Probably all been squeezed into one of the Nueva buildings.
At the corner of the block stood a large sign depicting the planned extension of the Muehlenfeldt Center that would soon take the place of the little houses. In an already vacant lot up the street, Ralph had seen some of the bulldozers and cranes waiting behind a chain-link fence. The buildings in the picture on the sign looked like quartz crystals or something—great slabs of concrete and glass rearing into a sky bluer than any ever seen in L.A. Nice stuff for Martians, maybe, thought Ralph. He turned away from the sign, waited for a break in the traffic, then dashed across the street.
The headquarters of the Revolutionary Workers Party was in a dingy, two-story brick building. Ralph was sure he had found the right address—there was a large poster in one of the upper windows: VOTE RWP IN ’84! in red letters that glowed from the lights in the room behind.
The lower part of the building, he saw as he stepped up onto the curb, was occupied by the Red Star Candy Store.
Behind a dusty plate glass window protected by a folding metal lattice, a few scattered candy boxes lay amid the corpses of small insects on their backs. There were no lights on in the store.
To the right of the store window a narrow door opened onto a flight of stairs. The inside of the door was covered with the same poster as in the window upstairs. Ralph looked inside, saw another light at the top of the stairs and heard voices muffled by another door.
There were more posters lining the walls of the stairwell as he climbed up. The colors were faded, depicting causes and heroes and dates back through the seventies and even into the late sixties. One, the earliest he could make out in the dim light from above, was for a rally against some war in— some place he had never heard of. I wonder if they managed to stop it, he thought idly as he mounted the last few steps.
The door at the top swung open under his hand. A flood of light poured out and revealed a large room filled with books. They were arranged on plywood shelves lining the walls and stacked on makeshift tables with folding sawhorses for legs. A sign on the wall read PROGRESSIVE BOOK STORE. A man with a pipe was sitting behind one of the tables with a little metal cashbox on it. He glanced up from the book he was reading as Ralph stepped in from the stairwell.
Ignoring the man’s eyes on his back, Ralph stood in front of the nearest shelves and pretended an interest in the books. There were several copies of each title, most still shiny with the look of new books that had never been opened. Some were a little faded and covered with a fine layer of dust.
He pulled a book from one of the shelves. A bushy-bearded face glared at him from the cover. He put it back and took another. This had two men on it, one with a precise goatee and the other with a shock of black hair and small glasses, gazing up at him from the depths of ancient photographs. Ralph opened the book and pretended to read, while sneaking a careful survey of the rest of what he could see of the RWP headquarters.
Through a wide doorway to the rear of the bookstore, he could see rows of metal folding chairs facing an unoccupied podium. More of the posters he had seen coming up the stairs lined the walls of the empty meeting hall.
Behind him, someone came in from the stairwell and called hello to the man with the pipe. Ralph put the book back on the shelf and glanced over at the table. The newcomer, a girl in jeans and a service-station wind-breaker, was talking animatedly to the man. They both were laughing and ignoring him.
Maybe he wasn’t watching me to begin with, thought Ralph. Maybe I’m getting nervous for no reason— at least so far. A little bolder, he swung his head around. Through a doorway on the other side of the bookstore another room was visible, its windows overlooking the street outside. The room was occupied by battered wooden desks and surrounded by shelves filled with yellowing stacks of Agitant back issues.
Several party members were clustered around one of the desks, sipping coffee from plastic cups and talking. A girl in a pullover sweater too large for her was talking on a phone in the room’s corner and writing something down on a yellow notepad.
Ralph suddenly perceived that the room he was looking into was in fact L-shaped, with its far section hidden from view. He was craning his neck to try to sight whatever was around the room’s bend when he felt something strike him just below the shoulder blade.
His breath became something solid in his throat for a moment. He whirled around, saw nothing, then looked lower and saw a face grinning up at him. It was the short man he’d seen in Mrs. Alvarez’s building. And Mrs. Teele said he’d been around there, too, thought Ralph. Looking at the man’s round face and uneven teeth, Ralph felt the knot in his throat swell and grow tighter. Does he remember seeing me? he wondered uneasily.
