Dante's Equation Part 32

Those memories had to be madness; they couldn't be real. He had spent the past few weeks confirming that at the Archives. But there was one thing hedid trust about those memories: he had been on a mission, a very urgent mission. And whatever else he did, however he survived, ate, worked, dreamed, while his brain healed, it was critical that he remember just what that mission was.

The impa.s.sive young Silvers at the entrance to the Archives, straight as arrows, sculpted like effigies, did not betray any recognition of him on their faces, though he'd seen this particular one, the one who held his ident.i.ty card, on many occasions.

"Pol 137." The Silver wrote meticulously in his book. He looked up, meeting Pol's eyes for the first time. "Working on another case, Detective?"

"Yes. For the Department of Communications."

Pol took his ID back and went on past.

Stupid. Why had he said that? That Silver had no need to know. He had been fl.u.s.tered at the question.Keep your mouth shut. Shut! He had only gotten this far on a damaged brain by saying as little as possible and by never,never , asking questions.

There was another checkpoint, the main archivist. Pol had to leave his things here. The archivist copied the doc.u.ments Pol needed onto a special green paper and wrote down the number of sheets he had been given. When he left, these would be returned for disposal. No papers went in; no papers went out.

Inside the Archives, Pol went to a bank of small lockers and took a key from his pocket. Notes could not be taken from this place, so they were stored here. Even so, Pol knew that anytime the state decided to look at his notes, they would, so he kept them cryptic. He took his archive notebook and his green pages to the ma.s.sive old tables in the center of the room. From his seat he was visible to the archivists, visible to the armed guards who stood along the balcony. There could be no secrets here, where all secrets were kept.

There wasn't much in his notes. His search for the language he remembered had yielded nothing. He had found six different languages in the Archives, two obsolete, the other four still in use in foreign states, but none of them matched the language he'd had in his head when he was picked up. So he still did not even know what state he had come from. He'd been inserting his own private keywords into searches for his cases whenever he could. He hadn't found any references to "United States of America," "United States Army," or any of the other words that rose to the surface of his brain like flotsam from a sunken ship.

He turned to his green pages. According to the lab a.n.a.lysis of the graffiti message, the black paint was a type used in construction. Construction sites were peopled with slave labor-Irons. The terrorist could be an Iron. But if so, he would risk a lot being caught out after curfew. For an Iron such an infringement was punishable by death.

He made a list of keywords for the search.Aliens. Graffiti. State terrorists. Construction sites. Black paint. He paused. He added:Washington . He tore it off and made his way to one of the lower archivists. Her badge identified her as a Bronze 3, a dark-haired beauty. She was all business. She took the list and the copy of the terrorist's signature circle, looked at his ID again, and told him to wait.

While he waited at his table, a hand fell on his shoulder. He managed not to jump. It was Gyde. He slipped into the next chair, looking as nervous as a mouse confronted by a cat.

"I don't like this place," he muttered, eyes darting to the guards. "Why do you come here so much? It's not healthy to be too curious. Someone will notice."

"I don't come here much."

"Find anything?"

"She's looking now."

His partner looked at his watch pointedly. "Just now? How long have you been here?"

"A while." Pol stared at Gyde heavily. Gyde smiled, a slight, unreadable smile, and dropped it.

The archivist brought the information. There were several large folders to sift through, most, if not all of which, would turn out to be irrelevant. Pol took his list from the top of the stack as the archivist put it down. He glanced at it briefly before balling it into a wad. "Washington"-zero records located.

"Let's get started," Pol said.

15.2. Sixty-Forty Denton Wyle

Denton rolled away from the Sapphian female, breathing hard. He stretched and yawned.

"I bring you food now," she said.

"Thank you," he responded in Sapphian.

She got up, tying her little skirt in place, and left him to bathe with the bowl of warm water she'd brought earlier.

He'd been in the village for, jeez, it had to be a couple of months now, and so far they'd sent a different female every morning. He did a few calisthenics, idly wondering if they considered it an insult to send a repeat and hoping that he wouldn't be stuck doing the very old and the very young eventually out of some bizarre hospitality requirements.

Not that he had to worry anytime soon. There were several thousand Sapphians living in the horseshoe gorge, and lots and lots of them were nubile females. Yes, lots and lots.

Whistling, he walked to the basin. The air was warm and soft on his skin. He splashed some water around on his body and shaved his face with a primitive knife. A sharp, flintlike stone served as the blade. The iron age had evidently not yet put in an appearance. The shaving sucked, but there was no way he was doing a Tom Hanks. The Sapphians didn't grow beards, and he had a hard-enough time fitting in as it was.

He put his own clothes back on. Fitting in was one thing, but wearing those little Sapphian skirts was just not going to happen.

They'd given him his own hut. It was like all the others-a one-room structure made of dried mud with a roof woven from huge rubbery fronds. It was cozy, in a me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind of way. It wasnot a suite at the Ritz. His mother would have a cow or maybe even a whole herd. He wondered if she knew he was missing by now. He wondered if she had penciled ten minutes into her busy routine to shed a freaking tear.

