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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1. Underwater
2. Funeral Games
3. Probation
4. A Few Simple Things
5. Mephistofeles
6. House Arrest
7. Dedale
8. Mindgames
9. Virtual Weather
10. The Sorcerer’s Birthday
11. In the Dark
12. Gone to Earth
13. Transfer
14. Out of Water
15. Hegira
16. Deep Water
17. Daylight
By Maureen F. McHugh
Copyright
This book is for four women: Ama Selu, Arla, Evelyn and Pat. And they all know why.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the following people: Bob Yeager, who tirelessly hounded me on technical details; all errors are mine, not his. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who gave me time and encouragement as well as cogent suggestions. Tim Ryan and Sean Barton (Information Services-R-Us); Tim for technical assistance and Sean for being my favorite fan.
1
Underwater
The man in the reflection didn’t have any eyes.
It was a trick of the lighting. He was looking into a window, out into the dark, and anywhere there was a shadow on his face the glass reflected nothing back. Holes for eyes. David looked up, the light fell on his face and his eyes appeared, he looked back out into the darkness and they became empty again.
Outside was ocean. This far below the surface it was always night. You really didn’t have to go very far underwater before all the sunlight was absorbed. He should have realized but he had been unconsciously expecting Caribbean warmth, Caribbean sun, not this huge expanse of black. He shuddered, and picked up his bag and limped on, keeping his eyes away from the window. He could still see his reflection walking with him, a stride and a quick step, bobbing along, favoring his stiff knee. He followed signs directing him to Baggage Claim, they were all in English. That was a disappointment, he had hoped that there might be more French, because of the Haitian population in Caribe. They would be in Creole anyway, and he didn’t know Creole.
He came through a security checkpoint and presented his passport and visa to the boy in uniform. The boy was a black with a long narrow face. So young, these soldiers. Like children dangling guns from their fingers. He was getting older, he thought, soldiers had not seemed so young when he was in the militaire. Thirty-three was not so old. He put his duffel on the belt through the security machine; a sign said that any comments or jokes would be treated with utmost seriousness. The boy studied his passport, then looked up at him, carefully comparing the im point by point. He remembered the points: eyes, chin, nose, hairline, eyebrows.
“Immigration is to your left,” the boy said in a high, helium voice, “Welcome to Caribe.” A cartoon voice from a soldier with a rifle.
It smelled like wet concrete and ammonia. The Port Authority was like a second rate airport: full of soldiers and pre-form furniture in bright grimy orange and aqua. A third world country underwater. He had not realized that it would be so dark.
He waited in line to get his suitcase, waited in line again to have his passport and visa scanned for authenticity by Immigration. He was very tired, it had been a long trip and his knee was stiff from sitting so long.
Finally, he was through Immigration and allowed out into the lobby. There was a crowd of people as he came out of Immigration, families waiting, leaning over the railing. His prospective employer was a woman, a banker named Mayla Ling. He didn’t have an im. He straightened his stride trying not to limp.
A big tall blond man in a sweater and tights was holding a sign that said “DAI.” He looked irritated.
“You are from Ms. Ling?” David said, hating the way he sounded.
“Yeah,” the big man squeaked. “Jean David Dai?”
He nodded. His own voice sounded foolish enough, but a helium voice coming out of this big man was ludicrous. The big man said “Jeen DAY-vid,” the way they did in the States, not “Jahn Dah-VEED.” “Just David,” he said, pronouncing it the way the other had. “I do not go by Jean.”
“Tim Bennet,” the big man said and offered his hand. David took it and Bennet made it into a contest of strength. He won and claimed David’s big suitcase. David followed him with his duffel bag.
It was cold and everything seemed far away. It was not a trick of tiredness, he thought, it was the air mixture that made everything sound so distant. People around him were dressed in winter clothes; men in sweaters and girls in bright shiny blues and golds. This city was under the Caribbean ocean, they could make the temperature anything they wanted, why make it so cold? Did he have any long-sleeved shirts?
He followed Tim Bennet through the Port, hurrying to keep up. They went down an escalator and he studied the expanse of back. Was Bennet a bodyguard/driver? Was there more than one? He looked like he could be security but David had been told that the job was a formality, for insurance reasons. Like the job he’d had at the Caribbean Consulate when he was at University, watching monitors at night, walking through the empty building while the building system switched lights on in front of him, off behind him.
The second escalator dumped them into a concrete parking garage and again he had to hurry to keep up with Tim Bennet. The car was a tiny little black thing with a sheen iridescing blue and red under the fluorescents like oil. A little toy. Julia, the city, wasn’t very big, until he had read the job description for this job and seen that it asked for a driver, he had thought they didn’t use cars. Cars made no sense, burning petrochemicals in a closed system. His one suitcase filled the trunk. What would they have done if he had two, he wondered, had them sent?
