Half the Day Is Night (15 page)

“Did you say a bomb?” Tim said.

“Wait on the street, walk softly. Go on.” He was standing as still as he could.

“Can you do something,” Tim asked, “can someone defuse it?”

“I am doing something. This is not the vid. Go on. Walk softly, it may have sensitive.”

Mayla did not believe, he could see. It was not doubt, she just did not comprehend. She stood in the kitchen entrance, still holding her coffee cup. “My things,” she said.

He shook his head. “Come on, Mayla,” he coaxed. “We must leave or perhaps we will all die.”

She looked at the cylinder, then came towards him, putting her feet down carefully, as if they were sore. She was wearing sandals. She had long feet. Gingerly, she opened the door to the garage. For a moment she looked at the button to open the big, outer garage door and he knew what she was thinking, it might set the bomb off. She looked at him. Tim, standing and waiting for Mayla to go first, looked at him. He shrugged, it was the way out. So she tapped it and the door went up smoothly.

“Son of a bitch,” Tim breathed.

“Okay,” he said, and she went down the curving steps.

Tim walked with his eyes on the floor as if walking a line. Like a drunk walking for a policeman. He stopped and looked at the cylinder for a moment. Then back at David. He did not believe, David thought. Not really. In his head he understood, but he did not believe.

“Go on,” David said.

Tim shook his head.

David followed him onto the steps. He looked back at Mayla's pretty house. The kitten was at the mail, sniffing the edge of a capsule.

“Mephisto, non!”

The kitten looked up and his tail twitched.

“Venite! Maintenant!”
he called the kitten.

“What are you doing?” Tim looked up the curve of the stairs down into the garage. Blue eyes.

“Calling the cat,” David said, “go on.”

“Fuck the cat,” Tim said.

He should, he knew. Mephisto decided to go back towards his rooms. Little cat, he would never see the sun.

“Mephistofeles! Venite,”
he called. Insolent, the kitten walked to the hall. He could go to the kitchen and get out a food packet. Sifting through the rubble of the dome, he thought, police find his remains clutching a cat-food packet. He followed the kitten back across the living room, walking carefully, feet falling smoothly, rolling to minimize his weight although it probably didn't make any difference. The big orange and yellow sun beamed benevolently, oblivious to the black water. It was a tiny warmth; it, Mephisto, himself, they would be smothered, extinguished in an instant. If the trigger was still active. If the bomb would still go off. The cat disappeared into his bedroom. He remembered when he had first been in Afrique, a corporal had carried a dead shell as a good luck piece. They'd all been told not to pick up anything, but they did. One time, the corporal had taken it out of his pocket and left it sitting on the tailgate of a transport and it had rolled off and exploded. All the time the corporal had carried it in his pocket nothing had happened and then, at that moment, it fell and went off. Or maybe it did not, maybe the corporal had carried his all through the war and that was a story he had heard and gotten confused. He'd seen a shell go off but he couldn't remember when.

The shoulder patch of an American Air Force Observer had a sword through a heart and emblazoned underneath it the word “DILLIGAFF.” He said it meant “Do I Look Like I Give a Flying Fuck?” Funny thing to think of.

Half crouched, David stalked the cat down the hallway.

In the bedroom the kitten watched over its shoulder and when it saw David it flattened its ears and went under the bed. He crouched by the edge and it slunk out of reach. David clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The kitten hissed, back against the bottom of the bed.

Don't be stupid. Leave him.

“David!” Tim must be standing at the top of the stairs.

He lay down, chest against the rug, and reached under the bed. His hand fell short.
“Mephisto, Mephistofeles, venite.”
The bomb was going to go off, the water was going to come in and the cat was going to get them both killed. He reached again, Meph lashed out and scratched the back of his hand. The cat was panicked. He should go now. He reached again, palm up. Meph lashed again and he caught the cat's paw. Meph reflexively sank his claws into the meaty base of David's thumb. David hauled on the kitten who squalled in terror and anger and tried to dig claws into the rug. He yanked the kitten out, Meph grabbed his shoulder, still screaming.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Tim said, watching him come down the hall. In the living room he thought it felt colder. Of course that was crazy, the room wouldn't be colder until the water came in and then it would be very cold.

