by M. A. Foster
Charodei looked at Akhaltsykh, who nodded. Charodei said, “Very well. Done. I will have Orlioz so instructed.”
“Tonight. And put some backup in with him. Don’t miss; it may charge if it’s only wounded.”
“Have no fears. Orlioz is expert.”
“Does he know what he’s really dealing with?”
“To my knowledge, no. He’s been told what to look for—Damistofia Azart—and to verify certain things about her. As far as I know he operates under the assumption that he is to dispatch a dangerous operative.”
“Make sure he understands that if he misses, he won’t get a second chance.”
Pternam let that admonition rest a moment, and then added, “And for a fact, we won’t get one, either.”
— 9 —
Marula: The Far Side of Now
Marula was a place, to Damistofia’s perception of it, limited though that was, which seemed to lend to its inhabitants little or no consciousness of any aspect of nature, save perhaps the verminous life-forms which infested the docks and warehouses and as well the poorer habitats. In Marula, as Damistofia heard it, they did not speak of the sky, or of plants, or of animals, or winds; they did speak to excess to a degree she found incomprehensible, of relationships between people, for which they invariably used slang and jargon all of which carried strong overtones of envy, jealousy, and general resentment, as well as a well-loaded cargo of sexual allusions which left no doubt as to what people did in Marula to amuse themselves.
At least in this much, she was thankful of this, because it enabled her to become fractionally more invisible, against the day when she should be let out of the Palliatory.
The relationship with Cliofino continued, although it seemed with fits and starts, and odd hesitations. But as far as his skill as a lover, she had no complaints, for he was both passionate and considerate, and although she sensed that there was no permanence to the relationship she let her new emotions and pleasures take her where they would, and afterward, when they lay quietly together, saying nothing but feeling the echoes of each other’s passages ring through themselves, she admitted to herself that she felt warm and good, and full of life.
Still, something eluded her, and much of that vague absence she marked down to her severance from her original past. Old Jedily; now she would have known exactly what to do, how to feel, what to suppress and what to loose, and when to cry out and make animal noises. But that was gone and Damistofia had no way to get it back. She knew that she would have to take what was worthwhile of Rael and discard the rest, and with her own experiences make her life now.
But something still nagged at her, which all her explanations to herself and her allowances could not complete. She knew very well what her problem was; there was something bothering Clio as well, and as time passed, it bothered her more and more.
She sensed, weakly at first, and then stronger, that he was holding something back, something he wouldn’t share, no matter what their transports. And when he went with her and paced her in her exercises, which were limbering up her body into a finely balanced supple instrument that responded in its slender, graceful economy of muscle and soft flesh much better than Rael’s awkward heavy lengths of limbs, she could catch him watching her closely, more so than she felt was motivated by lust or love or interest, but by something else. He was measuring her carefully; and what he saw he feared. He feared her! And to her knowledge he had no reason to.
Here, she was absolutely on her own. They had known this from the beginning, when her training began, when she had been Rael, but they had counted on what she seemed to be to shield her from the worst until she could get her own bearings. So even yet she had no outside source of information she could tap, to verify what Clio said he was. And as yet, she had no reason to doubt him, and yet she did, in the dark nights when he was not with her, and she had time to think about it.
This was such a night. The disturbances, which had seemed to be growing, had faded, and now one only heard distant, hushed rumors of thwarted uprisings, or else marches and protests, which sprang up and then faded away. Nothing nearby. The weather was no longer made up of the clear bright days of summer, but the rainy season of fall. Perhaps that had calmed them down. The Marula natives were long on talk, but as far as she could see, short on positive action.
But she could not sleep, and so she turned on the light, which was weak as is usually the case at night, and sat in her soft chair, which Clio had brought her, and thought, clearly.
She had been trying to forget Rael for weeks, now, months. And it was hard to try to bring back the old formulas by which Rael had plied his deadly trade, the only one he knew. The ideas swirled in her head like leaves in a street-gutter drain-mouth. It was all there, but it was fragmented and fading; the matrix of order was almost gone from it. Still, she thought that perhaps in that arcane and bizarre formulation of reality, perhaps there was insight, and so she tried harder, trying to remember, and as she did, feeling the strangeness of the female flesh that she wore now. The ideas, the very ideas, did not seem to fit well in Damistofia’s head as they had in Rael’s.
