Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille (7 page)

I was sitting in my favorite booth one Tuesday, when Libby signaled me over to her. She was wearing black jeans and a loose pink top that set off her pale skin and brown hair. I said, “What’s up?”

“Not much. The most important man in the world was here earlier.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Only I didn’t realize he was the most important man in the world, so I was serving someone who got here first and I didn’t jump fast enough.”

“Did he complain?”

“Yeah. I told him I was sorry I hadn’t known he was the most important man in the world.”

I nodded. “So, what does the most important man in the world drink?”

“Brandy and lemon sour.”

“Ah. Well, there you have it.”

“Yeah. How about you? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“Me? No.”

“You sure?”

I turned away and surveyed the room. A middle-aged woman leaned back in her chair, coffee neglected, eyes closed, newspaper in her hand. A little girl of about nine or ten sat alone near the door in the restaurant, probably waiting for her parents. A fat guy in a grey suit and grey hat with bushy white eyebrows sat alone near the door, like an extra in a De Laurentiis spy film. I wondered if he had woman troubles. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like nails. Where did I hear that?

There was a group of four business types, three men and one woman. I could now safely conclude that business wear in New Quebec, sixty-one years after its founding, involved lightcolored sports coats with thin lapels, dark shirts in solid colors (button-down was okay but not mandatory), slacks in light colors with a bit of a looser fit than I was used to, ties that were narrow and fairly tame, and suede shoes. Hair, decreed the Lords of Fashion for this time and place, must be short in back and at the sides; it may be long in front, but must be carefully groomed.

I turned back to Libby. “Yeah, I guess there’s some stuff on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“I think I’ve been doing too many drugs.”

“If you think so, you probably have. So cut it out. What else?”

“Souci.”

“What about her?”

“The other day she started in on me. About how stupid it was to play Irish music, and she just really let me have it. She apologized the next day, said she was just in a bad mood. It bothered me how, I don’t know,
devastated
I was. Does that make sense?”

She put a toothpick in her mouth and stared at me. “Look, pinhead, someone was killed in here. Someone tried to blow up the place. We don’t know when a fucking nuclear bomb is going to fall on our heads. You’re worried about some chickie not liking what song you play?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I am. That’s what’s worrying me.”

“So take your mind off her for a while and figure out what to do about the rest of it. Pinhead.”

“You got any ideas?”

“No. We didn’t tell the cops, though. Fred is trying to find out who delivered the boxes, and Rich and Eve are at the library studying up on the progress of the human race and nuclear war.”

“What’s the rest of my band doing?”

Libby made a crude gesture suggesting autoeroticism.

“Got it,” I said. “Yeah, I guess maybe it’s time I do something.”

“Good,” said Libby. “What?”

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to Rich and Eve, see if they need any help.”

But they didn’t; they’d already found the answers they were looking for.

Jamie pushed two tables together and Fred placed chairs around them as Rich and I cleaned up after the last pair of customers of the night. Libby brought over a pitcher of something called “plum-brego phosphate” and glasses for the bunch of us. We were in the taproom, I guess because it felt more intimate.

Rich sat down with his back to the stage and Eve at his right. I was on his left, with Libby next to me, then Fred, Jamie at the other end of the table, Rose next to him, and Tom across from me. Jamie, Rose, Fred, Rich, and Tom were all smoking the local variety of tobacco-like weed. Smoke trailed away from the stage toward the intake duct above the bar like a grey down comforter. I wondered if it could be woven into a business suit.

As we got settled I found myself studying Eve. Whatever they’d found out, she had no doubt done most of the hard work, just because she spoke all the languages and had that sort of mind. What sort of mind? She hardly ever said a word, and when she did, you could barely hear her. She had a delightful laugh and beautiful blue eyes and a habit of going into sulks. Once, when a bunch of us had been sitting around shooting the breeze, I’d suddenly been almost overwhelmed by sorrow for everything and everyone we’d left behind. I hadn’t said anything, and I’m sure my face didn’t change, but Eve suddenly reached over and squeezed my hand. I’ve never understood how she did things like that. A mystery among mysteries.

