Tomorrow's Crimes Page 12

  I said, “What’s your job here?”

  “My job?” She seemed amused, I suppose at the bluntness of the question. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. Jenna Guild, the Colonel’s personal secretary.”

  “Rolf Malone,” I said.

  “Yes. I know.”

  I said, “Did you know Gar while he was here? Or from before?”

  “Here. This is where I met him. At the elevator, in fact, where I just met you.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Four years. Why?”

  “I’m surprised at that dress.”

  Surprise made her laugh with a sound like a tinkling of small bells, much more pleasant than the political music of that first laugh I’d heard from her. “There are ways,” she told me. “Ways to do anything. If you’re connected with someone like the Colonel.”

  The spiraling corridor ended at last in closed double doors, against which Jenna Guild rapped just once. After the slightest of pauses, the doors slid apart into recesses in the walls, and we stepped through into a great luxurious room, all stuffed and carpeted, with furs every where and soft divans, different areas of the room at different levels; the whole was dominated by an incredibly broad curving window stretching around a full third of the wall space, through which could be seen a breathtaking view of the city, and of Hell at two o’clock in the sky.

  But Hell, no longer Hell, had become the sun! This was no red globe suspended in the sky; no red tinge muddied the distant landscape or bloodied the other towers around us; there was no red anywhere. Except that the sun was too large, it was Earth, totally Earth, and I stood awestruck, staring at it.

  A thin reedy voice said, “Are you impressed? It’s only a trick, a special glass to filter out the red. A trick to convince me I’m not really here in this filthy place.”

  I turned toward the weary voice and, coming toward me, a drink in his bony hand, a twisted smile on his narrow face, figured crimson robe wrapped around his thin body, was the man who had to be Colonel Holbed Whistler.

  VIII

  We sat on facing divans near the long window, talking. Jenna Guild had brought me a drink at Colonel Whistler’s request, and now was seated, composed and beautiful, on a low hassock a little away from us, ready to be called upon again.

  The Colonel directed the conversation into meaningless channels. He asked me about my trip, and then briefly discussed his experiences with space travel. When I grew restive, he asked me about Earth, putting specific questions about specific cities, most of which I had never seen, and detailing for me his feelings of homesickness. He had been on Anarchaos. he said, seven years and had never ceased to hate it.

  This talk, under other circumstances, might have been pleasant, but now it merely agitated my impatience. Still, I thought it best to let the Colonel have his head, at least until I got to know him better. As yet I wasn’t even sure whether to consider him an enemy or a friend.

  His manner and appearance I found not encouraging. There was a bony frailty to this man. an apparent weakness, everywhere but in his eyes, which, while his mouth produced pleasant banalities, studied me in cold calculation. Those eyes belied the brittleness of his body and the cordiality of his words. I felt emanating from him a great aura of coldness, of watchfulness, of secrecy and of caution.

  He must have sensed my impatience, for at last he ended his monotonous pleasantries, studied me in silence a moment, and then said, “Frankly, Mr. Malone, I am surprised to see you here. You were informed of your brother’s death before you left Earth, were you not?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Jenna tells me’—he smiled briefly at her and she smiled in acknowledgment—“your brother had arranged for you to be taken on by the company.”

  “That’s right.”

  He smiled, and made a slight shrugging gesture. “Such details,” he said, “are handled by the Department involved. I was not aware of your having been employed, or even of your existence, until just now. Your arrival is something of a surprise.” He glanced at Jenna Guild again, and back at me, saying, “I’m told it was assumed you wouldn’t be coming, under the circumstances. If you’d sent us notification, we would have arranged to have you picked up at Ni. Travel here is somewhat dangerous for a man alone. ”

  “I was careful,” I said.

  “Yes, of course. Caution is always best.” He offered me a blank, meaningless smile, sipped at his drink, and said, “But the point is, you arc here. Jenna tells me you would have acted as your brother’s field assistant, and that you appear to have no formal specialized education, that you went no further than junior college.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I fear we have a rather embarrassing problem, Mr. Malone,” he said. “I have no job for you. With your brother—”

  “I’m not here for a job,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m here to find out about my brother.”

  “Your brother?” He looked again at Jenna Guild, as though expecting her to step forward with an explanation, then said to me, “Your brother’s dead. Gar Malone is dead.”

  “That’s what I want to find out about,” I said. “How he died and why. And by whose hand.”

  “On Anarchaos? My dear man, such questions are irrelevancies here. There are no answers.”

  “Still I mean to look for them.”

  “Why? What possible good can it do? You can’t bring your brother back to life.”

  “I don’t mean to try.”

  “What, then?”

  “I want to know.”

  “For its own sake?”

  “For my sake. Once I know what happened to Gar I’ll know what to do about me.”

  He sat back, frowning, perplexed, even his eyes showing uncertainty. “I hardly know what to make of you,” he said. “Or what to do with you.”

  “You could help me, if you would.”

  “How?”

  “Tell me what is already known about Gar’s death. Where he died, how he was killed, any other circumstances that are known. And where I might find his grave.”

