Nest of Worlds

by Marek S. Huberath

  “In barracks B3,” Jesse reported in a drawl, “we have this individual named Macura. An older worker, strong as an ox.”

  Barracks B3 . . . That was his, Jaspers thought. Where in the dim light of a night lamp he once read a book about a dying world.

  At what point had he left off reading? In what place had he stopped the flow of time for those two good but bickering sisters, Ozza and Hobeth?

  I should return to that book someday, he thought, making himself a promise that he knew he wouldn’t keep.

  “Macura has a sadistic streak; he likes to torment his fellow workers,” said Jesse. “Because of him there are many bruises, injuries. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  “Haven’t you read Methodology of Social Work for Guards?”

  “Of course . . .”

  He obviously didn’t read it, Jaspers thought.

  “That kind of worker is indispensable to the collective,” he said. “He substitutes for you at work. He keeps the hall obedient. Intervention by a guard becomes unnecessary when the workers keep themselves in line. You could reward Macura, but you don’t need to.”

  “He is an animal, so primitive.”

  “That is also the rule. Primitive, but clever. Such a worker will never advance. He is content with the sense of his momentary power over others. He knows whom to bow to, and whom he can use his fists on.”

  Jesse had no more questions, so Jaspers made a wave of dismissal, indicating that he had other matters to attend to.

  The intellectual level of this Macura character, what did it matter? If he were smarter, he would occupy a higher rung on the ladder. It was obvious that a guard had more brains than a worker. What was Jesse’s problem? If the man had done his homework and read the textbook, Jaspers thought, I wouldn’t have to spend my time giving him instruction.

  97

  Daphne dragged herself off the settee. The part about Heather changed her mind about Jaspers: she disliked him. Around the driver’s seat were empty beer cans, Lone Sail. They rattled whenever the truck hit a bump. Gary was driving, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the road. He was pale, covered with sweat. He’d had a lot of beer. Fuzzy-headed, he drove slowly, with care.

  There was the Tolz tollgate already: the barrier made of bent metal pipe. It was in three colors once, but now the paint had fallen off and the color was only rust. Behind the barrier stood a small, concrete building with a slanted Tolz on a wooden sign.

  The truck stopped. From the building came a border guard and turned a winch to raise the barrier. Gary pulled into a parking area, where a trailer waited, with the colors of Emigrant, emptied of someone’s possessions. It didn’t take long for the crew there to unhitch the trailer that contained the Bolyas’ belongings and attach the empty trailer.

  He didn’t see Spig. He had thought the man would come to say good-bye, but there was no sign of him. Probably too caught up with the entry red tape.

  The truck turned and took the road back.

  98

  Gary, eyes shut, sat slumped in the passenger’s seat. Daphne drove.

  “That whole story, it shows how a guy can become a shit when he gets too caught up in his career. He abandoned that woman.” She glanced at her colleague, who was trying to sleep. “Did you get that far in the book?”

  “Abandoned? As a guard, he can’t have such a union. Besides he was stationed in another hall.”

  “But that was the reason . . .” Daphne needed to discuss this. “He takes off her clothes, screws her, and then she no longer pleases him.”

  “That wasn’t in the book. He was just sweet on her.”

  “It first showed when they met after work and she dressed differently.”

  “After work? That’s impossible. People go back to the barracks and hit the sack.”

  “They arranged to get off early a few hours and went to the canteen. And she put on a skirt instead of her worker’s slacks. Then he saw that although the rest of her was thin, she was big in the hips, and her rear stuck out. That broke the bubble. Also, she didn’t have breasts, and her legs were too muscular. Her neck was all right, but the back of it was getting thick, and the features of her face were too big for her head. She had nice eyes, but her nostrils . . .”

  “They didn’t meet after he became a guard.”

  “It happened while he was still a Monitor. And her voice, it was like a sheep bleating. So Jaspers decided she was an idiot.” Daphne was incensed, as if Gary had to answer for the character’s behavior.

