A Fire in the Sun

by George Alec Effinger

  Laila smiled. "Then you want something really bad, right?"

  "The worst," I said.

  She bustled out from behind her counter and went to the locked door in the rear of the shop. "I don't keep merchandise like that out," she explained as she dug in a pocket for her keys. Actually, they were on a long, green plastic necklace around her neck. "I don't sell Proxy Hell moddies to kids."

  "Keys are around your neck."

  "Oh thanks, dear." She unlocked the door and turned to look at me. "Be right back." She was gone a minute or two, and she returned with a small brown cardboard box.

  There were three moddies in the box, all plain, gray plastic, all without manufacturer's labels. These were bootleg modules, dangerous to wear. Regular commercial moddies were carefully recorded or programmed, and all extraneous signals were removed. You gambled when you wore an underground moddy. Sometimes bootlegs were "rough," and when you popped them out, you found they'd caused major brain damage.

  Laila had stuck handwritten labels on the moddies in the box. "How about infectious granuloma?" she asked.

  I considered it for a moment, but decided that it was too much like what Abu Adil had been wearing when I'd first met him. "No," I said.

  "Okay," said Laila, pushing the moddies around with her long, crooked forefinger. Cholecystitis?"

  "What's that?"

  ''Don't have any idea."

  "What's the third one?"

  Laila held it up and read the label. "D Syndrome."

  I shivered. I'd heard about that. It's some kind of awful nerve degeneration, a disease caused by slow viruses. The patient first suffers gaps in both long- and short-term memories. The viruses continue to eat away at the nervous system until the patient collapses, staring and stupid, bedridden and in terrible agony. Finally, in the last stages, he dies when his body forgets how to breathe or keep its heart beating. "How much for this?" I asked.

  "Fifty kiam," she said. She looked up slowly into my eyes and grinned. The few teeth she still had were black stumps, and the effect was grotesquely ugly. "You pay extra 'cause it's a hard-to-get item."

  "All right," I said. I paid her and stuffed the D Syndrome moddy in my pocket. Then I tried to get out of Laila's shop.

  "You know," she said, putting her clawlike hand on my arm, "my lover is taking me to the opera tonight. All of Rouen will see us together!"

  I pulled myself away and hurried out the door. "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful," I muttered.

  During the long drive out to Abu Adil's estate, I thought about recent events. If Kmuzu were right, then the fire had been started by Umm Saad's son. I didn't think that young Saad had acted on his own. Yet Umar had assured me that neither he nor Abu Adil still employed Umm Saad. He had flatly invited me to dispose of her, if I found her too irritating. Then if Umm Saad wasn't getting her orders direct from Abu Adil, why had she decided suddenly to take things into her own hands?

  And Jawarski. Had he taken a few potshots at me because he didn't like my looks, or because Hajjar had let Abu Adil know that I was nosing around after the Phoenix File? Or were there even more sinister connections that I hadn't yet discovered? At this point, I didn't dare trust Saied or even Kmuzu. Morgan was the only other person who had my confidence, and I had to admit that there really wasn't any good reason to trust him, either. He just reminded me of the way I used to be, before I'd gone to work changing a corrupt system from within.

  That, by the way, was my current rationalization for what I was doing, the easy life I was leading. I suppose the bitter truth was that I didn't have the guts to face Friedlander Bey's wrath, or the heart to turn my back on his money. I told myself that I was using my position deep in the pits of dishonor to help the less fortunate. It didn't really shut up my guilty conscience.

  As I drove, the guilt and loneliness amounted almost to desperation, and are probably to blame for the tactical error that came next. Maybe I should have had more faith in Saied or Kmuzu. I could at least have brought one of the Stones That Speak with me. Instead, I was counting on my own cleverness to see me through a confrontation with Abu Adil. After all, I did have two separate plans: First, I thought I might try bribing him with the D Syndrome moddy; and second, if he didn't take to buttering up, my fallback position consisted of hitting him between the eyes with my full knowledge of what he was up to.

  Well, hell, it sounded like a great idea at the time.

