Hot Sky at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

  “Cafe La Paloma,” Juanito said.

  “La Paloma,” Farkas told Olmo.

  “Bueno. I’ll have the plaza patrol make the pickup within two minutes. We’ll collect the shipment and transfer it to the depot as arranged.”

  “Something you ought to know. There’s an extra item of merchandise,” said Farkas.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m sending the courier along to the depot too. Don’t worry. I’ll provide you with the bill of lading in proper order.”

  “Whatever you want, my friend,” said Olmo, with a touch of mystification in his voice. “He is yours, whatever you want to do with him, and good riddance. I give him to you freely. But not free, you understand. You are aware that there may be extra shipping charges, yes?”

  “That doesn’t worry me.”

  “Bueno. The pickup will be made quite swiftly. You stay right there. I will come to you in person in a very little while so that we can speak. A serious matter has developed that must be discussed.”

  “Scrambler call isn’t good enough?” Farkas asked, puzzled and a little alarmed.

  “Not nearly, Victor. This must be in person. It is very delicate, very. You will stay? Cafe La Paloma?”

  “Absolutely,” Farkas said. “You can recognize me by the red carnation in my lapel.”

  “What?”

  “A joke. Get the goddamned pickup taken care of, Emilio, will you?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Bueno,” Farkas said.

  Olmo rang off. Farkas put the wand back in its slot.

  Juanito said, “Was that Colonel Olmo you were talking to?” He sounded awed.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You called him ‘Emilio.’ You asked for Guardia men to be sent. Who else could it have been?”

  Farkas shrugged. “Colonel Olmo, yes. We occasionally do business with each other. We are friends, in a way.”

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” said Juanito hoarsely, and made the gesture that Farkas recognized as the sign of the cross, a lateral trembling and bucking of the middlemost pair of the six blue spheres that made up Juanito’s apparent body. “You and Olmo are friends! You call him up just like that and he talks to you. And so I am really fucked.”

  “Yes. You really are,” said Farkas. “Todo jodido, isn’t that the phrase?”

  “Si,” Juanito said ruefully. “Estoy jodido, completely. Completely.” He turned away and looked into the distance. A thin chuckle came from Wu. Good for him, Farkas thought. He is capable of being amused by Juanito’s distress. That meant he had stopped caring about his own predicament. Farkas liked the idea that the person who had so casually and gratuitously transformed his life beyond repair, long ago, was fundamentally indifferent to circumstances, an impassive technician, a pure force of nature.

  Within moments Farkas saw two shapes moving purposefully toward him from the direction in which Juanito was looking: a red tetrahedron on spiny little legs and a pair of upright emerald columns joined by three parallel golden bars. They had to be the local Guardia Civil patrol, Farkas knew. Olmo was quick. Of course, K-M paid Olmo very well for his cooperation. And Valparaiso Nuevo was a very efficient police state, and the Guardia probably had outstanding communications techniques.

  “Mr.—Farkas?” The tetrahedron speaking. A little hitch in the voice, a kind of verbal flinch. Farkas knew what that was: the first sight of the eyelessness, the blank forehead, often did that to people. “Colonel Olmo sent us. Two men, he said, we were supposed to get.” He sounded confused.

  “I wasn’t that specific with him. Two people is all that I indicated. A boy and an old woman, as it happens,” said Farkas. “These two.”

  “Yes, sir. Glad to be of service, sir.”

  “Olmo made it clear to you that you aren’t supposed to hurt them, right? I don’t want you to hurt them. Just put them in storage until the procedures for their deportation are completed. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  Farkas watched them lead Juanito and Wu away.

  Now that he was no longer obliged to be guarding two prisoners at once, Farkas allowed himself to relax. He sat back, stared around the cobbled plaza.

  An odd emptiness came upon him.

  His mission had been satisfactorily completed, yes, and with striking ease. But it was strange, having had Wu in his possession after all these years of imagining what he would do to him if he ever caught him, and doing nothing at all.

