Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  “Okay,” she finally said.

  “It looks nice,” David said. “You look different.”

  “I think it is a good look for you, Constanza,” the woman said. “Okay. That is all, you have your cards.”

  “What about the port system?” Mayla asked. “What about hacking it?”

  “My hacker works at the port. The cards have an access code that the technicians use to check the equipment, they will come up green,” the woman said. “Then the system don’t even check your information against the base, it just repeat the information on your card. But use them fast, the port changes the codes sometimes.”

  “Will tomorrow be okay?” Saad asked.

  “Should be,” she said. And then loudly, “Okay Baba, let’s go.”

  Mayla wished she had a mirror.

  * * *

  She hated her haircut. It was short on the sides and hung longer and flipped under in the back. Her bangs ran across her forehead. It was too young for her, for one thing, a middle-school girl’s haircut. For another, it looked, well, cheap. It made her look hard. And old. Or maybe the last few months had made her look old. Or maybe she was just tired. But she didn’t like the haircut at all.

  “I like it,” David said.

  Men liked things like that, though. Men didn’t recognize class, they liked flash. This haircut was all flash, like a tight gauzy blouse.

  It would grow out. If it got them to Miami then she’d have nothing to complain about.

  David was sitting on the bed. He had a duffel bag. It was mostly empty: a toothbrush, a change of clothes. She had a little suitcase that was just as empty, but they thought it would seem strange if they didn’t have any luggage at all.

  She sat down on the bed. Nothing to do but go, but she was afraid.

  He sat down next to her. He had been so good, not pressuring her about sex, just letting that one night go as if it had never happened.

  “You’re a good man, David,” she said.

  He smiled and the creases ran away from the corners of his eyes. “I am not so good,” he said.

  “If it wasn’t for you,” she said, “I’d have been arrested.”

  He shrugged. “If it wasn’t for me, you would never have been suspected. Because I walked away from the house.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “maybe not. The blue and whites can make strange decisions.”

  “They are crazy, the institution, because the country is crazy. Now we have to go.”

  But she still thought it, following him out of the room. He was a good man, he tried to do the good thing. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked away from the bombing, but he had called her, when it would have been smarter not to. And he had stayed with her since she found him on the fish farm.

  A good man. But that sounded like a judgment, it sounded final. A superstitious shudder walked up her spine. She shouldn’t be thinking about him in final terms.

  She tried to think of Miami, but there was nothing, she couldn’t force her mind in any direction at all.

  They were on their way to the port. Saad would be at the port.

  She was leaving Caribe. That should have been good for some emotion but it wasn’t. She did hope, in an abstract sort of way, that Tim had left. She should call her grandfather—

  What an amazing reflex. Call her grandfather. Absolutely. Just as soon as she got to Miami.

  They got off the chute at the Marincite Port Authority and walking up the ramp she saw an Uncle. All in black, like at Tumipamba’s funeral, with a headset. He was watching the crowd come through the entrance. She half-stepped and David said, “Keep walking.”

  Of course, if they turned around that would call attention to themselves.

  David drifted away from her and then back until there was a couple of meters between them so they did not appear to be walking together. Maybe her haircut would hide her. Nothing could hide the fact that he was oriental. Was he going to allow them to pick him up so they wouldn’t see her?

  No, she thought, if they were looking for a couple, there was no sense in being a couple.

  She passed the Uncle, her eyes on the concrete ramp, her shoulders tense, waiting for him to come away from the wall, to glide through the crowd like a barracuda—

  But he didn’t move, not when she passed, not when David passed. She thought maybe he said something into his headset, but she wasn’t sure, and it didn’t necessarily have to be about them. Or maybe they were just going to be picked up farther in.

  Her stomach hurt and she had to go to the bathroom.

  She saw the ladies public and ducked in. It smelled, publics always did, but she felt a little sheltered.

