Authors: Dan Simmons
“L.A.,” said Harod. “New Orleans,” said Sutter. “New York,” said Kepler. “Done,” said Barent. “Donald informed me a few minutes ago that we were then somewhere over Nevada so we’ll drop Tony first. I’m sorry you won’t be able to enjoy the accommodations overnight, Tony, but you might want to catch forty winks before we land.”
“Yeah,” said Harod.
Barent rose and Haines appeared, holding the door to the forward corridor open. “Until we meet again at the Island Club Summer Camp, gentlemen,” said Barent. “
Ciao
, and good fortune to each of you.”
A servant in a blue blazer showed Harod and Maria Chen forward to their stateroom. The rear part of the 747 had been turned into Barent’s large office, a lounge, and the billionaire’s bedroom. Forward of the office, to the left of a corridor that reminded Harod of all the European trains he had ever traveled on, were the large staterooms, decorated in subtle shades of green and coral, consisting of a private bath, sleeping area with a queen-size bed, and couch and color TV. “Where’s the fireplace?” Harod muttered to the servant in the blazer.
“I believe that is Sheik Muzad’s aircraft that has a working fireplace,” answered the handsome young man with no trace of a smile.
Harod had poured another vodka on ice and joined Maria Chen on the couch when there was a soft knock at the door. A young woman in a blazer identical to the male aide’s said, “Mr. Barent wondered if you and Ms. Chen would care to join him in the Orion Lounge.”
“The Orion Lounge?” said Harod. “Sure, what the hell.” They followed the young woman down the corridor and through a security-card locked door to a spiral staircase. On a commercial 747, Harod knew, the staircase would lead up to the first-class lounge. As they stepped off the dark staircase at the top, both Harod and Maria Chen stopped in awe.
The woman went back down the stairs, securing the door at the bottom and shutting off the last gleam of reflected light from below.
The room was the same size as a normal 747 lounge, but it was as if someone had removed the top of the aircraft, leaving a platform open to the skies at 35,000 feet. Thousands of stars blazed overhead, seeming not to twinkle at all at this altitude, and Harod could look left and right at the dark wedge of wings, the blinking red and green navigation lights, and a carpet of starlit cloud tops a mile or more below them. There was absolutely no sound and no sense of separation between where they stood and an infinite expanse of night sky. Only low silhouettes suggested the presence of shadowy furniture and a single, seated person in the lounge itself. Behind and below them receded the long metallic bulk of the airliner, the top of its fuselage glowing slightly in the starlight, a single, bright beacon flashing on the tall tail.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Harod. He heard Maria Chen’s sudden in-take of breath as she remembered to breathe.
“I’m glad you like it,” came Barent’s voice from the darkness. “Come and sit down.”
Harod and Maria Chen walked carefully to a cluster of low chairs around a circular table, their eyes adjusting to the starlight. Behind them, the entrance to the spiral staircase had a single warning strip of red light on the top step and the bulkhead to the crew compartment was a black hemi sphere against the western starfield. They collapsed on soft cushions and continued to stare at the sky.
“It’s a translucent plastic compound,” said Barent. “More than thirty layers, actually, but almost perfectly transparent and much stronger than Plexiglas. There are scores of support ribs, but they are fiber thin and do not interfere with the view at night. The outer surface polarizes in the daylight and looks like a glossy black paint job from the outside. It took my engineers a year to develop it and then it took me two years to convince the CAB that it was airworthy. If it was left to the engineers, aircraft would have no windows for passengers at all.”
“It is beautiful,” said Maria Chen. Harod could see starlight reflected in her dark eyes.
“Tony, I asked both of you here because this concerns both of you,” said Barent.
“What does?”
“The . . . ah . . . dynamics of our group. You may have noticed a little tension in the air.”
“I noticed that everyone’s on the verge of losing their fucking minds.”
“Just so,” said Barent. “The events of the past few months have been . . . ah . . . troublesome.”
“I don’t see why,” said Harod. “Most people don’t get worked up when their colleagues are blown to shit or dropped into the Schuylkill River.”
“The truth is,” said C. Arnold Barent, “that we had grown far too complacent. We have had our Club and our way for too many years . . . decades actually . . . and it may be that Willi’s little vendettas have offered a necessary . . . ah . . . pruning.”