  “What Jaspers? What are you talking about, woman?” Gary looked at her in amazement. “Cedar. The guy’s name is Cedar.”

  Daphne turned, confused.

  “Better watch the road,” he said. “There’s fog up ahead. And on the left, a new blot.”

  She steered away from the attraction of the black smear.

  “Jaspers,” he went on, “is a common criminal. Pathologically aggressive. He permanently crippled his barracks mate, Crooks. Broke his shins. Out of envy for his rank of Monitor, they decided. Jaspers is rotting in some penal division of the factory. Cedar was the one who became a guard.”

  “And Heather, what will happen to her?” Daphne felt close to the heroine. Curiously, they had similar builds, similar problems with their builds.

  “There’s been no Heather yet.”

  “She works on the assembly line.”

  “It’s Cynthia who works on the assembly line. She’s tall, graceful, has thick, curly hair. You have to like Cynthia.” He spoke with grim satisfaction. “Cedar is trying to figure out a way to make her Secretary of the barracks, then a guard. I don’t think he has a chance with her. Anyway she’s moving to Lauhl soon.”

  99

  Zef’s next note:

  Playing with the numbers. Let’s take the Significant Names. There are, in this order, 144, 1,728, 20,736, and 248,832, and they come in groups of 9, 27, 81, and 243. Too much, right? You see no pattern, not at first.

  But all you need is a handheld calculator.

  The number of Names = 144 x 12(n-1), where n is the degree of the world’s nestedness.

  Behind this relation may lie something fundamental. A pity I can’t talk to Dave.

  Zef’s notes, Gavein realized, contained an element of theater. The young man liked to telescope the account of his reasoning, give his conclusions abruptly, then hold forth on them like a philosopher.

  100

  That morning, Gavein demanded that Dr. Nott operate on Ra Mahleiné immediately.

  “Your wife has only a few days to live.”

  “She can rise from her chair, her hair has stopped falling out, and she even has a tan.”

  “It’s a blip on the screen of nature, Dave, a fluctuation. If you could look inside her”—Nott’s wattle wagged—” you’d find few organs free of metastases. It makes no sense, none, to operate.”

  “But you haven’t looked inside her yourself,” he argued. “You haven’t opened her up.”

  Nott was implacable. “I’ve seen. Two days ago we did an MRI. One hundred and forty-four sections. Do you know how much that cost the government of Davabel?”

  “Less than to arm one soldier.”

  “A little less. But that’s beside the point.” She waved a hand. “In practically every section you can see the damned things growing . . .”

  They stopped, because Ra Mahleiné entered. In a flannel blouse and sleek slacks, and with her tan, she was in good form, not looking like a woman terminally ill. True, she walked slowly and tried not to bend, so it wouldn’t get dark before her eyes.

  “You see, Dave,” Dr. Nott whispered.

  Ra Mahleiné said, “Some official type has come with the supply van. He claims to be the attorney general. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “It’s Fernandez,” said Dr. Nott. “He’s conducting an investigation into the m
atter of those guardsmen.”

  Is an epidemic of death in Davabel necessary, Gavein wondered, for Ra Mahleiné to live? To preserve some kind of balance in nature, has one fluctuation given rise to an equal but opposite fluctuation . . . ? If so, she has every right to live. I don’t regret the thousands—they died natural deaths, didn’t they, fulfilling a condition of nature, however unusual. Davabel murdered Ra Mahleiné on its ship, so let it now redeem her life.

  He chuckled. “The attorney general himself asks if I will see him? Being Death has its advantages.”

  Fernandez was a fairly young man, with a large, heavy head that dipped forward. He looked at you from under his brows with the mournful gaze of an ox. The wide skull showed a glistening bald spot framed with short dark hair combed back. His thick features were accented by a closely trimmed mustache. In greeting, he held out a large, sweaty hand.

