Harsh Oases (5 page)

“Why didn’t you visit sooner?” she finally asked.

“I wanted to,” I said. “I stopped by five times, but couldn’t come up.”

“Tell me why,” she said stonily.

“Because I felt—I feel—responsible for what happened to you,” I said, as my insides knotted.

She sighed. “I know. And you are. I just wanted to hear you say it. They caught the techie at Matagorda who sabotaged my chute. The deal was made over the phone, and he was paid in cash. The police can’t trace anyone else involved. But the circles you and I move in are small and vicious, and people love to pass on bad news. Everyone knows it was Jasmine and her friend Trollinger.”

I felt a wall building itself between us, each word of hers a brick.

“You could have told me about you and her,” she said. “I might have been more careful somehow if I knew her type.”

“I know. I know now.”

She turned her head away. “You’d better go. And don’t come back.”

So I left.

Outside the sky was empty.

As part of my perverse uncommericalism, I decided to switch protagonists between every story in this abortive series. Lois McMaster Bujold I ain’t. But 1 did feel it allowed me to view my decadent island resort from a variety of coigns. Here, we get political.

The current “clash of civilizations,” if it even exists in actuality, is, of course, not a new issue. Even twenty years ago, when I wrote this story, any SF writer worth his or her radioactive salts would have observed and predicted even greater friction between postmodern cultures and more traditional ones. The continuing relevance of this story, despite some outmoded players, is depressing.

As William Gibson has brilliantly observed, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” But Bill didn’t note this till circa 1999! Note also that this story stealthily precedes Bruce Sterling’s “Are You For 86?” from 1992.

A GAME TO GO

That was the year all the women were dressing like Robin Hood, only in shades and synthetics that outmoded hero would never have countenanced. The basic outfit was boots, tights, abbreviated tunic, wide belt, and a little cap, feather optional. No fashion elements that hadn’t been recycled a hundred times before throughout history. The startling part of the look—the area where creative play entered and uniqueness emerged—was in the mingling of outrageous colors and textures.

Picture neon-red spandex bottoms topped by faux lizardskin. Picture acid-green lurex leggings disappearing beneath purple leather supple as cloth. Picture leopard-patterned plyoskin tights matched with orange fur.

Picture any combination you can, chances were someone was wearing it.

As fads went, it wasn’t bad. Flattering to the female form, anyway. So for months I watched them, these feminized Arcadian outlaws, looking rather like Shakespeare’s plucky heroines in male disguise (and exactly how, I always wondered, could the King fail to distinguish that this stranger in doublet and hose was, uh, shaped somewhat differently?), as they stepped boldly off the hydrofoil ferry from the mainland and onto our oil-stained dock of prestressed-concrete, dispersing from this common point, singly or with friends, all over the Hesperides, where, in the course of my duties, I was always being surprised by the sight of some gaudy Ardenite stepping from behind door or tree.

One thing I noticed was that no one wore black. Black was out, black was
declasse
, black had been done to death. This was the Neochrome ’Nineties, after all, the fin de siecle. The Wilderness Years were over, it was damn the smart torpedoes, and full-fusion ahead. Who wanted to wear black? Not the upper crust, not the underclasses, not even the few disaffected.

No one, in fact, except Nadya Tajir.

It all began so innocuously, with a bundle of wet grey leaves lying in the white sand. It still seems impossible now, that they could have led where they did.

I was out for my morning run along the beach. I stayed on the wetter, more compact sand below the highwater mark, but still the mutable footing pulled at muscles in my legs that no pavement ever did. The strain felt good. I thought about my years as a detective with the LAPD: taking my exercise on city streets, breathing exhaust, going in to my job-more and more reluctantly each day-to face the paperwork, the strictures, the orders, the tension. This morning, with the salt air filling my lungs, and myself my own boss, those days seemed ineffably far away. I looked to my right, toward the mainland, just to make sure it hadn’t vanished. There was a light haze over the sea, veiling the coast, and I could almost pretend the California shore really wasn’t there. But I knew the haze would bum off later, and the mainland and all it held would return.

It was still early—or, if you had been up all night, like many Hesperideans, just growing late enough to contemplate falling into bed—and the big island was quiet as a sleeping child. The Comiche road that ran atop the cliffs on my left was empty of scooters. Only the sporadic cries of gulls and the uneasy murmur of surf broke the silence. Soon enough, I’d be hearing the self-indulgent braying of the rich inmates of the islands, and the shrill exclamations of the daytripping tourists. I savored the silence now, while I could.

Rounding a curve where cliff pushed the beach out toward the water, I came upon it.

There was something in the way the sunlight caught on the cellophane that attracted my eye. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have passed right by it as unimportant flotsam. As things went, however, I was moved to stop and kneel by it.

A soggy chunk of some kind of small-leafed shrub wrapped in heat-sealed plastic, like a vending-machine sandwich.

I couldn’t make any sense out of this wave-delivered package. The stems did not terminate in any sort of roots, so it couldn’t be meant for planting. A botanical sample for some pharmaceutical firm? An odd souvenir? I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother to carefully package up such a thing. Were they coco leaves? I bit one. Nope. What then?

The mysterious package stirred bad feelings in me. So many odd, disturbing things were always washing up on my refuge. I thought of Kid Charlemagne’s murder, a year gone by now. It hadn’t been far from here that I had found the tab of estheticine, whose lure had underpinned his death. Was this piece of stormwrack to lead to something similar?

I had no answer. Picking up the bundle, I continued my run, gripping it by one corner and pinning it beneath my arm against my side. It leaked tepid water into my shirt, soaking the fabric like the thin colorless blood of a rare species of fish.

