“Are you so angry?”
She looked at him directly. “Of course I am. Do you expect peace on earth, or even in my heart? Just because a few aliens were sent down to become human for a while, and one came down here? Blue wasn’t a Messiah, whatever parallels the tabloids made. Everyone’s life is the stuff of which myth is made, when you look at it close enough.”
“What do you want?”
“Everything,” she said simply. “Just what I always wanted, but I was afraid to admit it before. Now I accept that I couldn’t go with Blue; I’ll never even walk on the moon. But I want it. All of it. From Goddess to green cheese to grey rock. And everything that comes with it. And while I am still alive, I wouldn’t mind being able to walk with a lover down the street hand in hand no matter what sex we were. I know that would have made my father happy. He said that all human ills were caused by one bunch of people trying to make the others think like them. What do
you
want?”
“I learned to want as little as possible. So as not to get disappointed too much.”
“It’s a hard creed around which to live your life.”
“Well, life isn’t easy. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” she said, and stepped up to him so she could put her fingertips to his face in an unconscious parody of Blue’s touch which she would use for the rest of her life to emphasize what was close to her heart. “But I have had a dream come real for me, and live in my house, and become as close to me as I am to myself. When I’ve had a moment like that it’s hard to remember even the moment of my own death.”
“Do you want special treatment on that account?”
“Do you think we have to make deals? Can’t you just accept me on the riverbank here, let me tell you how I see the view?”
“I’m not the only person who wants something from you, you know that as well as I do. If it was only you and I we would soon talk ourselves around to some kind of understanding, as you and Mac have done. But you know you’ll be different things to everyone, and they’re not all likely to be tolerant or even friendly. You aren’t exactly what some people think of as an ambassador for Earth.”
“I appreciate you making that clear.” She couldn’t help the edge in her voice.
“I’m trying to be honest. Don’t make fun of that.”
“I’m not making fun of you. But do you think we’ll ever meet across this valley?”
“I don’t know. Is that what’s vital? Today, I mostly care about what happened when the alien was here. I want to know what went on. Not what’s recorded. What really went on.
That’s
what makes you different, not your sexuality or your roommates or your
philosophia.”
He walked a little farther, then turned back to her. “When I was first in the force, I used to have to take down reports of UFOs. We used to put them on file and now and again we’d correlate them with other files and in the end we had a great big pile of nothing. If you and I argue about this, we’ll end up with a great big pile of nothing. I can’t pretend I couldn’t make it hard for you. You know the generous mandate that went with Mac’s job? Well, I gave it to him. I have discretionary powers he only dreamt of having. But I’d rather use them to make things easier for you.”
“That’s fine as long as I do what you want. But if I get out of line?”
“Can’t you trust me?”
“When you are doing your best to convince me we come from different worlds?”
“Do we?” He gestured around the horizon as she had done. She laughed.
“Well done!” she said. “Okay, I agree that if this has any point at all, it’s that we’re now one world whether we find it comfortable or not. I spent a year learning the lesson: eschew comfort.”
“You speak so well. These tapes should be a helluva fine production.” Andris gestured to the grey man and Kowalski, and Mr. Grey walked back across the street to join them.
“Maybe we can make a hit movie of them. After all, there’s all that footage of John’s that Mr. Grey here confiscated. Hester McKenzie can direct.”
Andris laughed out loud. “She’s Mac’s daughter, you know. And she’s already had some truck with those tapes. All right, Ms. Morgan, world citizen, here we go. You without the chip on the shoulder, me without …”
“Without preconceptions. Maybe we could even learn to like each other.”
He smiled, tidily as a cat. “You hate being an optimist, don’t you?”
Morgan grinned. “You got it, mister. But it’s a fate forced on me …”
“As if fate could force you to do anything, on balance,” he said, “I
have
been listening to you for two years,” and Morgan laughed and laughed. He went on, “I’m the one who sent Ace here, you know. I thought it might be good for her.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t think it made much difference,” said the grey man.
“We’ll see,” said Andris. “She’s young. There’s still time.”
“I think,” said Morgan, “that I
am
ready for you now. For what it’s worth.”
“We’ll decide what it’s worth.”
“No,” said Morgan, looking out into the empty air of the valley, “no, we won’t. We’re not that important.”
Morgan jerked a thumb at Kowalski. “Keep the queer-bashers away from me. If you can.”
“I can’t promise,” said Andris. “After all, it’s the real world.”
“You said it,” she said. “Welcome.”
The grey man watched Andris and the man in the blue suit get into the car and drive away. After the car had hummed out of sight he turned to Morgan.
“With Andris and Ko fighting over you, I might have to move in here,” he said. “To protect you.” And for the first time since he had known her, he smiled at her fully, grinned even: not the puckish smile of the manipulator, but an openmouthed, relaxed grin of joy. She smiled back with the same fullness, said lightly, “There are a lot of empty rooms.”
“I’d have to have Blue’s rooms, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to live where John lived.”
“No one does.” They walked back toward the gate.
“My name,” he said, “is Roger Terrence McKenzie. A.k.a. Mr. Grey.”
“Welcome. Do I have to call you Rog now? Or Mac, like the rest do?”
“I’m like the rest of you: starting again. Maybe I should go by a new name now. Terry should be ambiguous enough to fit in, don’t you think? Though I suspect I will have to bow to the inevitable and let you call me Grey for the rest of our lives.”
“That will be fun,” she said. He made a face and she laughed at him, her small face looking for a moment like a laughing river otter. “Give over,” he said then. “You’re teasing me.”
