by John Varley
"Well..." I wondered what to say to the OPC. Nothing he had said or done was really personal. He would have done it for anyone, or to anyone, in my position. But he had said he liked my work, which always gives me at least a small warm feeling.
"Don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out," the OPC said.
"Yeah. Thanks."
I entered the hall cautiously; it was empty. Waiting for the elevator to arrive was a very bad time. I had visions of the door popping open and being face-to-face with the little redheaded son of a bitch. But the car was empty. The Othello is shaped like a palm tree when seen from the side. That is, each story is set slaunchwise on the one below until about the fifteenth, then they start leaning back in the other direction. It produces that lovely curve some palm trees have, in pictures from Polynesia. Big green flags at the top look like leaves, and round, brown elevator cars move up and down the trunk like coconuts. Seen from the front, it looks like an incredible breaking wave of glass and metal. Go out the front door, look up, and you'll see floors thirty-five through forty-five hanging over you, way way up there.
The building was currently headed forward, in no great hurry, so I did the same, looking out for anyone who might be tailing me. You tell directions in Oberon from a baseline that will run all around the circle when it's done, midway from each edge. It's called Main Street, logically enough, though it's not really a street, it's more of an architectural promenade, an endless procession of behemoth nightmares. Facing with the spin, forward is in front of you, backward is behind you. Distances are measured in hours, minutes, and seconds, based on a twelve-hour clock. One hour was 261 miles long. That makes one second equal to 383 feet, or 117 meters, what they called the Oberon City Block.
I had walked about ten of these OCBs when I gradually slowed, slowed still further, and came to a halt. Something was wrong with this picture. What was it?
There was a small park to my left. I found a bench and sat on it, and watched the Othello Hotel gradually catching up with me.
Had I left anything? I patted my pockets, found everything I ought to have found. I looked at my suitcase. Two segments of the Pantechnicon are detachable, and look like regular suitcases. This small one, not much more than a change of clothes and clean underwear; the overnighter. The other was more suitable for stays of up to a week. Wonderful and handy as my super-trunk is, it is unwieldy to keep it always at your side. I had left it safe at the freight office at the Noon Elevator Up Terminal, the one down here on the rim. I could put my hand on it in ten minutes, if the need arose.
So it had to be Poly. God damn it! It would have been so simple just to wake her up, hustle her into her clothes, and get her out of there. Why hadn't I done it?
The only possible answer to that was that I really and truly had not thought she was in any danger. Why? Because it would have been so easy to get her out of there. I'd have done it. Now I was faced with something I most sincerely did not want to do, which was go back to the room and get her out.
Now wait, let's not be hasty. Let's examine that decision, shall we? Fifteen minutes ago it didn't occur to you to get her out. What's so damn urgent all of a sudden? What's different now?
What's different is my mind has had fifteen more minutes to think it through. I was hurried back in the room. I was thinking mostly of myself. Who wouldn't? Poly didn't figure in the Izzy and Sparky story; she was a civilian, a spear carrier. Why would Comfort hurt her?
But you know what happens to spear carriers in violent melodrama. Each week you got four people: the Hero, the Second Lead, the Girl, and Number Four, Mr. Dead Meat, the one with the black cloud over his head.
That alone wouldn't have brought me back to the hotel. But what if Izzy didn't know Poly was a spear carrier? What if he thought she was a compatriot, an ally, a member of that vast conspiracy of actors and actresses whose mission in life was to purloin valuable netsuke from families under the awful aegis of La Mafia Charonese?
That didn't bear thinking about. So I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin manfully, and marched back into the lobby of the Othello.
The elevator deposited me without incident on the right floor. I walked out slowly, pretending preoccupation as every sense reached out for the smell of danger.
It looked all right so far. There was a woman walking in my direction, tugging a wheeled suitcase on a strap. She smiled at me as we passed. Her hair was red. Actually, more of a reddish brown. Get a grip on yourself, Sparky! Three or four percent of the population is redheaded. Maybe five. Reddish hair doesn't make her Comfort's henchwoman.
