Anarchaos Read online

  “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 are 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 fife.”

  “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 back 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 Colonel 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 time.”

  “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 stern 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 presence of Jenna and the implications made apparent 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 a 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. “I’ll 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 all 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 my 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 Gar 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 mont
hs 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 part 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, stay 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 serving 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, and all seeming false and out of focus and somehow incorrect when placed on paper within this folder.

  There were other facts, too, which I hadn’t known. His salary, which was large. His job title, which was Developmental Surveyor. His home address here at the tower of Ice, which was Suite 87. His last job assignment, which was Special Projects Department, working under SP Supervisor L. L. Goss.

  And finally, there were job evaluations, six of them, the final one from the same L. L. Goss, the first three from V. Topher, four and five from G. D. zi Quinn. All six evaluations were full of praise; his supervisors had found Gar an excellent worker, imaginative, self-reliant, capable of taking criticism, very productive, cooperative, no trouble with co-workers, and so on and so on.

  But those weren’t the final papers. There was one more: the copy of a letter from Gar to Supervisor Goss recommending me for the job as his Field Assistant. The description was not me. Reading it, I saw that it too was a blueprint, like this folder, except that this was a blueprint for Rolf Malone. A revised blueprint. A loving description of who I might have been, if I hadn’t been who I am. Here and there in the revision glimpses of the original could faintly be made out.

  I closed the folder. I closed my eyes. I breathed as little as possible, because breathing hurt my throat. After a while Jenna came over and said, “What’s wrong? Rolf? Is something wrong?”

  “No,” I said, I opened my eyes and handed her the folder. “Thank you.”

  “You’re pale,” she said.

  “I want to see where he lived.”

  “Where he lived?” As though she had no idea what I meant.

  I pointed at the folder. “Suite 87. Gar.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “That’s all changed now,” she said.

  “I want to see it.”

  “But someone else lives there now. All your brother’s personal property was sent home to his parents. If we’d known you were coming, if you’d wanted us to keep them and give them to you here…” She trailed off.

  “I just want to see the rooms,” I said.

  “I don’t—” She stopped, and looked at the folder, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Let me see if I can get the key.”

  Of course she could get the key. She went away, and came back almost immediately, and led me to Suite 87 herself.

  No windows. Not in the halls, not in my room, not in the diner, not in
Jenna’s office, and not here in Suite 87. Only the Colonel, at the top of the tower, had a window, which told him kindly lies. Windowless, Suite 87 had three rooms, each as small as the one in which I had slept last night. The first was a sitting room done in green and brown, with an entertainment center along one wall. I almost went over to look at the books and tapes, but then I remembered they wouldn’t be Gar’s, they’d be the new tenant’s, and I turned away.

  The second room was a dinette, in silver and yellow, the kitchen appliances grouped on one side and the meal area across the way. It was necessary to go through the dinette to get to the third room, a bedroom in yellow and green, continuing the two primary colors from the earlier part of the suite. (Just as there were no windows, there was no red anywhere. The only manmade red I’d seen since arrival was the Colonel’s robe.) Finally, off the bedroom was a small silver and white bath.

  There was nothing here. I could stand in any of the rooms and look around and know I was looking at the walls and floors and furnishings that Gar had looked at, but artifacts of the new tenant kept intruding, breaking into my communication. Suite 87 was barren.

  At last I shook my head and said, “All right, I’ve had enough.”

  She looked at me with sympathy, and put her hand on my arm. I don’t know why, but that look and that touch made me dislike her for the moment.

  Out in the corridor again, I waited while Jenna relocked the door and then I said, “It’s time for me to see L. L. Goss.”

  “Special Projects Supervisor. Hell help you, if anybody will.”

  We had to take the elevator, and came to the first really busy level I’d so far seen. Men and women in work jumpers sat at tables, carried papers from room to room, spoke into tape machines or discussed things together in low intense voices. Jenna led me to a door which took me away from all this activity into a brown room where a girl sat primly in a brown juniper at a brown desk. She was plain of face and very thin, and I saw a quick expression of something like bitter envy flash by her eyes when she looked up and saw Jenna. But her voice was bright and impersonal as she asked what we wanted.