“Yes, Grey, my friend, I always tease you. The world teases you. The Universe is a tease.”
“I have to go. There is work to do. Wolves to keep from the stoop. I have to deal with the paperwork on John. Set things up for your tête-à-têtes with Andris. Deal with the flood from the outer world.”
“Before you go … Where did John come from?”
“We don’t know yet. He’s in fugue now, and can’t tell us. They say he might never recover. He certainly isn’t John Lee. John Lee was a gay Chinese video technician in Vancouver.”
“Was?”
“Died, of AIDS they thought, fifteen years ago. He was about twenty-five at the time. Back when people were still dying of it.”
“Instead of living miserably in quarantine in government health-care hostels,” said Morgan automatically, then: “Fifteen
years?”
“Yeah. Our boy would have been about twenty then—a bit younger. We don’t know what happened, but we know that when Lee died his papers and his equipment were stolen, and his place ransacked, while he was still lying on the bed.”
“Murdered?”
“No, the Medical Examiner’s investigator went over everything about six times, just in case. But the scenario was that he died alone, and then his place was looted by his neighbors.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. But this puts a different spin on it.”
“Yeah, but …”
“But why?”
“Yeah.”
“Getting away from something, or just—the obvious? Apprentice scenario? Or street kid taking advantage of a dying gay man who fell for the kid? Kid resents it, takes the stuff, gets interested? Shows a real hatred of the original Lee. Homophobia is just a kind of xenophobia, after all, same as misogyny. It would fit with what he did here. Let’s just use the technical terminology. Nutcase.”
“Yeah, we use that technical term in my line of work too. But if he’s really in fugue, not faking it, it’s not accurate, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.” Grey looked down, annoyed with the secret he’d be keeping for the rest of his life. “But he is a mess. If this case ever gets to court after the doctors are done with him, I’d be surprised. But I have to get the paperwork airtight, in case I’m wrong. I wish I could be wrong. I
want
him to be accountable.”
“So do I, but maybe not the same way. I want him to understand what he did. Really understand.”
“Which would have had the effect of actually
driving
him crazy, if it could happen.”
“Which seems to be where we started.” Morgan sighed.
“With a psychopath who wasn’t crazy …”
“But on whom we wished both feeling and madness.”
“Well, putting it that way …”
“Yeah. We live in a strange world, Grey.”
“Here’s the list of people looking for an exclusive story, a book contract, an interview, an exposé …” The grey man threw an untidy, two-inch-thick file and a cube of memory down on the hearth rug. Beside it he threw another, thinner file in a tiger yellow folder. “And here’s the ones you can’t ignore. The meeting with the Prime Minister. The audience with the King of England and the Spanish Pope, as they call him, which always bothers the hell out of me.”
“You have such an orderly mind,” Morgan said wryly.
“He’s from Central America, dammit. It’s not Spain! People are so imprecise. Never mind. The Secretary-General of the UN wants to talk to you about Blue’s sojourn, and about the activities of your brother in Tibet. As an expat Tibetan himself, he has sympathy with the new Dalai Lama’s predicament.”
“Predicament! Held almost a captive in that house in India. Can’t even travel to the monastery where the old Dalai Lama lived. Poor little kid. He’s so lonely. Robyn says half the people around him can’t even speak Tibetan.”
“Well, perhaps you can help your brother on this. This guy has made the UN into a world player again by sheer force of will, and he can probably do something useful about something as simple as that situation. He did win the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Speaking of which, there’s a letter here from them …”
“No. No.” Morgan pushed her hands out in front of her. “Not me.”
“No, not you.” She looked at him.
“Us,” he said, grinning like a cat with cream. “All of us. You, me, Delany, Russ, anyone with significant contact with Blue in this house. Including Aziz, the little twit. I must tell Rahim. He’ll be furious. He’ll think it should have been him.”
“Are you ever going to let him out?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve got his cell fully wired for incoming vid now. I’m letting him catch up on developments. But I won’t let him out until his part of the story is old news. I don’t want him catching the media wave and morphing himself into a hero. I’ll wait until his
cousin
is a hero. The ’fucking dancer faggot’ he hated so much. There is justice, after all, despite Heinlein’s contention.”
A few minutes later Aziz emerged from the attic studio he now called home. As soon as he opened the door, the light dull pounding they had been hearing all morning intensified. If they could hear it two storeys away, the music must be thunderous close up.
“He’s going to make himself deaf,” Morgan said. Aziz wandered downstairs and into the kitchen where Morgan and Grey were making sandwiches. As he walked he tugged earplugs out and tucked them into his pocket. Aziz was dressed in Jakob’s workout clothes. He was letting his hair grow.
At least he’s still combing it, not letting it dread,
thought Morgan.
There’s a limit …
“Hi, kiddo,” she said.
“Hi,” said Aziz, abstracted, rummaging in the breadbox. “What’s the what’s the?”
“Oh, nothing much. They’re going to give us all the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Cool,” Aziz said, opening the refrigerator door and leaning in. “Do we have any tahini?”
“He’s already deaf,” said the grey man, grinning.
“I heard you,” said Aziz. “It’s cool. I get it. Now I’m hungry. How about hummus? There are some pitas here, but there’s nothing to put with them.”
“Look at the back of the top shelf,” said Morgan. “And here’s a tomato to chop. Goodness forfend that a Nobel laureate-to-be should have nothing to put on a pita.”
“Look, I
said
it was cool. What else can I say? I’m busy. I’m
working.”