Maximum Light

by Nancy Kress

  By eight o’clock it’s getting dark, but New York still shells out enough money to light the outside of Lincoln Center, and anyway there’s an almost-full moon. I fit right into the crowd hanging around the dried-up fountain, doing deals and sucking sunshine and panhandling the dressed-up stewdees going to the ballet. But unlike most of the crowd, I’m clean and sober and wearing a pair of cheap zooms that make everything up close look blurry but everything a hundred yards away sharp as needles.

  The New York State Theater has a front all of glass. It’s streaky and spotty. Some guy told me there used to be curtains to give the rich people some privacy, but now they don’t got enough money (who does?) and so I can see inside, even through the dirt, to where the party is. At least, I can see the things closest to the glass. The lights inside don’t burn nowhere near as bright as the blinders safeguarding the outside from scum like us.

  With my zooms I can see little tables with fancy food and vases of flowers. I can see Cameron Atuli, still in his rucky-fucky dance costume, sitting on a marble bench close to the window. And I can see the little old lady who talks to him for a long, long time. Except for his lover, she’s the only one who does.

  When the party’s over, I follow her. The dealer at the fountain told me the party’s for rich people who might give the ballet some money, and this little old lady looks like a rich person. But she don’t smell right to me. I don’t know how to explain it. She just didn’t talk to nobody but Atuli, she left right after that, and her whole body, from a hundred yards away, just looks too … smooth-walking. Too disciplined. Too young.

  She crosses the fountain square real near me, accompanied by one of the bruisers that Lincoln Center hires to escort rich people to their cars or cabs. She passes right next to me. But I can’t take the zooms out without looking conspicuous, and she isn’t nothing but a smeary blur. But when she gets farther away, I see the escort put her into a cab, and I take off after it, a safe distance behind, on a powerboard I snaggled in the park. Following the cab is easy; New York traffic can’t move for shit.

  She gets out at a fairly nice, secure apartment building on West End Avenue. I note the address and go home, which is a friend’s place. He’s not a close friend, but he’ll let me stay there as long as I want, for the usual bonus. I hope it’s not too long. He’s a nice-enough guy, but in bed he just don’t know what he’s doing, and I’m not interested in teaching him.

  The next morning I’m back at West End Avenue real early, panhandling out past the secure zone. The guard glares at me but legally there isn’t nothing he can do. About 7:30 my bitch comes out, only she don’t look exactly the same. Thirty years younger, dressed in a business suit with a plain vest, but it’s still her all right. Today no cab; she takes the subway, and I follow along.

  She goes all the way to an office building downtown. I don’t go in, but I don’t need to. From outside I can see the little sign on the lobby wall: Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Well, well.

  Next I go hang around the back doors to the New York State Theater. The terminal I accessed in the Lincoln Center Library—and I never smelled such a stinking library, they just got hardly nobody throwing out homeless fossils—said that’s where the practice rooms for ballet are. The building don’t have any restaurant. Everybody’s got to eat sometime.

  But not alone. I don’t expect that, not after what happened to him in Washington with Dreamie and Teela. Atuli’s got with him not only his lover but a bunch of other dancers, six of them altogether, men and women, going out for lunch. I’m only going to get one shot.

  I wait till they’re standing in line at a restaurant on Amsterdam, relaxed and talking. “Mr. Atuli? Could I talk with you for a minute?”

  I still look like a panhandler, but I’m careful to speak well, and I don’t stand too close. Still, Atuli takes a step backward and his lover says, “Go away. Now.”

  “I know you’re Cameron Atuli,” I say, “but I’m not a crazy fan.” Yecchhh. “I have some information you really want to know. About your operation.”

  That gets his attention. It’s sort of a shot in the sky, but not really. Those chimps had his face; there must of been some sort of operation, sometime, to make that happen. I don’t plan to get too specific yet. Let him think I know a lot more than I do.

  But he don’t react like I hoped. “I don’t want to know anything about it!” he says, and backs away. Two other dancers step in front of him, and another one starts looking around for a surveillance cam or a cop.