Rich said, “I suppose you’re wondering—no, never mind. Eve and I decided to do what we could to predict when and if we were going to be hit by another bomb.” He paused for effect. Jamie and I looked at each other and Jamie rolled his eyes. Rich continued, “We didn’t exactly find out. We got sidetracked onto a study of the causes of the original war, back home.”

I looked around to see if anyone was going to react badly to the mention of home, but everyone seemed to handle it all right. Rich turned to Eve, who said, “Full-scale nuclear war has occurred five times in human history.” I could barely hear her over the whir of the ventilation system.

Jamie said, “Five times? Total?”

Eve nodded. “The Earth, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Galway around Proxima, just before mass colonization started.”

Tom said, “And we’ve been there for three of them.”

I said, “Pure coincidence.” Everyone looked at me. I added, “That was a joke.”

Rich said, “The first war, the one on Earth, lasted about eight years.”

“That’s a hell of a long time for a nuclear war,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s measuring from when Cairo was hit until, well, there was nothing left.”

“Yeah,” I said. We looked at each other. I was remembering where I was when I heard about Cairo. I was in a hardware store, getting some brackets to mount a speaker, when I noticed everyone rushing over to the cash register and watching the little TV, and I asked someone, and I remember how weak my knees got. There was a guy next to me in a maroon raincoat, yeah, it was May, and he sat down on the floor and shook his head. There was a lady who—well, never mind. Rich gave us a moment with our memories, then began speaking again.

“We started trying to find the causes of the war, and that’s when things started to get weird.” Once more he paused. “We couldn’t find any.”

“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t expect it to be that easy to conclude, after all this time.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. There was nothing. No speculation, no conflicting reports, no analyses tying it into a psychological racial death-wish, no blaming it on some country or another. No blaming it on space aliens or Elvis’s ghost.
Nothing
.”

“That,” I suggested, “is impossible.”

“I know,” said Rich.

Fred said, “Methinks someone has been censoring lots and lots of things.”

Libby said, “Did you try newspapers of the time?”

Eve said, “The library didn’t have any.”

“That seems weird,” I said. “With how easy information storage is—”

“I know,” said Rich. “They have papers from before the war, but none from during. Either none of them escaped, or they’ve been deleted or hidden.”

“Wow,” said Rose.

“We’re not done,” said Rich.

“Great,” said Jamie.

Rich turned to him and started to say something, then thought better of it. Instead he said, “We started digging into the history of the resettlement, looking for patterns on what happened that led to the wars on the Moon, and Venus, and Mars. That’s when Eve found the really weird thing.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said under my breath. Libby heard me and flashed a grin.

Eve said, “There was a Russian book that traced a particular group of colonists. They were all very powerful, and they came from different parts of the world, and they settled on Luna, well, just about the time we were getting nuked in London.”

“Really,” I said. “I hadn’t known there was any colonization going on that early. We got blasted ahead six years, and I got the impression that there hadn’t been much actual settling there until three or four years before that.”

Fred shook his head. “There wasn’t,” he said.

“When was the book written?” asked Jamie.

“Fairly recently.”

“So he could have gotten his dates wrong.”

“I suppose.”

“Let Eve go on,” said Rich.

We nodded. She said, “This group of people—”

“How big a group?” interrupted Jamie.

“About thirty families. Big families. Extended families. Perhaps as many as a thousand people.”

“All right.”

“They immigrated to Venus as a group during the two weeks before Ibrium City was destroyed. Then they moved to Dockside, Mars, about four months before the war on Venus. They left Mars during the three days before we were hit in Jerrysport.”

“A good group of guessers,” I said. “Or else they knew something the rest of the human race didn’t know.”

“Or,” said Rich, “they were the cause of the—”

Jamie interrupted Rich’s thought by snorting quite loudly. “Are you going to tell me that a thousand people caused nuclear war on five worlds?”

