“You are still a marvel, O Wise One,” said Mahmoud. His praise counted about as much as a broken Bedu camel stick. “You have lost much, but it is as Allah wills. Yet you have not lost your native wit and ability. I will be there very soon, inshallah, with some news that might interest you.” Inshallah means “if God wills.” Nobody but He was too sure about anything of late.
“The news is the payment, right, O Father of Generosity?” I said, shaking my head. Mahmoud had been a cheap stiff as a woman, and he was a cheap stiff now as a man.
“Yes, my friend,” said Mahmoud. “But it includes a potential new client for you, and I’ll throw in a little cash, too. Business is business.”
“And action is action,” I said, not that I was seeing much action these days. “You know how much I charge for this sort of thing.”
“Salam alekom, my friend,” he said hurriedly, and he hung up his phone before I could salam him back.
Musa looked relieved that I hadn’t turned him over to the police, although I’m sure he was just as anxious about the treatment he could expect from Mahmoud. He had every reason in the world to be concerned. He maintained a surly silence, but he finally took my advice and sat down in the battered red-leather chair opposite my desk.
“Piece of advice,” I said, not even bothering to look at him. “When Mahmoud gets here—and he’ll get here fast—take him directly to his property. No excuses, no bargains. If you try holding Mahmoud up for so much as a lousy copper fiq, you’ll end up breathing hot sand for the remainder of your brief life. Understand?”
I never learned if the punk understood or not. I wasn’t looking at him, and he wasn’t saying anything. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out the office bottle. Apparently a slow leak had settled in, because the level of gin was much lower than I expected. It was something that would bear investigating during my long hours of solitude.
I built myself a white death—gin and bingara with a hit of Rose’s lime juice—and took a quick gulp. Then I drank the rest of the tumblerful slowly. I wasn’t savoring anything; I was just proving to myself again that I could be civilized about my drinking habits.
Time passed in this way—Musa sitting in the red-leather chair, sampling emotions; me sitting in my chair, sipping white death. I’d been correct about one thing: It didn’t take Mahmoud long to make the drive from the Budayeen. He didn’t bother to knock on the outer door. He came through, into my inner office, accompanied by three large men. Now, even I thought three armed chunks were a bit much to handle ragged, little old Musa there. I said nothing. It wasn’t my business any longer.
Now, Mahmoud was dressed as I was, that is, in keffiya, the traditional Arab headdress, gallebeya, and sandals; the men with Mahmoud were all wearing very nice, tailored European-style business suits. Two of the suit jackets had bulges just where you’d expect. Mahmoud turned to those two and didn’t utter a word. The two moved forward and took pretty damn physical charge of Musa, getting him out of my office the quickest way possible. Just before he passed through the inner door, Musa jerked his head around toward me and said, “Rat’s puppet.” That was all.
That left Mahmoud and the third suit.
“Where you at, Mahmoud?” I asked.
“I see you’ve taken to dyeing your beard, O Wise One,” said Mahmoud by way of thanks. “You no longer look like a Maghrebi. You look like any common citizen of Asir or the Hejaz, for instance. Good.”
I was so glad he approved. I was born part Berber, part Arab, and part French, in the part of Algeria that now called itself Mauretania. I’d left that part of the world far, far behind, and arrived in this city a few years ago, with reddish hair and beard that made me stand out among the locals. Now all my hair was as black as my prospects.
Mahmoud tossed an envelope on the desk in front of me. I glanced at it but didn’t count the kiam inside, then dropped the envelope in a desk drawer and locked it.
“I cannot adequately express my thanks, O Wise One,” he said in a flat voice. It was a required social formula.
“No thanks are needed, O Benefactor,” I said, completing the obligatory niceties. “Helping a friend is a duty.”
“All thanks be to Allah.”
“Praise Allah.”
