Behold a Dark Mirror (28 page)

He was exhausted and drenched in sweat.  Lying on his back on the bed, he rummaged for his gun in the backpack, felt the engraving once more. 
For my favorite company man, in case of mutiny.
  He may have lost his name, but he hadn't lost, yet.

*

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but even if you were married I can't help you find your husband now.  There is no way to figure out who, among the Does, is the John you're looking for.  The anonymous plan is
intended
to make this kind of search difficult." 

"What would you do if you were me?"  Kebe said to the clerk in front of her.  He was supposed to help, but seemed uncooperative.  His yellow hair was unkempt and his shirt had a dirty collar.  He didn't smell from body odor, but sported a kind of dog-breath.  And he was clean shaven—which didn't help his round face and nondescript features.

"Well, it's going to take some luck.  It would be a good start to assume that your husband is indeed on Virgil," he smirked, "and that he wants to be found by you."

Kebe felt like slapping him, delivering a big flat one on that insolent face.

He said, "Moving here with two unrelated anonymous packages may make your reunion, hmm, difficult.  When you find him, get married—here on Virgil.  Your previous marriage was automatically voided."

"Can you tell me how many John Does you received last week?"

Her host shook his head.  "Even if I knew, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you."

This was a dead end, Kebe recognized;  this moron was no help.  She jumped up from her seat, snatching her knapsack.  With fitful steps, she turned to exit.

"I'll be waiting for you for our next appointment," the clerk said to her back.

"The hell with you," she said without turning around.  Kebe had waited to allow Nero to arrive before her, decouple their moves, make them look like unrelated events.  She had been too successful.

Her single quarters were neat rows of chicken coops that housed unmarried women.  Once through the door, the glory of her accommodation appeared:  plain metal bunks, prefab walls, tall gray lockers, a row of wash basins with mirrors.  Some high spirit had found the gumption to put lacy curtains on a window.  Kebe dropped her sack and sat on the edge of an empty bed, elbows on her knees, chin in her cupped hands.

The men's quarters were on the other side of Pilgrim’s Landing, which wasn't far, but promiscuity was discouraged, her host had said.  No unplanned visits to the barracks of the wrong gender:  For that, there was a Tower-supplied dating service, where one could get a new date every four months.  "We encourage stable relationships," her host had said.  And then, of course, there were the bars.  Or rather the bar, open for two hours after each shift.  That seemed the only place for a casual pick-up, which also meant she'd have to fend off swarms of pretenders.  There was a church, too.  It might have a tamer—if any—singles environment.

Which shift was Nero working?  He should have been here a while, perhaps a week or more.  By now he was wondering what had happened to her.  He'd start looking for ways to nose around.  Kebe reasoned he wouldn't do much, as they agreed she'd make the first move;  but soon he'd be worried.  What would he do?

He'd try to find a way to let her know where he was.

Kebe decided she'd try to harvest the beat before anything else.  After looking at herself in the mirror, she adjusted her bra, smelled her armpits, and went out looking for the bar, which she found within a short walk—short enough to realize how small Pilgrim's Landing was.  The electronic tag on the door claimed the place would open in five minutes at 12 AM.  It really said midnight, even though the day shone bright and the air was warm.

That was the interesting part of the briefing,
Kebe thought.  Dog-breath had said the Tower imposed on Virgil to run by the 24-hour Earth's day, even if its days clocked at 24 hours, 53 minutes and a bunch of seconds;  so daylight or darkness had little to do with clock time.  The bar was opening at 12 AM, in the middle of the day, for the end of the four PM to midnight shift—the ‘third third shift’ Dog-breath called it.  She walked up and down the main drag until the doors to the bar opened.

The Tower subsidized soft drinks and hot beverages;  alcohol was expensive.  Kebe settled for coffee and found a prime position in which to listen to as many conversations as possible.  Soon she was happy she had picked coffee, as much of the dialogue was dull.  Stock homesteaders patronizing bars were no different than bar patrons anywhere.  Two men approached a table next to hers;  diligently she lent her ears.

"Darnest thing, that trickster," one said, sitting down.  "I lost two weeks pay."

"Yeah, I heard about him—the guy on first third, right?  Didn't believe it myself," his companion said, "but never gambled;  I heard he always wins.  First-rate disappearing trick."

Kebe's coffee went down the wrong pipe;  she coughed and spilled her cup on the table. 
Oh, Nero!  First third—where do I find you?  Here at the end of your shift?

"May I help you with your coffee—can I bring you another one?  Or perhaps something stronger?"  A stranger in dirty overalls was mopping her table with a handkerchief.

"No thanks," Kebe said, standing up.  "Nothing personal, mind you," she smiled.  "I just realized I forgot something important."  She approached the nearby table.

"Who's the trickster, and where do I find him?"  she said.

"I don't know who he is," said the gambler, "just that he's good entertainment.  Hey, what's a cutie like you doing in this place?  You should be dating the planet-manager.  Sit here, come on!"  He said slapping a free chair.  "Drinks are on me."

"Thanks, but I'm taken.  Where do I find him?"

"Here, at the end of first third.  Who's the lucky one?  Don't bet against the magician, you'll lose your shirt!"

"I won't," she said walking to the door.

She heard his mate mutter,  "I'd like it if she lost her shirt."  And a cackle of laughter.

*

Nero was out picking tomatoes.  He figured this was a good job—as long as he didn't have to keep it for long.  The cranky time-keeping of Virgil meant farm hands had to carry two jobs, one for the daylight and one for when the shift was dark.  Nero's dark job was as an apprentice concrete hand;  when his shift was at night, he worked at a round-the-clock site.  Each of his job assignments would last on average a bit less than two weeks, he'd been told.  Unskilled pay was lousy, but conditions were better than on Earth.

The Tower had to be insane to impose the 24-hour synchronization discipline.  The cost on efficiency had to be staggering.  When specialized skills were involved, the policy was more sensitive, he'd been told.  On the other hand, he had to admit that the timekeeping exercise reminded all the parties of who exactly was in charge.  Timekeeping was a brutal political statement, not an economic one.

Tomatoes grew well on Virgil.  He picked a few more, putting each in his neck bag.  He stopped and ate one—a little fringe benefit.  When the bag was full, he walked to the conveyor to empty it.

Work was dull, but he'd grown accustomed to dullness.  On the good side, it was predictable.  He could even enjoy it in small doses.  Worry about Kebe bothered him;  ten days had gone by without news.  He willed himself to believe that Kebe had her reasons for not showing up yet.  But just in case, he had decided to make himself known to her.  Lacking a more sensitive approach, he'd begun playing the autogenic teleportation trick.  He dared other patrons to unmask his trick, collected wagers, and performed.  Of course, so far he was on top.  His profile, however, was becoming too high.

Lucifer—Virgil's sun—moved slowly across the sky and brought break time.  Nero walked off far enough to be out of sight, hidden by the thickets of widow's fans around the farming area.  Widow's fans were tall, aromatic bushes with velvety leaves that stung like hell when touched—painful, but rash and pain disappeared in minutes.  Leaves grew and fell in ten-day cycles;  once on the ground, old leaves writhed and lost the sting, acquiring a sweet scent.  Somebody, he had heard, was trying to turn the leaf paste into a spice.

He ate his sandwich and a few shiny little tomatoes and set himself up for his exercise.  Nero was better at teleporting himself, but he could move only to places that he could see or remember well.  He wasn't worried about that, for now;  his present priority consisted of practicing takeoff.

Nero began inducing a mild trance as usual.  He felt the growing tingling and the heat wave overtook him.  When he opened his eyes and snapped his fingers no sound came.  Now it was time to—

Wait.

A ghostly form materialized before his face, then more.  Many more—there were dozens around him now.  One brushed him.  At the contact, a psychedelic nightmare burst into his consciousness, a disconnected patchwork of perceptions without sense;  Nero was stunned for a long moment.  Still in shock, he realized the ghost had retracted from him, perhaps as uncomfortable as Nero from the feedback of the touch.  One by one all the ghosts disappeared.

Nero found himself in a place he'd never seen before.  Lighting was crepuscular;  the location deserted and hot—a lifeless wilderness.  He snapped his fingers:  no sound.  Scared, he  thought of himself back at the tomato farm, at his lunch spot.  The familiar surroundings reappeared.  He snapped his fingers—still no sound.  Nero panicked—he had to land now;  he must get out of his trance.  He was on a ride without brakes—and he had to stop!

He brushed on purpose a leaf of widow's fan with the back of his hand.  Pain!  Hot acid and molten lead!  Retracting his hand to nurse it, he heard the faint noise of his rustling clothes.  Mayhem erupted over the bushes.  Voices screamed, calling for help, some man was down.  Nero tried to stand up, but his legs yielded, so he sat on the ground.  His hand still hurt:  painful minutes lasted for eternities.  Dizziness, nausea, fright, and pain vied for primacy in his mind, and still, he couldn't help thinking he had been almost imprisoned in his non-state.  What had touched him?

What a sissy,
he thought,
I'm fainting
.

*

He came to as a crew tried to lift him on a stretcher.

"I'm OK," he said, sitting up.

"What happened to you?" one in a small crowd asked;  it was his shift supervisor.

"I'm not sure," Nero answered.  He looked at his hand, the rash was fading.  He showed him the red mark.  "I think I touched a widow's fan and fainted from pain."

"Can you stand?"  a paramedic asked.

"Let me try."  Nero picked himself up.  His legs were still wobbly, but he succeeded.

"Here, let me try this."  Another paramedic took his blood pressure and temperature.  "He's shaken up," he said to the supervisor, "But his vitals are normal."

"This is unrelated, then," Nero's supervisor stated.

"Unrelated to what?"  Nero said.

"Don is dead," one of Nero's coworkers in the crowd said.

"What?"

"He got the foams," the sharecropper added.

"The foams?"  Nero said.

"Back to work!"  yelled the supervisor.  "Break it up!  On, on, there's a crop to pick.  Get your bags, the break is over now!"

Nero obliged, being in no mood to argue.  After a while he managed to get close to the picker who had told him about Don's death.

"What's the foams?"  he said.

"Tis what killed Don."

"Tell me more."

"Tis no trick, magician.  The foams's when you get a seizure, and then you die, and got the foams in your mouth—like Don.  Been here a long time myself, heard it happens all the time.  Didn't believe 'em stories, but now I saw it myself.  The Tower don't tell nobody there's a sickness, the Tower tells us the foams's no sickness.  Some believe the Tower, like Don.  Look what good it did him.  Me, I've been friends with Don a long time, he was strong as a horse, and now look.  Me, I used to believe it, too, like Don.  We believed the Tower.  The Tower got me out of the dregs, gotta be some good about it.  But now, I don't know no more.  The foams got me scared, magician."

"I'm sorry about Don, pal."

The picker nodded.  Nero continued his work, bag after bag till the shift was over.  He was certain Don had met a ghostly death, and Nero might have as well met that fate, were it not for his altered state at the time.

At shift break, Nero returned with his eighteen companions to the farmhouse, where the kitchen provided them with dinner bags.  One by one they streamed through the framepost to Pilgrim's Landing and their barracks, which tonight would have an empty bed.  He showered, ate his dinner, then stopped to offer Don's friend another word of comfort.  He punted, should he go to the bar for his show?  He decided in favor;  the barracks would be a sad place tonight.

Evening had fallen.

Street lights and the lit-up entrance to the saloon guided his short walk.  As he entered, cheers greeted him.  "Hey, magician, show us your trick tonight, will you?"

A woman said,  "I'll bet against you."

That voice—Kebe!  He wanted to run to her, but constrained his reaction to a smile, a wink, and the words:  "Do it, you may win, who knows."

"Hey, lady, you better keep your Yees for drinking.  The magician's never missed yet," someone said.

"Who's the bookie tonight?"  Nero said.

"I am," said the bartender.

Nero approached the bar and sat down.  "Coffee, please."

The lad at the counter obliged.  "Magician, you're gonna try tonight?"

"I'll try alright."  Nero sipped his coffee with mild distaste, cursing the Tower for not shipping licorice here.  There were perhaps fifty people in attendance, most of whom could recognize him by sight now.  He'd done too much advertising, but that had met his purpose eventually.

He looked at Kebe, their eyes met.  Tonight, the magician would disappoint his audience.  Nero hoped Kebe had placed a significant wager.

CHAPTER 29

Ayin Najjar sat on the couch in Potter's office, oblivious to her surroundings.  Outside it was dark, inside it was even darker.  She could hardly see the tumbler on the tea table or the tipped-over bottle holding maybe another cup of liquor.  Three fateful days had gone by.  She was drunk.  Potter had gone home, and she was alone.

Day One had been a screaming success.  She wished it was still the end of Day One—she'd been so enthused she started dancing in this very office.  The xeno team had answered all questions with directness, gaining the goodwill of the correspondents, mellowing sour attitudes.  When the magnificent fifty had broken into groups, all five guides did a wonderful job, she was told.  Blessed be Day One.

Bad luck had barely missed the target on Day Two.  An accident happened—a redneck on a scaffolding fell and broke his neck.  Potter had told her it could have been anything.  The man had fallen from fifteen meters high onto a concrete pad, and when they picked him up he didn't have a bone that wasn't broken.  A team of correspondents was on the spot when that happened, which was bad.  But the redneck was working alone, there were no material witnesses to the circumstances of the fall, which was excellent.

Poor redneck, Ayin thought.  She leaned forward, picked up the glass from the tea table, and sipped from the nearly empty tumbler.  Potter had found her a real crystal tumbler, a luxurious glass.  Where or how he had found it, Ayin couldn't guess, but she enjoyed the feeling of it.  She had another sip.  So everyone took it as a genuine accident.

Day Three had been—she took another sip emptying the tumbler, refilled it in part from the tipped bottle.  Her hands were trembling.  It was good she was drunk, or she'd really get way too worked up at this stage.  That's the reason why she always took a sip when she relived Day Three.  She intended to stay drunk as long as necessary, because getting so angry was bad, it really made her angry, and the compound effect snowballed out of control.