RICHARD POWERS (8 page)

You are their model, their messenger from the outside world. Your job: to chat them up for hours at a shot, training them to survive the
force of their imaginations. You work to hold them to the rules of polite conversation, in a city trying to believe again in the existence of rules. It is, by any measure, the perfect job description
—the ticket you've been trying to write yourself for years. A golden existence. All that's missing is someone a little brave, someone just a little kind to
share it with.

"Tell me how you got here," you assign them, early on. The topic provides a high personal interest. Good practice with the tricky past tense. And it's easy to answer without straying too far outside core
vocabulary.

"How did
you
got here, Mr. Martin?" Nawaf baits you.

The whole class becomes a sea of colluding head bobs. "Yes. Yes.
We all want to know."

"Nothing to tell," you tell them. "I came here to make sure that your subjects and verbs all agree with each other."

"What job have you done before being our teacher?" Nawaf asks.

"What did I do before coming here to teach?"

"Yeah. You said it."

"A lot of things. Most recently, I trained Asian businessmen to survive Chicago."

The sly bastard persists. "Why did you change your jobs?"

"Now why in the world would that interest you?"

"It's v
ery interesting, Mr. Martin,"
the very interesting Zarai chips in.

"Well, for a lot of reasons. But we're not going to get into that."

"It's a secret?" Nawaf taunts.

"That's right. Yes. It's a secret."

"Top secret?" Zarai smiles at you from beneath her head wrapping.

You smile back at her. "Tip-top secret."

They say that you know more about this place on the day you first touch your foot to it than you will ever know about it again. And they're right. Each day that passes leaves you more confused about this stew, let alone the recipe that produced it. You understand Shiite versus Sunni, Maronite versus Orthodox, Druze, Palestinian, Phalangist, AMAL, the radical Party of God and their fanatical cell the Holy Warriors. But the fourteen other religions and splinter factions plunge you into the same despair that your students feel when confronting irregular English verbs.

This al-Jumhuriyah al-Lubnaniyah: even the name is a maze. The country's politics, like some unmappable Grand Bazaar out of Ali Baba, cannot be survived except by chance. Here civilization's ground rules disperse into the mists of fantasy. Standing agreements, tenuous at best, collapse back into the law of armed camps, each local militia staking out a few shelled blocks. No one is allowed to cross from zone to zone, not even the Red Crescent. Your students scrape by in a decaying landscape, one of those postapocalypse teen movies that so intrigue them.

But for all that, the streets still seem safer than Chicago's. Tomorrow feels more affirmed here, this city's pulse more surrendered to hope and devotion.

You learn a few words:
Na'am
,
shukran, merhadh, khubuz.
Yes, no, thank you, bathroom, bread. You begin to fantasize about meeting a woman, perhaps even a woman in head covering. About taking a crash course in the rules of her grammar.

Then the real woman calls you. Dead on schedule. Just as one of you recovers some semblance of health, some solidifying core of self-esteem, the other one calls to crash it. At least now, the two-dollar-a-minute taxi meter and the audible satellite lag protect you from extended conversation.

Or they would, if she weren't wild. Cost means nothing to her. Her words come through the phone like a violent cough. "Taimur. Tai. Thank God you're alive. You have to come back. Tonight. Now."

Too pathetic, even for retaliation. You can't even rouse yourself to decent brutality.

"I don't
think
so," you singsong into the receiver.

"I skipped my period."

You recover before the satellite link can click. "You skip every other month, Gwen. You're a high-strung, finger-pointing, street-brawling drama queen who never menstruates in the middle of a fight. Which is pretty much all the time."

Too many adjectives, and you've lost another round. Lost her. Lost yourself. Lost the person you were trying to become by coming here, one who refuses to return knee-jerk hurt for hurt.

She starts to sob, but softly, horribly. You hear her give up on the hope of consolation. And that, where nothing else could, makes you want to console her. Succor, once more, becomes your secret sickness. Your awful, tip-top secret.

"Gwen. Don't start. We can't do this again. We both promised." "I need you, Tai. I can't do this by myself."

"Cut the theater, Gwen. You're fine. Give it another couple of weeks." "I've given it
eight!'

It blossoms in you again, in the space of a second. Full-blown, the old, loving parasite you carry around inside, awaiting its chance to graze. A pillar of purity rises in your chest, so righteous it can't even be called anger. "Don't you think you ought to call the father, then?"

"You, Taimur. You. Don't you remember? Our long goodbye?" The weekend window when she seemed almost happy, knowing you were already gone. "Nobody before. Nobody since
...
"

The words are whiplash. And yet: they must be bluff. Florid, desperate, sadistic, even by the standards that the two of you have perfected.

"Gwen. As far as I remember from high-school biology, sperm must actually meet egg in order to
—"

"Oh fuck. Oh fuck. I knew we shouldn't have ... I told you that we
shouldn't
...
"

"What you said was 'Sex with your ex is asking for trouble.' In a soft, slinky voice, if I remember correctly."

She starts shrieking, the performance over-the-top, incredible. "Come home, Tai. I can be better. You can."

The accusation maddens you. You:
better.
You, who she always punished, just for being you.

"I need you. I can't do this. Come home. Now."

The now is hideous; it gives the game away. You don't bother to tell her: you are home. Or as close as you're going to get, for the foreseeable future. You place the still-pleading stream of hysteria back into the cradle. And you don't pick up on the ringing phone again, for several days.

You leave the compound sometimes, between classes, for fried fava beans or a breath of air. A non-cigarette break. Escape from Butt Central. Staff doesn't like it, but no one can stay cooped up forever. You keep close, always doubling back after a few minutes.

