“Do you have a prerecording of my abandoning the man as well? Leaving him to die like a dog?”
Lucan shook his head. He got up impatiently and closed the door, leaving the guards outside. Then he brought up a hologram of Akiko, her skin as pale and grainy as the inside of an apple. I had never seen her in expeditionary gear.
Lucan went on. “I’m not ordering you to believe me on any of this. I am asking you to assess Akiko Thirteen’s credibility as you are trained to do, that is, from the operational point of view. Assess the validity of what she told you. Did you know she’s an albino? Akiko fell into the category of special risk since she came here. Her condition made her vulnerable to blackmail, not to say the emotional volatility from keeping a secret like that from her coworkers.”
I put my hands over my eyes. Shuddering, I remembered how close we had been sitting to each other. I had looked into her eyes, and the perfect spirals inside them, without thinking what they concealed.
“She used skin-darkening creams?”
“Yes, we allowed it. We’re not monsters. We don’t discriminate and, under certain circumstances, we need genuine albino cooperation. Either way, Akiko was a risk to Section. Susceptibility to blackmail, if she kept it secret from her fellow workers. On the other hand, a tendency to break down and psychological volatility, if she lived at close quarters with others, always using the cream without letting them know. It seems to have gotten worse underground, the psychology of it.”
“Everything gets worse underground. Is she really an albino?”
“Not technically, but what difference does it make? Akiko has real East Asian ancestry. If you look in Chinatown today, you can find more than a few in the kitchens. Nobody harasses them as long as the clientele never find out who is making their meals. You would never have guessed about Akiko? I would never have guessed either, and I am an expert in the field of agent vulnerability. Blackmail, whitemail, whatever you want to call it.”
“It must be terrifying to look into a mirror and hardly be able to make out your reflection.”
Lucan brought up an overlay for the road atlas. He circled points for me to memorize, labelling them with various alphanumerics and notes. There were locations in the dense jungle right outside Rio I would need to scout, along with front offices in the city proper, warehouses, power installations which might be fueling any historical distortions, and the grand old coffee shops along the central avenues where I would be likely to find businessmen and spies, exiles and fanatics, in plain view, deep in their intrigues. Muller’s network might extend further than was generally known.
Lucan turned the map around so I could get a better look and commit it to memory.
“You know it’s a myth about reflections.”
“What?”
“It’s a myth, dating from the underground, that fair-skinned people have no reflection, and are supposedly immune to reflection sickness. Usually, when travelers go back to those years, it’s the first thing they check out, if they have any scientific curiosity.”
“You know, in Morocco, I never thought to look.”
“Then in Rio de Janeiro, it’s a good idea to satisfy yourself that it’s a legend. I don’t understand these simpleminded prejudices concerning people in the past. Otherwise, why did Europeans put mirrors in their rooms? Why did they carry vanity cases? Aren’t you meant to be an observer, first and foremost? And this is something you choose not to observe.”
I wasn’t sure what to tell Lucan. He made me ashamed of myself. I had been taught the same tragic history as everyone, after all. Under the stresses of the underground years, those ancient preoccupations with albinism had come to the fore. Persons with fair skin were as rare as dragon’s teeth. They had been simultaneously exalted and degraded in the mines—revered as soothsayers in some cases, in other cases expelled to the fringes of the underground communities. Some had seen their children abducted, had their pelts dyed after death and used as cult objects. If they were allowed to rest, it wasn’t in the grave. For their bones were rumored to contain particles of gold.
Nobody remembered the events of that time without a shudder that such discrimination could occur in the heart of the civilized continent, in the wake of the slave ships, and at the very moment when the survival of humanity was at stake. The supernova had tested us. In the deepest part of our hearts, it had found us wanting. For someone like Akiko Thirteen, it meant she would rather wear the equivalent of shoe polish on her face than take pride in her skin.
When I had finished memorizing the map of Rio, Lucan rolled it up and stored it in the corner of his office.
“Let me suggest that you ask yourself a question or two. And this is strictly from a practical intelligence aspect.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Why do you think Akiko Thirteen latched on to you? What is it about you, and your beliefs, Eleven, that drew her in? Is there anything about your own history that suggests a predilection for albinos? Because that, in itself, is a piece of intelligence about you that an adversary would like to acquire. If so, I should like to know before anybody out there does.”
I could not answer any of Lucan’s questions at the time. I didn’t have the chance to ask the only person who could have answered even one of them. Outside of my dreams, I never saw the face of Akiko Thirteen again. No matter how I searched, I didn’t come across anything but rumors concerning her existence or non-existence under the Constitution. Nor was there any trace in the judicial record.
The few days I had spent in her company had been memorable. I sometimes thought I might have fallen in love with Akiko Thirteen or that she might have fallen in love with me as she had previously fallen in love with a Twenty. She wouldn’t be the only supernaturally calm personality, the person who was always under control, who had given her heart away at a moment’s notice.