“Good,” said Mahmoud with some satisfaction. I could see him relax a little, now that the show was over. He turned to the remaining suit and said, “Shaykh Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi, O Great Sir, you’ve seen how reliable my friend is. May Allah grant that he solve your problem as promptly as he solved mine.” Then Mahmoud nodded to me, turned, and left. Evidently, I wasn’t high enough on the social ladder to be actually introduced to Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi.
I motioned to the leather chair. Il-Qurawi made a slight wince of distaste, then sat down.
I put on my professional smile and uttered another formulaic phrase that meant, roughly, “You have come to your people and level ground.” In other words, “Welcome.”
“Thank you, I—“
I raised a hand, cutting him off. “You must allow me to offer you coffee, O Sir. The journey from the Budayeen must have been tiring, O Shaykh.”
“I was hoping we could dispense with—“
I raised my hand again. The old me would’ve been more than happy to dispense with the hospitality song-and-dance, but the new me was playing a part, and the ritual three tiny cups of coffee was part of it. Still, we hurried through them as rapidly as social graces permitted. Il-Qurawi wore a sour expression the whole time.
When I offered him a fourth, he waggled his cup from side to side, indicating that he’d had enough. “May your table always be prosperous,” he said, because he had to.
I shrugged. “Allah yisallimak.” May God bless you.
“Praise Allah.”
“Praise Allah.”
“Now,” said my visitor emphatically, “you have been recommended to me as someone who might be able to help with a slight difficulty.”
I nodded reassuringly. Slight difficulty, my Algerian ass. People didn’t come to me with slight difficulties.
As usual, the person in the leather chair didn’t know how to begin. I waited patiently, letting my smile evaporate bit by bit. I found myself thinking about the office bottle, but it was impossible to bring it out again until I was alone. Strict Muslims looked upon alcoholic beverages with the same fury that they maintained for the infidel, and I knew nothing about il-Qurawi’s attitudes about such things.
“If you have an hour or two free this afternoon,” he said, “I wonder if you’d come with me to my office. It’s not far from here, actually. On the eastern side of the canal, but quite a bit north of here. We’ve restored a thirty-six-story office building, but recently there’s been more than the usual amount of vandalism. I’d like to hire you to stop it.”
I took a deep breath and let it out again. “Not my usual sort of assignment, O Sir,” I said, shrugging, “but I don’t foresee any problem. I get a hundred kiam a day plus expenses. I need a minimum of five hundred right now to pique my interest.”
Il-Qurawi frowned at the discussion of money and waved his hand. “Will you accept a check?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I’d noticed that the man was stingy with honorifics, so I’d decided to hold my own to the minimum.
He grunted. He was clearly annoyed and doubtful about my ability to do what he wanted. Still, he removed a moderate stack of bills from a black leather wallet, and sliced off five for me. He leaned forward and put the money on my desk. I pretended to ignore it.
I made no pretense of checking an appointment book. “I’m certain, O Shaykh, that I can spare a few hours for you.”
“Very good.” Il-Qurawi stood up and spent a few moments vitally absorbed in the wrinkles in his business suit. I took the time to slide the five hundred kiam into the pocket of my gallebeya.
“I can spare a few hours, O Shaykh,” I said, “but first I’d like some more information. Such as who you are and whom you represent.”
He didn’t say a word. He merely slid a business card to the spot where the money had been.
I picked up the card. It said:
Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi
Chief of Security
CRCorp
Below that was a street address that meant nothing to me, and a commcode. I didn’t have a business card to give him, but I didn’t think he cared. “CRCorp?” I asked.
He was still standing. He indicated that we should begin moving toward the door. It was fine by me. “Yes, we deal in consensual realities.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “I know you people.” By this time, we were standing in the hallway and he was watching me lock the outer door.
We went downstairs to his car. He owned a long, black, chauffeur-driven, restored, gasoline-powered limousine. I wasn’t impressed. I’d ridden in a few of those. We got in and he murmured something to the driver. The car began gliding through the rubble-strewn streets, toward the headquarters of CRCorp.
“Can you be more exact about the nature of this vandalism, O Sir?” I said.
