by Greg Bear
“Mr. Albigoni’s assigned me to be her principal therapist,” Martin said. “I need to stay with her.”
“Sorry, sir. Perhaps once she’s in the hospital. We’ve been instructed to evacuate you and the rest of your team by another route. Arrangements have already been made.”
Martin again smelled smoke and blood, the perverse sensation of anger and triumph. He could not fight internally and externally at once. He capitulated and the beefy man smiled with professional sympathy. They were led to a waiting limousine in the service garage at the rear of the building.
It was early afternoon. Only a few hours had passed since they had gone up Country.
61
Richard Fettle walked from his apartment to La Cienega Boulevard, some five kilometers, long thin legs pumping with an energy he had not felt in years. He feared nothing worried about nothing; saw the clear skies, heard the hum of shadows traffic—buses and rented cars, a few private cars—up and down the streets and broad boulevard, robins picking through weak winter grass on old residential lawns buckling sidewalks cracked and patched pavement.
The three towers of East Comb One cast their pearly reflected light on the antique shops and art galleries that had dominated La Cienega for a century. Here was a prime nexus between the therapied in their combs and the inhabitants of the shade; dickering, bargaining, a ghetto adventure.
Richard had therapied himself and that was the way it was supposed to be, as intended by God and nature. He had worked through his own labyrinth and rid himself of his own demon: a friend who had betrayed him but who had also once given the gift of concern and love.
Yet Richard did not feel the necessity to mourn Emanuel Goldsmith. No need to regret the exit of Nadine. Nothing in him but pumping legs and fading afternoon and the city he had lived in all of his life.
He passed the foot of the Califia Federal Deposit Bank, a great half century old ornate green and copper glass pyramid and adjoining tower. The stone walls were covered with eroded posters announcing the binary millennium A Time of Emotional Catharsis and the New Age Coming meetings of Idiot Liberation Up Against the Mind Control of the Therapied State protests against this development that change, vibrancy and anger and foolishness; the color and eclecticism and manic concern of citizens and groups tipped by ill focused or ill informed passions; the glory of the mottled human brain on its own native spin.
He took a deep breath, smiled at a passerby, who ignored both Fettle and the bank wall, and walked on. No fear. Even should Selectors come and take him away, no fear. Even should he walk into the upland valley home of Madame de Roche and find himself wholeheartedly disapproved of or into the Pacific Arts Lit Parlor and find scorn and sharp criticism; even should he judge that all his past labors were useless, no matter no fear he was free of the heavy clouds that had burdened his life. Having nothing he was all the more grateful to have less.
He paused before a flower shop watched over by an elderly woman with a grim expression. Gina and Dione had been cremated and their ashes scattered as per Dione’s wishes. No graves no markers an open acceptance of the anonymity guaranteed to all by death.
Still, he remembered. He could commemorate them somehow. What would suit best his present state of mind? He conferred with his credit balance, found a few hundred dollars to spare and asked the old woman what he could buy for two dear friends with such meager resources.
The woman walked back into her shop, leading him on with a curled finger. “Are you from around here?” she asked. Richard shook his head. He looked over shelves filled with strange ritual apparatus, not at all expected in a flower shop. Tiny bottles of herbs and oils, boxes of tied dried leaves and roots, drums of pure oil, anointed flour and blessed corn meal, colored sugars, plain and scented devotional candles, embroidered and brocade ceremonial robes on an antique chrome steel rolling rack, shelves of ceramic bowls capped and tied with wax and ribbons, drums small and tall wired to the north wall of the shop, a huge ceramic urn painted black and brick red squatting beside the rear counter.
“Where are you from, then?” she pursued.
“I’ve been on a long walk to think things over,” he said. “Pardon my curiosity, but I thought this was a florist’s—”
“It is,” the woman said. “But we get a call around here for santería and vodoun goods, herbs, that sort of thing. We cater to oriental mystery patrons, Urantia, Rosicrucian, Rites of Hubbard Schismatics, Sisters of Islam Fatima. You name it, we can get it.”
