“We are not alone, Frankly, we at LitVid 21 believe it is time to celebrate…But AXIS scientists urge caution. AXIS has almost certainly discovered life. But the towers that AXIS has seen may yet prove to be something other than buildings or cities.
“What do you believe? Cast your votes on our turnaround link and send your home vid comments care of your account number. Perhaps your opinion will make it to the entire LitVid 21 audience…”
17
Mary Choy debarked from a pd interjag minibus and glanced up briefly at East Comb One, upright stack of narrow horizontal mirrors with four sectors aligned into silver verticals, preparing to reflect hours from now the lowering westerly sun on the sixth jag where E Hassida lived. The city lay beneath uniform pewter clouds pushing in from the sea, decapitating the combs. There might be no usable sun this evening perhaps even rain but still the combs arranged themselves as if motivated by guilt for their shadowing presence.
Mary stood on the porch waiting for the home manager to announce her. Ernest Hassida opened the dark oakpaneled door and smiled warmly; short and muscular and round faced with sad eyes balanced by naturally amused lips and round cheeks. Mary smile back and felt the worst of the week slip away in the glow of his silent welcome.
He stepped aside with gallant sweep of arm and she entered, hugging him, his head level with her breasts. He nuzzled the black uniform there briefly pushed away with a shake too much for him grinning broadly small even white teeth gleaming, incisors projecting tiny roses. He gestured for her to sit.
“May I dytch?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said voice soft as velvet. “In a rough?”
“There’s been a nasty murder. And a Selector jiltz. In a while I’m off to Oversight to make a query.”
“So. Not a smooth. Not at all.”
E Hassida seldom tracked the nets or LitVids yet he was certainly not averse to technology. His small ancient bungalow was filled with choice equipment that often dazzled her. Ernest was a technical wizard at scrounge and integration, pushing disparate elements into harmony at a tenth the cost: music from all around at a gesture. Dancing art light could transform walls into operatic backdrops, dinosaurs could peer into windows grin wink; angels floated above the bed at night singing soft lullabies while ancient Japanese sages advised on the mahayana, heads like long melons, wise eyes crinkling with cosmic humor.
He stood back bowed returned to his visual keyboard and sat down to work again as if she were not there. More relaxed in his presence, Mary began the long impromptu t’ai chi dance, arms twisting, as she had the morning before but with more grace assurance fluidity. She thought herself a lake a river a fall of rain over the city. She found her center hung still for a moment there and opened her eyes.
“Lunch?” Ernest asked. The three wide flat screens mounted behind his keyboard revealed fearsome faces long angular barely human tracking them with eyes like glowing coals of ice. Neon drew their edges, child’s chalkgritty tempera colors filled them in. One sported for a nose the skull of an animal, cat or dog
“Frightening,” she commented.
“Aliens,” he said proudly. “Borrowed some details from barrio holograffiti.”
E Hassida specialized in aliens. Half Japanese half Hispanglish, he alternated between bright primary colors of Mayan/Mexican motifs and the calm earth pastels of old Japan; between landscapes and transformed pop. His work frightened and exalted. Mary would have accepted Ernest without his talent; with it he complemented her perfectly, disruptive disturbing enlightening, opposed to her administration calmness worldliness.
“Can you talk about it?” he asked, sitting next to her on edge of couch, gesturing machine sign language his own invention for food to be brought. Three foundscrap arbeiters shaped into graceful abstractions urceolate curves and cubist edges of black and gray rolled and spun into what served as kitchen and nursery for nano projects.
“I’m probably going to Hispaniola,” she said. “Clearances are being arranged in advance. Suspect flight.”
“Suspected of what?”
“Eight murders. One night orgy.”
Ernest whistled. “Poor Mary. You take these hard.”
“I hate them,” she said.
“Too much sympathy. Look; you’ve dytched but you’re stiff again.”
She uncurled her fingers and shook her head. “It’s not anger, it’s frustration.” Her black eyes searched his face. “How can they do this? How is it possible for something to go so terribly wrong?”
“Not everybody is as balanced as you…and me,” Ernest said with a small smile.
She shook her head. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch.”
“Now that sounds like anger,” Ernest said.
“I want it to be all over. I want us all to be grown up and happy. All of us.”
Ernest clucked doubtfully. “You’re pd. Like a surgeon. If everybody is well adjusted, you’re jobless.”
“I wouldn’t mind. You…” Mary groped for words, found none. Display of her doubts and weaknesses. Ernest had been her wailing wall for two years. He played the role calmly, her own mental surgeon solace. “I don’t even have time for love today.”
“Given a choice of lunch or love, you take my lunch?”
“You’re a good cook.”
“You’ve been on for how many hours?”
“Too many. But I had a break, and I’m having another now. Don’t worry. Ernest, have you heard of Emanuel Goldsmith?”
“No.”
“Poet. Novelist. Playwright.”
“I’m a visual man, not a lit.”
“He’s the suspect. A big man. Lived in a comb foot. Suspected of killing eight young followers. No motive. He’s vanished and I think he might have fled to Hispaniola. He has an open invitation from Colonel Sir John Yardley. You once told me you knew some people from Hispaniola.”
Ernest scowled. “I won’t be happy if you go there, Mary. If you want to learn about Hispaniola, why not go to the pd library and look it up? I’m sure it has all you need…”
“I’ve already done that but I still need an insider’s view. Particularly somebody from the underside.”
He squinted one eye. “I have friends who know people who worked there. Not nice people. They trust nobody.”
She caressed his cheek smooth black hand against thinly bearded brown face. “I’d like to talk to your acquaintances. Can you arrange?”
“They’re out of work, untherapied, soon illegal—even so, they’d leap at a chance to see you. You’re entertainment, Mary. But they’re here under Raphkind entry laws. They were deserted by Hispaniola when the egg dropped in Washington. They fear being sent back. They’re running from immigration and from Selectors too.”
“I can turn a blind eye.”
“Can you? You sound like an angry woman to me. You might want them put away, therapied.”
“I can control myself.”
Ernest looked down at his work gnarled hands. Nano scars. He did not show due caution with some of his materials. “How soon?”
“If I don’t trace Goldsmith in this country by tomorrow, I’m off to Hispaniola the next day.”
“I can talk with my friends. But if you’re not going, we’ll forget it.”
“I always need contacts in the shadows,” she said.
“Humor me. You don’t need these.”
The arbeiters brought out lunch, urceolate arbeiter leading with tray of two wine glasses, cubist rolling behind carrying a tray heaped with sandwich delicacies.