  So I’m cornered, and I’ve only got about twenty seconds. I say, loud enough for him to hear from behind his friends, “I saw the chimps with your face! That’s why I tried to get to you in the International Center! To warn you!” And I pull off my hat so all my blond hair tumbles out, and raise my face so he can see under the filth that I’m not no old bum.

  “Go! Now!” his lover shouts and starts shoving me. I didn’t know a rucky-fucky dancer could be so strong. People are stopping on the sidewalk now, to look: so many young people in one place, fighting. Down the street I see a cop on his powerboard. The dancer shoves me even farther away, and this time another one helps him. A girl pulls Atuli’s arm toward the restaurant door.

  It’s over. I crashed it.

  But then Atuli, who’s been shrinking away from me like I stink of shit, breaks from the girl and pushes over to me. “What chimps?”

  “Cam, don’t listen to her!”

  “No, wait. Joaquim, let her go. Sarah, let go of me! You—what chimps?”

  “Cam, don’t—”

  “Hush, Rob. Please. There shouldn’t have been any chimps in my … you. How did you even know I’d had an operation? Who … who are you?”

  A second chance. I pull free of the dancers, who stand around scowling, and face Atuli respectfully. The cop on the board cruises past.

  “I know you had an operation because I saw the result—your face on three live monkeys. Only nobody don’t believe me. And I’m betting you didn’t do it willing, and that you want to know more about it!” Did he? From his face—God, up close he was beautiful, too bad all the prettiest ones are blithe—I couldn’t tell. Mostly he looked scared.

  “Chimps? But how…?”

  “Stop, Cameron. Now,” his lover says quietly. “This is why you had the operation.”

  There’s a long moment where nobody says nothing, and you couldn’t of dented the air with a lasersaw.

  Then Atuli says, “You’re right, Rob. Miss, whoever you are—just leave me alone.” He turns toward the restaurant.

  “But I saw them! With your face!” I shout, like an idiot. A dancer gives me a final shove and I sprawl on the sidewalk. The last of them disappears into the restaurant. They can have the law here in minutes.

  I pick myself up and sprint away. Damn it to fucking hell. Atuli don’t care that somebody’s been growing his own face and sticking it onto monkeys, to sell to weepy bitches desperate for anything they can pretend is a baby. He don’t even care!

  Why not?

  Blocks away, gasping for air in a public toilet booth—since I left NS I just don’t get no exercise—I think about Atuli’s reactions. It was like he don’t know about the chimps. How could that be? He was there, Nick told me all about how Atuli must of been inside some sort of machine for hours, and must of been awake, too, for the machine to work. So how come he don’t know?

  “Stop, Cameron. Now. This is why you had the operation.”

  A memory wipe.

  I’d been hoping for information from somebody who’s had all his information deleted. Who didn’t know his own name until he learned it all over again. Some investigator I am!

  I slump down on the toilet seat, ready to give up. Go back to Washington, go to my hearing (which I plan to do anyhow; Nick’s been pretty decent to me, for a rusty fusty), take my slap on the wrist from the judge. And then what? Give up, forget the army, become a clerk someplace sitting in front of a screen all day transferring potatoes from o
ne warehouse to another.

  No. I’d die. I have to get into the army, and to do that I have to prove my story about the chimps is true. But Cameron Atuli don’t remember about the chimps. So now what?

  “Stop, Cameron. Now. This is why you had the operation.”

  His lover remembers. About whatever happened to Atuli that made him have his memory wiped. And maybe his lover knows where, or who, or something else I can follow up on to prove my story’s true.

  I straighten up and leave the toilet stall, which, now that I notice it, smells as bad as everything else in this city. I’ll be glad to leave. The ballet bunch will be going back to Washington, too, next week. I’ll have another shot there. This time, at Robert Radisson.

