“Yours. The Slux’s. Tomichi, I think.”
“Tomichi who?”
“Significant, Cris! How many by that name do we know?”
“Yes,” Crispin said abstractedly, “it’s a small city.” He stood up and put down his glass. “I’ll have to go over to Yamaxi’s to sort this out.”
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Be a man. You’re hardly the first it’s happened to.”
“I mean the bad news,” Crispin said. Then he blurted: “Can’t you even say you’re sorry?”
“Sorry?” she trilled. “Sorry?” Her dark, round eyes, like hematites set in the patterned skin, held a depth of self-confidence, a depth of indifference, that knocked all the nervous energy out of him as hard and fast as the love tap from Macafryan’s gun had knocked all feeling out of his right hand. He was caught in a sparkling whirlwind of intense emotion. She saw that he’d guessed; and, seeing that it was pointless to continue with her exaggerated display of emotion, she sloughed the pretense of love-hate as easily and thoughtlessly as she’d sloughed off her dress and petticoats and stockings (and...and...Crispin thought, torturing himself) and the furbishments of her social persona, and the volcanic naiveté and girlish passion he’d married her for, for Yamaxi. Significant knew how long it had been going on! Probably since she came to Redeuiina as a girl. On and off. Neither of them was the type to cherish a great and secret love. Likely it had started as coercion when she was still his employee, and then when she became disillusioned with her marriage, she’d drifted back of her own free will, out of frustration and the desire for revenge. He would believe that of her any day—had, in fact, accused her of it in the past (but with some unknown man, never with him, never with the one who was obvious).
Or maybe it was a great love, foiled.
Neither explanation provided an excuse.
As he stared at her, she rolled her eyes. She yawned, lifted the snifter of brandy to her nose, then put it down with a clink of glass on silver. “Give Devi my regards.”
Insults bubbled up in Crispin. Scalding pain. The furious embarrassment of the cuckold. Are you sure that’s all you’d like me to give him? Your #$%@!—your—
But as so many times before, anger quickly gave way to remorse. What will it take to make you love me again? Yleini, my wife—
He only just stopped himself from going down on his knees.
She yawned again, pointedly. “I doubt I’ll wait up. Don’t stay out too late, will you? It causes such disruption among the servants when they have to clean your boots and fetch you the newssheet and press your clothes and make you breakfast when you come in at five only to go back out. And I’m having a luncheon tomorrow—mixed company—with cold meats, so there’s a good deal of cooking to be done in advance. I do expect you to be there, by the way, your schedule permitting.” She glanced at her bookshelves. She’d branched out recently. As well as romances written by Kirekuni ladies, she was reading foreign literature from Throssom and Creddeze. Beside the books he saw an ashtray and her cigarette case. “Pish-pish!” she called, turning. “Pishie! Come out, dearest! T-t-t-t!” With a soft yowl, the Mimese cat emerged from under the sideboard in the corner and jumped up beside her, where cat hair already matted the brocade love seat. Pish-pish was a bad-tempered feline they’d acquired as set dressing for Crispin’s portrayal of a Mime immigrant. Not inappropriately, it found Yleini the most congenial person in the household. “Who’s an angel-beast?” she said, stroking it.
With difficulty, Crispin recalled the matter of Macafryan and Minami. Macafryan, Minami, and him. He moved toward his wife. When she looked up, he took her face gently in his left hand, stooped, and kissed her. She smelled of flowers. “I’ll be off then.”
“Must—” she started automatically, then glanced down. “What have you done to your other hand?”
“Something to do with the nerves, I think; it’s—”
“No, look at it.”
“It might be broken, I suppose.” He glanced at her face, saw live interest for the first time. “It’ll heal.” He shrugged and stole another kiss. She had so much power over him. “Don’t stay up reading all night, darling. I’ll be back as soon as possible. If not tonight, then certainly in time for your luncheon. I promise.” At the, door he glanced back. She looked fairly stunned. It had, he realized, been months since he’d spoken to her so tenderly.
Josie Macafryan’s boy was dead. Dawn had broken by the time Yamaxi finally dismissed his five or six associates, some of them Kirekuni officials and some Lamaroon lowlifes, who’d been sitting around the Yamaxis’ parlor with their boots up, smoking daze and doing free cocaine (perks of the business that few had the sense to stay away from) and gossiping interminably about how the Slux had met his end. Once the last of them took his leave, and the parlor was empty but for a fug of mind-curdling smoke, Crispin got down to brass tacks. “What have you and Minami been plotting behind my back? Devi, I have the right to know why you got whoever-it-was to bump off Macafryan—who was my charge, although you’ve cut off your nose to spite your face really, because as far as the world is concerned, he was yours—and why you tried, and didn’t succeed simply because I thought he had a higher liquor tolerance than he did, to have me bumped off along with him!”
For a couple of seconds, Yamaxi seemed not to register Crispin’s outburst. Then he yelped aloud and straightened up so fast he almost fell off the couch where he’d been reclining. His feet hit the floor and his pipe flew out of his fingers. “Bump? Off? Crispin, my dear boy!” He sputtered. It was the first time Crispin had ever seen him at a loss for words. “My dear boy!” he gasped.
Crispin was sitting across from him, so close their knees almost touched. “Can you explain to me, then, if it wasn’t you that planned it, how the boys knew where to find him? They’d already come back with the body by the time I got here. And on top of that, I got a lift back to Redeuiina, and no one passed us on the road. Were they already out looking for him before they even knew I’d lost him? I don’t think so. They were waiting for him. For us. Thank the Significant for booze, that’s all I can say.”
The first thing to confront him when he arrived at the Yamaxis’ had been Ted Macafryan’s body lying faceup on a tarpaulin in the middle of the rug. Everyone had been gathered around it, babbling with excitement. Crispin’s entrance had silenced them. Yamaxi explained—unconvincingly—that they were worried about waking his wife. Even after Crispin relayed what he’d just heard from the maid Saami, that Mme. Yamaxi hadn’t yet returned from her evening calls, the Little Governor’s anxiety didn’t abate (nor did he seem to wonder what his wife was doing out so late). Twittering about “security,” he had his thugs remove the corpse to an unspecified place of disposal. After they returned, the drinking and smoking started. Crispin had never in one evening been pressed so often to partake. He suspected they wanted to dope him into forgetting what he’d seen. They succeeded, and also failed, in that the dazeflower in the air had a slowing-down effect on him, diluting the initial horror of having his fears proved right into a weary, frustrated desire to get things straight. Now, in the face of Yamaxi’s bewilderment, he pursued his reasoning with less conviction. “This nonsense about masked knifemen is just that—nonsense. The knifemen were here five minutes ago.”
“You accuse our colleagues rashly,” Yamaxi protested. “Of course, he was your charge, as you say, so naturally, but really—”
“Or else your boys met up with Minami’s earlier, and they all ganged up on him. Poor old Ted. Drunk as a dog. Gets out of the car for a piss and probably the last thing he sees is the moon. Bit of a waste of manpower, Devi, if I may be so bold as to criticize. Judging from how they described where they found him, he’d only got a mile or two down the road, so if they’d waited a bit, in all likelihood he’d have crashed the motorcar and killed himself without any help at all. That would have made a watertight story. I’m surprised they brought the Exupresu back instead of bashing it about a bit and leaving him in i
t.” He heard his voice continuing, flat, gray. “But I forgot, I was supposed to die, too, wasn’t I? And no matter what my reputation, my wife”—his throat constricted briefly—“among others, would have sworn that I’m neither a reckless driver, nor prone to partake at inappropriate moments. I apologize. The whole scenario was gorgeously thought out. Pity it didn’t fly.”
He looked up at Yamaxi. The Little Governor was gripping his moustache with both thumbs and index angers; his eyes were closed.
“I don’t understand, Devi! A Far Westerner! Why? I mean, what are the Slux going to say? At the very least I expect they’ll reconsider their plans for a consulate in Redeuiina. At the very least.”
Yamaxi leaned forward. He appeared to have recovered command of himself. His gaze sought Crispin’s and didn’t waver, “It was never,” he said clearly, “meant for you to die.”
Crispin let out a long breath.
“You were meant to survive, as a witness.” Yamaxi’s hands rose, palms up. “You might have gotten a knock or two...but we would still be sitting here talking, as we are now. I anticipated this conversation. I do not underestimate you, dear boy. But had you not outwitted us”—the flicker of a smile—“you would have had different questions. You would not be asking Why? but What are we to do about him?”
“Minami.”
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t supposed to know the pair of you are in cahoots.”
“We are not, never have been, and never will be!” Yamaxi nearly shouted.
Crispin suspected that he was telling the truth—not just because he seemed really offended, but because Crispin had known him for almost four years, worked for him for half of that time, and if anything could be taken as an absolute index of Yamaxi’s character, it was his ego. Despite Yamaxi’s pretenses to modesty, he was the greediest, proudest lizard alive, and he would no more have cooperated with Minami than a rat would have gone into partnership with a snail.
Crispin’s instincts told him to leave it there. But skepticism impelled him to press: “Then how did you find out that Minami had targeted Macafryan?”
“How does one find out anything in this city?”
“Then why didn’t you just stop him? It would have been the easiest thing in the world to tell me to take a different route.”
“Ah, that is the beauty of it!” Yamaxi’s eyes shone briefly. Then he said with a semblance of humility, “Very well, Crispin. Perhaps I should have warned you in as many words. Perhaps that would have been more honorable. I know you like these old-fashioned paradigms. But you would have been quite safe. You would have been signaled to stop by Minami’s men—as they in fact signaled Macafryan—and they would then have attacked you—as they in fact attacked Macafryan. We guessed, correctly, that no guns would be used because of the noise, which gave us time to ambush the ambush. The Slux did not fight back.” Yamaxi’s nose wrinkled with contempt.
“He was too drunk,” Crispin said, defending Macafryan he knew not why.
“But as you said, you do not partake unwisely. You would have fought back, and before you were overwhelmed, our friends”—he gestured to the pulled-together chairs where the thugs had sat smoking his bounty—“would have burst out of the hedges, as in fact they did, saving you; but unfortunately coming too late to save our foreign friend—as in fact they were too late. They would have told you they’d been tracking Minami’s men to see where they were going, so stealthy, so far out of the city, so late at night. You would have been indebted to them—”
“And to you—”
“—for life.”
Crispin steepled his fingers. “I find it difficult to believe you staged—or even allowed—Macafryan’s murder just to make sure of me.”
“You are so perceptive!” The fingers had crept up to twist the moustache again, and above them Crispin saw the telltale crinkles forming around Yamaxi’s eyes. “I hesitate as always to boast, dear boy. But I believe that Minami has laid himself open to the prettiest masterstroke in the history of the occupation.”
Crispin felt suddenly exhausted. Behind Yamaxi, dawn dripped greasy and gray onto the carpet, through the cracks between the curtains. Most of the daze smoke had dispersed, and in this first intimation of day which was more powerful than the plethora of burning gas lamps, Crispin saw the flattened place on the carpet where Macafryan’s body had lain. Crispin had tried to roll the Slux over with his foot and discovered that he was vastly heavy, weighing five or six times as much as any air-marrow-boned Lamaroon. Crispin didn’t believe that he hadn’t fought back. Maybe some farmer would discover the carcasses of a city type or two stuffed under his hedge, grinning in rictus.
“The essential thing, after all, is and has been for some time, our need to get this nuisance, this buzzing, stinging horsefly, this Minami, out of our way,” Yamaxi said with the self-confident grandiosity that only he could manage without the help of cocaine.
While he explained his masterstroke, Crispin thought mostly of Yleini. He tried to keep from imagining her adultery in detail—there was no point in torturing himself—but when he fixed his eyes on Yamaxi’s face, affecting to listen to the governor’s involved scheme for provoking the Slux and the Creddezi (heretofore the closest of friends) into mutual suspicion (whatever that had to do with Minami), all he could do was watch the Kirekuni’s mobile slice of a mouth move, and imagine it kissing her (all over her beloved body) soft soft...and that moustache, waxed as hard as twin nails, scraping her, hurting her...
Yamaxi naked. A repulsive image. His mind recoiled, and he heard what the Little Governor was saying.
“...they’re like demogorgons on choke chains: big, violent by nature, and easy to anger. The trick is angering them to one’s own advantage. When Minami is put on trial for the brutal murder of one of their citizens—that should do it, I think!” Yamaxi nodded several times, pleased with himself. “And when they dig him up by the roots and find the Creddezi—aha, we shall feel the ground shift under our feet! We’ll show them that here in Lamaroon we are not afraid of punishing wrongdoing as it ought to be punished. We’ll prove we share with them that moral probity they esteem so highly. Okimako ought to promote me to Significance for it—for promoting internationalism, and for having the balls to repair the damage done here by Their Disciplinarians’ laxity. There has not been a court trial held here in Redeuiina for years; I have decided I cannot permit that any longer.”
“I didn’t know there’d ever been a trial held here,” Crispin said.
Soft, dark, honey, her kisses like pure distilled love. Even before they married, it had been the bond of the flesh that held them together; that had been the thread by which their marriage hung; but now he was losing sight even of what it had been like. His memories were irrevocably contaminated. At the bottom of the abyss waited Mr. Nakunatta, occasionally glancing at the sky and checking his pocket watch.
Yamaxi nodded inattentively. “Back in the early days, after the Occupation, we used to hang several insurgents a day. But mostly Ferupians, and those were inexcusably sloppy trials. This one, by contrast, will be an indictment by means of incontrovertible proof with which not even the Slux, with their love of procedure, will be able to find fault.”
Become quite the international policy apologist, haven’t we? Crispin thought.
“The Creddezi will not dare to show any interest, for fear of showing their hand. The same goes for Okimako. Their hands are tied by their very own laws. They may grind their teeth, but they will never dare to replace me. I am too valuable. They will just send me an older, less ambitious secretary of the interior, and in private, both they and the Slux will butter up the Creddezi and hand them an official or two, gift-wrapped, to make up for their loss. The status quo will hold, my dear boy, never you fear. We are not provoking an incident, only making sure justice is done.” Yamaxi giggled in pure delight. “Our dear friend Tomichi, though he does not yet know it, is stuck on a specimen card with a pin through his middle.”
The gaps between the curtains glowed as bright as the cracked-open doors of furnaces burning gray. “And I suppose when the time for the trial rolls around, I’m to be the star witness,” Crispin said.
“I hate to ask, dear boy. But really, I am not asking. I am insisting. Without you—you who have the distinction of never having been employed by me, you who are a completely unbiased witness, a chauffeur hired for the Slux’s stay—” Yamaxi giggled again. “Without you we have no case.”
“And after Minami is hanged?”
“Ah. You anticipate an upshot for which I scarcely, as yet, dare to hope.” Yamaxi infused his expression with honest regret: eyes wide, lips quivering, forehead furrowed a little as if he could not comprehend why life had to be so hard on them all. Crispin knew that expression. He gripped the arms of his chair, whose red leather showed scars where people had knocked their pipes out. Pain tingled through his two numb fingers. The nerves were coming alive again. The brightness of the sunlight now finding its way into the parlor seemed an outrage, an offense against nature. He wanted a cigarette. In the QAF he’d smoked twenty-five a day without even thinking about it, because everyone knew that on the front lines tobacco was as essential as booze and comradeship to keeping your sanity and your nerve; he’d not given up the habit until he shipped on the Slow Express Oil Flower without a sigilimi in his pocket. The pangs of nicotine withdrawal had been almost as hellish as the pangs after he lost IndeIa Mishime Akele Favis Kendris Belamis the evil-spawned geniuses—so naturally, after he settled in Redeuiina, and Yamaxi filled his pockets with more cash than even Yleini could think of ways to spend, he’d tried to recapture the pleasure once delivered by a cigarette in solitude...only to find that something had immunized his body to even the mildest forms of palliation. The finest imported tobaccos, Sjintang paperweed, it made no difference. The craving fleeted by him like a whiff of scent and was gone.
Yamaxi seized his left hand in both of his own. He raised it to his chest and pressed it there. Crispin stared, and forced himself not to pull away.
The Daemon in the Machine Page 55
