by Nancy Kress
Alcozer ambles over, no sweat or haste, where can I go? Uninvited, he sits at my table. “Good morning, Max.”
“Shalom, Agent Alcozer.” For the feds I always lay it on especially thick.
“We were surprised to see you here.”
The royal “we.” Everybody in the fucking federal government thinks they’re czars. I say, “Why is that? An old man, I shouldn’t want to live longer?”
“It was our impression that you thought you were barely living at all.”
How closely did they observe me in the Silver Star Home? I was there ten years, watching holos, playing cards, practically next door to drooling in a wheelchair. The government can spare money for all that surveillance?
“Have some orange juice,” I say, pushing my untouched glass at him. Too bad it isn’t cut with cyanide. Alcozer is the last thing I need. Over his shoulder I glance at Rosie, who frowns at the tablecloth, scratching at it with the nails of both hands.
She doesn’t look good. At the kumpania less than a week ago, she looked old but still vital, despite the gray hair and wrinkles. Then her cheeks were rosy, her lips red with paint, her eyes bright under the colorful headscarf. Now she sits slumped, scratching away—and what is that all about?—as pale and pasty as a very large maggot. No headscarf, no jewelry. Her gray hair has been cut and waved into some horrible old-lady shape, and she wears loose pants and tunic in dull brown. From women’s fashions I don’t know, but these clothes look expensive and boring.
Alcozer leans in very close to me and says, “Max, I’m going to be honest with you.”
That’ll be the day.
“We know you’ve been off the streets for ten years, and we know your son has taken the Feder Group legitimate. We have no reason to touch him, so your mind can be easy about that. But somebody’s still running at least a few of your old operations, and we don’t know who.”
Not Moshe. He died a week after his release from prison. Heart attack.
“Also, there are still old investigations on you that we could re-open. I don’t want to do that, of course, but I could. I know and you know that the leads are pretty cold, and on most the statute of limitations is close to running out. But there could be . . . repercussions. Up here, I mean.” He leans back away from me and looks solemn.
I say politely, “I’m sorry but I’m not following.”
He says, “Durbin-Nacarro,” and then I don’t need him to chart me a flight path.
The Durbin-Nacarro Act severely limits the elective surgery available to convicted felons. This is supposed to deter criminals and terrorists from changing their looks, finger prints, retinal patterns, voice scans, and anything else that “hinders identification.” Did they think that someone who, say, blows up a spaceport in San Francisco or Dubai would then go to a registered hospital in any signatory country to request a new face? Ah, lawmakers.
Sequene is, of course, registered in a Durbin-Nacarro country, but nobody has ever applied D-treatment to Durbin-Nacarro. The treatment doesn’t change anything that could be criminally misleading. In fact, the feds like it because it updates all their biological records on everybody who passes through Sequene. Plenty of criminals have had D-treatment: Carmine Lucente, Raul Lopez-Reyes, Surya Hasimo. But if Alcozer really wants to, he can find some federal judge somewhere to issue a dogshit injunction and stop my D-treatment.
Of course, I have no intention of actually getting a D-treatment, but he doesn’t know that. I put on panic.
“Agent . . . I’m an old man . . . and without this . . .”
“Just think about it, Max. We’ll talk again.” He puts his hand on mine—such a fucking putz—and squeezes it briefly. I look pathetic. Alcozer walks jauntily out.
Rosie is still scratching at the tablecloth. Now she starts to tear her bread into little pieces and fling them around. A young woman in the light blue Sequene uniform rushes over to Rosie’s table and says in a strong British accent, “Is everything all right then, Mrs. Kowalski?”
Rosie looks up dimly and says nothing.
“I’ll just help you to your room, dear.” Gently the attendant guides her out. I catch her eye and look meaningfully upset, and in five minutes the girl is back at my table. “Are you all right then, Mr. Feder?”
Now I’m querulous and demanding, a very rich temperamental geezer. “No, I’m not all right, I’m upset. For what I pay here, that’s not the sight I expect with my breakfast.”
“Of course not. It won’t happen again.”
“What’s her problem?”
