Hal took another step. The prisoner’s body went rigid and both eyes shut tight. “But that’s not all!” he exclaimed, still bracing himself against the expected blow.
“What we all need,” Kurtz said flatly, “is to calm down.”
The prisoner opened a single eye. “They try,” he began again, more tentatively now, “to cover their tracks. Everything’s abstract when it comes to this sort of business.” Both eyes were open now. The prisoner began to wag his head suggestively and, with his bound hands, he gestured in a general sort of way around the room. “This isn’t,” he said, “even Empire soil. Everything’s remote now, right? Everything’s someone else’s business. Impossible to track down, impossible to prove. But even so, let me tell you, they keep impeccable records.”
Kurtz motioned to Hal, who stepped back. The prisoner relaxed. Then Norma leaned in. She consulted briefly with Kurtz, then walked quickly toward the double doors.
Startled to attention, Lota whipped back to the drive. It had been some time since she’d been able to train her attention on anything but the prisoner and Kurtz, and her heart beat fiercely at the thought of how much she might have failed to notice in all that time.
But there was no detectable movement outside and, relieved, Lota turned back to the hall. She glanced first right, then left, and, from that direction, could just make out Bruno headed down the corridor, four or five ghosts trailing behind.
They must be foreign technicians, Lota guessed as they drew nearer—or guards. Their hands and feet had been shackled. Baby Jane took up the rear.
Norma had reached the double doors. She kicked the doorstops out from under them and they shut slowly. At the exact moment that the doors clicked into place, the prisoner began to howl.
Lota winced and turned back toward the drive. By the time she’d swung around again, Bruno had reached the double doors. He stood there, nose in the air, the slack skin beneath his chin quivering.
“These ones are next,” he said, nodding to Lota and gesturing toward the ghosts—all of whom had, by now, stumbled to a halt behind. “Make sure they don’t go anywhere.”
Lota stared at the ghosts and listened to Bruno’s heavy footsteps retreating slowly down the hall.
“I hope you know who you’re working for.”
Lota blinked. Even with how she was looking right at them, she couldn’t tell which one of the ghosts had spoken—or if anyone had spoken at all. Baby Jane, at the end of the single-file line, continued to pace the hall slowly; she did not appear to have heard anything.
“I worked with her, you know.” The voice was harsh, unsteady, little more than a hiss. Lota turned away. She focused as far as she could down the drive, thinking maybe if she fixed on something in the distance…
But then she turned back. One of the ghosts was looking straight at her.
“With that woman,” the ghost said. “Your boss. What does she call herself?”
Lota shook her head. She found it impossible now to glance away.
“She went by Santos then,” the ghost said. “I forget the first name. Everybody called her the Saint. It was a joke, see, because—”
Baby Jane stood in front of the ghost; was half a head or so taller than him, was practically breathing down his throat.
The ghost continued to stare past her, but his voice sounded increasingly strained.
“She was difficult to read. A closed book.”
Lota craned her neck toward the drive. Behind the closed doors, the prisoner began to scream in spasmodic bursts.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Baby Jane.
“But she was smart,” the ghost hissed, as if he hadn’t heard. “Could get almost anyone to talk. A bit of a psycho that way. Everybody knew.”
Baby Jane leaned in so that her face was practically pressed up against the ghost’s own. She’d moved her hand to her gun. “I said, Shut. The. Fuck. Up!”
The latch clicked. Hal pulled one of the double doors open just wide enough to stick his head outside. “Everything all right?”
Baby Jane stepped back. Lota turned—heart pounding—toward the drive. The fence looked wobbly in the distance. She grabbed at the door frame; couldn’t tell what was solid.
EIGHT
Rachel had no idea what time it was—only that it was not yet four-thirty because the short hand had not yet appeared in the bottom third of her watch.
Time had a way of playing tricks on you. It was quite possible that not quite so much time had passed as it seemed. Still, Rachel regretted not having kept track of how many times the long hand had appeared and disappeared from the bottom corner of her watch. If she had, she would at least have been able to gauge the hour.
