Hot Sky at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

  Nobody said a word to Carpenter as he left the building.

  As soon as he reached the Dunsmuir, half an hour later, Carpenter put in a call to Tedesco at the Samurai number he had been given. He expected to get some kind of corporate runaround; but to his amazement Tedesco appeared almost at once.

  “You weren’t there,” Carpenter said. “Why the hell not?”

  “It wasn’t required of me. I’ve seen the transcript.”

  “Already? That was goddamn fast. What are you going to do now?”

  “Do? What’s there to do? A fine has been levied for your negligence. The Port has stripped you of your sea license. Very likely Kyocera will sue us now for letting their people die out there in the Pacific, and that might be quite expensive. We just have to wait and see.”

  “Am I going to be demoted?” Carpenter asked.

  “You? You’re going to be fired.”

  “I—fired?” Carpenter felt as though he had been punched. He struggled to catch his breath. “The Company is behind me, you said at the first hearing. Fired? Is that how you’re behind me?”

  “Things changed, Carpenter. We didn’t know then that there were survivors. Survivors alter the entire circumstance, don’t you see? Kyocera wants your head on a platter, and we’re going to give it to them. We would probably have kept you on if there hadn’t been any survivors, if this had simply been an internal matter involving Samurai and the Port of Oakland—your word against that of your own crew, a matter of officer judgment and nothing else—but now there are accusers rising up publicly in wrath. There’s going to be a stink. How can we keep you, Carpenter? We would have hushed this all up and you might have hung on with us, but now we can’t, not with survivors speaking up, making us all look like shit. You think we can give you a new assignment now? Your new assignment is to look for a job, Carpenter. You have thirty days’ notice, and you’re damned lucky to get that. A termination counselor will advise you of your rights. Okay, Carpenter? You see the picture?”

  “I wasn’t expecting—”

  “No. I guess you weren’t. I’m sorry, Carpenter.”

  Dazed, his breath coming in heavy shocked gusts, Carpenter stared at the visor long after it had gone blank. His head was whirling. He had never felt such inner devastation. Suddenly there was a hole through the middle of the planet, and he was falling through it—falling, falling—

  Gradually he calmed a little.

  He sat quietly for a while, breathing deeply, trying not to think of anything at all. Then, automatically, he started to call Nick Rhodes.

  No.

  No, not now. Rhodes would be sympathetic, sure; but he had as much as already said that he thought Carpenter had brought all this on himself, hadn’t he? Carpenter didn’t need to hear more of that just now.

  Call a friend. A friend who isn’t Nick Rhodes.

  Jolanda, he thought. Nice round jiggly unjudgmental Jolanda. Call her and take her out to dinner and then go back to her house somewhere in Berkeley with her and spend the night fucking her blind. It sounded good, until he remembered that Jolanda was up in the L-5s with the Israeli, Enron.

  Someone else, then.

  Not necessarily in the Bay Area. Someone far away. Yes, he thought. Go. Go. Far away from this place. Run. Take yourself a little trip.

  To see Jeanne, for instance. Yes, sweet Jeannie Gabel, over there in Paris: always a good pal, always a sympathetic shoulder for him.

  She was the one who had gotten him into this sea-captain business in the first place. She wouldn’t come down on him too hard for the mess that he had made of it. And during his thirty remaining days of Level Eleven privileges, why the hell not stick the Company for air fare to Paris and a bit of fine dining at the bistros along the Seine?

  He keyed into the Samurai trunk line and asked for the Paris personnel node. A quick rough calculation told Carpenter that it was probably past midnight in Paris, but that was okay. He was in a bad way; Jeanne would understand.

  The trouble was that Jeanne Gabel was no longer at the Paris office. In good old Samurai Industries fashion she had been transferred to Chicago, they told him.

  He ordered the phone net to follow her path. It took only a moment to trace her.

  “Gabel,” said the voice at the other end, and then there she was on the visor, the cheerful warm stolid face, the square jaw, the dark straightforward eyes. “Well, now! Home is the sailor, home from the—”

  “Jeannie, I’m in trouble. Can I come see you?”