The girl hesitates, then decides that my tip will justify a minor invasion of Rosie’s privacy.
“Mrs. Kowalski has a bit of mental decay. Naturally she wants to get it sorted out before it can progress anymore, so she came to us. Now, would you like anything more to eat?”
“No, I’m done. I’ll just maybe take a little walk before my first doctor’s appointment.”
She beams as if I’ve just declared that I’ll just maybe bring peace to northern China. I nod and start a deliberately slow progress around Sequene. This yields me nothing, which I should have known. I can’t get into restricted areas because I couldn’t carry even the simplest jammer through shuttle security, and even if I could, it would only call attention to myself, and that I don’t need. There are jammers and weapons here somewhere, and from my study of the blueprints I can make a good guess where. I can even guess where Daria might be. But I can’t get at them, or her, and it comes to me that the only way I am going to see Daria is to ask for her.
Which I’m afraid to do. When your entire life has narrowed to one insane desire, you live with fear: you breathe it, eat it, lie down with it, feel it slide along your skin like a woman’s lost caress.
I was terrified that Daria would say no. And then I would have nothing left to desire. When that happens, you’re already dead.
In the afternoon the doctors take blood, they take tissue, they put me in machines, they take me out again. Everyone is exquisitely polite. I talk to someone I suspect is a psychiatrist, although I’m told he’s not. I sign a lot of papers. Everything is recorded.
Agent Alcozer waits for me outside my suite. “Max. Can I come in?”
“Why not?”
In my sitting room he ostentatiously takes a small green box from his pocket, presses a series of buttons, and sets the thing on the floor. A jammer. We are now encased in a Faraday cage: no electromagnetic wavelengths in and none out. An invisible privacy cloak.
Of course—Alcozer has jammers, has weapons, has anything I might need to get to Daria. Agent Alcozer.
Angel Alcozer.
He says, “Have you thought about my offer?”
“I don’t remember an offer. An offer has numbers attached, like flies on fly paper. Flies I don’t remember, Joe.” I have never used his first name before. He’s too good to look startled.
“Here are some flies, Max. You name three important things about the San Cristobel fraud of ’89. The hacker’s name, the Swiss account number, and the organization you worked with. Then we let you stay up here on Sequene without interference. Sound good?”
“San Cristobel, San Cristobel,” I mutter. “Do I remember from San Cristobel?”
“I think you do.”
“Maybe I do.”
His eyes sharpen. They are no color at all, nondescript. Government-issue eyes. But eager.
“But I need something else, too,” I say.
“Something else?”
“I want—”
All at once I stop. High in my nose, something tingles. This time there is even a distinct smell, like old fish. Something is wrong here, something connected to Alcozer, or to the San Cristobel deal—Moshe’s deal, not Stevan’s—or to this conversation.
“You want what?” Alcozer says.
“I want to think a little more.” I never ignore that smell. The nose knows.
He shifts his weight, disappointed. “Not too much more, Max. Your treatment’s scheduled for
tomorrow.”
How does he know that? I don’t know that. Alcozer has access to information I do not. Probably he knows where Daria is. All I have to do is give him the San Cristobel flies, and who gets hurt? Moshe is dead, that particular Robin Hood is dead, the island where it all happened no longer even exists, lost to the rising sea. The money was long since moved from the Swiss to the Indonesians and on from there. Nobody gets hurt.
No. There was something else about San Cristobel. Old fish.
I say, “Let me think a few hours. It’s a big step, this.” I let my voice quaver. “A big change for me, this place. You know I never lived big on Earth. And for a kid from Brooklyn . . .”
Alcozer smiles. It’s supposed to be a comradely smile. He looks like a vampire with a tooth job. “For a kid from Des Moines, too. All right, Max, you think. I’ll come back right after dinner.” He turns off the jammer, pockets it, stands. “Have another nice walk. By the way, there’s no restricted areas on Sequene that you could possibly get into.”
“You think maybe I don’t know that?”
“I’m trying to find out what you know.” Alcozer looks pleased with himself, like he’s said something witty. I let him think this. Always good to encourage federal delusion.
Old fish. But whose?
