Alyzon Whitestarr (47 page)

We followed Klara along a well-made path. It led us away from the enormous stage, which in the distance looked a bit like a landing pad for a spaceship, surrounded by all that country darkness. We were headed for a cluster of large white tents linked by covered walkways hung with holiday lights.

Two security men were standing at the door to the first tent, wearing black suits that accentuated the unnatural breadth of their shoulders. They nodded unsmilingly at the woman and stood aside to let us into the perfumed and candlelit interior, which had been made to look like a ballroom in some palace. The furniture was all beautiful heavy wood and looked as if it was antique. On every table, amid an incredible array of food, were enormous, beautifully detailed ice sculptures of birds, surrounded by dry ice that gave off a mist of pale smoke. There were also giant vases of flowers set about: lilies, bird-of-paradise flowers, and blazing bursts of gerberas, irises, and tulips. A woman in a white dress was playing a white harp, and there was also a white grand piano, although no one was sitting at it. The men and women standing around were dressed in expensive suits and magnificent, lavish gowns. It was attire for the Academy Awards, not a marathon of bands in a field, and I wondered for the first time what the point was of holding the two events simultaneously.

“See anyone you recognize, Tanya?” Klara asked me coyly, coming close enough for me to perceive her strong burnt-onion smell under the hair spray. I instinctively stepped
back from her. “Are you all right?” she asked, and there was a speculative look in her eye that made me regret bringing myself so much to her attention.

“Everyone’s like a million years old,” I said, putting on a sullen adolescent look. I cast a glance of disparagement at the harp player, and Klara smiled brilliantly.

“Now, Tanya,” Raoul said in an avuncular sort of voice. “Maybe you can get yourself a drink and something to eat.”

That was my signal to cut loose. I sighed and shrugged and slouched off, playing my role with a certain relish. I went to a drinks table, and a man in a white suit with a startling orange-looking tan poured me mineral water with a twist of lemon. I tried to look as if I were drying out after a hard night as I accepted it and walked over to the food table. I swallowed a couple of grapes and looked around the room, pretending boredom. In fact, I was anything but bored.

As Klara had tried to point out, there were a lot of famous faces: musicians and singers and actors I had only ever seen before on the covers of magazines or at the movies. There were also hundreds of unknown faces, and the crowd was getting thicker minute by minute. I began to look for the artists I had seen associated with Aaron Rayc in the many articles I’d read about him.

The first I spotted, ten minutes later, was a very beautiful woman with old-looking eyes that I recognized as Angel Blue, once known as Mallory Hart. I drifted close enough to smell her and recoiled at the rotten stench of infection she gave off. Five minutes later I saw Oliver Spike, but I didn’t go
near him because my danger sense reacted so sharply at the sight of him. I passed a heavyset man in a business suit talking in a loud voice to a group of starlets I recognized. He didn’t smell of infection, but the three girls he was speaking to smelled overwhelmingly of rotten meat.

I felt myself scrutinized, too, but it was the sort of occasion where people came to look and be looked at, and it meant nothing. I did feel embarrassed a couple of times when men and once a woman gave me frankly admiring looks that invited me to come up and talk to them, but I pretended not to see.

By the time I had been circulating for an hour, I had managed to identify only two more people who were infected, but I didn’t recognize either of them and could think of no way to learn their names save by asking. Most of the guests had bad essence smells, though, which suggested that their spirits were weak or corrupted; I wondered with a chill how many of them had been earmarked by Rayc for infection.

Then I saw Raoul, and my heart caught in my throat because Klara was introducing him to Aaron Rayc. Dita was with them, too, wearing a diaphanous ice-green dress that frothed about her shining limbs like foamy waves. Her glossy black hair was pulled back and dressed in an elaborate cluster of the palest pistachio-colored pearls and white flowers, and both she and Rayc were smiling brilliantly down at Raoul.

Dita reached out to stroke Raoul’s hand as she said something, and my skin crawled. Then she turned away and beckoned to a young man who emerged from the crowd dressed
in cream moleskins and a pale suede jacket. He kissed her hand and cheek so intimately, and his hair shone so like hers, that I realized they must be related. He turned to Aaron Rayc and bowed rather than taking the older man’s hand, and I began to wish he would turn my way so that I could see his face.