On reconsideration, I decided that my own affection for Akiko had a different source. She had fascinated me because of her condition. We, the survivors of the mines, had perpetrated terrible deeds against men, women, and children of fairer complexion. First, we hunted them and tanned their skins, to the point of extinction, stole their children, desecrated their underground burial plots in the coal mines. Later, we refused to touch them, refused to have them in our houses, spurned their cow smell, and spun a mythology around them and their reflections. I was guilty of my part in this but I was also secretly attracted and repelled by the people we had put into subjection. I looked into the mirror—truly for the first time—and understood some of my own limits during my service in Internal Section.
In any case, I couldn’t have been more relieved to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of Section. I could sense the solar plant charging even when I was in Lucan’s office. When it was full, to my surprise, the Director in Century came to observe my departure along with the remaining Thirteens.
Lucan was at the back, secretive behind his spectacles. Avery Thirteen made the last-minute preparations and realignments on the apparatus. Avery, who had taken up Akiko’s responsibilities, had a number of updated pieces of information about the Muller house and organization.
I never went back to my room. Avery had also packed my suitcase for the expedition. She went through the items with me, ticking them off a list, and obtained my signature on the bottom before, according to regulation, she filled the compartments for the blue pill and the black pill in the lanyard on my neck with more relish than I would have liked. I thought she was subliminally encouraging me to take them.
The consultant on duty locked on to the location on the other side, its face chattering with numbers. The suitcase was sent across. The ritual words were exchanged in the name of S Natanson.
The arch shimmered. The usual fireworks and more. The colored lens which gave off no heat. Red lines stretched across its circular face. Stars appeared and disappeared in an endless funnel while the smell of ozone rose ar
ound me until I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Inside Section, the lights trembled and went low and blue. The entire building was unsettled as the superconductor fed the vast dam of solar energy into the apparatus.
I yawned. I wanted to go to sleep on the floor in front of them. Instead, I shook hands with Avery and the DC. Then I nodded at Lucan, held my breath for a moment, and stepped into another world and time. Spirals of light shot through space-time in front of me and below my feet, while I turned round and around in the grip of a greater hand.
I fell over the suitcase on arrival. By the time I dusted off and got to my feet, any trace of a disturbance had dissipated. The heat was tremendous. I was in a small room, dark except for a barred window high on the wall. There were crates piled five deep, filled with the hairy brown heads of coconuts. I could hear women’s voices talking angrily in the vicinity.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had a job to do, and for the duration of it I was beyond the tentacles of Internal Section.
I lifted the suitcase and went through the door to find myself in a courtyard. Women in aprons were packing bottles in the sunlight, rolling loads of them on handcarts in the direction of the road.
One approached me. She was six-feet tall, so that I had to crane my head, and had a red cloth tied on her forehead. Her thick brown forearms were glistening with perspiration. She looked me up and down and slapped the side of my suitcase.
“Tiny, you came from the Palácio? You came from the Palácio right now?”
“Not at all.”
“Then you are from the company office.” She raised her voice, addressing the dozen other women in the yard. “How many times will you come to check on us? We have nothing to do with the union. We rejected the union.”
“No. You are mistaken.”
“We are not mistaken. You, Tiny, are the one who is mistaken to come here. Now you will see.”
The women collected around me. They began to push me towards the street, shouting and cursing about the union, vigorously pinching my arms and legs. I dug my feet in, trying to hold on to the suitcase, but was soon forced out. I stood helplessly on the pavement while they forced open the suitcase and went through its contents. Fuming, I put my hands in my pockets and watched while my possessions were passed from hand to hand until they reached somebody who wanted them. Items that weren’t wanted were tossed on the ground.
Never before had I experienced dark-skinned people behaving like barbarians. It was the tropical state of mind, I told myself, hearts corrupted by jungle and sun, minds dissolved into fever and mud.
“Can you try not to break anything?”
“Beware, Tiny. You have aroused a lion. You are lucky to escape with your life.”
Eventually the women retreated to the courtyard with my clothes, casting back imprecations about the union and the company office. I waited until they had returned to loading their carts before collecting the inner parts of the beacon. The elements of a beacon could be damaged easily, leaving the user stranded in a hostile century. I reassembled them in my palm, as fragile as bones in a fossil hand.
Without a chance to start the apparatus in private, I couldn’t be certain it was functional. Every so often one or other of the women caught sight of me and, as if to protect their stolen property, warded me off with an arm. I was angry enough to gesture back.
In a quarter of an hour I had the bag more or less packed. I was behind schedule; I was supposed to be in Copacabana in five minutes. Walking as fast as I could in what I hoped was the right direction, I pulled the suitcase awkwardly behind me and tried not to hear the jeers of the work crew. This part of the city was a jungle in itself. Weathered stone office buildings groaned in the humidity, green plants growing out of every crack in their walls. Small cars and taxis, as flat as tin cans, shot impatiently through the traffic lights.
