"Well, I don't know about humane . . . these are Vieghs we're talking about here.” How had I managed to get into a debate about ethics with a talking fly?
"This isn't just about Viegh and the Republic. It will spread everywhere eventually, and there are half a billion people in this hab."
"All right, my moral sense is quivering. So you're here to ask for help finishing up the mission, right? Hua's gone fishing, and Szemnik's a cripple, so it makes sense that Szemnik needs help. I'm not even saying I'm on your side, but anyway, why did you—I mean, why did Szemnik send you to talk to me in particular?"
"He thinks that if you pick a random person off the street, usually you'll get someone who's good and honest. But he and Hua aren't surrounded by random people off the street. Access to them is carefully controlled. Everyone is looking for a way to exploit the situation. For instance, the military suspects there are technologies in the suits that would be useful to them."
"Oh, really?"
"We already contacted Anu."
"Did you tell her there were kittens and fuzzy ducklings to be rescued?” Why couldn't these garlic-asses leave her out of this?
"I think she might be willing to help, but I don't think she and I can do it alone. Before Szemnik nanofabs the yeast, we need an up-to-date genomic and proteinomic sample of the rust. The infected fields are hundreds of kilometers away, and I don't have that kind of on-the-wing range."
I resisted the temptation to ask what the science-magic meant. I'm sure there were academicians in the Republic who would have understood a lot of it—excluding, of course, the parts that the Builders considered too dangerous to allow us to know. I'd never really worried about such things, being more interested in getting a good edition of the Kreutzer Sonata than in cooking up a bug or a bomb that could make our habitat not-inhabitat-able.
Third morning bells rang. Pretty soon people would start arriving for the rehearsal, and as they walked through the courtyard they'd probably be wondering why I was talking to myself.
"The border with Viegh is closed,” I pointed out.
"Right, so we have to use the emergency exterior monorail system."
"The which?"
It explained. What took me a while to understand was the part about “exterior"—which meant outside the hab itself, dangling down into outer space.
It kept on talking and talking, as if I was actually interested in its crazy, useless plan. At least a normal fly has the courtesy to buzz without words. Finally the piano player came through the gates, looking hung over as usual, and I took that as an excuse to escape the blathering bug.
At first the inside of the hall had its usual effect of calming me and helping me to focus. It's a perfect replica (including acoustics, they say) of the ancient Vienna Musikverein, from the velvet seats to the swan-riding cherubs on the ceiling.
But all through the rehearsal my eyes kept wandering over to Anu, and I embarrassed myself by missing a repeat on one of the numbers. The organs at both ends of my spine started to feel like the two lit ends of a juggler's fire torch.
Finally I cornered her in the hallway at the tea break.
"Anu!"
"Oh, hello, Rui"—a girlish smile—"I've missed you"—good!—"How have you been?"—but did that sound more like I was an uncle she'd forgotten about?
"I've taken up taxidermy. Would you like to try it sometime?"
I'd been hoping for a giggle, but all I got was a sad smile that made her look like Joan of Arc. They don't heat the building for rehearsals, and she had a thick wool dupatta wrapped around her head. “I have a pine wreath that I probably should have taxidermed,” she said, “but I think it's too late. It's dropped all its needles."
I solemnly studied the snaggletooth that somehow made her even more irresistible. “I want to see you,” I said.
"You're seeing me right now."
"You know what I mean. I've never—"
"Rui, we've attracted a lot of attention. There's no way for us to get any time together alone."
As if I hadn't spent the whole night thinking about that! Anu still lived at the convent where she'd been raised. The sisters said she could stay as long as she liked, even if she never felt the calling. They always had too many nuns who were old and feeble, and not enough young ones to handle all the work. I'd already imagined a few dozen dramas that began with Enter Rui, climbing over the convent's wall.
"A fly was buzzing around my room,” Anu said.
"One bothered me recently, too,” I said. “What a nuisance! It took me forever to get it to go away."
