me if I was Marion's son and told me to get over to the Eastside as quickly as I could. Not knowing what had happened, I was frantic. I raced out of my office and jumped in my car. I remember very little about the ride over, but I must have been going through worst-case scenarios in my mind."
How terrifying this must have been, a call from a stranger on a cold, rainy day. The need to drop everything and just leave, not knowing what you're going to find. Naturally he assumed the worst.
Jack glanced off and for a second I felt he might cry. Everyone else I had talked to had. But he composed himself and it occurred to me that maybe he was done with crying.
"When I found her I remember thinking that this was as bad as you can probably ever imagine. You never ever want to see your mother the way I saw mine that day. She was drenched to the bone and completely confused. It was clear that she had been crying and her mascara had all run down her face, making her look like some tragic clown. I asked her where her car was and she broke down in front of me...she had no idea. She was so completely lost!"
He paused in his telling. He was reliving every brutal second of that day as if it were yesterday. When he began again, his voice was low and halting.
"You want to know the funny thing? Even the car event didn't really bring the disease home for me. I knew my mother had a problem, but I hadn't put it all together. It didn't occur to me until a few weeks later when I was at a party. I was telling a friend about the incident and he casually asked me if my mother had Alzheimer's disease. It hit me like a ton of bricks."
Jack shook his head sheepishly.
"All of these events were happening, and I didn't realize that my mother had Alzheimer's until someone uninvolved casually mentioned it at a party! I was in denial."
As he uttered the D word, I couldn't help but think how many people were like Jack. We all make excuses rather than deal with what we don't want to see---even if it is right in front of our noses.
"Mom's just tired today."
"Dad's just got too much on his mind."
We minimize symptoms despite a preponderance of evidence. We acquit the victim and avoid the obvious. The mind really does work in mysterious ways.
"After my mother was diagnosed, I realized I needed to move her closer to me, so I relocated her to an apartment above my own. Thankfully, she let me take over her finances with minimal resistance and I eventually began taking her to the local senior center so I could go to work during the day. At first she complained bitterly, but I was persistent. I had no choice. But if there's a silver lining with Alzheimer's it's that they stop complaining as the disease gets worse. After a few weeks of resistance I think she actually enjoyed the senior center. Regardless, it only worked for a time. She became increasingly difficult for me to care for and I had to hire people to help, to make sure she got dressed in the morning, took her medications---and to make sure she didn't disappear out of the apartment while I was at work!
"Her personality also changed," Jack recalled. "She would swing from one extreme to the other almost minute to minute. My sweet, loving mother became paranoid and mean---something she never was earlier in life. I would be at work and receive a phone call from an aide who would be in tears over something my mother had done. I would run home and find this docile, sweet woman with no memory of having done anything untoward. Over time, the personality changes became extreme.
"Finally, the whole caregiver thing became exhausting. After all, they don't stop being ill to give you a break. Even though my partner understood, our relationship suffered. I didn't leave town for over four years. I became withdrawn and depressed. My blood pressure went up and I had a very hard time watching my mother disappear. I even started going to therapy to come to grips with everything. The therapy helped me understand that I needed help and that my mother needed to be in a nursing home."
"Did it make you feel guilty?" I asked.
"Initially, but I didn't feel guilty for long because it had to happen. In the end, though, once I got her into Steere House, I knew it was the right thing. We had a tough transition; my mother had been at another nursing home where things didn't work out.
"Ultimately, I was so happy to get my mother into Steere House. Aunt Barbara had also come down with dementia and was already living there. I was able to get my mother into the same room as her on the third floor. You know, my mother and Barbara lived together for sixty-eight years. They were apart for about ten years, but when they got back together at the nursing home, it was like they had never been apart."
Jack laughed. "The two of them loved their animals," he said. "I'm sure they thought that they owned those two cats. I'd come into the nursing home and find my mother in her room, but Barbara was always missing. I'd go hunting for her and find her sitting in some random room with one of the cats curled up in her lap. She'd light up and tell me that her kitty was here."
"What about your mother?"
"Oh, she was the same. There were times when I thought that my mother no longer recognized me, but she would always light up when one of the cats was in the room. Both of them. I would put one of the cats on their beds and they would just smile.
"The strangest thing is that my mother and aunt eventually forgot almost everything. They couldn't remember my name, where they were, or who they were. Yet those feelings---well, they remained. It was the same if there was a baby on the floor or if a certain tune was playing on the radio. Even in the end, they would simply light up."
"So, was Oscar there at the end?" I asked.
"The nurses tell me that Oscar was at Barbara's death. He came in a few hours beforehand and she died shortly thereafter. I wasn't there when my aunt died, but I can tell you what happened to my mother with Oscar."
Jack grinned.
"When Oscar was just a kitten, I used to bring him into my mother's room and put him on the bed. He would stay there for a minute or two, and then he would leave. You know what kittens are like."
Actually, I didn't.
"It was great for my mother, but he never stayed long. During the last week, when my mother was unconscious, Oscar would come into the room, look around or jump onto the bed for a moment, and then leave. On the night my mother died, the night nurse called me in to see my mother. She told me my mother wasn't doing well and that I should be there. When I got to the room, the lights were dim and they had started doing aroma therapy. I went to the bedside and was stunned to see Oscar lying there on the bed, curled up next to my mother. When I sat on the bed, he didn't budge; he just sat there purring."
Jack now wore a look of befuddled amazement.
"Seeing Oscar there at the bedside, I looked at my partner of eleven years, who was always there for me and my mother, and told him we were not leaving. As I said, my mother had this unique connection with cats and I knew this was the way she was going to die, with a cat at her side. Two hours later, my mother took her last breath. Oscar never moved until she died. Then he got up casually, like nothing had happened, and left the room."
We sat in silence. I was picturing Oscar. I bet Jack was too.
"I suppose my mother would have been happy to know that she died with one of the critters she loved the most. But to tell you the truth, all I felt was relief. I'd like to tell you that I felt horrible when my mother died, but I didn't. I think Ronald Reagan's daughter said it best for all of us when she called her memoir of her father's Alzheimer's The Long Goodbye. Every day I miss the mother I had sixteen years ago, but not the person she became. It was like watching a kid, but having them unlearn everything they knew."
I thought back on my conversation with the Scheers, who had voiced the same complaint. It must be like watching a film of a person's life run backward, I thought, except the person doesn't get any younger.
I asked Jack if he had any last thoughts about his experiences. He considered for a while before responding.
"You have to learn to love the person they become and find moments of happiness in the little things," he said. "That's why those animals at Steere House are so important. Dementia is all about comfort and distraction. I always felt okay about leaving my mother and Barbara because they had excellent care, each other, and they had their cats."
Standing at the doorway as I took my leave, I shook Jack's hand. Before I could go he offered one last thought.
"You know, Oscar the cat was not just a distraction for my mother," he said. "He was my distraction as well."
"It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see."
ONCE AGAIN, I HAD GONE OFF IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS and had come back with only more questions. Regardless, my visits were providing me with fresh insights into the disease that was afflicting so many of my patients and their family members. In a way, they were making me a more empathetic doctor.
I thought of Mary---my sounding board in this process, my confidante---and what made her so good at her job. I'm sure so much of her caring and compassion is innate; still, I also knew that she'd been through a lot.
This former beauty queen---she had been Miss Cranston, Rhode Island---had married the man of her dreams, only to find herself in an abusive relationship. When she reported him to the police, he killed himself in retaliation.
Having lived through that and singly raised two kids to college age, Mary was a tough customer who relentlessly focused on the positive. She was still full of surprises. Once, after she had pointed out the house where Talking Heads used to play, back in their days as students at the Rhode Island School of Design, she casually announced, "I used to go out with David Byrne."
As I said: full of surprises.
But the sight of her and the bleak expression on her face tempered any enthusiasm I felt and put my sense of wonder on ice.
"What's going on?" I asked when I found her frowning in her office.
"Nothing, David. It's just a bad day."
Mary stared off into space. I said nothing but didn't take my eyes off her. Eventually she opened up.
"Well, it turns out that the state of Rhode Island in its infinite wisdom isn't giving us the same amount of per-patient funding this year as they did last, and the administrator is threatening more cuts."
Every year, it's the same thing. The state asks us to do more and more with less and less. In a bleak economy, nursing homes are easy targets for bureaucrats looking to trim the budget anywhere they can. It's not like our patients line up outside of their legislator's office to protest.
Mary's news hit me like a wet blanket and I sat down in my chair with a thud. I knew that she was upset. Jobs were at stake and Mary was a perfectionist. She didn't like the idea of potentially compromising the care of her residents.
"So, who are you here to see?" Mary asked, attempting to put a smile back on her face.
"I wanted to check on Ruth. How's she doing?"
"Much better, actually. Her delirium has improved and she's eating again. I even saw her husband walking down the hallway with her earlier today. They were holding hands and it was really quite cute."
Mary's mood seemed to lift but the moment was short-lived. Her expression turned bleak again.
"Have you seen Saul?" she asked. It was almost a whisper.
"Not since shortly after he was admitted to the hospital," I said. He'd been over there for several weeks now, getting progressively worse.
"His daughter called today. She didn't sound so good. I guess he's in the intensive care unit now and not doing well."
The news wasn't surprising to me. Saul had been close to death when he left the home and I knew then it was just a matter of time. I looked off down the hallway in the direction of his old room.
"I wish..." I started but didn't finish my statement. Truthfully, I didn't know what I wished anymore. Saul had been pretty explicit about his wishes earlier in life---he wanted everything done, he kept saying. Yet his circumstances had definitely changed. Somewhere in the back of our minds, I know that most of us have a vision of how we would like to die. I was quite certain that Saul's vision didn't involve his current condition. But it didn't matter. The die had been cast.
"I know, you wish she'd have left him over here on hospice where Oscar could take care of him."
"I think it has less to do with the cat and more to do with the care that you and your staff provide up here. But yes, if I were in Saul's condition, I know I'd rather be here---cat or no cat!"
Invoking Oscar finally brought a smile to Mary's face. "Speaking of our friend, why don't you go take a look in Saul's room?"
I hesitated. I knew he wasn't there and I had come to see Ruth, and still felt that I hadn't been of much solace to Mary.
"Go on," she said.
I walked down the hall toward Saul's room. On the way I passed Ruth and Frank walking together, hand in hand. I said my hellos. Ruth greeted me with a warm smile.
"You're looking much better, Mrs. Rubenstein," I said. Though I sensed some recognition, I didn't expect her to respond, so I asked her husband, "Is she eating again?"
Frank smiled from ear to ear. "Like she's just come off a hunger strike!" With that, he vigorously shook my hand.
I may have actually smiled. I knew it was a temporary victory, but I was happy for them nonetheless.
I WASN'T QUITE SURE what I expected to see in Saul's room. It was dark and his belongings were laid out meticulously in preparation for his return. His bed had been carefully made; the comforter was drawn up above his pillow. Then I saw something move. In the dim light I recognized the shape of a cat. Oscar had started his vigil without the patient.
On my way over to the hospital, I thought about Barbara's decision to keep her father alive at all costs. Who was I to judge? It was so difficult to make that final call, to allow your parent or loved one to slip away. Maybe it was even a little unfair to burden a family member with such a terrible decision. Saul had insisted that he wanted everything done---back when he could still insist, back when he knew who he was. To each his own, I thought as I rode the elevators to the ICU, but I knew deep inside that I'd have chosen the cat.
There's little privacy in the intensive care unit. The doors to the rooms are almost always open wide so that nurses and staff can monitor their sick charges more effectively. These days the majority of ICU patients are older---in their eighties and beyond.
Room 19 was no different. A frail, graying man lay asleep in bed. A blue heating blanket covered much of his torso; it looked like a float that my son or daughter would use in a swimming pool. The blanket, filled with warm air, provided needed warmth to a body unable to fully generate its own heat. I barely recognized Saul. The nameplate on the chart confirmed his identity. Approaching his bed, I could see that a three-pronged intravenous line had been inserted into his neck. A dialysis machine was parked at the bedside. It was an ominous development for a man who never had any problems with his kidneys.
"I'm Dr. Dosa, Saul's primary care doctor," I said, introducing myself to the nurse who was standing in the corner charting at a computer. She acknowledged me with a brief nod before returning her attention to her notes.
"How's he doing?" I asked.
"Not good. He's still got low blood pressure on dobutamine and dopamine. His kidneys are failing, and the doctors are thinking about starting dialysis." The nurse shrugged. "We're doing everything we can."
I walked over and looked at the IV medications hanging from poles positioned above his head. He was on three antibiotics, all with expensive-sounding names: linezolid, Vancomycin, and ceftazidime. None of these medications had done anything thus far to threaten the bacteria in his bloodstream. The little buggers were winning and it was only a matter of time.
"The cardiologists are coming up here this afternoon to perform a transesophageal echocardiogram. They think his heart valves are seeded with bacteria," the nurse said, looking up from her computer.
I shook my head. Would he have wanted any of this? Certainly the trip to the hospital had been reasonable. But life events often get in the way of good intentions. Within a day, Saul's breathing had become labored, and his blood pressure bottomed out. Phone calls were made to the family. "He's hypotensive and we're going to need to put a tube in his lungs to help him breathe."
Looking at Saul, I realized he would now have a probe stuck down his esophagus in order to determine if his heart valves were also involved. Yet it wouldn't change anything even if the test proved positive. He certainly wasn't a candidate for surgery in his current state.
"Are you sure that all this makes sense?" I asked the nurse.
She shrugged. "Talk to the ICU doctors. Personally, I don't think so, but no one ever listens to me."
I smiled at her. "Me either."
My patient was way past autopilot now. No one would stop to ask if any of this made any sense. His breathing was labored, so they intubated him. His blood pressure was low, so they put him on medications. His kidneys were failing, so he was being considered for dialysis. Each treatment, procedure, and test made sense in the context of the latest information, but the big picture was absent. There was no consideration of the why; instead it was full steam ahead! I left Saul to his nurse's care and went in search of his intensive care doctors.
"Will it make a difference?" I asked the physician I found.
"Probably not. I think he's dying, but his family wants it done."
I returned to the front desk to call Saul's daughter. She answered immediately and I updated her about her father.
"The doctors here would like to put a tube down your father's throat to see if his heart valves are infected. Even if the test turns out to be positive, I'm not sure your father's poor condition will allow us to do anything to change his circumstances."
"Doctor, he wanted everything done."
"His circumstances have changed, though, Barbara."
"Everything, Doctor. Everything."
THE CALL CAME just after midnight. I got up to answer the phone, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
A young physician offered his condolences. "I'm sorry, but I just wanted to let you know that your patient Saul Strahan died earlier this evening. We tried CPR but we couldn't get him back. We did everything we could."
"Did you call the family?" I asked.
"We called his daughter. She took it really hard, but she's in with him now."
I told him to offer her my condolences and thanked him before hanging up the phone. I stared off into the darkness, thinking about Saul. I said a quick good-bye to him in the night air and then thought about his daughter. Did she get a chance to say good-bye? Probably not. I wondered if his minister had been by.
"What's wrong?" my wife asked, half asleep.
"My patient just died."
She muttered something unintelligible. In my business, these sorts of calls are not infrequent.
I settled back into bed, but found it difficult to fall back to sleep. In my mind, I pictured Oscar looking out of the window from Saul's room, perhaps gazing in the direction of the hospital across the street. I wondered if he knew. I am quite certain he would have been there, curled up next to Saul, had he stayed at the nursing home. In the end, all the procedures, tests, and treatments didn't make a difference. It was just his time. We all have choices about how we die, and some deaths seem better than others. I told myself that at least Saul was at peace. He'd moved on, whatever that might mean. I just wished the transition had been better.
"Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world---the clock and the cat."
CATS MAY HAVE NINE LIVES, BUT WE ONLY HAVE ONE and we're all terrified to talk about the ending of it.
"Nobody likes to talk about death," Cyndy Viveiros said, looking at me across the desk. "It's like the dirty D word we aren't allowed to use in polite company."
I knew what she meant.
"During those last few weeks, very few..." She paused. "Look, I understand how hard it is for people to confront their fears, but for the most part, I was alone. Certainly the staff at the nursing home was great. I couldn't ask for more. But they would come and go at the end of their shifts."
She gathered her thoughts.
"Dr. Dosa, you asked me here to talk about Oscar. So here it is. I appreciated Oscar for what he did for my mother. But I also truly believe that he was there for me. During the last few weeks of her life, Oscar was in and out of her room all of the time, and I found that incredibly comforting."
"So, you think Oscar was there for you as much as your mother?" It reminded me of the last thing Jack McCullough had said to me.
"I think he was there for me," Cyndy repeated. "In fact, I'm sure of it."
"IT HAD BEEN a long three weeks at Steere House and I think I'd spent most of my visiting time seated in a chair by my mother's bed. The room had become my world. Unless I was singing church hymns to her, the constant drone of the oxygen machine and my mother's breathing were the soundtrack of those early mornings. For the last three weeks, the life had seemed to ebb out of her like an outgoing tide. There was a certainty to those days, though, a certainty that those were the last days of my mother's life and sometimes a certainty that those days would never end.
"The last day of her life, I remember watching the clock and rubbing my eyes. A lot. It could be two in the morning but I had no intention of leaving. Still, as the minute hand would trudge its way around the clock on Mom's nightstand I told myself that it would happen soon: one last breath, and then silence. At least that's what the hospice nurses told me to expect. Yet after days of watching Mom's chest moving rhythmically up and down, I wasn't sure that the end would ever come.
"Even Oscar seemed a little confused by her stamina. The cat that everyone said could predict death had been in and out of the room every day for the past few weeks, and nothing. But those last few days there seemed to be a greater sense of purpose to his stride.
"I remember that last day I was there he walked over to me and sat down. When I had leaned down to pet him he purred softly, so I picked him up and placed him on my lap. I rubbed that soft belly of his while we both watched Mom across the darkened room. Before long, though, Oscar had jumped off my lap and onto the covers. Then, look, I know this sounds strange, but he seemed to sniff the air, and then he rolled over on his back and gave this very catlike stretch. It was almost as if he was striking a pose," she said, chuckling.
Cyndy looked up at me to gauge my reaction.
"You know, Oscar can be very charming, when he wants to be!" she added, attempting to justify her earlier comment. "Well, at any rate, Oscar looked over at my mother and fixed his gaze on her. I wondered if this was his sign. I think I even asked him, 'Will it happen soon?'"
If he knew, Oscar wasn't telling.
"You know, Dr. Dosa, at first I had found Oscar's visits a little unsettling." Cyndy paused, unsure of what to say next. "I knew Oscar's game. I had even had dreams about him sitting on Mom's bed, terrible dreams that woke me up out of a sound sleep and always at the same time each night: 3:00 am. It was just weird.
"During the first week of my watch Oscar would stroll by the doorway and stand at the threshold, peering into the room. At first I eyed him with anxiety, wondering if he'd cross over into our world. That's how I thought of that room, as my world."
Cyndy broke into a smile.
"After a while I came to realize that my fears were unfounded. I mean, for goodness sake. He wasn't anything supernatural. He didn't carry a scythe or a pitchfork. He was just an ordinary house cat. My mom loved cats. In fact, when I had first looked at nursing homes, I thought Mom might take some solace from the animals running around the unit, and she had.
"Now that I knew Oscar, he wasn't threatening. In fact, he had offered me more companionship than anyone. I had a lot of concerned phone calls, and people tried to be kind, but in the end only two people actually came to visit Mom. I get it. Nobody wants to visit a nursing home, let alone the dying. It's like running into a burning building; the impulse is to run the other way. But Oscar, well, he was different. He didn't shy away. Actually, he seemed to know when he was needed most.
"You know, the first day I saw Oscar sitting in Mom's doorway I had watched him with a feeling of trepidation, I guess. He just sauntered in and walked over to Mom's bed. I knew what a visit from Oscar might mean, and I guess I held my breath. But instead of jumping onto Mom's bed he sat down beside me. He seated himself on his hind legs on the chair next to me and looked up at me, as if to ask how I'm doing. Can you imagine?
"When I reached down to pet his head, well, he gave me a long, loud purr as if he was real satisfied with himself."
As if, I thought.
"Then, just like that, he leaped onto the windowsill and settled himself in a classic sphinx pose. You know the one I mean, Dr. Dosa?"
"I do indeed," I replied. I really did know the pose. It was regal and mysterious, as if our own Oscar was descended from Egypt, as if he was in some way a temple guardian. Actually, maybe the idea wasn't too far off.
"Well, Oscar spent a good amount of time sitting on that windowsill, studying the world both inside and out. Each day he was there to greet me at the front door of the unit, and, well, he seemed to escort me down the hall to Mom's room. He'd stay with me for the whole visit.
"I really warmed to the little guy, you know? Soon I even found his presence comforting. When I felt anxious, which I often did, I would talk aloud to Oscar and he seemed to listen. He never passed judgment or offered unwanted advice, he just listened. When I needed a break from the room, Oscar would stay with Mom while I went out to stretch my legs or grab a bite to eat. Sometimes he would even escort me down the hallway toward the unit doors.
"You know, Dr. Dosa, I had a lot of time to think, sitting there with Mom, and I wondered how I would feel when she finally passed. I had experienced so much guilt during the long duration of Mom's illness that I had begun to think of guilt as my birthright, something passed down to me like a family heirloom. How had I not noticed my mother's illness sooner? Did I do a good enough job dividing my time and attention between my children, my full-time job, and my needy mother? Did I do the right thing by putting her into the nursing home when I did?
"No matter how much I did there always seemed so much more to do, so much always undone."
Cyndy paused for a minute, to laugh or cry, I wasn't sure. I don't think she was sure either.
"Now I realized that I was beginning to feel guilty for not feeling guilty. In truth, my mother's death seemed a natural end to her suffering. But why do I feel okay with it? I asked myself. Searching for solace, I grabbed my mother's rosary from the bedside table and began to recite the Lord's Prayer aloud:
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
"When I was finished, I sat back down again, suddenly feeling very tired. For the first time I had a strong desire to go home. I spontaneously murmured a heartfelt prayer: Please, Lord, just take her.
"I closed my eyes for a moment and was consumed with a flood of loving memories of my mother from years gone by. They were comforting memories, and I allowed myself to almost drift off to sleep, listening to the white noise of the oxygen machine in the background. Suddenly I bolted upright. The noise from the oxygen machine was all I could hear. I looked over at Mom and realized she had stopped snoring. For the first time in days, she appeared peaceful. I looked at my watch. It was 3:00 am."
"THE NURSE CAME IN a couple of minutes later and listened to my mother with her stethoscope, confirming what I already knew.
"She gave me her condolences and then left to telephone whoever was on call. For a while I just sat quietly in the chair watching my mother. Inside, I knew that she was gone but I still watched her, searching for movement. I leaned over and kissed my mother on the forehead, telling her that her beloved late husband was waiting for her. Almost immediately, I felt this incredible sense of closure, like both my mother and I were finally free."
Cyndy started to smile ever so slightly. "After some time passed, I got up and left the room to get a cup of coffee. I wasn't quite ready to call my family yet; I needed to wake up. I remember it being eerily quiet on the unit. As I'm walking down the hall, I hear this pitter-patter of paws hitting the linoleum floors next to me. I looked down and saw Oscar walking next to me."
I could picture Oscar walking alongside Cyndy, matching her gait, keeping pace.
"So, he was, like, your companion for those three long weeks?" I asked.
Cyndy nodded and I could see the awe dawning on her expression. I had seen this look a lot, of late, as people talked to me about Oscar.
"Doctor, I remember walking into the bathroom to splash some cold water over my face. When I left the bathroom, Oscar was right there waiting for me at the door. I stopped in the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee. Then I sat down at a table in the dining area to begin to plan out who I needed to call. Suddenly, there was a noise in the chair next to me. I looked over and there was Oscar sitting on his hindquarters, eyeing me. It was like he was checking up on me to make sure I would be okay."
She smiled widely now. "You know, throughout this process, people would come and go. But Oscar would stay. He was really there for me. In fact, he was the last 'person' I saw that morning as I left the unit. He just sat there on the nurse's desk staring at me as the doors closed behind me."
"I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little,they become its visible soul."
IT WAS TIME TO STOP. I HAD NOW SPOKEN TO A HALF dozen people whose loved ones had died with Oscar by their side. I had plumbed their memories and emotions, and learned a lot more about what Alzheimer's does to families. But I was still surprised by how little I knew about Oscar.
I didn't feel frustrated, though. While I didn't feel enlightened necessarily, I did feel oddly elated. The image I was left with was that of Oscar walking Cyndy Viveiros down the hall and sitting with her in the darkened dining area---as he had sat with her mother in her final days. Maybe that's all he was: a companion, a sentient being who might accompany one person on their journey to the next world, or another through the grief of losing one they loved---a kind of underworld of its own. Wasn't that enough?
Did it matter if he had some extrasensory power of perception, if he could pick up on impending mortality before the best minds of medicine could? Maybe he was just a master of empathy. Maybe caring was his superpower.
I needed to talk to Mary.
"I've been thinking about what you said, that Oscar has forty-one family members and when one of them is in trouble, he goes and stays with them."
It was a little before three in the afternoon and Mary and I were sitting in her office. She had asked the staff to assemble at the nurse's desk at three, and I had arrived in time to get a few words in with her before the changing of the guard. The worries of our last encounter---the latest funding crisis, the Sisyphusean task of running the floor of this nursing home---seemed to have vanished, and she was looking calm and collected. She was also being quite modest.
"Oh, David, that's just my theory," she said. "What do I know? You have to remember, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool animal lover. It's not like I'm objective."
"Objectivity has its limits," I said. "Remember, I started out not believing in Oscar. To be honest, I thought you guys were all a little crazy."
"You know what the sign says," said Mary with a smile. "you don't have to be crazy to work here---but it helps!"
"But now I think that Oscar has some purpose," I continued. "Maybe he's meant to help the residents---the family members, as you put it. But also their family; they may be the ones who suffer the most."
"Don't forget the staff," said Mary. She was fully engaged now, playing Watson to my Holmes. "You can't work up here and not become involved in the lives of your patients. We come to love these people, David. Their loss grieves us, too. In the end, we often become as close spiritually and emotionally to these patients as their own family members."
"Does it help to have seen so many die with Alzheimer's?" I asked. "Doesn't it make it any easier?"
She thought for a minute before answering. "It makes it easier to understand what's happening," she said finally, "but not why. Why would anyone be afflicted like this? Why would God allow this to happen?"
Though we seldom touched on the subject of religion, I took a chance and asked her, "Do you pray, Mary? I mean, have you asked God why?"
She smiled without directly answering the question. "I don't think He'd answer right away," she said.
No, I thought. He'll take a message and get back to you.
"As I've said before, the thing you have to remember about domesticated animals," Mary said, as if she'd been reading my mind, "is that people started to keep them because they had a purpose. They worked. If you were a dog, you were herding sheep or something. Any cat that wasn't doing some serious mouse hunting around the farm wasn't going to be there for long. They had to earn their keep."
"So you think that's Oscar's job," I said, "to take care of people?"
Mary shrugged. "Why not? Maybe he's just more highly evolved than the other cats. Maybe it's his way of paying the rent." She checked her watch and smiled at me. "We're all just guests here, you know."
At that, the door to the unit opened and a parade of evening staff shuffled through.
Mary got up from her chair. "I've got to get the troops together so we can run our list. Are you sticking around?"
I shrugged.
"Please do. There's one more patient I'd like you to see before you go. Our sign-out should just take a minute."
A few moments later Mary was standing with her back to the door, addressing the afternoon charge nurse and four aides about the day's events. This was her daily change-of-shift meeting, when she would advise the incoming staff on what to look out for and which residents might need special attention. I took my place by one of the aides and tried to be unobtrusive as I listened in on the conversation.
"Over on the west side," Mary said, "there are a few things going on. In 312, Mrs. Carey seems to be---"
As Mary continued with her report, I began to daydream. Farther down the hall a handful of residents sat watching TV. This time of day it was probably one of the soap operas they seemed to enjoy. All that drama and nothing ever seemed to change. Behind them, I noticed the silhouette of a cat perched on the windowsill staring intently at the world outside. It appeared that Oscar was off the clock and had found a favorable place to while away the day. It seemed like there would be no deaths on the third floor today.
Mary's voice brought me out of my reverie.
"Dr. Dosa, you might want to hear about Mr. Grant. He's the resident I want you to see."
I turned my attention back to the group and Mary continued her report. "Mr. Grant has a pressure sore developing again. We're changing the dressings twice a day and it looks fairly clean. Just make sure that we turn him often. He's completely bedbound now so we really need to be careful that the ulcer doesn't get worse."
To me she added, "I need to change the dressing before I leave. Why don't you take a look with me in case there is something else you'd like us to do?"
I nodded as Mary wrapped things up. "Finally, there's Ruth Rubenstein. She's really rebounded over the last few weeks. She's walking again and her weight is back up. As you know, her confusion is finally gone and physical therapy has been working with her. By the way, Frank just got here and he's requested some privacy. Please keep her roommate in the dining area, out of respect. I think today is their anniversary or something and he wants to be alone with her."
When Mary mentioned the request for privacy, a few of the aides exchanged knowing looks. Requests for privacy between patients and spouses are not uncommon; still, sometimes the people who work here can act like schoolkids. Mary cast a cold eye on the smirkers and order was restored.
As the group broke up I followed Mary back to her office. "Now, why is the idea of the Rubensteins wanting privacy so funny to them?" she asked. "They're a married couple. Just because she lives here doesn't mean that they don't have needs."
Mary raised her head. "You know, one of the other male residents has been spending a lot of time in the room with Ruth lately. The thing is, she doesn't seem to mind his attention."
"Frank won't be happy," I said in a hushed voice.
"I suppose we'll have to tell him eventually."
"Please make sure I'm on vacation when you do," I said. I'm not sure I was joking.
Mary shrugged. "I've got to get out of here, so let's take a look at that pressure ulcer."
We left her office and headed down the hall toward Mr. Grant's room. Suddenly there was a scream and Ruth Rubenstein charged out of her room. The look on her face was one of pure terror and she ran past us without stopping.
A moment later Frank followed her out. He stopped when he saw Mary and me.
"Dr. Dosa, I need to speak with you," he said breathlessly. His face was a study in anguish.
I directed him down the hall in the direction of their room while Mary went in search of Ruth. We entered her room and sat down next to each other on Ruth's bed. Frank looked at me through eyes heavy with tears.
"Dr. Dosa, I need to tell you what happened today, but I need you to understand a little bit more about us first."
"All right," I said.
"Ruth and I were married shortly after the war. I don't know if you are aware of this, but we met at a concentration camp." He looked at me to gauge my response.
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Dear God, I still remember it to this day. It was late October 1943. I had already been at the camp for a few months." Mr. Rubenstein paused for a moment and became lost in his memories. A minute passed before he began again. This time his voice was low and uneven.
"They say when you get older that you forget. It's not true. I remember the past more vividly every day. In some ways, I envy my wife---she doesn't remember any of this anymore but I live with the memories every day. At night I dream about it: the humiliation, the suffering..." Frank paused briefly and looked at the floor before continuing.
"I remember the first moment I saw Ruth like it was yesterday," he said. As he spoke his accent seemed to become more pronounced, the Eastern European inflections and inverted sentences bubbled up through time to the surface. "She must have just arrived at the camp. She was dressed in a brown dress, torn. Her overcoat...it was still new, but stained now from travel. This heavy suitcase through the mud she was pulling. I still remember her long dark hair: tangled and dirty but oh! it was beautiful. For some reason---maybe it was fate---our eyes met. Doctor, she had the most magnificent eyes I'd ever seen. Most important, there was no fear in her eyes. She was in this horrible new place but all she looked was determined: She was going to live!
"So like that I fell in love with her. I had to know her. I walked over and offered to carry her bag."
Frank looked over at me, the hint of a smile coming to his face.
"She turned me down, but never once did I stop thinking of her. It was weeks before we met again. This may sound crazy, given our surroundings, but, Doctor, it was the happiest day of my life. From that day we were inseparable. For nine months we were together. Then suddenly, we were sent to different camps. Before we were separated we agreed that if we survived we would look for each other after the war. We chose a place to meet---a church in my hometown. Neither of us knew whether the other person survived."
"Mr. Rubenstein," I interrupted, "I can't even imagine what you went through."
He put his hand up to stop me from talking.
"Dr. Dosa, it was sixty-three years ago today that we met in the courtyard." He paused to allow the news to sink in. "For the first time since that day, Ruth does not know who I am."
As he spoke his tears poured down his cheeks. I looked at him in silence, unsure of what, if anything, I should say.
"When we came to the United States, we didn't have a lot of money. All we had was each other. We couldn't speak the language. Ruth cleaned rooms at the hospital and I went to school during the day to learn English. At nights, we would walk around New York City, looking in the store windows. Then we would go back to our little apartment and lay down together. That we could afford!
"Things got better. My English became not so bad and I got a job as a laboratory assistant. Ruth took a job as a nanny for a rich New York couple. She loved that job and those kids. Maybe because we couldn't have kids ourselves."
Frank began to tear up again.
"I'm sorry," I said.
He acknowledged my response with a quick nod before continuing. "We never had it easy but we made do. Our lives got better. I went back to school and finished my Ph.D. For my first real job we came here to New England."
I looked at Frank for a clue as to where this was going. Perhaps he realized that he was rambling. He stopped himself and looked at me.
"Today, for our anniversary, I brought her a dozen red roses and a piece of her favorite pear tart from that excellent bakery downtown on Federal Hill."
I glanced over and saw the unopened pastry box on the bedside table along with the vase full of roses.
"I walked into her room and said, 'Happy anniversary,' like so many times before. I sat on the bed and bent over to give her a kiss on the forehead."
He paused. "In her eyes all I could see was terror. Dr. Dosa, I was a stranger to her. She just started screaming...."
It was as if all the air had left the room.
"I didn't know what to do," he continued. "I tried to kiss her and she just kept screaming. I put my hand up to comfort her and she slapped me in the face. Then she got up and ran out of the room."
I could see the red mark on his left cheek. We settled into an uneasy silence. Finally Frank spoke.
"Doctor, I don't want my wife to live in fear like this."
I looked at Frank. He had stopped crying. His expression was fierce, as determined as hers must have been back in the camps. I understood now why he had wanted to tell me the story of his marriage.
"Will you help me, Doctor?"
Deep in my soul, I knew where he was coming from---and I knew where he was going. His heart was broken; there was nothing left. They had survived; they had come this far and now he was alone. I put myself in his shoes and for a moment, I thought of how easy it would be to break a cardinal medical oath and do what he was asking.
"No," I finally said. "I can't help you with that."
There was another awkward silence that I finally broke. "Mr. Rubenstein, your wife is terminally ill. Physically, she's been doing better lately, but when her time comes, we can put her on hospice and just make her comfortable."
"How long does she have?" he asked me.
"Mr. Rubenstein, only God knows that."
He allowed my answer to sink in. I wondered what he thought of God. Maybe God no longer existed for someone who had experienced so much horror. "Doctor, in my mind my wife died today."
He gathered his things from the bed. "Please just make whatever is left of her comfortable and don't let her suffer anymore."
"You have my word, Mr. Rubenstein."
Frank gave me a halfhearted smile and stood up. He crossed the room quickly and then went out into the hallway. I followed him as he passed his wife seated at the nurse's table at the front of the unit. He didn't give her a second glance and she did not see him. Maybe she was fixated on the black-and-white tabby cat that had left his perch at the window and had come to the front desk to inspect all of the commotion.
When he got to the front door I buzzed Mr. Rubenstein out of the unit with my ID card. As he left he turned quickly and grabbed my wrist. He looked me in the eye.
"Thank you for all of your help over the years," he said. "I know I haven't always..."
His speech trailed off and tears sprung to his eyes again. "Please just make her comfortable, Doctor."
I nodded and he smiled grimly through his tears. Then he was gone.
"The smallest feline is a masterpiece."
GEORGE DUNCAN LOOKED AT HIS MOTHER THROUGH tired eyes. Only a few hours before, he had been 300 miles away on the job in southern New Jersey; his work as a bankruptcy liquidator frequently took him away from home. His day had started uneventfully. Then at four o'clock he had received the call he had always dreaded.
"George, your mother is not well," Mary had told him. Usually he was the one to call her---so much so that when he saw the Steere House number on his cell phone he knew it wasn't good. "I think you'd better come up here as soon as you possibly can."
Instantly, he regretted having left his mother. He had spent almost every minute of the previous weekend's Thanksgiving holiday in her room. It was clear to him then that her health was in steep decline. But Monday had come calling, and with it his work responsibilities. His mother's chronic illness and frequent hospitalizations had already caused problems for him on the job. As he hung up the phone, he had felt the guilt ravage his mind and body.
"I'm sorry," he had told his surprised colleague. "It's my mother."
When he arrived at the nursing home shortly before midnight, George was pleased to see a family friend seated at the doorway, as if she were guarding it.
"I didn't let him in," she had told George, pointing to the black-and-white cat down the hall. "I didn't want him in here until you arrived."
For hours she had fended off Oscar's advances into the room. Eventually Oscar had grown frustrated and had walked away. But she knew he hadn't gone far.
George hugged her and then crossed the room to sit with his mother. She stirred briefly as if she recognized his arrival but then quickly returned to a peaceful slumber. He watched her breathing. It was rapid and rhythmical but did not have the violence that marked her many earlier episodes of aspiration pneumonia.
George took his mother's right hand from where it lay by her side. He grasped it vigorously with both of his hands and then cradled it softly to his chest. He began to cry again. He knew he was losing her.
He sat there like that for a while, unaware of the passage of time. Then came a knock on the door. A cleaning lady quietly entered the room and disappeared into the bathroom. She returned, carrying several bags of trash. George looked at her through his tears and she smiled warmly at him. He bowed his head.
Then George felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to find the cleaning lady's concerned eyes looking into his. She put her cleaning supplies on the floor and sat down next to him on the bed. George let go of his mother's hand.
"Don't cry," the cleaning lady said and handed him a tissue from a box on the bedside counter. "Remember, you will see your mother again. We have an earthly hope and you will see her again."
George stared at her in amazement. He wondered whether she attended the same Kingdom Hall he and his mother had.
"Do I know you?" he asked. The lady smiled warmly.
"Not really, but I know your mother. I have been working here for eight years. In the early days, when your mother was still able, she was my teacher. She was the one who taught me about the Bible."
George began to smile.
"My mother was a remarkable lady," he said.
The lady nodded and then stood up to continue her work.
"You'll be all right," she said firmly as she picked up her supplies and left the room.
No sooner had she departed than a night nurse walked in to check on George's mother. She watched Iris's breathing and looked at her watch, counting the respirations. Satisfied that her breathing was unlabored, she asked George if he needed anything. He said no, but she left the room and returned momentarily carrying a sandwich. Seeing the food, George realized that he hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime. He picked up the sandwich and eagerly began to eat.
As he chewed George heard the fast pitter-patter of padded feet on the floor. He looked down to see a black-and-white cat sitting on the floor in front of him. He was not surprised.
"Hello," George said to the cat. "Are you hungry?"
Oscar simply sat there and they settled into a strange silence, each looking at the other. George offered Oscar some of the meat from his sandwich. The cat sniffed at it disdainfully. He wasn't there for handouts. Oscar walked over to Iris's window and leaped onto the sill. There he settled into a crouched position and peered out into the dark night.
Polishing off his sandwich, George got up and turned on the CD player. He put one of his mother's albums on and selected her favorite song. As the song began to play, Iris briefly stirred. George crossed the room and knelt beside her. His mother's eyes opened and she looked deep into his.
"I love you," she said in a moment of stunning clarity.
Her last words spoken, she was silent again, drifting back into a peaceful sleep.
George spent a few more moments at his mother's bedside. When it was clear that she was no longer awake, he grabbed a blanket from the closet and returned to his seat. Within moments the music carried him away and he was fast asleep, dreaming of a place where his mother was with him, whole, in an unbroken and undamaged state.
GEORGE AWOKE WITH A START. He looked around, momentarily disoriented. Outside it was still dark. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was four in the morning. He had only been sleeping for two hours, yet he felt surprisingly refreshed. Regaining his bearings, George looked over at his mother's bed. She was breathing rapidly. As he stood to walk toward her bed, the activity roused Oscar from his perched position on the windowsill. The cat watched as he took his mother's hand and felt her pulse. It was frighteningly fast, crackling like an electrical current.
George rang the call bell and a nurse arrived immediately to reevaluate Iris. She left for only a moment before returning with a dose of liquid morphine. She placed the medicine inside Iris's mouth and then put her hand on George's shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. As the medicine began to take hold, Iris's breathing became more deliberate and her heart rate slowed from its staccato pace. He looked at his mother's face and studied her features as if to memorize them. He knew that she was leaving him and he began to cry.
A moment later Iris Duncan drew her last breath in this world.
"ABOUT AN HOUR after my mother died, an aide walked into the room," George said.
We were talking on the telephone late one evening a few months after his mother's last night at Steere House. We had tried to meet in person, but George had been called away to Florida for business.
"She told me that she was going to bathe my mother. I asked her why. 'My mother has died,'" I said.
"The aide looked at me and smiled. 'Your mother has died, but she should be clean,' she said."
Somewhere a thousand miles away, I could hear George choking up briefly as he considered the moment. "I have to admit that I was puzzled by her response. I asked her if it was normal to clean a dead body. She told me that she loved my mother and thought she should be clean."
"I suppose Steere House has many rituals at the end of life," I said. "For example, the nursing home always has their expired residents go out the same way they came in---through the front door. No one ever goes out the back service elevators."
"Yes," said George. "For me, though, of all the things Steere House did for my mother, this is what really took my breath away. A few hours later, the funeral director came for my mother. Oscar stayed for the whole time, watching over her. When the funeral director came, they placed my mother on the gurney and covered her with a white sheet.
"They wheeled my mother out of the room and down the hall toward the elevator. When we rounded the corner and started down the corridor toward the main elevators, I realized that almost every nurse, aide, and staff member in the building was lined up along the hallway like they were part of a procession for a dignitary. As we passed some of the nurses, I saw that they had tears in their eyes."
On the other end of the telephone, George began to cry freely.
"That took my breath away," he said, his voice wavering through the tears. "I realized then that they were like my family."
"You can't own a cat.
The best you can do is be partners."
ALL WAS QUIET ON THE THIRD FLOOR. THE RESIDENTS were tucked safely in their rooms and the visitors had gone. The only sound was the gentle hum from the dimmed fluorescent lights. With no one to disturb him, Oscar slept peacefully, sprawled out in full glory on the nursing desk like a big, furry stuffed animal.
From a distance outside came the sound of an ambulance, bringing some untold emergency to the hospital next door. Oscar stirred as the siren grew louder. He lifted his head to investigate. The siren ceased as the ambulance reached its destination and Oscar stretched and yawned. The fluorescent hum returned.
Mary was working the late shift. She was busy doing what she did much of the day, scribbling notes in a chart, content to know that the residents were at rest. Oscar watched her work for a few minutes before announcing with a meow that he was awake and receiving visitors. Mary smiled and reached over to scratch him under his chin. Satisfied that he had been noticed, Oscar dismissed Mary and turned his attention to his hind paws, licking them in slow, deliberate circles.
"Well, are you coming?" Mary asked him, standing up. "It's ten o'clock, time to pass out our bedtime meds."
Oscar blinked but did not move. Was he considering her request? He was a cat, after all, and his hard-to-get attitude came naturally to him. After a moment, perhaps after Mary's request had been recognized and processed, he leaped onto the medicine cart, sat down, and looked back at her as if to say, What's taking you?
"Okay, Oscar, we'll start on the west side."
The squeaky rear wheel cut through the silence, but no one was awake to notice. It was just Mary and Oscar, who peered over the cart, surveying the hallway like the captain of a ship gazing out at a familiar but darkened sea.
The door to room 316 was open and Mary entered, pushing the cart. Louise Chambers was in her bed, snoring peacefully. Oscar was disinterested. Mary paused to look over her medication list and then opened a drawer. She pulled out an anti-seizure medication, popped the pill out of its wrapper, and filled a cup with water. She then leaned over and gently stroked her patient's hand to wake her. Louise started awake and Mary waited a few moments, allowing her time to get her bearings before helping her to a seated position. Louise swallowed the pill easily and almost immediately fell back to sleep.
Mary stopped for a moment and picked up the silver Tiffany frame on her bedside table. A man in uniform was standing next to a World War II fighter plane. He held his helmet to his thigh with one arm and smiled proudly into the camera. He was tall. Studying his facial features, Mary immediately noticed the familiarity of his tall frame, his wavy brown hair and prominent brown eyes, and his clean-shaven, oval-shaped face.
Mary chuckled and carefully replaced the picture frame.
"At least now I know why you like Dr. Dosa."
Without a further word to her co-pilot, Mary headed next door, and to the next room, and the next, checking each resident, dispensing medicine where needed. Through each visit Oscar remained on the medicine cart, seemingly uninterested in his surroundings. At last they arrived at the room of Ruth Rubenstein, who appeared to be fast asleep. Here Oscar sat up, tall in the prow of his ship. He looked around and sniffed the air.
Something was not right in room 315.
In one swift motion, Oscar leaped off the cart and onto the bed, carefully avoiding Ruth's slumbering body. He gazed at his patient and considered the situation. He did not ask for a second opinion but circled---once, twice---carefully preparing a place to curl up next to her. Oscar looked back at Mary, blinking once as if to dismiss her.
"Are you sticking around?"
Oscar put his head on his front paws and pulled his body close to Mrs. Rubenstein. Gently he nuzzled her arm.
Mary stopped what she was doing and approached the bed. She assessed the patient, who was resting comfortably. Medically, there was nothing to do there, so she sat down on the bed next to Oscar and considered the family situation. Ruth had received no visitors since Frank died of a heart attack a few months back. She had outlived her immediate family, she had no children, and her lawyer was the closest thing she had to next of kin. There was no one left to call.
Mary reached over and lovingly stroked Ruth's hair. She looked over at the empty armchair across the room. A knit blanket was draped over the back; it had sat there unused for months. Mary was sad for a moment as she thought about how often she'd found Frank asleep there, long after every other visitor had left for the evening. Sometimes she would have to send him home. Grudgingly, he would collect his things, kiss his wife good night, and trudge off to his car only to return early the following morning. But Frank had never returned to the floor after the day of their last anniversary. He continued his daily phone calls but no longer visited. One day there was no call. A friend found Frank a few days later, laying peacefully in his bed.
Looking down at her patient, Mary perceived the faintest hint of a smile across Ruth's face. Maybe she was dreaming about her husband. Maybe she knew they would be together soon. Mary thought of the Rubensteins' half century--long relationship and Frank's stubborn dedication to his wife in the face of everything she had lost to dementia.
"God, Oscar," Mary said, "he really loved her. We should all be so lucky."
Mary leaned over and kissed Ruth's cheek while Oscar quietly purred. A few minutes passed as the two sat in quiet vigil. Then came a faint coughing from the room next door. Mary got up and said one last good-bye.
"Good luck, Ruth. I hope he's waiting for you somewhere."
She turned to face the black-and white-tabby cat.
"I don't suppose you're coming with me?"
His only response was a purr.
"No, I guess not. Well, I need to check up on the rest of our family."
Mary made a mental note to check back on Ruth when she was finished with her rounds. As she exited the room, she looked over at Oscar. The woman and cat locked eyes momentarily.
"Thank you, Oscar," she whispered, then dimmed the lights.
"A cat makes all the difference between coming home to an empty house and coming home."
ONE AFTERNOON A FEW DAYS AFTER RUTH'S DEATH, I was seated at the nurse's desk on the dementia unit, scribbling a note on one of my new patients, when I was interrupted by a commotion. Looking down the hallway, I noticed Maya chasing Oscar at full speed the way cats do when they are bored. Suddenly intrigued, I stood up and watched as they sped down the hallway past Louise Chambers, asleep in her chair. Then they were gone.
The scene of cat chasing cat in innocent play made me smile. As Mary said, this third floor really was their home. I looked past Louise in the direction of the departed cats. The afternoon sun had just started to make its impression, setting the walls aglow. Soon it would illuminate much of the hallway, then fade. It wasn't a lasting impression after all. I found myself thinking about Ruth Rubenstein; her death was still fresh in my mind. An hour earlier I had stopped by her room. I lingered there alone. I studied the unoccupied bed, neatly made, and the barren walls. Gone were the pictures of her youth, her husband, her past. The room was no longer hers, save for the faint reminder of her perfume. That too would disappear in time.
The main doors to the unit clicked open, interrupting my thoughts. I turned toward the door and saw Mimi, the admissions coordinator, escorting an elderly gentleman and two younger women onto the unit. They looked like sisters. They were on a tour of the facility and Mimi was in the midst of describing the unit.
"This is our advanced dementia unit. It is forty-one beds and staffed by nurses twenty-four hours a day..."
Suddenly the door closed behind the family with a thud, locking them in with the residents. I could sense their discomfort, even from a distance. They listened politely to Mimi as she carried on with her explanation, but I could well imagine what they were really thinking: How in the hell do we put our mother in this place? The doors lock behind you! What did she do to deserve this? I've seen this before: the deer-in-the-headlights look of a new family.
Mimi led the tour down the hall toward Ruth's room. She pointed out key locations on the unit---the kitchen area, the dining room, and the nurse's offices. As they passed Louise, asleep in her chair, one of the daughters stopped briefly to consider her.
I could almost hear the questions in her head as she studied Louise: Is she clean? Is she happy? Do they take care of her?
She was looking for reassurances that they were making the right decision, that they were in the right place.
I didn't envy them.
The lady moved over and studied the pictures on the corkboard next to Louise's door. For the first time since she arrived on the unit, she smiled. Then she disappeared down the hallway, chasing after the rest of her family.
I returned to the note I was writing. Something brushed against my feet. I looked down.
"Hello, Oscar."
He had finished his playtime with his sister cat and was looking up at me.
"I heard you were with Ruth when she died."
Much to my surprise, he sprang up onto the desk and sat down, staring at me as if to say hello.
Our eyes met and he started to purr.
"What's up, Oscar?" I asked, nervously reaching out my hand. "What's going on?" What if he was like Lassie, as I joked with Mary all those months ago, trying to say someone had fallen down the well? What if Oscar was trying to tell me something?
He considered my hand and then moved his face in toward it as if to say, Scratch, stupid!
I relaxed and began to scratch under his chin. I pulled him closer and he continued to purr more loudly. We sat together, sharing a moment, before we were interrupted.
"Hello, Dr. Dosa. I want to introduce you to the Carey family."
I looked up to see Mimi returning with the family. Oscar saw them too and began to take his leave. He leaped out of my grasp onto the floor before sprinting down the hallway.
"Cats," I said, by way of introduction, and leaned over to offer my hand.
Both daughters smiled.
"Do you have any questions about the unit?" I asked, trying to be helpful.
"Do you always have cats here?" one of the daughters asked incredulously.
"Absolutely. We have two cats on this floor and four more downstairs, along with a rabbit and several birds," Mimi answered.
"That's so nice," her sister responded. She was the one who had been studying Louise earlier. She turned to the father.
"Dad, Mom really loved cats."
Past tense.
"You mean, your mother loves cats," I said.
She gave me an odd look, perhaps slightly embarrassed. I realized how many of the families I worked with spoke of their loved ones with dementia as if they were already gone.
"Actually," I said, letting the poor woman off the hook, "we've found that the presence of animals really helps residents in the latter stages of dementia. Your mother will know that they're here."
"Really?" the woman asked.
"Yes, I didn't really think so myself at first, but I've spent enough time up here to realize that the animals really do make a difference for the residents and the families."
The woman gave me a questioning glance that I immediately recognized. It was probably the same look I had given Mary the first time she had shared her musings about Oscar.
"I suppose there is just something about animals that still gets through." I paused for a second. "I'd like to think they have something to teach us, too."
The woman nodded and looked around, "So, what do you think, Dad?"
"I think this is the place." He attempted a smile---an effort, given the circumstances and turned to Mimi. "If it's still available and you're willing to take care of my Lucy, we'll take the bed."
Mimi nodded and escorted the family out of the unit, deep in conversation about the various forms and paperwork that would need to be filled out.
As they left, Mary appeared from down the opposite hallway, pushing a resident in a wheelchair. She parked the patient by the desk and then reached over to give the woman a hug.
The woman smiled and returned the embrace.
"What was that all about?" she asked me as she rounded the desk to sit down.
"Mimi was here with a family. It looks like we'll have a new resident in Ruth's bed."
"We always do, David. They never stay empty for long."
The afternoon sun had faded now, like words written in water. Halfway down the hall I saw Oscar appear out of one of the rooms where he had taken refuge from the visitors. He looked at both of us and paused for a moment. Then he turned and trotted purposefully down the hall in the opposite direction. When he came to the last room on the right he stopped and appeared to sniff the air. Then with a flicker of his tail, he disappeared into the room. I looked at Mary with the hint of a smile. Was Oscar trying to tell us something?
I was listening.
MUCH LIKE THE FAMILY MEMBERS I VISITED IN THE course of my Oscar odyssey, I have come to be thankful for what Oscar does and what he has to teach us about the end of life. But the question that people keep asking me is "How does he do it?"
I think back to a phone call that I received shortly after my essay about Oscar appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The caller introduced himself as a World War II veteran from Florida. He told me that he had been a medic in Europe during the war and that his job was to evacuate injured soldiers from the battlefield.
"Doctor, by the end of the first few months of dragging people off the battlefield, I could tell whether the person was going to live or die," he said. "If they were going to die, there was a sweet aroma emanating from their bodies. I didn't smell it if they were going to live."
There is a plausible biological explanation for that "sweet smell of death." As cells die, carbohydrates are degraded into many different oxygenated compounds, including various types of ketones---chemical mixtures known for their fragrant aroma. Ketones are also found in abundance during episodes of untreated juvenile diabetes and doctors are taught early on in medical school to sniff the breaths of diabetics to determine if their sugar levels are high. Could it be that Oscar simply smells an elevated level of a chemical compound released prior to death? It is certainly clear that animals have a refined sense of smell that goes well beyond that of the ordinary human.
A 2006 study, published in a leading cancer journal, suggested that dogs could be trained to identify microscopic quantities of certain biochemicals excreted by cancer cells on the breaths of lung and breast cancer patients. Similar studies over the years have also identified melanoma-sniffing dogs and earthquake-predicting fish. Is it outlandish to suggest that Oscar, a cat residing on a floor where patients with end-stage dementia routinely die, has merely learned how to pick up on a specific smell emitted in the final hours of a patient's lifespan?
Perhaps, but I like to think of Oscar as more than a ketone early-warning system. Ever since I was a child, listening intently as my grandfather read bedtime stories from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, I have imbued animals with human characteristics and frailties. It could simply be that we see ourselves in them---the best of ourselves, sometimes.
On a floor where the staff has gone to great lengths to make the dying experience tolerable for the residents and their families, I'd like to think Oscar embodies empathy and companionship. He is a critical cog in a well-oiled and dedicated health care team. As the physician, it is my job to prescribe the appropriate medications and provide guidance to the family; it is the nurse's job to provide the appropriate care; it is the minister's job to provide the necessary spiritual counselling for the patient and their family; and it is Oscar's job to provide the critical companionship during the final hours. He is clearly part of the team and as much a comfort to the families as he is to the patient, though in some cases he is the only family the patient has left.
I don't really pretend to know the nature of Oscar's special gift---I am not an animal behaviorist nor have I rigorously studied the why and how of his behavior. Whether he is motivated by a refined sense of smell, a special empathy, or something entirely different---your guess is as good as mine. But I believe we can all learn from his example.
Though my interviews with decedents' families were meant to provide me with more insight into what Oscar does, I found myself learning a great deal more about the diseases that had destroyed my patients' lives than I did about the cat. For all the mystery surrounding Oscar, there was little mystery about the devastating consequences of dementia.
Today, there are over five million people in the United States with Alzheimer's disease and hundreds of thousands more with other less common forms of dementia. Without new treatments, estimates suggest that this number is likely to skyrocket as our population continues to age. But the tragedy of dementia is not measured merely by the number of patients directly affected. For every patient with dementia, there are many more caregivers whose lives will never be the same.
Recently, my wife and I joined their ranks when her mother was diagnosed with dementia. Like countless others in this country and around the world, we are entering an uncertain phase in our lives, one that will involve caring for a parent with dementia. We add this new responsibility to the myriad others of parent, professional, and spouse. Where will the extra energy come from?, we wonder. How can we find the capacity to care for yet another dependent---an adult, no less? Even though I work closely with caregivers who tackle the same issues, and have always respected their fortitude and optimism, it is always different when it happens to you and your own family. Suddenly it's personal.
After another exasperating phone call with her mother's doctors, who had nothing new to suggest in regard to her failing memory, my wife turned to me for support. "Surely from all of those interviews you gleaned some words of wisdom that might help me get through this?" While every case is different and all caregivers find their own way through trial and error, coming up with solutions as different as one family is from the next, I feel confident in making a few generalizations:
1. Take care of yourself.
As a geriatrician I have seen countless caregivers fail physically or mentally long before the patient with dementia does. There's good reason for this. Caregiving is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year responsibility. There is no time off for good behavior and the physical demands of caring for the elderly when they have dementia are profound. So too is the psychic strain of seeing someone close to you struggle. Remember, no one is ever successful for long if they go it alone. You need to share the burden of caregiving, even if it ultimately involves placing a parent or spouse in an assisted living or nursing home. You also need to maintain the body and mind by seeking the medical and emotional support needed to deal with caregiver challenges. The Alzheimer's Association has many fantastic resources; I've found their local support groups to be particularly helpful.
2. Be present.
Easier said than done---try putting aside daily work and life responsibilities and making the time to spend with someone at the end of life. Yet so many of our day-to-day responsibilities are ultimately inconsequential. Someone can always cover for you at work, and your children will forgive you for missing a soccer practice. Animals like Oscar can teach us through their steadfastness, their patience, and their presence. They don't have to be anywhere else except where they are. When Oscar visits his patients, he doesn't care what time it is or whether there is somewhere else he would rather be. He is in the moment. It is so important to be able to spend time with someone with dementia---even if you think that they no longer know who you are.
3. Celebrate the little victories but see the big picture.
Living with someone with dementia can be a roller-coaster ride. For every little victory that brings joy---an upswing in appetite, a remembrance of a name---there is the ultimate certainty of continued decline. Those that cope best with terminal progressive illnesses such as dementia are people who can gain satisfaction from a little victory without losing the larger perspective.
4. Become an advocate for high-quality care.
Our medical system does not effectively deal with patients with dementia. Certainly some institutions do it better than others, but ultimately every acute-care hospital, nursing home, and outpatient office could be improved. Being an advocate for high-quality care is about being involved and asking questions. It is also about choosing your battles and understanding the limitations inherent in dementia care, particularly in the nursing home environment. It is possible to get good care or bad care at every nursing home. What makes the difference is family involvement.
5. Love and let go.
It is my hope that, one day, dementia will become a footnote in medical history, much like smallpox and the plague are today. We will certainly be better at handling it. The treatment options available today, though, are few, and even those are seldom helpful for long. Eventually, every caregiver has to let go---whether it's letting go and sending a loved one to a nursing home or letting go when death is near. When this time comes, please remember that letting go of a person with terminal dementia is not a sign of defeat: It is an act of love.
I HAVE BEEN TRULY BLESSED IN MY LIFE TO FIND MYSELF surrounded by patients, colleagues, friends, and family who I learn from every day. A full list of acknowledgments would be simply too long to print, but I would specifically like to thank the following individuals for their assistance during this project:
First, I'd like to offer a special thank you to Sean Elder for believing in the project and helping me pull out what was good in the manuscript and make it better. I couldn't have done it without you.
I'd also like to offer my profound gratitude to the family members of Oscar's third-floor patients, past and present, who spent signficant time with me throughout the writing of this book. Some of you allowed me to use your names and stories in the book, while others provided background but asked for privacy. I can't possibly tell you how much I am indebted to the fact that you entrusted me with your innermost thoughts and personal demons. I apologize to all of you for any unintentional mistakes I have made in the presentation of the facts, for any liberties I have taken in telling your stories, and for any additional sorrow that I may have caused as we sifted through the memories.
Thank you also to Mary Miranda, who helped me collect many of the stories that appear in this book. Mary, it is through your eyes that I first saw how much good there was in Oscar, and the wonder in your eyes as you discussed each story was truly infectious. A special thanks also to the rest of the staff at Steere House and Home and Hospice of Rhode Island. Though your work is often underappreciated, I hope this book does something to correct this travesty. You are all the true Heroes of long-term care and perform your duties with more passion, love, and attention to detail than countless other professionals---including us doctors, who receive more praise and financial reward.
Special thanks also to Dr. Joan Teno for our many discussions about end-of-life care, the meaning of Oscar the cat, and your thoughts at every stage of the writing process. Please know that your mentorship, passion, and belief in the importance of end-of-life care have been profoundly inspirational to me. Thank you for being my sounding board over the years and, most importantly, a dear personal friend.
Thanks also to my other medical colleagues at Steere House, at Brown University's Center for Gerontology, the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and within the division of geriatrics. I have been fortunate to work with so many talented individuals over the years.
As any writer will tell you, there are hundreds of talented people behind the scenes who make each book come to life.
To Brenda Copeland, thank you for being my "cat guru"---not to mention a fabulous editor. Thank you for taking the leap of faith that a first-time author with a good story could pull this off. You were always so complimentary and knew exactly how to take a newbie under your wing. From here on out until the day I die, I will always remember to "jump right into the story" and I will never---ever---forget to use contractions! Thank you also to Ellen Archer, Will Balliett, and the rest of the staff at Hyperion for your valuable insights into the manuscript and for coaching me through the process at each step of the way.
To my agent, Emma Sweeney, and her colleagues Eva Talmadge and Justine Wenger---you're a first-class organization. Thank you for keeping me on the straight and narrow as I've learned to navigate these uncharted waters. You've always steered me in the right direction. As they say in the movies, "I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
In closing, I'd like to offer a heartfelt thanks to my family. To my "grandparents" Eva and Jan Rocek---thank you for your love, wisdom, and all of your life stories. I will always treasure those summers together at the lake house---even if I had to stay out of Puma's way. To Mellissa, thank you for being such an important part of our family. To my brother, Peter, and my parents Noemi and Stefan---thank you for your love and unconditional support through the good times and the bad. You are my role models in life, and I couldn't be luckier. Finally---and most importantly---to my children, Ethan and Emma, and my loving and supportive wife, Dionne. You are my reason for living and you inspire me daily. In sickness and in health, for better or worse, please know that I will love you always. And by the way, at the end of my days, I prefer the cat over the ICU.
MAKING ROUNDS WITH OSCAR. Copyright © 2010 David Dosa. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
EPub Edition © December 2009 ISBN: 978-1-4013-9496-7
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Janet Evanovich, bestselling author of One for the Money, Two for the Dough, and Three to Get Deadly, scores big with Four to Score, her most thrilling Stephanie Plum adventure yet. Working for her bail bondsman cousin Vinnie, Stephanie is hot on the trail of revenge-seeking waitress Maxine Nowicki, whose crimes include bail jumping, theft, and extortion. Someone is terrifying Maxine's friends, and those who have seen her are turning up dead. Also on the hunt for Maxine is Joyce Barnhardt, Stephanie's archenemy and rival bounty hunter. Stephanie's attitude never wavers---even when aided by crazy Grandma Mazur, ex-hooker and wannabe bounty hunter Lula, and transvestite rock musician Sally Sweet---and even when Stephanie makes an enemy whose deadly tactics escalate from treatening messages to firebombs. All of this pales in comparison, though, with and even greater danger Stephanie faces, when, homeless and broke, she and her hamster Rex move in with vice cop Joe Morelli.
Rated PG35 for lecentious wit and libidinous cohabitation.
LIVING IN TRENTON in July is like living inside a big pizza oven. Hot, airless, aromatic.
Because I didn't want to miss any of the summer experience I had the sunroof open on my Honda CRX. My brown hair was pulled up into a windsnarled, curls-gone-to-frizz ponytail. The sun baked the top of my head, and sweat trickled under my black spandex sports bra. I was wearing matching spandex shorts and a sleeveless oversized Trenton Thunders baseball jersey. It was an excellent outfit except it gave me no place to stick my .38. Which meant I was going to have to borrow a gun to shoot my cousin Vinnie.
I parked the CRX in front of Vinnie's storefront bail bonds office, lunged out of the car, stalked across the sidewalk, and yanked the office door open. "Where is he? Where is that miserable little excuse for a human being?"
"Uh oh," Lula said from behind the file cabinet. "Rhino alert."
Lula is a retired hooker who helps clean up the filing and sometimes rides shotgun for me when I do my fugitive apprehension thing. If people were cars, Lula would be a big, black '53 Packard with a high-gloss chrome grille, oversized headlights, and a growl like a junkyard dog. Lots of muscle. Never fit in a compact space.
Connie Rosolli, the office manager, pushed back at her desk when I entered. Connie's domain was this one front room where friends and relatives of miscreants came to beg money. And to the rear, in an inner office, my cousin Vinnie slapped Mr. Johnson around and conversed with his bookie.
"Hey," Connie said, "I know what you're bummed about, and this wasn't my decision. Personally, if I were you, I'd kick your cousin's pervert ass around the block."
I pushed a clump of hair that had strayed from the ponytail back from my face. "Kicking isn't good enough. I think I'll shoot him."
"Go for it!" Lula said.
"Yeah," Connie agreed. "Shoot him."
Lula checked out my clothes. "You need a gun? I don't see no gun bulges in that spandex." She hiked up her T-shirt and pulled a Chief's Special out of her cut-off denim shorts. "You could use mine. Just be careful; it sights high."
"You don't want a little peashooter like that," Connie said, opening her desk drawer. "I've got a forty-five. You can make a nice big hole with a forty-five."
Lula went for her purse. "Hold on here. If that's what you want, let me give you the big stud. I've got a forty-four magnum loaded up with hydroshocks. This baby'll do real damage, you see what I'm saying? You could drive a Volkswagen through the hole this sweetheart makes."
"I was sort of kidding about shooting him," I told them.
"Too bad," Connie said.
Lula shoved her gun back in her shorts. "Yeah, that's damn disappointing."
"So where is he? Is he in?"
"Hey, Vinnie!" Connie yelled. "Stephanie's here to see you!"
The door to the inner office opened and Vinnie poked his head out. "What?"
Vinnie was 5'7", looked like a weasel, thought like a weasel, smelled like a French whore and was once in love with a duck.
"You know what!" I said, hands fisted on hips. "Joyce Barnhardt, that's what. My grandma was at the beauty parlor and heard you hired Joyce to do skip tracing."
"So what's the big deal? I hired Joyce Barnhardt."
"Joyce Barnhardt does makeovers at Macy's."
"And you used to sell ladies' panties."
"That was entirely different. I blackmailed you into giving me this job."
"Exactly," Vinnie said. "So what's your point?"
"Fine!" I shouted. "Just keep her out of my way! I hate Joyce Barnhardt!"
And everybody knew why. At the tender age of twenty-four, after less than a year of marriage, I'd caught Joyce bare-assed on my dining room table, playing hide-the-salami with my husband. It was the only time she'd ever done me a favor. We'd gone through school together, where she'd spread rumors, told fibs, ruined friendships and peeked under the stall doors in the girls' bathroom to see people's underpants.
She'd been a fat kid with a terrible overbite. The overbite had been minimalized by braces, and by the time Joyce was fifteen she'd trimmed down to look like Barbie on steroids. She had chemically enhanced red hair done up in big teased curls. Her nails were long and painted, her lips were high gloss, her eyes were rimmed in navy liquid liner, her lashes gunked up with blue-black mascara. She was an inch shorter than me, five pounds heavier and had me beat by two cup sizes. She had three ex-husbands and no children. It was rumored she had sex with large dogs.
Joyce and Vinnie were a match made in heaven. Too bad Vinnie was already married to a perfectly nice woman whose father happened to be Harry the Hammer. Harry's job description read "expediter," and Harry spent a lot of his time in the presence of men who wore fedoras and long black overcoats.
"Just do your job," Vinnie said. "Be a professional." He waved his hand at Connie. "Give her something. Give her that new skip we just got in."
Connie took a manila folder from her desktop. "Maxine Nowicki. Charged with stealing her former boyfriend's car. Posted bond with us and failed to show for her court appearance."
By securing a cash bond Nowicki had been free to leave the lockup behind and return to society at large while awaiting trial. Now she'd failed to appear. Or in bounty-hunter speak, she was FTA. This lapse of judicial etiquette changed Nowicki's status to felon and had my cousin Vinnie worrying that the court might see fit to keep his bond money.
As a bond enforcement officer I was expected to find Nowicki and bring her back into the system. For performing this service in a timely manner I'd get ten percent of her bond amount. Pretty good money since this sounded like a domestic dispute, and I didn't think Maxine Nowicki would be interested in blowing the back of my head off with a .45 hollow tip.
I riffled through the paperwork, which consisted of Nowicki's bond agreement, a photo, and a copy of the police report.
"Know what I'd do?" Lula said. "I'd talk to the boyfriend. Anybody pissed off enough to get his girlfriend arrested for stealing his car is pissed off enough to snitch on her. Probably he's just waiting to tell someone where to go find her."
It was my thought too. I read aloud from Nowicki's charge sheet. "Edward Kuntz. Single white male. Age twenty-seven. Residing at Seventeen Muffet Street. Says here he's a cook."
I PARKED in front of Kuntz's house and wondered about the man inside. The house was white clapboard with aqua trim around the windows and tangerine paint on the door. It was half of a well-cared-for duplex with a minuscule front yard. A three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in pale blue and white had been planted on the perfectly clipped patch of lawn. A carved wood heart with red lettering and little white daisies had been hung on the neighboring door, proclaiming that the Glicks lived there. The Kuntz side was free of ornamentation.
I followed the sidewalk to the porch, which had been carpeted in green indoor-outdoor carpet, and rang the Kuntz doorbell. The door opened and a sweaty, muscle-bulging, half-naked man looked out at me. "What?"
"Eddie Kuntz?"
"Yeah?"
I passed him my business card. "Stephanie Plum. I'm a bond enforcement officer, and I'm looking for Maxine Nowicki. I was hoping you could help me."
"You bet I can help you. She took my car. Can you believe it?" He jerked his stubbled chin toward the curb. "That's it right there. Lucky for her she didn't scratch it up. The cops picked her up driving through town in it, and they brought the car back to me."
I glanced back at the car. A white Chevy Blazer. Freshly washed. I almost was tempted to steal it myself.
"You were living together?"
"Well, yeah, for a while. About four months. And then we had this disagreement, and next thing I know, she's gone with my car. It wasn't that I wanted her arrested . . . it was just that I wanted my car back. That was why I called the police. I wanted my car."
"Do you have any idea where she might be now?"
"No. I tried to get in touch with her to sort of patch things up, but I couldn't find her. She quit her job at the diner and nobody's seen her. I stopped around her apartment a couple times, and there was never anybody home. I tried calling her mother. I called a couple of her girlfriends. No one seems to know anything. I guess they could have been lying to me, but I don't think so." He winked at me. "Women don't lie to me, you know what I mean?"
"No," I said. "I don't know what you mean."
"Well, I don't like to brag, but I have a way with women."
"Uh huh." It must have been the pungent aroma they found so attractive. Or maybe the overdeveloped, steroid-pumped muscles that made him look like he needed a bra. Or maybe it was the way he couldn't conduct a conversation without scratching his balls.
"So what can I do for you?" Kuntz asked.
Half an hour later I left with a list of Maxine's friends and relatives. I knew where Maxine banked, bought her booze, shopped for groceries, dry-cleaned her clothes and had her hair done. Kuntz promised to call me if he heard from Maxine, and I'd promised to reciprocate in kind if I turned up anything interesting. Of course, I'd had my fingers crossed when I'd made the promise. I suspected Eddie Kuntz's way with women was to make them run screaming in the opposite direction.
He stood on the porch and watched me angle into my car.
"Cute," he called. "I like when a chick drives a sporty little car."
I sent him a smile that felt a lot like a grimace and peeled away from the curb. I'd gotten the CRX in February, sucked in by a shiny new paint job and an odometer that read 12,000 miles. Cherry condition, the owner had said. Hardly ever driven. And that was partly true. It was hardly ever driven with the odometer cable connected. Not that it mattered. The price had been right, and I looked good in the driver's seat. I'd recently developed a dime-sized lesion on my exhaust pipe, but if I played Metallica loud enough I could hardly hear the muffler noise. I might have thought twice about buying the car if I'd known Eddie Kuntz thought it was cute.
My first stop was the Silver Dollar Diner. Maxine had worked there for seven years and had listed no other source of income. The Silver Dollar was open twenty-four hours. It served good food in generous portions and was always packed with overweight people and penny-pinching seniors. The families of fatties cleaned their plates, and the seniors took leftovers home in doggy bags . . . butter pats, baskets of rolls, packets of sugar, half-eaten pieces of deep-fried haddock, coleslaw, fruit cup, grease-logged french fries. A senior could eat for three days off one meal at the Silver Dollar.
The Silver Dollar was in Hamilton Township on a stretch of road that was clogged with discount stores and small strip malls. It was almost noon, and diner patrons were scarfing down burgers and BLTs. I introduced myself to the woman behind the register and asked about Maxine.
"I can't believe she's in all this trouble," the woman said. "Maxine was responsible. Real dependable." She straightened a stack of menus. "And that business about the car!" She did some eye rolling. "Maxine drove it to work lots of times. He gave her the keys. And then all of a sudden she's arrested for stealing." She gave a grunt of disgust. "Men!"
I stepped back to allow a couple to pay their bill. When they'd pocketed their complimentary mints, matchbooks and toothpicks and exited the diner I turned back to the cashier. "Maxine failed to show for her court appearance. Did she give any indication that she might be leaving town?"
"She said she was going on vacation, and we all thought she was due. Been working here for seven years and never once took a vacation."
"Has anyone heard from her since she's left?"
"Not that I know of. Maybe Margie. Maxine and Margie always worked the same shift. Four to ten. If you want to talk to Margie you should come back around eight. We get real busy with the early-bird specials at four, but then around eight it starts to slack off."
I thanked the woman and went back to my CRX. My next stop would be Nowicki's apartment. According to Kuntz, Nowicki had lived with him for four months but had never gotten around to moving out of her place. The apartment was a quarter mile from the diner, and Nowicki had stated on her bond agreement that she'd resided there for six years. All previous addresses were local. Maxine Nowicki was Trenton clear to the roots of her bleached blond hair.
The apartment was in a complex of two-story, blocky, red-brick buildings anchored in islands of parched grass, arranged around macadam parking lots. Nowicki was on the second floor with a firstfloor entrance. Inside private stairwell. Not good for window snooping. All second-floor apartments had small balconies on the back side, but I'd need a ladder to get to the balcony. Probably a woman climbing up a ladder would look suspicious.
I decided to go with the obvious and knock on the door. If no one answered I'd ask the super to let me in. Many times the super was cooperative in this way, especially if he was confused as to the authenticity of my fake badge.
There were two front doors side by side. One was for upstairs and one was for downstairs. The name under the upstairs doorbell read Nowicki. The name under the downstairs doorbell read Pease.
I rang the upstairs doorbell and the downstairs door opened and an elderly woman looked out at me.
"She isn't home."
"Are you Mrs. Pease?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure Maxine isn't home?"
"Well, I guess I'd know. You can hear everything in this cheapskate apartment. If she was home I'd hear her TV. I'd hear her walking around. And besides, she'd stop in to tell me she was home and collect her mail."
Ah hah! The woman was collecting Maxine's mail. Maybe she also had Maxine's key.
"Yes, but suppose she came home late one night and didn't want to wake you?" I said. "And then suppose she had a stroke?"
"I never thought of that."
"She could be upstairs right now, gasping her last breath of air."
The woman rolled her eyes upward, as if she could see through walls. "Hmmm."
"Do you have a key?"
"Well, yes . . ."
"And what about her plants? Have you been watering her plants?"
"She didn't ask me to water her plants."
"Maybe we should go take a look. Make sure everything is okay."
"Are you a friend of Maxine's?"
I held up two fingers side by side. "Like this."
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check. I'll be right back with the key. I've got it in the kitchen."
Okay, so I fibbed a little. But it wasn't such a bad fib because it was for a good cause. And besides, she could be dead in her bed. And her plants could be dying of thirst.
"Here it is," Mrs. Pease said, brandishing the key.
She turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
"Hell-oo-o," she called in her warbling old lady's voice. "Anybody home?"
No one answered, so we crept up the stairs. We stood in the little entrance area and looked into the living room-dining room.
"Not much of a housekeeper," Mrs. Pease said.
Housekeeping had nothing to do with it. The apartment had been trashed. It wasn't a fight because nothing was smashed. And it wasn't clutter from a last-minute scurry to leave. Cushions were pulled off the couch and flung onto the floor. Cupboard doors were open. Drawers were pulled from the hutch and turned upside down, contents spilled out. I did a quick walk-through and saw more of the same in the bedroom and bath. Someone had been looking for something. Money? Drugs? If it was robbery it had been very specific, because the TV and VCR were untouched.
"Someone has ransacked this apartment," I said to Mrs. Pease. "I'm surprised you didn't hear the drawers being flung around."
"If I was home I would have heard it. It must have been when I was out to bingo. I go to bingo every Wednesday and Friday. I don't get home until eleven. Do you think we should report this to the police?"
"It wouldn't serve much purpose right now." Except to notify the police that I'd been in Maxine's apartment sort of illegally. "We don't know if anything's been taken. Probably we should wait for Maxine to come home and let her call the police."
We didn't see any plants to water, so we tippytoed back down the stairs and locked the door.
I gave Mrs. Pease my card and asked her to call me if she should see or hear anything suspicious.
She studied the card. "A bounty hunter," she said, her voice showing surprise.
"A woman's got to do what a woman's got to do," I said.
She looked up and nodded in agreement. "I suppose that's true."
I squinted into the lot. "According to my information Maxine owns an '84 Fairlane. I don't see it here."
"She took off in it," Mrs. Pease said. "Wasn't much of a car. Always something or other broken on it, but she loaded it up with her suitcase and took off."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"On vacation."
"That was it?"
"Yep," Mrs. Pease said, "that was it. Usually Maxine's real talkative, but she wasn't saying anything this time. She was in a hurry, and she wasn't saying anything."
NOWICKI'S MOTHER lived on Howser Street. She'd posted the bond and had put up her house as collateral. At first glance this seemed like a safe investment for my cousin Vinnie. Truth was, getting a person kicked out of his or her house was a chore and did nothing to endear a bail bondsman to the community.
I got out my street map and found Howser. It was in north Trenton, so I retraced my route and discovered that Mrs. Nowicki lived two blocks from Eddie Kuntz. Same neighborhood of well-kept houses. Except for the Nowicki house. The Nowicki house was single-family, and it was a wreck. Peeling paint, crumbling roof shingles, saggy front porch, front yard more dirt than grass.
I picked my way over rotting porch steps and knocked on the door. The woman who answered was faded glory in a bathrobe. It was getting to be midafternoon, but Mrs. Nowicki looked like she'd just rolled out of bed. She was a sixty-year-old woman wearing the ravages of booze and disenchantment with life. Her doughy face showed traces of makeup not removed before calling it a night. Her voice had the rasp of two packs a day, and her breath was hundred proof.
"Mrs. Nowicki?"
"Yeah," she said.
"I'm looking for Maxine."
"You a friend of Maxy's?"
I gave her my card. "I'm with the Plum Agency. Maxine missed her court date. I'm trying to find her so we can get her rescheduled."
Mrs. Nowicki raised a crayoned brown eyebrow. "I wasn't born yesterday, honey. You're a bounty hunter, and you're out to get my little girl."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Wouldn't tell you if I did. She'll get found when she wants to."
"You put your house up as security against the bond. If Maxine doesn't come forward you could lose your house."
"Oh yeah, that'd be a tragedy," she said, rummaging in the pocket of her chenille robe, coming up with a pack of Kools. "Architectural Digest keeps wanting to do a spread, but I can't find the time." She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit up. She sucked hard and squinted at me through the smoke haze. "I owe five years' back taxes. You want this house you're gonna hafta take a number and get in line."
Sometimes bail jumpers are simply at home, trying to pretend their life isn't in the toilet, hoping the whole mess will go away if they ignore the order to appear in court. I'd originally thought Maxine would be one of these people. She wasn't a career criminal, and the charges weren't serious. She really had no reason to skip out.
Now I wasn't so sure. I was getting an uncomfortable feeling about Maxine. Her apartment had been trashed, and her mother had me thinking maybe Maxine didn't want to be found right now. I slunk back to my car and decided my deductive reasoning would be vastly improved if I ate a doughnut. So I cut across town to Hamilton and parked in front of Tasty Pastry Bakery.
I'd worked part-time at Tasty Pastry when I was in high school. It hadn't changed much since then. Same green-and-white linoleum floor. Same sparkling clean display cases filled with Italian cookies, chocolate chip cannoli, biscotti, napoleons, fresh bread and coffee cakes. Same happy smell of fried sweet dough and cinnamon.
Lennie Smulenski and Anthony Zuck bake the goodies in the back room in big steel ovens and troughs of hot oil. Clouds of flour and sugar sift onto table surfaces and slip under foot. And lard is transferred daily from commercial-sized vats directly to local butts.
I choose two Boston cremes and pocketed some napkins. When I came out I found Joe Morelli lounging against my car. I'd known Morelli all of my life. First when he was a lecherous little kid, then as a dangerous teen. And finally as the guy who at age eighteen, sweet-talked me out of my underwear, laid me down on the floor behind the eclair case one day after work and relieved me of my virginity. Morelli was a cop now, and the only way he'd get back into my pants would be at gunpoint. He worked Vice, and he looked like he knew a lot about it firsthand. He was wearing washed-out Levi's and a navy T-shirt. His hair needed cutting, and his body was perfect. Lean and hard-muscled with the best ass in Trenton . . . maybe the world. Buns you wanted to sink your teeth into.
Not that I intended to nibble on Morelli. He had an annoying habit of periodically popping up in my life, frustrating the hell out of me and then walking off into the sunset. I couldn't do much about the popping up or the walking off. I could do something about the frustrating. From here on out, Morelli was erotica non grata. Look but Don't Touch, that was my motto. And he could keep his tongue to himself, thank you.
Morelli grinned by way of hello. "You're not going to eat both those doughnuts all by yourself, are you?"
"That was the plan. What are you doing here?"
"Drove by. Saw your car. Thought you'd need some help with those Boston cremes."
"How do you know they're Boston cremes?"
"You always get Boston cremes."
Last time I saw Morelli was back in February. One minute we were in a clinch on my couch with his hand halfway up my thigh, and then next thing I knew, his pager went off and he was gone. Not to be seen for five months. And now here he was . . . sniffing at my doughnuts.
"Long time, no see," I said.
"I've been undercover."
Yeah, right.
"Okay," he said. "I could have called."
"I thought maybe you were dead."
The smile tightened. "Wishful thinking?"
"You're scum, Morelli."
He blew out a sigh. "You're not going to share those doughnuts, are you?"
I got into my car, slammed the door, squealed out of the lot and headed for home. By the time I got to my apartment I'd eaten both the doughnuts, and I was feeling much better. And I was thinking about Nowicki. She was five years older than Kuntz. High school graduate. Twice married. No children. Her file photo showed me a blowzy blonde with big Jersey hair, lots of makeup and a slim frame. She was squinting into the sun and smiling, wearing four-inch heels, tight black stretch pants and a loose flowing sweater with sleeves pushed up to her elbows and a V neck deep enough to show cleavage. I half expected to find writing on the back of the picture . . . "If you want a good time, call Maxine Nowicki."
Probably she'd done exactly what she'd said. Probably she'd stressed out and gone on vacation. Probably I shouldn't exert myself because she'd come home any day now.
And what about her apartment? The apartment was bothersome. The apartment told me Maxine had bigger problems than a simple auto theft charge. Best not to think about the apartment. The apartment only muddied the waters and had nothing to do with my job. My job was simple. Find Maxine. Bring her in.
I locked the CRX and crossed the lot. Mr. Landowsky stepped out the building's back door as I approached. Mr. Landowsky was eighty-two and somehow his chest had shrunk over the years, and now he was forced to hike his pants up under his armpits.
"Oi," he said. "This heat! I can't breathe. Somebody should do something."
I assumed he was talking about God.
"That weatherman on the morning news. He should be shot. How can I go out in weather like this? And then when it gets so hot they keep the supermarkets too cold. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. It gives me the runs."
I was glad I owned a gun, because when I got as old as Mr. Landowsky I was going to eat a bullet. The first time I got the runs in the supermarket, that was it. BANG! It would all be over.
I took the elevator to the second floor and let myself into my apartment. One bedroom, one bath, living room-dining room, uninspired but adequate kitchen, small foyer with a strip of pegs for hanging coats and hats and gun belts.
My hamster, Rex, was running on his wheel when I came in. I told him about my day and apologized for not saving him some doughnut. He looked disappointed at the doughnut part so I rooted around in my refrigerator and came up with a few grapes. Rex took the grapes and disappeared into his soup can. Life is pretty simple when you're a hamster.
I moseyed back into the kitchen and checked my phone messages.
"Stephanie, this is your mother. Don't forget about dinner. I have a nice roast chicken."
Saturday night and I was having chicken dinner with my parents. And it wasn't the first time. It was a weekly occurrence. I had no life.
I dragged myself into the bedroom, flopped onto the bed and watched the minute hand creep around the dial on my wristwatch until it was time to go to my parents'. My parents eat dinner at six o'clock. Not a minute sooner or later. That's the way it is. Dinner at six or your life is ruined.
MY PARENTS live in a narrow duplex on a narrow lot on a narrow street in a residential part of Trenton called the burg. When I arrived my mother was waiting at the door.
"What is this outfit you're wearing?" she asked. "You have no clothes on. How is this to dress?"
"This is a Thunders baseball jersey," I told her. "I'm supporting local sports."
My Grandma Mazur peeked from behind my mother. Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after my grandfather went heavenward to dine with Elvis. Grandma figures she's of an age to be beyond convention. My father thinks she's of an age to be beyond life.
"I need one of those jerseys," Grandma said. "Bet I'd have men following me down the block if I was dressed up like that."
"Stiva, the undertaker," my father murmured from the living room, head buried in the paper. "With his tape measure."
Grandma linked her arm in mine. "I've got a treat for you today. Just wait till you see what I've cooked up."
In the living room the paper was lowered, and my father's eyebrows raised.
My mother made the sign of the cross.
"Maybe you should tell me," I said to Grandma.
"I was gonna keep it as a surprise, but I suppose I could let you in on it. Being that he'll be here any minute now."
There was dead silence in the house.
"I invited your boyfriend over for dinner," Grandma said.
"I don't have a boyfriend!"
"Well, you do now. I arranged everything."
I spun on my heel and headed for the door. "I'm leaving."
"You can't do that!" Grandma yelled. "He'll be real disappointed. We had a nice long talk. And he said he didn't mind that you shoot people for a living."
"I don't shoot people for a living. I almost never shoot people." I thunked my head against the wall. "I hate fix-ups. Fix-ups are always awful."
"Can't be any more awful than that bozo you married," Grandma said. "Only one way to go after that fiasco."
She was right. My short-lived marriage had been a fiasco.
There was a knock on the door, and we swiveled our heads to look down the hall.
"Eddie Kuntz!" I gasped.
"Yep," Grandma said. "That's his name. He called up here looking for you, and so I invited him to dinner."
"Hey," Eddie said through the screen.
He was wearing a gray short-sleeved shirt open halfway down his chest, pleated slacks and Gucci loafers, no socks. He had a bottle of red wine in his hand.
"Hello," we said in unison.
"Can I come in?"
"Sure you can come in," Grandma said. "I guess we don't leave handsome men standing at the door."
He handed the wine to Grandma and winked. "Here you go, cutie."
Grandma giggled. "Aren't you the one."
"I almost never shoot people," I said. "Almost never."
"Me too," he said. "I hate unnecessary violence."
I took a step backward. "Excuse me. I need to help in the kitchen."
My mother hurried after me. "Don't even think about it!"
"What?"
"You know what. You were going to sneak out the back door."
"He's not my type."
My mother started filling serving dishes with food from the stove. Mashed potatoes, green beans, red cabbage. "What's wrong with him?"
"He's got too many buttons open on his shirt."
"He could turn out to be a nice person," my mother said. "You should give him a chance. What would it take? And what about supper? I have this nice chicken that will go to waste. What will you eat for supper if you don't eat here?"
"He called Grandma cutie!"
My mother had been slicing up the chicken. She took a drumstick and dropped it on the floor. She kicked it around a little, picked it up and put it on the edge of the plate. "There," she said, "we'll give him this drumstick."
"Deal."
"And I have banana cream pie for desert," she added to seal the bargain. "So you want to make sure you stay to the end."
Be still my heart.
I TOOK MY PLACE at the table, next to Eddie Kuntz. "You were trying to get in touch with me?"
"Yeah. I lost your card. I put it down somewhere and couldn't find it. So I looked you up in the phone book . . . only I got your parents. Good thing, too. Granny told me you're hard up for a man, and it turns out I'm between women right now, and I don't mind older chicks. So I guess this is your lucky day."
The chick made a valiant effort not to stab her fork into Eddie Kuntz's eyeball. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
"I got a call from Maxine. She said she had a message for me and it was coming by airmail tomorrow. I said tomorrow was Sunday, and there was no airmail on Sunday, so why doesn't she just tell me the message. Then she called me some names." He gave me a face like Maxine had hurt his feelings for no good reason. "Real abusive," he said.
"Was that it?"
"That was it. Except she said she was going to make me squirm. And then she hung up."
BY THE TIME we got to the banana cream pie I was feeling antsy. Nowicki had called Kuntz, so Nowicki was alive, and that was good. Unfortunately, she was sending him airmail. Airmail meant distance. And distance was bad. Even more bothersome was the fact that Eddie Kuntz's napkin was moving on his lap without benefit of hands. My first inclination was to shout "Snake!" and shoot, but probably that wouldn't hold up in court. Besides, as much as I disliked Eddie Kuntz, I could sort of identify with a man who got a stiffie over banana cream pie.
I scarfed down a piece of pie and cracked my knuckles. I glanced at my watch. "Gee, look at the time!"
My mother gave me her resigned mother look. The one that said, So go . . . at least I got you to stay through desert and now I know you had one good meal this week. And why can't you be more like your sister, Valerie, who's married and has two kids and knows how to cook a chicken.
"Sorry, I have to run," I said, pushing back from the table.
Kuntz paused with his fork midway to his mouth. "What? We leaving?"
I retrieved my shoulder bag from the kitchen. "I'm leaving."
"He's leaving too," my father said, head bent over his pie.
"Well, this was nice," Grandma said. "This didn't go so bad."
KUNTZ DANCED behind me when I opened my car door. Up on the balls of his feet. Lots of energy. Tony Testosterone. "How about we go somewhere for a drink?"
"Can't. I've got work to do. I need to finish up a lead."
"Is this about Maxine? I could go with you."
I slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine over. "Not a good idea. But I'll give you a call if anything turns up."
Look out world. Bounty hunter in action.
The diner was less than half filled when I arrived. Most of the people were lingering over coffee. In another hour a younger crowd would straggle in for desert or fries after the movies let out.
The shift had changed, and I didn't recognize the woman working the register. I introduced myself and asked for Margie.
"Sorry," the woman said. "Margie didn't come in today. Called in sick. Said she might not be here tomorrow, either."
I retreated to my car and rummaged through my bag, searching for the list of family and friends I'd gotten from Kuntz. I ran down the list in the fading light. There was one Margie. No last name, no phone, and for address Kuntz had written "yellow house on Barnet Street." He'd also added that Margie drove a red Isuzu.
The sun was a thin scarlet smudge on the horizon when I got to Barnet, but I was able to spot the yellow bungalow and red car. A woman with a heavily bandaged hand stepped out of the yellow house to fetch her cat just as I crept to a stop at the curb. She grabbed the gray cat when she saw me and disappeared behind her door. Even from the curb I could hear the bolt being thrown.
At least she was home. My secret fear had been that she'd disappeared and was sharing rent with Maxine in Cancun.
I hitched my bag onto my shoulder, plastered a friendly smile on my face, marched up the short cement walk and knocked on her door.
The door opened with the security chain in place. "Yes?"
I passed my card through to her. "Stephanie Plum. I'd like to talk to you about Maxine Nowicki."
"Sorry," she said. "I have nothing to say about Maxine. And I'm not feeling good."
I peeked through the crack in the door and saw she held her bandaged hand to her chest. "What happened?"
She looked at me slack faced and dead eyed, obviously medicated. "It was an accident. A kitchen accident."
"It looks pretty bad."
She blinked. "I lost a finger. Well, I didn't actually lose it. It was on the kitchen counter. I took it to the hospital and got it sewed back on."
I had an instant vision of her finger lying on the kitchen counter. Little black dots danced in front of my eyes, and I felt sweat pop out on my upper lip. "I'm sorry!"
"It was an accident," she said. "An accident."
"Which finger was it?"
"The middle finger."
"Oh man, that's my favorite finger."
"Listen," she said. "I gotta go."
"Wait! Just one minute more. I really need to know about Maxine."
"There's nothing to know. She's gone. There's nothing more I can tell you."
I SAT in my car and took a deep breath. From now on, I was going to be more careful in the kitchen. No more fishing around the garbage disposal looking for bottle caps. No more flamboyant whacking away at salad greens.
It was too late to hit any more people on the list, so I headed home. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and the air getting sucked through the sunroof was pleasant. I cruised across town, parked behind my apartment building and swung through the rear entrance.
Rex stopped running on his wheel when I walked into the living room. He looked at me, whiskers twitching.
"Don't ask," I said. "You don't want to know." Rex was squeamish about things like chopped-off fingers.
My mother had given me some chicken and some pie to take home. I broke off a chunk of the pie and gave it to Rex. He shoved the crust into his cheek pouch, and his shiny black eyes almost popped out of his head.
Probably I'd looked like that earlier today when Morelli had asked for a doughnut.
I ALWAYS KNOW it's Sunday because I wake up feeling apologetic. That's one of the cool things about being a Catholic . . . it's a multifaceted experience. If you lose the faith, chances are you'll keep the guilt, so it isn't as if you've been skunked altogether. I rolled my head and looked at the digital readout on my clock. Eight. Still time to make late mass. I really should go. My eyes grew heavy at the thought.
Next time I opened my eyes it was eleven. Gosh. Too late to go to church. I heaved myself out of bed and padded to the bathroom, telling myself it was okay because God was willing to forgive little things like skimpy church attendance. Over the years I'd evolved my religion and constructed the Benevolent God. The Benevolent God also didn't care about such trifles as cussing and fibbing. The Benevolent God looked into a person's heart and knew if she'd been naughty or nice in the grand scheme of things. In my world, God and Santa Claus did not micromanage lives. Of course, that meant you couldn't count on them to help you lose weight, either.
I stepped out of the shower and shook my head by way of styling my hair. I dressed in my usual uniform of spandex shorts and halter-style sports bra and topped it off with a Rangers hockey jersey. I took another look at my hair and decided it needed some help, so I did the gel, blow-dry, hair spray routine. When I was done I was several inches taller. I stood in front of the mirror and did the Wonder Woman thing, feet spread, fists on hips. "Eat dirt, scumbag," I said to the mirror. Then I did the Scarlett thing, hand to my heart, coy smile. "Rhett, you handsome devil, how you do go on."
Neither of those felt exactly right for the day, so I took myself into the kitchen to see if I could find my identity in the refrigerator. I was plowing through a Sara Lee frozen cheesecake when the phone rang.
"Hey," Eddie Kuntz said.
"Hey," I answered.
"I got the letter from Maxine. I thought you might want to take a look."
I CRUISED over to Muffet Street and found Eddie Kuntz standing on his minuscule front lawn, hands dangling loose at his sides, staring at his front window. The window was smash city. Big hole square in the middle. Lots of fracture lines.
I slammed the door when I got out of the car, but Kuntz didn't turn at the sound, nor at my approach. We stood there for a moment, side by side, studying the window disaster.
"Nice job," I said.
He nodded. "Square in the middle. Maxine was on the softball team in high school."
"She do this last night?"
Another nod. "I was going to bed. I turned the light off and CRASH . . . a brick came sailing through my front window."
"Airmail," I said.
"Yeah, goddamn airmail. My aunt is apeshit. She's my landlady. Her and Uncle Leo live in the other half of this piece of crap. The only reason she isn't out here wringing her hands is on account of she's at church."
"I didn't realize you were renting."
"What, you think I'd pick out these paint colors? Do I look like one of those poofie guys?"
Hell no. Poofie guys don't think a rip in an undershirt represents a fashion statement.
He handed me a piece of white paper. "This was tied around the brick."
The letter was handwritten and addressed to Kuntz. The message was simple. It told him he'd been a jerk, and if he wanted his property back, he was going to have to go on a treasure hunt. It said his first clue was "in the big one." And then a bunch of mixed-up letters followed.
"What does this mean?" I asked him.
"If I knew I wouldn't be calling you, would I? I'd be out on a goddamn treasure hunt." He threw his hands into the air. "She's wacko. I should have known she was wacko from the beginning. She had a thing about spies. Was always watching those stupid Bond movies. I'd be banging her from behind, and she'd be watching James Bond on the television. Can you believe it?"
Oh yeah.
"You snoop around, right?" he said. "You know all about being a spy? You know about cracking codes?"
"I don't know anything about being a spy," I told him. "And I don't know what this says."
In fact, not only didn't I know anything about being a spy, I didn't even know much about being a bounty hunter. I was just bumbling along, trying to pay my rent, praying I'd win the lottery.
"So now what?" Kuntz asked.
I reread the note. "What is this property she's talking about?"
He gave me a minute-long, blank look. "Love letters," he finally said. "I wrote her some love letters, and I want them back. I don't want them floating around now that we're broken up. There's some embarrassing things in them."
Eddie Kuntz didn't seem like the type to write love letters, but what do I know? He did seem like the type to trash an apartment. "Did you go to her apartment looking for the letters?"
"Yeah, but the apartment was all locked up."
"You didn't break in? You didn't have a key?"
"Break in? You mean like bash down the door?"
"I walked through Maxine's apartment yesterday. Someone has torn it apart."
