He ate his sandwich and a few shiny little tomatoes and set himself up for his exercise. Nero was better at teleporting himself, but he could move only to places that he could see or remember well. He wasn't worried about that, for now; his present priority consisted of practicing takeoff.
Nero began inducing a mild trance as usual. He felt the growing tingling and the heat wave overtook him. When he opened his eyes and snapped his fingers no sound came. Now it was time to—
Wait.
A ghostly form materialized before his face, then more. Many more—there were dozens around him now. One brushed him. At the contact, a psychedelic nightmare burst into his consciousness, a disconnected patchwork of perceptions without sense; Nero was stunned for a long moment. Still in shock, he realized the ghost had retracted from him, perhaps as uncomfortable as Nero from the feedback of the touch. One by one all the ghosts disappeared.
Nero found himself in a place he'd never seen before. Lighting was crepuscular; the location deserted and hot—a lifeless wilderness. He snapped his fingers: no sound. Scared, he thought of himself back at the tomato farm, at his lunch spot. The familiar surroundings reappeared. He snapped his fingers—still no sound. Nero panicked—he had to land now; he must get out of his trance. He was on a ride without brakes—and he had to stop!
He brushed on purpose a leaf of widow's fan with the back of his hand. Pain! Hot acid and molten lead! Retracting his hand to nurse it, he heard the faint noise of his rustling clothes. Mayhem erupted over the bushes. Voices screamed, calling for help, some man was down. Nero tried to stand up, but his legs yielded, so he sat on the ground. His hand still hurt: painful minutes lasted for eternities. Dizziness, nausea, fright, and pain vied for primacy in his mind, and still, he couldn't help thinking he had been almost imprisoned in his non-state. What had touched him?
What a sissy, he thought, I'm fainting.
*
He came to as a crew tried to lift him on a stretcher.
"I'm OK," he said, sitting up.
"What happened to you?" one in a small crowd asked; it was his shift supervisor.
"I'm not sure," Nero answered. He looked at his hand, the rash was fading. He showed him the red mark. "I think I touched a widow's fan and fainted from pain."
"Can you stand?" a paramedic asked.
"Let me try." Nero picked himself up. His legs were still wobbly, but he succeeded.
"Here, let me try this." Another paramedic took his blood pressure and temperature. "He's shaken up," he said to the supervisor, "But his vitals are normal."
"This is unrelated, then," Nero's supervisor stated.
"Unrelated to what?" Nero said.
"Don is dead," one of Nero's coworkers in the crowd said.
"What?"
"He got the foams," the sharecropper added.
"The foams?" Nero said.
"Back to work!" yelled the supervisor. "Break it up! On, on, there's a crop to pick. Get your bags, the break is over now!"
Nero obliged, being in no mood to argue. After a while he managed to get close to the picker who had told him about Don's death.
"What's the foams?" he said.
"Tis what killed Don."
"Tell me more."
"Tis no trick, magician. The foams's when you get a seizure, and then you die, and got the foams in your mouth—like Don. Been here a long time myself, heard it happens all the time. Didn't believe 'em stories, but now I saw it myself. The Tower don't tell nobody there's a sickness, the Tower tells us the foams's no sickness. Some believe the Tower, like Don. Look what good it did him. Me, I've been friends with Don a long time, he was strong as a horse, and now look. Me, I used to believe it, too, like Don. We believed the Tower. The Tower got me out of the dregs, gotta be some good about it. But now, I don't know no more. The foams got me scared, magician."
"I'm sorry about Don, pal."
The picker nodded. Nero continued his work, bag after bag till the shift was over. He was certain Don had met a ghostly death, and Nero might have as well met that fate, were it not for his altered state at the time.
At shift break, Nero returned with his eighteen companions to the farmhouse, where the kitchen provided them with dinner bags. One by one they streamed through the framepost to Pilgrim's Landing and their barracks, which tonight would have an empty bed. He showered, ate his dinner, then stopped to offer Don's friend another word of comfort. He punted, should he go to the bar for his show? He decided in favor; the barracks would be a sad place tonight.
Evening had fallen.
Street lights and the lit-up entrance to the saloon guided his short walk. As he entered, cheers greeted him. "Hey, magician, show us your trick tonight, will you?"
A woman said, "I'll bet against you."
That voice—Kebe! He wanted to run to her, but constrained his reaction to a smile, a wink, and the words: "Do it, you may win, who knows."
"Hey, lady, you better keep your Yees for drinking. The magician's never missed yet," someone said.
"Who's the bookie tonight?" Nero said.
"I am," said the bartender.
Nero approached the bar and sat down. "Coffee, please."
The lad at the counter obliged. "Magician, you're gonna try tonight?"
"I'll try alright." Nero sipped his coffee with mild distaste, cursing the Tower for not shipping licorice here. There were perhaps fifty people in attendance, most of whom could recognize him by sight now. He'd done too much advertising, but that had met his purpose eventually.
He looked at Kebe, their eyes met. Tonight, the magician would disappoint his audience. Nero hoped Kebe had placed a significant wager.