“As long as none of us are next in line to be pruned,” said Harod. “Precisely.” Barent poured wine into a crystal goblet and set it in front of Maria Chen. Harod’s eyes had adapted so that he could see the others clearly now, but it only made the stars brighter, the cloud tops more milk-ily iridescent. “In the meantime,” said Barent, “there are bound to be certain imbalances in a group dynamic that had been so precariously established under circumstances no longer operative.”
“What do you mean?” said Harod. “I mean that there is a power vacuum,” said Barent and his voice was as cold as the starlight that bathed them. “Or more precisely, the
perception
of a power vacuum. Willi Borden has made it possible for little people to think they can be giants. And for that he will have to die.”
“Willi will?” said Harod. “So all that talk about possible negotiations and Willi joining the Club was bullshit?”
“Yes,” said Barent. “If necessary, I will run the Club by myself, but under
no
circumstances will that ex-Nazi ever sit at our table.”
“Then why . . .” Harod paused and thought a minute. “You think Kepler and Sutter are ready to make their move?”
Barent smiled. “I have known Jimmy for many years. The first time I saw him preach was in a tent revival in Texas four decades ago. His Ability was unfocused but irresistible; he could make a tent full of sweating agnostics do what ever he wanted them to and do it happily in the name of God. But Jimmy is getting old and he uses his real persuasive powers less and less while relying upon the apparatus of persuasion he’s built. I know he had you out at his little fundamentalist magic kingdom last week . . .” Barent held up his hand to cut off Harod’s explanation. “That’s all right, Jimmy must have told you that I would know . . . and understand. I don’t believe that Jimmy wants to upset the applecart, but he senses a possible shift in power and wants to be on the correct side when the shifting subsides. Willi’s meddling has appeared— on the surface— to have changed a very delicate equation.”
“But not in reality?” said Harod. “No,” said Barent and the softly spoken syllable was as final as a rifle shot. “They forgot essential facts.” Barent reached into a drawer of the low table in front of them and withdrew a double-action semiautomatic pistol. “Pick it up, Tony.”
“Why?” asked Harod, his skin bristling. “The weapon is real and it is loaded,” said Barent. “Pick it up, please.” Harod lifted the weapon and held it loosely in both hands. “OK, so what’s the deal?”
“Aim it at me, Tony.”
Harod blinked. What ever demonstration Barent had in mind, he wanted no part of it. He knew that Haines and a dozen other security people were within a critical distance. “I don’t want to aim it at you,” said Harod. “I don’t like these fucking games.”
“Aim the gun at me, Tony.”
“Screw you,” said Harod and stood up to leave. He made a dismissive motion with his hand and walked to where the red light showed the top step of the staircase.
“
Tony
,” came Barent’s voice, “
come here
.”
Harod felt as if he had walked into one of the plastic walls. His muscles cramped into tight knots and sweat broke out all over his body. He tried to surge forward, away from Barent, but only succeeded in dropping to his knees.
Once, four or five years before, he and Willi had had a session where the old man had tried to exert power over him. It had been a friendly exercise, in answer to some question Harod had asked about the Vienna Game Willi had been rambling on about. Instead of feeling the warm wave of domination that Harod knew he used on women, Willi’s onslaught had been like a vague but terrible pressure in Harod’s skull, white noise and a claustrophobic closeness all at once. But no loss of self-control on Harod’s part. He had recognized immediately that Willi’s Ability was much stronger than his own— more
brutal
was the phrase that had come to mind— but although Harod had doubted if he could have Used someone else during Willi’s assault, there was no sense that Willi could have Used
him
. “
Ja
,” Willi had said, “it is always like that. We can turn on one another, but those that Use cannot be Used,
nicht wahr
? We test our strength through third parties, eh? A pity really. But a king cannot take a king, Tony. Remember that.”
Harod had remembered that. Until now. “Come here,” said Barent. His voice was still soft, well modulated, but it seemed to reverberate until it filled Harod’s skull, filled the room, filled the universe so that the stars shook to the echo of it. “
Come here, Tony
.”
