Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 (5 page)

* *

It is, perhaps, the prerogative of every man
or woman to imagine, and thus force a
shape
, a
meaning
, onto that wild and meandering narrative of their
lives, by choosing genre. A princess is rescued by a prince; a
vampire stalks a victim in the dark; a student becomes the master.
A circle is completed. And so on.

It was the next morning that Achimwene’s
story changed, for him. It had been a Romance, perhaps, of sorts.
But now it became a Mystery.

Perhaps they chose it, by tacit agreement,
as a way to bind them, to make this curious relationship, this
joining of two ill-fitted individuals somehow work. Or perhaps it
was curiosity that motivated them after all, that earliest of
motives, the most human and the most suspect, the one that had led
Adam to the Tree, in the dawn of story.

The next morning Carmel came down the
stairs. Achimwene had slept in the bookshop that night, curled up
in a thin blanket on top of a mattress he had kept by the wall and
which was normally laden with books. The books, pushed aside,
formed an untidy wall around him as he slept, an alcove within an
alcove.

Carmel came down. Her hair moved sluggishly
around her skull. She wore a thin cotton shift; he could see how
thin she was.

Achimwene said, “Tell me what happened
yesterday.”

Carmel shrugged. “Is there any coffee?”

“
You know where it
is.”

He sat up, feeling self-conscious and angry.
Pulling the blanket over his legs. Carmel went to the primus stove,
filled the pot with water from the tap, added spoons of black
coffee carelessly. Set it to cook.

“
The boy is…a sort of
strigoi
,” she said. “Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t
know.”

“
What did he
do?”

“
He gave me something. He
took something away. A memory. Mine or someone else’s. It’s no
longer there.”

“
What did he give
you?”

“
Knowledge. That he
exists.”

“
Nakaimas.”

“
Yes.” She laughed, a sound
as bitter as the coffee. “Black magic. Like me. Not like
me.”

“
You were a weapon,” he
said. She turned, sharply. There were two coffee cups on the table.
Glass on varnished wood. “What?”

“
I read about
it.”

“
Always your
books
.”

He couldn’t tell by her tone how she meant
it. He said, “There are silences in your Conversation. Holes.”
Could not quite picture it, to him there was only a silence. Said,
“The books have answers.”

She poured coffee, stirred sugar into the
glasses. Came over and sat beside him, her side pressing into his.
Passed him a cup. “Tell me,” she said.

He took a sip. The coffee burned his tongue.
Sweet. He began to talk quickly. “I read up on the condition.
Strigoi. Shambleau. There are references from the era of the
Shangri-La Virus, contemporary accounts. The Kunming Labs were
working on genetic weapons, but the war ended before the strain
could be deployed – they sold it off-world, it went loose, it
spread. It never worked right. There are hints – I need access to a
bigger library. Rumours. Cryptic footnotes.”

“
Saying what?”

“
Suggesting a deeper
purpose. Or that strigoi was but a side-effect of something else. A
secret purpose…”

Perhaps they wanted to believe. Everyone
needs a mystery.

She stirred beside him. Turned to face him.
Smiled. It was perhaps the first time she ever truly smiled at him.
Her teeth were long, and sharp.

“
We could find out,” she
said.

“
Together,” he said. He
drank his coffee, to hide his excitement. But he knew she could
tell.

“
We could be
detectives.”

“
Like Judge Dee,” he
said.

“
Who?”

“
Some
detective.”

“
Book detective,” she said,
dismissively.

“
Like Bill Glimmung, then,”
he said. Her face lit up. For a moment she looked very young. “I
love those stories,” she said.

Even Achimwene had seen Glimmung features.
They had been made in 2D, 3D, full-immersion, as scent narratives,
as touch-tapestry – Martian Hardboiled, they called the genre, the
Phobos Studios cranked out hundreds of them over decades if not
centuries, Elvis Mandela had made the character his own.

“
Like Bill Glimmung, then,”
she said solemnly, and he laughed.

“
Like Glimmung,” he
said.

And so the lovers, by complicit agreement,
became detectives.

