Effortlessly Farkas slipped into the vacant seat between Enron and Jolanda. He smiled and nodded to Jolanda with just the right mixture of friendliness and tact, and in almost the same gesture offered his hand warmly to Enron. Enron admired that. What had taken place between Farkas and Jolanda earlier that day was being tacitly acknowledged, but not rubbed in his face.
“Sorry to have been so late,” Farkas said. “Some urgent calls came in just as I was getting ready to go out. Have you been waiting long?”
“Five or ten minutes,” said Enron. “We’ve already had a drink. You need to catch up with us.”
“Right,” Farkas said. Instead of using the keyboard at the table he simply beckoned to a waiter, who brought him, without even having to be told, a huge snifter containing a pool of some dark liqueur.
His regular tipple, no doubt, Enron thought. They must know him very well here.
“Pisco,” said Farkas. “Peruvian brandy. You would like it, I think. Shall I get you one?”
He signaled the waiter again.
“I’m not much of a drinker, thanks,” Enron said quickly.
“I’ll have one,” Jolanda said, leaning eagerly toward Farkas and giving him a luminous smile that roiled Enron’s insides with anger. She still had her last drink in front of her, only half-finished.
“You must come here often,” Enron said to Farkas.
“Practically every day. A very cheerful place, very friendly, and very pretty, too. If you don’t mind all the statues and holo portraits of El Supremo that they’ve decorated it with.”
“One gets used to that,” said Enron.
“Indeed.” Farkas sipped his brandy. “You have to hand it to the old tyrant, don’t you? The veritable reincarnation of some nineteenth-century banana-republic dictator, grabbing possession somehow of an entire satellite world and hanging on to it for all these decades. His own private empire. Assuming that he’s still alive, of course.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nobody ever sees him, you know. No one but his most intimate intimates. The governmental realm on Valparaiso Nuevo is absolutely secretive. For all anybody knows, Don Eduardo could have died ten years ago, and the news was hushed up. It would make no difference whatsoever in the way things operated here. It’s like in the old days of the Roman Empire, when sometimes the emperor would have been dead for weeks or even months, and the court officials kept everything going on their own without letting anybody know.”
Enron laughed, kicking the heartiness up about as high as was likely to seem plausible. “That’s a funny notion, all right. But there’s truth in it, isn’t there? As in any properly organized autocracy, the high officials of the court do all the interfacing with grubby reality, and the emperor stays hidden away out of sight.”
“And of course it’s all so much easier to do that now, when Don Eduardo can be called up electronically on any public occasion without the need to disturb the real Generalissimo in his lair.”
Enron laughed again, a lesser output of energy this time. He gave Farkas a cheery, slightly addled look, his best shot at appearing to be a little of a simpleton. “Tell me this, though, Victor—do you mind, my calling you Victor?—you don’t really think that Callaghan could be dead, do you?”
“I have no idea, actually. I was merely speculating, you understand. But in truth I suspect he’s still very much alive.”
Watching Farkas carefully, Enron said, “It’s remarkable that he’s been able to hold on so long, if in truth he has. I would imagine there are many who would covet a lucrative little world like Valparaiso Nuevo, filled as it is with such highly desirable fugitives. That Don Eduardo has managed to avoid a coup d’etat up till now seems like a miracle to me, considering—”
Enron was looking for a reaction, and he saw one.
It was only the merest shadowy tremor, a quick involuntary twitch of the left side of Farkas’s face. It was there and then it wasn’t, and Farkas was smiling serenely, a polite show of interest and nothing more. He is very very good, Enron thought But he knows something. He must.
Farkas said, “As I pointed out, he’s entirely inaccessible. That must be the secret of his survival.”
“No doubt,” said Enron. Very cautiously he said, “Do you think the Generalissimo could be overthrown, given the proper degree of planning?”
“With the proper degree of planning the devil could push God Himself off the throne of heaven.”
