by Ron Goulart
But fifteen years ago, when Tony had left her to pursue his siren song in Sime Territory, Carla had never expected to see him again. She cried herself to sleep, imagining him dead…until his letters started coming. He begged her to join him in Norlea, where he claimed Simes and Gens lived peacefully together. There he had met Zhag Paget, shiltpron player extrordinaire.
Today he brought his Sime partner to meet Carla. Seasoned cops separated into fawning fans and alert officers on crowd control when the two men arrived with their entourage.
Carla’s eyes went to Tony. With new lines of maturity in his face, he was even more handsome than she remembered. His wide dark-blue eyes sought hers, and he smiled the smile that left women swooning in the aisles.
He needs a haircut, Carla noted, remembering Tony’s mother forcing order to his mop of curls. Now his hair was longer than Carla’s, a lion’s mane that he tossed back as he glanced around the police station before striding up to her. “Carla,” he said.
She felt her toes curl just from his undivided attention.
“You’re looking good, Tony,” she managed to get out, aware of the stares of her fellow cops.
“Oh, I am good!” Tony replied with innuendo that was new since the last time they had met. Or perhaps at that time he had saved it for his performances.
He dropped the sex-god act, though, as he introduced “My partner, Zhag Paget. Zhag, this is Carla Stenner.”
“I feel as if I know you,” the Sime said. “Tonyo has told me so much.” He spoke perfect English with the Simelan accent Carla remembered from Tony’s mother. Gulf Territory Simelan, the same language but a different dialect from that of the channels at the Sime Center.
Zhag Paget was almost as tall as Tony, but with the thinner-than-slender Sime physique. He was in good health, his dark brown hair thick and shiny. The hand he held out, allowing her to decide whether to touch him, was merely slender, not skeletal like those of Freeband Raiders—outlaw killer Simes who still occasionally marauded through Gen territory.
Carla took the proffered hand, careful to look into the Sime’s hazel eyes rather than at his forearm. She had studied Sime physiology—mostly in autopsies. If Paget could coolly shake hands with her his tentacles were quiet in their sheaths, not writhing with the need to capture her in a death grip.
Not that they could—the retainers the Sime wore about his wrists prevented his tentacles from emerging.
Tony asked, “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
“The detectives’ office,” Carla offered.
“Selyn shielded?” Tony asked.
“The interrogation room, then,” Carla amended. Tony took out a “Sime Diplomatic Territory” sign and hung it on the door. Carla ushered her guests inside and pulled down the shade, preventing her colleagues from watching through the one-way glass.
As the three seated themselves, Paget asked Carla, “Do you mind?” indicating his retainers.
“Take them off,” she replied. “You should be able to tell I’m low-field.” She had donated selyn yesterday.
That earned her a smile from Tony. “You look good,” he said, reaching to help Paget out of the retainers. “How are the girls?”
“Dorrie’s at school in Central City. She wants to study Interterritory Law. Mattie.…”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for the news about her younger daughter. Carla explained, “Mattie’s living at the Sime Center. They’re training her as one of those special Donors— like you.” It came out accusatory, despite her best efforts.
Tony smiled radiantly. “But that’s good news, Carla. She’ll get the best education, a secure future, and…well, until you do it, you don’t know the thrill of giving transfer.”
“You always were the thrill-seeker,” said Carla, “and Mattie was always so damned impressed with ‘Uncle Tony.’”
“Perhaps,” he replied, “but you encouraged her to donate.”
“I support Unity,” Carla replied. “But plenty of people still think the only good Sime is a dead Sime. Security will be very tight tonight.” It had been tightening ever since the announcement of the concert. The Church of the Purity contingent would be kept across the street with their picket signs, and the League of Gen Businesses had been prevented from buying up all the tickets, leaving the performers to play to an empty hall.
