“Don’t scarp me. Answer me or I’ll put a bullet in your head.” But Pol was already regretting the blow. There were things he wanted from this scag, things he wanted desperately. He waited while Mestido stuffed sheets against his face, writhing with pain.
“Be good,” Pol said, as much to calm himself as Mestido. “Be good.”
“I will. I’ll tell you anything.” Mestido’s tone was groveling, but his eyes were hateful.
Pol was glad. He’d been starting to doubt this was the same man who defied the state and risked his life painting graffiti. “You’ve met aliens?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been to their planet?”
“Many times.”
“Could you get there again?”
Mestido’s brow clouded. His skin appeared dark brown over the bloodied white of the sheet stuffed against his face. He seemed to weigh his answer. “Maybe.” He withdrew the sheet and smiled, his teeth stained with blood. “You don’t believe me.”
“Maybe I do.”
Pol took a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped at his temples, spit on the cloth, wiped again. Mestido, who could not see him very well behind the light of the torch, watched warily.
Pol turned the torch onto his own face, lighting it from below. His other hand trained the gun quite deliberately at Mestido’s stomach.
“Am… Am I an alien?” Pol asked, voice thick.
Mestido’s eyes widened. He looked at Pol for a long time, examining his face very carefully.
“I’ve done surgery on the eyes. They used to be rounder. And if I don’t remove it I have thick hair above the eyes and on my cheeks and chin.”
There ought to be stubble by now. When was the last time he’d shaved? Late afternoon? This morning? He couldn’t even remember. Scarp, he’d gone out to a nightclub and he couldn’t remember when he last shaved.
Mestido leaned forward, his face slack with astonishment. “You are an alien! I knew it! I told them!”
Pol felt elation and terror. In his hand, the gun wavered and pointed off toward nothing. If Mestido had been sharp, he could have taken him. But he was smiling crazily.
“How do you know?” Pol asked, when he could trust his voice.
“I can tell.”
“How do you know?” Pol screamed.
“Well… look at you!” Mestido’s eyes wandered up and down. “Turn on the light.”
“Shut up,” Pol said, but he rose to his feet. There was no window in the bedroom, so he shut the door and turned on the light. There was more blood than he’d thought; the bed was gaudy with it, and Mestido looked like a walking infirmary. But his expression was devious. His wide-set eyes danced crazily.
“I told them you were here, but they didn’t believe me. Now they’ll see!”
“Have you ever seen anyone who looked like me?”
Mestido was grinning, his head going from side to side.
“Answer me! Hair on the face, fair-skinned, blue-eyed. Oh—and my hair, my hair is actually dark, like yours.”
“Certainly.”
“You’ve seen others like me?”
Mestido put a finger alongside his bloodied mouth. “When they come,” he said, hushing now as though this were a secret, “they can take any form.”
“What? But what do they look like on their planet? You said you’ve been there.”
“Some of them maybe look like that.”
Pol felt the urge to throttle the Bronze. “Do you know any of their language?”
“No.”
“Not even one word?”
“No. I—”
“What about their planet? What’s it like? Do you know the names of any of their cities?”
“I’ve been telling them. This whole world will be destroyed. Except for me. They promised I’d be safe.”
Pol pinched his eyes shut with his fingers. Rage was rising inside of him that was so foul and so overpowering that his body shook with the force of it. “You’re a scarping liar,” he said blackly.
What was on his face must have been terrifying, for Mestido scrambled farther back on the bed, yelping.
“You’re a scarping liar!”
“No!”
He had been fooled. This Bronze knew nothing, knew no real aliens. He was just a raving lunatic, another piece of shit with a damaged brain. A sob of rage and frustration broke from Pol, and before he knew it he was across the bed. He had Mestido’s neck in his hands, choking, choking him. There was a fury in him, a fury that had helped him kill the Silver months ago in Saradena. Lately it had been cowered by fear, but now it was back with terrible abandon. It fused his fingers into the shape of a garrote. He felt as though he could pop the worm’s head clean off his neck. Tomorrow didn’t exist. Yesterday didn’t exist. Only this moment, this revenge. Only his hands and this throat.
Mestido managed one word: “Green.”
Pol thought it was green anyway. His fingers released. Mestido coughed, wheezing for breath as if his esophagus had been crushed. It was a terrible sound. Pol could already see the skin darkening on his neck. He waited, breathing through his nose like an enraged bull.
“What?”
“Their planet… was green.”
Something inside Pol’s heart broke open. There was a sob low in his chest. Green. That was right, wasn’t it? This place was all gray: gray sky, gray stone, gray dust, gray bombs, battlefields of soil as icy and gray as the uniforms of the corpses that lay there. Even the plants were sickly pale. But he remembered green.
Mestido was struggling to sit up.
“Show me,” Pol said.
It was after dawn when they got to their destination. They’d caught an early-morning bus that carried Irons and low-level Bronzes to a construction project beyond the City line. From their drop-off point it was a mile walk.
To… nothing that Pol could see. They had come to a ravine, a V-shaped gorge that might have once been a river but was now only a dark sludge of a stream half-clogged with dirt and ash and other nameless pollutants. The sides of the ravines were overgrown with tenacious brambles. Mestido stopped at the edge of the ravine, arms folded.
“Where?” Pol licked his lips, took out his gun. There was nothing here, but maybe that was the point. The aliens would choose an isolated place, a place where no one would be around, wouldn’t they? “Show me.”
Mestido started down the sloping bank. Pol followed, moving carefully. The brambles were uniquely configured to latch on to the textured wool of his uniform.
They moved like this for perhaps fifteen minutes before Pol realized Mestido was doubling back, going in a circle. He stopped, freeing his arm and the gun from the vegetation with a jerk. “Stop!”
In front of him, Mestido hesitated, as though considering not stopping, but a glance over his shoulder showed him that the gun was still too close.
“Where the hell is it?”
“Here. Somewhere around here.” Mestido began walking forward again.
Pol wrenched himself forward quickly, the brambles tearing his clothes. He grabbed the Bronze’s arm. “I said stop!”
Mestido froze.
“What is this? What are we looking for?”
Mestido turned to look across the ravine. “I saw them land here. It was right here.”
Pol’s eyes narrowed, trying to read something, anything, on Mestido’s face. He didn’t look like he was lying, but he didn’t look sane, either.
“Tell me what happened.”
Mestido rolled his tongue around in his mouth. His throat was swollen where Pol had throttled him, puffing out until his head and neck looked like a ball. “I was looking for ore stone.” He kicked at the dirt. “You can sell it on the streets. One day I saw this ship—”
“A ship?”