Again, the blank look. "I don't know anything about it."
"I think someone was looking for something. Could Maxine have been keeping drugs?"
He shrugged. "Who knows with Maxine. Like I said, she's screwy. "
It was nice to know Maxine was in the area, but aside from that I couldn't get too excited about a note I couldn't read. And I definitely didn't want to hear more about Kuntz's sex life.
He draped an arm around my shoulders and leaned close. "I'm gonna level with you, sweetiepie. I want to get those letters back. It might even be worth something to me. You know what I mean? Just because you're working for this bail bonds guy doesn't mean you can't work for me, too, right? I'd pay good money. All you have to do is let me talk to Maxie before you turn her over to the cops."
"Some people might consider that to be double-dipping."
"A thousand dollars," Kuntz said. "That's my final offer. Take it or leave it."
I stuck out my hand. "Deal."
Okay, so I can be bought. At least I don't come cheap. And besides, it was for a good cause. I didn't especially like Eddie Kuntz, but I could understand about embarrassing love letters since I'd written a few myself. They'd gone to my slimy ex-husband, and I'd consider a thousand dollars well spent if I could get them back.
"I'll need the letter," I said to him.
He handed it over and gave me a punch in the shoulder. "Go for it."
THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds. Fortunately, I lived in a building filled with seniors who sat around all day doing crosswords. And this was sort of like a crossword, right?
My first choice was Mr. Kleinschmidt in 315.
"Ho," Mr. Kleinschmidt said when he answered the door. "It's the fearless bounty hunter. Catch any criminals today?"
"Not yet, but I'm working on it." I handed him the airmail message. "Can you unscramble this?"
Mr. Kleinschmidt shook his head. "I do crosswords. This is a jumble. You have to go ask Lorraine Klausner on the first floor. Lorraine does jumbles."
"Everyone's a specialist today."
"If Mickey Mouse could fly he'd be Donald Duck."
I wasn't sure what that meant, but I thanked Mr. Kleinschmidt and I tramped two flights down and had my finger poised to ring Lorraine's bell when her door opened.
"Sol Kleinschmidt just called and told me all about the jumbled-up message," Lorraine said. "Come in. I have cookies set out."
I took a chair across from Lorraine at her kitchen table and watched her work her way through the puzzle.
"This isn't exactly a jumble," she said, concentrating on the note. "I don't know how to do this. I only do jumbles." She tapped her finger on the table. "I do know someone who might be able to help you, but . . ."
"But?"
"My nephew, Salvatore, has a knack for this sort of thing. Ever since he was little he's been able to solve all kinds of puzzles. One of those freak gifts."
I looked at her expectantly.
"It's just that he can be odd sometimes. I think he's going through one of those conformity things."
I hoped he didn't have a tongue stud. I had to struggle not to make guttural animal sounds when I talked to people wearing tongue studs. "Where does he live?"
She wrote an address on the back of the note. "He's a musician, and he mostly works nights, so he should be home now, but maybe it would be best if I call first."
SALVATORE SWEET lived in a high-rise condo overlooking the river. The building was sandblasted cement and black glass. The landscaping was minimal but well maintained. The lobby was newly painted and carpeted in tones of mauve and gray. Hardly a nonconformist's paradise. And not low-rent, either.
I took the elevator to the ninth floor and rang Sweet's doorbell. A moment later the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with either a very ugly woman or a very gay guy.
"You must be Stephanie."
I nodded my head.
"I'm Sally Sweet. Aunt Lorraine called and said you had a problem."
He was dressed in tight black leather pants held together at the sides with leather lacing that left a strip of pale white flesh from ankle to waist, and a black leather vest that molded around coneshaped, eat-your-heart-out-Madonna breasts. He was close to seven feet tall in his black platform pumps. He had a large hook nose, red roses tattooed on his biceps and---thank you, Lord---he didn't have a tongue stud. He was wearing a blond Farrah Fawcett wig, fake eyelashes and glossy maroon lipstick. His nails had been painted to match his lips.
"Maybe this isn't a good time . . ." I said.
"As good as any."
I had no idea what to say or where to look. The truth is, he was fascinating. Sort of like staring at a car crash.
He looked down at himself. "You're probably wondering about the outfit."
"It's very nice."
"Yeah, I had the vest made special. I'm lead guitar for the Lovelies. And let me tell you, it's fucking impossible to keep a good manicure through the weekend as a lead guitarist. If I'd known how things would turn out for me, I'd have taken up the fucking drums."
"Looks like you're doing okay."
"Success is my middle name. Two years ago I was straight as an arrow, playing for Howling Dogs. You ever hear of Howling Dogs?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Nobody fucking heard of Howling Dogs. I was fucking living in a fucking packing crate in the alley behind Romanos Pizza. I've been punk, funk, grunge and R&B. I've been with the Funky Butts, the Pitts, Beggar Boys, and Howling Dogs. I was with Howling Dogs the longest. It was a fucking depressing experience. I couldn't stand fucking singing all those fucking songs about fucking hearts fucking breaking and fucking goldfish fucking going to heaven. And then I had to fucking look like some western dude. I mean, how can you have any self-respect when you have to go on stage in a cowboy hat?"
I was pretty good at cussing, but I didn't think I could keep up with Sally. On my best day, I couldn't squeeze all those "f" words into a sentence. "Boy, you can really curse," I said.
"You can't be a fucking musician without fucking cursing."
I knew that was true, because sometimes I watched rockumentaries on MTV. My eyes strayed to his hair. "But now you're wearing a Farrah Fawcett wig. Isn't that kind of like a cowboy hat?"
"Yeah, only this is a fucking statement. This is fucking politically correct. See, this is the ultimate sensitive man. This is taking my female shit out of the closet. And like I'm saying, here it is, you know?"
"Un huh."
"And besides, I'm making a shitload of money. I caught the wave on this one. This is the year of the drag queen. We're like a freaking fucking invasion." He took the note from my hand and studied it. "Not only am I booked solid for every weekend for two years . . . I get money stuffed in my goddamn pants. I got money I don't know what to do with."
"So I guess you feel lucky to be gay."
"Well, just between you and me, I'm not actually gay."
"You're a cross-dresser."
"Yeah. Something like that. I mean, I wouldn't mind being sort of gay. Like, I guess I could dance with a guy, but I'm not doing any of that butt stuff."
I nodded. I felt like that about men, too.
He got a pen from a hall table and made some marks on the note. "Lorraine said you're a bounty hunter."
"I almost never shoot anybody," I said.
"If I was a bounty hunter I'd fucking shoot lots of people." He finished scribbling on the paper and gave it back to me.
"You're probably gonna find this hard to believe, but I was sort of weird when I was a kid."
"No!"
"Yeah. I was like . . . out there. So I used to spend a lot of time talking to Spock. And Spock and me, we'd send messages to each other in code."
"You mean Spock from Star Trek?"
"Yeah, that's the dude. Boy, Spock and I were tight. We did this code thing every day for years. Only our codes were hard. This code is too easy. This code is just a bunch of run-together letters with some extra shit thrown in. 'Red and green and blue. At Cluck in a Bucket the clue waits for you.' "
"I know Cluck in a Bucket," I said. "It's just down from the bonds office."
The trash containers in the Cluck in a Bucket parking lot are colored red, green and blue. The green and the blue are for recycling paper and aluminum. The big red one is for garbage. I'd bet my apprehension fee the next clue was in the garbage.
A second man came to the door. He was neatly dressed in Dockers and a perfectly pressed button-down shirt. He was shorter than Sweet. Maybe 5'9". He was slender and totally hairless, like a bald Chihuahua, with soft brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and a mouth that seemed too wide, too sensuous for his small pinched face and little button nose.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"This is Stephanie Plum," Sally said. "The one Lorraine called about."
The man extended his hand. "Gregory Stern. Everyone calls me Sugar."
"Sugar and I are roommates," Sally said. "We're in the band together."
"I'm the band tart," Sugar said. "And sometimes I sing."
"I always wanted to sing with a band," I said. "Only, I can't sing."
"I bet you could," Sugar said. "I bet you'd be wonderful."
"You'd better go get dressed," Sally said to Sugar. "You're going to be late again."
"We have a gig this afternoon," Sugar explained. "Wedding reception."
Yeeesh.
CLUCK IN A BUCKET is on Hamilton. It's housed in a cement cube with windows on three sides. And it's best known not for its outstanding food but for the giant rotating chicken impaled on a thirty-foot flagpole anchored in the parking lot.
I cruised into the lot and stopped short of the red Dumpster. The temperature had to be a hundred in the shade with a hundred percent humidity. My sunroof was open, and when I parked the car I felt the weight of the heat settling around me. Maybe when I found Nowicki I'd have my air-conditioning fixed, or maybe I'd spend a few days at the beach . . . or maybe I'd pay my rent and avoid eviction.
I walked to the Dumpster, thinking about ordering lunch. Two pieces of chicken plus a biscuit and slaw and an extra large soda sounded about right.
I peeked over the edge of the Dumpster, gave an involuntary gasp and staggered back a few feet. Most of the garbage was in bags, but some of the bags had split and had spewed out guts like bloated roadkill. The stench of vegetable rot and gangrenous chicken boiled over the Dumpster and had me reassessing my lunch plans. It also had me reassessing my job. There was no way I was scrounging in this mess for the stupid clue.
I returned to my car and called Eddie Kuntz on my cell phone. "I've deciphered the note," I told him. "I'm at Cluck in a Bucket, and there's another clue here. I think you'd better come see for yourself."
Half an hour later, Kuntz pulled into the lot. I was sitting in my car, slurping down my third giant-sized Diet Coke, and I was sweating like a pig. Kuntz looked nice and cool in his new sport utility vehicle and factory-installed air. He'd changed his clothes from the sweat-stained boxers he'd worn this morning to a black fishnet undershirt, black spandex shorts that didn't do much to hide Mr. Lumpy, two gold chains around his neck, and brand-new Air Jordans that looked to be about a size 42.
"All dressed up," I said to him.
"Gotta maintain the image. Don't like to disappoint the chicks."
I handed him the decoded note. "The next clue is in the red Dumpster."
He walked to the Dumpster, stuck his head over the edge and recoiled.
"Pretty ripe," I said. "Maybe you want to put on some old clothes before you go in there."
"What, are you nuts? I'm not wading through that shit."
"It's your note."
"Yeah, but I've hired you," Eddie said.
"You didn't hire me to go Dumpster surfing."
"I hired you to find her. That's all I want. I just want you to find her."
He had two pagers clipped onto his spandex shorts. One of them beeped and displayed a message. He read the message and sighed. "Chicks," he said. "They never stop."
Right. It was probably from his mother.
He went to his car and made a couple of calls on his car phone. He finished the calls and came back to me. "Okay," he said, "it's all taken care of. All you have to do is stay here and wait for Carlos. I'd stay, but I got other things to do."
I watched him leave, then I turned and squinted beyond the lot. "Hey Maxine," I yelled. "You out there?" If it had been me I'd have wanted to see Kuntz slopping around in the garbage. "Listen," I said, "it was a good idea, but it didn't work out. How about you let me buy you a couple pieces of chicken?"
Maxine didn't come forward, so I sat in my car and waited for Carlos. After about twenty minutes a flatbed truck pulled into the lot and unloaded a backhoe. The flatbed driver fired up the backhoe, rolled it to the Dumpster and put the bucket under the bin's bottom edge. The Dumpster tipped in slow motion and then crashed to the pavement and lay there like a big dead dinosaur. Garbage bags hit the ground and burst, and a glass jar clinked onto the blacktop, rolled between the bags and came to rest a few feet from where I was standing. Someone had used a Magic Marker to write "clue" on the outside of the jar.
The backhoe driver looked over at me. "You Stephanie?"
I was staring, transfixed, at the Dumpster and the mess in front of me, and my heart was beating with a sickening thud. "Unh huh."
"You want me to spread this garbage around some more?"
"No!"
People were standing in the doorways and staring through the windows of Cluck in a Bucket. Two high school kids dressed in yellow-and-red Cluck uniforms ran across the lot to the backhoe.
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" one of the kids yelled.
"Hey, don't get your undies in a bunch," the driver said to the kid. "Life's too short." He motored the backhoe onto the flatbed, got behind the wheel, gave us a military salute and drove off. We all stood there, momentarily speechless.
The kid turned to me. "Do you know him?"
"Nope," I said. "Never saw him before in my life."
I WAS less than a mile from my apartment, so I grabbed the jar, jumped into my car and headed for home. All the way, I kept looking over my shoulder, half expecting to be tracked down like a dog by the garbage police.
I unlocked my door and called to Rex. "Another one of those days."
Rex was asleep in his soup can and made no response, so I went into the kitchen and made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I cracked open a beer and studied the new encrypted message while I ate. I looked for run-together words and extra letters, but it was all a big glob of nothing to me. Finally I gave up and called Sally. His phone rang three times and his machine kicked in. "Sally and Sugar aren't home, but they'd just loooooove to talk to you, so leave a message."
I left my name and number and went back to staring at the note. By three o'clock my eyes felt fried and there was no word from Sally, so I decided to go door-to-door to the seniors again. Mr. Kleinschmidt told me it wasn't a crossword. Lorraine told me it wasn't a jumble. Mr. Markowitz told me he was watching TV and didn't have time for such nonsense.
The light was blinking on my phone machine when I returned to my kitchen.
The first message was from Eddie Kuntz. "So where is she?" That was it. That was the whole message.
"What a moolack," I said to the answering machine.
The second message was from Ranger. "Call me."
Ranger is a man of few words. He's Cuban-American, former Special Forces, he makes a much better friend than an enemy, and he's Vinnie's numero uno bounty hunter. I dialed Ranger's number and waited to hear breathing. Sometimes that was all you got.
"Yo," Ranger said.
"Yo yourself."
"I need you to help me take down a skip."
This meant Ranger either needed a good laugh or else he needed a white female to use as a decoy. If Ranger needed serious muscle he wouldn't call me. Ranger knew people who would take on the Terminator for a pack of Camels and the promise of a fun time.
"I need to get an FTA out of a building, and I haven't got what it takes," Ranger said.
"And just exactly what is it that you're lacking?"
"Smooth white skin barely hidden behind a short skirt and tight sweater. Two days ago Sammy the Gimp bought the farm. He's laid out at Leoni's, and my man, Kenny Martin, is in there paying his respects."
"So why don't you just wait until he comes out?"
"He's in there with his mother and his sister and his Uncle Vito. My guess is they'll leave together, and I don't want to wade through the whole Grizolli family to get at this guy."
No kidding. The landfill was littered with the remains of people who tried to wade through Vito Grizolli.
"Actually, I had plans for tonight," I said. "They include living a little longer."
"I just want you to get my man out the back door. I'll take it from there."
I heard the disconnect, but I shouted into the phone anyway. "What are you freaking nuts?"
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I was dressed in four-inch FMPs (short for "fuck-me pumps," because when you walked around in them you looked like Whorehouse Wonder Bitch). I shimmied into a low-cut black knit dress that was bought with the intent of losing five pounds, gunked up my eyes with a lot of black mascara and beefed up my cleavage by stuffing Nerf balls into my bra.
Ranger was parked on Roebling, half a block from the funeral home. He didn't turn when I pulled to the curb, but I saw his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.
He was smiling when I slid in beside him. "Nice dress you're almost wearing. You ever think about changing professions?"
"Constantly. I'm thinking about it now."
Ranger handed me a photo. "Kenny Martin. Age twenty-two. Minor league loser. Charged with armed robbery." He glanced at the black leather bag I had draped on my shoulder. "You carrying?"
"Yes."
"Is it loaded?"
I stuck my hand in the bag and rooted around. "I'm not sure, but I think I've got a few bullets in here somewhere . . ."
"Cuffs?"
"I definitely have cuffs."
"Defense spray?"
"Yep. Got defense spray."
"Go get 'em, tiger."
I sashayed across the street and up the steps to Leoni's. A small knot of old Italian men stood smoking on the front porch. Conversation stopped when I approached, and the group parted to let me pass. There were more people in the vestibule. None of them was Kenny Martin. I went to room one, where Sammy the Gimp was on display, resting nicely in an ornate mahogany casket. There were lots of flowers and lots of old Italian women. No one seemed to be too upset about Sammy's demise. No heavily sedated widow. No wailing mother. No Kenny.
I said goodbye to Sammy and tottered down the hall in my heels. There was a small foyer at the end of the hall. The foyer opened to the back door, and Kenny Martin was standing in front of the door, sneaking a smoke. Beyond the door was a covered driveway, and somewhere beyond the driveway was Ranger.
I leaned against the wall across from Kenny and smiled. "Hi."
His eyes fixed onto my Nerf balls. "Are you here to see Sammy?"
I shook my head no. "Mrs. Kowalski in room two."
"You don't look all broke up."
I shrugged.
"If you was all broke up I could comfort you. I got lots of ways to comfort a woman."
I raised an eyebrow. "Hmm?"
He was 5'10" and a solid 190 pounds. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and white shirt with the top button popped open.
"What's your pleasure, dollie?" he asked.
I looked him up and down and smiled as if I liked what I saw. "What's your name?"
"Kenny. Kenny 'the Man' Martin."
Kenny the Man. Unh! Mental head slap. I extended my hand. "Stephanie."
In lieu of a handshake he laced his fingers into mine and stepped closer. "Pretty name."
"I was going outside for some fresh air. Want to join me?"
"Yeah, sure. Nothing in here but dead people. Even the people who are alive are dead, you know what I mean?"
A little girl ran down the hall to us. "Kenny, Mama says we have to go now."
"Tell her I'll be there in a minute."
"She said I'm supposed to bring you now!"
Kenny did palms-up. A gesture of the futility of arguing. Everyone knows you never win against an Italian mother. "Maybe I could call you sometime?" Kenny said to me. "Maybe we could get together later."
Never underestimate the power of a Nerf ball. "Sure. Why don't we go outside, and I'll write down my number. I really need some air."
"Now!" the kid yelled.
Kenny made a lunge at the kid, and she whirled and ran back to Mama, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
"I gotta go," Kenny said.
"One second. I'll give you my business card." I had my head in my bag, scrounging for my defense spray. If I couldn't get him to walk through the door, I'd give him a shot of spray and drag him out.
I heard more footsteps on the carpet and looked up to find a woman striding toward us. She was slim and pretty with short blond hair. She was wearing a gray suit and heels, and her expression turned serious when she saw me with Kenny.
"Now I see the problem," she said to Kenny. "Your mother sent me to fetch you, but it looks like you've got a complication here."
"No complication," Kenny said. "Just tell her to keep her shirt on."
"Oh yeah," the woman said. "I'm going to tell your mother to keep her shirt on. That's like a death wish." She looked to me, and then she looked to Kenny, and then she smiled. "You don't know, do you?" she asked Kenny.
I was still searching for the spray. Hair brush, flashlight, travel pack of tampons. Damn it, where was the spray?
"Know what?" Kenny said. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't you ever read the paper? This is Stephanie Plum. She blew up the funeral home last year. She's a bounty hunter."
"You're shitting me!"
Oh boy.
KENNY GAVE ME a shot to the shoulder that knocked me back a couple of feet. "Is that true, what Terry said? Are you a bounty hunter?"
"Hey!" I said. "Keep your hands off me."
He gave me another whack that had me against the wall. "Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to mess with Kenny."
"Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to jump bail." I had my hand in my bag, and I couldn't find the lousy defense spray, so I hauled out a can of extra-hold hair spray and let him have it square in the face.
"Yeow," Kenny yelped, jumping back, hands to his face. "You bitch, I'll get you for this. I'll . . ." He took his hands away. "Hey, wait a minute. What is this shit?"
Terry's smile widened. "You've been hair-sprayed, Kenny."
The little girl and an older woman hustled down the hall.
"What's going on?" the woman wanted to know.
An old man appeared. Vito Grizolli, looking like he'd walked off the set of The Godfather.
"Kenny's been hair-sprayed," Terry told everyone. "He put up a pretty good fight, but he just didn't have the muscle to stand up to extra hold."
The mother turned on me. "You did this to my boy?"
I tried not to sigh, but one escaped anyway. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. "I'm a bond enforcement officer," I told her. "I work for Vincent Plum. Your son failed to appear in court, and now I need to bring him in to reschedule and have his case reviewed."
Mrs. Martin sucked in air and faced-off at Kenny. "You did that? You didn't go to court? What's the matter with you? Don't you know anything?"
"It's all bullshit," Kenny said.
Mrs. Martin smacked him on the side of the head. "You watch your language!"
"And how is this to dress?" she said to me. "If you were my daughter I wouldn't let you out of the house."
I scrambled away before she could smack me, too.
"Kids," Vito Grizolli said. "What's happening to this world?"
From a man who had people killed on a regular basis.
He shook his finger at Kenny. "You should have kept your court date. You do this like a man. You go with her now, and you let the lawyers do their job."
"I got hair spray in my eye," Kenny said. "It's watering. I need a doctor."
I held the back door open for him. "Don't be such a big baby," I said. "I get hair spray in my eyes all the time."
Ranger was waiting under the canopy. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and black assault pants tucked into black boots. He had a body like Schwarzenegger, dark hair slicked back off his face and a two-hundred-watt smile. He was drop-dead sexy, he was as sane as Batman, and he was a primo bounty hunter.
He gave me all two hundred watts. "Nice touch with the hair spray."
"Don't start."
MONDAY MORNING I woke up feeling restless. I wanted to move on Maxine Nowicki, but I was stalled on the clue. I looked at the note again and felt frustration gnawing at me. Sally Sweet hadn't returned my call. I was itching to call him again, but it was eight o'clock, and I thought it was possible drag queens weren't early risers.
I was on my second cup of coffee when the phone rang.
"It's me," Sally said.
I read the note over the phone, letter by letter.
Silence.
"Sally?"
"I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I've been up all night, looking sexy, shaking my ass. It isn't easy, you know."
I could hear yelling in the background. "What's going on?"
"It's Sugar. He's got breakfast all made."
"Sugar makes your breakfast?"
"I'm on the phone with Stephanie," Sally yelled back.
"Boy, I don't have anyone make breakfast for me."
"What you have to do is live with a gay guy," Sally said. "They're into this cooking shit."
Something to think about.
"I don't want to rush your breakfast," I said. "I'll be home for another hour, then I'm going to the office. When you figure it out you can call me at the office, or you can leave a message on my machine."
"Ten four, kemosabe."
I took a shower and dressed for another scorcher day. I gave Rex fresh water and some hamster food, which he didn't deem worthy to so much as sniff at.
I slung my black leather tote over my shoulder, locked up and took the stairs to the lobby. Outside, the blacktop was steaming, and the sun was beginning to throb in a murky sky. I played Savage Garden all the way to the office and arrived psyched because I'd had good traffic karma, sailing through the lights.
Connie was bent over a file when I walked in. Her black hair was teased high around her face like a movie set that was all facade. Everything up front and nothing in the back. Killer hair as long as she didn't turn around.
"If you want to talk to the man, he isn't in," she said.
Lula popped up from behind a bank of file cabinets. "He's doin' a nooner with a goat today. I saw it on his calendar."
"So how's it going?" Connie asked. "Any action on the Nowicki thing?"
I passed a copy of the note to Connie and Lula. "I have a message from her that's written in some kind of code."
"Lose me," Lula said. "Code isn't one of my specialties."
Connie sunk two teeth into a heavily lipsticked lower lip. "Maybe the numbers are really letters."
"I thought of that, but I couldn't get it to work."
We all stared at the note for a while.
"Might not mean anything," Lula finally said. "Might be a joke."
I nodded. Joke note was a possibility.
"I helped Ranger with an apprehension yesterday," I said. "Kenny Martin."
Connie gave a low laugh. "Vito Grizolli's nephew? Bet that was fun."
"There was a woman with him that I can't place. I know I've seen her before, but it keeps slipping away from me."
"What'd she look like?"
"Slim, pretty, short blond hair. He called her Terry."
"Terry Gilman," Connie said. "Used to be Terry Grizolli. Was married to Billy Gilman for about six hours and kept his name."
"Terry Grizolli! That was Terry Grizolli?" Terry Grizolli was two years older than me and had been linked with Joe Morelli all through high school. She'd been voted prom queen and had created a school scandal by choosing Joe as her escort. After graduation, she'd gone on to become a professional cheerleader for the New York Giants. "I haven't seen her in years," I said. "What's she doing now? Is she still a cheerleader?"
"Rumor has it she's working for Vito. She has a lot of money and no discernible job."
"You telling me she's like a wise guy?"
"Affirmative action," Connie said.
The front door opened, and we all turned to look. Lula was the first to find her voice. "Killer earring."
It was a parrot swinging on a gold hoop that was looped through one of Sally's ears.
"Got it at the shore," he said. "You buy a pair of thong briefs and they throw in the earring." He made a grab at his ass and hiked himself up. "Christ, I don't know how they wear these thong things. They're giving me hemorrhoids."
He was minus the Farrah wig, and his own hair was a mess of dark brown corkscrew strands. Sort of Rasta without the dreds. He was wearing cut-off denims, a white T-shirt, red clogs and was freshly manicured with silver polish.
"This is Sally Sweet," I told Connie and Lula.
"I bet," Lula said.
Sally handed me the translation of the coded message and looked around. "I thought there'd be wanted posters on the walls and gun racks filled with shotguns."
"This isn't Dodge City," Lula said. "We got some class here. We keep the guns in the back room with the pervert."
I read the note. " 'One-thirty-two Howser Street. Under the bench.' That's Maxine's mother's address."
Sally slouched onto the couch. "When I was a kid I watched reruns of Steve McQueen. Now he was a bounty hunter."
"Damn skippy," Lula said. "He was the shit."
"So now what?" Sally wanted to know. "We going to Howser Street?"
Foreboding sliced into my stomach. We?
Lula slammed her file drawer shut. "Hold on. You're not going off without me! Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"
I like Lula a lot, but last time we worked together I gained seven pounds and almost got arrested for shooting a guy who was already dead.
"I'm going to Howser Street," I said. "Only me. One person. Steve McQueen worked alone."
"I don't mean to be insulting," Lula said, "but you ain't no Steve McQueen. And something happens you'll be happy I'm around. Besides, this'll be fun . . . the two of us working on a case together again."
"Three of us," Sally said. "I'm going, too."
"Oh boy," Lula said. "The three muffkateers."
LULA GAVE THE NOWICKI HOUSE the once-over. "Don't appear like Maxine's mama spends much time spiffing up the old homestead."
We were in Lula's Firebird with Sally in the backseat doing air guitar to Lula's rap music. Lula cut the engine, the music stopped, and Sally snapped to attention.
"Looks kind of spooky," Sally said. "You guys have guns, right?"
"Wrong," I said. "We don't need guns to retrieve a clue."
"Well, this is fucking disappointing. I figured you'd kick the door down and blast yourselves into the house. You know, rough up some people."
"You want to cut down on the breakfast drugs," Lula said to Sally. "You keep going like this all your nose hairs are gonna fall out."
I unbuckled my seat belt. "There's a little wooden bench on the front porch. With any luck, we won't have to go in the house."
We crossed the patchy lawn, and Lula tested the bottom porch step, pausing when it groaned under her weight. She moved to the next step and picked her way around floorboards that were obviously rotted.
Sally tiptoed behind her. Clonk, clonk, clonk with his clogs. Not exactly the stealth transvestite.
They each took an end of the bench and flipped it over.
No note stuck to the bottom.
"Maybe it blew away," Lula said.
There wasn't a stray breath of air in all of Jersey, but we checked the surroundings anyway, the three of us fanning out, covering the yard.
No note.
"Hunh," Lula said. "We been given the runaround."
There was a crawl space under the porch, enclosed with wooden lattice. I dropped to hands and knees and squinted through the lattice. "The note said 'under the bench.' It could have meant under the porch, under the bench." I jogged to the car and retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment. I returned to the porch, scrunched low and flashed the beam around the dirt floor. Sure enough, there was a glass jar directly under the part of the porch that supported the bench.
Two yellow eyes caught in the light, held for a second, and skittered away.
"Do you see it?" Lula wanted to know.
"Yep."
"Well?"
"There are eyes under there. Little beady yellow ones. And spiders. Lots of spiders."
Lula gave an involuntary shiver.
Sally made another adjustment on his thong.
"I'd go get it, but a big woman like me wouldn't fit," Lula said. "Sure is a shame it isn't just a little roomier."
"I think you'd fit."
"Nope, unh ah, I know I wouldn't fit."
I considered the spiders. "I might not fit, either."
"I'd fit," Sally said, "but I'm not doing it. I paid twenty bucks for this manicure, and I'm not fucking it up crawling under some rat-infested porch."
I hunkered down for another look. "Maybe we can stick a rake in there and pull the jar out."
"Nuh ah," Lula said. "A rake isn't gonna be big enough. You gotta go in from the end here, and it's too far away. Where you gonna get a rake anyway?"
"We can ask Mrs. Nowicki."
"Oh yeah," Lula said. "From the looks of this lawn she does lots of gardening." Lula stood on tiptoes and looked in a window on the side of the house. "Probably not even home. Seems like she'd be out by now what with us up on her porch and all." Lula moved to another window and pressed her nose to the glass. "Uh oh."
"What uh oh?" I hated uh oh.
"You'd better look at this."
Sally and I trotted over and pressed our noses to the glass.
Mrs. Nowicki was stretched out on the kitchen floor. She had a bloody towel wrapped around the top of her head, and an empty bottle of Jim Beam was on the floor beside her. She was wearing a cotton nightgown, and her bare feet were splayed toes out.
"Looks to me like dead city," Lula said. "You want a rake, you better get it yourself."
I knocked on the window. "Mrs. Nowicki!"
Mrs. Nowicki didn't move a muscle.
"Think this must have just happened," Lula said. "If she'd laid there for any amount of time in this heat she'd be swelled up big as a beach ball. She'd have burst apart. There'd be guts and maggots all over the place."
"I hate to miss seeing the guts and maggots," Sally said. "Maybe we should come back in a couple hours."
I turned from the window and headed for the car. "We need to call the police."
Lula was on my heels. "Hold the phone on the we part. Those police people give me the hives."
"You're not a hooker anymore. You don't have to worry about the police."
"One of them traumatic emotional things," Lula said.
Ten minutes later, two blue-and-whites angled to the curb behind me. Carl Costanza emerged from the first car, looked at me and shook his head. I'd known Carl since grade school. He was always the skinny kid with the bad haircut and wise mouth. He'd bulked up some in the last few years, and he'd found a good barber. He still had the wise mouth, but under it all, he was a decent person and a pretty good cop.
"Another dead body?" Carl asked. "What are you going for, a record? Most bodies found by an individual in the city of Trenton?"
"She's on the kitchen floor. We haven't been in the house. The door is locked."
"How do you know she's on the floor if the door is locked?"
"I was sort of looking in the window, and . . ."
Carl held up his hand. "Don't tell me. I don't want to hear this. Sorry I asked."
The cop in the second car had gone to the side window and was standing there, hands on gun belt. "She's on the floor all right," he said, peering in. He rapped on the window. "Hey, lady!" He turned to us and narrowed his eyes against the sun. "Looks dead to me."
Carl went to the front door and knocked. "Mrs. Nowicki? It's the police." He knocked louder. "Mrs. Nowicki, we're coming in." He gave the door a good shot with his fist, the rotted molding splintered off, and the door swung open.
I followed Carl into the kitchen and watched while he stooped over Mrs. Nowicki, feeling for a pulse, looking for a sign of life.
There were more bloody towels in the sink and a bloody paring knife on the counter. My first thought had been gunshot, but there were no guns in sight and no sign of struggle.
"You better call this in for the ME," Carl said to the second cop. "I don't know exactly what we've got here."
Sally and Lula had taken positions against the wall.
"What do you think?" Lula asked Carl.
Carl shrugged. "Nothing much. She looks pretty dead."
Lula nodded. "That what I thought, too. Soon as I saw her I said to myself, Hell, that woman's dead."
The second cop disappeared to make the call, and Lula inched closer to Mrs. Nowicki. "What do you think happened to her? I bet she fell and hit her head, and then she wrapped her head in a towel and croaked."
That sounded reasonable to me . . . except for the paring knife with blood and pieces of hair stuck to it.
Lula bent at the waist and examined the towel, wrapped turban style. "Must have been a good clonk she took. Lots of blood."
Usually when people die their bodies evacuate and the smell gets bad fast. Mrs. Nowicki didn't smell dead. Mrs. Nowicki smelled like Jim Beam.
Carl and I were both registering this oddity, looking at each other sideways when Mrs. Nowicki opened one eye and fixed it on Lula.
"YOW!" Lula yelled, jumping back a foot, knocking into Sally. "Her eye popped open!"
"The better to see you with," Mrs. Nowicki rasped out, alto voiced, one pack short of lung cancer.
Carl stepped into Mrs. Nowicki's line of sight. "We thought you were dead."
"Not yet, honey," Mrs. Nowicki said. "But I'll tell you, I have one hell of a headache." She raised a shaky hand and felt the towel. "Oh, yeah, now I remember."
"What happened?"
"It was an accident. I was trying to cut my hair, and my hand slipped, and I gave myself a little nick. It was bleeding some, so I wrapped my head in a towel and took a few medicinal hits from the bottle." She struggled to sit. "Don't exactly know what happened after that."
Lula had her hand on her hip. "Looks to me like you drained the bottle and passed out. Think you took one too many of them medicinal hits."
"Looks to me like she didn't take enough," Sally murmured. "I liked her better dead."
"I need a cigarette," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Anybody got a cigarette?"
I could hear cars pulling up outside and footsteps in the front room. The second uniform came in, followed by a suit.
"She isn't dead," Carl explained.
"Maybe she used to be," Lula said. "Maybe she's one of them living dead."
"Maybe you're one of them nut cases," Mrs. Nowicki said.
Lights from an EMS truck flashed outside, and two paramedics wandered into the kitchen.
I eased my way out the door, to the porch and onto the lawn. I didn't especially want to be there when they unwound the towel.
"I don't know about you," Lula said, "but I'm ready to leave this party."
I didn't have a problem with that. Carl knew where to find me if there were questions. Didn't look like there was anything criminal here, anyway. Drunken lush slices scalp with a paring knife and passes out. Probably happens all the time.
We piled into the Firebird and hauled ass back to the office. I said goodbye to Lula and Sally, slid behind the wheel of my CRX and motored home. When things calmed down I'd go back with some sort of longhandled mechanism for retrieving the bottle. I didn't want to explain to the cops about the clues.
In the meantime, there were a few phone calls I could make. I'd only gotten partially through Eddie Kuntz's list. It wouldn't hurt to run through the rest of the names.
Mrs. Williams, one of my neighbors, was in the lobby when I swung through the doors. "I've got a terrible ringing in my ears," she said. "And I'm having a dizzy spell."
Another neighbor, Mrs. Balog, was standing next to Mrs. Williams, checking her mailbox. "It's the hardening of the arteries. Evelyn Krutchka on the third floor has it something awful. I heard her arteries are just about turned to stone."
Most of the people in my building were seniors. There were a couple of single mothers with babies, Ernie Wall and his girlfriend, May, and one other woman my age, who only spoke Spanish. We were the segment of society on fixed incomes or incomes of dubious reliability. We weren't interested in tennis or sitting at poolside. For the most part we were a quiet, peaceful group, armed to the teeth for no good reason, violent only when a premium parking slot was at stake.
I took the stairs to the second floor, hoping they'd have some effect on the pie I'd had for breakfast. I let myself into my apartment and made an instant left turn into the kitchen. I stuck my head in the refrigerator and pushed things around some, searching for the perfect lunch. After a few minutes of this I decided on a hard-boiled egg and a banana.
I sat at my dining room table, which is actually in a little alcove off my living room, and I ate my egg and started on the list of names and businesses Kuntz had given me. I dialed Maxine's cleaner first. No, they hadn't seen her lately. No, she didn't have any clothes to pick up. I called my cousin Marion, who worked at Maxine's bank, and asked about recent transactions. No new postings, Marion said. The most recent transaction was two weeks ago when she withdrew three hundred dollars from the outside ATM.
Last name on the list was a 7-Eleven in north Trenton, a quarter mile from Eddie Kuntz and Mama Nowicki. The night manager had just come on when I called. She said a woman meeting Maxine's description had been in the night before. She remembered the woman because she was a regular. It had been late at night and store traffic had been slow. The woman had been chatty and had relieved the tedium.
I stuffed Maxine's photo into my shoulder bag and took off for the 7-Eleven to confirm the identification. I parked nose-in to the curb at the front of the store and stared beyond the plate glass windows to the register. There were four men in line. Three still in suits, looking rumpled from the heat and the workday. By the time I made my way through the door, there were two men left. I waited for them to complete their business before introducing myself to the woman behind the counter.
She extended her hand. "Helen Badijian. I'm the night manager. We spoke on the phone."
Her brown hair was plaited in a single braid that reached to her shoulder blades, and her face was devoid of makeup with the exception of eyes lined in smudgy black liner. "I didn't get it straight on the phone," Helen said. "Are you with the police?"
I usually try to avoid answering that question directly. "Bond enforcement," I said, leaving Helen to believe whatever. Not that I would lie about police affiliation. Imitating a police officer isn't smart. Still, if someone misunderstood because they weren't paying attention . . . that wasn't my problem.
Helen looked at Maxine's photo and nodded her head. "Yep, that's her. Only she's a lot more tan now."
So I knew two things. Maxine was alive, and she had time to sit in the sun.
"She bought a couple packs of cigarettes," Helen said. "Menthol. And a large Coke. Said she had a long drive ahead of her. I asked her if she was going to buy a lottery ticket because that's what she always did . . . bought a ticket every week. She said no. Said she didn't need to win the lottery anymore."
"Anything else?"
"That was it."
"You notice the car she was driving?"
"Sorry. I didn't notice."
I left my card and asked Helen to call if Maxine returned. I expected the card would go in the trash the moment I pulled out of the lot, but I left one anyway. For the most part, people would talk to me when confronted face-to-face but were unwilling to take a more aggressive step like initiating a phone call. Initiating a phone call felt like snitching, and snitching wasn't cool.
I rolled out of the lot and drove past the hot spots . . . Margie's house, Maxine's apartment, Kuntz's house, Mama Nowicki's house and the diner. Nothing seemed suspicious. I was itching to get the next clue, but there were people out on Howser Street. Mrs. Nowicki's neighbor was watering his lawn. A couple of kids were doing curb jumps on skateboards. Better to wait until dark, I thought. Two more hours and the sun would go down and everyone would move inside. Then I could skulk around in the shadows and, I hoped, not have to answer any questions.
I returned to my apartment and found Joe Morelli sitting on the floor in my hall, back to the wall, long legs stretched in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He had a brown paper bag next to him, and the entire hall smelled like meatballs and marinara.
I gave him the silent question look.
"Stopped by to say hello," Morelli said, getting to his feet.
My gaze dropped to the bag.
Morelli grinned. "Dinner."
"Smells good."
"Meatball subs from Pino's. They're still hot. I just got here."
Ordinarily I wouldn't let Morelli into my apartment, but it would be a sin against everything holy to turn away Pino's meatballs.
I unlocked the door, and Morelli followed me in. I dumped my shoulder bag on the small hall table and swung into the kitchen. I took two plates from the wall cabinet and set them on the counter. "I'm having a hard time believing this is entirely social."
"Maybe not entirely," Morelli said, close enough for me to feel his breath on the back of my neck. "I thought you might want a medical update on Maxine Nowicki's mother."
I put the subs on plates and divided up the tub of coleslaw. "Is it going to ruin my appetite?"
Morelli moved off to the fridge in search of beer. "She was scalped. Like in the old cowboy and Indian movies. Only in this case, not enough was removed to kill her."
"That's sick! Who would do such a thing?"
"Good question. Nowicki isn't saying."
I took the plates to the table. "What about prints on the knife?"
"None."
"Not even Mrs. Nowicki's?"
"Correct. Not even Mrs. Nowicki's."
I ate my sub and thought about this latest turn of events. Scalped. Yuk.
"You're looking for her daughter," Morelli said. Statement, not question.
"Yep."
"Think there could be a tie-in?"
"Two days ago I interviewed one of Maxine's friends from the diner. She had a big bandage on her hand. Said she'd whacked her finger off in a kitchen accident."
"What's this friend's name?"
"Margie something. Lives on Barnet. Works the dinner shift at the Silver Dollar."
"Any other mutilations I should know about?"
I tried some of the coleslaw. "Nope. That's it. It's been a slow week."
Morelli watched me. "You're holding something back."
"What makes you say that?"
"I can tell."
"You can tell nothing."
"You're still mad at me for not calling."
"I am not mad!" I slammed my fist down on the table, making my beer bottle jump in place.
"I meant to call," Morelli said.
I stood and gathered the empty plates and the silverware. CRASH, clang, clang! "You are a dysfunctional human being."
"Oh yeah? Well, you're fucking frightening."
"Are you saying you're afraid of me?"
"Any man in his right mind would be afraid of you. You know that scarlet letter thing? You should have a tattoo on your forehead that says 'Dangerous Woman. Stand Back!' "
I stormed into the kitchen and slapped the dishes onto the countertop. "I happen to be a very nice person." I turned on him and narrowed my eyes. "What's so dangerous about me?"
"Lots of things. You have that look. Like you want to pick out kitchen curtains."
"I do not have that look!" I shouted. "And if I did it would not be for your kitchen curtains!"
Morelli backed me into the refrigerator. "And then there's the way you make my heart beat fast when you get excited like this." He leaned into me and kissed the curve of my ear. "And your hair . . . I love your hair." He kissed me again. "Dangerous hair, babe."
Oh boy.
His hands were at my waist and his knee slid between mine. "Dangerous body." His lips skimmed my mouth. "Dangerous lips."
This wasn't supposed to be happening. I had decided against this. "Listen, Morelli, I appreciate the meatball sub and all, but . . ."
"Shut-up, Stephanie."
And then he kissed me. His tongue touched mine, and I thought, Well, what the hell, maybe I am dangerous. Maybe this isn't such a bad idea. After all, there was a time when I'd wanted nothing more than a Morelli-induced orgasm. Well, here was my chance. It wasn't as if we were strangers. It wasn't as if I didn't deserve it.
"Maybe we should go into the bedroom," I said. Get away from sharp knives in case something goes wrong and I'm tempted to stab him.
Morelli was wearing jeans with a navy T-shirt. Under the drape of the T-shirt he was wearing a pager and a .38. He unclipped his pager and put it in the refrigerator. He threw the bolt on the front door and kicked his shoes off in the hall.
"What about the gun?" I asked.
"The gun stays. Nothing's stopping me this time. You change your mind, and I'll shoot you."
"Um, there's the issue of safety."
He had his hand on his zipper. "Okay, I'll leave it on the nightstand."
"I wasn't talking about the gun."
Morelli stopped the progress of the zipper. "You're not on the pill?"
"No." I didn't think sex once a millennium warranted it.
"What about . . ."
"I haven't got any of them, either."
"Shit," Morelli said.
"Nothing in your wallet?"
"You're going to find this hard to believe, but cops aren't required to carry emergency condoms."
"Yes, but . . ."
"I'm not eighteen years old. I no longer score with nine out of ten women I meet."
That was encouraging. "I don't suppose you'd want to tell me the current ratio?"
"Right now, it's zero for zero."
"We could try a plastic sandwich bag."
Morelli grinned. "You want me bad."
"Temporary insanity."
The grin widened. "I don't think so. You've wanted me for years. You've never gotten over having me touch you when you were six."
I felt my mouth drop open and instantly closed it with a snap, leaning forward, hands fisted to keep from strangling him. "You are such a jerk!"
"I know," Morelli said. "It's genetic. Good thing I'm so cute." Morelli was many things. Cute wasn't one of them. Cocker spaniels were cute. Baby shoes were cute. Morelli wasn't cute. Morelli could look at water and make it boil. Cute was much too mild an adjective to describe Morelli.
He reached out and tugged at my hair. "I'd run to the store, but I'm guessing your door would be locked when I got back."
"It's a good possibility."
"Well, then I guess there's only one thing to do."
I braced myself.
MORELLI PADDED into the living room and picked up the channel changer. "We can watch the ball game. The Yankees are playing. You got any ice cream?"
It took me a full sixty seconds to find my voice. "Raspberry Popsicles."
"Perfect."
I'd been replaced by a raspberry Popsicle, and Morelli didn't look all that unhappy. I, on the other hand, wanted to smash something. Morelli was right . . . I wanted him bad. He might have been right about the curtains too, but I didn't want to dwell on the curtains. Lust I could manage, but the very thought of wanting a relationship with Morelli made my blood run cold.
I handed him his Popsicle and sat in the overstuffed armchair, not trusting myself to share the couch, half afraid I'd go after his leg like a dog in heat.
Around nine-thirty I started looking at my watch. I was thinking about the clue under Mrs. Nowicki's porch, and I was wondering how I was going to get it. I could borrow a rake from my parents. Then I could extend the handle with something. I'd probably have to use a flashlight, and I'd have to work fast because people were bound to see the light. If I waited until two in the morning the chances of someone being up to see me were greatly reduced. On the other hand, a flashlight beam at two in the morning was much more suspicious than a flashlight beam at ten at night.
"Okay," Morelli said, "what's going on? Why do you keep looking at your watch?"
I yawned and stretched. "Getting late."
"It's nine-thirty."
"I go to bed early."
Morelli made tsk, tsk, tsk sounds. "You shouldn't fib to a cop."
"I have things to do."
"What sort of things?"
"Nothing special. Just . . . things."
There was a knock at the door, and we both glanced in the direction of the sound.
Morelli looked at me speculatively. "You expecting someone?"
"It's probably old Mrs. Bestler from the third floor. Sometimes she forgets where she lives." I put my eye to the security peephole. "Nope. Not Mrs. Bestler." Mrs. Bestler didn't have big red hair like Little Orphan Annie. Mrs. Bestler didn't wear skin-tight black leather. Mrs. Bestler's breasts weren't in the shape of icecream cones.
I turned back to Morelli. "I don't suppose I could get you to wait in the bedroom for a moment or two . . ."
"Not on your life," Morelli said. "I wouldn't miss this for anything."
I threw the bolt and opened the door.
"I don't know why I'm doing this," Sally said. "I'm like sucked into this bounty hunter trip."
"The excitement of the chase," I said.
"Yeah. That's it. It's the fucking chase." He held a jar out to me. "I went back and got the clue. Borrowed one of those longhandled duster things. I decoded the note, but I don't know what it means."
"Weren't there people around, wondering what you were doing?"
"When you look like this nobody asks. They're all happy as shit I'm not close-dancing on their front lawn with Uncle Fred." He lifted his chin a fraction of an inch and gave Joe the once-over. "Who's this?"
"This is Joe Morelli. He was just leaving."
"No I wasn't," Morelli said.
Sally stepped forward. "If she says you're leaving then I think you're leaving."
Morelli rocked back on his heels and grinned. "You gonna make me?"
"You think I can't?"
"I think somebody should help you pick out a bra. This year the rounded look is in."
Sally looked down at his icecream cones. "They're my trademark. I'm making a fucking fortune off these babies." He looked up and sucker-punched Morelli in the gut.
"Oof," Morelli said. Then he narrowed his eyes and lunged at Sally.
"No!" I yelped, jumping between them.
There was some close-in scuffling. I got clipped on the chin and went down like a sack of sand. Both men stooped to pick me up.
"Back off," I yelled, slapping them away. "Don't either of you touch me. I don't need help from you two infantile morons."
"He insulted my breasts," Sally said.
"That's what happens when you have breasts," I shouted. "People insult them. Get used to it."
Joe glared at Sally. "Who are you? And what's with this jar?"
Sally extended his hand. "Sally Sweet."
Joe took the offered hand. "Joe Morelli."
They stood like that for a moment or two, and I saw a red flush begin to creep into Sally's cheeks. The cords in Morelli's neck grew prominent. Their hands remained clasped and their bodies jerked in rigid struggle. The morons were arm wrestling.
"That does it," I said. "I'm getting my gun. And I'm going to shoot the winner."
Eyes slid in my direction.
"Actually, I've gotta run," Sally said. "I've got a gig at the shore tonight, and Sugar's waiting in the car."
"He's a musician," I told Morelli.
Morelli took a step backward. "It's always a treat to meet Stephanie's friends."
"Yeah," Sally said, "my fucking pleasure."
Morelli was grinning when I closed and locked the door. "You never disappoint me," he said.
"What was that wrestling match about?"
"We were playing." He glanced down at the jar. "Tell me about this."
"Maxine Nowicki has been leaving clues for Eddie Kuntz. Sort of a revenge-driven scavenger hunt. The clues are always in code. That's where Sally comes in. He's good at cracking codes." I opened the jar, removed the paper and read the message. " 'Our spot. Wednesday at three.' "
"They have a spot," Morelli said. "Makes me feel all romantic again. Maybe I should make a fast run to the drugstore."
"Suppose you went to the drugstore. How many would you buy? Would you buy one? Would you buy a month's worth? Would you buy a whole case?"
"Oh boy," Morelli said. "This is about curtains, isn't it?"
"Just want to get the rules straight."
"How about we live one day at a time."
"One day at a time is okay," I said. I suppose.
"So if I go to the drugstore you'll let me back in?"
"No. I'm not in the mood." In fact, I was suddenly feeling damn cranky. And for some unknown reason the image of Terry Gilman kept popping up in my mind.
Morelli ran a playful finger along my jawbone. "Bet I could change your mood."
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at him slitty eyed. "I don't think so."
"Hmmm," Morelli said, "maybe not." He stretched, and then he sauntered into the kitchen and retrieved his pager from the refrigerator. "You're in a bad mood because I wouldn't commit to a case."
"Am not! I absolutely would not want a case commitment!"
"You're cute when you lie."
I pointed stiff-armed to the door. "Out!"
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I could have called Eddie Kuntz and told him the newest message, but I wanted to talk to him face-to-face. Maxine Nowicki's apartment had been ransacked, and two people connected to her had been mutilated. I was thinking maybe someone wanted to find her for something other than love letters. And maybe that someone was Eddie Kuntz.
Kuntz was washing his car when I drove up. He had a boom box on the curb, and he was listening to shock jock radio. He stopped when he saw me and shut the radio off.
"You find her?"
I gave him the note with the translation. "I found another message."
He read the message and made a disgusted sound. " 'Our spot,' " he said. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You didn't know you had a spot?"
"We had lots of spots. How am I supposed to know which spot she's talking about?"
"Think about it."
Eddie Kuntz stared at me, and I thought I caught a hint of rubber burning.
"She's probably talking about the bench," he said. "The first time we met was in the park, and she was sitting on a bench, looking at the water. She was always talking about that bench like it was some kind of shrine or something."
"Go figure."
Kuntz gave me a hands-up. "Women."
A Lincoln Town Car eased to the curb. Navy exterior, tinted windows, half a block long.
"Aunt Betty and Uncle Leo," Eddie said.
"Big car."
"Yeah. I borrow it sometimes to pick up a few extra bucks."
I wasn't sure if he meant driving people around or running people over. "I have your occupation listed as cook, but you seem to be home a lot."
"That's because I'm between jobs."
"When was your last job as a cook?"
"I dunno. This morning. I toasted a waffle. What's it to you?"
"Curious."
"Try being curious about Maxine."
Aunt Betty and Uncle Leo walked up to us.
"Hello," Aunt Betty said. "Are you Eddie's new girlfriend?"
"Acquaintance," I told her.
"Well, I hope you turn into a girlfriend. You're Italian, right?"
"Half Italian. Half Hungarian."
"Well, nobody's perfect," she said. "Come in and have some cake. I got a nice pound cake at the bakery."
"Gonna be another scorcher today," Uncle Leo said. "Good thing we got air."
"You got air," Kuntz said. "My half doesn't have air. My half's hotter'n hell."
"I gotta get in," Uncle Leo said. "This heat is murder."
"Don't forget about the cake," Betty said, following Leo up the steps. "There's cake any time you want it."
"So you're doing other stuff to find Maxine, right?" Kuntz asked. "I mean, you're not just waiting for these clues, are you?"
"I've been going through the list of names and businesses you gave me. The manager of the Seven-Eleven said Maxine stopped by Sunday night. So far, no one else has seen her."
"Christ, she's here all the time leaving these stupid clues. Why doesn't someone see her? What is she, the freaking Phantom?"
"The manager of the Seven-Eleven said something that stuck in my mind. She said Maxine always used to buy a lottery ticket, but this time she said she didn't need to win the lottery anymore."
The line of Kuntz's mouth tightened. "Maxine's a lunatic. Who knows what she's thinking."
I suspected Eddie Kuntz knew exactly what Maxine was thinking.
"You need to be on that bench tomorrow at three," I told Kuntz. "I'll call you in the morning and make the final arrangements."
"I don't know if I like this. She pitched a rock into my window. There's no telling what she might do. Suppose she wants to snuff me?"
"Throwing a rock through a window doesn't equate with killing someone." I stared at him for a moment. "Does she have a reason for wanting to kill you?"
"I pressed charges against her. Is that a reason?"
"It wouldn't be for me." This loser wasn't worth doing time for. "Hard to say about Maxine."
I LEFT KUNTZ fiddling with his boom box. I'm not sure why I'd felt compelled to see him in person. I suppose I wanted to look him in the eye and learn if he'd scalped Maxine's mother. Unfortunately, in my experience, eyes are vastly overrated as pathways to the soul. The only thing I saw in Eddie Kuntz's eyes was last night's booze tally, which I could sum up as being too much.
I looped past Mrs. Nowicki's house and saw no sign of life. Her windows were closed shut. Shades were drawn. I parked the car and went to the door. No one answered my knock. "Mrs. Nowicki," I called out. "It's Stephanie Plum." I knocked again and was about to leave when the door opened a crack.
"Now what?" Mrs. Nowicki said.
"I'd like to talk."
"Lucky me."
"Can I come in?"
"No."
The entire top of her head was bandaged. She was without makeup and cigarette, and she looked old beyond her years.
"How's your head?" I asked.
"Been worse."
"I mean from the cut."
She rolled her eyes up. "Oh, that . . ."
"I need to know who did it."
"I did it."
"I saw the blood. And I saw the knife. And I know you didn't do this to yourself. Someone came looking for Maxine. And you ended up getting hurt."
"You want my statement? Go read it from the cops."
"Did you know someone visited Maxine's friend, Marjorie, and chopped off her finger?"
"And you think the same guy did both of us."
"It seems reasonable. And I think it would be better for Maxine if I found her before he does."
"Life is a bitch," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Poor Maxie. I don't know what she did. And I don't know where she is. What I know is that she's in a lot of trouble."
"And the man?"
"He said if I talked he'd come back and kill me. And I believe him."
"This is all in confidence."
"It don't matter. There's nothing I can tell you. There were two of them. I turned around and there they were in my kitchen. Average height. Average build. Wearing coveralls and stocking masks. Even had on those disposable rubber gloves like they wear in the hospital."
"How about their voices?"
"Only one spoke, and there wasn't anything to remember about it. Not old. Not young."
"Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?"
"I don't know. Like I said, there wasn't anything to remember."
"And you don't know where Maxine is staying?"
"Sorry. I just don't know."
"Let's try it from another direction. If Maxine wasn't living in her apartment and didn't have to go to work every day . . . where would she go?"
"That's easy. She'd go to the shore. She'd go to get some ocean air and play the games on the boardwalk."
"Seaside or Point Pleasant?"
"Point Pleasant. She always goes to Point Pleasant."
This made sense. It accounted for the tan and the fact that she wasn't conducting business in Trenton.
I gave Mrs. Nowicki my card. "Call me if you hear from Maxine or think of anything that might be helpful. Keep your doors locked and don't talk to strangers."
"Actually, I've been thinking of going to stay with my sister in Virginia."
"That sounds like a good idea."
I TURNED LEFT onto Olden and caught a glimpse of a black Jeep Cherokee in my rearview mirror. Black Cherokees are popular in Jersey. They're not a car I'd ordinarily notice, but from somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious a mental abacus clicked in and told me I'd seen this car one time too many. I took Olden to Hamilton and Hamilton to St. James. I parked in my lot and looked around for the Cherokee, but it had disappeared. Coincidence, I said. Overactive imagination.
I ran up to my apartment, checked my answering machine, changed into my swimsuit, stuffed a towel, a T-shirt and some sunscreen into a canvas tote, pulled on a pair of shorts and took off for the shore.
The hole in my muffler was getting bigger, so I punched up the volume on Metallica. I reached Point Pleasant in less than an hour, then spent twenty minutes looking for cheap parking on the street. I finally found a space two blocks back from the boardwalk, locked up and hooked the tote bag over my shoulder.
When you live in Jersey a beach isn't enough. People have energy in Jersey. They need things to do. They need a beach with a boardwalk. And the boardwalk has to be filled with rides and games and crappy food. Add some miniature golf. Throw in a bunch of stores selling Tshirts with offensive pictures. Life doesn't get much better than this.
And the best part is the smell. I've been told there are places where the ocean smells wild and briny. In Jersey the ocean smells of coconut-scented suntan lotion and Italian sausage smothered in fried onions and peppers. It smells like deep-fried zeppoles and chili hot dogs. The scent is intoxicating and exotic as it expands in the heat rising from crowds of sun-baked bodies strolling the boardwalk.
Surf surges onto the beach and the sound is mingled with the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the spinning game wheels and the highpitched Eeeeeeee of thrill seekers being hurtled down the log flume.
Rock stars, pickpockets, homies, pimps, pushers, pregnant women in bikinis, future astronauts, politicians, geeks, ghouls, and droves of families who buy American and eat Italian all come to the Jersey shore.
When I was a little girl, my sister and I rode the carousel and the whip and ate cotton candy and frozen custard. I had a stomach like iron, but Valerie always got sick on the way home and threw up in the car. When I was older, the shore was a place to meet boys. And now I find myself here on a manhunt. Who would have thought?
I stopped at a frozen custard stand and flashed Maxine's photo. "Have you seen her?"
No one could say for sure.
I worked my way down the boardwalk, showing the picture, distributing my cards. I ate some french fries, a piece of pizza, two chunks of fudge, a glass of lemonade and a vanilla-and-orange-swirl icecream cone. Halfway down the boardwalk I felt the pull of the white sand beach and gave up the manhunt in favor of perfecting my tan.
You have to love a job that lets you lie on the beach for the better part of the afternoon.
THE LIGHT was frantically blinking on my answering machine when I got home. If I had more than three messages my machine always went hyper. Blink, blink, blink, blink---faster than Rex could twitch his whiskers.
I accessed the messages and all were blank. "No big deal," I said to Rex. "If it's important, they'll call back."
Rex stopped running on his wheel and looked at me. Rex went nuts over blank messages. Rex had no patience to wait for people to call back. Rex had a problem with curiosity.
The phone rang, and I snatched it up. "Hello."
"Is this Stephanie?"
"Yes."
"This is Sugar. I don't suppose Sally is with you."
"No. I haven't seen Sally all day."
"He's late for dinner. He told me he'd be home, but he isn't here. I thought maybe he was off doing some bounty hunter thing since that's all he talks about anymore."
"Nope. I worked alone today."
I OPENED the curtains in my bedroom and looked out across the parking lot. It was mid-morning and already the heat was shimmering on the blacktop. A dog barked on Stiller Street, behind the lot. A screen door banged open and closed. I squinted in the direction of the barking dog and spotted a black Jeep Cherokee parked two houses down on Stiller.
No big deal, I said to myself, lots of people drive black Jeep Cherokees. Still, I'd never seen a Cherokee there before. And it really did remind me of the car that had been tailing me. Best to check it out.
I was wearing cut-off jeans and a green Big Dog T-shirt. I stuck my .38 into the waistband of the jeans and pulled the shirt over the gun. I walked around like this for a few minutes, trying to get used to the idea of carrying, but I felt like an idiot. So I took the gun out and returned it to its place in the brown bear cookie jar.
I rode the elevator to the small lobby, exited from the front entrance and walked one block down St. James. I hung a left at the corner, continued on for two blocks, turned and came up behind the Cherokee. The windows were tinted, but I could see a shadowy form at the wheel. I crept closer and knocked on the driver's-side window. The window rolled down and Joyce Barnhardt smiled out at me.
"Ciao," Joyce said.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I'm staking you out. What does it look like I'm doing?"
"I suppose there's a reason?"
Joyce shrugged. "We're both after the same person. I thought it wouldn't hurt to see what pathetic attempts you've made to find her . . . before I take over and get the job done."
"We aren't after the same person. That simply isn't done. Vinnie would never give the same case to two different agents."
"A lot you know."
I narrowed my eyes.
"Vinnie didn't think you were making any progress, so he gave Maxine Nowicki to me."
"I don't believe you."
Joyce held her contract up for me to see. "Authorized by the Vincent Plum Agency to apprehend Maxine Nowicki . . ." she read.
"We'll see about this!"
Joyce made a pouty kissy face.
"And stop following me!"
"It's a free country," Joyce said. "I can follow you if I want to."
I huffed off, back to my building. I stomped upstairs, got my keys and my shoulder bag, stomped back downstairs and gunned the CRX out of the lot . . . with Joyce close on my back bumper.
I didn't bother to lose her. I turned onto Hamilton and in less than five minutes was at the office. Joyce parked half a block back and stayed in her car while I stormed through the front door.
"Where is he? Where is that miserable little worm?"
"Uh oh," Lula said. "Been there, done that."
"Now what?" Connie said.
"Joyce Barnhardt, that's what. She showed me a contract authorizing her to bring in Maxine Nowicki."
"That's impossible," Connie said. "I issue all the contracts, and I don't know anything about it. And besides, Vinnie never gives out an FTA to two different agents."
"Yeah, but remember that Joyce person came in real early on Tuesday morning," Lula said. "And she and Vinnie were locked in his office together for almost an hour, and they were making those weird barnyard sounds."
"I forgot my gun again," I said.
"I got a gun," Connie said, "but it isn't going to do you any good. Vinnie went to North Carolina yesterday to pick up a jumper. He should be back the end of the week."
"I can't work like this," I said. "She's in my way. She's following me around."
"I can fix that," Lula said. "Where is she? I'll go talk to her."
"She's in the black Cherokee, but I don't think that's a good idea."
"Don't worry about nothing," Lula said, swinging through the door. "I'll be real diplomatic. You wait here."
Lula, diplomatic?
"Lula," I yelled, "come back here. I'll take care of Joyce Barnhardt."
Lula reached the car and was standing by the curbside rear quarter panel. "This the one?" she called to me.
"Yes, but . . ."
Lula pulled a gun out from under her T-shirt and---BANG! She blew a cantaloupe-sized hole in Joyce's back tire. She had the gun back under the shirt by the time Joyce got out of the car.
Joyce saw the tire and her mouth dropped open.
"Did you see that?" Lula asked Joyce. "A guy came by here and shot up your tire. And then fast as anything, he ran away. I don't know what this world is coming to."
Joyce looked from Lula to the tire and from Lula to the tire, all the while her mouth still open but no words coming out.
"Well, I gotta get back to work," Lula said, turning her back on Joyce, walking back to the office.
"I can't believe you did that!" I said to Lula. "You can't just go around shooting out people's tires!"
"Look again," Lula said.
Connie was at her desk. "Anybody want to go to Mannie's for lunch today? I'm in a pasta mood."
"I have to follow up on a lead," I told her.
"What kind of lead?" Lula wanted to know. "There gonna be action? If there is, I want to go along, because I'm in an action mood now."
Truth is, I could use another person to keep an eye out for Maxine. I'd have preferred Ranger, but that was going to be awkward with Lula standing in front of me, hankering after action.
"No action," I said. "This is a boring lead. Very boring."
"It's about Maxine, isn't it? Oh boy, this is gonna be great. That body we found last time was almost dead. Maybe this time we'll hit the jackpot."
"We'll need to take your car," I said to Lula. "If there's a takedown we can't all fit in my CRX."
"Fine by me," Lula said, retrieving her purse from a file drawer. "I got air in my car. And another advantage, my car's parked out back, so we don't have to put on our sympathy face to Joyce, being that she's got a flat tire and we don't. Where we going anyway?"
"Muffet Street. North Trenton."
"I STILL DON'T LIKE THIS," Kuntz said. "Maxine is crazy. Who knows what she'll do. I'm gonna feel like a sitting duck out there."
Lula was standing behind me on Kuntz's porch. "Probably just another dumb-ass note taped to the bottom of the bench. Think you should stop your whining," she said to Kuntz, "on account of it makes you look like a wiener. And with a name like Kuntz you gotta be careful what you look like."
Eddie cut his eyes to Lula. "Who's this?"
"I'm her partner," Lula said. "Just like Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, the Lone Ranger and What's-his-name."
Truth is, we were more like Laurel and Hardy, but I didn't want to share that information with Kuntz.
"We'll be in place ahead of time," I said. "Don't worry if you don't see us. We'll be there. All you have to do is show up and go sit on the bench and wait."
"What if there's trouble?"
"Wave your arms if you need help. We won't be that far away."
"You know which bench, right?"
"The bench next to the flagpole."
"Yeah. That's the one."
Betty stuck her head out next door. "Hello, dear. Isn't it a lovely day? Are you young people planning some sort of activity? If I was your age I'd go on a picnic today."
"We're working today," Lula said. "We got a big lead to follow up on."
"Betty," Leo yelled from deep in the house, "where's my coffee cake? I thought you were bringing me a piece of coffee cake."
Betty pulled her head in and closed the door, shutting off the flow of cold air.
"Nosy old bag," Kuntz said. "You can't do nothing around here without her knowing it."
"Why do you stay if you dislike it so much?"
"Cheap rent. I get a break because I'm family. Betty's my mother's sister."
"YOU KNOW what we need?" Lula said, sliding behind the wheel, buckling herself in. "We need some disguises. I bet Maxine knows what you look like by now. And the way I remember that part of the park, there aren't a lot of places to hide. We're gonna have to hide out in the open. We're gonna need some disguises."
I'd been thinking similar thoughts. Not that we needed disguises but that we were going to have a hard time making ourselves invisible.
"I know just the place to get a good disguise, too," Lula said. "I know where we can get wigs and everything."
Twenty minutes later we were standing outside the door to Sally's condo.
"This feels a little weird," I said.
"You know someone else who's got wigs?"
"I don't need a wig. I can stuff my hair up under a ball cap."
Lula rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, that's gonna fool a lot of people."
The door opened and Sally looked out at us. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was standing on end.
"Yikes," Lula said.
"What's the matter? This the first time you've seen a hung-over transvestite?"
"Not me," Lula said. "I've seen lots of 'em."
Lula and I followed him into the living room. "We have a strange sort of favor to ask," I said. "We need to go on a stakeout this afternoon, and I'm worried about being recognized. I thought you could help me with a disguise."
"Who do you want to be . . . Barbarella, Batgirl, the fucking slut next door?"
"MAYBE I COULD just borrow a wig," I said to Sally.
He ambled off to the bedroom. "What do you want? Farrah? Orphan Annie? Elvira?"
"Something that won't attract attention."
He returned with a blond wig and held it out for approval. "This is from my Marilyn collection. Very popular with older men who like to be spanked."
I was thinking Yuk, but Lula looked like she was filing it away in case she decided to return to her former profession.
Sally pinned my hair back and tugged the wig on. "Needs something."
"Needs Marilyn lips," Lula said. "Can't have Marilyn hair without Marilyn lips."
"I don't know how to do lips," Sally said. "Sugar always does my lips. And Sugar isn't here. We sort of had a fight, and he went off in a snit."
"You two fight a lot?" Lula asked.
"Nope. Never. Sugar's real easy to live with. He's just a little nerdy, you know. Like, he thinks I shouldn't be hanging out with you because it's too dangerous. That's what we had the fight about."
"Jeez," I said. "I don't want to come between you and your roommate."
"No problem, man. Sugar's cool. He's just one of those worrywart motherfuckers." Sally opened a professional-size makeup case. "Here's lots of shit if you know how to use it."
I choose candy-apple-pink lipstick and made big, glossy, pouty lips.
Sally and Lula stood back and did the take-a-look thing.
"Gotta lose the shoes," Lula said. "Never gonna get away with those lips and that hair and those shoes."
Sally agreed. "The shoes aren't Marilyn."
"I saw these great shoes at Macy's," Lula said. "They'd be perfect."
"No! I'm not going to Macy's. I want to get to the park early, so we can hang out and watch for Maxine."
"Only take a minute," Lula said. "You'd go bonkers over these shoes."
"No. And that's final."
"Just let me put some lip gloss on and I'll be ready to go," Sally said.
Lula and I sent each other a look that said, Uh oh.
Sally paused with lip gloss in hand. "You didn't think you were going to leave me here, did you?"
"Well, yeah," I said.
"This is bounty hunter shit," Lula said. "And you don't know any bounty hunter shit."
"I know other kinds of shit. And beside, I don't think you know a big fucking bunch of bounty hunter shit, either."
I was staring at the wall, and I was thinking it might feel good to run full tilt and bash my head against it. "Stop! We'll all go. We'll all pretend to be bounty hunters."
Sally turned to the hall mirror and smeared lip gloss on his lips. "Sugar gave me this cool cherry-tasting shit to use on my lips. He says I've got to keep my lips from getting chapped so my lipstick goes on nice and smooth. I'm telling you, this woman stuff is complicated."
He was wearing leather sandals, cut-offs that were so short he had cheek showing, a sleeveless T-shirt and a two-day beard.
"Not sure you totally got the hang of this woman stuff," Lula said. "Think maybe you'd do better shaving your ass than worrying about lip shit."
IT WAS a little after one when we got to the park.
"Those shoes make all the difference," Lula said, staring down at my new shoes. "Didn't I tell you those shoes were the shit?"
"Slut shoes," Sally said. "Retro fucking slut."
Great. Just what I needed, another pair of retro slut shoes---and an extra $74 on my Macy's charge card.
We were sitting in the parking lot, and directly in front of us was a large man-made lake. A jogging path circled the lake, sometimes snaking through patches of trees. A snack bar and rest rooms were in a cinder-block building to our right. To the left was an open field with swing sets and wooden structures for climbing. Benches had been placed at the water's edge but were empty at this time of day. The park saw more use in early evening when the temperature dropped. Seniors came to watch the sunset and families came to feed the ducks and play children's games.
"Kuntz will be sitting on the bench by the flagpole," I said. "Instructions were that he should be there at three."
"I bet she pops him," Sally said. "Why else would you set someone up like that?"
I didn't think there was much chance that Maxine would pop him. The bench was too exposed. And there were no good escape routes. I didn't suppose Maxine was a rocket scientist, but I didn't think she was entirely stupid, either. It looked to me like Maxine was playing with Eddie Kuntz. And it looked to me like she was the only one who thought the game was funny.
I passed the photo of Maxine around. "This is what she looks like," I said. "If you see her, grab her and bring her to me. I'll be covering the area between the snack bar and the car. Lula, you take the playground. Sally, I want you to sit on the bench by the boat ramp. Keep your eye out for snipers." I did a mental eye roll on this one. "And watch that no one rushes Kuntz after he sits down."
Not only had Sally and Lula talked me into buying platform sandals with strappy tie things halfway up my calf, they'd also managed to get me to trade my shorts for a black stretch miniskirt. It was an excellent disguise except for the fact that I couldn't run, sit or bend.
At two o'clock a couple of women arrived and took off jogging. Not Maxine. I walked down to the snack bar and bought a bag of popcorn to feed to the ducks. Two older men did the same. A few more joggers showed up. Men, this time. I fed the ducks and waited. Still no sign of Maxine. Lula was sitting on a swing, filing her nails. Sally had stretched out on the ground behind his bench and appeared to be sleeping. Do I have a team, or what?
For as long as I'd been there, no one had approached the bench by the pole. I'd inspected it from top to bottom when I'd first arrived and found nothing unusual. One of the joggers had returned from his run and sat two benches down, unlacing his shoes and drinking from a water bottle.
Kuntz arrived at 2:55 and went straight to the bench.
Lula looked up from her filing, but Sally didn't move a muscle. Kuntz stood at the bench for a moment. He paced away from it. Nervous. Didn't want to sit down. He looked around, spotted me at the snack bar and silently mouthed something that looked like "Holy shit."
I had a short panic attack, fearing he'd come over to me, but then he turned and slouched onto the bench.
A black Jeep Cherokee rolled into the lot and parked next to Kuntz's Blazer. I didn't need a crystal ball to figure this one out. Joyce had followed Kuntz. Not much I could do about that now. I watched the car for a while but there was no action. Joyce was sitting tight.
Ten minutes ticked by. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Nothing was happening. The park population had increased, but no one was approaching Kuntz, and I didn't see Maxine. Two guys carrying a cooler chest walked toward the water. They stopped and spoke to the jogger who was still sitting on the bench near Kuntz. I saw the jogger shake his head no. The two guys exchanged glances. There was a brief discussion between them. Then one of the guys opened the chest, took out a pie and smushed it into the jogger's face.
The jogger jumped to his feet. "Jesus Christ!" he shrieked. "What are you nuts?"
Lula was off the swing and moving in. Joyce ran down from the parking lot. Kuntz edged off his bench. Even Sally was on his feet.
Everyone converged on the jogger, who had one of the pie guys by the shirt. People were yelling "Break it up" and "Stop" and trying to untangle the two men.
"I was only doing my job!" the pie guy was saying. "Some lady told me to get the guy sitting on the bench by the fountain."
I glared at Eddie Kuntz. "You dunce! You were on the wrong bench!"
"The fountain, the flagpole . . . how am I supposed to keep track of these things?"
The aluminum pie plate and globs of chocolate cream pie were lying ignored on the ground. I fingered through the remains and found the scrap of paper, tucked into a plastic bag. I stuffed the bag, chocolate globs and all, into my purse.
"What's that?" Joyce said. "What did you just put in your purse?"
"Pie crust. I'm taking it home for my hamster."
She grabbed at my shoulder strap. "I want to see it."
"Let go of that strap!"
"Not until I see what you put in your purse!"
"What's going on here?" Lula asked.
"Stay out of this, fatso," Joyce said.
"Fatso," Lula said, eyes narrowed. "Who you calling fatso?"
"I'm calling you fatso, you big tub of lard."
Lula reached out to Joyce, Joyce made a squeak, her eyes went blank, and she crashed to the ground.
Everyone turned to Joyce.
"Must have fainted," Lula said to the crowd. "Guess she's one of those women can't stand to see men fighting."
"I saw that!" I said to Lula, keeping my voice low. "You zapped her with your stun gun!"
"Who me?"
"You can't do that! You can't zap someone just because they call you fatso!"
"Oh, excuse me," Lula said. "Guess I didn't understand that."
Joyce was coming around, making feeble movements in her arms and legs. "What happened?" she murmured. "Was I struck by lightning?"
Kuntz sidled up to me. "Like your disguise. Want to go out for a drink later?"
"No!"
"Try me," Sally said to Kuntz. "It's my wig. And I wouldn't look bad in that skirt, either."
"Jesus," Kuntz said to me. "Is he with you?"
"Damn right, I'm with her," Sally said. "I'm the fucking cryptographer. I'm part of the team."
"Some team," Kuntz said. "A fruit and a fatso."
Lula leaned forward. "First off, let me tell you something. I'm not a fatso. I happen to be a big woman." She reached into her purse and came out with the stun gun. "Second, how'd you like to have your brain scrambled, you dumb, overdeveloped gorrilla?"
"No!" I said. "No more brain scrambling."
"He called us names," Lula said. "He called Sally a fruit."
"Well, okay," I said. "Just this once, but then no more scrambling."
Lula looked at her stun gun. "Damn. I used all my juice. I got a low battery here."
Kuntz made a hands-in-the-air, I-give-up, I-hired-a-loser gesture and walked away. Several bystanders helped Joyce to her feet. And Lula and Sally and I retreated to the car.
"So what was it you and Joyce were squabbling about?" Lula wanted to know.
"I got another clue. As soon as I saw the pie I knew it was supposed to be for Eddie Kuntz, and I figured there was a clue in it. Joyce saw me pick the clue up off the ground." I pulled the plastic bag from my purse. "Ta dah!" I sang.
"Hot dang!" Lula said. "You are so good."
"We're like the A-team," Sally said.
"Yeah, only the A-team didn't have no drag queen," Lula said.
"Mr. T. liked jewelry," Sally said. "I could be Mr. T."
"Nuh uh. I want to be Mr. T. on account of he was big and black like me."
Sally had taken the note out of the bag and was reading it. "This is interesting. She keeps changing the code. This is much more sophisticated than the others."
"Can you read it?"
"Hey, I'm the fucking code master. Just give me some time."
I PARKED in the lot to my apartment building and took the stairs to the second floor. Mrs. Delgado, Mr. Weinstein, Mrs. Karwatt and Leanne Kokoska were standing, staring at my door.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Someone left you a message," Mrs. Karwatt said. "I was going out with the garbage when I noticed it."
"It's a pip, too," Mrs. Delgado said. "Must be from one of them hoodlums you're out to get."
I stepped up and looked at the door. The message was scribbled in black marker: "I hate you! And I'll get even!"
"Who do you suppose did this?" Leanne asked. "Are you on a real dangerous case? You after a murderer or something?"
Truth is, I had no idea anymore who I was after.
"Permanent marker," Mr. Weinstein said. "Gonna be the devil to get off. Probably gonna have to paint over it."
"I'll call Dillon," I told them, shoving the key in the lock. "Dillon will fix it for me."
Dillon Ruddick was the super, and Dillon would fix anything for a smile and a beer.
I let myself into my apartment, and my neighbors went off looking for a new adventure. I slipped the safety chain into place, bolted my door and headed for the kitchen. The light was blinking on my answering machine. One message.
I punched Replay. "This is Helen Badijian, the manager at the Seven-Eleven." There was a pause and some fumbling. "You left your card here and said I should call if I had information about Miss Nowicki."
I dialed the 7-Eleven and Helen answered.
"I'm very busy now," she said. "If you could drop by later, maybe around ten, I think I might have something for you."
This was turning into a halfway decent day. Sally was working on the clue, and the 7-Eleven woman had a potential lead.
"We need to celebrate," I told Rex, trying to overlook the fact that I was actually very creeped out by the message on my door. "Pop-Tarts for everyone."
I looked in my cupboard, but there were no Pop-Tarts. No cookies, no cereal, no cans of spaghetti, no soup, no extra jars of peanut butter. A piece of paper was taped to the cupboard door. It was a shopping list. It said, "buy everything."
I took the note down and shoved it into my bag so I wouldn't forget what I needed and slung the bag over my shoulder. I had my hand on the doorknob when the phone rang.
It was Kuntz. "So, about that drink?"
"No. No drink."
"Your loss," he said. "I saw you fingering the pie on the ground. You find another note?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And I'm working on it."
"Looks to me like we're not making much progress with the note crappola. All we ever get are more notes."
"There might be more. The manager at the Seven-Eleven called and said she had something for me. I'm going to stop around later tonight."
"Why later? Why don't you go now? Cripes, can't you move faster on this? I need those letters."
"Maybe you should tell me what this is really about. I'm having a hard time believing you're in this much of a sweat about a couple of love letters."
"I told you they could be embarrassing."
"Yeah, right."
I LOOKED in my shopping cart and wondered if I had everything. Ritz crackers and peanut butter for when I felt fancy and wanted to make hors d'oeuvres, Entenmann's coffee cake for PMS mornings, Pop-Tarts for Rex, salsa so I could tell my mother I was eating vegetables, frosted flakes in case I had to go on a stakeout, corn chips for the salsa.
I was in the middle of my inventory when a cart crashed nose to nose into mine. I looked up and found Grandma Mazur driving and my mother one step behind.
My mother closed her eyes. "Why me?" she said.
"Dang," Grandma Mazur said.
I was still in the wig and the little skirt. "I can explain."
"Where did I go wrong?" my mother wanted to know.
"I'm in disguise."
Mrs. Crandle rattled her cart down the aisle. "Hello, Stephanie, dear. How are you today?"
"I'm fine, Mrs. Crandle."
"Some disguise," my mother said. "Everybody knows you. And why do you have to be disguised as a tramp? Why can't you ever be disguised as a normal person?" She looked into my cart. "Jars of spaghetti sauce. The checkout clerk will think you don't cook."
My left eye had started to twitch. "I have to go now."
"I bet this is a good getup for meeting men," Grandma said. "You look just like Marilyn Monroe. Is that a wig? Maybe I could borrow it sometime. I wouldn't mind meeting some men."
"You loan her that wig and anything happens, I'm holding you responsible," my mother said.
I UNPACKED my groceries, replaced the wig with a Rangers hat, traded the skirt in for a pair of shorts and resigned the retro slut shoes to a back corner of my closet. I shared a Pop-Tart with Rex and cracked a beer open for myself. I called Dillon to tell him about my door, and then I went out the bedroom window to my fire escape to think. The air was still and sultry, the horizon dusky.
The parking lot was filled with cars. The seniors were all home at this time of day. If they went out to eat it was for the early bird special at the diner, and even if they went to the park to sit for a half hour they were home by six. If they were eating in it was at five o'clock so as not to interfere with Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
Most cases I get from Vinnie are routine. Usually I go to the people who put up the bond and explain to them that they'll lose their house if the skip isn't found. Ninety percent of the time they know where the skip is and help me catch him. Ninety percent of the time I have a handle on the sort of person I'm dealing with. This case didn't fall into the ninety percent. And even worse, this case was weird. A friend had lost a finger, and a mother had been scalped. Maxine's treasure hunt seemed playful by comparison. And then there was the message on my door. "I hate you." Who would do such a thing? The list was long.
A pickup pulled away from the curb half a block away, exposing a black Jeep Cherokee which had been parked behind the pickup. Joyce.
I allowed myself the luxury of a sigh and drained the beer bottle. You had to respect Joyce's tenacity, if nothing else. I raised my bottle in a salute to her, but there was no response.
The problem with being a bounty hunter is it's all on-the-job training. Ranger is helpful, but Ranger isn't always around. So most of the time when something new comes up I end up doing it wrong before I figure out how to do it right. Joyce, for instance. Clearly, I don't know how to get rid of Joyce.
I crawled back through the window, got another bottle of beer and another Pop-Tart, stuffed the portable phone under my arm and went back to the fire escape. I ate the Pop-Tart and washed it down with beer and all the while I watched the black Cherokee. When I finished the second bottle of beer I called Ranger.
"Talk," Ranger said.
"I have a problem."
"So what's your point?"
I explained the situation to Ranger, including the tire and the park episode. There was a silence where I sensed he was smiling, and finally he said, "Sit tight, and I'll see what I can do."
Half an hour later, Ranger's $98,000 BMW rolled to a stop in my parking lot. Ranger got out of the car and stood for a moment staring at me on my fire escape. He was wearing an olive-drab Tshirt that looked like it had been painted on him, GI Joe camouflage pants and shades. Just a normal Jersey guy.
I gave him a thumbs-up.
Ranger smiled and turned and walked across the lot and across the street to the black Cherokee. He walked to the passenger-side door, opened the door and got in the car. Just like that. If it had been me in the car, the door would have been locked, and no one looking like Ranger would get in. But this is me, and that was Joyce.
Five minutes later, Ranger exited the car and returned to my lot. I dove through my window, rushed out the door, down the stairs and skidded to a stop in front of Ranger.
"Well?"
"How bad do you want to get rid of her? You want me to shoot her? Break a bone?"
"No!"
Ranger shrugged. "Then she's gonna stick."
There was the sound of a car engine catching and headlights flashed on across the street. We both turned to watch Joyce pull away and disappear around the corner.
"She'll be back," Ranger said. "But not tonight."
"How'd you get her to leave?"
"Told her I was gonna spend the next twelve hours ruining you for all other men, and so she might as well go home."
I could feel the heat rush to my face.
Ranger gave me the wolf smile. "I lied about it being tonight," he said.
AT LEAST Joyce was gone for a while, and I didn't have to worry about her following me to the 7-Eleven. I trudged upstairs to my apartment, made myself a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich on worthless white bread and channel surfed until it was time to go see Helen Badijian.
Most of the time I enjoyed my aloneness, relishing the selfish luxury of unshared space and ritual. Only my hand held the television remote, and there was no compromise on toilet paper brand or climate control. And even more, there was a tentative, hopeful feeling that I might be an adult. And that the worst of childhood was safely behind me. You see, I said to the world, I have my own apartment. That's good, right?
Tonight my satisfaction with the solitary life was tempered by a bizarre message still scrawled on my door. Tonight my aloneness felt lonely, and maybe even a little frightening. Tonight I made sure my windows were closed and locked when I left my apartment.
En route to Olden I did a two-block detour, checking my mirror for headlights. There'd been no sign of Joyce, but better to be safe than sorry. I had a feeling this was a good lead, and I didn't want to pass it on to the enemy.
I reached the 7-Eleven a few minutes before ten. I sat in my car a while to see if Joyce would miraculously appear. At 10:05 there was no Joyce, but from what I could see through the store's plate glass windows there was also no Helen Badijian. A young guy was behind the register, talking to an older man. The older man was waving his arms, looking royally pissed off. The young guy was shaking his head, yes, yes, yes.
I entered the store and caught the end of the conversation.
"Irresponsible," the older man was saying. "No excuse for it."
I wandered to the back and looked around. Sure enough. Helen wasn't here.
"Excuse me," I said to the clerk. "I thought Helen Badijian would be working tonight."
The clerk nervously looked from me to the man. "She had to leave early."
"It's important that I speak to her. Do you know where she can be reached?"
"Girlie, that's the hundred-dollar question," the older man said.
I extended my hand. "Stephanie Plum."
"Arnold Kyle. I own this place. I got a call about an hour ago from the cops telling me my store was unattended. Your friend Helen just walked out of here. No notice. No nothing. Didn't even have the decency to lock up. Some guy came in to buy cigarettes and called the cops when he figured out there was no one here."
I had a real bad feeling in my stomach. "Was Helen unhappy with her job?"
"Never said anything to me," Arnold said.
"Maybe she got sick and didn't have time to leave a note."
"I called her house. Nobody's seen her. I called the hospital. She isn't there."
"Have you looked everywhere in the store? A storage room? The cellar? Bathroom?"
"Checked all that out."
"Does she drive to work? Is her car still here?"
Arnold looked to the young guy.
"It's still here," the young guy said. "I parked next to it when I came in. It's a blue Nova."
"Must have gone off with one of her friends," Arnold said. "You can't trust anyone these days. No sense of responsibility. A good time comes along, and they kiss you goodbye."
I turned my attention to the clerk. "Any money missing?"
He shook his head no.
"Any sign of struggle? Anything knocked over?"
"I got here first," Arnold said. "And there wasn't anything. It looked like she just waltzed out of here."
I gave them my card and explained my relationship with Helen. We did a brief behind-the-counter search for a possible note, but nothing turned up. I thanked Arnold and the clerk and asked them to call if they heard from Helen. I had my hands on the counter, and I looked down and saw it. A book of matches from the Parrot Bar in Point Pleasant.
"Are these yours?" I asked the clerk.
"Nope," he said. "I don't smoke."
I looked at Arnold. "Not mine," he said.
"Do you mind if I snitch them?"
"Knock yourself out," Arnold said.
At the risk of seeming paranoid I checked my rearview mirror about sixty times on the way home. Not so much for Joyce, but for the guys who might have spooked or snatched Helen Badijian. A week ago, I'd have drawn the same conclusion as Arnold . . . that Helen took off. Now that I knew about chopped-off fingers and scalpings I took a more extreme view of events.
I parked in my lot, did a fast look around, inhaled a deep breath and bolted from my car. Across the lot, through the rear entrance, up the stairs to my apartment. The hate message was still on my door. I was breathing hard, and my hand was shaking so that it took concentration to get the key in the lock.
This is stupid, I told myself. Get a grip! But I didn't have a grip, so I locked myself in and checked under the bed, in the closets and behind the shower curtain. When I was convinced I was safe I ate the Entenmann's coffee cake to calm myself down.
When I was done with the cake I called Morelli and told him about Helen and asked him to check on her.
"Just exactly what did you have in mind?"
"I don't know. Maybe you could see if she's in the morgue. Or in the hospital, getting some missing body part sewed back on. Maybe you could ask some of your friends to keep an eye out for her."
"Probably Arnold's right," Morelli said. "Probably she's at a bar with a couple friends."
"You really think so?"
"No," Morelli said. "I was just saying that to get you off the phone. I'm watching a ball game."
"There's something that really bothers me here that I didn't tell you."
"Oh boy."
"Eddie Kuntz was the only one who knew I was going to see Helen Badijian."
"And you think he got to her first."
"It's crossed my mind."
"You know there was a time when I'd say to myself . . . How does she do it? How does she get mixed up with these weirdos? But now I don't even question it. In fact, I've come to expect such things of you."
"So are you going to help me, or what?"
I DIDN'T LIKE the idea that I might be responsible for Helen's disappearance. Morelli had agreed to make a few phone calls, but I still felt unsatisfied. I pulled the Parrot Bar matches out of my pocket and examined them. No hastily scribbled messages on the inside flap. For that matter, nothing to identify them as Maxine's. Nevertheless, first thing in the morning, I'd be on my way to Point Pleasant.
I went to the phone book and looked up Badijian. Three of them. No Helen. Two were in Hamilton Township. One was in Trenton. I called the Trenton number. A woman answered and told me Helen wasn't home from work yet. Easy. But not the right answer. I wanted Helen to be home.
Okay, I thought, maybe what I needed to do was go see for myself. Take a look in Kuntz's windows and see if he had Helen tied to a kitchen chair. I strapped on my black web utility belt and filled the pockets. Pepper spray, stun gun, handcuffs, flashlight, .38 Special. I thought about loading the .38 and decided against it. Guns creeped me out.
I shrugged into a navy windbreaker and scooped my hair up under my hat.
Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?"
"A thirty-eight."
"I like a nine-millimeter myself."
"A nine's good."
"Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said.
One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.
Traffic was light at this time of night. A few cars on Olden. No cars on Muffet. I parked around the corner on Cherry Street, a block down from Kuntz, and walked to his house. Downstairs lights were on in both halves. Shades were up. I stood on the sidewalk and snooped. Leo and Betty were feet up in side-by-side recliners watching Bruce Willis bleed on TV.
Next door, Eddie was talking on the phone. It was a portable, and I could see him pacing in his kitchen in the back of the house.
Neighboring houses were dark. Lights were on across the street, but there was no activity. I slipped between the houses, avoiding the squares of light thrown onto the grass from open windows, and crept in shadow to the back of Kuntz's house. Snatches of conversation drifted out to me. Yes, he loved her, Kuntz said. And yes, he thought she was sexy. I stood in deep shade and looked through the window. His back was to me. He was alone, and there were no whacked-off body parts lying on his kitchen table. No Helen chained to the stove. No unearthly screams coming from his cellar. The whole thing was damn disappointing.
Of course, Jeffrey Dahmer kept his trophies in his refrigerator. Maybe what I should do is go around front, knock on the door, tell Kuntz I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop in for that drink. Then I could look in his refrigerator when he went for ice.
I was debating this plan when a hand clamped over my mouth and I was dragged backward and pressed hard into the side of the house. I kicked out with my feet, and my heart was pounding in my chest. I got a hand loose and went for the pepper spray, and I heard a familiar voice whisper in my ear.
"If you're looking to grab something, I can do better than pepper spray."
"Morelli!"
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I'm investigating. What does it look like I'm doing?"
"It looks like you're invading Eddie Kuntz's privacy." He pushed my jacket aside and stared down at my gun belt. "No grenades?"
"Very funny."
"You need to get out of here."
"I' m not done."
"Yes, you are," Morelli said. "You're done. I found Helen."
"Tell me."
"Not here." He took my hand and tugged me forward, toward the street.
The light over Eddie's back stoop went on, and the back screen door creaked open. "Somebody out here?"
Morelli and I froze against the side of the house.
A second door opened. "What is it?" Leo said. "What's going on?"
"Somebody's creeping around the house. I heard voices."
"Betty," Leo yelled, "bring the flashlight. Turn on the porch light."
Morelli gave me a shove. "Go for your car."
Keeping to the shadows, I ran around the neighboring duplex, cut back through the driveway and scuttled across yards, heading for Cherry. I scrambled over a four-foot-high chain-link fence, caught my foot on the cross section and sprawled facedown on the grass.
Morelli hoisted me up by my gun belt and set me in motion.
His pickup was directly behind my CRX. We both jumped in our cars and sped away. I didn't stop until I was safely in my own parking lot.
I slid from behind the wheel, locked my car and assumed what I hoped was a casual pose, leaning against the CRX, ignoring the fact that my knees were scraped and I had grass stains the entire length of my body.
Morelli sauntered over and stood back on his heels, hands in his pockets. "People like you give cops nightmares," he said.
"What about Helen?"
"Dead."
My breath caught in my chest. "That's terrible!"
"She was found in an alley four blocks from the Seven-Eleven. I don't know much except it looks like there was a struggle."
"How was she killed?"
"Won't know for sure until they do the autopsy, but there were bruises on her neck."
"Someone choked her to death?"
"That's what it sounds like." Morelli paused. "There's something else. And this is not public information. I'm telling you this so you'll be careful. Someone chopped her finger off."
Nausea rolled through my stomach, and I tried to pull in some oxygen. There was a monster out there . . . someone with a sick, twisted mind. And I'd unleashed him on Helen Badijian by involving her in my case.
"I hate this job," I said to Morelli. "I hate the bad people, and the ugly crimes, and the human suffering they cause. And I hate the fear. In the beginning, I was too stupid to be afraid. Now it seems like I'm always afraid. And if all that isn't bad enough, I've killed Helen Badijian."
"You didn't kill Helen Badijian," Morelli said. "You can't hold yourself responsible for that."
"How do you get through it? How do you go to work every day, dealing with all the bottom feeders?"
"Most people are good. I keep that in front of me so I don't lose perspective. It's like having a basket of peaches. Somewhere in the middle of the basket is a rotten peach. You find it and remove it. And you think to yourself, Well, that's just the way it is with peaches . . . good thing I was around to stop the rot from spreading."
"What about the fear?"
"Concentrate on doing the job, not on the fear."
Easy to say, hard to do, I thought. "I assume you came to Kuntz's house looking for me?"
"I called to give you the news," Morelli said, "and you weren't home. I asked myself if you'd be dumb enough to go after Kuntz, and the answer was yes."
"You think Kuntz killed Helen?"
"Hard to say. He's clean. Has no record. The fact that he knew you were seeing Helen might have no bearing on this at all. There could be someone out there working entirely independently, turning up the same leads you're turning up."
"Whoever they are, they're ahead of me now. They got to Helen."
"Helen might not have known much."
That was possible. Maybe all she had were the matches.
Morelli locked eyes with me. "You aren't going back after Kuntz, are you?"
"Not tonight."
SALLY CALLED while I was waiting for my morning coffee to finish dripping.
"The code was fun, but the message is boring," Sally said. " 'The next clue is in a box marked with a big red X.' "
"That's it? No directions to find the box?"
"Just what I read. You want the paper? It's sort of a mess. Sugar tidied the kitchen this morning and accidentally tossed the clue in the trash masher. I was lucky to find it."
"Is he still mad?"
"No. He's on one of his cleaning, cooking, interior decorating benders. He got up this morning and made scratch waffles, sausage patties, fresh squeezed orange juice, a mushroom omelet, put a coffee cake in the oven, scoured the kitchen to within an inch of its life and took off to buy new throw cushions for the couch."
"Dang. I was afraid he might be upset because I borrowed the wig."
"Nope. He was all Mr. Congeniality this morning. Said you could borrow the wig anytime you wanted."
"What a guy."
"Yeah, and he makes a bitchin' waffle. I have rehearsal at ten in Hamilton Township. I can stop on my way and give you the clue."
I poured a mug of coffee and called Eddie Kuntz.
"She was here," he said. "The bitch was spying on me last night. I was on the phone, and I heard someone talking outside, so I ran out to look, but she got away. There were two of them. Maxine and someone else. Probably one of her wacky girlfriends."
"You sure it was Maxine?"
"Who else would it be?"
Me, that's who, you big dumb jerk. "I got the pie clue worked out. The next clue is coming in a box with a big red X on it. You have any boxes like that sitting on your lawn?"
"No. I'm looking out my front window, and I don't see any boxes."
"How about in back?"
"This is stupid. Clues and boxes and . . . Shit, I found the box. It's on my back stoop. What should I do?"
"Open the box."
"No way. I'm not opening this box. There could be a bomb in it."
"There's no bomb."
"How do you know?"
"It's not Maxine's style."
"Let me tell you about Maxine. Maxine has no style. Maxine's a nut case. You feel so confident about this box, you come over and open it."
"Fine. I'll come over and open it. Just leave it where it is, and I'll be there as soon as I can."
I finished my coffee and gave Rex some Cheerios for breakfast. "Plan for the day," I said to Rex. "Wait for Sally to drop off the note. Next thing I drive over to Kuntz's house to open the box. Then I spend the rest of the day in Point Pleasant looking for Maxine. Is that a plan, or what?"
Rex rushed out of his soup can, stuffed all the Cheerios into his cheeks and rushed back into the soup can. So much for Rex.
I was debating if a second cup of coffee would give me heart palpitations when someone knocked on my door. I answered the knock and stared out at a flower delivery person, just about hidden behind a huge flower spray.
"Stephanie Plum?"
"Yes!"
"For you."
Wow. Flowers. I love getting flowers. I took the flowers and stepped back. And the flower person stepped forward into my apartment and leveled a gun at me. It was Maxine.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," she said. "Fell for the old flower delivery routine. What'd you just get off the banana boat?"
"I knew it was you. I just wanted to talk to you, so I didn't let on."
"Yeah, right." She kicked the door closed and looked around. "Put the flowers on the kitchen counter and then stand facing the refrigerator, hands on the refrigerator door."
I did as she said, and she cuffed me to the fridge door handle.
"Now we're going to talk," she said. "This is the deal. Stop being such a pain in the ass and I'll let you live."
"Would you really shoot me?"
"In a heartbeat."
"I don't think so."
"Miss Know-it-all."
"What's with these clues?"
"The clues are for the jerk. I wanted to make him jump like he made me jump. But you had to come along, and now you do all his dirty work for him. What is it with this guy and women? How does he manage?"
"Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm doing it for the money."
"I'm so stupid," she said. "I did it for free."
"There's something else going on here," I said. "Something serious. Do you know about your apartment being ransacked? Do you know about Margie and your mother?"
