The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  “I’ll continue for you,” I say. “You want me to deliver Jerome Stiles to you. You’re just about to hand me a card with a private phone number that is not to be shared around.”

  Velázquez blinks, surprised.

  “I am psychic,” I tell him.

  After a dry chuckle, Velázquez continues, “Please understand, this is no ordinary situation. We’re not talking about an ordinary man. Jerome Stiles’s knowledge goes beyond that of anyone else we’re aware of. His value to our country is enormous. Unfortunately his sense of loyalty does not seem to extend beyond himself.”

  Velázquez pauses to deliver a steely gaze. “Are you aware that Stiles has followed every detail of your life and your sister’s, since birth?”

  “And before,” I reply. “What I don’t know is why.”

  “No one knows that,” says Velázquez, cold-eyed. “Stiles works almost entirely alone and keeps no written records. He has neither family nor friends. What we do know is that Jerome Stiles—”

  “Cut the crap,” I interrupt. “His name isn’t Stiles, just as yours isn’t Velázquez. All I want to know is, how many others are out there? Others like myself and my sister? And I want to know why. If you can’t tell me that, I’ve absolutely no reason to talk to you.”

  Velázquez leans slightly toward me. “Where there are no written records, there can be no certainty. But it appears there were originally some sixty or seventy others. When—”

  “Sixty or seventy?” I say, disturbing the sleepers/smokers.

  “That’s what we believe.”

  “You said were,” I press. “Why were?”

  “I’m afraid that the number has dropped quite dramatically over the years,” says Velázquez. “We believe that he is culling genotypes.”

  “Culling genotypes,” I repeat. “I think you mean he is murdering his own children.”

  Velázquez gazes at me neutrally.

  “Tell me about Regis Labs,” I say.

  “Regis Labs conducted a very early pilot program in human artificial insemination, funded in part by the US government. Stiles—Dobbins, if you prefer—extended invitations to some of the most prominent academicians of that time, including of course your own mother. He screened both male and female candidates, but with the males it seems to have been an empty gesture. From the beginning, Dobbins’s interest was the propagation of his own DNA.”

  “Why?”

  “No one knows. There’s very little information about Tim Dobbins. Not even his age. I’ve seen photos of him taken in 1950, and I’ve seen photos taken of him last week, and there’s not much difference. But time’s got to be running out for him. He’s behaving erratically. The people who’ve worked with him in the past are very uneasy.”

  Velázquez looks around before continuing, “Stiles has something very specific in mind for you and your sister, Mr. Mancer. Don’t ask me what because I don’t know—but he’s certainly taken a lot of trouble on your behalves. That’s why you’re being watched so closely now, by all the parties involved. May I ask you something?”

  “Ask.”

  “Why China? What brought you and your sister here?”

  “Happenstance,” I reply. “A friend of ours signed up for a teaching program. My sister followed suit.”

  “Interesting,” says Velázquez. “The reason I say ‘interesting’ is that all your remaining siblings are now on their way here.”

  I gaze at him questioningly.

  “Those not already in China,” continues Velázquez, “are preparing to come, all for different reasons. We’re certain there has been no communication among any of the parties. Curious, don’t you think?”

  I sink a little deeper into my seat, recalling a rainy day in Kunming and an encounter with myself in epaulets. I’m not sure that curious covers it. China’s the endgame all right. I’m no clearer than before as to what game we’re talking about. But it ends here in China.

  “How many of us are left?” I mutter.

  “Nine. There were six sets of twins in your peer group. You and your sister are the only pair remaining. Only one week ago, there was a murder-suicide involving the last remaining fraternals. We believe it to be an actual murder-suicide. This may be a little disturbing to hear,” says Velázquez, “but there is a very high incidence of violence in your group. Nineteen have been charged with domestic violence. Six have murdered a family member.”

  Perfect. Everyone is either dead or en route to China with murder in their hearts for the kinfolk.

