by Gary Lovisi
But why?
Another message from his Earth brother, perhaps more subtle this time? Perhaps the paperbacks would lead him to Arabella Rashid like a bloodhound to a fox? However the paperbacks could also lead Arabella Rashid to James Ryan. And to the Resistance!
It was a two-way street, a double-edged sword.
Very dangerous.
Ryan wondered who was being led to whom.
Was this the betrayal he knew would come? Ryan shook his head. He had no way of knowing. He got together a bunch of paperbacks, including a prized copy of Howard Schoenfeld’s Let Them Eat Bullets! This was a wonderful one-shot Gold Medal hard-boiled crime novel classic by a one-shot author and wartime conscientious objector. A brave man who paid his dues with prison time but stood his ground for what he believed. Ryan packed the paperbacks away in a small canvas bag. Then he decided to pay a call on a fellow paperback reader. See what she had. See if she wanted to do any...trades.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MARS AIN’T LIKE NO PLACE ON EARTH
Mars is so cool!
Not temperature-wise, she thought, though that also was true this time of year she was told.
Arabella Rashid visited all the outposts and towns, the factories and mines. She looked in at the centers of Marsport, and she had to admit it—she liked the place. She liked the people. And they seemed to like her.
Mars really was cool.
When she got back to her cube she saw the message from James Ryan on her screen. There was no visual though, which she thought odd. She called down to the desk, told the clerk she needed her screen repaired.
The clerk told her, “Sorry, ma’am, the screen is not broken. All the visuals on our screens are set on blank from the main center.”
“They’re off?” she said incredulously.
“Yes, ma’am, the guests and citizens like it better that way. Privacy reasons, you know. The caller can’t see you, and you can’t see your caller.”
“Well, that’s not the way they do it back on Earth,” Arabella Rashid said testily.
“Exactly, ma’am,” the clerk said noncommittally, so practiced it really seemed like he was not committed to any opinion at all. “Will there be anything else?”
“No,” Arabella said. She cut the link and sat down on the edge of her bed. There were real problems here. “Privacy” was such an outmoded concept. There was no such thing as privacy any more. Privacy was actually subversive. Why would a person want to keep anything private from anyone else? By what right? And certainly not from the Authority or The DOC! The audacity! Mars was a world that seethed unruliness, hard-headed opinion and resistance to anything Earther. She saw a dangerous determination here that could easily breed an attitude for rebellion.
She wondered about that. Was it really possible? Rebellion? Here? Nonsense! Such a thing was unimaginable. Nevertheless, she smelled it everywhere, even in the way the people walked out on the streets. Their very posture and body language oozed independence, pride, and worse. Defiance! And here she finally did see the influence of those mystery and hard-boiled crime paperbacks. A world of outlaws! Rebels! It was all pretty clear, it was hard-nosed, hard-boiled attitude of such intense self-sufficient freedom-lovers it practically screamed to Earth and the DOC—I don’t need you!
Get Out Of My Life!
Get Out Of My Way!
Leave Me Alone!
And then there were the paperbacks she’d found under the bed in her cube on the Clinton. Who the hell had left those there? Or put them there? And why? Was it some kind of message? A joke? A warning? Perhaps a marking? And this book person, James Ryan? Coming here in half an hour, making an appointment with her, for of all things, to trade paperbacks? What the hell was that about?
It was all so crazy. James Ryan. Did she remember that name? She seemed to know it from long ago. Another life? Even before Simon! Or maybe it was just after Simon?
Arabella Rashid shook her head, took out the box of old paperbacks and placed them on her bed. She sat down and read a few pages from the latest one she’d just begun. This was a fast crime caper novel, Mike Black’s The Heist. She read it, and she waited for this James Ryan to arrive.
* * * *
When James Ryan got to Arabella Rashid’s cube, she buzzed him right in. She was surprised to see a youngish-looking man, but with more age than first appeared. There were many years of experience in those eyes. And she could tell that not all of it was good. There was something else. Arabella knew this man knew things. He knew a lot of stuff. Arabella could almost smell the scent of secret knowledge on him. She wondered, just how much did he know? She was determined she’d find out—one way or the other.