  “What—how—” A quick recovery from her surprise. “Of course, Paul.”

  “I’ll hop the next plane to Chicago, okay?”

  “Sure. Sure, come right away. Whatever’s best for you.”

  But his Company credit card seemed no longer good for air fare. After a couple of tries at reprogramming it, Carpenter gave up and tried car rental instead. Evidently they hadn’t canceled that yet, because a reservation came through on the first shot. Driving to Chicago probably wouldn’t be fun, but if he hustled he supposed he could make it in two days, at most three. He called Jeanne back and told her to expect him by midweek. She blew him a kiss.

  The car delivered itself to the Dunsmuir forty minutes later. Carpenter was waiting outside the hotel with his suitcase behind him. “We’re going east,” he told it. “Head for Walnut Creek and keep on going.” He put the car on full automatic and leaned back and closed his eyes as it started up toward the hills. There was nothing to see, anyway, but the black unrelenting curtain of rain.

  21

  alone in his hotel room after his dinner with Meshoram Enron and Jolanda Bermudez, Farkas paced from corner to corner for ten or fifteen minutes, arranging pieces of the puzzle in his mind, tearing them down again, rearranging them. Then he put through a scrambled call to Emilio Olmo.

  “I’ve been sniffing around a little,” Farkas told the Guardia Civil officer. “I’m starting to pick up a little whiff of conspiracy here and there.”

  “Have you? So have I.”

  “Oh?”

  “You say first. What do you know, Victor?”

  “The Southern California group that you heard rumors about? They’re real. Or at least, let me say, I’ve picked up the rumor about them now from an entirely new source.”

  “A reliable source?”

  “Reasonably reliable. A friend of a friend. Someone who is very well connected in the way of information transfer.”

  “Ah,” said Olmo. “So the story is traveling. How very interesting. What else can you tell me, Victor?”

  “Nothing, really.” Farkas saw no need just yet to provide Olmo with details of the Israeli involvement in the plot against the Generalissimo. That would be premature; it was clear to Farkas that Enron had some specific proposals to make, and Farkas wanted to hear them before he brought Olmo into the picture. If indeed he was going to bring Olmo into the picture at all. There was always the option of cutting the Guardia Civil man out of the scene, if the Israeli angle showed real promise. There might be more slope to gain by letting the coup happen than by helping Olmo snuff it out. Olmo, perhaps, could be used in some way quite other than to function as Generalissimo Callaghan’s chief policeman. The Kyocera plan of making him Don Eduardo’s successor whenever the Generalissimo finally died would guide Olmo toward making the correct choices. But Farkas did not know yet which side he wanted to sell out, and therefore it was appropriate at this point to be vague with Olmo. “As I said, this was third-party material. But I thought you would want to know that the project is being discussed in various places.”

  “Yes. I do,” said Olmo. “Though in fact I am somewhat ahead of you. The Californians and their plans are not only real, but some of them have recently paid a visit to Valparaiso Nuevo to examine the territory.”

  “You know this definitely?”

  “Third-party information, like yours,” Olmo said. “I haven’t seen them myself. But we know that they were here. We are working on tracing them, but we are having a little diffi
culty. Probably they have gone back to Earth already. But in that case we will be watching for them, the next time they return.”

  “Well, then,” Farkas said. “You’re ahead of me, all right. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Emilio.”

  “It is always a pleasure to hear from you, Victor.”

  “I’ll call you if I find out anything more definite.”

  “Please do,” said Olmo.

  Perhaps this was the moment to put through a call to New Kyoto and ship this thing up to higher levels. Farkas debated it inwardly and decided against it, for now. If one did not happen to be Japanese, the only way one could reach higher levels oneself was to take the initiative in situations that called for boldness and decisiveness, and then to display, when everything had taken shape properly, the excellent results that one had achieved.

  Farkas slept on it. When he awoke, the patterns were clearer in his mind. Before going out for breakfast he called the number of the hotel room that Jolanda shared with Enron.

