by Emma Bull
I looked up and closed the book. The title was Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada. “Is that so odd?”
“Some. It’s the lingua franca, or one of them, but most of the people who use it can’t read it. Many of them can’t read at all.” I remembered my mood suddenly. “I don’t imagine it bothers them. As long as they can count.”
“No, they’re perfectly happy. They have no idea there are things like this out there.”
He might have been talking about the Marquez book, or the library, but I saw something in his hand, and turned to look. It was one of the books on wind-powered generators.
I put the novel back and stood where I was, my arms slack at my sides. “I saw them the first time.”
“I was watching you when you did, too. Once you remembered that you shouldn’t react, you had a very good stone face. What does this mean to you?” He gestured again with the book.
“It’s illegal as hell to have it,” I said, my eyes wide. “Isn’t it? Any of those books.”
“And that’s what impressed you? The wickedness? Maybe it was. But tell me, why is it illegal?”
Well, there was a limit to how brainless I could be expected to be on the subject. I said, “In a town where the City controllers have an energy monopoly? Information about free, unregulated, untaxable energy? Heck, I can’t imagine.”
He smiled. “And don’t you know anyone who buys untaxed methanol? Or has a portable generator with no registration tag in the cellar?”
I raised my hands and opened them; the international symbol of helplessness. “Afraid not. If you’re looking for households to raid. I guess you’ll have to find your own.”
“My own would be a good place to start. But you’ve forgotten, I think. I rode in your elevator.”
I had forgotten. “My elevator?” I asked, blinking.
“Up and down. I was glad you’d left the call button working on your floor, after I had a look at the stairwell. But it took us half an hour to make it run from inside.”
If it had ever occurred to me that I’d be escaping from my own floor, I’d have torn out the damned call button. If I’d realized I’d be facing this exceedingly large person who held a copy of Running on the Wind like a smoking gun with my fingerprints on it, I’d have jumped off the roof before I let him ride in my elevator.
I walked past him to the window seat and occupied it. There wasn’t a chair nearby, and I thought he’d have to stand. “All right,” I said. “What, do you need your VCR repaired?”
Mr. Lyle sat on the rug at my feet. It was like being attended by a folded cast-iron pillar. “A twelve volt to AC inverter, actually. Can you do it, do you think?”
This time my blink wasn’t for show. “Good grief. You’re not kidding. You use wind?”
“Solar panels.”
“Wind’s better,” I said absently. “Or water. You can’t replace photovoltaics anymore, unless you know about a warehouse I haven’t found.” Then I woke up “Chango, anyone can spot a solar panel! If you want to get busted, why not just carry the damn thing downtown?”
Mr. Lyle’s smile was benevolence itself. “You don’t understand the island. Besides, the City can’t afford a helicopter.”
Of course. The building that held my treasure house stood in plain sight of Ego and her tall sisters. The spinning vent on my roof had to pass daily inspection. Who would see anything here? This was one of the tallest buildings I’d seen since we left the Deeps. “I don’t have any tools with me.”
Mr. Lyle shrugged and stood up in the same motion, as if his shoulders pulled the rest of him along. “Come see what we have.”
So I was shown through the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, and, finally, into the power shed, opening off the pantry. I was a little disappointed. There were enough tools, but no more, and they were only of reasonable quality. The inverter was all right, but I had one rated for twice the load, and another hidden away, still crated, for when the first began to show its age.
This wasn’t the opulent marvel that the rest of the house was; this wasn’t the magnetic center of anything, for anyone. While I took the inverter apart and assaulted it with multimeter probes, I asked Mr. Lyle, casually, what they ran off it. Answer: a pump, some lights, some fans, a couple of recharging units. No audio, no video? A shortwave radio. So this wasn’t Paradise, after all.
Mr. Lyle must have seen something in my face. He said gravely, “There are so few disks and tapes left, and they cost so much, that it’s easier to fall back on other things. Books, and live music, and theater. There’s a lot of that on the island.”
“Anyone recording the music?”