She stared at me and frowned. It seemed like she was waiting for me to say more. When I didn't, she turned on her heel and stalked off without another word.
When the rehearsal was over, I loosened my bow with the kind of twists you'd use to wring a chicken's neck. I wiped the rosin off of my instrument, wadded up my handkerchief, and threw it in the case with a curse. Everyone would expect me to go to a teahouse now and be my usual laughing self. I walked fast out a side exit, through the gates, and out into the plaza.
I walked for a long time, stepping over beggars, dodging oxcarts, and pushing through market squares that I didn't recognize. After a while I noticed that my hand was hurting, and I loosened my grip on the handle of my violin case. My leg muscles were complaining too, and I was out of breath. I was at the intersection of two narrow corridors littered with trash. An old man was tending a water fountain, and a crowd of dirty boys was kicking a rock around as enthusiastically as if they'd eaten twice as much that day as they really had. A slowly oscillating wind synced to a tired, ultrabasso wheeze told me that there was a recycling lung somewhere nearby.
I gave the toothless old man a milli for a drink, then put my case against a wall and sat down on it. I spent some time making a comprehensive list of my weaknesses, and then a man sat down next to me on my case.
"Get off,” I said. “This isn't a public bench."
"I need to talk to you, Rui Santos.” He reached into his tunic and pulled out a leather policeman's badge.
"What do you want?"
"You seemed to be in quite a hurry.” He was big, and spoke in a soft, gravelly voice.
"That's not against the law, is it?"
"What's in the box?"
"My violin."
"Anything else?"
"What's this about?"
"Who are you meeting here?"
Confused and angry, I stood up, and then, as if it had been a prearranged signal, two more men materialized. The big one slowly got off the end of my case. I'm not much of a spy, and I'm sure my thoughts played across my face like a magic lantern show. One: Why are they hassling me? Two: I have nothing to hide. Three: Actually, I do have something to hide—my knowledge of the weapons built into the suits.
The big man stepped up to me and took my hand like he was going to ask me to marry him. I was held like a horse on a short tether. One of the others came up behind me and felt for weapons under my clothes, then emptied out my pockets. The boys and the old water seller had all disappeared.
"You're the boss violin-player at the palace,” the big bruiser said. “Work with your hands, don't you?"
He started to bend my wrist backward. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see one of his men systematically searching through my case.
"You work with your hands?” he repeated. It felt like the little bones inside my wrist had turned into a bag of broken glass.
"Yes, I do. What do you want? I don't know what this is all about.” The assistant goon turned my violin upside-down and shook it to see if he could get anything to fall out through the f-holes.
"Why were you in such a hurry?"
"I wasn't in a hurry.” He twisted harder on my wrist, and I hissed through my teeth.
"Tell me the truth."
"I wasn't in a hurry,” I insisted, trying to keep my voice from squeaking. “I was just upset. I . . . my lover was singing at the rehearsal. We aren't as . . . close as we used to be
."
The flunky finished his search. “Nothing here, boss."
The big one looked at me carefully like he was choosing a cut of meat at a butcher's shop, and then let go of my hand. “I want you to think this meeting over, Santos. Think hard about it."
I did plenty of thinking that night. The first thing I had to admit to myself was what should have been obvious. When the Head Bone Crusher had told me to tell the truth, I had: I wanted Anu, and I was making myself suffer because of it. I wasn't just temporarily discombobulated, wasn't just trying to judge whether it was time to move on. I was like a man who's been able to drink in moderation for his whole life. Then one day he goes on a tear, and within a month he's stopped showing up for work, and he's saying things like I drink because I like the taste, or I can take it or leave it. And the worst part was that I knew now, with a hollow feeling in my gut, that Anu scorned me, thought I was a contemptible coward.
The next morning, the fly was waiting for me outside my door, and I let him in.
* * * *
"I need a sort of a fake alibi,” I said.
I was having tea at a street table with Gaithri Gomes, the principal violist. We'd once had quite a fling, until she cut it off. Now she was married. Gaithri was from a rich family, and she was at least my age, but she managed not to look matronly in spite of her classy evening shift and nipple rouge.