* *

MARTIAN HARDBOILED, genre of. Flourished in
the CENTURY OF DRAGON. Most prominent character: Bill GLIMMUNG,
played most memorably by Elvis MANDELA (for which see separate
entry). The genre is well-known, indeed notorious, for the liberal
use of sex and violence, transplanted from old EARTH (also see
MANHOME; HUMANITY PRIME) hardboiled into a Martian setting,
sometimes realistically-portrayed, often with implicit or explicit
elements of FANTASY.

While early stories stuck faithfully to the
mean streets of TONG YUN CITY, with its triads, hafmek pushers and
Israeli, Red Chinese and Red Soviet agents, later narratives took
in off-world adventures, including in the BELT, the VENUSIAN NO-GO
ZONE and the OUTER PLANETS. Elements of SOAP OPERA intruded as the
narratives became ever more complex and on-going (see entry for
long-running Martian soap CHAINS OF ASSEMBLY for separate
discussion).

* *

“
There was something else,”
Carmel said.

Achimwene said, “What?”

They were walking the streets of old Central
Station. The space port rose above them, immense and inscrutable.
Carmel said, “When I came in. Came down.” She shook her head in
frustration and a solitary dreadlock snaked around her mouth,
making her blow on it to move it away. “When I came to Earth.”

Those few words evoked in Achimwene a
nameless longing. So much to infer, so much suggested, to a man who
had never left his home town. Carmel said, “I bought a new identity
in Tong Yun, before I came. The best you could. From a Conch –
”

Looking at him to see if he understood.
Achimwene did. A Conch was a human who had been ensconced, welded
into a permanent pod-cum-exoskeleton. He was only part human, had
become part digital by extension. It was not unsimilar, in some
ways, to the eunuchs of old Earth. Achimwene said, “I see?” Carmel
said, “It worked. When I passed through Central Station security I
was allowed through, with no problems. The…the digitals did not
pick up on my…nature. The fake ident was accepted.”

“
So?”

Carmel sighed, and a loose dreadlock tickled
Achimwene’s neck, sending a warmth rushing through him. “So is that
likely?” she said. She stopped walking, then, when Achimwene
stopped also, she started pacing. A floating lantern bobbed beside
them for a few moments then, as though sensing their intensity,
drifted away, leaving them in shadow. “There are no strigoi on
Earth,” Carmel said.

“
How do we know for sure?”
Achimwene said.

“
It’s one of those things.
Everyone knows it.”

Achimwene shrugged. “But
you’re
here,” he pointed out.

Carmel waved her finger; stuck it in his
face. “And how likely is that?” she yelled, startling him. “I
believed it worked, because I
wanted
to believe it. But
surely they know! I am not human, Achi! My body is riddled with
nodal filaments, exabytes of data, hostile protocols! You want to
tell me they
didn’t know
?”

Achimwene shook his head. Reached for her,
but she pulled away from him. “What are you saying?” he said.

“
They let me through.” Her
voice was matter of fact.

“
Why?” Achimwene said. “Why
would they do that?”

“
I don’t know.”

Achimwene chewed his lip. Intuition made a
leap in his mind, neurons singing to neurons. “You think it is
because of those children,” he said.

Carmel stopped pacing. He saw how pale her
face was, how delicate. “Yes,” she said.

“
Why?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Then you must ask a
digital,” he said. “You must ask an Other.”

She glared at him. “Why would they talk to
me?” she said.

Achimwene didn’t have an answer. “We can
proceed the way we agreed,” he said, a little lamely. “We’ll get
the answers. Sooner or later, we’ll figure it out, Carmel.”

“
How?” she said.

He pulled her to him. She did not resist.
The words from an old book rose into Achimwene’s mind, and with
them the entire scene. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he
said.

* *

And so on a sweltering hot day Achimwene and
the strigoi left Central Station, on foot, and shortly thereafter
crossed the invisible barrier that separated the old neighbourhood
from the city of Tel Aviv proper. Achimwene walked slowly; an
electronic cigarette dangled from his lips, another vintage
affectation, and the fedora hat he wore shaded him from the sun
even as his sweat drenched into the brim of the hat. Beside him
Carmel was cool in a light blue dress. They came to Allenby Street
and followed it towards the Carmel Market – “It’s like my name,”
Carmel said, wonderingly.