"I don't want to get into that. There's nothing I can do now. But I can tell you one thing. I'm going to get what's coming to me from that son of a bitch Eddie Kuntz. He's going to pay for everything he did."
"You mean like scalping your mother?"
"I mean like breaking my nose. I mean like all the times he got drunk and smacked me around. All the times he cheated on me. All the times he took my paycheck. And the lies about getting married. That's what he's going to pay for."
"He said you took some love letters that belong to him."
Maxine tipped her head back and laughed. It was a nice honest throaty laugh that would have been contagious if I hadn't been chained to my refrigerator. "That's what he told you? Boy, that's good. Eddie Kuntz writing love letters. You probably own stock in the Brooklyn Bridge, too."
"Listen, I'm just trying to do a job."
"Yeah, and I'm trying to have a life. This is my advice to you. Forget about trying to find me because it isn't going to happen. I'm only hanging around to have some fun with the jerk and then I'm out of here. Soon as I'm done yanking Kuntz's chain I'm gone."
"You have money to make you disappear?"
"More than God has apples. Now I'm going to tell you something about that box. It's filled with dog doody. I spent all day in the park, filling a plastic bag. The clue is in the doody in the plastic bag. I want the jerk to paw through that doody. And trust me, he wants to find me bad enough to do it. So back off and don't help him out."
I felt my lip involuntarily curl back. Dog doody. Ugh.
"That's all I have to say to you," Maxine said. "Go look for somebody else and stop helping the jerk."
"Are you the one who wrote on my door?"
She turned to leave. "No, but it's a pretty cool message."
"You're going to leave the key to the cuffs, aren't you?"
She looked at me and winked and waltzed away, closing the door behind her.
Damn! "I'm not the only one after you!" I yelled. "Watch out for that bitch Joyce Barnhardt!" Shit. She was getting away. I yanked at the cuffs, but they were secure. No knives or helpful kitchen utensils within reach. Phone too far away. I could yell until doomsday and Mr. Wolensky, across the hall, wouldn't hear me over his TV. Think, Stephanie. Think! "Help!" I yelled. "Help!"
No one came to help. After about five minutes of yelling and fuming I started to feel a headache coming on. So I stopped yelling, and I looked in the refrigerator for something that would stop a headache. Banana cream pie. There was some left from Saturday. I ate the pie and washed it down with milk. I was still hungry, so I ate some peanut butter and a bag of baby carrots. I was finishing up with the carrots when there was another knock at my door.
I went back to the yelling "Help!" routine.
The door swung open and Sally stuck his head in. "Fucking kinky," he said. "Who cuffed you to the fridge?"
"I had a little scuffle with Maxine."
"Looks like you lost."
"Don't suppose you saw her hanging out in the parking lot."
"Nope."
My biggest fear was that she'd gotten away, never to be found. My second biggest fear was that Joyce had nabbed her. "Go down to the basement and get Dillon, the super, and ask him to come up with his hacksaw."
Twenty minutes later I was still wearing a bracelet, but at least I was free of the refrigerator. Sally had left for rehearsal. Dillon was on his way downstairs with a six-pack under his arm. And I was late for an appointment with a box full of dog shit.
I barreled down the stairs and out the door. I started toward my car but pulled up short when Joyce rolled into the parking lot.
"Joyce," I said, "long time, no see." I peeked into her car, looking for Maxine. "You still following me?"
"Hell no. I have better things to do than to sit around all day waiting for someone to get hit with a pie. I came by to tell you goodbye."
"Giving up?"
"Getting smart. I don't need you to find Maxine."
"Oh yeah? Why is that?"
"I know where she's hiding. I have a contact who knows all about Maxine's transactions. Too bad you were never in retail like me. I made a lot of connections."
The driver's-side window rolled up, and Joyce roared out of the lot, down the street.
Great. Joyce has connections.
I crossed to the CRX and noticed that someone had left a note under my windshield wiper.
I said I'd get even and 1 meant it. I've been watching you and 1 know he was here. This is your last warning. Leave my boyfriend alone! Next time I soak something with gasoline I'll strike a match to it.
This was about somebody's boyfriend. And only one person came to mind. Morelli. Ugh! To think I almost went to bed with him. I squeezed my eyes shut. I fell for all that talk about no condoms and no sex. What was I thinking? I should have known better than to believe anything Morelli told me. And it wasn't hard to guess the girlfriend's name. Terry Gilman. This threat had mob written all over it. And Connie had said Terry was connected.
I sniffed at my car. Gasoline. I put my finger to the hood. It was still wet. Morelli's unhinged girlfriend must have just been here. Probably did this while I was chained to the refrigerator. No big deal, I thought. I'd run the CRX through a car wash.
I stuck the key in the door lock more out of force of habit than actual thought. The key didn't go through the usual turn, which meant the door wasn't locked. I looked closer and saw the scratches made next to the window. Someone had used a jimmy bar to pop the lock.
I had a premonition of bad news.
I did a fast peek in the window. Nothing seemed stolen. The radio looked intact. I opened the driver's side door and the gasoline smell almost knocked me to my knees. I put my hand to the seat. It was soaked. The floor mats were soaked. The dash was soaked. Gasoline pooled in nooks and crannies.
Shit! Goddamn Morelli. I was more angry at him than I was at Terry. I looked around the lot. No one there but me.
I whipped out my cell phone and started dialing. No answer at Morelli's house. No answer at his office number. No answer on his car phone. I kicked a tire and did some inventive swearing.
I was parked in a back corner of the lot with no cars in the immediate vicinity. It seemed to me the safest thing to do right now was to leave the car parked and let some of the gas evaporate away. I opened the windows wide, went back to the apartment building and called Lula at the office.
"I need a ride," I told Lula. "Car problems."
"OKAY, so tell me again about this box," Lula said, lining the Firebird up with the curb in front of Kuntz's house.
"Maxine says it's filled with dog doody, so we shouldn't touch it."
"You believe Maxine? Suppose it's a bomb?"
"I don't think it's a bomb."
"Yeah, but are you sure?"
"Well, no."
"I tell you what. I'm staying on the front porch while you open that box. I don't want to be anywhere near that box."
I walked around to the back of the house, and sure enough, there was the box, sitting on the stoop. The box was about a foot square. It was heavy cardboard, sealed up with tape, marked with a red X.
Kuntz was at the screen door. "Took you long enough."
"You're lucky we came at all," Lula said. "And if you don't change your attitude we're gonna leave. So what do you think of that?"
I crouched down and examined the box. Nothing ticking. Didn't smell like dog shit. No warning labels that said Dangerous Explosives. Truth is, anything could be in the box. Anything. Could be cooties left over from Desert Storm. "Looks okay to me," I said to Kuntz. "Go ahead and open it."
"You're sure it's safe?"
"Hey," Lula said, "we're trained professionals. We know about these things. Right, Stephanie?"
"Right."
Kuntz stared at the box. He cracked his knuckles and pulled his lips tight against his teeth. "Damn that Maxine." He took a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and bent to the box.
Lula and I discreetly stepped away from the stoop.
"You're sure?" he asked again, knife poised.
"Oh yeah." Another step backward.
Kuntz slit the tape, parted the flaps and peeked into the box. Nothing exploded, but Lula and I kept our distance all the same.
"What the hell?" Kuntz said, looking more closely. "What is this? Looks like a plastic bag sealed with one of those twisty tie things and filled with chocolate pudding."
Lula and I exchanged glances.
"I suppose the clue's in the bag," Kuntz said. He poked at the bag, his face contorted, and he uttered something that sound like "Ulk."
"Something wrong?" Lula asked.
"This isn't pudding."
"Well, look on the bright side," Lula said. "It didn't explode, did it?"
"Gosh, look at the time," I said, tapping my watch. "I'm going to have to run."
"Yeah, me too," Lula said. "I got things to do."
The color had drained from Kuntz's face. "What about the clue?"
"You can call me later, or you can leave it on the machine. Just read the letters off to me."
"But . . ."
Lula and I were gone. Around the side of the house. Into the Firebird. Down the street.
"Now what?" Lula said. "Gonna be hard to top that for excitement. Not every day I get to see a box full of poop."
"I need to look for Maxine. I'm not the only one to figure out she's in Point Pleasant. Unfortunately, I've got a vandalized car sitting in my parking lot, and I'm going to have to take care of that first."
I tried Morelli on the cell phone again, and got him in his car.
"Your girlfriend visited me," I said.
"I don't have a girlfriend."
"Bullshit!"
I read him the note and told him about my door and my car.
"Why do you think it's my girlfriend?" Morelli wanted to know.
"I can't think of anyone else who would make a woman so totally deranged."
"I appreciate the compliment," Morelli said. "But I'm not involved with anyone. I haven't been for a long time."
"What about Terry Gilman?"
"Terry Gilman wouldn't pour gasoline on your car. Terry Gilman would politely knock on your door, and when you answered she'd gouge your eyes out."
"When was the last time you saw Terry?"
"About a week ago. I ran into her in Fiorello's Deli. She was wearing a little denim skirt, and she looked very fine, but she's not the woman in my life right now."
I narrowed my eyes. "So who is the woman in your life now?"
"You."
"Oh. Then what is this boyfriend stuff all about?"
"Maybe it's Maxine. You said it happened after she chained you to the refrigerator."
"And she's talking about Kuntz? I don't know. It doesn't feel right."
LULA PARKED next to the CRX, and we got out to assess the damage.
"I don't know how you get rid of this much gasoline," Lula said. "It's everywhere. It's even spilled on the outside. You got gas puddles here."
I needed to call the police and get a report on file, and then I needed to call my insurance company. The car needed to be professionally cleaned. I probably had a deductible, but I couldn't remember the amount. Not that it mattered. I couldn't drive the car like this.
"I'm going inside to make a couple phone calls," I told Lula. "If I hustle I might be done with this in time to go to Point Pleasant and look for Maxine."
"You know what I love about Point Pleasant? I love those half-orange and half-vanilla swirly frozen custard cones. Maybe I'll have to go with you. Maybe you could use a bodyguard."
A blue Fairlane swung into the lot and skidded to a stop behind us.
"Holy cats," Lula said. "It's old lady Nowicki, driving half in the bag."
Mrs. Nowicki lurched out of the car and swayed over. "I heard that, and I'm not half in the bag. If I was half in the bag I'd be a lot happier."
She was dressed in poison-green spandex. She'd troweled on full face makeup, a cigarette was stuck in the corner of her mouth and wisps of orange frizz framed a poison-green turban . . . which I knew hid a freshly scalped head.
She looked at my car and gave a bark of laughter. "This yours?"
"Yeah."
"Didn't anybody tell you the gasoline's supposed to go in the tank?"
"Something you want to see me about?"
"I'm leaving town," Mrs. Nowicki said. "And I have some news for you. Maxine would be real mad if she knew I told you this, but I think you were right about it being better you found her than . . . you know."
"You've heard from her?"
"She brought her car around for me. Said she didn't need it anymore."
"Where is she?"
"Well, she used to be in Point Pleasant, like I thought. But she said people got wind of that so she's moved to Atlantic City. She wouldn't give me an address, but I know she likes to play at Bally's Park Place. Thinks the odds are better there."
"You're sure?"
"Well, pretty sure." She took a deep drag on the cigarette which just about wore it down to the filter. Blue smoke filtered out her nose, and she flicked the butt away. It hit the pavement, rolled under my car and . . . phunff!The car ignited.
"YIKES!" Lula and I yelped, jumping back.
The car was engulfed in a big yellow fireball.
"FIRE! FIRE!" Lula and I hollered.
Mrs. Nowicki turned to look. "What?"
KABOOM! There was an explosion, Mrs. Nowicki got knocked on her ass, and a second fireball erupted. Lula's Firebird!
"My car! My baby!" Lula yelled. "Do something! Do something!"
People were pouring out of the building, and sirens wailed in the distance. Lula and I stooped over Mrs. Nowicki, who was stretched out on the pavement, face up, eyes wide.
"Uh oh," Lula said. "You aren't gonna be dead again, are you?"
"I need a cigarette," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Light me up."
A squad car slid into the lot, lights flashing. Carl Costanza got out of the car and walked over to me. "Pretty good," he said. "Looks like you blew up two cars this time."
"One was Lula's."
"We gonna have to look for body parts? Last time you blew up a car we found body parts a block away."
"You only found one single foot a block away. Most of the parts were right here in the lot. Personally, I think Mrs. Burlew's dog carried the foot there."
"So what about this time? We gotta go looking for feet?"
"Both cars were unoccupied. Mrs. Nowicki got shook up, but I think she's okay."
"She's so okay, she left," Lula said. "She could do that on account of her piece-of-junk car didn't get cooked."
"She left?" My voice sounded like Minnie Mouse's. I couldn't believe she left after causing the accident.
"Just this second," Lula said. "Saw her just leave the lot."
I looked out to St. James, and an unsettling thought flashed into my head. "You don't suppose she did this on purpose, do you?"
"Blew up both our cars so we couldn't go off looking for her daughter? You think she's smart enough to think of something like that?"
THE FIRE TRUCKS left first, then the police, then the tow trucks. And now all that was left was a charred, sanded spot on the blacktop.
"Oh well," Lula said. "Easy come, easy go."
"You don't seem very upset. I thought you loved that car."
"Well the radio wasn't working right, and it got a ding on the side of the door at the supermarket. I can go out and get a new one now. Soon as I get the paperwork done I'm going car shopping. Nothing I like better than car shopping."
Nothing I hated more than car shopping. I'd rather have a mammogram than go car shopping. I never had enough money to get a car I really liked. And then there were the car salesmen . . . second only to dentists in their ability to inflict pain. Ick. An involuntary shiver gripped my spine.
"See, I'm one of those positive type people," Lula went on. "My glass isn't half empty. Nuh uh. My glass is always half full. That's why I'm making something of myself. And anyway, there's people lots worse off than me. I didn't spend my afternoon looking for a note in a box full of dog poop."
"Do you think Mrs. Nowicki was telling the truth about Atlantic City? She could have been trying to throw us off the trail."
"Only one way to find out."
"We need wheels."
We looked at each other and did a double grimace. We both knew where there was an available car. My father had a powder-blue-and-white '53 Buick sitting in his garage. From time to time I'd been desperate enough to borrow the beast.
"No, no, no," Lula said. "I'm not going down to Atlantic City in that big blue pimpmobile."
"Where's your positive attitude? What about all that cup-is-half-full stuff?"
"Fuck the cup is half full. I can't be cool in that car. And I don't ride in no uncool car. I got a reputation at stake. You see a big black woman sliding across the seat in that car, and you think one thing. Twenty-five dollars for a blow job. I'm telling you, if you aren't Jay Leno you got no business being in that car."
"Okay, let me get this straight. If I decide to go to Atlantic City, and the only car I can come up with is Big Blue . . . you don't want to go with me."
"Well, since you put it that way . . ."
I called Lula a cab, and then I trudged up the stairs to my apartment. I let myself in and went straight to the refrigerator for a beer. "I have to tell you," I said to Rex. "I'm getting discouraged."
I checked my answering machine and received a terse message from Eddie Kuntz. "I got it."
Kuntz didn't sound any happier when I called him back. He read the letters out to me. Fifty-three in all. And he hung up. No inquiring as to my health. No suggestion to have a nice day.
I dialed Sally and transferred the burden onto him. "By the way," I said. "What kind of car do you have?"
"Porsche."
Figures. "Two seater?"
"Is there any other kind?"
Room for me. No room for Lula. She'd understand. After all, this was business, right? And the fact that her car just got blown up, that was business too, right? "It wasn't my fault," I said. "I wasn't the one who tossed the cigarette."
"I must have been beamed up for a minute there," Sally said. "I think I just got a couple sentences from the other side."
I explained about the cars' catching fire and about the lead from Mrs. Nowicki.
"Sounds like we need to go to Atlantic City," Sally said.
"You think we could squash Lula into the Porsche with us?"
"Not even if we greased her."
I gave an internal sigh of regret and told Sally we'd go in my car and I'd pick him up at seven. No way was I going to be able to cut Lula out of this caper.
"OTHER MOTHERS have daughters who get married and have children," my mother said. "I have a daughter who blows up cars. How did this happen? This doesn't come from my side of the family."
We were at the table, eating dinner, and my father had his head bent over his plate, and his shoulders were shaking.
"What?" my mother said to him.
"I don't know. It just struck me funny. Some men could go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record."
Everyone sat in shocked silence because that was the longest speech my father had made in fifteen years.
"Your Uncle Lou used to blow up cars," my father said to me. "You don't know that, but it's true. When Louie was young he worked for Joey the Squid. Joey owned car lots back then, and he was in a war with the Grinaldi brothers, who also owned car lots. And Joey would pay Louie to blow up Grinaldi cars. Louie got paid by the car. Fifty dollars a car. That was big money in those days."
"You've been to the lodge, drinking," my mother said to my father. "I thought you were supposed to be out with the cab?"
My father forked in some potatoes. "Nobody wanted to take a cab. Slow day."
"Did Uncle Lou ever get caught?"
"Never. Lou was good. The Grinaldi brothers never suspected Lou. They thought Joey was sending out Willy Fuchs. One day they clipped Willy, and then Lou stopped blowing up Grinaldi cars."
"Ommigod."
"Worked out okay," my father said. "Lou went into the wholesale fruit business after that and did pretty good."
"Funky bracelet you got on your arm," Grandma said. "Is it new?"
"Actually, it's half of a pair of cuffs. I accidentally locked myself into them and then couldn't find the key. So I had to hacksaw one of them off. I need to go to a locksmith to get this half opened, but I haven't had the time."
"Muriel Slickowsky's son is a locksmith," my mother said. "I could call Muriel."
"Maybe tomorrow. I have to go to Atlantic City tonight. I'm checking out a lead on Maxine."
"I should go along," Grandma said, jumping out of her chair, heading for the stairs. "I could help. I blend right in there. Atlantic City's full of old babes like me. Let me change my dress. I'll be ready in a jiffy!"
"Wait! I don't think . . ."
"Wasn't nothing good on TV tonight anyway," Grandma called from the second floor. "And don't worry, I'll come prepared."
That brought me out of my seat. "No guns!" I looked over at my mother. "She doesn't still have that forty-five, does she?"
"I looked all over in her room, and I couldn't find it."
"I want her strip-searched before she gets in my car."
"Not enough money in the universe," my father said. "Not under threat of death would I look at that woman naked."
LULA , Grandma Mazur and I stood in the hall, waiting for Sally to answer his doorbell. I was wearing a short denim skirt, white T-shirt and sandals. Grandma was wearing a red-and-blue print dress with white sneakers. Lula was wearing a low-cut red knit dress that hiked up about three inches below her ass, red-tinted hose and red satin sling-back heels.
And Sally opened the door in full drag. Black bitch queen wig, skin-tight silver-sequined sheath that stopped three inches below his ass, and strappy silver platform heels that put him at a startling 6'8" without the hair.
Sally gave me the once-over. "I thought we were supposed to be in disguise."
"I' m disguised as a fox," Lula said.
"Yeah, and I'm disguised as an old lady," Grandma said.
"My mother wouldn't let me go if I was disguised as somebody," I said.
Sally tugged at his dress. "I'm disguised as Sheba."
"Girlfriend," Lula said to him, "you are the shit."
"Sally's a drag queen," I explained to Grandma.
"No kidding," Grandma said. "I always wanted to meet a drag queen. I always wanted to know what you do with your dingdong when you wear girl's clothes."
"You're supposed to wear special underpants that tuck you under."
We all looked down at the crotch-level bulge in the front of Sally's dress.
"So sue me," Sally said. "They give me a rash."
Lula tipped her nose in the air. "What's that smell? Mmmmmm, I smell something baking."
Sally rolled his eyes. "It's Sugar. He's in a fucking frenzy. He must have gone through ten pounds of flour in the last two hours."
Lula muscled past Sally into the kitchen. "Lord," she said, "will you look at this . . . cakes as far as the eye could see."
Sugar was at the counter, kneading bread dough. He looked up when we came in and gave us an embarrassed smile. "You probably think I'm weird to be doing all this baking."
"Honey, I think you're cute as a button," Lula said. "You ever want a new roommate you give me a call."
"I like the way it smells when you have something in the oven," Sugar said. "Like home."
"We're going to Atlantic City," I said to Sugar. "Would you like to join us?"
"Thanks, but I have a pie ready to go in, and this dough has to rise, and then I have some ironing . . . "
"Damn," Lula said, "you sound like Cinderella."
Sugar poked at his dough. "I'm not much of a gambler."
We each took a cookie from a plate on the counter and herded ourselves out of the kitchen, down the hall and into the elevator.
"What a sad little guy," Lula said. "He don't look like he has much fun."
"He's a lot more fun when he's in a dress," Sally said. "You put him in a dress and his whole personality changes."
"Then why don't he always wear a dress?" Lula wanted to know.
Sally shrugged. "I don't know. Guess that doesn't feel right, either."
We crossed the sleek marble lobby and walked the flower-bordered path to the lot.
"Over here," I said to Sally. "The blue-and-white Buick."
Sally's mascared lashes snapped open. "The Buick? Holy shit, is this your car? It's got portholes. Fucking portholes! What's under the hood."
"A V-eight."
"Yow! A V-eight! A fucking V-eight!"
"Good thing he don't have them tuck underpants on," Lula said. "He'd rupture himself."
The Buick was a man thing. Women hated it. Men loved it. I thought it must have something to do with the size of the tires. Or maybe it was the bulbous, egglike shape . . . sort of like a Porsche on steroids.
"We'd better get going," I said to Sally.
He took the keys out of my hand and slid behind the wheel.
"Excuse me," I said. "This is my car. I get to drive."
"You need someone with balls to drive this car," Sally said.
Lula stood hip stuck out, hand on hip. "Hah! And you think we don't have balls? Look again, Tiny Tim."
Sally held tight to the wheel. "Okay, what'll it take? I'll give you fifty bucks if you let me drive."
"I don't want money," I said. "If you want to drive the car, all you have to do is ask."
"Yeah, you just don't go pulling this macho shit on us," Lula said. "We don't stand for none of that. We don't take that bus."
"This is gonna be great," Sally said. "I always wanted to drive one of these."
Grandma and Lula piled in back, and I got in front.
Sally pulled a slip of paper from his purse. "Before I forget, here's the latest clue."
I read it aloud. " 'Last clue. Last chance. Blue Moon Bar. Saturday at nine.' "
Maxine was getting ready to bolt. She was setting Eddie up one last time. And what about me? I thought she might be setting me up one last time, too, by sending me on a wild-goose chase to Atlantic City.
THE FIRST THING I always notice about Atlantic City is that it's not Las Vegas. Vegas is all splash from the outside to the inside. Atlantic City is not so much about neon lights as about good parking. The casinos are built on the boardwalk, but truth is, nobody gives a damn about the boardwalk. A.C. is not about ocean. A.C. is about letting it ride. And if you're a senior citizen, so much the better. This is the Last Chance Saloon.
The city's slums sit butt-flush with the casinos' back doors. Since Jersey is not about perfection this isn't a problem. For me, Jersey is about finding the brass ring and grabbing hold, and if you have to go through some slums to get to the slots . . . fuck it. Crank up your car window, lock your door and roll past the pushers and pimps to valet parking.
It's all very exhilarating.
And while it's not Vegas, it's also not Monte Carlo. You don't see a lot of Versace gowns in Atlantic City. There are always some guys at the craps table with slicked-back hair and pinkie rings. And there are always some women dressed up like bar singers standing next to the oily, pinkie ring guys. But mostly what you see in Atlantic City is sixty-five-year-old women wearing polyester warm-up suits, toting buckets of quarters, heading for the poker machines.
I could go to New York or Vegas with Lula and Sally and never be noticed. In Atlantic City it was like trying to blend in with Sigfried and Roy and five of their tigers.
We came onto the floor, four abreast, letting the noise wash over us, taking it all in . . . the mirrored ceiling, the 3-D carpet, the flashing lights, and hustling, swirling crowds of people. We moved through the room and old men walked into walls, pit bosses turned silent, waitresses stopped in their tracks, chips were dropped on the floor and women stared with the sort of open-mouthed curiosity usually reserved for train wrecks. As if they'd never seen a seven-foot transvestite and a two-hundred-pound black woman with blond baloney curls all dressed up like Cher on a bad day.
Do I know how to conduct an undercover operation, or what?
"Good thing I got my Social Security check yesterday," Grandma said, eyeing the slots. "I feel lucky."
"Pick your poison," Lula said to Sally.
"Blackjack!"
And off they all went.
"Keep your eyes open for Maxine," I said to their departing backs.
I walked the room for an hour, lost $40 shooting craps, but got a free beer for a $5 tip. I hadn't run across Maxine, but then that wasn't a surprise. I found a sectional with good visibility and settled in to watch the people.
At eleven-thirty Grandma appeared and sank down next to me. "Won twenty bucks on my first machine, and then it turned on me," she said. "Bad luck all night after that."
"Got any money left?"
"None. Still, it wasn't all wasted. I met a real looker. He picked me up at the two-dollar poker machines, so you know he's no cheapskate."
I raised my eyebrows.
"You should have stayed with me. I could have gotten you fixed up, too."
Oh boy.
A small white-haired man approached us. "Here's your Manhattan," he said to Grandma, handing her a drink. "And who's this?" he asked, turning to me. "This must be your granddaughter."
"This here's Harry Meaker," Grandma said to me. "Harry's from Mercerville, and he had bum luck tonight, too."
"I always got bum luck," Harry said. "Had bum luck all my life. Been married two times, and both wives died. Had a double bypass last year, and now I'm clogging up again. I can feel it. And look at this. See this red scaly patch on my nose? Skin cancer. Gonna have it cut out next week."
"Harry came down on the bus," Grandma said.
"Prostate problems," Harry said. "Need a bus with a toilet on it." He looked at his watch. "I gotta go. Bus leaves in a half hour. Don't want to miss it."
Grandma watched him walk away. "What do you think? He's a live one, huh? For a while, anyway."
Lula and Sally trudged over and plopped down on the couch next to me.
"Didn't hear no gunfire, so I guess no one saw Maxine," Lula said.
"Maxine was the smart one," Sally said. "She stayed home."
I looked at him. "Not a good night?"
"Cleaned me out. I'm going to have to do my own nails this week."
"I could do them for you," Lula said. "I'm real good at nails. See those little palm trees on my nails? I put them on myself."
"Hold it," I said, getting to my feet. "Look at that woman in the turquoise slacks by the craps table. The one with all the yellow hair . . ."
The woman had her back to me, but she'd turned a moment ago, giving me a good look at her face. And she looked a lot like Maxine.
I started walking toward her when she turned again and stared directly at me. Recognition registered simultaneously for both of us. She pivoted on her heel and disappeared into a crush of people at the far side of the table.
"I see her!" Lula said, one step behind me. "Don't lose sight!"
But I had lost sight. The room was crowded, and Maxine wasn't dressed in red spangles like Lula. Maxine blended right in.
"I got my eye on her," Grandma yelled. "She's going for the boardwalk."
Grandma had climbed onto a blackjack table and was standing, sneakered feet planted wide. The dealer made a grab for her, and Grandma hit him on the head with her purse. "Don't be rude," she said to the dealer. "I just come up here to get a good look on account of the osteoporosis shrunk me and now I'm too short."
I took off at a run for the boardwalk entrance, weaving between clusters of gamblers, trying not to mow anyone over. In two heartbeats I was out of the game room, into the wide hallway leading to the door. I caught a glimpse of big straw hair in front of me, saw it bob through the double glass door. I was pushing people away and yelling "Excuse me" and I was breathing heavy. Too many doughnuts, not enough exercise.
I swung through the door and saw Maxine ahead of me, running for all she was worth. I kicked it up a notch, and I heard Lula and Sally clattering and swearing half a block back.
Maxine made a sharp turn off the boardwalk, down a side street. I made the same turn just as a car door slammed and an engine caught. I ran to the car, reached it just as its wheels spun. And then the car was gone. And since Maxine was nowhere to be seen, I supposed Maxine was gone, too.
Sally slid to a stop and bent at the waist to catch his breath. "That's it for me, man. From now on fuck the heels."
Lula crashed into him. "Heart attack. Heart attack."
We were all walking around, gasping for breath, and Grandma trotted up. "What happened? What'd I miss? Where is she?"
"Got away," I said.
"Dang!"
Three guys came out of the shadows at us. They looked to be late teens, wearing baggy homey pants and unlaced court shoes.
"Hey, momma," one said. "What's happening?"
"Give me a break," Sally said.
"Whoa," the kid said. "Big bitch!"
Sally straightened his wig. "Thanks."
The kid pulled a Buck knife out of his pants pocket. "How about giving me your purse, bitch?"
Sally hiked up his skirt, reached into his briefs and pulled out a Glock. "How about using that knife to slice off your balls?"
Lula whipped a gun out of her red satin purse and Grandma hauled out her .45 long-barrel.
"Day my make, punk," Grandma said.
"Hey, I don't want any trouble," the kid said. "We were just having some fun."
"I want to shoot him," Sally said. "Nobody'll tell, right?"
"No fair," Lula said. "I want to shoot him."
"Okay," Grandma said. "On the count of three, we'll all shoot him."
"No shooting!" I said.
"Then how about if I kick the shit out of him?" Sally said.
"You're all nuts," the kid said, backing away. "What kind of women are you?" His friends took off, and he ran after them.
Sally put his gun back in his pants. "Guess I flunked the estrogen test."
We all stared at his crotch, and Grandma said what Lula and I were thinking.
"I thought that bulge was your dingdong," Grandma said.
"Jesus," Sally said, "who do you think I am, Thunder the Wonder Horse? My gun wouldn't fit in my purse."
"You need to get a smaller gun," Lula said. "Ruins your lines with that big old Glock in your drawers."
GRANDMA, Lula and Sally were asleep fifteen minutes out of Atlantic City. I drove the big car in the dark and the quiet, thinking about Maxine. I still wasn't convinced this was anything other than a wild-goose chase. True, I'd seen Maxine, just as her mother had said but she'd gotten away a little too easily. And she hadn't looked all that surprised to see me. Her car had been parked on a dark side street. Not the sort of thing a lone woman would do. It was safer and more convenient to park in the parking garage. She'd taken off in a black Acura. And while I didn't actually see her get in the car, I suspected she wasn't driving. It had all been too fast. The motor had caught the instant I heard the car door slam shut.
So I was thinking maybe she wanted to throw me off. Maybe she was still in Point Pleasant. Maybe she'd paid her rent for the month and didn't want to move. So when she discovered her mother had informed on her, she concocted this scenario to keep me away from Point Pleasant. Or maybe this was another game. Maybe Eddie Kuntz had been right about Maxine's fascination with James Bond.
I dropped Sally off first, then Lula, and Grandma last.
"Mom thinks you've gotten rid of that gun," I said to Grandma.
"Hunh," Grandma said. "Imagine that."
My mother was at the front door, standing arms crossed, looking out at us. If I was a good daughter I'd go in and have some cookies. But I wasn't that good a daughter. I loved my mother, but love only goes so far when you're trying to explain how your grandmother ended up standing on a blackjack table in a packed casino.
I waited for Grandma to successfully negotiate the steps, then I waved goodbye and drove away in the big blue car. I made every light on Hamilton, turned at St. James and felt a nervous flutter in my stomach at the sight of emergency vehicles at the corner. Cop cars, fire trucks, EMTs. The parking lot to my building was filled with them. Lights were blazing, and the squawk of loudspeakers carried back to me. Sooty water ran in the gutter, and people dressed in bathrobes and hastily put together outfits milled about on the sidewalks. Whatever it was, it seemed to be over. Firefighters were packing up. Some of the curious were dispersing.
Fear arrowed into me. Next time I'll strike a match.
The street was blocked, so I parked where I was and ran across the small patch of grass that bordered the lot. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the lights and squinted through a haze of smoke and diesel fumes, counting windows to locate the fire. Second floor, two apartments over. The fire was in my apartment. The window glass was broken and the surrounding brick was blackened. No other apartment showed any damage.
My only coherent thought was of Rex. Rex was trapped in a glass aquarium in the middle of all that ruin. I stumbled to the building's back door, begging for a miracle, not sure if I was screaming or crying, focused only on Rex. I was dragging in air that felt thick and unbreathable. Like swimming through Jell-O. Vision and sound distorted. Hands pulling at me as I struggled to cross the crowded lobby. I heard my name being called.
"Here!" Mr. Kleinschmidt shouted. "Over here!"
He was with Mrs. Karwatt, and Mrs. Karwatt had both arms wrapped around Rex's glass aquarium.
I shoved my way through to them, barely able to believe Rex had been saved. "Is he okay? Is Rex okay?" I asked, raising the lid to see for myself, tilting the soup can to look at a startled Rex.
Probably it's silly to feel so much affection for a hamster, but Rex is my roommate. Rex keeps my apartment from feeling empty. And besides that, he likes me. I'm almost sure of it.
"He's fine," Mrs. Karwatt said. "We got him out right away. Thank goodness you gave me a key to your apartment. I heard the explosion and went right in. Lucky the fire started in your bedroom."
"Was anyone hurt?"
"No one was hurt. It was all in your apartment. Mrs. Stinkowski below you has some water damage, and we all smell smoky, but that's it."
"This must be a doozy of a case you're on," Mr. Kleinschmidt said. "Someone blew up your car and your apartment all in one day."
Kenny Zale clomped over to me. I went to grade school with Kenny, and for a while in high school dated his older brother, Mickey. Kenny was a fireman now. He was dressed in boots and black bunker pants, and his face was grimy with sweat and soot.
"Looks like you visited my apartment," I said to Kenny.
"Maybe you should think about getting a different job."
"How bad is it?"
"The bedroom's gone. That's where it started. Looks to me like someone pitched a firebomb through your window. The bathroom is salvageable. The living room is pretty much trashed. The kitchen will probably be okay when it gets cleaned up. You'll need new flooring. Probably have to paint. There's a lot of water damage."
"Can I get in?"
"Yeah. This would be a good time. The fire marshal's up there now. He'll probably walk you through to let you get what you can, and then he'll seal it until the investigation's over and he's sure it's safe."
"John Petrucci still the fire marshal?"
"Yeah. You're probably on intimate terms."
"We've spent some time together. I wouldn't say we were intimate."
He grinned and ruffled my hair. "I'm glad you weren't in bed when this happened. You'd be toast."
I left Rex with Mrs. Karwatt, ran the stairs and worked my way through the crush of people in the hall. The area around my apartment was water soaked and sooty. The air was acrid. I looked through the door and my heart contracted. The destruction was numbing. The walls were black, the windows broken, the furniture unrecognizable as anything other than drenched, charred rubble.
I'm a firm believer in denial. My reasoning is why deal with unpleasantness today when you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if you procrastinate long enough, maybe the issue will go away. Unfortunately, this issue wasn't going away. This issue was beyond denial. This issue was fucking depressing.
"Shit!" I shrieked. "Shit, shit, shit, shit!"
Everyone on the floor stopped what they were doing and stared at me.
"Okay," I said. "I feel better now." It was a lie, of course, but it felt good to say.
Petrucci walked over. "You got any idea who did this?"
"No. Do you?" Another lie. I had a few ideas.
"Somebody with a pretty good arm."
That could be Maxine. The softball star. But it still felt wrong. It felt more like mob . . . like Joe's pal, Terry.
I gingerly stepped into the kitchen. The brown bear cookie jar was untouched. The phone looked okay. The soot and water were pervasive and depressing. I bit down hard on my lip. I wasn't going to cry. Rex was safe. Everything else was replaceable, I told myself.
We went room by room, and not much was salvageable. A few cosmetics that had been in the bathroom and a hair dryer. I put them in a bag from the kitchen.
"Well, this isn't so bad," I said to Petrucci. "I've been wanting to redecorate. I just wish the bathroom had gone."
"What, you don't like orange and brown?"
"Do you think it's too late to burn the bathroom?"
Petrucci looked pained. Like I'd asked him to fart in public "You have insurance for all your stuff?"
"Yes." Maybe.
Mrs. Karwatt was waiting in the hall with Rex. "Are you okay? Do you have some place to stay? You could sleep on my couch tonight."
I took the cage from her. "That's nice of you to offer, but I'll probably go home to my parents. They have a spare bedroom."
Old Mrs. Bestler was in the elevator. "Going down," she said, leaning on her walker. "First floor, ladies' handbags."
The doors opened to the lobby, and the first person I saw was Dillon in his superintendent coveralls.
"I was just going up to take a look," he said. "Guess I'll have to get the paintbrush out."
"Gonna take a lot of paint." My lip was trembling again.
"Hey, don't worry about it. Remember when Mrs. Baumgarten set fire to her Christmas tree? The whole apartment was burned to a crisp. Nothing left but ashes. And now look . . . good as new."
"It's worth a case of Guinness for you to take a sledgehammer to the bathroom."
"What, you don't like orange and brown?"
I WAS GLAD I'd parked the Buick on the street, out of sight of the fire-blackened building. Out of sight, out of mind. Sort of. The Buick was quiet and womblike. Nice and insulating against the outside world. The doors were locked, and the activity was all in front of me, half a block away.
Rex and I sat in the car and tried to collect our thoughts. After a while Rex started running on his wheel, and I assumed his thoughts were all collected. My thoughts were taking longer to come together. My thoughts were running in frightening directions. Someone wanted me scared and maybe dead. There was a remote possibility it was the same someone who was chopping off fingers and whacking off scalps, and I didn't like the idea that this was in my future.
I rested my head on the steering wheel. I was exhausted, and I was on the brink of tears. And I was afraid if I started crying I wouldn't stop for a long, long time.
I looked at my watch. It was two A.M. I needed to get some sleep. Where? The most obvious solution was to go home to my parents, but I didn't want to put their lives in jeopardy. I didn't want the next target for a firebomb to be their house on High Street. So where could I go? A hotel? There are no hotels in Trenton. There are some in Princeton, but they were forty minutes away, and I was reluctant to spend the money. I could call Ranger, but no one knows where Ranger lives. If Ranger took me in for the night, he'd probably have to kill me in the morning to make sure his secret was safe. Lula? That was sort of a scary idea. Better to face the scalper than sleep with Lula. There was my best friend, Mary Lou, and there was my sister, Valerie, but I didn't want to endanger them, either. I needed someone who was expendable. Someone I didn't have to worry about. Someone who had extra room.
"Oh boy," I said to Rex. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
I sat for another five minutes, but I couldn't come up with a better solution to my problem, so I turned the key in the ignition and slowly drove past the lone fire truck at the end of the street. I tried not to look at my apartment, but I caught a glance of the fire escape from the corner of my eye. My chest gave a painful constriction. My poor apartment.
I took a deep breath. I didn't want to die. And I didn't want someone to hate me. And I absolutely did not want to cry.
"Don't worry about a thing," I said to Rex. "This will all work out. We've had bad times before, right?"
I took Hamilton to Chambers and followed Chambers to Slater. Two blocks down Slater I found the house I was looking for. It was a modest brown-shingled row house. All lights were off. I closed my eyes. I was dog tired, and I didn't want to do this.
"Maybe we should sleep in the car tonight," I said to Rex. "Then tomorrow we can get something more permanent."
Rex was doing a four-minute mile on the wheel. He blinked at me once, and that was it. The mental message was, You're on your own, kid.
Truth is, I didn't want to stay in my car. The crazy person could come and get me while I slept. He could jimmy the window, and he could cut off all my fingers. I looked at the house again. This was the one place I could feel safe and not be completely freaked out if the house was destroyed. This house belonged to Joe Morelli.
I hauled my cell phone out of my bag and dialed.
The phone rang six times before Joe answered with a mumbled hello.
"Joe?" I said. "It's Stephanie."
"Does this involve death?"
"Not yet."
"Does it involve sex?"
"Not yet."
"I can't imagine why else you'd be calling me."
"Someone firebombed my apartment tonight, and I need a place to stay."
"Where are you?"
"In front of your house."
An upstairs curtain was pulled aside.
"I'll be right down," Joe said. "Don't get out of your car until I open my door."
I HAULED Rex's cage off the front seat. "Now remember," I said, "no sniveling over the fact that our life is sucky. And no getting all mushy because Morelli is so hot. And no crying. We don't want Morelli thinking we're losers."
Morelli was on his small cement front porch. The door was open behind him, and I could see light from the upstairs hall. He was barefoot, dressed in cut-offs that rode his hips. His hair was tousled from sleep, and he had a gun in his hand, hanging loose at his side. "You talking to someone?"
"Rex. He's a little nervous about all this."
Morelli took the cage from me, kicked his door shut and carried Rex into the kitchen. He put the cage on the counter and flipped the overhead light on. It was an old-fashioned kitchen with dated appliances and Formica counters. Cupboards had been recently painted with cream enamel, and there was new linoleum on the floor. A pot sat soaking in the sink. Looked like Morelli'd had spaghetti for supper.
Morelli put a quart of cold milk and a bag of Oreos on the small wood table that pressed against one kitchen wall. He took two glasses from the dish drain, sat down at the table and poured out two glasses of milk.
"So," he said, "you want to talk about it?"
"I was in Atlantic City looking for Maxine tonight, and while I was gone someone pitched a firebomb through my bedroom window. The whole apartment went up. Fortunately, Mrs. Karwatt had a key and managed to rescue Rex."
Morelli stared at me for a beat with his unreadable cop face. "Remember those purple shoes you bought last year?"
"Reduced to ashes."
"Damn. I had plans for those shoes. I've spent a few sleepless nights thinking about you wearing those shoes and nothing else."
I helped myself to a cookie. "You need a life."
"Tell me about it. I spent last weekend laying linoleum." He took a second cookie. "I notice you're driving the Buick. What happened to the CRX?"
"Remember I told you about how someone soaked it with gasoline? Well, it sort of exploded."
"It exploded?"
"Actually, it caught fire first. Then it exploded."
"Hmm," Morelli said, eating the top half of the Oreo.
A tear slid down my cheek.
Morelli stopped eating. "Wait a minute. Is this for real? You aren't making this up?"
"Of course this is for real. Why else do you think I'm here?"
"Well, I thought . . ."
I jumped up, and my chair crashed to the floor. "You thought I made this up so I could come over here in the middle of the night and crawl into your bed!"
The line to Morelli's mouth tightened. "Let me get this straight. Yesterday, someone actually blew up your car and your apartment. And now you want to move in with me? What, do you hate me? You're a walking disaster! You're Calamity Jane in fucking spandex!"
"I am not a walking disaster!" But he was right. I was a walking disaster. I was an accident waiting to happen. And I was going to cry. My chest ached and my throat felt like I'd swallowed a baseball and tears gushed out of my eyes. "Shit," I said, swiping the tears away.
Morelli grimaced and reached out to me. "Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean---"
"Don't touch me!" I shrieked. "You're right. I'm a disaster. Look at me. I'm homeless. I'm carless. And I'm hysterical. What kind of a bounty hunter gets hysterical? A loser bounty hunter, that's what kind. A l-l-loser."
"Maybe milk wasn't the right choice here," Morelli said. "Maybe you could use some brandy."
"And there's more," I sobbed. "I lost forty bucks on craps, and I was the only one who didn't have a gun tonight!"
Morelli pulled me into his arms and held me close to him.
"That's okay, Steph. Forty dollars isn't so much. And lots of people don't have guns."
"Not in New Jersey. Not bounty hunters."
"There are some people in Jersey who don't have a gun."
"Oh yeah? Name one."
He held me at arm's length and grinned. "I think we should get you up to bed. You'll feel better in the morning."
"About the bed . . ."
He pushed me toward the stairs. "I have a spare bedroom made up."
"Thanks."
"And I'll leave my door open in case you get lonely."
And I'd lock my door in case I got weak.
I AWOKE DISORIENTED, staring at a ceiling that wasn't mine. The walls were covered with faded green paper patterned with barely discernible viney flowers. Comforting in an old-fashioned way. Morelli had inherited this house from his Aunt Rose and hadn't changed much. My guess was the simple white curtains that hung on the windows had been chosen by Rose. It was a small room with a queen-size bed and a single chest of drawers. The floors were wood, and Morelli had placed a rag throw rug beside the bed. It was a sunny room and much quieter than my own bedroom, which faced out to the parking lot. I was sleeping in one of Morelli's Tshirts, and I was now faced with grim reality. I had no clothes. No clean underwear, no shorts, no shoes, no nothing. First thing would be a trip to Macy's for an emergency wardrobe.
There was a clock radio on the chest of drawers. It was nine o'clock. The day had started without me. I opened my door and peeked into the hall. All was silent. No sign of Morelli. A piece of paper had been taped to my door. It said Morelli had gone off to work and I should make myself at home. It said there was an extra key for me on the kitchen table and towels laid out in the bathroom.
I showered and dressed and went downstairs in search of breakfast. I poured myself a glass of orange juice and looked in at Rex.
"No doubt about it, I made an idiot out of myself last night," I said.
Rex was sleeping in his soup can and didn't show a lot of concern. Rex had seen me in my idiot state before.
I ate a bowl of cereal and took a look at the house. It was clean and orderly. The food in the cupboard was basic, the pots were second generation. Six glasses. Six dishes. Six bowls. Shelf paper left from Aunt Rose. He had a coffeemaker, but he hadn't made coffee, nor had he made breakfast. No dirty dishes. No new dishes in the dish drain. Morelli would stop on the way to work for coffee and whatever. Cops weren't known for their excellent diets.
I remembered Morelli's living room furniture from his apartment. Utilitarian. Comfort without style. It seemed off in the row house. The row house needed overstuffed with magazines on the coffee table and pictures on the walls.
Rooms were shotgunned. Living room, dining room, kitchen. Because Morelli lived in the middle of the block, there were no windows in the dining room. Not that it mattered. I couldn't see Morelli using the dining room. In the beginning, when Morelli had first moved here, I couldn't see him in the house at all. Now it suited him. Not that Morelli had turned domestic. It was more that the house had assumed independence. As if Morelli and the house had reached an agreement to coexist and leave it at that.
I called my mother and told her there'd been a fire and I was staying with Morelli.
"What do you mean, you're staying with Morelli? Ommigod, you're married!"
"It's not like that. Morelli has an extra bedroom. I'm going to pay him rent."
"We have an extra bedroom. You could stay here."
"I've tried that before, and it doesn't work. Too many people using one bathroom." Too many homicidal maniacs wanting to kill me.
"Angie Morelli is gonna have a fit."
Angie Morelli is Joe's mother. A woman both revered and feared in the burg.
"Angie Morelli's a good Catholic woman, and she's not as open-minded as I am," my mother said.
The Morelli women were good Catholics. The men broke every commandment. The men played Monday night poker with the Antichrist.
"I have to go," I said. "I just wanted you to know I was okay."
"Why don't you and Joe come over for dinner tonight? I'm making meat loaf."
"We're not a couple! And I have things to do."
"What things?"
"Things."
My next phone call was to the office. "My apartment got firebombed," I told Connie. "I'm staying with Morelli for a while."
"Good move," Connie said. "You on the pill?"
I straightened the kitchen, pocketed the key and took off for the mall. Two hours later I had a week's worth of clothes and a maxed-out charge card.
It was noon when I got to the office. Connie and Lula were at Connie's desk eating Chinese.
"Help yourself," Lula said, nudging a cardboard carton. "We got lots. We got fried rice, shrimp clumps and Kung Fu something."
I picked at a shrimp clump. "Heard from Vinnie yet?"
"Not a word," Connie said.
"How about Joyce? Heard from her?"
"Nope. And she hasn't brought Maxine in, either."
"I been thinking about Maxine," Lula said. "I think she's in Point Pleasant. And I wouldn't be surprised if her mama was there, too. That Atlantic City thing was a big phony wild-goose chase to keep us away from Point Pleasant. Her getaway don't feel right. That car was sitting there waiting for her to come out and take off. I think her mama set us up."
I tried some of the Kung Fu stuff. "I've been thinking the same thing."
LULA AND I stood in the middle of the boardwalk, across from the Parrot Bar, and clipped our pagers onto our shorts. I was wearing Day-Glo orange running shorts that had been on sale at Foot Locker, and Lula was wearing yellow-and-black tiger-striped spandex. She'd had her yellow ringlets beaded so that all over her head were four-inch strands of fluorescent pink, poison-green and bright yellow beads. It was ninety-six in the shade, the ocean was millpond calm, the sky was a cloudless azure, and you could fry an egg on the sand. We were here to find Maxine, but already I could see Lula getting distracted by the frozen custard stand.
"This is the plan," I said to Lula. "You're going to hang out here and keep your eye on the Parrot Bar, and I'm going to canvass the beach and the boardwalk. Page me if you see Maxine or anyone associated with her."
"Don't worry, nobody'll get by me. I'd just like to see that bony-ass mother. I'll grab her by what little hair she's got left, and I'll---"
"No! No grabbing, no shooting, no gassing, no stun-gunning If you spot someone just stick with them until I get to you."
"Suppose it's self-defense?"
"There will be no self-defense. Don't let anyone see you. Try to blend in."
"I need an ice cream to blend in," Lula said, her hair beads jumping around, clacking every time she moved her head. "You give me an ice cream and I'll look like everybody else here."
Well hell, Tallulah, then go get an ice cream.
I walked north first. I'd brought a pair of mini-binoculars that I trained on the beach since Maxine seemed like the sunbather type. I went slowly and methodically, wandering through the arcades and bars. I walked beyond the amusement area to where the boardwalk was plain old boardwalk. After an hour of this I turned and headed back to Lula.
"Haven't seen anybody I know," Lula said when I reached her. "No Maxine. No Maxine's mama. No Joyce. No Travolta."
I stared into the bar across the way, and I didn't see any of those people, either. I took a brush and an elastic scrunchy out of my bag and pulled my hair back, off my neck, into a ponytail. I had a real desire to jump in the ocean, but I decided to settle for a lemonade. I was down to the wire with Maxine. I didn't have time to waste on such frivolity as lowering my body temperature.
I left Lula on the bench, got a lemonade and continued to walk and to scan the south end of the beach. I walked past a series of spin-the-wheel games and came to an arcade. I stepped into the cool shade and moseyed past the claw machines and the skillo ramps. I looked over at the wall where the prizes were displayed and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood at the wall, surveying the prizes. Five pieces of Farberware for 40,000 points. Wooden lighthouse for 9,450. Looney Tunes watch, 8,450. Dirt Devil, 40,100. Boom box, 98,450 points. The woman seemed to be counting the tickets she held in her hand. One hand held the tickets. And the other hand was heavily bandaged. She had brown hair, slim body.
I stepped farther back in the room and waited to see her face. She stood there for a moment longer, turned and walked to the redemption desk. It was Margie. I scooted past the desk, behind Margie's back, out to the boardwalk and paged Lula. She was just a short distance away. She looked up when the pager went off. I caught her eye and gave her a "come here" wave.
Margie was still at the desk when Lula trotted up.
"What's going on?" Lula asked.
"You remember I told you about Maxine's friend, Margie?"
"The one had her finger chopped off."
"Yes. That's her at the redemption desk."
"Point Pleasant sure is a popular place."
Margie took a large box from an arcade employee and moved to the side door that opened to the street. She passed through the door and turned right, away from the boardwalk. Lula and I watched her walk to the end of the block and cross the street. We followed after her, Lula a little less than a block away and me behind Lula. Margie crossed another street, continued on and went into a house in the middle of the next block.
We held our positions and watched for a while, but Margie didn't come out. The house was a single-story bungalow with a small front porch. Surrounding houses were similar. Lots were small. Cars were parked on both sides of the street.
We weren't in a good position to conduct any kind of surveillance. We'd driven to Point Pleasant in a car that drew attention. My only consolation was that even if we had a more generic car, there were no parking places open.
"So I take it you think this Margie is with Maxine. And maybe Maxine's mama is there, too," Lula said.
"Yeah. Problem is, I don't know if Maxine's in the house right now."
"I could be the Avon lady," Lula said. "Ding dong, Avon calling."
"If Maxine's mother is in there she'll recognize you."
"Think maybe we be recognized standing on the street like this, too," Lula said.
Very true. "Okay, this is what we'll do. We'll go see if Maxine's in the house. If she isn't at home, we'll sit down with Margie and watch some TV until Maxine shows up."
"Sounds like a plan to me. You want the back door or the front door?"
"Front door."
"And you probably don't want me to shoot anybody."
"Shooting isn't my favorite thing."
Lula walked along the side of the house to the back, and I went to the front door. I knocked twice and Margie answered.
Her eyes opened wide in surprise. "Oh!"
"Hi," I said. "I'm looking for Maxine."
"Maxine isn't here."
"You wouldn't mind if I came in and looked for myself?"
Maxine's mother swayed into view. "Who is it?" She took a long drag on her cigarette and let the smoke curl from her nose, dragon style. "Christ, it's you. You know, you're getting to be a real pain in the ass."
Lula came in from the kitchen. "Hope nobody minds my coming in. The back door wasn't locked."
"Oh God," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Tweedledum."
There was an empty box in the middle of the floor with a lamp sitting beside it.
"You win this lamp at the arcade?" Lula asked Margie.
"It's for my bedroom," Margie said. "Twenty-seven thousand points. Yesterday, Maxine won a deep fat fryer."
"Hell, we won just about everything in this house," Mrs. Nowicki said.
"Where's Maxine now?" I asked.
"She had some errands to run."
Lula sat down on the couch and picked up the channel changer for the TV. "Guess we'll be waiting then. You don't mind if I watch TV, do you?"
"You can't do this," Mrs. Nowicki said. "You can't just waltz in here and make yourself at home."
" 'Course we can," Lula said. "We're bounty hunters. We can do anything we want. We're protected by a dumb-ass law made back in 1869 when people didn't know any better."
"Is that true?" Mrs. Nowicki wanted to know.
"Well, actually the law doesn't cover control of the channel changer," I said. "But it does give us a lot of rights when it comes to the pursuit and capture of a felon."
There was the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway between houses, and Margie and Mrs. Nowicki exchanged glances.
"That's Maxine, isn't it?" I asked.
"You're going to ruin everything for us," Mrs. Nowicki said. "We had this all planned out, and now you're screwing it up."
"I'm screwing it up? Look at you two. You've been scalped and had your finger chopped off. Back in Trenton there's a dead store clerk. And you're still playing this stupid treasure hunt game."
"It isn't that simple," Margie said. "We can't leave yet. They have to pay the price."
A car door slammed and Mrs. Nowicki gave a start. "Maxie!" she yelled.
Lula gave Mrs. Nowicki a bump with her hip. Mrs. Nowicki lost her balance and flopped onto the couch, and Lula sat on her. "I know I'll get hollered at if I shoot you," Lula said. "So I'll just sit on you until you be quiet."
"I can't breathe," Mrs. Nowicki said. "You ever think about cutting back on the helpings?"
Margie had a trapped animal look, like she couldn't decide whether to shout a warning or bolt for the door herself.
"Sit," I told her, pulling an industrial-size can of pepper spray out of my bag, shaking the can to make sure it was active. "Don't go running around confusing things."
I was hidden by the door when Maxine came in, but Lula was in full view, sitting on Mrs. Nowicki.
"Lo," Lula said to Maxine.
"Shit," Maxine said. Then she did an about-face and lunged for the door.
I kicked the door closed and aimed the spray at her. "Stop! Don't make me use this."
Maxine took a step back and raised her hands.
"Now get off me, you big load of blubber," Mrs. Nowicki said to Lula.
I had a pair of cuffs stuck into the waistband of my shorts. I handed the cuffs to Lula and told her to secure Maxine.
"Sorry to have to do this," I said to Maxine. "The charges against you are minimal. If you cooperate you might not even get jail time."
"It's not jail time I'm worried about," Maxine said. "It's dead time."
Lula reached out to snap the cuffs, and without warning the front and back doors crashed open. Joyce Barnhardt, dressed in swat black with "bounty hunter" emblazoned on her T-shirt, charged into the room with guns drawn. There were three other women with her, all dressed like Joyce, all armed like Rambo on rampage, all yelling "Freeze" at the top of their lungs and doing those squatting cop stances you see in the movies.
Margie's new lamp got knocked over and crashed on the floor, and Margie and Mrs. Nowicki and Maxine started yelling and running around, trying to protect their stuff. They were yelling "Oh no!" and "Help!" and "Don't shoot!" Lula dove behind the couch and made herself as small as anyone weighing two hundred pounds could make herself. And I was yelling at everyone to stop yelling.
There was a lot of confusion and a lot of people in that one small room, and it suddenly occurred to me that Maxine wasn't one of them. I heard gravel fly against the house and looked out the window to see Maxine gun the car out of the driveway and take off down the road.
I didn't have a car, so there wasn't much point in my rushing out. And I sure as hell wasn't going to help Joyce catch Maxine, so I didn't say anything. I just backed off and sat down in a big, overstuffed chair and waited for things to calm down. What I really wanted to do was to wade in and beat Joyce to a bloody pulp, but I didn't want to set a bad example for Lula.
Joyce had recruited her cousin Karen Ruzinski and Marlene Cwik to help with the takedown. I didn't know the third woman. Karen had two little kids, and I guess she was happy to get out of the house and do something different.
"Hey Karen," I said, "where are the kids? Day care?"
"They're with my mother. She's got a pool in her yard. One of those big ones with the deck around it." Karen set her gun down on the coffee table and pulled her wallet out of one of the pockets in her swat pants. "Look here," she said. "This is Susan Elizabeth. She starts school this year."
Mrs. Nowicki picked up Karen's gun, squeezed a shot off, and a chunk of plaster fell out of the ceiling onto the television set. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks and stared at Mrs. Nowicki.
Mrs. Nowicki leveled the gun at Joyce. "Party's over."
"You're in big trouble," Joyce said. "You're harboring a fugitive."
A humorless smile slashed Mrs. Nowicki's face. "Honey, I'm not harboring anything. Look around. You see a fugitive?"
Understanding registered in Joyce's eyes. "Where's Maxine?"
Now I was smiling with Mrs. Nowicki. "Maxine left," I said.
"You deliberately let her get away!"
"Not me," I said. "I wouldn't do such a thing. Lula, would I do such a thing?"
"Hell no," Lula said. "You're a professional. Although, I gotta say, you haven't got no cool bounty hunter shirt like they do."
"She can't have gone far," Joyce said. "Everybody out to the car."
Mrs. Nowicki searched through her pockets, found a cigarette and stuck it in her mouth. "Maxie's long gone. They'll never find her."
"Just out of morbid curiosity," I said. "What's this all about?"
"It's about money," Mrs. Nowicki said. Then she and Margie laughed. Like that was a good joke.
MORELLI WAS SLOUCHED in front of the television when I got back to the house. He was watching Jeopardy, and there were three empty beer bottles alongside his chair.
"Bad day?" I asked.
"To begin with . . . you were telling the truth about your apartment. I checked. It's a big black cinder. Ditto for your car. Following along in the same vein, word has gotten out that we're living together, and my mother expects us for dinner tomorrow at six."
"No!"
"Yes."
"Anything else?"
"The case I've been working on for the last four months collapsed."
"I'm sorry."
Morelli made a disgusted gesture. "It happens."
"Have you had anything to eat?"
An eyebrow raised, and he looked at me sideways. "What did you have in mind?"
"Food."
"No. I haven't had any of that."
I went to the kitchen and said hello to Rex, who was sitting on a small mound of assorted dinner treats. Compliments of Morelli, Rex was feasting on a grape, a miniature marshmallow, a crouton, and a beer nut. I removed the marshmallow and ate it, so Rex wouldn't run the risk of requiring a filling in his fang.
"So what do you want?" I asked Morelli.
"Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans."
"How about a peanut butter sandwich?"
"That would be my second choice."
I made two peanut butter sandwiches and brought them into the living room.
Morelli looked at his sandwich. "What are these lumps?"
"Olives."
He opened the sandwich and looked inside. "Where's the jelly?"
"No jelly."
"I think I need another beer."
"Just eat it!" I yelled. "What do I look like, Betty Crocker? I didn't have a great day, either, you know. Not that anybody asked me about my day!"
Morelli grinned. "What about your day?"
I slumped onto the couch. "Found Maxine. Lost Maxine."
"Happens," Morelli said. "You'll find her again. You're the bounty hunter from hell."
"I'm afraid she's getting ready to bolt big time."
"Can't blame her. There are some scary guys out there."
"I asked her mother what this was all about, and she said it was about money. Then she laughed."
"You saw her mother?"
I filled Morelli in on the details, and he didn't look happy when I was done.
"Something has to be done about Barnhardt," he said.
"Any ideas?"
"Nothing that wouldn't get my shield taken away."
There was a moment of silence between us.
"So," I said, "how well do you know Joyce?"
The grin returned. "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"You want a full accounting of my sex life up to this moment?"
"That would probably take days."
Morelli slouched a little lower in his chair, his legs stretched in front of him, his lips curved into a smile, his eyes dark and dreamy. "I don't know Joyce as well as I know you."
The phone rang, and we both gave a start. Morelli had the cordless on the table beside him. He answered and mouthed "Your mother."
I was making no, no, no signals, but Morelli continued to smile and handed the phone over to me.
"I saw Ed Crandle this afternoon," my mother said. "He said don't worry, he'll take care of everything. He's going to drop the forms off here."
Ed Crandle lived across the street from my mother, and he sold insurance. I guessed this meant that I had some. Ordinarily I could look in my desk drawer to check. That wasn't possible now that my desk drawer and everything in it was smoke.
"And that nice superintendent, Dillon Ruddick, called and said your apartment was sealed for security right now, so you can't get in. But he said he was going to start work on it next week. Also, a woman named Sally would like you to call her back."
I thanked my mother and again declined dinner and the use of my room. I hung up and called Sally.
"Shit," Sally said, "I just heard about your apartment. Hey, I'm really sorry. Is there anything I can do? You need a place to crash?"
I told him I was staying with Morelli.
"I would have fucking wrestled him into the ground if I wasn't wearing heels," Sally said.
When I got off the phone Morelli had pulled the plug on Jeopardy and was watching a ball game. I felt gritty from sweat, the back of my neck was scratchy with sunburn, and I could see my nose glowing. Should have used sunblock.
"I'm going to take a shower," I said to Morelli. "It's been a long day."
"Is this a sexual shower?"
"No. This is an I've-been-sweating-all-day-at-the-shore shower."
"Just checking," Morelli said.
The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was faded but clean. It was smaller than my apartment bathroom, and the fixtures were older. But the era of construction was more graceful. Morelli had stacked towels on a shelf above the toilet. His toothbrush, toothpaste and razor took up the left side of the sink vanity. I'd placed my toothbrush and toothpaste on the right. His and hers. I gave myself a mental shake. Get a grip, Stephanie . . . this isn't a romance novel. This is the result of a firebombing. There was an over-the-sink medicine cabinet, but I couldn't bring myself to open the door. It seemed like prying, and I was sort of afraid what I might find.
I showered and brushed my teeth and was toweling my hair dry when Morelli knocked on the door.
"Eddie Kuntz's on the phone," Morelli said. "You want him to call back?"
I wrapped the big bath towel around myself, cracked the door, and stuck my hand out. "I'll take it."
Morelli handed me the phone, and his eyes locked on my towel. "Shit," he whispered.
I tried to close the door, but he was still holding on to the phone. I was holding the towel with one hand, and the phone with the other, and I was nudging the door closed with my knee. I saw his eyes darken and soften, like liquid chocolate. I knew the look. I'd seen it before, and it had never turned out well for me.
"This isn't good," Morelli said, his gaze now wandering the length of the three-inch opening between door and jamb, from the towel to my legs and back to the towel.
"Hello?" Kuntz said at the other end of the line. "Stephanie?"
I tried to twist the phone out of Morelli's hand, but he was holding fast. My heart was going ka-thunk, ka-thunk in my chest, and I was starting to sweat in unusual places.
"Tell him you'll call him back," Morelli said.
I CLENCHED MY TEETH. "Let go of the phone!"
Morelli relinquished the phone but kept his foot in the doorway.
"What?" I said to Kuntz.
"I want a progress report."
"The report is that there's no progress."
"You'd tell me, right?"
"Yeah, sure. And by the way, someone soaked my car with gasoline and firebombed my apartment. You wouldn't happen to know who that someone was, would you?"
"Jeez. No. You think it was Maxine?"
"Why would Maxine firebomb my apartment?"
"I don't know. Because you're working for me?"
Morelli reached in and took the phone. "Later," he said to Kuntz. Then he disconnected and tossed the phone in the sink.
"This isn't a good idea," I said. But I was thinking, Why not? My legs were shaved. I didn't hardly have any clothes on so that awkward step was eliminated. And after everything I'd been through, I deserved an orgasm. I mean, it was the least I could do for myself.
Morelli moved in and nuzzled my bare shoulder. "I know," he said. "This is a terrible idea." His mouth brushed just below my earlobe. We locked eyes for a heartbeat, and Morelli kissed me. His mouth was gentle, and the kiss lingered. When I was in high school my best friend, Mary Lou, told me she heard Morelli had fast hands. Actually, just the opposite was true. Morelli knew how to go slow. Morelli knew how to drive a woman crazy.
He kissed me again, our tongues touched, and the kiss deepened. His hands were at my waist and then at my back pressing me into him, and either he had one hell of an erection or else his night stick was rammed into my stomach. I was pretty sure it was an erection, and I thought if I could just get that nice big, stiff, magical thing deep inside me all my worries would fade away.
"I've got some," Morelli said.
"Some what?"
"Some condoms. I've got a carton. Serious investment. Top of the line."
The way I was feeling I figured that carton wouldn't take us to Sunday.
And then his mouth was on me again, kissing my neck, my collarbone, the swell of my breast at the top of the towel. And then the towel was gone and Morelli took his mouth to my nipple and fire flashed through me. His hands were everywhere, exploring, caressing . . . teasing. His mouth dropped lower, trailing a string of kisses to my navel, my belly, my . . . OMMIGOD!
Mary Lou had also told me she'd heard Morelli had a tongue like a lizard, and now I knew firsthand the accuracy of that rumor. God bless the wild kingdom, I thought with a new appreciation for reptiles. I had my fingers tangled in his hair, and my bare ass pressed against the sink, and I was thinking, Oh, yum! I was on the brink. I could feel it coming . . . the delicious pressure, the heat and mind-emptying need for release.
And then he moved his mouth half an inch to the left.
"Go back!" I gasped. "Go back. GO BACK!"
Morelli kissed my inner thigh. "Not yet."
I was feeling frantic. I was so close! "What do you mean, not yet!"
"Too soon," Morelli said.
"Are you kidding me? It's not too soon! It's been years!"
Morelli stood, scooped me up, carried me into his bedroom and dropped me onto his bed. He stripped off his T-shirt and shorts, all the while watching me with dilated eyes, all black pupil beneath the black fringe of his lashes. His hands were steady, but his breathing was ragged. And then his briefs were gone and he was naked. And I wasn't sure anymore if this was going to work. It had been a long time, and he looked awfully big. Bigger than I'd remembered. Bigger than he'd felt through his clothes. He took a condom out of the box, and I scooted up to the headboard. "On second thought . . ." I said.
Morelli grabbed me by the ankles, pulled me down flat on my back and pushed my legs apart. "No second thoughts," he said, kissing me. And then he put his finger on me in precisely that spot. He moved the finger a little, and now I was thinking he was looking just right. Not really too big at all. Now I was thinking I had to find a way to get the damn thing inside me. It wasn't bad to look at, but it wasn't really doing all that much for me bobbing around on its own.
I grabbed hold and tried to direct it, but Morelli moved out of reach. "Not yet," he said.
What was with this not yet all the time! "I think I'm ready."
"Not nearly," Morelli said, dropping lower, doing some more of the terrific tongue torture.
Well okay, if this was what he really wanted to do it was fine by me because I actually liked this a lot. In fact, I was almost there. Another thirty seconds and I was going to fly off into the great beyond, shrieking like a banshee.
And then he moved a half inch to the left . . . again.
"Bastard," I said . . . in a loving sort of way. I reached out and stroked him, heard his breath catch at my touch. I drew my fingertip across the little slit at the top, and Morelli went very still. I had his attention. I dipped my head down and gave him a lick.
"Christ," Morelli gasped, "don't do that. I'm not Superman!"
Had me fooled. I went on a much more extensive tasting expedition, and suddenly Morelli was galvanized into action. In an instant, I was on my back and Morelli was poised over me.
"Not yet," I said. "It's not time."
He snapped the condom on.
"The hell it isn't."
Heh, heh, heh, I thought.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING I awoke in a tangle of damp sheets and warm Morelli. We'd made a respectable dent in the condom supply, and I was feeling very relaxed. Morelli stirred beside me, and I cuddled into him.
"Mmm," he said.
Two hours later there were a few less condoms in the box and Morelli and I were both lying facedown and slack limbed on the bed. I was thinking that sex was an excellent thing, but I probably didn't need any more now for ten or fifteen years. I eyeballed the distance between the bed and the bathroom and wondered if I could walk that far. The phone rang, and Morelli passed it over to me.
"I was wondering what I should wear tonight," Sally said. "Do you think I should be a man or a woman?"
"Doesn't matter to me," I said. "Lula and I are going to be women. You want to meet us there, or you want me to pick you up?"
"I'll meet you there."
"Okeydokey."
I turned to Morelli. "Are you working today?"
"Half day, maybe. I need to talk to a couple people."
"Me too." I dragged myself off the bed. "About dinner tonight . . ."
"Don't even think about standing me up," Morelli said. "I'll track you down and find you and make your life a living hell."
I did a mental grimace and managed to get myself into the bathroom without hardly grunting or whimpering. The sex goddess was a trifle sore this morning, feeling a little like a human wishbone.
I took a shower, dressed and ambled down to the kitchen. I'd never seen Morelli in the morning, and I'm not sure what I'd expected, but it wasn't the half-man, half-beast that was reading the paper and drinking coffee. Morelli was wearing a misshapen T-shirt and rumpled tan shorts. He was sixteen hours beyond a five o'clock shadow, and he hadn't combed his hair, which was multiple weeks beyond needing a haircut.
It had been sexy last night. This morning it was downright frightening. I poured out coffee and a bowl of cereal and sat across from him at the small table. The back door was open, and the morning air coming through it was cool. In another hour it would turn hot and steamy. Already the cicadas were singing. I thought about my own kitchen and sad charred apartment and my throat closed over. Remember what Morelli told you, I thought. Concentrate on the positive. The apartment will be okay. Brand-new carpet and paint. Better than before. And what had he said about the fear? Concentrate on doing the job, not on the fear. Okay, I thought, I can do that. Especially when I was sitting across from the man of my dreams.
Morelli drained his coffee cup and continued to read the paper.
I found myself wanting to refill the cup. And I didn't want to stop there. I wanted to make breakfast for Morelli. Hotcakes and bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice. Then I wanted to do his laundry and put fresh sheets on the bed. I looked around. The kitchen wasn't bad, but it could be cozier. Fresh flowers, maybe. A cookie jar.
"Uh oh," Morelli said.
"What uh oh?"
"You have that look . . . like you're redesigning my kitchen."
"You don't have a cookie jar."
Morelli looked at me like I was from Mars. "That's what you were thinking?"
"Well, yeah."
Morelli considered that for a moment. "I've never actually seen the purpose for a cookie jar," he finally said. "I open the box. I eat the cookies. I throw the box away."
"Yes, but a cookie jar makes a kitchen homey."
I got another one of those Mars looks.
"I keep my gun in my cookie jar," I said by way of further explanation.
"Honey, a man can't keep his gun in a cookie jar. It just isn't done."
"Rockford did it."
He got up and gave me a kiss on the top of my head. "I'm gonna take a shower. If you leave before I'm out, promise me you'll be home by five."
So much for the man of my dreams. I gave him one of my favorite Italian hand gestures, which he didn't see because he was already out of the room. "Fuck the cookie jar," I said to Rex. "And he can do his own goddamn laundry, too." I finished my cereal, rinsed the bowl and put it in the dishwasher. I slung my black leather tote over my shoulder and took off for the office.
"OMMIGOD," CONNIE SAID WHEN I walked into the office, "you did it!"
"Excuse me?"
"How was it? I want details."
Lula looked up from the stack of files she was sorting. "Yep," she said, "you did the deed all right."
I felt my eyes go wide. "How do you know?" I sniffed at myself. "Do I smell?"
"You just got that look like you've been totally fucked," Lula said. "Sort of relaxed."
"Yeah," Connie said. "Satisfied."
"It was the shower," I said. "I took a really long relaxing shower this morning."
"Wish I had a shower like that," Lula said.
"Is Vinnie in?"
"Yeah, he got back late last night. Hey, Vinnie," Connie yelled. "Stephanie's here!"
We heard him mumble "Oh Christ" from deep inside his office, and then his door opened. "What?"
"Joyce Barnhardt, that's what."
"So I gave her a job." Vinnie squinted at me. "Jesus, you just get laid?"
"I don't believe this," I said, hands in the air. "I took a shower. I did my hair. I put on makeup, new clothes. I had breakfast. I brushed my goddamn teeth. How does everyone know I got laid?"
"You look different," Vinnie said.
"Satisfied," Connie said.
"Relaxed," Lula added.
"I don't want to talk about it," I shouted. "I want to talk about Joyce Barnhardt. You gave her Maxine Nowicki. How could you do that? Nowicki is my case."
"You weren't having any luck with it, so I figured what the hell, let Joyce take a shot at it, too."
"I know how Joyce got that case," I said. "And I'm going to tell your wife."
"You tell my wife, and she'll tell her father, and I'll be dead. And then you know where you'll be? Unemployed."
"He got a point there," Lula said. "We all be unemployed."
"I want her off the case. Lula and I had Maxine in custody, and Joyce barged in with the slut troop and screwed everything up."
"Okay, okay," Vinnie said. "I'll talk to her."
"You're going to take Nowicki away from her."
"Yeah."
"Sally called and said he was going to the bar tonight," I told Lula. "Do you want to come, too?"
"Sure, I don't want to miss any of the fun."
"Need a ride?"
"Not me," Lula said. "I got a new car." Her eyes slid past me to the front door. "What I need now is a man to put in it. He got a name on him, too."
Connie and I swiveled to look. It was Ranger, dressed in black, hair slicked into a ponytail, small gold hoop earring shining like the sun.
"Yo," Ranger said. He stared at me for a moment and smiled. He raised his eyebrows. "Morelli?"
"Shit," I said. "This is embarrassing."
"Came by to get the papers on Thompson," Ranger said to Connie.
Connie handed him a folder. "Good luck."
"Who's Thompson?"
"Norvil Thompson," Ranger said. "Stuck up a liquor store. Took four hundred dollars and change and a quart of Wild Turkey. Started celebrating in the parking lot where he parked his car, passed out and was found by a parking attendant who called the police. Didn't show up for his court date."
"Like always," Connie said.
"He's done this before?"
"Twice."
Ranger signed his part of the contract, passed it back to Connie and looked over at me. "Want to help me round up this cowboy?"
"He isn't going to shoot at me, is he?"
"Ah," Ranger said, "if only it was that simple."
Ranger was driving a new black Range Rover. Ranger's cars were always black. They were always new. They were always expensive. And they were always of dubious origin. I never asked Ranger where he got his cars. And he never asked me my weight.
We cut through center city and turned right onto Stark Street. Ranger cruised past the auto body and the gym into a neighborhood of blighted row houses. It was midday, and welfare mothers and kids were on the stoops, looking for relief from the sweltering interiors of their airless rooms.
I leafed through the file to familiarize myself with Thompson. Black male, 5'9", 175 pounds, age sixty-four. Respiratory problems. That meant we couldn't use pepper spray.
Ranger parked in front of a three-story brick building. Gang slogans were spray-painted on the stoop and under the two firstfloor windows. Fast-food flotsam had banked against the curb and crumpled wrappers littered the sidewalk. The entire neighborhood smelled like a big bean burrito.
"This guy isn't as dangerous as he looks on the sheet," Ranger said. "Mostly he's a pain in the ass. He's always drunk, so it doesn't do any good to threaten him with a gun. He's got asthma, so we can't spray him. And he's old, so you look like a fool if you beat him to a pulp. What we want to do is cuff him and carry him out. That's why you're along. Takes two to carry him out."
Wonderful.
Two women were sitting two doors down. "You coming after old Norvil?" the one asked. "He run his bail again?"
Ranger raised his arm in acknowledgment. "Hey, Regina, how's it going?"
"Picking up now that you're here." She swiveled her head to the ground-level open window. "Yo, Deborah," she hollered. "Ranger's here. Gonna give us some entertainment."
Ranger moved into the building and started climbing the stairs. "Third floor," he said.
I was getting an uncomfortable feeling about this apprehension. "What did she mean . . . entertainment?"
Ranger was on the second-floor landing. "There are two tenants on the third floor. Thompson is on the left. One room and bath. Only one way out. He should be at home at this time of day. Regina would have told me if she'd seen him leave."
"I get the feeling there's something else I should know about this guy."
Ranger was halfway up the third flight of stairs. "Only that he's freaking nuts. And if he whips his dick out to take a leak, stand back. He tagged Hanson once, and Hanson swears he was fifteen feet away."
Hanson was another bounty hunter. Mostly worked for Gold Star Bail Bonds on First Street. Hanson had never struck me as someone who would fabricate war stories, so I turned around and started doing double-time down the stairs. "That's it for me. I'll call Lula to come pick me up."
My progress was halted by a hand grabbing the back of my shirt. "Guess again," Ranger said. "We're in this together."
"I don't want to get peed on."
"Just keep your eyes open. If he goes for his dick we'll both jump him."
"You know I could have lots of good jobs," I said. "I don't need to be doing this."
Ranger had his arm around me, encouraging me to walk up the stairs. "This isn't just a job. This is a service profession. We uphold the law, babe."
"Is that why you do this? Because you believe in the law?"
"No. I do this for the money. And because hunting people is what I do best."
We reached Thompson's door, and Ranger motioned me to one side while he knocked.
"Lousy fuckers," someone called from inside the room.
Ranger smiled. "Norvil's home." He gave another rap. "Open the door. I need to talk to you."
"I saw you out on the sidewalk," Norvil said, the door still closed, "and I'll open this door when hell freezes over."
"I'm going to count to three, and then I'm going to break in," Ranger said. "One, two . . ." He tried the doorknob, but the door was still locked. "Three." No response from inside. "Damn, stubborn old drunk," Ranger said. He stepped back and gave the door a solid kick just to the left of the doorknob. There was the sound of splintering wood, and the door crashed open.
"Lousy fuckers," Norvil yelled.
Ranger cautiously stepped into the doorway, gun in hand. "It's okay," he said to me. "He isn't armed."
I moved into the room and stood beside Ranger. Norvil was on the far side of the room with his back against the wall. To his right was a chipped Formica table and a single wooden chair. Half the table was taken over with a cardboard box filled with food. Ritz crackers, Count Chocula cereal, a bag of marshmallows, a bottle of ketchup. A dorm-sized refrigerator was on the floor by the table. Norvil was dressed in a faded T-shirt that said "Get Gas From Bud" and a pair of baggy, soiled khakis. And he was holding a carton of eggs.
"Lousy fuckers," he said. And before I realized what was happening . . . SPLAT. I got hit in the forehead with an egg. I jumped back, and the ketchup bottle sailed by my ear, smashed on the doorjamb and ketchup splattered everywhere. This was followed by the pickle jar and more eggs. Ranger caught an egg on his arm, and I got one square on my chest. I turned to dodge a jar of mayo and got hit in the back of the head with another egg. Norvil was in a frenzy, throwing whatever he laid hands on . . . crackers, croutons, corn chips, knives and spoons, cereal bowls and dinner plates. A bag of flour exploded in his hands, and flour flew in all directions. "Rotten pinko, commie bastards," he shouted, searching through the box for more ammo.
"Now!" Ranger said.
We both lunged for Thompson, going for his arms. Ranger locked a cuff on one wrist. We struggled to secure the other. Norvil took a swing at me, catching me in the shoulder. I lost my footing in the cracker crumbs and flour and went down hard to the floor. I heard the second cuff click closed and looked up at Ranger.
Ranger was smiling. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm just peachy."
"You have enough food on you to feed a family of four for a week."
Ranger had none. A small stain on one arm where he'd gotten hit by the egg.
"So why is it you're so clean and I'm such a mess?"
"For one thing, I didn't stand in the middle of the room, making a target of myself. For another thing, I didn't fall on the floor and roll in flour." He reached a hand out to me and helped me up. "First rule of combat. If someone throws something at you, step out of the way."
"Devil whore," Norvil shouted at me.
"Listen," I shouted back, "I was due. And it's none of your business anyway."
"He calls everyone a devil whore," Ranger said.
"Oh."
Norvil planted his feet wide. "I'm not going anywhere."
I looked at the stun gun on Ranger's utility belt. "How about we zap him?"
"You can't zap me," Norvil said. "I'm an old man. I got a pacemaker. You screw up my pacemaker and you'll be in big trouble. It could even kill me."
"Boy," I said, "that's tempting."
Ranger took a roll of duct tape off his gun belt and taped Norvil's legs together at the ankles.
"I'm gonna fall over," Norvil said. "I can't stand like this. I got a drinking problem, you know. I fall over sometimes."
Ranger got Norvil by the armpits and tipped him backward. "Grab his feet," he said. "Let's get him to the car."
"Help!" Norvil yelled. "I'm being kidnapped! Call the police. Call the Muslims!"
We got him to the second-floor landing, and he was still yelling and wriggling. I was working hard to hold him. Egg and flour were caked in my hair, I smelled like pickle brine, and I was sweating like a pig. We started down the second flight; I missed a step and slid the rest of the way on my back.
"No problem," I said, hoisting myself up, wondering how many vertebrae I'd cracked. "You can't keep Wonder Woman down."
"Wonder Woman looks a little beat," Ranger said.
Regina and Deborah were sitting on their stoop when we hauled Norvil out.
"Lord, girl," Regina said. "What happened to you? You look like a big corn dog. You've been all breaded up."
Ranger opened the Range Rover's rear door, and we tossed Norvil inside. I limped around to the passenger side and stared at the pristine leather seat.
"Don't worry about it," Ranger said. "You get it dirty I'll just get a new car."
I was pretty sure he was kidding.
I WAS on the small front porch, rooting around in my bag, looking for the key to Morelli's house when the door opened.
"I'm not even going to make a guess on this one," Morelli said.
I pushed past him. "You know Norvil Thompson?"
"Old guy. Robs stores. Goes nuts when he drinks . . . which is always."
"Yep. That's Norvil. I helped Ranger bring him in."
"I take it Norvil wasn't ready to go."
"Threw everything he had at us." I looked down at myself. "I need a shower."
"Poor baby. I could help."
"No! Don't come near me!"
"This isn't about the cookie jar, is it?"
I dragged myself up the stairs and into the bathroom. I stripped and stepped under the steaming water. I washed my hair twice and used a cream rinse, but my hair wouldn't come clean. I got out of the shower and took a look at my hair. It was the egg. It had hardened like cement, and little pieces of eggshell were stuck in the cement.
"Why me?" I said.
Morelli was on the other side of the bathroom door. "Are you all right? Are you talking to yourself?"
I wrenched the door open. "Look at this!" I said, pointing to my hair.
"Looks like eggshell."
"It won't come out."
Morelli leaned closer under the guise of examining my hair, but he was actually looking down my towel. "Hmm," he said.
"Listen, Morelli, I need help here."
"We haven't got much time."
"Help with my hair!"
"Honey, I don't know how to tell you this, but I think your hair is beyond my help. The best I could do is take your mind off it."
I searched through the medicine chest and came up with some scissors. "Cut the egg out."
"Oh boy."
Five minutes later Morelli looked up from his job and met my eyes in the mirror. "That's all of it."
"How bad is it?"
"You remember when Mary Jo Krazinski had ringworm?"
My mouth dropped open.
"It's not that bad," Morelli said. "Mostly it's just shorter . . . in spots." His finger traced a line along my bare shoulder. "We could be a few minutes late."
"No! I'm not going to be late for your mother. Your mother scares the hell out of me." His mother scared the hell out of everyone but Joe. Morelli's mother could see around corners. His father had been a drunk and a philanderer. His mother was beyond reproach. She was a housewife of heroic proportions. She never missed mass. She sold Amway in her spare time. And she didn't take crap from anyone.
Morelli slid his hand under my towel and kissed the back of my neck. "This'll only take a minute, babe."
A burning sensation skittered through my stomach and my toes curled. "I have to get dressed," I said. But I was thinking, Ohhhh, this feels good. And I was remembering what he'd done the night before, and that had felt even better. His hands found my breasts, and his thumb rubbed across my nipple. He whispered a few things he wanted to do to me, and I felt a little dribble of drool escape from the corner of my mouth.
Half an hour later, I was rushing around my room, searching for clothes to wear. "I can't believe I let you talk me into that!" I said. "Look how late we are!"
Morelli was fully clothed and smiling. "This cohabiting thing isn't so bad," he said. "I don't know why I didn't try it out sooner."
I stepped into my underpants. "You didn't try it out sooner because you were afraid to make a commitment. And in fact, you still haven't made a commitment."
"I bought an entire carton of condoms."
"That's a commitment to sex, not to a relationship."
"It's a start," Morelli said.
I glanced over at him. "Maybe." I pulled a little cotton sundress out of the closet. It was the color of sun-bleached straw and buttoned in the front like a shirt. I dropped the dress over my head and smoothed over a few wrinkles with my hand.
"Shit," Morelli said. "You look great in that dress."
I checked out his Levi's. He was hard again. "How did that happen?"
"You want to learn a new game?" Morelli asked. "It's called Mr. and Mrs. Rover."
"News flash," I said. "I don't iron. I don't eat raw fish. And I don't do dog stuff. You lay a hand on me, and I swear, I'm going for my gun."
MRS. MORELLI opened the door to us and smacked Joe on the side of the head. "Sex fiend. Just like your father, God rest his rotten soul."
Morelli grinned down at his mother. "It's a curse."
"It wasn't my fault," I said. "Honestly."
"Your Grandma Bella and your Aunt Mary Elizabeth are here," Mrs. Morelli said. "Watch your language."
Grandma Bella! My mouth went dry and black dots danced in front of my eyes. Grandma Bella put the curse on Diane Fripp, and Diane had her period nonstop for three months! I rechecked the buttons on the front of my dress and subtly felt to make sure I'd gotten my underwear back on.
Grandma Bella and Aunt Mary Elizabeth were in the living room, sitting side by side on the couch. Grandma Bella is a small white-haired lady dressed in traditional Italian black. She'd come to this country as a young woman, but back then the burg was more Italian than Sicily, so she'd kept her old-country ways. Mary Elizabeth is Bella's younger sister and is a retired nun. They both had highball glasses in their hands and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.
"So," Grandma Bella said, "the bounty hunter."
I sat on the edge of the seat of a wing-back chair and pressed my knees together. "Nice to see you, Grandma Bella."
"I hear you're living with my grandson."
"I'm . . . renting a room in his house."
"Hah!" she shouted. "Don't make up fibs to me or I'll put the eye on you."
I was doomed. I was fucking doomed. Even as I sat there I could feel my period coming on.
"THERE'S NO SUCH THING as the eye," Joe said. "Don't try to scare Stephanie."
"You don't believe in anything," Bella said. "And I never see you in church." She shook her finger at him. "Good thing I pray for you."
"Dinner's ready," Mrs. Morelli said. "Joseph, help your Grandma Bella into the dining room."
This was the first time I'd been in Mrs. Morelli's house. I'd been in the garage and the backyard. And of course I'd passed by countless times, always speaking in hushed whispers and never dillydallying for fear Mrs. Morelli would come get me by the ear and accuse me of wearing day-old underwear or not brushing my teeth. Her husband was known for not sparing the belt on his sons. Mrs. Morelli needed none of that. Mrs. Morelli could nail you to the wall with a single word. "Well," she would say, and the hapless victim would confess to anything. Everyone but Joe. As a kid Joe had run wild and unchecked.
The house was more comfortable than I'd expected. It felt like a family house, used to the noise and confusion of children. First Joe and his siblings, and now there were grandchildren. The furniture was slipcovered and clean. The carpet freshly vacuumed. The tabletops polished. There was a small wooden toy chest under one of the front windows and a child's rocker beside the chest.
The dining room was more formal. The table was set with a lace cloth. The hutch displayed worn heirloom china. Two bottles of wine sat uncorked and breathing at the head of the table. There were white lace curtains on the windows and a traditional, burgundy Oriental rug under the table.
We all took our seats; and Mary Elizabeth said grace while I eyed the antipasto.
After grace, Grandma Bella raised her wineglass. "To Stephanie and Joseph. Long life and many bambinos."
I glanced over at Joe. "You want to field this one?"
Joe took some ravioli and sprinkled them with grated cheese. "Only two bambinos. I can't afford a big family on a cop's salary."
I cleared my throat and glared at Morelli.
"Okay, okay," Morelli said. "No bambinos. Stephanie moved in with me because she needs a place to live while her apartment gets repaired. That's all there is to it."
"What do you think, I'm a fool?" Grandma Bella said. "I see what goes on. I know what you do."
Morelli helped himself to chicken. "Stephanie and I are just good friends."
I went rigid with my fork halfway to my mouth. He'd used those words to describe his relationship with Terry Gilman. Wonderful. Now what was I supposed to believe? That I was on equal footing with Terry? Well, you pushed him into it, stupid. You forced him to tell Bella this wasn't a serious relationship. Well, yeah, I thought, but he could have made me sound a little more important than Terry Gilman!
Bella's head rolled back, and she put her hands palms down on the table. "Silence!"
Mary Elizabeth made the sign of the cross.
Mrs. Morelli and Joe exchanged long-suffering glances.
"Now what?" I whispered.
"Grandma Bella's having a vision," Joe said. "It goes with having the eye."
Bella's head snapped up, and she pointed two fingers at Joe and me. "I see your wedding. I see you dancing. And I see after that you will have three sons, and the line will continue."
I leaned toward Joe. "Those things you bought . . . they were good quality, right?"
"The best money can buy."
"I gotta go lay down now," Bella said. "I always gotta rest after I have a vision."
We waited while she left the table and climbed the stairs. The bedroom door clicked closed, and Joe's mother gave an audible sigh of relief.
"Sometimes she gives me the willies," Mary Elizabeth said.
And then we all dug into the meal, avoiding talk about marriage and babies and crazy old Italian women.
I sipped my coffee and scarfed down a plateful of homemade cookies, keeping one eye on the time. Eddie Kuntz wouldn't show at the bar until nine, but I wanted to be in place earlier than that. My plan was to plant Lula and Sally inside the bar while I did surveillance on the street.
"It was very nice of you to invite me for dinner," I told Mrs. Morelli. "Unfortunately, I have to leave early. I have to go to work tonight."
"Is this bounty hunter work?" Mary Elizabeth wanted to know. "Are you hunting down a fugitive?"
"Sort of."
"It sounds exciting."
"It sounds like a sin against nature," Grandma Bella said from the hallway, freshly risen from the guest bed. "No kind of work for someone expecting."
"Grandma Bella," I said. "I'm really not expecting."
"A lot you know," she said. "I've been to the other side. I see these things. I got the eye."
"OKAY," I said to Morelli when we were half a block from the house, "just how accurate is this eye thing?"
"I don't know. I never paid much attention to it." He turned onto Roebling and pulled over to the curb. "Where are we going?"
"I'm going to the Blue Moon Bar. It's the next point of pickup in Maxine's treasure hunt. Take me back to the house, and I'll get my car."
Morelli swung out into traffic. "I'll go with you. Wouldn't want anything to happen to my unborn child."
"That's not funny!"
"All right. The truth is there's only crap on television tonight, so I might as well come along."
The Blue Moon Bar was down by the State Complex. There was a public parking lot on the next block, and there was on-street parking in front of the bar. There were small businesses on either side of the bar, but the businesses were closed at this time of the night. The bar had been a disco in the seventies, a sports bar in the eighties, and a year before it had been transformed into a fake micro-brewery. It was basically one large room with a copper vat in the corner, a bar running the entire length of one side and tables in the middle of the room. Besides serving booze, the Blue Moon Bar sold snack food. French fries, onion rings, nachos and fried mozzarella. On Saturday nights it was packed.
It was still early for the bar crowd, and Morelli was able to get a spot on the street, two cars down from the door. "Now what?" Morelli asked.
"Kuntz's supposed to show up at nine. Then we see what happens."
"What usually happens?"
"Nothing."
"Gosh, I can't wait."
By eight-thirty Lula and Sally were in the building. Kuntz arrived fifteen minutes later. I left Morelli in the truck with a photo of Maxine, and I went in to be with Kuntz.
"You look different," Kuntz said.
"I had some hair problems."
"No, that's not it."
"New dress."
"No. It's something else. I can't put my finger on it."
Thank goodness for that.
Lula and Sally came over and stood with us at the bar.
"What's doin'," Sally said.
"We're wasting more time, that's what's doin'," Kuntz said. "I hate these dumb treasure hunt things." His eyes held mine for a moment and then fixed on a point over my shoulder. I turned to see what had caught his attention.
It was Joyce Barnhardt in a very short, very tight black leather skirt and an orange knit tank top.
"Hello, Stephanie," Joyce said.
"Hello, Joyce."
She flashed a smile on Kuntz. "Hello, handsome."
I turned to Lula, and we made the finger-down-the-throat, tongue-stuck-out gag gesture to each other.
"If I had those breasts I could clean up," Sally whispered to me. "I could make enough money in a year to fucking retire. I wouldn't ever have to put on another pair of heels."
"What are you doing here, Joyce? I thought Vinnie was going to talk to you."
"It's a free country," Joyce said. "I can go where I want. Do what I want. And right now what I want is to get Maxine."
"Why?"
"Just for the fun of it," Joyce said.
"Bitch."
"Slut."
"Whore."
"Cunt."
I kicked Joyce in the shin. I draw the line at cunt. And besides, ever since that day I caught her bare-assed on my dining room table with my husband, I've been wanting to kick her.
Joyce responded by grabbing my hair.
"Yow!" I said. "Let go!"
She wouldn't let go, so I gave her a good pinch in the arm.
"Hold on here," Lula said. "I can tell you don't know nothing about fighting. This woman got you by the hair, and all you can do is give her a pinch?"
"Yeah, but it'll leave a bruise," I said.
Joyce yanked harder at my hair. Then suddenly she gave a squeak, and she was on her back, on the floor.
I glared over at Lula.
"Well, I just wanted to see if the new batteries were working," Lula said.
"So how much do you think breasts like that would cost?" Sally asked. "Do you think they'd look good on me?"
"Sally, those are real breasts."
Sally bent down and took a closer look. "Damn."
"Uh oh," Lula said. "I don't know how to break this to you, but we're missing someone."
I looked around. Kuntz was gone. "Sally, you check the men's room. Lula, you search the room here. I'll see if he's outside."
"What about Joyce?" Lula said. "Maybe we should shove her over in the corner where people won't trip on her."
Joyce's eyes were glazed, and her mouth was open. Her breathing seemed normal enough, considering she'd just taken a few volts.
"Joyce?" I said. "You okay?"
One of her arms flailed out.
A small crowd had accumulated.
"Dizzy spell," I told everyone.
"I read in the manual sometimes people wet themselves when they have one of these dizzy spells," Lula said. "Wouldn't that be fun?"
Joyce's legs started flopping around, and her eyes came into focus.
Lula hoisted her up and sat her in a chair. "You should see a doctor about these spells," Lula said.
Joyce nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."
We got Joyce a cold beer and went off to find Kuntz.
I went outside to Morelli. "You see Eddie Kuntz leave?"
"What's he look like?"
"Five-eleven. Bodybuilder. He was wearing black pleated slacks and a black short-sleeve shirt."
"Yeah, I saw him. He left about five minutes ago. Drove off in a Chevy Blazer."
"He alone?"
"Yep."
"Nobody followed him?"
"Not that I noticed."
I returned to the bar and stood at the entrance looking for Sally and Lula. The room was crowded, and the noise level had risen considerably. I was jostled forward and then sharply yanked back, face-to-face with an angry woman I didn't recognize.
"I knew it was you!" she said. "You bitch."
I knocked her hands off me. "What's your problem?"
"You're my problem. Everything was fine before you came along."
"What are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about. And if you have any sense in that big bimbo head of yours you'll get out of town. You'll go far away. Because if you don't I'm gonna find you and turn you into a pile of ashes . . . just like your apartment."
"You set fire to my apartment!"
"Hell no, not me. Do I look crazy enough to do something like that?"
"Yes."
She laughed very softly, but her eyes were small and hard with emotions that had nothing to do with joy. "Believe what you want. Just stay away from my boyfriend." She gave me a rough shove backward and stalked off toward the door, disappearing in the crowd.
I started after her, but the guy next to me moved in. "So," he said, "you want a boyfriend all your own?"
"Jesus," I said. "Get a life."
"Hey," he said, "just asking. No reason to get all huffy."
I shoved my way around him, but the woman was gone. I worked through the room to the door. I looked outside. I went back inside and looked some more. No luck.
I found Sally and Lula at the bar.
"This is impossible," Lula said. "There's wall-to-wall people here. You can't hardly even get a drink, much less find someone."
I told them Morelli saw Kuntz take off in the Blazer, but I didn't tell them about the angry woman. The angry woman was a separate issue. Probably.
"If there's not gonna be any more action here, Sally and me are taking off for this place he knows has good music," Lula said. "You want to come with?"
"No thanks, I'm calling it a night."
Sally and Lula gave each other the elbows.
"SO WHAT HAPPENED?" Morelli asked when I got back to the truck.
"Nothing."
"Just like always?"
"Yeah, except this was more nothing than usual." I rummaged through my shoulder bag, found my cell phone and dialed Kuntz. No answer. "This is too weird. Why would he leave the bar like that?"
"Were you with him the whole time? Maybe someone gave him another clue, and he went off on his own."
We were still parked at the curb, and I was thinking I should go back to the bar and ask some questions. "Wait here," I told Morelli.
"Again?"
"This will only take a few minutes."
I went to the bartender who'd been tending bar near us when Joyce went down.
"Do you remember the dark-haired guy I was with?" I asked. "The one dressed in black."
"Yeah. Eddie Kuntz."
"You know him?"
"No. Some woman came in around seven, right after I came on. She gave me a picture of Kuntz and ten dollars to pass him a note."
"Do you know what the note said?"
"Nope. It was in a sealed envelope. Must have been good, though. He left as soon as he read it."
Well, duh.