  The dark, glassy column that was Meshoram Enron appeared on the visor.

  “Jolanda’s not here,” Enron said, a little too quickly, not bothering to hide the hostility of his tone. “She’s downstairs in the health club.”

  “Good,” Farkas said. “You’re the one I wanted to talk to.”

  “Yes?”

  “We need to have another little meeting. There are some loose ends left from last night that I’d like to tie up.”

  Enron seemed to be considering that. But his glassy facade was unchanging: Farkas had no clear idea of the processes going on within the Israeli’s mind. Enron was too well guarded. It was impossible for Farkas to read any fluctuation in Enron’s emanations using only the image in a visor. He would have to be in direct contact with him to pick up nuances of that sort.

  After a moment Enron said, “We’re expecting to go back to Earth later today, or maybe on the first shuttle tomorrow.”

  “Then there’s plenty of time for us to get together, isn’t there?”

  “This is important, you say?”

  “Very.”

  “Anything to do with Jolanda?”

  “Not in the slightest. She is a very fine woman, but you and I have more significant things to discuss than who sleeps with whom, am I not right?”

  This time Farkas noticed a definite brightening of Enron’s image, a distinct increase of gleam.

  “Where do you want to meet?” Enron asked.

  “A town called El Mirador, on Spoke D,” Farkas said, picking the site randomly out of his memory. “The Cafe La Paloma, right on the central plaza, in forty-five minutes.”

  “Make it sooner.”

  “Half an hour, then,” Farkas said.

  Enron was already there when Farkas arrived, five minutes before the appointed time. The plaza, at this hour, was quiet, far emptier than it had been the day Farkas and Juanito had gone there to find Wu Fang-shui. Enron was sitting at one of the front tables, as motionless as a piece of sculpture, betraying no sign of restlessness at all. But he was tight, tight as a coiled spring: Farkas could see that from thirty paces away.

  Sitting down opposite him, Farkas said at once, “There is this California project, involving a change in government. You spoke of it last night.”

  Enron said nothing.

  Farkas continued: “A joint effort might be the best way to bring off such a project, you said. A large corporation and a prosperous country, putting up the needed funds, fifty-fifty.”

  “Go on,” Enron said. “You don’t need to remind me of what I said.”

  “All right, then. The point is this: Were you making an offer? Are you people willing to have the enterprise be a partnership?”

  Now Enron was leaning forward, alert, intent. The rhythm of his breathing had changed. Farkas knew he had struck the right place.

  “We could be,” the Israeli said. “Are you?”

  “It’s very possible.”

  “What level are you, Farkas?”

  “Nine.”

  “That’s not high enough to authorize anything this big.”

  “High enough to initiate it, though.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose. And of course you already have the authority to go as far as you’ve gone.”

  “Of course,” Farkas said, without hesitation.

  “I need to go back down to Earth and talk to people,” said Enron. “It isn’t a question of authority, it’s a question of information. I need to have some more. Then you and I can get together again and maybe we can strike a deal. I can tell you, Farkas, this is precisely why I came to Valparaiso Nuevo.”

  “Excellent,” said Farkas. “We are traveling on converging lines. I like that. We will talk again soon.”

  “Very soon, yes.”

  The conversation was over, but neither of them moved. Enron still seemed tightly coiled: more so than before, possibly. There was just enough of a pause to allow for a change of subject.

  Then Enron said, “Jolanda is really fascinated by you, you know. Does that happen often, women falling for you that way?”

  “Often enough.”

  “I would think, with your eyes that way, and all—”

  “Quite the opposite,” said Farkas. “Many seem to find it attractive. You aren’t annoyed, are you?”

  “A little,” Enron said. “I admit it to you. What the hell, I’m a normal competitive male. But no, no, it doesn’t really bother me. It isn’t as if I own her. And I was the one who told Jolanda to make a play for you in the first place. By way of getting your attention, of setting up contact with you.”

  “I’m grateful to you, then. I don’t mind being fished for, with bait of that quality.”