"Your breakfast." The female returned with a wooden bowl of cut fruit and a sticky tapiocalike grain.

"Thank you, Gertrude." He smiled.

The female gave him a typically blank Sapphian smile, her eyes on his cheek, and left.

The Sapphian village was spread throughout the horseshoe gorge, paths connecting cl.u.s.ters of huts, each cl.u.s.ter designed around a center circle. His hut was on the largest community circle, the place where everyone ate the evening meal and enjoyed the subsequent dancing and carousing. It was, you might say, prime real estate. During the afternoon siesta the circle was used for lounging and visiting, and in the mornings it was filled with women and children. The women soaked and dyed the silky husks they used to make clothing, while the young children clambered about like sleek little rats.

It wasn't that Denton disliked children. He didn't have an opinion one way or the other. But these weren't exactlychildren , were they? And anyway, he'd be d.a.m.ned if he was going to spend another morning watching husks turn red. At this early hour, with the Sapphian sky a fresh, light aqua, the men and boys were gathering to form work committees. Denton walked over and joined a group of men.

"Allook saheeddoes not need to work," one of the men said to him, motioning him away oh, so politely.

"I know." Denton smiled. "But Iwant to work."

The man looked surprised, as if Denton had said he'd like to join a chain gang. "Ifallook saheed wishes?"

"Yes, thank you, but I want to work."

The man took Denton to join a group of young males. They greeted him like he was the second coming. He bobbed his head and said h.e.l.lo to each of them in turn,"Ta zhecta. Ta zhecta. Ta zhecta." His neck had grown stiff from all the bobbing. He had probably dislocated a disk or two.

The eight of them headed down a path into the jungle. Denton found himself paired with a young male he'd noticed before. "Hey, John." The boy looked at him in confusion. "Zhohn?"

"I can't say your name. Can I? What is it?" The boy rattled off something with at least threek 's. Denton had learned basic Sapphian, because there was no way he could live without being able to wheedle. But the names were harder than everyday speech and, anyway, calling them by human names was a small-enough illusion.

"See? I cannot say that. I say 'John,' okay?" "Zhohn," the boy repeated, looking pleased. "I like this name." Like all the Sapphians, John was a beautiful creature. His feet were long and thin, inhuman-looking, with those sticky gecko toes. They reminded Denton of angel's feet-except for the dirt and the rough red inner edge where the skin had calloused. John was only now coming into manhood, and he looked like Peter Pan or Puck, the eternal boy. Well, sort of. He might have looked like that if not for a birth defect, a withered right hand. Denton had noticed him before because such things were rare among the Sapphians. It was a surprise that itwas rare, actually, given that there wasn't a plastic surgeon for a couple of million light-years.

"What are we doing today?" Denton asked him. "We pick fruit." "Is that right?" It didn't sound too difficult. Not breathtakingly exciting, either. "The true way is: I pick.You catch." John's eyes twinkled. "That is how it works, eh?" "Yes." "Are you good at picking fruit?" "So good the fruit comes to me. I don't even climb the tree." Denton realized he was being teased. And John was looking directly into his eyes. Denton felt ridiculously grateful at being treated like, well, like a person. A lump clogged his throat. "I want to

see that." "Youwill see. I am Mighty John." The boy struck his chest in a machismo gesture. His own use of the fake name made him giggle childishly. Denton laughed, too.

The vista as they walked was a pretty one. They pa.s.sed a stream where the water sparkled, reflecting the green of the jungle in glints of emeralds. A delicate fernlike moss covered the banks of the stream like lace. They pa.s.sed a tree that was curved like a woman and had a climbing vine up its length with bright red flowers the size of Denton's head.

Jesus, it was beautiful. It was not LA and never would be. The lump in his throat throbbed. "Listen, John? Are there other things to see away from here? Maybe . . ." Denton wracked his brain for vocabulary. "Maybe big water? Or other villages? Other people?"

John looked away into the distance as they walked, the smile fading from his face. "Away from here? I have never left the gorge in my life."

"No? Maybe you heard stories?"

"No person leaves the gorge. Never." John's tone indicated that the very idea was inconceivable. His eyes went nervously to the others.

Denton got the idea that this was not a welcome topic of conversation, but he found the whole thing perplexing. The gorge was a gorgeous place, sure. But what kind of a people would not explore their own planet? Out of sheer boredom if nothing else.

"Why, John? Why do people never leave the gorge?"

John turned and met his eyes. He looked frightened and his words were quiet and urgent. "It is not safe. It is very dangerous out there. You must not go out there, friend."

"Oh," Denton said. "Okay."

John had not been bragging by much. Of the eight of them, he was the only one who climbed the trees, the job apparently being his specialty. He chose apaava tree first, its trunk smooth and straight and covered with tough, needlelike spines. John wrapped rags around his wrists and feet and mounted the tree, agile as a circus performer.

Denton worked with two of the other males handling a large net. They manipulated it to catch the fruit as John tossed it down. Every few minutes they swooped the contents of the net to the ground and the remaining males gathered the fruit into bundles.