I returned to Morelli, slouched down in the seat and closed my eyes. "Stick a fork in me, I'm done."
Morelli turned the key in the ignition. "You sound bummed."
"Bummed at myself. I was stupid tonight. I let myself get distracted." Even more embarrassing, I hadn't immediately thought to question the bartender. And that wasn't all that had me bummed. Morelli had me bummed. He didn't understand about cookie jars. He gave his mother the wrong answer at the table. And I hated to admit it, but that eye thing had me worried. My God, what if Bella was right and I was pregnant?
I looked over at Morelli. His features were softened by shadow, but even in the dark I could see the paper-thin scar that sliced through his right eyebrow. A few years ago, Morelli had walked into a knife. And he'd probably walk into another. Maybe a bullet. Not a comforting thought. Nor was his love life comforting. In the past, Morelli'd had a short attention span when it came to romance. From time to time, he'd shown flashes of protective tenderness for me, but I wasn't always a priority. I was a friend, like Terry Gilman and the pissed-off woman, whoever the hell she was.
So I was thinking maybe Morelli wasn't prime husband material. Not even counting the fact that he didn't want to get married. Okay, now for the big one. Was I in love with Morelli? Hell, yes. I'd been in love with him since I was six years old.
I smacked myself in the forehead with the heel of my hand. "Unh."
Morelli gave me a sideways glance.
"Just thinking," I said.
"Must have been some thought. You almost knocked yourself out."
The thing is, while I was in love with Morelli for all these years, I'd always known it was best if nothing came of it. Loving Morelli was like loving cheesecake. Hours of misery on the Stairmaster, working off ugly fat, in return for a moment of blissful consumption.
All right, maybe it wasn't as bad as all that. Morelli had matured. How much he'd matured I couldn't nail down. Truth is, I didn't know a lot about Morelli. What I knew was that I had a hard time trusting him. Past experience led me to believe blind faith in Morelli might not be a smart thing.
In fact, now that I thought about it, maybe love wasn't the right word. Maybe enamored was better. I was definitely enamored.
We rode in silence for most of the way home. Morelli had the golden oldies station on, and I was sitting on my hands so I wouldn't rip the knob off the radio.
"You look worried," Morelli said.
"I was thinking about the note the bartender gave to Eddie Kuntz. He said Kuntz read it and took off."
"And?"
"The other notes were all in code. Kuntz couldn't figure them out. That's why Sally was brought into it. Sally was always the only one who could read the notes."
Morelli cruised down his street and parked in front of his house. "I don't suppose you'd consider turning all this over to the police?"
And cut myself out of a recovery fee and leave the possibility open for Joyce to bring Maxine in? Fat chance. "Nope. I wouldn't consider it."
Lights were blinking off in the downstairs windows in Joe's neighborhood. Early to bed, early to rise meant you had a job that allowed you to make the mortgage payment every month. Blocks away cars hummed on Chambers, but there was no traffic on Joe's street.
"I had something else sort of odd happen tonight," I said. "I had a run-in with a woman at the bar."
Morelli unlocked his front door and flipped the light switch. "And?"
I gave Morelli the details of the conversation. "So what do you think?" I asked.
"I don't know what to think. Obviously it wasn't Terry."
"No. It wasn't Terry. There was something familiar about her, though. Like maybe I'd seen her someplace before. You know, like a nameless face in the supermarket."
"You think she firebombed your apartment?"
"I wouldn't write her off the list. You recognize any women going in or out?"
"No. Sorry."
Our eyes locked, and we both knew the doubt was there.
He tossed his keys on a sideboard, shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it across the lone wooden chair. He moved to the kitchen, where he checked his answering machine, unclipped his gun and his pager and laid them on the counter. "You need to pass that information about the woman on to the arson squad."
"Should I call tonight?"
Morelli closed the distance between us and took me in his arms. "Monday will be soon enough."
"Hmm," I said, in a less than encouraging voice.
"What hmm?"
"I'm not sure this is a good idea."
He kissed me lightly on the mouth. "This was never a good idea."
"Exactly. You see, this is exactly what I mean."
"Oh shit," Morelli said. "You're not going to make this all complicated, are you?"
My voice rose an octave. "Damn right I'm going to make this complicated. What do you think this is here anyway?"
"This is . . . satisfying mutual needs."
"A good fuck."
"Well, yeah."
I shoved him away. "Don't you ever need more than a good fuck?"
"Not right now! And what about you? You going to tell me you don't need it?"
"I have control over my needs."
"Yeah, right."
"I do!"
"That's why your nipples are hard."
I looked down at my dress. You could see the shape of my nipples behind the cotton fabric. "They've been like that all day. There's something wrong with them."
A smile twitched at the corners of Morelli's mouth. "You want me bad."
Damn skippy I wanted him. And that made me even more furious. Where were my principles? I wasn't sure I believed his answer about the woman who confronted me at the bar. I sensed a continuing relationship of some sort between him and Terry Gilman. And here I was with hard nipples! Ugh.
"I can do without you just fine," I said. "Don't call me. I'll call you."
"You won't last through the night."
Egotistical jerk. "Fifty bucks says I will."
"You want to bet on this?" He sounded incredulous.
"The first one to crack pays up."
Morelli's brows lowered and his eyes narrowed. "Fine. It won't be me, sweetheart."
"Hah!"
"Hah!"
I whirled around and stomped up the stairs. I brushed my teeth, got into my nightshirt and crawled into bed. I laid there for a half hour in the dark, feeling cranky and lonely, wishing Rex wasn't in the kitchen, wondering what ever possessed me to make that stupid bet. Fear, I thought. That's what possessed me. Fear of being dumped again. Fear of getting screwed over. Fear of defective condoms. Finally I got out of bed and stomped back down the stairs.
Morelli was in the living room, slouched in his favorite chair, watching television. He gave me a long, considering look.
"I came to get Rex," I said, swishing past him.
Morelli was still watching me when I returned carrying the hamster cage. The look was speculative and quietly unnerving.
"What?" I said.
"Nice nightshirt."
SUNDAY MORNING I opened my eyes and thought about Maxine Nowicki. I'd been on the case for a week. It felt like three. I dressed in shorts and T-shirt, and without even bothering to comb my hair, carted Rex to the kitchen.
Morelli glanced up from the paper when I padded in. He took in my hair and smiled. "Trying to help me win the bet?"
I poured out a mug of coffee and looked at the white bakery bag on the table. "Doughnuts?"
"Yeah. I was going to go to church, but I decided to get doughnuts instead."
I sat across from him and selected a Boston creme. "I've been on this Nowicki case for a week, and I don't think I'm making any progress."
"Imagine how the merry mutilator-murderer feels. He's hacking people up and making no progress."
"There's that." I reached behind me for the portable phone and dialed Kuntz. "No answer."
Morelli gave a chunk of doughnut to Rex and topped his cup. "Maybe we should take a ride over there this morning."
This caught my attention. "You have one of those cop feelings, don't you?"
"Feels funky."
I agreed. It felt funky. I ate two doughnuts, read the funnies and went upstairs to take a shower. I left the door unlocked, but Morelli didn't traipse inside. Good, I told myself. This was much better. Yeah, right.
Morelli was waiting for me when I came down the stairs. "Ready," I said.
Morelli looked at the big black leather tote bag draped over my shoulder. "You have a gun in there, don't you?"
"Christ, Morelli, I'm a bounty hunter."
"You have a permit to carry concealed?"
"You know I don't."
"Then get rid of the gun."
"You're wearing a gun!"
"I'm a cop."
I screwed up my mouth. "Big deal."
"Listen," Morelli said, "this is just the way it is. I'm a cop, and I can't go out with you when I know you're carrying concealed illegally. Besides, the thought of you with a gun in your hand scares the crap out of me."
As well it should. "Fine," I said, taking the gun out of my bag. "Just don't come running to me for help." I looked around. "So where do I put this?"
Morelli rolled his eyes and put the gun in a drawer in the sideboard. "You only had one, right?"
"What do I look like, Hopalong Cassidy?"
THE FIRST THING Morelli and I noticed was that Eddie Kuntz's car was nowhere to be seen. The second was that no one was answering the door. Morelli and I looked in the front window. No lights burning. No bodies on the floor. No sign of struggle. No Kuntz.
We were standing there with our noses pressed to the glass when the Lincoln Town Car pulled up.
"What's going on?" Leo wanted to know.
"I'm looking for Eddie," I said. "Have you seen him?"
Betty joined us on the porch. "Is something wrong?"
"They're looking for Eddie," Leo said. "When did we see him last? Yesterday?"
"Last night," Betty said. "He went out a little after eight. I remember because I was watering my flowers."
"Was his car here this morning?"
"Now that you mention it, I don't remember seeing it," Betty said.
"Saturday night," Leo said. "You know how it is with a young man."
Morelli and I looked at each other.
"Could be," Morelli said.
I gave them my card with my phone and pager numbers. "Just in case," I said.
"Sure," Leo said, "but don't worry. He's just partying."
They disappeared into their cool, dark house and the door clicked closed. No cake invitation.
Morelli and I went back to the truck.
"So?" I said.
"It would make sense that the note was personal and not from Maxine. It would explain the fact that it wasn't in code."
"You really believe that?"
Morelli shrugged. "It's possible."
I stared into the Glick front window. "They're watching us. I can see them standing a few feet back from the window."
Morelli rolled the engine over. "You have plans?"
"I thought I might visit Mrs. Nowicki."
"Isn't that a coincidence? I woke up this morning thinking it would be a good day to go to the shore."
The temperature was in the eighties. The sky was the color of putty. And the humidity was so high I could feel the air lying on my face. It wasn't a good day to go anywhere . . . unless it was out of Jersey.
"You aren't going to play Buddy Holly all the way to Point Pleasant, are you?"
"What's wrong with Buddy Holly?"
I grimaced. He probably liked the Three Stooges, too.
IT STARTED RAINING when we hit Point Pleasant. A nice steady soaker that chased everyone off the beach. It was the sort of rain farmers liked. Except there weren't any farmers in Point Pleasant---only bummed-out vacationers.
I directed Morelli to the Nowicki house, and we sat outside for a while, watching. There were no cars in the driveway. No lights on inside. No sign of activity.
"Looks a lot like Eddie Kuntz's house," I said.
"Yeah," Morelli said. "Let's go take a look."
We ran for the shelter of the porch and rang the bell. Neither of us expected an answer. When we didn't get one, we snooped in the windows.
"We missed the party," Morelli said.
The front room was a mess. Lamps knocked over, tables on end, chair cushions askew. Not from Joyce, either. This was a different mess.
I tried the door, but it was locked. We ran around back and crowded onto the small stoop. No luck with that door, either.
"Damn," I said. "I bet there are clues inside. Maybe even bodies."
"One way to find out." Morelli smashed the door window with his gun butt.
I jumped back. "Shit! I don't believe you did that. Didn't you watch the O. J. trial? Cops can't just bust into places."
Morelli had his arm through the hole in the glass. "It was an accident. And I'm not a cop today. It's my day off."
"You should team up with Lula. You'd make a great pair."
MORELLI OPENED THE DOOR, and we carefully picked our way around the broken glass. He looked under the sink, found a pair of rubber gloves, put them on and wiped his prints off the doorknob. "You don't need to worry about prints," he said. "You were here legitimately two days ago."
We did a fast walk-through just to make sure there were no bodies, dead or alive. Then we methodically worked our way through the rooms. Closets, drawers, hidden places, garbage bags.
All of their clothes were gone, and as far as I could tell, so were the prizes they'd won. They'd been in a hurry. Beds were unmade. Food had been left in the fridge. There'd been a struggle in the living room, and no one had bothered to make repairs. We didn't find anything that might hint at a new address. No sign of drugs. No bullets embedded in woodwork. No bloodstains.
My only conclusion was that they weren't great housekeepers and were probably going to end up with diverticulitis. They ate a lot of bologna and white bread, smoked a lot of cigarettes, drank a lot of beer and didn't recycle.
"Gone," Morelli said, snapping the gloves off, returning them to the sink.
"Any ideas?"
"Yeah. Let's get out of here."
We ran to the truck, and Morelli drove to the boardwalk. "There's a pay phone at the top of the ramp," he said. "Call the police and tell them you're a neighbor, and you noticed a back window was broken in the house next door. I don't want to leave that house open for vandalism or robbery."
I took stock of myself and decided I couldn't get much wetter, so I sloshed through the rain to the phone, made the call and sloshed back.
"Everything go okay?" he asked.
"They didn't like that I wouldn't tell them my name."
"You're supposed to make something up. Cops expect it."
"Cops are weird," I said to Morelli.
"Yeah," he said, "cops scare the hell out of me."
I took my shoes off and buckled myself in. "You want to hazard a guess on what happened in the living room back there?"
"Someone came after Maxine, chased her around the living room and got hit from behind by a blunt instrument. When he woke up the three women were gone."
"Maybe that someone was Eddie Kuntz."
"Maybe. But that doesn't explain why he's still missing."
THE RAIN STOPPED halfway home, and Trenton showed no sign of relief from the heat. The hydrocarbon level was high enough to etch glass, and the highways hummed with road rage. Air conditioners were failing, dogs had diarrhea, laundry mildewed in hampers, and sinus cavities felt filled with cement. If the barometric pressure dropped any lower everyone's guts would be sucked through the soles of their feet into the bowels of the earth.
Morelli and I barely noticed any of this, of course, because we were born and raised in Jersey. Life is about survival of the fittest, and Jersey is producing the master race.
We stood dripping in Morelli's foyer, and I couldn't decide what I wanted to do first. I was starving, I was soaked, and I wanted to call and see if Eddie Kuntz had turned up. Morelli prioritized my actions by stripping in the hall.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He'd removed his shoes and socks and shirt and had his thumbs stuck in his shorts. "I don't want to track water all through the house." A smile tugged at his mouth. "You have a problem with this?"
"No problem at all," I said. "I'm taking a shower. Does that give you any problems?"
"Only if you use all the hot water."
He was on the phone when I came downstairs. I was clean, but I couldn't get dry. Morelli didn't have air, and at this time of the day it was possible to work up a sweat doing nothing. I prowled through the refrigerator and decided on a ham-and-cheese sandwich. I slapped it together and ate standing at the counter. Morelli was writing on a pad. He looked up at me, and I decided this was cop business.
When he got off the phone he picked at the deli ham I'd left out. "That case I was working on has just been reopened. Something new turned up. I'm going to take a fast shower, and then I'm going to have to go out. I'm not sure when I'll be back."
"Today? Tomorrow?"
"Today. I just don't know when."
I finished my sandwich and straightened the kitchen. Rex had crawled out of his soup can and was looking neglected, so I gave him a small chunk of cheese and a crust of bread. "We're not doing too good here," I told him. "I keep losing people. Now I can't find the guy I'm working for."
I tried calling Eddie Kuntz. No answer. I looked up Glick in the phone book and called Betty.
"Have you seen Eddie yet?" I asked.
"No."
I hung up and did some pacing. Someone knocked on the front door.
It was a little Italian lady.
"I'm Joe's godmother, Tina Ragusto," she said. "You must be Stephanie. How are you, dear? I just heard. I think it's wonderful."
I didn't know what she was talking about, and I suspected it was better that way. I made a vague gesture toward the stairs. "Joe's in the shower."
"I can't stay. I'm on my way to a jewelry party." She handed me a white shirt box. "I just wanted to drop this off." She lifted the lid and spread the tissue paper, so I could see what lay beneath. Her round face smoothed with her smile. "You see?" she said. "Joseph's christening outfit."
Ulk.
She gave me a pat on the cheek. "You're a good Italian girl."
"Half Italian."
"And a good Catholic."
"Umm . . ."
I watched her walk to her car and drive away. She thought I was pregnant. She thought I was marrying Joe Morelli, the man voted "least trustworthy male to date my daughter" by mothers statewide. And she thought I was a good Catholic. How had this happened?
I was standing in the foyer, holding the box, when Joe came down. "Was someone here?"
"Your godmother. She brought me your christening outfit."
Morelli picked it out of the box and looked at it. "Good grief, it's a dress."
"What do you want me to do with it?"
"Put it in a closet somewhere, and I'd appreciate it if you kept the dress part quiet."
I waited until Morelli was out of sight, and then I looked down at my stomach. "No way," I said. I looked at the christening dress. It was kind of pretty. Old-fashioned. Very Italian. Damn, I was getting all choked up over Morelli's dress. I ran upstairs with the dress, put it on Morelli's bed, ran out of the room and slammed the door closed.
I went to the kitchen and called my best friend, Mary Lou, who had two kids and knew about pregnancy.
"Where are you?" Mary Lou wanted to know.
"I'm at Morelli's."
"Ommigod! It's true! You're living with Morelli! And you didn't tell me! I'm your best friend. How could you do this to me?"
"I've only been here for three days. And it's no big deal. My apartment burned up, and Morelli had an extra room."
"You did it with him! I can hear it in your voice! How was it? I want details!"
"I need a favor."
"Anything!"
"I need one of those pregnancy test things."
"Ommigod! You're pregnant! Ommigod. Ommigod!"
"Calm down. I'm not pregnant. I just want to make sure. You know, peace of mind. And I don't want to buy one myself, because if anybody sees me it'll be all over."
"I'll be right there. Don't move."
Mary Lou lived about a half mile away. Her husband, Lennie, was okay but he had to be careful not to drag his knuckles when he walked. Mary Lou never cared much about intelligence in a man. Mary Lou was more into packaging and stamina.
Mary Lou and I have been friends since the day we were born. I was always the flake, and Mary Lou was always the underachiever. Maybe underachiever isn't the right word. It was more that Mary Lou had simple goals. She wanted to get married and have a family. If she could marry the captain of the football team, even better. And that's exactly what she did. She married Lennie Stankovic, who was captain of the football team, graduated high school and went to work for his father. Stankovic and Sons Plumbing and Heating.
I wanted to marry Aladdin so I'd get to fly on his magic carpet. So you can see that we were coming from different places.
Ten minutes later Mary Lou was at the front door. Mary Lou is four inches shorter than me and five pounds heavier. None of her weight is fat. Mary Lou's solid. Mary Lou's built like a brick shithouse. If I ever do tag team wrestling, Mary Lou's going to be my partner.
"I've got it!" she said, barreling into the foyer, brandishing the test kit. She stopped short and looked around. "So this is Morelli's house!"
This was said in hushed tones of awe usually reserved for Catholic miracles like weeping statues of the Virgin.
"Oh man," she said. "I always wanted to see the inside of Morelli's house. He isn't home, right?" She took off up the stairs. "I want to see his bedroom!"
"It's the one to the left."
"This is it!" she shrieked, opening the door. "Ommigod! Did you do it on this bed?"
"Yeah." And on my bed. And on the couch, the hall floor, the kitchen table, in the shower . . .
"Holy shit," Mary Lou said, "he's got a carton of condoms. What is he . . . a fucking rabbit?"
I took the little brown bag from her hand and peeked inside. "So this is it?"
"It's simple. All you have to do is pee on the plastic strip and wait for it to change color. Good thing it's summer and you're wearing a T-shirt, because the hard part is not getting your sleeve wet."
"Darn," I said. "I don't have to go right now."
"You need beer," Mary Lou said. "Beer always works."
We went to the kitchen, and we each had two beers.
"You know what's missing in this kitchen?" Mary Lou said. "A cookie jar."
"Yeah, well, you know how it is with men."
"They don't know anything," Mary Lou said.
I opened the box and removed the foil packet. "I can't get this open. I'm too nervous."
Mary Lou took it from me. Mary Lou had nails like razor wire. "We gotta time this. And don't tip the plastic strip. You have to collect the pee in that little indentation."
"Ick."
We went upstairs, and Mary Lou waited outside the door while I did the test. Friendship among women does not include viewing each other's urine.
"What's happening?" Mary Lou yelled through the door. "Do you see a plus sign or a negative sign?"
My hand was shaking so badly I was lucky I didn't drop the whole thing in the toilet. "I don't see anything yet."
"I'm timing," Mary Lou said. "It takes three minutes max."
"Three minutes," Mary Lou yelled again, and she opened the door. "Well?"
Little black dots were dancing in front of my eyes and my lips felt numb. "I'm going to faint." I sat down hard on the floor and put my head between my knees.
Mary Lou took the test strip. "Negative. Yes!"
"God, that was close. I was really worried. We used condoms every single time, but Bella said---"
"Joe's Grandma Bella?" Mary Lou gasped. "Oh shit! Bella didn't give you the eye, did she? Remember when she put it on Raymond Cone and all his hair fell out?"
"Worse than that, she told me I was pregnant."
"Then that's it," Mary Lou said. "The test is wrong."
"What do you mean the test is wrong? The test isn't wrong. Johnson and Johnson doesn't make mistakes."
"Bella knows these things."
I got up off the floor and splashed water on my face. "Bella's a crackpot." Even as I said it I was mentally doing the sign of the cross.
"How far overdue are you?"
"I'm not actually overdue yet."
"Wait a minute. You can't take this test if you aren't overdue. I thought you knew that."
"What?"
"It takes time to develop the hormone. When's your period?"
"I don't know. In about a week, I guess. Are you telling me this test isn't valid?"
"That's what I'm telling you."
"Fuck!"
"I gotta go," Mary Lou said. "I told Lennie I'd bring pizza home for supper. You want to eat with us?"
"No. Thanks anyway."
After Mary Lou left I slouched in the chair in the living room and stared at the blank television screen. Taking the pregnancy test had exhausted me.
I heard a car pull up and footsteps on the pavement outside the house. It was another little Italian lady.
"I'm Joseph's Aunt Loretta," she said, handing me a foil-topped casserole. "I just heard. And don't worry, dear, these things happen. We don't talk about it, but Joseph's mother had sort of a hurry-up wedding, too, if you know what I mean."
"It's not what it seems."
"The important thing is that you eat good food. You aren't throwing up, are you?"
"Not yet."
"Don't worry about getting the dish back to me. You can give it to me at the shower."
My voice rose an octave. "The shower?"
"I gotta go," she said. "I gotta visit my neighbor in the hospital." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Cancer," she whispered. "Terrible. Terrible. She's rotting away. Her insides are rotted, and now she's got sores all over her body. I had a cousin once who rotted like that. She turned black and just before she died her fingers fell off."
"Eeeeeuw."
"Well," she said, "you enjoy the casserole."
I waved goodbye and carted the warm casserole off to the kitchen. I set it on the counter and banged my head against the cabinet door a couple of times. "Argh."
I lifted a corner of the foil and peeked inside. Lasagna. Smelled good. I cut a square for myself and scooped it onto a plate. I was thinking about seconds when Morelli came home.
He looked at the lasagna and sighed. "Aunt Loretta."
"Yep."
"This is out of control," he said. "This has to stop."
"I think they're planning a shower."
"Shit."
I got up and rinsed my plate, so I wouldn't be tempted to cut another wedge of lasagna. "How'd things go today?"
"Not that good."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Can't. I'm working with the Feds. It's not supposed to go public."
"You don't trust me."
He cut a slab of lasagna and joined me at the table. "Of course I trust you. It's Mary Lou I don't trust."
"I don't tell Mary Lou everything!"
"Look, it's not your fault. You're a woman, so you blab."
"That's disgusting! That's so sexist!"
He took a bite of lasagna. "I have sisters. I know women."
"You don't know all women."
Morelli considered me. "I know you."
I could feel my face get warm. "Yeah, well, we should talk about that."
He pushed back in his chair. "It's your nickel."
"I don't think I'm cut out for irresponsible sex."
He thought about that for a beat and gave an almost imperceptible nod. "We have a problem then, because I don't think I'm cut out for marriage. At least not now."
Wow. Big surprise. "I wasn't proposing marriage."
"What were you proposing?"
"I wasn't proposing anything. I guess I was just setting boundaries."
"You know, you're one of those women who drive men nuts. Men drive off bridges and drink too much because of women like you. And it was your fault in the bakery, too."
I narrowed my eyes. "You want to explain that to me?"
Morelli smiled. "You smelled like a jelly doughnut."
"You jerk! That's what you wrote on the bathroom wall in Mario's Sub Shop. You said I was warm and sweet and good to eat. And then you went on to describe how you did it! It got back to my parents, and I was grounded for three months. You have no scruples!"
His eyes darkened. "Don't confuse me with that eighteen-year-old kid."
We glared at each other for a couple of beats, and the silence was shattered by the sound of something smashing through Morelli's living room window.
Morelli bolted from his chair and ran for the front room. I was close behind, almost slamming into him when he stopped short.
A bottle lay in the middle of his living room floor, and there was a fire-blackened rag stuck into the mouth of the bottle. A Molotov cocktail that had burned itself out because the bottle hadn't broken on impact.
Morelli skirted the bottle, rushed into the hall and out the door.
I got to the door in time to see Morelli aim and fire at a retreating car. Only the gun didn't fire. It went click, click, click. Morelli looked at the gun in disbelief.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"This is your gun. I got it out of the sideboard when I ran through the hall. It hasn't got any bullets in it!"
"Bullets are creepy."
Morelli looked dazed. "What good is a gun without bullets?"
"It's good for scaring people. Or you can hit people with it. Or you can use it to break windows . . . or crack walnuts."
"You recognize that car?"
"No. You get a look at the driver?"
Morelli shook his head. "No." He stalked through the house, took his gun and pager off the kitchen counter and clipped them to his belt. He called the dispatcher and gave him the car description. Then he called someone else with the plate number. He took an extra clip out of a kitchen drawer and put it in his pocket while he waited on the plate.
I was standing behind him, and I was trying hard to stay calm, but I was shaking inside, and I was having flashbacks of my ruined apartment. If I'd been home, in bed, when the bottle had exploded, I'd have been killed, charred beyond recognition. As it was I'd lost just about everything I owned. Not that it was much . . . but it was all I had. And now it had almost happened again.
"That was for me," I said, relieved that my voice didn't tremble and give me away.
"Probably," Morelli said. He murmured something into the phone and hung up. "The car was reported stolen a couple hours ago."
He gingerly picked up the bottle with a kitchen towel and put it in a paper bag. Then he set the bag on the kitchen counter. "Fortunately, this guy didn't chose his bottle wisely, and when he threw it, it landed on carpet."
The phone rang, and Morelli snatched at it.
"It's for you," he said. "It's Sally."
"I need help," Sally said. "I have a gig tonight, and I can't figure out this makeup shit."
"Where's Sugar?"
"We had another fight, and he took off."
"Okay," I said, reacting more than thinking, still feeling numbed by the second attempt to end my life. "I'll be right over."
"Now what?" Morelli asked.
"I need to help Sally with his makeup."
"I'll go with you."
"Not necessary."
"I think it is."
"I don't need a bodyguard." What I really meant was I don't want to get you killed, too.
"Then consider this to be a date."
WE KNOCKED twice, and Sally just about ripped the door off its hinges when he yanked it open. "Shit," he said, "it's you."
"Who'd you think it would be?"
"I guess I was hoping it was Sugar. Look at me. I'm a wreck. I don't know how to do any of this shit. Sugar always gets me dressed. Christ, I haven't got the right hormones for this fucking shit, you know what I mean?"
"Where'd Sugar go?"
"I don't know. We had another fight. I don't even know how it started. Something about me not appreciating his coffee cake."
I looked around. The house was beyond immaculate. Not a speck of dust anywhere. Nothing out of place. Through the kitchen door I could see the kitchen counters neatly lined with cakes, pies, loaves of bread, glass jars filled with cookies and homemade fudge.
"I didn't even realize he was all that upset," Sally said. "He got dressed and left when I was in my bubble bath."
Morelli arched an eyebrow. "Bubble bath?"
"Hey, give me a break here. RuPaul says you're supposed to take a goddamn bubble bath, so that's what I do. Gets you in touch with your fuckin' female side."
Morelli grinned.
Sally was wearing black bikini Calvins and panty hose, and he was holding a contraption that looked like a corset with breasts. "You gotta help me," he said. "I can't get into this by myself."
Morelli held up a hand. "You're on your own."
Sally looked over at him. "What, are you homophobic?"
"Nope," Morelli said. "I'm Italian. There's a difference."
"Okay," I said. "What do I have to do?"
Sally wiggled into the corset and got it in place. "Tighten this fucker up," he said. "I need to get a waist."
I pulled at the strings, but I couldn't get them to go together. "I can't do this. I haven't got enough hand strength."
We both looked at Morelli.
Morelli gave a disgusted sigh. "Shit," he said, heaving himself off the couch. He took hold of the strings, put his foot to Sally's butt and yanked.
"Oof," Sally said. He looked over his shoulder at Morelli. "You've done this before."
"Dolan used to wear one of these when he went undercover."
"I don't suppose you did Dolan's makeup?"
"Sorry," Morelli said, "makeup's way out of my league."
Sally looked to me.
"No sweat," I said. "I'm from the burg. I was putting makeup on Barbie before I could walk."
Half an hour later I had him appropriately slutted up. We tugged on his wig and did some last-minute combing. Sally zipped himself into a short black leather skirt and a black leather top that looked like Madonna meets the Hell's Angels. He slipped his sizefourteen feet into a pair of platform heels, and he was ready to go.
"How are you doing on time?" I asked.
He grabbed his guitar case. "I'm cool. So how do I look? Am I pretty?"
"Well, uh . . . yeah." If you like almost-seven-feet-tall, slightly bowlegged, hook-nosed guys with hairy chests and arms dressed up like the bride of the Valkyries.
"You should come with me," Sally said. "I'll introduce you to the rest of the band, and you could stay and watch the show."
"Do I know how to take a girl on a date, or what?" Morelli said.
We took the elevator with Sally and followed him out of the lot. He looped around down by the river and got on Route 1 north.
"That was nice of you to help him with his corset," I said.
"Yeah," Morelli said. "I'm Mr. Sensitivity."
Sally went about fifteen miles and put his blinker on, so we'd know he was turning. The club was on the right side of the highway, all lit up in red and pink neon lights. Already there were a lot of cars in the lot. The sign on the rooftop advertised an all-girl revue. I guessed that was Sally.
Sally crawled out of the Porsche and straightened his skirt.
"We've played here for four weeks now," he said. "We're like fucking regulars."
Regular what I didn't know.
Morelli looked around the lot. "Where's Sugar's car?"
"The black Mercedes."
"Sugar does okay."
Sally grinned. "You ever see him in drag?"
We both shook our heads no.
"When you see him you'll understand."
We followed Sally in through the kitchen entrance.
"If I go through the front I'll get fucking mobbed," he said. "These people are animals."
We went down a dreary narrow hall to a back room. The room was filled with smoke and noise and the Lovelies. All five of them. All dressed in various forms of leather . . . with the exception of Sugar. Sugar was wearing a blood-red satin dress that fit him like his own skin. It was short and tight and so smooth in front I thought he must have been surgically altered. His makeup was flawless. His lips were full and pouty, painted in high gloss to match the dress. He wore the Marilyn wig, and on my best day I never looked that good. I slid a sideways glance at Morelli, and he obviously was caught in the same dumbstruck fascination that I was experiencing. I shifted my attention back to Sugar and realization suddenly hit me.
"The woman in the bar was Sugar," I whispered to Morelli. "It was a different blond wig, but I'm sure it was Sugar."
"Are you kidding me? He was right in front of you, and you didn't recognize him?"
"It happened so fast, and the room was dark and crowded. And besides, look at him! He's beautiful!"
Sugar saw the three of us come into the room, and he was on his feet, calling Sally an ungrateful slut.
"Christ," Sally said, "what's he talking about? Don't you have to be a chick to be a slut?"
"You are a chick, you dumb shit," one of the other drag queens said.
Sally grabbed his package and gave it a hike up.
"I'd like to talk to you in private," Morelli said to Sugar.
"You don't belong here, and I'm not talking to you," Sugar said. "This is the band's dressing room. Now get the hell out."
Morelli crossed the room in three strides, backing Sugar into a corner. They stood talking like that for a few minutes, and then Morelli eased off. "Nice meeting you," he said to the other band members, who were shuffling foot to foot in awkward silence. "Talk to you later," he said to Sally.
When we left Sugar was still in the corner, his eyes small and glittery, not a part of his baby doll face.
"Jeez," I said. "What did you say to him?"
"I asked him if he was involved in the firebombings."
"And what did he tell you?"
"Not much."
"He sure makes a beautiful woman."
Morelli gave his head a small shake of amazement. "Christ, for a minute there I didn't know whether I wanted to punch him in the face or ask him for a date."
"We going to stay to watch the band?"
"No," Morelli said. "We're going out to the lot to check out the Mercedes, and then we're going to run a check on Sugar."
THE MERCEDES was clean, and so was Sugar. No priors for Gregory Stern. When we got back to Morelli's house there were two cop cars parked in front and several people milling around on the sidewalk. Morelli parked the truck and got out and walked over to the nearest uniform, who happened to be Carl Costanza.
"Been waiting for you," Carl said. "Didn't know if you wanted us to board your window."
"No. It'll be okay for tonight, and tomorrow I'll get a glass guy over here."
"You coming in, or you gonna do the report in the morning?" Carl asked.
"I'll do it in the morning."
"Congratulations," Costanza said to me. "I hear you're preggers."
"I'm not preggers!"
Costanza draped an arm around me and leaned close. "Would you like to be?"
I rolled my eyes.
"Okay, but remember me in case you change your mind," Carl said.
An old man in a bathrobe came up to Morelli and gave him the elbow. "Just like old times, huh? I can remember when Ziggy Kozak's house got machine-gunned into Swiss cheese. Boy, I tell you, those were the days."
Morelli went into the house, got the firebomb and gave it to Carl. "Have this checked for prints and put it in the lockup. Anybody canvass the neighborhood for a witness?"
"No witnesses. We did every house."
"How about the car?"
"Hasn't turned up yet."
The cops got into their cars and drove off. The people dispersed. I followed Morelli into the living room, where we both stood looking at the glass shards scattered over the floor.
"I'm really sorry," I said. "This is my fault. I shouldn't have come here."
"Don't worry about it," Morelli said. "Life was getting dull."
"I could move out."
Morelli grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me to him. "You're just afraid you're going to cave and have to pay me fifty dollars."
I felt a smile come on. "Thanks."
Morelli leaned in and kissed me. He had his knee between my legs and his tongue in my mouth, and I got a hot rush that dropped my stomach about six inches.
He backed off and grinned at me. "Good night."
I blinked. "G'nite."
The grin widened. "Gotcha."
I grit my teeth. "I'm going to bed."
"I'll be down here if you get lonely. I'm going to sleep on the couch tonight just to make sure no one crawls through my window and walks off with my television."
I WAS UP early, but Joe was up earlier. He'd cleaned the glass away and was eating lasagna for breakfast when I trooped into the kitchen.
I poured coffee and gave the lasagna a wistful glance.
"Go for it," Morelli said.
If I ate the lasagna I'd have to do something physical, like jog a couple of miles. Not my favorite activity. I preferred to get my exercise by walking through a shopping mall. Okay, what the hell, I should probably go out for a run anyway. Keep in shape, and all that crap.
I sat across from him and dug in. "You back on the mystery case today."
"Surveillance."
I hated surveillance. Surveillance meant you sat in a car all by yourself until your ass fell asleep. And if you left to go to the bathroom all hell broke loose and you missed it.
Morelli pushed his empty plate away. "What are your plans?"
"Find Maxine."
"And?"
"And that's it. I have no ideas. I'm out of leads. Everyone's disappeared. Eddie Kuntz's probably dead. For all I know Mrs. Nowicki, Margie and Maxine are dead. Dead and buried."
"Boy, it's nice to see you so positive this morning."
"I like to start out right."
Morelli got up and rinsed his plate. "I have to go to work. If you were an ordinary person I'd tell you to be careful. Since you are who you are, I'll just wish you good luck. Oh, yeah, and someone's supposed to show up at nine to fix the window. Can you hang around until he's done?"
"No problem."
He kissed me on the top of the head and left.
I looked at Rex. "This feels a little strange," I said. "I'm not used to being a housewife."
Rex sat on his haunches and stared at me. At first glance you might think he was contemplating what I'd just said. More likely he wanted a grape.
For lack of something better to do I called Eddie Kuntz. No answer. "Dead," I said to Rex. I wanted to drive over and have another chat with Betty, but I had to wait for the glass to get fixed. I had a second cup of coffee. And then I had a second piece of lasagna. At nine o'clock the glazier arrived, and he was followed by yet another Italian lady bearing food. A chocolate cake this time. I ate half while I waited for the windows.
I DIDN'T HAVE TO KNOCK on the door to know Eddie Kuntz wasn't home. No car out front. No lights anywhere. Windows and doors closed up tight. The only thing missing was black crepe.
I knocked on Betty's door instead.
"What can I tell you?" Betty said. "He's not home. Like I told you before, last I saw him was Saturday."
She didn't look worried or confused. What she looked was pissed. Like I was bothering her.
"Does he do this a lot? Do you think we should notify the police?"
"He's on a bender," Leo said from his chair in front of the TV. "He picked up one of his trashy girlfriends, and they're shacked up somewhere. That's the end of it. He'll be home when he's home."
"You're probably right," I said. "Still, it might not hurt to do a little investigating. Maybe it would be a good idea if we checked out his apartment. You have a key?"
Leo was more adamant this time. "He's on a bender, I'm telling you. And you don't go snooping around in a man's home just because he goes on a bender. Anyway, why are you so interested in finding Eddie? I thought you were looking for Maxine Nowicki."
"Eddie's disappearance might be related."
"For the last time, I'm telling you it's not a disappearance."
Sounded like denial to me, but what do I know? I went back to the Buick and drove to Mrs. Nowicki's house. It looked even worse than it had the first time I saw it. No one was cutting the grass, and a dog had done number two right in the middle of the sidewalk. Just for the hell of it I walked around the house and looked in the windows. No sign of life.
I got back in the car and headed for Margie's house. I took New York to Olden, turned onto Olden and spotted the beat-up Fairlane Morelli uses for surveillance. He was parked across the street from the 7-Eleven where Helen Badijian had worked before her death. Morelli was working with the Feds, so I assumed it was drugs, but really it could be anything from running guns to blackmarket babies. Or maybe he'd stopped there to have lunch and take a nap.
Margie's house looked better kept than Nowicki's, but empty all the same. I looked in the windows, and I wondered what Margie had done with her cat.
The next-door neighbor stuck her head out her front door and caught me peeking in Margie's window.
"I'm looking for Margie," I said. "I work with her at the diner, and I haven't seen her for a couple days, so I got worried. She doesn't seem to be home."
"She went on vacation. She said it was too hard to work with her finger cut like that, so she took some time off. I think she went to the shore. I'm surprised you didn't know."
"I knew she wasn't working. I didn't know she went to the shore." I looked around. "Where's her cat? She take it with her?"
"No. They don't allow cats in the house she rented. I'm feeding the cat. It's no bother."
I was half a block away when it hit me. The finger! She'd have to have it looked at. She'd have to get her stitches removed. And Maxine's mother probably needed medical attention, too. She'd still had her head all wrapped up when I saw her in Point Pleasant.
I hustled to the office so I could use the by-street directory. Connie was doing her nails, and Lula had her ears plugged in to a Walkman. Lula's back was to me, and her beads were clicking around her head, and her ass was going side to side in some jive step. She caught me in her peripheral vision and turned the Walkman down.
"Uh oh," she said. "You're not getting any."
"How do you know that?" I yelled. I threw my hands into the air. "I don't believe this!"
Vinnie poked his head around the corner. "What's all the racket about?"
"Stephanie's here," Connie said.
Vinnie had a cigar in his mouth that I'm willing to bet was twice the size of his dick. "Where's Maxine? I forfeit my money in five days, for crissake. I should never have taken Barnhardt off."
"I'm closing in."
"Right," Vinnie said. "Closing in on my liver." He ducked into his office and slammed the door.
I traced Margie's address in the directory and came up with her last name. There are three hospitals in the Trenton area. Helene Fuld is a short distance from Nowicki's neighborhood. Margie's address is equal distance between Helene Fuld and St. Francis.
I went home to Joe's house, helped myself to another wedge of chocolate cake and called my cousin Evelyn, who works at Helene Fuld. I gave her the two names and asked her to nose around. Neither Margie nor Mama Nowicki was wanted by the police, so (assuming they were alive) they had no reason not to return to their doctors. Their only concern was keeping me from following them back to Maxine.
IT WAS three o'clock, and I was sort of hoping another Italian lady would stop around with something new for dinner. I kept looking out the window, but I didn't see any big black cars bearing food. This posed a problem because the idea of being in Morelli's kitchen, making him dinner, felt like a Doris Day movie.
Evelyn called and told me it was my lucky day. Both women had been treated at Fuld. Both women would go to their own doctors for follow-up. She gave me the names of the attending physicians and also the names listed for primary care through their medical plans. I told her I owed her. She said a detailed description of Morelli in bed would do the trick.
I called the doctors and lied my ass off to their receptionists, telling them I'd forgotten my appointment time. Both women had Wednesday appointments. Shit, I was good.
Morelli dragged in with a sweat stain the length of his gray Tshirt. He went to the refrigerator and stuck his head in the freezer. "I've gotta get air in this house."
I thought the weather was pretty good compared to yesterday. Today you could sort of see a yellow glow where the sun was behind the layer of funk air.
He pulled his head out of the freezer, tossed his gun on the counter and got a beer.
"Bad day?"
"Average."
"I saw you in north Trenton."
"You made me?"
"I recognized the car. I figured you were watching the Seven-Eleven."
"And watching, and watching, and watching."
"Drugs?"
"Funny money."
"I thought you weren't supposed to tell me."
"Fuck it. Treasury has this case so screwed up it doesn't matter. There've been bogus twenties coming out of Trenton for five years that we know of . . . probably more. Treasury has everything in place. They go in to get the guy. No plates where the plates are supposed to be. No paper. No nothing. Including no funny money traffic. We can't even make an arrest. We look like a bunch of fucking amateurs. Then all of a sudden, yesterday, a couple of the twenties get passed at the convenience store on Olden. So we start all over, looking to see who goes in that store."
"The clerk didn't know who passed them?"
"They were discovered at the bank when the teller was counting them out for deposit."
"What do you think?"
"I think we had the right guy the first time. Some fluky thing happened and the stuff wasn't there."
"I just had a weird thought. We attributed Helen Badijian's death to her connection with Maxine. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Maxine. Maybe it had to do with the funny money."
"I thought of that, too, but the MO ties it to Maxine. Cause of death to Badijian was a blow to the head, but she also had one of her fingers chopped off."
I had an even weirder thought, but I didn't want to say it out loud and sound like a dunce.
The phone rang, and Morelli answered. "Yes, Mrs. Plum," he said.
I jumped out of my chair and started to run for the front door. I was halfway through the dining room when Morelli snagged me by the back of my shirt and stopped my progress with a sharp yank that had me pressed against his chest.
"Your mother," he said, handing me the phone.
"Stephanie," my mother said. "What is this I hear about your being pregnant?"
"I'm not pregnant. This is a living arrangement, not a marriage."
"Everybody's talking. Everybody thinks you're pregnant. What should I tell Mrs. Crandle?"
"Tell her I'm not pregnant."
"Your father wants to talk to you."
I could hear the phone being transferred and then some breathing.
"Dad?"
"Yeah," he said. "How's the Buick running? You gotta give it high test, you know."
"Don't worry. I always give it high test." I never gave it high test. It didn't deserve high test. It was ugly.
He gave the phone back to my mother, and I could hear my mother rolling her eyes at him.
"I have a nice pot roast on the stove," she said. "With peas and mashed potatoes."
"Okay," I said. "I'll come for dinner."
"And Joseph."
"No. He can't make it."
"Yes, I can," Joe said.
I gave a big sigh. "He'll come, too."
I disconnected and gave him the phone. "You'll be sorry."
"NOTHING LIKE BEING PREGNANT to give a woman a glow," Grandma said.
"I may be glowing, but I'm not pregnant."
Grandma looked down at my stomach. "You look pregnant."
It was all that damn Italian food. "It's cake," I said.
"You might want to get rid of that cake before the wedding," Grandma said. "Or you're going to have to buy one of them empire gowns that don't have a waist."
"I'm not getting married," I said. "There's no wedding."
Grandma sat up straighter. "What about the hall?"
"What hall?"
"We figured you'd hold your reception at the Polish National Hall. It's the best place for it, and Edna Majewski said they had a cancellation, but you'd have to act fast."
"You didn't hire a hall!"
"Well, we didn't put down no deposit," Grandma said. "We weren't sure of the date."
I looked to Joe. "You explain it."
"Stephanie's apartment got damaged in the fire, and she's renting a room from me until her apartment's repaired."
"How about sex?" Grandma asked. "Are you having sex?"
"No." Not since Saturday.
"If it was me, I'd have sex," Grandma said.
"Christ," my father said, at the head of the table.
My mother passed me the potatoes. "I have forms for you to fill out for the insurance. Ed was over at your apartment and said there was nothing left of it. He said the only thing that was left was the cookie jar. He said the cookie jar was fine."
I silently dared Morelli to say something about the cookie jar, but Morelli was busy cutting his meat. The phone rang and Grandma went to the kitchen to answer it.
"It's for you, Stephanie," Grandma yelled.
"I been calling all over, trying to track you down," Lula said. "I got some news. Joyce Barnhardt called Vinnie just before we were getting ready to leave, and Connie listened in. Joyce told Vinnie she'd make him bark like a dog if he put her back on the case and guess what?"
"I can guess."
"Yeah, so then she goes on to tell Vinnie how she's getting her leads on Maxine. And now we know the name of the little jackoff that's helping Joyce."
"Yes!"
"So I figure maybe you and me should pay him a visit."
"Now?"
"You got something better to do?"
"No. Now will be fine."
"I'll pick you up then on account of I'm not riding in that Buick."
Everyone stopped eating when I returned to the table.
"Well?" Grandma said.
"It was Lula. I'm going to have to eat and run. We have a lead on a case."
"I could go, too," Grandma said. "Like last time."
"Thanks, but I'd rather you stayed home and entertained Joe."
Grandma winked at Morelli, and Morelli looked like a snake that just swallowed a cow and got it stuck in his throat.
Ten minutes later, I heard a car pull to the curb outside. Rap music thumped through the house, the music cut off and in moments Lula was at the door.
"We got a lot of pot roast," Grandma said to Lula. "You want some?"
My mother was on her feet, setting an extra plate.
"Pot roast," Lula said. "Boy, I like pot roast." She pulled a chair up and shook out her napkin.
"I always wanted to eat with a Negro," Grandma said.
"Yeah, well, I always wanted to eat with a boney-assed old white woman," Lula said. "So I guess this works out good."
Grandma and Lula did some complicated handshake thing.
"Bitchin'," Grandma said.
IT WAS the first time I'd ridden in the new Firebird, and I was feeling envious.
"How can you afford a car like this working as a file clerk? And how come your insurance came through, and I'm still waiting?"
"First off, I got low overhead where I'm living. And second, I just keep leasing these suckers. You barbecue a car and they give you a new one. No sweat."
"Maybe I should look into that."
"Just don't tell them about how your cars keep getting blown up. They might think you're a risk, you know what I'm saying?" Lula had taken High to Hamilton. "This guy, Bernie, works at the supermarket on Route Thirty-three. When he's not stacking oranges he's selling wacky tobaccy, which is the common link between Barnhardt and Mama Nowicki. Nowicki talks to Bernie, then Bernie talks to Barnhardt."
"Joyce said it was a retail connection."
"Ain't that the truth."
"From what Connie got on the phone it seems he's also visually challenged."
"Blind?"
"Ugly."
She turned into the supermarket lot and rolled to a stop in a front slot. Not many people were shopping at this time of the night.
"Joyce said he was a horny little troll, so if you don't want to buy dope maybe you can promise him favors."
"As in sexual favors?"
"You don't have to deliver," Lula said. "All you gotta do is promise. I'd do it, but I think he's more your type."
"What type is that?"
"White."
"How do I find him?"
"Name's Bernie. Works in Produce. Looks like a horny little troll."
I pulled the visor mirror down, fluffed my hair and applied fresh lip gloss. "Do I look okay?"
"From what I hear, this guy won't care if you bark and chase cars."
I didn't have trouble finding him. He was stickering grapefruits with his back to me. He had a lot of curly black hair on the back and sides of his head and none on the top. The top of his head looked like a big pink egg. He was just under five feet, and built like a fireplug.
I put a sack of potatoes in my cart, and I cruised over to him. "Excuse me," I said.
He turned, tilted his head back and looked at me. His fat fish lips parted slightly, but no words came out.
"Nice apples," I said.
He made a gurgling sound, and his eyes slid down to my chest.
"So," I said, "you have any dope?"
"What are you kidding me? What do I look like?"
"A friend of mine said I could get some dope from you."
"Oh yeah? Who's your friend?"
"Joyce Barnhardt."
This got his eyes to light up in a way that told me Joyce probably hadn't paid cold cash for her marijuana.
"I know Joyce," he said. "But I'm not saying I sold her any dope."
"We have another mutual friend."
"Who's that?"
"Her name's Nowicki."
"I don't know anybody named Nowicki."
I gave him a description.
"That must be Francine," he said. "She's a pip. I just never knew her last name."
"Good customer?"
"Yeah. She buys lots of fruit."
"See her lately?"
His voice got crafty. "What's it worth to you?"
I didn't like the sound of this. "What do you want?"
Bernie made a smoochy sound.
"Gross!"
"It's because I'm short, isn't it?"
"No. Of course not. I like short men. They, um, try harder."
"Then it's the hair, right? You want a guy with hair."
"Hair doesn't matter. I could care less about hair. And besides, you have plenty of hair. It's just not on the top of your head."
"Then what?"
"You don't just go around making smoochy sounds at women! It's . . . cheap."
"I thought you said you were friends with Joyce."
"Oh yeah. I see your point."
"So how about it?"
"The truth is, I'm not actually attracted to you."
"I knew it. I could tell all along. It's my height."
Jeez, the poor schnook really had a thing about his height. I mean, it wasn't as if he could help being born short or having a head like a bowling ball. I didn't want to compound his problem, but I didn't know what to say. And then I thought of Sally! "It's not your height," I said. "It's me. I'm a lesbian."
"You're shitting me!"
"No. Really."
He looked me up and down. "Are you sure? Christ, what a waste! You don't look like a lesbian."
I guess he thought lesbians had a big L burned into their foreheads, or something. Although, since I don't know any lesbians I'm not exactly an authority.
"You have a girlfriend?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure. She's . . . waiting in the car."
"I want to see her."
"Why?"
"Because I don't believe you. I think you're just trying to be nice to me."
"Look, Bernie, I want some information on Nowicki."
"Not until I see your girlfriend."
This was ridiculous. "She's shy."
"Okay, I'll go out there."
"No! I'll go get her." Jesus!
I jogged out to the parking lot and leaned in the window at Lula. "I'm in kind of a bind here. I need you to help me out. I need a lesbian girlfriend."
"You want me to find you one? Or you want me to be one?" I explained the situation to her, and we hoofed it back to Bernie, who was rearranging his grapefruits.
"Hey, little dude," Lula said. "What's the word?"
Bernie looked up from the grapefruits and almost jumped out of his shoes. "Whoa!"
Guess Bernie hadn't expect my girlfriend to be a two-hundred-pound black woman wearing pink spandex.
"Jeez!" Bernie said. "Jeez!"
"So Stephanie tells me you know old lady Nowicki."
Bernie vigorously nodded his head. "Yeah."
"You see her lately?"
Bernie just stared at Lula.
"Earth to Bernie," Lula said.
"Unh?"
"You see old lady Nowicki lately?"
"Yesterday. She came in to get some, you know, fruit."
"How often does she like to buy fruit?"
Bernie chewed on his lower lip. "Hard to say. She's not regular."
Lula draped an arm around Bernie and almost smothered him in her right breast. "See, the thing is, Bern, we'd like to talk to Nowicki, but we're having a hard time finding her on account of she's not staying in her house. Now if you could help us out here, we'd be grateful. Real grateful."
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Bernie's face, from his bald dome to in front of his ear. "Oh crap," he said. And I could tell from the way he said it that he wanted to help us out.
Lula gave him another squeeze. "Well?"
"I dunno. I dunno. She never says much."
"She always come in alone?"
"Yeah."
I gave him my card. "If you remember something, or if you see Nowicki, you give me a call right away."
"Sure. Don't worry."
We got to the car, and I had another one of those weird thoughts. "Wait here," I said to Lula. "I'll be right back."
Bernie had been standing in the front of the store, watching us through the glass. "Now what?" he said. "You forget something?"
"When Nowicki bought her fruit from you, did she pay you with a twenty?"
He sounded surprised at the question. "Yeah."
"You still have it?"
He stared at me blank-faced for a minute. "I guess . . ." He took his wallet from his back pocket and looked inside. "Here it is. It's the only twenty I got. It must be it."
I rooted around in my shoulder bag and found some money. I counted out two tens. "I'll trade you."
"Is that it?" he asked.
I gave him a sly smile. "For now."
"You know, I wouldn't mind just watching."
I patted him on the top of his head. "Hold that thought."
"We didn't find out much," Lula said when I got into the car.
"We know she was in Trenton yesterday."
"Not many places three women can stay in Trenton," Lula said. "Not like down the shore where there's lots of motels and lots of houses to rent. Hell, the only hotels we got charge by the hour."
That was true. It was the state capital, and it didn't actually have a hotel. This might leave people to think no one wanted to stay in Trenton, but I was sure this was a wrong assumption. Trenton is cool. Trenton has everything . . . except a hotel.
Of course, just because Nowicki was doing business with Bernie didn't mean she had to be in Trenton proper.
We took one last spin past Eddie Kuntz's house, the Nowicki house and Margie's house. All were dark and deserted.
Lula dropped me off in front of Morelli's house and shook her head. "That Morelli got one fine ass, but I don't know if I'd want to live with a cop."
My sentiments exactly.
The windows were open to bring air into the house, and Morelli's television carried out to the street. He was watching a ball game. I felt the truck hood. Warm. He'd just gotten home. His front door was open like the windows, but the screen door was locked.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Anybody home?"
Morelli padded out barefoot. "That was fast."
"Didn't seem all that fast to me."
He relocked the screen and went back to the television.
I don't mind going out to the ballpark. You could sit in the sun and drink beer and eat hot dogs, and the whole thing was an event. Baseball on television put me into a coma. I dug into my pocket, found the twenty and passed it over to Morelli. "I stopped for a soda in north Trenton and got this in change. I thought it'd be fun to check its authenticity."
Morelli looked up from the game. "Let me get this straight. You bought a soda, and you got a twenty in change. What'd you give her, a fifty?"
"Okay, so I don't want to tell you where I got it right now."
Morelli examined the bill. "Goddamn," he said. He turned it over and held it to the light. Then he patted the couch cushion next to him. "We need to talk."
I sat down with reservation. "It's phony, isn't it?"
"Yep."
"I had a hunch. Is it easy to tell?"
"Only if you know what to look for. There's a small line in the upper right corner where the plate is scratched. They tell me the paper isn't exactly right, either, but I can't see it. I only know by the scratch mark."
"Was the guy you tried to bust from north Trenton?"
"No. And I was pretty sure he was working alone. Counterfeiting like this is usually a mom-and-pop deal. Very small." He draped his arm over the back of the couch and stroked the nape of my neck with a single finger. "Now, about the twenty . . ."
IT WAS HOPELESS. Morelli was going to worm this out of me.
"The twenty came from Francine Nowicki, Maxine's mother," I said. "She passed it to a dope dealer yesterday."
I told him the rest of the story, and when I was done he had a strange expression on his face.
"How do you walk into these things? It's . . . spooky."
"Maybe I have the eye."
As soon as I said it I regretted it. The eye was like the monster under the bed. Not something to tempt out of hiding.
"I really thought it was a one-man operation," Morelli said. "The guy we were watching fit the profile. We watched him for five months. And we never pegged anyone as being an accomplice."
"It would explain a lot about Maxine."
"Yeah, but I still don't get it. During that five-month period this guy never made physical contact with Kuntz or Maxine."
"Did you actually see him passing the money?"
"No. That was part of the problem. Everything we had on him was circumstantial and coincidence."
"Then why did you move?"
"It was the Feds' call. There were events that led us to believe he was printing."
"But he wasn't."
"No. Not money, anyway." Morelli looked at the twenty again. "It's very possible there are just a bunch of these twenties floating around, and Nowicki's mother inadvertently passed one on."
There was a knock on the door, and Morelli went to get it.
It was Sally.
"He's bananas!" Sally said. "He tried to kill me! The poor dumb sonnovabitch tried to fucking kill me."
Sally looked like an overgrown, demented, testosterone-gone-berserk schoolgirl. Plaid pleated skirt, crisp white blouse, grungy sweat socks and beatup Reeboks. No makeup, no wig, two-day beard, hairy chest peeking out the top of the blouse.
"Who's trying to kill you?" I asked. I assumed it was his roomie, but with the way Sally was dressed it could be most anyone.
"Sugar. He's freaked out. Stormed out of the club after the gig on Sunday night and didn't come home until about an hour ago. Walked in the door with a gallon of gasoline and a Bic lighter and said he was going to torch the place, claiming he was in love with me. Can you believe it?"
"Go figure."
"He was ranting on about how everything was fine until you showed up, and then I stopped paying attention to him."
"Doesn't he know you're not gay?"
"He said if you hadn't interfered I would have developed an attraction for him." Sally ran his hand through his Wild Man of Borneo hair. "My luck, someone goes fucking gonzo over me, and it's a guy."
"Could have something to do with the way you dress."
Sally looked down at his skirt. "I was trying this on when he barged in. I'm thinking of changing my image to wholesome."
Morelli and I both bit into our lower lips.
"So what happened?" Morelli asked. "Did he set fire to the apartment?"
"No. I wrestled the gas can out of his hands and threw it out the window. He tried to set fire to the rug with his Bic, but the rug wouldn't burn. All he did was make big black melt spots and stink the place up. Synthetic fibers, you know. Finally he gave up and ran away to get more gas. I decided I wasn't going to wait around to get turned into a briquette, so I stuffed a bunch of clothes into a couple of garbage bags and took off."
Morelli had a grim expression on his face. "And you came here."
"Yeah. I thought with the way you handled him in the club, and with you being a cop and all, this was a safe place to stay." He held up his hands. "Just for a couple days! I don't want to impose."
"Shit," Morelli said. "What does this look like, a halfway house for potential victims of homicidal maniacs?"
"It might not be such a bad idea," I said. "If Sally let it be known he was living here, we might draw Sugar in."
Truth is, I was enormously relieved to know the identity of the firebomber. And I was sort of relieved to find it was Sugar. Better than the mob. And better than the guy who cuts off fingers.
"Two things wrong with that," Morelli said. "Number one, I can't get excited about my house being turned into an inferno. Number two, grabbing Sugar won't do much good if we can't convict him of a crime."
"No problem there," Sally said. "He told me about how he firebombed Stephanie's apartment and how he tried to burn down this house, too."
"You willing to testify to that?"
"I can do better than testify. I've got his diary out in the car. It's filled with juicy details."
Morelli leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "The only way I'll agree to this is if neither of you actually stays here. You put the word out that you're living with me, and twice a day you go in and out the front door, so it looks real. Then I put you in a safe house for the night."
"Put Sally in a safe house," I said. "I'll help with surveillance."
"No way," Sally said. "I'm not being left out on all the fun."
"Neither of you does surveillance," Morelli said. "And it's not open to debate. It's my way or it's no way."
"What safe house did you have in mind?"
Morelli thought about it a minute. "I could probably put you with one of my relatives."
"Oh no! Your grandmother would find me and give me the eye."
"What's the eye?" Sally wanted to know.
"It's a curse," I said. "It's one of those Italian things."
Sally shivered. "I don't like that curse stuff. One time I was down in the islands, and I accidentally ran over this voodoo person's chicken, and the voodoo person said she was gonna make my dick fall off."
"Well?" Morelli asked. "Did it fall off?"
"Not yet, but I think it might be getting smaller."
Morelli grimaced. "I don't want to hear this."
"I'll go home to my parents," I said. "And Sally can come with me."
We both looked at Sally in the skirt.
"You have any jeans in the car?" I asked.
"I don't know what I have. I was in a real rush. I didn't want to be there when Sugar got back with more gasoline."
Morelli put in a call to have Sugar picked up, and then we dragged Sally's clothes in from his car. We left the Porsche parked at the curb, behind the Buick, and we pulled the shades on the front downstairs windows. Then Morelli called his cousin, Mooch, to come get Sally and me at nine in the alley behind his house.
Thirty minutes later Morelli got a call from Dispatch. Two uniforms had gone over to check on Sally's apartment and had found it on fire. The building had been evacuated without injury. And Dispatch said the fire was under control.
"He must have come back right away," Sally said. "I didn't think he'd set fire to everything if I was gone. It must have just about killed him to torch all of those cakes and pies."
"I'm really sorry," I said. "Do you want me to go over there with you? Do you want to see it?"
"I'm not going anywhere near that place until Sugar's strapped to a bed in the loony bin. Besides, it wasn't even my place. I was renting from Sugar. All the furniture was his."
"YOU SEE, this is much better," my mother said, opening the door for me. "I have your bedroom all ready. As soon as you called we put on new sheets."
"That's nice," I said. "If it's okay with you, I'll let Sally sleep in my room, and I'll bunk with Grandma Mazur. It'll only be for a day or two."
"Sally?"
"He's just behind me. He had to get his bags out of the car."
My mother looked over my shoulder and froze as Sally ambled into the foyer.
"Yo, dudes," Sally said.
"What's happening?" Grandma chimed back.
"Jesus H. Christ," my father said, from his chair in the living room.
I carted Rex off to the kitchen and set his cage on the counter. "No one's supposed to know Sally and I are living here."
My mother looked pale. "I won't tell a soul. And I'll kill anyone who does."
My father was on his feet. "What kind of getup is that?" he asked, pointing at Sally. "Is that a kilt? Are you a Scot?"
"Heck no," Grandma said. "He's no Scot. He's a transvestite . . . only he doesn't strap down his dingdong on account of it gives him a rash."
My father looked at Sally. "You mean you're one of them Tinkerbell boys?"
Sally stood up a little taller. "You got a problem with that?"
"What kind of car you drive?"
"Porsche."
My father threw his hands in the air. "You see? A Porsche. Not even an American car. That's what's wrong with you weirdos. You don't want to do nothing like you're supposed to. There wasn't anything wrong with this country when everybody was buying American cars. Now everywhere you look it's some Japanese piece of caca and look at the trouble we're in."
"Porsche is German."
My father rolled his eyes. "German! Now there's a country. They can't even win a war. You think they're gonna help me get what I got coming to me from Social Security?"
I grabbed one of the garbage bags. "Let me help you get this upstairs."
Sally followed after me. "You sure this is okay?"
I had the bag halfway to the second floor. "Yeah. My father likes you. I could tell."
"No, I don't," my father said. "I think he's a fruitcake. And any man who looks that bad in a skirt has a patriotic duty to stay in the closet where no one can see him."
I pushed the bedroom door open, set the bag inside, and gave Sally fresh towels.
Sally was standing in front of the mirror I had on the back of my door.
"You think I look bad in this skirt?" Sally asked.
I studied the skirt. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but he looked like a mutant from Planet of the Apes. He was probably the hairiest transvestite ever to wear a garter belt. "It's not terrible, but I think you're more of a straight skirt kind of guy. And leather is good on you."
"Dolores Dominatrix."
More like Wanda the Werewolf. "You could go with the wholesome look," I said, "but it would require a lot of shaving."
"Fuck that," Sally said. "I hate shaving."
"You could try a body waxing."
"Man, I did that once. Shit, it hurt like hell."
Good thing he didn't have ovaries.
"Now what?" Sally said. "I can't go to bed this early. I'm a night person."
"We don't have a car so we're sort of limited, but Morelli's only about a half mile from here. We could walk over and see if anything's happening. Look through your stuff and see if you have something dark."
Five minutes later Sally came downstairs in black jeans and a faded black T-shirt.
"We're going for a walk," I said. "Don't feel like you have to wait up. I have a key."
Grandma sidled up to me. "Do you want the 'big boy'?" she whispered.
"No, but thanks for offering."
SALLY AND I strained our eyes and ears all the way to Morelli's neighborhood. Unlike Lula, who never admitted to being scared, Sally and I were perfectly comfortable with the knowledge that Sugar had us ready to jump out of our skin.
We stopped at the corner of Morelli's block and looked things over. There were cars on either side of the street. No vans. Morelli's truck was parked, so I guessed Morelli was home. Shades were still drawn, and the lights were on. I assumed there was someone watching the outside of the house, but I couldn't pick him out.
This was a nice neighborhood. Similar to my parents'. Not as prosperous. Houses were mostly occupied by seniors who'd lived there all their adult lives or by young couples just starting out. The seniors were on fixed incomes, clipping coupons, buying tennis shoes on sale at Kmart, doing only the most essential house maintenance, thankful their mortgages were paid and they could stay in their homes for taxes. The young couples painted and papered and filled their houses with furniture from Sears. And they marked time while they built equity and hoped their properties would appreciate, so they could buy bigger tract houses in Hamilton Township.
I turned to Sally. "Do you think Sugar will come here looking for you?"
"If he doesn't come for me, he'll come for you. He was fucking flipped out."
We walked to the middle of the block and stared across the street at Morelli's house. A shoe scuffed on the stoop behind us, and a figure slid from deep shadow. Morelli.
"Out for a stroll?" he asked.
I looked beyond him at the bike parked on the small yard. "Is that a Ducati?"
"Yeah. I don't get to ride it much."
I moved closer. It was the 916 Superbike. Red. The motorcycle to die for. Smart choice for tailing someone who'd just firebombed your house. Faster and better maneuverability than a car. I found myself liking Morelli more now that I knew he owned a Duc.
"You out here alone?" I asked.
"For now. Roice is coming on at two."
"I guess they weren't able to pick Sugar up."
"We're looking for the car, but so far it's a big zero."
Headlights appeared at the end of the street, and we all shrank back against the house. The car rolled past us and turned two blocks down. We eased forward, out of hiding.
"Sugar have friends outside of the band?" Morelli asked Sally.
"Lots of casual friends. Not many close ones. When I first joined the band, Sugar had a lover."
"Would Sugar go to him for help?"
"Not likely. It wasn't a happy parting."
"How about the band? You have anything scheduled?"
"Rehearsal on Friday. Club date on Saturday."
That seemed like a millennium away. And Sugar would have to be a fool to show up. It had been stupid of him to attack Morelli. Cops get touchy when someone drops a firebomb in a fellow officer's house.
"Get in touch with the other band members," Morelli said to Sally. "Let them know you're staying with Stephanie and me. Ask if they've seen Sugar."
I looked over at Morelli. "You'll call me if anything happens?"
"Sure."
"You have my pager number?"
"Committed to memory."
I'd done this drill before. He wouldn't call me. Not until it was all over.
Sally and I crossed the street, entered Morelli's house, walked the length of it and exited the back door. I stood for a moment in the yard and thought about Morelli, lost in shadow again, his street appearing deserted. It gave me a creepy feeling. If Morelli could disappear, so could Sugar.
ONCE A WEEK Grandma Mazur went to the beauty parlor and had her hair shampooed and set. Sometimes Dolly would use a rinse and Grandma would have hair the color of an anemic apricot, but mostly Grandma lived with her natural color of steel gray. Grandma kept her hair short and permed with orderly rows of curls marching across her shiny pink scalp. The curls stayed miraculously tidy until the end of the week, when they'd begin to flatten and blend together.
I'd always wondered how Grandma had managed this feat. And now I knew. Grandma rolled her pillow under her neck so barely any skull touched the bed. And Grandma slept like the dead. Arms crossed over her chest, body straight as a board, mouth open. Grandma never moved a muscle, and she snored like a drunken lumberjack.
I crawled out of bed at six A.M. bleary-eyed and rattled from my night's experience. I'd had maybe thirty minutes of sleep, and that had been accumulated time. I grabbed some clothes and dressed in the bathroom. Then I crept downstairs and made coffee.
An hour later I heard movement overhead and recognized my mother's footsteps on the stairs.
"You look terrible," she said. "You feel okay?"
"You ever try to sleep with Grandma?"
"She sleeps like the dead."
"You got it."
Doors opened and slammed shut upstairs, and my grandmother yelled for my father to get out of the bathroom.
"I'm an old lady," she yelled. "I can't wait all day. What are you doing in there anyway?"
More doors slamming, and my father clomped into the kitchen and took his place at the breakfast table. "I gotta go out with the cab this morning," he said. "Jones is in Atlantic City, and I said I'd cover his shift."
My parents owned their house free and clear, and my father got a decent pension from the post office. He didn't need the money from hacking. What he needed was to get out of the house, away from my mother and my grandmother.
The stairs creaked, and an instant later Sally's frame filled the doorway. His hair stood out from his head in snarls, his eyes were half closed and he stood stoop shouldered and barefoot, hairy arms dangling from my too-small, fuzzy pink robe.
"Man," he said, "this house is frantic. I mean, like, what time is it, dude?"
"Oh jeez," my father said, grim-faced, "he's wearing ladies' clothes again."
"It was in the closet," Sally said. "Guess the clothes fairy left it for me."
My father opened his mouth to say something, my mother gave him a sharp look, and my father snapped his mouth shut.
"What's that you're eating?" Sally asked.
"Cereal."
"Far out."
"Would you like some?"
He shuffled to the coffeemaker. "Just coffee."
Grandma Mazur hustled in. "What's going on? I didn't miss anything, did I?"
I was sitting at the table, and I could feel her breath on the back of my head. "Something wrong?"
"Just looking at this new-style hairdo you got. Never seen anything like it, what with these big chunks cut outta the back."
I closed my eyes. The egg. "How bad is it?" I asked my mother. As if I didn't already know.
"If you have some free time you might want to go to the beauty parlor."
"I thought it was some punk thing," Sally said. "It'd be rad if it was purple. Maybe spiked out."
AFTER BREAKFAST, Sally and I took another walk over to Morelli's house. We stood in the alley behind the house, and I dialed Morelli on my cell phone.
"I'm in your yard," I told him. "I didn't want to walk through your back door and get blown away."
"No problem."
Morelli was at the sink, rinsing out his coffee mug. "I was just getting ready to take off," he said. "They found Kuntz's car parked in the farmers' market lot by the tracks."
"And?"
"That's it."
"Blood? Bullet holes?"
"Nope," Morelli said. "A-one condition. At first glance doesn't look like anything was stolen. No vandalism. No sign of struggle."
"Was it locked?"
"Yep. My guess is it was left there sometime early this morning. Any sooner than that and it would have been stripped clean."
"Anything happen here last night?"
"Nothing. Very quiet. What are you up to today?"
I picked at my hair. "Beauty parlor."
A grin tugged at the corners of Morelli's mouth. "Going to ruin my handiwork?"
"You didn't take any more hair off than you absolutely had to, right?"
"Right," Morelli said, the grin still in place.
Usually, I got my hair done by Mr. Alexander at the mall. Unfortunately, Mr. Alexander couldn't work me into his busy schedule today, so I opted for Grandma's salon, the Clip and Curl on Hamilton. I had a nine-thirty appointment. Not that it mattered. My gossip rating was so high I could walk into Clip and Curl any time of the day or night, no waiting necessary.
We left through the front door, and I noticed the van parked across the street.
"Grossman," Morelli said.
"He have a Duc in that van?"
"No. He's got a two-way radio, a crossword puzzle book, and a jelly jar."
I had my eye on the Porsche and the butter-soft leather seats. And I knew I'd look very cool in the Porsche.
"Forget it," Morelli said. "Take the Buick. If you get into trouble the Buick is built like a tank."
"I'm going to the beauty parlor," I said. "I'm not going to get into trouble."
"Cupcake, your middle name is trouble."
Sally was standing between the Porsche and the Buick. "So, like, what's it gonna be?" he asked.
"The Porsche," I said. "Definitely the Porsche."
Sally buckled himself in. "This car does zero to a hundred in a fucking second." He cranked the engine over and catapulted us off the curb.
"Yow!" I said. "This is a family neighborhood. Slow down!"
Sally looked at me from behind reflector shades. "I like speed, man. Speed is good."
I had my hands braced on the dashboard. "Stop street! Stop street!"
"Stops on a dime," Sally said, stomping on the brake.
I jerked against the shoulder harness. "Ulk."
Sally lay an affectionate hand on the steering wheel. "This car is like a total engineering experience."
"Are you on drugs?"
"No way. Not this early in the day," Sally said. "What do I look like, a bum?"
He turned onto Hamilton and lead-footed it to Clip and Curl. He parked and looked at the shop over the tops of his glasses. "Retro."
Dolly had converted the downstairs part of her two-story house into a beauty parlor. I'd come here as a little girl to get my bangs cut, and nothing had changed since then. If it was midday or Saturday, the place would be packed. Since it was early morning only two women were under dryers. Myrna Olsen and Doris Zayle.
"Ommigod," Myrna said, shouting over the noise of the dryer. "I just heard the news about you marrying Joseph Morelli. Congratulations."
"I always knew you two would get married," Doris said, pushing the dryer off her head. "You were made for each other."
"Hey, I didn't know you dudes were married," Sally said. "Way to go."
Everyone gaped at Sally. Men didn't come into the Clip and Curl. And Sally pretty much looked like a man today . . . with the possible exceptions of his lip gloss and two-inch dangly rhinestone earrings.
"This is Sally," I told them.
"Chill," Sally said, giving them a rapper fist kind of greeting. "Thought maybe I'd get a manicure. My nails are like trashed."
They looked confused.
"Sally's a drag queen," I said.
"Isn't that something," Myrna said. "Imagine."
Doris leaned forward. "Do you wear dresses?"
"Mostly skirts," Sally said. "I'm too long-waisted for dresses. I don't think they're flattering. Of course, I have a couple gowns. Gowns are different. Everyone looks good in a gown."
"Being a drag queen must be so glamorous," Myrna said.
"Yeah, well, it's okay until they start to throw beer bottles at you," Sally said. "Getting hit with beer bottles is a fucking bummer."
Dolly examined my hair. "What on earth happened to you? It looks like someone cut big chunks out of your hair."
"I got egg stuck in it, and it got hard, and it had to get cut out."
Myrna and Doris rolled their eyes at each other and went back under the dryers.
An hour later Sally and I slid back into the Porsche. Sally had cherry-red nails, and I looked like Grandma Mazur. I looked at myself in the visor mirror and felt tears pooling behind my eyes. My naturally curly hair was cut short, and perfect Tootsie Roll curls covered my head.
"Massive," Sally said. "They look like fucking dog turds."
"You should have told me she was doing this!"
"I couldn't see. I was drying my nails. Excellent manicure."
"Take me to Joe's house. I'm going to get my gun and kill myself."
"It just needs to be a little mussed," Sally said. He reached over. "Let me fix it up for you. I'm good at this."
I looked in the mirror when he was done. "Eeeeek!" I looked like Sally.
"See," he said. "I know just how to do it. I have naturally curly hair, too."
I took another look. I guessed it was better than the dog turds.
"Maybe we should cruise over to north Trenton," I said. "Check out Eddie Kuntz. Make sure he isn't sitting in his kitchen having lunch."
Sally stepped on the gas, and my head snapped back.
"Jackrabbit start," he said.
"How long have you had this car?"
"Three weeks."
My radar was tingling. "You have a license?"
"Used to."
Oh boy.
THE LINCOLN TOWN CAR was in front of the Glick half of the house. Of course, Kuntz's half was without car.
"This doesn't feel good," I said to Sally.
"Like maybe ol' Eddie Kuntz is fish food."
I imagined, now that Eddie's car had been found abandoned, his aunt and uncle would be wringing their hands. Maybe they'd be distraught enough to let me into Eddie's apartment to snoop around.
Leo Glick opened his front door before I had a chance to knock.
"Saw you drive up," he said. "What kind of cockamammy car is that anyway? Looks like a big silver egg."
"It's a Porsche," Sally said.
Leo squinted at him. "What's with the earrings?"
"I felt like being pretty today, man," Sally said, shaking his head to give Leo the full effect. "See how they sparkle in the sun? Fucking awesome, huh?"
Leo backed up a step, as if Sally might be dangerous. "What do you want?" he asked me.
"I don't suppose you've heard from Eddie?"
"Don't suppose I have. And I gotta tell you I'm getting sick of people asking about him. First the cops come this morning to tell us about his car. Big deal. He left his car somewhere. Then some bimbo comes around asking about him. And now here you are on my doorstep with Miss America."
"What kind of bimbo? Do you remember her name?"
"Joyce."
Great. Just what I need. More Joyce.
"Who is it?" Betty called from inside the house. She looked around Leo's shoulder. "Oh, it's you. Why do you keep bothering us? Why don't you just mind your own business?"
"I'm surprised you aren't more worried about your nephew. What about his parents? Aren't his parents worried?"
"His parents are in Michigan. Visiting. We got relatives there," Leo said. "And we aren't worried, because Eddie's a bum. He does this all the time. The only reason we put up with him is because he's blood. We give him cheap rent, but that don't mean we have to baby-sit him."
"You mind if I look around?"
"Damn right I mind," Leo said. "I don't want no one creeping around my house."
"As it is, I've had the phone ringing ever since the police were here. Everyone wanting to know what's going on," Betty said.
"Next thing you know there'll be TV trucks pulling up, and I'll be on the evening news because her nephew's a bum."
"He's your nephew, too," Betty said.
"Only by marriage, and that don't hardly count."
"He's not so bad," Betty said.
"He's a bum. A bum!"
SALLY AND I stood at the curb by the Porsche and watched the Glicks making shooing motions at us.
"They're like . . . lame people," Sally said.
"When I first met them I had the feeling they liked Kuntz. At least Betty. In the beginning she was inviting me in for pound cake. And she was warm. Sort of motherly."
"Maybe they're the ones who offed of Eddie. Maybe he didn't pay his rent. Maybe he insulted Betty's pound cake."
I didn't think they offed Eddie Kuntz, but I did think they were acting odd. If I had to pin down emotions I'd say they were scared and angry. They definitely didn't want me sticking my nose into their business. Which meant either they had something to hide or else they didn't like me. Since I couldn't imagine anyone not liking me, I was going to assume they had something to hide. And the most obvious thing they would have to hide would be knowledge of Eddie Kuntz. Like maybe whoever snatched him had gotten in touch with Uncle Leo and Aunt Betty and had scared the beejeebers out of them.
Or here's another thought. Maybe Kuntz's mixed up with the counterfeit stuff and has gone underground. Maybe the note passed through the bartender was to warn him. And maybe Kuntz told Uncle Leo that he's okay and that Leo should keep his mouth shut and not let anybody come snooping . . . or else. Jesus, maybe his closets are filled with stacks of twenties!
Betty was still making the shooing sounds, but now she was mouthing the word go.
"How about I drive," I said to Sally. "I've always wanted to drive a Porsche." Also, I've always wanted to live.
My pager went off, and I looked at the number. It wasn't familiar. I hauled my cell phone out of my shoulder bag and dialed.
The voice at the other end was excited. "Jeez, that was fast!"
I squinted at the phone. Like squinting would help me to think better. "Who is this?"
"Bernie! You know, the vegetable guy. And I got news for you. Francine Nowicki just came in. She wanted some special produce, if you get my drift."
Yes! "Is she there now?"
"Yeah. I was real smart. I told her I couldn't get anything for her until I went on my break, and then I called you right away. I figured your friend said she'd be grateful and all."
"I'm on my way. Make sure Mrs. Nowicki stays there until I arrive."
"Your friend's with you, right?"
I disconnected and jumped into the car. "We just got a break!" I said, buckling myself in, plugging the key into the ignition. "Mama Nowicki's shopping for fruit."
"Far out," Sally said. "Fruit is cosmic."
I didn't want to tell him what sort of fruit Bernie was selling. I was afraid he'd clean Bernie out and there wouldn't be any left for Maxine's mother.
I took off from the curb with my foot to the floor.
"Wow! Warp speed, Mr. Sulu," Sally said. "Excellent."
Ten minutes later, give or take a few seconds, I cruised into the supermarket lot and parked. I wrote a note to Bernie telling him to give Francine Nowicki enough "produce" for only one day, and instructed him to tell her she'd have to come back tomorrow for the rest. Just in case I lost her today. I signed it "Love and kisses, your new friend, Stephanie." And then I added that Lula sent her love, too.
"There's a little guy in the produce department who looks like R2D2," I told Sally. "Give him this note and take off. If you see Maxine's mother, don't go near her. Just give Bernie the note and come back here, so we can follow her when she leaves."
Sally loped across the lot on his long legs, earring glittering in the sunlight, rat's nest hair bobbing as, he walked. He swung through the big glass doors and turned toward Produce. I lost sight of him for a moment and then he was back in my line of vision, heading out.
"She was there," he said, folding himself into the little car. "I saw her standing by the apples. You can't miss her with that big bandage on her head. She's got it covered with a scarf, but you can still see it's a bandage underneath."
I'd chosen a spot off to the side, next to a van so we'd be less visible. We fell into silence, watching the door.
"There!" Sally yelped. "She's coming!"
We scrunched down in our seats, but it wasn't necessary. Mrs. Nowicki was parked in the front on the other side of the lot. And she wasn't being careful. Just another day in the life of a housewife. Out to do the marketing, scoring some dope from Businessman Bernie.
She was driving an old, beat-up Escort. If she was flush with funny money, she sure wasn't spending it on transportation. I let her get some space on me, and then I crept out of the lot after her. After a half mile I had a depressing feeling about her destination. After another half mile I was sure. She was going home. Maxine wasn't Albert Einstein, but I also didn't think she was dumb enough to hide out at her mother's house.
Mrs. Nowicki parked in front of her house and shuffled inside. If I thought Maxine was on the premises I had the right as a bounty hunter to break down the door and go in guns drawn. I wasn't going to do this because, first off, I didn't have a gun with me. And secondly, I'd feel like an idiot.
"Guess it wouldn't hurt to talk to her," I said.
Sally and I knocked on the door and Mrs. Nowicki stepped into view. "Look what the cat drug in," she said.
"How's your head?" This was my friendly approach, designed to throw drunken, pothead Mrs. Nowicki off guard.
She drew on her cigarette. "My head's peachy. How's your car?"
So much for friendly. "The insurance company felt sorry for me, so they gave me this Porsche."
"Yeah, up your ass," she said. "The Porsche belongs to the freak."
"Seen Maxine lately?"
"Not since she took off at the beach."
"You left the house early."
"Got tired of sand," Maxine said. "What's it to you?"
I moved past her, into her living room. "You don't mind if I look around?"
"You got a search warrant?"
"Don't need one."
Her eyes followed me as I moved through the house. "This is harassment."
It was a small bungalow. All on one floor. Easy to see Maxine wasn't there. "Looks like you're packing."
"Yeah, I'm cleaning out my Dior stuff. I decided I was only wearing Versace from now on."
"If you see Maxine . . ."
"Right. I'm gonna call you."
There was an end table and chair by the door. A .38 had been placed on the end table.
"You think you need that?" I asked.
Mrs. Nowicki stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray by the gun. "Doesn't hurt to be careful."
We got back in the car and my pager beeped, displaying my mother's number.
Grandma answered my callback. "We just wanted to know if you'll be home for dinner," Grandma said.
"Probably."
"And what about Sally?"
"Sally, too."
"I saw he was wearing rhinestones when he went out today. You think I should get dressed up for supper?"
"Not necessary."
I took off and drove back to the supermarket. I had one last detail to check out with Bernie.
Sally and I staggered through the heat into the air-conditioned store. Bernie was ripping leaves off heads of lettuce when he saw us. His eyes got round, and by the time we got up to him, he was jiggling around, unable to stand still.
"Oh man," Bernie said, "you're back! Holy cow!" He was beaming at Sally, and he was wringing his hands. "I thought I recognized you, but I wasn't sure. And then when I saw you just now I knew! You're Sally Sweet! Jeez, I'm a big fan. A big fan! I go to the club all the time. I love that all-girl revue. Boy, you guys are great. And that Sugar. She's the best. I could really go for her. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"Sugar's a guy," I said.
"Get out!"
"Hey," I said. "I know about these things."
"Oh yeah. I forgot. You look so normal."
"Did Francine Nowicki pay you with another twenty?"
"Yep. I got it right here." He took it out of his shirt pocket. "And I did what you said. I only gave her a couple pieces of fruit. Too bad, too, because I could have made a real killing. She had a lot of money on her. She took out a roll of twenties big enough to choke a horse."
I took the twenty from him and looked at it. It had the scratch mark in the corner.
Bernie was on tiptoe, trying to see the bill. "What's with the interest in the twenty. It marked or something?"
"No. Just checking to see if it's real."
"Well? Is it?"
"Yep." Real counterfeit.
"We need to go now," I said. "Thanks for calling me."
"My pleasure." He was gaping at Sally again. "It's been a real treat to meet you," he said. "I don't suppose I could have your autograph."
Sally took the black marking pen out of Bernie's shirt pocket and wrote "Best wishes from Sally Sweet" on Bernie's bald dome.
"There you go, dude," Sally said.
"Oh man," Bernie said, looking like he'd burst with happiness. "Oh man! This is so great."
"You do that a lot?" I asked Sally.
"Yeah, but usually when I do head writing I have to write a lot smaller."
"Hmm."
I wandered over to the cookie aisle to pick out some lunch, and I wondered if Morelli was still watching the 7-Eleven. I could save him a lot of trouble. I was pretty sure Maxine's mother had been the one to pass the phony twenties. It was her neighborhood store. And she didn't seem shy about floating the bad bills. The upside to telling Morelli about Francine Nowicki passing another bogus twenty dollars was that he'd probably abandon the store and watch Francine for me. The flip side was that if anything went down I couldn't trust him to include me. And if he brought Maxine in, and I wasn't along for the ride, neither Vinnie nor I would get our money.
Sally and I settled on a box of Fig Newtons and a couple of sodas. We went through checkout and ate in the car.
"So, lay this marriage gig on me," Sally said. "I always thought Morelli was just nailing you."
"We're not married. And he's not nailing me."
"Yeah, right."
"Okay, so he used to be nailing me. Well, actually, he only nailed me for a very short time. And it wasn't nailing. Nailing sounds like body piercing. What we had was . . . uh, consensual sex."
"Consensual sex is excellent."
I nodded in agreement and popped another Fig Newton into my mouth.
"I guess you got a thing going for Morelli though, huh?"
"I don't know. There's something there. I just can't figure out what it is."
We chewed Fig Newtons and thought about that for a while.
"You know what I don't get?" Sally said. "I don't understand why everyone was working so hard to throw us off the trail five days ago, and now old lady Nowicki is back in her house. We walked right up to her, and she didn't care."
He was right. Obviously something had changed. And my fear was that Maxine was goodbye. If Maxine was safely on her way to a new life, Mrs. Nowicki could afford to take more chances. And so could Margie. I hadn't stopped at Margie's house, but I was sure she was there, packing her valuables, explaining to her cat why Mommy was going to be gone for a long, long time. Probably paying the cat-sitting neighbor off in bad twenties.
But of course she wasn't ready to leave yet. She had a doctor's appointment. And so did Francine. Good thing for me, because I'd be hard-pressed to do surveillance. I wasn't exactly the FBI. I didn't have any of their cool surveillance equipment. For that matter, I didn't even have a car. A silver Porsche, a '53 Buick, and a red Firebird weren't gonna cut it as primo stealth vehicles. I was going to have to find a car that would go unnoticed, so I could sit in front of the Nowicki house tomorrow.
"NO!" MORELLI SAID. "You can't borrow my pickup. You're death on cars."
"I am not death on cars!"
"Last time you used my car it got blown up! Remember that?"
"Well, if you're going to hold that against me . . ."
"And what about your pickup? And your CRX? Blown up!"
"Technically, the CRX caught fire."
Morelli scrunched his eyes closed and smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Unh!"
It was a little after four. Sally was watching television in the living room, and Morelli and I were in the kitchen. Morelli'd just gotten in, and he looked like he'd had another one of those days. Probably I should have waited for a better time to ask him about the truck, but I had to be at my mother's in an hour for dinner. Maybe I should try a different approach. I ran my fingertip across his sweat-soaked T-shirt and leaned very close. "You look . . . hot."
"Honey, I'm about as hot as a man can get."
"I might be able to do something about that."
His eyes narrowed. "Let me get this straight. Are you offering sex for the use of my truck?"
"Well, no, not exactly."
"Then what are you offering?"
I didn't know what I was offering. I'd intended this to be sort of playful, but Morelli wasn't playing.
"I need a beer," Morelli said. "I've had a really long day, and it's going to be even longer. I have to relieve Grossman in an hour."
"Anything new turn up on Kuntz's car?"
"Nothing. "
"Anything happen at the Seven-Eleven?"
"Nothing." He pulled on his beer. "How was your day?"
"Slow. Not a lot going on."
"Who you want to watch?"
"Mrs. Nowicki. She moved back into her house. I went in to talk to her, and she was packing."
"Doesn't mean she's going to take you to Maxine," Morelli said.
I shrugged. "It's all I've got."
"No, it's not," Morelli said. "You're sitting on something."
I raised an eyebrow. It said, Oh yeah?
Morelli chucked the empty beer bottle into the recycling bin. "This better not have to do with the counterfeiting case I'm on. I'd hate to think you were withholding evidence."
"Who me?"
He took a step closer and pinned me to the counter. "So, how bad do you want my truck?"
"Pretty bad."
His gaze dropped to my mouth. "How bad?"
"Not that bad."
Morelli gave a disgusted sigh and backed off. "Women."
Sally was watching MTV, singing along with the groups, doing his head-banger thing.
"Jesus," Morelli said, looking into the living room, "it's a wonder he doesn't shake something loose."
"I CAN'T loan you my car," my father said. "It's gotta go in to get serviced tomorrow. I got an appointment. What's wrong with the Buick you're driving?"
"The Buick is no good for surveillance," I said. "People stare at it."
We were at the table, and my mother was serving out stuffed cabbage. Plop, onto my plate, four cabbage rolls. I opened the button on my shorts and reached for my fork.
"I need a new car," I said. "Where's my insurance money?"
"You need a steady job," my mother said. "Something that pays benefits. You're not getting any younger, you know. How long can you go chasing hoodlums all over Trenton? If you had a steady job you could finance a car."
"Most of the time my job is steady. I just got stuck with a lemon of a case here."
"You live from hand to mouth."
What could I say; she was right.
"I could get you a job driving a school bus," my father said, digging into his dinner. "I know the guy does the hiring. You make good money driving a school bus."
"One of them daytime shows did a thing on school bus drivers," Grandma said. "And two of the drivers got bleeding hemorrhoids on account of the seats weren't any good."
My eye had started to twitch again. I put my finger to it to make it stop.
"What's wrong with your eye?" my mother asked. "Do you have that twitch back?"
"Oh, I almost forgot," Grandma said. "One of your friends came looking for you today. I said you were out working, and she gave me a note for you."
"Mary Lou?"
"No, not Mary Lou. Someone I didn't know. Real pretty. Must have been one of those makeup ladies at the mall, because she was wearing a ton of makeup."
"Not Joyce!"
"No. I'm telling you it was someone I didn't know. The note's in the kitchen. I left it on the counter by the phone."
I pushed away from the table and went to get the note. It was in a small, sealed envelope. "STEPHANIE" had been printed in neat block letters on the face of the envelope. It looked like an invitation to a shower or a birthday party. I opened the envelope and put a hand to the counter to steady myself. The message was simple. "DIE BITCH." And in smaller script it said when I least suspected it he'd make his move. It was written on a recipe card.
What was even more disturbing than the message in the note was the fact that Sugar had waltzed right into my parents' house and handed the envelope to Grandma.
I returned to the table and wolfed down three cabbage rolls. I didn't know how to handle this. I needed to warn my family, but I didn't want to scare them half to death.
"Well?" Grandma said. "What's in the note? Looked like an invitation."
"That was someone I know from work," I said. "Actually, she's not a nice person, so if you ever see her again, don't let her in the house. In fact, don't even open the door to her."
"Ommigod," my mother said. "Another lunatic. Tell me she doesn't want to shoot you."
"Actually . . ."
My mother made the sign of the cross. "Holy Mary, mother of God."
"Don't get going with the Holy Mary stuff," I said to my mother. "It's not that bad."
"So what should I do if I see her again?" Grandma asked. "You want me to put a hole in her?"
"No! I just don't want you to invite her in for tea!"
My father helped himself to more cabbage rolls. "Next time put in less rice," he said.
"Frank," my mother said, "are you listening to this?"
My father picked up his head. "What?"
My mother smacked herself on the forehead.
Sally had been bent over his plate, shoveling in cabbage rolls like there was no tomorrow. He paused and looked at me, and I could hear the gears grinding in his brain. Pretty girl. Lots of makeup. Note. Bad person. "Uh oh," Sally said.
"I'm going to have to eat and run," I said to my mother. "I have to work tonight."
"There's chocolate chip cookies for desert."
I laid my napkin on the table. "I'll put them in a bag."
My mother jumped to her feet. "I'll do it."
We had labor laws in the burg. Mothers do brown bags. That's it. No exceptions. All over the country people were looking for ways to get out of work. In the burg, housewives militantly guarded their responsibilities. Even working mothers refused to relinquish the assembling of lunch or leftovers. And while other family members might from time to time be recruited to mop the kitchen floor, do the laundry, polish the furniture, no one performed the task to housewife standards.
I took the cookie bag and ushered Sally out of the house. It was early, and we really didn't need to leave, but I didn't think I'd hold up to the grilling. There was no good way to tell my mother I was being stalked by a homicidal drag queen.
My mother and grandmother were at the door, watching us get in the car. They stood backs straight, hands clasped. Lips pressed tight together. Good Hungarian women. My mother wondering where she went wrong, wondering why I was riding around with a man wearing rhinestone earrings. My grandmother wishing she was with us.
"I have a key," I called to them. "So, it probably would be a good idea to lock up."
"Yeah," Sally added, "and don't stand in front of any open windows."
My mother did another sign of the cross.
I started the car. "We need to end this," I told Sally. "I'm fed up with being scared, worrying that Sugar's going to jump out at me and set my hair on fire."
"I talked to all the guys in the band, and no one's heard from him."
I drove toward Chambers. Truth is, I'd abdicated dealing with Sugar. "Tell me about Sugar," I said. "Tell me the stuff you told the police."
"We were roommates for about six months, but I don't know a whole lot about him. His family's in Ohio. They couldn't deal with the gay thing, so Sugar split. I've been with the band for about a year, but in the beginning I mostly hung with the guys from Howling Dog.
"About six months ago Sugar had this knock-down, drag-out fight with his boyfriend, John. John moved out, and I moved in. Only I wasn't like John, you know. I was like just a roommate."
"Sugar didn't think so."
"Guess not. Man, this is a real piece of shit, on account of we were like the perfect roommates. Sugar's a neat freak. Always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And I'm like, not into that, so it was cool. I mean, man, we didn't fight over who got to do the fucking vacuuming. And he's real good with the girl shit. He knows all about foundation and blush and the best hair spray. You should have seen me before I moved in with him. I was like a fucking barbarian. I mean, I've like lived with a couple chicks, but I never paid any attention to how they got the fucking eyeliner on. This girl shit is complicated.
"Sugar knew all about it. He even helped me pick out clothes. That was the one thing we did together. Shop. He was a fucking shopping fool. Sometimes he'd bring clothes home for me. Like I wouldn't even have to go with him."
So now I understood the shorts with the ass hanging out.
"He was in drag when he gave the note to Grandma," I said. "It takes special equipment to look like a woman, and it's unlikely Sugar had time to take anything out of the apartment. So either he has a second apartment or else he bought new."
"Probably bought new," Sally said. "Sugar makes lots of money. Five times what I'm making. Some of the things you need to get in New York, but that's not a real problem."
"Too bad he torched the apartment. We might have been able to find something there."
"And the police have the diary."
Common sense told me to give this over to Joe, but when I ran through the benefits they didn't add up. The department was already motivated to find Sugar. They were probably already putting out the maximum effort. What we needed here was talent from a different direction. What we needed was Ranger.
I called his private number, his pager, and finally connected on his car phone.
"Help," I said.
"No kidding."
I filled him in on recent harrowing events.
"Bummer," Ranger said.
"Yeah, so what do you think I should do?"
"Increase his discomfort. Invade his space and do whatever makes him crazy."
"In other words, set myself up as a target."
"Unless you know where he lives. Then we go there and take him down. But I figure you don't know where he lives."
I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Ranger's black BMW slide to the curb behind me about half a block away.
"How did you find me?" I asked.
"I was in the neighborhood. Saw you turn onto Chambers. Is that guy wearing rhinestones?"
"Yep."
"Nice touch."
"Okay, we'll go to Sugar's favorite hangouts. See what we can stir up."
"I'm in the wind, babe."
Whatever the hell that meant.
"I HAVE IT ALL mapped out," Sally said, pulling into a small parking lot next to a downtown restaurant. "This is the first stop."
I looked at the sign on the side of the building. DANTE'S INFERNO. Like, oh boy.
"Don't worry about the name," Sally said. "It's just a restaurant. Serves spicy food. Sugar likes spicy food."
The restaurant was basically one large room. Walls were decorated with faux frescoes depicting various scenes where satyrs and minotaurs frolicked in hell and other hot places. No Sugar.
Two men waved to Sally, and Sally waved back.
"Hey, dudes," Sally said, moving through the room to their table. "I'm looking for Sugar. Don't suppose you've seen him tonight?"
"Sorry," they said. "Haven't seen Sugar all week."
After Dante's we did a full circuit of bars and restaurants with no luck.
"I know we're out here doing this looking for Sugar thing," Sally finally said, "but the truth is I'd crap in my pants if he all of a sudden popped up. I mean, he's crazy. He could, like, fucking Bic me."
I was trying not to think about it. I was telling myself Ranger was out there . . . somewhere. And I was trying to be careful, staying alert and on guard, always looking, ready to react. I thought if Sugar wanted to get in my face and slash me to ribbons, I'd stand a chance. If he just wanted to get rid of me, he could probably do it. Hard to avoid a bullet from a man who thinks he has nothing left to lose.
The sun had set and dusk had settled around us, not doing much for my nervous stomach. Too many shadows now. Sally had known someone in almost every place we'd visited. No one had admitted to having seen Sugar, but that didn't mean it was true. The gay community was protective of its own, and Sugar was well liked. My hope was that someone had been lying and a phone call had been made that would send Sugar out prowling.