He looked at me as if I hadn’t spoken a language he knew.
“The trouble is finding blank tape stock. It would be great to videotape the plays, but there was never as much tape or hardware for that, so it’s hard to get. I think we’ve lost the movie biz for good.”
Then, appalled, I shut up. Enthusiasm had possessed me for a moment, tricked me into an openness as foreign to me as… well, as any number of things. I’d be giving guided tours of the archives, if I went on like this.
The output off the inverter seemed steady. I put the cover plate back on. “Hand me the lamp and we’ll test it.”
The fluorescent tube clinked like microscopic bells and lit. Mr. Lyle stared at it, pleased, and the light sketched chilly blue-white highlights over his bare scalp, down his nose, along his upper lip, and across his chin like a scratchboard drawing on the brown of his skin. “My first name is Claudius,” he said. “Feel free to use it.”
As if I’d earned it by fixing the inverter — but that didn’t ring true. Before I had time to reconsider, I asked, “What happened to your voice?”
“I used to sing. I was proud of it. But when I was fifteen, I was involved in a cocaine deal that went a little astray. I was shot in the neck.”
“Chango.” My eyes, before I could stop them, went to a spot just below his face, but the band collar of his shirt hid most of his throat.
“It was hard to forgive that fifteen-year-old boy for ruining my voice. But you must forgive yourself. I never forgot; that would have meant unlearning the lessons that made me wiser than him. But I forgave.”
“Well, there,” I said brightly, and put the screwdriver away. “All done. But I still think you should switch to wind.”
As we retraced our steps to the front of the house, I waited for him to return to the subject. I was relieved when he didn’t.
The person I least wanted to talk to was Theo, so I was unreasonably annoyed when he was consistently somewhere else all afternoon. When I found China Black in the kitchen and mentioned him, she raised her hands from a pile of lettuce and looked at the ceiling. “Your Frances has him, cher,” she said. “She is making him draw maps and remember the number of steps in all of Ego’s staircases.”
“She’s not my Frances,” I said, without heat. “But I wish her luck. Theo’s doing all right if he remembers to go home when we turn the lights off.” That was spite; Theo was perfectly acute by any normal standard. Now I could tell her how many -
I could, too. I could tell Frances all manner of useful things about Ego, that Theo was unlikely to have noticed. Number of security people on the front and back entrances, day and night; old fire exits; corners that stayed dark, even when guards passed with their lamps… Theo would never have gone into those windowless rooms wary of the absence of light, as I had, frightened of the power that could swallow me with impunity, that dimmed my life to nonexistence just by being there.
Frances was planning her damned murder. Santos, I could take the point for her, with a videocassette in my hand. All I needed was a faked label for — what was the supposed name of the stupid thing? — Hellriders. The Horseman movie. I sold video to his old man, for gods’ sake. Did he know that? He had to.
“Are you well?” said China Black.
I’d forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation. “Yes,” I said. There was a leaf c
ast aside on the counter, brown around its red-and-green edges. I picked it up and turned it between my fingers and thumb. “Dana called you ‘Maitresse,’ ” I said suddenly.
China Black went on tearing lettuce. “Shall I answer the question you want to ask? I am teaching her, for her safety.”
“Safety?”
“I may be too late. Pombagira may already have her.”
“Who,” I asked with a stirring of unwelcome alarm, “is Pombagira?”
“She is the wife of Eshu. Some call her Red-eyed Erzulie. You will see her in the bar, in the whorehouse, wearing her tight red dress, smoking her cigarette. She likes liquor and blood, and in her service there is power and money, but no lasting joy.”
I pleated the lettuce leaf, and heard the center rib pop with each fold. “You can’t Deal with joy,” I muttered, but she heard me. She turned her back on the counter and stared at me.
“No. You can Deal with power and money, and shame and pain. Do you want your friend to have those?”
“I have no friends,” I said, and walked blindly away.