  The guard at Abu Adil's gate recognized me and passed me through, although Kamal, the butler, demanded to know what I wanted. "I've brought a gift for Shaykh Reda," I said. "It's urgent that I talk with him."

  He wouldn't let me leave the foyer. "Wait here," he said with a sneer. "I will see if it is permitted."

  "The passive voice should be avoided," I said. He didn't get it.

  He went all the way down to Abu Adil's office, and came all the way back with the same contemptuous look on his face. "I'm to bring you to my master," he said. It sounded like it broke his heart to accommodate me.

  He led me into one of Abu Adil's offices, not the same one I'd seen on my first visit with Shaknahyi. A sweet smell, maybe incense, filled the air. There were framed prints of European art masterpieces on the walls, and I heard a recording of Umm Khalthoum playing softly.

  The great man himself was sitting in a comfortable armchair, with a beautifully embroidered blanket over his legs. His head lolled back against the back of the chair, and his eyes were closed. His hands were laid flat on his knees, and they trembled.

  Umar Abdul-Qawy was there, of course, and he didn't look happy to see me. He nodded to me and put one finger to his lips. I guessed this was a signal not to mention any of the things he'd discussed with me concerning his plans to unseat Abu Adil and rule the old shaykh's empire in his place. That wasn't why I was here. I had more important things to worry about than Umar's half-assed power struggle.

  "I have the honor to wish Shaykh Reda good afternoon," I said.

  "May Allah make the afternoon prosperous to you," said Umar.

  We'll see, I thought. "I beg to present the noble shaykh with this small gift."

  Umar made a small gesture, the little flick of the hand a lordly king uses to command a peasant to approach. I wanted to stuff the moddy down his fat throat. "What is it?" he asked.

  I said nothing. I just gave it to him. Umar turned it over in his hand a few times. Then he looked up at me. "You are more clever than I gave you credit," he said. "My master will be greatly pleased."

  "I hope he doesn't already have this module."

  "No, no." He placed it on Abu Adil's lap, but the old man made no move to examine it. Umar studied me thoughtfully. "I would offer you something in return, although I'm certain you would be courteous enough to refuse."

  "Try me," I said. "I'd like a little information."

  Umar frowned. "Your manners—"

  "They're terrible, I know, but what can I say? I'm just an ignorant beaneater from the Maghreb. Now, I seem to have uncovered all kinds of incriminating information about you and Shaykh Reda—about Friedlander Bey too, to be honest. I'm talking about this goddamn Phoenix File of yours." I waited to see Umar's reaction.

  It wasn't long in coming. "I'm afraid, Monsieur Audran, that I don't know what you're talking about. I suggest that your master may be engaged in highly illegal activities, and has attempted to shift the blame—"

  "Be silent." Umar and I both turned to stare at Reda Abu Adil, who had popped the Proxy Hell moddy he'd been wearing. Umar was badly shaken. This was the first time Abu Adil had seen fit to participate in a conversation. It seemed he wasn't just a senile, helpless figurehead. Without the cancer moddy chipped in, his face lost its slackness, and his eyes gained an intelligent fierceness.

  Abu Adil threw off the blanket and stood up from the chair. "Hasn't Friedlander Bey explained to you about the Phoenix File?" he demanded.

  "No, O Shaykh," I said. "It's something I learned of only today. He has kept the thing hidden from
me."

  "But you delved into matters that don't concern you." I was frightened by Abu Adil's intensity. Umar had never shown such passion or such strength of will. It was as if I were seeing Shaykh Reda's baraka, a different kind of personal magic than Papa's. The moddy of Abu Adil that Umar wore did not hint at the depth of the man. I supposed that no electronic device could hope to capture the nature of baraka. This answered Umar's claim that with the moddy he was the equal of Abu Adil. That was just self-delusion.

  "I think they concern me," I said. "Isn't my name in that file?"

  "Yes, I'm sure it is," said Abu Adil. "But you are placed highly enough that you stand only to benefit."

  "I'm thinking of my friends, who aren't so lucky."

  Umar laughed humorlessly. "You show your weakness again," he said. "Now you bleed for the dirt beneath your feet."

