by Patty Jansen
So I fished Ynggi out of the kids’ room, where he was playing a game with Nalya and Ileyu was watching them.
The game involved sets of little wooden triangles that you could stack in different ways to produce the tallest structure. It was a Pengali agility game, and I’d seen them play it at home in Barresh, usually when their concoction collapsed on the tiles with a great clatter, and wooden triangles bounced everywhere.
Nope, not much risk of a cultural takeover by plastic figurines happening here.
The kids’ faces fell when I asked Ynggi to come. Both he and Jaki were very popular with all the kids. Because of the Pengali system with karrit points that governed an individual’s standing in the tribe, they taught the kids, both Pengali and Coldi alike, a lot about responsibility and consequences of their actions. Employing them had been one of the best things I’d done.
Ynggi told them that Jaki would continue to play once he had put the younger kids to bed, and then he came with me into the hall. He asked what I wanted him to do.
“Listen and observe. I want to know if we can trust these people or if they have an ulterior motive.”
“I’m not great at those things. Sheydu is much better.”
“I don’t want you to do the security stuff. Sheydu will do that. I want you to look at the people. How they react to you. How they dress. How they treat each other. How they treat their children or their elders.”
Comprehension dawned on his face. Yes, he understood. And no, Sheydu did not do any of those things.
Sheydu handed him the listening bug which he stuck onto the inside of his Pengali belt that sat over the top of his jumpsuit and from which dangled not the traditional glass-stone knife, but a satchel of cloths to wipe spills and sticky fingers, a bundle of spoons and a little holo-sheet that contained key terms to look out for in local eatery menus for things that would cause trouble if the kids were to eat them.
To be sure, his knife had still travelled with us, as had the fishhooks and the lines, but they were in our luggage, packed in a travel case that stood in the hall.
We filed out of the apartment.
It was now dark, and fellow hotel guests we met in the foyer were going out for dinner. They gave our party a wide berth. Dressed in plain dark clothing and with several of our team imposing in stature, no one could pretend we were simple tourists.
Mariola waited outside under the entrance awning with the trolley. She was talking to another woman, leaning against the vehicle.
When we approached, the other woman scurried away, giving Mariola a wave. She wore a uniform that differed from the park standard outfit that Mariola wore.
Mariola said, “Get in everyone and keep your belongings inside. I’m going to put up the sides of the vehicle. It’s going to be a bit hot for you, but this way, there shouldn’t be any questions about what you’re doing as park visitors in the residential area.”
We all climbed into the benches where the children had sat during much of the day, and with a click and a zoom, the sides of the vehicle, the boards that had formed the safety railing unfolded. They formed into a cabin which displayed the New World Entertainment logo on the outside.
They enclosed us in a stuffy bubble of darkness.
The trolley wobbled when Mariola jumped in the driver’s seat. We started moving.
I could see a little strip of the street in between the panels of the vehicle. We turned away from the hotel, in the opposite direction from where the park entrance was. We had come in that way yesterday, in a dedicated bus service that ran from the beachside suburbs where we had stayed a few days. On the way, we had traversed some utterly desolate country: dry fields, cracked and abandoned roads, dilapidated housing estates, abandoned business parks with windows smashed in.
Once the greater Los Angeles area had housed over ten million people. Just two million lived there today, and I had my doubts whether this area would even support that many. Athyl was a desert city, but there was evidence of food production in alleys, inside indoor farms, in the aquifers everywhere. There was none of that here. The food, apparently, came from elsewhere.
We had entered the resort through the main road and the main entrance, a large arch to give visitors the illusion that they were entering a fantasy castle.
Mariola took us out via a bumpy back road. She stopped several times when she would speak to someone. Once I could hear a gate opening and closing. We left the zone of covered streets and cooling. It grew hot inside the cabin with all of us in the small space.
The trolley proceeded slowly.
An avalanche of sound washed over us: people talking and yelling, motorbikes and other engines, some of them quite noisy, loud music, people laughing, a noisy party with blaring music, and people talking.
The small strip between the panels allowed me to see coloured lights illuminating houses painted in bright colours. Blue, yellow, pink, green.
We drove for what felt like a couple of blocks before Mariola turned off the road, into a driveway, and stopped.
A man approached the vehicle and spoke to Mariola in a language I didn’t understand.
She then let down the sides.
We stood on a paved driveway with different-coloured tiles arranged in patterns. The house was two floors high, painted bright orange with electric blue window sills—seriously—with a porch and two sets of windows on either side on the ground floor. The front yard was small, all-paved, but several large pots stood around the edges, filled with palm trees and flowers.
Another electric trolley stood in the yard, and Mariola’s driver Chickadee was washing it with a cloth and a bucket.
He greeted us.
A man came down the steps that led down from the set of double doors that looked too large for a house this size.