“Haven’t seen you at our public forums before,” said the man brightly.
He continued to grin up at Ralph.
“Uh . . . no.” He squeezed his voice out into the air. “I’m new in L.A.”
“Well, we’re always glad to see some fresh faces around here.” The smile evaporated, and the man sighed. “Sometimes you get a little, you know, wax museum feeling around here. Know what I mean? Same old people all the time.” He fell silent for a moment, then beamed at Ralph again. “Just curious?”
“Huh?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
“Did you come just because you’re curious, or are you, you know, into political stuff?”
“Well—”
“I mean, it’s all right,” said the short man. “Lots of people start out just curious, and then become interested, I guess you’d say.” He clapped Ralph with enthusiasm on the arm. “So stick around. Peter is really a great speaker. And he knows this Ximento matter from the inside out—he was in Brazil a couple of years ago for a conference.” He paused, looking as if he were waiting for something to be said.
“Sounds interesting, all right,” said Ralph.
“And we’ve got a good pamphlet on the subject, too. Just a dollar. Sometimes it’s hard keeping the printed stuff up to date, the way things go so fast. Sometimes a whole issue’s forgotten before you have anything to show people about it. But we were already researching this before the Front started moving north, so we just had to kind of rush it into print, is all. It’s over there on the table. I’d buy you a copy, so you’d have it to read, but that’s sort of frowned upon. It’s supposed to be the sign of a . . . well, serious person to buy their own literature.”
“I’ll have to get a copy.”
“Yeah, do that. You’ll enjoy it.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist.
“Hey, almost time for the forum to start. I’d better go make sure we got enough chairs out. See you in the meeting hall in a few minutes.” The short man turned and hurried away.
He didn’t recognize me, thought Ralph as he wandered over to one of the book-covered tables. He didn’t make the connection. The room was filled with people who had entered from the stairwell while they had been talking. The crowd was clustered into groups conversing, or individuals looking over the bookshelves by themselves.
Ralph found the knot gone and air pouring into his lungs again. At least he had penetrated this far safely—although nothing had been made any less mysterious yet. From the table, he picked up a thin pamphlet with the word “Ximento” in the title. Not very much for a dollar, decided Ralph, putting it back down and heading for the entrance of the meeting hall.
“Hey, buddy. Give me a hand with this, will you?”
He stopped and turned towards the voice. A door he hadn’t noticed before stood open, revealing a large kitchen. A huge, ancient stove, like a squared-off battle ship, and deep iron sinks stood beneath the bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The short man was pointing to a massive cylindrical coffee urn standing on a counter by the door.
“What’s the matter?” said Ralph.
“Help me carry this thing into the other room.” The short man grabbed one of the urn’s handles. “It’s for refreshments after the forum.”
Ralph shr
ugged and stepped into the kitchen. He grunted as he lifted up on the urn’s other handle. “Maybe you should’ve moved it first,” he said, “and then—” He stopped, sensing the door suddenly closing, shutting off the sounds of the crowd in the bookstore. Letting go of the handle, he stepped backward away from the short man. A dull noise he barely heard and a wave of pain swept over him from the back of his head.
“Hell,” somebody was saying as Ralph staggered into the counter. “Not like that—you can break somebody’s skull like that!” He couldn’t lift his head, and saw only the dark and swimming floor as he groped his way out.
A pair of boots—they looked like old battered military issue—stepped into his vision.
“Hey, get him!” another voice said. How many were there in the room?
“Don’t let—”
“For Pete’s sake.” Somebody grabbed Ralph, pinning his arms to his sides. “Give me that thing.”
“Careful.”
The room tilted on its side, darkening from red to black.
* * *
“Hey. Come on. Wake up.” The voice sounded familiar somehow.