Gaithri's eyebrows went up. “Oh?"
I tossed a milli into a monk's bowl and succeeded in making him go away. “Well, maybe not so much an alibi as—to convince some people that I'm in a certain place, when actually I'm not. Of course I understand if you..."
"Is this about a woman?” A sad smile. And was that a hint of pity on her face?
"No, it's—well, there is a woman involved, but—actually it's worse than that, which is why maybe you'd rather not..."
"Worse in what way?"
"Political,” I admitted, feeling sure that my ears were glowing like hot coals.
The eyebrows shot up again, and then she let loose with a laugh like a war-whoop.
* * * *
The next day, Gaithri and I made ourselves look tipsy on the way to her posh abovedecks apartment. Her husband was inspecting one of his plantations, and wouldn't be back for two days. I nearly shed my skin like a snake when Gaithri pulled me to a halt outside the courtyard and rubbed my crotch for verisimilitude. We went inside and were instantly sober. Twenty heartbeats later I was climbing out a window and slinking off through the bushes. The whole charade felt natural and familiar to me in a way that probably should have been embarrassing, but what I mainly remember is praying hard to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva that the goon squad had dug deeply enough into my scurrilous reputation to be easily convinced.
Anu and I met on horseback at the edge of the hunting reserve, and as we headed in through the trees the fly scouted by air to help us avoid the groundskeeper.
The fly had made the next part sound easy. The airlock was “only” three meters below the surface of the lake. Our spinning habitat “only” made half a standard gee worth of gravity. The water would press down on the hatch, but the amount of force holding it shut would be “not too great.” Two healthy adults should “easily” be able to lift it. (These Outsiders all had a way of sounding like smarmy academicians, even when they were incarnated as bugs.) The plan was for Anu and me to lift the hatch, flooding the airlock with water. Then Anu swims down with the fly sealed in a wine bottle, closes the hatch above her (much easier than opening it, without the water pressure to fight against), and keeps on holding her breath while the airlock cycles, filling itself with air. Then she and the fly ride the monorail car north to take their sample, while I lead the horses back to the stable and let myself back in through Gaithri's window. Anu gets a do-gooder vacation out beyond Viegh, and I get back in Anu's good graces (and maybe her sarong, too, although I had to admit to myself that I was so far off my usual form that that wasn't the main thing on my mind).
It all sounded like a good plan.
We put on an impressive show for the coots and egrets. Anu and I dove, surfaced, treaded water, and dove again. Fly, are you sure we're in the right place? Oh yes, straight down from where you are. Dive, fumble, come back up. Fly, did your no-doubt-extremely-rigorous calculations take into account the fact that the bottom of a lake is usually covered in a layer of mud? Dive again.
We came back to the beach and sprawled out, whipped as mules. Never in my life have I lain naked on a warm beach, with such a beautiful woman lying naked next to me, and felt so little in the way of healthy lust.
More dives in the underwater nightmare-twilight, more gasping rests on the sand. Finally my hand found a handle under the muck. Then the real torture started. Have you ever tried to lift a heavy weight—a very heavy weight—while holding your breath underwater? We came back up to the beach to rest so that next time we'd be fresh and ready to give it our best pull. The glow-tubes were dimming.
"Anu? Rui?” I wished that one of the birds would snap the fly out of the air so that I wouldn't have to hear his squeaky buzz of a voice anymore.
"What?” Anu gasped, lying on her side and shading her eyes with one hand.
"The groundskeeper is coming this way."
"We're going as fast as we can,” I said. I felt like using the wine bottle as a flyswatter.
"I know,” the fly said, “but I've mapped out his routine. At this time in the afternoon he always comes along the shore of the lake. I didn't think we'd be here anywhere near this late."
Moans from the two humans.