  She had cramps and she took a long time, and all the time she was sitting there she expected the stall door to be kicked open and the Uncles to come in and rag her out with her tights around her knees. She had her hands clasped together, she felt as if she were praying, but she didn’t really know what to do except think, please no, please no. But the Uncles didn’t come.

  They weren’t waiting when she came out of the public. Across the concourse she saw David reading a newspaper but she pretended not to see him. She checked her gate on the monitors and saw him fold the newspaper and start walking. So she walked to.

  At the gate she would find Saad and get their tickets. Then she would leave David’s on the seat so he could pick it up. If he got to the gate, if she got to the gate—

  Two more Uncles in black, standing outside a stall that sold coconut bread hamburgers and beer. And two more a little beyond them on the other side of the concourse. Uncles everywhere. For her and David, for Saad? Had something happened and Saad’s partner figured out what was going on? Were their documents okay or had the Indian woman betrayed them?

  She saw their gate, full of people. She saw Saad waiting just this side of the departure check. She started for Saad, better if she got the tickets from Saad than if David did, she was marginally more disguised than he was.

  And she saw, standing between her and Saad, Polly Navarro. He was impeccable in his suit, holding a newspaper.

  Business trip. Madre de Diós, let it be a business trip.

  The carpet was Marincite maroon, heavy duty, and she thought she was past him when he said, “Mayla?” with just the right amount of surprise. Completely natural.

  She realized after she looked up that she should have just been deaf. But he was here, he was waiting for them. And it was all over.

  She looked around but didn’t see the Uncles.

  “Polly,” she said.

  “Going to Miami?” he asked.

  She nodded. “My grandmother was from there. I have cousins there.” She didn’t have cousins there, they were spread across the country, and she shouldn’t justify.

  “You remember Saad Shamsi?” Polly asked.

  David was drifting towards Saad, who was not watching anyone, who was blank as a stone, watching into the concourse. When Polly turned David turned and found a seat.

  The instinct to live, she thought. It is all up now, but he is still going through the motions.

  “Saad,” Polly said, “you remember Mayla Ling.”

  “Yes, of course,” Saad said.

  Polly put his paper on the counter. “I’m going to Miami on business,” he confided. The confidence sounded awkward, of course he would be going on business. “I hate the decompression, though.”

  “Are you decompressing on this side or on that side?” Mayla asked. The instinct to survive, pretending everything was normal while she waited for Polly’s Uncles to come get them.

  “Usually I decompress on this side, but this time I’m decompressing on the other side.”

  A small part of her that had not yet given up the belief that they would get free thought about being stuck in decompression in Miami with Polly.

  “Oh,” Saad said, “so you’re on our sub.” He was so stiff.

  “You’re on the 10:30?” Polly said.

  Something was strange about Polly. She
remembered him from the take-over. He had been different. He was in control here, why wasn’t he riding high? Why was he perspiring?

  “Are we served lunch?” Polly asked vaguely, but his eyes drifted away, across the concourse.

  She glanced across. They were there, finally. Uncles, three of them in black and one in regular street uniform maroon. Les Tontons. Where they crossed the concourse there was space, people were gone.

  Polly had a funny half-smile.

  She wondered if they would pick up David. If they didn’t, he would still be stuck, Saad had the tickets. He would still be hiding. Better to be in hiding.

  She was going to be arrested, turned over to the blue and whites, but she couldn’t feel anything. Time was so slow. She felt suspended. This were the last few moments of this life, and she didn’t know what was coming.

  “Have a nice trip,” Polly said.

  The uniformed Uncle said, “Mr. Polito Navarro?”

  “Yes,” Polly said.

  “I’m afraid we need to talk to you.”

  The black-clothed Uncles were cutting between Polly and her and Saad, cutting him off.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting some people in Miami, I really need to get there,” Polly said and she could see the sweat on his upper lip. “Can this perhaps wait until I get back?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said the uniformed Uncle. He was older, every fitting on his uniform polished to high gloss. “You’ll have to come with us.”