“You’ll see. I believe it’s being caused by one person. I have no idea why; I just want it stopped. There are too many clients in the building beginning to complain.”
And it’s beyond the capabilities of the Chief of Security, I thought. That spoke something ominous to me.
After about half an hour of weaving north and east, then back west toward the canal, then farther north, we arrived at the CRCorp building. Allah only knew what it had been before this entire part of the city had been destroyed, but now it stood looking newly built among its broken and blasted neighbors. One fixed-up building in all that desolation seemed pretty lonely and conspicuous, I thought, but I guess you had to start someplace.
Il-Qurawi and I got out of the limousine and walked across the freshly surfaced parking area. There were no other cars in it. “The executive offices are on the seventeenth floor, about halfway up, but there’s nothing interesting to see there. You’ll want to visit one or two of the consensual realities, and then look at the vandalism I mentioned.”
Well, sure, as soon as he said there wasn’t anything interesting on the seventeenth floor, I immediately wanted to go there. I hate it when other people tell me what I want to do, but it was il-Qurawi’s five hundred kiam, so I kept my mouth shut, nodded, and followed him inside to the elevators.
“Give you a taste of one of the consensual realities,” he said. “We just call them CRs around here. We’ll stop off first on twenty-six. It’s functioning just fine, and there’s been no sign of vandalism as yet.”
Still nothing for me to say. We rode up quickly, silently in the mirrored elevator. I glanced at my reflection. I wasn’t happy with the appearance I’d had to adopt, but I was stuck with it.
We got off at twenty-six. The elevator doors opened, we stepped out, and passed through a small, well-constructed airlock. When I turned to look, the elevator and airlock had disappeared. I mean, there was no sign that elevator doors could possibly exist for hundreds of miles. I felt for them and there was nothing but air. Rather thin, cold air. If I’d been pressed to make a guess, I’d have said that we were on the surface of Mars. I knew that was impossible, but I’d seen holo shots of the Martian surface, and this is just what they looked like.
“Here,” said il-Qurawi, handing me a mask and a small tank, “this should help you somewhat.”
“I am in your debt, O Great One.” I used the tight-grip straps to hold the mask in place, but the tank was made to be worn on a belt. I had a rope holding my gallebeya closed, but it wouldn’t support the weight of the tank, so I just carried it in my hands. We started walking across the barren, boulder-studded surface of Mars toward a collection of buildings in the far distance that I recognized as the international Martian colony.
“The atmosphere on this floor only approximates that of Mars,” said il-Qurawi. “That was part of the group’s consensus agreement. Still, if you’re outside and not wearing the mask, you’re liable to develop a rather serious condition they call ‘Mars throat.’ Affects your sinuses, your inner ears, your throat, and so forth.”
“Let me see if I can guess, O Sir,” I said, huffing a little as I made my way over the extremely rough terrain. “Group of people in the colony, all would-be Martian colonists, and they’ve voted on how they wanted the place to look.” I gazed up at a pink peach-colored sky.
“Exactly. And they voted on how they wanted it to feel and smell and sound. Actually, it approximates the reports we get from the true Mars Project rather closely. CRCorp supplies the area, for which we charge what we feel is a fair price. We also supply the software that maintains the illusion, too.”
I kicked a boulder. No illusion. “How much of this is real?” I said. Even using the tank, I was already short of breath and eager to get inside one of the buildings.
“The boulders, as you’ve just discovered, are artificial but real. The buildings are real. The carefully maintained atmosphere is also our responsibility. Everything else you might experience is computer or holo generated. It can be quite deadly out here, but that’s the way this group wanted it. We haven’t left anything out, down to the toxin-laden lichen, which is part of the illusion. For all intents and purposes, this is the surface of Mars. Group 26 has always seemed to be very pleased with it. We’ve gotten very few complaints or suggestions for improvement.”
“Naturally, O Sir,” I said, “I’m looking forward to interviewing a few of the residents.”