It was a short workday. None of the Sapphians ever worked past noon, the heat of the day. The others coddled him at first. But after a while, they seemed to forget that he wasallook saheed , and that was all right. It wasn't exactly a day of international thrills and adventure, but it beat the heck out of sitting outside his hut watching his toenails grow. And that was a little bit pathetic.

All morning, as he worked with the net, he kept remembering what John had said:It is not safe . He thought of the terrors he'd had those first days before he'd found the gorge, walking alone and wondering what deadly forms of life might exist on this planet. He remembered the large thing he'd heard far away in the jungle and the blood on the trees.

Maybe it wasn't that important to find out if Molly Brad or any of the others had ever been here after all.

Denton tilted back his head, looking at the stars.

The stars on Sapphia were incredibly bright, and there were zillions of them. They formed a mesh across the sky far denser than the star pattern he remembered from home. It was like . . . like looking at downtown New York from the air.

The lump in his throat hurt. It was becoming chronic, that d.a.m.ned lump. It was like bad heartburn, only higher and . . . lumpier. He stopped looking at the stars.

He wished the party would start already. He was sitting on a log in the community circle. The place was crowded with Sapphians, as it was every night. And like every night, the minute he moved close to a log people got up, motioning for him to take their place. On the subway in New York or Paris this would be considered suspicious behavior. But here . . . well, the Sapphians had this generosity thing down cold. Yessiree. He smiled and nodded at people pa.s.sing by until he thought his head would fall off."Ta zhecta. Ta zhecta. Ta zhecta."

He was waiting for the good stuff to be broken out-gancha,a fermented fruit juice that was sickly sweet but intoxicating enough to justify any insult to the palate.Gancha was especially effective at dissolving lumps. But before he could get his hands on some he had to wait through the weekly ritual. Finally one of the older males, his blond hair only lightly dusted with silver, got up and announced the list.

This was a thing they did every seven days; Denton had counted. In a world without Thursday Night Ladies' Night or Monday Night Football, it was nice to have a way to mark your place in time. He had come to think of it as "the Sat.u.r.day Night Special" and had named the other days of the week accordingly.

The Sat.u.r.day Night Special went something like this: Someone would stand up and make a brief announcement. Then there would be an hour or so in which the Sapphians cried and yodeled and stomped around and in general acted like the world was coming to an end.

The first time Denton had seen it he'd been really freaked. He'd been sure something catastrophic was going down. But the crying gradually subsided and what followed was the biggest binge of the week, lots of drinking, lots of s.e.x. And he could really go for a trip to Blottosville right about now. But first he had to get through the crying.

There was a female on his right. She sniffed out a few crocodile tears, working herself up to a genuine cry. She was nothing special. Denton tried, but he could not for the life of him remember if she had ever visited him in the mornings or not. That thought made the lump ache.

"Ta zhecta,"he said to her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. It is sad."

He leaned toward her, trying to get her to make eye contact. "Why is it sad? What the man said-it was a list of names, yes?"

She looked as if she didn't understand the question.

"Are they . . . ?" He didn't know the word for "ancestors." "Fathers? Fathers of fathers of fathers? And mothers of mothers of mothers? From a long time ago?"

She looked at his cheek in total bewilderment. "No."

He didn't know how to phrase the question any differently. He kind of figured this ritual was a memorial, a recounting of some tragic communal event-a plague or meteorite or something like that.

"We say good-bye to them now," she said.

"Yes, I see," he said, though he hadn't a frigging clue.

"Do you want to take me to your hut?"

He was annoyed. "No. I want to talk."

"Oh."

She waited. Something about the way she waited made him feel stupid.

"What do you do in the day?"

"I collect grain at the river."

So! Do you do a lot of traveling with that job? How are the benefits?

"Do you have children?"

"I have given birth three times."

She looked young, but he wasn't surprised. As much as he liked the Sapphians' free-for-all att.i.tude toward s.e.x, he had to admit that the abundance of rug rats and pregnant females was a less than attractive result. Sometimes it seemed as though there were more children than adults in the village.

She was still staring at his cheek.

"So. You want to . . . uh . . . go to my hut?"

When Denton returned to the circle a little while later the party had started. He blinked at the nighttime brightness-a combination of starlight and firelight. Before he could take more than three steps, an older female brought him a plate loaded with roasted meat and grain. He thanked her three times, as she kept nodding and bowing at him. He looked at the plate and sighed.

What he really wanted, and badly, was the hard stuff. What he wanted even more was someone sympathetic to drink it with. And the only one who qualified was John. He and John had hung together a lot lately.

He scanned the crowd of Sapphians and saw the boy at the outer edge of the firelight talking to a young female. He headed over there, but by the time he arrived John and the female had taken off down a path into the jungle. Denton followed.

There was not a lot of light on the path. He walked, the plate warm in his hand, feeling a little uneasy. Something rushed toward him from the trees and s.n.a.t.c.hed the plate.

He cried out, stumbling backward. But as the figure darted back into the trees, Denton saw what-or who-it was. It was the girl with the long white-gold hair, the one he'd seen first that night he'd found the village.

"Hey! Wait!" He ran after her.