  “Someone in the Department might know that,” he said, ruminating, and asked Jenna Guild, “Which Department would that be? Development?”

  “Special Projects, I think,” she said.

  He turned back to me. “You can talk to someone there in the morning, if you like. After that, we’ll have to decide what’s to be done about you.”

  “In the morning? Why not now?”

  He seemed surprised. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

  I looked out the window, but then realized the fact of daylight meant nothing here. Hell stood always at two o’clock in the sky over Ulik. But I, used to the regularity of Sol around the Earth, had been assuming that daylight meant daytime as well. I said, “No, I don’t. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “It’s well after midnight,” he said. “You have no watch?”

  “No. I . . . haven’t needed one.”

  “Jenna, get Mr. Malone a watch.” Turning hack to me he said, “A watch is indispensable here. So far as Anarchaos is concerned time does not exist.”

  “I’m sorry I came so late,” I said, and got to my feet, leaving my untouched drink on the low table beside the divan.

  “Perfectly all right,” he assured me. He smiled, and remained seated. “Jenna and I were still up,” he said. “Weren’t we, Jenna?”

  Jenna agreed silently, smiling, nodding at the Colonel. Was I wrong, or was there something strange in that smile she gave him. something secret that glittered there like fury or hate? I couldn’t be sure.

  The Golond said. “Jenna will show you your room, and make arrangements for you to see the right people in the morning. Just place yourself in her hands.”

  “I will. Thank you for your rime.”

  “Not at all. My only pleasure is speaking with new arrivals from home, even on such unhappy business.”

  All the way across the room my
back itched, between the shoulderblades, where I could feel his eyes.

  IX

  The room I was to sleep in was small and windowless, but nevertheless extravagant. The walls were covered in a textured fabric of rich blue, complemented by a gray carpet on the floor. The furnishings continued the use of blues and grays, with the addition of dark polished wood tones. The lighting was soft, indirect, and a bit whiter than I was used to.

  Jenna had led me here in silence, her face stem and expressionless. She was clearly angry about something and was trying unsuccessfully to keep that anger hidden. I supposed that the clues Colonel Whistler had managed to call to my attention concerning the relationship between himself and Jenna were what had caused the anger, but I couldn’t understand why. Surely the implication of those clues was true; the services of a Jenna would almost have to be among the fringe benefits offered executives sent to a remote place like Anarchaos. Why should she be angry that such an obvious role had been made clear to an unimportant stranger?

  Looking at Jenna, reflecting on her para-secretarial duties, I began to think of myself in regard to those duties, and how long it had been since I had shared pleasure with a woman. There had been the years in prison, of course, and since then my attention had been focused exclusively on the death of my brother. Only when the subject was called to my attention, as it had been by the Colonel, did I remember my thirst, which then became feverish.

  Jenna said, “If you’re hungry, I could have food brought to you. Not much, of course; everything’s shut down for the night.” She was trying to be civil, but her voice was made of ice and her words had sharp edges.

  I said, “Is it me you’re mad at?”

  She seemed surprised. “No, no,” she said, and tried to smile which worked fairly well. “Don’t mind me. I’m just tired.”

  “Do you have to go back to the Colonel now?”

  Instantly, her face snapped shut again and coldly she said, “Why?”

  “I wish you’d eat with me. I don’t like to sit at a table alone.”

  Only slightly less hostile, she said, “It’s late, Mr. Malone. I’m not very hungry, but I am tired.”

  Her coldness was helping me forget the thirst. “All right,” I said. “Ill see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll have some food sent to you.”

  “Thank you. My luggage is still outside, in the auto.”

  “I’ll have it brought in.” She hesitated, then said, somewhat contritely, “I’ll try to be pleasanter in the morning.”

  “We all will be,” I said, “after we’ve slept.” It was meaningless politeness, and I was relieved when she accepted it as a goodbye and walked out, closing the door silently behind her. I sat down in a blue armchair, removed my shoes, and rubbed the bare soles of my feet back and forth across the carpet, giving myself over to the cat-pleasure of it while waiting for the food to be brought.

  It came ten minutes later, and I wasn’t entirely surprised when it was brought by Jenna herself, who smiled apologetically at me and said, “Is it too late to accept your invitation?”

  “You’re just in time.” I glanced at the two servings on the tray she carried, and said, “I couldn’t have eaten all that anyway.”

  She laughed, perhaps more than the joke warranted, and I helped her set the table for two. She kicked off her own shoes when she saw I was barefoot, spoke brightly and humorously about her troubles in getting this snack from the kitchen help, and ail in all made every attempt to make up for her past behavior. I responded more than I wanted to, my thirst returning stronger than ever, and it being now in part a literal thirst, my mouth and throat as dry as the desert around the city. I drank down the glass of milk she’d brought me, plus several glasses of water, but ray mouth remained dry, my skin somewhat feverish, my thoughts random and confused and explosive.

