Hot Sky at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

  Rhodes hated to let his car brain do the thinking. But in this case he didn’t know where the hell he was going, only that the route module code was H112.03/accessWR52, somewhere out in the vicinity of Walnut Creek.

  “Take me to H112.03/accessWR52,” Rhodes told the car.

  The car obediently repeated the numbers.

  “And, by the way, where is that, exactly?” Rhodes asked.

  But all the car could do was give him the route module code all over again. For the car brain, the location of H112.03/ accessWR52 was a place known as H112.03/accessWR52, period.

  The vehicle held the road very nicely, considering the velocity of the oncoming wind. It took Rhodes with barely a wobble through the ancient Caldecott Tunnel and into the bleached, torched-looking countryside east of the hills, where the temperature was always twenty degrees warmer because the cool breeze off the Pacific was unable to make it that far inland, even on days when the Diablos weren’t roaring. Today, with the hot east wind blowing, the temperature differential was probably much greater: true desert heat out there, Rhodes thought, hot as a furnace, fry you like an omelet in half a minute. But he was secure inside the cozy sealed bubble of his car, which was taking him swiftly down the freeway, on past the venerable high-rise towers of the old quiet suburban towns, Orinda, Lafayette, Pleasant Valley, toward the sprawling ramshackle metropolis of Walnut Creek—and then, just before the Walnut Creek interchange, a zig and a zag and a departure from the trunk road, the car swinging now up into the hills. It was absolutely empty country up there, amazingly empty, dotted with the occasional gnarly form of an oak tree standing in the midst of sun-scorched grass. The car went onward through a security gate and then another, and then past a checkpoint that made the first two gates look like barriers made of cheesecloth.

  Brilliant green sky-glo letters, floating in the air about forty feet up, announced:

  KYOCERA-MERCK, LTD.

  WALNUT CREEK RESEARCH CENTER

  So there was his answer, not that he really had any doubts left by this time.

  The car, in the grasp of some invisible Kyocera-programmed highway brain, moved through the checkpoint, past a series of Babylonian-looking brick buildings, and into a reception dome.

  Mr. Kurashiki was waiting for him there, no simulation at all, a real Japanese human person with a certain reptilian grace. Mr. Kurashiki bowed formally in the Japanese manner, a quick robotic click of his head. A quick robotic smile, too. Rhodes smiled back but did not return the bow. The formalities were done with; Mr. Kurashiki led Rhodes into a transport shaft that conveyed him upward and deposited him in an office that, from its ad hoc furnishings and general appearance of improvisation and barrenness, was obviously used only for just such impromptu conferences as these.

  It was exactly noon.

  Mr. Kurashiki vanished silently. Rhodes stepped forward. A surprisingly tall Japanese was standing at the precise center of the room, waiting for him. A different kind entirely, this one. He looked like something carved out of yellow-green obsidian: sharp features, shining skin texture, glossy wide-set jet-black eyes with a single dense unbroken eyebrow line above them. Powerful cheekbones, sharp as blades.

  No bow from this one. A smile that seemed almost human, though.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Rhodes. I am so extremely glad that you were able to advantage us of your presence here today,” he said. “You will forgive me, I am sure, for our little subterfuge, our pretense of real-estate business. Such things are necessary sometimes, as of course I am certain you know.” His voice was deep and resonant and his accent was perceptibly alien: International Modern Japanese English, the purring accent of the exile race that in its various far-flung places of refuge had begun to develop its own new and characteristic way of speaking the world language. “But I have not introduced myself. I am Nakamura. Level Three Executive.” A business card jumped into his hand as if by a conjuring trick, elegant laminated parchment with gold trim, and he handed it to Rhodes in a smooth, practiced way.

  Rhodes stared at the card. Its metallic lettering glowed with talismanic inner light. There was the Kyocera-Merck monogram, and the name HIDEKI NAKAMURA in flaring three-dimensional modernistic script, and a simple numeral 3 in one corner. The mark of status: Nakamura’s place on the corporate slope.