"We have many places left to try?" I asked Sally.
"A couple clubs. We'll save the Ballroom for last."
"Would Sugar go out in drag?"
"Hard to say. Depends on his mood. He'd probably feel safer in drag. I know I always do. You put that makeup on, and it's watch out world!"
I could relate to that. My makeup always increases with my insecurity. In fact, at that very moment I had an overwhelming desire to crayon my lids with bright blue eye shadow.
We stopped in at the Strip, Mama Gouches, and Curly's. Only one place left. The Liberty Ballroom. Appropriately named. If you didn't have balls, you didn't want to go there. I figured I had balls when I needed them, so there was no problem.
I drove past the State Complex, which always felt weirdly deserted at night. Acres of unoccupied parking spaces, eerily lit by halogen light. Empty buildings with black glass windows, looking like the death star.
The Ballroom was on the next block, next to the high-rise seniors' housing known to one and all as the Warehouse.
All night long Sally had been telling people we'd end up at the Ballroom. And now that we were here my skin was crawling and all my little hairs were standing on end. It was fear and dread premonition, plain and simple. I knew Sugar was in there. I knew he was waiting for us. I parked and looked around for Ranger. No Ranger in sight. That's because he's in the wind, I told myself. You can't see the wind. Or maybe the wind went home to watch Tuesday night fights.
Sally was cracking his knuckles next to me. He felt it, too. We looked at each other and grimaced.
"Let's do it," I said.
SALLY AND I stood inside the door and looked around. Bar and cocktail tables in the front. Small dance floor to the rear. Very dark. Very crowded. Very noisy. My understanding was that the Ballroom was a gay place, but clearly not everyone here was gay.
"What are all these ungay people doing here?" I asked Sally.
"Tourists. The guy who owns this place was going bust. It was a gay bar, but there weren't enough gay men in Trenton to make a go of it. So Wally got this great idea . . . he hired some guys to come in and dance and get all smoochy with each other, so the place would look really gay. Word got out, and the place started filling up. Like you could come here to see homos and be fucking politically correct." Sally smiled. "Now it's trendy."
"Like you."
"Yeah. I'm fucking trendy."
Sally waved to someone. "See that guy in the red shirt? That's Wally, the owner. He's a genius. The other thing he does is give the first drink free to daytrippers."
"Daytrippers?"
"Yuppies who want to be gay-for-a-day. Like suppose you're a guy, and you think it'd be a kick to get dressed up in your wife's clothes and go out to a bar. This is the place! You get a free drink. And on top of that, you're trendy, so it's all okay. You can even bring your wife, and she can try out being dyke-for-a-day."
The woman standing next to me was dressed in a black leather vest and black leather hot pants. She had an expensive perm that gave her perfect red curls all over her head, and she was wearing brown lipstick.
"Hi!" she said to me, all cheery and chirpy. "Want to dance?"
"No thanks," I said. "I'm just a tourist."
"Me too!" she squealed. "Isn't this place too much? I'm here with my husband, Gene. He wants to see me slow dance with a woman!"
Gene looked very preppy in Dockers and a plaid sport shirt with a little horse stitched onto the pocket. He was swilling a drink. "Rum Coke," he said to me, leaning across his wife. "Want one?"
I shook my head no. "I have a gun in my shoulder bag," I said. "A big one."
Gene and his wife moved away and disappeared in the crowd.
Sally had an advantage at 6'4". He was swiveling his head, looking the crowd over.
"See him?" I asked.
"No."
I didn't like being stuck in the Liberty Ballroom. It was too crowded, too dark. People were jostling me. It would be easy for Sugar to come up on me here . . . like Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. That could be me. One shot to the gut and I'd be history.
Sally put his hand to my back to steer me forward, and I jumped and shrieked. "Yikes!"
"What? What?" Sally yelled, looking around panic-stricken.
I had my hand to my heart. "I might be a tad nervous."
"My stomach's a mess," Sally said. "I need a drink."
Sounded like a good idea to me, so I trailed behind him to the bar. Every time he'd push through people they'd turn and look and go, "Hey, it's Sally Sweet! I'm a real fan." And Sally would go, "Shit, man, that's cool."
"What do you want?" Sally asked.
"Beer in a bottle." I figured if Sugar attacked me, I could brain him with my beer bottle. "I didn't realize you were so famous," I said to Sally. "All these people know you."
"Yeah," Sally said, "probably half the people in this room have slipped a five under my garter belt. I'm like regional."
"Sugar's here somewhere," the bartender said, passing drinks to Sally. "He wanted me to give you this note."
The note was in the same tidy little invitation-sized envelope Sugar had given Grandma. Sally opened the envelope and read the note card.
" 'Traitor.' "
"That's it?" I asked.
"That's all it says. 'Traitor.' " He shook his head. "He's wigged, man. Beyond Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes is funny. This isn't funny."
I belted back some beer and told myself to stay calm. Okay, so Sugar was a little over the edge. It could be worse. Suppose the guy who was going around chopping off fingers was after me? That would be worrisome. He'd already killed someone. We didn't know for sure if Sugar was a killer. Arson didn't necessarily mean he was a killer type. I mean, arson was remote, right? So no point to getting all freaked out ahead of time.
Ranger moved next to me. "Yo," Ranger said.
"Yo yourself."
"Is the man here?"
"Apparently. We haven't spotted him yet."
"You armed?"
"Beer bottle."
He gave me a wide smile. "Good to know you're on top of things."
"No grass growing here," I said.
I introduced Ranger and Sally to each other.
"Shit," Sally said, gaping at Ranger. "Jesus shit."
"Tell me what I'm looking for," Ranger said.
We didn't exactly know.
"Blond Marilyn wig, red dress with short skirt," the bartender said.
Same outfit he had been wearing onstage at the club.
"Okay," Ranger said. "We're going to walk through the room and look for this guy. Pretend I'm not here."
"You going to be the wind again?" I asked.
Ranger grinned. "Wiseass."
Women spilled drinks and walked into walls at the sight of Ranger grinning. Good thing he didn't want to be the wind. The wind would have had a hard time with this group.
We cautiously elbowed our way to the back, where people were dancing. Women were dancing with women. Men were dancing with men. And a man and a woman in their seventies, who must have been from a different planet and had accidentally landed on Earth, were dancing together.
Two men stopped Sally to tell him Sugar was looking for him. "Thanks," Sally said, ashen faced.
Ten minutes later, we'd circled the room and had come up empty.
"I need another drink," Sally said. "I need drugs."
The mention of drugs made me think of Mrs. Nowicki. No one was watching her. I just hoped to God she was hanging around for her doctor's appointment. Priorities, I told myself. The apprehension money wouldn't do me much good if I was dead.
Sally went off to the bar, and I went off to the ladies' room. I pushed through the door labeled Rest Rooms and walked the length of a short hall. Men's room on one side. Ladies' room on the other. Another door at the end of the hall. The door closed behind me, locking out the noise.
The ladies' room was cool and even more quiet. I had a moment of apprehension when I saw it was empty. I looked under the three stall doors. No size-ten red shoes. That was stupid, I thought. Sugar wouldn't go to the ladies' room. He was a man, after all. I went into a stall and locked the door. I was sitting there enjoying the solitude when the outer door opened and another woman came into the room.
After a moment I realized I wasn't hearing any of the usual sounds. The footsteps had stopped in the middle of the room. No purse being opened. No running water. No opening and closing of another stall door. Someone was silently standing in the middle of the small room. Great. Caught on the toilet with my pants down. A woman's worst nightmare.
Probably my overactive imagination. I took a deep breath and tried to steady my heartbeat, but my heartbeat wouldn't steady, and my chest felt like it was on fire. I did a mental inventory of my shoulder bag and realized the only genuine weapon was a small canister of pepper spray.
There was the scrape of high heels on the tile floor, and a pair of shoes moved into view. Red.
Shit! I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from whimpering. I was on my feet now. And I was dressed. And I felt sick to my stomach.
"Time to come out," Sugar said.
I reached for my bag, hanging on the hook on the back of the door, but before I could grab it the bolt popped off and the door was wrenched open, taking my bag with it.
"I did everything for him," Sugar said, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I kept the apartment clean, and I made all his favorite food. And it was working---until you showed up. He liked me. I know he did. You ruined everything. Now all he thinks about is this bounty hunter business. I can't sleep at night. I worry all the time that he's going to get hurt or killed. He has no business being a bounty hunter."
He held a gun in one hand, and he swiped at his tears with the other. Both hands were shaking, and he was scaring the hell out of me. I had my doubts that he was a killer, but an accidental gunshot wound is just as deadly as an intentional one.
"You've got this all wrong," I said. "Sally just decodes messages for me. He doesn't do anything dangerous. And besides, he really does like you. He thinks you're terrific. He's outside. He's been looking for you all night."
"I've made up my mind," Sugar said. "This is the way it's going to be. I'm going to get rid of you. It's the only way I can protect Sally. It's the only way I can get him back." He motioned to the door with the gun. "We need to go outside now."
This was good, I thought. Going outside was a break. When we walked through the Ballroom, Ranger would kill him. I carefully inched my way to the door and stepped out into the hall, moving slowly, not wanting to spook Sugar.
"No, no," Sugar said. "You're going the wrong way." He pointed to the door at the other end of the hall. "That way."
Damn.
"Don't think about trying something dumb. I'll shoot you dead," he said. "I could do it, too. I could do anything for Sally."
"You're in enough trouble. You don't want to add murder to the list."
"Ah, but I do," he said. "I've gone too far. Every cop in Trenton is looking for me. And do you know what will happen to me when I'm locked up? No one will be gentle. I'm better off on death row. You get your own room on death row. I hear they let you have a television."
"Yes, but eventually they kill you!"
More tears streaked down his cheek, but his eyeliner didn't smudge. The man knew makeup.
"No more talking," he said, pulling the hammer back on the revolver. "Outside. Now. Or I'll shoot you here. I swear I will."
I opened the door and looked out. There was a small employee parking lot to the right and two Dumpsters to the left. A single overhead bulb lit the area. Beyond the Dumpsters was a blacktopped driveway. Then a grassy lawn and the seniors' building. It was a really good place for him to shoot me. It was private and sound wouldn't carry. And he had several exits. He could even choose to go back into the building.
My heart was going ka-thunk, ka-thunk, and my head felt spongy. "Wait a minute," I said. "I need to go back inside. I forgot my shoulder bag."
He closed the door behind him. "You don't need your shoulder bag where you're going."
"Where's that?"
"Well, I don't know exactly. Wherever you go when you're dead. Climb into the Dumpster so I can shoot you."
"What are you nuts? I'm not climbing into the Dumpster. That thing is disgusting."
"Okay, fine, then I'll just shoot you here." He pulled the trigger and click.
No bullet in the chamber. Standard safety procedure.
"Darn," he said. "I can't do anything right."
"You ever shoot a gun before?"
"No. But it didn't seem like it'd be all that complicated." He looked at the gun. "Ah, I see the problem. The guy I borrowed the gun from left one of the bullets out."
He sighted the gun at me, and before he had time to pull the trigger, I jumped behind one of the Dumpsters. Bang, zing. A bullet hit the Dumpster. Bang, zing again. We were both so panicked we were acting unreasonably. I was running between Dumpsters like a tin duck in a shooting gallery, and Sugar was firing at shadows.
He got off five rounds, and then there was the telltale click again. He was out of bullets. I peeked out from my hiding place.
"Shit," he said. "I'm such a loser I can't even shoot somebody. Damn." He plunged his hand into his red purse and came out with a knife.
He was between me and the back door. My only real option was to run like hell around the building or across the grass to the seniors' building. He looked more athletic than me, but he was in heels and a skirt, and I was wearing shorts and sneakers.
"I'm not giving up," he said. "I'll do it with my bare hands if I have to. I'll rip your heart out!"
I didn't like the sound of that, so I took off across the grass for all I was worth, running full out for the seniors' building. I'd been in the building before. There was always a guard at the door at this time of the night. The front of the building was well lit. There were two double glass doors, and then the guard. Beyond the guard was a lobby where the old folks sat.
I could hear Sugar laboring behind me, breathing heavily and shrieking for me to stop so he could kill me.
I barreled through the doors and hollered for the guard, but no guard came running. I looked over my shoulder and saw the knife arc down at me. I spun to the side, and the knife blade sliced through the sleeve of my Rangers jersey.
The lobby couches were filled with seniors.
"Help!" I yelled. "Call the police! Get the guard!"
"No guard," one woman explained. "Budget cuts."
Sugar lunged again.
I jumped away, grabbed a cane from an old geezer and started slashing at Sugar.
I'm one of those people who imagine themselves acting heroically at disasters. Saving children from school buses dangling precipitously from bridges. Performing first aid at car wrecks. Rescuing people from burning buildings. The truth is, I totally lose my cool in an emergency, and if things turn out okay, it's through no effort of mine.
I was blindly slashing at Sugar. My nose was running and I was making animal sounds, and by sheer accident I connected with the knife and sent it sailing through the air.
"You bitch!" Sugar shrieked. "I hate you! I hate you!" He hurled himself at me, and we went down to the ground.
"In my day, you'd never see two women fighting like that," one of the seniors said. "It's all of that violence on television. That's what does it."
I was rolling around with Sugar, and I was shouting "Call the police, call the police." Sugar grabbed me by my hair and yanked, and when I jerked back I caught him with my knee and pushed his gonads a good six inches into his body. He rolled off me into a fetal position and threw up.
I flopped over onto my back and look up at Ranger.
Ranger was grinning again. "Need any help?"
"Did I wet my pants?"
"No sign of it."
"Thank God."
RANGER, SALLY AND I stood on the sidewalk in front of the seniors' building and watched the police drive off with Sugar. I'd pretty much stopped shaking, and my skinned knees had stopped bleeding.
"Now what am I going to do?" Sally said. "I'm never going to be able to get into that corset all by myself. And what about makeup?"
"It's not easy being a drag queen," I said to Ranger.
"Fuckin' A," Ranger said.
We walked back to the club parking lot and found our cars. The night was humid and starless. The air-conditioning system droned from the club roof, and canned music and muffled conversation spilled out the open front door into the lot.
Sally was unconsciously bobbing his head in time to the music. I loaded him into the Porsche and thanked Ranger.
"Always enjoy seeing you in action," Ranger said.
I drove out of the lot and headed for Hamilton. I noticed my knuckles were white on the wheel and made another effort to relax.
"Man, I'm really stoked," Sally said. "I think we should do more clubs. I know this great place in Princeton."
I'd just almost been shot, slashed, and choked to death. I wasn't feeling all that stoked. I wanted to sit someplace quiet and nonthreatening and eat my mother's cookies.
"I need to talk to Morelli," I said. "I'm going to pass on the clubs, but you can go on your own. You don't have to worry about Sugar now."
"Poor little guy," Sally said. "He isn't really a bad person."
I supposed that was true, but I was having a hard time finding a lot of sympathy for him. He'd destroyed my car and my apartment and had tried to kill me. And if that wasn't enough, he'd ruined my Gretzky Rangers jersey. Maybe I'd feel more generous tomorrow, when I'd regained my good humor. Right now, I was tending toward grouchy.
I turned at Chambers and wound my way to Morelli's. The van was no longer on his street, and I didn't see the Duc. Lights were on in the downstairs part of Morelli's house. I assumed he'd been told about Sugar and had ended the stakeout. I took my cookies and angled out of the Porsche.
Sally slid over to the driver's seat. "Later, dude," he said, taking off with his foot to the floor.
"Later," I said, but the street was already empty.
I knocked on the screen door. "Yo!" I hollered above the TV.
Morelli padded out and opened the door for me. "Were you really rolling around on the floor at the senior citizens' home?"
"You heard."
"My mother called. She said Thelma Klapp phoned her and told her you just beat the crap out of some pretty blond woman. Thelma said that since you were pregnant and all she thought you shouldn't be rolling around like that."
"The pretty blond woman wasn't a woman."
"What's in the bag?" Morelli wanted to know.
Morelli could sniff out a cookie a mile away. I took one and handed the bag over to him. "I have to talk to you."
Morelli flopped onto the couch. "I'm listening."
"About Francine Nowicki, Maxine's mother . . ."
Morelli went still. "Now I'm really listening. What about Francine Nowicki?"
"She passed another phony twenty. And my informant tells me Francine had a roll of them."
"That's why you were so hot to put her under surveillance. You think she's mixed up in this counterfeiting thing and she's going to take off . . . along with Maxine."
"I think Maxine might already be gone."
"Why are you still interested if you think Maxine's gone?"
I took another cookie. "I don't know for sure that she's gone. And maybe she's not so gone that I can't find her."
"Especially if her mother or her friend rats on her."
I nodded. "There's always that possibility. So what do you say, can I use your truck?"
"If she's still there in the morning I'll put a van in place."
"Her doctor appointment's at three."
"Why did you decide to tell me?"
I slouched lower on the couch. "I need help. I don't have the right equipment to do any kind of decent surveillance. And I'm tired. I hardly slept last night, and I've had a nightmare day. This guy emptied a revolver at me tonight, and then he chased me with a knife in his hand. I hate when people do that!" I was trying to eat a cookie, but my hand was shaking so bad I could hardly get it to my mouth. "Look at me. I'm a wreck!"
"Adrenaline surplus," Morelli said. "As soon as it wears off you'll sleep like the dead."
"Don't say that!"
"You'll feel better in the morning."
"Maybe. Right now I'm happy for whatever assistance you can give me."
Morelli got up and shook out cookie crumbs. "I'm going to get a glass of milk. Want one?"
"Sure."
I stretched out the length of the couch. He was right about the adrenaline. I'd stopped shaking and now I was exhausted.
I HAD a moment of disorientation when I opened my eyes. And then I realized I'd fallen asleep on Morelli's couch. And now it was morning. Sunlight was streaming through the front windows, and I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. Morelli had removed my shoes and covered me with a summer quilt. I did a quick check to make sure the rest of my clothes were intact before feeling too grateful.
I shuffled into the kitchen and poured out some coffee.
Morelli was buckling his gun onto his belt. "I've gotta run," he said. "I called your mother last night and told her you were here. I figured she'd worry."
"Thanks. That was nice of you."
"Help yourself to whatever. If anything comes up today, you can get me on my pager."
"Are you watching Nowicki?"
Morelli paused. "She's gone. I had someone check last night. The house is empty."
"Damn!"
"We might still get her. There's an alert out for her. The Treasury has resources."
"The doctor---"
"Nowicki canceled her appointment yesterday."
He gulped the rest of his coffee, put the mug in the sink and took off. He got to the middle of the dining room, stopped and stared down at his shoe for a minute. Thinking. I saw him give his head a single shake. He turned, strode back into the kitchen, pulled me to him and kissed me. Lots of tongue. Hungry hands.
"Jesus," he said, backing off. "I'm in really bad shape."
And he was gone.
MY MOTHER looked up expectantly when I came into the kitchen. Well? the look said. Did you sleep with him?
My grandmother was at the table with a cup of tea. My father was nowhere to be seen. And Sally was at the head of the table, eating chocolate chip cookies, once again wearing my bathrobe.
"Hey, dude," Sally said to me.
"Sally was telling us all about last night," Grandma said. "Boy, I sure wish I'd been there. Sally said you were the bomb."
"Of all places," my mother said, "the senior citizens' home. What were you thinking? You know how they talk!"
"We've had three phone calls so far this morning," Grandma said. "This is the first chance I've had to sit down with my tea. It's just like we're movie stars!"
"So what's new?" I asked Sally. "You have plans for the day?"
"I'm moving. Got a new place to live. Ran into some friends last night who were looking to replace a roommate. They've got a house in Yardley."
"Dang," Grandma said. "I'm going to miss seeing you sitting there in that pink bathrobe."
I puttered around until Sally was out of the house. Then I took a shower and straightened my room. I didn't like that I'd lost Mrs. Nowicki. All because I hadn't told Morelli the whole story soon enough. "Damn!" I yelled out. Now all I needed was for Joyce Barnhardt to haul Maxine in. "Shit."
My mother knocked on my bedroom door. "Are you all right in there?"
I opened the door. "No, I'm not all right. I'm bummed! I've screwed this case up, and now I have to worry about Joyce Barnhardt making my apprehension."
My mother gave a sharp inhale. "Joyce Barnhardt! Joyce Barnhardt couldn't carry your water pail! You're better than Joyce Barnhardt!"
"You think so?"
"Just go fix whatever it is you botched. I'm sure it isn't that bad. This woman you're after has to be out there somewhere. People don't just disappear."
"It isn't that easy. I've lost all my leads." With the exception of Bernie the horny drug dealer, who I wasn't crazy about seeing again.
"Do you know that for sure?"
Actually, no.
"You're right," I said. "It wouldn't hurt to check a few things out." I grabbed my shoulder bag and headed for the stairs.
"Will you be home for supper?" my mother asked. "We're having fried chicken and biscuits and strawberry shortcake."
"I'll be home."
My enthusiasm did another dip when I saw the Buick waiting for me. It was hard to be Wonder Woman in the Buick. It would be much easier to be Wonder Woman on a Duc, for instance.
I crawled onto the big bench seat and peered over the steering wheel at the powder-blue hood stretching endlessly in front of me. I turned the key and accelerated. Bzzzzzzzup, the car sucked gas and rolled up the street.
Morelli had covered Mrs. Nowicki's house, but he hadn't gone to see Margie. There was a slim chance that Mrs. Nowicki might be with Margie.
I didn't feel encouraged when I pulled up at Margie's house. Her car wasn't there, and neither was Mrs. Nowicki's. I went to the door and found it locked. No one answered my knock. I tiptoed around and looked in windows and saw no sign of life. No breakfast dishes left on the kitchen counter. No socks left lying on the floor. No cat curled in an armchair. The neighbor didn't pop out. Maybe she was used to me snooping.
I crossed the lawn and rapped on the neighbor's door.
She looked puzzled at first, then she placed me. "You're Margie's friend!" she said.
"Yes, and I'm still looking for Margie."
"You just missed her. She was home for a day, and now she's gone again."
"Do you know where she went?"
"I didn't ask. I just assumed it was back to the shore."
"Well, thanks," I said. "I'll catch up with her one of these times."
I went back to the car and sat there berating myself for a few minutes. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" I said.
I was on the road, so I thought, What the hell, I'll make a lastditch effort and double-check on Maxine's mother. No stone unturned.
I didn't see a car in front of her house, either, but I parked and went to her door. I knocked, and the door swung open. "Hello?" I called. No answer. I went room to room and was relieved not to find anyone dead, or scalped, or hacked into little pieces.
Maxine's mother hadn't lived well. The double bed mattress sagged miserably in the middle. The sheets were threadbare. A faded chenille spread served as blanket and bedspread. Both were littered with burns from cigarettes. The furniture was old and scarred, beyond polish. Rugs were soiled. Sinks were stained and chipped. The kitchen wastebasket was filled with booze bottles. And the house reeked from stale smoke and mildew.
There were no scribbled notes indicating travel plans. No magazine pages dog-eared to cruise advertisements. No fake twenties carelessly discarded. Mrs. Nowicki was gone and didn't expect to be back. I thought the open door was a blatant message. Let the wipe-ass scavengers pick this shit over, the door said. I'm movin' on.
I went back to the Buick and tried to piece things together, but I didn't have nearly enough information. What I knew was that Margie, Maxine's mother and Maxine were sticking together. I knew that Francine Nowicki had a bunch of bad twenties. I suspected that Eddie Kuntz wanted Maxine for more than love letters. And I knew someone wanted information on Maxine bad enough to kill for it.
I thought the most confusing element in all of this was the disappearance of Eddie Kuntz. He'd been missing for four days. I thought he'd have floated in on the tide by now.
I've checked on Margie and Maxine, I thought. I should check on Eddie Kuntz, too. Trouble was, I hated to tangle with Betty and Leo again. It was getting unpleasant. Of course, I could just ride by. Stopping could be optional.
I put the Buick in gear and cruised over to Muffet Street, pausing in front of the Glicks' house. Didn't look like anybody was home in either side. No Lincoln Town Car parked at the curb. I could feel my fingers getting twitchy, wanting to see if Eddie's front door would swing open like Francine's. Maybe since no one was around I could even help it swing open.
My heart did a little tap dance. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, don't even think what you're thinking! What if you get caught inside! Okay, I have to admit, getting caught inside would be a downer. I needed a lookout. I needed Lula. The office was about ten minutes away.
I hauled out my cell phone and dialed the office.
"Yeah, sure," Lula said. "I'm good at lookout shit. I'll be right there."
"I'm going to try to get inside," I told her. "I'll take my cell phone with me. You sit across the street and be cool and call me if Betty or Leo comes home. Then I'll go out the back door."
"You can count on me," Lula said.
I drove to the end of the block, turned the corner and parked. Then I walked back to the Glicks' house and marched up the stairs to the porch. Just to be sure I knocked on the Glicks' door. No answer. I looked in the window. No one walking around. I did the same on the Kuntz side. I tried the door. Locked. I ran around to the back. No luck there, either. I should have called Ranger instead of Lula. Ranger had a way with locks. I used to carry a set of lock picks, but I could never get them to work, so I threw them away.
I glanced over at Eddie's back window, next to the door. It was cracked open! No air-conditioning in the Kuntz side. You could probably bake bread on the kitchen floor. I slunk off the porch and gave the window a nudge. Stuck. I looked around. There was no activity in the neighborhood. No dogs barking. No neighbors watering grass. No kids playing. Too hot. Everyone was inside, running their air conditioners, watching television. Good for me.
I discreetly dragged a garbage can over to the window and climbed on. I balanced on my knees, gave the window a good hard shot and ZZZING! The window sailed open. I didn't hear anybody yelling "Hey, you! What are you doing?" so I figured everything was cool. I mean, it wasn't like I was breaking and entering, because I hadn't actually broken anything.
I slid the window back down and ran to the front of the house to make sure the Glicks hadn't come home. When I didn't see the Lincoln I felt a little more comfortable, so that my heart slowed down to almost normal. I did the upstairs first, methodically going room by room. When I got to the downstairs I looked out the window and saw the red Firebird parked two houses down. I searched the kitchen last. Milk in the refrigerator. And upstairs in his bedroom there'd been dirty clothes on the floor. Things that would lead me to believe he hadn't intended to go on a trip.
I found two key rings in the junk drawer by the sink. One key ring held several keys. Car key, house key, a locker key. The other key ring only held one key. My mother lived in a duplex like this, and her junk drawer held two key rings, too. One was an extra set of keys. The other was the key to next door.
I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. I'd been in the house for a half hour. Probably I shouldn't push my luck, but I really wanted to take a quick tour of the Glick half. It'd be helpful to find a ransom note left lying on the Glicks' kitchen counter. The key was in the drawer calling to me. Use me. Use me. Okay, what was the worst that could happen? The Glicks would catch me, and I'd be embarrassed. But that wouldn't happen because Lula was watching.
I pocketed the key, closed the window to within an inch of the sill, slipped out the door and stuck the key in the Glicks' lock. Bingo. The door clicked open.
The first thing I noticed was the wash of cool air. It had to be forty degrees in Betty Glick's kitchen. It was like walking into a refrigerator. The no-wax linoleum floor was spotless. The appliances were new. The countertops were Formica butcher block. The theme was country kitchen. Wooden hearts painted barn red and Newport blue, inscribed with homey messages, were hung on the walls. A small pine turned-leg table had been positioned under the back window. The toaster snuggled under a crafts fair toaster cover. Pot holders and dish towels sported rooster designs, and in a colorful, hand-painted bowl was the essential orange-scented potpourri.
Only problem was that the potpourri did nothing to disguise the fact that Betty Glick's kitchen smelled bad. Betty needed some baking soda down her sink drain. Or maybe Betty needed to empty the garbage. I did a quick look through the cupboards and drawers. Nothing unusual there. Also no dead rats or rotting chicken carcasses. The waste container was scrubbed clean and lined with a plastic bag. So what was that smell? There was a kitchen telephone, but no answering machine to snoop on. The sticky pad beside the telephone was blank, waiting for an important message. I looked in the refrigerator and the broom closet, which had been converted into a small pantry.
The smell was stronger on the broom closet side of the room, and suddenly I knew what I was smelling. Uh oh, I thought, take me out of here, feet! But my feet weren't listening. My feet were creeping closer to the source of the smell. My feet were heading for the cellar door next to the broom closet.
My cell phone was in my shoulder bag, and my shoulder bag was hung on my shoulder. I looked inside the bag to make sure the LED was lit. Yep. The phone was working.
I opened the cellar door and flipped the light switch. "Hel-lo-o," I called. If I'd have gotten an answer, I'd have fainted.
I crept halfway down the stairs and saw the body. I'd expected it would be Eddie or maybe Maxine. This body was neither. It was a man in a suit. Late fifties, early sixties, maybe. Very dead. He'd been placed on a tarp. No blood anywhere. I wasn't a forensics expert, but from the way this guy's eyes were bulging and his tongue was sticking out I'd say he hadn't died of natural causes.
So what the hell did this mean? Why would Betty have a corpse in her basement? I know it sounds crazy, but it struck me as especially odd since Betty was such a tidy housekeeper. The basement had been finished off with tile flooring and an acoustical ceiling. Laundry area to one side. Storage to the other, including some large equipment under another tarp. An average basement . . . except for the dead guy.
I stumbled back up the stairs and popped into the kitchen just as Betty and Leo came through the front door.
"What the hell?" Leo said. "What the hell is this?"
I didn't know what was going on, but it didn't feel healthy to hang around in Betty's kitchen. So I bolted for the back door.
BANG! A bullet sailed past my ear and embedded itself in the doorjamb.
"Stop!" Leo shouted. "Stop right where you are."
He'd dropped the box he'd been carrying, and he was aiming a semiautomatic at me. And he was looking much more professional with a gun in his hand than Sugar had looked.
"You touch that back door, and I'll shoot you," Leo said. "And before you die I'll chop your fingers off."
I stared at him bug-eyed and open-mouthed.
Betty rolled her eyes. "You and those fingers," she said to Leo.
"Hey, it's my trademark, okay?"
"I think it's silly. And beside, they did it in that movie about that short person. Everyone will think you're a copycat."
"Well, they're wrong. I did it first. I was clipping fingers years ago in Detroit."
Betty retrieved the box Leo had dropped, carted it into the kitchen and set it on the counter. I read the printing on the side. It was a new chain saw. Black and Decker, 120 horsepower, portable.
Eek.
"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but there's a dead guy in your cellar. Probably you should call the police."
"You know when things start to go wrong, it all turns to crapola," Leo said. "You ever notice that?"
"Who is he?" I asked. "The man down there."
"Nathan Russo. Not that it matters to you. He was my partner, and he got nervous. I had to settle his nerves."
My phone rang inside my shoulder bag.
"Christ," Leo said, "what is that? One of those cellular phones?"
"Yeah. I should probably answer it. It might be my mother."
"Put your bag on the counter."
I put it on the counter. Leo rummaged through it with his free hand, found the phone and shut it off.
"This is a real pain in the ass now," Leo said. "Bad enough I have to get rid of one body. Now I have to get rid of two."
"I told you not to do it in the cellar," Betty said. "I told you."
"I was busy," Leo said. "I didn't have a lot of time. I didn't notice you helping any to get the money together. You think it's easy to get all that money?"
"I know this is a sort of dumb question," I said. "But what happened to Eddie?"
"Eddie!" Leo threw his hands in the air. "None of this would have happened if it wasn't for that bum!"
"He's just young," Betty said. "He's not a bad person."
"Young? He ruined me! My life's work . . . pooof! If he was here I'd kill him, too."
"I don't want to hear that kind of talk," Betty said. "He's blood."
"Hah. Wait until you're out on the street because your no-good nephew blew our pension plan. Wait until you need to get into a nursing home. You think they're gonna let you into assisted living on your good looks? No sirree."
Betty put her grocery bag on the small kitchen table and started to unpack. Orange juice, bread, bran flakes, a box of three-ply jumbo-sized trash bags. "We should have gotten two boxes of these trash bags," she said.
This made me swallow hard. I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do with the trash bags and chain saw.
"So go back to the store," Leo said. "I'll start downstairs, and you can go get more bags. We forgot to get steak sauce anyway. I was gonna grill steaks tonight."
"My God," I said. "How can you think of grilling steaks when you've got a dead man in your basement?"
"You gotta eat," Leo said.
Betty and Leo were standing with their backs to the side window. I looked over Leo's shoulder and saw Lula bob up and look in the window at us, her hair beads flopping around.
"Do you hear funny clicking sounds?" Leo asked Betty.
"No."
They both stood listening.
Lula bobbed up a second time.
"There it is again!"
Leo turned, but Lula was gone from the window.
"You're hearing things," Betty said. "It's all this stress. We should take a vacation. We should go to someplace fun like Disney World."
"I know what I heard," Leo said. "And I heard something."
"Well, I wish you'd hurry up and kill her," Betty said. "I don't like standing here like this. What if one of the neighbors comes over? How will it look?"
"Downstairs," Leo said to me.
"And don't make a mess," Betty said. "I just cleaned down there. Choke her like you did Nathan. That worked out good."
It was the second time in twenty-four hours someone had pointed a gun at me, and I was beyond scared. I was vacillating between cold, stark terror and being truly pissed. My stomach was hollow from fear, and the rest of my body was spastic with the need to grab Leo by his shirtfront and rap his head against the wall until his fillings fell out of his teeth.
I imagined Lula was scrambling to help, calling the police. And I knew what I needed was to stall for time, but it was hard to think coherently. I was sweating in Betty's forty-degree kitchen. It was the cold sweat of someone facing death badly. Not ready to go.
"I don't g-g-get it," I said to Leo. "Why are you doing all this killing?"
"I only kill when I have to," Leo said. "It's not like it's indiscriminate. I wouldn't have killed that sales clerk, but she pulled Betty's ski mask off."
"She seemed like such a nice girl, too," Betty said. "But what could we do?"
"I'm a n-n-nice girl," I said.
"We didn't even get any information from her," Leo said. "I cut off her finger to show I was serious, and she still wouldn't talk. What kind of a person is that? All she said was that Maxine was in Point Pleasant. Big deal. Point Pleasant. Maxine and twenty thousand other people."
"Maybe that was all she knew."
Leo shrugged.
I did a panicked search for another question. "You know what else I don't get? I don't get why you scalped Mrs. Nowicki. Everybody else had their finger cut off."
"I forgot my clippers," Leo said. "And all she had in the house was this dinky paring knife. You can't do real good work with a paring knife. Not unless it's supersharp."
"I keep telling you, you should take ginko," Betty said. "You don't remember anything anymore."
"I'm not taking any damn ginko. I don't even know what ginko is."
"It's an herb," Betty said. "Everybody takes it."
Leo rolled his eyes. "Everybody. Unh."
Lula bobbed up at the window again. And this time she had a gun in her hand. She squinted and sighted and BAM! The window shattered, and a rooster pot holder hanging from a hook on the opposite wall jumped in place.
"Jesus H. Christ," Leo said, dodging aside, whirling around to face the window.
"Drop your gun, you punk-ass old coot," Lula yelled. "You don't drop your gun, I'm gonna bust a cap up your ass!"
Leo shot at the window. Lula returned fire, taking out the microwave. And Betty and I dove under the table.
Sirens whooped in the distance.
Leo ran for the front door, where there was more gunfire and a lot of cussing from both Leo and Lula. Police strobes flashed through the front windows, and there was more shouting.
"I hate this part," Betty said.
"You've done this before?"
"Well, not exactly like this. It was much more orderly last time."
Betty and I were still under the table when Morelli came in.
"Excuse me," Morelli said to Betty. "I'd like to speak to Ms. Plum in private."
Betty crawled out and stood and looked like she didn't know where to go.
I crawled out, too. "You might want to detain her," I said to Morelli.
Morelli passed her off to a uniform and glared at me. "What the hell's going on here? I answer my page and it's Lula screaming how someone's shooting you."
"Well, he didn't actually get around to shooting me."
Morelli sniffed. "What's that smell?"
"Dead guy in the basement. Leo's partner."
Morelli wheeled around and went downstairs. A minute later he came up smiling. "That's Nathan Russo."
"And?"
"He's our friendly neighborhood funny money distributor. He's the guy we've been watching."
"Small world."
"There's a press down there, too. Under a tarp.
I felt my face crumple and my eyes fill with tears. "He wanted to kill me."
"I know the feeling," Morelli said. He put an arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
"I hate to cry," I said. "I get all blotchy, and it makes my nose run."
"Well, you're not blotchy right now," Morelli said. "Right now you're white. The guy downstairs has more color than you." He guided me through the house to the porch, where Lula was pacing, looking like she'd break out in hives any minute. Morelli sat me down on the step and told me to put my head between my legs.
After a minute the clanging stopped in my head, and I didn't feel like throwing up anymore. "I'm okay," I said. "I feel better."
Lula sat next to me. "First time I ever saw a white person who really was white."
"Don't go anywhere," Morelli said. "I need to talk to both of you."
"Yessir, boss," Lula said.
Morelli squatted next to me and lowered his voice. "You weren't in this house illegally, were you?"
"No." I shook my head for emphasis. "The door was open. I was invited in. The wind blew the door . . ."
Morelli narrowed his eyes. "You want to pick one?"
"Which one do you like?"
"Christ," Morelli said.
He went back into the house, which was now filled with cops. An EMS truck had arrived. No need for that. No one had been hurt, and the body in the basement would go home with the coroner in his body snatcher truck. Neighbors had collected on the sidewalk by the EMS truck. Others stood on porches across the street. Betty and Leo were sitting in two separate blue-and-whites. They'd be kept apart from now on and questioned independently.
"Thanks for coming to my rescue," I said to Lula. "Boy, you really nailed that pot holder."
"Yeah, only I was aiming for Leo. Sorry I didn't call you in time. I kept getting interference. Lucky I got through to Morelli right away."
At the end of the block a black Jeep screeched to a halt and a naked man jumped out.
"Goddamn!" Lula said. "I know that naked motherfucker."
I was on my feet and running. The naked motherfucker was Eddie Kuntz! Eddie saw the crowd in front of his house and immediately scurried behind some shrubbery. I skidded to a stop directly in front of the shrub and stared. Kuntz was tattooed head to toe with colorful messages like "pencil dick" and "woman beater" and "I like to be buttfucked."
"Ommigod," I said, trying hard not to be obvious about comparing messages with equipment displayed.
Kuntz was rabid. "They've been holding me hostage. They tattooed my entire body!"
Lula was next to me. "Think they been generous with the pencil dick," she said. "Think you're more a stubby eraser."
"I'm going to kill her," Kuntz said. "I'm going to find her and kill her."
"Maxine?"
"And don't think you're getting your thousand dollars, either."
"About the car you just got out of . . ."
"It was that other bounty hunter. The one with the knockers. Said she'd picked up a police call on her scanner and was heading over here. She picked me up on Olden. That's where Maxine dumped me off. Olden! In front of the Seven-Eleven!"
"Do you know where Maxine was going?"
"The airport. All three of them. They're in a blue Honda Civic. And I take that back about the thousand. You bring that cunt to me, and I'll make you goddamn rich."
I whirled around and ran for the Firebird.
Lula was pounding pavement behind me. "I'm on it," she was saying. "I'm on it!"
We both jumped in the car, and Lula rocketed away before I even had my door closed.
"They'll take Route One," she said. "That's why they dropped him off on Olden. They were heading for One." She cornered Olden with two wheels touching pavement, took the turnoff and hit Route I north.
I'd been so excited I'd forgotten to ask which airport. Like Lula, I'd just assumed it was Newark. I looked over at the speedometer and saw it hovering at ninety. Lula put her foot to the floor, and I braced myself and turned my face away.
"They got that little prick good," Lula said. "I almost hate to pick Maxine up. You gotta admire her style."
"Creative," I said.
"Damn skippy."
Actually, I thought the tattooing might be a little excessive. I didn't like Eddie Kuntz but I had to wince at the thought of Maxine needling him head to foot.
I was looking for the blue Honda, and I was also looking for Joyce. Wouldn't you know, Joyce would happen on Eddie Kuntz. If there was a naked man anywhere near Joyce, she'd find him.
"There they are!" I yelled. "On the side of the road."
"I see 'em," Lula said. "Looks like Maxine got stopped by the cops."
Not the cops. They got stopped by Joyce Barnhardt, who'd stuck a portable red flasher on the roof of her Jeep. We pulled in behind Joyce and ran to see what was happening.
Joyce was standing on the shoulder of the road, holding a gun on Maxine, Mrs. Nowicki and Margie. The three women were spreadeagled on the ground by Joyce with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Joyce smiled when she saw me. "You're a little late, sweetiepie. I've already made the apprehension. Too bad you're such a loser."
"Hunh," Lula said, slitty eyed.
"You've got three people cuffed, Joyce, and only one of them is a felon. You have no right to manhandle the other two women."
"I can manhandle whoever I want," Joyce said. "You're just pissy because I got your collar."
"I'm pissy because you're being an unprofessional jerk."
"Careful what you say to me," Joyce said. "You get me annoyed and you and lard butt might find yourselves on the ground with these three. I've got a couple more cuffs left."
"Excuse me," Lula said. "Lard butt?"
Joyce trained her gun on Lula and me. "You've got thirty seconds to get your fat asses out of here. And you should both look for new jobs, because it's clear I'm the primo bounty hunter now."
"Yeah," Lula said. "We don't deserve to have a cool job like bounty hunter. I've been thinking maybe I'd get a job at that new place just opened, Lickin' Chicken. They tell me you work there you get to eat whatever you want. You even get them biscuits when they're fresh out of the oven. Here, let me help you get these women into your car."
Lula hoisted Maxine to her feet, and when she handed her over to Joyce, Joyce made a sound like "Ulk" and crumpled to the ground.
"Oops," Lula said. "Another one of them dizzy spells."
Helped along by a few volts from Lula's stun gun.
There was a medium-sized duffel bag on the backseat in Joyce's car. I searched through the bag and found the keys to the cuffs. I unlocked Mrs. Nowicki's cuffs and then Margie's cuffs. I stepped away. "You're on your own," I told them. "I'm not authorized to arrest you, but Treasury is looking for you, and you'd be smart to turn yourselves in."
"Yeah, sure," Mrs. Nowicki said. "I'm gonna do that."
Lula got Maxine to her feet and dusted her off, while Mrs. Nowicki and Margie shuffled uncomfortably on the side of the road.
"What about Maxie?" Margie asked. "Can't you let Maxie go, too?"
"Sorry. Maxine has to report back to the court."
"Don't worry about it," Maxine said to her mother and Margie. "It'll work out okay."
"Don't feel right to leave you like this," Mrs. Nowicki said.
"It's no big deal," Maxine said. "I'll meet up with you after I get this straightened out."
Mrs. Nowicki and Margie got into the blue Honda and drove away.
Joyce was still lying on the ground, but she'd started to twitch a little, and one of her eyes was open. I didn't want Joyce to get accosted while she was coming around, so Lula and I picked Joyce up and stuffed her into the Jeep. Then we took the Jeep keys and locked Joyce in, nice and snug and safe. The little red light was still flashing on the roof of her car, so chances were good that a cop would stop to investigate. Since the little red light was illegal, it was possible that Joyce might get arrested. But then, maybe not. Joyce was good at talking cops out of tickets.
MAXINE WASN'T FEELING TALKATIVE on the way to the station, and I suspected she was composing her story. She looked younger than she had in her photo. Less trampy. Maybe that's what happens when you tattoo out anger. Like breathing life back into a drown victim. In goes the good air, out comes the bad air. Or maybe it was the hundred-dollar haircut and color, and the seventy-five-dollar DKNY T-shirt. Maxine didn't look like she was hurting for money.
The Trenton Police Station is on North Clinton. The building is red brick and utilitarian. The parking lot is Brooklyn south . . . about an acre of secondrate blacktop surrounded by ten-foot-high chain-link fencing. The hope is that the fencing will prevent the theft of police cars, but there's no guarantee.
We pulled into the police lot and saw there were two cruisers backed up to the drop-off behind the building. Leo Glick was helped from one of the cars. He looked our way. His gaze was piercing and angry.
"No sense making a big scene," I said to Lula. "We'll take Maxine in through the front so she doesn't have to deal with Leo."
Sometimes, if court was in session, I could take my apprehension directly to the judge, but court was adjourned for the day, so I walked Maxine back to the docket lieutenant. I gave him my paperwork and handed Maxine over.
"I have a message for you," he said. "Morelli called in about five minutes ago and left this number. Wants you to call him back. You can use the phone in the squad room."
I made the call and waited for Morelli to come on the line.
"Since you're at the station I assume you brought Maxine in," Morelli said.
"I always get my man."
"That's a scary thought."
"I was speaking professionally."
"I need a rundown on what happened at the house here."
I skipped over the part about using Kuntz's key to get into the house and told him the rest.
"How did you get to me so fast today?" I asked.
"I was back on surveillance at the Seven-Eleven." There was a moment of silence between us when I could hear people talking in the background. "Kuntz is being cooperative," Morelli said. "He's so pissed off he's willing to tell us anything we want to know. He said Maxine was on her way to the airport."
"Yeah. I got her on Route One."
"She alone?"
"Nope. "
"I'm waiting," Morelli said.
"Margie and Mrs. Nowicki were with her."
"And?"
"And I let them go. I wasn't authorized to arrest them." And I didn't especially want to see them caught. I had a hard time believing they were involved in the counterfeiting. For that matter, I hadn't especially wanted to bring Maxine in, either. What I suspected was that they'd extorted money from Leo and were on their way to the good life. This was really terrible, but something inside me wanted them to succeed.
"You should have told me right away. You knew I wanted to talk to Maxine's mother."
Morelli was mad. He was using his cop voice.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"That's it for now."
I stuck out my tongue at the phone and hung up. I was feeling very mature.
MY FATHER was slouched in his chair, watching baseball on television. My grandmother was asleep sitting up, head back on the couch, and my mother was next to her, crocheting. This was a nightly pattern, and there was comfort in the ritual. Even the house itself seemed to fall into a satisfied stupor when the dishes were done and the only sound was the drone of the ball game.
I was outside, on my parents' steps, doing nothing. I could have been doing something deep, like thinking about my life, or Mother Teresa's life, or life in general, but I couldn't get turned on by that. What turned me on right now was the luxury of doing nothing.
After I'd handed Maxine over, I'd gone to see my apartment and had been surprised to find repairs were already underway. I'd visited with Mrs. Karwatt and Mrs. Delgado, and then I'd gone back to Morelli's house and packed up my few possessions. The threat of danger was gone, and staying with Morelli now would have smacked of relationship. What was wrong was that there was no relationship. There was great sex and some genuine affection, but the future was too far in the future to feel comfortable. And on top of that, Morelli made me nuts. Morelli pushed all my buttons without even trying. Not to mention Grandma Bella. Not to mention all those Morelli sperms swimming upstream, trying to bash their way through the end of the condom. My eye started to twitch, and I put my finger to it. You see? That's what Morelli does to me . . . gives me an eye twitch.
Better to live with my parents than Morelli. If I could just make it through a few weeks with my parents, I could move back into my own apartment, and then my life will get back to normal. And then my eye will stop twitching.
It was almost ten, and there was no activity on the street. The air was still and dense. The temperature had dropped. There were a few stars overhead, struggling to shine through Trenton's light pollution, not having much luck with it.
Someone was bouncing a basketball blocks away. Air conditioners hummed, and a lone cricket chirped in the side yard.
I heard the whine of a motorcycle, and I thought there was a slim chance I knew the biker. The sound was mesmerizing. Not the thunder of a hog. This was the sound of a crotch rocket. The bike drew closer, and finally I saw the outline under the streetlight at the end of the block. It was a Ducati. All speed and agility and Italian sexiness. The perfect bike for Morelli.
He eased the Duc to the curb and removed his helmet. He was wearing jeans and boots and a black T-shirt, and he looked like the sort of man a woman had to worry about. He kicked the stand out and strolled over to me.
"Nice night to be sitting out," he said.
I was reminded of the time I went to Girl Scout camp and sat too close to the fire and my boots started smoking.
"Thought you'd want to know how the interrogation went."
I leaned forward, greedy with curiosity. Of course I wanted to know!
"It was a total bitchfest," Morelli said. "I've never seen so many people so eager to incriminate themselves. It turns out that Leo Glick has a record a mile long. He grew up in Detroit, working for the Angio family. Was an enforcer. Twenty years ago he decided he was getting too old to do muscle work, so he apprenticed himself to a printer he met in prison. The printer, Joe Costa, had a set of really good plates. Leo spent three years with Costa, learning the business, and then one day Costa got dead. Leo doesn't know how this happened."
I rolled my eyes.
"Yeah," Morelli said. "That's what I think, too. Anyway, Leo and Betty left Detroit and moved to Trenton, and after a couple years they set up shop.
"Leo knew Nathan Russo from Detroit. Nathan was a bag man for the Angios. Leo got Nathan to relocate and launder for him. It was all pretty clever. Nathan runs a dry-cleaning business. Betty was the go-between, and she made all the exchanges in bundles of laundry. Very sanitary."
"That's terrible."
Morelli grinned.
"What about Maxine?" I asked.
"Maxine was in love with Kuntz, but Kuntz is a real asshole. Slaps women around. Maxine isn't the first. Abuses them in other ways, too. Kept telling Maxine she was stupid.
"So one day they have a real bad fight and Maxine takes off with Kuntz's car. Kuntz figures he'll show her, so he presses charges and has her arrested. Maxine gets out on bail and is berserk. She goes back to Kuntz and pretends to be lovey, but what she really wants is to get even. Kuntz has been bragging about what a big gangster he is and how he has this counterfeit operation going. Maxine goads him into showing her the plates, and Eddie, with his very small brain, goes next door when Leo and Betty are at the supermarket and gets the plates and the account book and a duffel bag of twenties. Then Maxine screws his brains out, sends him into the shower to get ready for round two, and takes off with everything."
"Maxine is the shit."
"Yes," Morelli said. "Maxine is definitely the shit. In the beginning it was just supposed to be a revenge game. You know, make Kuntz sweat. Send him on a treasure hunt from hell. But Leo finds out about it and sets off to find Maxine, Detroit style. He interrogates Marge and Maxine's mother, and they don't know anything about anything."
"Even after he encourages them to talk by slicing off a body part."
"Yeah. Leo's not too good at character analyses. He doesn't know he can't get blood from a stone. Anyway, when Maxine finds out about the finger and the scalping, she's outraged, and she decides to cut her mother and Marge in and go for the gold.
"She's gone through the account books by now, so she knows she's dealing with Leo. She calls him up and gives him the terms. A million in real money for the plates and the account book."
"Did Leo have that kind of money?"
"Apparently. Of course, Maxine's denying the extortion part of the story."
"Where's the million?"
Morelli looked like he really liked this part. "Nobody knows. I think it's out of the country. It's possible the only charges that'll stick against anyone is the original auto theft and the failure to appear against Maxine. There isn't actually any proof of extortion."
"What about kidnapping Eddie Kuntz?"
"No charges pressed. If you had 'pencil dick' tattooed all over your ass would you want to go public? Besides, most of those tattoos weren't permanent. The first night Eddie was kidnapped Maxine locked him in a room with a bottle of gin. He got stinking drunk and passed out and when he woke up he was Mr. Tattoo."
I was looking at the Duc, and I was thinking that it was very cool and that if I had a Duc I'd really be the shit.
Morelli nudged my knee with his. "Want to go for a ride?"
Of course I wanted to go for a ride. I was dying to get my legs around those 109 horses and feel them wind out.
"Do I get to drive?" I asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"It's my bike."
"If I had a Ducati, I'd let you drive."
"If you had a Ducati you probably wouldn't talk to a lowlife like me."
"Remember when I was six and you were eight, and you conned me into playing choo-choo in your father's garage?"
Morelli's eyes narrowed. "We aren't going to go through this again, are we?"
"I never got to be the train. You were always the train. I always had to be the tunnel."
"I had better train equipment."
"You owe me."
"I was eight years old!"
"What about when I was sixteen, and you seduced me behind the éclair case at the bakery?"
"What about it?"
"I never got the top. I was only the bottom."
"This is entirely different."
"This is no different! This is the same thing!"
"Jesus," Morelli said. "Just get on the damn bike."
"You're going to let me drive, right?"
"Yeah, you're going to drive."
I ran my hand over the bike. It was sleek and smooth and red. Morelli had a second helmet strapped to the backseat. He unhooked the cord and gave me the helmet. "Seems a shame to cover up all those pretty curls."
I buckled on the helmet. "Too late for flattery."
It had been a while since I'd driven a bike. I settled myself onto the Duc and looked things over.
Morelli took the seat behind me. "You know how to drive this, right?"
I revved the engine. "Right."
"And you have a license?"
"Got a bike license when I was married to Dickie. I've kept it current."
He held me at the waist. "This is going to even the score."
"Not nearly."
"Entirely," he said. "In fact, this ride's going to be so good you're going to owe me when it's done."
Oh boy.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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SENSUAL CONFESSIONS
To the love of my life, Gerald Jackson, Sr.
To everyone who enjoys reading about those Madarises, this one is for you.
Dear Reader,
I never imagined when I penned my first Madaris book fifteen years ago that the series would still be going strong today.
The Madarises are special, not just because they're my first family series, but because over the years you've made them your family. The Madaris men have become your heroes because they represent those things you desire in a man---someone whose looks not only take your breath away, but who also makes you appreciate the fact that you're a woman. I still believe that, even with a man like Blade Madaris.
Blade, his twin brother, Slade, and their cousin Luke became special the moment they appeared on stage at the bachelor auction in Surrender. Of the three, I knew that Blade Madaris was a force to be reckoned with, even more so than his older cousin Clayton. There was a hint of just what type of man Blade was when it was revealed that he was the one who'd inherited Clayton's infamous case of condoms.
Although Blade thinks his player lifestyle is just perfect, what he doesn't count on is meeting a woman like Samari Di Meglio. A woman he can't seem to walk away from.
I hope you enjoy reading Sensual Confessions, the sixteenth book in the Madaris Family and Friends series.
All the best,
Brenda Jackson
So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
---James 1:19
Contents
"Just who do you think you're fooling, Blade? You're interested in Sam. Admit it."
What was this---an interrogation? Blade Madaris thought as he ignored his cousin Luke and glanced around the restaurant before looking down at his watch. It was almost six. He had just arrived in Oklahoma City a few hours ago and Luke had picked him up from the airport.
On their way into town, Blade had persuaded Luke to make a pit stop at a restaurant downtown. He'd even suggested that Luke call his wife, Mac, and invite her to join them, conveniently extending the same invitation to the other two female partners in Mac's firm, Samari Di Meglio---better known as Sam to her friends---and Peyton Mahoney. Since Mac's marriage, the law firm that used to be known as Standfield, Di Meglio and Mahoney was now Madaris, Di Meglio and Mahoney.
"Of course I'm interested in Sam," Blade finally said, easing back in his chair and taking a sip of water. His great-grandmother had always said that confession was good for the soul. "She's a woman, isn't she? And a good-looking one, so quite naturally I want to get to know her better."
Luke stared at him. Irritation was clearly etched in his face. "But what's the reason?"
Blade rolled his eyes. "Why? Does a man have to have a reason to want to get to know someone?"
Luke gave him a suspicious look.
Blade sat his glass down on the table. "For crying out loud, Luke," he said. "You've only been married ten months and already you've forgotten that you were once a skirt chaser."
"I haven't forgotten, but I consider Sam a friend."
Blade glanced at his watch again before looking at Luke. "Good for you. But to me she's a prospective conquest. Will it make you feel better if I told you she doesn't even like me?"
"Doesn't surprise me. Your reputation precedes you, even in Oklahoma. She's heard about you and detests everything you represent," Luke said bluntly.
"Whatever." Blade wasn't the least bit bothered by Luke's warning. She wouldn't be the first woman who detested him, and he figured she wouldn't be the last. Besides, women might complain about him being a player, but that had never stopped them from jumping into his bed.
Admittedly, he had picked up on the negative vibes from Samari at Luke and Mac's wedding, and had found it rather amusing---challenging in a way. It didn't bother him in the least that Sam was difficult, because the one thing he liked when it came to women was a challenge. He took it all in stride and figured her resistance would make the victory that much sweeter. He was confident that he would be getting what he wanted. And he had decided the day of Luke's wedding that he wanted Sam. Clarification, he wanted Sam in his bed. There was a difference.
Luke's phone rang. Blade watched as his cousin stood to pull his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, sliding it open as he sat back down. "Yes, sweetheart."
A few moments later Luke nodded. "All right, we're at the restaurant waiting," he said. "No problem. I love you, too."
Luke put his phone back in his pocket and glanced at Blade. "That was Mac."
"Like I thought it was anyone else," Blade said, chuckling.
"They got slightly detained but are on their way now."
He nodded and detected that Luke was just as eager to see Mac as Blade was to see Sam. "Marriage certainly agrees with you, Luke," he said after a while.
Luke grinned at him. "Hmm, maybe you ought to try it."
A scowl quickly appeared on Blade's face. "And maybe you ought to keep your opinions to yourself."
Luke couldn't help but laugh. "Not that I think you'd really care, but Mac mentioned Peyton couldn't make it. She'd made other plans."
Blade took another sip of water. It wasn't that he didn't care, especially since Peyton Mahoney was a good-looking woman in her own right, but he'd set his sights on Sam. There had been something about Samari Di Meglio that got to him, just below the gut.
"So how long will you be in town?"
Blade glanced over at his cousin. He, Luke and his brother Slade were thick as thieves---always had been, always would be. The only kicker was now Luke and Slade were married and he was still single, and that was taking some getting used to.
"Not sure yet," he replied, glancing at his watch once again. "I'm meeting with J. W. Mosley tomorrow. Slade and I are glad we won the bid for the contract. I understand we had some pretty stiff competition."
Luke nodded. Blade's construction company, which he jointly owned with his fraternal twin, Slade, had been hired to do extensive renovations to Luke and Mac's home, as well as build the Luke Madaris Rodeo School. And now the company would also be building the new thirty-four-story Mosley Building in downtown Oklahoma City.
Over the past few years, the Madaris Construction Company had earned a reputation as one of the best firms in the country. With Blade as construction engineer and Slade as master architect, their designs were renowned worldwide.
"You're sure they're on their way?"
Luke glanced at Blade. He recognized the look on his face, since he'd seen it on several occasions over the years. It was Blade's predatory look. Luke swore silently to himself and decided it wasn't any of his business, since he'd given his cousin fair warning. Samari Di Meglio was not your typical Blade Madaris kind of woman. Sam despised players in the worst way, and Blade was definitely a player---of the card-carrying variety. Hell, he even had membership in the notorious Gentlemen's Club, and everyone in Houston knew that its members were far from being gentlemen.
"Yes, they're on their way," Luke said, taking a sip of water after deciding to mind to his own business. Blade was a grown man and Sam was a smart, intelligent woman. There was no doubt that the two would tangle, bump heads and even try to do each other in before it was over. He smiled as he leaned back in his chair. Things would definitely be interesting and all he could do was settle in for what he knew would be a wild and crazy ride.
Samari Di Meglio frowned as she glanced at the woman by her side after handing the valet attendant her car keys. "I don't know why I agreed to come here with you, Mac. You of all people know how I feel about Luke's cousin. The man is everything I detest."
Mackenzie Standfield Madaris couldn't help but smile. "Well, yeah, I know. I'm also surprised that you came."
Sam shrugged. "What can I say, it's a free meal."
Mac rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
Sam, Peyton and Mac had met in law school. The three women had become the best of friends and now they were partners in their own law firm, Madaris, Di Meglio and Mahoney. She of all people knew that the last thing Sam needed was a free meal, especially given her family---the filthy rich Di Meglios of New York.
Thanks to the proceeds from the trust fund that she had received on her twenty-third birthday, Sam had been the one to provide the financing to get their law firm off the ground, and for that Mac would be eternally grateful.
"Besides," Mac said as they entered the restaurant, "if there's any one woman who can handle Blade Madaris, it's you."
Sam appreciated Mac's vote of confidence, especially when she glanced around the restaurant and her gaze landed on the man in question at the same time he laid eyes on her. He immediately gave her one of his predatory smiles.
She could actually feel the blood rushing through her veins and felt the hard thud of her heart beating in her chest. It wasn't a good sign that a twenty-eight-year-old woman suddenly felt like a teenage girl swooning over one of those "I-heart-you" smiles from the cutest boy in school.
Luke and Blade saw them as they entered and stood up to greet the two women, stretching their muscular bodies to their full height. Sam's gaze immediately went to Blade's broad shoulders, and with his jacket off she could actually see the muscles rippling under his starched white dress shirt. He was wearing a pair of jeans that hugged his firm muscular thighs. She'd seen him only a few times and the one thing that stood out, besides the fact that he was truly a handsome man, was that he was a sharp dresser, whether it was business or casual attire. He was Mr. GQ in living color, and he had an air of machismo about him that women could sense and few could resist.
He stood tall---almost six foot four---with a body that had her insides quivering in appreciation. She hated being reminded of how long it had been since she'd been intimate with a man. She was used to flirting with men who had the word player stamped on their foreheads, and setting them up for heartbreak. She enjoyed showing them that two could play their games. Thanks to the hurt and humiliation she'd suffered at the hands of Guy Carrington a few years back, on what should have been her wedding day, she got great pleasure from pretending to be the needy, airhead, spoiled little rich girl. She enjoyed getting to them before they got to her, but not in the same way, of course. She figured it was their just deserts, and the least she could do to retaliate for their thoughtless behavior toward women.
Mac touched Sam's arm, regaining her attention. "Wait a minute. You didn't bring it up so I will."
Sam lifted an eyebrow. "What?"
"The vase of flowers you got today."
She shrugged. "What of it? I have a secret admirer who evidently hasn't gotten the message that I'm not interested."
"Or one of those players who didn't appreciate your turning the tables on them, perhaps?"
Sam looked at Mac as she planted her hands on her hips. "Trust me, if that was the case I wouldn't be getting flowers."
"Still, I think you should consider investigating just to be on the safe side. You could have a stalker."
Sam shook her head. Of course Mac would think that way. "I really don't think it's that serious. Besides, I have an idea who they might be from."
She glanced back at Blade and her gaze went directly to his face. The eyes staring back at her were dark, piercing and determined. They were filled with a hunger like he wanted to eat her alive. She could just imagine what was going through his mind. He wouldn't hesitate to seduce her if given the chance. She tilted her head, knowing he would never get the opportunity.
Okay, she would admit there was a sexy air about him, and there was no doubt in her mind that he proudly lived up to his womanizing reputation. A part of her knew she probably should not have come, since tonight she wasn't at the top of her game. But because she was here, she would just have to deal with it and handle the notorious Blade Madaris in her own way.
And notorious he definitely was, with a face too gorgeous to be real. He possessed a ruggedly handsome square jawline, high cheekbones and a straight nose. And then there were his lips, the most sensuous looking pair she'd ever seen. They were curved in a smile that was trying really hard to seduce her, get on her good side and break down her defenses.
She found his efforts annoying and was determined not to let him get past her guard. Some men just didn't know when to give up. Her mind went back to the flowers she'd left sitting on her desk, and felt the same held true for whoever had sent them. For the past three weeks she'd received a bouquet of flowers. They were beautiful, and she could tell by the blossoms in each arrangement that they had to have been expensive. Although she wasn't one hundred percent certain, she believed they had come from Blade.
If he was the culprit, and assumed liked a lot of players did that a quick way into a woman's panties was with sweet-smelling roses, he would be sorely disappointed. Maybe there were some women who were that naive, but their name wasn't Samari Di Meglio.
Mac nudged her shoulder, interrupting Sam's thoughts. "Our guys are waiting."
Sam frowned, feeling a migraine coming on. "One of the guys is definitely yours, but the other is sooo not mine. I wouldn't claim him if my life depended on it."
As they began walking toward the two men, Sam wanted to believe what she'd just said.
Blade glanced at the two women who were making their way toward him and Luke. Both were stunningly beautiful. One was already taken by Luke. The other...well. He studied all five foot eight of her. He looked her up and down, top to bottom, taking note of her blue business suit with its short skirt that showcased a pair of lush brown thighs and long, sexy legs. They were legs that went on forever, and one of these days he intended to see just where they stopped. He could just imagine the body hidden under her suit---a body he was convinced needed a master touch. His.
He smiled at the thought before his eyes moved up to her face. She was a mix of Italian and African-American. She had a pair of beautiful dark exotic eyes, a cute nose and delicious looking lips. Her caramel-colored skin looked soft and smooth, and the mass of black hair that flowed around her shoulders gave her a sexy look. Samari Di Meglio was the kind of woman who easily drew men to her, made them drool mercilessly and compelled them to include her in any wicked fantasies they had. But he also knew that she was a woman with no intention of ever being claimed by any man---not now or forever.
That was fine with him, since the word forever wasn't in his vocabulary, anyway. He wasn't interested in any woman beyond the first two orgasms, maybe three on a hot night. To go beyond that was asking for trouble, especially if she had a tendency to become possessive, or assumed that most men's brains were controlled by what happened below the belt, and that if you kept a certain part of their anatomy satisfied, then that's all it took. But that was a false assumption where Blade was concerned.
That might be true for some men, but he had yet to encounter a woman who could make him forget what day it was, whose bed he was in or whose legs he was between. And when the time came, he had no qualms about pulling back, pulling out and getting the hell out, if necessary.
"Hello, Blade."
"Hi, Mac."
He kissed her on the cheek and then watched as her face broke into an incredible smile when she looked at her husband. Luke leaned over and kissed Mac's lips as she slid into his open arms, almost instinctively. The gesture was as natural as anything Blade had seen in a long time. He had known---from that first night more than seven years ago when Luke and Mac had met at a charity bachelor auction in Houston---that the two had the hots for each other. And he was still having a hard time getting used to the public displays of affection between them, especially since Luke had always been aloof where women were concerned. Marriage had certainly made him a different man.
Blade shifted his gaze from the loving couple to the woman standing in front of him---who was so damn delicious looking he could eat her for dessert. And one day he intended to do just that. As usual, whenever they were around each other, the sexual tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
"Hello, Sam."
"Blade."
She held her hand out and he took it, liking the soft, warm feel of it. She reclaimed her hand as he pulled out her chair. "Glad you could make it."
She smiled politely. "I'm sure you are."
He sighed inwardly. He had a feeling that all the lines he had planned to use on her tonight would be wasted. The woman was what most would call a lost cause, but he didn't intend to give up. All it took was a whiff of her perfume to know the battle wouldn't be easy, but the victory would be well worth it. Besides, she hadn't yet tangled with the likes of Blade Madaris---on a good day or an even better night.
He glanced over at Luke and Mac. The couple had finally sat down. "How are you, Mac?" he asked.
She smiled at him. "I'm fine. Luke mentioned that your company was awarded the contract for the Mosley Building. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
"How long do you plan on being in town?" she asked.
"Not sure. That depends."
"On what?" Sam asked.
She watched Blade shift his gaze from Mac to her with a smile that would have made her drool if she was the drooling type, which she wasn't. But she would give it to him for being the kind of man who could make her feel hot all over, whatever the temperature. And then there were his eyelashes, which were just as deadly as his lips. His lashes were long and thick---lashes most women would envy.
"As chief engineer of Madaris Construction Company, I need to make sure the groundwork is laid before my crew can start work. There are surveys I need to complete, research that needs to be done, soil samples to be analyzed, as well as planning the construction schedule from start to finish. I also need to work with the Mosley people to keep the public informed as to what's going on."
He took a sip of water. "The design of the Mosley Building will be unique, and it's my job to make sure the materials we use and the work we do meet our highest standards. So there's no telling how long I'll be here---maybe four to six months."
Sam nodded. Regardless of what he'd just said, she knew there was more to him hanging around Oklahoma City than he let on. The look in his eyes said as much. The man just refused to give up. She would hate to make him another casualty, like every other player who thought she was fair and easy game. Evidently, he felt pretty damn sure of himself.
Any other time she would have jumped at the opportunity to prove him wrong, but with the phone call she'd received from her parents before leaving the office, she didn't have the time or the inclination. Although she was pretty good when it came to multitasking, she didn't want to take on both Blade and her parents at the same time.
Her mom and dad, who had been responsible for choosing Guy as their future son-in-law, were at it again. For some reason they couldn't leave well enough alone. At first, when they had called last week, they'd insisted that she fly home to New York to meet the man they thought was the perfect match for her.
When she had refused, they had tried playing on her sympathy by claiming that they would be too old to enjoy grandchildren when she and her brother, DeAngelo, finally settled down and produced offspring.
"Peyton sends her regrets, but she wasn't able to make it, Blade," Mac said, diverting his attention.
Sam glanced at him to see if any disappointment registered on his face. He smiled. "Luke told me and I'm disappointed," he said evenly.
Was he really? Hmm. As if she'd spoken out loud, Blade shifted his gaze from Mac to her and once again gave Sam that predatory smile. She was relieved when the waitress appeared and placed glasses of water in front of her and Mac, and gave everyone menus. She had dined at this restaurant before, so it didn't take long to decide what to order.
Sam closed her menu and glanced up to find Blade staring at her. She was about to ask if there was anything wrong, but decided not to. Instead she stared back at him. She smiled to herself. If he thought he could outstare her, he was so wrong. This was one of the games she and her brother would play as children, when they didn't have anything better to do. Not only did she play it well, oftentimes she beat her older brother. She could hold her own with the best of them and could stare down anyone without blinking.
It didn't take long for her to see that was exactly what Blade was trying to do. Evidently he'd played a similar game as a child and could definitely hold his own. But she had to admit---even though it bothered her to do so---that staring at him was affecting her in ways that the game she'd played with DeAngelo never did.
She felt a stirring sensation emanating from Blade's dark eyes. They seemed to be staring right through her, reading her thoughts.
"Blade, I understand Jake will be hosting a huge party in a few weeks to celebrate Sheikh Valdemon's marriage," Mac said.
It was only then that he looked away from Sam, to answer her. "Yes, he is. And you know nobody throws a party like Uncle Jake and Diamond. They would have given the party sooner, but it's been hard for the newlyweds to visit the States because of commitments between the two countries."
"I can't wait to meet the woman the sheikh chose as his bride," Mac said excitedly.
Blade shrugged. "Everybody who attended the wedding celebration said she's a beauty. Still, I thought Rasheed would remain a bachelor forever. But I guess he had to marry sooner or later to produce an heir."
Sam remembered the sheikh. What woman who'd attended Luke and Mac's wedding hadn't? She had certainly checked him out herself. "Who did he marry?" she asked.
"A young woman from his country," Blade said. "One chosen for him by his family. If I remember correctly, she's the reason he had to unexpectedly leave Luke and Mac's wedding. Rasheed wasn't happy about that. But according to Uncle Jake, it ended up being a love match anyway, and I'm glad. I would have hated for him to have gotten tied down for the rest of his life, married to a woman he didn't love," Blade concluded.
Sam took a sip of water and looked over the rim of her glass at him. "So when you marry, it will be for love, Blade?"
She knew by the look in his eyes that he didn't appreciate her question, and from the silence at the table it was evident that, like her, Mac and Luke were waiting for him to answer. Sam wasn't exactly sure what had possessed her to ask such a question when she already had a pretty good idea what his response would be. But she had asked, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would make it crystal clear for her, so that there would never, ever be any misunderstanding. He enjoyed being a womanizer, and he proudly played the part.
He took another sip of water before flashing a smile that revealed a pair of dimples she hadn't noticed until now. His eyes locked on her face. "I don't ever plan to marry, Sam---for love or any other reason. I enjoy my life just the way it is. I could never be a one-woman man. What's the point?"
"Yes, I agree with you one hundred percent. What's the point? I don't plan to marry, either. Like you, I like my life just the way it is, and I could never belong to one man exclusively."
She wasn't quite sure what he had expected her to say, but from the look on his face she could tell that hadn't been it. He evidently thought men were the only ones who could play the field.
Sam was spared from saying anything else when the waitress returned to take their orders. But that didn't stop her from glancing across the table at Mac and seeing the sly smile on her friend's lips. Luke seemed inordinately preoccupied with his silverware.
It was obvious she had stunned Blade, so everyone was giving him a chance to recover. From the way he was staring across the table at her, he had to be wondering why---since they had the same outlook on life when it came to commitment---she had refused to give him the time of day.
Sam looked away as she ran a finger around the rim of her glass, then seductively touched the tip with her tongue, knowing Blade's eyes followed her every movement. She tried to ignore the shudder that passed through her each time their eyes connected. When the waitress delivered their food, and she began eating, she tried to overlook the intense sexual chemistry between them even as they shared the table with others. She wasn't sure whether Mac and Luke were aware of what was taking place between them or not, but both she and Blade knew it. Dinner was as enjoyable as it could have been under the circumstances, and at the end of the meal she thanked everyone for inviting her, and stood up to leave.
"Where are you rushing off to?" Blade asked, quickly rising to his feet.
The tone of his voice, to her way of thinking, sounded a lot throatier than it should have. It sent shivers up and down her body.
She met his gaze. "I'm going home. I drove Mac over. But since Luke's SUV is here, I'm sure all three of you will be riding back together and---"
"No," Blade said smoothly. "I'm staying at a hotel in town."
That surprised her. "You are?"
His smile widened. "Yes. I didn't want to impose on the newly weds. Would it be a bother to drop me off at the hotel?"
"Drop you off?" she asked, as if she hadn't heard him right. She inhaled deeply, silently telling herself to get a grip. Handle her business. So what if she had to drop him off at some hotel? She could do that. Put him off at the curb and keep going.
"Yes, at the hotel."
Before she could answer, Luke spoke up, giving her an out. "No need to bother Sam. Mac and I can drop you off at the hotel, Blade. Besides, your luggage is in my truck."
She cast Luke an appreciative smile. "Then it's all settled. Luke and Mac will make sure you get to the hotel," she said, looking back at Blade. "It was good seeing you again, and thanks for dinner."
She was about to turn for a quick getaway when he said, "I'll walk you to your car."
Sam forced herself not to tell him she preferred if he didn't. She knew he hadn't intended to let her go that easily, not until he found out what he wanted to know. "Fine." She glanced at Luke and Mac. "It's always good seeing you, Luke, and I'll see you in the morning, Mac."
"Yes, bright and early," she responded. "We have to go over our notes for the Penton's case."
Sam nodded and gave her a thumbs-up before turning to leave, with Blade by her side.
He didn't say anything until they had walked out of the restaurant and were waiting as the valet attendant went to get her car. Then Blade faced her and said, "I think you owe me an explanation."
"About what?" she asked, deciding to play innocent as she tilted her head back. He held her gaze with an intense look in his eyes.
"If you don't have any problems with casual dating, then why have you been giving me the cold shoulder every time I approach you?"
Before she could answer, the valet brought her car around. "The reason is rather simple," she said, opening the door and tossing her purse on the passenger seat.
"Is it?" Blade asked, watching as she slid into the driver's side of her sporty red Mercedes two-seater.
"Yes," she replied, buckling her seat belt and rolling her window down.
He gazed at her. "And what reason is that?"
She turned the radio to a station that played soft music before looking back up at him, staring straight into his eyes and stating what she knew was the biggest lie of her life. "You, Blade Madaris, don't interest me. Good night."
And before he could utter another word, she revved the engine and drove away.
Blade tossed the hotel key on a table after settling into his suite. He couldn't help the smile that touched his lips as he recalled Sam's parting words. He didn't for one minute believe she had been serious.
Of course, what she'd said had sounded pretty damn convincing, like saying it would be the end of it. If those words had been spoken by any other woman, it would have been. He didn't have time to waste on anyone who refused his advances. But Blade knew for a fact that he did interest Sam, just as she interested him. It had been obvious tonight, although she probably wanted to deny the truth. But he wouldn't deny it. He didn't intend to give up on her so easily, and evidently, she was counting on that fact.
He was a man who knew women inside and out. He was thirty-four and knew the female gender a lot better than men with twice his experience. And for him to make that claim said a whole hell of a lot.
From the time they were teenagers, it was clear that he and his twin brother, Slade, had a different take on women. Slade had been easygoing and had put his career first. Blade, on the other hand, had been able to juggle both. His sexual exploits rivaled those of his cousin Clayton, who ten years earlier had had the same reputation.
At one time, the thought that Blade was following in Clayton's footsteps had been cause for major concern in his family. They figured once Clayton had settled down and was married, that would be the end of the playboys in the Madaris family. He chuckled as he removed his jacket, thinking about how he had proven them wrong. He probably had more notches on his bedpost than his cousin Clayton ever thought of.
Times were different now. Things had changed. He probably didn't have to work as hard to get a woman in bed as Clayton had. Nowadays, women were liberated, freethinkers. The ones he dated didn't mind the fact that they weren't the only one. They enjoyed a challenge and preferred getting physical in the bedroom more than anything else. The sky was the limit behind closed doors and he'd had no complaints. He dated women whose only concern was not having to "fake it," and who didn't give a damn that come morning, when he walked out the door, chances were he wouldn't be back. They weren't into long-term relationships any more than he was. He dated women who not only knew the score, but played the game as much as he did.
He had accepted early on in life that marriage wasn't for everyone, and he didn't lose sleep over the fact that he wasn't settling down to the kind of marriage his parents had. More than anything, the two words that scared him to death were settling down. There was still too much fun out there to be had, too many women out there to sleep with. Marriage demanded faithfulness and he was convinced there was not a single woman capable of holding his interest forever.
He had tried to explain his position to his family time and time again. But that hadn't stopped them, even Clayton, from worrying about the number of women coming and going in and out of his life---namely, his bedroom. His great-grandmother thought he had issues. But as far as he was concerned, he just had a healthy Madaris sexual appetite.
He would never forget the day Clayton had given him a huge case of condoms and told him that at the rate he was going, he would definitely need them. Clayton had been right. Blade had gone through that case and was working on several more.
Some women he met definitely had marriage on their minds. He quickly let them know, up front, he wasn't going there. He never intended to marry. It was okay for some, like his brother Slade and cousin Luke, but not for him. He enjoyed life too much. He enjoyed having fun in the bedroom. And as they say, variety is the spice of life---at least when it came to his sex life. What was a sexual taboo for some was a welcome change for him.
He had no intentions of ever getting stuck with a wife who would eventually turn their bedroom into nothing more than a place to sleep. He worked hard and enjoyed playing harder. The thought of being stuck in a marriage that was limited to predictable sex---"PS," as he referred to it---was enough to make him break out in hives.
And he didn't want to have to answer to any woman. He wanted to come and go as he pleased. He was always getting calls from different women, but he answered them when he got good and ready, and not before. He didn't mind dropping one if he had to, because she could quickly be replaced. He would never trade in his long list of numbers in his little black book for a long, drawn-out, till-death-do-us-part marriage. What was the point?
It didn't bother him that he had acquired quite a reputation, one that rivaled that of Clayton, who had been his idol growing up. As best he could remember, he'd never seen Clayton with the same woman twice. But now, even Clayton was happily married and a proud father.
Blade shook his head. Imagine that. He'd be the first to admit that Clayton had hit gold with his wife, Syneda. In fact that's how he always thought of her---as Clayton's golden woman---with her green eyes and mass of golden-bronze hair. She was fun to be with, witty and beautiful, and it seemed as if she was handling her man. It was easy to see why Clayton only had eyes for his wife. He adored her. But Blade knew for a womanizer like Clayton to find a woman like Syneda was indeed a rarity.
Blade was a man who loved women, but he loved his bachelor lifestyle even more, which was why practicing safe sex was critical in his book. He was selective with the women he slept with. In certain situations, he even asked his bed partner to produce medical verification attesting to her sexual health, and he did likewise. Nothing personal, just covering all the bases.
His thoughts shifted to Samari Di Meglio. There was something about her that stimulated him sexually just thinking about her. Sure, she could claim all she wanted that she wasn't interested in him, but he knew for a fact that she was. He recognized the look whenever their eyes met, and he felt the heat when he'd touched the palm of her hand. He had also picked up on the sexual vibes that were just as obvious as if she'd opened her mouth and said it aloud, letting him know she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Maybe she was the kind of woman who liked to be pursued by men, and with her beauty he could easily imagine that happening. He could see a man wanting her so bad that he'd do just about anything to have her, knowing that one night in bed with her would be well worth it.
Whether she knew it or not, she had done the unthinkable to a Madaris---at least this particular Madaris. She had issued a challenge that struck a nerve with him, and he intended to make her eat her words. And he would take great pleasure in doing so.
He headed toward the bathroom to take a shower.
Sam's town house was in a secure gated community called Windsor Park, situated on a beautiful lake with mountains in the background. It was considered one of the safest areas in the city.
A few months after she'd come to Oklahoma, Sam's parents had insisted that she move to Windsor Park. At the time, a man her father had prosecuted more than twenty years ago had escaped from prison and was determined to get back at him.
Since threats had been made against the entire Di Meglio family, her parents decided not to take any chances, especially after there had been several attempts to run her brother off the road. The man was eventually caught. But before he could be apprehended, he was killed in a shoot-out with the police.
Sam's home was much too large for one person. In her opinion, it was definitely more space than she needed. There were two bedrooms on the ground floor, a bathroom, a living room, dining room and spacious kitchen. On the upper floor were two more bedrooms---one that she used as an office---an entertainment room and a huge bathroom that included a sauna and a Jacuzzi. There was a screened-in balcony with a hot tub off the master bedroom.
At first, she had intended to move out of the town house into a smaller place once the threat had passed. But by then she had fallen in love with her home. She loved the close proximity to the office and enjoyed all the amenities the exclusive gated community provided, especially the scenic walking trail and recreational park. On the weekends she would spend hours relaxing or sitting on a blanket by the lake and reading.
Sam pulled into her private garage and within minutes was entering her house. The moment the door closed behind her, she kicked off her shoes. It was only then, in the comfort of her home, that she allowed her mind to drift back to Blade Madaris.
She wondered if he would take her words at face value. Any man with an ounce of pride would. For a woman to come right out and say that she wasn't interested in him was bold, not to mention ego-crushing.
She had been looking in his eyes when she'd said it, but his reaction was unreadable. But then, she hadn't hung around long enough after that to really find out. She had driven off like the devil himself was on her tail.
She put her purse and briefcase on the table as she made her way into the kitchen, thinking she'd have a cup of tea before getting ready for bed.
She, Mac and Peyton had decided to take on Clarissa Penton's sexual-harassment case, but the three of them had agreed that it sounded a lot like Clarissa was trying to get even with her boss for refusing to return her advances.
After turning on the stove to heat the water for her tea, Sam glanced out the window at the lake. She had intended to pull her notes together and go over what they knew about the case so far. As Mac had reminded her, they would be meeting to discuss the case in the morning. But any plans to review those notes had been made before tonight's dinner. And being in the presence of Blade Madaris for an extended period of time had been unnerving. Although she had tried downplaying the chemistry and mutual attraction between them, it had been there, and blatantly so. But that didn't mean she would act on it, even though her body was daring her to do so.
It wasn't because she thought he was too much to handle. To her way of thinking, no man was once he met the right woman. She'd heard a lot of stories about Blade and figured someone needed to knock him off his high horse. But it wouldn't be her. Not this time. She had enough to deal with. There was her share of the caseload that had been divvied up among the three of them, and her parents were still trying to run her life even from New York.
Antonio and Kayla Di Meglio still hadn't learned their lesson with Guy, she thought, settling down at the kitchen table with her cup of tea. Guy had joined her parents' law firm and, according to her father, had a bright future. He was highly intelligent, articulate, a smooth dresser, a sharp lawyer, and he had an interest in politics, which had once been her father's dream. Guy had even told her parents he had Italian ancestors somewhere in his family. That made him a shoo-in.
Yielding to her parent's wishes---and against her better judgment---Sam had begun dating Guy. To her surprise she'd really liked him, although she wouldn't go so far as to admit that she fell in love with him. They dated for almost a year before he popped the question. Because she thought she'd gotten to know him, and believed he was the one man she could live the rest of her life with, she had said yes.
Her parents had turned her wedding into the social event of the year, inviting more than five hundred guests. She'd had bridal showers galore and her wedding dress had been designed by Vera Wang. Her parents had assumed, as she had, that she and Guy would share a long and prosperous marriage, and the storybook wedding would be one they would all remember.
Sam shook her head as she finished her tea and walked over to the sink to rinse out her cup before placing it in the dishwasher. Yes, her wedding day had been one she and Guy would remember, all right, along with her parents and all five hundred invited guests, but for all the wrong reasons.
She had walked down the aisle to take her place by Guy's side when a commotion in the back of the church got everyone's attention. Two women with screaming babies came forward to announce that Guy was their babies' daddy. One even claimed she was pregnant with another child of his. Talk about drama. It took the reverend and the ushers a full hour to get things under control. Later, in Reverend Caldwell's study, Guy had confessed that the two women's claims were true. However, he felt the situation had nothing to do with Sam, and they should go on with the wedding anyway. He'd certainly been a fool to think that. She'd told him so, and none too nicely.
Sam walked out of the kitchen and went upstairs to her bedroom, remembering how she'd gone on her honeymoon without Guy. When she'd returned two weeks later, she had gotten a call from Mac, asking if she wanted to become a partner with Peyton and her, realizing their law-school dream of forming their own legal practice.
Mac had been living in Louisiana, and her boyfriend had proved to be no better than Guy when he up and married someone else. Peyton, who'd grown up on Chicago's South Side, had been working as a community activist and lawyer, wasn't involved with anyone and was ready for a change. Mac, who was a black Cherokee, was ready to move back home to Oklahoma. Considering everything, the timing was perfect.
Over her parents' objections, Sam left New York and headed for Oklahoma. But distance had not stopped her parents from trying to interfere in her personal life or wanting to play matchmaker on occasion. In a way, she understood her parents' desire to have grandchildren. Their friends---the social elite of Manhattan and the Hamptons---were all bursting with pride about their grandkids. At thirty-two, DeAngelo, who was still very much a player, had no intention of settling down and getting married, so her parents had focused their attention on her.
As she stripped off her clothes to take her shower, she couldn't help but think again of Blade Madaris. Maybe now the flower deliveries would stop coming to the office, since she had a strong suspicion he was behind them. During dinner he had mentioned to Luke that one of their aunts had opened up a florist shop on the ground floor of the Madaris Building. Had he just been bringing Luke up-to-date on what was going on in their family, or was it meant to let Sam know he was her secret admirer? Thanks to Angelo, which is what friends and family called her brother, she knew firsthand how players operated. Send a woman flowers to break down her defenses, her brother would say. Who could resist a beautiful, sweet-smelling, romantic bouquet?
Samari Di Meglio, for one.
She knew from the conversation at dinner that Blade would be in town for only a day or so, not long enough for them to run into each other again. Since he was Luke's cousin, and a close friend at that, and she was one of Mac's best friends, chances were their paths would cross again, but hopefully none too soon. Blade was a player who had little regard for the women whose hearts he broke. He was the type of man she wanted no part of, the kind she detested. And after what she'd said to him tonight, she was certain he would stay as far away from her as he could.
Blade chided himself, silently scolding himself for being a fool for getting up at the crack of dawn and hurriedly eating breakfast just to chase behind a woman. It was certainly not the way he usually operated.
He appreciated the car rental company for delivering the vehicle to him and having it ready for him when he walked out of the hotel that morning. A man with a plan, he slid behind the wheel, and now he stood watching from the office window the object of his curiosity as she parked her car. She had no idea he was there awaiting her, and he couldn't wait to see her face when she did. He liked having the element of surprise on his side.
"I'm not sure it was a good idea to let you in, Blade."
He glanced over his shoulder and met Mac's gaze and couldn't help but smile. Dressed in a blue pantsuit, she looked sleepy but in a beautiful sort of way. It was obvious she wasn't used to getting to the office this early, but had let it slip that they would be here early since she had to be in court by ten.
"Why do you feel that way?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes. "I think it's obvious. Sam doesn't like you."
He knew that was probably putting it mildly. "I intend to change her mind about that," he said.
"Personally, I don't think you can. You didn't make such a good impression on her at my wedding or my birthday party. That said, I'm going into my office. I've seen Sam's hot-blooded Italian temper in action and I don't want to be around when she walks through that door and finds you here."
He watched as Mac hurried into her office and closed the door, and then he glanced out the window in time to see Sam get out of her car. He felt his heart flutter in his chest as she swung her legs around to get out. She was wearing a business suit, with one of those short skirts again, the kind that showed off just what a nice pair of legs she had.
She crossed the parking lot carrying a deli bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. But his eyes weren't really focused on what she was carrying. They were focused on her and just how good she looked this morning.
Why am I so drawn to her? He couldn't help but ask himself that. He couldn't blame his fixation on her beauty, since he'd been attracted to beautiful women before. The fact that she presented a challenge was part of it, he was sure. For some reason, he wanted to best her at her own game. He had to represent the players out there.
As he continued to watch her, he saw her smile at the security guard standing by the entrance. Blade frowned, remembering how the guy, who looked about twenty-four or twenty-five, had given him the third degree until he showed him proof that he was related to Mac. He knew the guard was just doing his job, but Blade thought he'd been more of a stickler than he needed to be.
He watched as the same man who'd given him grief just an hour or so earlier gush like a besotted fool when Sam greeted him with a smile. Sure, Blade would be the first to admit she had that effect on men. But still he didn't like the way the man was looking at her, mainly because he recognized the look even if Sam didn't.
He tried to ignore the mounting irritation he felt, and refused to consider, even for a moment, that he was jealous. Being jealous of a woman didn't fit who he was. Admittedly, he was more than slightly annoyed that she never smiled at him that way, but he intended to change that, as well. He was a smart enough man to know that getting a smile out of her would take time.
He continued to study the two and rolled his eyes. Now they were standing and chatting like old friends. He glanced at his watch, and when he looked out the window again he tried to ignore Sam and the security guard by looking up at the sky. It was the second week in April and the temperature that morning had been cool, but the weather forecast said warm air was moving their way. The sky was a beautiful blue and he couldn't help wondering how the weather was back home in Houston. When he glanced back at Sam, he realized she was about to enter the building. The clock on the wall said seven-thirty as he quickly moved toward the door.
She opened the door, nearly gasped in surprise when she saw him standing there. Before she could open her mouth to say a single word, he smiled at her, leaned in the doorway and said, "So tell me, Sam. Just what kind of man does interest you?"
Sam stared up at Blade. It had been a long time since any man had rendered her speechless. What was Blade Madaris doing in her office at this time of the morning? She quickly answered her own question when she thought about the question he'd just asked. He was a man whose advances were probably never rebuffed. He was used to women thinking he was the greatest thing since Grandma's apple pie. For him to show any interest in a woman was a privilege, an honor, or so he thought.
She'd heard that back in Houston he had his choice of single women at his beck and call. Considering that, it was no wonder he was so conceited. The mere thought that she wasn't like all those other women, and that she'd had the nerve to come right out and tell him he didn't interest her, probably had him in a tizzy to find out why, or better yet, to prove her wrong.
Instead of answering, she moved passed him and headed toward her office, since she needed time to regain her composure. "Good morning, Blade. You're the last person I expected to see today."
"I'm sure I was," he said, walking in step beside her.
She wasn't sure what cologne he was wearing but he certainly smelled good. How could his scent be more seductive than a breakfast sandwich and coffee from Walter's Café?
"I guess you figured what you said last night would have kept me from coming back," he added, as he followed her into her office and closed the door behind them.
She had figured that. "I was being honest with you, which I felt was best."
"I appreciate it but I don't believe you."
Sam placed the bag and coffee on her desk, and by the time she turned to face Blade a frown had settled on her face. "Excuse me?"
He smiled. "I said I don't believe you."
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against her desk. "Are you so conceited that you think every woman alive should want you?"
His smile widened. "For starters, we're not talking about every woman, we're talking about you. And yes, I think you want me."
She gave him a chilly look as the muscles in her neck actually knotted. "Please explain how you figure that."
He shrugged. "You've been sending sexual vibes my way."
Her brow wrinkled at the center of her forehead. "What?"
"I said you've been sending sexual vibes my way. It started at the wedding. I have this uncanny ability to detect when a woman and I connect in the most sensual way. I have a built-in radar that lets me know she's attracted to me. When that happens, it's up to me to let her know whether or not I'm interested. If a woman picks up on the 'I'm interested' signal, that's cool. If she doesn't and if it's someone I really want to hook up with, then I take things a step further. I picked up on the fact that you're attracted to me. However, when I responded, so to speak---on two occasions, I might add---for whatever reason, you retreated."
Sam kept her jaw clenched tight. He was right. She had been interested in him, but not for the reasons he thought. She knew immediately when she saw him at the wedding and observed how he worked the room at Mac and Luke's reception that he was a player.
The only reason she had singled him out was the same reason she targeted most men like him, and that was to teach him a lesson. By the time he noticed her, she had decided not to pursue her plan, since Luke and Mac's marriage officially made him a relative of her best friend. She figured the best thing to do was to spare him.
Then last month, when she'd seen him again at the birthday party Luke had given for Mac, she'd known he was once again on the prowl. More than once he had tried hitting on her and she'd ignored him. By the time the party had ended, she'd pretty much decided that if she ever saw him again she would finally take him down a peg. Now would be a perfect time if she didn't have her parents to deal with.
A week after the party the flowers had begun arriving, a beautiful bouquet each week, but without a card. The florist explained the flowers had been ordered over the Internet so she had no idea who'd sent them. It could have been anyone. Although Sam had never mentioned it to Mac, a part of her had believed they were from Blade, since he had been the last man to come on to her and he had the money to do something that extravagant. It was obvious that the weekly floral arrangements she'd received weren't cheap.
"I can see I've left you speechless."
Her response would have been a snort, but she suppressed the instinct. Her first inclination was to give him the reading of his life, something Angelo said she was good at when it came to men who were womanizers. He and Sam's three male cousins had been the recipients of such a dressing-down.
She lifted her head, locked onto his gaze. "Read my lips, Blade. There weren't any vibes. Anything you thought you sensed was a figment of your imagination. Contrary to what you believe, not every woman is interested in you. If you knew anything about me, the one thing you would know is that men like you turn me off. I can chew them up and spit them out."
"Prove it. Prove that I can't break through the defenses you have set up around yourself." His voice was deep, controlled and sexy. The expression on his face was intense and just as sexy as his voice. She wanted to roll her eyes. But for the moment, she couldn't move her gaze from his.
Defenses?
"Besides," he continued, interrupting her thoughts as a cocky grin spread across his face. "I sort of like the thought of you chewing me up. You can even go ahead and bite me a few times and I won't complain."
He took a step forward, standing in front of her. "But what I will do, Sam, is retaliate in a way that will have you moaning for days and groaning for nights."
A shudder passed through Sam's body at his threat. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep and was still feeling tired. Or it could have been that Blade was standing too close to her and his scent, the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes were all getting to her. Or it could have been the fact that it had been more than four years since she'd been intimate with a man. And the last time had been so quick she would've missed it if she had blinked. Not only had it been rushed, it had been thoroughly unsatisfying.
She stared at him. "You're sure of yourself, aren't you?"
A soft smile touched his determined lips. "Yes."
She shook her head. When they had been doling out arrogance, he had been first in line, she was sure. There was nothing wrong with being confident, but this man was as conceited as they came. "Sorry to disappoint you, but you're wrong."
"Then prove it."
Famous last words, she thought. But he was beginning to annoy her. "I don't have to prove anything. I told you how I feel. It would be so much easier on the both of us if you respected that."
"And I will once you answer my question. Just what type of man does interest you, since I don't? Based on what you said last night, you have no problem with a man who's not into long-term relationships, so just what turns you on, Sam Di Meglio?"
She glared at him. "A man who respects my wishes, for one."
He took a step closer to her and put both hands on her desk, effectively pinning her in between. He smiled faintly. He smelled heavenly. And her heart was beating like crazy in her chest.
His mouth was inches from hers. "And I will respect your wishes," he said in a silky voice that sent all kinds of erotic sensations through her body. "But first, since you won't answer my question, let me give you my opinion and tell you what I think."
She breathed slowly and deeply, inhaling his scent through her nostrils. "You really don't need to bother."
His smile widened a bit as he leaned closer to her. "Humor me."
His breath was hot on her lips and she fought back the urge to do more than just humor him, to do something crazy like stick her tongue out and lick his lips from corner to corner. So she did something probably even worse; she concentrated on those lips. They were beautiful, firm and full, curved and clearly defined and shaped in a perfect bow.
She would be the first to admit she was one of those women who were drawn to a man's lips. Even though he'd ended up being a deceitful ass, Guy's lips hadn't been all bad. But no one's lips could compare to the ones she was staring at now, the ones sending shivers through her body, making her feel hot all over, so much so that she wanted to remove her jacket, take off her blouse, slip out of her skirt, take off her bra and panties and...
She blinked. What in the world was happening to her? What could she be thinking? What was he thinking? She opened her mouth to ask Blade that very thing, when, too late, she realized he'd been waiting for her to do just that.
Before she could draw in her next breath his mouth captured hers and began eating away at it like she was his breakfast and he intended to devour her right up until lunch. The moment his tongue touched hers, stroked it in such a way that blatantly reminded her how long it had been since she'd engaged in foreplay with a man, he conjured up all those deep-seated, wild fantasies no other soul knew about, not even Mac and Peyton.
Any thoughts of what Mac and Peyton didn't know fled Sam's mind when Blade deepened the kiss. She knew she had to do something before he went any further or before she succumbed any more to his passion. If that happened, considering the last time she'd been intimate with someone, he could drag her to the floor and she wouldn't put up much of a fuss. In fact she might be the one dragging him first.
She had no idea just how long they'd been kissing or how long they would have continued had the intercom on her desk not buzzed, and if their secretary, Priscilla Gaines, hadn't chosen that moment to say, "Ms. Madaris wanted me to remind you of the meeting this morning, Ms. Di Meglio."
Sam drew in a deep breath as Blade reluctantly let go of her lips. "Bad timing, wouldn't you say?" he whispered, straightening his physique and taking a step backward.
She exhaled, still wondering what the hell had happened. She shook her head, sending a mass of curly locks flying around her shoulders as if that would help screw her head back on, not only right but tight. She knew at that moment that this man was dangerous to any woman. He was smooth and lethal all rolled into one. She wondered how many hearts he'd already broken and how many more he would be breaking. Maybe not intentionally, but with total disregard for the fact that although he might not fall in love with a woman, some would ultimately fall in love with him and painfully watch as he swaggered out of their life without even a backward glance.