“Thisis th’ karyewl b’ dryvin.”
He had thought his English was pretty good, but he was tired and he hadn’t been listening and helium in the air mix made voices sound so strange. “Pardon me?” he said.
“This car,” Bennet pointed at the little car, “this is Mayla’s car. You know how to drive a car?”
“I have driven…” his mind went blank, he couldn’t think of the word, “not a car, you know, in the militaire, they use them.”
“Troop transports?”
David shook his head. “In French we say ‘jeep’.”
“Yeah, jeeps, that’s what we call them. Cars probably aren’t too different.”
He watched Bennet clamber into the car and got in his side. He almost felt as if he was sitting on the ground, it was so low. Jeeps weren’t like that. Clutch, accelerator, gear shift, brake: it all looked familiar. The instrument panel was different.
Bennet put the car in reverse and squealed away from the wall, shoved into gear and squealed again, then braked into a ramp that spiraled down. He acted as if he were angry. They came off the ramp, accelerated, Bennet leaned forward and flicked something on the keyboard on the panel, then took a box off the dash and started to rummage through it. The car continued to accelerate and Bennet was not watching. They went right into a tunnel that narr
owed sharply and David grabbed the dash, the wall was centimeters from the passenger door—the car eased into a bigger tunnel. A four-lane highway in a tunnel, with lots of buses and a few cars.
“Audomadick guy danse,” Bennet squeaked, still looking through the box.
He thought about the words until they made sense: “automatic guidance.”
“They don’t allow manual driving on the belt,” Bennet said. This time David was listening carefully and he understood. “Takes a bit of getting used to.” Bennet smiled at him, pleased with himself. “Mind if I play some music?”
He shook his head. The wall of the tunnel was still close to the passenger door and then the car changed lanes smoothly as another car came out of an entrance tunnel. It made him uncomfortable. He closed his eyes but opened them again because not being able to see was worse than seeing. Bennet dropped a chip in the player. There was a moment of silence, the open sound before a song started, and then a crack of thunder and the soft patter of rain. Ambient music. The singer started; a woman’s voice, distant, howling wolf-like, then coming close to sing the first line, “When I was six my father died.”
“How d’ya like it?”
He shrugged. “It is okay.” He didn’t mind ambient music, but he didn’t recognize the song. He had the feeling Bennet wanted him to dislike it. “Do you work for Ms. Ling?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Bennet said.
“What do you do?” David asked.
“Your job,” Bennet said grimly, or at least as grimly as anyone could in a helium falsetto.
* * *
The sub had come in at three in the afternoon but that was ten at home in Paris and he had started with a 5:12 a.m. flight from Orly. His employer was at work. He followed Bennet up the steps from the garage into a house. Well, he had known she was rich; she could afford to fly him from France and she could afford a car. Maybe houses were common here the way they were in the U.S. But he didn’t think so.
The living room was huge, and the first thing he saw across the furniture and hardwood floor was the expanse of window. Outside was a strip of white gravel with dead coral pieces like bushes and then black ocean. Out in the ocean was another glow like a bowl turned upside down (the neighbors) but mostly just blackness.
He didn’t like it, it made him feel even colder than he was. Nothing. It didn’t even look like water out there, it just looked like nothing. Who would have a view on nothing? What would be the point? He looked away, looked around, tried to take in what he saw. Lots of wood, very expensive. On the white stucco wall behind him was painted a sun with a benevolent face, sleepy eyes, full pouting lips and flames like hair. It looked back at that awful view and he did, too, drawn inexorably.
Deep and black, empty, like the space between stars. He did not even get a sense of the awful pressure that must be bearing down on this building—he realized abruptly that it was a dome, built to distribute the pressure and that was the reason for the strange curve of the glass, but that didn’t seem important. He couldn’t take this job, he couldn’t live in this place.
“Quite a view,” Bennet said. “Something that makes you know you’re alive.”
Know you are alive? It made him think of the absurdity of his being alive.
* * *
Bennet showed him a little flat—bedroom, sitting room and little kitchen, all as impersonal as a hotel room—and he stretched out on the bed to wait. He jerked awake when he heard voices and checked his chron. It was almost six. His head was full of anxious travel dreams and he was cold. A woman’s voice he thought, and ran his fingers through his hair. His boss.
She was younger than he’d expected. He thought she was in her thirties. Ling sounded like a Chinese name but she didn’t look particularly Asian, she seemed American. She had black hair cut in a helmet, it swung slightly as she turned her head. She was as tall as he was, which, he had to admit, was not so very tall. She held out her hand, “Jean David Dai?” she said, pronouncing it as Bennet had.
“Just David,” he said.
“Are you Chinese?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” he said, “my great-grandparents were from Viet Nam.”