  "Every sun has its setting," I told him. "Maybe someday you'll find yourself slipping down in the Phoenix File ratings. Then you'll wish you'd never heard of it."

  "O Master," said Umar angrily, "have you not heard enough of this?"

  Abu Adil raised a weary hand. "Yes, Umar. I have no great love for Friedlander Bey, and even less for his creatures. Take him into the studio."

  Umar came toward me, a needle gun in his hand, and I backed away. I didn't know what he had in mind, but it wasn't going to be pleasant. "This way," he said. Under the circumstances, I did what he wanted.

  We left the office and walked down a connecting hallway, then climbed a stairway to the second floor. There was always an air of peace in this house. The light was filtered through wooden lattices over high windows, and sounds were muffled by thick rugs on the floors. I knew this serenity was an illusion. I knew I'd soon see Abu Adil's true nature.

  "In here," he said, opening a thick metal door. He had a strange, expectant expression on his face. I didn't like it at all.

  I went past him into a large soundproofed room. There was a bed, a chair, and a cart with some electronic equipment on it. The far wall was a single sheet of glass, and beyond it was a small control booth with banks of dials and readouts and switches. I knew what it was. Reda Abu Adil had a personality module recording studio in his home. It was like the hobbyist's ultimate dream.

  "Give me the gun," said Abu Adil.

  Umar passed the needle gun to his master, then left the soundproofed room. "I suppose you want to add me to your collection," I said. "I don't see why. My second-degree burns won't be all that entertaining." Abu Adil just stared at me with that fixed grin on his face. He made my skin crawl.

  A little while later, Umar returned. He had a long, thin metal rod, a pair of handcuffs, and a rope with a hook at one end. "Oh jeez," I said. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. I was truly afraid that they wanted to record more than just that.

  "Stand up straight," said Umar, walking around and around me. He reached out and removed the moddy and daddies I was wearing. "And whatever you do, don't duck your head. That's for your own good."

  "Thanks for your concern," I said. "I appreciate—" Umar raised the metal rod and brought it down across my right collarbone. I felt a knife-edge of pain shoot through me, and I cried out. He hit me on the other side, across the other collarbone. I heard the abrupt snapping of bone, and I fell to my knees.

  "This may hurt a little," said Abu Adil in the voice of a kindly old doctor.

  Umar began beating me on the back with the rod, once, twice, three times. I screamed. He struck me a few more times. "Try to stand up," he urged.

  "You're crazy," I gasped.

  "If you don't stand up, I'll use this on your face."

  I struggled to my feet again. My left arm hung uselessly. My back was a bleeding ruin. I realized I was breathing in shallow sobs.

  Umar paused and walked around me again, evaluating me. "His legs," said Abu Adil.

  "Yes, O Shaykh." The son of a bitch whipped the rod across my thighs, and I fell to the floor again. "Up," grunted Umar. "Up."

  He hit me where I lay, on my thighs and calves until they were dripping with blood too. "I'll get you," I said in a voice hoarse with agony. "I swear by the blessed Prophet, I'll get you."

  The beatings went on for a long time, until Umar had slowly and carefully worked over every part of me—except my head. Abu Adil had instructed him to spare my head, because he didn't want anything to interfere with the quality of the recording. When the old man decided that I'd had enough, he told Umar to stop. "Connect him," he said.

  I lifted my head and watched. It was almost like being in someone else, far away. My muscles jumped in anguished spasms, and my wounds sent sharp signals of torment through every part of me. Yet the pain had become a barrier between my mind and body. I knew that I still hurt terribly, but I'd taken enough punishment to send my body into shock. I muttered curses and pleas to my two captors, threatening and begging them to give me back the pain-blocking daddy.

  Umar only laughed. He went over to the cart and did something with the equipment there. Then he carried a large, shiny moddy link over to me. It looked a lot like the one we used with the Transpex game. Umar knelt beside me and showed it to me. "I'm going to chip this in for you," he said. "It will allow us to record exactly what you're feeling."

  I was having a difficult time breathing. "Motherfuckers," I said, my voice a shallow wheeze.

  Umar snapped the chrome-steel moddy link onto my anterior corymbic plug. "Now, this is a completely painless procedure," he said.