"I'd better leave and let you get back to work now," he said, smiling as if coming to her office and kissing her senseless first thing in the morning was an everyday occurrence. "I'll be returning to Houston later today, but I plan to come back to Oklahoma City in about three weeks."
She frowned. "Why?"
His smile widened. "The Mosley Building, or have you forgotten?"
She had forgotten, sort of. "Why do you need to come back? I thought your construction crew would be taking over now that things have been finalized."
He chuckled as he smooth out his jacket. "Not yet. As chief engineer, I'm hands-on from start to finish. That means you'll be seeing a lot of me for at least the next six months or more."
Her entire body stiffened when she remembered his spiel at dinner last night. For Pete's sake, she didn't want to see any more of him. Less of him would serve her nicely. She had let her guard down with him today, and judging from the smirk on his face, he evidently assumed he'd gotten the upper hand. "I don't want to see more of you, Blade."
The smile that appeared on his face at that moment would have been priceless to any other woman. "You need to stop doing that, you know," he said as he headed toward the door.
She crossed her arms over her chest again. "Doing what?"
He glanced back over his shoulder and paused long enough to reply, "Saying one thing when you mean another."
She glared at him. "I mean what I say, Blade. You just can't seem to get the message."
He put his hand on the doorknob and angled his head to the side to look at her, a pose she found unnerving. "No, Sam. I read you loud and clear, and if you do mean what you say then you need to stop sending mixed signals. I'll see you in three weeks."
He opened the door and was gone.
"So there you have it," Peyton Mahoney said, as she threw her pencil in the middle of the conference table. "According to the photo lab, those pictures were doctored."
A disgusted look appeared on Mac's face. "So Clarissa Penton lied to us. Those are not pictures of her and Sidney Gresham in bed together."
"Nope. So what do we do now?" Peyton asked.
"There's only one thing left to do," Mac replied, as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Get her on the phone and ask her to meet with us. We'll let her know what we've found out and advise her to get someone else to represent her. We should also suggest that she drop the charges, and let her know what can happen if she doesn't."
Mac glanced over at Sam. "What do you think?"
Sam had been staring into space, but now looked across the table at her two friends. "The way I feel right now, I want to call her in and kick her you-know-what for wasting our time."
Mac couldn't stop the smile that spread across her face. She saw that Peyton was doing a better job than she was at holding back. Both of them were well aware that Sam was in a lousy mood and had been since Blade left. They were also aware that Sam and Blade had spent almost twenty minutes together in her office before he'd finally departed, and that was only after Priscilla had reminded Sam of their meeting. They had both noticed that although Sam had reapplied her lipstick, her lips were kiss-swollen nonetheless.
"I think," Mac said, "that we go with option one---call her in and let her know we won't be representing her in her sexual harassment case against Sidney Gresham." She glanced at Sam again. "You might want to take a chill pill before she arrives, Di Meglio."
Muttering something under her breath, Sam stood and walked over to the coffeepot to pour a cup. "I don't need a chill pill. What I need is my head examined."
"Um, Blade Madaris was that bad, Sam?" Peyton asked, grinning.
She turned around and stared at her friends for a long, steady moment before rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "No, he was that good," she said in a disgusted tone. "Damn it."
From the stares and arched eyebrows, she immediately knew what Mac and Peyton assumed. "For crying out loud, stop staring at me like I don't have any panties on. We didn't go that far. Jeez. He was only in my office for twenty minutes. It was only a kiss."
Peyton stood as she gathered her folders. "Hey, a woman and her man can do a lot in twenty minutes. And please don't ask me how I know."
Since Peyton was the argumentative type and no one was in the mood for a debate this early in the morning, they didn't say anything as she left the room. As soon as the door closed behind her Sam felt Mac's eyes shift to her.
"Sam, if Blade is making a nuisance of himself and is harassing you, I can have Luke talk to him."
Sam waved off her words as she returned to her seat. "It's not that serious, Mac. He's not harassing me. There's a difference between a man openly pursuing a woman and when he's harassing her."
"And usually the difference is the attitude of the woman," Mac pointed out. "Do you or don't you want to be involved with Blade?"
"No, I don't and I've told him that. But of course he thinks he can change my mind. I think he sees me as some kind of conquest. I'm the one woman not falling at his feet, not eagerly crawling between his sheets. He wouldn't be a true-blue player if he didn't get the woman who rejects his advances, namely me."
She leaned back in her chair, stared into her coffee and then added, "He thinks I'm being defensive, whatever that means. And I didn't help matters this morning by letting him kiss me."
"Mmm, sounds interesting."
Sam looked at her friend. "Damn it, Mac, it was better than interesting. I've never been kissed like that before. The man makes using his lips and tongue some sort of art form."
Mac chuckled as she stood up. "Must be a Madaris trait. And I hope you know that unless you put your foot down and give him a reason not to, Blade will be back, and he won't give up until he gets what he wants." She shook her head. "Neither of you are acting rational. I've known Blade for more than seven years, and I've never known him to pursue a woman the way he's chasing you for any reason, conquest or otherwise. I've known you even longer, and I've never known you to let a bona fide player get under your skin."
Sam didn't say anything for a moment and then said, "He claims I'm sending mixed signals."
"Are you?"
She paused, then admitted, "Possibly. You and Peyton of all people know how I handle players."
"Yes. Which has me wondering why you're handling him differently?"
"He's Luke cousin. Besides, my parents are beginning to act crazy again by playing matchmaker. There's this new guy who's working at the law firm. My folks are all but shoving him down my throat. My mother sent me pictures of him over the Internet, but I've refused to open the file."
Mac shook her head. "Will your parents ever learn?"
"Apparently not. I see now that I made a mistake after law school when I let them talk me into coming home and working in the family firm. Those years I spent at Di Meglios were the worst. My parents were determined that I not have a life, at least not one they couldn't control."
Sam couldn't help but remember those years. Her parents were highly respected attorneys who'd earned a name for themselves in New York circles. The firm included her mother and father, her father's two brothers, Federico and Leandro, and their sons, Maddox and Damon, as well as her brother. They were all Di Meglios and they made their name representing the rich and famous.
Besides her mother, Sam had been the only Di Meglio woman in the family practice. All her female cousins had been smart enough to choose some other profession, since they'd known they would have been expected to work at the family-run law firm.
She cringed each time she remembered her parents' angry words when she'd told them of her decision to move to Oklahoma and form a law practice with Mac and Peyton. She knew they were still holding out, hoping that eventually she would come to her senses and return home to Manhattan to the plush, prestigious office overlooking the Hudson River, which was still empty and waiting for her. Angelo was the only one who knew for certain that she wouldn't be coming back, and she had left with his blessings.
"You're a big girl and I know you can take care of yourself," Mac said, interrupting her thoughts. "And as far as Luke is concerned, he knows that Blade is capable of handling himself, as well. Just so you know, Luke and I talked about it last night, when Blade walked you to your car. We've made a decision to stay out of it. Whatever happens is between you and Blade. Like I said, you're a big girl."
Sam didn't say anything for a moment and then, smiling, she stated, "Well, the first thing this big girl needs to do is clear her calendar for a week and fly to New York to pay her parents a visit. I need to settle a few things and get them to understand my life is my life, and I won't have them interfering. And as for Blade, if he continues to be a nuisance, I will settle a few things with him, as well."
Later that evening Blade entered his condo. In a way he was glad to be back home in Houston. His meeting with J. W. Mosley had gone well and the man was looking forward to working with Madaris Construction Company. The building would be a magnificent addition to downtown Oklahoma City's skyline.
Blade had slept through most of the flight. But right now, he was wide-awake and Sam Di Meglio was on his mind. He was convinced that the only reason he was still thinking about her was because he hadn't met anyone quite like her. Besides her beauty, he knew there was a passion in her just waiting to be unleashed. He saw it in her walk, was moved by it whenever their eyes met, and had felt it in their kiss that morning. He was definitely looking forward to returning to Oklahoma City, and would make it his business to see her again.
He had talked to Luke on his cell phone on the way to the airport. His cousin had given him fair warning and tried to convince him Sam wasn't a woman a man wanted to toy with. Blade didn't want to toy with her. He wanted to spend an entire night in bed with her. He wanted to get her out of his system. He was convinced the kiss they'd shared that morning had definitely been the reason she was still on his mind.
He had put his overnight tote and garment bag on the bed when his cell phone rang. He quickly pulled it out of his pants pocket. "This is Blade."
"I know who you are."
He couldn't help but chuckle upon hearing his great-grandmother's matter-of-fact voice. "Yes, ma'am, Mama Laverne, I'm sure you do. And how are you doing today?"
"As well as can be expected. And how was your trip to Oklahoma?"
Blade lifted a brow. "How did you know I went to Oklahoma?"
"Slade told me when I called to check on Skye. She's been a little under the weather."
"Oh," Blade said, leaving his bedroom and heading for the kitchen to get a beer out of the refrigerator. He hadn't known his sister-in-law was sick. "How is she doing?"
"She's doing fine for someone who's having a baby."
Blade blinked. "Excuse me? Skye's pregnant?"
"I dreamed about fish last night, so you know what that means."
He nodded as put his great-grandmother on speakerphone, placing his cell phone on the table while he unscrewed the beer cap. Yes, he most certainly knew what that meant. Everybody in the entire Madaris family did. If Skye wasn't pregnant, someone else was. It seemed whenever his grandmother dreamed of fish someone ended up pregnant.
"Yes, I know," he said, before tipping the beer bottle to his mouth to take a huge swallow.
"I'm guessing it's Skye, which would be my first great-great-grand. So I'm tickled pink at the thought of that. But who knows. It might not be Skye. It just as well could be one of your girlfriends."
Blade nearly choked on the beer he'd been drinking.
"Blade? You okay?"
He coughed to keep from choking. "Yes, I'm fine. You don't have to worry about it being one of my girlfriends. I don't do babies."
"But you do women and all it takes to make a baby is a man and a woman who---"
"Excuse me, Mama Laverne, but I think I hear someone at the door," he said, quickly deciding the last thing he needed was to hear his great-grandmother's version of how babies were made. "I need to go answer it."
"Oh, okay. Will you be at church Sunday?"
He rolled his eyes. He hadn't planned to go. "Why? Is there something happening there this Sunday?"
"Something happens at church every Sunday, Blade."
He rolled his eyes again. "Yes, ma'am. I'll see if I can make it."
"Elsie Fowler's niece is back in town and she'll be there."
Blade shook his head. Now he knew for certain that he wouldn't make it. Elsie Fowler's niece, Sharon what's-her-name, was not his type. She was the clingy kind who hadn't been all that great in bed. "Okay, Mama Laverne, I'll talk to you later."
He hung up, glad to end the call. His great-grandmother meant well, but they had different opinions about things, namely his marital status and his social life. The old gal was a die-hard matchmaker. And from what he'd heard, she used to be good at it back in the day. Five of her seven daughters-in-laws had been handpicked. And now she was trying to step back into that role. All of her great-grandchildren were well aware that she was trying to marry them off. Blade even suspected she had something to do with Luke and Mac getting together. It was a good thing she didn't know of his interest in Sam or she would have taken it the wrong way. The only thing he was interested in was getting her in his bed, nothing more.
After emptying his beer bottle and putting it in the recycling bin, he made his way to the living room. It was a Thursday night and in his corner of the world, the weekend didn't start on Friday. It started tonight. He picked up the phone to call his friends Wyatt Bannister and Tanner Jamison to see if they were interested in heading over to Sisters, a restaurant where they knew single women liked to hang out. He was back on familiar turf and he felt good about it.
"Welcome back, Sam. How did things go with your parents?" Mac asked as soon as Sam walked into the conference room.
She made a face as she sat down in one of the chairs at the large oval table.
"Mmm, that bad?" Peyton inquired as a grin spread across her lips.
"Worse. They weren't expecting me, so I figured I would have the element of surprise on my side, but that wasn't the case. Even with such short notice they were able to make sure Cash Larkin made an appearance."
"Cash Larkin?" Peyton asked as she spread cream cheese on her bagel. "Who's Cash Larkin?"
"He's a new attorney at the firm. He's been there for about six months or so. My parents think he has a promising career and is just the man to marry their daughter. Sound familiar?"
"Will they ever learn?" Peyton asked, smiling.
"Apparently not."
Mac shook her head and then asked, "Did you accomplish what you set out to do?"
"With my parents, maybe. But I'm not sure about Cash. I don't know what my parents said to him, but I think he assumed that a serious relationship with me was a done deal. I hate to burst his bubble because he is a cutie."
"If he's a cutie then why burst his bubble?" Peyton asked with a serious expression on her face. "You shouldn't assume he'll be like Guy. Who knows? He just might be the one."
Sam didn't reply, since Peyton was only echoing what her parents had said. She couldn't go through life blaming every man for what Guy had done to her. All men weren't like him.
"It doesn't matter if he's nothing like Guy," she finally said. "I'm not interested in Cash. Besides, there wasn't any chemistry between us. No heat."
Peyton raised an eyebrow. "None?"
"Not enough to make me pause. Like I said, he's good-looking. He has a good body, nice teeth, but that's about it," she said. What she wouldn't say was that compared to Blade Madaris he lacked just about everything. He didn't have that swagger, that intense look in his eyes, and when she shook Cash's hand, all she felt was a warm, clammy palm---not a spark of hot desire.
"How does he kiss?" Mac asked.
Sam shrugged. "Don't know. We didn't get that far." And it wasn't for lack of trying on his part, she thought, remembering the couple of times he tried to get her alone. She just wasn't feeling him. Maybe it had been the wrong thing to do, but she had compared Cash to Blade. There had been more than just chemistry between her and Blade, even when she hadn't wanted to admit it. Even when she had denied it to herself and to him.
The moment he'd showed up at Mac's rehearsal dinner, Sam knew he would be trouble. She had watched him out of the corner of her eye as he smoothly checked out the women, mostly single female friends of Mac. And she knew the moment his gaze landed on her. Later that night, when everyone left the church for the rehearsal dinner, he'd approached her to make small talk. But she'd stopped him cold with an icy look before he could even get in a word.
"Well, I hate to change the subject, but I have some good news to share with everyone," Mac said.
Sam sat up straight and looked over at her expectantly. "What's your good news?"
Mac was beaming brightly. "Well, it's not really my good news personally, but good news about people I care about. First, Ashton called yesterday to say that Nettie is expecting."
"Wow!" Peyton said, clapping her hands. "That's wonderful!"
"He didn't predict triplets again?" Sam asked, smiling. Everyone knew the story of how Mac's cousin had said Nettie would be having triplets---three sons---even after the doctor had convinced Nettie she would never have children.
"No, he says it's just one baby this time. A daughter," Mac said, chuckling. "And," she continued, "Luke talked to Slade last night. He and Skye are expecting."
"I think we really do have a reason to go over to Twains after work to celebrate," Sam said. She had met Skye at one of Mac's bridal showers and had immediately liked her. She was down-to-earth and friendly.
"I agree," Peyton interjected.
Mac chuckled. "Count me in."
Sam nodded. She was happy for Nettie and Skye. They had fallen in love and married good men. Sam had met Ashton while she and Mac were roommates in law school. Sam had had a crush on him for a while. It was a man-in-uniform thing. As far as Slade was concerned, although he was Blade's twin brother, the two looked and acted nothing alike. Slade was handsome in his own right, but his disposition was entirely different from Blade's. They were like night and day. It was easy to see that Blade was a man who enjoyed women, and it was just as obvious that Slade was a man who could be loyal to only one woman. It was there in his eyes whenever he looked at his wife. Blade wouldn't know how to look at a woman like that. He wouldn't know the first thing about making a woman feel like she was the only one, mainly because with him she wouldn't be.
"Okay, it's time to get down to business," Mac said.
Sam put her case files on the table. Mac was right. It was time to get down to business and that meant eliminating any thoughts of Blade Madaris.
Blade drove the rental car to the rodeo construction site. After he parked the car, he turned his attention to the men from Madaris Construction who were hard at work on what would be Luke's rodeo school.
Weather permitting, the project would be completed on time, and Luke's school would be finished by the end of the month. Mac was hoping to host a grand opening the first of June, which meant landscape work had to be finished by then, as well. The timing was good, since some of the same men on Luke's project would be working on the Mosley Building.
Blade got out of the car and pushed his Stetson back off of his forehead with his thumb. He hadn't had time to drop by and check on the progress at the site when he'd been in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago. In fact, he hadn't been to the construction site since the foundation had been poured.
The building was huge and consisted of two floors, which would give Luke all the space he needed to teach others what he had been taught. From what Blade had heard, there was already a waiting list of eager rodeo students.
"You're back?"
Blade turned and saw Luke coming out of the barn. He couldn't help but chuckle and say, "Hey, you could act like you're glad to see me."
"Whatever," Luke said, giving him a bear hug. "Like I don't know the real reason you returned."
Blade looked away and observed one of the men installing a window on the second floor. His cousin was the last person he would have told that he hadn't been himself lately. He'd done what he always did when he'd returned to Houston and had gone out with Wyatt and Tanner to their usual spots. But he hadn't had a burning desire to sleep with any of the women he saw there. He actually thought he was coming down with something until he'd figured out just what was wrong with him. The kiss he'd shared with Sam had done him in. He'd never kissed a woman that way without the two of them ending up in bed. That meant that he and Sam had unfinished business. In order for him to move on, he needed to get her out of his system.
"Any news from the home front?" Luke asked, prompting Blade to turn around and look at him.
Blade couldn't help but smile. "I'm sure you've heard about Ashton and Slade."
Luke nodded.
"And I don't know if you've heard about it yet, but Reese got a promotion," Blade added.
"No, I hadn't heard," said Luke. "A promotion to what?"
"He's foreman of Madaris Explorations."
Luke frowned. "But that's Trevor's job."
Blade chuckled. "Not anymore." Trevor was a family friend and had worked as their cousin Dex's foreman for years.
"Trevor is opening a facility to train ex-military men. It's for those interested in tactical military operations."
"Sounds deep."
Blade laughed as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "Knowing Trevor, it will be. And I understand Drake Warren might be working with him at some point. And if Ashton ever decides to retire from the military, he'll be joining them, as well."
Luke leaned back against the post. Blade could feel his cousin studying him. He looked at him. "What's wrong?"
"You tell me. Why are you back?"
Blade took a breath and looked away momentarily to where three of his men were working on the roof of the building, installing shingles. There was no way he was going to confess to Luke the real reason he was back in town, especially since Sam was Mac's best friend. Since getting married, Luke had become a damn knight in shining armor.
He glanced back at his cousin. "I told you I would be coming back."
"You said in three weeks, not two."
Blade leaned against the post that was supporting Luke's weight. "There are more permits I need to file at the courthouse for the Mosley Building," he said. He didn't like having to explain his reasons for anything he did to anyone, not even Luke.
"That's it?"
Blade met Luke's gaze directly. "Is there supposed to be more?"
"You tell me."
Blade knew he couldn't very well do that. The less Luke knew of his plans for Sam the better. Besides, there were certain things he couldn't explain to Luke because he didn't understand them himself. Like why the women back in Houston had suddenly become uninteresting to him. While he had been home, he had begun to take a closer look at the women he'd been dating and had found them lacking, except in the bedroom. But now even that wasn't enough to hold his interest.
"There's nothing to tell. When is Mac coming home?" he asked, changing the subject.
The look Luke gave him let Blade know his cousin knew exactly what he was doing and that he wasn't taking the bait.
"Usually she's home by now, but she called a few minutes ago to say that she, Peyton and Sam are going for drinks after work to celebrate."
"To celebrate what?"
"Ashton and Skye's news. They'll be going somewhere to eat afterward, so if you haven't eaten yet you might as well join me for dinner. And if you don't have a place to stay while you're in town, you know you're welcome to stay here."
"Thanks, but I'll be at the hotel. It's located downtown near the courthouse where I need to transact business. There are a number of permits I need to get pulled."
Although Luke wasn't saying anything, Blade was aware that his cousin knew enough about the construction business to know that he didn't have to come to Oklahoma City himself to pull any permits. Blade had people working for him who could have performed those tasks.
He glanced over at Luke. "So what's for dinner?"
"A casserole."
Blade smiled. At Morehouse that had been Luke's specialty. He, Luke and Slade had shared an apartment not far from campus, and the one thing they could look forward to was Luke's casseroles.
"You didn't say how long you plan on being in town, Blade."
No, he hadn't, Blade thought. "Not sure yet," he answered. And then he added. "I'll know by the middle of the week."
Hopefully by then I'll have a plan, he thought. There was no way he could tell Luke that he would remain in town for as long as it took to get Sam into his bed.
The man glanced around thinking this particular restaurant seemed as good a place as any for them to meet. He glanced over at the woman who was already there waiting for him.
She looked a little different today and he immediately knew what it was. She was wearing makeup. No doubt to impress him, since she fancied herself in love with him. And she probably thought he had fallen in love with her, as well. He shrugged. What she thought wasn't his concern. But if believing such would assure that she continued to provide him with the information he needed, then so be it.
He sat in the chair across from her. "You look pretty today."
"Thanks." She smiled. His compliment had pleased her, so he would make sure to shower her with more in the future. After a few minutes of small talk, in which he told her again how nice she looked, he said, "The flowers are still being delivered." It was a statement and not a question.
"Each week, and they are beautiful, too. She likes them and doesn't suspect a thing."
He nodded, glad to hear it.
"She thinks she has a secret admirer."
He couldn't help but smile at the thought of that, and thanks to Samari Di Meglio he'd had very little to smile about over the past few years. He wasn't a secret admirer---far from it. But if she wanted to think that she could certainly do so. When she discovered the truth it would be too late to do anything about it.
"How long will you continue to send the flowers to her?"
The annoyingly soft voice had interrupted his thoughts. Now she was asking a question that really wasn't any of her business. His jaw tightened. His gaze narrowed. "For as long as I want," he said in a chillingly cold tone.
He saw the look in her eyes, the flash of fear. He breathed in deeply, knowing that he had to get his feelings under control. The last thing he needed was to make her wary of giving him the information he needed.
He reached out and touched her hand, held it in his for a while. "I didn't mean to scare you. But I've told you why I need to make her remember what she's done, and why she has to pay for doing it."
The woman nodded. Of course, he hadn't told her everything. He'd told her just enough to get her sympathy to do what he needed her to do. She assumed the most he would do was scare and harass Samari Di Meglio for a while, and not do anything really serious to harm her. He smiled to himself at the thought of that. Little did the woman sitting across from him know, but he had a much bigger and more sinister plan. It was one he had worked on for years. Now the time had come and no one, and he meant no one, would stand in his way.
Sam glanced up when she heard the buzzing sound from Security. She reached over and pressed the button on her intercom. "Yes, Rita?"
"There's someone here to see you."
Sam arched an eyebrow. The office had closed hours ago. After work, she, Mac and Peyton had gone to Twains, the bar and grill on the corner, to have a drink to celebrate Ashton's and Skye's news. They'd also ordered dinner. Afterward, Mac and Peyton had left for home, but since she had been out the past week, Sam had decided to return to the office to catch up on paperwork.
Their building was in a very busy section of town with a popular restaurant a few doors down. But that hadn't stopped someone from ransacking Mac's office last year. That incident had prompted them to hire a twenty-four hour security service, since at any time of day, any one of them might be working late at the office. Rita Wilder, one of their three security guards, worked twelve-hour shifts three days a week---from nine in the morning to nine at night. On occasion, however, she made extra money working overtime by staying late. Frank Denson worked the same number of days from nine at night to nine in the morning. And Marlon Fisher covered everything else. Sam was confident they had a top-notch security team, although Rita sometimes got lost in her romance novels.
"Who is it, Rita?" she asked. She couldn't imagine anyone dropping by the office this late. If anyone glanced in the window, however, they would see the lights were still on in her office and her car was still parked outside.
"He says his name is Blade Madaris."
The air in the room seemed to suddenly evaporate, and she could hear the pounding of her heart in her chest. What was Blade doing here? When had he returned to Oklahoma City? The last time she'd seen him, his parting words had been that he would see her in three weeks, and it hadn't been three weeks yet.
"Ms. Di Meglio?"
She could tell from the sound of Rita's voice that she was probably annoyed that someone had interrupted her novel. "Yes, Rita?"
"Well, do you want me to send him up or not?"
Sam's first impulse was to say no, to tell Rita to advise him to come back during regular business hours. A smile touched Sam's lips at how that sort of message would be received. It definitely wouldn't go over well.
She wouldn't put it past him to sit in the parking lot and wait until she finally left the building, since he knew she wouldn't be working all night. Against her better judgment, she inhaled a deep breath and said, "Yes, Rita. Let him in."
Realizing the impact of her words made her blood surge through her veins. There was a tightness that wedged in her chest. Suddenly, her tongue remembered the taste of him and she forced herself to swallow hard, to fight back the tingling sensation that was sweeping through her body.
Her ears perked up. She could hear the sound of his footsteps as he walked down the hall toward her office. They were paced with practiced precision. The sound of his feet making contact with the floor was hypnotic. She could just imagine the swagger in his every step.
Sam turned to her computer to save the document she'd been working on, and began wondering why Blade was here in her office. Deep down she knew the reason. She had explained it all to Mac a week ago. He saw her as the one who got away. The one he wasn't finished with yet. The one who refused to let him get to first base. And for a man who was used to hitting home runs, a strikeout was unacceptable.
Usually she would enjoy flirting with a man, especially one who was a player and who she intended to set up for a fall, but not tonight. Blade had a way of unnerving her, and she knew she had to be on her guard around him.
She pushed her chair back and stood, deciding she needed to be on her feet when he entered her office. He was a lot taller than she was, and she still had to look up at him, but not as far.
She came around her desk and leaned her bottom against it. Too late, she realized this was the exact position he'd left her in the last time he'd seen her two weeks ago. The very same day he had kissed her senseless.
Before she could change positions or move to another spot in the room, she heard him take the final step down the hall, and when she looked toward her door, he was there. Her eyes locked on his face, but her breath took in all of him. His manly scent was forcing her to exert a degree of self-control she hadn't had to exercise in a long time.
She allowed her gaze, just for a moment, to take in his entire body. He wore a pair of dark tailored trousers, an expensive looking dress shirt, a designer sports coat and Italian loafers. As usual, he looked far too sexy for his own good and for hers. He had a body built for whatever he wanted to use it for, and she had more than an idea just what that was.
She inhaled deeply, remembering two could play his game, and at that moment she decided that yes, she would play. And win. She had given him fair warning and he hadn't heeded it. Instead, the last time they were together he had taken her mouth and done delicious things to it, things she was still losing sleep over. His kiss had been greedy. He'd made it wet. He had flavored it with desire and seduction and then delivered it with a tongue that should be outlawed. But she couldn't think about any of those things now. This was war.
"Blade, what are you doing here?"
He leaned in the doorway, showcasing impressive muscles, a sleek build and a flabless, taut body that most men would give just about anything to have.
"I came to see you."
His deep, sexy voice was as potent as anything she'd ever heard, and it sent a yearning, a kind she'd never felt before, through her. Deciding that standing on her feet wasn't such a good idea, after all, she forced her legs to move as she went back to sit behind her desk.
"Why? And how did you know where I was?" she asked, forcing herself to breathe, and at the same time concentrate on the question she'd just asked.
He took his time answering and continued to look at her. The heat of his gaze was like a soothing caress. "I needed to see you again," he finally said. "And I knew you were here from Mac. I was at her place when she came home. And when I asked about you, she mentioned you were working late tonight."
Sam frowned. "She would not have told you that had she known you were going to disturb me."
He shrugged easily. "Probably not. It wasn't my intention to disturb you, but my hotel happens to be right up the street."
How convenient, Sam thought, and then let her mind wander, thinking about all those things they could do in his hotel room. All those things they could do right here. Thank God Rita was up front, although the security guard was probably sitting at her desk, consumed by her novel. But if she heard a lot of unusual noises she would come and investigate. And what Rita would see with her own eyes would put those romance novels to shame.
Sam felt her knees get weak and was glad she was sitting down. Now was not the time to think of all the things Blade could do to her or all the things she could do to him. Nor should she dwell on all those things they could do to each other. The man standing across the room looking so delicious she could eat him alive was a bona fide player. He needed to be taught a lesson, regardless of the sexual chemistry between them. He was too arrogant, too sure of himself to suit her. And when she finished with him he would regret the day he'd ever broken any woman's heart.
But she knew Blade was not a fool. If she appeared too eager, then he would know she was up to something. So she would take her time, play the part of the reluctant but horny woman, and let him work hard for her. Eventually, he would assume that he was getting close to breaking down her resolve. She, of course, would let him think that. She would tease him mercilessly, even give him a little sample of what he thought he would be getting. She would enjoy building him up, just to break him down. She would be the one to teach him the lesson he sorely deserved to learn.
Blade Madaris had finally met his match.
Blade wondered what Sam was thinking, since he knew for certain that something was going on in that pretty little head of hers.
As far as he was concerned, a one-night stand---as long as it was an all-nighter---was just what he needed to get her out of his system. He was convinced that she was feeling the same sexual tension that was gripping him all the way to his toes. She was trying to be cool, calm and collected. Other women had tried that same tactic, fearful of letting him know the depths of their desire. He hoped that wouldn't be the case with Sam, because he wanted to know. He needed to know.
It was killing him to find out.
"Come to my hotel room with me," he said, deciding not to beat around the bush. He had made a pit stop for one reason and one reason only. He knew it and she knew it, as well. They were adults. There was no reason to be coy or deny what just wouldn't go away.
Her chuckle was like a kick in his groin. "Don't hold your breath, cowboy."
He winced, disappointed. She was still denying those needs, still being coy. This wasn't going to be as easy as he had hoped.
"May I ask you something, Blade?"
Can we go ahead and get naked? was the question he hoped she would ask. "Yes, you can ask me anything," he replied.
She placed her hands on the desk and held his gaze. "What part of what I said the other night at the restaurant didn't you understand? I thought I was very clear when I said you don't interest me."
A smile touched his lips. "And I thought I was just as clear, Sam, when I said that you were sending mixed signals."
She narrowed her eyes. "If that's the case then I need to immediately make a correction."
He slowly crossed the room toward her desk. "Don't bother."
When he got to her desk he walked around it and sat on the edge, facing her. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she was surprised by his boldness.
"Why are you playing hard to get, Sam, when you know you want me? One night is all I'm asking for, and I'll have you climaxing in your sleep for the rest of the week. The memories will be just that strong and powerful."
She arched an eyebrow. "You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"
"Yes, especially since I haven't had any complaints, just requests for repeat performances."
He saw the smile that touched the corners of her lips. He was not in the mood to humor her. He wanted to make love to her. Get her naked and get inside of her and stay there until he'd gotten his fill. Was one night too much to ask for?
He held her gaze and felt the air surrounding them thicken with the same intensity of his erection, and was glad that he was sitting down. But he knew she was very aware of his aroused state.
"Have you ever considered the fact that I might be a different breed of woman than what you are used to?"
Yes, he had considered it, and he believed that was one of the reasons he was so hot for her. "That thought has crossed my mind once or twice," he replied smoothly.
"And that doesn't bother you?"
He thought her question was odd. "No. Why would it bother me? I'm a flexible guy. I can roll with the flow."
"Even if it takes you on some very wild fantasies?"
He lifted his brow at the same time he felt his erection twitch in his trousers. Whether she knew it or not, she was trespassing onto his turf. Could it possibly be that they were of like minds? Did they have the same kind of wild, wicked and naughty fantasies?
He couldn't help wondering just what she had on her mind. He would draw the line at a ménage à trois, since he didn't like sharing. But if she wanted to blindfold him and tie him to the bed and have her way with him, then bring it on---the ropes and the blindfold. "How risqué are we talking?" he asked, now that his curiosity, among other things, was piqued.
"Not sure. Forget I asked."
The hell he would. He doubted that he could.
"It's late and I've stayed here longer than I should have," she said, pushing her chair back to get up. He watched the movement of her hips and got turned on even more. She liked wearing those short business suits and he liked seeing her in them. She had the legs to wear them.
"And before you ask again, the answer is still no. I won't go to your hotel with you, Blade. I'm going home. Alone."
His gaze moved from her legs back to her face. "Are you sure you want to do that?"
"Tonight I do. Tomorrow, maybe not."
A tightness formed in his stomach. His heart began pounding. She had just given him hope and he caught it like it was a lifeline, something he'd never done before. "Have dinner with me tomorrow," he said, standing up.
"Why?"
"So I can convince you that I do interest you."
She held his gaze for a long moment, as if tossing his offer around in her head, and then she said, "All right. But you won't get too many opportunities to convince me of anything."
He hadn't thought that he would, which meant that he needed to use every minute of his time wisely. He stood back to gave her room to clear off her desk and to log off her computer. She was about to put the strap of her purse over her shoulder when he reached out and gently pulled her to him.
He figured he had been in her office less than thirty minutes, but it had to have been the most intense half hour he'd ever shared with a woman outside of the bedroom.
She didn't resist when he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her even closer and stood in such a way that she felt his arousal. Every inch of it, and it felt so damn good cradled in the juncture of her thighs. "Let me give you something to think about until I see you tomorrow."
And then he lowered his mouth to hers.
Sam saw his mouth coming and was ready for it. They had talked long enough and she needed this to take the heat off. The moment their mouths touched she could feel her heart slam against her chest, automatically causing an ache between her thighs. The way his erection was pressing against her wasn't helping matters. But she could handle it.
Or she would die trying.
Moments later she thought she would be dying anyway, if he continued to kiss her the way he did. His tongue was greedier tonight than it had been the last time. There were no parts of her mouth that hadn't been licked, sucked and teased. He was thorough and by the time he was finished she was moaning deep in her throat. But then she'd heard his groans, those husky sounds he'd made, letting her know his enjoyment was just as pleasurable as hers.
Once again it was the intercom that had them reluctantly pulling their mouths apart. "Ms. Di Meglio, it's eight o'clock, and you wanted me to let you know so that you wouldn't stay here too late," Rita said.
Sam licked her lips, sealing in Blade's taste. She was surprised Rita had remembered. Usually she was so absorbed in her novel that she forgot everything. Sam leaned over and pressed the button on her desk. "Thanks, Rita, I'm getting ready to leave now."
Thankfully, Blade stood back to let her lock her desk drawers, and then he moved in step with her when she headed out the door. She bade Rita a good-night when they passed through Security. She and Blade didn't say anything until they were walking out the door to the parking lot.
"She's a lot nicer than that security guard that was here the morning I stopped by," Blade said.
Sam looked over at him. "That was Frank Denson. He takes his job seriously."
Blade snorted. "Yeah, I can tell." He decided not to mention that as far as he was concerned, the man took her seriously, as well. He had watched how Denson had hung on to her every word. Had the man been a dog he would have been panting and wagging his tail. A low growl rumbled in Blade's chest at the memory.
When they reached her car he waited until she opened the door and slid inside, appreciating the glimpse of her thigh. "And you're sure I can't persuade you to come to my hotel room tonight?"
Sam couldn't help but grin. Blade was persistent if nothing else. "I'm positive. I agreed to have dinner with you tomorrow night, that's a start."
He smiled down at her. "I prefer thinking about the finish. It will be a lot hotter and steamier."
"We'll see."
"No, Samari Di Meglio, get ready to feel. And because I was taught to make sure ladies get home safely, I'll follow you."
She nodded. There was no reason to tell him that he would only be allowed to go so far, because she lived in a gated community. He would find out soon enough, especially if he assumed she would be inviting him inside for a nightcap. It wouldn't be happening.
"Good night, Blade.
"Good night, and I'll pick you up here tomorrow at five."
"All right." And without giving him time to say anything else, barely giving him time to get into his own car and start the engine, she pulled off.
Scowling, Blade sat outside the gate while Sam drove through it. She had conveniently avoided mentioning that she lived in a gated community---a very upscale one at that. The engineer in him couldn't help but admire the design and structure of the complex---at least what he could see from the outside.
Windsor Park.
He knew the price of the townhomes in this development weren't cheap. And judging from the fortress surrounding it, the complex looked as secure as Fort Knox. Was there a reason she had decided to live someplace that provided her such high-level security and protection?
As he drove away, he tried to remember just what he knew about Sam. Since meeting her he had asked Mac a number of questions. Some she had answered and others she had not. Luke had been just as tight-lipped as his wife, and the only thing he had said, other than a warning that Sam wasn't the kind of woman he should go after, was that her family had money.
That was all well and good, since Blade wasn't exactly broke himself. Thanks to the Madaris Construction Company, and his uncle Jake Madaris---not only a highly successful businessman, but one hell of a financial adviser, who had made some wise investments on Blade's behalf---if he never worked another day in his life, he could still live a very wealthy lifestyle.
Minutes later, when he entered his hotel room, an idea took shape in his head. He would be meeting with some of Mosley's employees tomorrow to start the ball rolling, so everything would be in place to break ground in a few months. But that didn't mean he couldn't remain in Oklahoma City a little while longer than planned, to make sure things were under control and on schedule---although the Madaris Construction Company had yet to miss a deadline, and certainly not on his watch.
And if he intended to hang around, there was no reason for him to remain cooped up in this hotel. First thing in the morning he would call Claire, the secretary he and Slade shared at the Madaris Construction Company, to get her to find him a place to stay. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the complex where Sam was living. He was certain there must be a unit there that could be leased on a short-term basis.
He smiled as he headed toward the bathroom for a shower. It didn't bother him in the least that he was doing some things he'd never done in the past in his hot pursuit of a woman. But then a man had to do what a man had to do, and since he believed it would be well worth it in the end, then so be it. The moment she had mentioned the words wild fantasies, he had known he would not be able to walk away until he discovered just what kind of wild fantasies she had in mind.
He was in the process of removing his shoes when his cell phone rang. A glance at the caller ID indicated the call was from Slade. He clicked on the line. "Hey, Slade, what's going on?"
"I thought I'd warn you that Mama Laverne has been asking about you. She dropped by the office today to visit with you."
Blade lifted a brow. She was always asking about him and every other son, grand and great-grand of hers. The old gal made it her business to try and keep up with everyone. She had probably planned to read him the riot act for not showing up for church that Sunday. "And?"
"And she's wondering why you're back in Oklahoma."
Blade leaned against the dresser in the bedroom. "What did you tell her?"
"That we have business there you had to take care of. I even showed her the model of the Mosley Building we have on display in the lobby. That may have satisfied her somewhat, but I suggest you give her a call to let her know you're all right. The older she gets the more she worries."
Blade chuckled. Slade was too nice to say that the older their great-grandmother got the more she meddled in their affairs. "Okay, I'll call her tomorrow. How's Skye doing?"
"My lady is doing fine."
Blade shook his head. His twin liked getting all mushy on him when it came to Skye. He was sounding like a whipped man. Like Luke, this marriage thing evidently agreed with him.
"Do you know how long you plan to stay in Oklahoma?" Slade asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Blade shrugged. "For another week or so."
He thought of Sam and then said, "Maybe longer. I want to be hands-on." He wasn't referring to the Mosley Building, but Slade didn't really need to know that.
"In fact, I plan on contacting Claire tomorrow to see if she can find me a bigger place," he added, giving Slade a heads-up on his plans. "It will be cheaper to lease something instead of remaining in a hotel, since I'll be making a number of trips back and forth periodically to check on things." He smiled. His reasoning sounded good even to his own ears.
"That might not be such a bad idea. It might save us a lot of money in the long run. Take care and I'll talk to you later."
"You, too."
"And don't forget to call Mama Laverne or you might be sorry."
"I'll call her." Blade hung up the phone thinking about Slade's comment about saving the company money. He chuckled. Saving the company money was the last thing on his mind. Getting Sam into his bed topped the list.
Sam couldn't help the smile that kept creeping across her face as she blow-dried her hair. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Blade thought he had her right where he wanted her---almost. The fact that he couldn't follow her inside the gated community might have set him back a bit, but there was no doubt in her mind that he intended to recover ground tomorrow over dinner. She would definitely be prepared.
A short while later, she got into bed and curled up under the covers. She hadn't gotten a lot done tonight because of Blade's visit, which meant she would have to get up and go into the office early. She had an appointment at ten with a woman who was divorcing her husband and wanted full custody of the family dog. To avoid dwelling on what a circus the case might become, Sam shifted in bed, trying not to think about Blade---the man who seemingly was trying to monopolize all of her time.
She didn't have to close her eyes to recall how he'd looked standing in her office doorway or how she'd felt ogling him. Her office had been filled with so much sexual energy it was a wonder the two of them hadn't been electrocuted. She knew that she needed to mind her p's and q's at dinner the next day, and stay one step ahead of his game. He was a man on the prowl, determined to get inside her panties. And she was just as determined that he didn't.
She wondered if he would continue to send the flowers. Peyton had joked that her secret admirer must know her schedule, since no flowers had been delivered while she'd been away last week. It would have been easy for Blade to find out that information. Mac might have innocently mentioned it to him, just as she'd mentioned her whereabouts tonight. Or Luke could have been the one to spill the beans.
Sam sighed, thinking she missed the flowers and had gotten used to receiving them. The gesture seemed like Blade's M.O. Including a card with some mushy sentimental line just wasn't his style. Evidently, he was trying to make sure he was always in her thoughts whenever she looked at the beautiful flower arrangement.
He hadn't mentioned that he was the one sending her flowers. He hadn't even paid much attention to the bouquet when he'd been in her office. If this was all a part of his version of the game of Seize and Conquer---which she was certain it was---then she intended to enjoy the flowers while they lasted.
She knew once he learned the truth---that she had been stringing him along---he wouldn't be happy. There was a chance he might not want to speak to her ever again.
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She wasn't going to indulge in a guilt trip where Blade was concerned. All it took was remembering her wedding day to make her forget about having any sympathy for Blade. And then there was Vivian Randall, her college roommate. Ten years had passed, but at times it seemed just like yesterday that Sam had rushed to the campus emergency room, only to find out that it was too late---Vivian had died of an overdose of pills. She still felt guilty about Vivian's death, since it had been her medication---a drug Sam's family doctor had prescribed for her migraine headaches---that Vivian had taken when she committed suicide. And all because a guy she thought she was in love with had played her. He had hurt and humiliated her in the worst way.
Even under a pile of blankets, Sam still felt cold. She knew that exacting revenge wouldn't erase the memory of being embarrassed on her wedding day in front of five hundred guests, or what had happened to Vivian. But it gave her some satisfaction that at least one player would get his just deserts.
She shifted in bed when her phone rang. She reached to pick it up and saw from the caller ID that it was Frederick Damon Rowe, affectionately called FDR. She and Frederick were the same age, shared the same birthday, had finished law school at about the same time and had begun working at Di Meglio on the same day. Over time, they had become close friends.
FDR was a great guy. And unlike some of the other employees at the firm, it had never bothered him that her last name was Di Meglio. He treated her like anyone else and not the bosses' daughter.
"Hey, FDR, what's going on?"
They talked for a little while and she listened as he told her about a case he was working on. Although her parents approved of their close friendship, they had never tried to encourage a romantic relationship between them. Sam had always thought it was a little odd, since FDR was a very handsome man who had a lot going for him. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised if he made partner soon.
Later, after ending the call, she thought about what her brother had told her a few days ago. Angelo had claimed FDR was seeing someone and that it seemed to be serious. If that was true, why hadn't Frederick mentioned it to her? Why was he keeping secrets from her?
But she wasn't going to worry about that tonight. She had enough to deal with as she prepared for dinner with Blade Madaris tomorrow evening.
"They're baaack...." said Priscilla jokingly, using the catchphrase from the Poltergeist movie sequel.
Sam glanced up at the beautiful bouquet of flowers that Priscilla placed on her desk. She couldn't help but lean back in her chair and laugh. For the past month Priscilla had been the one who'd delivered the flowers to her, at first complaining that the fragrance was too strong for the office. But last week, when Sam was out and the flowers didn't come, Priscilla had been the one complaining that she'd missed them, according to Mac and Peyton.
Priscilla had been with them for a couple of years, and at forty-one, she was more like a mother figure. She was a stickler for details and always maintained a professional demeanor, refusing to call them by their first names, even though she insisted they call her Priscilla. Sam had always thought that the single mother of eleven-year-old twin boys was very attractive. But in the two years that she'd been with them, she had never once mentioned anything about a man in her life.
"I heard you're nothing but a phony, Priscilla," Sam said, as she moved her chair closer to her desk. "Mac and Sam told me all about how you carried on when the flowers didn't come last week."
"Okay, Ms. Di Meglio, I admit I'd gotten used to them," Priscilla said, putting Sam's mail in her in-box. "You still have no idea who's sending them?"
A smile touched Sam's lips. "Maybe and maybe not. We'll just have to wait and see. Oh, I forgot to mention that when I saw FDR last week he told me to tell you hello."
"Oh," Priscilla said, her gaze quickly shifting away. "Well, I better get back to my desk. I have a lot to do before the end of the day."
Sam watched her secretary scurry out of her office. Had she imagined it or had Priscilla acted kind of weird at the mention of FDR? She shrugged, certain that she had just imagined it.
She studied the beautiful arrangement sitting on her desk. Every week the mix of flowers was different. She wondered if the choice had been the sender's, or just ones the florist had picked out. It didn't really matter, since every arrangement was breathtakingly beautiful and brightened up her week.
Sam glanced at her watch. Her first appointment of the day would be arriving in less than an hour.
Blade's meeting with Mosley lasted for a little more than an hour. The moment he walked out of the office building he was on the phone, returning his secretary's call. "Yes, Claire, what do you have for me?"
"I did what you asked and was able to find something available in Windsor Park. The person I spoke with was extremely helpful. Once I mentioned your friend who's already living there, they were able to locate a vacant town house right next door. In fact, the two of you will practically share the same driveway, since your garages are connected. The place is completely furnished, with two bedrooms and..."
Blade didn't hear the rest of the details once Claire said how close his town house was to Sam's. He looked up into the Oklahoma sky and thought that someone up there definitely liked him. And to think he'd even missed church the past few Sundays.
"So, is this a place you want us to sign a lease for, Mr. Madaris?"
"Yes." He couldn't say the words quickly. "How soon can I move in?"
"Today if you like, once we finalize the paperwork, which can be done by fax. I spoke with the utility company and put them on hold until you told us to move forward. Now that you have, we can do so without delay. The keys to the unit and the paperwork will be delivered to your hotel before three o'clock. Would you like me to order groceries and have them delivered, as well?"
A smile touched his lips. "No, that won't be necessary, Claire. I'll be eating out most of the time while I'm here." That made him recall his dinner date, not that he'd forgotten.
"Will there be anything else, Mr. Madaris?"
"No, that's about all."
He hung up the phone, still smiling, and thinking now he was making progress in his goal to get Sam in his bed.
Felicia Laverne Madaris, matriarch of the Madaris family, leaned back in her chair and gazed at the woman sitting across from her. Dora had been her daughter-in-law the longest and was married to her oldest son, Milton. "So, Dora, what do you think? Is there another reason Blade is staying in Oklahoma City while all the women here are pining for him?"
Dora hunched her shoulders. "Who knows what that particular grandson of mine is up to? But I will tell you this---I pity any woman who gets mixed up with him, thinking he's looking for something serious."
Mama Laverne nodded in agreement and then said, "Mmm, I think he's hot on the tail of one of Mac's friends---the pretty one with all that curly hair. I saw him trying to talk to her at Mac and Luke's wedding, but the chile wouldn't give him the time of day." She chuckled. "I think she set him back a bit."
Dora chuckled in turn. "Smart girl."
"Yes, but if she's the reason he's back in Oklahoma, that means for the first time in his life he's actually running behind a woman instead of the other way around. The women here in Houston have made things easy for him, always at his beck and call. This Oklahoma girl might give him a run for his money, and I'd love to see that happen. I'm going to make it my business to find out more about her. She just might be the one."
Neither woman said anything for a long time while they sat sipping their cups of tea. "You're the first person I've mentioned this to, but I dreamed of fish again last night," Mama Laverne said.
Dora's eyes widened. "You think it's Christy?"
Mama Laverne understood why she would think that. Her granddaughter Christy had proudly proclaimed after the birth of her first child that she and her husband, Alex, wanted a lot more children, and it seemed that whenever anyone called or dropped by, the couple was always in bed.
Mama Laverne smiled and shook her head. "They might be working on a new addition, but not this time. I actually saw the image of a man sitting on a dock with a fishing rod in his hand, and he seemed pleased as pleased could be when he pulled in a whopper of a bass from the lake."
Dora's lips quirked into a smile. "Sounds like a mighty proud man who went fishing that day. Who was he?"
Mama Laverne didn't say anything for a minute. For the past month, her fish dreams have been coming steadily, and in a way it made her heart feel good to know that the Madaris family and their friends were multiplying and would continue to do so long after she was gone.
"Mama Laverne?"
Her feeble fingers tightened on the cup in her hand, and then she said in a voice that quirked with humor. "The man was Clayton."
Dora's eyes widened to twice their regular size. "Clayton?"
"Yes."
"That means..."
"Yes." Mama Laverne said the one thing Dora couldn't bring herself to say. "Yes, that means that Syneda is pregnant again, and heaven help us all."
Blade crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against his parked car. He couldn't hide the smile that touched his lips as he watched the woman who walked out of the two-story, redbrick building. Nor did he want to. He squinted against the sunlight and adjusted his eyes accordingly so he could see her better. She was definitely a beautiful sight to behold.
He hadn't known what to expect when he showed up at exactly five o'clock for their first---and what she probably considered their only date. Under normal circumstances he would have agreed with her. But he had a feeling that tonight would not end the way he wanted, though it definitely wouldn't be for lack of trying on his part. He wanted her in his bed, and his moving into Windsor Park greatly reduced the distance it would take to get her there.
She looked beautiful, as usual, wearing another business suit that showed off her legs. The red color highlighted her complexion, and her curly hair flowing around her shoulders gave her a sexy appeal. He wondered how far he would go tonight. A better question was how far would she let him go? He had made reservations at a nice restaurant in Bricktown, one of the most popular areas of the city. He had requested a table in one of the cozy, secluded sections of the restaurant, with candlelight. After dinner he would bring her back here to get her car, and she would assume their night together would be over. Little did she know it would just be starting. He could just imagine what her reaction would be once she discovered he was now living next door to her.
Tipping the brim of his Stetson, he smiled when she approached, and said, "Sam."
"Blade. Have you been waiting long?"
"No. And even if I had been, you would have been well worth the wait."
Her mouth quirked at the corners and he knew at that moment that she'd probably heard that line before. That might be true, because he'd certainly delivered it over the years, but this time he'd actually meant what he'd said.
He opened the car door for her and inhaled her scent. She smelled feminine. She smelled like woman. And as he watched her slide onto the leather seat, he appreciated a glimpse of her thighs. He hoped that later tonight he would be getting more than a glimpse. In fact, he was anticipating seeing her naked.
"Thank you," she said, seconds before he closed her door.
"You're welcome."
He moved around the front of the car to open the door to the driver's side. Once settled with his seat belt in place, he glanced over at her and saw she was looking at him. He smiled. "Are you okay?"
She smiled back. "Yes."
Blade backed the car out of the parking lot, thinking she was smiling and that was a good thing.
Sam decided to stare out the window at the buildings they passed, although there was nothing different about them. She usually drove through these same streets every day on her way to the office. But she needed this time. Not to clear her head, because that wasn't possible as long as Blade was sitting in the seat next to her, but to affirm in her mind that going through with her plan was something she needed to do. It was something she had to do to the man who was most women's most ardent fantasy, and who could potentially become her own worst nightmare.
There was no doubt in her mind that over the next few hours she would be tempted as a woman in a way she'd never been tempted before. Blade had that ability. He had that skill. And she didn't have to be a genius to know that tonight he fully intended to use it.
"We should be there in a minute."
His words prompted her to glance over at him and ask, "Where are we going?"
"To Yates."
She nodded. She was impressed. "I heard it's a very nice place."
"You've never eaten there?"
"Surprisingly, no."
He looked pleased at that. "Then I'm glad your first time will be with me."
She shifted her gaze back out the window, thinking that in a way she was glad her first time would be with him, too.
"And you look nice."
She chuckled as she looked back at him. "You look nice yourself."
And she meant it more than he would ever know. When she had walked out of the building and seen him standing there, leaning against his car, waiting for her and looking like a man who knew what he wanted and had every intention of getting it, it had sent an intense shudder all the way up her spine.
"We're here."
She glanced out the windshield. Yes, they were.
The blood flowing through his veins felt warm as Blade glanced across the table at his companion. Sam had been quiet during most of dinner. He couldn't help wondering what she was thinking, what she was feeling, and if she had any idea how much he wanted her.
To be quite honest, he hadn't realized the extent, the degree, the depth of his desire for her until now. He had been in her presence for more than an hour, the longest amount of time he'd ever spent alone with her since they'd met. At least they were practically alone, since the restaurant had adhered to his request and seated them in a secluded area in the back, at a table set for two.
After mulling over the menu, they had decided on their order. While waiting for their meal to arrive they had indulged in a glass of white wine. She'd asked him questions about his work on the Mosley Building, which set the tone of their conversation, avoiding any personal subjects.
Once their food arrived, the conversation slowed---and almost ceased entirely. But what she didn't say, he could actually feel. That was something he had been aware of from the first time their eyes had met, at Mac and Luke's rehearsal dinner. Although she might not have wanted to give off those sensual vibes, she was doing so, anyway. They spoke to him and he automatically responded.
Like he was doing now.
He glanced over at her. As if she felt his gaze, she glanced up, and the moment their eyes connected he was literally robbed of his senses. The blood flowing through his body suddenly felt hot---to the boiling point.
"Dinner was wonderful, Blade. Thanks for bringing me here," she said in a soft voice, as if to break the intensity of the moment.
His gaze remained focused on her face. "You're welcome."
He had to fight the impulse to say he intended for there to be more of these dinners, but then he wondered why he would think such a thing. He was the hunter and she was his prey. Once she was caught there would be no reason for them to do this again. Their date tonight had a purpose and they both knew it. They were adults and were mature enough to handle whatever the outcome.
He wasn't looking for a long-term relationship or a serious involvement with any woman. He was a guy who wasn't interested in the house with the white picket fence or the wife who would greet him at the door each day when he came home from work. That was Slade, but that wasn't him.
"So, will you be having dessert tonight?"
Her question made him smile. "Yes, but not here."
She lifted an elegant brow and then tilted her head in a challenging pose when it became evident that she knew what he meant. "You think so?"
He chuckled softly. "I hope so."
And he truly meant that and couldn't believe he had done a complete turnaround in his approach to this woman. Usually he wasn't into playing games. However, Sam was definitely making him work hard for her. But then, he felt she was worth it.
"Maybe this is where I need to tell you that I plan on going home alone," she said, interrupting his thoughts.
For a moment he just stared at her, then nodded slowly. "Yes, but a lot can happen before you get there."
He watched her lower her lids in a way that had him wondering if perhaps her mind was engaging in the same sizzling hot, over-the-top, taboo kind of fantasies his mind was having right now.
He shifted in his seat and decided he needed to change the subject and do it quick. Otherwise his erection just might burst through his zipper. "Tell me about your family, Sam."
He could tell that his question had surprised her. He could also tell it seemed to relax her. She eased back in her chair. Once their dishes and wineglasses had been removed, they enjoyed a cup of coffee. Usually he didn't touch the stuff. He was hyper enough and didn't need a caffeine boost.
"What exactly do you want to know?"
"Anything you want to tell me." So I can figure out what there is about you that makes me want you so much, he thought to himself. Right now I'm thinking what it would be like to take you on top of this table.
"It might bore you."
"You could never bore me."
Sam chuckled at his response. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
She took a sip of her coffee and then said, "My paternal great-grandparents came to this country from Rome with their four sons and only the clothes on their backs. They worked hard, educated their sons and were proud when all four completed law school and went into practice together. And that was the birth of the Di Meglio law firm."
Sam paused for a moment to indulge in a few childhood memories. As a little girl she remembered her grandmother telling her the family story, and she could still hear the pride in her grandmother's voice. "Their first office was a place above my great-grandfather's restaurant in the Bronx. Then after they won their first big case, they opened offices in Manhattan." There was no need to mention the rumors that one of her grand-uncles had had Mafia ties.
She kept talking, mainly because Blade seemed truly interested in what she was saying---interested and intrigued. She talked. He listened, while quietly sipping his coffee and looking attentively at her.
"My father met my mother in law school. I'm told they had a fiery relationship, couldn't agree on anything and argued case law most of the time." A grin touched the corners of her lips. "From what I hear they nearly drove their professors batty."
Blade burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?
"Your parents sound like my cousin Clayton and his wife, Syneda. They're both attorneys as well and can't agree on anything."
Sam smiled and pushed her hair back off her shoulders. "I met Clayton and Syneda last year during our handling of the Coroni case. Nice couple." She took a sip of her coffee and continued. "My parents had no contact with each other after law school, and then three years later they faced off in the courtroom. He was the prosecutor and she was the defense attorney. What the jurors saw was a hot-tempered Italian D.A. up against an African-American attorney with an attitude. She won. He lost. She went out that night to celebrate. He went out to lick his wounds. They happened to both be at the same nightclub." Sam giggled. "Imagine that."
For a moment Blade could imagine it, especially if her mother had in her younger days looked anything like Sam. "Sounds like a stormy confrontation."
"I understand it was worse than that," she said, after taking another sip of her coffee. "They ended up leaving the bar together, presumably to help him get over losing the case---but in a way that only a woman can. I'm told it was supposed to be a one-night stand, but things didn't work out that way, and they've been together ever since. They have a rather close and loving relationship," she said with a huge smile on her face.
Blade couldn't help but smile back. "I know you have a brother. I recall meeting him at Luke and Mac's wedding."
"Yes, DeAngelo. But everyone calls him Angelo. He's thirty-two and he's also a lawyer. The Di Meglio law firm is still going strong, with my mother and father, my father's two brothers, their two sons, my brother and several associates."
"And you're not there?"
Sam shook her head. "No. I worked there for a while---two years, in fact, right out of law school. But I soon discovered there were too many Di Meglios. And as one of only two female attorneys, I was in the minority. My brothers and male cousins made sure I got the easy cases, nothing I could really sink my teeth into. I had three watchdogs instead of three fellow attorneys who respected my skill."
"So after two years you left New York and came here?" he asked, watching her expression closely. Throughout dinner he had been carefully observing her every time she spoke, practically hanging on every word she said. He could tell she was close to her family, probably as close to hers as he was to his.
"Yes, I came here," Sam said. "Mac, Peyton and I had been close friends in law school and had always talked about forming a partnership together, so we decided to fulfill our dream. And the rest is history."
She took yet another sip of her coffee and then glanced back at him. "Okay, it's your turn. Tell me about your family, although since Mac is married to Luke I know something about the Madarises already. Just to think you have an uncle who's married to Diamond Swain and is good friends with Sterling Hamilton is awesome."
Blade chuckled. He distinctly recalled the night his uncle Jake had made the announcement to the family. To say that they'd all been shocked was an understatement. Uncle Jake referred to his wife as his "diamond" and the family knew why. The well-known and much-beloved actress, Diamond Swain Madaris, was definitely a jewel to everyone who met her. And movie actor and producer, Sterling Hamilton was considered one of the family.
"Yes, it is. In fact, I think my entire family is awesome. My parents had four sons. You've met my twin, Slade, who is married to Skye. And as you know, they're expecting a baby."
"Yes, we're all excited."
He smiled. From what he'd heard, the entire family was excited. It seemed that having babies was becoming a favorite pastime for the Madarises and their friends. "I have two younger brothers. Quantum, who is twenty-six and completing his residency at a hospital in Houston, and Jantzen is twenty-three. Slade and I were able to recruit Jantzen into joining the family business as our PR and marketing director, and he's doing an awesome job."
They talked awhile longer as he told her more about his family. She had already met most of them at Mac's wedding, which made the conversation flow rather easily. He liked how she remembered things that had happened at the wedding or at Mac's birthday party that made them both laugh.
"At Mac's party, you were with someone," said Blade.
Sam lifted her brow. She decided to respond truthfully, as she always did when a question came up about her and Frederick's relationship. "Yes, he's a lawyer in my family's law firm. Frederick Rowe. He still works there and I consider him a good friend."
"So there is nothing going on between the two of you?"
She held Blade's gaze for a moment and then said, "Why are you just getting around to asking me about Frederick? If you did think we were together that night, I see that didn't stop you from trying to hit on me."
He reached out and captured her hand when she placed it on the table. She felt herself trembling from head to toe when his fingertips brushed across her knuckles. "The reason I never got around to asking you about him was because I was able to find out that information from Luke. He said the guy was just a friend of yours."
"Then why did you ask me about him now?" She tried to ignore how the touch of his hand on hers was sending sparks of electricity up and down her spine. He was trying to seduce her, and heaven help her, but she was enjoying it and finding it hard to resist his charm.
"Because I wanted to hear you tell me," he said softly. His voice was like a stroke across her skin, sending even more sparks through her. "Before, I just had secondhand information, although I figured Luke knew what he was talking about. And the reason I still made a move on you that night was because I wanted you, and once Luke had assured me there was nothing between you and Frederick but a close friendship, I saw no reason to stand on the sidelines."
Just as she was sure he saw no reason not to continue stroking her hand. She was fully aware of what he was doing and why he was doing it. Electricity was coursing through her, and making her want things from him that she knew better than to crave.
She pulled her hand from his and casually glanced at her watch. She then looked up at him. "I hate to be a party pooper, but I'm a working girl and I've got an early appointment in the morning. I need to go home and get to bed."
Blade was sure it was the look of desire that appeared in his eyes that prompted her to add, "Alone."
He tilted his head to the side, studied her for a moment and then asked, "Do you really want to do that?"
She hesitated long enough for him to know she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do about him, and as far as he was concerned that was a good thing. That meant he was making progress. He was an impatient man. And he didn't want to make progress, he wanted to make love---to her, nonstop, all night long. He wanted those long, sexy legs of hers wrapped tightly around him while he buried his body deep inside her. He wanted her so badly he could taste it. And he intended to taste her. That seemed simple enough, and as hot and sensual as it could get.
"Yes, that's what I want to do."
Her response, he thought, had been slow in coming. He wondered how she was going to handle knowing that he had arranged to be next door to her, never out of sight or out of mind. He was going to turn borrowing a cup of sugar into his favorite pastime. Sooner or later he would break down her defenses, and as her next-door neighbor, he would take pleasure in doing so.
When Blade slowed to a stop at the traffic light, Sam couldn't help but look over at him, and not surprisingly, their eyes locked. Heat flooded her entire body and she wondered if he could feel it. He said nothing, but continued to stare. They got so caught up in the sexual chemistry transmitting between them that it took a blast from a car's horn to remind them where they were.
The sound also reminded her where they were going. Her car was still parked at the office and she planned get into it and drive home. And just as she'd told him, she would be going home alone.
Why did the thought of going home alone suddenly seem like such an awful choice, when she could have this sexy man go home with her? He had laid it on thick tonight, oozing sexiness all over the place and reminding her more than once that she hadn't had a man in her bed in close to four years. Blade was making her feel that certain parts of her body were overdue for a tune-up and some serious repair.
She chuckled to herself. She couldn't imagine him giving her a quick fix. He would take his time, probably make her beg, and then he would deliver in a way that would be far better than anything she could ever imagine.
But why imagine it when she could have the real thing?
She knew the answer to that question. Like all players, he needed to be taught a lesson, and she couldn't start letting her emotions get in the way. She couldn't forget that he was a womanizer who wanted one thing from her and only one thing. Once she had sex with him, he would move on to the next hard up and willing woman. He wouldn't care one iota that someone's heart would get broken.
Blade was an arrogant man, but not in an intolerable kind of way. She had been out with men who were a lot worse---men who wore the word obnoxious around their necks. But she could tell that Blade was a self-assured man---confident and comfortable with who he was. He wore his cockiness proudly, like a designer label.
He pulled into the parking lot, but instead of stopping beside her car, he circled the lot until he came to a secluded spot with very little lighting, under an arbor of low-hanging trees.
When he brought the car to a stop she glanced over at him. All it took was a look into his eyes to know his intention. "Tell me you're kidding," she said.
His smile was hot. The hottest thing she'd seen in a long time. He unbuckled his seat belt and slid his seat back. "I never kid when I'm about to make out with a woman."
She lifted a brow. "Make out?"
He reached over and, with a flick of his wrist, her seat belt was unbuckled. "Yes, we'll start with a few kisses and go from there."
His arrogance was showing. "And you assume going from there will be easy for you?" she asked. She could deal with the kisses, and in fact was looking forward to them.
"I hope so. I want you, Samari Di Meglio. You give a whole new meaning to the word desire. I want you to the point that I ache." He drew in what sounded like an angry breath, and said, "Hell, this is the first time I've admitted that to a woman."
A smile curved her lips at the frustration she heard in his voice. "Wow, I'm flattered. A sensual confession. Got any more?"
"What? Sensual confessions?"
"Yes."
A smile touched his lips. "Not tonight." He leaned closer and whispered against her lips, "But I do have something else to give you."
She didn't have to ask what, and didn't have time to, anyway. Before she could draw in her next breath, he was there. And when his lips captured hers and he proceeded to slide his tongue into her mouth, while running his fingers through her hair, she couldn't do anything but close her eyes and moan.
Blade didn't have time to question why he was feeling so possessive toward this woman, and so needy. He refused to ponder why there was such an urgency to taste her and why she was becoming something he craved. Instead, he allowed his body and mind to tumble out of control while he feasted on her mouth, her lips, her tongue, on everything within his reach.
Her moans were like a symphony to his ears and propelled him to deepen the kiss. With each kiss she responded with a passion that matched his own. His stomach clenched each time her tongue stroked his with the same intensity he felt. Their movements were restricted by the confines of the car and the clothes they were wearing, and he could only imagine what it would be like to have her stretched out on a bed beneath him, totally naked.
The thought of that inflamed his passion caused a primitive hunger to stir within the depths of his masculinity. Emotions that he couldn't put a name to suffused him, enveloping all of his senses.
He was playing out one of his wildest fantasies with her. Making out in a parked car with the risk of getting caught gave him an adrenaline rush. Shudders of electricity coursed through his body. Under normal circumstances, he didn't take any risks with women. Caution had always been the name of the game. But at that moment, he couldn't think of anything else but enjoying her.
An alarm went off in his head at the thought that he was headed toward a danger zone, and he quickly pulled his mouth away and drew in a deep breath, taking in the scent of her sexual arousal. With moonlight coming in through the windshield, he could see her clearly. Her body had shifted and her back was pressed against the door. Her clothes no longer looked as neat as they had earlier. One part of her jacket nearly hung off her shoulder and a couple of the buttons on her blouse had come undone, revealing what looked like a red lace bra. Red lace? He'd seen red lace before, but why did seeing it on her have the lower part of his body throbbing?
And then there was her skirt, which had risen up her thigh and was barely covering her hips. Her long, beautiful legs were teasing him, making him see her as a delectable morsel to be eaten.
He quickly glanced out the window. He had parked in a dark and secluded area. It was the perfect spot to make out with a woman. He hadn't done anything like this since high school. Hell, he was a grown man, not a horny teenager.
But Samari Di Meglio was making him lose control. His desire for her was making him not think straight. Seeing her like this, with her dark, sultry eyes staring back at him and her moist lips parted, he felt the sexual tension inside him become almost unbearable.
A sexual hunger tore into him---more intense than before. He ignored whatever had triggered the alarm inside his head, and lowered his mouth to hers again. A sensation filled with horrific need ripped through him the moment their mouths connected. She moaned and sank against him as he shifted his body deeper into the arms she had opened to him.
More sensations raced through him when his hand made contact with her thigh. He felt her respond to his touch as she arched her back to get closer. He couldn't do everything he wanted to do to her in the car right now, but what he would do, what he intended to carry out, would be done in such in a way that she would always remember this place, this time tonight, with him.
Sam felt a sense of loss when Blade slowly pulled his mouth away. She drew in a deep breath, but before she could summon any more of a response than that, she felt his hand continue its trek up her thigh. At the same time his lips brushed lightly across the bare skin above the top of her blouse.
What he was doing with his lips and hands was causing heat to course through her veins in a way that had sensations spiking in other areas of her body. She'd heard about people making out in cars, mostly in the backseat, but she had never done it. Although she was intent on making players pay for their behavior, she drew the line on just how far she would go in her quest for revenge. She enjoyed setting them up, teasing them mercilessly, fueling their fire and then dousing them with cold water. Telling them exactly where they could go---and none too nicely.
For some reason she had made Blade an exception. She was granting him liberties she'd never given any other man---player or otherwise. But she was convinced there had to be a good reason for this madness, and before it was all over she would regain her sanity.
She believed the reason he'd become her weakness was because he was making her feel things she'd never felt before. It could also have been because he evoked the wild, risqué fantasies that she had kept hidden for years. They had been locked away, buried, until recently, when she became enraptured by her erotic dreams. Lately, he'd played a starring role in them. It was as if he'd found the key to her innermost sexual fantasies, secrets that she had always wanted to explore. And now she was on the verge of living out her sexual desires.
He lifted his head and met her gaze, and she saw the naked hunger in the depths of the eyes staring back at her. He held fast to her gaze while his fingers inched farther and farther up her thigh, moving toward the juncture of her legs. Within seconds, his fingers had reached their mark and his hand flattened and gently sank into her, as if staking a claim.
She felt the heat of his palm against the crotch of her wet panties, and the contact launched a surge of sexual heat that burned through her. Her breathing intensified while her heart thumped loudly in her chest.
"Remember our conversation earlier tonight about dessert?" he asked in a deep, husky tone. The timbre was so sensual that she felt her pelvis clench.
Yes, she remembered. And their verbal exchange, every single word they had spoken, his innuendo, were still vividly on her mind.
"I remember," she said, barely able to get the words past her lips as heat flooded her belly.
She felt the moment he gripped the hem of her skirt and began inching it up with his free hand, the moment the air surrounding them began cooling her exposed flesh. Now was the time to stop him, to tell him that what he was about to do was totally crazy, insane. She needed to rein him in, take control and remind him they were adults and not hot-and-bothered teenagers with overactive hormones. But her mind and her body dismissed every argument that her brain was trying to make.
Instead, her primal sexual urge overwhelmed any rational thoughts. She couldn't do anything at that moment but remain still. And the idea made the area under the palm of his hand that much wetter. From the look of the dark eyes staring intensely at her, she knew he was aware of it. The smile that touched his lips, corner to corner, confirmed it.
And then she watched as he lowered his head. Not to her lips, nor to her breasts, but to the area between her thighs.
"Blade!"
She screamed his name the moment she felt his palm being replaced by his mouth, and he began flicking the tip of his tongue against the moist spot in the crotch of her panties. It didn't seem to bother him that they were practically drenched. The only thing he appeared to care about was savoring the taste of her.
That thought sent a flood of pleasure through her. He gripped her hips and used his teeth to move aside her barely there panties, then proceeded to insert the hot tip of his tongue inside her.
Her body responded immediately to the invasion. Even the leather behind her back seemed to burn at that moment. Sharp, piercing, hot strokes of pleasure shot through every part of her. When he worked her legs over his shoulders and delved his tongue even deeper inside of her, he literally stole her breath.
How had she lived twenty-eight years and never experience something like this? She forced herself to breathe, and when his lips joined his tongue and skated over sensitive flesh, he lapped her right into an orgasm. Shudders began consuming her and she grabbed hold of his head, to keep him in place.
His tongue and lips continued to stroke, caress and consume her as if it was his due, his every right to send passion blazing through her. And as her body continued to shudder and convulse, he held tight to her hips, refusing to release his grip as he continued to use his mouth to give her pleasure.
She screamed his name once more when everything within her body exploded, sending sharp shards of ecstasy spiraling through her. Instead of releasing her, he spread her legs farther and continued to sip her as if she were the finest of wines. His foreplay sent bone-deep sensations all the way to her womb, making her quiver from the inside out.
Her body felt suspended in midair and her senses were wrung tight as her womanly core became drenched with her juices. At that moment she did something she'd never done before---she purred with intense satisfaction. Searing waves of pleasure continued to overtake her, and she closed her eyes while drowning in pure rapture.
Blade didn't pull back his tongue until he felt the last of Sam's spasms subside. He licked his lips, thinking that he'd never gone down on a woman like that before, with a hunger that seemed unquenchable. Her taste had tempted him. It had teased and taunted him mercilessly. Even now, the flavor of her womanly fluid had seeped into his tongue, saturated his lips and made the thick veins of his erection pulsate like crazy.
Before he eased his head away from her, he lifted his gaze and met her eyes, which seemed dazed, hazy, stunned. Surely she'd had a man make love to her in that way before. The look in her eyes, her flushed face, took his breath away. He reached out and gently stroked his hand through her hair, which had come undone and was tumbling around her shoulders, making her look downright sexy and sated.
He let his fingers glide through the strands, while fighting the throbbing of his aroused body part. The interior of the car had her intimate scent. The more he inhaled it, the more he wanted of it. Not only did he want to taste her again, fill his mouth with her flavor, but he wanted to sink his shaft into her, feel the wetness that he'd tasted.
He lowered his mouth and kissed her, knowing she could taste the essence of herself on his lips and tongue. The thought of her doing so sent molten blood surging through his veins, and drove his senses wild, so much so he thought he would explode. But he couldn't stop kissing her. He couldn't curb the urgency of his tongue as it took hold of hers, stroking, melding, tangling. This was definitely an R-rated kiss if ever there was one.
Finally, he released her mouth and drew in a deep breath as he leaned back against his seat. He wanted to do a lot more than just kiss her, but he knew the confines of the car wouldn't allow it.
"Blade..."
He shifted to meet her gaze. Her eyes were still hazy with a look of sensuality, and her breathy voice seemed throaty and constrained. "Yes, Sam?"
"I have a sensual confession of my own to make," she whispered, in a tone saturated with the aftereffects of her orgasm.
He moved closer to her. "What's your confession?"
"What you did to me down there...no one...ever."
He released a hard, guttural breath as his mind translated what she was saying. He had suspected as much, but her confession confirmed it. She had just admitted that no man had ever done to her what he'd just done. A fierce sense of sexual pride arose in him as he shifted his body to lean closer to her lips, connecting them with his again.
He began devouring her mouth once more, enjoying sexual pleasure everywhere his tongue touched. When she pushed him away, he literally groaned in protest.
"I thought I saw a light, Blade."
He glanced out the window and saw the headlights of what looked like a security patrol car headed their way. He pulled her up on the seat. "Come on. We need to get out of here."
Blade watched as Sam quickly eased up in her seat. He turned on his headlights to give the impression he was about to pull away, and when the patrol car circled the parking lot and left without approaching them, he released a deep breath.
He glanced back over at Sam and saw her straightening her clothes, tugging her skirt down her thighs. Then she ran fingers through her hair and glanced over at him.
Not sure what she was about to say, and really not wanting to risk that it would be something he didn't want to hear, he leaned over and kissed her again. He then pulled back, looked into her eyes and whispered, "We'll talk about it tomorrow."
He appreciated that she merely nodded as he backed out of the parking space. It didn't take long to reach where her car was parked. As soon as he pulled up beside it, she opened the door and jumped out.
"Sam!" he called after her.
Instead of slowing down she tossed over her shoulder the same line he'd just said. "We'll talk tomorrow."
He watched as she quickly got into her car, and when her red sports car sped off across the parking lot, he was right behind her.
Sam's fingers tightened on her steering wheel as she drove through the streets and away from downtown. How did tonight happen? She was supposed to have been the one with the upper hand. But somehow Blade had turned the tables on her, caught her at a weak moment and taken advantage of the fact that she had lowered her guard.
She squeezed her legs together in an attempt to stop the tingling sensation that was still there, actually pulsating out of control. His mouth ought to be outlawed. She drew in a quick breath and then thought, Umm, maybe not.
She shook her head. She wouldn't want his mouth outlawed, definitely not with the lingering sensations she was feeling now. Once she got home and calmed her enflamed nerves by drinking a cup of herbal tea, she would be able to recover her shattered brain cells and recoup her senses. At least now she was aware just what she was up against, and the next time she would be fully prepared.
To be honest, a part of her, though---definitely not the area between her legs---was hoping there wouldn't be a next time. Fool that she was, she had even confessed to him that it had been her first time.
"That was real smart, Samari," she muttered angrily to herself as she hit the button to roll down her car window. The cool night air blowing in her face was what she needed right now.
Sam glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the object of her distraction was following her home again tonight. She couldn't do anything but smile, thinking that at least she would have the upper hand in something. He evidently assumed he had primed her for the next phase of her seduction, and that she was so hot and bothered that she would tell the attendant at the security gate to let him through. It wouldn't surprise her if Blade was already wearing a condom in anticipation.
When she came to a traffic light her thoughts went back to what had happened in his parked car. Talk about something that had definitely been wild and risqué. And to make matters worse, she had been so absorbed in what he'd been doing to her that she hadn't given much thought to where they were parked. Frank, who usually worked from nine at night to nine the next morning, had a habit of driving around the parking lot as part of his security duties. What if he had caught them in a compromising position? Talk about major embarrassment.
She frowned when she saw that Blade was still following behind her as she turned into the driveway toward the security gate. He actually thought she would be gullible enough to tell the guard that it would be okay to let him through. The corners of her lips curved in a wicked smile. She would take great pleasure in bursting his arrogant bubble. She brought her car to a stop. The attendant recognized her and the security arm was lifted.
As she drove through, she glanced back in the rearview mirror. When she saw Blade stopping at the station, she smiled as she kept on going. He would probably claim that he was with her, but the attendant on duty would not let him through under any circumstances without her consent, which she hadn't given. That would serve Blade right, for assuming he had the upper hand after what had happened tonight.
She had just hit the switch inside her car to open her garage door when she noticed the headlights coming toward her cul-de-sac. She blinked upon recognizing the dark sedan. There was no way. No how. But when the car pulled into the driveway next to hers, she knew for certain it was Blade.
Everything before her turned red as she quickly switched off her ignition and got out of her vehicle at the same moment he did. He had the audacity, the sheer gall, to smile at her.
"Out kind of late, aren't you, Sam?" Blade said, leaning against his car as he watched her approach with a look on her face that could only be described as furious.
"What are you doing here?" She all but flung out the words.
He shrugged easily before saying, "This place was empty so I decided to lease it while I'm in town."
She stared at him for a moment before the full impact of his words seemed to sink in. He could tell the moment they did by the look in her eyes. They had sharpened to slivered glass. "Why would you do such a thing?" she all but snapped.
He gave her a faint smile and said, "I like having you within easy reach."
Sam burst through her front door and slammed it shut behind her. She threw her purse on the sofa in a fury. Her Italian temper was in full bloom. She began pacing the floor, calling herself all kinds of fools ten times over. Every cell in her body, even the ones between her legs that had been throbbing earlier, were now vibrating in anger.
How dare Blade assume he could move next door to her because, as he'd put it, he liked having her within easy reach. The nerve of the man! After he'd spouted those words she had gotten so angry that instead of giving him the response on the tip of her tongue, she had literally turned and stomped off.
Tonight he had proved that he was no different than all the rest of the players out there. He would do whatever it took to get what he wanted, because his needs and wants were all that mattered.
She headed for the kitchen to make a cup of tea, although she doubted anything would be able to calm her down right now. She hoped that Blade realized his actions constituted all-out war on her part, and that by the time she was finished with him, he would regret ever having crossed her path.
The sunlight shining through the window roused Blade from sleep. He glanced around the room, thinking his ever efficient secretary had come through with shining colors, as usual. Claire had taken care of every single detail. She had already hired a cleaning service that had come in yesterday afternoon and made sure clean linens were on the bed.
When he had checked out of the hotel, she'd hired a service to transport his belongings from the hotel to the town house. His clothes were hanging up in the closet and his toiletries were in the bathroom. And the refrigerator was stocked with bottles of water and his favorite beer.
When he'd walked through the door last night after his confrontation with Sam in the driveway, he had needed a beer. In fact, he could have actually used something stronger. To say she'd been upset with him was an understatement. He would give her time to cool off, time to realize that being next door to him would benefit the both of them.
After what had happened between them in the parked car, what could possess her to continue playing her hard-to-get game was beyond him. How long would it take for her to concede that he'd gotten her already? At least partly. What they'd shared last night was a sexual act whether she wanted to admit it or not. So the way he saw it, they might as well go ahead and finished what they'd started.
When he heard a car door slam, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked over to the window. He saw Sam putting something in the trunk of her car.
He rubbed his hand down his face and wondered what time it was, figuring it had to be before eight in the morning. The clock on the wall confirmed his suspicions. He then remembered Sam had mentioned last night that she had an early appointment at the office.
She was wearing the kind of business suit that he was beginning to recognize as her personal style. She looked professional, yet her short skirt showed off her long, gorgeous legs in a very sexy way. Today's suit was a lime-green, and like all the others he'd seen her wear, she looked damn good in it. Her hair was down and flowed around her shoulders. A breeze was blowing and he watched as it ruffled her curls, making her hair billow like soft chiffon around her face.
It was a face he had stared into last night, watching the afterglow of her orgasm. The orgasm he had given to her. He took pride in his skill as a lover, making it his business to assure that every woman he slept with experienced sexual pleasure.
He was not a selfish man by any means, and never left a woman's bed until she was contented and purring like a satisfied kitten. But last night he'd wanted to do more than merely make Sam purr. He'd wanted to satisfy a primal urge, the sexual triumph of seeing his woman explode in unadulterated passion.
His woman.
His breathing literally stopped when he realized what had crossed his mind. He was startled at the mere thought he would consider any woman his. Blade flinched. That had certainly been a slip of the mind, a temporary loss of his senses. He enjoyed too many women to settle on just one. It wasn't in his makeup to love just one woman.
He inhaled a deep breath. He had to be rational now. The novelty of having made out in the car was messing with him, filling his head with foolish thoughts and making him think things he had no business thinking. Whatever had possessed him to make out with her in a parked car was beyond him, but he knew he would do it again if the opportunity presented itself.
His gaze focused on Sam. She had gone back inside to get her briefcase, and was putting it in the backseat. When she leaned over, her skirt inched up and he got a glimpse of those same thighs that he'd been between last night. As he stared some more, he saw her lean over so far that he caught sight of her shapely backside, as well as a glimpse of her panties.
He wiped his hand across his forehead, feeling the heat. Going to bed with an erection larger than Texas would probably do that to you. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in such a state.
Blade wasn't sure how long he stood there gazing down at her, and was surprised she hadn't seemed to realize she was being watched. Maybe she had and was deliberately ignoring him.
Had she deliberately flashed him?
She finally got into her car and drove off, and he stood there until she was no longer in sight. It was only then that he moved away from the window to go back to bed, with a hard-on that was practically killing him. He wouldn't be totally satisfied until the day Sam was in this bed with him.
Sam's mouth thinned as she kept on driving. She had been very much aware that Blade had been standing at his bedroom window watching her, but she had refused to turn around and give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence.
But what she had done, and what she would continue to do every chance she got, was to give him an eyeful of what he would not be getting. That was the reason she had opened the back door to place her briefcase on the seat, leaning over more than she'd needed to.
A smile touched her lips. He thought living next door to her would put him in heaven, but she intended to make it a living hell. And when he finally came over to her house, panting like a dog that needed to get laid, she would tell him just what she thought of him, and let him know he was the last man she wanted to sleep with.
Her cell phone rang when she got to the traffic light. She clicked it on without checking the caller ID. "Yes?"
"I thought I'd call to let you know our parents aren't too happy with you right now."
Sam rolled her eyes at her brother's warning. "What did I do now, Angelo?"
"You didn't make any headway with Cash. They like him."
Sam rolled her eyes. "They liked Guy, as well. Big deal."
Angelo chuckled. "Yeah, well, this one has political aspirations."
"So did Guy. And Cash didn't rack up any points with me."
"Tell that to the folks. By the way, what's up with FDR? He's been acting rather strange lately. Taking trips out of town on weekends and being evasive about where he's going."
Sam put on her turn signal as she exited the highway. Remembering her brother's suspicions that FDR was seeing someone and trying to keep it a secret, she figured whoever it was probably lived in another city. "FDR's a big boy and can take care of himself. He probably feels he has a lot on his plate, trying hard to make partner. He won't be a shoo-in like someone I know."
"Hey, I work hard. I'm good at what I do."
"Whatever." She switched to another radio station. She knew Angelo was right. He was a good attorney and a hard worker. And like her cousins, the other Di Meglios working at the firm, they were earning their way up the ladder and not living on easy street. Her father and uncles made sure of it.
"Okay, I'll give you that. You are a hard worker. The only thing you're lax about is making a move on a certain woman," she said smartly.
"What are you talking about, Sam?"
"Mmm, I'll let your figure it out. Goodbye, Angelo."
She clicked off the phone, wondering when her brother would finally acknowledge that he had a thing for Peyton.
Blade cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as he studied the paper that had been faxed to him earlier. "This is going to be a real nice facility when it's completed, Trevor. Slade and I appreciate the business."
Trevor had chosen Madaris Construction to turn a huge empty warehouse he had purchased on the outskirts of Houston into a tactical training facility.
"And no, there shouldn't be a problem with it being operational within eight months. I'm returning to Houston next week and look forward to meeting with you then."
A few moments later Blade ended the call, and smiled as he studied the preliminary drawings he held in his hand. As he'd told Trevor, the facility he envisioned, the one Slade had designed, would be an imposing structure and serve Trevor's purpose. Blade would make sure it was built to specifications, perfect in every way. He had already surveyed the location where Trevor wanted the building erected, and felt the area was ideal. This was one project that Blade looked forward to returning to Houston to oversee, once his work in Oklahoma City with the Mosley project was finished.
Folding the papers, he vividly recalled Madaris Construction's first major project. The opportunity came from Trevor's brother-in-law, Mitch Farrell, on the recommendation of Uncle Jake, who was one of the partners in the venture. The Madaris Building and Office Park had been a dream come true and their success in handling the project had opened doors for the company.
But business wasn't what was on Blade's mind as he tossed the drawings onto the desk and walked over to the window, the one facing the back of the property. From where he stood he could see a recreation park, similar to the one he'd designed for the condominium complex he and Slade had developed in Houston.
His thoughts shifted to Sam. He would be the first to admit that he found the situation with Sam out of character for him. But to be honest, he hadn't really been in character since the day he'd laid eyes on her. He refused to think it had to do with anything more than his desire to have her in his bed.
The thought of making love to her---especially getting a taste of what she had to offer---was constantly on his mind. Luckily, he'd kept busy making the necessary phone calls to assure the Mosley project remained on schedule, but more than once throughout the day his thoughts had drifted and he had replayed what had happened in the parked car the night before.
He shook his head, thinking heaven help him if his great-grandmother discovered the true reason he was hanging around Oklahoma City. She had her own ideas about how her grands' and great-grands' lives should pan out. She thought there was a woman out there for him, one who would get him to settle down, a woman who would make him want a meaningful relationship.
He had tried telling her that such a woman didn't exist, and it wasn't meant for every man and woman to marry. But that didn't keep her from dropping hints whenever she could, making him aware of her desire to see her grands and great-grands tie the knot. He wasn't stupid. He knew she'd been working behind the scenes on him for years. With Slade and Luke in wedded bliss, you would think she would be happy.
Blade was hoping she saw him as a lost cause and would move on to Reese, who was the next oldest great-grand. Reese was considered a loner, so Blade wasn't sure how he felt about getting married. Reese was especially close to La'Kenna James. They had been best friends since college and the two claimed that's all they were. And since Kenna and Reese often dated others, the family had no reason to believe otherwise. But Blade had seen them together at Luke and Mac's wedding. He had noticed the way Reese looked at Kenna, and wondered if something was about to change with his cousin's status.
He glanced at his watch. He was through for the day. Luke had called earlier and invited him to dinner, since Reese was in town. There was no doubt in Blade's mind that the best way to handle Sam was to give her the time and space she needed to think about last night. Sensual memories were a good thing. But if she thought she'd be able to ignore him, then she had another think coming.
"Is there a reason why you're giving those computer keys a beat down?"
Sam glanced up and couldn't help but smile. Peyton stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, staring at her with a frown on her face. Sam knew that standing in front of her was a tough cookie. Peyton had grown up on Chicago's South Side and had returned there to work as an attorney after law school. Of the three, Peyton was the one they considered the quiet storm, but she would be the first to put up a good argument if one was needed.
Peyton was also someone who would listen, study and weigh every aspect of a case, focusing on the facts, without being emotional. She believed in fighting for the little guy. Sam would be the first to admit that their relationship in law school had gotten off to a rocky start because they had come from such different backgrounds. Peyton had seen her as the spoiled little rich kid, and she had seen Peyton as someone who still had a chip on her shoulder because of what she hadn't had while growing up, as if it were Sam's fault. Mac had fit nicely in between, and after getting to really know each other, they had forged a friendship that Sam knew would always be there, no matter what.
"Actually---" Sam leaned back in her chair "---beating on these computer keys is better than finding Blade Madaris and beating up on him."
Evidently Peyton thought her statement amusing, if the smile that replaced her frown was anything to go by. She walked into the room and dropped into the chair across from Sam's desk. "Is he causing problems?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "Like the flowers aren't enough."
Peyton lifted her eyebrow in surprise. "He's the one who's been sending you those flowers?"
Sam nodded. "Yes, although he hasn't admitted it. I haven't brought it up and neither has he. But it's a typical player move to try and break down a woman's defenses. The flowers started coming not long after Mac's birthday party, where Blade tried hitting on me several times. And a few nights ago when Mac and I met him and Luke after work at Carlton's, he conveniently dropped the hint that his aunt had opened a florist shop."
Peyton grinned. "So, he's trying to work you, is he?"
"So he thinks," Sam said, shaking her head.
"I take it that dinner with him last night didn't go well?" Peyton asked.
Sam wondered if Peyton detected the blush that she was trying to hide. Dinner had been great. It was the dessert after dinner she'd been trying to forget.
"Dinner was fine," she said truthfully. "It was when I got home that still has me pissed."
"Pissed about what?"
"He's leased the vacant town house next door."
Peyton's eyes widened as she sat up straight in her chair. "You're kidding."
"Wish I was. He even told me the reason when I asked him why he'd done it. He said to keep me within reach."
Peyton shook her head. "I don't know whether you should be flattered or scared."
Sam stared at her. "Scared?"
Her friend nodded. "If it was anyone else, I would say it sounds like he's stalking you. But I've met Luke's family and they all seem sane."
Sam laughed. "However, you and I both know that in every family there's a loony tune. But seriously, I think of Blade's antics as more of him making a nuisance of himself than a threat."
"Then maybe you should be flattered. I've heard stories about him. I have cousins living in Houston and his reputation there is legendary. Blade Madaris is used to having anything and anyone he wants. The women love him. Good eye candy is hard to find these days and you have to admit he's rather pleasing to the eyes."
"Yes, he is pleasing to the eyes," Sam couldn't help but admit.
"If he did lease that house just to keep you within reach, it's probably a first for him to give any woman that much attention. Hmm, makes me wonder."
"About what?"
"How you're going to deal with him. Blade appears to be a man pretty sure of himself, and he goes after what he wants. Moving next door proves that he wants you."
"He won't have me." She knew that had to be a sore spot with him. Men who assumed they could have any woman they wanted, and play them however they felt like playing them, without concern for their feelings and emotions, were used to having things their way.
"So, what are you going to do about him living next door?"
Peyton's question interrupted Sam's thoughts, and she couldn't help but smile at the plan she'd decided on earlier. "I intend to drive him crazy. Take every opportunity to remind him of what he doesn't have and what he won't be getting. Handle him like I handle all players. I think he needs to be taught a lesson."
Peyton frowned. "Haven't you gotten enough of going after players to teach them a lesson, Sam? One of these days it's going to backfire on you again. Do I need to remind you about Belton LaSalle?"
Just hearing the man's name sent shivers down Sam's spine. LaSalle had been a player of the worse kind. He had pursued her for weeks after meeting her in a bar where she, Peyton and Mac had been enjoying after-hours drinks. He had walked in that night with the word player all but plastered on his forehead.
Sam had decided that Belton should be taught a lesson. She didn't want to think about what might have happened that night if Mac and Peyton hadn't been at the same restaurant and seen LaSalle slip something into her drink when her back was turned. They had immediately called the police, who had arrested Belton there on the spot. Belton had been sentenced five years for possession of GHB, the date-rape drug.
Not wanting to talk or think about Belton LaSalle any longer, Sam changed the subject and discussed the woman she had met with earlier that day: one who wanted to sue the local newspaper for failing to print her husband's obituary. She was certain more people would have shown up for the service had they known.
"Where's Mac?" Sam asked a few moments later, when Peyton stood to leave for her three-o'clock appointment.
"She left early today. Her brother-in-law Reese is in town and she wanted to prepare dinner."
Sam nodded, remembering Mac had mentioned that Reese would be arriving. She wondered if Blade would be having dinner with Mac and Luke. Sam certainly hoped so. The last thing she wanted was for him to make his way over to her place and knock on her door. It would be just like him to find some excuse to aggravate her.
Besides, she needed time to put her plans for him into motion. She wanted him to think she had come around and was open to having an affair. And when he thought he had her just where he wanted her, she would let him know that he was the one who had been used.
There was nothing like seeing the look on a player's face when he was ready to sizzle, only to have her defuse the flame. She liked being a tease and proving to them that some women were immune to their doggish charms.
"Peyton, what do you have planned for the weekend?" she asked. Tomorrow was Friday and the last thing she needed was to run into Blade over the weekend. And with him living next door there was a strong possibility that would happen. Besides, she needed distance to think of a good plan for him.
"Nothing. Why?"
"How would you like to go with me for the weekend to that new resort in Sparks? I heard it has a real nice spa, and it will be my treat."
Peyton studied her a second and then asked. "Any reason you want to get out of Dodge?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "For Pete's sake, stop asking questions. Do you want to go or not?"
Peyton smiled. "Yes, I'll go, but it doesn't have to be your treat, Di Meglio."
Sam waved one hand in the air. "Whatever. I'll bring my bags in tomorrow and we can leave right after work. I'll call to make the reservation."
After Peyton left her office, Sam leaned back in her chair, feeling more relaxed. She had found something to do for the weekend and didn't have to worry about crossing paths with Blade.
Late Sunday night the sound of a woman humming woke Blade up. At first he thought he'd been dreaming, but now he was wide-awake and could still hear the sound. He flipped on his back, perked up his ears and wondered where the melody was coming from.
Easing out of bed and grabbing his robe, he glanced around his room. He didn't believe in ghosts, so the thought of this place being haunted didn't enter his mind. He began walking toward where the sound was coming from.
He opened the French doors leading to the balcony and stepped out in his bare feet on the cool ceramic tile. He glanced to his right and had a good view of Sam's balcony. Because of the way the townhomes were designed, the only thing that separated the two was a brick planter, which afforded only a semblance of privacy between the two homes. But all he had to do was push a few plants aside to see into the screened-in area off her bedroom.
She had installed a hot tub and she was outside in it. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed and she looked relaxed. She was humming the song that had awakened him.
Although he hadn't checked the time, he figured it to be close to midnight, since it had been after ten o'clock when he'd left Luke and Mac's place. When he'd arrived home he'd assumed Sam had returned from her weekend getaway and had turned in for the night, since all the lights were out at her place.
During dinner on Friday night Mac had mentioned that Sam and Peyton had gone away for the weekend to a resort in a town called Sparks. He figured that had been Sam's way of putting distance between them.
Now she was back and he was wide-awake and feeling like a Peeping Tom. He'd never had a reason to stand in the shadows to watch a woman in a hot tub before, but he was doing so now, as all kinds of sensations formed deep in his belly.
Blade wasn't sure how long he stood there, but it was long enough to focus on the way her head lay against the back of the tub, and how her beautiful face seemed to glow in the moonlight. Her hair was tied up on top of her head, exposing the long, graceful curve of her neck and throat.
Bubbles were swirling all around her and he didn't have to strain his eyes to know she was naked in the hot tub. That much was evident by the way the bubbly water splashed on her chest, and on occasion a plump, bare breast would be exposed when she shifted positions. He felt the lower part of his body get hard and was about to open his mouth to let her know he was there, and to ask if he could perhaps join her, when she spoke.
"Enjoying the peep show, Blade?"
She hadn't even opened her eyes, which immediately let him know she'd been expecting him and had known all along he was there. She had intentionally been humming to lure him out of his bed. Okay, so she'd gotten him, and his mind was suddenly filled with a number of ways he would like to get her. Several positions came to mind, but the one he liked best was doggie style.
A shudder rippled through him, all the way to his groin, when he visualized it in his mind. He clenched his jaw, trying to suppress the heat consuming his body. He finally decided to answer truthfully. "Yes, I'm enjoying it, immensely. But I would enjoy it even better if I could see a lot more of you."
"That can be arranged."
His eyes strained as he watched her. What he hadn't expected was her easing out of the water to stand up. And just as he'd assumed, she was naked and her body was simply beautiful. She was so flawless that he could hear his heart weep and could feel his erection beating its head against his zipper in agony.
She possessed what had to be the most perfect pair of breasts---firm, luscious, shapely. Her nipples seemed to be calling out for his mouth. He forced his gaze to move lower, to her flat stomach and the water that was glistening off her gold belly ring. And then he saw the small tattoo of an eagle on the side of her hip.
Blade pulled in a deep breath as his gaze moved to the juncture of her thighs. Sweet mercy. He muttered deep in his throat as he fixed his eyes on her womanly charm, perfectly shaped with a Brazilian wax. He licked his lips, remembering the kiss he had placed there, and how his tongue had felt sliding around the smooth surface before going deep inside of her.
He could have sworn she had tasted of cinnamon and spice that night, and even now the flavor of her still clung to his tongue and wouldn't go away. Her feminine heat was emitting a scent that was being absorbed into his nostrils, his skin and every damn inch of him.
He released his breath when she got out of the tub, showing a nice curvy and delectable backside. Her long, beautiful legs glistened with water and were gorgeous and as shapely as a pair of legs could be. As soon as her feet, which were as beautiful as the rest of her, touched the tile floor, he noticed a toe ring.
She crossed the floor to where she'd placed a towel across a chair, and worked every curve of her body as she strutted her stuff. A lump formed in his throat as she swayed her hips, lifted her breasts and all but glided sensuously to her destination. A model on a runway could not have done any better. He nearly moaned in agony when she reached for the towel, flapped it open and then draped it around her body, covering up all those parts he'd enjoyed seeing.
