Half the Day Is Night

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

1. Underwater

2. Funeral Games

3. Probation

4. A Few Simple Things

5. Mephistofeles

6. House Arrest

7. Dedale

8. Mindgames

9. Virtual Weather

10. The Sorcerer's Birthday

11. In the Dark

12. Gone to Earth

13. Transfer

14. Out of Water

15. Hegira

16. Deep Water

17. Daylight

By Maureen F. McHugh

Copyright

 

This book is for four women: Ama Selu, Arla, Evelyn and Pat. And they all know why.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the following people: Bob Yeager, who tirelessly hounded me on technical details; all errors are mine, not his. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who gave me time and encouragement as well as cogent suggestions. Tim Ryan and Sean Barton (Information Services-R-Us); Tim for technical assistance and Sean for being my favorite fan.

1

Underwater

The man in the reflection didn't have any eyes.

It was a trick of the lighting. He was looking into a window, out into the dark, and anywhere there was a shadow on his face the glass reflected nothing back. Holes for eyes. David looked up, the light fell on his face and his eyes appeared, he looked back out into the darkness and they became empty again.

Outside was ocean. This far below the surface it was always night. You really didn't have to go very far underwater before all the sunlight was absorbed. He should have realized but he had been unconsciously expecting Caribbean warmth, Caribbean sun, not this huge expanse of black. He shuddered, and picked up his bag and limped on, keeping his eyes away from the window. He could still see his reflection walking with him, a stride and a quick step, bobbing along, favoring his stiff knee. He followed signs directing him to Baggage Claim, they were all in English. That was a disappointment, he had hoped that there might be more French, because of the Haitian population in Caribe. They would be in Creole anyway, and he didn't know Creole.

He came through a security checkpoint and presented his passport and visa to the boy in uniform. The boy was a black with a long narrow face. So young, these soldiers. Like children dangling guns from their fingers. He was getting older, he thought, soldiers had not seemed so young when he was in the
militaire.
Thirty-three was not so old. He put his duffel on the belt through the security machine; a sign said that any comments or jokes would be treated with utmost seriousness. The boy studied his passport, then looked up at him, carefully comparing the im point by point. He remembered the points: eyes, chin, nose, hairline, eyebrows.

“Immigration is to your left,” the boy said in a high, helium voice, “Welcome to Caribe.” A cartoon voice from a soldier with a rifle.

It smelled like wet concrete and ammonia. The Port Authority was like a second rate airport: full of soldiers and pre-form furniture in bright grimy orange and aqua. A third world country underwater. He had not realized that it would be so dark.

He waited in line to get his suitcase, waited in line again to have his passport and visa scanned for authenticity by Immigration. He was very tired, it had been a long trip and his knee was stiff from sitting so long.

Finally, he was through Immigration and allowed out into the lobby. There was a crowd of people as he came out of Immigration, families waiting, leaning over the railing. His prospective employer was a woman, a banker named Mayla Ling. He didn't have an im. He straightened his stride trying not to limp.

A big tall blond man in a sweater and tights was holding a sign that said “DAI.” He looked irritated.

“You are from Ms. Ling?” David said, hating the way he sounded.

“Yeah,” the big man squeaked. “Jean David Dai?”

He nodded. His own voice sounded foolish enough, but a helium voice coming out of this big man was ludicrous. The big man said “Jeen DAY-vid,” the way they did in the States, not “Jahn Dah-VEED.” “Just David,” he said, pronouncing it the way the other had. “I do not go by Jean.”

“Tim Bennet,” the big man said and offered his hand. David took it and Bennet made it into a contest of strength. He won and claimed David's big suitcase. David followed him with his duffel bag.

It was cold and everything seemed far away. It was not a trick of tiredness, he thought, it was the air mixture that made everything sound so distant. People around him were dressed in winter clothes; men in sweaters and girls in bright shiny blues and golds. This city was under the Caribbean ocean, they could make the temperature anything they wanted, why make it so cold? Did he have any long-sleeved shirts?

He followed Tim Bennet through the Port, hurrying to keep up. They went down an escalator and he studied the expanse of back. Was Bennet a bodyguard/driver? Was there more than one? He looked like he could be security but David had been told that the job was a formality, for insurance reasons. Like the job he'd had at the Caribbean Consulate when he was at University, watching monitors at night, walking through the empty building while the building system switched lights on in front of him, off behind him.

The second escalator dumped them into a concrete parking garage and again he had to hurry to keep up with Tim Bennet. The car was a tiny little black thing with a sheen iridescing blue and red under the fluorescents like oil. A little toy. Julia, the city, wasn't very big, until he had read the job description for this job and seen that it asked for a driver, he had thought they didn't use cars. Cars made no sense, burning petrochemicals in a closed system. His one suitcase filled the trunk. What would they have done if he had two, he wondered, had them sent?