  Level Three?

  Level Three was puissant managerial material indeed, just one notch below the two practically imperial levels that were occupied almost entirely by the hereditary plenipotentiary ruling families of the great megacorps. In his whole corporate career Rhodes had never laid eyes on, let alone spoken with, anyone higher than Level Four.

  A little shaken, he slipped the card into his pocket. Nakamura was now extending his hand again, this time just for a conventional Western handshake, and Rhodes took it. It felt more or less like the hand of any ordinary mortal.

  Nakamura was still smiling, too. But behind the smile Rhodes imagined he perceived the cold rage that infested these high-level Japanese: despite all their wealth and power and intelligence, driven from their homeland by the furies of the sea. Forced to take up their lives here and there around the world in the midst of the hairy, ugly, smelly, big-nosed, pallid un-Japanese barbarians. And even to have to shake their hands now and then.

  Nakamura said, “If I may offer you something to drink, Dr. Rhodes—I am partial to cognac, myself, and perhaps you would like to join me—”

  They’ve really done their research, Rhodes thought admiringly.

  “Yes,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly. “By all means. Please.”

  14

  enron said, “there’s a restaurant, over there. Let’s go have dinner.”

  “Restaurant?” Jolanda said. “I don’t see any restaurant, Marty.”

  “There. There.” Enron lifted her arm as if it were a jointed piece of wood attached to her torso and pointed with it. “That little place with the tables out front in the courtyard, the red-and-green awnings. The restaurants up here are all out in the open like that. Because you can breathe the air here, you see.”

  “Oh,” she said dreamily. “Oh, yes. I understand.”

  Did she? They had been on Valparaiso Nuevo for eight hours now and she was still moving around like a sleepwalker. Of course, this was her first time on any habitat, but still— still—

  At the terminal where they came in, when all those smartass kids had come crowding around them trying to get him to hire them as tourist guides, she had seemed dazed and bewildered in the hubbub, standing by helplessly while Enron coped with them. “Who are they?” she asked, sounding like a confused child, as the insistent swarm pressed in close. And she had barely seemed to be listening as he told her: “Fucking leeches, they are. Parasites who want to charge you a fortune to help you get through customs and checked into your hotel, which any intelligent person is perfectly capable of handling for himself.” He had finally hired one anyway, a big blond pudgy kid who called himself Kluge. Had hired him partly because he had begun to suspect that their services really might be necessary in a place as corrupt as this, and partly to provide himself with someone who might be able to make connections for him as he settled into the task ahead. Which was, specifically, to help them locate her conspiratorial friend from Los Angeles, Davidov, on this little world where it was not necessarily easy to locate people who were not eager to be located.

  Enron had explained some of this to Jolanda also, not all, and she had nodded; but it was a dull, sleepy sort of nod. There was no light of comprehension in her eyes.

  Valparaiso Nuevo seemed to be acting on Jolanda so far like a drug, some sort of narcotic. You would think that she would be hypermanic on the first day of her very first trip to the L-5 worlds after so many years of fantasizing about going to one, goggle-eyed with curiosity, running around trying to take everything in all at once. But no, no, the shock of novelty had had exactly the opposite effect. Even though she was such a heavy user of hyperdex—Enron had seen her taking the stimulant sever
al times, now; she gobbled it like candy—she appeared numbed, stunned, up here on Valparaiso Nuevo, shuffling around dragging her feet like the slow-witted sluggish cow that she really was, beneath all her babble of the importance of art and culture and the need to protect the planet and all the rest of her asshole California politics.