“Yes. But that isn’t very probable. Whereas Don Eduardo—”
“Is mortal, and vulnerable,” said Farkas. “Yes, I think it could be done. I’m sure that there are those who are thinking about such a thing, too.”
Ah.
Enron nodded eagerly. “I agree. That surely is so. In fact,” he said, “I’ve actually heard rumors to that effect. Fairly trustworthy rumors.”
“Have you?” Still no more than an amiable show of interest. But, again, the telltale twitch of the lip.
“Yes, actually.” It was time to put some cards on the table. “An American group. Californians, I think.”
A distinct response from Farkas, one more twitch and a significant wrinkling of the eerie forehead. He inclined his head just a bit in Enron’s direction. It seemed clear that he understood now that a negotiation was taking place.
“Interesting,” Farkas said. “You know, I’ve heard some stories of the same sort.”
“Indeed.”
“Just rumors, of course. A takeover of the satellite, organized from—yes, California, I’m sure that was what they were saying.” Farkas seemed to be reaching into a dim, misty memory of something that he had heard that was not very important to him.
“The story is getting around, then.”
“As such stories will do.”
“Could one of the big companies be behind it, possibly, would you think?” Enron asked.
“Behind the story, do you mean, or the coup?”
“The coup. Or the story, I suppose. Either one.”
Farkas shrugged. He still was trying to make it seem as though all of this were merely hypothetical discussion, Enron thought. “Impossible for me to say. They would need backing, wouldn’t they, these conspirators?”
“Naturally. A coup d’etat is an expensive pastime.”
“Something that only one of the megacorps would be able to bring off, yes,” Farkas said. “Or one of the wealthier countries. Your own, for example.” A little more emphasis, suddenly, on that last sentence. The voice deepening: a verbal nudge in the ribs.
Enron chuckled. “Yes, I suppose we could put up the money for something like that. If we had any reason to, that is.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not really. No more than Kyocera-Merck does, I’d say, or Samurai. There are people here who are wanted for serious crimes against the state of Israel, certainly. Foreign spies, a few of our own more corrupt officials, and so forth. But there are plenty of retired experts in industrial espionage, also, and embezzlers, and peddlers of company secrets—people who have profited greatly at the expense of this megacorp or that and whose return to Earth for trial would be advantageous to the companies. I could almost see a joint effort being launched to extract the fugitives from this place: some big company and some prosperous country, let us say, putting up the funds together on a fifty-fifty basis. But of course all this is sheer fantasy, is it not?” Enron flicked his fingertips outward, a dismissive gesture. “There will be no coups d’etat here. This is a lovely little planet, and no one on Earth would want to harm it Besides, I understand that Generalissimo Callaghan has quite an efficient secret police. Everyone is watched here, I am told.”
“Very closely, yes,” Farkas said. “It would be hard to mount any sort of uprising here, except perhaps one that came from within: one that involved the court officials themselves.”
Enron raised an eyebrow.
Was Farkas dropping some kind of hint? Were Kyocera’s plans for taking this place over already advanced far
beyond the notions of Mr. Davidov and his associates? No, no, Enron decided: Farkas is merely playing with speculative possibilities, now. If any such inner-echelon conspiracy of the Generalissimo’s close subordinates existed and Farkas were part of it, he would never risk talking about it in a public restaurant, certainly not with an Israeli agent but probably not even with someone he knew. He would try to keep the secret even from himself. That was what Enron would have done, at any rate, and he did not think that Farkas was any more rash than he was in matters of this sort.
But there was no chance to follow it up just now. Jolanda, who had watched the entire duel in silence, tapped Enron’s wrist and said, “The waiter is signaling you, Marty. There’s a telephone call for you, I think.”
“It can wait.”
“What if it’s our friend Dudley? You know how badly you want to hear from him.”
“Good point,” said Enron grudgingly. “All right. If you’ll excuse me, Victor. I’ll be right back.”
He took the call in a shielded cubicle to the rear of the restaurant. But the face that came onto the visor was not the brutal, massive one of Mike Davidov. Enron found himself looking once again at the softer, fleshier features of the courier Kluge. He seemed agitated.