Pantry, power shed, garage. I stood staring at the limo, barely visible in the near darkness; the sun was dipping its toes in the river, to the west, and the garage windows faced east. Did Albrecht have a limo? Had Theo ridden in it, to the Underbridge, even, and dusted the smell of wealth off at the door to keep the secret? But it had been no secret for Sherrea. Just for me.
I didn’t want to think about either of them. I hoped Frances the Serial Killer was scaring the wits out of Theo, along with the information she wanted. Was this why Albrecht wanted the Horseman movie? Not because it was rare, but because he had a damned good reason for wanting to know about the Horsemen, no matter how unreliable the source? Because he was suffering an infestation of Tom Worecski?
Or maybe he was a willing accomplice. I thought of that money-pale face in the light of his desk lamp, the profile repeated on the coins he gave me. He’d sent me to find a copy of Singin’ in the Rain. Maybe Gilles de Rais would have loved Singin’ in the Rain. But if A. A. Albrecht was delighted with Tom Worecski, why had he wanted the Horseman movie?
My thoughts were as productive as peas in a rattle: they made a lot of noise, and went nowhere. My eyes had adjusted enough to see the garage door, so I left by it.
Evening, in that garden, seemed to bloom like one of its plants. Clinging to the garage wall was a vine with flowers like the bells of trumpets, milk-white and luminous in the dusk, lavishly scented. Bats rose in a translucent cloud from the eaves of an outbuilding and set to hunting with brisk, irregular darts. A slow spark fired and disappeared in the shrubbery across the grass, and another: fireflies. I crunched along the gravel path to round the garage and see the last of the sunset.
It was down to turquoise, watery gold, and indigo. “Going someplace?” said someone behind me.
“Nope.” I glanced over my shoulder. It was Mick Skinner. I wasn’t familiar with the timbre of his new voice, though I noticed that he’d brought the hint of Texas with him when he’d switched bodies. The light warmed his features, delicate and angular under the well-kept copper-brown skin. The whole body was well kept, I realized, and young. “Was that one trying to kill himself?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your new ride. This is going to be a real growth experience for him, right?”
“Jesus,” said Mick, “who put a burr under your sa—”
It took me an instant to remember the end of the expression, as it had him. The sound I made was a substitute for laughter. “Let’s do ’em all and get it over with. Shall I take the bit between my teeth? Or you could look a gift horse in the mouth.”
He looked away.
“I haven’t any horse sense. I kick over the traces. I’m mulish. I’m given to horseplay, nagging, and feeling my oats. Have we locked the barn after the horse got out, or is this a horse of a different color?”
“Stop.”
“Whoa?”
“I’m sorry,” Mick said. “Whatever it was I did. Only I’m betting it wasn’t me.”
I sighed. “Well, the thought of you doesn’t lead me to remember several years of my life with vague embarrassment.”
“What?” he said again. “You’re starting to sound like Frances.”
“That’s almost an insult.” I turned and walked back to where he stood. “Are you part of her invasion plan?”
He lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you still here, then?”
“Why are you?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, that wasn’t meant as mockery. Last I heard, you and I were to be protected.”
He looked out toward the sunset, which was gone. “Would you join the invasion?”
Here was the opening to say that I knew Ego, that I knew Albrecht, that I’d be useful. “I can’t imagine why.”
After a moment he said, “Because nobody’s as good at looking out for themselves as Frances thinks she is.”
That was nearly as hard to figure out as the sentence of mine that he’d complained about. “Then maybe she’ll get killed. Ask anybody in this household if they’d weep at the thought.”
“I would.”
“Then go pick up your flamethrower and enlist.”
He smiled, reluctantly. “I don’t think a flamethrower would help.”
“Whatever. What does she have to do to get Worecski?”
Mick scuffed the gravel, drawing patterns in the pale stone with his toe. “It’s all brute strength and speed. At least, it always was. Christ, two Horsemen in a head fight is an ugly thing. You can keep somebody from switching rides, from shifting to a new body, if you move on him fast and hard, as if you’re gonna ride him.”
“What do the real owners of the bodies do while all this is going on? Referee?”