But I continued on past my door. This was in the category of "normal" precaution. It was good policy never to let anyone see what room you're in; it's one of those habits that is a waste of time for a thousand times, and then saves your life on the thousand-and-first. I stopped, frowning down at the room card as if it were written in Sanskrit. I scratched my head, and glanced at the woman out of the corner of my eye. She was just going out of sight around a corner.
Suddenly the numbers made sense. I smiled, shook my head ruefully at my own stupidity, and stuck the card into the slot on the door. It opened, and I eased in. Shut it behind me. Set my suitcase beside the door for a quick getaway. Hurried to the bedroom. Reached down to shake her shoulder.
Check that last. Sometimes I get so into the scenarios I write for myself I almost believe I've done them. But two steps into the bedroom I registered several things at once, in no particular order. Someone was in the bathroom running water. It was not Poly, because there she was, sprawled out almost as I had left her, except now the sheets were soaked with blood, except she had not had those burns and gashes on her back. There had not been three of what looked like her fingers severed, resting on the bedside table.
There were four Oberon five-thousand-dollar bills, one on the bed, one on her bloody back, two on the floor.
There was a message written in blood on the wall over her head. The message was this: OOOPS!
Just OOOPS!
As in Ooops, I thought she was you, Sparky, knowing you are a master of disguise. As in Ooops, I thought she might know something, Sparkster old man, as to your whereabouts. As in Ooops, don't be angry, Mr. Valentine, and can I still have your autograph? I'm a great fan.
She started to moan.
I hurried to the bed and knelt beside her, turned her over. What he had done to her face almost defies description. One eye was open the tiniest crack. She recognized me, and reached for me with one bloodied hand. I caught her wrist; I could not afford to have her blood all over me now.
"...didn't know 'nythin'," she croaked. Blood spilled from her mouth. "...Trev'r? Is it you, Trev?"
"It's me," I whispered in her ear. "Shhh. Be quiet now, honey, and I'll do what I can do."
I'd been keeping an eye on the door to the bathroom, which was not in the line of sight from the bed. More importantly, I'd listened with every fiber of my body for the sound of water running in the sink. I imagined he had quite a cleanup job to do on himself, but I couldn't believe he'd leave Poly alone much longer.
I looked around for a weapon. I had several interesting items concealed in my suitcase, but it was far too dangerous to cross the bedroom again because he'd be able to see me for about half the trip. It had been sheer luck he wasn't placed to observe me when I came through the door from the parlor. Don't ever count on luck like that continuing.
Nothing looked good until I spotted her violin case on the floor by the bed. She really had played me some bluegrass tunes on it, and now it was stowed in this sturdy metal case about two feet long....
It was not a Louisville Slugger, but it would do. I crept to the side of the bathroom door and made myself very still. When his nose came out of the bathroom, that's when I should start my swing.
His snakelike speed almost saved him again. He must have seen some movement out of the corner of his eye, because his right arm started to come up and his head started to pull back. Neither move was quick
enough, but seeing how close he came made me more sure than ever I would never meet this man in a "fair fight."
"A fair fight is one you win," my father used to say. "It's as simple as that. If you must shoot somebody, aim for a spot right between the shoulder blades. From a great distance, if possible."
I was aiming from very close, but my goal was to knock his fucking head right into the left-field bleachers. I heard bone crunching as his nose spread out on his face. Blood gushed, and he staggered back. I kept right up with him, not assuming I could fell him with one blow after the way he'd fought on the Britannic. I hit him again, overhand, right down on the crown of his head. He had almost regained his balance and I was winding up for the third swing when his foot slipped on the fluffy bath mat provided by the Othello—a mat I had intended to take with me, since Toby liked them—and he fell backward. The back of his head hit the edge of the toilet with a mighty crack! I winced. Jesus, that hurt even to listen to. His head bounced three times on the tiled floor before he came to rest. Eternally, I hoped.