Rich said, “And then removed all traces of how they did it. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

Jamie made a sound with his lips, something like “Pffff.”

Rose said, “Why would they want to?”

Rich shrugged.

Fred said, “I don’t see it.”

Eve said, “They were all very rich and very powerful.”

I said, “Is there any evidence at all?”

“The timing,” said Rich. “The fact that they could do it. The lack of any other indications as to the cause.”

I shook my head. “I don’t buy it.”

Rich said, “Guess where they went after they left Mars?”

I shrugged. “How should I—wait. No.”

Rich said, “They spent some time on Galway around Proxima, then they built a series of exploratory starships, including the
Winnipeg Dave
. At the time this book was written, they were en route following her, about six colony ships and three years behind.”

“Damn,” I said. “And these guys have been everywhere there’s been nuclear war, and there’s been nuclear war everywhere they’ve been?”

“Yes,” said Rich.

“And now they’re here?”

“Yes,” said Rich.

“Wow,” I said.

“I need whiskey,” said Rose.

“There’s more,” said Rich.

“Great,” said Jamie. “What now?”

“They have a name.”

“A name?” I said. “Like an organization?”

“Yep,” said Rich. “The book gives the name in Russian, but—”

“Sacharmedved,” said Eve, or something like that.

We all took turns trying to pronounce it. I shook my head. “Does it mean anything?”

“Yeah,” said Rich.

“Sugar Bear,” said Eve, in her tiny little voice.

The Cicero Cluster became a going concern around 550 years after the founding of Ibrium City. It consisted of some fourteen star systems loosely centered around Cicero itself. It was founded by several thousand men and women who escaped from the destruction of the Triangle Worlds by matters of days in some cases, hours in others. They never learned from whom they fled, yet they were harried, hounded, and hunted, until those who escaped landed on a friendly if relatively lifeless world they called Cicero after the captain of the
Docsmith
, the flag vessel of the makeshift fleet. The sun they named Marko, and, over the course of several hundred years, they came to inhabit a belt of stars around it.

For the first few score of years they were hiding from whoever had caused the destruction of the Triangle Worlds. Later they became stronger, but they still made no effort to reach anyone outside of their own system, for fear their efforts at communication would be detected. When they finally got around to trying, nearly a hundred years after the landing on Cicero, they couldn’t reach anyone. Some thought this was because communication technology had changed sufficiently that no one was receiving what they were broadcasting. Others suspected that they were using faulty information on the location of the Earth, or incorrect algorithms on the other major systems, or incorrect algorithms to update their positions.

No one seriously entertained the notion that the Earth and every other outpost of humanity had been destroyed, leaving only themselves and the enemy.

When the Cicero Cluster was discovered, or, more probably, stumbled upon by the enemy, attempts to reach anyone who might help were intensified, even as hasty defenses were organized. The theory that advances in communication technology prevented contact became more popular, so efforts to find newer, better, and more unusual means of sending information across light-years doubled and doubled again.

They never did make contact. But in the course of trying, they learned how to break down matter and reassemble it at arbitrary points in space. It was while they were debating how to use this as a weapon, and how to get the necessary amount of energy, that it occurred to someone that an arbitrary point in space was also an arbitrary point in time.

An entire world of discovery would open up, if every habitation in the cluster wasn’t reduced to rubble before they had the chance.

“Sugar Bear,” I repeated dumbly.

Rich nodded.

“I need whiskey,” said Rose.

Tom stared at Rich.

Libby and Fred looked at each other, back at Rich, at each other, at the rest of us, and back at Rich. Silence covered the room like a London fog, broken by occasional patches of cleared throats and shuffled feet.

“Well, that was dull,” I said. “Anyone have any interesting news?”

Fred cleared his throat. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Great.”

“I’ve been making some discreet calls, trying to find out who might have tampered with those cases of whiskey.”

“Ah. And?”

