“Only to the Movement,” Andrei said. He wasn’t kidding.
The sun was setting by the time they returned to their safehouse. It had been a long day. “You must be tired, Carlotta,” Laura said as they climbed stiffly from the three-wheeler. “Why don’t you come in and have supper with us?”
“It’s nice to ask,” Carlotta said, smiling sweetly. Her eyes glistened and there was a soft rosy glow to her cheeks. “But I can’t make it tonight. I have Communion.”
“You’re sure?” Laura said. “Tonight’s good for us.”
“I can come by later this week. And bring my date, maybe.”
Laura frowned. “I might be testifying then.”
Carlotta shook her head. “No, you won’t. I haven’t even testified yet.” She reached from the driver’s seat and patted the baby’s tote. “Bye, little one. Bye, y’all. I’ll call or something.” She gunned the engine, kicking gravel, and drove through the gates.
“Typical,” Laura said.
They walked up onto the porch. David pulled his key card. “Well, Communion, that sounds pretty important—”
“Not Carlotta, she’s just a klutz. I mean the Bank. It’s a ploy, don’t you see? They’re gonna make us cool our heels here in this big old barn, instead of letting me make my case. And they’re calling Carlotta to testify first, just to rub it in.”
David paused. “You think so, huh?”
“Sure. That’s why Sticky was giving us the runaround earlier.” She followed him into the mansion. “They’re working on us, David; this is all part of a plan. That tour, everything.… What smells so good?”
Rita had dinner waiting. It was stuffed pork with peppers and parsley, Creole ratatouille, hot baked bread and chilled rum soufflé for dessert. In a candlelit dining room with fresh linen and flowers. It was impossible to refuse. Not without offending Rita. Someone they had to share the house with, after all.… At the very least, they had to try a few bites, just for politeness sake.… And after all that nasty scop, too.… It was all so delicious it stung. Laura ate like a wolverine.
And no dishes to wash. The servants cleared everything, stacking it onto little rosewood trolleys. They brought brandy and offered Cuban cigars. And they wanted to take the baby too. Laura wouldn’t let them.
There was a study upstairs. It wasn’t much of a study—no books—just hundreds of videotapes and old-fashioned plastic records, but they retired to the study with their brandies anyway. It seemed the proper thing to do, somehow.
Lots of old framed photos on the study’s walls. Laura looked them over while David shuffled curiously through the tapes. It was clear who Mr. Gelli, the former owner, was. He was the puffy-faced hustler throwing a good-buddy arm over vaguely familiar, vaguely repulsive Vegas show-biz types.… Here he was toadying up to some snake-eyed goofball in a long white dress—with a start, Laura realized it was the Pope.
David loaded a tape. He sat on the couch—an overstuffed monster in purple velour—and fired up the TV with a clunky remote. Laura joined him. “Find something?”
“Home movies, I think. He’s got lots—I picked out the most recent.”
A party at the mansion. Big ugly cake in the dining room, smorgasbord groaning with food. “I shouldn’t have eaten so much,” Laura said.
“Look at that jerk in the party hat,” David said. “That’s a mad doctor, for sure. Can you see that, Atlanta?”
Faint squeaking came from Laura’s earpiece; she was wearing it loose, and it dangled. She felt a little funny about having shared the earpiece with Carlotta; kind of like sharing a toothbrush, or like sharing a … well, best not to think about that one. “Why don’t you take that off, David?” She removed her own glasses and pointed them at the door, guarding them from intruders. “We’re safe here, right? No worse than the bedroom.”
“Well …” David froze the tape and got up. He punched an intercom button by the door. “Hello. Um, Jimmy? Yeah, I want you to bring us that plug-in clock by the bedside. Right away. Thanks.” He returned to the couch.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Laura said.
“You mean order them around like they were servants? Yeah, I know. Very non-R. I got some ideas though—I want to talk to Personnel about it, tomorrow.…” Discreet knock at the door. David took the clock from Jimmy. “No, nothing else … okay, go ahead, bring the bottle.” He plugged his headset into the clock. “How’s that, Atlanta?”