This time, there was no question of leaving him alive. But I quickly ran into a problem. How was I going to tell if he was dead? Lord knew, he had proven incredibly tough the last time we met.
I placed my palm against his chest but could feel nothing. It didn't seem to be rising and falling. I thought about putting my ear close to his heart, but every time I thought about it I kept getting the last-reel scene from ten thousand B pictures. You know the one. The monster is lying there, "dead," and suddenly rears up, snarling, ready for round two. No, thank you. When I was around his "corpse," I intended to keep my eyes firmly on his hands and his face.
I'd done what I could. Short of carving him into pig jerky with my Swiss army knife, I didn't know what else to do.
I carefully searched him. I found papers, identity cards, three passports. He had a knife strapped to his leg, and a gun in one pocket. I looked at it. It had a normal handgun shape, but nothing else about it was familiar. It was made from hard gray plastic. There was a readout on the left side that displayed a lot of information, none of it meaning anything at all to me except the number "15" where it said ROUNDS REMAINING. That's nice, I thought, as I could see no way to reload the thing. I jammed it into my pocket.
When he was picked clean I left him there and returned to Poly.
I eyed the twenty thousand dollars covetously. It was my fare, in semiluxurious accommodations, to Luna.
Relax. Don't get upset. I'm a thief, but I'm not that low.
It's a custom that evolved slowly as medical science got better and better at patching up what was broken in the long-suffering human frame. Now almost anything is fixable, even some types of brain damage, though your friends might not recognize you when the doc's finished patching up your cerebrum.
There's a scene in the classic movie The Godfather where one of the Corleone brothers grabs a camera from a police photographer, ruins the film, and smashes the camera. As he's walking away the mobster flips some bills from his wallet onto the ground, paying for the damages. It is a gesture of pure and utter contempt, a great moment in cinema.
That's what had happened here. Isambard Comfort had broken Oberon laws against assault and battery, but the penalty in such cases, in most jurisdictions, was to be fined for the cost of repairs, plus some punitive damages. You could pursue the batterer in civil court, but awards for pain and suffering tended to be small. Since most people had never had the living shit kicked out of them, there was no broad understanding of just how much pain and suffering could really be worth, in dollars and cents. Most court cases involved a punch in the nose. As long as you didn't employ a deadly weapon—narrowly defined to a blade or a firearm—you were unlikely to do jail time. If it was a first offense courts tended to be lenient. I doubted Comfort had a record on Oberon—or on Pluto or Charon, for that matter.
Comfort was paying Poly's medical bills. And spitting on her pain and suffering. There was also a threat implicit in the gangster gesture.
I was once worked over by a professional, a man who enjoyed his work, who had nothing against me and when it was all over seemed a little surprised that I was vexed about the matter. I was so peeved, in fact, that I waited five years before paying him back, with interest, just so it would come out of the blue, with no warning. That man still jumps at the sound of doorbells....
I leaned over and kissed her forehead. It was the only place that looked as if a touch wouldn't hurt.
"...Trevor?"
"I'm here. I've got to go, but help will be here soon. Hang on."
"Didn't know... where you were... he thought..."
"I know, babe. I'm so sorry. I made a big mistake."
I couldn't tell if she heard any of that. She seemed to drift off, and I took a deep breath and headed for the door.
Those little wide-angled peepholes they put in hotel doors? Most people think they're there so you can see who is outside. They are, but also to see if anyone is outside. I never leave the room without checking first, and it's been proven a good practice several times before this. The redheaded woman was in my field of vision.
Hmmm. Could she be an innocent bystander? If so, why was she still pulling her little suitcase... my god, was it only four minutes later? My watch didn't seem to have stopped.
She just seemed to be idling around out there. She never really glanced at my door. Then, suddenly, she was moving, walking at a businesslike pace, until I couldn't see her anymore. A couple went by in the other direction, and I realized it was the arrival of the elevator that had spurred my lady into action. When I first saw her she was waiting in the wings, as it were. She went onstage when the new people arrived, and if all those suppositions were correct... yes, here she was again, pulling the suitcase, moving slowly, this time glancing at my door and then at her watch.