“It seems the truck was sitting unattended here for several hours. Unlocked as well.”

“Oh.”

“On the other hand, our next-door neighbor, Mr. Carob of the appliance store, saw the driver and his assistant leaving the truck to get coffee or something, and then saw two other persons near it.”

Fred was the sort of person who would use “persons” in casual conversation.

“How is Mr. Carob at descriptions?” I asked.

“Quite good, actually.”

“Well, bless his heart.”

“Did you have to explain why we were looking for them?”

“I think he assumed some liquor was taken, and I saw no need to correct him on this.”

“Bless your heart.”

“Thank you.” He took some notebook paper from his pocket. “The descriptions,” he said.

Rich already had his hand out. He chewed his beard and grunted as he studied them. “Two men, both white, one about five-eight or nine with short red hair, walked with his shoulders hunched up, the other shorter, neat dark hair, mustache, his feet point out a bit when he walks.”

“He really does have a good eye,” I said.

“He does,” said Rich. “I don’t recognize either one from the description, though. I’ll ask around.”

“Discreetly,” I suggested.

“What about the police?” said Rose.

I shook my head. “Whatever is going on, the local police are involved at some level, or there would be more of an investigation going on over the guy who was killed here.”

“Not necessarily,” said Fred. “We don’t know what kind of manpower they have, or even how serious a crime murder is on a colony like this.”

“It can’t be legal,” said Libby.

I studied the faces around me, then looked down at the table between my arms. I suspected they were realizing, for the first time, just how serious this was. I wondered how we’d all stand up to it. Fred wouldn’t be shaken. I knew from talking to him that he’d been through worse. And Libby was like a rock. Rich? Eve? Jamie? Tom? I didn’t know. Myself? Heh. We’d see.

“…big explosion,” Libby was saying, “and all our clothes fell off, and the lights went out. What could we do?”

I said, “What?”

“Oh, nothing. You weren’t listening.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I was distracted. What were you saying?”

“I was saying that you knew someone who knew something about Sugar Bear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Souci. Remember the first time you mentioned Sugar Bear around her? She practically got up and ran from the room.”

“Oh. Yeah. I thought I’d imagined that. You noticed it, too, huh?”

“Shit,” said Libby. “I’d have to have been dead to miss it.”

“You going to ask her about it, Billy?” asked Jamie.

I almost asked him if he had any idea what he was asking for, but there was really no point in it. “Yeah. I’ll be seeing her tomorrow.”

I caught Tom’s eye. He stared at me for a moment, then looked away.

The next day was Wednesday, and a cold breeze came walking through the streets, carrying a smell and a tingling on the skin that’s winter saying, “Hi. I’ll be there in a minute, okay?” I have no great love for winter, but that first warning day of it is pleasant; it gives me a referent for the word “brisk,” and makes me want to put on a leather jacket and go walking through the streets with my girl’s hands wrapped around my arm as she leans toward me for warmth and my hands are in my pocket and our hair goes whipping around…

Yeah.

The temperature was just above freezing, and I’m told that in New Quebec this was pretty much as cold as it ever got, which was nothing compared to Jerrysport, with its incomplete terraforming, but pretty horrid compared to the tightly controlled conditions in Ibrium City.

I said nothing as we walked in toward the main drag, Souci’s hands wrapped around my arm. Her hair was blown back off her face. There was that slight pout to her lips that may have been accomplished with lipstick. There were two bicycles in front of the bakery, probably the same bicycles, but I didn’t see the kids. A middle-aged woman dragged groceries behind her in a small cart. A fat man sat on a wire chair outside an outdoor café it was too cold for everyone else. Our conversation as we walked consisted of, “Where should we eat?” “How about Cecil’s?” “Fine.” We didn’t have to talk.

There was plenty of light in Cecil’s so I could keep watching her. I never got tired of looking at her. The bones of her face were not so much perfect as perfect for her; the feline curve around the edges of her eyes, the hollow of her cheek, like a work of sculpture. I thought about what I had to ask her and grimaced.