Today, a knot of men a little younger than you mill around on the pavement outside school, examining a flat tire. Someone approaches for help. You walk toward him and he shows you something. And the something is metal, and a gun. And then he is not. Not asking for help.

"Please enter the car. Fast, fast."

Three of them persuade you of the idea. They're all shouting quietly, a Chinese fire drill. An improvised skit of confusion. One ties your hands behind you. Another shoves your head down to clear the car roof, just like in the cop shows. Too fast even for fear. A crazy mistake that'll have to wait to be straightened out. Wait until they remove the greasy rag they tie around your face. Wait until they settle down.

The engine starts. The car lurches forward.
There is no flat,
you realize, your thoughts even stupider than this crisis. The one sitting next to you pushes your head to the floor.

On your way down, he presses close to your ear. "Don't worry. Don't worry. This is just political." The comic diction comforts you. These men are amateurs.

On the floor of a dark car. Someone's foot rests on your temple, just for the thrill of disgracing you. They drive at least an hour. Maybe two. Time enough to catch up with your own pulse rate, with what's happening to you, your fatal stupidity. You give in to the heat of the floorboard, to the nail of the shoe on your skull, the sponge bath of terror. You start to quake. The rope around your wrists keeps your arms from banging together.

The car traces an enormous circle. They are playing some insane charade of distance, doubling back, trying to throw you off. You want to call out to them to get where they're going. You're long since lost. But every sound from you elicits a hiss and a heel crush.

They stop. They bang you out of the car. You cock back your head, to see beneath the oily blindfold. Someone chops you hard in the neck. They drag you, doubled over, inside.

They take your keys and the trinkets from your pockets. Your Swiss Army knife causes a buzz out of proportion to its two pinkie blades and nail clippers.

They confiscate your wallet, pulling it apart piece by piece. They demand an account of every scrap and wrapper. Your expired organ donor declarations. Your eyeglass prescription. Your student ID, ten years obsolete. Bank cards that you couldn't use anywhere within a thousand kilometers.

"What is this?" a venomous tenor shouts at you, sticking each enigma under your blindfold for inspection. "What these numbers mean?"

"Those
...
are phone numbers. Phone numbers of friends in
America."

"Don't lie!" Another pair of hands slams you from the rear, more for the drama than for the pain.

"Codes," a neutral voice declares.

"Not codes. Phone numbers. Go ahead. Call them. Tell them I say hello."

The voice laughs without humor.

Another bodiless voice draws close to your face. "You American?
Why you look like a Arab?"

You curse your failure to memorize the fourteen splinter groups. Who are these people? What do they need to hear? Answer wrong and you will never answer again. They'll kill you for your political ignorance.

"Why?" your interrogator shouts. "What kind of name is Taimur Martin?"

The question you grew up with. Your gut snaps tight. You roll the die and answer: "I am
...
half Iranian."

Rapid bursts of translation pass among several people. They argue, climbing up the pitches of virulent Arabic. You've never realized how much you need your eyes to converse.

"Where your passport?"

"I
...
didn't think I'd need it when I stepped out of the compound."

For a moment they soften, pat you on the shoulder. They shuffle around in the invisible room, collecting your things. They'll put you
back in the car, return you to the school, drop you off, and fade back into whatever lunatic cabal of posturing boys put them up to this stunt.

Instead, they strip and search you. The hunt grows violent. Your body starts to convulse again. You will shit all over the floor. You will die here, and you won't even know why.

"Please, not the necklace," you beg. "That's a present. A gift from a
—

"Don't call us thieves." Spit sprays your cheek. And the necklace, Gwen's good-luck charm, disappears into the political.

They want names. Names of who? It's absurd. They can spot an American from ten kilometers, if they only look. What would they do with names? Saunter up and down the street, calling them out? Still they ask, but listlessly, a dry read-through of the barest minimum script.

"Tell us what we ask. We know how to use
...
electricity. You understand?"

You understand. You fake a weak composure. You tell them you'll do whatever they ask.

"What are you doing here?"

You cannot stop yourself. "You kidnapped me."

Something cracks you just above the left ear. Lights explode against the curtain of your blindfold. You bite into your tongue. You vomit, stinging and dry, in your mouth.

"What are you doing here?"

"I am a teacher." Slower and slower. "I give conversational English lessons at
—"

"You are stupid. Big shit. You are American spy. You are CIA."

The first objecting syllable out of your throat whips your interrogator into fury. "You lie. You
liel
We know why you come here. We know about your big secret."

Connections light you up at last. It comes back to you, the vanished lesson from your teacher-training days in Des Moines. The first rule of any classroom: Never resort to irony.

8

The first generation of imaginary landscapes began pouring from the simulator just as Adie settled in to her own new one. She took only a few weeks to see just what chambers the Cavern meant to mimic. She stood inside the room-sized box, watching a stream of images flicker across those living walls, the last, baffled Neanderthal standing by as
Homo sapiens
launched its breakout.

With her olive pullovers and her four-foot hank of hair falling like the stern line of a sponge boat in a braid down her back, she drew mixed reviews from the doughnut-packing hackers. Rajan Rajasun-daran and the signal-processing team found her a mild abrasion. Ronan O'Reilly, the econometric modeler, plied her with polite indifference. Jackdaw Acquerelli responded to her like a spooled background process. Sue Loque slammed her New York provincialism at every opportunity. Spider Lim lavished her with almost ethnographic attention. Adie, for her part, clung to Stevie Spiegel. But the scent of an old friend only made the air of this new planet harder to breathe.

Jonathan Freese, the RL director, dragged her down the mountainside to a cafe. Over a healthy shot of triple mocha, he launched into a rambling monologue on Parmigianino, Tiepolo, and the baptistery doors at Pisa. Like asking your first black neighbor over to listen to your Duke Ellington.