"Show's over, Blade."
His gaze moved to her face. "Why did you even bother?"
She threw her head back and laughed. "So you'll have a chance to see what you'll never get."
She was teasing him, toying with his jewels, and he didn't like it one damn bit. "Would you like to bet on that? Two can play your game, Sam."
He could tell from her expression that she didn't like the sound of that.
"What do you have in mind? Torment me. Tease me. Tantalize me with no promise of release?" he asked.
"All of the above."
Now it was his time to chuckle. "Don't mess with a man who's at the top of his game, especially if that man is so hard up for you that he can't think straight." He was giving her fair warning. It was the right thing to do.
He watched her features and knew she was trying to make a decision about something. "Maybe you're right. All we're doing is causing each other agony, which is a waste of time and energy."
His erection throbbed in anticipation. Now she was making sense.
"But I'm not sure you can handle me, Blade. I'm not a woman who can be easily pleased."
It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that pleasing her hadn't been too difficult the other night. "There's not a woman walking this earth that I can't please."
"So you say."
"So I know. Give me one night with you to prove it."
He saw indecision etched on her face. "I'll think about it."
He couldn't help but smile. "Yes, you do that. But in the meantime, have breakfast with me in the morning."
She shook her head. "I have an early appointment at the office."
"What about lunch?"
"I plan to work through lunch."
He refused to give up. "Dinner?"
He waited to see if she would come up with another excuse, and then she surprised him by saying, "Dinner will be fine, but it has to be here. It was your treat the last time. It's only fair that it will be mine this time."
He nodded, wondering what her "treat" consisted of. "What time?"
"Will six o'clock work?"
"Yes."
"Fine. I'll see you here at six."
She was about to open the French doors to her bedroom when he stopped her. "Wait! Do you need me to bring anything?"
She looked at him for a moment, then tossed her head to send the hair that had been atop her head falling to her shoulders. She stood there, looking not only like a seductive creature, but one who was wild and too sexy for words.
"Yes, you can bring something."
The look in her eyes was scorching every part of him. "What?"
"Plenty of condoms."
He couldn't think. His mouth dropped, and before he could pick it up, she slid inside the house and closed the door behind her. And while he stood there in a daze, with a hard-on that was like nobody's business, the lights on her balcony went off and cast him in total darkness.
Sam couldn't help the smile on her face as she slid into bed an hour later. By her parting words, Blade could only assume that there would be some action after dinner at her place. But he was so wrong. She planned to tempt him and tease him, but she had no intentions of delivering. In the end she would frustrate him, annoy the hell out of him and make him mad. Then she would ask him to leave and take his condoms with him.
Oh, well.
Tomorrow night she would pretend she had softened and was just as hot as he was, but not quite ready to go all the way. She would lie about some hang-ups she had and see what kind of cure he would concoct for them. Most players thought they were love doctors who had their own brand of medication for whatever ailment a woman had. She wondered if Blade knew how to mend broken hearts. The ones he'd probably caused many women.
She had known the exact moment he had stepped out onto the balcony. She had been aware of when he had begun watching her through the planter. Although she hadn't wanted it to, her body had responded to him in a way it had never responded to another man. She would have to be on her toes tomorrow, making sure she was the one in charge at all times. He'd already discovered her weakness, and she had to make sure he didn't have any more tricks up his sleeve. If she could keep his head from between her legs, she would be fine. She simply refused to become another woman he could easily seduce.
She flipped over on her back in bed and stared up at the ceiling. Now was not a good time to question her judgment in handling Blade. He was a man who liked sex, and to dangle it in front of him with no intention of giving in just might push him over the edge. What would he do if that were to happen? Other than wanting to wring her neck, she couldn't think of a single thing. He wasn't a violent man who would be driven to such an act. He would walk away, pissed as hell, and would not want to have anything to do with her again. Players did have their pride and didn't like any conquest to get the best of them. They didn't like to fail.
But he would fail. She would be Blade's ultimate downfall.
Blade woke up the next morning in the best of moods, with Sam's words ringing in his ears. When he'd asked her what he could bring, she had simply said, "Plenty of condoms."
He wondered what plenty meant. A dozen? Hell, he'd bring two dozen just in case, although he couldn't imagine going through that many in a single night. He hadn't done anything like that before, but there was a first time for everything. His thoughts shifted to the other night. Now that had been her first time, by her own admission.
Of course, she'd alluded to the possibility that there wouldn't be any action because he just might not be able to please her. He looked forward to proving her wrong and enjoying every inch of her luscious body in the process.
He was heading to the bathroom to take a shower when his phone rang. He checked the caller ID and saw that it was his cousin Felicia. Smiling, he clicked on the line. "What's up with you on this cheerful Monday, Fe?"
"Nothing much. I'm helping Diamond with Rasheed's party and doing invitations. Usually you don't bring anyone, but I thought I'd play it safe and check to make sure nothing has changed."
She was right. He never brought anyone to a Madaris family function. He wouldn't dare. First, there wasn't a woman alive he could bring who wouldn't think she was the anointed one. And if he was to show up with a woman, his family would assume he was making a statement. He liked scoping out the eligible single women invited to family parties. Over the years, he'd scored quite a number of hits. He then thought of Sam and conceded he'd also made one or two misses.
"Thanks for asking, but I'm doing the solo thing as usual," he said, ignoring Sam's face, which kept popping up in his mind. There was no way he would consider taking her to a family function, regardless of how bad he wanted her in his bed.
"All right, but if you change your mind let me know."
He chuckled. "Trust me. I won't be changing my mind."
"Well, I'll let you go," Felicia said. "When do you plan to return to Houston?"
"Probably next week." He thought about his hot dinner date later this evening and then added, "But it depends on how much I get accomplished while I'm here."
After hanging up the phone, he glanced at his watch. He didn't have a whole lot to do today. There was a conference call at eleven and a meeting with J. W. Mosley at three. Then he would eagerly return home for the dinner date he had with Sam. There was no way he wouldn't be on time, and there was no way he wouldn't have plenty of condoms, which meant he needed to make a pit stop at the drugstore. He'd brought only so many with him, since he hadn't expected to be this lucky.
And while he was out and about he might as well pick up a little gift for Sam to set the mood. He'd noticed a florist shop not far from Windsor Park. Sam looked to be the kind of woman who would appreciate getting a bunch of flowers.
He smiled as he headed to the bathroom to take that shower. Yes, a beautiful floral arrangement should do the trick. Normally he didn't do the flowers thing, but he would try anything to get in her good favor.
Hopefully the end result would be him in her bed.
"I heard Blade moved into the place next door to you. What's up with that?" Mac asked as she slid into the chair across from Sam's desk.
Sam turned away from her computer and gave her a faint smile. "You and I both know what's up with that. He's up---probably most of the time---and figured being close is just another way to get me into his bed."
Mac nodded, knowing what she said was probably right. "I've never known Blade to work this hard for a woman. You might have become an obsession with him."
Sam shrugged. "As long as it's a healthy one I don't have any problem, because it's coming to an end soon."
Mac leaned forward in her chair. "He's not going to like it if he discovers you've set him up, teased him with no intention of delivering."
"He'll get over it."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then it's his concern and not mine."
Before Mac could respond to that, there was a knock on the door. "Come in," Sam said.
Patsy Ackerman, the young woman who worked for them part-time as a paralegal, stepped in. "Here are those reports you wanted to look over for the Collins case."
Sam smiled at her as she accepted the folders. "Thanks. Now I have to make time to read them before our court date in a few weeks."
Patsy nodded and then glanced at the flowers on Sam's desk. "You got more flowers. They're pretty."
Sam studied the arrangement and couldn't help but agree. "Yes, they are pretty, aren't they?"
"And you still don't know who's sending them?"
Sam lifted a brow, wondering how Patsy knew the flowers were being sent by an unknown admirer. "No, it's still a secret," she replied honestly, seeing no reason not to.
Moments after Patsy had left, Mac silently stared at Sam. "What?" Sam asked, seeing the concerned look on her friend's face.
"I hope you know what you're doing. Blade's a player, true enough, but he's also a Madaris. They don't like being crossed."
Sam frowned. "Then maybe he needs to learn how to keep a certain part of his anatomy in his pants."
"Maybe so, but be forewarned. If you're trying to teach him a lesson, your self-control just might be tested, as well."
She didn't doubt that. It was tested each and every time she breathed the same air as Blade. Each and every time she remembered what he'd done to her that night in the parked car. She couldn't look at his mouth and lips without remembering, without feeling a tingling sensation at the juncture of her thighs, and without her panties getting wet.
"I can handle Blade, Mac."
Mac drew in a deep breath and said, "A Madaris man can be lethal when he has one thing on his mind, so for your sake I hope that you can handle him."
The knock sounded on Sam's door at exactly six o'clock, even though she hadn't expected Blade to be late. But she hadn't expected him to be standing there with a huge bouquet of flowers---more beautiful than all the others he'd sent her---and wearing a Stetson that shadowed his eyes and did everything to emphasize those oh-so-sexy lips of his. She thought he looked good in a pair of jeans and white shirt and his signature blazer. He smelled good, too, with whatever cologne he was wearing.
She couldn't help but smile when he stepped inside her house, thinking that all those other floral arrangements, although beautiful, hadn't done anything for her, but for some reason these did. Maybe the reason was because there was no secrecy shrouded in these flowers. With these, he was finally admitting that she was definitely the object of his seduction.
"These are for you," he said, tossing his Stetson on her coffee table with a perfect aim before handing her the flowers.
"They're beautiful, Blade. But then they always are. Thank you."
He gave her a funny look and shrugged his masculine shoulders. "You're welcome."
She turned to put the flowers in a vase and set them on the table. She felt his gaze roam over her body, taking in her short denim skirt and the white halter top stretched tightly across her breasts, which she wore without a bra. She had seen the outfit on a mannequin in the store today and had known it would be perfect for tonight. It was just the thing to get a man's erection throbbing. It was designed to get him hot and definitely bothered.
Sam turned back around and her gaze automatically went to his zipper, although she couldn't have missed the massive bulge even if she had wanted to. He was huge and appeared as hard as a rock. He was as aroused as any man could be, and he wasn't trying to hide it. She doubted he could have hidden the colossal protrusion even if he'd wanted to do so. She hadn't counted on blood pulsating rapidly through her veins upon seeing him in that state and realizing the degree of his desire for her.
And just like she was checking out every single aspect of him, he was checking her out, as well. His gaze moved all over her, from head to toe, but paused for more than a second on her breasts. And then, as if his eyes sent some kind of erotic message, the nipples of her breasts started feeling sensitive, almost achy against the material of her top. She also felt the tips swell under his unwavering gaze.
If she'd been any other woman, into casual sex just for the hell of it---and if he'd been any other man, and not a player whose philosophy was to always bed and never wed women---she would have seriously considered being his sexual playmate for a while. She'd never thought about doing such a thing before, but he would have been a temptation she might have given in to.
"I hope you're hungry," she heard herself saying, as his gaze continued to scan her up and down.
His eyes returned to her face and he smiled. She forced herself not to melt right there on the spot at how sexy his smile looked, while he stood there with his hands shoved into his pockets, staring at her as if he wanted to eat her alive. He'd nearly done so before and the memory sent sensuous shivers up her spine.
"Yes, I'm hungry," he said, breaking into her thoughts. "So, what's for dinner?"
Now that he'd asked...Sam sauntered across the room to Blade, deliberately swaying her hips in the process. She saw red-hot desire in the depths of his dark eyes. And his erection seemed to swell even more.
She reached up and placed her palms on his shirt and brought her body flush against his. She felt his hand go immediately to her backside and was well aware of him inching up the back of her skirt.
She looked up into his eyes, smiled and said in what she hoped was a sexy voice, "Me. So let's start cooking."
She then pulled his mouth down to hers.
If this was an appetizer, he didn't want to imagine what the main course was, Blade thought as he tightened his hold around Sam's waist. He hadn't expected this, for her to give herself to him on a silver platter, to let him know he would be feasting on her tonight.
She wasn't just kissing him, she was whipping up something so delicious that he couldn't do anything but groan in delight. Her tongue was working magic on every part of his mouth, not leaving any place untouched as she explored from crevice to crevice.
Her tongue was tangling around his and was feeding at his mouth with an intensity and hunger that let him know they had mutually greedy appetites tonight. Unable to help himself, he took the kiss deeper, and his hand roamed over her backside, pressing her closer to his hard form. He wanted her to feel him, wanted her to know just how hot he was for her.
To his surprise, he was the one who finally pulled his mouth away, not because he couldn't handle any more of her kisses, but because he was ready to move from the appetizer right on to the main course. She stared at him, and he studied her kiss-swollen lips and couldn't help wondering what she was thinking.
Sam couldn't believe that the kiss she and Blade had just shared had nearly blown her away. She was supposed to have been in control, but the moment his tongue began tangling with hers, and when he pressed her center close to his and the throbbing of his erection increased, sending vibrations of pleasure shooting to all parts of her body, she had gotten lost in a way she'd never gotten lost in a kiss before.
He stepped back and her eyes became glued to him when he removed his jacket and tossed it aside. Next came his shirt, and she gathered that he intended to strip right in her living room and wasn't wasting any time. She wouldn't stop him yet. She would take this as far as she could. Besides, she wanted to see him naked. After tonight it would probably be her only chance to see him in the raw.
She tossed her hair back along with the notion that such a thing bothered her. Blade Madaris was due his due, and she was going to be the woman who would make sure he got it.
But she couldn't help the knot that formed in her throat when his hands went to the zipper of his jeans. She'd said she was his dinner, and he wasn't wasting any time digging in. Maybe she should stop him, after all, before things got too out of hand, especially while she still had some control of her senses. Once he undressed, she wasn't sure just where things would go.
But she didn't stop him. She was afraid she might miss seeing something if she did. That sounded so awful, but it was the honest to goodness truth. So she stood there and watched as he leaned over to remove his boots and socks and then kicked them aside. He then slid his belt out of the pant loops before easing his jeans, along with his black silk boxers, down his legs. By removing those two pieces of clothing she saw just what she'd been waiting to see, in all its entire glorious and swollen splendor.
His shaft was huge. It was more than enough to fill her hands. She doubted it would even fit into her mouth, and she was having serious misgivings about her ability to get it inside of her---not that such a thing was going to happen.
But still, there was nothing wrong with getting an appreciative eyeful. And she had to admit it was definitely an impressive sight, painstakingly erect amid a groin area covered in dark curly hair. Whoever said that when you've seen one you've seen them all evidently hadn't seen this one.
She shifted her gaze to study the rest of him, fully unclothed, beautifully naked with sculpted arms and shoulders, and gorgeous abs. He had muscles all over, and his body was both defined and refined from head to toe. He was truly a work of art.
"Come here, Samari."
She couldn't explain it, but things happened to her whenever he said her full name. The sound of it coming from those incredible sexy lips not only seemed to caress her skin, it also made goose bumps appear all over, and sent prickling sensations throughout her body.
A voice inside her head cautioned her---warned her that this was where she should call everything off. Urged her to reveal to him that it had been all fun and games, and that she wasn't interested in taking things any further. But the truth was she was interested, if for no other reason than to test her resolve. Besides, she might as well get something out of this before sending him on his way.
She felt herself moving, drawn to him in a way she'd never been drawn to a man before, yet at the same time determined that this night would end no differently than with any other player she'd dealt with.
Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she kept walking and then came to a stop directly in front of him. She watched as his gaze lowered from her eyes to the top of her blouse, seeming to linger on her swollen nipples. If there was any doubt in his mind of her reaction to him, her breasts were telling it all, sending the message he needed to hear.
He then returned his gaze to her face. "Do you have any idea just how long I've wanted to get inside of you?" he asked in a voice that set her juices flowing. "When I saw you at the rehearsal dinner I wanted to suggest then that we forget everything and go somewhere and make love."
She noticed he'd said "make love" and not "have sex." She didn't think that players knew the meaning of making love, and that the only thing they thought about was having sex with women. She'd seen the look of interest in his eyes that night and figured he'd planned to make her the next notch on his bedpost---his flavor of the hour. And the next day, at the wedding, she figured he would hit on some other woman. That's how players operated.
"Take off your top so I can see your breasts, Sam."
She swallowed. She had a feeling that wasn't all he wanted to do with them, and before she could talk herself out of doing so, she lifted her halter top over her head and tossed it aside. His gaze zeroed in on her breasts and she could feel them swell even more before his eyes.
Suddenly, as if he had every right to do so, he reached out and cupped her breasts in his hands as he leaned forward. Before she could draw her next breath he used his tongue to lick a wet circle around the hardened tip of one, and then drew a nipple into his mouth and began sucking. Every pull on the swollen bud sent sensations rippling throughout her body.
Searing heat seemed to thrum between her legs and she released a deep moan and squeezed her eyes shut. She'd never gone this far in her game of revenge, never had been tempted to do so. But Blade was doing more than just tempting her, he was reminding her in every possible way that she was a woman, a woman with needs. A tight feeling erupted in her chest at the thought that for the first time in her life she wanted a man.
His mouth finally released her breasts and she felt the sense of loss, but he eased downward to nibble on her belly and she opened her eyes to find he had dropped to his knees in front of her. He was definitely getting serious, and she immediately knew where all this was leading. She also remembered her one weakness when it came to him.
"Blade, I---"
Whatever words she'd been about to say ended in a moan when his fingers found their way inside her panties and touched her achy flesh. She felt weak in the knees and all but slumped across him. He tugged down her skirt and she knew she shouldn't let him go any further. And when he proceeded to remove her panties and toss them aside, she couldn't muster the strength or the will to stop him.
But she knew whatever she did with him, she would have to do with caution. Blade's lovemaking had a way of getting her so wrapped up in pleasure that she would forget everything except how he made her feel. And the one thing she could not forget was that he could not go all the way with her. At some point she had to end things and ask him to leave.
But not now, she thought when she felt the tip of his nose rubbing against her feminine charms. He was muttering things she couldn't entirely understand, but she could make out the words sweet, hot, delicious.
And before she could strain her ears to make out anything else, she literally gasped when he suddenly used his arms to widen her legs, and at the exact same moment jabbed his tongue inside of her.
"Blade!"
He didn't respond. Not that she'd expected him to. Neither did he stop what he was doing, nor had she truly expected that, either. She grabbed ahold of his shoulders when his mouth became relentless in what he was doing to her---more relentless and hungrier than the night in the parked car. It was as if he was intent on consuming her alive.
Passion and lust made her womanly flesh throb even more and made sensations sweep through her body. She threw her head back while he held tightly to her thighs and his tongue penetrated even deeper.
Her moans became cries, her groans became gasps and her heart began racing as if it would never, ever slow down. And just when she thought he couldn't possibly torture her any more, his tongue delved even deeper and made moves, some incredible thrusting motions that nearly had her screaming.
Suddenly an orgasm hit and it hit her hard, slamming into her with the strength of a tractor trailer. Her hands left his shoulders and grabbed the sides of his head, not to pull him away but to hold him in place. She could tell that he was a man intent on finishing what he'd started, and didn't plan on going anywhere until the last spasm left her body.
It was then that she pushed him backward, sending him tumbling to the floor, and she quickly proceeded to crouch down on top of him. Before he could say a single word, she became the aggressor and captured his mouth in hers, tasting herself on his lips and tongue.
Her flavor mingling with his did something to her. It made something snap inside of her as she continued to take control of his mouth. She was very much aware of his erection poking her belly.
She released his mouth and leaned downward, capturing his erection in her hand, and proceeded to feather it with kisses before taking her tongue and licking it as she would a lollypop.
"Damn, woman, what are you doing to me?" He choked out the words while his body exploded and he groaned out her name. When his shudders subsided, he grabbed hold of her hair and gave it a fierce tug.
"Ouch!" She released him, and the moment she did so, he caught her off guard and shifted positions so that she was the one on her back and he was towering over her.
"I got to get inside you, Samari. Now!"
He had spread her legs with practiced ease, and then suddenly, before she could react, she felt the hard thickness of his manhood enter her, stretching her wide in the process, and she flinched in pain. It was then that she realized just how far out of hand things had gotten. He was halfway inside of her. "Stop!"
That single word startled Blade and he froze. He didn't go any farther, but neither did he pull out. He stared down at her with lust-laden eyes, as if trying to figure out why she'd told him to stop. He blinked, and then as if it dawned on him, he pulled out of her and reached for his jacket, which he'd toss on the floor nearby.
Before she could say anything, he told her, "Sorry about that. I can't believe I forgot to put on a condom."
She watched as he shook his jacket, and a dozen or more foil-wrapped condom packets went flying everywhere, all over her floor. She was amazed at the number and couldn't help wondering just how many he'd planned to use on her. As if the question going through her mind showed in her expression, he laughed. "When it comes to you I've discovered I have a huge appetite."
She could only stare, and tried to force out of her mind just how good he'd felt inside of her for that brief period of time. Her womb was literally weeping at the thought that he wouldn't be back. When he had invaded her, her muscles had clamped down hard on him like a vise.
She shut her eyes at the memory, but quickly opened them when she felt his hands grab hold of her thighs again. Already he had put on a condom and was ready. And so was her body, although she didn't want it to be. More than anything she wanted him back inside of her, too, but she knew that couldn't happen. She pulled herself up into a sitting position. "Blade, wait. We need to talk."
He looked at her, surprised. "Talk?"
"Yes."
Confusion replaced the surprised look in his eyes. "Now?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"You're kidding, right?"
She pulled in a deep breath that was filled with the aroma of sex. She could certainly understand why he thought she was kidding. They were on the floor, naked, with condoms spread all around. And he had a huge erection, poised and ready for action, with his hands planted on her thighs with the intent of spreading her legs. He'd been there before, so he knew she was wet and ready---just waiting for his return.
She met his gaze and shook her head. "No, I'm not kidding."
She watched him swallow and then saw how he released a deep breath. "Is it because I forgot the condom? Look, I'm really sorry about that. That's not the way I usually operate, and nothing like that has ever happened to me before. When it comes to making out with a woman I'm usually in better control. I can't explain what the hell happened."
She could, and easily. Like her, he had gotten caught up in the moment, wrapped up in the most intense kind of pleasure. Their bodies had reacted and had left their minds behind.
"It has nothing to do with the condom," she said, pulling away from him, and grateful when he let go of her thighs. What she was about to say wouldn't be pretty. She intended to make it sound worse than it was. He would get pissed. She broke eye contact with him to reach for her skirt, blouse and panties.
"Then if it's not about the condoms, what is it? Why aren't we finishing what we've started?"
She felt her heart thud against her chest at the sound of the disappointment in his voice. She stood and slid into her skirt and pulled the halter top over her head. She tossed her panties back down, since they were wet.
She then met his gaze again. Cleared her throat and said, "I invited you over here, but I didn't intend for us to have sex, Blade."
He sat back on his haunches. The dark brown eyes staring back at her narrowed. "Of course you did. Did you not tell me when I arrived that you would be my dinner?"
She tossed her hair over her shoulders and deliberately gave him a haughty look. "Yes, I told you that. But when I did so, I had no intention of going through with any such plan."
"Then why did you lead me to believe that you would?"
She lifted her chin. "To teach you a lesson. You're a player. A man who thinks he can have any woman he wants, and I wanted to prove there're some women who find you resistible. I am one of them. Sorry you couldn't break through my defenses."
She saw the flash of anger that appeared in his eyes when her words sank in. He slowly got to his feet and she tried not to concentrate on the fact that her words hadn't deflated his erection any.
"Are you standing here telling me that you're nothing but a tease? That you deliberately invited me over here to set me up? That you dressed that way to make me want you, and did everything you did to me knowing that you wouldn't deliver?" he asked, with confusion and fury in his voice.
She pushed aside any feelings of guilt that plagued her. "Yes, that's what I'm saying."
Her response sounded flippant, totally lacking in remorse, and her expression gave the appearance of a woman who didn't have a shameful bone in her body.
He covered his face, as if he was awakening from a bad dream---a very bad dream. "But why, Sam?"
She crossed her arms over her chest. Again she fought back any feelings of guilt. There was something about the look in his eyes that was totally unexpected. That look was something she would have to think about later, but definitely not now.
"The reason is simple. You're a player and I'm a player hater. Because of men like you I was made a fool of on my wedding day, in front of over five hundred guests, when two women showed up claiming to be my fiancé's baby mamas. And I lost a good friend in college---my roommate. She committed suicide after a guy she thought she loved made a fool of her."
Those eyes that had been flashing fire before were blazing now. "You're punishing me because of what some other guys did?"
"Yes, but don't think you're the only one. There have been others before who got the same treatment from me."
"And you're still alive to brag about it?"
A sneer touched her lips. "Evidently being a tease doesn't mean a death sentence."
Instead of responding, Blade gathered up his clothes and angrily began putting them on. Like her, he didn't bother with his underwear. She watched as he balled up his briefs and put them in his pocket. He then headed for the door.
"Wait! What about all these condoms?"
He turned and glanced at her in a way she wished he hadn't. If looks could kill then she would definitely be dead. "Flush them down the damn toilet for all I care. And just for your information, Sam, I don't have sex with women who don't know the score. I've never misled a woman by making promises I didn't intend to keep. The women I sleep with know I'm not into long-term relationships, and for whatever reason, they prefer things that way."
He paused and then said in a somewhat softer tone, "I regret what happened on your wedding day. What your fiancé did to you was unforgivable in my book. And as for your friend who committed suicide, believe it or not, the same thing happened to my cousin Dex's best friend, Greg. He fell in love with a girl in college and she played him and he took his own life. So men aren't the only ones who are players. Just like all women aren't alike, all men aren't the same, either."
Sam pulled in a deep breath. Instead of feeling a surge of satisfaction at what she'd just done to Blade, a part of her felt pangs of regret. "Look, Blade---"
"No!" he snarled. "You look, Sam. You got your damn pound of flesh. You got your laughs at my expense, so let's end it there. We know where we stand with each other now. Personally, I don't think you're a nice person, and although it's unlikely our paths will never cross, I suggest we try to avoid each other whenever possible."
She lifted her chin. "Fine. And you can stop sending me those flowers."
He glared back at her. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never sent you or any woman flowers, other than the women in my family."
He then threw his head back and laughed. "And I'm such a fool that today was the first time I've ever given a woman I'm interested in flowers. For some reason I thought you were special. Damn, was I wrong. You can flush them down the toilet along with the condoms."
Muttering an obscenity that Sam was grateful she couldn't hear, Blade opened the door and walked out, slamming it shut behind him.
Blade let himself into his town house as rage blasted from every pore in his body. In all his thirty-four years, nothing like this had ever happened to him before. And the woman had had the damn nerve, the gall, to blame him for something he'd had nothing to do with.
Admittedly, he was a player. He enjoyed women. He liked variety when it came to making love, and so far there hadn't been a woman out there capable of giving him what he wanted, what he needed and desired, all in one single package. Hell, considering his fantasies, he doubted it was possible for any one woman to fulfill his needs.
He didn't make excuses for doing what he did, but he of all people respected women. He had enough of them in his family and had been taught from an early age how women were to be treated. He'd never held a gun to their heads to make them sleep with him, so what gave Sam the right to come off thinking she was justified in seeking revenge on behalf of women who'd ever been hurt by him?
He ignored the blinking message light on his answering machine as he walked through his living room toward the kitchen. He needed a beer. In all honesty, he needed something stronger, but he would settle for what he had.
Moments later he was leaning against the kitchen counter, after taking a huge swallow of his beer. The cold brew had flowed down his throat, but other than that, the drink hadn't affected him. He was staring down at the floor as his anger continued to boil.
By her own admission she was a player hater? He had heard about those kinds of women, but had been lucky not to have encountered one until now. How could he have been so stupid, so gullible? So damn horny for a woman that he hadn't seen the signs? How had he allowed her to get under his skin to the point that he had been chasing her for the past ten months like a fool?
And how in the hell had he allowed her to make a difference when no other woman had?
Damn! She was probably next door having a good old-fashioned laugh.
He slammed the beer bottle on the counter, almost spilling the contents on his hands and the countertop. And just to think that all the while he had been getting dressed to go over to her place for dinner, he'd barely been able to put his clothes on without thinking about when he would be taking them off with her, how his naked body would lie on top of hers, slide deep inside of her---as deep as he could go---giving her the ride of her life.
But things hadn't gone quite the way he'd wanted. Although he had slid inside of her. At least he had tried to. She had been pretty damn tight and he had enjoyed the feel of her muscles clamping around him as he tried pushing deeper, determined to be deeply embedded in her, before she'd stopped him. And he'd assumed that was because he wasn't wearing a condom.
He couldn't believe such a thing had happened. This was the first time he'd been skin to skin with any woman, and the feel of being inside of her without being sheathed in latex had every muscle in his body pulsating, even now. She probably hadn't realized it, but he had managed to stroke her at least once before pulling out.
But that was the thing. Even after realizing he wasn't wearing a condom, he hadn't wanted to pull out. He had wanted to stay in, ease deeper inside of her, feel her wetness claim him, her feminine juices saturate his erection, and press into her deeper and deeper.
She hadn't minded when he'd spread her luscious thighs wide. And she hadn't minded being taken---or almost taken---right there in her living room. He liked a woman who didn't believe lovemaking had to be confined to the bedroom. Where was it written that the bedroom was the only place two people could make love? The thought of that was so damn boring.
Hell, he'd had lots of plans for Sam tonight. The moment he'd walked into her house and saw that her place was just like his, a number of erotic scenarios had danced through his mind. He had thought about taking her on the kitchen table, in the sauna and in that damned hot tub she had tempted him with last night.
But things didn't quite work out that way. Instead, after getting him all hot and bothered, she had sent him packing with a damn smirk on her face. What she'd pulled tonight was unforgivable in his book, and just as he'd told her, it would be best for the both of them if they made it a point to avoid each other.
"You okay, Blade?"
Blade glanced across the table at his cousin Reese. There was no way he would tell him that no, he wasn't okay. He'd gone to bed mad and had awakened that morning even madder. What was worse, he had gone to bed with a hard-on and had awakened with a bigger hard-on. It had taken a couple of cold showers to make his erection go down. The mere thought of how Sam had deliberately played him was something he had yet to get over, and he doubted if he ever would.
"Blade?"
He blinked and noticed both Luke and Reese were staring at him. "Yes?"
"I asked if something was wrong. You don't seem like yourself today," Reese said.
He shrugged. "You're imagining things."
The three of them had met for breakfast, and afterward, they would return to Luke's ranch and help him with moving some furniture around. Mac had decided she wanted to redecorate, and now with the three additional bedrooms, a massive family room and a spacious kitchen that he and Slade's crew had added on six months ago, what used to be a small ranch house had become a sprawling home with a lot of room for a larger family. It wouldn't surprise Blade, when Mama Laverne talked about fish again, that the fishing rod would be aimed straight at Luke and Mac.
He glanced over at Luke to find him staring at him. "You sure you're okay, Blade?" he asked.
"I'm positive."
"Then where were you last night?" Luke asked. "Slade was trying to reach you."
Blade chuckled. "I wasn't lost. I was out. And when I returned I didn't check my messages. I called him this morning." He took a sip of his coffee and asked, "Is there a law that says I have to be home at all times?"
"No."
"Okay, then."
"Kind of touchy today, aren't you? If I didn't know better I would think you needed to get laid or something," Reese said with a grin on his face.
Blade didn't see a damn thing funny about it, mainly because he did need to get laid---and in a bad way. He'd never gone without sex this long and all because of one woman. How screwed up was that?
He opened his mouth, ready to give his cousin the scathing response he deserved, but Luke interrupted, eager to keep the peace. "The rodeo school is looking good, Blade."
Blade's frown turned into a smile. He always appreciated compliments about the work that he and Slade's company did, and Luke of all people knew it. "Thanks. According to Townsend, the last coat of paint will be hitting the walls next week. The only thing left will be landscaping. Any idea when the horses will arrive? I want the corral and the new barn ready before they're delivered."
Just the mention of horses got Luke talking, and Blade was grateful for the distraction. He could nod and feign interest while his mind wandered to other things---namely Samari Di Meglio.
He had gotten very little sleep last night. The worst thing he could have done was to let her mouth touch him. Even now he was getting excruciatingly hard just thinking about it. Women had gone down on him before, but never in the way she had. It was quite obvious she was a novice at that sort of thing. He could even believe that she'd never done it before. Her lack of experience had showed, but it hadn't been felt. As far as he was concerned, no pro could have done it better. There had been something about the way she had taken him in her hands, and later with her mouth, and applied the perfect amount of pressure and---
"Blade, you're daydreaming again."
He met Luke's gaze. "Am I?"
"Yes. Reese has been asking you a question for the last five minutes."
Of course, he knew Luke was exaggerating. He cut his eyes over to Reese. "Sorry. What was your question?"
Reese grinned again and Blade was tempted to knock that silly smirk off his lips. "I asked if you were headed back to Houston for the party Jake and Diamond are hosting for Rasheed and his wife this weekend."
"Yes, I'll be there."
He would leave for Houston on Friday. The women in Houston knew how to treat a man. They didn't play games or seek revenge. They weren't teases. They weren't player haters. "What about you?" he asked Reese. "When do you take over Trevor's old job?"
Reese smiled. "In a couple of months. Trevor is finalizing the projects he started. And yes, I'm headed back to Houston. In fact, I'm leaving here on Thursday to swing by Austin to get Kenna. She's going to the party with me."
Blade nodded and didn't say anything, but after taking a sip of his coffee, he decided to ask, "Has it ever occurred to you that if you ever get married, your wife probably won't take too kindly to the fact that your best friend is a woman?"
Reese leaned back in his chair. "Nope, mainly because I'd never marry a woman who didn't get along with Kenna. Would you marry someone who didn't get along with Tanner and Wyatt?"
Blade frowned. It wasn't the same and Reese damn well knew it. "Since I don't ever plan to marry I can't answer that question," he said.
"Well, I do plan to marry one of these days, although no time soon, and I would never consider marrying someone who couldn't accept my relationship with Kenna," Reese said. "And vice versa. She would never marry someone who could not accept her relationship with me."
Blade shook his head and decided to play devil's advocate. "And you know this for certain?"
"Yes. We've discussed it. Everyone has a best friend. I'm a man who just happens to have one that's a woman. No big deal."
In Blade's book it was a big deal. But if Reese and Kenna were convinced it wasn't, then who was he to argue? He glanced over at Luke. "Are you ready for us to leave and get started on your place?"
Luke nodded. "Yes. I promised Mac that when she got home this evening I'd have at least one room finished. And you never make Mac a promise you don't intend to keep."
Sam had a drowsy look on her face from a sleepless night when she walked into the office. The first person she saw after passing through Security was Patsy, who was leaving the building.
The young woman smiled at Sam. "More flowers came for you today and there's a card with them," she said excitedly. "I saw the florist bring them in."
Sam gave her a slight smile and nodded as she made her way toward the reception area. Priscilla glanced up when she saw her and smiled. "More flowers arrived today, Ms. Di Meglio, and there's a card with them."
"Thank you, Priscilla," she said as she made her way down the hall toward her office. Everyone was more interested in her secret admirer than she was. In fact, she was still trying to get over Blade's statement last night that he hadn't been sending them. All this time she'd actually thought he was.
Thoughts of Blade were still in her mind and had been since last night. After he'd left her place she had picked up every condom packet off the floor and placed them in a drawer in her bedroom. She had actually counted them---thirty in all. Had he honestly thought he would use even half that number?
She rolled her eyes, thinking, yes, he probably had. If he would have had his way, he would have humped her all night and she would have enjoyed every minute of it.
She drew in a deep breath at her sensual confession. Chances were she would have gone to sleep totally relaxed, sated and satisfied. Instead, she had slid between the sheets tense, annoyed and obsessing about what she could have had---and all in the name of revenge. Whoever said getting even was sweet hadn't met the likes of Blade Madaris.
She opened the door to her office and her gaze immediately went to the huge arrangement sitting in the middle of her desk. These flowers were more beautiful than all the others had been, and whoever was sending them certainly had great taste. But the ones Blade had given her last night had these beat.
She walked around the desk and pulled out the drawer to put her purse inside. Then glanced up to see Peyton and Mac standing in the doorway. "We heard the flowers came with a card this time," Mac said with a huge grin on her face.
Sam rolled her sleepy eyes. "Evidently the entire office has heard about it," she said, sitting down behind her desk and leaning back in her chair, thinking she could certainly use a good eight hours' worth of sleep.
"Boy, you look tired," Peyton said, laughing. "Didn't you get any sleep last night?"
Sam glared at her friend. "Don't mess with me, Mahoney. I'm so not in a good mood."
Mac crossed her arms over her chest. "And why aren't you in a good mood, Sam? I thought you had a date with Blade. Didn't things go the way you had planned?"
Sam refused to answer that. Instead she snatched the card off the flowers. "I know the only reason the two of you are here is because you're dying to know who's been sending me flowers."
"Like you don't already know," Peyton said smartly, as she stepped into the office and took a chair across from Sam's desk.
"I thought I knew, but I found out last night it wasn't Blade."
Mac rolled her eyes. "You actually thought they were from him?" she said, closing the door and then taking the chair next to the one Peyton occupied. "According to Luke, Blade never gives women flowers," she added.
Sam decided not to say anything about the fact that he had given her a beautiful arrangement last night. Instead she opened the small envelope and pulled out the card and read it.
I've been sending you flowers to enjoy while you can, because starting today your days are numbered. An old friend.
Sam reread the card, certain that what she'd read was meant to be a joke. But she couldn't stop the uneasy feeling that was running through her mind and the sweaty palms of her hands. She dropped the card on her desk and glanced over at Peyton and Mac in shock.
"Sam, are you all right?" Peyton asked, getting out of her chair. "What did the card say?"
Sam opened her mouth to speak but couldn't. Instead she shoved it toward them. Mac picked up the card. Mac and Peyton read it together and she could hear the expletives coming from Peyton's mouth.
"What the f---is going on? Who the hell is making a threat like this? Is this some kind of sick joke?"
"Peyton, calm down," Mac said, as her eyes remained glued to Sam. "Sam, do you have any idea who could have been sending you these flowers?"
Sam, still unable to speak, only shook her head. She didn't have a clue. She watched as Mac then picked up the phone on her desk and began dialing. "Yes, Detective Adams, this is Mackenzie Standfield Madaris, and you're needed over to my office immediately."
Luke handed the bottles of beer to Reese and Blade. "Thanks, guys, you deserve these. I didn't know Mac had so much stuff to move from the attic."
The phone rang and Luke reached over, checked the caller ID, smiled and picked it up. "Hello, sweetheart."
Blade and Reese watched as the smile on his face turned to anger. "When?" Then moments later he asked, "Did you call the police?"
Luke pulled in a deep breath as he stood up, already grabbing his car keys from his jeans pocket. "That's fine, I'm on my way." He hung up the phone.
"What's going on, Luke?" Reese asked, with concern in his voice.
"That was Mac. The person who's been sending Sam flowers for the past six weeks finally sent a card with them today, with a death threat."
"What!" Blade was out of the chair, almost knocking it over. "Are these the same flowers Sam thought I was sending her?"
Luke raised a brow as he grabbed his Stetson off the hat rack. "I wasn't aware she thought you were the one sending those flowers."
"She mentioned it last night and I assured her they weren't from me," Blade said, hot on Luke's heels as he headed for the door. Reese quickly followed Blade.
"Well, according to Mac, the card Sam got with the delivery today wasn't pretty, and said something about her days being numbered," Luke said over his shoulder as he headed for the truck. "And the two of you don't have to go with me. Hopefully, I won't be long."
"I'm going," Reese said, already opening the door and climbing inside the backseat of Luke's truck.
"And don't think for one minute I'm not going, too," Blade all but snarled, feeling more protective of a woman than he'd ever felt before. The same woman he'd convinced himself just last night that he didn't want to cross paths with ever again. "If it involves Sam, then I'm going."
Luke glanced over at him and nodded. "Fine."
Blade took in a deep breath as he opened the door and got in the front seat. Why he felt the need to see for himself that Sam was okay, he wasn't sure. He would figure out the reason why later.
During the last thirty minutes, Sam's attitude had gone from shock to anger and then fury, evident from her use of some of Peyton's colorful expletives, which at one point had begun flowing from her mouth as if they were an everyday part of her vocabulary.
Now she had calmed down---somewhat. She had managed to prove that her temper at its best would put even her father to shame. How dare someone send her flowers for six weeks, only to inform her that now her days were numbered? The man had to be a lowlife, a scoundrel, an asshole.
"And you're sure you have no idea who could have sent you these flowers or why they want to threaten your life, Ms. Di Meglio?"
Sam glanced across the room. For a while she'd forgotten the detective had been sitting in the extra chair Priscilla had brought into her office. She'd also forgotten that Mac and Peyton were still in her office, as well. Everyone was sitting there and staring at her.
She drew in a deep breath and returned the detective's intense gaze. She had met him a year and a half ago, when he had been investigating the trouble involving Mac. "No, Detective Adams, I have no idea who's behind those flowers and---"
At that moment her office door flew open and Sam saw Blade standing in front of her, bigger than life. Over his shoulder, she could see Luke and Reese standing behind him. The look on Blade's face was fierce, almost lethal. Detective Adams had been quick, and was already on his feet with his gun drawn.
"Wait!" three female voices said at once, although Sam's was the loudest.
It was only when Luke pushed passed Blade that Detective Adams recognized him and put his gun back in his holster and straightened his jacket. "I would suggest you knock the next time," Adams said, offering Luke his hand.
Luke grinned as he shook hands with the man. "It wasn't my idea to burst in like that. That's my cousin Blade. He's sort of a hothead at times. And this is my brother Reese."
Sam sat back down in her chair, trying to get her heart rate back to normal, as she stared across the room at Blade. She'd known he was with Luke when Mac had called, because Mac had mentioned it. But considering everything, she hadn't expected him to come.
Her gaze moved past him to Reese. She'd only seen him a few times since the wedding, and she thought there was no mistaking him and Luke for brothers, since they favored each other quite a bit. Like Luke, Reese was a very handsome man.
But no one, she thought, letting her gaze shift back to Blade, was more handsome than the man staring back at her, even when he was mad. And yes, he was mad, but she couldn't tell if he was angry at her or the situation that she found herself in.
"I was just asking Ms. Di Meglio a few questions so I can decide how to proceed, since she prefers that I not alert the police yet. So for now, I'm working this case privately."
"Why don't you want the police involved?" Blade asked her, as if he had every right to know.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him it was none of his business what she did, but for some reason she couldn't do that. "I prefer that my parents not know about this," she said. "And for now, until we find out if there is a legitimate threat, I want as few people to know about it as possible."
He nodded and then leaned against a wall. There was a knock on the door and Priscilla brought in more chairs and left, closing the door behind her.
Everyone sat except for Blade. It seemed he preferred standing, bracing himself against the wall, directly in her line of vision. She tried focusing her eyes on Detective Adams instead of on him.
"Now then, we can continue," Detective Adams said. "And before we do I need to make sure you're comfortable with everyone here."
She drew in a deep breath. Although Blade was probably the last person she should have felt comfortable with, considering their history, she said, "Yes, I'm fine."
"All right then. I was asking if you have any idea who could have sent you those flowers with the card."
She shook her head. "I have no idea."
"And just how long have you been getting the flowers?" he then asked.
"About six weeks. They were delivered once a week, every Wednesday."
"Uh, they arrived a day early this week," Detective Adams said, as if making an observation.
Sam glanced over at Blade. The card had been passed around and now he was reading it. She could feel the anger raging in him. It was hard to believe his rage was directed toward her assailant and not her.
"So why didn't you contact the police when the flowers started coming?"
She shifted her gaze from Blade back to Detective Adams, who was watching her closely. "I saw no reason to."
"And why not?"
She frowned. The man was asking a lot of questions and she had to remind herself that he was merely doing his job. She met his inquisitive gaze. "Because I thought I knew who was sending them."
"And who did you think was sending them?"
"Really, Detective Adams," she said, giving him an exasperated look. "Do you need to know all that?"
"If you want me to help you stay alive."
"Yes, but---"
"I'm the one she thought was sending her the flowers," Blade said, in a voice that was deep and controlled.
Sam glanced over at him, as did everyone else in the room, including Detective Adams. He studied Blade and it was easy to tell he was sizing him up, seeing him in a whole new light. Now as a possible suspect.
"But you didn't send them?" the detective asked, his penetrating stare trained directly on Blade.
Blade stared right back. His eyes were just as unwavering. "No, I didn't send them."
"And you have no idea who did?"
"No," he stated firmly.
Detective Adams nodded before glancing back at Sam. "Do you have any reason not to believe him?"
Sam looked at Blade and studied his features, got caught up in the eyes staring back at her. Although he'd come, he was still mad. He hadn't gotten over the stunt she'd pulled last night. And in a way she probably had hurt him. Probably not emotionally, but for most men their ego was just as real as any living thing. It could easily get bruised. And then there was male pride that could be just as easily wounded. She had pretty much trampled on both. She had tried to play him the way he'd played others. Sooner or later he would try getting back at her, she had no doubt of that. But he wouldn't try it this way. He wouldn't stoop that low.
"Ms. Di Meglio?"
She blinked and looked back at Detective Adams. "Yes?"
"I asked if you had any reason not to believe Mr. Madaris." He smiled, remembering there were three of them in the room, and added, "Blade Madaris."
She shook her head. "No, there's no reason not to believe him." She then chuckled and said, "He might think he wants to wring my neck about now, but he would never intentionally hurt me."
"And you know that for sure?"
She pulled in a deep breath, refusing to acknowledge Blade's presence, and responded to the detective's question. "Yes, I know that for certain."
The muscles in Blade's neck knotted, and it had taken all he had not to hit something after reading the card that had come with the flowers. Who in the hell had sent it to her? Evidently it was the same person who'd been sending her the other flowers for six weeks. A secret admirer, so she'd thought. She had been damn wrong about that. And she had been wrong in assuming it had been him.
Detective Adams was still asking her some routine questions. She was answering them, but already Blade's mind was focused on what she wasn't telling the officer. As far as he was concerned, there were a number of men who could have put her at the top of their shit list, if what she'd claimed last night was true. She was a player hater who took pride in seeking revenge. In his book that wasn't a reason to want to bump her off, but there were a lot of people walking around who were not playing with a full deck.
Detective Adams stood and closed his writing pad. "I plan to contact the florist. I know you said the flowers were ordered over the Internet. Still, there's a way for us to track a credit-card payment."
"So what should she do now?" Mac asked.
"Watch her back," the detective replied quickly. "I know you already have a security team set up here and that's good. You might want them to make sure no one gets through unless they have appointments, and I suggest that you don't work late for a while. Leave when everyone else leaves, and if you do work late have one of the security guards walk you to your car. And you might want to---"
"Hold up. Time out," Blade interrupted. "There may be a lunatic on the loose, trying to kill her and for now it's going to be business as usual?"
Detective Adams turned to Blade. "Basically yes, since she refuses to have us make a big deal out of it. We can't get fingerprints off the card, since practically everyone's hand has been on it."
Detective Adams then turned to Sam. "Where do you live?"
"Windsor Park."
It was obvious from his expression that he was familiar with the complex and impressed. "That's a good place to live. It's a gated community, almost like a fortress. I don't know the last time anyone from the police department had to respond to a crime there. They have an excellent security system set up. The president would be safe there without the Secret Service, they're that good."
"Yes, but she isn't in that gated community twenty-four hours a day," Peyton said. "She will be pretty secure here and at home, but what about the distance in between?"
Detective Adams shrugged his shoulders. "If she doesn't want police protection, I suggest she hire a bodyguard."
Moments after Detective Adams left, everyone in Sam's office sat around staring at the vase of flowers on her desk. How could something so beautiful carry such an ugly message?
Still, the flowers were pretty, a mix of fresh roses, sunflowers, lilies, daisy poms and other varieties Sam couldn't name, and all beautifully arranged inside a green glass vase. There was nothing about the flowers that would indicate the person who'd sent them was devious rather than thoughtful.
Sam checked her watch and then pushed back from her desk to stand. She didn't want to look at the flowers any longer. "I'm going out to grab some lunch," she said.
Five pairs of eyes shifted to her and stared. She put her arms across her chest. "Don't any of you even think it."
"And what do you think we're thinking?" Luke asked.
She lifted her chin. "That one of you, possibly all of you, intend to be my shadow."
"And you have a problem with that?" Blade asked.
Sam's gaze slowly moved to him. He was glaring at her and she glared right back. She couldn't help the cynical smile that touched her lips. "What's in this for you, Blade? We're not exactly bosom buddies. In fact, the last time we talked we decided that we don't even like each other, especially after last night."
Too late she'd realized she had said the wrong thing, and quickly wondered why she'd said it at all. She had wanted to strike out at something and he was an easy target. The dark eyes staring at her became darker and his jaw tightened. His hands were opening and closing in tight fists, and she wondered if he'd decided to wring her neck, after all.
He slowly turned to the others and said in a rather calm voice, "Excuse us a moment. Sam and I need to have a private conversation."
It was on the tip on her tongue to say no, they didn't need to have anything, but then she changed her mind. It was best to get it over and done with now. She'd thought last night was the end of things, but apparently it wasn't.
None of the others, she noted, seemed inclined to hang back. Luke, however, leaned over and whispered in Blade's ear, but loud enough for everyone to hear, "Hey, man. Go easy on her. Remember, until they catch this guy you're still a suspect."
Blade's eyes sharpened, but hers rolled. She was glad when Mac all but shoved him out the door. When the door closed behind them, Sam decided to sit back down in her chair. If Blade wanted to stand during their confrontation, that was his business.
"So, what do we have to talk about?" she asked.
He didn't say anything for a long while. He just stood there and stared at her.
"Well, I'm waiting and I don't have all day, Blade."
She knew she was goading him again, deliberately being a pain in the ass. But for some reason she couldn't help it. He wasn't supposed to be here. Last night should have been the last she'd seen of him, at least for a good while. He was a player and she had played him. He was supposed to hate her guts. He should be spitting on the ground she walked on, or better yet, sticking pins in a voodoo doll that bore her likeness.
But instead he was here. He had all but burst into her office like a madman, as if he was a former lover or even her current one. The entire time Detective Adams sat asking her questions, he'd stood across the room, propped against the wall with his eyes glued to her.
"Why didn't you tell Detective Adams everything, Sam?"
She logged off her computer and then turned and looked at him. "Everything like what?"
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Like how you like getting your kicks as a player hater by playing guys. Did you ever think doing that kind of crap might catch up to you one day? Did it ever cross your mind that somewhere along the way you might have pissed some guy off big-time?"
She rolled her eyes, something she'd found herself doing a lot around him. "Hey, Blade, it's not that serious. Does every woman you dump come gunning for you?"
He came around the desk and pulled back her chair and then pinned her in with his arms braced on both sides. He leaned down, in her face, and nailed her with his gaze, as if he wanted to make sure he had her absolute attention.
"How many times do I have to tell you that the women I get involved with know the score?" he said in a clipped tone. "I don't play those kinds of games with women. They know what I want from them. They also know what I don't want, which is a commitment of any kind. And if they somehow get it into their heads that they can change me along the way, then it's their fault for thinking it and not mine. Not all players are dogs, so don't blame me for what some other guy did to you, Sam. I don't appreciate it and I won't accept it."
A caustic comeback was just on the tip of her tongue. She thought about telling him that she didn't give a damn what he didn't appreciate or accept, but something stopped her. Maybe it was because she realized just how close those sexy and kissable lips of his were to hers. It could have been his heated breath that warmed her skin. Or maybe it was the memory of those lips on her breasts, her belly, between her legs, inside of her, that suddenly made a shudder run through her body. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter, because she was sure that he felt it, as well. He'd once said her body had the ability to send him vibes. Evidently it was doing so now. There was a change in his eyes, in his breathing and in the way he looked at her. At that moment she knew that she was his main focus.
She tried to shift her body in the chair and wished she hadn't when her knee accidentally brushed against his crotch. She felt his erection---hard and massive. Her throat tightened and she tried to look away, but found she couldn't. The gaze holding hers was intense, almost daring her to avert her eyes even a fraction. And she couldn't. Instead she sat there, staring as intently into his eyes as he was staring into hers. She felt the heat rise between her legs, wetting her panties, sending fierce sensations all the way to her womb.
And then she remembered just how it felt to have him inside of her. Although he hadn't gone in all the way, he had gone in deep and far enough for her to commit to memory what he'd felt like. At that moment, that was what her mind was dredging up. The feel of him inside of her, how her inner muscles had clamped hold of him, ready to pull everything out of him.
It would be so easy to just go ahead and reach out and unzip his pants, and pull out his aroused body part, shift her position in the chair, prop her legs on her desk if she had to, and lead him inside of her, to finish what they'd started last night. She could just imagine him gripping her hips with his hands, leaning forward, flexing his lower body to push all the way to her womb. She'd never been taken in her office before, although she'd fantasized about it several times. And he'd always been the man she figured that she would be crazy enough to risk doing such a thing with.
If the chair got to be too uncomfortable, he could always move her to the desk, spread her legs, get on top of her and pump his way inside of her. He could hold her body immobile while he thrust back and forth like nobody's business, and make her come all over the place, all over him. And likewise, he would come, too. She could just imagine the feel of his hot semen shooting inside of her.
She clenched her thighs together, wondering if a woman could have an orgasm in broad daylight just thinking about what a man could do to her. She heard herself moan and realized from the look in Blade's eyes that he'd heard it, as well. Before she could pull in her next breath he responded to her moan with a guttural growl, just seconds before slamming his mouth down on hers.
He didn't mean to kiss her. In fact, he had decided after last night that he wouldn't come within ten feet of her again. But there was something about Samari Di Meglio that got to him on a level no other woman could. She had done more than just get under his skin. She had gotten into other places in his body, as well. Places he didn't want to think about now.
Instead he wanted to concentrate on this---the taste of her, the feel of her tongue tangling with his. The sensations that having his mouth locked with hers were invoking within him---those were the things he wanted to focus on. Those were the things so clearly on his mind.
She was a hard nut to crack since she still refused to acknowledge or believe that no matter what she said, her body always told a different story. He'd known the moment she had wanted him, the moment her panties had begun getting wet. He didn't have to touch them to know it had happened. Her body had emitted a sensuous scent, an aroused scent, one he had come to know and recognize. It was a scent that pushed him to want to take things to another level, such as taste her in the most intimate way. Get inside her body and this time stay there, without any damn interruptions, whether he was wearing a condom or not.
He heard the warning bells going off in his head. They were flashing like crazy, making all kinds of loud noise. But he would deal with all that later. Right now, the only thing he wanted to deal with was this. The tastiest woman he'd ever had the pleasure of devouring.
The soft knock on the door broke them apart. He pulled back reluctantly and breathed in deeply. Then a frown covered his face. Whoever was at that door had better have a good reason for interrupting them.
"What?" he called out, and none to nicely.
The door slid open and Luke poked his head in. He glanced at both of them and Blade was certain he could clearly see Sam's kiss-swollen lips and his still-wet mouth. And Luke had the damn nerve to smile.
"Sorry for the interruption, but I'm just checking to make sure that the two of you are still alive in here, and haven't done each other in." His smile widened when he added, "It was Mac and Peyton's idea. They were worried."
Blade moved toward the window, deciding to let Sam respond to that. "As you can see, we're fine. However, we're still discussing a few things," she said.
"Okay, I'll let them know. Priscilla ordered pizza and it should be here in a few minutes. It's best eaten when it's hot."
"Fine. We'll be out shortly," Sam said.
Luke nodded and then closed the door.
Sam glanced across the room. Blade had been standing at the window, gazing out, but when Luke closed the door he had turned around with his hands in his pockets and was staring at her. She pulled in a deep breath. "I thought we settled things between us last night, Blade," she heard herself say in a shaky voice. That had been some kiss. Her body was still tingling all over from it.
Emotions she didn't want to deal with, emotions she wished would stay locked where she had kept them, were rising to the surface. She tried forcing them back under lock and key and discovered she couldn't.
"I thought so, too," he said. But for some reason she didn't think he was as confused by what had happened as she was.
"You said you wanted to talk," she reminded him.
She watched as he slowly walked back to her desk and sat on the edge of it. Then he said, "I'm sure you have your reasons for not telling Adams everything. I don't have a full understanding of what those reasons are, but what I do know is that there are two women beyond that door who will do anything, even put their lives on the line if they had to, in order to protect you. Do you want that?"
No, she didn't. She didn't even want to think of her own life being on the line, although after reading that card she had to face the reality that there was a strong possibility it was. "No, that's not what I want," she finally said, reaching for the business card Detective Adams had left her. It was a business owned by a friend of his. She picked it up. Rowdy's Security Service. She shook her head. Security service was just another name for bodyguards.
"And do you want to do that?" he asked, glancing at the card she held. "Hire someone to be around you twenty-four hours a day?"
She glanced up at him. "No, but do you have a better idea? And I meant what I said about not wanting my parents to know. They would call in the darn National Guard if they thought for one moment my life was in danger."
Blade nodded. "You might eventually have to tell them what's going on."
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," she said, tossing the business card back on her desk.
Blade looked at her. "And to answer your question, yes, I think I have a better idea, and I want you to hear me out. Okay?"
She wasn't sure what his idea would be, but she was willing to listen. "Okay."
He stood, paced a few times and then turned back to her. "The way I see it, you're probably safe at work and at home. Any danger you'll face will be traveling between both places."
"Kind of."
He lifted a brow. "Kind of?"
"Yes. I do go places other than work and home, Blade. I go grocery shopping. I get my hair done once a week. I get my nails done and occasionally a pedicure. Also, when I need to, I get a wax job and---"
She stopped talking. Clamped her mouth shut. Too late she realized she'd given him too much information, especially since he knew firsthand about her Brazilian wax job in an up-close-and-personal sort of way. She cleared her throat. "Uh, you get the picture."
He met her gaze. "Yeah, I got the picture."
Probably more than he should have, she thought. "So as you can see I do have a life."
"And I'm sure you want to keep that life, so I propose that when you're not home or at work that we hang out."
She lifted a brow. "Hang out?"
"Yes. Since we live next door to each other, it will be easy for me to drop you off at work each day and come back and pick you up in the evenings. I can also make sure you get to all your errands."
Blood rushed through her ears upon hearing his offer. Her first impulse was to tell him where he could take his offer, almost certain that there was an ulterior motive. But then she decided to not be so quick to jump to conclusions.
"Why, Blade? Why would you waste your time doing that? You're an intelligent man, so I'm sure you know what I pulled last night was meant to break all ties between us."
He shrugged. "Breaking all ties between us is easier said than done, Sam, especially since your best friend happens to be my cousin's wife, and her husband is a man who is as close to me as a brother. When they worry about something, then I worry."
She narrowed her gaze. "So you're willing to put up with me so they won't have to worry?"
"That's the gist of it. There cannot and never will be anything between us. I think we both know that."
She glared at him. Did he have to be so brutally honest? In a way it was for the best, since they both knew where they stood. But if that was the case, then what was that kiss all about a few moments ago? He had taken her mouth like always. Nothing had changed there. Not even her response to him. Or the fact that she wouldn't mind too much if he decided to take her right now. She wasn't sure why she had this fantasy about being taken on her desk, but she did.
She shook her head, not believing the path her thoughts had taken. This was not a good day. It had started off bad and now it had ended badly. She needed a glass of wine. She needed to spend time in her sauna. A relaxing soak in her hot tub sounded real nice. She needed Blade to move away from her desk. He was too close. He definitely didn't need to be within arm's length of her again. And she certainly didn't need to see up close how aroused he still was.
She cleared her throat. "Fine, if you want to play babysitter, then knock yourself out."
She could tell by the expression on his face he would probably like the pleasure of knocking her out instead, given how flip her response was. But he wouldn't. Blade was not a violent man. He might be pretty pissed off with her, but he would not hurt her. She really and truly believed that.
And, she thought, glancing over at her flowers---or rather she hoped---that the person who'd sent them wouldn't hurt her, either. She was hoping that whoever he was, he was just trying to mess with her, scare her out of her wits. He had signed the card "an old friend." She tried to remember how many players she had humiliated over the years. Now she would be racking her brain for the rest of the day and probably all night, trying to figure out who it could be.
"Ready to go? I left my car at Luke and Mac's place, which is just as well, since I'll be using yours," Blade said, breaking into her thoughts.
"Whatever. We'll take this a day at a time. I'm hoping this is all a bad joke and that nothing comes out of it."
"Trust me," he said, opening the door and then leading her out. "I'm hoping the very same thing."
The man picked up the phone on the first ring. "Is there a problem?"
"The flowers were delivered with a card this time."
He rolled his eyes. "I'm well aware of that," he said, trying to keep his voice calm. The woman was getting on his nerves. "You said you understood why I have to do what I'm doing, and that I had your full support. Are you changing your mind now?"
"No."
He smiled. "Good. And I'll have something special for you when I see you again. And remember, no matter what, we're in this thing together. All I want to do is shake her up a little bit, scare her some. Once that's over, our life together can begin."
The lie coming from his lips was bittersweet. First, he would take care of Samari Di Meglio, and then she would be next. He couldn't risk anyone ever finding out he was the mastermind behind everything. He had waited years for this opportunity.
"Love you," he said, repeating another lie in a deep, husky bedroom voice, trying to remind her of what had happened between them the last time they'd been together, and how good things were between them when she did what he asked.
"Love you, too."
He knew she did, and he would play it for all it was worth to get the results he wanted.
"I can't believe I ate so much pizza."
Blade started the car and couldn't help looking down at Sam's legs. Not for the first time he thought they were definitely a luscious pair. He had been between them three times and there was still unfinished business. He still didn't know how they would feel pinned around his back while he was locked inside her body, rocking them toward one hell of an orgasm. He felt his lower body swell just thinking about it.
He tracked his gaze from her legs up to her face and saw that her eyes were close. And as if she felt him looking at her, she opened them and glanced over at him. She lifted a brow. "Well?"
He swallowed. "Well what?"
She rolled her eyes. "Can you believe I ate so much pizza?"
He couldn't help but chuckle. Hell, yeah, he could believe it, since he was watching each and every time she slid a slice into her mouth, recalling how she had used that same mouth on him. "Yes, I can believe it. I saw you." He would tell her that much. "Evidently you were hungry."
She nodded. "I was. I skipped breakfast and figured I'd get a bite to eat later. As you know, that didn't happen."
Yes, he knew.
When she closed her eyes again he backed out of the parking lot. They rode in silence, and when he came to the first traffic light, he glanced back over at her. Her eyes were still closed, so he lowered his gaze to her thighs. Her skirt had inched up when she'd buckled her seat belt. He liked seeing her thighs, but definitely needed to say something to her about wearing those short skirts.
He chuckled to himself, thinking he really didn't have the right to tell her how to dress, and knowing Sam, she wouldn't hesitate to let him know it. It wasn't as if they were involved or anything.
Then what the hell was he doing becoming her chauffeur? Her personal bodyguard? Frankly, he didn't have a problem with the latter, he thought as he drove the car through traffic. If anyone needed to guard her body it might as well be him. Not that he could lay claim to it or anything. It was just the principle of the thing. He smiled, wondering just what that principle was.
"What's with the smile?"
He glanced over at her. She had awakened from her nap. "Nothing important." Then to change the subject he asked, "And what time do you plan on going into the office tomorrow?"
He watched as she drew in a deep breath before running her hands through her hair, to take advantage of the breeze that was coming in through the window.
"Good thing you asked," she said. "I have an eight-o'clock appointment. Will that be a problem for you?"
He didn't want to tell her he usually didn't get up before eight. So instead he lied. "No, that won't be a problem. Will you need to stop somewhere for breakfast before you get to the office?"
She shook her head. "No, I usually prepare my own breakfast."
He nodded, thinking it would be nice, since he was driving her into the office, if she invited him to join her for breakfast. When time passed and she didn't issue an invitation, he figured he wouldn't be getting one.
When he came to another traffic light he glanced over at her and saw she'd closed her eyes again. Evidently, she hadn't gotten any more sleep last night than he had.
At that moment, he couldn't help but wonder just what kind of relationship she had with her parents. She'd mentioned that they had attended Luke and Mac's wedding, but then so had more than five hundred other people. Besides, he had spent his time checking out the single women and not older married couples.
However, he did recall seeing Sam's brother, although the two of them hadn't been officially introduced. What he had seen was the way the man had watched Peyton every chance he got. He wasn't the only one who'd noticed. Of course, Wyatt and Tanner had been checking Peyton out for themselves, had picked up on his territorial actions and figured it was best to keep their distance. Sam's brother didn't look like a person anyone would want to tangle with over a woman.
When he made the turn into the complex, he noticed Sam's eyes were open and she glanced around. "We're home already?"
A hot, tingling sensation shot through his midsection with her response. She made it sound as if they were a couple who were going to the same place, to eat together, tangle between the sheets and eventually fall asleep together. It was hard to explain, but playing house with her didn't sound so bad.
"Yes, we're almost there," he said, "just as soon as we get through Security."
A short while later, as they drove toward the area where their town houses were located, slowing down almost to a crawl for the speed bumps, Blade glanced over at her. "You aren't planning on going back out any more tonight, are you?"
"No, I'm in. I need to get all the sleep I can."
So did he, but he had a feeling sleep wouldn't come easily again tonight.
"Thanks for bringing me home, Blade, and you didn't have to walk me to the door."
He came and stood beside her, much too close for her peace of mind. "Yes, I did. And I'm going to check out the inside, as well," he said in that throaty voice that gave her goose bumps.
"Do you really think that's necessary?" she couldn't help but say as she worked her key into the lock.
"Considering everything that's happened today, yes, I do."
She decided not to argue with him. Instead, after opening the door she moved aside to let him enter first. She walked in behind him and closed the door, watching as he moved around checking the rooms downstairs. She had tossed her purse on the table when he walked into her kitchen and dining-room area. When he returned and headed up the stairs, she felt a tightening in her stomach. She wasn't sure how she felt about him being in her bedroom. That was really invading her personal space. Kicking off her heels, she quickly moved to follow him.
"Really, Blade, is all this necessary?"
He barely glanced over his shoulder. "You asked me that before and I told you that it was."
When they made it to the landing he glanced around. "Did you know the design of your town house is identical to mine?"
"I figured it would be."
He kept walking, looking into the bedrooms he passed. "How do you like having a sauna?" he asked.
"It's nice." Then she frowned. "If someone is in here, then our talking out loud has taken away the element of surprise. I hope you know that."
Instead of responding he shrugged his muscular shoulders and kept walking. When he got to her bedroom he paused in the doorway and glanced around. She couldn't help wondering what he was thinking, with all the shades of pink and gray. She loved the decor of her bedroom and had bought the furnishings using the money from the first case she'd won. All the pieces of her furniture, including her California-king-size four-poster bed, had been hand crafted by a furniture designer out of North Carolina named Dwight Chesley.
"Nice bedroom."
She looked up at Blade. "Thanks, but I'm sure if you've seen one, you've seen them all," she said, making light of his compliment.
"For some reason this one is different."
She forced herself not to say it was probably the first bed belonging to a woman that he hadn't been in, but decided not to do so. It was getting late and she was tired. The day had been overwhelming to say the least.
Instead she said, "Now that you've satisfied your curiosity, I'll walk you to the door." And instead of waiting for him to move, she began walking back down the hall and then down the stairs. He didn't immediately follow her and she could only assume that he felt the need to check out her master bath, as well. When he finally joined her downstairs, she was waiting beside the front door.
"I input my phone number on your landline under B," he said. "Hand me your cell phone for a second."
Rolling her eyes, she moved to the sofa to get it out of her purse, and walked back over and handed it to him. She watched as he entered his name and phone numbers---both for his cell phone and landline---into her BlackBerry. He then handed it back to her.
"Now I need your numbers," he said, taking his phone out the pocket of his jacket. She gave them to him and moments later he returned his own BlackBerry to his pocket.
He met her gaze. "I guess I don't have to tell you to be careful opening the door for anyone you really don't know."
She forced her eyes not to roll. "No, you don't have to tell me, although you've done it anyway."
He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "You like having a smart mouth, don't you?"
"I don't know. Do I?"
His frown deepened. "Keep it up and I'm going to get pissed."
She couldn't help but inwardly smile at that. "Mmm, what else is new, Blade? Same place---" she looked at her watch "---and almost the same time. Seems like your mood is a repeat of last night."
When she saw anger flicker in his eyes, she drew in a deep breath and then said, "Look, sorry I brought up anything about last night. I'm not in a good mood right now. I'm tired, sleepy, aggravated and---"
"Trying to make the best of a difficult situation."
She was. And the fact that he knew it almost was too much for her. All day she'd tried being strong, but now she felt vulnerable. Knowing there was someone out there who wanted to do her harm had her stomach in knots, and it had taken everything she had to fight back her fears. She was a Di Meglio, she had come from a long line of Italians and Africans who were mighty and invincible. Brave to a fault. Not a coward among them and she was determined not to be the first.
"If you want to get to the office by eight, then we need to leave here no later than seven-thirty," he said.
She nodded. "I'll be ready. And I'm doing breakfast if you'd like to drop in. It will be ready around six-thirty."
"Thanks, but fair warning. I'm not a morning person, Sam."
She shook her head and glanced down as a chuckle erupted from her throat. She glanced back up at him and smiled. "Neither am I, but I can do a good job at faking it."
The smile that touched his lips---those incredible lips---she thought, was refreshing. His eyes held hers for the longest time and then he reached out and touched her cheeks. The fingertips touching her skin felt warm, soothing...caring. She inhaled deeply at the thought that there was a slight possibility that he did care. He might not want to, but he did anyway. Otherwise, he would not be here now. She couldn't help but find that interesting.
"Try to get some rest," he said. He leaned closer and brushed a kiss across her lips and whispered, "Good night."
"Good night, Blade."
When she opened the door to let him out, a private security patrol car was driving by, making its rounds. Seeing the patrol car made her feel safe and secure. As she watched Blade walk down her steps and head next door to his own place, she suddenly felt so terribly lonely.
Blade pulled off his jacket and tossed it aside, then picked up the phone to retrieve his messages after seeing the light blinking. He checked the first number and saw the call had been from Alex. He hit the speed-dial button to return the call.
"Alex, this is Blade. Did you try reaching me?"
"You're not picking up on your cell phone. What's up with that?"
Blade pulled in a deep breath. "I was in a meeting," he said, thinking of the time he'd spent in Sam's office while Detective Adams had asked her questions. "What's going on?"
"I never got the chance to thank you for helping out at A.C.'s birthday party last month."
A.C. was the nickname for Alex and Christy's daughter, Alexandria Christina, who had turned two last month. Alex and Christy had asked him to be the cameraman at the party when the one they'd hired became ill. Blade hadn't minded filling in, since it had been better than playing lifeguard at the kiddy pool as he'd done the previous year.
Blade smiled. "No problem, although I wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon."
Alex chuckled. "Does that mean I can't pass your name on to Sir Drake? His daughter will be celebrating her first birthday soon and I'm sure they'll want a bunch of pictures."
"Hey, don't do me any favors."
Alex laughed. "Will we see you this weekend at Jake and Diamond's party?"
Blade rubbed a hand over his face. In his haste to volunteer as Sam's bodyguard, he'd forgotten all about the fact that he was supposed to return to Houston this weekend for the party Jake and Diamond were hosting for Rasheed. He would have to think of what to do about Sam while he was gone. He couldn't talk her into going to the ranch with Mac and Luke, since they'd made plans to attend the party in Houston, as well. The Madarises liked to party, and enjoyed any excuse for a family gathering.
"Yes, I plan to come."
"I'll see you then, and again thanks for taking care of the pictures at A.C.'s party. You took some real good shots and all of them came out great. I owe you one for agreeing to do it on such short notice," Alex said, regaining Blade's attention.
"I might be collecting on that IOU sooner than you think," he said. "A woman I know is getting flowers."
Alex laughed. "And?"
"She doesn't know who's sending them."
"I'm sure they aren't coming from you. And I can't imagine you getting jealous about someone sending a woman you're messing around with flowers, since jealousy isn't one of your attributes. Sounds like she has a secret admirer. Why do you care? What's the problem?"
He glanced out the window at the lake. It was just beginning to get dark and there was a breeze in the air that was stirring the waters. "The problem is that her secret admirer threatened to kill her."
"Damn. That doesn't sound good. Who is this woman?"
"Samari Di Meglio. She's one of Mac's law partners."
"I've met Sam. A nice person. She's also a looker."
Blade smiled. Since he knew just how much Alex loved and adored his wife, he knew his comment was nothing more than a compliment. "Yes, she is."
"Call me tomorrow so we can talk about it. And by the way, in case you hadn't heard, Mama Laverne dreamed about fish again."
Blade rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "What's going on with her? Why can't she have normal dreams like everybody else?"
Alex laughed. "Depends on what you consider normal dreams. Hell, I would hate for her to start having any of yours."
Blade couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of that, and quickly concluded that Alex was right. He would hate for the old gal to start having any of his dreams. They would turn her gray hair grayer. Hell, she just might wake up the next morning completely bald.
"And just so you know, all eyes are on Clayton and Syneda."
Blade almost got weak in the knees at that announcement. "I hope you're bullshitting me, Alex."
"Sorry, but I'm not."
Blade shook his head. Clayton and Syneda, the attorneys in the family, and a power couple if there ever was one, already had a daughter, eight-year-old Remington, who was definitely a handful, and that was putting it mildly. The thought of adding another child to their already chaotic household was a bit much.
Moments after his conversation with Alex ended, Blade returned calls to his brothers Slade and Jantzen. Both wanted to give him the scoop about the stork possibly visiting Clayton and Syneda again, just in case he hadn't heard.
It was close to eleven when he finally headed upstairs to take a shower and try to get some sleep. He'd seen security patrolling the area when he'd left Sam's place, and he felt good about it. He also felt good that he was right next door if she needed him.
Sometime tomorrow he would call and talk to Alex and tell him what he knew. Alex was a former FBI agent who owned a private investigation firm and was good at what he did. Hell, Alex wasn't just good. His ability to solve cases was legendary.
If anyone could find out who the person was behind the threat to Sam's life there was no doubt in Blade's mind it was Alex.
Daylight was just beginning to break when Sam finished her shower. After toweling dry she slipped into her robe to go downstairs to start a pot of coffee.
Even after all the drama of yesterday, she had been able to get some sleep. She was certain the glass of wine she'd had before finally going upstairs to shower and dress for bed had helped.
As strange as it seemed, she had felt a measure of comfort knowing Blade had been in her bedroom. The man had a way of being a part of her fantasies whether she wanted him to be or not.
With the coffee brewing she was about to head back upstairs, when she remembered she had left her purse on the sofa, and that when Blade had returned her BlackBerry after inputting his phone number, she'd noticed that she had missed a call. She had totally forgotten about it until now.
Taking her BlackBerry from her purse, she saw the missed call had come from Peyton's private number at the office. Sam pressed the button to listen.
"Sam, this is Peyton. After you guys left I hung back to get some work done and happened to be here when your eight-o'clock appointment called to cancel. I thought I'd let you know so you wouldn't get up so early to come into the office. After everything that happened today, you need your rest. In fact, if you want to just take the whole day off and chill, then do so. Mac and I can handle things here. Love you. Bye."
After Sam ended the voice-mail message she breathed a deep sigh. She wished she'd checked her messages last night and then she wouldn't be up so early this morning. Oh, well, since she was already up, she might as well stay up, and she just might take Peyton's advice and work from home today and get some rest.
Then she remembered Blade. It was too late to call and let him know about her change in plans. He would be knocking on her door for breakfast in about a half hour. Since she was up, she might as well prepare breakfast as planned. Besides, she was hungry. All the activity in her dreams last night had made her ravenous.
She headed upstairs to get dressed and tried to suppress the thought running through her mind that she was actually looking forward to seeing Blade.
A scowl covered Blade's face as he locked his front door to head over to Sam's place. It was quiet, barely daybreak. Yet when he'd glanced out his bedroom window at the park, he'd seen a number of people who were up and walking or jogging. Hell, why anyone in their right mind would be up at this time of morning was beyond him.
He glanced at his watch. It was a minute shy of six-thirty. He had gotten some sleep last night, but not a whole lot. After he'd taken his shower and gotten into bed, he'd received more phone calls from family members. Now that the word was out that Clayton and Syneda were expecting, everyone was making bets as to where this child might have possibly been conceived. It was a family joke that Remington was conceived in an elevator. There was no telling with this one, since from what he gathered, Clayton and Syneda had an active and adventurous sex life.
Some wondered whether the baby would be a boy or girl. Frankly, he thought Remington was all the daughter Clayton could handle. But others in the family felt that it would serve Clayton right to have another girl, given his playboy bachelor days. Blade chuckled, his sense of humor returning for the first time since learning of the threat to Sam's life.
He glanced around before walking up the steps to her front door. This particular cul-de-sac was quiet. Most of the people had money and could afford the exclusive lifestyle. Even though Windsor Park was supposed to be one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, he still intended to be very cautious, and hoped that Sam would do the same. She might think this was no big deal, but he wouldn't make that mistake.
He figured the reason he was so hell-bent on keeping her safe was that there was still unfinished business between them. And although she assumed that the stunt she'd pulled Monday night was the end of things between them, he had no intention of letting her walk away so easily. She needed to understand that a Madaris man wasn't someone to toy with. And when all this was over, he would deal with her in his own way.
After knocking on her door, he didn't have long to wait for it to open. His eyes slid over her, noticing just how good she looked barefoot and in a pair of cutoff jeans and a tank top. She was definitely not dressed for work.
"I hope you're not thinking of wearing that to the office," he said, trying to keep his eyes from staring at her cleavage, peeking out from the vee of her tank top. She had nice breasts and it didn't take much for him to be reminded of how they looked and tasted.
"Of course not. I decided to work at home today," she said, walking away and leaving him standing in the doorway.
He slowly ran his hands down his face. She had decided to work at home? Had he known, he could have gotten at least three or four more hours of sleep. "Excuse me," he said, walking over the threshold and closing the door behind him with a little more force than necessary. "But did you not tell me you had to be in the office at eight this morning?"
She turned around and he realized that she had noticed the frown on his face. "Yes, I did tell you that. However, Peyton called and left a message on my phone last night that my eight-o'clock appointment had canceled. Only problem is that I didn't retrieve the message until a short while ago. I figured since you were probably already up, the least I could do was go ahead and fix you breakfast."
Then, as if that settled it, she tossed her curly hair over her shoulders, turned back around and continued walking toward the kitchen.
The man really was a grouch in the mornings, Sam thought, as she returned to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast. She hoped he was hungry, since she had cooked a lot of food, and had even made biscuits from scratch. According to Mac, Luke ate a big meal in the morning, so Sam could only assume most men did.
She was standing at the stove frying bacon when she heard Blade enter the kitchen. She decided not to turn around just yet. Let him continue to stew quietly. One of the first things she noticed when she'd opened the door was just how good he looked. This was the first time she had seen him wearing casual clothes. His jeans actually looked well-worn---even had a rip in the knee---although she wasn't sure if the tear was from a designer or the real thing. His T-shirt, which fit him like a muscle shirt, was a walking advertisement for his construction company. And he still had that just-woke-up look, which was sexy as hell.
"Need help with anything?"
Now, that question made her turn around. When did a man offer to help in the kitchen? She knew from experience that her father always conveniently disappeared when it was time to do the dishes. And her brother was just as bad.
"What can you do?" she asked.
"Just about anything you can."
Now, that was a challenge if ever she'd heard one. The Di Meglio men avoided the kitchen every chance they got, but the women definitely knew their way around it, even blindfolded. "You think so?"
He leaned against one of the kitchen counters and crossed his legs at the ankle. "I'm sure there are some dishes you could probably make better than me, but I'm confident that I can hold my own."
Sam turned and removed the frying pan from the stove before turning back to him. She took the bacon out of the frying pan and placed it on a platter. "You want to explain how that came about?"
She glanced up at the exact moment a smile touched his lips. "Easily," he said. "Felicia Laverne Madaris, my great-grandmother. She made sure all her sons, grandsons and great-grandsons knew their way around the kitchen, regardless of whether we wanted to or not. Some of us fared better than others, but all of us have our specialties. Luke has his casseroles and Slade is the best when it comes to preparing a well-balanced meal any time of day."
She nodded. "And what's your specialty?"
He smiled broadly, which gave Sam a sensation like a shot to the bottom of her belly. "I can handle just about anything," he said in a deep, husky tone. "But my specialty is desserts."
She felt the heat settle between her legs and felt the tips of her breasts harden against her top. She swallowed deeply, wondering if he could gauge her body's reaction to his words. Desserts. That would always be a hot topic for them. She couldn't hear the word without thinking of a parked car, being physically aroused and having oral sex.
She looked away from him and began cleaning the frying pan before putting it in the dishwasher. She knew she had to say something or the heat between them would steam up her kitchen.
"Ahh, if you still want to help, you can go ahead and set the table," she said.
"Sure thing."
She could hear the sound of his footsteps across the kitchen floor, then him opening her cabinets, removing dishes, glasses and eating utensils. She then went to the refrigerator to take out the orange juice. The blast of cool air was just what she needed, but it did nothing to alleviate the tingling sensation that was still pulsing between her legs. She probably needed a cold shower to get rid of that. He hadn't been in her house more than ten minutes---ten nerve-racking minutes---and already her body was betraying her.
She inhaled a deep breath as she closed her refrigerator door. She would get through breakfast with him this morning, even if it killed her.
Blade was convinced that this was one breakfast he wouldn't survive, since Sam's outfit was practically killing him. Talk about being hot. He'd always thought she had gorgeous legs, but he was really starting to go crazy over those luscious brown thighs. And when she bent over to put the frying pan in the dishwasher, he had actually seen her rounded cheeks. Of course, there was the memory of having gone halfway inside her that was driving him crazy, making his erection throb uncontrollably.
Deciding it was best to shift his gaze elsewhere to get his sex-obsessed thoughts under control, he looked at her china and studied the pattern. Not that he really cared, but it was better than standing there and drooling over her. He thought the design was pretty, just like her. His great-grandmother once said you could tell a lot about a woman by the dishes she used.
He studied the plate in his hand. It was a cool green. He could see that the smooth, transparent surface of the china was made with fine craftsmanship and beauty. And those were the same qualities he saw in her.
"How are things coming over there?"
He glanced at her. His eyes traced her body, from her painted toes to the tousled hair on her head. She was curvy, downright luscious looking. Her beauty was enough to steal his breath and make him proud he was a man. He was determined more than ever to finish what they'd started two nights ago.
Sexual tension was building between them and he knew she could feel it just as he could. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen with platters in her hand, looking both sexy and domestic. He looked surprised when he saw how much food was on the platters. Had she expected to feed an army?
"Everything is all set," he said, finally finding his voice as he placed the last fork down beside a plate. He glanced at the table set for two and thought he hadn't done a bad job.
She walked over to him and put one of the warm platters in the middle of the table, then looked up at him. "I'm impressed. The table looks nice."
"Thanks."
"There's a half bath around the corner if you want to wash up," she said.
"All right."
He headed to the bathroom, wondering how he would get through this meal. Somehow he would, and then he would leave and go back to his place and get the sleep he'd been cheated out of.
Sam's eyes lingered on Blade as he left the kitchen. It was only then that she released a deep breath and let her fingers relax enough to set the other platter down on the table. She didn't have to ask herself what there was about being in the same room with him that made her feel this way. The man oozed sexiness in a way no other man could. And it didn't help matters when she looked into his eyes, or caught him staring at her. It was at those times that she could vividly recall intimate moments between them, sensual confessions they had shared.
She quickly walked back to the refrigerator to get the bottle of orange juice. The best thing to do was to keep him occupied with idle chitchat, she thought, and once breakfast was over, he would leave and she would get to work reading the case files that Patsy had dropped off last week.
She glanced up when Blade returned. "You drink orange juice, right?"
"Yes. And over breakfast I need to talk to you about a couple of things."
She arched an eyebrow. "What?"
"The threat on your life."
She chuckled lightly as she came back to the table. She sat down after filling their glasses with juice. "Getting tired of your babysitting gig already?"
He took the chair across from her. "No. I just don't like not knowing who and what we're dealing with. That's why I talked to Alex."
She paused and reached for a slice of bacon. "Alex?"
"Yes, Alex Maxwell. Remember him?"
She nodded. "Yes. I don't want to think what could have happened to Mac if he hadn't figured things out," she said.
"Alex has agreed to help us, but I need you to be up front with him and tell him everything, Sam. You need to tell him about all those guys you didn't mention to Detective Adams. He will need names."
"The only reason I didn't mention anything about them to Detective Adams is because I don't think there's a connection."
"Maybe not, but we need to let Alex check things out and decide that."
"And he's willing to help?" she asked.
"Yes, he's willing to help investigate."
What Blade didn't tell her and what he himself hadn't wanted to dwell on was the reason Alex was willing to do it. It was simple. Alex was doing it because he'd asked him to. They were family and if Blade had come to him with concerns about Sam's safety, then that pretty much sealed it. Although Alex hadn't said anything, he knew Sam wasn't like those other women Blade had messed around with. For some reason, Sam meant something to him.
"But what if this was just a joke? And someone is doing what Detective Adams said, just trying to ruffle my feathers?" Sam asked, breaking into his thoughts.
As far as Blade was concerned Sam's questions were timely and necessary. He still wasn't ready to think about his relationship with Sam. He wasn't even ready to consider the possibility that they even had a relationship. And he was certain that she would be the first to deny one existed.
He leaned back in his chair. "And do you really think that?"
She slowly chewed her bacon. "I honestly don't know what to think, Blade."
The frustration in her voice touched him. He was tempted to get up and pull her into his arms and hold her, whisper in her ear that as long as there was life in his body, nothing would ever happen to her.
He took in a sharp breath. He was confused at how he was thinking, shocked by how he was feeling. He grabbed his glass of orange juice and almost finished it in one swallow. It would have been better had it been a glass of cold beer.
"I think the worst thing we can do is to not do anything and assume that note is the end of it and we won't hear from him again. Whether this guy plans to take things further or not doesn't matter." His tone then turned somewhat angry. "I want to know who he is regardless. I don't want him to get away with what he's done."
And he won't get away with it, Blade thought, as he continued to eat. Whoever the guy was, he had gone too far and Blade was determined to let him know it.
"You said you had a couple of things to discuss with me. That's one. What's the other?"
He glanced over at Sam. And suddenly his mouth almost went dry when she licked a crumb off her lip with her tongue. He straightened in his chair when he felt his erection straining against his zipper.
"I want to talk to you about this weekend," he said.
She raised a brow. "This weekend?"
"Yes. I'm leaving town for the weekend, heading back to Houston."
"Oh."
"I'm attending that party Jake and Diamond are hosting for Sheikh Rasheed Valdemon and his bride. I want you to come with me."
A look came across her face. He could tell she was surprised by what he'd said. Hell, he could understand that, since he was surprised by what he'd said, as well. For him to bring a woman to a family function was something he would hear about for the rest of his life. It would set a precedent. It would start all kinds of speculations. It would give his great-grandmother the idea that she should start looking for a dress to wear to his wedding. Hell, it would set off all those rumors he'd rather not deal with. But for some reason he wanted Sam with him. If only so he could continue to protect her. If he left her here he would only worry, so it stood to reason that she should come with him. It made perfect sense.
Evidently it didn't make perfect sense to her, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. "Do you have a problem going to Houston with me this weekend?" he asked her.
"Yes."
Her response had been quick and he wasn't sure just how much he liked that. "Why?"
She set her fork down. "Because for some reason you've gotten it into your head that I can't look out for myself, Blade. I am well aware that I need to be cautious until I find out who sent those flowers and that note. But I refuse to become dependent on a man. I appreciate you being here and wanting to make sure I'm okay, but we agreed it was only so that Peyton, Mac and Luke wouldn't worry. I don't think we should get carried away with anything."
Too late, he thought. They had already gotten carried away. He had done some things with her he hadn't done with any other woman, and being inside her body without a condom was just one of them. And the crazy thing about it, as strange as it sounded and as unwise as he knew it was, his shaft was bursting to get back inside of her, just that same way.
"Want some more juice?" Sam asked when she noticed his glass was empty.
"Yes. Thanks."
Sam lifted the pitcher off the table and poured him a glass. She wondered how and why he'd made an offer like that. Take her to Houston with him? And just where was she supposed to stay when she got there? She knew he had a condo, but did he actually expect them to stay under the same roof? All night? And what would his family think if they did?
And why was every muscle in her body, every fiber, oozing with a need that was as intense as anything she'd ever experienced? The sensations running through her had her almost to the breaking point, but she still refused to give in. She was a tough nut to crack---stubborn to a fault. A die-hard Di Meglio.
But as she sat there and watched Blade butter his toast, she knew she was in deep trouble.
"Since you prepared breakfast I'll clean up the kitchen," Blade said as he stood to start clearing the table.
Sam stoodm as well. "That's not necessary. It's the least I can do, since you got out of bed early for nothing."
"No problem," he said, walking toward the sink with dishes in his hand. "Any inconvenience was repaid twofold. You outdid yourself with breakfast." And he really meant it. He'd never eaten eggs so fluffy and she'd even baked homemade biscuits.
"There's no way I'm going to let you clean all this up by yourself, Blade," she said when she reached his side.
He turned to face her. Stared into her eyes and said, "Yes, you are, because I need the space right now."
Sam swallowed as she noted the look in his eyes. It was hot, full of lust. So much that it nearly took her breath away. She took a step back. "In that case maybe you should leave. I can handle things here."
"No. Let me do this. Just leave me alone for a while. I'm sure there are other things you have to do."
"Yes, I did bring some files home with me."
"Then how about going and read them."
A furious expression crossed her face. "Now look here, Blade. You don't tell me what to do."
"No, you look here, Sam," he said, lowering his gaze downward toward his crotch.
She followed the direction of his eyes and gave a sharp gasp. He had a massive erection, bigger than she'd ever seen before, and it was pressing hard again his zipper.
Her gaze slowly returned to his face, then roamed over it. His eyes were like dark orbs glinting with fire, his nostrils were flaring and his lips were tight.
"It was hard as hell getting through breakfast with you sitting there," he said in a low and husky tone. "Watching you eat. Seeing you chew your food and lick the syrup off your biscuits. Remembering."
She drew in a deep breath and knew exactly what he'd remembered...her going down on him. "I think I'll go up to my office and read those case files after all," she said, slowly backing away. "Thanks for cleaning up, and you can let yourself out when you're through."
Her heart skipped several beats as she quickly walked out of the kitchen.
Instead of going into her office to read, Sam decided to stretch out on her bed. She had opened the blinds to let in some sunlight and had turned on the radio so that soft music played in the background. Then she tried focusing on the case file she'd grabbed out of her briefcase, and not on the man downstairs in her kitchen.
An hour or so later, she could no longer concentrate on what she was reading, and dropped the papers as her head fell back on the mattress in frustration. Did Blade think he was the only one who'd had a hard time eating this morning? Well, he didn't know the half of it. If he was watching her, did he not notice her watching him? She'd felt like a fool sitting there staring at his mouth each time he put a cup of coffee or a glass of juice to his lips.
And talk about licking something. What about the time her gaze had followed him when he'd stuck his tongue out to lick jelly from the corner of his mouth? Didn't he realize seeing that had been a real turn-on for her?
She flipped on her back and stared up at the ceiling. In all her twenty-eight years she'd never encountered the likes of a man like Blade Madaris. He could be angry with her one minute and then give her a look that said he wanted to make passionate love to her the next.
If they continued on like this, allowing sexual tension and lust, not to mention anger, to rule their senses, then where would that lead? She knew the answer to that question without thinking about it: right to the nearest bedroom to work it out.
With all the planning she'd done, her elaborate scheme, she still hadn't gotten rid of him. Blade Madaris was like the Energizer Bunny that keeps going and going and going. She closed her eyes and groaned when she felt a twitch between her legs.
She opened her eyes and decided to think logically about the situation. The first thing she needed to know and understand was why he was there. After what she'd done Monday night she would think he'd be miles away from her, jumping for joy at the thought that someone wanted to bump her off. Instead, he was staying close and had rearranged his schedule to become her bodyguard.
She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It had been more than an hour since breakfast. Why was it taking him so long to tidy up the kitchen? She eased to the side of the bed, thinking that perhaps he'd left already and just hadn't told her that he was leaving. After all, she had told him to let himself out when he finished cleaning the kitchen.
But regardless of what she'd said, the decent thing for him to have done was to let her know he was leaving, if for no other reason than she could reset the security alarm. Slipping into her flats, she made her way down the hall and quietly walked down the stairs.
When she reached the bottom floor she walked through to the kitchen and found it spotless. Even the stainless-steel appliances had been wiped clean and were gleaming. She left her kitchen and headed for her front door to reset her alarm. She stopped and stared as butterflies fluttered in her lower belly. Blade was there, stretched out on her sofa, asleep.
The first thought that came to mind was why hadn't he gone back to his place and slept on his own sofa? And then she knew. As much as they didn't fully understand it, there was this pull that kept yanking them back together no matter how upset, angry and frustrated they got with each other. She had tried brushing him off, dissing him, setting him up for humiliation and deliberately getting on his nerves, and he was still here.
And it was time that at least one of them found out why.
She figured she should wake him, but decided against it. They would talk when he woke up on his own. Right now, she just wanted to look at him while he slept.
His breathing was deep and even and his chest moved with every breath. He was lying flat on his back with one leg thrown to the side, nearly hanging off the sofa. His zipper was facing her and she could tell he was no longer as aroused as he had been before, but still big. He had taken off his shoes but had kept his socks on.
Her gaze moved back to his face. His lower jaw seemed more prominent today. Probably because of the slight shadow covering it, which indicated he hadn't taken the time to shave before coming over. And his lips, those lips she enjoyed looking at so much, seemed to move slightly with every breath he took.
She also slept on her back and had once read an article that said people who sleep on their backs were confident and ready to tackle life. It also said they were vain and happy with their physical appearance and were always up for trying something new, both in and out of bed. Hmm, now that was definitely a thought.
Just watching him lying there filled her with a sense of desire she hadn't known possible. The man was smoldering with sensuality of the fieriest kind. There was nothing about him that didn't turn her on, whether he was in clothes or out of them.
Taking a deep breath, she was about to turn around when she heard him groan. She looked back at his face and saw his eyes were still closed, but there was an odd expression on his face, as if he'd gotten swept up in some sort of dream. He moaned again, and as she slid her gaze lower, she saw his T-shirt had risen to uncover a little of his tummy. The hair covering the area was curly and appeared soft to the touch. Her eyes moved a little lower and his erection began to swell right before her eyes.
From her studies in college, she recalled that according to Freud's theories, the reason people dreamed was to release hidden urges and secret desires they weren't allowed to express in real life.
She swallowed, and wondered just what kind of dream Blade was having when he groaned again, a grunt that almost sounded like a growl this time. She knew she should leave him, let him do whatever it was he was doing in private, and turned away. However, the moment she did so, he groaned out her name in a fevered pitch. "Samari."
She turned around quickly and stared at him. His eyes were still closed, but an intense look of pleasure covered his face. And she knew at that moment that whatever dream he was having, she was part of it.
In the deep, dark recesses of his slumber, Blade pulled at Sam's hair, held tight to her curls when he slowly entered her, hoping and praying that they could finish what they started this time. If she told him to stop he didn't know what he would do.
Very carefully he began entering her, feeling her body stretch to accommodate his entry, experiencing the sexual pleasure of her muscles clamping him tightly. He paused a moment to give her body time to adjust to his size and glanced up at the stars. They were outside on his balcony, back in Houston. He had taken the spread off of his bed, along with some pillows, to sleep out in the open. And make love.
They'd had a glass of wine, but that was not what was driving their desire. It was passion of the deepest kind, a need to know each other this way, to finally push aside the mistrust and anger. It was time for both of them to realize there was a reason for this bond between them. They could continue to fight it, deny it and not claim it. But the truth of the matter was this was meant to be.
He looked down into her face and felt something he'd never felt before, saw something in her eyes he'd never seen, and he knew this time their union would be complete. There would be no interruptions.
He spread her legs farther apart as he felt his shaft go deeper and deeper inside of her, almost to the hilt. He hadn't put on a condom, so they were skin to skin, flesh to flesh, and just the thought of it almost made him come.
He kept going, spreading her legs even farther, and then he---
"Wake up, Blade."
He drew in a sharp breath and felt his body being shaken. He tried to hold on to the dream but felt it drifting away, out of his reach and out of his touch. He moaned in despair, not wanting to believe that once again he had not finished the task he'd set out to do. Refusing to accept that someone had the damn nerve to interrupt his dream, he opened his eyes wide. And there she was, the object of his obsession, the cause of his current state of frustration, looking down at him with a smile curving her lips from corner to corner.
"You were dreaming," she said, as if that explained everything.
With a deep, guttural groan to mask his curse, he turned his head away from her for a second, trying to get his bearings, to hide his disappointment, and wondering just how much of his dream she'd heard. Slade swore that he talked in his sleep, telling things better left unknown.
Blade sighed as he turned his head and looked back up at her, and then moving carefully, he pulled himself up in a sitting position as he rubbed his hands across his face. He then looked up at her again and flinched when he saw that damn smile was still on her face.
"How long have I been sleeping?" he asked, working the kinks from his neck.
"I have no idea, since I wasn't aware you'd gone to sleep until I came downstairs to check on things. I thought you had left."
"Started to," he replied. "But couldn't make it to the front door. I collapsed on your sofa. Sorry about that."
"No problem."
He tried to move his legs, which felt as if they were still asleep. "Did you finish reading that file?" he asked.
"Not all of it. There's only so much legal stuff I can take in one sitting."
"Oh." He wished she wouldn't stand there like that, so close to him. She still had on those cutoffs and a tank top. She looked fresh and smelled good. And just to think that in his dream he had come close to getting what she had refused him in reality. Close but not close enough, deep but not deep enough.
He pulled in a deep breath and figured he'd better get out of there before doing something real stupid. Like reaching out and grabbing her thighs, unzipping her shorts and tasting her all over.
"I guess I better go now," he said, getting up from the sofa, causing her to take a step back.
"Call me if you need to go somewhere. Give me a ring even if you decide on takeout for lunch. I want to be here if anybody shows up," he added, throwing the sentences over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
"I don't like being bossed around, Blade."