I go to dinner. The second I sit at a table, Rosie totters in to the dining room, lights up like a rocket launch, and shouts, “Christopher!”
I look around. Two other diners in the room so far, and they’re both women. Rosie lurches over, tears streaming down her cheeks, and throws her arms around me. “You came!”
“I—”
A harried-looking woman in the light blue uniform hurries through the doorway. “Oh, Mr. Feder, I’m so sorry, she—”
“It’s Christopher!” Rosie cries. “Look, Anna, my brother Christopher! He came all the way from California to visit me!”
Rosie is clutching me like I’m a cliff she’s about to go over. I don’t have to play blank—I am blank. The attendant tries to detach her, but she only clutches harder.
“So sorry, Mr. Feder, she gets a little confused, she—Mrs. Kowalski!”
“Christopher! Christopher! I’m going to have dinner with my brother!”
“Mrs. Kowalski, really, you—”
“Would it help if I have dinner with her?” I say.
The attendant looks confused. But more people are coming into the dining room, very rich people, and it’s clear she doesn’t want a fuss. Her earcomm says something and she tries to smile at me. “Oh, that would be . . . if you don’t mind . . .”
“Not at all. My aunt, in her last days . . . . I understand.”
The young attendant is grateful, along with angry and embarrassed and a half dozen other things I don’t care about. I reach out with my one free hand and pull out a chair for Rosie, who sits down, mumbling. A robo-waiter appears and order is restored to the universe.
Rosie mumbles to herself all through dinner, absolutely unintelligible mumbling. The attendant lurks unhappily in a corner. The set of her body says she’s has been dealing with Rosie all day and is disgusted with this duty. Stevan must have created a hell of a credit history for Mrs. Kowalski. Rosie says nothing whatsoever to me, but occasionally she beams at me like a demented lighthouse. I say nothing to her, but I get worried. I don’t know what’s happening. Either she really has lost it—in less than a week? is this possible?—or she’s a better actress than half of the holo stars on the Link.
She eats everything, but very slowly. Halfway through dessert, some kind of chocolate pastry, the dining room is full. The first shift, the old people who go to bed at ten o’clock (I know this, I’m one of them) have left and the second shift, the younger and more fashionably dressed, are eating and laughing and ordering expensive wine. I recognize a famous Japanese singer, an American ex-Senator who was once (although he didn’t know it) on my payroll, and an Arab playboy. From Sequene’s point of view, it is not a good place for a tawdry scene.
Rosie stands and cries, “Daria Cleary!”
My heart stops.
But of course Daria is not there. There’s only Rosie, flailing her arms and crying, “I must thank Daria Cleary! For this gift of life! I must thank her!”
People stare. A few look amused, but most do not. They have the affronted look of sleek darlings forced to look at old age, senility, a badly dressed and stooped body that may smell bad—all the things they have come to Sequene to avoid experiencing. The attendant dashes over.
“Mrs. Kowalski!”
“Daria! I must thank her!”
The girl tugs on Rosie, who grabs at the tablecloth. Plates and wineglasses and expensive hydroponic flowers crash to the floor. Diners mutter, scowling. The girl says desperately, “Yes, of course, we’ll go see Daria! Right now! Come with me, Mrs. Kowalski.”
“Christopher, too!”
I say softly, conspiratorially, to the girl, “We need to get her out of here.”
She says, “Yes, yes, of course, Christopher, too,” and gives me a tight, grateful, furious smile.
Rosie trails happily after the attendant, holding my hand.
I think, This cannot work. Once we’re out of the dining room, out of earshot, out of hypocrisy . . .
In the corridor outside the dining room Rosie halts, shouting again, “Daria!” People here, too, stop and stare. Rosie, suddenly not tottering, leads the way past them, down a side corridor, then another. Faster now, the attendant has to run to catch up. Me, too. So Rosie hits the force fence first, is knocked to the ground, and starts to cry.
“All right, you,” the girl says, all pretense of sweetness gone. “That’s enough!” She grabs Rosie’s arm and tries to yank her upward. Rosie outweighs her by maybe twenty-five kilos. A service ’bot trundles towards us.