[“You might as well point one set at the TV,”] the clock told him loudly. [“Watching that door’s pretty boring.”] Laura didn’t recognize the guy’s voice; some Rizomian on the night shift, she’d given up caring at this point.
The tape spooled on; David had muted the sound. “Lotta Anglos at this gig,” David commented. “I miss the Rastas.”
Laura sipped her brandy. It wrapped her mouth in molten gold. “Yeah,” she said, inhaling over the glass. “There’s a lot of different factions on this island, and I don’t think they get along too well. There’s the Movement revolutionaries … and the voodoo mystics … and the high-techies … and the low-techies …”
“And the street poor, just looking for food and a roof …” Knock knock knock; the brandy had arrived. David brought it to the couch. “You realize this could be poisoning us.” He refilled their snifters.
“Yeah, but I felt worse when I left Loretta behind with Carlotta, she’s been so good since then, I was afraid Carlotta’d slipped her some kind of happy-pill.…” She kicked off her shoes and curled her legs beneath her. “David, these people know what they’re doing. If they want to poison us they could do it with some speck of something we would never even see.”
“Yeah, I kept telling myself that, while I ate the ratatouille.” Some rich drunk had collared the cameraman and was shouting gleefully into the lens. “Look at this clown! I forgot to mention the local faction of pure criminal sleazebags.… Takes all kinds to make a data haven, I guess.”
“It doesn’t add up,” Laura said, sinking easily into brandy-fueled meditation. “It’s like beachcombing after a storm, all kinds of Net flotsam thrown up on the golden Grenadian shore.… So if you push on these people, maybe they go neatly to pieces, if you hit the right flaw. But too much pressure, and it all welds together and you got a monster on your hands. I was thinking today—the old Nazis, they used to believe in the Hollow Earth and all kinds of mystical crap.… But their trains ran on time and their state cops were efficient as hell.…”
David took her hand, looking at her curiously. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”
“It’s important, David. The most important thing we’ve ever done. You bet I’m involved. All the way.”
He nodded. “I noticed you seemed a little tense when I grabbed your ass in the elevator.”
She laughed, briefly. “I was nervous … it’s good to relax here, just us.” Some moron in a bow tie was singing on a makeshift stage, some slick-haired creep pausing to make wisecracks and snappy in-joke banter.… Camera kept moving to men in the audience, Big Operators laughing at themselves with the bogus joviality of Big Operators laughing at themselves.…
David put his arm around her. She leaned her head onto his shoulder. He wasn’t taking this as seriously as she did, she thought. Maybe because he hadn’t been standing there with Winston Stubbs …
She cut off that ugly thought and had more brandy. “You should have picked an earlier tape,” she told him. “Maybe we could get a look at the place before old Gelli brought his decorators in.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen our pal Gelli in any of this. Must be his nephew’s party, or something.… Whoa!”
The tape had switched scenes. It was later now, outside, by the pool. A late-night swim party, lots of torches, towels … and opulent young women in bikini bottoms. “Holy cow,” David said in his comedian’s voice. “Naked broads! Man, this guy really knows how to live!”
A crowd of young women, next to nude. Sipping drinks, combing wet hair with long, sensuous strokes and their
elbows out. Lying full length, drowsy or stoned, as if expecting a tan by torchlight. A full-color assortment of them, too. “Good to see some black people have finally shown up,” Laura said sourly.
“Those girls must have crashed the gig,” David said. “No room in that gear for invites.”
“Are they hookers?”
“Gotta be.”
Laura paused. “I hope this isn’t going to turn into an orgy or anything.”
“No,” David said callously, “look at the way the camera follows their tits. He wouldn’t be getting this excited if there was anything hot and heavy coming up.” He set his empty glass down. “Hey, you can see part of the old back garden in that shot—” He froze the image.
[“Hey,”] the clock protested.
“Sorry,” David said. The tape kept rolling. Men enjoyed seeing women this way—rolling hips, jiggle, that soft acreage of tinted female skin. Laura thought about it, the brandy hitting her. It didn’t do much for her. But despite David’s pretended nonchalance she could feel him reacting a little. And in some odd, vicarious way that itself was a little exciting.