“Thisis th' karyewl b' dryvin.”

He had thought his English was pretty good, but he was tired and he hadn't been listening and helium in the air mix made voices sound so strange. “Pardon me?” he said.

“This car,” Bennet pointed at the little car, “this is Mayla's car. You know how to drive a car?”

“I have driven…” his mind went blank, he couldn't think of the word, “not a car, you know, in the
militaire,
they use them.”

“Troop transports?”

David shook his head. “In French we say ‘jeep'.”

“Yeah, jeeps, that's what we call them. Cars probably aren't too different.”

He watched Bennet clamber into the car and got in his side. He almost felt as if he was sitting on the ground, it was so low. Jeeps weren't like that. Clutch, accelerator, gear shift, brake: it all looked familiar. The instrument panel was different.

Bennet put the car in reverse and squealed away from the wall, shoved into gear and squealed again, then braked into a ramp that spiraled down. He acted as if he were angry. They came off the ramp, accelerated, Bennet leaned forward and flicked something on the keyboard on the panel, then took a box off the dash and started to rummage through it. The car continued to accelerate and Bennet was not watching. They went right into a tunnel that narrowed sharply and David grabbed the dash, the wall was centimeters from the passenger door—the car eased into a bigger tunnel. A four-lane highway in a tunnel, with lots of buses and a few cars.

“Audomadick guy danse,” Bennet squeaked, still looking through the box.

He thought about the words until they made sense: “automatic guidance.”

“They don't allow manual driving on the belt,” Bennet said. This time David was listening carefully and he understood. “Takes a bit of getting used to.” Bennet smiled at him, pleased with himself. “Mind if I play some music?”

He shook his head. The wall of the tunnel was still close to the passenger door and then the car changed lanes smoothly as another car came out of an entrance tunnel. It made him uncomfortable. He closed his eyes but opened them again because not being able to see was worse than seeing. Bennet dropped a chip in the player. There was a moment of silence, the open sound before a song started, and then a crack of thunder and the soft patter of rain. Ambient music. The singer started; a woman's voice, distant, howling wolf-like, then coming close to sing the first line, “When I was six my father died.”

“How d'ya like it?”

He shrugged. “It is okay.” He didn't mind ambient music, but he didn't recognize the song. He had the feeling Bennet wanted him to dislike it. “Do you work for Ms. Ling?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bennet said.

“What do you do?” David asked.

“Your job,” Bennet said grimly, or at least as grimly as anyone could in a helium falsetto.

*   *   *

The sub had come in at three in the afternoon but that was ten at home in Paris and he had started with a 5:12 a.m. flight from Orly. His employer was at work. He followed Bennet up the steps from the garage into a
house.
Well, he had known she was rich; she could afford to fly him from France and she could afford a car. Maybe houses were common here the way they were in the U.S. But he didn't think so.

The living room was huge, and the first thing he saw across the furniture and hardwood floor was the expanse of window. Outside was a strip of white gravel with dead coral pieces like bushes and then black ocean. Out in the ocean was another glow like a bowl turned upside down (the neighbors) but mostly just blackness.

He didn't like it, it made him feel even colder than he was. Nothing. It didn't even look like water out there, it just looked like nothing. Who would have a view on nothing? What would be the point? He looked away, looked around, tried to take in what he saw. Lots of wood, very expensive. On the white stucco wall behind him was painted a sun with a benevolent face, sleepy eyes, full pouting lips and flames like hair. It looked back at that awful view and he did, too, drawn inexorably.

Deep and black, empty, like the space between stars. He did not even get a sense of the awful pressure that must be bearing down on this building—he realized abruptly that it was a dome, built to distribute the pressure and that was the reason for the strange curve of the glass, but that didn't seem important. He couldn't take this job, he couldn't live in this place.

“Quite a view,” Bennet said. “Something that makes you know you're alive.”

Know you are alive? It made him think of the absurdity of his being alive.

*   *   *

Bennet showed him a little flat—bedroom, sitting room and little kitchen, all as impersonal as a hotel room—and he stretched out on the bed to wait. He jerked awake when he heard voices and checked his chron. It was almost six. His head was full of anxious travel dreams and he was cold. A woman's voice he thought, and ran his fingers through his hair. His boss.

She was younger than he'd expected. He thought she was in her thirties. Ling sounded like a Chinese name but she didn't look particularly Asian, she seemed American. She had black hair cut in a helmet, it swung slightly as she turned her head. She was as tall as he was, which, he had to admit, was not so very tall. She held out her hand, “Jean David Dai?” she said, pronouncing it as Bennet had.