He limped down the steps, counting them, the cat craning around to see the garage. At the base of the steps he palmed the door latch and the big safety door creaked and closed off Mayla's house as he watched. It would have to be opened by the security company now that it had been manually closed. It probably wouldn't stop the water from coming into the garage. He looked at the Skate. There was a lot of money in that car. He wondered if it should be moved, but hell, the insurance would pay for it. He shifted Meph to one arm and sprinted the last distance. Tim palmed the big watertight garage doors and they slammed into place, powered by the water force they were built to withstand. David winced, expecting explosion.

But there was nothing.

He looked at Mayla and Tim and grinned. Adrenaline made him suddenly, furiously happy.

“What the bloody hell were you doing?” Tim asked.

“He wanted to play with it. I thought maybe he would explode it before we were outside. We should call the police.” He put his arm around Mayla's shoulders and squeezed. She was still holding her coffee cup.

“What kind of bomb is it?” she asked.

“Not a very good one,” he said. “We should go and call the police. I can explain to everyone once.”

They walked to the next house. David kept his arm around her shoulders and did not allow her to look back. He kept expecting the explosion behind him, kept waiting for it to go off, knowing it would startle him. Each minute it didn't go off made him think that maybe it wouldn't; that Mayla's house, the yellow sun, the black car, the music chips, Tim's vacuum coffee maker, his clothes, everybody's clothes and toothbrushes—he wished he had brushed his teeth—and the pots and pan and the groceries would all be all right. That they could go back inside and forget it.

David pushed the buzzer. A woman's voice said, “Yes?”

“Hello,” he said to the air. “My name is David Dai, I work for Mayla Ling, your neighbor? May we make a call from here?”

“Step back please?”

He assumed they were being surveyed.

“Ms. Magritte?” Mayla said.

“Oh, hello Ms. Ling.” Then nothing. David looked at Mayla, wondered what was going on. Then he realized Ms. Magritte had to come down and let them in. So they waited and he ignored Mayla's house and the big steel doors.

Ms. Magritte's garage door opened. The domes on this street didn't have front doors. Or sidewalks or windows on the street or any of the other places and ways that neighbors were neighbors. “Hello, Ms. Ling,” Ms. Magritte said, smiling. She was a tiny dark woman who spoke American-accented English. “Is there a problem with your system?”

“No,” Mayla said, “there's a bomb in my house.”

That struck Tim as funny.

Ms. Magritte did not know what to say.

“We have to call the police,” Mayla said.

“Oh my God,” Ms. Magritte said. She looked up and down the street as if she might see someone, and then at Mayla's garage doors. “Who—” Ms. Magritte started and then closed her mouth.

“I'm not political,” Mayla said. “It's because of my position at the bank, I think.”

Ms. Magritte nodded as if this explained something and led them upstairs. David relinquished Mayla to Tim's arm. He handed the cat to Mayla and was amused to realize that it was good there was no one else who needed watching because he was working against the law of diminishing returns. “Careful,” he said, “he scratched me.” Welts stood on his hand. Mayla nodded. Like Xhosa refugees, he thought. She would be all right as long as he could keep telling her what to do. Tim would be fine as long as he did not allow himself to realize. And he would be all right, he reflected wryly, as long as he had to keep telling her what to do.

“I have a Steuben glass bud vase from the 1900s,” Mayla said to Ms. Magritte. “It was my grandmother's from Hawaii. I was afraid to take it to work because I was sure someone would knock it off my desk. Isn't that ironic? Of course, David says it may not go off. I guess I should have put it away where it would be safe but I always felt what's the use of having those kind of things if you don't leave them out where you can see them and enjoy them?”

Ms. Magritte licked her lips. “I think you should sit down and have a cup of coffee. Then after your man calls the police maybe I should call Girardin. Girardin is my husband, Ms. Ling, I'm sure you remember him?”

