Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Die of infection? In an hour and a half? Virtual infections, like virtual weather, must be accelerated.

  “I want to check the tents,” Santos said. “Only for a minute.”

  He still couldn’t see anything out of his right eye. Seeing out of only his left eye was strange. He looked around, trying to focus, found himself looking at a corpse. Well, there were a lot of them.

  The man lay flopped on his back, his chest, abdomen and groin bloody but not ruined. His blood was black and wet in the moonlight and his fatigues looked genuinely soaked (David thought if he touched the body his fingers would come away black) but it was curiously cosmetic. He was flopped there convincingly enough, abandoned the way corpses look, but he looked bland. Features too regular, somehow. Not particularly handsome. He had an insignia on his shoulder, a chess piece. It was a knight, with an arrow superimposed, pointing forward. He had a moustache but his cheeks were mannequin smooth. David couldn’t put his finger on what was missing, but maybe it was that only the minimum details were there and that wasn’t enough to give him humanity.

  That made sense. In a game the casualties couldn’t be too real or it wouldn’t be fun.

  “We got to go,” Santos said.

  They passed the body of the woman with the strange blue fire weapon as they left. She looked different, more real than any of the others, although her appearance was exaggerated. She had long hair that was black in the moonlight. Part of her face was shattered but her fatigues were open at the throat and she had full, perfect breasts filling her undershirt. Her skin was dark and smooth.

  “What was that blue?” David said.

  “What?” Santos said.

  “This woman, she had some sort of weapon? Blue, like electricity? It made her hard to kill?”

  “Oh, no. She’s a PC, you know, like us. When she looked at us, she saw the blue glow, too. It’s in the game.”

  David shuddered, a feeling that came out of nowhere and ran through his system like lightning and was gone.

  Being one-eyed was making his head hurt.

  Away from camp they climbed a bit. The treadmill made him have to step different, accelerating in a way that felt a little as if he were going up. Santos tapped on his cheek and was suddenly wearing a headset. David did the same thing. The set was open, he could hear the wash of a live mic, but no one was on. Where was Amazon Lil? They were supposed to maintain com silence, but he didn’t know why. Maybe Amazon Lil and the leader of the other team could trace locations through the corns. Maybe it was just the rules of this particular game.

  None of it particularly made sense. He wondered how much longer until the game was over.

  He sighed.

  “You okay?” Santos said.

  “Yeah,” David said. He could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

  “It makes you kind of crazy, being wounded,” Santos said. “I get wounded all the time, you know? Only I always get it in the leg or something, then the treadmill messes you up, like to make you limp.”

  “It is not that, so much. I should not be doing this,” David said.

  “Why not?” Santos said. “It’s just a game. Pass the time thing.”

  “It is a waste of money,” David said. “I do not have a job.”

  “Oh,” Santos said. They climbed a bit more and then the land seemed to level out. Some sort of plateau, David thought.

  “Nothing up here,” Santos announced. “We should go back down.”

  He took them down a wash where the shadows were pitch black and they had to watch their footing. The treadmill couldn’t simulate climbing or rocks but it could jerk around a bit. The land around them was dry, but sometime it had rained enough to make this wash. Virtual rain. They had had a virtual thunderstorm, why wasn’t this full of runoff now? Because it was a game, he told himself.

  “Are you looking for a job?” Santos said.

  “There is a problem,” David said. “About the work card. I lost mine.”

  “Politics?” Santos said carefully.

  “No,” David said, “nothing like that.”

  Santos was silent. David wondered what he was thinking. Probably that David was a criminal of some sort. The whole bottom of the wash plunged into blackness ahead of them. David thought to himself that he just didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to deal with it.

  Santos paused, too. Studying the wash he said, “They are hiring people to do construction work at my fish farm. You ever been a fish jock?”

  “No,” David said. “I did construction work.” A summer job in Blacksburg, Virginia, when he was in high school there.