Someday I'm going to set up the Rui Santos School for Spies, and as a prerequisite I'm going to enforce an apprenticeship in adultery. How else does the aspiring skullduggerer prepare himself for this kind of situation? The husband comes home while you're in bed with the wife. What to do, the earnest pupil asks? Well, obviously, my boy, you don't walk back out the front door. We hadn't planned on my coming along on the expedition, but now there was no other choice.
* * * *
You'd be amazed what the threat of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution can do for your motivation. We pulled hard and finally got the hatch open.
The underground chamber let out a big air bubble. I couldn't see well through the dark, dirty water, but I could sort of feel this bubble, big enough to be a burp from Varuna's crocodile. Anu grabbed me by the wrist and tugged me down into the airlock as if maybe I didn't know where to go. It didn't occur to her that I might be discovering a sudden preference for breathable air.
We closed the hatch over our heads, sealing ourselves underwater in a dark coffin. A layer of air appeared underneath the hatch, as the fly had assured us it would. The pressure felt like kebab skewers in my eardrums, but if it was forcing the water out, I was in favor of it. We only had to tread water for a few minutes until the water went down enough so we could stand.
* * * *
The body of the gondola was made of something like glass, so that when we let the fly out of his wine bottle, it was as if we were only giving him a promotion into our own, bigger bottle. The glass should have given us a view of outer space all around us, but the little ship was so dirty inside that we had to use up some of its supply of drinking water to clean a patch on one wall and see out. The fly spoke some magic words in high-pitched English, and the capsule started moving—faster than a galloping horse, he claimed.
"That's the sun,” he told us as a tiny disk of light slowly swept across the window-within-a-window. He flew over and landed on the glass, like a dragonfly basking in the light of the glow-tubes.
"Very impressive,” I said, but it was actually disappointingly dim. It must look much brighter from the inner solar system. I didn't mind so much that the gondola was dark inside (I don't look my best when I'm baby-naked and covered in muck), but a little more heat would have been good.
"Can we see Earth?” Anu asked, so on the next rotation the fly told her how to search for it, covering the sun with a finger and loo
king on one side or the other. She thought she might have picked it out, but she couldn't be sure.
"The cradle of the species,” the fly buzzed wistfully, and I held back an urge to ask him if he meant flies or humans.
"Graveyard, you mean,” Anu said.
They started debating like academicians. It turns out that a fly can ponder cosmology, abstract morality, and the infinite. I pondered the shape of Anu's hips, silhouetted in the sunlight, and also the weighty question of whether I'd ever get another roll in the hay with her before she discovered how unworthy I was. Probably the reason it had ended so badly for Earth was that there were too many people like me, only interested in fucking like rabbits.
There was a crash. Not a very big crash, but enough to make me slip in the mud puddles that my dripping feet had made in the sepulchral dust. I yelled. Well, actually I screamed. Not a very big scream, but enough to announce to Anu, the fly, and the surrounding cosmos that I was scared.
There was a lot of hubbub from the two humans, and everything inside the gondola rattled as if the vessel was a drum. Our big tutti must have drowned out the fly's solo for a while, because it seemed like a long time later when I finally noticed he was repeating something over and over in English. Once Anu and I shut up, the spirit inside the gondola heard him. Everything swayed, and the percussion section reluctantly scuddered to a stop as if it hadn't noticed at first when the conductor stopped waving his stick.
"Everyone okay?” the fly asked. “I think we must have hit some micrometeorite pitting on the track.” He was back on the clean patch of the glass.
"I'm all right,” I said sheepishly.
"Me too,” Anu said. “What's micro. . . ?"
"A speck of dust is flying through outer space at very high speed, and it hits the outside of the hab and makes dents."
"'To dust you will return,’ ‘’ Anu said, “but I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so literal, and I'd rather it didn't happen today."
"This does bring up some issues,” the fly said. “Anu, I explained about collecting the sample. The plan was for me to do it, since you might be noticed and . . . apprehended if you came out through the hatch. But if I'm unable to do it, do you think you understand what's needed?"
Asimov's SF, September 2010 Page 10