  Maybe it was the fresh air, Enron thought, with its relatively high proportion of oxygen and the total absence of shit like methane and toxic contaminants. She couldn’t handle all that sweet pure stuff. Maybe her mind conked out if it didn’t have its proper CO2 fix. Or the light gravity, maybe. It ought to be making her giddy but instead it was somehow turning her into a zombie. Down at the terminal in the hub, they had practically been floating above the pavement, the gravitational pull was so feeble, and almost from the moment of their arrival she had been slogging around with that glassy-eyed brain-dead look on her face.

  Now, after all the maddening lunatic bureaucratic customs-and-immigration routines were done with and they had checked into their hotel, it was dinnertime and they were in a town called Valdivia, a little past midway up F Spoke toward the rim. The gravity here was about.6, Enron figured. A little closer to Earth-normal than at the terminal, anyway. So far it wasn’t making much difference. He hoped Jolanda would be livelier when they got back to the room after dinner.

  They entered the restaurant courtyard. An oily-looking head waiter unctuously seated them. Menus blossomed out of visors set in the tabletop.

  “What do you want to drink?” Enron asked.

  “What?” She blinked at him.

  “To drink, to drink! Wake up, Jolanda!”

  “Oh. To drink. I’m sorry, Marty. It must be the jet lag.”

  “There isn’t any jet lag in shuttle travel. We came right up here, bam, quicker than it would take to go from California to Tel Aviv.”

  “Well, it’s something, anyway. I feel so strange.”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “Oh, no, that isn’t it It’s a wonderful place! I knew the space worlds were beautiful, fabulous, but I never really imagined—the stars, the moon—I mean, the splendor of it all, all these shining glass walls, the fantastic views you get everywhere—and the air—it’s so fresh I feel drunk, Marty.

  I’ve never breathed air like this.” She gave him a moony, apologetic look. “I’m so excited that I’m dazed, I guess. I feel like this is all some sort of dream. Oh, Marty, I’m so thrilled that you brought me here. —Get me a whiskey sour, will you?”

  Good. At least she was coming to life a little.

  Enron managed a smile. After punching the drink orders into the tabletop computer he reached across the table, took her hand, stroked it affectionately, squeezed it. Winked. Tonight in the hotel, he thought, I will lick every square millimeter of your glorious oversized body, I will drive you crazy with sex, I will fuck you sixty ways from Tuesday. And then in the morning we will go looking for your friends, your shifty Los Angeles friends who are supposed to be here somewhere, the ones who are planning to toss the old Generalissimo into the matter converter and take possession of this place. And when we find them, your Davidov and the others—

  His eyes were roving randomly past Jolanda’s shoulder, exploring in an automatically inquisitive sort of way the tables behind her, as he fondled her. Suddenly Enron caught sight of someone whose presence here startled him extremely.

  Well, look who’s here! The eyeless Kyocera Hungarian!

  Enron’s fingers tightened convulsively. Jolanda let out a little yelp of pain and surprise and pulled her hand away from him. She stared at him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “What is it? Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Not really. But something very interesting. Don’t turn around, Jolanda. Just get up and walk across the courtyard. You need to pee, or something. Ask the waiter where to go. And take a good look on the way, without seeming to. The man sitting three tables behind us, facing in my direction. You’ll know which one I mean.”

  She did exactly as she was told. Enron followed her with his eyes, watching the slow, undulating movements of her, the swaying of her hips, the ripplings of her great meaty buttocks. As she passed the Hungarian, she reacted only in the most momentary way, a quick tightening of her step and a brief sharp backward quiver of her elbows, as though a mild electrical shock had passed through her. Eyes less acute than Enron’s might not have noticed the response at all. Then she moved on, her loose gown floating grandly about her, and disappeared on the far side of the courtyard.

  On the way back she stole another look, flicking a glance at the side of the Hungarian’s face as she went past him. She was wide-awake now, eyes bright, breathing hard, nostrils flaring. Excited, yes.

  “Fascinating,” she said, taking her seat. “I’ve never seen a face like that.”

  “I have.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve had some contact with him. Long ago.”