Harod, on his knees, arms, neck, and body straining, was jerked onto his back like some stuntman being pulled off his horse by an invisible wire. Harod’s body spasmed and his booted feet beat on the carpet. His jaws clenched and his eyes bulged in their sockets. Harod felt the scream build in his throat and knew that it could never be released, that it would grow there until it exploded, throwing shards of his flesh across the room. On his back, legs stiff and spasming, Harod felt the muscles of his arms contract and expand, contract and expand, his elbows digging into the carpet, fingers hooked into claws, as he slid backward toward the seated shadow. “
Come here, Tony
.” Like a palsied ten-month-old learning to crawl on its back, Tony Harod obeyed.
When his head touched the low coffee table, Harod felt the vise of control release him. His body spasmed in such release that he almost urinated.
He rolled over and got to his knees, his forearms on the black glass of the tabletop.
“Aim the gun at me, Tony,” Barent said in the same conversational tone as before.
Harod felt a killing rage surge through him. His hands shook wildly as he felt for the gun, found the grip, raised it . . .
The barrel had not been leveled when the sickness struck. Years ago, his first year in Hollywood, Harod had suffered a kidney stone. The pain had been incredible, unbelievable. A friend later told Harod that he imagined it was like being knifed in the back. Harod knew otherwise; he had been knifed in the back while running with a Chicago gang as a kid. The kidney stone hurt more. It was like being knifed from the inside out, like someone dragging razor blades through your entrails and veins. And along with the incredible pain of the stone itself had come instant nausea, vomiting, cramps, and fever.
This was worse. Far worse.
Before the barrel came level, Harod was curled on the floor, vomiting on his silk shirt and trying to wrap himself in a knot. Along with the pain and sickness and humiliation there was the overwhelming knowledge that
he had tried to hurt Mr. Barent
. The idea was insupportable. It was the saddest thought Tony had ever suffered. He wept as he vomited and groaned with pain. The pistol had fallen out of his limp fingers onto the black glass tabletop.
“Oh, you don’t feel well,” Barent said softly. “Perhaps Ms. Chen should aim the weapon at me.”
“No,” gasped Harod, curling into a tighter ball. “Yes,” said Barent. “I want her to.
Tell her to aim the gun at me, Tony
.”
“Aim the gun!” gasped Harod. “Aim it at him!”
Maria Chen moved slowly, as if underwater. She lifted the revolver, steadied it in her small hands, and aimed it at Tony Harod’s head.
“No! At him!” Harod doubled over as the cramps struck him again. “At him!”
Barent smiled. “She does not have to hear my orders to obey them, Tony.”
Maria Chen pulled the hammer back with her thumb. The black opening was aimed directly at Harod’s face. Harod could see the terror and sorrow building behind her brown eyes. Maria Chen had never been Used before.
“Impossible,” gasped Harod, feeling the pain and illness recede and knowing that he might have only seconds to live. He staggered to his knees and held his hand up as a useless shield against the bullet. “Impossible . . . she’s a
Neutral
!” He almost screamed it.
“What is a Neutral?” inquired C. Arnold Barent. “I have never encountered one, Tony.” He turned his head. “Pull the trigger, please, Maria.”
The hammer fell. Harod heard the solid click. Maria Chen squeezed the trigger again. Again.
“How careless,” said Barent. “We forgot to load it. Maria, could you help Tony to his seat, please?”
Harod sat shaking, sweat and vomit plastering his shirt to his stomach, his head bowed, forearms on his knees.
“Debra will take you below and help you clean up, Tony,” said Barent, “and Richard and Gordon will clean up in here. If you would like to come up later and have a drink in the Orion Lounge before we land, do feel free. It is a unique place, Tony. But please remember what I said about the temptation others will have to . . . ah . . . rearrange the natural order of things. It is at least partially my fault, Tony. It has been too many years since most of them have experienced a . . . ah . . . demonstration. Memory fades, even when it is in the best interest of the individual for it not to.” Barent leaned forward. “When Joseph Kepler comes to you with an offer, you will agree to it. Is that understood, Tony?”
Harod nodded. Sweat fell onto his stained slacks. “Say yes, Tony.”
“Yes.”
“And you will contact me immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy,” said C. Arnold Barent and patted Harod’s cheek. He turned his tall chair so that only the back of it was visible, a black obelisk against the star field. When it swiveled back, Barent was gone.