“Well?”
“He’s gone. Your Los Angeles person.”
“You mean Dudley Reynolds? Gone where?”
“Back to Earth,” Kluge said. His voice was hoarse with shame. “They fucked us up. He never was in that hotel in Santiago. They checked in there, and then they left and went straight to the terminal and caught the shuttle to Earth under four entirely new names. Those bastards must have a suitcase full of passports.”
“Mother of Mohammed,” Enron said. “Here and gone. Just like that.”
“Very slippery people.”
“Yes,” Enron said. “Very slippery.” His respect for Davidov had gone up a couple of notches. Davidov must be no ordinary freebooting thug, if he could dance his way through Valparaiso Nuevo so artfully, eluding even a clever boy like Kluge—doing his business here, concluding the preliminaries of his little insurrection, and getting out of here right under Kluge’s nose.
Enron wondered whether Davidov had had a meeting with Victor Farkas while he was here. But he saw no immediate way of finding that out from Farkas without divulging information to him that he was not yet ready to share. There might be other ways, though.
“Is there anything else you want me to do?” Kluge asked.
“Not right now. No. Yes: one thing. Can you put together Davidov’s path through Valparaiso Nuevo in any more detail than you’ve given it to me? All I know is that he was in this hotel for a while and then he supposedly went to another one under a different name and now he’s on his way back to Earth. Can you discover how long he was here and who he saw? Particularly I want to know if he had any contact with the man without eyes. You know. Farkas.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Kluge said. “I can try to run a reverse trace, all his moves backward from today.”
“Good. Good. You get right on it, yes.”
Enron was flaming with annoyance and frustration as he returned to the table. To have come all the way up here for nothing—well, not entirely nothing, at least he had encountered Farkas and through him had begun to link Kyocera with the uprising against the Generalissimo. That was still mostly conjecture, though. And now, assuming he cared to pursue any of this, he would have to try to hunt Davidov down in Los Angeles. Damn. Damn.
It took all his considerable self-discipline to get himself calm. Then, as he approached the table, Enron saw from the exchange of body language that was going on between Jolanda and Farkas that something flirtatious had been taking place in his absence, and he was furious all over again.
Farkas, who had been leaning toward Jolanda in an obviously affectionate manner, returned quickly and smoothly to his upright position while Enron was still twenty paces to the rear of the table. Interesting, Enron thought. Eyes in the back of his head. Jolanda had picked up some sort of signal from Farkas’s withdrawal that Enron was returning, and she too had straightened up, but she had no way of swiftly repairing the way she looked: her face was flushed, her eyes were glowing. The good old hot blast of arousal was coming out of every pore of her. That irritated Enron, but also it excited his competitive lust. Let Farkas make time with her behind my back, he thought. But he will never touch her again. Whereas when we get back to the hotel this evening, I will fuck her as she has never been fucked before.
“You look upset,” Jolanda said. “Bad news?”
“Of a sort, yes. It was a message from Dudley. His father is very ill and he’s returning to Earth at once. So we won’t be able to have lunch with him tomorrow.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It certainly is. Such a sweet person—I feel very sad for him. We’ll have to call him as soon as we get back to Earth ourselves, won’t we?”
“Absolutely,” Jolanda said.
As Enron took his seat, Farkas rose, smiling. “Pardon me, please. I will be back very soon.”
Enron watched him cross the room, wondering if Farkas had somehow deciphered the inner meaning of what he had just said and was on his way to make some telephone call of his own. But no, no, the eyeless man was simply going to the bathroom.
Turning to Jolanda, Enron said, “He’s up to his neck in this thing, I’m certain of it. He’s here to set things up for Kyocera as the behind-the-scenes muscle for your friend’s operation. There’s no doubt about that.”
“He thinks you’re here to do the same thing for Israel,” Jolanda said.
What a wild notion that was! Enron’s eyes widened. The woman was extraordinary. Her mind constantly went darting off with hummingbird velocity into the strangest places.