Personnel at the hotel where Logan and Paget were staying had been checked and rechecked. When two maids and a cook disappeared two days ago they had been replaced with police officers, not the conveniently available applicants with perfect credentials. Tails on those applicants had led the police to confiscate a bomb that could have blown out an entire floor of the hotel. They also rescued the three missing hotel employees, still alive—presumably intended as hostages for the escape of the bombers had their plan worked.
Carla was proud of her security team. Paget took off his retainers as they discussed how her Gen officers and the channels and Donors from the Sime Center were to be deployed.
Free of the retainers, Zhag stretched his handling tentacles. “Could we have some tea?” he asked.
“We don’t have—” Carla began.
“We always carry trin tea,” Tony replied. “Where can I find hot water…?”
“There’s a kitchen back of the coffee service,” she told him.
No sooner had the door closed than Zhag said bluntly, “You know Tonyo’s still in love with you, don’t you?”
Carla blinked and tried to control her racing heart. Simes could read Gen emotions in their selyn fields—there was no use trying to hide it from Paget.
“You’re all the women he sings about,” Paget continued. “Sad songs—the ones all the women love, on both sides of the border. Do you understand Simelan?”
“Fairly well. Tony’s mother taught both of us, in case either of us changed over and had to run for the border.” It served her well in interrogating both the occasional Sime and Simelan-speaking Gens who had escaped from Sime territory at adolescence and, unable to adapt, drifted into a life of crime.
“Tonyo writes lyrics in both languages,” said Paget, “but his greatest song is in Simelan. Do you know when he wrote it?”
“After his mother died?”
“Ah. You know how hard he took that.”
“Yes. She and I both let him down. Neither of us would go with him into Sime Territory. His mom loved his dad very much, you know. Mr. Logan’s a good man, but he never understood Tony’s love of music, or his fascination with Simes.”
“He still doesn’t,” said Paget. “He sent back the concert tickets Tonyo sent him. Are you going to disappoint him too?”
“Disappoint him? I haven’t heard from him in five years!”
“You shattered his dreams. Carla, the way you treat him may inspire his music, but it is shen on the man himself!”
“Why should you care? I know you’re friends, but—”
Paget shook his head. “Tonyo literally keeps me alive. And sane. To do that, he has to be sane himself.”
“I’ve never led him on,” said Carla. “I’ve seen him twice in fifteen years. At his mother’s funeral, when his father shunned him, I invited him to stay with my family. I was pregnant and trying to handle a two-year-old! Tony got along really well with Matt. My husband. I thought he was completely over me.”
Paget shook his head. “That was when he wrote—” he spoke a phrase in Simelan that Carla didn’t recognize. “A rough translation is, Love Stronger than Need. In-territory, it’s considered his greatest composition. Until Tonyo, I don’t think most Simes realized that Gens could feel anything that strongly.”
“So he did come back to see if I would change my mind after Matt died. I wasn’t sure. He waited a year, and he said he was only here to visit his mother’s grave.”
“I made him wait that year. I hoped you’d join him then—it’s frustrating to have you there, as invisible as selyn but just as potent, enticing him across the border.”
“I had two children facing l
ife without their father. I couldn’t even think about changing their lives so drastically again, over…someone who abandoned me.”
Carla saw Paget’s eyes go out of focus, indicating that he was using Sime senses to read her field. “And now?” he asked.
“Tony’s every woman’s dream on the radio, in recordings, on the stage. He can have any woman he wants.”
“Believe me, he only wants you.”
“He wants a fantasy,” Carla replied, just as Tony reappeared with steaming cups of trin tea.
“Who wants a fantasy?” he asked.
“Zhag thinks you’re still in love with me,” Carla said before she could stop herself.
“I am,” Tony replied, then glanced over at the Sime in mock annoyance. “I suppose you know what great lie detectors channels make. No use trying to hide your feelings.”
But Carla’s police training fastened on one word. She stared at Paget. “You’re a channel?”
“I thought that was in the information you were sent.”
Carla shook her head. “How can you possibly be a professional musician as well?”
“I changed over years before Unity. I…used to kill.”
