"NOTICE: YOUR BILL IS OVERDUE. SERVICE TO THIS UNIT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED, PENDING PAYMENT. TO RESTORE SERVICE, CONTACT YOUR SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE AT "1-2-3-4." CALLS TO THIS NUMBER ONLY WILL BE PERMITTED PENDING REINSTATEMENT OF CREDIT. THANK YOU."
Denine snorted. "Why not leave it? We're going to be clearing out of here anyway."
Payne scratched his stomach. "I'd like to talk to this Mardi, if I can reach her." He hesitated over the numbered buttons, then pressed the first four digits. The screen flickered, and the words: "PLEASE WAIT" appeared, with tinny music and a skyline view of New Phoenix. Payne tapped his foot impatiently. Finally, "WAIT" was replaced by an attractive blonde.
"Hello," she said melodiously. "I'm Sandy, for New Phoenix ComServ. Thank you for calling."
"Hello," Payne said. "I'd like to find out—"
The woman continued without interruption. "If you are calling to pay a bill, please say, 'Payment.' If you are calling to inquire about a bill, please say, 'Inquiry.' If you are calling for another reason, please say, 'Other.' Please speak clearly. Thank you."
"Inquiry," Payne said in irritation.
There was a blink, and the screen split down the middle. The same woman, on the left side, spoke again. "Thank you. Your outstanding bill is now being listed on the right-hand side of your screen. If you wish me to read it aloud, please say, 'Read.'"
Payne read the bill silently. It amounted to two months' local service charges, a few long distance calls, and a maintenance fee for an unused interactive fiction subscription. "You going to pay it?" Denine grunted, not approvingly.
"It's the only way I know to get access to her messages and records," Payne said.
"Pay."
"Mmph. Who's this for? Mozy's family, who couldn't care less—or your story? She's dead. Why don't you let it rest?" There was an edge to her voice.
Payne glanced at her uneasily, wishing he could answer her anxiety. "I want to learn whatever I can," he said finally, knowing it was inadequate.
The telephone woman became animated again. "If you wish to settle your account at this time, please say, 'Pay.' If you wish more information, please say—"
"Pay,"
Payne snapped.
The screen blinked. "Do you wish full reinstatement of service? For full reinstatement, you must pay the next month's service charge in advance. If you wish to do this, please say—"
"No,"
Payne growled.
"Thank you. A representative will be with you in a moment. It's been a pleasure serving you."
Payne swore as another "WAIT" message appeared. Finally a living person came on the screen, and Payne was able to explain his wishes. There was some haggling, and finally he agreed to pay the outstanding bill plus an additional two weeks' service. A chime sounded as "Service Restored" appeared on the screen.
"You going to get reimbursed for that?" Denine asked, from the couch where she'd gone to sit.
"Maybe. You have to be willing to spend a little, in this business."
"It's business, then."
"Yah. Partly," he said, wondering why he felt guilty. He pressed for a recall of phone messages. There were several from Mozy's mother, his and Denine's of several weeks ago, plus two from a young woman, whom he assumed was Mardi. He cued for Mozy's phone list, and quickly found Mardi's number. He jotted it down, then called it.
A middle-aged woman answered. "Hello?"
"May I speak to Mardi, please?"
The woman went away, and a younger woman appeared—the same face Payne had seen in the messages. He introduced himself, and Denine—motioning her back to the phone—and explained what they were doing. "You've heard what happened?" Mardi nodded. "We're at her apartment now. We found a note you left her. Well. We're trying to sort out what happened at the end, you know. Your note said you were taking care of Mozy's gerbils for her?"
"That's right," Mardi said. "But she didn't call me. It was a friend of hers—I forget his name—"
"Hoshi?" Payne said.
"That was it."
"Hoshi Aronson?"
"I don't know. Does it matter? He called me up and asked me to take care of them."
"I see," Payne said. "You still have the gerbils, then?"
"Uh-huh. Do you want them back?"
"No, perhaps you should keep them—if you don't mind." Payne glanced at Dee, who shrugged.
"Sure," Mardi said. She paused, then said suddenly, "I just figured that Mozy had gone home, you know, to her parents, or something. I never thought—" Her voice caught.