  During the meal she led the conversation, talking to me as her employer had done of Earth, except that Jenna seemed more interested in Earth as I knew it than as she remembered it. She asked me questions, and I gave her the most harmless parts of my biography. She mentioned Char once or twice, each time with sympathy and what seemed very like regret, but asked me nothing about him and volunteered nothing that she knew of his last months on Anarchaos.

  A knock at the door interrupted us at one point. I went to it, and found a guard from downstairs, who had brought my knapsack. When I shut the door and turned back to the table, I saw that Jenna had left it and had moved to a pan of the room which could not be seen by anyone standing in the doorway. She seemed to be quite interested in a small wooden chair there, and commented on how seldom one saw that style of furniture these days. I agreed, we both returned to the table, and we went on with our meal and our conversation.

  She seemed interested in the auto, which she called in the local fashion—as I had done—a car. “You took a chance,” she said, “driving alone all the way from Ni.”

  “I was armed,” I said.

  “But what if the car had broken down?”

  “I would have been in trouble.”

  “Yes, indeed. Most people don’t own cars here at all, and that’s why. It’s much safer to fly.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to go about buying a car,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Buying and selling are about the same anywhere.”

  “Did it cost much?”

  “Not much. Excuse me, I need another glass of water.”

  She made a joking comment on the amount of water I was consuming, and I replied in kind. When I came back with the fresh glass we talked about other things, and neither of us mentioned the auto again.

  Finishing the meal, she pushed her chair back and said, “it’s getting late. We both need our sleep.”

  I said, “Will you stay here?”

  She pretended to misunderstand me. “I’d love to talk some more, Rolf, but it’s after two now.”

  I said. “I meant, slay here.”

  She studied me in silence for nearly a minute, and I read her every thought on her face. I knew when her curiosity about me was uppermost in her mind, and I knew when her dislike of being taken so bluntly for granted was strongest, and I knew when she was considering the possibility of using me to avenge her pique against the Colonel, and I knew when she decided that if she had the name she might as well have the game. I also knew when she was deciding not to answer me too quickly, in order not to appear eager or easy, and in my mind I counted to ten with her, missing by one beat, so that I had just finished thinking nine when she smiled with sex in it and said, “You’re not very subtle, are you, Rolf?”

  “I hoped you would think the invitation a compliment,” I said, but didn’t add that I was incapable at the moment of any greater subtlety. My mouth was dry again, but the glass was empty.

  “I do think it a compliment,” she said, her voice husky, “but I’m afraid I’m an incurable romantic. I like my compliments . . . sweeter.”

  I got to my feet, and went to her, and took her in my hands.

  She spoke only twice more, the first time to whisper, “Turn out the light,” which I did, though I would have preferred it on. The second time, just before I fell asleep, she ran her nails lightly over my chest, and laughed against my throat, and murmured pleasurably, “You act like a man just out of prison.” I laughed too, and folded my arms around her, and fell asleep.

  X

  She was gone in the morning, when I was awakened by a knocking at the door. I was fully conscious at once, though baffled by where I was and by a sense that someone should be with me, though for a second I couldn’t think who or why. But then the knock was repeated. I got out of bed, put on my trousers, and found at the door a short and sullen girl with greasy long hair, who wore a guard uniform exactly like those worn by the men outside the main door. She handed me a small package and said, “I’m supposed to show you to the diner. After you eat, I’m supposed to take you to see Miss Guild.”

  “Good,”
I said. “Wait there.” I shut the door, leaving her outside.

  The package contained a watch, which read eight-thirty. I washed and dressed, took the elevator with my sullen guide, and entered the diner at ten minutes to nine. The normal day had begun much earlier here, I saw, since all the tables in the diner—a room very similar to what we called the mess in prison—were empty. A sullen employee paced me along the servicing line, filling my tray with a stock breakfast, and as I ate at a table near the door I reflected on the reason for Jenna Guild’s consideration in letting me sleep late, and I found a smile coming unbidden to my lips. How odd it felt. But then my memory stretched to include my reason for being here in the first place, and the smile dissolved, and I hurried through the rest of the meal.

  At nine twenty-five my guide left me at the entrance to Jenna’s office. I stepped in, wondering how I was going to behave on first seeing her, and she decided it for me, greeting me briskly with, “There you are. Had a good sleep? Does the watch fit? She remained seated behind her desk.

  Business hours, in other words, were exclusively for business. I said, “Yes to both questions. Now I get started.”

  “Certainly.” Brisk, impersonal, friendly in the machined way she’d been when I’d first seen her by the elevator. “To begin with,” she said, “I thought you might be interested in seeing your brother’s file.” She extended a folder across her desk toward me. “You could sit at that table over there while you look at it, if you like.”

  “Thank you.”

  The folder contained documents, and the documents reduced Gar to a blueprint. His height, his weight, his date of birth, the color of his hair and eyes and skin, the place of his birth, the names and current address of his parents, the GD address for me that hid my life in prison, his scholastic records, his work history; all things I already knew, all seeming false and out of focus and somehow incorrect when placed on paper within this folder.