  “I just didn’t think she’d be so enthusiastic about it, that’s all.”

  “She strikes me as the sort of woman who is very quick to become enthusiastic,” Farkas said. This was making him uncomfortable. Perhaps that was the Israeli’s intention. He stood up. “I will wait very eagerly to hear from you again,” he said.

  Jolanda was in the room when Enron got back to it. He had left a note for her to let her know that he had had an unexpected call from Farkas and had gone off for a meeting with him on another spoke.

  “What did he want?” she asked. “Or is it all secret spy business that I’m not supposed to hear about?”

  “You already know plenty,” said Enron. “You may as well hear a little more. He invited me to go into partnership with Kyocera on the coup d’dtat.”

  “Invited yoy? Personally?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “Israel. He came right out and said it: asked me if we were willing to go into the deal on a fifty-fifty basis.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That we were, of course. That this was precisely what I had come to Valparaiso Nuevo to arrange. But first, I said, I had to go back to Earth and get some further information. He will assume that I mean from my government, a confirmation of interest. But in fact I meant I had to speak with your Davidov. It is important for me to know what kind of an understanding he has with Farkas, before I take any of this to Jerusalem.”

  “You won’t need to go back to Earth for that,” said Jolanda. “I had an unexpected call this morning too.”

  “What? Who?”

  “He’s still here,” she said, preening for him, glowing in what struck Enron as a deeply self-congratulatory way. “Davidov. He said he saw us yesterday, having dinner with Farkas in that restaurant in Cajamarca.”

  “He saw us?” Enron repeated, in complete stupefaction. “He was there? No, this is impossible. He is gone, back to Earth.”

  “He’s here, Marty. He told me so. I talked with him half an hour ago. It was his face on the visor. It’s almost as distinctive a face as Farkas’s, in its way. I told him that you wanted to see him, and he said that would be fine, you could meet with him at a place on Spoke A, one of the farms. I wrote the coordinates down.”

  “He is gone,” Enron said. �
�So Kluge swore to me. All those names, all those hotels, and then he and his three friends were on the shuttle back to Earth.”

  “Kluge may have been telling you lies,” Jolanda said. “You ought to consider that possibility.”

  Enron struck his forehead angrily with the flat of his hand. “Yes. Yes, I should. It is Kluge who has been searching for Davidov and failing to find him, and giving us this story and that one about his comings and goings. Why was it so hard to find him? Why was Davidov always one step ahead of this supposedly clever and trustworthy courier? Either Kluge has been lying to me or Davidov is a magician who can deceive all the scanning equipment this habitat has. Let me have his number, fast!”

  Reaching Davidov was the easiest thing in the world. Enron put through the call and there he was an instant later, centered in the visor: the bull neck, the colorless hair, the Screen-blemished face, the glacial eyes.

  “Nice to hear from you,” Davidov said to Enron. His voice was high and light and soft, a gentle Californian voice altogether out of keeping with his coarse, heavy-featured Slavic face. “Any friend of Jolanda is a friend of mine.”

  “I would like to speak with you in person,” Enron said.

  “Come right on over,” said Davidov pleasantly.

  With Jolanda in tow, Enron made the journey down to the hub and back up Spoke A into one of the agricultural zones, where everything was green and sparkling, a land of milk and honey. They passed farms of wheat, of melons, of rice, of corn. Enron saw banana trees heavy with yellow fruit, and coconut-palm groves, and a citrus orchard. It reminded him very much of the bountiful, ever-fruitful groves of his own country, flourishing in the twelve-month growing season and abundant rain of the eastern Mediterranean region. But all of this was built on artificial foundations, Enron reflected. The trees here grew in styrofoam, vermiculite, sand, gravel. Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.

  The coordinates Davidov had provided were those of a rabbit ranch. Hordes of the furry little animals were skittering around in fields of alfalfa, gray rabbits and brown ones and white ones, and various combinations of colors. Davidov was standing in the midst of them, just outside the farmhouse, talking to a slender, bespectacled man in farm clothes.