Then Dita went to introduce him to Raoul, and I was shocked to the core—because I saw that it was Harlen Sanderson.

Without warning, Harlen whipped his head in my direction. Fortunately, despite my incredulity, I had the wit not to turn hastily away. Instead, I simply shifted my gaze slightly and tried to relax into the strange, deep stillness that had stopped him finding me the night before. I felt his eyes rake the crowd, skating over me, and then the pressure was gone. I waited another full minute before daring to think of him or glance in his direction again, and found that he had vanished. Aaron and Dita were still speaking with Raoul, so I could not go over to him. My heart pounded with fear at the thought that Harlen was somewhere nearby, trying to find who had been staring at him.

I had to get out of the tents, but how? Raoul had said it was permitted for guests of the gala to cross to the main venue, but he had the tickets and I dared not go and get mine from him now. The obvious answer was to just sneak out, but I couldn’t even think how to get away from the bracelet of tents with all the security around. Frightened of being out in the open any longer, I made my way to the toilets, following
discreetly posted signs. My legs felt stiff and the boots awkward. The hair on my neck prickled the whole time I wove through the crowd at the thought that I might come face to face with Harlen at any moment. I told myself it was silly to feel so frightened because there would be nothing he could do to me among so many people. But the awful essence scents of so many of the people I passed—bad eggs, spoiled milk, burning gasoline—made me wonder if that was true.

I was sweating with tension and fear by the time I reached the toilets, which were deluxe portables in a side tent clamped onto the main tent. Unfortunately, there was no other way out of it. Once in a stall, I felt safer, and if there hadn’t been an attendant who had seen me enter, I might have been tempted to stay there. I replayed Harlen Sanderson kissing Dita Rayc and felt again my shocked realization that they must be mother and son. No wonder Dita had seemed familiar to me. But why was Harlen’s last name Sanderson when Dita’s previous husband had been Makiaros? Then I remembered that Makiaros had been her second husband. Harlen must be the son of her first marriage. I shuddered in revulsion at the thought that Rayc might have infected his stepson.

I had a moment of fright, thinking that Harlen must have seen Raoul at Davey’s. Then I remembered Harrison had said that only the bouncer had got out of the van, so Harlen would not have got a good look at him. Suddenly I remembered the cell Raoul had lent me. I fished it out of Gilly’s shoulder purse, but after typing out a text message, I noticed there was no signal. I thrust the phone back into my purse as someone
knocked on the door. Then the attendant asked if I was all right, and I realized that I had groaned aloud.

“Fine,” I called out chirpily, flushed, and then opened the door. The attendant was a young woman only a little older than I was. She had returned to her position behind a table upon which rested bowls of perfumed water sprinkled with rose petals. She smiled at me, and when I smelled her fragrance of hot waffles, I had an idea.

“You don’t know when the bands are supposed to begin playing?” I asked in a girlish, confiding tone.

Her smile turned rueful. “You’re in the wrong place if you think you’re gonna hear any real music in here. The walls of the tents have been especially treated to make them soundproof.”

I stared at her. “But … why did these people come if they don’t get to hear the music?”

“Most of them are showbiz and arty types and socialites who come to be seen and to see what other people are wearing and who they’re with. The rest are money men and women who would probably have a heart attack if they heard the music they get rich from.”

“Wow, that’s pretty cynical,” I said, a little startled.

She sighed. “Sorry. This job sort of washes the stars from your eyes, you know? But how come you’re over here instead of over there, anyway? I mean, you’re not trapped behind a washbasin.”

“My uncle is in there hobnobbing,” I said glumly. “My boyfriend is in one of the lesser bands, but I can’t find a way
to slip this mausoleum and go over to see him without being questioned by one of those goons in suits.”

She giggled. “They’re awful, aren’t they? But can’t you just ask your uncle? You can go over if one of the hostesses escorts you back to the main gate.”