Ryan smiled at the youngish woman before him. She was about 10 years his junior but you’d never know it by looking into her eyes. For while her face was soft, youthful, almost girlish—it was her eyes that betrayed her. Those eyes glittered with life and intelligence, but they also showed an intensity and depth Ryan had not seen in anyone since he’d left Earth twenty years before as a young government agent.
What Ryan saw in her eyes was raw and naked power. It ran deep, and dark, and deadly because it was combined with the will to use that power to whatever advantage she desired. It was a devastating combination.
Ryan smiled, a bit forced though, and he tried to relax. She was very attractive. Even though his natural built-in alarms of danger rang loud and clear, he liked what he saw in her.
She was tall and lean, dark and bright-eyed, long glow-green hair, the latest Earth fashion. She had full red lips, nice legs, athletic. It was all the good stuff he liked in a woman in all the right places.
Arabella Rashid smiled back hesitantly. She had no idea what this man wanted. She did like the look of him though, even as he moved closer to her weapon stash under the pillow at the head of her bed. A knife at the right end, a small silenced hand gun at the other end. Just in case. She noticed that Ryan was carrying a small canvas case. It didn’t appear to be too heavy. She wondered what was inside. She wondered where his weapons were hidden. Was he carrying explosives? A bomb?
They kind of circled around each other for a moment, kind of like human vultures doing a death dance over the dregs of a corpse. Or pretty damn near it. Though they’d certainly not describe it that way.
They were both professionals.
They both knew it now.
“Hi,” Ryan said, with his best boyish smile this time. “Name’s James Ryan. I work out at the Olympus Mines, engineering, my specialty, and other odd jobs.”
Arabella Rashid smiled back. She knew just what that ‘odd jobs’ meant. Trouble-shooter. A yellow caution light went off in her mind. “My name’s.... Well, you know my name, Mr. Ryan. You’re the one who rang me up on the screen to ask to see me.”
“Yes,” Ryan said. “That’s right.”
“To trade...paperbacks?” Arabella said, incredulously.
Ryan smiled back. He expected this. “I know it seems kind of silly, but a lot of the guys here collect these old books.”
“Indeed. Do they read them too?”
Religiously, Ryan wanted to say. Instead he shrugged, replied, “Yeah, a lot of them do. Sometimes.”
“Do you, Mr. Ryan? Do you actually read these old books?”
“Ah, yes. Some of them. The really good ones. As many as I have time for.”
Arabella Rashid smiled, she could see he was holding back. Now she understood. She took out her small box, spreading out the old paperbacks on the bed with the covers face-up in front of them.
His eyes lit up. Actually lit up and he smiled as he looked from the cover of one book to the next intently, then back to her.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Ryan examine the books. She was examining him as he examined the books. He was very interested. He took a quick look at each one carefully then holding it up, looking it over front and back. He smiled, then nodded.
Ryan then opened up his own canvas case. It wasn’t explosives
or a bomb at all. Instead he took out a dozen or so old paperbacks of his own and laid them out on the other end of the bed next to her.
“You want to...trade? Really? Just that? Is that really it, Mr. Ryan?”
“Yes. If you’re interested. I usually come across dupes, duplicate copies. Then there’s books I’ve already read but didn’t especially like. I—a lot of us—trade our paperbacks to other guys for their paperbacks. I know it seems kind of childish, but that way everyone gets something they want. Like that Mike Black novel you have over there. Or even the two Don Winslow novels. His stuff is so good it hurts! Or those William F. Nolan Black Mask boys private eye novels.”
“I’ve just begun the Mike Black book,” Arabella Rashid said, picking up her copy of The Heist, looking it over. This one was an old Leisure paperback. She handed it to Ryan to inspect. A bit reluctantly.
“Like it?” Ryan asked.