She had no notes, no reminders, but it worked, after all, with a specific code of logic, and there were axioms and postulates, and then developmental proofs, simple proven bases, and upon that foundation one erected Operations, which were statements about reality. She reviewed the logic, and found she could recall it; then the axioms and assumptions, each with its name and title, according to some caprice of trickery of Rael: The First Noble Truth, Gödel’s Refutation, Heisenberg’s Trinity, Asimov’s Law, and then, for no reason, Number Five. There were a score of others, and, one by one, they fell back into place. Then the basic exercises in manipulating the symbols, which at first felt clumsy and often threw her into errors, but she began to make them work properly for her, and the symbols for the Arbitrary Exercise Answers began to come in proper order.
She warmed up to it, feeling the same thrill as had Rad when he had first built this system: it was neither mystical nor mysterious but clear and logical and scientific. It did not reveal the future, but only extremely narrow sections, as related to specific problems. The more specific the inputs were, the narrower and brighter became the Searchlight. Yes. That was a good way to look at it: a searchlight beam, illuminating something, or showing you that nothing was there. In the manipulations she could also choose the angle of illumination.
And so, one datum at a time, she began substituting elements she knew into the progress of the formulas, turning them back onto themselves, building resonances, harmonic derivatives, orders of probability. It went like music, only music always stopped too soon, and this, abstract, alive on its own, did not, but kept on building to the final phrase. She exhausted the small sheaf of papers she had hurriedly grabbed, and absentmindedly got some more, and continued, and the Answer came, with difficulty, dim, and somewhat blurred, but it came, and she knew it was Truth: Cliofino is an assassin and you are his target.
There was a verification subroutine, and she ran it without hesitation, suspecting the Answer, yet feeling no emotion but a sense of achievement and triumph, and it was clear: Cliofino is an assassin and you are his target. Hard as diamond, adamantine and poised, it hung in her mind in the dance of symbols and formulae and was itself. Damistofia was so far into the routine that she hardly paused, muttering aloud only, “Thought something wasn’t right,” and continued, now using this formulation as a base, and building it into a more difficult phase, now asking “why?”
And in a shorter time, now, she also had the answer: Because he knows what you are, and those who order him have so directed, and he will obey.
Now she sat back, feeling clammy sweat on her body, and noticing that her palms were damp. All this time, working out together in the gym, wrestling with one another, bodies conjoined, interpenetrated, one, in the throes of love and desire; he had had a thousand opportunities, and had not tried. Why? She didn’t need the system of Rael to tell her that: because he senses or co
mprehends that her reactions may be faster and to try would be deadly peril—to him, and he might not succeed. She could defend, merely, or defend-attack. What was the course? Here was a problem Rael’s system could easily handle. She thought, and then began coding in the symbols and sequences to derive the answer she sought. The first thing that came clearly was the element of Time. Soon. As she would have explained it to someone who had no knowledge of the system, “at the far side of Now.” And what was the correct action for her? Again she bent to the pencil and paper, again she frowned in concentration, and the answer came almost too easily: You must kill him when he tries it. That is the only course open.
The rest of it was anticlimactic, and tiring, and she felt sleepy. But she remembered from Rael that it was only right and only correct to carry the operation out to the last place, to derive the whole answer, for only in that way could one sense the awful chasms that lay on either side, even if they were not described. And at last she finished, knowing what she had to do, and feeling the correctness of it, however painful it was to think of it. And after she had torn the paper into shreds and flushed them down the commode, and went back to bed, she thought long on it: And I asked, I did, if I could save him, because he is so good, so young, and so nice a lover, so pretty, so muscular and graceful, and it said there was no way. And then, looking at the light beginning to bleed wanly into her single window toward the east, she allowed her heart to ache and a small tear formed at the outer corners of her eyes, and she sniffled once, and went to sleep at last.