  Disguised as a woman, an old dowdy woman. Well, well, well.

  It would have been easy enough, back there in the musty slaggy confines of the habitat shell, to have put his thumbs on Wu’s eyeballs and pushed. But of course Farkas knew that doing that would not thereby give him the normal vision that had been denied him before his birth. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted normal vision, anyway, not any more; but paying Wu back would have brought him a certain degree of pleasure.

  But it was also necessary to consider that that one little moment of gory self-indulgence would have destroyed his career, and his career was a very fine one, extremely rewarding in a number of ways. It wouldn’t have been worth it.

  And the boy—

  Farkas felt no remorse about that. The boy would suffer: good. He was a treacherous little bastard who had behaved exactly as Farkas had expected him to, peddling his loyalties to the highest bidder, just as his father had done before him, apparently; and he needed a lesson. He would get one, a good one. Farkas brushed him from his mind and signaled to the waiter.

  He asked for a small carafe of red wine, and sat patiently sipping it, waiting for Olmo.

  It wasn’t a long wait.

  “Victor?”

  Olmo was hovering by his shoulder. By the color he was radiating, he seemed very tense.

  “I see you, Emilio. Sit down. You want some wine?”

  “I never drink.” Olmo arranged himself ponderously at the table, sitting at a ninety-degree angle from Farkas. It was the first time they had actually met: all their previous dealings had been by scrambled data-link. Olmo was shorter than Farkas expected him to be, but very stocky. The upper cube of the two that made up his body was wider than the lower one in a way that indicated broad shoulders and powerful forearms. When he was sitting down Olmo seemed to be quite tall, a massive presence.

  Farkas imagined him at some earlier phase of his career sweatily working over the enemies of the Generalissimo in a basement room with a pliant strip of hemp: rising to his present eminence on this world from the humble ranks of the official torturers. Did El Supremo torture his enemies? Farkas wondered. Of course. All petty tyrants did. He would ask Olmo about it some time or other; but not now.

  Farkas took a thoughtful sip of his wine. Local product, he supposed. Not bad at all.

  He said, into an awkwardness that he was certain was caused by Olmo’s discomfort over the realities of his physical appearance, “You arouse my curiosity, Emilio. Something so delicate that you won’t even risk telling me about it by scrambler?”

  “Indeed. I think I will have some water. It will look more casual to those who are watching us, and I know that they are, if I am drinking something too.”

  “Whatever you say.” Farkas beckoned to the waiter.

  Olmo hunched forward, cupping his glass in his hand. In a very quiet voice, more than a whisper but less than a normal conversational tone, he said, “This is strictly hearsay. The reliability of the source is questionable and the content of the rumor is so surprising that I am extremely skeptical. But I want to check it with you nonetheless. We did not, of course, have this discussion, if anyone asks.”

  “Of course,” said Farkas impatiently.

  “Bueno. So, then, this is the news. The possible news. Word has reached me, by, as I say, highly irregular and somewhat untrustworthy sources, that a group of criminals based in South California is getting ready to launch an insurrection against the existing authority here on Valparaiso Nuevo.”

&
nbsp; “Southern California,” Farkas said.

  “What?”

  “Southern California. That’s what they call it. You said South California.”

  “Ah.”

  “An insurrection.”

  “They intend to invade this world and overthrow the Generalissimo by force. Then they intend to establish their own government here, and round up all the fugitives who have taken sanctuary. And then they will sell them, for many billions of Capbloc dollars, to the various agencies and forces on Earth who would like to have them back.”

  “Really?” Farkas said. It was a fascinating idea. Crazy, but fascinating. “Someone actually plans to do this?”

  “I have no idea. But it is something that perhaps could be done, and it would be very lucrative if it was managed in the right way.”

  “Yes. No doubt it would.” Valparaiso Nuevo was an absolute treasure trove, a gold mine of expensively wanted fugitives. But Callaghan had to have it well defended, and himself also. Especially himself. They didn’t call him the Defender for nothing. The only way to overthrow him would be to blow the whole place up. “I see why you called it a delicate matter,” Farkas said. “But why are you telling me this, Emilio?”

