She shook her head. “They don’t want me there. So I called you,”
“Next time use the phone.” I pushed the call button.
She stared at me, looking tiny and miserable and alone.
“I’m sorry.” I bent my head. “It’s just that when you call me I’m the last to know, in a place like that.”
She still stared at me. The cab came finally, and I was glad.
We sat together in the Koss Tefirah garden. I asked her, finally, “Why did you call me, anyway?” Hoping there was a good reason, afraid of what I was going to feel like if there wasn’t.
“I was unhappy.”
My hand tightened over the stone arm of the bench. “About what?”
She shivered like a plucked string. “Nothing.” Her own hands twisted, always moving.
“About what?”
She didn’t answer. (Nothing.)
“Damn it, Ineh! You can’t tell me ‘nothing’ forever! Either you trust me or you don’t and if you don’t I don’t know what the hell I’m here for!”
“I can’t. I can’t tell you. I’m afraid—”
“For you or for me?”
“I’m afraid!” She crushed her eyes shut, and her fists, and her mind.
I unlatched my data bracelet, let it fall into my hand. “Open your eyes. There’s something I want you to see; I want to show you something.”
Slowly her eyes opened, and her fists. She looked at me, tensing.
I held out my wrist. A band of scar tissue circled it, naked and alien. “See that?”
She nodded.
“A bond tag did that.” I turned away from her, pulled my jacket up and my shirt loose. The sun felt warm on my skin; I remembered the feel of another sort of fire on my back. ... I let her look at the scars. “That’s what it means to wear one.” I pulled my shirt down again, turned to face her. “I was shipped to the Colonies as contract labor. If it hadn’t been for the people who run the Center I’d still be there. I’ve been somebody’s slave, Ineh.”
She touched my wrist with cold fingers.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I must give a private performance.”
The words hung in the air between us like crystal beads. I felt the answer to the question complete its circle before I could even ask. The strangers I’d seen at the Haven, disappearing after the show, going on to something more—a private performance.
“It’s different than what you do in the show?”
“Different ... the same . . . more.” Her hands pressed her arms inside her long sleeves.
“When is this next ‘performance’? After the show?” It was dusk already.
“Yes.” Her fingers dug into the flesh of her arms. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to—”
“Then don’t go. Stay with me. We’ll protect you.”
“No, they’ll come for me. They’ll find me; nowhere is safe from them!”
“Ineh, that’s what they want you to think. It’s not true, not if you don’t want it to be.”
“It is! I see it in their minds.”
I broke off, not sure any more whether she was fooling herself, or I was. “What about the Corpses? We could go to them—” Even the word left a bad taste in my mouth.
“No!”
I could have argued it, but I didn’t. Suddenly I was remembering Polhemas, and why he’d come to the Center.
Ineh stiffened where she sat, looking past me. There was no one else anywhere near us. “They’re coming. They’ll find us together. I have to go—”
“There’s no one—”
“I feel them!” She stood up, and I knew that in another moment she’d disappear.
“Wait, where—? Where can I find you?”
“In Ringer’s End. Thirty-five—” She wavered, and was gone. I sat on the bench alone, waiting for whatever happened next. The stars were starting to show through, and a sliver of the lower moon. About five minutes later a middle-aged man and woman, upside gentry, came into the glade, walking slowly. They looked at me a little longer than they might have; but no longer than anyone dressed the way they were would look at someone dressed like me, in a park at dusk. They went on, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. Thinking thoughts I couldn’t hear. Were they the ones? Or were they just her fear showing; or just an excuse? I sat twitching until they’d passed, and then I went looking for a cab.
I got to Ringer’s End as fast as I could. For Oldcity it wasn’t a bad looking street: at least it was clean, and almost quiet. I could hear the sea. I found the building entrance, but no one answered when I buzzed. It was almost time for the Haven show; I couldn’t make myself stay there waiting, with no proof that she’d ever even been there. I left Ringer’s End and went to a weapon shop, where I got myself a stungun. Then I chased the hour across town to the Haven.
I went through the Haven’s doors again, hiking across infinity, not even noticing any more that I walked on thin air. Time mattered, not space—and time was shrinking in on me all the time. I sat down, leaning back away from the glissen mist, not wanting anything to dull my mind. My fingers beat seconds on the empty tabletop, out of rhythm with the gibbering background voices. I’d never noticed before how much like a dirge the music sounded.
At last the usual show began, and I held my breath until I saw Ineh coming out of her cloud of light. As soon as she was a solid reality I started, (Where were you? Where the hell did you go? What’s happening; tell me what to do!)
And in the frozen moment before she began, my waiting mind filled with an echo of numbers, a combination ... I saw that it unlocked the secret of the invisible walls and would let me pass through. (Why? Why?) But she didn’t answer, and. I couldn’t let myself wonder too much. There weren’t any answers now, only the soft whispering of her soul reaching out to me, the knowledge that in another hour someone might be using it for a private playground. The seconds crawled past me, space-time warped out of shape in this strange dreamland; her performance went on forever—and was over before I had time to realize it. The guests were on their feet, shuffling out, the room was darkening behind them.
I got up, stood trying not to look like I was waiting, until most of them were gone. The invisible wall was moving up on me, pressuring me to leave. ... I said the numbers, and the wall of darkness swallowed me up.
Beyond it there was nothing but a corridor—blank, gray, empty. I blinked, shaking off the feeling that I’d walked through a wet, open mouth. At the far end of the hall was a door. I walked toward it, still not quite believing that I’d come this far. I put my hands into my pockets, feeling the stungun cool and smooth in my palm. The door at the end of the hall didn’t have a knob or a plate. I pushed it, and it swung open. Beyond it was more darkness—an alley.
I turned, looking back over my shoulder. Behind me, the entrance I’d come through had become a solid wall. I had the feeling it wouldn’t let me back again. And there were no other doors; at least none that I could see. (Ineh!) I shouted her name with my mind, but there was no answer. This time I wasn’t expecting one. I’d been shown the door, and Ineh— Ineh…The door was still open. I went through it.
A heavy fist came down across my shoulders, clubbing me to my knees. Grease and grit skidded under my hands, scraping my palms, and then it was somebody’s foot in my side throwing me back against the wall. The hands on my jacket dragged me up, knocking me against the cold peeling surface until my brains rattled, pulling away and coming back to hit me again, everywhere, and I couldn’t seem to make any part of me work well enough to stop them. . . . Until the hands let go again at last and I slid down into the trash.
“Keep away from her, freak—” His foot in my ribs, underlining the word. “Or the next time they won’t find your body.” The foot came after me one last time.