  “Maybe,” Santos said, “I can talk to the super, you know—”

  Sharp crack. From the wash, someone opened fire.

  There was nowhere to go. He unslung his rifle, backing up, but the treadmill made it hard, jerking him to unsettle his footing and he kept having to grab the handlebar, groping blindly, afraid that he would miss and fall, unable to fire, and he could either stand and fire into the shadows or back up but he couldn’t do both. Grenade. He stopped and pulled a grenade. He only had four, how many had he used at the camp, one? Two? Tap the timer to arm it and wait a second, he didn’t want them to toss it back. Sharp, small ta-ta-ta-ta-tat, a curiously nothing noise, and him standing there in the long blue moment, waiting to throw his grenade.

  The world went dark. Cloud over the moon? He threw the grenade, blind, and crouched down. Blind. He was blind.

  The grenade made a satisfying concussion and then he didn’t hear anything except his own breathing. Shit, was he deaf, too? Blind while the enemy probably rushed at him, mannequin soldiers with chessmen on their shoulder patches. And him, glowing in the enemy’s eyes like St. Elmo’s fire. He didn’t know if they had stopped firing or if he was deaf, too. Maybe he had died and the system had failed to dump him into the park—sharp crack, and someone called out “Madre de Diós.” He fired blindly in the direction of the sound, and someone fired, either at him, or it was Santos. Why didn’t Santos say anything? If he didn’t hear anything from Santos then Santos was dead. He fired again, a short sharp burst, blindman’s bluff. Maybe they would kill him. Maybe they were crawling towards him. They couldn’t torture him, he wasn’t really here, it wasn’t like the blue and whites, no virtual cell, no electrodes in the genitals, but still they might be coming for him, and he couldn’t see. He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t, and didn’t have to, so he reached up and just as he grabbed his helmet he heard Santos say, “Lezard—”

  * * *

  —then he was sitting on the treadmill in his own cubicle, breathing in great, satisfying gasps. He was never going to play again, the game sucked, and he didn’t have to play. He was going to sit here a moment because his knee ached and then he was going to go back to the room and feed Meph or something but he wasn’t doing this again.

  He had left Santos in the wash. Although what the hell he was supposed to do blind he didn’t know. The helmet was red, with cracked padded forehead and cheek rests. He fingered where the gray foam stuck out through the crack. If they played something else it would be different, some sort of spy thing maybe. Just not wargames. Or maybe sword-and-sorcery kind of wargames, that would be all right. Then if he got wounded the wizard or someone could do some sort of spell and make him all right.

  Santos wouldn’t have known he was completely blind from looking at him, would he? He might, Santos had seen he was wounded when he used the medikit on him.

  He tried to decide what to do. He could leave Santos a message. He did that the last time. He could just forget it and go away. Walk away. It was easy to walk away. Back to the room with Meph. Look for a job in a neighborhood where everybody stared at him because he was foreign. He was really just going to fit right in, get a job where he made enough money to buy himself some fake papers and then just go home. Sure. Even assuming he somehow came up with the money, how was he going to find someone who could do fake papers? He was stuck here, and he wasn’t going to get
out and eventually they were going to arrest him. Beyond that he couldn’t think. He was lost.

  He thought about getting up, but couldn’t think of why. He didn’t want to go back to the room.

  If he had the nerve to kill himself and be done with it. There was no logical reason to live, eh? He laughed, he couldn’t even handle a fake death in a virtual wargame, what made him think he’d have the nerve to really kill himself? What would he do about Meph? He could send Meph to Tim, Tim would take care of the cat. At least until he left.

  Empty thoughts. Brain white noise. He sighed and put the helmet back on and found himself in the park. Nothing to do here, either. His knee ached and he didn’t really want to walk around. He had a sudden picture of himself, standing up on the treadmill and fishing blindly for the handlebars. Well, people in p-suits looked worse, wandering around in gyms, gesturing to the empty air. He walked across the park to the program listing, read down the list.

  He felt paralyzed.