  Gavein shook his hand, discreetly wiped his hand on his pants, and nodded for everyone to sit, but Fernandez remained standing. He had an unpleasant way of speaking, positioning himself behind you and observing you over your shoulder. Gavein supposed this was out of professional habit.

  “You can guess why I came . . . ,” Fernandez began, shifting the burden of the conversation to him, the other person, also a tactic of the trade. He spoke quietly and clearly, perhaps because his words were off the record.

  “You tell me,” returned Gavein. He hated these police ploys. Let the man go to a little trouble.

  Fernandez hesitated. “All right. It concerns the murder of the residents of this house. That is . . .” From a transparent attaché case he took out one of the documents. “Edda Eisler, R, the owner; Myrna Patricks, R; Anabel de Grouvert, B; Fatima and Massmoudieh Hougassian, no category; and Brenda Wilcox, also no category.”

  “And?” Gavein gave him a searching look.

  “Our investigation is also looking into the death of Dr. Yullius Saalstein, B, an employee of the DS,” the attorney read. “But you can see for yourself.” He handed Gavein the document. Where Fernandez had touched the attaché case, it was wet and slippery, like the skin of a carp. He held the case in a different place, but the sides bent and the zipper stuck. He put it on the sofa and pulled out one of the pages. It was a list of names of the Guard’s brigade: Sergeant Gavril Kurys, B; Corporal Hans Jura, R; and privates Benter Crain, G; Manuelo Bobrov, G; Frank Kratz, R; Eberhardt Ziaia, G; Constantine Dell, R. Someone was missing.

  “In that brigade there was another man, short, pudgy . . . They called him Olsen.”

  “You’re sure that a person of that name was in the brigade?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “In the Guard there is only one man with that name, Private Vandy Olsen, distinguished with a medal for saving a burning armed transporter and its badly injured crew. We have reason to believe that he didn’t take part in the massacre.”

  “But he belongs to the brigade?”

  “Yes.”

  “All you need to do is check Kurys’s morning report.”

  “It wasn’t made. They left without it.”

  “That’s a breach.”

  “You are right. But we cannot place the dead under arrest.”

  “And the statements of the accused?”

  “There are no statements. The men all burned before they could give a deposition. Kurys survived, true, but has not regained consciousness. He’s in a neurological clinic now. His injuries are serious and probably permanent.”

  “Olsen lives, and you are protecting him? The others are outside your jurisdiction now.”

  “You insult me,” said Fernandez quietly.

  The remark was part of the game, and that is how Gavein took it.

  “I state in front of witnesses”—Gavein indicated Dr. Nott and Ra Mahleiné with a nod—“that among the murderers was a man named Olsen. One of the soldiers spoke his name. And the brigade numbered eight men, not seven. Both Lorraine and my wife have testified to that.”

  This concluded the interview with the attorney general.

  How many more pointless exchanges will there be? Gavein wondered.

  Every morning the ritual was the same: trucks leaving with lights flashing, then a Davabel breakfast: cottage cheese, an egg, ham, ketchup.

  Ra Mahleiné, heavily medicated by Dr. Nott, felt no pain. After breakfast, she would sit in the armchair in front of the house and do a little knitting; Lorraine hunkered next to her. Gavein brought out another armchair and set it on the sidewalk. The days were almost balmy now. All was still and pleasant on the deserted street. Overhead, the exploding helicopter cast shadows. A ball of fire speckled with dozens of fragments, it paled slowly in the sky. Its crew was long dead.

  Gavein opened the book.

  101

  I write the numbers of the nested worlds—3, 5, 8, 13—but can’t find a formula for them. A tough froze! Without the 8, they would all be odd numbers, increasing. But that’s not much of a pattern; it doesn’t have the precision of the others. If you put 7 or 11 in the place of the 8, you have a sequence of primes, but then there’s no 2. I don’t know.

  Finally a little humility in that redhead, thought Gavein.