“
It is an old name,”
Achimwene said. But his attention was elsewhere.

“
Where are we going?”
Carmel said. Achimwene smiled, white teeth around the metal
cigarette. “Every detective,” he said, “needs an
informant.”

Picture, then, Allenby. Not the way it was,
but the way it is. Surprisingly little has changed. It was a long,
dirty street, with dark shops selling knock-off products with the
air of disuse upon them. Carmel dawdled outside a magic shop.
Achimwene bargained with a fruit juice seller and returned with two
cups of fresh orange juice, handing one to Carmel. They passed a
bakery where cream-filled pastries vied for their attention. They
passed a Church of Robot node where a rusting preacher tried to get
their attention with a sad distracted air. They passed shawarma
stalls thick with the smell of cumin and lamb fat. They passed a
road-sweeping machine that warbled at them pleasantly, and a
recruitment centre for the Martian Kibbutz Movement. They passed a
gaggle of black-clad Orthodox Jews; like Achimwene, they were
unnoded.

Carmel looked this way and that, smelling,
looking,
feeding
, Achimwene knew, on pure unadulterated
feed
. Something he could not experience, could not know, but
knew, nevertheless, that it was there, invisible yet ever present.
Like God. The lines from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish floated in his
head. Something about the invisibles. “Look,” Carmel said, smiling.
“A bookshop.”

Indeed it was. They were coming closer to
the market now and the throng of people intensified, and solar
buses crawled like insects, with their wings spread high, along the
Allenby road, carrying passengers, and the smell of fresh
vegetables, of peppers and tomatoes, and the sweet strong smell of
oranges, too, filled the air. The bookshop was, in fact, a yard,
open to the skies, the books under awnings, and piled up, here and
there, in untidy mountains – it was the sort of shop that would
have no prices, and where you’d always have to ask for the price,
which depended on the owner, and his mood, and on the weather and
the alignment of the stars.

The owner in question was indeed standing in
the shade of the long, metal bookcases lining up one wall. He was
smoking a cigar and its overpowering aroma filled the air and made
Carmel sneeze. The man looked up and saw them. “Achimwene,” he
said, without surprise. Then he squinted and said, in a lower
voice, “I heard you got a nice batch recently.”

“
Word travels,” Achimwene
said, complacently. Carmel, meanwhile, was browsing aimlessly,
picking up fragile-looking paper books and magazines, replacing
them, picking up others. Achimwene saw, at a glance, early editions
of Yehuda Amichai, a first edition Yoav Avni, several worn
Ringo
paperbacks he already had, and a Lior Tirosh semizdat
collection. He said, “Shimshon, what do you know about
vampires?”

“
Vampires?” Shimshon said.
He took a thoughtful pull on his cigar. “In the literary tradition?
There is
Neshikat Ha’mavet Shel Dracula
, by Dan Shocker, in
the Horror series from nineteen seventy two – ”
Dracula’s Death
Kiss
“ – or Gal Amir’s
Laila Adom
– ”
Red Night
“
– possibly the first Hebrew vampire novel, or Vered Tochterman’s
Dam Kachol
– ”
Blue Blood
“ – from around the same
period. Didn’t think it was particularly your area, Achimwene.”
Shimshon grinned. “But I’d be happy to sell you a copy. I think I
have a signed Tochterman somewhere. Expensive, though. Unless you
want to trade…”

“
No,” Achimwene said,
although regretfully. “I’m not looking for a pulp, right now. I’m
looking for non-fiction.”

Shimshon’s eyebrows rose and he regarded
Achimwene without the grin. “Mil. Hist?” he said, uneasily.
“Robotniks? The Nosferatu Code?”

Achimwene regarded him, uncertain. “The
what?” he said.

But Shimshon was shaking his head. “I don’t
deal in that sort of thing,” he said. “
Verboten
. Hagiratech.
Go away, Achimwene. Go back to Central Station. Shop’s closed.” He
turned and dropped the cigar and stepped on it with his foot. “You,
love!” he said. “Shop’s closing. Are you going to buy that book?
No? Then put it down.”