Ralph started to raise his eyelids but the first narrow crack of light bounced off the back of his skull like a mallet. He clamped his eyes shut again, his head throbbing with his pulse. “Go away,” he said.
“No, no. Come on,” coaxed the voice.
It was no use. Consciousness welled up in him with each imploding wave of his blood. Where had he heard that voice before? He gripped the sides of the cot he was lying upon and ran his tongue over his dry lips.
“What’d he hit me so hard for?” He groaned.
“We’re sorry about that.” A different voice, a woman’s. “We didn’t know....”
He grunted, braced himself and opened his eyes wide. Yellowish electric light clamored like a siren in his skull, then faded into a dull headache.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Ralph lifted his head and turned it to one side. He found himself looking into Stimmitz’s face. For a few seconds their eyes met, then Ralph laid his head back upon the cot. “Go to hell,” he said. A cold and bitter current seemed to pour out of his chest like a tide as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Hey, man, it’s not what you think—”
“I don’t care,” said Ralph in disgust. “I don’t care how you did it, or why you made me think you got torn to pieces on the dreamfield. I don’t care about any of that stuff. Real cute trick, all right.” He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up, pulling his head down between his shoulders to ease the clanging in his head. Past Stimmitz he could see two or three other people in the room. “Do you mind if I leave now?” he said, the corner of his mouth bending into a snarl. The bitterness had become clearer, refined into a sense of betrayal and anger at having been fooled for so long, whatever the obscure motivation for the fraud had been. No more, he thought. I’ve had enough.
“You are Ralph Metric, aren’t you?”
“Come on.” He kneaded his forehead without looking up. “Cut it out, Stimmitz. I don’t know what all of this has been for, what the point was of making me think you were dead and everything, but enough’s enough.”
A few seconds of silence passed. “I’m not Michael Stimmitz,” the other said quietly. “I’m his brother Spencer.”
“Huh?” Ralph jerked erect. “What? His brother! You’re kidding.” He looked into the other’s face. The differences became obvious—a thinner nose, closer set eyes than the Stimmitz he had known out at the Opwatch base. “I . . . he never said he had a brother.”
Spencer Stimmitz shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think you needed to know.”
“I don’t get it.” Ralph’s anger had drained away, leaving his former confusion. “Why’d you hit me over the head?”
“We didn’t know who you were.” Just behind Spencer was the short man. “We thought you might be one of Muehlenfeldt’s agents.”
“Me? I thought you were.” Ralph looked past Spencer at the others crowding the small room. The short man was there, looking more grim-faced than he had in the Progressive Bookstore. Towering over him was the man whose battered Army boots he had glimpsed in the kitchen, the one, he guessed who had knocked him out. There was something subtly wrong about the wide-staring eyes and the hands fidgeting inside the pants pockets. I’m lucky my skull’s still in one piece, thought Ralph. If it is.
Leaning against a door, arms folded, was the woman he had heard speak a moment ago. For several seconds he stared directly into her face.
He had seen her before—carrying a camera in the desert outside the Opwatch base.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at him. “We were a little hard on you. But you know we can’t take any chances.”
The way she said the words you know disturbed him. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, Spencer broke in again.
“It’s a good thing I came down here.” He emitted a quick, barking laugh. “They were talking about how to get rid of your corpse.”
“Great,” muttered Ralph. He carefully shook his aching head from side to side, but nothing became any clearer. “This may sound stupid,” he said at last, “but what’s going on around here? Who are you people, anyway?”
No one spoke for a moment. “Hey,” said Spencer, glancing back at the others, “maybe you hit him too hard. It’s affected his memory.”
Scowling, the man with the army boots brushed Spencer aside and stood in front of Ralph. “Maybe,” he said darkly, “this dude’s diddling around with us.” He pursed his lips and spat.
Ralph looked at the gob of spittle dead-centered between his feet, then back up as the man brought his hand close to Ralph’s face. A slight metallic whisper and a knife with a long blade flashed across his vision.
