“Agreed.”
One of the men brought up a palmsized security slate and read out the pd equipment on her person. “Deactivate and hand it all over, please.” She removed her lapel phone and camera. The man took it and studied her face from the distance of a few feet, his eyes ice blue and startling in his smooth brown skin. “Lovely work. You’re not augmented. If you ran with us and didn’t waste your time with pd you could change whatever you wanted. Anything.”
Mary agreed that was possible. Employment agency executives were given much less leeway in many respects than other classes of executive, however; their financial records were swept weekly. The attrition for top executives within any given three year stretch was more than a third. Their lives were not easy. So how could these keep up appearances and run radical games sheltering Hispaniola illegals? Kilter here.
The blue eyed man detached himself from his two companions and waved his index finger around one shoulder. Ernest and Mary should follow. Mary glanced back at the remaining two and saw that one was now a woman. Anger mixed with increased concern. Very expensive deceptions had been played. Expensive and illegal; she should have expected nothing less.
They were probably not west coasters or comb inhabitants at all. Suddenly she smelled the dirty east, Raphkind refugees, crumbs from the spoiled feast. She focused on the blue eyed man, paying Ernest no attention at all. He didn’t mind. He had warned her and he was right; she would have to be very discreet.
The blue eyed longsuit ordered a transport for them and a blocky white cab arrived on a slaveline. These cabs could fit into most of the combs’ expressways, traveling in three dimensions along the propulsive tracks. Automatic, comb monopoly, unregulated by recently passed metro law; no records. Where comb citizens went was their own concern.
Having inserted his card the blue eyed longsuit could tell the cab what to do and he ordered its windows opaque and its map display turned off. “We’ll be there shortly,” he said. “Ernest was right, M Choy. You’re really quite entertaining.”
She had no trouble meeting his eyes. He turned away after sufficient time to prove the contest was juvenile. The cab stopped and they disembarked into a rear apartment service way. The addresses had been sprayed over with Day-Glo orange paint. A view through a distant open airway told her they were about a kilometer up the side of the comb. They were on the west face overlooking blue Pacific. Since the comb segments swung about day and night she could not use angle for clues. Besides she had agreed and would keep her agreement; the challenge was more than she could ignore, however.
“This way, please.” The longsuit stepped up to the rear door and it opened. Inside were three blacks: two men, one immensely fat, the other shorter bull necked and more muscular, face like a little boy’s; and an amazonish woman. They lounged before a broad picture window overlooking the northwest, the minute blocky galaxies of lights below West Comb Two and the Canoga Tower clear through the cool still late evening air.
The tall athletically handsome woman stood, hair cut close to her skull broad shoulders draped in a handmade flame red and yellow cotton print dress that hung loose and graceful to her feet. The blue eyed longsuit kissed her on one cheek. Again no introductions were made.
“You have questions,” the woman said with sharp disdain. “We are bored. Brighten our evening for us. We are told Ernest is a wonderful artist and that for our meeting with you, he will donate a piece to our cause.”
Mary looked around the room and slowly smiled. Ernest’s ingenuity impressed her more each month. “All right,” she said. “You are from Hispaniola?”
“She wants to know about Colonel Sir,” the large woman said to her companions. “Tell her what you know.”
“Because of Colonel Sir, there is no home in Hispaniola,” said the immensely fat black man. He wore a gray and brown print cotton longsuit urbane and tropical at once. “You tell that to your missy.” He gestured for Ernest to pass the word along to Mary as if she might need plain English translated. “The faith is weak, the shrines ignored; like all the others, Yardley he plays at being Baron Samedi, but he is not. We thought he was a noir blanc, black white man, black in his guts, but he is a blanc de blanc, white clear through, and now Hispaniola is blanc.” The fat man again made his lip curl appraisal. “This woman is not black,” he said matter of factly to Ernest and the large woman. “Why does she want to look black? She fools nobody.”
Ernest grinned at Mary. He was enjoying this. “She likes the color.”
“You say there’s no faith on Hispaniola,” Mary said. “Tell me why.”
“When Yardley came in, there had been five years of oppression from blancs in Cuba. Five years they had torn the island between them and killed the houngans, burned the honfours and banished the loas. They knew where the power lies, who the peoples follow. Like trying to kill an anthill. Then, heavens to glory!—as always happens, rose a general from within, Haitian, General De Franchines, man of vision, man of honor, and he made pacts with the kings and queens and bishops, turned mobs into armies and burned out the Cubans.
“But the USA blancs they support the Cubans and the Dominicans, so General De Franchines hired Zimbabwe soldiers and brought in an English gunman, once knighted by King Charles, and this gunman, he sees the sweet land, the opportunity, he has a plan. He turns on De Franchines, he turns the people against our general, he becomes general but never calls himself that, and he fights in the field like a soldier. He is a good soldier and the Cubans they flee and the Dominican egalistes, they take refuge in Puerto Rico and Cuba, and the USA they recognize this Colonel Sir who puts his rank before his knighthood. Maybe before his manhood too.” The fat man smiled at Mary, an ingratiating fey smile unexpected in the bulk. He wore six thick plain gold bands on his right hand. “Colonel Sir John Yardley, hero to the people. Maybe to us, too, back then. We were children, what did we know. He brought money and doctors and food. He taught us to live in this century, and to please our visitors who brought more money.
He taught us to be concerned with comfort and medicine and machines. That is how he made Hispaniola white. Now the people they pay lip to the gods but they do not feel them, they do not need them, they have white money and that is better.”
“What is Yardley like in person?” Mary asked. The large well dressed woman said something in Creole.
“His mansion is a little house near Port-au-Prince,” the fat man said quietly. “He fools you with his modesty. He lives behind the big mansion where he meets all the foreign dignitaries, and he makes sure you know where his bed is. His women they are all blanc but one, his wife, she is a princess from le Cap. Cap Haïtien. I still love her like a mother, despite her love for him. She has a powerful spirit, and she gives it to Colonel Sir, and the spirit tells him how to make Hispaniolans love him, all of them. So they still love him.”
Mary shrugged and turned away from the fat man and the large woman, looked at Ernest. “He tells me what I already know,” she said softly, “except when he colors it with his own politics.”
The fat man jerked as if slapped. “What? What?”
“You’re not telling us anything we can’t learn in a library,” Ernest said.
“Your libraries must be wonderful. You don’t need us, then,” the fat man said. “Colonel Sir is not the man he used to be. Do your libraries tell you that? He uprighted the economy, he brought in work and factories, he made our youths into soldiers and gave our old people homes. He made the courts just and the Uncles—”
“The police,” the large woman said.
“He made the police into protectors of the islands. He built resorts and made the beaches clean, and he rebuilt the palaces and made museums and even filled them with art. Who knew where the money came from? It came, and he fed the people. But he is not the same now. He does not get the commissions now. The world, they are on to him now. Your President is dead by his own hand. Perhaps it should have been a silver bullet, like Christophe!”