The Far Side of Now. It came late the next day, toward evening, a gray and cheerless day, of damp, cold winds off the invisible estuary, but at least the rain had stopped. Cliofino appeared, quite out of nowhere, and announced that he had at last obtained a work-release for her and had secured a small place in a habitat far enough away from the Palliatory for her to forget it He added, “And we’ll wait a bit, and then just not report back, and they’ll forget about you entirely, among the much more alarming problems they have here.”
“And I’ll be free, with correct papers, and everything…”
“Everything. It’s all taken care of. All it has to do is unwind.”
“How did you do it?”
“Ah, some persuasion here, some chicanery here, and in a couple of cases, outright bribery.” He handed Damistofia a thin wallet, which contained her new identity papers.
She took them, and said, “This is what you have been working on all along?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Tell me the real reason. You, of course, are not one of these people.”
Cliofino did not hesitate. “You have been recruited. We have need for operatives who are both agile and mentally alert… and who can be extracted from the matrix of the people with the minimum of disturbance.”
“I see. All of it was that?”
“No, not all. Sometimes extra things happen… sometimes they don’t, or perhaps you wouldn’t want them to. No, that which went between us was real enough, and I hope it might continue.”
She nodded, as If overwhelmed by the information, but smiled, and begin gathering up her things, which were very few. She thought, I travel light now.
They walked through the grounds and out the main gate, and no one seemed to care, or make any gesture toward them. This surprised Damistofia, and she asked Cliofino, as they stepped outside the wall into the street and began walking down it, “They didn’t even care! How did you do that?”
“I convinced them I was a deep cover agent of Femisticleo Chugun, the head of the, ah, secret state police. Of course, I have help in maintaining this disguise, but in these times, as long as one seems on the side of order, few questions are asked. I have recruited here before, and they are a little relaxed in their vigilance, and so…”
“But you are not that.”
“Not for Chugun. We hope to see him over a slow fire.”
They walked along for a while, beside the wall still, which seemed to go on and on, and at last she saw the end of it. “I suppose you’ll tell me more when we get where we’re going.”
“Yes, more.”
“And I don’t really have much choice in this, do I?”
He looked at her sidelong, with an engaging smile. “Choice? Of course you’ll have choice. We are not like those who have held it so long here. I’ll tell you how things are, and then you make up your own mind.”
“Should I not want to work with your… group?”
“Read your papers. Go on, open them.”
Damistofia removed the wallet from her bundle while she walked, and opened the wallet. There was, inside, a standard Lisak Identification card, listing name, residence, province and the like, and at the bottom, in the block marked “Occupation,” it said, “Landscaping Inspector, Beautification Section, Not Restricted. She shook her head, and said, “I don’t understand this at all. I know little or nothing about plants or landscaping.”
Clio laughed. “Neither do the inspectors, as a rule. It’s a fat patronage job. All you have to do is travel around and fill out forms. Nothing is ever done wrong, of course, unless it’s by someone you don’t like. So I’ll tell you what we want you to do, and if you don’t want to, then go and inspect; I’ll arrange an appointment with your new boss. Your initial assignment will be the South Coast sector, which is to say, in Sertse Solntsa, Zolotane, and Priboy. If you are nice to the Head Inspector here in Marula, he’ll post you off to the Pilontaries where you can really vanish.”
“You are serious?”
“Absolutely. Although… I’d hate to see you go. I have to stay here in the Marula area.”
They were beyond the wall, now, but there seemed to be nothing in particular near the Palliatory. A few deserted buildings, vacant lots, old warehouses. The street was broad and straight, and veered off toward the west where, farther down, there seemed to be something, an untidy jumble of buildings she could not identify. Overhead, the sky was overcast, but in the far west there was an immense pearly flare of clouds, backlit by the westering sun, now setting somewhere out to sea beyond Clisp. She walked, and stared at the bright western sky until her eyes grew weary and blurred, and then she looked back to the thoroughfares of Marula. She saw around her empty, uninhabited and unused spaces, abandoned, rusting machinery and odd parts of old buildings left behind, and trash blowing in the vacant lots. It was the most desolate and. forbidding thing she could remember seeing in that part of her life she could remember, and it filled her with an aching longing to be elsewhere, now, immediately, somewhere…
Damistofia turned to Cliofino and said, “Why is there nothing here, next to the Palliatory?”