He looked at the large black and red urn. “What’s in there?” he asked.
“Six hundred knives known to have been used to kill human beings,” the woman said. “Packed in blessed oil to ease their accumulated pain. Now, aren’t you sorry you asked? We can get any kinds of flowers you want. Look at these catalogs.” She dialed up a glorious garden on an old display screen. “Just tell us what you want. We can deliver.”
“I need something I can take with me now,” Richard asked. He eyed the urn dubiously.
“Just what’s out front, then. You a cultist or an edge walker?”
“No,” he said. “I’m a writer.”
“All the same. All dreamers. I sell to them all. I got a charm for writers. Lit or Vid or both. Guarantees satisfactory broadcast and royalties.” She winked at him.
“Thanks, but no,” Richard said.
She finger curled him to the front of the store and pointed to the vases of fresh flowers under the awning. “Noble special on nano roses. Can’t tell the difference,” she said. “Smell wonderful. Completely natural. Made from grain byproducts.”
He politely admired the roses and admitted they were very nice but declined. “Something real, please.”
She shrugged, no accounting for tastes, and lifted a wrapped dozen orange and white and black winter lilies. “Dominican Glory,” she said. “Engineered in my ancestral country. Seventy five and Uncle Sugar excise,” she said.
“They’re fine. Very pretty. Could I purchase some of your white wrapping paper?”
“It’s such a lovely evening,” the woman said, “I’ll give you a couple of meters for a blessing.”
Next he visited a traditional arts store to purchase a bottle of blue tempera paint. Sitting on a bench in the store’s rear patio, surrounded by an old splintering wooden fence, his feet scuffing a concrete slab stained with the excesses of young art students, Richard laid out the wrapping paper and carefully lettered a sign.
Dusk was well along when he returned to the bank wall. He carried the rolled banner under one arm and clutched the flowers, wide brush and bottled paste in a bag. He applied the paste with the wide brush over an unreadable stretch of eroded posters and smoothed his sign into the glistening dripping gel. Then he taped one by one the lilies around the sign.
East Comb One had gradually folded its mirrored walls. Natural evening fell on the city below; by the time he finished, arcs of street lighting danced between the forking tops of tall poles up and down the boulevard, playing a sand shifting electrical night music.
He stood heels on curb back from his impromptu memorial and whispered to himself what he had printed on the sign, not caring what the few shade pedestrians might think.
For Gina and Dione. For Emanuel Goldsmith and for those he killed. For God save us all human beings, idiots and wise men. For myself. Sweet Jesus, why does it hurt so much when we dance?
Satisfied, he turned abruptly, leaving brushes and glue behind, and walked into the night.
62
Mary sat in the main office of the warden of Thousand Flowers, looking through the passport and the few papers that had accompanied the prisoner into Hispaniola. Soulavier and the warden argued loudly in Creole and Spanish next door in the prison records room.
The United States passport belonged to Emanuel Goldsmith. It was of the primitive paper variety still favored by some nations and still recognized by most; Hispaniola’s own laws with regard to visitors’ papers were loose, as befitted a country deriving much income from tourism.
The passport photograph of Goldsmith, several years old, bore some resemblance to the prisoner if not examined too closely. But all the other documents—Arizona state ID “smart card,” medical log card, social security card—carried the name Ephraim Ybarra. The name was not familiar.
Soulavier entered the office, shaking his head vigorously. The warden followed, also shaking his head.
“I have given him my orders,” Soulavier said. “But he insists on consulting with Colonel Sir. And Colonel Sir cannot be reached now.”
“Too bad,” Mary said. “If you get through to him, let me tell him what I know.”
The warden, a short fat man with bulldog jowls, shook his head again. “We have made no mistake,” he said. “We have done what we were told to do by Colonel Sir himself. I took his phone call. There has been no error. If this is not the man you thought, then perhaps you are mistaken. And to remove him from his legally ordered punishment, that is an outrage.”