The door opened. Surely, Rachel thought…Surely now. She held her breath. A young man entered. He wore khaki pants too large for him and a semi-automatic weapon slung over one arm.
“All right?”
Rachel had never been more disappointed. She exhaled loudly. The kid dragged a chair from behind the door and sat down. He slumped forward and looked at Rachel blankly. Then, as if suddenly inspired, he took a stick of gum out of one of his deep pants pockets and thoughtfully folded it into his mouth.
He tipped the pack toward Rachel. “Gum?”
Rachel shook her head.
The kid reached into his pocket again, this time retrieving a small spiral-bound notebook and a pen. He scribbled on the cover of the notebook to get the ink flowing, then flipped it open randomly to a blank, lined page.
“Name?” he said, without looking up.
Rachel was silent.
“What’s your name?” the kid repeated. He lifted his forehead slightly this time, but he kept his eyes on the page.
Rachel’s throat felt permanently closed. If she could just get a drink of water—
The kid had looked up. He was staring at her, a stupid grin on his face. “What’s that?” he said. “You don’t have a name?”
Again Rachel shook her head. She was terribly thirsty.
The kid stared. He chewed his gum slowly. “What’s—” he began again.
“Rachel!” Rachel said, croaking on the word. She cleared her throat. “Rachel Darling.”
The kid continued to chew. With every bite, the white gum flashed visibly.
“What’s yours?”
“Mine?” the kid asked.
Rachel nodded.
“Alien.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Rachel hadn’t noticed how tense she’d been. Her back ached; her neck—craned backward and sideways, away from the desk—was killing her. She leaned forward and shook her head. Was this some sort of elaborate joke? She’d been taking everything so…so seriously! When now, all of a sudden, it seemed perfectly clear…It was all…a joke. A dream!
Yes, that was it. A dream. She nearly laughed out loud.
But then the laugh caught—the thought faltered.
If it was just a dream, why, Rachel wondered—now that she’d realized as much—did she go on dreaming?
She yanked hard against the desk, felt the sharp bite of metal, the wrenching pressure of the drawer as, having slid out as far as it could along its metal tracks, it met its limit. The kid was looking at her, still flashing—at semi-regular intervals—his little ball of hard white gum.
A bubble of panic rose in Rachel’s throat. Why didn’t she wake up, dammit? Why didn’t the kid disappear? It made no sense, any of it, and yet, unlike in a dream, realizing this changed nothing. The kid continued to stare. Rachel’s wrists to smart painfully. The drawer to extend itself from the desk only so far—to wobble stubbornly against its metal hinge.
“Tell me,” the kid said, slumping still further in his chair, “what exactly do you do here?” The gun on his shoulder shifted slightly as he moved, so that now—without his even realizing it—it was pointed almost directly at Rachel.
“Do?” Rachel shook her head. She had to keep things in perspective, had to keep—over whatever
it was that was happening—some degree of control. She cleared her throat loudly, levelled her gaze at the kid—and the gun. “Listen,” she said. “I’ve a right to know. What’s this all about?”
The kid looked genuinely surprised.
“I mean…” Rachel licked her lips, which were exceedingly dry. “Is this some sort of…interrogation?”
The kid nodded seriously, considering. He stretched his gum into a thin strand until it broke over his tongue.
“I mean,” Rachel said again, and yanked impatiently against the drawer. “I mean,” she repeated a third time, her voice rising now, almost to a whine, “you can’t, you can’t be…serious!”
The kid burst out laughing. He laughed for a good minute or more. A strange, strangled-sounding laugh that confused Rachel. She kept a sort of half smile playing at her own lips because of it; didn’t want it to seem to the kid that she didn’t get the joke, if that’s what it was.
But then, as abruptly as the kid had started laughing, he stopped. He got up, stretched, and loped over to the window—leaning out over the ledge to get a wider view.