The unsettling thought that she might just be right came to him, though.
“Did he tell you that while I was on the phone?” Enron asked uneasily.
“No, of course not. But I could see him thinking it. He’s as convinced that Israel is the secret backer as you are that Kyocera is.”
He felt immense relief, It was all just her muddleheaded speculation, then.
“Well, he’s wrong,” Enron said.
“What if you both are? What if there is no secret backer?”
“You know nothing about these things,” said Enron, irritated now by this.
“Right,” Jolanda said. “I am a stupid cow and that’s all. You admire me only for my tits.”
“Please, Jolanda.”
“I have very fine tits, I agree. Many men have told me that and I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with them. But there’s more to me than that, believe me, Marty. If you’re lucky you may find that out.”
“You misunderstand me. I have the highest respect for—”
“Yes. I’m sure you do.”
Jolanda glanced past Enron’s shoulder. Farkas had reappeared, now, and loomed above him.
“About dinner,” Farkas said genially, as he resumed his place at the table. “As I said, I have eaten here very often. If you will permit me to recommend one or two things—”
20
it was raining cats and dogs as the Tonopah Maru came into San Francisco Bay, towing its iceberg behind it. How appropriate, Carpenter thought, that the first rain in God only knew how many months should be falling with crazy superabundance on San Francisco on the very day that the trawler showed up with this huge addition to the local water supply.
The weather had been cruelly cloudless the entire second half of the voyage home, no sign of the usual, even ubiquitous, masses of water vapor that congested and whitened the sky nearly all of the time in most parts of the world. That was one of the greenhouse effects, the increase in atmospheric water vapor, which helpfully served to amplify the relatively small basic warming impulse that the CO2 and other greenhouse gases caused. But, for some inexplicable reason, day after day out at sea the sky above the Tonopah Maru had been immaculate and the sun had beaten w
ith unrestrained fury against the berg. Which had, mirror-dusted though it was, given up much of its substance to the sea under the daily solar barrage.
Still, there was plenty of it left for San Francisco. And here they were at journey’s end, chugging under the venerable Golden Gate Bridge with something like seventeen or eighteen hundred kilotons of the Antarctic ice cap in tow, heading into a dark squally afternoon, torrents and torrents of H2O dropping with lunatic irascibility upon the city by the bay.
“Will you look at that,” Hitchcock said, standing on deck next to Carpenter in the drenching downpour. “Actual fucking rain.”
“Beautiful,” Carpenter said. “Gorgeous.”
It wasn’t, not really. The rain was raising clouds of ambient filth from the city streets, lifting the accretions of dust that had been building up for months or perhaps years and hurling them upward, so that the downpour became ever grayer as the airborne crud came drifting copiously down again. Streams of garbage were falling from the sky. Yes, Carpenter thought, very lovely, very pretty to behold.
There were places, he knew from his stint in the Samurai Weather Service, where a sweet, cleansing, fertility-giving rain fell practically every day: the eastern end of the Mediterranean, say, or the grain belt of Saskatchewan, or the Siberian plains. But this was not one of those places. Rain along the West Coast was such a rarity that it was more of a nuisance than anything else when it did finally arrive, generally in some kind of absurd excessiveness like this. It came with insufficient frequency to maintain any kind of water supply, serving mainly to liberate the accumulated chemical gunk on the streets and roads and turn them into funhouse slideways, to cut ghastly gullies in the withered and defoliated hills east of the bay, and to churn up the loose particulate grime that lay everywhere in the city, redistributing the mess but not removing it.
What the hell. He was safely home, and with his cargo. So the voyage had been a success, except for the one little blemish of the squid-ship event. And Carpenter tried not to think about that.
He went under cover, into the blister dome at the stern. Caskie was there, doing something to a control panel. Carpenter said to her, “Get me the Samurai facility at the Port of Oakland, will you? I need to know which pier I’m supposed to deliver this thing to. I’ll take the call in my cabin.”
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