David made the call. He wanted to relate things crisply, not wasting words. Unfortunately the officer kept interrupting him, asking him about things before he'd gotten to them and then making him go back to explain. But he had been through this kind of thing before; people who did not know how to take a briefing. “No sir, I don't know when it got there … yes sir, a pressure trigger … yes sir, I've seen them before, in the war in South Africa … no sir, I'm not a citizen, I work for Ms. Ling … no sir, I've never seen one like it … the trigger, just the trigger, I've never seen liquid explosive … I don't know, it could be nitroglycerine for all I know, it looks transparent … nitroglycerine … no sir, I didn't say it was that. Nitroglycerine is something people used to use, like dynamite, a hundred years ago. It could be anything, I don't know … I was a chemist before the war … no sir, I don't know, I was just making the point that I do not recognize it, you see? I do not think it is nitroglycerine … no, I did not touch it, it would probably explode … yes sir, everybody is out … we will be waiting outside … yes sir, the watertight doors are shut. Goodbye—what?… David, David Dai … D, A, I … the records might be under Jean David Dai, that is my whole name … yes sir, that's right, Mayla Ling … yes, French … yes sir … thank you sir … good-bye.

David took back the cat and they thanked Ms. Magritte and went outside, standing together. They watched the door and looked up the street at the direction the police would come. The cat clung, curious and frightened. David's hand hurt where Meph had scratched him. He realized he was tapping nervously on his hip and made himself stop.

“This is crazy,” Tim said to no one in particular. He kept shaking his head, as if this were some sort of amazing entertainment.

The sound of sirens set David's teeth on edge. It was a scream that bounced around stone tunnels and made it impossible to tell where the noise was coming from. It was unsafe under the artificial lights. Of course, lights were confusing for pilots in the old night-vision goggles the Prots used. Not like the new German goggles that compensated. He realized he was thinking they would use the lights to call in strikes. The first car rocked around the corner, a blue-and-white Julian patrol car. They turned the siren off but left the blue-and-white lights flashing and shifting across the walls and the street, glancing off the metal doors. Far off another screech was colliding with the walls and corners. Doors slammed, an officer pointed at them, he straightened up. He identified himself to the officer and said that he was the one who had called. The officer was black, one of ours, he thought. He told the young officer—whose eyes kept disappearing behind the polished visor of his cap when the light reflected off it—what he'd found and what they'd done (leaving out the part about the cat) and which doors they'd shut. While he was talking, a third and fourth car parked next to the first two, cutting off the back half of the street. He had to wait until they shut off their sirens to finish speaking. They left their lights on. It bothered his eyes. He wondered if he'd ever be able to stand the sun again.

The officer walked over to Mayla who was standing by the first car. He stopped, nodded respectfully. There were white officers and that seemed strange. In Africa he had worked with mostly black troops.

The cat squirmed. David relaxed and scratched his ears, but Meph laid them back and mewed, his eyes slitted against the flashing lights. A lower siren set Meph squalling, a skid pulled up, lights flashing blue and green. Men in combat beige overalls stepped out and began to pull out equipment. Explosives Unit.

He shifted his shoulders and then realized he had no rifle. An officer came up and told him to move back behind the cars, out of the way. Of course, here it didn't matter what color the officers were, this was not Afrique. People had begun to collect and a civilian crew pulled up and took out vid equipment. Mayla was talking to someone, her hands were in motion as she explained something. From where he stood her eyes were hidden by the shadow of her hair except when the light from the cars swept across her face. Then the blue light made her face perfectly white, and her eyes, hair and mouth were as black as water.

“Lieutenant,” someone said to his left and he turned but it was an officer talking to one of the men from the skid. Meph mewed and he realized he was squeezing too hard. Relax, he told himself. He was waiting for the explosion and he knew when it came he was going to start, he was wound up tight and there was nothing he could do except wait.

“Is this like the bomb on Esperance?”

“I think. Nobody's seen it yet. One of her staff described it,” the lieutenant said.