  “An astounding face. I’d like to sculpt it, in clay. To run my hands over him and feel the bony structure underneath. Who is he, Marty?”

  “A man named Farkas. George Farkas, Laszlo Farkas, Alexander Farkas—I forget the first name. Hungarian. They have about six first names in the whole country, Hungarians. If they aren’t Georges, they’re Laszlos or Alexanders. Or Zoltans. He works for Kyocera-Merck. Victor Farkas, that’s the name. Victor. The exception that proves the rule.”

  “How do you know him?” Jolanda asked.

  “I met him once. It was in—I don’t remember, Bolivia, Venezuela, some incredibly hot place that was all jungles and vines and palm trees, a place where you would sprout green moss on your skin if you stood still for five minutes. He is in my line of work, this Farkas.”

  “A journalist?”

  “A spy. His title with Kyocera-Merck is ‘expediter.’ My title with my employer is ‘journalist.’ We do the same sort of thing, Farkas and I, but he does it for Kyocera-Merck and I do it for the government of Israel.”

  “I thought you worked for Cosmos magazine.”

  He took her hand in his again. She has magnificent breasts, he thought, but she is really stupid. Perhaps there is a connection. She is a cow not just metaphorically, but a real one, a literal cow. She has been retrofitted with bovine genes to give her those splendid udders.

  Quietly Enron said, “I thought I had told you all of this already and that you had understood it. The magazine work is my cover, Jolanda. I truly am a spy. That is what I do, actually, when I pretend to be a journalist. Is that clear enough? Are you willing to believe it? This was a matter that I thought was settled the night I was at your house.”

  “I decided the next morning that you had only been joking.”

  “A spy. Truly. When you told me about your friends in Los Angeles, the reason why I asked you to come up here with me and introduce me to them was that I saw a way that doing so would benefit my country. Not my magazine, but my country. I work for the state of Israel. Is that difficult for you to believe? When I left you that night, I called someone in Jerusalem on a secret scrambled line, I used code names and code words, I told them in spy language where I wanted to go and why I wanted to go there, and tickets for this trip were made available to me through special channels. And visas for us both. Do you think it is always so easy to get an entry visa to a place like this? But I did it in one night, because my government made the proper connections for me. I tell you this because I would not want you to be deceived about me in any way. I may seem sometimes like a bastard, but I am an honorable man, Jolanda.”

  “The other night, when I said I had never slept with a spy before, you said that you were one. You said it just like that. I believed you and then afterward I didn’t. And now you’re saying it again.”

  “If you want to believe I am a writer for a magazine, Jolanda, believe that instead. Believe whatever makes you happiest.”

  Enron saw that she was going to go back and forth on the issue in what passed for her mind foreve
r. Which was fine with him. If she were ever interrogated, she would provide her questioners with a torrent of ingenuous ambivalence. Sometimes telling people the simple truth about yourself is the best way of surrounding the reality of your profession with a haze of confusion.

  She said, “The man without eyes. How can he be a spy, if he can’t see?”

  “He can see, all right. He just doesn’t do it the way we do.”

  “He uses extrasensory perception, you mean?”

  “It is something like that, yes.”

  “Was he born that way?”

  “Yes and no,” Enron said.

  “I don’t understand,” said Jolanda. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A splice job was done on him while he was in the womb. I don’t know who did it, or why. The time we met, it didn’t seem appropriate to ask him about it.” Enron allowed himself a quick glance in Farkas’s direction. Farkas was busy with his dinner. He seemed calm, relaxed, concentrating entirely on his meal. If he had noticed Enron’s presence, he was giving no indication of it. Enron said, “He is a very difficult man, very intelligent, very dangerous. I wonder what he is doing here. —You find his face fascinating, you say?”

  “Very.”

  “You want to sculpt it? You want to run your hands over his bony structure?”

  “Yes. I really do.”

  “Ah,” Enron said. “Well, then. Let us find a way of arranging for that to be possible, shall we?”