At the major intersections, checkpoints kept watch on the public, brown-skinned and white-skinned soldiers monitoring their giant radios, gleaming copper bullets hanging in belts around their waists. They didn’t pay me any attention. Nor did anybody else. I was relieved to blend in as I had been told about old Brazil. I saw blacks and whites mingling without distinction.
I went past a row of hotels advertising their rooms by the hour, foyers paved with red carpet. Then came cafeterias promising food by the gram. Their interiors consisted of counters sitting end to end in dim light.
The road I was following broadened into a square that centered on the statue of a mounted man. Here and there were stone benches, legs covered with moss. I examined them, trying to find my bearings against the map in my head, and realized I only had to turn right to see the beach, the length of Copacabana with the lights shining in the haze. The water lay stagnant on the sand. Young men were kicking a ball around.
“Mr. Eleven, I presume. The famous and delightful Enver Eleven, who has brought so much trouble in his wake.”
“Who’s asking?”
“The only individual in the Agency, besides you, who has shaken hands with Dr. Muller, although it was only to read the electricity. The only other one who knows the face of the adversary. As far as we know.”
“As far as we know. You’re João Twenty.”
“The very same. My friends, up and down the centuries, know me as Joãozito. And you, Mr. Eleven, are going to be my new friend.”
We shook hands. My brand-new friend wore a raincoat, for no good reason considering the sky, and tinted spectacles. I stood back and got the measure of him. João Twenty was short but nevertheless an impressive specimen, a mustache running the length of his full lips. He was broad-shouldered, a small bull of a man, but—as you saw on making his acquaintance—nimble as a bullfighter.
“You want to go back to my place? Or do you want me to show you around first? I can show you Rio. I don’t mind.”
I said, “Let’s go back. I want to see if the beacon is still working. It took a beating on the way. I would like to put my mind at rest.”
“We will get to your beacon. But take some time to appreciate your arrival. This city is different when you see it in person, when you experience it with your own eyes and your own senses. This city, above all, in this century. You can’t compare the effect with a mere holographic reproduction in some museum of the old world.”
“I do want an introduction to old Rio from a genuine resident. Let’s check the beacon first and we can explore.”
João started us across the square. I turned around for a moment to make sure that nobody was following us but, as far as I could tell, there were only young men and women in one another’s arms on the square and the soccer players on the tattered beach. In the grand old buildings along the shore, the windows had turned orange. João put his hand on my arm.
“Mr. Eleven, I have to compliment you. Unfortunately I have to compliment you and I hope you do not start to imagine I am insincere. In fact, your Portuguese is excellent.” He cupped a hand around one ear. “You have exactly the right intonations for a visitor from the north. From Recife, perhaps.”
“The machines programmed me well. Apparently at your suggestion.”
“And who said that?”
“A friend. We have a mutual friend.”
João put his arm around me, as if he were about to hug me.
“Mr. Eleven, Enver. I’ll tell you more when it is safe to talk. Then we peel the pineapple. Then we truly peel the pineapple. Let’s get some clean clothes on you first. I want you to look like the noblest carioca.”
João’s apartment lay at the top of a building adjacent to the beach, protected by a steel door and a sleeping doorman, head buried in a bowler hat. We went into the cage of the escalator, rose a dozen floors and then a few more, and entered through a hallway lined with shamans’ masks. White leather couches occupied the main room. There were piles of records, a thick carpet, fading views of Sugarloaf, and the white-and-red l
ights of downtown.
The residents on station, designated as a class in the Twenties and Thirties, were a different breed to those of us who lived out of a suitcase. Residents were encouraged to make a home for themselves, not to remain interlopers. They made friends, even took lovers, with the consent of the consultants. They had some steadiness in their lives in a foreign land. I envied them for it.
Which is not to say that João Twenty was a hopeless romantic. If anything, he was the consummate professional. The first thing he did, while I was still looking out the window at Sugarloaf, was to spread out the shattered pieces of the beacon on his kitchen table. He took a bag of tools from under the floorboards.
On the bookshelf, beneath one of those world globes with a light in the middle, was the circuit diagram which João rolled out on the carpet, placing the various components on the blue lines. I held the pieces in place while he soldered the connecting wires back.
Each time João fixed something, he checked the current with a voltage meter. The needle didn’t budge. He fixed the next wire. Checked the current. Nothing changed. Each time his smile became shorter. At the end, he threw his hands in the air.
“You had better make your prearranged rendezvous, Agent Eleven, because there is no hope for this piece of junk. There are breakages on every circuit, you saw. That is what you get from budget cuts. They send us to a foreign location with inadequate equipment.”
I said, “I watched what those women were doing and I wanted to cry. I hope that kind of ignorance isn’t typical of this country.”
João put his tools back in their box. He wore a solemn expression, as if he were trying to make a decision. When he was done, he took two crystal glasses from the cupboard and poured something into them which looked like wine.
We sat on the leather couches and drank. The liquid was stronger than wine. It tasted like burnt cinnamon.
“Catuaba. An infusion. We think of it as a kind of tea. You like it?”
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