For once there was no one looking at them, she thought wickedly. Maybe if they curled up on the couch and were very, very quiet …
A slim brown girl with ankle bracelets mounted the diving board. She sauntered to the end, bent gracefully, and went into a handstand. She held it for five long seconds, then plunged head-first.… “Jesus Christ!” David said. He froze it in mid-splash.
Laura blinked. “What’s so special about—”
“Not her, babe. Look.” He ran it backward; the girl flew up feet-first, then grabbed the board. She bent at the waist, strolled backward … She froze again. “There,” David said. “There to the far right, by the water. It’s Gelli. Lying in that lawn chair.”
Laura stared. “It sure is … he looks thinner.”
“Look at him move.…” The girl walked the board … and Gelli’s head was wobbling. A spastic movement, compulsive, with his chin rolling in a ragged figure eight, and his eyes fixed on nothing at all. And then he stopped the wobbling, caught it somehow, leering with the pain of effort. And his hand came up, a wizened hand like a bundle of sticks, bent down acutely at the wrist.
In the foreground, the girl balanced gracefully, slim legs held straight, toes pointed like a gymnast. And behind her Gelli went touch-touch-touch, three little dabs of movement to his face—fast, jerky, totally ritualized. Then the girl plunged, and the camera slid away. And Gelli vanished.
“What’s wrong with him?” Laura whispered.
David was pale, his mouth tight-set. “I don’t know. Some nerve disorder, obviously.”
“Parkinson’s disease?”
“Maybe. Or maybe something we don’t even have a name for.”
David killed the television. He stood up and unplugged the clock. He put on his glasses, carefully. “I’m gonna go answer some mail, Laura.”
“I’ll come with you.” She didn’t sleep for a long time. And there were nightmares, too.
Next morning, they inspected the foundations for settling and dry rot. They opened every window, making note of cracked glass and warped lintels. They checked the attic for drooping joists and moldy insulation, checked the stairs for springy boards, measured the slopes of the floor, cataloged the multitude of cracks and bulges in the walls.
The servants watched them with growing anxiety. At lunch they had a little discussion. Jimmy, it transpired, considered himself a “butler,” while Rajiv was a “majordomo” and Rita a “cook” and “nanny.” They weren’t a construction crew. To David this sounded ludicrously old-fashioned; things needed doing, so why not do them? What was the problem?
They responded with wounded pride. They were skilled house staff, not no-account rudies from the government yards. They had certain places to fill and certain work that came with the places. Everybody knew this. It had always been so.
David laughed. They were acting like nineteenth-century colonials, he said; what about Grenada’s high-tech, anti-imperialist revolution? Surprisingly, this argument failed to move them. Fine, David said at last. If they didn’t want to help, it was no problem of his. They could prop up their feet and drink piña coladas.
Or maybe they could watch some television, Laura suggested. As it happened, she had some Rizome recruiting tapes that might help explain how Rizome felt about things.…
After lunch Laura and David continued their inspection remorselessly. They climbed up into the turrets, where the servants had their quarters. The floors were splintery, the roofs leaked, and the intercoms had shorted out. Before they left Laura and David deliberately made all the beds.
During the afternoon David caught some sun in the bottom of the dead pool. Laura played with the baby. Later David checked the electrical system while she answered the mail. Supper was fantastic, again. They were tired and made an early night of it.
The Bank was ignoring them. They returned the favor.
Next day David got out his tool chest. He made a little unconscious ritual of it, like a duke inspecting his emeralds. The toolbox weighed fifteen pounds, was the size of a large breadbox, and had been lovingly assembled by Rizome craftsmen in Kyoto. Looking inside, with the gleam of chromed ceramic and neat foam sockets for everything, you could get a kind of mental picture of the guys who had made it—white-robed Zen priests of the overhead lathe, guys who lived on brown rice and machine oil.…
Pry bar, tin snips, cute little propane torch; plumbing snake, pipe wrench, telescoping auger; ohm meter, wire stripper, needlenose pliers … Ribbed ebony handles that popped off and reattached to push drills and screwdriver bits … David’s tool set was by far the most expensive possession they owned.