  * * *

  I get back to Washington forty minutes before the hearing, which goes real quick. I stand next to Nick, who might look like shit these days but is still important and rich. I wear a white dress I stole on the way to the courthouse. My hair is caught in a ribbon at the back of my head. I bow my head a little and speak soft. I try to look like an orphaned national resource who just needs a little guidance. The judge puts me on probation.

  “You little fraud,” Nick says outside the courthouse. He has to lean against the building wall. “Where have you been for three days?”

  “New York,” I say, and right away he gets it. He may be dying, but his brain works just fine.

  “The Aldani Ballet is there on tour. You went to badger Cameron Atuli.”

  “And it didn’t work,” I say, even now hating to admit that. “He don’t remember nothing. He had a memory wipe.”

  Nick don’t react. He just says, “Are you certain? Tell me why you think so.”

  So I go through the whole story, leaving nothing out, telling it straight.

  “FBI,” Clementi says, like he’s trying the idea out. But he still don’t look really surprised, which surprises me. He’s holding out on me.

  “And what did you find out while I was gone, Nick?”

  “Nothing,” he says, and he’s lying. Suddenly I’m furious—with him because I thought he was really on my side. And with myself, for believing it for half a shitty second. Nobody’s on your side but you.

  He says, “Let’s go home.”

  So I can’t show how furious I am, because he’s still giving me a place to stay, and if I don’t stay there I’ll never find out what else he knows that I don’t. So I take his arm and we start off slowly for the cab stand. His steps wobble. In just the few days I’ve been gone, he’s worse.

  So what. This old fart don’t matter to me. Let him die.

  * * *

  When we get home, Her Highness is back from visiting her sister. Her suitcase clutters up the front hall. She takes one look at Nick, leaning on my arm to even walk into the apartment, and she goes still all over.

  “Nick.”

  “Hello, Maggie. I’m glad you’re back.”

  She don’t answer, and they look at each other, and I know it’s time for me to leave. “I’m going out,” I say, and go back through the front door. Then I go around the building, up the service elevator, and in through the delivery door. I got the code from the super the first day, for the usual fee. I inch along the hall until I can see them reflected in the mirror over the fireplace, and can hear them clearly.

  She’s sitting real close to him on the sofa, one hand on his knee, the other just touching the back of his neck. Every once in a while her fingers move a little in his hair.

  “Since when?” he asks.

  “Weeks now. I knew you’d tell me when you chose to.”

  “You never said, never indicated by so much as a look—”

  She laughs, shaky. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line, Nick? Only you indicated it with every look, every movement. Did you think I don’t know you well enough, after fifty-five years, to know when you’re dying?”

  He pulls her closer. They’re quiet a minute, and then he says a weird thing. “I want to do it well, Maggie. The only way I can face it is to believe I’m doing it well.”

  “I understand,” she says, so low I barely catch it. “And you don’t want my help.”

  “Not ‘don’t want’—‘can’t take.’ Because then I wouldn’t be doing it as well as I need to. Does that make sense?”

  “About you, darling—yes, it makes sense to me.” Which makes one of us.

  He chuckles. “No going not gently, no raging against the dying of the light. That’s for the young. No rage at all. But, Maggie—I do need your help. With things I may not be able to get done before I … before.”

  “Anything, love. What sorts of things?”

  “Not what, who. Shana and Laurie.”

  “Laurie? You mean, about getting a baby however she can?”

  He pulls a little away to look into her face. “Is there anything you don’t already know about your family?”

  “Their numbers are legion,” Maggie says. “But I only guessed about Laurie. She spoke to you, I take it. And you pledged to do whatever is necessary.” She stops, and I watch her face struggle with itself. “And I will, too. Just don’t tell Sallie.”

  “Which brings me to Shana,” he says, and the back of my neck tingles.

  “Shana? What’s that slutty little con artist got to do with Sallie?”