  At least I know that Timothy Dobbins had nothing to do with luring the Mancer twins to this country. If anything, he worked overtime to get us out of here. Maybe it was a case of bad timing, I consider. Lil and I may have come earlier than expected and gotten tangled up in someone-or-other’s depopulation program. That time seems now to have passed. But why here, why now? Could it be that the Communist takeover a half-century ago interrupted a pet Timothy Dobbins project that now requires… completion?

  “What’s in this for you?” I ask Velázquez. “Why do you want Dobbins all to yourself?”

  The man seated next to me takes his time formulating an answer. Finally he says, “Forgive me, but I must answer your question thoughtfully. There’s no point in further complicating your situation with information that can’t help you. Let me just say that Dobbins is in serious trouble, and so is anyone in whom he has confided. It’s believed that he has confided in you, Mr. Mancer, and it is further supposed that you have confided in me. We must both, therefore, play our cards very carefully. If I may say so, you yourself are in no position to bargain with any of the players involved. I believe that I am. Unfortunately the only thing that either of us can possibly use for leverage at this point is Dobbins himself. Either we gain possession of Timothy Dobbins, or soon we will have no place to stand.”

  “And Agent Barnes?” I ask.

  “Unfortunately Agent Barnes is not to be trusted.”

  At last, a rational statement.

  I extend my hand. “I think this is where you hand me a phone number and wish me a lot of luck.”

  “It’s written backward,” says Velázquez, producing a small scrap of paper. “A primitive device, I know, but we do what we can. And I do wish you luck.”

  Rising, Raul Velázquez walks away into the night.

  I gaze unhappily at the backward phone number for a moment before tucking the card into my wallet. Right beside the one received from Agent Truth Guy, along with various other numbers I’ll never dial.

  Life is so whatever.

  Re-opening my ironclad journal with a sigh, I record the date at the top of a fresh page—and now I stare at that date.

  March fourth, 2003.

  Hmmm. I’m pretty sure that makes yesterday March third, 2003, also known in some circles as New Age Groundhog Day. The Three-three-three. My eyes roll listlessly as I recall Tree’s four unheard messages on the American Teacher’s Telephone. I may have let something slip my mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Below Lil’s balcony, the basketball courts glisten with the day’s third rain. I’ve spent this entire Sunday in Lil’s bathrobe, sitting unshaven at the American Teacher’s Computer, a pilled acrylic blanket wrapped around my legs. In early March, we have back-tracked to midwinter.

  “It wasn’t our time yet.” That’s what Tree said about the Three-three-three.

  I told her that was my feeling, too.

  “I tried to find your energy,” she told me yesterday over Korean barbeque, “but I hit a firewall. I saw you surrounded by—I don’t know what it was. Almost like an electrified fence. I never did find you.”

  “Mmm,” I replied. It was something to say.

  “We were met,” said Tree. “Every time you attempt to do something powerful, you are met by the Opponent, and we were met. Don’t worry about it. Another day’s coming, and we’ll be ready. Four-four-four, Five-five-five, whenever it is.”

  I told her that was my feeling, too.

 
If not for the rain, I’d have run a load of laundry through Lil’s refrigerator/clothes-washer this morning. The first and only time I’ve felt practically Chinese was when I hung my first load of wash on the balcony. There are metal pipes along the ceiling over which you hook your clothes-hangers with the aid of this odd broomstick-looking thing. My above-dumpster flat has one, too. I asked Bellamy what it was for. He could’ve really sent me up. Ah, this Chinese rectum device. Wow. Really?

  These people hang their wash everywhere—trees, street signs, fences. Stand still long enough, and they’ll hang it on you. But they’re at their best decorating balconies. On a windy day, you can go through the bushes beneath the tenements and find anything you want. Never have to buy clothes in this country.

  Hong Kong just passed an ordinance against attaching aluminum clotheslines to your windowsill. You buy them at the supermarket. They unfold and unfold till you say wow I can hang everything I own on this thing. Problem is, wet clothes are heavy, so, with the aid of a gust of wind, they tend to break away and start laundry avalanches that can take out a city block. Here’s poor Chen Chan Chang walking along the lu, evening paper beneath his arm, and—what’s that curious sound? Chen’s final worldly act is to look up into the maw of fifty-seven floors of poly-cotton. All of which is a way of not saying what’s really on my mind.