“Nevertheless,” Soulavier said, voice rising, “I have the authority to remove this prisoner, whether or not you consult with Colonel Sir.”
“I will ask that you sign a hundred papers, a thousand,” the warden said, eyes and lips protruding. “I will not accept any responsibility.”
“I do not ask you to accept responsibility. I am responsible.”
The warden grimaced in disbelief. “Then you are a dead man, Henri. I pity your family.”
“That is my worry,” Soulavier said quietly, looking down at the desk. “Look at this man’s other papers. He has obviously stolen the passport and the tickets. Goldsmith would have no need for such aliases.”
“I know nothing about such things,” the warden said, glancing at Mary with a worried scowl. Her transform presence bothered him.
“We will take the prisoner now,” Soulavier resolved after a deep breath. “I order it in the name of the Executive of Hispaniola. I am his appointed representative.”
The warden held up his hands and shook them as if they were wet. “It is your loss, Henri. Let me get the papers for you to sign. Many papers.”
In the darkness near midnight, Soulavier’s far traveled limousine pulled away from Thousand Flowers with its three passengers: a dejected and silent Soulavier, Mary Choy, tight lipped and grimly thoughtful, and the mysterious, unconscious Ephraim Ybarra, slumped across the rear seat like so much baggage.
“Aircraft entering the area,” the limousine’s controller informed them in its feminine, slightly buzzing voice. Soulavier roused quickly and peered through the side window. Mary leaned back to look through the other side.
“What is its call sign?” Soulavier asked, shrugging at Mary when he could see nothing.
“It has no call sign,” the limousine said. “It is an Ilyushin Mitsubishi 125 helicopter.”
“Is it nearby?”
“Two kilometers away and closing.” The limousine climbed to the rim of the valley overlooking Thousand Flowers. It turned off the road into thick brush and doused its lights. The sound of its electric motor changed pitch. The window glass frosted momentarily as the car reduced its apparent temperature to match the surrounding brush and soil. “It is flying in the direction of the prison at an altitude of three hundred twelve meters. It has a human pilot.”
“Dominican,” Soulavier said emphatically. “Colonel Sir gives that branch of the defense no automatic vehicles, and there is no reason for such a machine to be so far from its base. It means that things are going badly. We cannot speak with our forces or the helicopter will detect us. We will not stay here…And we will not head for the plain, either. There is a small town nearby where we can hide for a time…The town where I was born.”
Mary stared at him.
“Yes,” he said. “I am native Dominican. But I live in Port-au-Prince since I was an adolescent.” He addressed the controller: “Take us to Terrier Noir, as soon as the helicopter has passed.”
Mary glanced at Ephraim Ybarra and saw that his eyes were open slits, pupils shifting without seeing. A line of saliva trailed from the corner of his mouth. She wiped it away with a soft cloth. His eyes closed again and he snorted lightly, right arm twitching.
“There it is,” Soulavier said, pointing through the front window. A bright searchlight beam illuminated the ground barely twenty meters from where the limousine had turned off the road. Mary wondered whether a coup had succeeded and Colonel Sir was out of power. Could this helicopter be looking for them on behalf of the USA government? She watched Soulavier closely. He was not afraid. If anything, he appeared calmer, more in control now that he had made his decision.
The searchlight flicked away and the helicopter dipped into the valley to hover above the prison. Distantly, they heard loudspeakers on the helicopter make demands in Creole.
“They do not look for us,” Soulavier said. “Maybe they come to free other foreign prisoners. Or politicals…”
“There are political prisoners in Thousand Flowers?” Mary asked.
“Not from Hispaniola. They will threaten to send the prisoners from other countries back, unless a new government is recognized…It has been done twice before, and Colonel Sir rebuffed the challenges.”
Mary shook her head in astonishment. More than ever she longed for the simple and familiar outlines of LA, where she knew the rules and could intuit the surprises with fair regularity.