  “I flew to Atlanta yesterday, on the shuttle. I asked Sallie to get me some information from the CDC deebees, and, reluctantly, she did. Shana went tearing off to New York on her own and came back with more. And Van Grant reported in. Maggie, something is very wrong. Cameron Atuli was abducted, forced to donate the tissue samples and MOSS scan that ended up creating the chimps that Shana saw. Atuli was also castrated, and his testicles are still with his abductors. The FBI rescued him. Afterwards he had a memory wipe, probably for the trauma. Sallie found some of this out in the top-security CDC deebees. But when Van called me, he said there was no mention of Atuli in any government deebee, anywhere. And I did a search in the public legal deebee myself. There’s no court case, settled or pending, involving the kidnapping of Cameron Atuli. And Shana swears that a woman talking privately to Atuli in New York went to work the next day at the FBI.”

  Just in time, I keep from making a noise. Maggie don’t. She grunts like he just hit her, and then she chokes out, “Do you know what you’re saying, Nick? That Van—that the government—knows about a kidnapping, knows that criminals are making illegal monkey-human babies—or whatever they are—and isn’t prosecuting!”

  “There may be a reason. The Justice Department may be holding off because they’re still tracing the operation to its roots.”

  “If that were so,” Maggie argues, “they wouldn’t have allowed a key witness like Atuli to have induced retrograde amnesia, no matter what his trauma. They’d need him to testify Besides, the government isn’t going to support animal/human vivifacture hybrids—no matter who wants a baby substitute! Half of the government is religious—”

  “Ah, but which half? Van? He says so, but who knows what Vanderbilt Grant really believes?”

  “—and all of the government knows that most people cringe from the idea of a chimp with a toddler’s face. Or anything else like that. These are politicians, Nick—they’re not going to allow, even covertly, something that polls show ninety percent of the voters abhor. There’s no reason.”

  “I know,” he says, and leans his head on the back of the sofa. His eye’s twitching again. In the mirror I see Maggie’s face, and I have to look away.

  “Is it bad, dear heart?”

  “No. No pain, not with the meds. But the mucor is growing into my brain, and I don’t think it can be too long now before the coma. Laurie and Shana—you may have to finish helping both of them, Maggie.”

  “How?” she says, and I have to admit that the old bitch has class. She’s not wailing and fussing and making it harder for him. She’s like a platoon leader waiting for orders that she’ll die herself trying to carry out, if he’s the one giving them.

&nbs
p; “I don’t know. But Laurie needs—must have—a child. And Shana has to get accepted into the army. She’s not suited for anything else.”

  “Why Shana?” Maggie says, somewhere between impatience and ice. “You’ve only known Shana a few weeks. She’s a liar and a cheat. And she can take care of herself—she’s been doing it for years. She’s got her whole life ahead of her to get herself straightened out, if that’s what she really wants. She’s young, dearest. Why bother with Shana?”

  “Because she’s young,” Nick says, and closes his eyes. Maggie lets her face go, then, and when I can’t bear to watch it anymore in the mirror, I creep back along to the delivery door and jam the elevator between floors so I can be alone.

  Maggie is right—Nick and me don’t hardly know each other. Plus, he’s a moldy oldie who already used up his share of time. Plus, he’s one of the two generations that are breaking the backs of mine. Plus, he thinks I’m a waste of air, even if he is helping me get into the army. Probably hopes I’ll get sent to South America and killed in action.

  I know all that. But I’m crying anyway, slumped in my stupid white dress against the dirty service elevator wall, and I feel like the worst stewdee of all time.

  12

  CAMERON ATULI

  The dreams about animals have ended. But now it’s something worse.

  It starts the day after that girl, the one who’d been the soldier in my dressing room in Washington, tries to attack us in New York. Rob and Joaquim and Dmitri keep her from touching me. But they can’t stop her yelling, or me hearing: I know you had an operation because I saw the result—your face on three chimps.… I saw them! With your face!

  “She’s crazy,” Rob says to me as we all crowd into the safety of the restaurant. Joaquim and Dmitri, Sarah and Caroline, say nothing. They’re leaving it to Rob. But what do the other four know about what happened to me before my operation? What does that girl know? How much of my life is closed off from me—but not from everyone I live with, dance with, love with?