  Ana called to say she’s tired, so let’s not do anything tonight after all. For this I’ve waited four days. She wouldn’t even book our next date. I’ll call you, she said.

  I’d really like to check another book out of the library.

  My hand goes to my throat where the moldavite pendant should be. I guess somewhere between the fracas on the turquoise sofa and the fray on the satiny bed, it came off my neck. I’ll do well to get that little green stone back before Tree finds out. Anyway you measure a good sexual experience by how long it takes to find everything you’d been wearing. If it’s four days before you have both your shoes, you know you probably had a really swell time.

  I wish I could stop thinking about just how swell. That blue/green-eyed woman has got me so tore open that I keep checking to see if I still have my entire transverse colon. It’s probably all this newly discovered emotional availability that’s got me spooked. Whatever, there’s not one hell of a lot I can do about it except wait until Ana Manguella decides to pick up the phone. Four-four-four, Five-five-five, whenever.

  Tree won’t admit it, but she’s really shook about the Three-three-three. Girl had her head loaded all wrong. Absolutely nothing happened on March third, and now she’s saying she can’t trust her intuition. Hell, I knew that all along. “I feel the need for a serious retreat,” she said as we finished the last of yesterday’s barbeque. “I need to get out of my apartment, out of this city, just get out of my head for a while. I’ve asked my school for two weeks off, and I think they’re going to give it to me.”

  “And go where?” I asked.

  She smiled dimly. “Mr. Xu has been telling me about China’s seven sacred mountains. I’m reading about them online. Any one of them would be great. What I’d really like to do is make a pilgrimage to all seven.”

  You might want to stick with one, Tree. Pilgrims walk up China’s sacred mountains.

  Meanwhile I needn’t expect any fresh pages from Truman/whomever. Tree is burning them as fast as they come.

  “I can’t trust anything I’m getting anymore,” said Tree. “I’ve gotten off-track somehow.”

  “Tree,” I said, “I think you can, like, really trust these pages.”

  I’m, like, really starting to talk like Itsy.

  Tree shook her head. “I took a close look at the last page that came through. I sat down and traced the handwriting with my finger and let that guide me back to the mind that created it and—Julian, that novel is not from who we thought.”

  I blinked, waiting.

  “I followed that handwriting back to an old friend of ours.”

  “What’s so bad about an old friend?” I said. “I’ve never been all that attached to Truman, if you really—”

  She shook her head again. “This is an old friend I was really hoping not to see again anytime soon, least of all now.”

  “Could have been something you ate,” I suggested.

  “I burned the page,” said Tree, “and I burned the two that came after it. If another one comes tonight, I’ll burn that, too.”

  “You’re burning my Pulitzer,” I informed her calmly.

  “Jules. If you have a Pulitzer in you, it will come out. You do not have to bring it in from some other galaxy, and I will not jeopardize our work for the sake of your vanity.”

  Girl’s right. She has gotten off-track. I’m not sure all seven sacred mountains will do it. Then again, that last page from Truman was a bit odd. Maybe he’s finally figured out how to order martinis up there.

  My hand keeps going to my throat. I never realized how much I’ve depended on that ugly interstellar road-kill for… whatever I’m depending on it for. My abiding sense of the absurd, I suppose. Isn’t much of a neck-warmer.

  Here on Lil’s computer is an article that says Operation Iraqi Freedom has already cost us twenty-five million gallons of jet fuel and sixty-five million gallons of gasoline. All I can say is, if we didn’t go over there to grab their oil, we might begin to give it some little thought. Otherwise it may be necessary to borrow a gallon-can to get back home.