She nodded. “It seems to be a good book, a fabulous story. Of course I haven’t finished it yet. Just begun it, in fact.”
Ryan nodded, put it down and looked at her book stash, examining each paperback minutely. His eyes suddenly starred noticeably when they zeroed in on a copy of Green Ice by Raoul Whitfield. This was a hard-boiled gem if ever there was one. It was by an underrated and original Black Mask writer, a buddy of the great Dashiell Hammett. Hammett—‘The Man’ himself! This edition was an old and incredibly rare Avon Murder Mystery Monthly digest, and it was in pretty decent shape for such an old and delicate paperback. It screamed out to Ryan—”Read me, Baby! Read me! Now!”
“Now that’s a great one,” Ryan said. He carefully picked up the delicate old copy of Green Ice, and he examined it lovingly for a moment.
Ryan handed it to Arabella Rashid. She looked it over. It was such a thin volume, hardly seemed like a real book at all, “This is good to read?”
Ryan smiled. “It’s a classic, very best hard-boiled, high in body-count. An outstanding Depression Era out-of-control crime, graft, and caper involving missing emeralds. The green ice of the title. It’s old, but it’s, oh so good.”
Arabella Rashid looked at the copyright date. It was written almost one hundred and fifty years ago! Incredible! This particular edition was over one hundred years old itself. She shook her head, “It’s such old stuff.”
“There’s no age limit on quality,” Ryan said matter-of-factly.
Arabella Rashid looked up at him, nodded, then put Green Ice on the table beside her bed to read next.
“So why did you really want to see me, Mr. takes-care-of-odd-jobs Ryan?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TRADING PAPERBACKS
“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” Ryan said, serious, but smiling a bit. It was, after all, kind of downright silly. Totally unexpected.
“...to trade paperbacks?” Arabella said.
“Sure,” Ryan said, then as if to prove his intentions he began, “To start off, I’d really like to trade you for that copy of Green Ice. I can let you have something very nice for it. I don’t know if this will appeal to you, being a woman and all, but I’ve got a great copy of The Black Echo by Michael Connelly. It’s the first Harry Bosch novel, a hard story about a cop who as a kid saw his mother murdered and it effected him for the rest of his life. It’s a story similar to what actually happened to a young James Ellroy. Ah, if you want to trade, I’d also like that old Bantam edition of John Fante’s Ask the Dust. That is a tough one to find and a cult noir classic. In fact, Connelly even makes mention of Fante’s book in another one of his Harry Bosch novels, The Closers. You see, there’s a lot of history in these books, not only in the stories themselves and the characters, but with the authors, the cover artists, even some of the editors and publishers.”
He stopped for a moment to allow her to digest his words. He knew he was blathering a bit. She smiled, she still seemed interested, so he continued.
I’ve also got something else really special, it’s in plastic to protect it. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, the only Sherlock Holmes full-length novel. This one is a beautiful paperback edition from 1952 published by Bantam Books about 125 or so years ago! Rare as hen’s teeth today. The only copy like it on Mars!”
“Sherlock Holmes?” Arabella Rashid said, turning the name over in her mind. She liked the sound of it. She thought she’d read something about him once, long ago. Before Simon. “I’ve heard of him. It’s not really hard-boiled crime, though, is it?”
“No, not really, but it’s like they say, the great classic stuff lasts forever. True quality writing, or great heroes and stories, always stand the test of time. This novel was originally written in a place called England. It is as good today as when Doyle first set his pen to paper to write it more than two hundred years ago.”
She looked back at Ryan oddly, “You really like this stuff. You even seem to like the people who wrote this stuff—and the people in these books too.”
Ryan smiled, “I feel like I understand them, I guess. They’re kinda, almost like, real to me. It’s hard to explain.”
She didn’t ask him to explain. Ryan wondered if that was because she herself understood, or if it was just because she didn’t give a damn. He found that he really hoped it was the former and not the latter.
Ryan shrugged it off, “In the old days, before computers, before typewriters even, people wrote books by hand. Pen on paper.”