  “For one thing, if there is a threat against the life of the Generalissimo, it is my responsibility to take preventive action.”

  “I understand that. Still, why bring me in? Do you think I can lead you to the conspirators?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “For God’s sake, Emilio. I thought you were an intelligent man.”

  “Intelligent enough, I think.”

  “If I were involved with this thing, would I be likely to want to tell you word one about it?”

  “That depends,” said Olmo. “Let us look at some other factors. I have not only the Generalissimo’s security to be concerned with, but also my own.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I am useful to you, or at least to your employer. Your employer is Kyocera-Merck, Victor. You make no secret of that. Why should you? I work for K-M too, of course, although not quite so openly. Indeed, not openly at all.”

  “True.”

  “The Generalissimo has ruled Valparaiso Nuevo for thirty-seven years, Victor. He was not young when he seized power here and he is quite old now. When he goes, the Company sees it to be in its interest for me to succeed him. You knew this, didn’t you?”

  “More or less.” Farkas was getting tired of Olmo’s circuitous manner. The fracas in the outer shell had wearied him and he wanted to go back to his hotel. “Would you mind getting to the point, Emilio?”

  “I’ve given you a great deal of help in carrying out the project the Company sent you here to do. Now you help me. It is only reasonable, one K-M man to another. Tell me the truth. Do you know anything whatsoever about this takeover conspiracy?”

  Farkas found this hard to believe. He hadn’t imagined Olmo to be so dumb.

  “Not a thing,” he said. “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

  “You swear that?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Emilio. I could swear to whatever you wanted me to, and what would it matter?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Do you? Yes, I suppose you do. You shouldn’t trust anybody, but all right. If it’ll make you feel any better, here: the holy truth is that I really don’t know a thing about any of this. God’s sacred truth. By the archangels and apostles, this is absolutely the first that I’ve heard of it. And I suspect that there’s nothing to the rumor at all.”

  “No. I believe that you have spoken honestly. But what I am afraid of,” said Olmo, “is that there actually is such a conspiracy, and Kyocera-Merck may be behind it. Perhaps using these California people as proxies. And that when Don Eduardo goes, I will go with him. That I have become irrelevant to the Company; that the Company has decided to discard me.”

  “This sounds crazy to me. So far as I know, you’re as important to the Company as you’ve ever been. And your role in facilitating the Wu business will strengthen your position in their eyes even more.”

  “And the coup? Let’s say that the stories I have heard have substance behind them, this South California group. Let us assume that such a group exists, and such a plan. It is your belief that they have nothing to do with K-M, then?”

  “How would I know? Am I Japanese? Use your brain, Emilio. I’m just a Company expediter, Level Nine. That’s pretty high up the slope but it’s nowhere near policy level. The boys in New Kyoto don’t call me in to share their secret plans with them.”

  “You think, then, that the plotters of this coup are merely a gang of free-lance criminals from South California, acting completely on their own. Southern California.”

  “God in heaven,” Farkas said, exasperated now close to his limit of tolerance. “Haven’t I made it sufficiently clear that all I know about this idiotic coup is the stuff you’ve just told me? I have no evidence that it exists at all, and apparently you don’t have much yourself. But all right. All right. If it’ll reassure you, Emilio, let me tell you that in my estimation the plotters, if there are any and whoever they may be, are more likely to want to cooperate with you than to put you down, if they have any sense at all, and when and if they get close to making their move on this place, the smartest thing they could possibly do would be to get in touch with you and hire you to help them overthrow the Generalissimo. You will furthermore have the backing of Kyocera-Merck in whatever happens, because K-M is interested, God knows why, in bringing this foul little orbiter into its sphere of influence and has already tapped you to be the next Generalissimo, so they are not likely to sit by idly while a bunch of free-lance gangsters from California push their chosen man out the window. Okay, Emilio? Do you feel better, now?”