Cecil’s? It was a small place with a lot of mirrors and chrome and a little bit of an antiseptic feeling. The food was good, though. We had something that tasted like oyster soup and almost was, then she had a small salad and I had something with beef and mushrooms in a sherry sauce. No complaints.

She said, “You’re pretty quiet.”

“I’m eating.”

She said, “Ahh,” which meant, “I don’t believe you.”

I said, “Well, yeah.”

She said, “What is it?”

I said, “The bunch of us had a talk last night.”

“Oh?”

“We need to know what you know about Sugar Bear.”

Everything in her body seemed to tighten for a moment and I was suddenly sure she was about to leave, but then that moment passed and she just looked at me. Her eyes never left mine. She said, “Is that right?” I wish I could describe the tone of voice she used for that: the cool, distant, uninterested tone that cut like a razor and raised welts like a whip. Maybe, if I could describe it, you’d understand just how hard it was for me to continue the conversation. If you think this is a plea for sympathy, you got it, bub.

“We need to know,” I repeated.

“Who is we?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Jamie, Rich, Eve, Tom, Rose—”

“These people sent you to ask me—”

“Not exactly. We need to know about Sugar Bear, and I know you know something about it.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s important.”

“To whom?”

“To all of us. Maybe to everyone in New Quebec. Maybe to everyone in the world.”

“Shit,” and the scorn in her voice cut me again, raised more welts.

“Maybe I’m wrong about that,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “If so, you can tell me why. I need to know.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Doesn’t it matter what happens to me?”

“What will happen to you?” She turned her head from me and didn’t say anything. I said, “I don’t understand. Would something happen to you if you told us about it?”

She didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if her shoulders were shaking or not. The idea that I might be making her cry made me physically ill. I said, “Are you all right, babe? Is there something I can—”

“Leave me alone, all right?”

She got up and walked out of the place. I sat there for two hours hoping she’d come back. When she didn’t I went back to the apartment, but she wasn’t there, either. I sat up in the living room with my back against Tom’s pillow for an hour or so, then I went into my room and slept.

Jamie woke me up the next morning with coffee with cream and sugar and cocoa. “Thanks,” I said, sitting up.

He sat down against the wall opposite me. “How did it go?”

It came back to me then. I studied the wall for a moment, just to see if there were any cracks in it. I cleared my throat and turned back to Jamie. “Not well,” I said. “She got upset and took off.”

“You didn’t get an answer, then.”

“No. Not yet, anyway. Maybe after she’s thought about it.”

“Okay,” he said, and left me to finish my coffee in peace.

Later the four of us plus Carrie trooped over to Feng’s for breakfast. I had an omelette with green pepper and onions and sausage and garlic and cayenne, and a side of French toast. I had a local tea that was maybe a bit milder than the Irish Breakfast I was used to.

“Well,” I said as I was finishing up. “We struck out with Souci. Now what?”

“What was the problem?” asked Tom.

“She didn’t want to tell me anything,” I said.

Tom said to Carrie, “Could you ask her?” Her eyes grew very wide and she shook her head.

“Guess not,” I said.

“I could talk to her,” said Jamie.

I looked at him. Yeah, he could be pretty persuasive. I remembered once when he convinced me to start an Irish band with him and Rose and Tom. I said, “If you think you can talk her into telling us something, go for it. I just don’t want to get her any madder at me than she already is.”

“This is so weird,” said Carrie. “It’s like you’re plotting against her.”

“Not against her,” I said, maybe too quickly, because the same thought had occurred to me.

“What,” said Tom, “
for
her?”

“We need to know what she knows,” I said.

“I was joking,” said Tom.

“What I’d like to do,” said Jamie, “is go stir up trouble somewhere until someone does something.”

“Robert B. Parker,” said Tom.

I said, “When you find a good writer, you stick with him.”

“It’d work,” said Jamie.

“Where do we do that?” said Tom.

“Ummm. I don’t know.”