“So, this is what you see up here,” he said. He started to laugh again. “Ha ha! So this is what you see! You know”—he turned to face Rachel—“it isn’t really that different from what you can see from the street.” He sounded neither disappointed nor surprised. The kid sat down. “We’re very serious,” he said as he adjusted the strap of his gun, which had begun to slip off his shoulder again. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Rachel shivered, though she didn’t feel cold. She had to be careful, she reminded herself. Even if this was a dream, its limits and therefore its consequences seemed to be real. She wondered briefly where the kid had come from—which side of the island—and if she’d seen him before. She didn’t think so, but then, she had trouble keeping the island people straight in her mind. It wasn’t a race thing—clearly. It was a side effect of diplomacy. It was her job to introduce herself to and shake the hands of lots of people she had no personal interest in meeting and was never going to see again. It did something to the brain. She had a tremendous capacity for remembering names and faces in the short term, but little to no capacity for lasting impressions. People blurred together in her mind—the people she met today, for example, to a certain extent interchangeable with the people she’d met yesterday or even five years before. Just watch, Rachel thought, a year from now, even this kid’s face would blur and change, become confused in her mind with a dozen or so others…
Once again, the utter absurdity of her situation—even, or especially, if it was real—hit her.
“But you can’t,” she cried out, “you just can’t do this!” She sprang forward—causing the desk drawer to slide back along its tracks and then to snap, with an efficient click, into position. “You can’t just walk in here, just…take over like this!” It was probably imprudent to say more, but Rachel suddenly felt a petty, almost vindictive desire to counter the kid’s smugness with her own. “Plus,” she continued, “they know, you know.” She nodded, for some reason, in the direction of the window. “I knew something was wrong, before anyone even came in here. I put in a call to the capital.”
Her confidence had reached its peak; it had nowhere to go from there. “I reported exactly what’s going on here,” Rachel said, her voice beginning to tremble. “So there can’t…there can’t be any mistake.” Her pulse was distracting; it beat loudly in her ears. She was no longer entirely sure what she was talking about.
The kid shrugged. It was an irritating gesture, which served to calm Rachel somehow. She felt annoyed rather than afraid, first with the kid and then with herself—then at the stupidity of blind luck. If only all this had happened next week, she thought, or even tomorrow, rather than today! If only she’d left the island in November—had insisted, in keeping with her instinct and better judgment; had simply said, as she’d intended, “No. The situation is untenable…”
Instead, she’d tried to please, had tried not to ruffle any feathers.
Well, now look where it had got her.
Rachel shuddered. Goddammit; she’d known. Ever since—at least—the incident of the dog bite, she’d known. She could have changed her mind then, told the ambassador she couldn’t stay—told him that something else would need to be arranged. But she’d done nothing—had pressed all of their luck, had even experienced a degree of pleasure in being able to be the reasonable one; to insist to Ray that it only made sense to stay, that everything was going to be all right.
The incident had happened on a Thursday. Ray and Zoe were due to fly out the very next week. Ray had picked up Zoe from school that afternoon. She had, he said afterward, seemed unusually upbeat. They’d made a stop at the only semi-decent bakery on the island, across from the Birdman statue in the centre of town. Ray said he remembered his attention had been caught, briefly, by a group of kids huddled around the fountain; that he’d felt uneasy in a way he didn’t understand.
They left the bakery and moved toward the fountain. The uneasy feeling grew. But then Rachel had called. The two of them had spoken for a minute or two, annoyed with each other for some reason (afterward, neither one of them could recall about what).
Rachel gritted her teeth. She yanked again, hard, against the drawer. It slid out as far as it could before roughly bouncing to a halt. The kid watched her from his chair, snapping his gum and shaking his head.
The truth was, Rachel thought angrily as she shook out her wrists and cursed under her breath, she’d known nothing. What was knowledge, after all—after the fact, and unaccompanied by any form of action—except the basest and most rudimentary fear? What she’d felt after the incident of the dog bite was likely nothing more complicated than that.