They worked on the plumbing all morning—starting on the servants’ bathroom. Hard, filthy work, with lots of creeping about on one’s back. After his afternoon sun worship David stayed outside. He’d found some gardening tools in a shed and tackled the front acreage, stripped to the waist and wearing his videoshades. Laura saw that he had fast-talked the two gate guards into helping him. They were trimming wild ivy and pruning dead branches and joking together.
She had nothing to report to Atlanta, so she spent her time catching flack. Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of gratuitous advice from every corner of the compass. Several idiots expressed grave disappointment that they had not yet toured a secret Grenadian drug lab. A Rizome graphics program was showing up as a pirate knock-off in Cuba—was the Bank involved? Rizome had contacted the Polish government—Warsaw said Andrei Tarkovsky was a black-market operator, wanted for forging false passports.
The Rizome elections were heating up. It looked like the Suvendra race was going to be close. Pereira—Mr. Nice Guy—was making a surprisingly strong showing.
David came in to shower for supper. “You’re gonna burn up out there,” she told him.
“No, I won’t, smell.” He reeked of rank male sweat with an undertone of mint. His skin looked waxed.
“Oh no!” she said. “You haven’t been using that tube stuff, have you?”
“Sure,” David said, surprised. “Prentis claimed it was the best ever—you don’t expect me to take that on faith, surely.” He examined his forearms. “I used it yesterday, too. I’d swear I’m darker already, and no burn either.”
“David, you’re hopeless.…”
He only smiled. “I think I may have a cigar tonight!”
They had supper. The servants were upset by the recruiting tapes. They wanted to know how much of it was true. All of it, Laura said innocently.
As they lay in bed, she got Atlanta to slot her a Japanese-language tape—mystery stories of Edogawa Rampo. David fell asleep at once, lulled by the meaningless polysyllables. Laura listened as she drifted off, letting the alien grammar soak in to those odd itchy places where the brain stored language. She like Rampo’s straight journalistic Japanese, none of those involved circumlocutions and maddening veiled allusions.…
Hou
rs later she was shaken awake in darkness. Harsh babble of English. “Babe, wake up, it’s news.…”
Emily Donato spoke out of the darkness. [“Laura, it’s me.”]
Laura twisted in the lurching waterbed. The room was dim purples and grays. “Lights, turn on!” she croaked. Flash of overhead glare. She winced at the clock. Two A.M. “What is it, Emily?”
[“We got the fact,”] the clock proclaimed, in Emily’s familiar voice.
Laura felt a pang of headache. “What fact?”
[“The F.A.C.T., Laura. We know who’s behind them. Who they really are. It’s Molly.”]
“Oh, the terrorists,” Laura said. A little jolt of shock and fear coursed through her. Now she was awake. “Molly? Molly who?”
[“The government of Molly,”] Emily said.
“It’s a country in North Africa,” David said from his side of the bed. “The Republic of Mali. Capital Bamako, main export cotton, population rate two percent.” David, the Worldrun player.
“Mali.” The name sounded only vaguely familiar. “What do they have to do with anything?”
[“We’re working on that. Mali’s one of those Sahara famine countries, with an army regime, it’s nasty there.… The F.A.C.T. is their front group. We’ve got it from three different sources.”]
“Who?” Laura said.
[“Kymera, I. G. Farben, and the Algerian State Department.”]
“Sounds good,” Laura said. She trusted Kymera Corporation—the Japanese didn’t throw accusations lightly. “What does the Vienna heat say?”
[“Nothing. To butt out. They’re covering something up, I think. Mali never signed the Vienna Convention.…”] Emily paused. [“The Central Committee meets tomorrow. Some people from Kymera and Farben are flying in. We all think it smells.”]
“What do you want us to do?” Laura said.
[“Tell the Bank when you testify. It wasn’t Singapore that killed their man. Or the European Commerzbank either. It was the secret police in Mali.”]
“Jesus,” Laura said. “Okay …”
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