“They’re not necessarily there,” he said with an odd expression.
“Where are they?”
“A Horseman seals up the host personality and uses the rest of it: memory, conscious and unconscious motor control, learned skills. But… if you’ve got a horse you want to keep, and you want it to stay where you left it when you ride somebody else… it’s easier if the host isn’t there anymore.”
I felt a chill. “You kill it.” He could have killed me.
“It can happen by accident, if you ride too long. The personality dwindles away, like a candle going out. But you can snuff it right away, too, if you need to. If you want to.” He dropped his gaze to the path.
I wanted to ask him if he’d killed the young man who’d taken such care of that pretty body. I was afraid to know. “So Frances will try to take Worecski over. What happens if she does?”
“Oh, she won’t,” he said. “She just needs to hold him there while she blows his brains out.”
“Chango.” When my voice was entirely mine again, I said, “But if she’s — won’t she blow her own brains out, too? Effectively?”
“Timing’s everything,” he agreed. “If she pulls back too early, he can skip before she kills the body. If she doesn’t pull back in time, it’s blammo, brain for rent.”
Unless that gave the brain back to its original owner. Did Mick believe that Frances had killed her host? “You don’t talk as if this is hypothesis. You… People have done this before.”
“Yes,” he said, mildly surprised. “I told you, it’s called a head fight. Not too many people actually got killed, but that was usually the intention.”
“Frances has done this.”
“Oh, yeah. It must be the way she got the Horsemen she was hunting, too. She was always good. Strong and fast. But Tom was strong and fast and bugfuck crazy. I don’t think Frances can take him. Without help.”
“This doesn’t sound like something you can do by committee.”
“We could distract him,” said Mick. He was hard to see in the dark. “We could do that much.” He sounded as if he were arguing with something I couldn’t remember saying.
It was cool,
out near the river after sunset. Mick was wearing his jacket, the one he wouldn’t leave behind in my apartment. I shivered and rubbed my arms.
“Then you can,” I said. “Have fun. If this is a remake of High Noon, she’s not Gary Cooper. She’s not the good guy.”
“Who is?” he asked, as if the question wasn’t rhetorical.
“Forget it. I’m square with Frances, and I’m sure as water runs downhill not going to try to get killed just because I can.”
“You still hold it against her, that bit back at your place.”
“No, I told you. We’re square. If I owed her, it would be different, but I don’t owe her anything. Do you?”
With a crunching of gravel, he turned back toward the shrubbery. He came out of the shadow of the garage and moonlight fell on him. I caught up to him where the path bent.
“We all slept with each other,” he said. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, at first. “We had a lot of contempt for normal people — or we said we did — and besides, some experiences are so strange and strong that they force you away from anybody who doesn’t share ’em. When we wanted to get laid, as opposed to when we wanted to prove something, we turned to our own kind. So Frances and I have gone to bed with each other a few times.” He pinched a branch end off the nearest shrub and toyed with the leaves, creasing them along the veins. “I think, for Frances, that’s all it was.”
I knew it wasn’t the sort of statement one was expected to answer. I said, “If that was supposed to make me understand, let me remind you that’s not a motivation I have much experience with.”
He looked up sharply. “Haven’t you ever liked someone? Respected them? Been their friend?”
Had I ever… “No,” I said. “So if you tell me it makes you want to get killed for no good reason, I’ll have to take your word for it.”
He dropped the twig. “I was going to tell you dinner was ready. I bet we’ve both missed it now.”
We had, but there were leftovers. I felt a little like a character mistakenly let loose in Beauty and the Beast, in that house. All one’s needs provided for, and no staff in sight. And a strong suspicion that one ought not to try to leave. Mick took his dinner away with him; I sat in the kitchen with mine, at a wooden table with a scarred top, under a hanging kerosene lamp. It was another of the house’s comforting rooms, full of simple objects and the smell of garlic. Or maybe the damned house just thought I needed comforting. I cleaned up after myself and found my way up the back stairs without incident to my allotted room.
