“Same as always,” Noble said. “He won’t. Whenever has he reacted to anything?”
“You’re right,” Tabaqui admitted reluctantly. “Practically never. You see”—he winked at me—“our Leader, may his Leadership days last and last, is blind as a bat and so has some trouble reacting. He usually entrusts it to Sphinx. ‘Do me a favor, react for me,’ he says. So poor little Sphinx ends up reacting double. Maybe that’s why he went bald. It must be very tiresome, you know.”
“You’re saying he wasn’t always bald?” Noble said.
Tabaqui sent him a withering look. “What do you mean, ‘always’? Like born with it? Maybe he was born bald, but by the time I met him, Sphinx had ample hair up top, thank you very much!”
Noble said he could not imagine it. Tabaqui countered that Noble always had trouble with his imagination.
I finally lit a cigarette. Tabaqui’s antics made me want to laugh out loud, but I was afraid it would sound like hysterics.
“And besides!” Tabaqui remembered suddenly. “Sphinx christened you. How could I forget? You see how nicely it all fits together? Since you are his godson, he’s going to react to you like he’s your loving mommy. Happy ending all around.”
I seriously doubted that a bald snitch like Sphinx feeling motherly toward me looked like a happy ending, and I said so.
“Your loss,” Tabaqui said crossly. “Really your loss. Sphinx would make a decent mother. Trust me.”
“Right. Especially if you ask Black.” Noble presented a fake smile. “There he is, by the way. Call him over. He can tell Smoker what kind of mother Sphinx makes.”
“You’re twisting my words,” Jackal protested. “I never said for everyone. It goes without saying that as far as Black is concerned, Sphinx is more like a stepmother.”
“An evil one,” Noble said sweetly. “From those German fairy tales that make children scream at night.”
Tabaqui pretended not to hear that.
“Hey! Over here, old man,” he shouted, waving his arms. “We’re right here! Look this way! Hello-o! I’m afraid his eyes are completely shot,” he said with concern, grabbing the last of the rolls. “That’s because of all those weights. Pumping iron is not as healthy as it’s cracked up to be, you know. And what’s more important,” he continued after consuming the roll in two gulps, “he needs to watch his calorie intake. So it would be a good thing not to leave too many carbs lying around. Isn’t that right, Black?”
Black, a morose fellow with a blond buzz cut, approached with a chair that he swiped on the way, placed it next to Noble, sat down, and stared at me.
“What’s right?”
“That you shouldn’t overeat. That you’re heavy as it is.”
Black said nothing. He really was heavy, but certainly not from overeating. He appeared to have been constructed that way. Then he had bulked up his muscles on various pieces of equipment and become even more imposing. A tank top left his biceps exposed, and I was studying them appreciatively while he was studying me. Tabaqui informed him that I was being transferred, and most likely to the Fourth, to them.
“Unless it’s the Third, except it’s not, because it’s obvious that when you have a choice you always choose where there’s more free space.”
“So?” was the extent of Black’s response. His arms looked like hams, and his blue eyes seemed unblinking.
Tabaqui was crestfallen.
“What do you mean, ‘so’? You are the first to get an exclusive scoop!”
“And what am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’re supposed to be astonished! Surprised, at the very least!”
“I am surprised.”
Black got up, bumping a paper lantern with his head, and went to sit at an empty table two spaces over from us. There he proceeded to extract a paperback from his vest pocket and transferred his attention to it, blinking myopically.
“There,” Tabaqui fumed. “And to think we were denigrating Blind’s responses. Compared to Black, he is vitality incarnate!”
He was exaggerating about vitality. I’d first met Blind in the hospital wing. We were roommates. In the three days we spent there, he didn’t say a single word. He also almost never stirred, so I came to regard him as just a part of the landscape. He was gaunt, but not tall, his jeans would fit a thirteen-year-old, and both of his wrists together made one of mine. Next to him I was the picture of health. I did not know who he was then, so I just figured he was being bullied a lot. And now, watching Black, I thought that if anyone looked like a Leader in the Fourth, it was certainly him, and not Blind.
“It’s so weird,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
“Yep. See, you caught it as well.” Tabaqui nodded. “Of course it’s weird. You look at Black, this tower of power, and even he is walking in the shadow of Blind. That’s what you meant, right? He’s such a commanding presence. Regal, even. Right? We’re all amazed. We live side by side with him, and all day, every day, we are amazed. How come—here he is, and yet he’s not the Leader? And the one who’s the most amazed is Black himself. He wakes up at dawn, casts his gaze about, and inquires, ‘For why?’ Day after day after day.”
“Can it, Tabaqui,” Noble said. “That’s enough.”
“I am angry,” Tabaqui explained, draining his coffee. “Can’t abide those apathetic types.”
I finished my coffee as well, along with my second cigarette. It was clearly time to go. I didn’t want to, though. It was so nice in the Coffeepot. To sit here, to smoke openly, to drink coffee—which, for the denizens of the First, was a kind of mild arsenic. The only thing nagging me was the thought of Tabaqui telling someone else of my transfer. I figured I should leave before that happened. Tabaqui, in the meantime, took out a pad and started scribbling in it with a pen that formerly rested behind his ear.
“Right . . . Right . . . ,” he was mumbling. “Of course . . . And don’t forget this . . . Naturally. Now that is completely out of the question.”
Noble was spinning the lighter on the edge of the table.
“I think I’d better go,” I said.
“Just a sec.” Tabaqui scribbled for a while longer, then tore out the page and handed it to me. “It’s all here. The basics, at least. Study it, remember it, use it.”
I stared at his chickenscratch.
“What’s this?”
“A guide,” Tabaqui sighed. “The essential information. Survival rules for a migrant. On top: in case of transfer to us. Underneath: to the Third.”
I looked closer.
“Something about plants . . . Watches . . . And what do the linens have to do with it? Don’t you get them as well?”
“We do. But it’s best not to leave behind anything that bears your imprint.”
“What imprint? It’s not like I smear shoe polish on myself before going to bed.”
Tabaqui gave me that look again—of a grizzled veteran aggrieved by much wisdom.
“Look, it’s simple. Everything that’s yours you take with you. Whatever you cannot take you destroy. Nothing that belonged to you must remain. What if you were to die tomorrow? Would you like a black ribbon tied to your cup, accompanied by a disgusting note along the lines of The memory of you is forever in our hearts, O prodigal brother of ours?”
I shuddered.
“All right. I get that. But . . . watches?”
A transferee to the Fourth is strongly advised to rid himself of any and all devices designed to measure time: wristwatches, stopwatches, alarm clocks, precision chronographs, etc. Any attempt to conceal such an item shall be immediately uncovered by the resident expert and, to prevent reoccurrences of this highly provocative behavior, the offending person shall be assigned a penance devised and approved by said expert.
For anyone being transferred to the domain of the Third, a.k.a. “the Nesting,” it is advisable to acquire the following items: a set of keys (provenance unimportant), two flowerpots in good condition, no fewer than four pairs of black socks, an amulet against allergies, earplugs, a copy of The Day of the Triffids by J. Wyndham, and an old dried plant collection.