“Cleared it off a while back. No reason, that I know of. They were going to build something else, and then they never got around to it, and so it stayed the same.”
“The smoke and—all that; where did that come from?” Cliofino pointed vaguely southwest. “Over there was the nearest one. That’s what you probably smelled. South Mernancio District.”
“There were others?”
“Oh, yes… many more. Three in Marula so far.” He paused and added, “We’ve not seen the end of it yet. There’ll be more before it’s over.”
“There must be a better way for people to live together.”
“You will hear our ideas.” He took her hand shyly and they walked on into the dusk.
The untidy jumble of buildings came nearer as they walked, and the light grew more uncertain. Damistofia thought they had walked about half an hour, or less. Not very far. She felt no fatigue. As they came near the first buildings, they saw motion in an open field, behind an untidy fence long since gone to ruin, vandals, and wood-stealers. Soft, low, melodious calls, running, quick, darting shadows in the failing light.
Cliofino gestured toward the dim figures. “In the midst of chaos, they still find time to have a round of Dragon.”
“Can we watch? I often heard them talking about Dragon, back there.”
&n
bsp; “I suppose so. We have nothing to do tonight, except find a place to eat, and find your new place.”
Damistofia squeezed his hand, “And of course we’ll have to try it out?”
“Oh, yes. Mind, I’ve already been there, and it’s in a quiet corner.”
“Good.” While they walked up to the fence, a few late-arrivals approached on velocipedes, pedaling madly in the uncertain light, swerving and stopping and recklessly throwing themselves off their machines, to slip through the fence, and pausing for a moment to size things up, leap immediately into the action, which was at a high peak.
The newcomers quickly found places of concealment in what appeared to be an abandoned junkyard. Hardly had they vanished into the shadows when the current reigning Dragon returned from another part of the field, trotting effortlessly, glaring here and there, and carrying the Scorpion meaningfully limp, ready for instant use. Here he stopped, and called out, “Latecomers, show yourselves! Skulk not in the shadows like Bezards and Wisants. Come forth, come forth! I am somewhat tired from overexertion, and will lay my friend on your shoulder as a comrade.” The spectators tittered among themselves, and glanced at one another.
Cliofino leaned close and whispered, “Judging by the crowd, this one’s a famous liar. Hell wait for one to show and then pound him down. Just you watch!”
All remained quiet, however, From distant parts of the field came, at intervals, odd half-calls, subvocalized and unintelligible—Obviously, the other players taunting the Dragon. Damistofia thought she could sense movement back there, players risking little swift lunges and darts. They did not like a waiting game.
The Dragon walked about, as if uncertain, peering here and there like a stage villain, an act which seemed to fool no one. At last he stopped, and mopped his brow with his sleeve. He called out, “Come, my children, bear my heavy burden.”
One of the shadows erupted into a running form that seemed to reach his top speed instantly, as if shot from a gun. He passed directly in front of the Dragon, hooting as he ran, wildly, almost like the cry of a Bosel. The Dragon was not caught off-guard. When the runner had emerged, the Dragon had been slightly out of position, but in an astonishing display of virtuosity, shifted the Scorpion to the other hand and neatly, almost effortlessly, backhanded the runner between the shoulder blades, a motion that seemed light, almost easy, until one saw the runner pitched over headfirst by the force of the blow, landing rolling awkwardly, while the former Dragon now dusted his hands off, and began walking off the field. He said, to no one in particular, “Told you I was tired. Now take up the Scorpion and demonstrate excellence to the laggards by the fence.” And with that, he joined the spectators there, but made no further move to leave. He passed near Damistofia and Cliofino, and she heard him breathing hard. He was an older man, and overweight. Yet he had entered this anarchic Game and plunged into the action, chasing younger sprites.