He was tall, dark-skinned, wore his curly hair in a ponytail and wore a pink shirt with blue flowers.
“This is my cousin, Swallow,” Mariola said.
Totally in keeping with the tradition of using animal and plant names.
The fellow came into the yard.
He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.
He met my eyes. His expression was intelligent, shrewd almost.
A second man watched from inside the open door to the house.
“Good evening. How can I help you?”
His voice was deep.
“I heard that you organise trips across the border,” I said.
“We do, yes. We do sightseeing trips of the parks and canyons, the natural wonders of the world. We can do one day and multiple day tours, depending on where you want to go.”
“Do we have options?”
“Yes, if you’re a serious customer, we can take you pretty much anywhere you want. Different places will have different rates. We can also advise you on the best places to visit.”
“I would like to discuss a number of options.”
He jerked his head to the door. “Let’s go inside.”
The second man had already disappeared into the house, and we followed Swallow up the steps into a broad hallway with gleaming tiles and a carpet runner. There were gold rimmed light fittings along the sides of the walls with lights that spread a warm glow through the hallway.
Several doors on the sides were closed, but one door was open and gave a view into a lush dining room, where several young kids sat watching a screen.
“Do you live here as well?” I asked Mariola.
“No, I live around the corner with my family. My husband’s father and aunt live with us, and we also live with his sister, and her children.”
I wondered how many people lived in this house. It looked much bigger than it had appeared from the outside. I definitely hadn’t expected the richly appointed furnishings. I wondered if the other houses in the street—which looked fairly similar—also contained such elaborate interiors. Maybe it was a status symbol associated with the pa
rt of the street. Maybe it was because people would spend a lot of time inside during the day when it was hot and there were dust storms.
Swallow opened a door to the side, letting us into a palatial office. White tiles lined the floor, and in the middle sat an enormous desk made of dark wood with ornately carved wooden legs, polished within an inch of its life, and a leather chair.
One wall contained a large screen, and heavy blinds hung over the window. Through a crack between them, I could see the house next door, which was roughly an arm’s length away. These people obviously had little use for outdoor space. The weather might be quite pleasant at the moment, but the summers would be ferocious.
Two couches faced each other in one corner of the room. Swallow waved his hand for us to sit down.
As was usual, Evi remained at the door, and Ynggi joined him.
I sat down on one couch, and Swallow sat on the other couch, with a low table between us. Sheydu, Nicha and Deyu remained standing, but Swallow offered them a seat at the table in another corner. A man he didn’t introduce also remained at the door. His security guard, I guessed.
A young woman scurried into the room with a tray with glasses and a carafe containing an amber fluid.
“Drink?” she asked.
“Yes, please.” Because it was impolite to refuse.
As she poured, the scent of alcohol drifted on the air. I had better be careful and not drink too much of this.
Swallow waited until the young woman was gone. She left the door open.
“Now we can talk about your proposed trip. We have all the facilities to make you comfortable and to provide an exciting trip. If you want to go walking, we can arrange that, we can also arrange boat tours in the canyon, we can arrange horse riding, or camel riding if that is your thing, or we can arrange speedboat racing on the lake.”
“Actually, there are a few specific locations that we would like to visit.”
I took out my reader and put it on the table, and found the maps that Deyu and Reida had prepared. Several locations we had already crossed off as being not significant or we had already visited.
I enlarged the area I was interested in across the border.
His eyebrows flicked up.
“Why would you want to go there? There is nothing to see over there.”
“It’s close enough to the tourist spots, isn’t it?”
“I guess, but…”
“You said you could take me anywhere?”
“We can, but I don’t understand why…”
“We’re not here as tourists. There is a mystery that we would like to solve. There used to be an organisation called the Southern California Aerospace Corps. They were initially based in San Diego, in a location we have already visited. That visit didn’t answer our questions about the organisation, so we’re now looking at additional locations. They used to operate a factory in this location.”
“Huh.” He stared at our map.
“Have you heard of them?”
“Heard, yes. Aren’t those the group that was going to take us all for trips to the Moon?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the group,” I said. “They took over a lot of technology once the space exploration institutes fell victim to the civil war.” Mainly from NASA, but there had been other, related, institutes.
Swallow snorted. “You’re putting it politely. They stole a lot of the stuff. They squirrelled it across the border. They were going to build space bases and all that. They even got money for it. But nothing ever came of it.” He frowned at me. “But why would you worry about that? I mean—you come from…” He spread his hands.
“It’s a fairly long story,” I said. “In short, we found some stuff that we think may have been theirs and we want to know more.”
“You found stuff? You mean, out there?” He glanced at the ceiling.
“Yes. We need to know how seriously to take it.”
“Huh. They kind of disappeared.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Ran out of money and out of people who wanted to support their crazy dreams, that’s my guess.”