CHAPTER 29
Ayin Najjar sat on the couch in Potter's office, oblivious to her surroundings. Outside it was dark, inside it was even darker. She could hardly see the tumbler on the tea table or the tipped-over bottle holding maybe another cup of liquor. Three fateful days had gone by. She was drunk. Potter had gone home, and she was alone.
Day One had been a screaming success. She wished it was still the end of Day One—she'd been so enthused she started dancing in this very office. The xeno team had answered all questions with directness, gaining the goodwill of the correspondents, mellowing sour attitudes. When the magnificent fifty had broken into groups, all five guides did a wonderful job, she was told. Blessed be Day One.
Bad luck had barely missed the target on Day Two. An accident happened—a redneck on a scaffolding fell and broke his neck. Potter had told her it could have been anything. The man had fallen from fifteen meters high onto a concrete pad, and when they picked him up he didn't have a bone that wasn't broken. A team of correspondents was on the spot when that happened, which was bad. But the redneck was working alone, there were no material witnesses to the circumstances of the fall, which was excellent.
Poor redneck, Ayin thought. She leaned forward, picked up the glass from the tea table, and sipped from the nearly empty tumbler. Potter had found her a real crystal tumbler, a luxurious glass. Where or how he had found it, Ayin couldn't guess, but she enjoyed the feeling of it. She had another sip. So everyone took it as a genuine accident.
Day Three had been—she took another sip emptying the tumbler, refilled it in part from the tipped bottle. Her hands were trembling. It was good she was drunk, or she'd really get way too worked up at this stage. That's the reason why she always took a sip when she relived Day Three. She intended to stay drunk as long as necessary, because getting so angry was bad, it really made her angry, and the compound effect snowballed out of control.
A crop picker on a farm had a bad case of the foams. He died, of course. But Potter had pulled a magic trick of sorts. Nobody of consequence was at the farm when it happened, and Potter swept it under the rug before anybody realized what had happened.
<
br /> She'd have to remember Potter when she became Chairperson of the Tower. Someone will have to fill the position she'd vacate. Someone like Potter. But oh, wait, now maybe that was not going to happen anymore. Anyway...
All teams of correspondents were somewhere else on Day Three, which was good, and they all returned to Pilgrim's Landing at the scheduled time, and all the damn urchins were going home on Day Three. All of them would be off her back.
So one went, and then another, and another. Only a few urchins remained by the time Max Hopkins's turn came.
"I'm staying," Hopkins had said.
Damn! All of them had to go. That was the plan, Ayin thought. Here was the one circumstance none of them had imagined—nobody who had a life would consider staying, right? Wrong!
So Hopkins gave up his return ticket and claimed his right to a homestead on Virgil. Max damn Hopkins, Universal News Agency, the news hero of the Perimeter Wars, was now going to get his third Galaxy Award by ruining her career.
Even more damning, Ayin enjoyed reading Hopkins's brilliant columns. Lately he wrote from his desk; she thought he'd retired from the field. He's come out of mothballs with blazing pistols to get me, she thought, and gulped the rest of her drink.
After his example, another couple of buckaroos had decided to stay. Not a thing anyone could do to force them off planet: The plan qualified them C-cubed; if they wanted to stay, nobody could kick 'em out. Nope. That was the law.
She lay down for a while. Day One had been such a success. She had to celebrate Day One...
Part IV: Crescendo
In the long run, no form of government survives the people who staff it—especially not in our upwardly mobile caste system, where it's so difficult to embrace corruption in an evolutionary manner. Lately, I've become an admirer of democracy in that regard.
Ayin Najjar
CHAPTER 30
"Why are you drinking alone, big boy?"
Jenus took his eyes off the bottle of whiskey to look at the woman who had just addressed him. Her solid, shapely figure could indulge without effort a lonesome bachelor.
"Mind if I sit?" she continued, pulling a chair up to Jenus's table. Hazel eyes, large round nose, full lips and square jaws, dimples in her smile; her curly blonde hair showed dark roots. She wore little makeup and had nice teeth. Her voice was firm, solid—a good match to the rest of her demeanor. She helped herself to one of the glasses that Jenus had asked the waiter to leave with the bottle. She poured. Jenus watched.
"Of course you don't mind," she said. "You're so lonely you're screaming for company."
"How do you know?"
"Those who want to drink alone have only one glass. So?" she said.
"So what?"
"Back to square one. Why are you drinking alone?"
She smiled, but her smile faded as Jenus explained, "Two people I work with died. One died in my arms a few weeks ago. The other died yesterday."
She nodded. "Did you kill them?"
Jenus raised his eyebrows. "Do I look like I did?"
"Hard to tell. You might as well, for all I know." She was playing with the glass; she hadn't drunk a drop yet.
"Heavens no, I didn't kill them," Jenus said.
"Then how did they die?"
"Do you want my opinion or the official rap?"
"Try both, let me test your imagination."
"My opinion is I don't have a clue, but I'm sure the official story is baloney. The Tower blames fevers for the one who died yesterday, and epileptic seizure for Rick."