That was no surprise. Except for a small minority, all Simes who had changed over before Unity had killed a Gen every month until the treaty had forced them to undergo disjunction.
“Aren’t most working channels in Sime territories disjunct?”
Only nonjunct ones—those who had never killed in their lives—were assigned to the Sime Center here.
“Zhag was too old to be trained as a channel when he stopped killing,” Tony explained.
Carla sensed there was more, unspoken. She looked Zhag in the eye and asked, “When was the last time you killed?”
“Fifteen years ago,” he replied promptly and firmly.
Carla looked to Tony, who nodded. “Not since I met him, Carla, and believe me, I’d know.”
“So I’m free to pursue music,” said Paget. “And lucky—or maybe it was fate that brought Tonyo and me together.”
“I always knew my destiny was in Gulf Territory,” said Tony.
“Well,” Paget said, draining the last of his tea, “my destiny is lunch and a rest before the concert.” He started putting the retainers back on. “Stay here, Tonyo. You two have a lot to talk about. Pol and Belinda can escort me back to the hotel.”
“Are you sure?” Carla saw real concern in Tony’s expression.
Paget laughed. “Tonyo, I’m as post as you are! And these things—” He winced as he raised one retainer-clad wrist. “Well, they certainly do blur the ambient. All I want to do is go back to the hotel and get out of them again.”
“It’s all arranged,” Carla assured him. “You won’t have to wear them again until after the show.” One of her tougher jobs had been convincing the mayor that a team of police officers and people from the Sime Center could safely convey their star performers from the hotel to the concert hall without the devices that gave Simes headaches and disorientation—no condition for a performer giving an historic concert.
But one battle she had lost: channels from the Sime Center were not to be allowed to mingle unretainered with the audience.
“Take everybody with you,” Tony told Zhag. “I’m just another Gen on this side of the border.” At their two skeptical stares, he added, “Besides, I’ve got a police escort.”
“Fine,” said Zhag. “I won’t expect to see either of you till it’s time to go to the concert hall.”
When the Sime had left, Carla said, “He seems awfully nice.”
“For a Sime?”
“For a famous performer. And he cares about you.”
“Yeah—Zhag’s my other half, the brother I never had. This past fifteen years I’ve fulfilled all my dreams…except one.”
It was hard to look away from that angel’s face, those deep blue eyes, as he bent closer. Then they were kissing, and it was as if fifteen years melted away.
Remembering where she was, Carla broke the kiss, gently. Tony still held her, pressing their bodies together, whispering, “You’re so beautiful.”
She pushed him away. “Tony, you’ve never seen the real me.”
“You’re wrong. I always have.” And she recalled that he had always seen her plain features as beautiful.
“You’ve changed,” he added. “You’re not afraid of Simes anymore. You can come with me now, Carla.”
“What—just like that?”
“Why not? We ought to have a Gen chief of security—this won’t be our last concert in Gen Territory. Carla, you’re not fooled by the glamor, the fame, the money. An entertainer’s never a great catch as a husband—”
“Husband!”
He ran a hand through unruly curls, which fell right back down on his forehead. “You loved me once. I left, and you found someone else. But Matt is gone, and I’m still alive. Your children have their own lives. Come and work with Zhag and me. He likes you.”
“And Zhag is part of any life with you, isn’t he?”
“I’m not hiding that.”
“You would never leave him—go off to live in another territory where he couldn’t go?”
His lips thinned. “No. And I didn’t do that to you, Carla. You could have come with me. It wouldn’t have been any more dangerous for you than it was for me.”
She nodded. “I know that now. I didn’t know it then.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I didn’t trust Simes.”
“You do now?”
“Some,” she said honestly. “I trust Madson Quint, the head channel at the Sime Center. I think…I could trust Zhag Paget.”
A smile like sunshine lit Tony’s face. “You’ve got an important job here, but what we’re doing is important, too. Territory boundaries won’t come down through legislation. The treaty’s a huge step, but it’s people like Zhag and me who will bring about genuine Unity. Did you know our recordings sell three times as well in Gen Territory as in Sime Territory?”