“My uncle will insist I stay here.” I leaned closer. “He doesn’t approve of my boyfriend. I thought I’d be able to go over and see him and then sneak back.”

“Ohh,” she said. I smelled her curiosity when I mentioned my boyfriend.

“His name is Macoll, and he’s with Neo Tokyo.”

“I saw his picture,” she said to my surprise. “He’s hot, but isn’t he kind of old?”

“I’m into father figures,” I said with a straight face.

She hesitated and then suggested that I could try going through the catering tent. It was open at the back so chefs could go out for a smoke. I could then just go over the fields and through the performers’ trailers. There was sure to be a way, because the bouncers would be at the front gates.

I thanked her and went warily back into the main tent after getting directions.

Again I threaded through people, keeping my eyes peeled for Harlen. Conversations about the music industry, the publishing world, this or that gallery or agent swirled about me. The room boiled with conversation and loud bursts of laughter, and it seemed to have grown hotter and somehow tenser.

Then I saw that some huge screens had been unveiled or brought in, or maybe they had been there all along and I had
not noticed them because there had been nothing on them. But now they were glowing with life and movement, and I realized they were offering a view of the enormous stage being watched by thousands of people a short walk away. It seemed weird that there were visuals but no music, only the harp and then the piano playing something light and vaguely classical, which bore out what the washroom attendant had said about the people at the function not caring about the music, only the prestige of being special guests at the Big Sleep Gala Party.

I was almost to the catering section when I spotted Klara. Before I could turn away, she noticed me, so I stopped and told her to tell my uncle I was bored. I was as rude as I thought Tanya would have been.

Klara regarded me for a moment out of her wide beautiful eyes. Then she said, “You seem very strung out, Tanya. Are you on something?” It took me a thick second to figure she meant drugs. She was smiling approval.

“What’s it to you?” I asked, my mind racing.

She smiled a catlike smile of satisfaction. “Do you have what you need?” she asked. “I have a friend who might be able to help you if you don’t.”

“I’ve got my own friend over there listening to the music, if I could just figure out how to get out of this place,” I retorted, wondering if I could manipulate her into getting me over to the Big Sleep.

Klara’s wet red smile widened. “I’ll tell your uncle you would like to go and see the bands as soon as the formal part of this occasion is over, shall I?” Her eyes glimmered like fluorescent lights on pools of oil.

Cursing her inwardly for not offering to take me over at once, I shrugged ungraciously, and watched her vanish into the crowd. She would report to someone that Raoul’s niece took drugs, I was sure. That made me realize that such a gathering as this, with its endless supply of wine and food and its svelte army of Klaras slithering about and suggesting a refill or a little shot or a pill, would be a perfect way to gather information about people. Was that what this was all about? A gathering of intelligence to be used to manipulate people?

I shivered and followed the next waitress with an empty tray into the catering tent, refusing to stop when someone called out, certain I would be sent back if I did. As I had hoped, no one came after me; everyone was too frantically busy. I burst out of the back of the tent into the cool bite of the night. I looked up and saw that the sky must be totally clouded over because not a single star showed.

I set off at once through the darkness, making directly for the back of the huge stage. Oddly, I could hardly hear the music, although I could feel the ground pounding with the vibration of it. I supposed it must be that all of the music was pouring away from the tented area, and out into the audience and beyond.

It was hard to walk on the tufty, uneven grass, and after tripping twice on the rough clumps, I stopped and pulled off my boots, socks, and tights. When I got to the trailer city behind the main stage, I hesitated, wondering if it would be all that easy to go through to the main performance area. There would be dozens of bouncers guarding the fences to stop fans getting over to mob the Rak or other musicians.

As I walked along the makeshift street between the caravans, it gave me a little shock to realize that Da must be in one of them with Neo Tokyo. For one instant I wanted desperately to go and find him and tell him everything. I wanted to feel his arms around me and be enveloped in his reassuring warmth and his goodness and kindness. I wanted, I realized, to be his little girl, only somehow all that had happened had taken me out of the realm of childhood. I hadn’t realized it until that moment, and I felt a pang of almost unbearable grief.