  “You don’t want to do this, Marat,” Polly said.

  “No sir,” the uniform said. “Come with me, sir.”

  Saad whispered, “Oh shit.”

  Blue and whites on the concourse. A lot of them. Blue and whites weren’t supposed to be in Marincite. But they were there. “Sir,” the uniform said, “Do you want to come with me, or go with them?”

  Polly nodded. “The President,” he said.

  “Yes sir,” the uniform said.

  Polly took a deep breath. “All right,” he said.

  * * *

  She handed her card to the woman at the departure gate. Saad was waiting on the other side. The light flashed green. The woman at the departure gate chattered in Spanish, something about the ticket and her name. She called her Señorita Rodriguez. Mayla nodded and took the ticket and her card.

  Behind her David went through the same routine. She couldn’t help watching to make sure that the light flashed green.

  The sub was nearly full. She waited, thinking they would still come, that the Uncles would pull them off the sub, that their documentation would not stand up. But the sub pulled away.

  She dozed and dreamed of being in a cathedral. Along the walls were people she thought were blue and whites, and she was getting married, but she didn’t know who to. Once she thought it was Tim, and once Saad, but most of the time she didn’t know.

  17

  Daylight

  David found that suddenly he was tired, so tired he wanted to do nothing but sleep. They climbed out of their seats, his knee was stiff. Sitting still a long time always made his knee stiff.

  “I guess we have to get our luggage, eh?” he said, smiling.

  Mayla looked startled. “Wouldn’t it look suspicious if we didn’t?”

  He laughed. “We are in Miami. There is no suspicious anymore.”

  He would call his aunt and uncle and make arrangements to go there when he had decompressed.

  The sub had surfaced, they could feel it riding buoyant and it did strange things to his equilibrium. Up the debarkation tube and out into a hallway full of light. Bright hard white sunlight. He wanted to laugh.

  Behind him Mayla stopped in the doorway.

  “What?” he asked.

  “It’s too much,” she said. She was blinking and tearing.

  She was still in Caribe. Caribe was all she had, and she was still there. A refugee.

  He went back and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “We will buy you sunglasses. It is okay. You will get used to it.”

  She shook her head, the tears were more than just light. David waited, polite.

  “It is like after the war,” he said. “At first you bring the war home with you. You can never forget the war, but finally you can leave it behind.”

  He didn’t know if she understood him or not, he wasn’t sure if he believed it or not, but he was sure going to try.

  “Come on,” he said again.

  And this time she came.

  The water was very cold. It was a shock. David and Tim began to swim down, angling their bodies. There was no feeling of weight, they moved through space unemcumbered. Into the dark beyond.

  David had trouble knowing which way was up and which was down. They angled up a bit until the ground disappeared.

  The farther they went, the more depth the dark had, not only by the absence of light so much as the quantity of dark that separated them from the lighted dome. Entropy made palpable.

  Particularly paranoid this morning, he thought. It was the dark, the dark always bothered him.

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t really out to get you. If he lost Tim he would turn around and try to head back for the dome but there was a good chance he would miss it in the darkness. He would die of exposure in a couple of hours.

  Abruptly he realized he had been moving for the space of half a dozen kicks in the direction Tim had vanished. Was he paranoid if he was correct? He turned in a full circle to see if he could catch sight of Tim, but he had gone, no way to even guess direction.

  David was lost in the night.

  Then his headlamp went off.

  Instantly, the black rushed in at him.

  BY MAUREEN F. MCHUGH

  China Mountain Zhang

  Half the Day Is Night

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  HALF THE DAY IS NIGHT

  Copyright © 1994 by Maureen F. McHugh

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10010

  Tor Books on the World-Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-7927-6

  First edition: October 1994

  First mass market edition: January 1996

  eISBN 9781466865747

  First eBook edition: March 2014