  China’s operation against the deadly SARS virus, meanwhile, is going as one might reasonably expect. Rumors have people dropping like flies on city streets, especially here in Guangdong Province where the disease first emerged. The Chinese government is still completely mum despite growing protests from the World Health Organization. Here at Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence, they’re swabbing everything in sight. All day Friday, there was a huge cauldron of black medicinal tea simmering in the courtyard, beside it a ladle and a stack of nested cellophane cups. I even saw a bar of soap in one of the boys’ restrooms. Next thing you know, they’ll have toilet paper.

  I also found a couple of articles about ma huang this morning. Seems it’s very, very, very bad for you, and what isn’t that’s even remotely enjoyable? The article calls it ephedra, labels it “herbal speed,” and cautions chubby Americans not to get strung out on the stuff or they may find their knees speaking to each other in Brazilian Portuguese. A word to the wise is sufficient.

  The rest of us will require a little more information.

  Lil paid me a visit last night. I was lucid dreaming that I was sitting atop the pyramid in downtown Memphis—it’s not as sharp as you might imagine—when Lil appeared mid-air with angel wings. She was wearing all white. “You totally blew the Three-three-three,” she said.

  “I really like the little harp,” I replied. “Do you take requests at all?”

  “Do you have any fucking idea,” said Lil, fluttering furiously, “of the enormity of what you have just undone?”

  “Tree says it wasn’t our time.”

  “It wasn’t our time because you were too busy getting your brains fucked out by that woman. Who is she anyway?”

  “Taller than Adrian, for one thing,” I replied. “Beyond that, she’s none of your business.”

  “Does she know about our work?” demanded Lil. “She does, doesn’t she?”

  “What work, Lillian? Nothing happened on the Three-three-three.”

  “And why was that, Julian? I’d really like to know. I’d also like to hear how you intend to make up for this.”

  “I’ve had enough of your abuse. I’m waking up.”

  “Don’t you dare. How else am I supposed to talk to you? You never meet me in the glow anymore.”

  I adjusted my posture. The point of the pyramid was a little sharp.

  Fluttering a little closer, Lil said, “Tell me if this sounds the least bit strange to you. A beautiful young woman suddenly appears in your life and throws herself at your dick—”

  “It was more of a soft lo
b.”

  “—just before the Three-three-three.”

  “That was a coincidence.”

  “Right,” said Lillian. “I suppose it was also a coincidence that she snatched your moldavite?”

  My hand went to my throat. “It fell off.”

  “And now that we’ve missed the Three-three-three, she’s suddenly dropping you.”

  My voice became a growl. “You have never been able to deal with my relationships.”

  “That woman is working for the other fucking side, Julian.”

  “It’s been so nice talking to you, dearest.”

  “You get that moldavite back. You hear me?”

  “I’m waking up.”

  Lil fluttered to within an inch of my nose. “Do, Julian. Do wake up. That would be really swell for Tree and me because we’re just a little bit tired of cleaning up behind you.”

  A burst of sunlight knifes though the gap in Lillian’s curtains. I think the rain has stopped again. I don’t know what this spell of damp weather is about, but I can tell you it plays hell with knitting bones. There’s an outbreak of black mold on the ceiling of the American Teacher’s Bathroom that’s threatening to make SARS look like a fingernail fungus. Thought you’d want to know. At least my menacing little red mushrooms are regenerating. They’ve grown two inches the past two days. Meanwhile I’m covering the top of the aquarium with a grill of hardware cloth topped by a sauce pan. Rodent extrusion device.

  Unable to bear this chair a moment longer, I rise and the acrylic blanket pools at my ankles, causing electric sparks all about the groin area. I needed that. Stepping around the American Teacher’s Mattress, I throw open the door to the balcony and gaze out at the fracturing cloud cover.

  Marilyn caught me yesterday weaving in the general direction of Studebaker Supermarket. It was a straightforward conversation as I reconstruct it. Nothing at all about armpit sex or German-made number-two pencils—I’ve found a stationer in Hong Kong who carries them. Afterward I walked away with the troubling realization that I’d just agreed to have dinner with Marilyn tomorrow night in Shikou. Whatever. She’s paying.