He turned before reaching for the doorknob. If she was trying to pick a fight with him, now was not the time to do it. Twice he had left her house in a sexually deprived state. The last thing she would want today was to deliberately provoke him.
"Let it go, Sam. I'm not in a good mood. Just do what I ask."
"No, I won't do what you ask. My father's name is Antonio DeAngelo Di Meglio and not Blade Madaris."
Blade glanced down at the floor and counted to ten. He even muttered a few choice words. When he felt enough time had elapsed, he glanced back over at her. He studied her and saw the stubbornness etched in her face, and he saw something else, too---deep sexual frustration.
His heart began beating deeply within his chest. He knew the signs and should have picked up on them sooner. Their predicament was basically the same. They needed to get laid, but not with just anybody, only with each other.
Always with just each other.
He sucked in a deep breath, thinking how possessive that sounded. How final and absolute. He'd never thought about final and absolute with a woman in his entire life. All of a sudden a realization struck and it hit hard. If his feet hadn't been planted firmly on the floor he probably would have been knocked over. He was feeling strong emotions toward a woman.
But this wasn't just any woman. This was a woman who had proved she was different---difficult and different. Evidently that's what he needed. And that's what he'd been waiting for without knowing it.
He could vividly remember the night they'd met and all the times they'd seen each other since then. He had tried his luck with her, but instead of giving up, he had become almost obsessed with having her. He had convinced himself she was just another notch to add to his bedpost, and that his attraction to her was only sexual.
Now, ten months later, he hadn't added her to his bedpost yet, mainly because she could never be just another notch. She was the one he had singled out without realizing he was doing so. The one woman he hadn't gotten out of his mind since first seeing her. She was the woman who constantly invaded his dreams. The one who'd triggered an urgency within him that no other woman could match.
Over the years, he had been told, preached and even lectured to about what to expect when a Madaris man knew he had found the woman for him. The one he was meant to share his life with, his soul mate. And the one thing he'd always been told was that she would be different.
The one standing across the room glaring at him was different, all right. As fiery as they came and with an attitude that he would have to work on. And then there was that temper of hers from her Italian side of the family. He would let her keep it, just encourage her to tone it down some.
At that precise moment it was crystal clear why he'd been chasing her from the start, even after she'd dissed him a few times. Why he had looked for any excuse to come back to Oklahoma City to see her. Why he was living next door to her now. Why he had become her watchdog, determined to keep her safe. Why he had asked Alex to find out who was trying to hurt her. And why he had given up three hours of sleep this morning.
The reasons were as clear as the nose on his face. She was meant to be his. She was his. And he loved her with all the heated passion that was flowing through his body, all the torrid sensations that he felt---both sexual and nonsexual.
She would never believe the emotions he was feeling. Very few people who knew him would. He would have to show her rather than tell her, and eventually she would understand. He would make damn sure of it. But he definitely wouldn't share his feelings with her yet. If he gave her an inkling of how he felt she would refuse to believe it, and would think it was his way of getting revenge. There was no doubt in his mind that she would put up a wall between them so high it might take him years to climb over it.
"Do you have a problem?"
Her words pulled him out of his daze. "A problem?" he asked.
"Yes, you're just standing there staring at me like you have a problem."
If she only knew. He leaned back against the door. "My only problem is that you have too much of a smart mouth."
She narrowed her eyes, stiffened her spine and placed her hands on her hips. "You want to try and change it?"
He could tell she was poised, ready for a fight. She had no idea the type of battle they were about to wage. It was probably a good thing she didn't know, he thought. "Yes, I want to try and change it. I would love teaching that mouth of yours about respect."
He saw the fiery blaze deepen in her eyes and his lips couldn't help but twitch in response. The heat was certainly on now.
She laughed. "Do you honestly think you can take me on?"
A sensuous smile touched both corners of his lips when he said, "I'm going to damn well try."
He began walking toward her and he had to admire her for standing her ground, not moving an inch, keeping her hands on her hips and tilting her chin up, which was fine with him. It gave him a better angle for his mouth to connect to hers.
When he got close she said, "Enough of this, Blade. I want you to leave."
He kept smiling. "No you don't. If I left that would be like you admitting defeat, and I don't think you want to do that."
She lifted her chin an inch higher. "I'll never admit defeat."
"I didn't think you would."
And then before she could blink, he reached out and gently grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her face closer and slanted his mouth across hers. He was doing something about her smart mouth, just as he'd warned her he would. He was teaching her about respect in the most sensuous way.
Sam knew the best way to get out of his grasp was to use her knee to kick Blade in the groin. She hadn't taken all those self-defense classes growing up for nothing. But at that moment when Blade slid his tongue inside her mouth, any thought of doing physical harm to him flew out the window.
Instead she grabbed hold of his shoulders and pushed her mouth even closer. His taste was invading her senses as it did each and every time their mouths locked. She enjoyed kissing him. She enjoyed him kissing her. And the touch of his tongue on all parts of her mouth was causing her to groan back in her throat. It enticed her to participate in this sensual mouth play any way she could.
So she did.
Her tongue became embroiled in a heated duel, tangling with his, swirling from one side of his mouth to the other. It was as if they couldn't taste enough, touch enough or get close enough. Her body was humming in pleasure, telling her this was what it needed, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. It didn't come close. Deeper intimacy was what her body craved and what she longed for. And to prove the point---as if her body had a mind of its own---her middle pressed against his aroused member and her erect nipples poked hard into his chest. Her body prodded him to press his tongue even deeper inside her mouth, move it around in a frantic pace and lick and suck everything it touched.
He suddenly pulled his mouth from hers and stared down at her face as he drew in a much needed breath and gave her the chance to do the same. "Do you understand about respect now?" he asked in a thick, raspy voice.
She held his gaze. "No. You're going to have to do a lot better than that," she challenged.
A growl emanated from deep in his throat and the expression on his face became one of intense determination. The look in his eyes---hot, hungry and devouring---sent shudders through her body and had her shivering. "Then I guess I'll need to take things to another level," he said in a voice raw with sexual need.
He didn't wait for a comment. Instead, he simply reached out and ripped the tank top off her body, tossing it somewhere behind him. A furious look crossed her face. "Damn it, Blade. That's going to cost you."
He gave her a haughty smile. "Send me the bill."
His gaze then went from her face to her chest to see what his handiwork had unveiled. Beautiful and plump breasts with the most gorgeous dark tips he'd ever witnessed. He'd thought that before when he'd seen them and thought the same thing now. He'd been around enough to know that no two women had the same breasts. Shapes, sizes, textures and tastes varied. But he could stand there and say that hers were in a class by themselves. They were made for his hands and mouth alone.
"Give me my top back."
Her request pulled his gaze back up to her face. "I don't know why you'd want your top when you're about to lose your bottoms. But I think I want to hear you beg me to take them off of you."
Sam glared at him. "Don't hold your breath because I don't beg."
Blade shrugged. "There's a first time for everything."
And before she could open her mouth to give him a scathing retort, he tumbled her back onto the sofa.
Blade's game plan was to seduce her body and then conquer her heart. And ignoring Sam's shrieks of rage, he captured her mouth the moment her back touched the sofa cushions.
First she had been the object of his seduction, then the object of his obsession. Later, the object of his protection, and now she was the cause of his frustration.
But he was about to remedy that.
Nothing was going to stop him, not even the angry look that was flashing in her eyes when he lifted his mouth. She was a hellion. There was no other way to describe her, and he loved every inch of her. He smiled at the thought that he could confess to such a thing and feel like smiling.
"I'm going to count to ten, Blade, and you better be off me before I get to the last number," she said through gritted teeth.
He wouldn't tell her not to waste her breath. He had her pinned down on the sofa with her breasts bare. That wasn't good enough for him, especially when he remembered how she'd looked on the floor Monday night, totally naked as he'd been.
He could vividly recall her curvy body and sliding between those long, gorgeous legs.
"One."
And how good it felt to be pressed between such a luscious pair of thighs.
"Two."
And then he glanced down at her chest.
"Three."
Those were the sexy twin mounds that he had enjoyed tasting.
"Four."
He recalled almost making her come just from having his mouth on them, sucking them like crazy and licking them all over.
"Five."
Blade dipped his head and captured a torrid nipple in his mouth, sucked it in like a whirlwind and then began licking it with his tongue like candy.
"Six."
He smiled, thinking that the sound of the number six hadn't been as blistering as the others. He noticed her breathing had changed. It was now faster and she had begun wriggling under his body. He began sucking on her nipple a little harder, as if he was trying to draw something out of it. He heard her moans turn into cries, not of pain but of pleasure. He knew that was the case when she captured his head in her hands to hold him to her breasts.
His mouth switched to the other nipple, and he didn't waste time before giving it the same attention and torment---the same pleasure. She had stopped counting. Instead what he heard pouring from her mouth were moans of the most sensuous kind. And now she was writhing beneath him. His ears perked up when she said his name.
"Blade."
He smiled. That was a start. She was coming around nicely and he intended to keep her coming---literally.
Keeping his mouth glued to her breasts, he slowly inched his hand downward and smoothly began easing her zipper open. Her body tensed for only a second and then she began writhing again.
And then she said, "Blade! Please!"
His fingers made their way inside the opening, moved past the silken material of her panties and slid to the crotch that shielded her womanly charms. The moment his fingers touched her, soaked in her wetness, he began stroking her.
Her feminine scent filled the air and her moans became groans as he continued to work his fingers while still not letting up on her breasts. And then she cried out his name again, bucked against him, tightened her thighs to capture his hand, and thrust out her chest so her nipple wedged deeper into his mouth.
He felt her muscles clench his fingers, and wished it was his erection that was being taken. He lifted his mouth from her breasts to stare into her face. Her orgasm was so intense and the look on her face was totally beautiful. Her eyes were tightly shut and her lips slightly parted, and she was breathing through her mouth in short gasps.
One day she would learn to keep her mouth closed, he thought, inching his lips toward hers and sliding his tongue inside the opening. She latched onto it, tangled with it, mated with it. And while his fingers continued to work her, she exploded into yet another orgasm.
He pulled his mouth away to let her scream. He wanted to hear it. He needed to hear it. And at that moment, hearing the sound sent desire racing through him in a way it had never done before. Mainly because that scream had come from the woman he loved---the only woman that mattered, the woman who had captured his heart.
His woman.
With her eyes tightly shut, Sam felt drained, totally spent and shocked. Two orgasms back to back! She would not have believed such a thing was possible---maybe for some women but not her. She had been happy with her last encounters---as infrequent as they were---but to get not just one real good one but two? Wow!
No, actually, Blade had given her four. She couldn't forget the night in the parked car and Monday night here on this same floor. A total of four orgasms and he hadn't fully penetrated her yet.
She opened her eyes and gazed up at him. He was looming over her and still had her pinned to the sofa. It was evident he wasn't planning on letting her go anywhere. He was probably thinking that she'd had four orgasms to his one and that he was due a few more. She hated to disappoint him, and she wouldn't. She was tired of fighting with him, tired of denying herself the very thing she wanted.
She had tried teaching him a lesson, humiliating him in a way most men would not have put up with. But he was still here. The man had staying power if nothing else. Did he want her as a notch on his bedpost that bad? Evidently. But still, she wouldn't be easy. Di Meglios never were.
"Well?"
She glanced up at him, ran her fingers through her hair and said, "Well, what?"
"Ready to go again?"
She would have laughed if she'd had the breath to do so. He really thought highly of himself. "Two is all I can do in a twenty-four hour period. Sorry."
"Says who?"
"Me. I know my body."
He moved his fingers and it was then she realized they were still inside of her. "I know your body, too. I'm getting six out of you today."
He had to be kidding. "Six?"
"Yes."
"And how did you come up with that number?" she asked.
A smile touched both corners of his lips. "That's the number you stopped at. The number when you gave in."
She didn't like the sound of gloating in his voice. "Doesn't matter. You still didn't make me beg."
"Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't." She would have remembered. Wouldn't she?
"You said please."
She frowned, vaguely remembering what she'd said. "So what if I did? That wasn't begging."
"Yes, it was."
She didn't intend to argue with him.
"Say it was, so I can get you out of these shorts," he said, not letting the matter drop.
He was working his fingers again and the feel of them was sending tremors through her body, and then she began feeling a wave of hunger building up inside her once more. How in the world was that even remotely possible?
"Blade?"
"Hmm?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I'd rather show you why rather than try to explain," he whispered, his voice confident and arrogant, yet at the same time tender and warm.
She stared at him as he continued to work his fingers, while the hunger kept growing inside of her. And she knew as miraculous as it could be, if he kept it up that she would come again. But this time, she didn't want his mouth or fingers to deliver such pleasure. It was time to stop evading what she really wanted---total and complete penetration.
He was still holding her gaze and wouldn't let it go. And in a move that she figured surprised him, she leaned up and took her tongue and ran the wet tip along the edges of his lips, those same lips that could arouse her just from looking at them. She smiled when he released a quick rush of breath.
And then she used the tip of her tongue and wiggled it through the center of those lips, and when he all but sucked it inside his mouth to join with his, she flicked it all over the place.
Moments later, he pulled back and stared hard into her eyes. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he asked in a strained voice.
She knew this response would be easy. "I'm begging, Blade."
But not for long, Blade thought, when he shifted his body to remove her shorts. He was stripping her and stripping his control all at the same time, obsessed with anticipating the feel of her muscles clamping him and pulling him in as they had done before. But first he had to make certain of something. More for her benefit than for his.
"Are you on the pill?"
She blinked. "The pill?"
"Yes?"
She nodded. She was on them more so to regulate her period than anything else, but he didn't have to know that. "Yes, why?"
"If you want me to use a condom, I will, but I like the feel of being inside of you bare. I'm healthy," he said, twisting around to pull his wallet out of his back pocket and then taking something out of it to hand to her.
She took what looked like a laminated business card, but when she studied it, she saw that it was a health card. She glanced back up at him. "You carry around a health card?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"No."
"It doesn't matter," he said, when she handed the card back to him. "I'm making love to you regardless."
"Why?"
He stared down at her. She was totally naked as he straddled her, and he would be removing his own clothes shortly. Now would be a good time to tell her how he felt, but he knew he couldn't. His woman was a "show me" woman and he intended to show her in both deeds and actions.
"Because of this." And then he leaned closer and captured her mouth in a way he'd gotten used to doing, yet still found exciting. When he eased off of the sofa to remove his shirt, she sat up with him.
"Let me, Blade," she said.
Sam's voice was filled with sexual desire, so much that she could hear it herself and knew he had to be aware of it, as well. He stood there as she pulled his T-shirt over his head and proceeded to toss it aside. Instead of going straight for his pants she used her hands to roam all over him, touching places on his chest she had often fantasized about. He was built. He was masculine. He was all man.
She felt him tremble at the touch of her hand. She liked the feel of the crisp hair beneath her fingers.
"Having fun?" he asked in a tense tone.
She smiled at him. "Not as much as I intend to have."
Surprise glinted in his eyes. "You're dangerous."
"You should have considered that before taking me on, Blade Madaris."
And then she leaned forward and captured one of the dark pebbles on his chest in her mouth, doing just what he'd done to her nipples earlier, licking and sucking.
She liked the guttural sound that he made and enjoyed the way his heart felt beating wildly in his chest pressed against her lips. Knowing she needed to take things to the next level, she pulled back and lowered her hand to undo his jeans, slowly easing down the zipper. It didn't take her long to work both his jeans and his briefs down his legs and toss them aside.
"I need you to sit on the sofa so I can remove your socks," she said, taking a look at him and enjoying the view. He was totally naked except for his socks.
He eased back on the sofa to sit down and she crouched down in front of him and slid the socks off his feet and tossed them aside. He then reached out for her, but she pushed him back against the cushion and, while still on her knees, leaned forward and licked his stomach, tracing wet rings around his navel with her tongue. She felt him clench his abdominal muscles as her mouth brushed against them.
She leaned back on her haunches and looked up at him. "You didn't ask, Blade, but I'm healthy, too. I get regular checkups. Now move your hips toward me."
He eased forward as she requested and the moment he did she dipped her head to his lap.
Mercy!
That was the only word Blade could think of when his head fell back against the sofa. What was this woman doing to him? She had taken his heart, so what else did she want? He knew at that moment Samari Di Meglio had his soul, as well.
This woman who was kneeling in front of him with his full erection in her mouth was doing things to him with her tongue that had him shuddering deep in his groin. He reached down and grabbed ahold of her head, tightened his fingers in her hair as he was devoured by what had to be the naughtiest mouth on earth.
"Samari."
Her name was a tortured moan from his lips and he quietly conceded that he wouldn't be able to handle what she was doing to him much longer. If she was retaliating for his earlier actions, she was getting retribution many times over. And when he felt his body nearly ready to explode, he slid his hands from her hair to her shoulders and, before she realized what he was doing, quickly eased her back, tumbling her to the carpeted floor and then swiftly joining her there.
The moment he straddled her body, he parted her legs and, gripping her thighs, eased into her warm, wet womanly charm. This time he didn't intend to stop until he thrust to the hilt.
Her body was tight and clenched him mercilessly as he stared down at her and pushed forward, only pausing when she needed to draw in a deep breath. "When was the last time you did this?" he asked. If he didn't know better he'd think she was a virgin. Her passageway was just that tight.
She looked up at him and for a moment he didn't think she was going to answer. "Over four years ago."
He blinked and decided that would be a discussion they would have later. But for now, he knew he intended to make this the best she'd ever had. Make it worth waiting four years for.
She dug into his shoulders as he moved deeper, stretching her body to accommodate his size. If there was any other way than this he would try it. However, he needed to feel her clenching him. He needed to give her all the pleasure she could handle.
When he had spread her to the hilt, he again gave her time to adjust. "You okay?" he said, wiping sweat off her brow.
She smiled up at him, "Yes, I'm fine now. I feel you."
He chuckled. "Good, because now I'm going to fill you."
By the time he figured that she'd gotten his meaning, he had begun moving, lifting her hips to receive his thrusts, easing in and out of her as if it was natural...and one day it would be.
Over and over he made love to her, stroking inside of her, slow and deep, imbedding himself to the hilt and then almost completely pulling out before going deep back inside again. Then he leaned forward and captured her mouth, making love to it with the same rhythm and pace of his thrusts.
When he felt her body buck underneath him, felt her detonate as her feminine juices began drenching him, he threw his head back and clamped down on her thighs and thrust as deep as he could go and then he exploded.
His semen shot straight to her womb. Hot, thick and potent. And he knew it had to be coating her insides, filling her. Once his sperm realized they were free, and no longer confined to a condom, he bet they would instinctively swim around like crazy to find an egg.
Not this time, fellas, he thought. He knew that had it happened this time, it would not have bothered him in the least. This was his woman. One day he wanted her to have his babies. He loved her and he wouldn't be satisfied until she loved him back.
Before he could pull in a deep breath, more shudders racked his body, and another release shot straight to her womb when yet another orgasm claimed him. And he knew at that moment that he would never, ever get enough of her.
"Why haven't you done this in four years, Sam?"
Sam refused to open her eyes, doubting she had strength to do even that. She pulled in a deep breath. That had been her sixth orgasm. Back to back. Once they'd christened the floor, he had taken her to the sauna, saying he'd never made love in a sauna before and wanted to try it. They had added to the steam and by the time he had stretched her out on the bench and entered her, thrusting in and out of her like he needed to mate with her as much as he needed to breathe, she could still feel the tremors that had rammed through her body.
Afterward, they had drunk plenty of water and then together had prepared lunch. After lunch he had taken her on the kitchen table, claiming he was getting his dessert again, and then they'd made love in the shower. The remaining times had been in her bed.
She glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. It was six o'clock and time for dinner, but she didn't think she would ever be able to move again.
"Sam?"
She forced her eyes open to look at him. "What?" she said in a near whisper.
"Why haven't you made love in four years?"
She closed her eyes. Moments later she reopened them, figuring he wouldn't let her be until she told him. "I've been too busy setting up players. Building them up and letting them down."
He lifted a brow. "At the risk of your own pleasure?"
She rolled her eyes. "What pleasure? At the risk of your ego getting inflated more than it probably already is," she said. "This is a sensual confession that you can take to the grave. What I've shared with you today is the first time I've done this and gotten any real pleasure out of it. I've only done it three other times and the men were selfish."
"But I wasn't?"
She chuckled and rolled her eyes. "You can ask me that after six times? Pleeeze."
He grinned as he shifted his body to lean over her. "Did I hear you say please? That's the magic word. I think you should get ready for number seven."
And before she could tell him he was crazy if he thought that, he lowered his mouth and proved that he wasn't.
"If I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. Blade actually brought a woman to the party," several voices whispered.
A number of heads turned to stare at the couple who had just walked in.
"Who is she?"
"Don't know."
"Her face looks familiar."
"Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that one of the girls who was in Luke and Mac's wedding, one of Mac's attorney friends?"
Blade knew that he and Sam were being discussed the moment they entered the huge room at Whispering Pines, his uncle Jake's ranch, where most of the Madaris parties were held. He and Sam had arrived in Houston late yesterday evening, but had only notified Slade when they had gotten to town. Blade knew for his family to see him and Sam together would be a shocker.
He'd gone through the receiving line and had met Rasheed's wife, Johari. The rumors he'd heard were true. She was a beauty, but he thought that no woman was as beautiful as the one standing beside him.
Getting Sam to come with him to Houston hadn't been easy. She had grumbled all the way, claiming he was just trying to boss her around. He'd finally convinced her that due to Alex's hectic schedule it would be better if she came and talked to him here. The sooner Alex got a handle on things the better.
Blade still didn't like the fact that Sam's life could be in danger. That day when they had finally made love had turned into a lazy day filled with sex, sex and more sex. She would blush every time he teased her about the number of times she'd come. By the time they had closed their eyes that night it had been a whopping ten. And he had awakened the next morning ready to make love to her again. He had set a record not only for her but for himself, as well. He'd never wanted any woman that much and for that long. He had driven her into work at ten on Thursday, a time he considered a reasonable hour.
Her security team at the office had been apprised of the threat by Mac, and everyone was being cautious and alert. No packages were to be accepted that looked suspicious, and the only persons allowed in to meet with Sam were those appointments previously scheduled with current clients.
Blade had taken the initiative to speak with the security force himself and everyone was ready to do whatever had to be done to protect her. Even Rita had pulled her head out of her romance novel long enough to listen, and by the look in her eyes Blade had a feeling this was probably the most excitement she'd ever experienced as a security guard.
"Do you get the feeling that we're being watched, Blade?"
Sam's question reined in his thoughts and he could only smile. Being watched was just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until his great-grandmother saw them. That's when the interrogation would begin.
He glanced around, not surprised to see a number of curious eyes on them, mostly those of his relatives. They were trying to digest it all, making sure they weren't seeing things, or drawing the wrong conclusion. In this case the conclusions they reached would probably be right. The woman standing by his side would one day become Mrs. Blade Madaris.
He smiled at her and said, "We are being watched. I usually don't bring anyone to family functions."
"Why not?"
"I'm a player, remember. It's not good for my image," he teased, and couldn't help but laugh when he saw the frown on her face.
"Come on," he said, taking her hand. "I see my parents over there, as well as my grandparents. And I'm sure my great-grandmother is around here somewhere. I want to introduce you. The last thing I want is for them to get ideas about us. We're nothing more than friends and the sooner they know it the better."
Sam nodded. "I agree."
Blade figured she would. What he didn't tell her was that although he would tell his family she was nothing more than a friend, there was not a single one of them here tonight who would believe it.
An hour or so later Blade had made the rounds with Sam by his side, introducing her to everyone. After claiming he needed to go discuss a business matter with Slade, he had left her in his great-grandmother's and Syneda's care, something that hadn't gone unnoticed. Mama Laverne and Syneda were two of the most opinionated and nosy women in the Madaris family.
Felicia Laverne Madaris, who was sitting on one of the sofas, glanced up at Sam and smiled before asking, "So, how long have you and my great-grandson been seeing each other?"
Syneda noticed the surprised look on Sam's face before she responded. "Blade and I aren't seeing each other. We're just friends. He's sort of helping me out of a jam."
Syneda and Mama Laverne exchanged knowing looks. First of all, Blade didn't have female friends, he had bed partners. And Blade wouldn't help any woman out of a jam unless there was something in it for him. But what was so crystal clear to both women, although the waters were evidently still rather murky to Samari Di Meglio, was that somehow, someway, Blade had singled her out. It was also rather obvious Ms. Di Meglio had no earthly idea just what that meant.
"I understand you're expecting," Sam said to Syneda, breaking into her thoughts. "Congratulations."
Syneda beamed. "Thanks. I'm happy about it, although it did come as a shock, since I was on birth control. But that's the thing about a Madaris man. If he wants to get you pregnant, a simple thing like a birth-control pill or a condom isn't going to stop him."
"Oh," Sam said, and quickly looked away. She had nothing to worry about, since the last thing Blade would want to do was to get her pregnant. She was sure of it.
After meeting them, Sam was convinced that she liked Blade's family. Some of them she'd met before, at Mac and Luke's wedding. They were friendly then and they were friendly now. Christy Madaris Maxwell had pulled out a bunch of photos of her little girl and Sam thought she looked like a doll, absolutely adorable. For a moment Sam could envisioned her own little girl, who would look like her father. And for some reason a little girl with Blade's features flashed across her mind.
She almost choked on the wine she'd been drinking. Lorren Madaris, who was married to Blade's cousin Justin, and Caitlin Madaris, who was married to his cousin Dex, glanced over at her with concern. "Are you okay?" Lorren asked.
She nodded after clearing her throat. "Yes, I'm fine." Deep down she knew she wasn't fine. For some reason she'd just thought about being the mother of Blade's baby.
Deciding that was the last thing she wanted to think about, she glanced around the room and smiled when she saw how attentive Sheikh Rasheed Valdemon was to his wife. She thought they made such a beautiful couple, and Johari Valdemon was practically glowing. Sam knew why. They had announced to everyone a few moments earlier that they would become parents this fall.
Sam knew that her own parents would jump for joy if either she or Angelo presented them with a grandchild. The thought of having a baby had never crossed her mind before, but now with so many pregnant women here tonight, she found herself thinking about it. And whenever she did, those thoughts would include Blade. She wasn't ready to think about why that was the case; for now she would just accept that it was.
She turned, knowing the object of her thoughts had returned to her side. He smiled at her. "Missed me?"
She chuckled. "Of course."
He glanced over at his family. "Excuse us for a minute." He took Sam's hand in his and led her over to a secluded spot near where the band had been playing earlier.
"I've made arrangements," he whispered. "Alex wants to talk to you before the party ends tonight. We'll use Jake's office. Will that be okay?"
"Yes, that will be fine. The sooner he finds out something the better. It's been crazy at the office with everyone looking over their shoulders."
He nodded in understanding.
"Sam! I didn't know you would be here."
Blade and Sam turned when Luke and Mac walked up. Sam gave her best friend a hug. "When I saw you in the office before you left town on Thursday, I didn't know, either," she said to Mac. "Blade had asked me the day before but I turned him down. And then he kept pestering me about coming, so I changed my mind Friday morning." She chuckled and added, "He finally asked me nicely instead of making it an order."
Mac nodded as she and Luke glanced over at Blade, who only shrugged his shoulders. "I thought it was best to bring her with me instead of leaving her in Oklahoma with that crazy person still on the loose."
Luke stared at Blade a moment. "I can see you thinking that way."
Luke knew it was a lie even as he said it. He couldn't see Blade thinking that way at all. For Blade to bring Sam to the party could only mean one thing. A woman had finally captured his cousin's heart.
Sam glanced around at all the people gathered in Jake Madaris's office. She had assumed that only she, Blade and Alex would be there, and was surprised when she walked in and found others waiting.
When Alex Maxwell saw the obviously confused expression on her face, he explained, "I'm going to do everything I can to find out who sent you those flowers, Sam. But these other folks are sort of my backup just in case things get crazy, like they did with Mac last year. Besides, I'd like them to hear everything in case they latch onto something that I might miss."
Sam smiled. She'd heard all about Alex Maxwell and his ability to solve cases, so she doubted he would miss anything. And then, glancing around the room, she realized she knew about four of the others, as well. They were former members of the U. S. Marines recon forces. And two of them were former CIA agents.
"I'm sure you know everyone, but I'd like to reintroduce everybody anyway," Alex said.
"All right."
"First is Ashton Sinclair."
She smiled and then walked straight over into Ashton's outstretched arms. She knew Ashton very well, since he was Mac's cousin.
Ashton glanced down at her with a grin on his face. "Have you been behaving yourself?"
She smiled. "Trying to."
A serious expression then appeared on Ashton's face. "Alex will find the person responsible. In the meantime take every precaution."
She nodded. "I will." She smiled widely. "I understand congratulations are in order for you and Nettie."
He laughed. "Yes, we're having a girl. Nettie and I are ecstatic and the boys are excited," he said of his sons, six-year-old triplets---Hunter, Wolf and Brody.
She was introduced to Drake Warren and his wife, Tori. They were former CIA agents. She gave them hugs, as well. "And how is the newest member of the Warren family?" she couldn't help asking.
The couple beamed proudly. "Dior is doing marvelous and is giving her big brothers a lot of grief already," Tori said of their two other children, sons Deke and Devin, ages five and three respectively. "She'll be celebrating her first birthday soon."
Sam then met Trevor Grant, another former marine and close friend of the Madaris family. She knew from talking to Blade that Reese would be replacing Trevor as foreman of Madaris Explorations, a company owned by Blade's cousin Dex. Trevor wanted to pursue his dream of opening a tactical operations facility, and Drake and Ashton would be partners in the business venture.
"And how is your family, Trevor?" she asked. She remembered meeting Trevor's wife, Corinthians, and their two children, a seven-year-old son named Rio and a five-year-old daughter named Phoenix.
"Everyone is doing fine," Trevor said, smiling. "Thanks for asking."
Sam thought that all of them---Alex, Ashton, Drake and Trevor---were definitely handsome men, and Tori was certainly a beauty. And it was obvious that she was adored and loved by Drake.
"Now that we all know each other," Alex said, grinning, "we can get down to business. I want you to sit next to Blade, Sam, while I ask you some questions."
"Sure," she said, easing down beside Blade on the love seat. She smiled when he took her hand in his, tucking it into his lap.
"Now then," Alex started. "I understand you were questioned by Detective Adams, who I worked with to solve the Coroni case, so I got to know him pretty well. He's an intelligent man who's good at what he does, so I'm sure he's probably asked some of the same questions I'm about to ask. However, I might want you to elaborate some more in your answers. That will help me in my investigation."
"All right."
He paused for a second. "Now, I need the names of all the men you've been associated with. Since your secret admirer claims to be an old friend, you need to go back as far as you can, even during your college days. So let's start there."
Sam shifted to a more comfortable position in the love seat, but Blade held tight to her hand. "I didn't date a lot in college, especially after what happened my first year at Yale."
"What happened?" Tori asked.
Sam glanced across the room and met Tori's gaze. "My roommate, Vivian Randall, committed suicide in our dorm room. I was away in class at the time."
"And why did she kill herself?" Ashton asked.
She noticed that, like Detective Adams, Alex was jotting down information on a notepad. "She had met this guy at school, Tyrell Graham, and he convinced her that he was madly in love with her. She found out differently when a video of them making love showed up on the Internet. She questioned him about it and he brushed her off, admitted to putting it out there and laughed in her face about it. She came back to our dorm room and overdosed on some of my pills."
"Your pills?" Trevor asked, lifting a brow.
"Yes. The doctor had prescribed them for my migraine headaches and she took them." Sam lowered her head as if the memory was almost too much for her.
Blade tightened his grip on her hand. He'd known about her roommate committing suicide, but hadn't known the woman had used Sam's prescription to do so. No wonder she still felt guilty after all these years.
The room was silent for a moment. "Evidently you were upset about the entire incident. Did you ever confront Tyrell Graham about his part in your roommate's death?" Sir Drake said.
Sam's eyes blazed with fire. "Yes, of course. He didn't have any remorse."
"And what did you do?" Ashton asked, figuring she would have retaliated.
"Nothing at the time. I was too upset about it. Before the semester was over I had changed universities and returned home to New York and attended NYU. But I did run into Tyrell a few years later."
"How long ago was that?" Tori asked.
"Three years ago. I was invited to be one of the judges in a bodybuilding contest he was entered in. There were five judges, but of course he thought it was my fault that he didn't win."
"And was it your fault that he didn't win, Sam?" Blade asked, looking at her as if he knew she'd had something to do with the outcome.
She smiled at him. "Well, I did mention what he'd done to my godfather, who happened to be one of the major sponsors of the event."
Alex chuckled, reading between the lines. "Did Graham threaten you?"
"No, but I could tell he was mad. Not only did he lose the competition, but he was banned from every contest my godfather sponsored."
"You do know that if he was a career bodybuilder, one who spent hours and hours working out to compete, what you did could have ruined him for life," Trevor pointed out.
She pressed her lips together a second before saying, "Then I guess that was unfortunate for him. I had no pity for him, like he had no pity for Vivian."
Alex cleared his throat. "Okay, moving on. You said you didn't date seriously during college. What about later, in law school?"
She shook her head. "No, I didn't date seriously then, either. I met the man I thought I would marry a few years ago, not long after I finished law school and went to work at my family law firm. Guy Carrington was an associate attorney there. We became engaged and planned to marry."
"What happened?" Drake asked.
Sam didn't say anything for a moment. "On the day of the wedding, in the middle of the ceremony, two women showed up claiming Guy was the father of their children and that he was still seeing them both. One of the women was pregnant again."
"Have you heard from Carrington?" Alex asked.
"Not since he contacted my family's firm for a reference and I found out about it."
"And what did you do?" Ashton asked.
She smiled. "My parents were out of the office and the paperwork came across one of my uncle's desks. He passed it on to me. Of course I gave Guy a glowing recommendation."
The look in her eyes said it all. They could just imagine just how glowing the recommendation was. Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned.
"So there's a chance you're not one of Carrington's favorite people," Trevor said, trying to hide his smile.
"No, but then he's not one of mine."
"When was the last time you saw him?" Tori asked.
"The day of the wedding."
The room got quiet again. "How about telling what happened after your broken engagement, about the men you dated and why you dated them," said Blade.
Sam shifted her gaze from him to the other five pairs of eyes focused on her. "After Guy, I was on a mission to make men pay. So I decided to get even and became a bona fide player hater."
Alex lifted a brow. "A player hater?"
"Yes."
Five pairs of eyes shifted from Sam to Blade. He returned their stares with a shrug.
Alex cleared his throat and returned his gaze to Sam. "So as a player hater, what exactly did you do?"
"The usual."
Sir Drake, who had been leaning against the edge of Jake's desk, asked, "What's the usual?"
Sam smiled. "I would lead them on, convince them I was interested in them and that I was easy. I would build up their sexual expectations and when the time came for me to deliver, I didn't."
"You deliberately set them up? Strung them along? Teased them?" Trevor asked incredulously.
"Yes," she responded proudly. "I played them."
Trevor shook his head. "I'm sure a number of them must have been angry, even have threatened your life," he said.
"Yes, they did."
"Didn't you take any of them seriously?" Alex asked.
"No. I figured they would eventually get over it. I just wanted to show them that two could play their games."
"What about that guy a few years ago, Sam?" Ashton asked. "Mac mentioned that some guy was arrested and served time for trying to exact revenge on you."
"Someone tried to get even?" Blade asked.
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Belton LaSalle. I met him the first year I moved to Oklahoma. He believed that he was God's gift to women."
Five pairs of eyes sought Blade out again. This time he smiled.
"Anyway," Sam said, "I thought he needed to be taught a lesson. I must have seriously pissed him off. About a week or two later, he called and invited me out, claiming he just wanted to apologize and show me that there were no hard feelings."
She shifted in her seat and noticed the she had everyone's attention. "Mac and Peyton didn't trust him and suggested that I meet him in a public place. I picked a well-known restaurant downtown, but I didn't know that Mac still had misgivings about him. She and Peyton had made reservations at the same restaurant and got a table not far from ours."
She drew in a deep breath. "To make a long story short, when my back was turned, Belton slipped a date-rape drug into my drink."
"The bastard!" said Alex, to everyone's surprise.
Blade and the others understood Alex's outburst had to do with a situation involving Christy a few years ago.
"Lucky for me, Mac and Peyton saw the whole thing before I drank anything. They called the police, and Belton was arrested and sent to prison. He was given four years, but only served two."
"So you know for a fact that he's out of prison now?" Ashton said.
"He's supposed to be. I got a letter from the parole board a few years ago saying he was being released two years early for good behavior."
"Have you seen him or has he tried contacting you in any way?" Drake asked.
"No, the last time I saw him was in court---the day he was sentenced."
"Okay, what about male friends?" said Alex.
"There's only Frederick."
"Frederick?" Ashton asked.
"Yes, Frederick Damon Rowe. We call him FDR. We started working at my family's law firm on the same day and became best friends."
"When was the last time you saw him?" Alex asked.
"I saw him when I was home visiting my family about three weeks ago. He calls periodically to check up on me, and even comes to visit me. However, he's been busy lately and hasn't had a chance to get away," Sam said.
"Are there any other names that come to mind---male or female---that you feel I should check out?" Alex asked.
Sam shook her head. "No, I can't think of anyone."
"What about cases you've handled? Anyone that you've really pissed off?"
She shrugged. "There's always one or two, but none that I think would want to retaliate."
Alex smiled. "Share the names with me and let me be the judge of that. And I would like a list of the names of all your employees." He closed his notepad. "How soon can I get it?"
"I can fax that information to you when I return to the office Monday," Sam said.
"Good. I have some free time between assignments. I should have some information for you in a couple of weeks."
"That soon?" she asked.
Alex smiled. "Yes. I have contacts, and usually they're not only efficient, they're fast."
"When will you be returning to Oklahoma, Sam?" Ashton asked.
"Tomorrow."
"What about protection for her until I find out something?" Alex asked, turning to Blade.
Blade smiled. "She's with me, and I don't plan on letting anything happen to her. Trust me."
Blade opened the door to his condo and stood back and let Sam enter first. She glanced at him when he followed her inside and shut the door behind them. "I'm glad that's over," she said, tossing her purse on a table.
"It wouldn't surprise me if he contacts us sooner," Blade said, removing his tie. "Alex is good at what he does. And like he said, he has good contacts."
Sam sat down on the sofa, kicked off her shoes and crossed her legs. Blade watched her every move as he went behind the bar. "Would you like something to drink?"
"Yes, please. A glass of wine would be nice."
"A glass of wine coming up. It's a beautiful night. Would you like to sit outside on the balcony?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you go ahead and I'll follow shortly with the wine."
"Thanks."
He tracked her with his eyes as she walked barefoot toward the French doors. The dress she was wearing, a yellow, tiered silk number, looked good on her. It wasn't too short, but showed off her beautiful legs. He had noticed a number of men at the party admiring them. He had told her before leaving for the party and again on the drive back home just how good she looked in that dress.
He finished pouring their drinks and moved to join her outside. When he opened the French door she was standing at the rail looking out. She turned to him and smiled. "You're right. It is a beautiful night," she said, accepting the glass of wine he offered. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
She swung back around and looked at the view. "Your company did a wonderful job on the Madaris Building. I love the way it's all lit up at night---all fifteen stories."
He stood next to her and followed her gaze. "That was Slade's idea. He figured the lights would reflect on Laverne Park."
She turned back to him. "Which is named after your great-grandmother," she said.
He took a sip of his wine. "Yes. Although we all might joke about her trying to keep up with all of us, there's no doubt in our minds how we feel about her. We wouldn't trade her for the world. She raised seven sons after my great-grandfather died. They all got a good education and they're out on their own. She was also there for her grands."
He chuckled. "My dad, Justin, Dex, Clayton and Felicia had some stories to tell about her. Like the time she caught my dad and Cousin Nolan skipping school. I heard she drove them back to school and sat in the back of their class that day to make sure they stayed there."
Sam laughed. "After talking to her tonight I can tell she's made of sturdy stuff. I was close to my grandmother and felt a great loss when she died while I was in high school. I never knew my great-grandmother, but I'm told she was a strong woman just like your great-grandmother."
She took a sip of her wine, looked over at him. "You know your family thinks something is going on between us, don't you."
He grinned. "Something is going on between us."
"No, I think they believe we're more than bed partners."
We are more than bed partners, sweetheart. Instead he said, "You do understand why they would think that."
"Yes. You've never brought a woman to a family function before. But they don't know why you brought me."
Oh, they know, trust me. "It doesn't matter," he said.
"In a way it does, because I like them, Blade."
And they like you.
"I don't want them getting the wrong idea," she said.
Too late. It's a done deal.
Sam turned back to look at the view of the impressive building. "So, what floor is your office on in the Madaris Building?"
"The Madaris Construction Company is on the fifteenth floor."
"Wow, all the way at the top."
"Yes."
"And will I get to tour the Madaris Building tomorrow?" she asked.
He smiled. "Of course, I'll give you a personal tour before we return to Oklahoma."
She turned back to him, surprised to see he had moved closer, and looked up at him. "Promise?"
His smile widened. "I promise."
Blade couldn't remember the last time he'd enjoyed talking to a woman this much. Usually when he was with a woman they didn't talk at all. Their only communication was in the bedroom. But Sam was different. He wanted her. He loved her and could actually feel that love all the way to the bone.
Besides loving her, he desired her. His gaze roamed up and down her body, remembering the times he'd been inside of her and wanting to get back inside her again. "Did I tell you how good you look tonight?"
"Yes, about three times, I think," she said, grinning.
"Now I've made it four." He reached out and traced his fingers along the spaghetti straps of her dress.
The strong, lean fingers that were lightly touching Sam, caressing her shoulders, were sending delicious shudders through her body.
"Do you know what I want to do? What I've fantasized about doing?" he said, in a deep, husky tone.
"No, what have you fantasized about, Blade?"
He eased closer to her, so close that his chest was pressed against her, and he subtly pried her thighs apart with his knee to get closer to the opening between her legs. Not surprisingly, she felt his arousal.
He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear. "Bending you over this railing and taking you right here...from behind."
Sam's heart began beating wildly when the image of Blade's fantasy flashed in her mind. She imagined herself with her dress hiked up and her backside tilted to him and Blade standing behind her with his pants down past his knees, his erection hard and ready to go deep inside of her.
She swallowed and glanced around. "What would your neighbors think?"
"They won't be able to see a thing," he assured her, using his tongue to lick her earlobe. "This balcony is private, secluded, flanked by solid brick walls. It's dark, and as you can see, no one is in the Madaris Building tonight."
She looked across the park at the building.
"I want you," he said, as he began tracing kisses around the side of her neck. "I want to get inside your body and ride you hard, Sam."
He lifted his head and her eyes stared into his. She felt the heat coming from his lips and saw the way his nostrils flared. As if they had a mind of their own, her arms reached out and encircled his neck and she pulled his mouth to hers.
The kiss was long, deep and intoxicating, and had her groaning in the deepest part of her throat. She knew he was lifting the hem of her skirt when she felt the cool night air caressing her thighs. And her heart began thumping harder against her chest as his hands slid off her panties.
"Oh."
His fingers trailed over her Brazilian wax job, caressed the clean smoothness of the skin before easing a finger into her wetness. She groaned again from the probing, and when his finger began making circular motions inside of her, she pulled her mouth from his and threw her head back.
In an effortless move, he turned her to face the railing and stepped up behind her, letting his erection press hard against her buttocks. "Feel me?" He leaned forward, licking the side of her face with his tongue.
"I feel you," she responded, barely able to get the words out. "You're hungry?"
A smile touched his lips. "Starving, sweetheart. Can I make a sensual confession?"
She moaned deep in her throat. His finger was still inside of her, making her clutch him fiercely with every stroke. "Yes." Her response was followed by another moan.
"I like shooting off inside of you, combining our juices while I thrust in and out."
His words were killing her softly, arousing her even more. "I heard you have cases of condoms," she panted.
He smiled again. "I do. Make sure I show them to you sometime. But I like being skin to skin with you without anything between us. I like giving you a part of me that no other woman can ever claim. I hope you don't mind."
"If I did mind, it wouldn't have happened the first time or all those other times after that. Now stop talking and take me, Blade, like in your fantasy."
"Hmm, not yet. I need to cop a taste first. Hold this position and don't move until I tell you to do so."
She was tempted to turn around when she heard him pulling a couple of pillows off the patio furniture, and then she glanced down and saw that he had nestled his body flat on his back between her open legs. His hands grabbed a hold of her knees. "Come on, baby. Lower yourself, down to my mouth." He licked his lips. "I'm waiting. I'm starving."
"Blade." His name came out as a sensuous sigh as she lowered her body. When her womanly center was directly over his face, he raised up to settle his mouth between her legs.
She swallowed a scream when his tongue entered her, and her hands tightened on the railing. With intense thrusts of his tongue inside of her, her body began to quiver---shuddering as it had never done before. She took in deep breaths and when she thought there was no way she could handle any more, her body exploded.
"Blade!"
How could he do such things to her? And why did she let him? She knew the answer before the last shudder left her body. She loved him. The man who'd told her that he would never love a woman, would never marry---against all odds---had captured her heart.
Sam held tight to the railing as all her strength left her, making her weak in the knees, even as he held them. Moments later he released her and slid from under her. And then he was there, behind her. She heard his zipper open and his pants drop. The erection pressing against her was large, hot and ready---just like she'd imagined.
Before she could utter a sigh, he had tilted her up and entered her from the back. He began moving into her wetness in firm, easy strokes, holding tight. She could hear his thighs beating against her buttocks in repetitive thrusts.
And then he leaned over her, lowered the zipper on her dress and placed a wet kiss at the center of her neck, followed by a nip to her skin. "Now I've branded you," he whispered, just seconds before he exploded inside of her.
Sam could feel his hot release shoot all the way to her womb. She shivered at the very essence of his virile semen as it mixed with her own juices, and her body shuddered in intense pleasure again.
She heard him let out another guttural groan and gasped when another release shot from him, heading straight for her womb a second time.
"You are mine," he breathed against her ear, at the same time she felt his hot tongue trailing a path from her neck to the side of her face. Moments later, while their bodies were still intimately connected, he eased them down to the cushions he had placed on the balcony floor. And there he continued to hold her in his arms, with his erection still locked deep inside of her.
As she closed her eyes, drained and sated, she knew it wouldn't matter to her if he never took it out.
The woman opened the door and smiled brightly when she saw the man she had been thinking about. "You should have called. I would have come to the airport to get you."
He smiled down at her. "I know, but it was no bother. Got any news to tell me?"
"Yes," she said, leading him over to her sofa. "Ms. Di Meglio is out of town. She went to Houston with that man, Blade Madaris. I think he's appointed himself her bodyguard."
The man laughed as he pulled her down to the sofa with him. "That doesn't matter. When I'm ready to make my presence known and remind her of the reason I hate her, neither Madaris nor anyone else will be able to stop me from doing what I want to do."
Sam stood at the window in her office and looked out. Blade was pulling up in the parking lot, and in no time at all Rita was racing over to the car, no doubt to squeal on her.
Rita was probably telling Blade that earlier that day Sam had tried defying security to go out and grab lunch at the restaurant on the corner. Mac had come back to the office just in time to talk her out of leaving.
She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling a moment of frustration. She had been back from Houston for over a week and her secret admirer had not once tried contacting her. She was beginning to think it had all been a sick joke played by one of her former clients, or someone she had opposed in a court case. Some people took a loss in the courtroom personally.
She moved away from the window when she saw Blade heading toward the building with an unhappy look on his face. A fierce frown tightened his features. Evidently Rita had told him---the traitor. The woman needed to stick to reading her romance novels.
Sam rolled her eyes. Maybe it was time to make Blade see reason and let up a little. She had no complaints about the amount of time they spent together, especially since he stayed at her place every night. But she thought he was overdoing it a little with this protection thing.
She couldn't go to her front door unless he was dead on her heels. And when he took her home in the afternoons, they stayed there. They either stopped for takeout on the way home or had food delivered to them once they got there. More than once she'd suggested they go out someplace, and he wouldn't hear of it. Well, she was determined that he would listen to her today. Somehow and someway she was determined to get his attention.
She looked up when he flung open her office door. She swallowed the knot caught in her throat and smiled sweetly at him. "Is something wrong, Blade?"
He closed the door with just about as much force as he'd opened it, and crossed his arms over his chest. They were about to have an argument and it was bound to be a doozy. It was a good thing that Priscilla and most of the staff had already left. Peyton had been in court all day and Mac's office was at the other end of the long hallway. Even if Mac heard Blade scolding Sam, she wouldn't have lifted a finger to help, since she believed the tongue-lashing was much deserved.
"Are you out of your mind? I can't believe you planned to go out for lunch by yourself."
"It was to the restaurant on the corner to grab a burger," she said defensively.
"I don't care if it was to go outside on the sidewalk to buy a bag of peanuts. I bring you here every morning and you are to stay put until I come back and pick you up," he said, raising his voice.
That got her dander up. "I've told you before, Blade. You are not my daddy."
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Then maybe I should call Mr. Di Meglio and let him know just how difficult his daughter is being about staying alive."
She glared at him. She still hadn't told her parents anything. "You wouldn't dare."
His smile formed slowly and didn't quite reach his eyes. "Try me, sweetheart."
She continued to glare at him. He would call her parents---she had no doubt of that. Already she knew they were getting suspicious, but she wasn't sure of what. When she had talked to them last week they had mentioned possibly coming to see her. Fortunately, she had managed to talk them out of it, telling them she was working on a very important court case. Since they were both attorneys, they understood and had relented. However, they'd informed her that they would be calling her again this week. She dreaded their calls because it meant she would have to lie to them again.
"I want your word, Sam, that you won't be trying something like that again."
She lifted her chin. "You might want my word, but you won't get it. I feel like I'm a prisoner at work and in my home. I want to go out and eat at a restaurant without having to look over my shoulder. I need to get my nails done this week and go to the spa."
"And I told you that I would take you wherever you needed to go."
"But I don't want you to feel obligated to take me places and be my bodyguard. You have your own work to do."
"And I'm doing it. I met with my surveyors today. Everything with the Mosley project is on schedule and we'll hand Luke the keys to the rodeo school on Friday."
She let out a long, frustrated sigh. She had to get him to understand. "Blade, I want to take my car and just drive. I want to feel my hair blowing in the wind without fear that someone's trying to kill me."
"And that time will come, Sam. In fact, I got a call from Alex earlier today, and he's flying into town tomorrow. He has information he wants to share with you."
Blade could tell by the expression on her face that she needed to hear that.
"Really? Do you think that he---"
"Let's not jump to conclusions. Let's just wait to see what he has to say." He dropped his hands to his side. "Are you ready to leave?"
"No."
"No?"
"That's what I said," she told him as she moved from behind her desk, walked over to the window and closed the blinds. Then she glanced over her shoulder. "Lock the door, Blade."
Blade wasn't sure how long he stood there staring at her before he finally reached behind him to lock the door. It was probably when she began stripping off her clothes. He took a deep breath as he watched her, and in no time at all, she had stripped down to nothing more than a pair of black lace panties.
"Is there a reason you're taking off your clothes in here?" he asked, although he was now following her lead and removing his.
"Yes, there is one fantasy I have that we haven't played out yet."
He glanced over at her as he unzipped his pants. "And what fantasy is that?"
"Being taken on my desk. Think you can handle it?"
Blade couldn't help but smile. Hell, at times he wondered if he could handle her. When they arrived in Houston, she had declared that it was fantasy week, and each night one of them would act out their wildest sexual fantasies. Some had been real doozies. They had even made out again in a car---the backseat this time---although it was parked in Blade's garage. It hadn't mattered. He had taken her in the car, against the door, as well as on the hood and the fender. The fantasies had been worthwhile.
Sam was everything he could possibly want in a woman---sexually daring, provocative. He loved her and he respected her. There were times when he would find her staring at him as if he was a puzzle she needed to solve that was missing one piece. It was during those times that he wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms and tell her just how much he loved her and that everything would be okay.
Sam slowly walked toward him, swaying her hips, and he moved away from the door to meet her halfway. They were two naked bodies about to intimately become one. She wrapped her arms around his waist and began rubbing her body against him, flesh against flesh and skin against skin.
He picked her up in his arms and carried her to her desk and plopped her naked rear end on top. He then leaned forward and captured her mouth, mating their tongues in one ravenous exchange.
He reached down and used his finger to test her, to see if she was ready for him, and wasn't surprised to find that she was. He pulled his mouth back and whispered against her lips, "You're hot and wet."
"Then make me hotter and wetter."
He tilted her back on the desk and spread her legs in the process. And then his erect and protruding shaft homed in on just where it wanted to go. He teased the well-lubricated opening of her legs before slowly easing inside of her.
His breath caught the moment he sensed the pleasure he always felt when he entered her like this. He'd never thought he would find a woman like her, a woman whose sexual fantasies mirrored his, and who met his every need, not just in the bedroom.
She wrapped her legs around him as he moved inside her, while her inner muscles clenched tight around his engorged erection. Her muscles were working him and he was determined to work her just as hard. Each thrust into her body mirrored just how much he loved her, how much she meant to him, and just how determined he was to never let her go.
When he felt her shudder around him he rolled his hips and rocked into her one final time before exploding, releasing the orgasm he could no longer hold back, and joining her as the two of them climaxed together.
An hour or so later, in a better frame of mind than she had been earlier, Sam got out of the car when Blade parked it in her driveway. He had fulfilled another one of her fantasies and she was happy about it. Sex had to be one of the best stress relievers.
And to top things off, after leaving the office he'd taken her to the restaurant on the corner. Instead of getting takeout, as she assumed they would, he had parked the car, come around and opened her door, took her hand and led her inside the restaurant, requesting a table at the window.
During dinner, it had been quite obvious that he was watchful and alert. Every so often she would see him looking around, checking out anyone who'd entered the restaurant. But sitting across from him, sharing a meal and telling him how her day had gone had been nice.
"Other than the nail salon and spa, do you have any other appointments this week?" he asked as he waited for her to walk around the car.
She didn't look at him as she pulled her key out of her purse. "Yes, I have a doctor's appointment on Friday."
"A doctor's appointment?"
"Yes," she said, still not looking at him. "My regular checkup."
It wasn't completely true. There was nothing regular about the appointment she had made with her doctor. She was late, and for someone whose cycle was always regular, that concerned her. But then, she knew all the stress of what she was going through might have had something to do with it.
But something Syneda Madaris had said that night at the party in Houston still stuck in her mind.
...the thing about a Madaris man. If he wants to get you pregnant, a simple thing like a birth-control pill or a condom isn't going to stop him....
She glanced over at Blade when he took the key from her hand. Although the two of them had spent the last three weeks making love practically each and every day, there was no reason for her to assume he wanted more out of the relationship. And he was definitely not a man who'd want a baby.
He enjoyed her. She was a novelty. She was a first for him in many ways. A woman he had shared sensual confessions with. But she knew that once he got tired of her, he would walk away without looking back. She knew it and she accepted it because she loved him. She appreciated him caring enough to protect her. But he'd explained in the beginning that the reason he was doing it was to keep Mac, Peyton and Luke from worrying.
"You're expecting a delivery?"
She glanced up at Blade and then at the box that was sitting on her doorstep. "No." She glanced at the label. "It looks like a box from Mom. She's always sending me stuff if she sees something she thinks I'd like. Unfortunately, I inherited her shoe fetish. I'm sure you've noticed I have quite a few."
Blade nodded. He had noticed. But still...
"When you get inside I want you to call your mother to verify she sent you this package."
Sam rolled her eyes. "Is that really necessary?" she asked, opening the door.
"Yes," Blade said. "It's necessary."
"Fine, I'll do it," she said, tossing her purse on the table. "Will you at least bring the box inside the house?"
Blade looked over at her. "I'm not touching that box and neither are you. Just get your mother on the phone, Sam."
Sam glared. "I hope you know if I call her she's going to wonder why I'm even asking, when I know she's sent me stuff before."
"Doesn't matter, Sam. Call her."
When she narrowed her eyes, he said, "Please."
She smiled sweetly as she went back to the sofa and grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. "Sure, Blade, now that you've begged."
He ignored her comment as he thought about the box sitting on her doorstep. He wasn't a paranoid person, but for some reason he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He heard the conversation between Sam and her mother and knew what she was going to say before she'd hung up the phone.
Blade was already pulling out his cell phone and dialing 9--1-1.
The man meant to kill her.
That was a fair enough assessment to make, Detective Adams thought, as he glanced over at Sam and Blade. Blade was holding her in his arms while her face was pressed against his chest.
The bomb squad was leaving after detonating what had been a bomb. Had she opened the box, it would have blown her and anyone standing within twenty feet of her to smithereens. He could tell that Sam was upset and afraid, and rightly so. To finally realize someone meant to kill you was enough to cause anyone distress. And it hadn't been one of those amateur, homemade bombs. Whoever had put it together knew exactly what he or she was doing. It was someone who knew enough about chemistry and physics to make a fairly sophisticated explosive device.
"I suggest the two of you find somewhere else to go tonight," Detective Adams said. "And the fewer people who know where you are the better until we can find out who's behind this. The only thing the guard at the security gate knows is that the package was delivered by the regular FedEx delivery man for this route."
Detective Adams took in a deep breath. "Chances are the deliveryman didn't have a clue what he was delivering. In fact, if someone had broadsided his truck, he and everything within twenty feet would have been blown up."
Blade's lips tightened. Although he had called the police he had hoped it was a false alarm. The bomb squad had closed off the area while they investigated the package, and once they discovered it contained live explosives set to go off when the package was opened, they went to work.
"Mr. Madaris?"
"I heard you," Blade said, trying not to show his anger, especially toward anyone associated with the police. They had been more than helpful, considerate and very efficient. He just didn't want to think about what could have happened to Sam if she'd opened that box. His arms tightened around her just thinking about how he could have lost her.
"I understand you've called Alex Maxwell into this," Detective Adams said.
Blade nodded.
"Then I'm confident we'll have the person responsible sooner rather than later. We don't have the manpower or resources that he seems to have. With Maxwell's help, we'll have this lunatic behind bars before he can try anything else."
Blade hoped so, too. He wouldn't rest until the person who had tried to hurt his woman was captured.
He leaned back and looked down at Sam, and could tell she was still in a state of shock. "We're leaving here tonight, Sam. I want you to go upstairs and grab some things. We'll be gone for a few days, at least three to four."
The police and bomb squad had already done a thorough sweep of her house to make sure that nothing had been tampered with and there had been no forced entry. But until the authorities talked to the FedEx driver, no one was taking any chances.
She glanced up at him, and the look Blade saw in her eyes nearly ripped his heart out. The fire was gone from her eyes. But he knew that eventually it would return and when it did it she would be mad as hell at the person responsible. Her temper would be out of control, and it would be the one time he wouldn't mind seeing it.
"Do you need me to help you pack, sweetheart?" he asked softly.
She shook her head as she stepped out of his arms. "No, I can do it. I'll be back in a few."
He watched as she walked up the stairs.
Ignoring how badly her hands were shaking, Sam hurriedly went through several drawers in her bedroom, pulling out items and throwing them in the suitcase on her bed. Enough for three or four days, as Blade had said.
She paused for a moment to take a deep breath when reality hit hard once again. Someone had tried to blow her up. Someone truly wanted her dead. She actually felt weak in the knees knowing there was a person who hated her enough to want to end her life.
"Samari?"
She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes, then turned around. Blade rarely called her Samari except when they were making love. "Yes?"
"Come here, baby."
She quickly crossed the room and walked right into his open arms. "I promise you that we will get this guy," he whispered.
She heard the conviction and the determination in his voice. "I know. But all this time I thought...I was really hoping that it was a bad joke. I never really thought that someone actually wanted to hurt me."
She drew in a deep breath. Now she knew and she would never be caught off guard again.
"Luke, this is Blade."
It took Blade a good fifteen minutes to tell his cousin what had happened. It would have taken less time if Mac, who'd been standing next to Luke, hadn't kept interrupting by asking questions.
"Assure Mac that Sam's okay, just shaken up a bit. We're at one of those resort hotels in the mountains that have a cluster of chateau-style villas, and we're staying put for a while. Alex is supposed to arrive in the morning and he'll head straight to your place. I want you to bring him here, Luke. And you might want to check your rearview mirror periodically to make sure you aren't being followed."
Blade gave Luke the name of the resort and their villa number. "I don't know what information Alex has for us, and other than contacting you, I haven't made any other calls. The fewer people who know where we are the better. And have Mac clear Sam's calendar, because she won't be back in the office this week."
Moments later he ended the call and placed the phone on the dresser. The resort was a pretty nice place if you needed somewhere to hide out, and until that lunatic was caught he intended to keep Sam right here. What nearly happened today had taken a good twenty years off his life.
He glanced up when he heard the bathroom door open. She had showered. They usually took showers together, but he'd needed to call Luke to apprise him of what had happened. Of course, both Luke and Mac were furious, but grateful Sam was okay.
Blade saw that she was wearing the bathrobe supplied by the hotel, and knew that she was naked underneath. Sex should have been the last thing on his mind but it wasn't. He would always want her, anytime and anyplace. But now, what she needed was for him to hold her, assure her that she was safe.
"Are you okay?" he asked softly.
She nodded as she tried drying her hair with a towel. "Yes."
He crossed the room and took the towel out of her hand. "Sit," he said, pulling out the chair at the desk for her.
She glared up at him and he saw some fire returning to her eyes, but not enough to suit him. When she sat in the chair he went about drying her hair. This was the first time he'd dried a woman's hair, but then there had been so many firsts with Sam.
"I called Luke and Mac and told them what happened," he said.
She didn't say anything. She simply nodded.
"Mac is going to clear your calendar for the rest of the week."
She nodded at that, too.
"We're staying here for a while. At least till Sunday, and then we'll decide where we'll go. If I have to, I'll take you back to Houston, to Whispering Pines. Nobody can get on that ranch unless Jake wants them there."
When she still didn't say anything to that, he said, "And I want you naked for the entire time we're here."
She turned around, glared at him, stood up and snatched the towel out of his hand. "You horny bastard, don't hold your breath!"
He laughed. "Hey, the fire's back and I love it. I was beginning to miss your smart mouth."
When Sam realized what Blade was trying to do, she threw herself into his arms and pressed her face against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. She needed his strength. And she would give just about anything for his love.
Blade held Sam tight for a long moment and then picked her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed. "I just want to hold you, sweetheart. Nothing more, I promise," he said, tucking her close to his side as he stretched out in the bed. "I really need to hold you."
There was no conversation between them as he held her, needing to have her close to him as much as it seemed she needed to have him close to her. A few moments later, he said in a strained yet husky voice, "I could have lost you, Sam. Damn, I could have lost you. And what scared me most is the thought of losing you without letting you know how much I love you."
Her body went still and for a moment he wasn't sure she was breathing. "Sam?"
She shifted slightly and turned in his arms to meet his gaze. "You love me?"
He reached out and traced the tip of his finger down the side of her face. "Yes. And I'm not saying that to try and put pressure on you or anything. I know you don't love me yet, but I might as well warn you that if I have anything to say about it, you will eventually."
Sam had to fight the tears from falling from her eyes when she whispered, "I do."
Blade lifted a brow. "You do what?"
She reached out and placed the palm of her hand against his cheek. "I do love you."
He pulled back slightly and stared at her. "You do not."
She couldn't help but grin. "I do, too."
She moved up in the bed and leaned over him. "I love you, Blade Madaris, and that's what scared me the most, too. The thought that I could have died and you would not have known how I felt. You would have had no idea how much I love you."
"Oh, baby." Blade pulled the woman he loved into his arms and covered her mouth with his. This was his woman. He loved her more than life itself and was determined more than ever to protect her. Nothing in this world was more important to him than her.
When Sam awoke the next morning it was to find her body curled up close to Blade with his large arm slung over her hip, as if he needed to make sure she was there, plastered to him and safe from harm. She shifted her body and smiled, knowing she truly had something to smile about.
Blade loved her.
She never considered herself a crybaby, but she felt tears welling up in the back of her eyes. The two of them were an unlikely couple. He had been the player and she, the player hater. And she had done all the things to him that had been her trademark. And he still had come back. He had been there when she needed him. If she would have defied him and opened that box, she would not only have taken her life but taken his, as well.
She closed her eyes when she realized just how close she'd come to doing that. That damn lunatic. That crazy person had a lot of friggin' nerve to want her dead. She couldn't wait until he was caught and when he was, she would---
"The fire is boiling over in your eyes now. You're pretty hot in more ways than one," Blade said, lifting her up and placing her on top of him. She'd known he'd only wanted to hold her, but after his sensual confession that he loved her, she had wanted him to make love to her, and he had, several times. And she had drifted off to sleep with him still embedded deep inside of her. It hadn't been the first time they'd gone to sleep that way, and she was going to make sure it wasn't the last.
"What time is Alex arriving?" she asked. She was ready to hear what he had to say.
"His flight got in a couple of hours ago."
Her eyes widened. "That means he could be on his way here," she said, trying to pull out of Blade's arms.
"Doesn't matter. I'm getting this."
And then he kissed her in the way she was getting used to being kissed by him. It was a long, drawn-out, make-your-panties-wet kiss. The only problem was she wasn't wearing any panties.
She pulled back and broke off the kiss. "Come on, Blade, we have plenty of time for that later. We need to get dressed."
He released her and she eased out of bed. "I want to be dressed with the coffee brewing when he gets here, and I need to shower first."
Blade watched her walk into the bathroom in all her naked splendor, and when he heard the sound of the water running, he decided he wanted to take a shower, as well. He eased out of bed and followed the woman he loved.
"Thanks, Sam," Alex said, accepting the cup of coffee. He glanced over at Sam and Blade and thought something was different. Oh, he'd known since the other night in Houston that they were having an affair, but Christy thought it was more than that. Seeing them together now, he was beginning to think so, too.
He watched how Blade was keeping her within easy reach, and when she moved, so did Blade's eyes. She was rarely out of his sight. If Blade hadn't already fallen in love with her, then he was more than halfway there.
Alex bit into his bagel. Luke had stopped by a deli and bought a dozen of them. Sam had eaten only one. He, Luke and Blade had practically finished off the others.
"So, you think you know who sent the bomb, Alex?"
That question came from Blade. He, Alex and Luke were in chairs in the sitting-room area of the hotel room. Sam was perched on the arm of Blade's chair and his arm was wrapped around her waist.
Alex took a sip of his coffee. "I think so, but first let me tell you who I don't suspect any longer."
Blade nodded. "All right."
Alex opened his notepad. "First, Tyrell Graham."
Sam's gaze sharpened. "And just what is good old Tyrell doing these days?" she asked.
Alex met her eyes. "Nothing. The man is dead. He was shot by his girlfriend last year and she's presently serving time for it. She caught him cheating and blew him away."
Sam flinched upon hearing about Graham's death. Although she thought he was scum, she felt bad about it.
"And I think we can scratch LaSalle off the list, as well. In fact I'm pretty sure of it," Alex said.
Luke, who had heard the story about Belton LaSalle from Mac, asked, "Why is he off the list?"
"Because he hasn't lived in the United States since his probation ended. He found religion and moved to Africa to work as a missionary," Alex responded.
Sam leaned forward, clearly astonished. "You've got to be kidding me."
Alex shook his head and tried hiding his smile. "Trust me, I'm not."
"Wow."
"And as far as Guy Carrington is concerned, he is practicing law at a firm in Miami and has a nice place on the beach. He's a happy-go-lucky bachelor, although he's paying out the yin yang in child support."
Blade had been quiet, listening to what Alex was saying. "If all those people have pretty much been eliminated, then who's remaining?" he asked.
Alex met Sam's gaze, and hesitated. "I've narrowed it down to one person who is our prime suspect right now."
Sam swallowed and pulled in a deep breath. She felt Blade's arms tighten around her. "And who is he, Alex?"
The room got quiet as Alex leaned forward in his chair and held Sam's gaze. "I know you're going to find this hard to believe, Sam, but all my evidence points to Frederick Rowe."
For a moment Sam just stared back at Alex and then she stood. "That's impossible. There has to be a mistake. I don't believe it. I refuse to believe it. And I hope you have a good reason for saying something like that!"
Everyone could tell how upset Sam was. Anyone who knew her for any length of time knew she didn't do anything halfway, whether it was seeking revenge, settling a score, defending a client or choosing her friends. Rowe was a friend she trusted, and she refused to believe the worst about him.
Alex flipped a page in the notepad, then glanced over at Sam. "These are my reasons for making him the prime suspect. Maybe there is an explanation, but until we know what that is, he heads the list."
Drawing in a deep breath, she went back to sit on the arm of the chair beside Blade. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
"First of all," Alex said, "were you aware that over the past three months Rowe has come to Oklahoma City at least a dozen times?"
Sam blinked. No, she hadn't known that. Why would FDR come to town without contacting her, or not even stay at her place? "No, I didn't know," she said honestly. "But maybe he has business interests here that he's keeping private," she added in his defense.
Alex shrugged. "Possibly. And did you know he's in town now and has been since the beginning of the week?"
Sam pulled away from Blade to stand up again. Surprise was etched all over her face. "FDR is here? In Oklahoma City?"
Alex nodded. "Yes. I had someone track him to a hotel last night, where he is staying."
Sam didn't say anything. She couldn't help wondering what FDR was up to. When she had talked to Angelo earlier in the week, he'd said Frederick had taken a few days off to visit the aunt who'd raised him. She lived in Florida.
Knowing everyone in the room was waiting for her to respond, she said, "No, I didn't know that, either. My brother mentioned he'd taken some time off to visit a relative in Florida."
She rubbed her hands down her slacks. She knew those two things alone raised suspicions about FDR, but she still wasn't convinced. "Still," she said, "that doesn't mean anything other than he's keeping his comings and goings a secret for some reason and---"
"And we've discovered the secret," Alex interrupted. "It baffled me how your 'secret admirer' knew when you were out of the office, which is the reason flowers weren't delivered that week you went home to New York to visit your parents. Now I believe I know why."
Needing the comfort of Blade's touch, Sam sat back down on the arm of the chair and he automatically reached out and again wrapped his arms around her waist. "Why?" she asked.
Alex hesitated for a moment. "He's having an affair with someone in your office, Sam. And from what I gather, the affair has been going on for about six months now."
Sam threw her head back and closed her eyes. This was crazy, simply crazy. FDR was having an affair with someone in her office and she didn't know about it? She lowered her head, opened her eyes and looked back at Alex. "Who is it?"
Alex's gaze was unwavering. "Your secretary, Priscilla Gaines."
If Blade's arms hadn't been around Sam's waist, she would have toppled over and literally fallen and hit the floor. Priscilla had been the law firm's secretary since day one, and Sam knew she rarely dated anyone. Not that it mattered, but Priscilla was twelve years older than FDR and she was a single mother raising her twin boys.
Sam glanced around the room and saw the way the men were all looking at her. Alex was right---all of FDR's secrets were incriminating. However, she still refused to believe the worst about him.
"Fine, those things make him a suspect. But there is the one thing that as an attorney I know you haven't presented, and that's a motive."
Alex leaned back in his chair as he flipped to another page in his notepad. "I think this would be sufficient motive," he said, tearing out the sheet and handing it to her.
Sam hesitated, refusing to even look at it as she passed it on to Blade. "What does the paper say? What would have been his motive, Alex?" she asked softly.
Alex took a deep breath. "Revenge. Does the name Alvin Quincy ring a bell?"
Sam scrunched up her face for a moment and quickly said yes. "Years ago, when my father was a prosecutor, he sent him to prison. Quincy escaped around six years ago, a little after I moved here. He'd always made threats about getting back at my father, and when he was freed, he went after my brother, Angelo, running him off the road, nearly killing him. Everyone figured he'd come after me or my parents next, which is the reason my family talked me into moving to Windsor Park, for security reasons."
"Was the man ever captured?" Luke asked.
Sam shook her head. "Yes, but he swore he would never be taken alive and was killed in a shoot-out when the police tried to apprehend him."
She glanced over at Alex. "But what does any of that have to do with FDR?"
Alex closed his notepad. He met her gaze. "It seems that Frederick Damon Rowe is Alvin Quincy's son."
Those were the last words Sam heard before everything around her suddenly turned black and she passed out.
Luke glanced up at Blade when he reentered the room. "How is she?"
"I think she's in shock. I know for a fact she's still in denial." He glanced over at Alex. "Even after all you've told her, she still wants to believe FDR isn't a suspect."
Alex nodded in understanding. "It's hard to comprehend that someone you trust has betrayed you."
"Betrayed, hell!" Blade stormed, his anger escalating. "The man tried to kill her. Blow her up. What kind of damn friend is that?"
"Calm down, Blade," Luke said.
"I won't calm down until Rowe is put in jail and the keys are thrown away. But not before I kick his---"
The sound of Luke's cell phone ringing drowned out Blade's words, and Luke was glad. He'd never seen Blade this angry before about anything, and definitely not over a woman. He saw the caller was Mac. "Hello, sweetheart."
"We have trouble," Mac said, almost whispering into the phone.
Luke stood. "Why? What's up?"
"Sam's parents are here. They arrived this morning and want to know where she is, and have threatened to turn this city upside down until they find her. When they first got to town they went straight to her town house, and someone at the security gate told them about the bomb."
Luke ran his hands down his face. He had met Sam's parents before. They could be a force to deal with when it came to their children. "Hold on a minute, Mac." He then relayed to Blade and Alex what Mac had told him.
Blade released a curse. "Great! That's all we need."
"Yes, but at least we got our prime suspect under surveillance, and I'm going to contact Detective Adams to pick him up from the hotel and bring him in for questioning."
"And I want to be there when you do," Blade almost growled.
Alex rolled his eyes. "I don't think that's a good idea."
Blade met his friend's gaze. "My woman was almost killed, Alex. There's no way I'm not going to be there when Rowe is brought in."
Alex pulled in a deep breath of air, then pushed it out. "Fine, but I wouldn't suggest that Sam be there. Are you going to leave her here alone?"
"Damn," Blade uttered. He'd forgotten about that.
"Two of Jake's men are parked outside," Luke said. "I had them follow us to make sure we weren't followed by anyone. I can leave them here to keep an eye on things until we get back."
Blade nodded. He knew all of Jake's men, since most of them had worked for his uncle for years. Since Jake and Mac were partners in a land-grazing deal, Jake's men rotated periodically to stay with the herd. They were men who could be trusted.
"That's a good idea," Blade said. "I'd feel better about leaving her, knowing they're here. Let me go check on Sam again. I want to tell her our plans and also tell her that her parents are in town."
"Handling my parents won't be easy, Blade. Maybe I should go," Sam said, easing off the bed.
"No, you should lie down awhile longer. I wish you'd let me call the doctor. Are you sure you're okay?"
Sam took a deep breath. She had no recollection of ever fainting before, even when she'd been told about Vivian. "I'm fine, really. But maybe you're right. I should rest up to deal with my parents later. And Blade, I know everything that Alex said about FDR makes it look bad, and I know this might sound crazy, but I still refuse to believe he did it."
Blade pulled her into his arms. "There's nothing wrong with not wanting to believe the worst about someone you care deeply about, sweetheart."
"But that's just it, Blade. I don't believe the worst in FDR. No matter what evidence there is stacked against him. He would not want me dead. I just won't believe it."
As he drove to the law offices of Madaris, Di Meglio and Mahoney, Luke glanced toward the backseat of his truck. "You're quiet, Alex."
Alex looked up from his mini laptop. "I'm just checking out a few things. I've learned from prior cases that it's not over till the fat lady sings, and for some reason she hasn't taken center stage with this one yet."
Blade, who was sitting up front in the passenger seat, turned around. "Are you beginning to think that it's not Rowe?" he asked.
Alex shrugged. "I'm beginning to think we need to get him in and question him as soon as possible. I called Detective Adams and asked that he bring him to the law firm instead of picking him up and taking him down to headquarters. That way we'll have him and Priscilla Gaines there together. I met Ms. Gaines last year while handling that case for Mac, and she genuinely seemed to care for Mac, Sam and Peyton. She was almost overprotective of them. I can't see her wanting to hurt one of them."
"Not even for love?" Blade asked. "If she thinks she's fallen in love with Rowe and he's convinced her that he has a legitimate gripe with Sam, then she would possibly go along with anything he has planned---including murder."
"Yes, but..." Alex shook his head. "Even with a motive of revenge on Rowe's part, why lash out at Sam when he was there working at the firm every day with the very man who had put his father behind bars? Why not lash out at Antonio Di Meglio, Sam's mother or her brother?"
Alex didn't say anything for a moment. "There is something I need to check out. I can feel it," he said, looking back at his laptop.
Luke and Blade didn't say anything. They'd known Alex long enough to know that he wouldn't leave any stone unturned in this investigation, and that if someone other than Rowe was involved, Alex would uncover it.
Blade didn't know what to expect upon meeting Sam's parents, but it hadn't been a slightly older version of Clayton and Syneda. In their early fifties, the two were dynamic together.
Sam's mother, who looked like an older version of Sam, was simply beautiful, gorgeous in her own right. And her father was tall, dark and dashingly handsome. Blade would bet any money that the man had been a rogue in his day. And with his striking looks, Blade would also bet he had been a heartbreaker. Like his daughter, he had sharp eyes, and also like his daughter, an even sharper tongue.
Antonio and Kayla Di Meglio lit into him the moment he walked into Mac's office, and began questioning him as if he was on the witness stand. Who was he to their daughter? Where was she? Who would want to hurt her? And what steps were being taken to assure her safety?
He was grateful that, like Sam, Mac had a large office, big enough to accommodate the eight people crowded into it. He decided not to beat around the bush, and to let Sam's parents know his role in their daughter's life.
"I'm Blade Madaris, the man who's going to marry Samari," he said, shocking everyone in the room.
"Marry her?" Sam's father said, with an expression indicating he was stunned, as well. "I just saw my daughter a few weeks ago and she never said anything about being serious about anyone."
"We became involved after she returned," Blade said. "Just believe me when I say that I love Sam, she loves me, and when all this is over, I am marrying her."
"And what about babies?" Kayla Di Meglio quickly asked. "You do want children one day, right?"
"Yes," Blade said with a serious expression on his face. "We will have lots of children." He thought about the text message he'd received from Slade that morning, saying their great-grandmother had dreamed about fish yet again. What was this for her, a bonus year? That made him wonder.
"And as far as where Sam is," he continued, "she's in a safe location for now, until we discover who sent that bomb yesterday. I hired a family friend, Alex Maxwell, to investigate and---"
"Alex Maxwell?" Sam's father interrupted, glancing across the room at Alex, who was sitting alone in a corner, working on his laptop.
Alex glanced up. "Yes?"
"I've heard of you," Sam's father said. "Your name and reputation precede you---admirably, I might add."
Alex nodded. "Thank you." He then turned his attention to whatever was on his computer screen.
Antonio turned his attention back to Blade. "Do you have any idea who would want to hurt my daughter?"
"Yes. Our prime suspect right now is a man who works for you, and we believe his accomplice is someone who works here for this firm."
Shock showed on Sam's parents' faces. "Who?"
"Frederick Rowe."
"Frederick?" Sam's father said in disbelief. "That's absurd. My wife and I wouldn't believe Frederick any more capable of hurting Sam than her own brother would."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Di Meglio," a deep voice said from the doorway. "Especially since it seems I might be in need of an attorney, if I don't decide to represent myself."
Everyone turned toward the door, where a man Blade figured to be Frederick Rowe stood flanked by Detective Adams on one side and a police officer on the other.
Sam was sitting at a table drinking a cup of coffee and awaiting word from Blade. She hoped that he believed her when she said that there was no way that FDR was involved.
She nearly jumped when there was a knock at the door and wondered if it was the cleaning lady, come to straighten up the villa. As Sam walked to the door to look out the peephole, she tried to stop her heart from racing upon remembering that two of Jake's men were stationed outside in the parking lot.
She was surprised to see the person standing on the other side. She took the chain off the door and opened it. "Frank? What are you doing here?"
The man who'd worked as a security guard at their law firm for the past year flashed a friendly smile. "Mr. Madaris asked me to come and get you. Something has come up and they need you at the office."
Sam nodded. Evidently her parents were out of control and giving everybody grief. "Okay, let me grab my purse. I thought you were still out of town, skiing in Colorado," she said, rushing over to the table to get her purse and slip into her shoes.
"I returned to town early and they called me to come in when Rita phoned in sick this morning."
"Oh."
Sam picked up her purse, turned around and smiled at him. "Okay, I'm ready to go."
Antonio Di Meglio glanced over at Blade. "Why did you think Frederick had anything to do with this threat against Sam?"
"Motive."
"And what motive is that?" Kayla Di Meglio asked, pushing her hair away from her face, a habit her daughter had evidently inherited.
"Revenge. Do you know who his father is?" Blade asked.
Antonio Di Meglio nodded. "Yes. A man I sent to prison when Frederick was no more than ten years old. My wife and I kept up with Frederick, who was sent to live with his grandmother when his father was put away. His mother was killed driving the getaway car. It was a bank robbery, planned by Alvin Quincy and his girlfriend, in which three innocent people were killed."
Frederick continued the story. "The Di Meglios were there for me when I was growing up. Not that they had to be, but because they are good people. And when I got older and expressed an interest in law, they provided me with money for law school and made sure I had a job afterward."
Blade nodded. "Sam didn't know." It was a statement more than a question.
"We never told Sam," Kayla Di Meglio said. "We felt that if and when Frederick wanted her to know, he would tell her."
"Eventually, I would have told her," Frederick said. "In the beginning it was important that she accepted me and got to know the man I am. Then, after a while, when she did accept me for who I was, it didn't matter. So, no, she didn't know."
"Even when she found out about your relationship to Quincy and about all your trips to Oklahoma that she didn't know about, she still believed you were innocent," Blade said.
"And the reason he didn't tell anyone about those visits was mainly because of me," Priscilla said, as she nervously entered the office.
She moved over to Frederick's side. "We fell in love, but I wasn't ready for anyone to know I was involved with a younger man. And I made him promise not to tell anyone."
Mac leaned back in her chair. "So, we still don't know who sent that bomb."
"Yes, we do." Alex, who'd been quietly working at his laptop, suddenly jumped up. "Damn. The bastard covered his tracks well."
He looked up, saw everyone staring at him and decided to explain. "According to the statement received from the FedEx driver, he'd made deliveries in Sam's complex that day, but he didn't leave one for Sam, which meant it had to be personally delivered. I asked the security company for Sam's complex to provide me with the names of all their employees, regardless of whether they were working that day or not. I just compared that list to the list of employees Sam sent me, of who works here, including your security staff. I saw a number of them work at both places."
Mac nodded. "That can be explained. When Sam, Peyton and I decided to hire security service here, Sam recommended that we use the same company that was being used in her gated community. They had a good reputation."
"Yes, but one of their employees is someone we need to question immediately," Alex said.
"Who?" Blade asked, moving toward Alex.
"Frank Denson."
"Frank?" Peyton asked, surprised. "Why would Frank want to hurt Sam?"
Alex sighed deeply. "I just finished doing an extensive background check on Denson, who changed his last name, by the way. The man has a degree in chemical engineering from MIT."
"Why would someone with that kind of degree and from such a prestigious school work as a security guard?" Detective Adams asked.
"According to the report I received just now," Alex said, "he had a mental breakdown after his last year of college. It seems he never got over his sister's suicide almost ten years ago. The two were extremely close growing up. Their parents had been abusive, so the two had always been there for each other."
"And who was his sister?" Mac asked.
Alex pulled in a deep breath, then said, "Vivian Randall."
"Vivian Randall!" Sam's father exclaimed. "She was Sam's roommate her first year at college. Randall committed suicide over some guy on campus. Why would Denson want to get back at Sam for that?"
"He probably blames her," Blade said, thinking out loud. "Damn. I bet in his mental state that he blames Sam for what happened to his sister."
"But why?" Kayla Di Meglio was asking. "Sam had nothing to do with that. Vivian Randall committed suicide. Sam wasn't even in their dorm room when she did it."
"Yes," Blade said, nodding. "But Vivian Randall used Sam's prescription drugs when she overdosed. I know that shouldn't matter, but I bet in Denson's sick mind, she's just as guilty as Tyrell Graham, the man who drove Randall to commit suicide."
"Then why not go after Graham and leave my daughter alone?" Antonio Di Meglio angrily asked.
"He might have," Alex replied. "Tyrell Graham was killed last year and his girlfriend was arrested for the crime. But she has always maintained her innocence. Now I'm wondering if perhaps she was set up."
At that moment Luke's phone rang, and when he saw the call was from one of the men posted to watch Sam, he quickly picked up. "Yes, Marvin, what's up?"
"Did you forget to call to let us know you were sending someone from Security to pick up Ms. Di Meglio? That security guard from her office showed up and they just drove off."
"What!" Luke exclaimed getting to his feet. "Follow them. Stay a safe distance behind and let us know where he's headed."
Luke clicked off the phone and look at everyone. "That was one of the men we left guarding Sam. It seems Denson showed up, probably convinced her we sent for her, and she left with him. The bastard has Sam."
Detective Adams pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and, ignoring Blade's roar of anger, called in to headquarters. "I need police backup."
They had been riding for a good ten minutes when Sam glanced over at Frank. "Why are we going this way? This is not the way to the office."
Frank chuckled. "I was wondering how long it would take you to notice. We aren't going to the office, Ms. Di Meglio."
Sam was confused. "Why? I thought you said Blade asked that you bring me to him and that---"
"I lied."
For the first time since being in Frank's presence, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "What's going on, Frank? I think you need to take me back to the resort."
The laugh that came out of his mouth chilled Sam to the bone. "And I think you need to shut up. You would be dead now if you had opened that box like I planned."
His words sent Sam's mind reeling. "You're the one who sent that bomb?"
"Guilty as charged, Counselor," he said, bringing the car to a stop. "And I found out where you were from eavesdropping on a conversation between Ms. Madaris and Ms. Mahoney this morning. It gave me another chance to take care of you once and for all."
"But why? What have I ever done to you?" She glanced around and saw Frank had brought her to a secluded area near an abandoned warehouse.
"You helped take away the only person who loved me. Because of you, I lost my sister."
Sam began racking her brain, trying to remember what case she'd handled that had involved anyone that could have been in Frank's family. "Your sister? There must be a mistake."
Frank grinned. "No mistake. Those were your pills."
Sam frowned. "My pills?"
"Yes. My sister took your pills and killed herself."
"Vivian?" Sam exclaimed.
Saying her roommate's name made Frank's face become more contorted with rage. "Yes, Vivian!" he screamed. "They were your pills, so you helped kill her. I've already killed Tyrell Graham for his part, and I was glad to let him know who I was before putting a bullet in his head."
Frank smiled, and the way his lips curled sent chills through Sam's entire body. "Then I set it up to make it seem that it was his girlfriend's doing," he said proudly. "That wasn't hard to do, since I heard them arguing that same day. A lot of the neighbors heard them, too. And since I worked security at that condo complex, I followed her back to her place so I'd know where she lived. When I killed Graham, it was easy for me to return to her place and hide the murder weapon inside her house."
He paused as if gathering his thoughts. "And now, Samari Di Meglio, I am going to kill you. Now get out of my car."
"They've turned off a road that leads to an abandoned warehouse," one of Jake's men said to Luke on his cell phone.
"We're there," Luke said, turning off the main highway and onto a dirt road. He heard Blade curse and knew exactly how his cousin felt. Luke had gone through the same thing when Mac's life had been in danger.
Detective Adams had reviewed a map of the area and figured out where Sam was being taken, so his men were already in place. But Luke knew that was not enough to satisfy Blade, since anything could go wrong.
Before they'd left the law firm, Patsy Ackerman had admitted to the police that she was the one who'd kept Frank informed about Sam's whereabouts, and knew that he had been sending her the flowers. Frank had convinced Patsy that he wasn't planning to harm Sam, but just wanted to shake her up a bit. Patsy hadn't realized how obsessed he was until he had come over to her place and told her about the bomb. He had tied Patsy up and said he would take care of Ms. Di Meglio and then come back and deal with her.
Luckily, Patsy was able to untie herself. The police officer who'd accompanied Detective Adams to the office with Rowe had transported Patsy down to police headquarters for further questioning.
It hadn't been easy, but they had convinced Sam's parents to remain at the law office with Mac and Peyton, who seemed capable of handling the couple better than anyone.
Luke glanced over at Blade and saw the intense look on his face. "You love Sam, don't you? I mean really love her."
Blade, who'd been staring straight ahead, glanced back. "Yes, I really love her, and I'm not going to try and figure out how it happened. It happened. And like I told her parents, I'm going to marry her." Blade took a deep breath and shook his head. "I remember Justin saying that Lorren was his fate. In my case, Sam is my destiny."
Luke was about to ask another question when his phone rang. He listened for a short while and then ended the call. "Frank's at the abandoned warehouse and he's made Sam get out of the car," he told Blade.
Sam knew that Frank was unstable, and she didn't intend to become another one of his victims. She had every intention of getting way from him as soon as she could.
"Move," Frank ordered, breaking into her thoughts.
"Frank, please listen and---"
"Shut up or I'll shoot you now."
She'd seen the gun and, considering his mental state, knew she had to tread lightly. She began walking. "Shooting you now and getting it over with isn't such a bad idea," Frank said. "Stop and turn around."
She slowly turned as he'd ordered her to. At that moment she knew she didn't have a chance to escape, and talking to Frank was no use.
"Vivian died because of you. If you hadn't had those pills, she wouldn't have died," he snarled.
Sam pulled in a deep breath. There was no way she could reason with him to make him see that even if she hadn't had the pills, Vivian would have found some other way to end her life.
"And now you will die," he said.
She stared at him and saw the demented look in his eyes and felt her knees weaken. At least she had told Blade she loved him.
Frank raised the gun and aimed it straight at her head. She closed her eyes, and the moment she did, a shot rang out, then a second. She opened her eyes and saw Frank crumple to the ground. Someone had shot him.
She looked around as police officers came swarming from everywhere. She heard Blade call her name, and then she saw him racing toward her. Somehow she found the strength to move, once she realized what had happened.
She threw herself into Blade's arms as he pulled her close and whispered that he loved her. She buried her face in his shirt, trembling with relief that he was there. Sam knew at that moment that she was safe and in the arms of the man she loved.
Sam opened her eyes, once again shivering while reliving the nightmare of Frank Denton aiming a gun at her head.
"It's okay, sweetheart. You're here with me."
She took a deep breath at the sound of the deep, husky voice so close to her ear. Instinctively, she leaned back against Blade's hard body, and the arm already around her middle tightened.
They were naked, in her bed, after having made love earlier. Now he was whispering in her ear, telling her how he wanted to make love to her so that she would forget the near tragic incident earlier that day.
After providing Detective Adams and the police with all the information they needed, Blade had taken Sam home and run warm, sudsy water in the Jacuzzi tub, then had gotten in with her. With strong gentle hands he had tried soothing away all her hurts and fears.
He had dried her off, wrapped her securely in a towel and taken her to the living room, where he had held her in his arms until she had gone to sleep. She had awakened hours later in bed and wearing the nightgown he had put on her.
She had gotten dressed and had gone downstairs to find Blade in the kitchen, preparing dinner. The moment he looked up and saw her, he'd stopped what he was doing, moved toward her and pulled her into his arms. He had swept her off her feet, taken her upstairs and had made love to her until they were both satisfied and completely drained. Then they had drifted off to sleep until she awoke from the nightmare of her recent ordeal at the hands of Frank Denton.
She shifted in bed and turned toward Blade and pulled his mouth to hers, eased her tongue between the lips she adored and kissed him in a way she needed to. He responded the way she wanted, taking over the kiss, and had her moaning moments later.
He pulled his mouth away and trailed kisses down her throat before returning to her mouth again. Later, he gathered her into his arms. "Hungry?" he asked in a deep voice.
She gave him an affirmative nod. Other than the bagel and coffee she'd had for breakfast, she hadn't eaten anything. "What were you cooking?"
"Baked chicken, rice pilaf, green beans and corn bread," he said proudly.
She smiled and licked her lips. "I can't wait."
He laughed. "I prepared enough, since I invited your parents over."
She blinked in surprise. "My parents?"
"Yes. I can expect Luke and Mac to entertain them for just so long. The only reason they haven't shown up is because I convinced them you needed your rest."
Sam appreciated that.
"They were worried about you, which is why they flew into town in the first place. They suspected something was up. I talked to them earlier today and assured them I would take care of you."
"You did?"
"Yes, and I might as well confess right now that I told them I was going to marry you."
She studied him for a moment, trying to gauge if he was serious or not. "Are you?" she asked.
"Am I what?"
"Going to marry me?"
"I hope that I am. Will you marry me?"
She smiled. "Is this an official proposal?"
"Yes," he said with a serious expression on his face. "I thought I'd never ask a woman to marry me, but I need you in my life, Sam. And if you prefer to live here because of your law practice, then I can move to Oklahoma City."
"But what about your company?"
"I can set up a satellite office here. Houston is only eighty minutes away by air, and Slade and I have been thinking about purchasing a Cessna for the company, anyway."
"You can fly a plane?"
He laughed. "After the incident with Christy a couple of years ago, we decided to all get our pilot's licenses." He didn't say anything for a moment and then asked, "So, will you marry me?"
She reached up and placed her arms around his neck. "Yes, I will marry you."
Blade's smile spread from ear to ear. "I might as well do another one of those sensual confession things," he said.
"About what?"
He reached out and gently rubbed her stomach. "I told your parents that we would make lots of babies."
She held his gaze. "And you want babies, Blade? Lots of them?"
"Yes, I want babies, lots of them. And for a man who'd never given a thought to being a father, that's saying a lot."
Sam nodded. Yes, it certainty was. She swallowed, thinking she might as well tell him her suspicions. "What if I told you there's a possibility that---"
"You're already pregnant." He finished her sentence for her.
Her eyes widened. "Yes. How did you know?"
He told her about his great-grandmother's fish dreams.
"And your family believes there's a connection?" she asked in amazement.
He smiled. "Yes. So far she's been right most of the time. All the dream does is confirm that someone is pregnant. She doesn't always know who. But once she says she's had a dream about fish, then everyone starts looking at each other suspiciously."
"And how will you feel if they began looking at you?"
His smile widened. "It wouldn't bother me a bit. So when will you know for sure?"
"I can always take one of those pregnancy tests. But I'm an old-fashioned girl and I prefer hearing it from a doctor. I have an appointment on Friday."
"We have an appointment on Friday. We're in this together, and no matter the outcome, we'll leave there and go shopping for an engagement ring."
He leaned down and placed a kiss on her lips. "How does a June wedding sound?" he said.
"That's only two months away," she said, looking up at him.
He laughed. "Hey, I met your mom. She can handle it, and if she needs help, the women in my family will be glad to pitch in."
Sam's lips softened. "In that case, I guess a June wedding it is."
Satisfied, he pulled her closer and captured her lips in a kiss that was meant to seal what he knew was his destiny. She was the only woman for him, smart mouth and all. He would love her, adore her and cherish her forever.
Slade Madaris raised his champagne glass in a toast to the newlyweds. "Today, Blade and Sam, the two of you have made the oldest member of the Madaris family truly happy."
He glanced over at his great-grandmother and grinned before returning his attention back to the smiling couple. "May today be the first of many days the two of you will share in wedded bliss."
Blade took a sip of champagne and smiled at Sam. She'd had to settle for sparkling cider. Her doctor had confirmed what she'd suspected, that she was having his baby. He hadn't had to make an announcement to his family, since Mama Laverne's dream about fish had pretty much narrowed it down when Alex and Christy said they weren't expecting.
Blade proudly announced that he was going to be a father and was very happy about it, and that their wedding was going take place in June---not because he had to marry Sam, but because he wanted to.
Knowing that they would finally become grandparents in about seven months, Sam's parents were excited beyond measure. The news wasn't something they could tell them over the phone, so he and Sam had made a surprise visit to New York.
After Sam's parents learned that Frank Denson had confessed to killing Tyrell Graham, they fought to get the case reopened and get Tyrell's girlfriend, who'd been falsely convicted, exonerated and released from prison.
"I believe it's time for another dance, Mrs. Madaris," said Blade as he leaned over and whispered in Sam's ear, before taking the glass from her hand. He swept her onto the dance floor as the music began to play. The elaborate and elegant wedding had taken place in New York, and all the Madarises had traveled to the Big Apple for the event. Blade and Sam would be catching a plane out of JFK for London for a fifteen-day cruise to the Mediterranean.
With the help of the Madaris women, Sam's mother had done the impossible in less than sixty days, putting together an elaborate wedding the likes of which New York society hadn't seen in a long time. The guest list had included friends and family members from both sides. Not surprisingly, the Madarises and Di Meglios knew some of the same people.
"Did I tell you how beautiful you look today?" Blade asked, leaning closer and whispering in her ear.
Sam smiled up at her husband. He had told her several times, but she had also seen it in his eyes. His love had been so plain it almost brought tears to her eyes. "Yes, but you can always tell me again," she said.
"Samari Madaris, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, not only today but always. And I love you."
The smile that touched her lips also touched her heart. "And I love you, too, so very much."
He pulled her back into his arms and held her tight as their bodies swayed gently to the sound of the orchestra music. Sam glanced over at a couple standing on the sidelines, talking, before turning her gaze back to her husband. "Are you sure Reese and Kenna are just friends?"
Blade grinned. "That's what they say and no one has a reason to doubt them. But who knows? Friends can become lovers. Clayton and Syneda proved that."
Sam saw FDR and Priscilla. They made a great couple, and in fact, wedding plans were in the works.
Sam had decided to relocate to Houston when Clayton and Syneda decided to expand their law firm and wanted to add another Madaris to their practice. And what used to be Madaris, Di Meglio and Mahoney would soon become Madaris, Mahoney and Rowe, since Frederick would be moving to Oklahoma City for good.
Sam couldn't help noticing her brother dancing with Peyton, and wondered if Angelo had finally decided to make a move. If so, it was about time.
Sam wrapped her arms around her husband and placed her head on his chest. She was happy. She was having his baby and life was good. She had a Madaris man and she would love him for the rest of her life.
SENSUAL CONFESSIONS
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5181-0
© 2010 by Brenda Streater Jackson
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Kimani Press, Editorial Office, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
® and TM are trademarks. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and/or other countries.
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