“That’s because there are ten times as many people in Gen Territory,” she reminded him.
“All right,” he agreed with a grin. “But if we can really tour, instead of doing just one concert in a border town and being sent right back into Sime Territory, we will sell ten times as many here. Gens who’ve never seen a Sime that wasn’t a berserker love Zhag’s music. You’ve heard our recordings?”
“Of course. If I hadn’t bought them, the girls would have.”
“Well, they’re nothing compared to a live concert. The only security Zhag’s going to require after the concert is to keep people from tearing his clothes off for souvenirs.”
And Tony had been right. There were plenty of skeptics in the concert audience, but Sime and Gen together had brought about a Unity that far transcended anything mandated in the Treaty.
But now there had been a Kill—exactly what all Gens feared if they allowed Simes to walk among them.
Paget said he hadn’t done it. Tony was certain he hadn’t.
But then how to account for one very dead body?
Quint extended his laterals, the smallest tentacles, which lay on either side of his wrists. These were selyn sensing organs, as well as the means to draw life force from a Gen.
Quint entwined his tentacles with Paget’s, as if for a channel’s transfer of life force. But only their hands, arms, and tentacles touched, as Quint performed a deep reading of the musician’s system.
“You’re a channel,” said Quint to Paget, “but that’s on your record. You’re post, of course. And.…” He frowned. “How did you bury it so deep so fast?”
Curiosity rang so strongly through Carla that Quint glanced over at her. But then his eyes fixed accusingly on Paget’s as he announced in Simelan, “You’re junct.”
But that was one Simelan word every Gen understood. Junct: joined to the Kill. Having killed once, a Sime was instantly addicted to the thrill of killing. Breaking the dependency was said to
be the worst suffering humanly possible.
All except a small handful of Simes of Zhag Paget’s generation had endured that withdrawal for the sake of Unity, to reunite the two kinds of human beings.
Now Paget was addicted again: junct. Probably, having backslid at the cost of a life, he would never be trusted again, even in Sime Territory.
But Paget said contemptuously in English, “What kind of channel can’t tell that you’re reading an old scar on my nager? I didn’t kill that girl. Zlin it in my systems! I can’t kill!”
“You are junct,” Quint repeated in English.
Paget switched back to Simelan, unaware that Carla understood much better than she spoke that language. “Yes, I’m technically junct,” he said in exasperation. “Consider my age, Fool! I was never disjunct.”
“Oh, my God,” Carla said. “You and Tony lied to me!”
I was considering trusting you two with my entire future. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “You’ve not only killed—you’ve broken the Unity Treaty.”
Quint dismantled his grip, saying, “This man isn’t lying. That means he may be insane. Handle him with great caution.”
“You may be sure of that!” Carla said coldly, holding her own feelings tightly as she realized that if Quint turned his attention her way he would sense her unprofessional turmoil.
She ordered her officers to take in the suspect—suspects, now, as Tony was an accomplice in helping Paget break the Treaty. Never mind his incidental betrayal of her.
Carla fell back on procedure. “Rafe,” she said to Belius, “Logan said he would do two songs and then come off stage. When he does that, arrest him.”
“Arrest Tonyo?! No!”
Carla had forgotten the girl in the pink dress. Similla Gordon said, “Lieutenant, I think you’d better hear this witness before you arrest anybody.”
The girl, whose name was Charmion Johnson, was obviously very nervous, but she was determined to defend Tony Logan. “Tonyo wasn’t even here when it happened!” she insisted.
As Quint automatically placed himself between Paget and the agitated Gen, Charmion shied back from the approach of a Sime. She nearly stumbled over her friend’s body, which brought a fresh gush of tears. Taking a shuddering breath, she squared her shoulders and addressed Paget. “Letty wanted to meet you. She loved your music so much. And now she’s dead!”