And in fact, when she considered it now, Rachel hoped to hell she hadn’t known. If she had, how would she ever be able to forgive herself, for…
For this? For…abandoning Zoe. For letting her daughter be taken—no, for actually pushing her away.
There was simply no other way to put it. She’d led them into this. She’d insisted that they continue to progress along a course she knew was wrong; had been just as determined as Ray had been not to let anything alter their route—or even to notice anything was wrong until it was far too late.
It hadn’t been a big dog, Ray insisted later. Just one of the scrawny island dogs they often saw scrounging for scraps outside Josie’s or down by the wharf. But it had been fierce.
When it lunged, Rachel had still been on the line. She’d heard a strangled cry, then a loud crash as Ray dropped the phone. There were barks and yells; there was Zoe’s scream and the intermittent cries of nearby kids and passersby; there were grunts and muffled shouts as Ray threw himself on the dog, kicked at it—bit, even.
He’d gone nearly out of his mind, he told Rachel later, and couldn’t clearly remember the progression of events. At some point, though, he must have grabbed a stone from the street, because he remembered bringing it down as hard as he could on the dog’s skull. The dog had growled and writhed, but had kept its jaw clenched firmly around Zoe’s small hand.
Ray tried again, then a third time. The dog snarled and leapt, releasing Zoe’s hand. It bared its teeth at Ray—its eyes blank and hard.
He must have closed his eyes then, he said, in preparation for a blow that never came. When he opened them again he saw that the dog was already halfway across the square.
Several minutes passed after that before Ray remembered Rachel on the other end of the line.
Her voice had sounded very small. Like the voice of a mouse, Zoe offered later, shouting up from a hole in the ground. “Ray! Ray! Talk to me! Ray!” Rachel had screamed. “What the hell is happening!? What the hell is going on?”
The bite had been deep but clean. They took Zoe to the clinic and the wound was scrubbed and bandaged. She was given a series of shots.
“It was an accident,” Ray assured both Rachel and Zoe as they headed home. “The dog w
as just acting on instinct. He didn’t know what he was doing. We can’t blame the dog.”
“But what about the feeling you had?” Rachel had pressed him later. “You said you felt uneasy. There must have been some reason for that, right? And the kids…When you said they were huddled at the fountain. Where was the dog then? What do you think they were doing?”
“Rachel,” Ray had said, then paused. Sighed. “I honestly don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what to say. Yes, sure—I had a feeling, but I have lots of feelings, don’t I? So do you. Isn’t it more logical—as you say—to stick to what we know?” He looked at her reprovingly. “It was an accident,” he repeated. “And you can’t blame the dog.”
Rachel felt—as she had so often that fall—backed into a corner. She let the subject drop. Now, though—sitting on the floor of her office across from this kid with the gun—she cursed herself. It hadn’t been just a “feeling.” The threat to Zoe’s safety, as well as to Ray’s and her own, hadn’t been “all in her head,” she’d known that much. But it was impossible that she could have known more. Or done anything different, given the circumstances, from what she did do.
Which was to wave goodbye to Ray and Zoe as they climbed the airstairs and ducked into the tiny plane that would take them safely back to the capital.
Anyway. Rachel leaned against the drawer. It was useless to think about any of this now. She’d had no other choice at the time—or she’d felt that way, which amounted to the same thing. If she’d changed her mind and made a fuss—pressed for an immediate reassignment—she’d have looked impulsive, even unstable, difficult to please. It wasn’t exactly negative thinking; it was perfectly true: if they weren’t careful, they’d end up in Dakar next—or Brazzaville.
Although, then again, when you thought about it (and Rachel often did), even ending up in a “reputable” place like Frankfurt or Auckland wasn’t anything like a guarantee. Logically speaking, anything could happen to anybody anywhere—and at any time. Even being returned to the capital, or getting posted to Frankfurt, could in no way protect a person from ordinary dangers quite impossible to foresee.
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