Rosie is calling, “Daria! Daria! Please, you don’t know what this means to me! I’m an old woman but I was young once, I too lost the only man I ever loved—remember Cyprus? Do you—you do! Cyprus! Daria!”
The ’bot exudes a scoop and effortlessly shovels up Rosie like so much gravel. The girl says viciously, “I’ve had just about enough of—”
And stops. Her face changes. Something is coming over her earcomm.
Then there is an almost inaudible pop! as the force-fence shuts down. At the far end of the corridor, a door opens, a door that wasn’t even there a moment ago. Stealth coating, I think, dazed. Reuven’s robo-dog. My hand, unbidden, goes to my naked ring finger.
Standing in the doorway, backed by bodyguards both human and ’bot just as she was in the ViaHealth hospital fifty-five years ago, is Daria.
She still looks eighteen. As I stumble forward, too numb to feel my legs move, I see her in a Greek taverna, leaning against the bar; on a rocky beach, crying in early morning light; in a hospital bed, head half shaved. She doesn’t see me at all, isn’t looking, doesn’t recognize me. She looks at Rosie.
Who has changed utterly. Rosie scrambles off the gravel scoop and pushes away the attendant, a push so strong the girl falls against the corridor wall. Rosie grabs my hand and drags me forward. At the doorway, both ’bot and human bodyguards block the way. Rosie submits to a body search that ordinarily would have brought death to any man who touched a Rom woman in those ways, possibly including her husband. Rosie endures it like a pagan queen disdaining unimportant Roman soldiers. Me, I hardly notice it. I can’t stop looking at Daria.
Still eighteen, but utterly changed.
The wild black hair has been subdued into a fashionable, tame, ugly style. Her smooth brown skin has no color under its paint. Her eyes, still her own shade of green, bear in their depths a defeat and loneliness I can’t imagine.
Yes. I can.
She says nothing, just stands aside to let us pass once the guards have finished. The human one says, “Mrs. Cleary—” but she silences him with a wave of her hand. We stand now in a sort of front hall. Maybe it’s white or blue or gold, maybe there are flowers, maybe the flowers stand on an
antique table—nothing really registers. All I see is Daria, who does not see me.
She says to Rosie, “What do you know of Cyprus? Were you there?”
She must think Rosie was a whore on Cyprus when Daria herself was—the ages would be about right. But Daria’s question is detached, uninvolved, the way you might politely ask the age of an historical building. Dating from 1649? Really. Well.
Rosie doesn’t answer. Instead she steps behind me. Rosie can’t say my name, because of course we are all under surveillance. She must remain Mrs. Kowalski so that she can go home to Stevan. Rosie can say nothing.
So I do. I say, “Daria, it’s Max.”
Finally she looks at me, and she knows who I am.
The Rom have a word for ghosts: mulé. Mulé haunt the places they used to live for up to a year. They eat scraps, use the toilet, spend the money buried with them in their coffins. They trouble the living in dreams and visions. Wispy, insubstantial, they nonetheless exist. I could never find out if Stevan or Rosie actually believed in mulé. There are things the Rom never tell a gajo.
Daria has become a muli. There is no real interest in her eyes as she regards me. This woman, who once in a hospital room risked both our lives to bring me riches and atonement and shame, now has lived beyond all risk, all interest. Decades of being shut away by Peter Cleary, of being hated by people who make periodic and serious efforts to kill her, of being used as a biological supply station from which pieces are clipped to fuel others’ vanity, have drained her of all vitality. She desires nothing, feels nothing, cares about nothing. Including me.
“Max,” she says courteously. “Hello.”
The throaty catch, the hesitation, is gone from her voice. For some reason, it is this which breaks me. Go figure. Her accent is still there, even her scent is still there, but not that catch in the voice, and not Daria. This is a shell. In her eyes, nothing.
Rosie takes my hand. It is the first time in forty years, except for when she was crazy Mrs. Kowalski, that Rosie Adams has ever touched me. In her clasp I feel all of the compassion, the life, that is missing from Daria. Nothing could have hurt me more.