"I understand," said Payne. "Did Mozy ever mention this Hoshi person to you?"
"Once or twice maybe. Someone she worked with." Mardi looked uncomfortable. She was staring at him. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"
"Possibly—on television. I work as a newscoper."
Mardi's eyes widened. "Television! Are you doing a story about Mozy?"
Payne explained that his interests were both professional and personal. "Could you tell us . . . what was going on with her in her life, with her and you, for instance?"
"Her and me?" Mardi stared at him oddly, and for a moment, she looked as though she might erupt in tears. Instead, suddenly, she started talking—about time spent with Mozy as a classmate, about Mozy's abruptly leaving school, leaving
her
, saying she was going to work full time, and then vanishing without so much as a phone call. And finally, weeks later, Mardi's mother telling her she had seen Mozy's obituary in the paper.
By the time it was over, Mardi was crying, and Denine was trying to comfort her. Before ending the conversation, they agreed to meet in the next few days.
Afterward, Payne and Denine sat a while, looking at the apartment mess around them, looking at each other, and then Payne holding Dee as she shuddered, letting go of accumulated tension and grief. Finally she straightened and wiped away her tears. "Let's get this shit finished," she said, turning away to the half-filled boxes.
Payne knelt beside her, helping. For a time, they worked in silence. Then he cleared his throat. "If you can stand it, there's someone else I'd like you to meet."
Denine rested her head on her forearms for a moment. Then she sighed, looked up with reddened eyes, and said, "Who's that?"
"A man named Bill Jonders. No, forget I said that—he's a source. His name's Phoenix. Just Phoenix."
* * *
Darkness was creeping in through the motel room windows, but no one had gotten up to turn on a light. The coffee pot was empty. Jonders was only peripherally aware of these facts, as he was of the acid indigestion in his stomach, as he slumped in his chair, wondering where to go from here.
Payne was flipping through his notes thoughtfully. His girl friend Denine was sitting on the nearer of the two beds, her knees drawn up under her chin. Oddly enough, Jonders liked her. She was depressed and angry, but he couldn't blame her for that. She looked as though she'd heard enough.
Heard enough? He hadn't intended to tell her anything.
Hours from now, he knew, he would deeply question the decision he had made here tonight. But it was done, now—and one more person knew the truth about Mozy. And now Hoshi.
"If something happened to her, what right do you have to keep it secret? What right! What is this bullshit about coronary seizure?" She had turned into a tiger before his eyes, the disbelief building to the strain point, as he might have guessed it would—and finally the break.
"I—" he was avoiding Payne's eyes "—there's only so much I'm at liberty to say."
Denine's eyes smoldered with controlled anger. "Not even your name, huh?" she said sarcastically.
"My name's Jonders."
Denine seemed not to hear. "She was my best friend once," she whispered.
Whisper in return: "I know."
Denine's voice was a barely contained outcry. "The girl has died, for god's sake!"
Maybe he had known he would change his mind; maybe it never really needed changing, but moments later, when Payne stunned him with a direct question about Hoshi Aronson's involvement—he'd never mentioned Hoshi to Payne—he turned and asked Denine for a pledge of silence—
"What's hard for me to believe," Payne said—and Jonders raised his eyes, losing the train of thought—"is that Mozy would have just walked into something like this brain-scan—as dangerous as it was—without a stronger motive than a crazy infatuation."
Denine spoke, pulling her hair back in a ponytail, voice heavy. "I can believe it of her. You don't know how stubborn she could be. If Mozy thought she was in love with someone, and doing this would get her what she wanted—" Denine shrugged.
"I don't think she understood how experimental it was," Jonders said. "We never talked to her about it, but it wasn't for nothing that we hadn't tried it on a human subject. There are too many variables that we don't know how to control."
Payne rapped his pen impatiently. "But hadn't you been doing linkup procedures all along?"
"Sure—but that's a lot less intrusive. We'd explored various permutations of the link, we'd been learning details and principles. But the full scanning programs were—are—still in an early stage of development." Jonders was kneading his right hand into a fist. "Hoshi knew that. That's what made it so astonishing."
"He was in love with Mozy," Denine said. "Right?"
"Apparently so. He kept it well hidden."