"Was Rick your friend?"
"Closest friend I've had in a while."
"So you really are lonely, now."
Jenus nodded. "In more ways than one."
"Just arrived?"
"Months ago."
"What drove you here?"
"Long story."
"Ah," she said,
"And my name is John Doe."
"An anonymous colonist! This is becoming interesting: what are you running from?"
"I'm not running from anything—I'm here because I don't like to run away."
"That's a bit oxymoronic."
Jenus thought. "Guess I'm getting drunk."
"Not even close. This bottle's just started; that's your first glass."
He looked up. "Look, ma'am, you surely are decorative, and I could use a sympathetic ear, but I'm not here to argue my points."
"I apologize—I didn't mean to irritate you. What do you want to talk about, instead?"
Jenus stared into vacuum. "How about you?"
"My name is Rebecca... Doe. That's my name, promise—found in a dumpster and raised in an orphanage. I came here because anything is better than my former life, which I want to forget."
"I propose a toast to celebrate a converging purpose."
"Deal."
They raised their glasses, and both sipped.
"You're not a drinker, John."
"Not any more. Neither are you."
She nodded.
"So what are you doing in a bar, Rebecca?"
"Looking for people like you—what else?"
"I don't get it."
"Well, you're sad for your friends. I can tell you mean it, so maybe you're a decent human being—sort of. You don't believe the Tower, which means you can think. And you're reasonably good looking." She winked. "What do you do for a living?"
"I drive a bulldozer."
"Yawn. What did you do for a living?"
Jenus looked at her. "Classified."
"Have you taken your battery test?"
"Not yet."
"Wow—you must be one hell of a clever guy. You came here two months ago with the skin mama gave you, a false name, and nothing more. And you're making a living as well as the average grunt, maybe better. You haven't taken your test, and you don't look to me like you're a career bulldozer operator, so that's not even your trade."
"You're an amazing X-ray machine."
"Thanks. Actually, I have some information to trade that you may find interesting."
"Oh, yes? What would that be?" Jenus answered, tapping his fingers on the table.
"Would you like to know more about what killed your friends?"
"My friend. I didn't know the guy who died yesterday."
"Whatever," Rebecca said.
"Yes, I'd like to know more. But..."
"But?" Rebecca said.
"Somehow I believe curiosity will get me in trouble."
"Well, maybe in the future, but not yet. The Tower is trying to keep it hush-hush, but there's no rule—yet—that forbids discussing what I want to talk to you about."
Jenus creased his brows. "Meaning?"
"As I said, I have information to trade, not to give away."
Jenus nodded. "How much?"
"Oh, maybe two hours of your time."
He grinned. "When do we go?"
"How about now?"
He cocked his head. "Let's go, then." They walked out.
"How old are you, Rebecca?"
"No more than thirty-five, no less than thirty-four."
"So you really were found in a dumpster."
"I was found in a kernel."
"Same thing."
"I agree."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a baker—you've eaten my bread already. I also make pastry." She looked at him with a mischievous dimpled smile.
Along main street all was quiet. Rebecca walked briskly; her steps echoed off the buildings. A clock showed 23:33, which today was night-time. The warm air smelled odd to Jenus—it wasn't the fragrance of Earth's spring or summer. A scent reminiscent of cilantro and vanilla, dry and
stark, faint and foreign, laced the night. He wondered when he'd get used to it; wrong smells were worse than bad clocks.
"We're here," Rebecca said. She opened a door to a long corridor and entered first, Jenus followed.
Time keeping, to Jenus, was a sign of the real attitude of the Tower concerning Virgil. Me Tarzan, you ape, Jenus thought. He could hear Tarzan yodeling when he thought of the foam on Rick's dead mouth. Yesterday he had watched Tarzan pounding his chest over another corpse. On Virgil, Tarzan tended a rat farm as a sideline business.
At the end of the corridor, Rebecca disappeared down a flight of stairs and through a door. The buzz of conversation in the room muted: Everyone watched Rebecca and Jenus. Rebecca smiled as if she'd done this a thousand times.
"This is my friend John Doe. He lost two workmates during the last few weeks and he doubts the Tower's explanations. I invited him here to talk it over with us," she said.
Everybody looked at Jenus. He guessed there were maybe forty adults in the room, no children. Most sat on the floor, a few sat on chairs or on the table. The group lacked the appearance of formal leadership.
"Hello," Jenus said, nodding at nobody in particular. The situation was embarrassing and awkward.
"Hello John," boomed a huge man wearing a yarmulke. "I'm Terry: welcome to our meeting." He had a beard and was balding; the yarmulke covered the crown of his head. Terry looked like a ton of muscles; his head rested on a neck the size of a tree-trunk, his mouth was cut sharply, and his eyes were cautious and firm. He showed no teeth when he spoke.
"Hello," echoed more voices on cue.
"Rebecca, you and John sit down and join us," said a woman from a darkened corner that Jenus couldn't see.
Rebecca looked around and found a place on the floor for both of them, away from the door. They stepped across the room and slumped against the wall.
Behold a Dark Mirror Page 24