  "You're gonna die," I muttered. "You're gonna fuckin' die."

  Abu Adil was still holding the needle gun on me, but I couldn't have done anything heroic anyway. Umar knelt down and fastened my hands behind me with the handcuffs. I felt like I was going to pass out, and I kept shaking my head to stay conscious. I didn't want to black out and be completely at their mercy, though that was probably already true.

  After he got my wrists bound, Umar caught the handcuffs with the hook and pulled on the rope until I staggered to my feet. Then he threw the end of the rope over a bar mounted on the wall high over my head. I saw what he was going to do. "Yallah," I cried. He pulled on the rope until I was hoisted up on tiptoes with my arms raised behind my back. Then he pulled some more until my feet no longer touched the floor. I was hanging from the rope, the full weight of my body slowly pulling my arms from their sockets.

  It was so excruciating, I could only take panting little breaths. I tried to shut out the horrible pain; I prayed first for mercy, then for death.

  "Put the moddy in now," said Abu Adil. His voice seemed to come from another world, from high on a mountaintop or far below the ocean.

  "I take refuge with the Lord of the Dawn," I murmured. I kept repeating that phrase like a magic charm.

  Umar stood on the chair with the gray moddy in his hand, the D Syndrome moddy I'd brought. He chipped it onto my posterior plug.

  He was hanging from the ceiling, but he couldn’t remember why. He was in terrible agony. "In the name of Allah, help me!" he cried. He realized that shouting just made the pain worse. Why was he here? He couldn't remember. Who had done this to him?

  He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything.

  Time went by, and he might have been unconscious. He had the same feeling one has on waking from a particularly vivid dream, when the waking world and the dream are superimposed for a moment, when aspects of one distort images of the other, and one must make an effort to sort them and decide which shall have precedence.

  How could he explain being alone and bound like this? He wasn’t afraid of the hurting, but he was afraid he wasn’t equal to the task of understanding his situation. There was the low hum of a fan above his head, and a faint spicy smell in the air. His body twisted a little on the rope, and he felt another slash of pain. He was bothered more by the notion that he appeared to be involved in a terrible drama and had no sense at all of its significance.

  "Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, "he whispered, "the Beneficent, the Merciful Ow
ner of the Day of Judgment. Thee alone we worship. Thee alone we ask for help."

  Time passed. The suffering grew. Finally, he did not remember enough even to wince or writhe. Sights and sounds played through his numbed senses upon his drowsing mind. He was beyond evaluating or reacting, but he was not yet quite dead. Someone spoke to him, but he did not respond.

  "How's that?"

  Let me tell you, it was horrible. All of a sudden, understanding poured back into my consciousness. Every bit of pain that had been held at bay suddenly returned with a vengeance. I must have whimpered, because he kept saying "It's all right, it's all right."

  I looked up. It was Saied. "Hey," I said. It was all I could manage.

  "It's all right," he told me again. I didn't know if I should believe him. He looked pretty worried.

  I was lying in an alley between some rundown, abandoned tenement buildings. I didn't know how I'd gotten there. At the moment, I didn't care.

  "These yours?" he said. He was folding a small handful of daddies and three moddies.

  One of them was Rex and one was the gray D Syndrome moddy. I almost wept when I recognized the pain-blocker daddy. "Gimme," I said. My hands shook as I reached up and chipped it in. Almost instantly I felt great again, although I knew I still had terrible lacerations and at least a broken collarbone. The daddy worked faster than even a ton of Sonneine. "You got to tell me what you're doing here," I said. I sat up, filled with the illusion of health and well-being.

  "I came after you. Wanted to make sure you didn't get into any trouble or anything. The guard at the gate knows me, and so does Kamal. I went into the house and saw what they were doing to you, then I waited till they dragged you out. They must've thought you were dead, or else they don't care if you recover or not. I grabbed up the hardware and followed. They dumped you in this stinking alley, and I hid around the corner till they left."

  I put my hand on his shoulders. "Thanks," I said.

  "Hey," said the Half-Hajj with a loopy grin, "no thanks are needed. Muslim brothers and all that, right?"