Okay. She's with Comfort. Did she see me enter the room? Possible. I'd seen her go around a corner, but she might have peeked back.
Say she didn't see me enter. I don't think she'd have recognized me, as the face I was wearing right now was quite different from the one Comfort had seen. So she didn't see me, and she's out there as an early warning system for Comfort.
I didn't believe it. I think she did see me, and the reason she was still outside was she was more use as a lookout than as a second-string torturer. They were contemptuous enough of my abilities against him alone that they felt they didn't need her as reinforcements. And they were right, too. I had been very lucky, and I didn't intend to abuse that luck.
Sparky, you must think very fast, and move very fast. You need a plan.
Soon I had one. It was full of holes, but it was the best I could do.
Near the center of the parlor a ventilation outlet was set into the ceiling, covered by a grid. I got my Swiss Army knife, moved a chair into position to stand on, and removed the screws holding the grid in place. I put the grid up into the ductwork above, then chinned myself to see if the air conduit was big enough to crawl through. It looked good. This is the third way out of a room, after the door and the window, that most people never think about. I had used ducts like these several times in the past to avoid an overzealous public, whether it be a crowd looking to shake my hand or get a lock of my hair, or a sheriff with a warrant. Lately, exclusively the latter.
I hurried into the bathroom once more. I stuffed a roll of toilet paper and three of those tiny bars of soap into my shirt, then I kicked 'Sambard Comfort in the head three more times, for luck. He still didn't move, still wasn't breathing.
It was time. I took a deep breath, and went to the front door again.
She was out there, looking a little impatient. Thinking he was taking too long? Waiting for a signal? It would probably be some sequence of taps on the front door. No way to know what it was. But that was okay. Keeping my eye to the lens, I rapped sharply, twice.
It galvanized her. She came away from the wall, hands going inside her coat for something. As she reached for the doorknob I put one ro
und through the door about chest-high.
It hit her square in the sternum, lifted her, slammed her back against the opposite wall. Her right hand came out of her coat with a gun looking exactly like Comfort's. The impact with the wall knocked it loose and it bounced on the carpet. She started to reach for it again and I angled the gun down and fired four more rounds. It wasn't as noisy as I expected. There was some sort of silencer on the pistol, I was to discover, so most of the sound came from the lead ripping through the wood of the door.
Outside, each slug delivered a nasty spray of splinters that tore at her as well as the lead. One of the bullets went into the wall beside her head. The other three hit her at various places, doing a great deal of damage each time. She slumped over.
I had bitten the inside of my cheek. It hurt like hell. Feeling slightly numb, I noticed a brass casing at my feet. Shell casing? I picked it up, saw it was a whole bullet, a .55, I think. I had no idea what I'd done to make it eject an intact round. But I saw why the bullets had hit her so hard, caused so much damage, yet hadn't punched right through her into the wall. It was a hollow-point round. The slugs must have mushroomed when they hit the door, so by the time they hit her they must have been great, wide, irregular masses of hot metal. I winced at the image. Killing this person I didn't know did not exhilarate me. But she was the one who came hunting.
I jerked the door open. Nobody had stepped out in the hall to investigate the noise. The Othello's soundproofing was first-rate. I kicked her weapon through the open door, then grabbed her by the back of her coat and pulled her inside the room. She was deadweight, making no move at all. I hoped that meant she was as dead as Izzy Comfort.
The hall was sprayed with bright red blood. Nothing I could do about that. It didn't affect my plans, anyway. I'd be happier if no one called the front desk about spilled paint for the next fifteen, twenty minutes or so, but it wasn't vital to my plan.
My plan? Essentially, confuse the trail. Make it hard to figure out what happened here, with two corpses and a torture victim. Get out of the way, and maybe, maybe I'd have a shot at maintaining I hadn't been here at all when all the shit hit the fan.