Back home I changed into white trousers, a blue polo shirt, and beat-up huaraches on bare feet. The bundle sat in a little puddle on an endtable, holding my thoughts focused on it. I brought it with me to my office on the waterfront promenade, a couple of small rooms which were situated then between Ybarrondo’s hotel and Bascombe’s art gallery.

Bert Tanager was waiting there for his morning’s orders.

(Normally, I had two men working for me, but I had recently discharged one for unnecessarily roughing up a feisty drunk who had turned out to own half of Brazil.)

Tanager was a former linebacker for the New England Patriots, and looked the part, being almost my size. His presence at the bar of La Pomme d’Or had stopped many a fight before it could even begin. Given Tanagers tight-lipped nature, I was probably the only person on the islands who knew that he also held a degree in medieval French literature, and collected old 78’s.

“How was the crowd last night?” I asked.

Tanager shrugged. “The same.” He glanced at my bundle of leaves, but said nothing. I handed him the soggy lump.

“I want you to run over to the mainland this morning and get this analyzed. Wait for the results.”

Tanager said, “Okay, Mister Deatherage,” took the package and left.

I went through the day’s mail that had just come over with the first boat. There was a letter from the big rent-a-cop firm that leased me and my men to the management of the Hesperides, reminding me that my quarterly report was overdue. That was about as much interference as I ever got from my nominal, distant bosses, and I resolved to placate them immediately so they’d stay away.

When I was done with the deskwork, I went outside into the hot sun and cool breezes. During the couple of hours I had been busy, the promenade had filled with tourists. I stood with my back against the wall of my building and watched the women for a while, in their silly cocked caps with feathers nodding. It was nice work if you could get it

One woman in particular intrigued me. Dressed like the rest, she seemed to be alone. I observed her as she idled in front of store windows, took a turn down the walkway, then stopped to rest her arms on the promenade’s railing, gazing out to sea. Boasting a fine figure, she wore her short blonde hair moussed into spikes. She seemed awfully familiar .…

I jolted upright, knowing suddenly that I knew her. Knew her well. Was I being self-deceitful, or merely blind, not to have recognized her for half an hour?

I walked over to her. She didn’t hear my steps—no one does if I don’t want them to—and so she remained leaning forward until I spoke.

“Hello, Ruth.”

She started visibly, but recovered quickly enough to turn slowly. She had had a facial biosculpt, but I recognized now the basic contours I had known during our marriage. Except now there were no bruises on her skin.

“Hello, Leon,” she said in a calm but stiff voice. “This is a surprise. Are you on holiday too?”

“No. I work here now.”

She seemed genuinely astonished. “You left the force?”

“I couldn’t take it anymore. You knew better than anyone what it was doing to me. I had a breakdown shortly after we split. Now I’m a glorified security guard. An old cop’s last refuge. Hell, I even gave up smoking last year. I couldn’t stand another one of those damn vegetable cigarettes.”

She said nothing. Neither did I. She studied my face. I studied hers. I spoke first.

“It’s your hair.”

“What?”

“It’s your hair more than your new face that threw me. I couldn’t picture you as anything but a brunette. Don’t get me wrong, though, I like it.”

She smiled tentatively. “You do?”

“I do. Really.”

Her smile lasted a minute, then disappeared as old memories swarmed up behind it. “You seem changed, Leon. But I forget sometimes it’s been three years. A lot can happen in three years, can’t it?”

“Sure.”

She locked glances with me forthrightly. “But not enough to erase everything, Leon. Not by half.”

“That’s what I figured.”

We were silent again, each looking uncomfortably out to sea, as if for instructions on how to behave. Again, I broke the silence.

“How’s the practice?”

“I run a clinic now, Leon, under my own name. The Weatherall Clinic for Sexual Dysfunctions. Have you heard of it?”

I’m afraid I was a little bitter. “Caters to rich neurotics?”

“Hardly. My clients are mostly rape victims who need to relearn their bodies. I also deal with a lot of expatriated political prisoners who have been sexually tortured. And I’ve even got a couple of women who were traumatized by their abortions.”

This latter category of patients surprised me. I wasn’t aware that there were any more such unfortunates.

There’s a new generation of sexually active kids who’re too young to remember the time before the “morning-after” pill. I wasn’t. I distinctly recall the excitement that followed the discovery by Professor Etienne-Emile Beaulieu, working for the French firm of Roussel-Uclaf, of RU-486, a steroid that functioned as a side-effect-free chemical abortifacient. There had been a tremendous uproar by morality watchdogs of all stripes when the pill was initially marketed, but attempting to halt its dispersal was like trying to beat back the waves. Within a few years of its release, the drug had reduced the number of yearly D&C abortions in America from millions to several thousand. The effects worldwide, except in a few theocracies, were similar. Not only had hundreds of “planned parenthood” clinics gone out of business, but so had dozens of fundamentalist sects that had capitalized on the abortion issue.

I was impressed by Ruth’s new career. “Sony to mouth off without knowing more. It sounds like you’re making the world a better place. Unlike me.”

“I try. But don’t knock yourself. You’re doing a useful job, and you seem happy.”

“I guess.”

Ruth moved away from the railing, obviously anxious to be off. “Well, it was nice to see you again, Leon.” She extended her hand, and I took it. “Don’t forget me.”

Her hand was warm and familiar. It felt like something out of another life.

“I couldn’t,” I said. “I won’t.”

* * *

That night I sat in my dark house, tense as one of the graphite cables that held undersea stations anchored to the ocean floor. Tanager had returned, but without any results. The lab we normally used—a small one in San Diego—had been unable to pin down the leaf, other than to identify some psychoactive components, so they had sent it on to a better-equipped facility, one which did a lot of work for the big government agencies such as the FBI. Knowing the stuff was some kind of drug, but not exactly what, irritated me. I was more sure than before that its presence on the island would turn out to be significant, not an accident.