"But people sometimes do crazy things when they're in love." Denine shook her head, wiping back tears. "Jesus. All those years she was dying for someone to fall in love with her. Then this. I'll bet she never even knew the guy had fallen for her." Blowing her nose, she slid down from the bed and padded into the bathroom.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Payne rustled open a file folder and extracted a piece of paper. "Have you seen this?"
Jonders squinted in the dim light, reading. It was an excerpt from Hoshi's diary. "Where did you get this?" he asked in astonishment.
"Police source. You knew that he was missing, I assume."
"I'd heard. But not about this." Jonders reread Hoshi's words.
Eye for an eye, and death for a death.
"He took it very hard, I knew. But this—"
"What do you think he'll do?"
"I'm afraid to guess."
Payne nodded and walked to the window, looking out at the New Phoenix skyline. The motel was located on the outskirts of the city, in the hills. Stars were just beginning to appear in numbers. "Where are they?" he said softly.
"Who?"
"The aliens."
Jonders swallowed with difficulty, but remained silent. Payne turned, his gaze questioning. "I told you," Jonders said, "there's nothing I can tell you."
Payne narrowed his gaze, and Jonders glanced pointedly toward the bathroom door. Even if he were willing to discuss the aliens with Payne, he would not do so in Denine's presence. As it was, he had undoubtedly overstepped the bounds of good sense, perhaps even by coming to this motel room—no matter his precautions to avoid being detected. And rightly or wrongly, he had accepted Denine's pledge of silence regarding Mozy.
But he would not talk of the aliens. That was getting too close to the fire.
Payne seemed to accept the limitation. He looked out the window again. "Where is
Father Sky
now?"
"Serpens Cauda—tail of the serpent. It's in the Milky Way. You can't see it now, it's a summer constellation," Jonders replied.
Payne nodded, and gazed up into the sky, seemingly entranced by whatever he envisioned out there in the heavens. When Denine emerged from the bathroom, she peered at the two of them in the darkness, reached for a light switch, then without touching it, returned to the bed where she'd been sitting. There she took up a silent vigil in the gloom, as though she had already divorced herself from whatever unpleasantness remained to be spoken.
Since leaving the road, he has had a harder time of it finding his way—but no matter. He will manage. What must be done will be done. Guilt will be cleansed.
Desert floor is hard and dry, sun bright and high over the mountains, though not too hot, really. Eyes are going bad again; cacti and shrubs dancing like dust devils, shifting positions when his attention wanders. Could have gotten the eyes fixed, probably some small adjustment, they were expecting him at the hospital; but for what? If he is to do what needs doing, then what need of vision? Make it a little easier, maybe; but he's not here to have it easy.
Some distance ahead, a blurry line of dust. Squinting and readjusting, he can see it clearly for an instant before it vanishes in a haze, the haze that mostly defines his view of the world. It's a vehicle, rumbling down one of the old county roads. Squints again, the vehicle is turning off. Good, he thinks. No place for others where he's going. Stay parallel to the road. One step follows another. Ground hard, legs a little unsteady. Feet and ankles aching. Follow the direction of the road.
So desolate, it's hard to keep one's bearings; but don't complain of loneliness, that's what we're here for. Thirst, though, is another matter. The water bottles are empty now, and the throat is parched, the body hungering for moisture. After he's there it won't matter, but he must get there before thirst brings him down.
Must get there before thirst brings him down.
Blinks, trying to shake the muzzy fog that envelops his mind more and more often. Keep the focus, keep the direction. One foot in front of the other.
* * *
He's left the basin for some low hills by the time the sun disappears in a blazing finale behind the mountains. Not clear if he'll be able to keep traveling at night, but he's determined to reach higher ground before dark. If his bearings are correct, this should be the last set of hills.
He scrambles up a brambly ledge, and his foot slips, banging his right knee down on a rock. Pain slams up into his brain, and for a time he can only sit gasping, clutching his shin, as the throbbing slowly subsides. When at last he can stand on it, not without pain but at least without agony, he hobbles on upward to the crest of the rise, and follows the line of the ridge for a while. The sky is a deepening shadow, probably stars coming out, only he can't see them, just about everything is a blur now. Blink, blink. The ground under his feet comes back into focus.