  * * *

  In the Bolyas’ old apartment several creeps moved in, the kind who shaved their heads. They usually wore green tunics with red epaulets. Two girls and three guys, dividing the rent among them equally. Daphne was suspicious. She counted the dozens of beer cans thrown in the garbage. The cans were neatly stuffed into plastic bags, but one time squirrels tore open a bag, and they spilled out. The people drank quietly, without uproars.

  Gary and Daphne, on the other hand, threw a party with much stamping of feet and bottles of port. The occasion was the publication in a local paper of Daphne’s article on what movers did: two whole columns of text. A bottle was overturned, and port got into the upholstery of the divan. Worse, the tub drain clogged and water seeped through the ceiling of the creeps below. An apology had to be made.

  The girl who opened the door was thin as a rail. An even line of straight hair fell over half her face; the other hemisphere of her skull was shaved to a brushlike stubble. Her green tunic ended at mid-thigh, and her legs were bare.

  The explanation Gary launched into became increasingly awkward.

  When he finished, the girl said, “I’m Margot.”

  He realized he hadn’t introduced himself. He did.

  “No problem with the water,” she said. “We’re going to be painting anyway. But you won’t be doing that again, right?”

  They exchanged phone numbers: simpler to call than walk down.

  The new neighbors were OK.

  One afternoon he and Daphne returned from the market. (Although Gary drove a truck, he didn’t own a vehicle privately; for marketing he had to use mass transit.) Furniture was being delivered to the people below. The three guys in green tunics struggled with the heavy pieces; the girls carried the lighter things: stools, flowerpots.

  Gary helped them unload a large wooden table with a broken corner. The ungainly piece had been fitted into the van with difficulty, and getting it out wasn’t easy either. More gashes were added in the process.

  Daphne looked at the table, at the inside of the van, and at the men doing the lifting. “Nothing to worry about,” she told them. “You can hide that with a little shoe polish.”

  Gary panted under the weight of the table.

  “Nice table,” Daphne said to Margot. “It’ll be just right for the dining room.”

  “I got it at Morley’s. It was on sale, because it’s damaged.”

  The other woman, Jutta, dropped a flowerpot with a ficus, and soil fell out. Swearing, she gathered the broken pieces and the soil and threw them in the garbage can. She stuffed the ficus in too, breaking its stalks.

  “Fucking plant,” she said, out of breath. Her faded jeans were tight on her po
werful thighs. When she bent over, the pants seemed close to splitting open. Gary could practically hear the seams rip. But the pants held.

  I’ve calculated the time of staying in a Land for the world of Linda and Jack (where n = 4). It’s 3 8/9 years, or 1,419 days. Another piece in the puzzle.

  102

  Daphne stepped out of the bath and put on a gray bathrobe. Its color went with her hair, which she wrapped in a striped towel.

  Even the hot water hasn’t relaxed her, Gary thought, seeing her frown.

  She fell into an armchair. Her few physical charms showed through the bathrobe. Her cleavage was covered with freckles. Gary handed her a beer.

  She choked on the first swallow. But with the second, her gaze steadied.

  “Sometimes, Gary, you’re as self-possessed as a corpse,” she said.

  “Huh?” He blinked, with the pink irises of an albino.

  “You didn’t say a word when you were carrying the Bolyas’ table.”

  “Ah . . . right.” He was slow. “I thought so.”

  “No doubt about it. I saw the manufacturer’s mark.” Her dark eyes fixed on Gary.

  “What does this mean?”

  “I thought about that in the tub. The green tunics are mafia. They kill the people who move and take their things, and the border guards of Tolz look the other way. There’s probably an accomplice among the guards.”

  “It makes no sense. Why keep the evidence?”

  “Greed.”

  “If you’re right, this is awful. We should tell the police.”

  103

  The police didn’t take Daphne’s story very seriously.

  For the next job, Gary was unable to park his rig in front of the building: there was a new red Amido there. Jutta and Margot were washing the car. Sudsy water ran along the gutter.

  It was the Bolyas’ Amido, down to the broken headlight, broken turn signal, and chipped paint.