“It first showed when they met after work and she dressed differently.”
“After work? That’s impossible. People go back to the barracks and hit the sack.”
“They arranged to get off early a few hours and went to the canteen. And she put on a skirt instead of her worker’s slacks. Then he saw that although the rest of her was thin, she was big in the hips, and her rear stuck out. That broke the bubble. Also, she didn’t have breasts, and her legs were too muscular. Her neck was all right, but the back of it was getting thick, and the features of her face were too big for her head. She had nice eyes, but her nostrils…”
“They didn’t meet after he became a guard.”
“It happened while he was still a Monitor. And her voice, it was like a sheep bleating. So Jaspers decided she was an idiot.” Daphne was incensed, as if Gary had to answer for the character’s behavior.
“What Jaspers? What are you talking about, woman?” Gary looked at her in amazement. “Cedar. The guy’s name is Cedar.”
Daphne turned, confused.
“Better watch the road,” he said. “There’s fog up ahead. And on the left, a new blot.”
She steered away from the attraction of the black smear.
“Jaspers,” he went on, “is a common criminal. Pathologically aggressive. He permanently crippled his barracks mate, Crooks. Broke his shins. Out of envy for his rank of Monitor, they decided. Jaspers is rotting in some penal division of the factory. Cedar was the one who became a guard.”
“And Heather, what will happen to her?” Daphne felt close to the heroine. Curiously, they had similar builds, similar problems with their builds.
“There’s been no Heather yet.”
“She works on the assembly line.”
“It’s Cynthia who works on the assembly line. She’s tall, graceful, has thick, curly hair. You have to like Cynthia.” He spoke with grim satisfaction. “Cedar is trying to figure out a way to make her Secretary of the barracks, then a guard. I don’t think he has a chance with her. Anyway she’s moving to Lauhl soon.”
99
Zef’s next note:
Playing with the numbers. Let’s take the Significant Names. There are, in this order, 144, 1,728, 20,736, and 248,832, and they come in groups of 9, 27, 81, and 243. Too much, right? You see no pattern, not at first.
But all you need is a handheld calculator.
The number of Names = 144 × 12(n - 1), where n is the degree of the world’s nestedness.
Behind this relation may lie something fundamental. A pity I can’t talk to Dave.
Zef’s notes, Gavein realized, contained an element of theater. The young man liked to telescope the account of his reasoning, give his conclusions abruptly, then hold forth on them like a philosopher.
100
That morning, Gavein demanded that Dr. Nott operate on Ra Mahleiné immediately.
“Your wife has only a few days to live.”
“She can rise from her chair, her hair has stopped falling out, and she even has a tan.”
“It’s a blip on the screen of nature, Dave, a fluctuation. If you could look inside her”—Nott’s wattle wagged—” you’d find few organs free of metastases. It makes no sense, none, to operate.”
“But you haven’t looked inside her yourself,” he argued. “You haven’t opened her up.”
Nott was implacable. “I’ve seen. Two days ago we did an MRI. One hundred and forty-four sections. Do you know how much that cost the government of Davabel?”
“Less than to arm one soldier.”
“A little less. But that’s beside the point.” She waved a hand. “In practically every section you can see the damned things growing…”
They stopped, because Ra Mahleiné entered. In a flannel blouse and sleek slacks, and with her tan, she was in good form, not looking like a woman terminally ill. True, she walked slowly and tried not to bend, so it wouldn’t get dark before her eyes.
“You see, Dave,” Dr. Nott whispered.
Ra Mahleiné said, “Some official type has come with the supply van. He claims to be the attorney general. Do you want to talk to him?”
“It’s Fernandez,” said Dr. Nott. “He’s conducting an investigation into the matter of those guardsmen.”
Is an epidemic of death in Davabel necessary, Gavein wondered, for Ra Mahleiné to live? To preserve some kind of balance in nature, has one fluctuation given rise to an equal but opposite fluctuation…? If so, she has every right to live. I don’t regret the thousands—they died natural deaths, didn’t they, fulfilling a condition of nature, however unusual. Davabel murdered Ra Mahleiné on its ship, so let it now redeem her life.
He chuckled. “The attorney general himself asks if I will see him? Being Death has its advantages.”
Fernandez was a fairly young man, with a large, heavy head that dipped forward. He looked at you from under his brows with the mournful gaze of an ox. The wide skull showed a glistening bald spot framed with short dark hair combed back. His thick features were accented by a closely trimmed mustache. In greeting, he held out a large, sweaty hand.
Gavein shook his hand, discreetly wiped his hand on his pants, and nodded for everyone to sit, but Fernandez remained standing. He had an unpleasant way of speaking, positioning himself behind you and observing you over your shoulder. Gavein supposed this was out of professional habit.
“You can guess why I came…,” Fernandez began, shifting the burden of the conversation to him, the other person, also a tactic of the trade. He spoke quietly and clearly, perhaps because his words were off the record.
“You tell me,” returned Gavein. He hated these police ploys. Let the man go to a little trouble.
Fernandez hesitated. “All right. It concerns the murder of the residents of this house. That is…” From a transparent attaché case he took out one of the documents. “Edda Eisler, R, the owner; Myrna Patricks, R; Anabel de Grouvert, B; Fatima and Massmoudieh Hougassian, no category; and Brenda Wilcox, also no category.”
“And?” Gavein gave him a searching look.
“Our investigation is also looking into the death of Dr. Yullius Saalstein, B, an employee of the DS,” the attorney read. “But you can see for yourself.” He handed Gavein the document. Where Fernandez had touched the attaché case, it was wet and slippery, like the skin of a carp. He held the case in a different place, but the sides bent and the zipper stuck. He put it on the sofa and pulled out one of the pages. It was a list of names of the Guard’s brigade: Sergeant Gavril Kurys, B; Corporal Hans Jura, R; and privates Benter Crain, G; Manuelo Bobrov, G; Frank Kratz, R; Eberhardt Ziaia, G; Constantine Dell, R. Someone was missing.
“In that brigade there was another man, short, pudgy… They called him Olsen.”
“You’re sure that a person of that name was in the brigade?”
“I’m sure.”
“In the Guard there is only one man with that name, Private Vandy Olsen, distinguished with a medal for saving a burning armed transporter and its badly injured crew. We have reason to believe that he didn’t take part in the massacre.”
“But he belongs to the brigade?”
“Yes.”
“All you need to do is check Kurys’s morning report.”
“It wasn’t made. They left without it.”
“That’s a breach.”
“You are right. But we cannot place the dead under arrest.”
“And the statements of the accused?”
“There are no statements. The men all burned before they could give a deposition. Kurys survived, true, but has not regained consciousness. He’s in a neurological clinic now. His injuries are serious and probably permanent.”