Arabella Rashid smiled emptily. She knew all the histories, public, private, secret, and even true. She knew all of that. Why didn’t she say anything about it? Why was she playing so dumb? She didn’t quite know herself, except that she liked Ryan and liked talking to him. She even liked listening to him talk. Which was pretty amazing for someone like her.
They talked books the rest of the afternoon. Authors, characters, cover artists, the various designs and formats of product put out so long ago by defunct forgotten publishers no one had hardly ever heard of, even when they had been publishing in their own era. They were remembered now by no one at all. Except Ryan.
It took in a lot of ground. A lot of thoughts and ideas. Except political ideas. They both steered clear of politics. It was not always easy.
Arabella began to realize that she was more than physically attracted to James Ryan. She was attracted to him in a very real and refreshingly intellectual sense. And the fact that they didn’t agree on things—often not agreeing on much at all—rather than being annoying was actually stimulating. It was exciting. She was excited. She saw Ryan as a character cut right from the heroes of the books he read. The books she read now too, she thought.
The books they shared and enjoyed.
She also knew he had feelings for her. She could tell, the way he looked at her was unmistakable. She found herself hoping they ran deeper than the merely physical. She knew people, knew men especially. They were all such fools, such little boys really, except those rare few. There were men of character and substance, who had real depth, hard-headed no-nonsense serious types, who were special. Arabella Rashid felt that Ryan was of this type. He was serious. You’d never know it, talking paperbacks, flirting, shooting the breeze. They talked, laughed and joked around, but he was a serious guy. She liked that. She liked him. She did not want to have these feelings. She did not want to have any feelings. She did not like having feelings, nor did she trust them. She thought they’d all been drained out of her by Simon. Apparently they had not.
Arabella felt that for Ryan to be such a serious man was not always a good thing for him. He could be too damn serious sometimes and that could be a bad thing. A dangerous thing. Ideological and hard-headed-serious. That could spell trouble in a political sense. It could even become revolutionary. He could be a man who would dare to say, what a man wanted to say. Or worse, dare to do, what a man wanted to do. Those men were rare today, at least among the social non-predatory, non-criminal type. The unincarcerated. Even the politicals down on Earth had become mild and meek
. Scared all the time. Ryan was not like them. He had strength, character, integrity, a brain. He was bold. He had, she realized...honor.
She was drawn to it, drawn to him like a magnet. The realization made her feel woozy almost. She knew he was drawn to her too and the thought excited her all the more. She knew he wanted her. A serious hungry wanting. But not just because she was the best damn woman he’d ever seen. The best he could ever have on Mars or anywhere on Earth. That was not it. He’d passed up better before, back on Earth. Women like that didn’t worm their way into men like James Ryan without a reason.
Arabella Rashid blushed as she looked over at him, watching him look at the books, hiding her glance so he did not know she was looking at him. It was a rare feeling for her. She realized that Ryan somehow saw into her, into her most private area, her most private thoughts and feelings. He saw even into her deep, dark, and ugly places, the places she knew were there and that she was so adept at hiding. Ryan saw it all and never even flinched. Instead he smiled. It did not bother him. He did not fear her. He saw her the way she was, the total, entire woman. She felt a powerful connection with him that she could not deny.
She felt naked before him and she loved the feeling.
Arabella Rashid was awed. She traded paperbacks, she talked authors, she listened to his substantial knowledge on books and other topics. Always she asked questions to keep him talking. She even made a few jokes to watch him laugh. She asked for more information on this book, or that author, even tried to engage him in politics....
Ryan just laughed and talked about a town called Poisonville in a book by Dashiell Hammett called Red Harvest, in an early Dell edition he had called Nightmare Town. And she wondered if she would end up turning Mars into a nightmare planet once she found out just what was going on here.
* * * *
Ryan was alone now. In his cube. The copy of Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett lay open on his chest. He dozed. He dreamed. His mind time-tripping back. Back to another life. Another reality.