He stared at the distorted reflection of his face in the shiny blade, until an understanding of its macabre purpose swept like a hot electric wire into his mind. The cot slid into the knife-wielder’s knees as Ralph scrambled backwards across it. He flattened himself against the wall. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Get him away from me!”
“Come on,” coaxed the short man, tugging at the other’s arm. “Put it away, Gunther. Not now.” The big man looked sullen but with another small noise, the blade disappeared. “He gets nervous,” the short man said, turning to Ralph.
“Just keep him away from me.” Ralph braced his shoulders against the wall to stop their trembling. He stood there, working at breathing for a few moments before he spoke again. “I don’t know who you people think I am, but I wish you’d let me in on it, too.”
The woman and the three other men exchanged glances. I’ve blown it, thought Ralph, watching them. They’re probably mulling over the corpse-disposal problem again.
“Aren’t you Ralph Metric?” said Spencer, looking puzzled. He held up a wallet that Ralph recognized as his own. “You’ve got a California driver’s license and an Operation Dreamwatch ID that says you are.”
He nodded without speaking.
“Well, then you can relax.” Spencer shrugged and spread his hands open. “This is it. I mean, we’re the Alpha Fraction.”
“The what?” Ralph was beginning to wonder if something had been knocked loose when they had hit him. Every new piece of information seemed to make things even more confused.
“The Alpha Fraction. Didn’t my brother tell you to come find us?”
“You know, don’t you,” said Ralph slowly, “that your brother’s dead.”
He watched the other’s face.
“We’ve assumed that.” Spencer’s voice remained level and calm. “But he wrote us about you in his last letter.” He pulled a dirt-creased envelope from his hip pocket, unfolded it and extracted a photograph.
Ralph took it from the outstretched hand. It was a black-and-white shot of himself, taken sometime without his knowledge on the Opwatch base: a colorless, two-dimensional Ralph Metric frozen in front of one of the buildings out in the middle of
the desert. Probably just wandering around, he thought, studying the photo. As usual.
He turned the picture over. On the back were several lines in the late Michael Stimmitz’s precise handwriting. Spence— Possible recruit, name of Ralph Metric. Should be able to trust him: Will be filling him in gradually, & send him on to L.A. if nothing turns up here. M.
“So that’s what it was all about,” murmured Ralph. He tapped the picture with his forefinger.
“What’s that?” said Spencer.
“All that stuff your brother talked about. Just before . . . what happened to him. Universes, and stuff. He was trying to recruit me, but he didn’t have time to tell me everything before he was killed. That’s what he was trying to do.”
“He didn’t say anything about the Alpha Fraction?” asked the short man.
“No,” said Ralph. “Nothing.”
The man sighed. “Let’s go upstairs and see if there’s any coffee left. This is going to take a while.”
Ralph pushed himself away from the wall and stepped around the cot.
He held out the photograph to Spencer, who didn’t appear to see it.
“Do you know how Mike died?” said Spencer.
“I was there. I saw it.” He watched as Spencer nodded and turned away, expressionless. Someone touched his arm. He turned and saw beside himself the woman he had first seen in the desert, now making a small gesture with her hand.
“He’ll be okay,” she whispered, glancing at Spencer’s back disappearing through the room’s doorway. “He was still hoping, is all. About his brother.”
The relief Ralph had felt at the small light penetrating the accumulated mysteries was muted. He followed the woman out of the room and up an unlit stairway.
Interlude:
Somewhere in a Corridor of Power
Although the city roared ceaselessly below, it was quiet aboard the jetliner. The carpet was like an ankle-deep sea, temporarily calm. Seamed with age, Senator Aaron Muehlenfeldt’s face was reflected in the circular window as he looked down upon the scattered four a.m. traffic on the freeways. Pinpoints of red and white light were wandering among the great L.A. buildings.
The Dreamfields Page 7