  Oh, he ached inside. He wanted to go home.

  He waited, read the program listing. He sat down, not knowing how long he might wait.

  * * *

  He was thinking about Meph, about having Meph on his lap, when Gin appeared, shaking back her egret hair. “Hi, Lezard,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said, “is Santos coming?”

  “Should be,” she said, “time is up.”

  The cyborg, Jack Stomper, was next, and then Santos. “Hey, Lezard,” he said, and David’s stomach tightened, but Santos didn’t seem upset. “You been sitting here waiting?”

  “Yeah, I am sorry about leaving,” David said.

  “No problem,” Santos said. “You couldn’t see anyway.”

  Amazon Lil appeared, then Cobre. “Good job,” Amazon Lil said to Cobre, who smiled, embarrassed, and shrugged.

  “I should not leave you like that,” David said.

  “You couldn’t see,” Santos said. “It is not like you could do anything. Don’t worry. Next time will be better.”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “I should not spend the money.”

  “You need money?” Santos said.

  “I have some saved,” David said, “but I should not waste it, you know, on a game.” He didn’t want to play anyway, but he couldn’t tell Santos that.

  Santos frowned. “Look, there is this place on Saucone Street, called Ramanathan. It is a bar where the fish jocks all get a job. My super, he’ll be there hiring on Friday night. You come on Friday night, I’ll introduce you. Maybe you can get a job, you know?”

  He would lose his anonymity. “I have never been a fish jock,” he said.

  “You said you have construction experience,” Santos said. “You can dive?”

  “I have learned,” David said, uneasy.

  “It is construction work. Just temporary, until the job is finished, you know? A couple of months. But you can get experience. I will be there,” Santos said. “If you don’t come, I will wait all night for nothing. My dive vest is purple and red, and lots of people know Santos. Is Lezard your real name?”

  “No,” David said. “Kim. Kim Park.”

  “See you Friday,” Santos said, and reached up. Somewhere the real Santos was grabbing his helmet, pulling it off.

  The park chimed, David was running out of time. The others were gone, too. He pulled off his helmet and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. At least it was short, now.

  He hadn’t even thought to ask whether or not they’d won.

  * * *

  Saucone Street was not in Dedale, it was up on the first level, where the bank and the oldest, established parts of the city were. He found the street in a map of the city he bought in the plaza. It was incomplete, the upper levels were all drawn out in careful detail but the third level was vague and Dedale was just a cross-hatched area. He wasn’t sure how anyone could draw Dedale, it wasn’t in neat levels. The fourth level was even more vague and the fifth and sixth levels, both still under construction, weren’t shown at all. Leaving Dedale scared him. He stood in the plaza, trying to figure out the nearest bus stop.

  There was no bus stops in Dedale proper, it wasn’t accessible to buses or skids or cars. Dedale was a map-maker’s nightmare, full of steps and narrow passages. Streets were more like the holes in swiss cheese than the careful grid of a city.

  He found a bus stop out on the edge of the neighborhood, on a street that seemed uncomfortably wide and loud. The bus was painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, with names overlaying names. The present owner had painted a huge yellow rectangle and lettered “Bonamie Transport” in mostly even purple letters. It didn’t seem to burn petrol, maybe methane? He didn’t understand these people, internal combustion stole the air that they breathed.

  The bus had trouble climbing to the next level, rumbling slowly up the ramp and grinding gears while traffic collected behind them. A motor scooter shot around them, squeezing between the front of the bus and the curving concrete wall while the driver swore. They rumbled around on the third level for awhile and then had to climb to the second level, grinding and shuddering. The woman sitting next to David was huge and carried her groceries in a string bag—breadfruit, rice, infant formula and coffee. When the bus turned, she leaned against him pressing him into the window.

  They entered the bus terminal on the second level and everyone got off. David found a bus schedule. His bus was on the first level and the bus station seemed about as complicated as Dedale but he finally found people standing in line to climb an escalator. The escalator wasn’t working so he climbed.