She nodded, “My greats,” she waved her hand to indicate a couple of more greats, “were Chinese. My grandfather is Chinese-American, but I’m a, I guess I’m a mongrel.” She laughed. “There aren’t many Asians in Caribe. Some Cuban-Chinese, so you can get good Chinese food, and good Cuban beans and rice in the same restaurant.”
She talked fast, mostly about the ninety-day probation period, because, she said, although his qualifications were fine they had no idea how comfortable they might be with each other. Tim slouched in the background, brooding.
“It’s an American insurance company,” she said, “and there are all sorts of restrictions about who I should hire. There’s a lower premium for someone with security or military experience. They don’t consider our military real military experience. Here, we don’t fight much except each other, and people who join the military tend to stay in, you know?”
He nodded although he didn’t know and didn’t care. He was working hard to understand what she was saying.
“Can you drive?” she asked. He told her about his experience with jeeps. “In Africa,” she said. “You were an officer?”
“Because I had a degree from the university,” he said. “I was a lieutenant.”
“Well,” she said, “you’ll be a driver but you’re not expected to clean or cook. I have someone come in once a week and do the cleaning.” She paused. He was tired of sorting things out, tired of foreignness. “It znat really nezesaribu can you youza recike?”
He didn’t understand.
“A recyc,” she said, slower. “For swimming, can you swim?”
“I have swim, swam, in a pool. Not like in the ocean.”
“Tim can teach you tomorrow, it’s not hard. And he’ll help you with driving. Tim will be with us for a while longer, until everything is settled,” she said.
“Ah,” he said.
Tim had his hands in fists on the back of her chair, now he leaned against the chair as if doing push-ups. He didn’t say anything. She did not look at him, either. Very angry, this room.
“I don’t expect problems,” she said, “you shouldn’t either. Sometimes Tim and I eat dinner together when I’m home,” Ms. Ling said. “Tonight you should eat with us, until you get some groceries.”
“Thank you,” he said, not feeling especially thankful at all.
* * *
He expected that the first thing he would learn was driving. The job description had specifically mentioned driving. At dinner he admitted that he was surprised that there were cars. “It seems, it would be bad for the air?” he said.
“There aren’t really that many of them,” Mayla said. “The people who have them live where the air recirculation is good, anyway, like here, where the system can handle it.”
“But there is the highway.”
Mayla frowned. “The highway?”
“The beltway,” Tim said.
“Oh right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I guess it is a highway, I just never thought about it. That was built when I was a girl, by President Bustamante.”
“With money advanced from the World Fund. It was supposed to improve infrastructure,” Tim explained.
“Roads are infrastructure,” Mayla said.
“Sewers are infrastructure. Air recirculation is infrastructure,” Tim said.
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Mayla said. “Everybody knows it was a misuse of the money. I just get tired of hearing you bash the government.”
“Kids on the lower levels don’t develop right because there isn’t enough O2 in their air mix and the bloody President for Life wants to build a highway,” Tim said.
“We get the point, Tim, you don’t care for the local politics,” Mayla said.
“Don’t get sanctimonious,” Tim said. “You bitch, too.”
Mayla turned to David, �
��It’s really probably better that you didn’t talk about politics, much. Here it can get you into trouble.” She looked over at Tim. “Even if you carry a foreign passport.”
“Aren’t we prissy this evening,” Tim said.
“I guess we are,” Mayla said.
David looked at his fish and wished he could go to bed.
* * *
The next morning he had his lesson with the recyc system. Bennet took Ms. Ling to work and came back with a rented diving suit. It was blue with yellow reflective stripes like racing stripes down the legs and across the flippers. “I guessed the size,” Bennet said. “It’ll be a short lesson so it should be all right.”
He took the suit back to his rooms and put it on. The tunic part was all right, but the tights were too long and they bunched around his knees and ankles. He stood in front of the mirror and tried to decide if his bad knee was obvious. It wasn’t like his good one, up above it the yellow stripe down the tights showed the kind of hollow place where it was all scarred up. And he had skinny legs, legs like a chicken.
David had trouble with the seals, it took him awhile to figure out how they worked. He pulled up the hood and decided he didn’t like the way he looked so he pulled it back down. He would have liked to pull his hair back, maybe he should get it cut? Long hair was old-fashioned. Eh, not the time to think about it.
He picked up his flippers and gloves and went out through the living room to a kind of utility room.
Bennet didn’t have his hood up, either. He was doing something with the recyc units. David waited a moment, not sure if Bennet knew he was there or not. “I should, ah, learn what you are doing?”
Bennet started a little but didn’t look up. “Yeah, the masks are in the closet.”
The two masks were hanging on the wall like faces. Above them on the shelf was an AP15 rifle. He looked at the rifle. “Why does Ms. Ling have an AP15?” he asked. He could not stop himself from picking it up.
“She has a permit. I took some security classes, they said she was allowed to have one. She’s going to sell it back.”
Half the Day Is Night Page 1