“Of course,” said il-Qurawi. “That’s why I brought you here. We’re very proud of Group 26, and justly so, I think.”
“Praise Allah,” I said. No echo from my client.
After more time and hiking than I’d been prepared for, we arrived at the colony itself. I felt like a physical wreck; the executive with me was not suffering at all. He looked like he’d just taken a leisurely stroll through the repro of the Tiger Gardens in the city’s entertainment quarter.
“This way,” he said, pointing to an airlock into the long main building. It appeared to have been constructed of some material derived from the reddish sand all around, but I wasn’t interested enough to find out for sure if that were true or part of the holographic illusion.
We cycled through the airlock. Inside, we found ourselves in a corridor that had been painted in institutional colors: dark green to waist-level, a kind of maddening tan above that. I was absolutely sure that I would quickly come to hate those colors; soon it proved that they dominated the color scheme of most of the hallways and meeting rooms. The people of Group 26 must have had a very different aesthetic sense than I did. It didn’t give me great hopes for them.
Il-Qurawi glanced at his wristwatch, a European product like the rest of his outfit. It was thin and sleek and made of gold. “The majority of them will be in the refectory module now,” he said. “Good. You’ll have the opportunity to meet as many of Group 26 as you like. Ask whatever you like, but we are under a little time pressure. I’d like to take you to floor seven within the next half hour.”
“I give thanks to the Maker of Worlds,” I said. Il-Qurawi gave me a sidelong glance to see if I were serious. I was doing my best to give that impression.
The refectory was down the entire length of the main building and through a low, narrow, windowless passageway. I felt a touch of claustrophobia, as if I were down deep beneath the surface; I had to remind myself that I was actually on the twenty-sixth floor of an office tower.
The refectory was at the other end of the passageway. It was a large room, filled with orderly rows of tables. Men, women, and children sat at the tables, eating food from trays that were dispensed from a large and intricate machine on one side of the front of the room. I stared at it for a while, watching people go up to it, press colored panels, and receive their trays within fifteen or twenty seconds each.
“Catering,” said il-Qurawi with an audible sigh. “Major part of our overhead.”
“Question,
O Sir,” I said. “Who’s actually paying for all this?”
He looked at me as if I were a total fool. “All these people in Group 26, of course. They’ve signed over varying amounts of cash and property, depending on how long they intend to stay. Some come for a week, but the greater portion of the group has paid in advance for ten-or twenty-year leases.”
My eyes narrowed as I thought and did a little multiplication in my head. “Then, depending on the populations of the other thirty-some floors,” I said slowly, “CRCorp ought to be making a very tidy bundle.”
His head jerked around to look at me directly. “I’ve already mentioned the high overhead. The expenses we incur to maintain all this—and the CRs on the other floors—is staggering. Our profits are not so great as you might think.”
“I ask a thousand pardons, O Sir,” I said. “I truly had no intention to give offense. I’m still trying to get an idea of how large an operation this is. Maybe now’s the time to speak to one or two of these ‘Martian colonists.’ “
He relaxed a little. He was hiding something, I’d bet my wives and kids on it. “Of course,” he said smoothly. I thought back on it and couldn’t recall a single time he’d actually called me by name. In any event, he directed me to one of the tables where there was an empty seat beside an elderly man with short-cropped white hair. He wore a pale-blue jumpsuit. Hell, everyone there wore a pale-blue jumpsuit. I wondered if that was the official uniform on the real Mars colony, or just a group decision of this particular CR.
“Salam alekom,” I said to the elderly man.
“Alekom-os-salam,” he said mechanically. “Outsider, huh?”
“Just came in to get a quick look.”
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Now, some of us really hate outsiders. Spoils the group consensus.”
“I’ll be out of here before you know it, inshallah.”
The white-haired man took a forkful of some brown, smooth substance on his tray, chewed it thoughtfully, then said, “Could’ve at least gotten into a goddamn jumpsuit, hayawaan. Too much trouble?”
Budayeen Nights Page 22