  He had just missed the bus he wanted. He hoped Santos waited. When the bus finally came he paid twice the fare he had for the Bonamie Transport and sat down. Wide streets, businesses (closed for the evening). He wondered why the fish jocks came to a bar on the first level.

  The first level seemed clean. The air was dryer and smelled better and the buses were new. He thought at one point they were close to the bank, but he wasn’t sure. The driver turned on to a side street, like a service street, and looked up into the mirror and called “Saucone.” When David got off he felt the ground rumbling beneath his feet, the way it rumbled in his room in Dedale. Saucone Street was connected to the freight system. A little like the service entrance for the first level.

  The bar was crowded, men were standing out front, leaning against the wall and talking, but none of them were wearing a red-and-purple diver’s vest. Inside was dim and the bare walls were concrete painted yellow. He smelled the sweet sour odor of spilled beer. The only decoration were pictures of girls cut out of magazines—blonde American girls, mostly, in risqué bathing suits—pasted on the wall behind the bar. He craned, looking for the red-and-purple diver’s vest.

  There were a couple of people in red and purple. One was a woman, and for a moment he tried to imagine if it might really be Santos. Funny that he might have been so completely fooled, people did that in VR, but he didn’t think it was true in this case. Santos was too young, too obviously adolescent male. So he looked for a kid, and found one: about twenty, twenty-two, he thought, a short stringy bare-armed Latino, standing with another diver, a dark, smooth-faced, slightly overweight young man.

  David pushed through the crowd. “Excuse me,” he said, “I am looking for a diver called Santos?”

  “Yeah?” the kid said.

  “I am Kim Park, but he knows me as Lezard?”

  “Lezard?” the kid said. “No shit?” He grinned. “I thought you were Haitian!”

  “No,” David said, “I am not.” It was a stupid thing to say but Santos nodded.

  “Okay. Yeah. Ronald,” he said to the other diver, “this is Lezard!”

  Ronald grinned and bobbed his head.

  “This guy knows about war.”

  David smiled, nodded, and they were all smiling at each other. Santos was wearing nothing under his diver’s vest and looking at his bare arms made David feel cold.

  “You want a drink?” Santos said. “I get
you a drink, hey, it’s no problem, you wait here, I get you a drink, beer okay? They have American beer here, but I think it is too expensive and the beer from Mexico, I like it better, you know? How ’bout a bottle of Cinco de Mayo, okay?”

  David took a deep breath, looked around. Ronald was still smiling at him and David smiled back at Ronald. It occurred to David that Ronald wasn’t too smart.

  And then Santos was back with three bottles of beer, condensation already forming on the outside. The beer was flat—everything carbonated was flat in Julia, because of the air pressure—and it had the too-sweet taste of the beer in the bottom of the glass. David had had homebrew beer in a township in South Africa and suddenly the taste was there for him, sharp, bitter beer, the way beer must have tasted for centuries. And he could see the shanty bar, with its blue-green metallic siding, industrial cast-off, and the deep darkness inside where a man sat next to an ancient cooler, waiting for customers.

  Being with Santos always brought back South Africa.

  “Did we win?” he asked Santos.

  “What,” Santos said.

  “The last game, did we win?”

  “No,” Santos said, “we lost on points, because only you and the woman knocked out. You and me, we scored most of the points for our side, the others, they didn’t do nothing. It was really dry out there, really dry, everybody circling around, if we did not find those tents, nothing would have happened, you and me, we were the only ones who got wet, you know? Good beer, huh? Ronald, this guy is natural out there, is like it is real for him, you know? He makes it so real. You don’t know.”

  Santos was talking so fast that the end of his words seemed to disappear, “tense” for tents. Grinning and talking as fast as he could. Maybe it wasn’t that Ronald wasn’t quick, maybe he was just overwhelmed.

  “You see, the guys at the bar? Right. Those are the agents for the farms. The guy in the dark blue? He is the agent for my farm, I told him about you.”