Gunfire, high pitched humming clusters of pops and hisses, rose from the valley.
“Go,” Soulavier told the limousine. The motor changed pitch again and the limousine backed onto the road. Mary reached across with both hands to keep the prisoner’s head from lolling painfully as the car swerved expertly around tight mountain turns.
1100-11101-11111111111
63
Terrier Noir had been rebuilt and expanded after the great earthquake. Sitting in a low mountain valley, straddling a narrow black ribbon of aqueduct where once there had been a river, white reinforced concrete buildings and stickbuilt houses clustered like opaque crystals in the starlight.
Seated on an island at the north end of town, interrupting the flow of the aqueduct like a miniature Notre Dame de Paris, rose an ornate four spired church that seemed to have been assembled by some talented child from bits of giant bones.
There were no streetlights visible; all windows had been shuttered. The limousine entered the town square and paused by the central statue. With some surprise Mary realized the statue was not of Yardley but of a portly man wearing a wide brimmed, square crowned hat. “John D’Arqueville,” Soulavier explained, noting her interest. “He was Terrier Noir’s finest son, an artist and architect. We will stay in his church tonight. I know the prêt’ savan.”
The limousine passed through the square, down a narrow street between rows of darkened houses and across a short bridge onto the church’s teardrop shaped island. Soulavier got out and pounded on the tall arched entrance doors with a heavy white painted knocker shaped like a femur. Beside Mary, Ephraim Ybarra stirred, opened his eyes and looked at her with helpless terror. His body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, and he closed his eyes again.
She looked through the window and saw Soulavier confer with a short man in a green robe. The man looked in the direction of the limo, nodded and opened the doors wide, letting out the sepia glow of a candlelit nave.
“I will take his head and shoulders, you, his feet,” Soulavier said, opening the second door and pulling the prisoner from the limousine.
They carried the limp man into the bone church of John D’Arqueville.
The prêt’ savan—advisor on church matters to the town’s official vodoun houngan—barely reached Mary’s shoulders in height. His intense eyes followed Mary with a look of mild shock and perhaps a little awe. He seemed to recognize her and shook his head, deeply perplexed, as he followed them down the middle aisle between pews to a double altar—striped pillar beside life size crucifix—at the front of the church.
The crucifix looked ancient, a dark wooden T s
upporting a black Jesus in muscle knotted agony. Bright blood from the crown of thorns stood out against the ebony black of the face; around the base of the cross twined a vivid green serpent, black tongue frozen in a sinister dart.
The church interior smelled of sweet wax and polished wood with a faint hint of damp. Candles burned in sconces along the walls, in stands along the outer and center aisles, and before the twin altars of vodoun and Catholicism, banked in inclined rows like a living choir of lights. There were no candles in the high vault of the church, however, and it took Mary several minutes, while they lay the prisoner on a pew softened by prayer cushions, before her eyes adjusted and she could see what surrounded them on high.
She gawked in wonder. Suspended from the vault and the walls above the aisles were eleven enormous alien figures, each six to seven meters tall, long arms outstretched, faceless heads held proud and high, torsos slim and prominently ribbed as if in starvation or death. She tried to make out the details of their construction and recognized slender pipes, accumulations of scrap machinery, dimly glittering red and gold foil wrapped around interwoven wire and rods of metal.
Sacred nightmares with vast spread wings, creatures culled from an unearthly ocean, flayed, hung up to dry.
“This man is ill?” the prêt’ savan asked, hands folded in concern as he knelt over the prisoner.
“He needs rest,” Soulavier said. “We need to stay here for the evening.”
“The troubles,” the prêt’ savan said, shaking his head. “Who is this, brother Henri?” He nodded at Mary.
“She is a guest of Colonel Sir,” Soulavier said. “A very privileged guest.”
“Is she a friend of yours, Henri?”
Soulavier hesitated the merest moment, glancing at Mary, before he answered, “Yes. She is my conscience.”
The pret’ savan regarded Mary with more respect, and some awe.