  Olmo was silent for a time.

  Then he said, “Thank you. If you learn anything more about any of this, you will tell me, Victor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bueno,” Olmo said, a fraction of a second before Farkas could say it for him. “I do trust you, my friend. As much as I trust anyone.”

  “Which is not at all, correct?”

  Olmo laughed heartily. He seemed suddenly much more at his ease, after Farkas’s long and irritable outburst “I know you will do nothing to harm me unless you find it absolutely unavoidable, for your own sake, to turn against me.”

  “That sounds right enough.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “So you will let me know, if you hear from anyone about this plot?”

  “Jesus! I’ve already said I would. Under the terms you’ve just laid out. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we can get back to the business at hand, all right? You agree to see to it that Wu and Juanito get shipped off promptly to the K-M lab satellite, as the Company has directed us to arrange. Yes?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Bueno,” Farkas said. And they both laughed.

  8

  at quarter to eight sharp, Carpenter walked out in front of the hotel to wait for Rhodes to arrive. The night was mild, humid, a soft moist breeze blowing in off the ocean. You could almost believe that rain was on the way, unless you knew something about recent West Coast weather patterns, in which case you realized that the Second Coming of Christ would be a more probable event in San Francisco this evening. But Rhodes was, of course, late, and there was a nasty, sour, nostril-stinging chemical tang in the damp air that made Carpenter feel uncomfortable about standing outside maskless very long, despite all Rhodes had told him that afternoon about the relative benevolence of the Bay Area atmosphere. He went back inside and stood there peering out through the lobby portholes. Rhodes finally showed up around ten after eight.

  He was driving a big, broad-nosed car, an antiquated-looking job extremely full of people. Carpenter got in back, next to a hefty Latin-looking woman with an immense mass of dark, tumbling hair, who flashed him a huge, beacon-bright, improbably glossy smile. Her eyes had a sheen and protrusiv
eness that said immediately to Carpenter that she was a heavy hyperdex user. She seemed about to introduce herself, but before she could say a thing a stocky, swarthy-faced man on the other side of her reached his hand across her, seizing Carpenter’s with a startlingly aggressive grip, and said loudly, in a deep, robust voice, faintly tinged with a European accent of some unspecifiable sort, “I am Meshoram Enron. I am from Israel.”

  As if I couldn’t guess, Carpenter thought.

  “Paul Carpenter,” he said. “Friend of Dr. Rhodes. Childhood friend, in fact.”

  “Very good. I am extremely pleased to make your acquaintance, Dr. Carpenter. I write for Cosmos, on scientific and technological matters. You know this magazine? It is one of the biggest. I am with the Tel Aviv office. I have arrived from Israel only the day before yesterday, especially to talk with your friend.”

  Carpenter nodded, wondering how often Enron began a sentence with anything except the first-person-singular pronoun. One out of three? One out of five?

  “And I’m Jolanda,” said the big woman with the hair and the smile and the hyperdex eyes, now that Enron had subsided for the moment.

  Her voice was a trained theatrical one, rich and husky, straight from the diaphragm. A cloud of pheromonal fragrance seemed to burst from her as she spoke, and Carpenter felt an immediate response in his groin. But he was too experienced to build any happy assumptions on that. Most likely she greeted everyone that way, plenty of voltage up front, nothing in particular behind it.

  Rhodes said without looking back, “Paul, this is Isabelle.”

  The woman sitting next to Rhodes up front swiveled and flashed the swiftest of how-d’ye-do grins, a mere chilly flicker. Carpenter found himself taking an immediate irrational dislike to her. She was very attractive, he saw, in the moment before she turned away from him again; but attractive in an oddly discordant way, too much force in the eyes and too little in the rest of the face, and her great corona of wild, frizzy scarlet hair was like a shriek of disdain for the conventions of ordinary beauty. She was probably a handful and a half, Carpenter thought, on scarcely any evidence at all: an unpredictable mix of tenderness and ferocity.