“Do you know anyone who used to work for them?”
“Not really.”
This had been our reply, everywhere we went. People knew of the organisation. No one knew anyone who had worked for it. The youngest of those employees would now be in their seventies, and average life expectancy was seventy-one, so it was not surprising.
“I want to find some of those people who can tell me more. I want to look at this place that used to be the base where they put space craft together and test the vehicles. Perhaps someone in the town has an old vehicle in a shed at their house. Perhaps we can find someone who used to work at this factory. According to my information, thousands of people used to work here. Does that explain to you why we want to go there?”
“I guess. It’s not a pleasant area, though. The townsfolk are fond of roughing up strangers.”
“I’m not expecting a welcome committee. I just want to see what we can find out.”
“You said you wanted to find people who used to work there and kept stuff in their garage.”
“Get us a good local guide. That’s all we need.”
“Huh.”
And then he said nothing for a while.
“So can you do it?”
He shrugged. “This is a long way to travel, and these localities are not easy to get to. They’re well off-limits, and not even we have easy access to them. We might need to bribe an administrator or two. You have to understand that this is deep into enemy territory. We’ll also have to get local guides and they don’t come cheap.”
“I also understand that not terribly many people live in these areas.”
“With good reason. They’re hellish deserts.”
“It’s not summer.”
His mouth twitched. He didn’t look entirely convinced and was still stalling. It was time to bring out the heavy-duty tactics.
I asked, “How much?”
“Just you and these people?”
“No. There will be two parts to this trip. We’ll start off doing the usual sightseeing. There is a fairly large party in our hotel. Mariola knows them. They will want to come on the sightseeing part. Then I want you to take myself and a smaller group to these sites while the children and the others come back here.”
He eyed my map. “You’d need two days for your part.”
“That’s all right.”
“You’d need on-ground vehicles, and guides.”
“That’s all right.”
“It will cost.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think so, Mister. I’m allowed to take people on scenic tours. This here…” He waved at the map. “Is crazy territory. You never know what you might find there. Bands of rogues, coyotes.”
“Make it happen. I’ll pay you fairly, for your knowledge and your silence.”
He eyed the other man who still stood at the door, and then Mariola, also at the door. She gave a tiny snort, as if she wanted to say: “You wanted a job. I give you a job, now take it.”
He nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”
Chapter Six
With that settled, we went into the details of the planned trip, and other people came into the room. It so happened that Swallow had a guide on the books who had grown up in the area where the factory was. There was a lot to organise for so many people to go out tomorrow. Swallow gave orders to his people, all of whom took their tasks without asking questions, except to ask if there was anything that people in my team couldn’t eat or didn’t like.
Mariola was the central tent pole of the business.
In this house, Swallow was the boss, and the others were his servants. We were keeping alive an entire ecosystem.
He said that he would come to pick us up in the morning and gav
e us a list of all the things that we should bring.
We already had most items, but it might be a good idea to swing by the shop on the corner and pick up some insect repellant, if we could find any that was safe for everyone to use. It might also be a good idea to stock up on some non-perishable food.
I asked if we would camp overnight and needed to bring sleeping bags, but Swallow said he’d look after it.
Then it was time for us to go back to the accommodation, because we had a lot of packing to do ourselves.
Evi and Ynggi were still in the hallway, but the children who had been watching the screen earlier were now with them, playing another Pengali game. The children were all laughing and running after the bouncy balls he flicked through the hallway with his tail.
They looked disappointed when we entered the corridor.
We made our way back out of the house. A lot of curious people had gathered in the street. They all remained outside the gate and started calling as soon as we came out.
Swallow yelled something at them. They shuffled aside, off the driveway. Some continued calling.
Then the other man, the guard, strode down the steps, across the yard while yelling at them. Some people started leaving before he reached that gate, but others argued back at him, but eventually left, too.
What was all that about? People wanting work?
Chickadee was still cleaning the other vehicle, now vacuuming it out. He gave us a brief nod. Another servant.
Mariola drove us back to the accommodation. She didn’t close the sides of the vehicle this time, because she said the curfew had ended.
I asked her what curfew, and she said the park owners didn’t want the guests to see anything related to the maintenance and upkeep of the place, so this all happened after a certain time when all the guides had ushered the visitors to their rooms or the approved evening venues.
I had noticed that the restaurants advertised session times, and that they were all the same time slots. So the guests had set times to eat, and the workers would then scurry out of their way when the change-over happened? Just so that the rich visitors wouldn’t see anyone sweeping the streets or, heaven forbid, cleaning the toilets? And these people who cleaned the place were faceless grey ghosts, very poorly paid grey ghosts at that? People who, judging by the spectacle outside Swallow’s house, were even begging the family to give them jobs?