We sat there a bit longer, then Jamie shrugged and stood up. “I’ll go talk to Souci.”

“Good luck,” I said. The rest of us sat and drank coffee and tea, saying very little, for the better part of an hour. Then Fred came in, saw us, and headed straight over. He had a camera case slung over his shoulder, and a manila folder in his hand.

“Any news?” I asked him.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “I happened to see someone who matched one of the descriptions going into a building not far from here, so I took a picture of him, and Mr. Carob agreed that it is him.”

“That’s great,” I said. “What building?”

“It’s just a few doors down,” he said. “It’s called Le Bureau Théâtral du Nouveau Québec.”

“That’s the agency Souci works out of,” said Carrie.

“Of course it is,” I said.

“I talked to her,” said Jamie a few hours later, back at the apartment. “I tried, anyway.” I waited, watching him, wondering how he’d react to the latest news on our end. Tom and Carrie were out watching TV or something at Carrie’s and Rose was in the back room running through scales on her fiddle. Jamie said, “She doesn’t think it’s any of our business what she knows, and doesn’t feel like talking about it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Was she mad at you?”

He shook his head. “Not as far as I could tell. She hardly looked at me, though. She just kept packing.”

My stomach did a one-and-a-half gainer into my small intestine. I said, “Packing?”

“She said she was flying out to Derniérebale for a week or so, to get away from things.”

“Oh,” I said. My voice sounded very small in my own ears. “When is she leaving?”

“Today or tomorrow.”

“Maybe I should walk over there.” Jamie didn’t answer. I said, “She’s pretty mad at me, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know. Your name didn’t come up.” He didn’t look at me while he said it.

I said, “Oh.”

A moment later I felt Jamie watching me, and realized that my eyes were closed. I opened them. Jamie said, “Want to play a song or two?”

“Not right now,” I said. “I think I’ll take a walk. I’ve got news for you, but it’ll wait.”

“Are you sure you don’t want company?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks. I’ll be back in a few.”

It took a long fifteen minutes to get to Souci’s apartment. She lived in a neighborhood of tree-lined streets, interrupted by little half-block parks and wading pools and such. She lived in the bottom unit of a new-looking duplex with a roommate whom she never saw. “That’s the only way I can stand to have a roommate,” she had explained. I could hear her voice when I thought about it. I remembered the inside as clean and orderly, with a couch, an entertainment console, a fibrawood table and chair set, and not much more. “The furniture is all Annie’s,” she had explained. “I don’t have much of my own. I don’t stay in one place long enough to keep much furniture.” I heard her voice again.

No one answered when I rang. I thought about camping on the doorstep and decided that would be pretty stupid, so I went back. Jamie had left. I sat in the living room, hauled out the banjo, and played through “Sailor’s Hornpipe” and “Arkansas Traveler,” then settled down to work on “Tennessee Rag” for a while, to see if I could finally get it clean. This required a great deal of concentration, leaving me no room to think about anything else.

That evening I went to a club where Les Sons Magiques were playing. I hoped Souci might be there. She wasn’t. Between sets I spoke to her friend, Christian, the lead guitarist. He confirmed that she’d gone out of town. “I’m not sure why,” he said. “She seemed really weird when I talked to her. Do you know what’s going on?”

I shook my head. “I wish I did.”

He nodded, distracted. He put his feet up on a chair and sipped a beer. “Are you guys playing tomorrow? I should hear you sometime, and we don’t play again until Saturday.”

“No, we’ve got the weekend off. Want to get together and do some tunes?”

He gave me a sort of appraisal. “That’d be fun,” he said, surprising me. “Feng’s?”

“How about my place? It’s just off Dupont, toward the river.” I gave him the address. We agreed to make it about noon and I’d whip us up some food.

It didn’t occur to me until I was walking home that Christian was a friend of Souci’s, and Souci was tied into Le Bureau, which meant I ought to be at least a little more suspicious of him. I sighed. I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing.