Hot Sky at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

  “Marty—”

  “Please. We are not children, you and I. You brought him here; the room has a bed and a door that locks; I understand what must have taken place. That was the idea, was it not? For you to bring him here under the pretense of measuring him for a sculpture, and to go to bed with him?”

  “It wasn’t a pretense,” Jolanda said, with some heat in her tone. She was sitting by the window with her back to the awesome view, the black backdrop and the blazing panoply of stars and planets and swiftly moving L-5 worlds. “I actually did measure him. I quite legitimately intend to do a portrait of him. Look—look here—” Jolanda indicated a little stack of data-cubes. “All the measurements are here.”

  “Did he tell you what you look like to him? You know, everything is just geometry to him. A very strange geometry.”

  “He said I was beautiful.”

  “Yes. So you are. He told me, once, how a certain woman looked to him, and I have never forgotten it. This was the other time when we met, when we were at that conference in Caracas, the one about taking molybdenum and beryllium out of seawater. The woman was from Peru, Chile, one of those countries, and she looked something like you, as a matter of fact, big like a cow up here, a very big woman all over, not fat, exactly, but well furnished and extremely—”

  “Marty, I don’t care.”

  “We were sitting by the pool, Farkas and I, and she came up out of the water like Aphrodite, do you know? A very generous Aphrodite, done by Rubens. With the breasts out to here, and the arms that were as thick as thighs, and the thighs even bigger, but everything very finely shaped and in perfect proportion, just big. Rather like you. And I said something to Farkas, a comment about her body, forgetting for the moment that he has no eyes, and he just laughed, and he said, ‘For me she is somewhat different.’ I think he said that the way she looked to him was like three barrels set on their sides and tied with a flaming cord. Or maybe five barrels. But that was very beautiful to him, he said. Each person looks entirely different to him, you know, an altogether individual shape. The information he gets with his senses, it is not like the information we take in.” Enron smiled. “I’m glad he thought you were beautiful. You are, you know. Much like that woman in Caracas. And you are wonderful in bed. As I am sure he discovered.”

  “Do you know what you look like to me right now?” Jolanda asked. “A wolf. A little lean wolf with green eyes and dripping fangs.”

  “Would you like to make a sculpture of me? Here: take my measurements too. Right now!” He began to undo his belt.

  “This is lousy, Marty. I can’t stand a jealous man. If you didn’t want me to go to bed with him, why did you throw me at him like that?”

  “Because I wanted to get certain information. And that seemed like the most efficient way of getting it. Surely you understood that?”

  “I suppose I did, yes,” she said. “Now that I think about it a little.” She shot him a fiery look. “But do you understand that I never would have considered doing it except that I found him attractive? I’m not a toy to be passed around, Marty. Or a piece of bait. I wanted to sleep with him. And I did. And I’m glad that I did! I enjoyed it tremendously.”

  “Of course you did,” Enron said, changing his tone from one of harsh banter to a softer, more placating one. “He’s an unusual man. It must have been an unusual experience.” He crossed the room to her and rested his hands alongside her neck, gently kneading the soft flesh and the firm muscles beneath. “Do you really think I’m being jealous, Jolanda?”

  “Yes. Damned right I do. You needed this to happen, but you didn’t like it. I could see that when you showed up in the restaurant. You felt you had to hover around us, you had to keep control of the situation even as you were pushing me toward him.”

  Enron was a little taken aback by that accusation. Was it so? He had believed that the purpose of his breaking in on Jolanda and Farkas at the restaurant had been merely to send a signal to Farkas that they needed to talk, once Farkas’s dalliance with Jolanda was out of the way. But perhaps there had been more going on than that. He could have waited until tomorrow to make contact with Farkas, after all. But perhaps he had actually needed to let Farkas know that he had some kind of prior claim on Jolanda, some degree of ownership, before they had gone to bed together.

  He shrugged. “At any rate, did you learn anything useful from him?”

  “That depends. What do you mean by useful?”

  “For example, did he say anything about why he’s up here?”

  “He told you in the restaurant what he’s doing up here. He said he was on a holiday.”

  “Of course. A holiday. —You really are stupid, aren’t you?”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “He’s here spying for Kyocera. You knew that.”

  “So he’s spying for Kyocera, then. We didn’t talk about anything having to do with Kyocera. I took some measurements of his face and skull, and then he asked me if I would go to bed with him, and then—”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “He doesn’t seem like a blind man in bed, Marty. Or somebody who looks at a beautiful woman and sees an arrangement of barrels. He knew where everything was supposed to be.”

  “I’m sure he did,” said Enron. He drew a long, slow breath. “Okay, listen to me, now. What I think, Jolanda, is that Kyocera-Merck has a finger in this little plot that your friends from Los Angeles have cooked up, and that the Hungarian is here as the K-M point man, here to meet with the conspirators and help them set things up.”

  Jolanda turned in her seat and looked up at him. “What makes you think that? Nobody ever mentioned a word about Kyocera when they were telling me about the plan.”

  “Why should they? But an adventure of such a kind takes money. Someone has to buy the weapons, someone has to pay for transporting them here. People have to be trained. And then there are the customs fees, the bribes, all the expenses of buying your way into a well-protected place like this with a small army. Who is their backer, do you think?”

  “I don’t have any idea. They never said.”

  “My entire purpose in coming here—do you remember?—is to meet with your friends and let them know that my country is willing to offer them whatever financial support they may need. But the possibility arises that they may already have found a very powerful partner in their enterprise.”

  “Kyocera-Merck, you mean?”

  “So it begins to seem.”

  “Why would Kyocera-Merck want to overthrow the dictator of Valparaiso Nuevo?”

  “For reasons of pure imperialism, perhaps,” Enron said. “Kyocera is said to be in a strongly expansionist mode these days, and they may just want to add a few more L-5 worlds to their collection. Or maybe it is only that there are some people living here in sanctuary who are wanted by them. I don’t know, Jolanda. But if Farkas is here, and a coup is being engineered, it gives me reason to suspect that he’s mixed up in this plan somehow on K-M’s behalf.”

  “And if he is?”

  “Then I need to cut myself in on the deal. A partnership arrangement: split the costs, share the payoff. Kyocera can have this place, if it wants it. But some of the people who have been living in hiding here—those are people that we want. And will get, one way or another.”

  Enron was enjoying a long, extravagant shower just before dinnertime when Jolanda put her head into the cubicle and said, “The courier is on the phone. He thinks he’s found Davidov. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Tell him to wait,” Enron said.

  He stepped under the water again, letting it roll down luxuriously over the dense, matted black hair of his chest, which was still covered with soap. In Israel, of course, there was plenty of water to squander on showers. But Enron had been in California just before coming here, living under the enforced Spartan restrictions of the West Coast’s perpetual drought, and now he was reveling in the availability once more of unlimited water up here on Valparaiso Nuevo, where everything wa
s recycled with maximum efficiency and nothing was rationed.

  After a long while he emerged, toweling himself dry, and went into the bedroom. Kluge’s fleshy, earnest face was peering out of the visor. Enron casually wrapped his towel around his middle and moved into scanner range.

  “Well?”

  “Spoke C,” Kluge said. “The Hotel Santa Eulalia, in the town of Remedies. Four men with California addresses on their passports checked in last week. This was one of them. He’s using the name of Dudley Reynolds, but I think he’s the one you wanted to find. I’ll pump his picture across to you.”

  The visor image went blurry with download interference for a moment. Kluge was jacking his flex terminal into the output. Then the picture was clear again, and Enron found himself looking at the solido of a square-headed, thick-necked man with austere blue eyes and blond hair, almost colorlessly so, cropped very short. His skin, which must originally have been of a Slavic pallor, was a blackish purple, heavily mottled and blotched from too much Screen. It was a frightening face, big-chinned and almost lipless, a bestial Cossack face.

  Enron said to Jolanda, “What do you think?”

  “That’s Davidov, yes. It’s him, all right.”

  “He looks like a beast.”

  “He’s really quite gentle,” Jolanda said.

  “No doubt,” said Enron. He told Kluge to come back on camera. “All right, you’ve found them. Well done. Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “They checked out about twelve hours ago. They may have gone back to Earth.”

  “Name of a pig,” Enron muttered. “We’ve missed them?”

  “I’m not entirely certain of that. My contacts in Emigration haven’t come up with any record of their leaving Valparaiso Nuevo yet. However, the fact remains that they have left their original hotel. I’m going to continue looking.”

  “You do that.”

  “I could use an advance on my fee,” Kluge said. “My expenses on all this have been running high.”

  “How much do you want?” Enron asked.

  “A thousand callaghanos?”

  “I’ll give you two thousand,” Enron said. “It’ll save me the trouble of having you come around with your hand out again in another day or two.”

  Kluge seemed very surprised indeed. Jolanda was looking at Enron in puzzlement also.

  Enron took his terminal from the drawer, tapped out Kluge’s account number, and pumped the money across to him. Kluge blurted his gratitude and disappeared from the visor.

  Jolanda said, “Why’d you give him so much?”

  “What does it matter? There’s plenty of money. I was ready to let him have five.”

  “They don’t respect you, if you’re too easy with money.”

  “They’ll respect me, all right. Kluge has dealt with Israelis before.”

  “How do you know that?” Jolanda asked.

  “We keep records,” said Enron. “Don’t you think I checked on him before I hired him?” He wadded his towel into a ball, threw it across the room, and began to select clothes for the evening. “Are you ready to go out for dinner?”

  “Just about.”

  “Good. While I’m getting dressed, call Farkas at his hotel. Tell him we’re about to eat and ask him if he’d like to join us.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “To find out if he knows anything about the plan to overthrow the Generalissimo. And if he can tell me where Davidov is.”

  “Shouldn’t you talk with Davidov before you ask Farkas about any of that?” Jolanda asked. “You’re only guessing that Farkas is involved. If he isn’t, and you tip him off to what’s going on, you may wind up letting Kyocera know things that you’d be better off not having them know.”

  Enron stared at her admiringly. He let a smile slowly emerge and broaden.

  “You have a good point there.”

  “You see? I’m not really all that stupid, am I?”

  “I may have misjudged you, it would seem.”

  “You simply can’t believe that a woman who’s as good in bed as I am can also think straight.”

  “On the contrary,” Enron said. “I have always thought that intelligent women make the best bed partners. But sometimes if a woman is too beautiful I fail to notice how intelligent she also is.”

  Jolanda glowed with pleasure. It was as if he had canceled out all the cruel things he had said to her with a single oblique compliment.

  Indeed she is extremely stupid, Enron thought. But she was right that he would have to be careful with Farkas.

  “The thing is,” he said, “that time is moving along, and we haven’t yet been able to locate your friends. I might as well begin sounding Farkas out. There is the risk that you mention: but there’s also the possibility that I’ll learn something from him. Call him. Invite him to have dinner with us tonight, or else lunch tomorrow.”

  The phone light came on again as Jolanda moved toward the desk. She looked at Enron uncertainly.

  “Answer it,” Enron said.

  Kluge, again. “I’ve got your Davidov for you. He changed hotels, but he’s still here. All four of them are. Spoke B, the Residencia San Tomas, in the town of Santiago.”

  “Are all the hotels in this place named for saints?” Enron asked.

  “Many of them. The Generalissimo is a very religious person.”

  “Yes. I suppose he would be. What name is our man using now?”

  “Dudley Reynolds, still. The other three are named James Clark, Phil Cruz, Tom Barrett on their passports.”

  Enron glanced at Jolanda. She shrugged and shook her head.

  “They’re probably the ones we want,” Enron said to Kluge. “All right. Keep an eye on them. Stay in touch. If I don’t answer, put the call on seek. Call me anywhere, anytime there’s news. Let me know where they go, who they see.”

  Jolanda said, when Enron had broken the contact, “Do we try to see them tonight;”

  “Are you good friends with these people?”

  “I know Mike Davidov very well. The other names are ones I’ve never heard of at all. But of course they’re all fakes.”

  “How well do you know Davidov? You ever sleep with him?”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Please,” Enron said. “I don’t give a damn about your chastity or the lack thereof. I need to know what kind of a relationship you had with this Davidov.”

  Jolanda’s face colored. Her eyes flamed with anger.

  “I’ve slept with him, yes. I’ve slept with a lot of people.”

  “I realize that. Davidov is what I’m asking about, right now. You and he were lovers, and now you turn up here with me, a visiting Israeli. How will he react? Will it bother him?”

  “We were just friends. When I was in L.A. I stayed with him, that’s all. It was always a very casual thing.”

  “He won’t be bothered, you say?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “All right,” Enron said. “Call him. The Residencia San Tomis, in the town of Santiago. Ask for Dudley Reynolds. Tell him you’re here with a newsman from Israel that you met in San Francisco, and that I’d like very much to talk with him as soon as possible.”

  “Do I say what it is you’d like to discuss?”

  “No. He can figure it out. Call him.”

  “Right,” Jolanda said. She programmed the phone. Almost at once a synthetic voice said, “Mr. Reynolds is not in his room. Is there a message for him?”

  “Leave your name and our room number at this hotel,” Enron told Jolanda. “Ask him to call back, any hour, whenever he comes in.”

  “What now?” she asked, when she was done.

  “Now call Farkas, and invite him to have dinner with us.”

  “But shouldn’t you wait until—”

  “There are times when I get tired of waiting,” said Enron. “A calculated risk. I need to get things moving. Call Farkas.”
r />   They agreed to meet in the town of Cajamarca, at a cafe right against the rim, not far from Farkas’s hotel. Getting together on what was essentially Farkas’s turf struck Enron as being a good idea. He wanted Farkas to feel safe, relaxed, congenial. We are beginning to create a splendid friendship, you and I, linked by our memories of Caracas long ago and now by our confraternal acquaintance with the splendid body of Jolanda Bermudez: that was the idea. We trust each other. We can share significant secrets with each other for our mutual benefit. Indeed.

  Farkas arrived late at the cafe. Enron found that bothersome. But he kept himself under tight control while he waited, ordering a nonalcoholic drink, and then another. Jolanda had a couple of cocktails, long greenish-blue drinks of a species unknown to Enron, probably sweet and sticky. And at last, nearly half an hour after the rendezvous time, the eyeless man came swaggering in.

  Watching Farkas’s grand, almost regal entry, Enron suddenly found himself not so sure that it was going to be all that easy to strike up a chummy and profitably manipulative relationship with him. He had forgotten, or perhaps had never bothered to notice, what a commanding figure Farkas was: extraordinarily tall, almost a giant, really, with an athlete’s wide shoulders and easy grace. It hadn’t been just a fascination for the bizarre that had drawn Jolanda to him. Farkas moved with wonderful self-assurance, never making a misstep as he walked between the tables, nodding and waving to the bartender, the waiters, the busboy, even some of the other customers.

  And he was so damned strange. Enron saw Farkas as if for the first time, staring in wonder and distaste at that lofty white half dome of a head set like a chunk of marble atop the long muscular neck, the shining forehead curving up and up without interruption from the bridge of his nose to the high, receding hairline. Farkas seemed scarcely human. Some kind of weird mutant creature, a monstrous head on a human body. But of course that was what he was: a weird mutant creature.

  This will take some careful managing, Enron thought.

  But he was fundamentally confident that it would all work out. He always was. And so far it always had.