He was aware of Sandwell watching him patiently. 'You came here to see me bleed?'
he ventured.
'I came to give you a chance.' Sandwell handed him a business card. It bore the name Montgomery Shoat. There was no title or address. 'Call this man. He has work for you.'
'What kind of work?'
'Mr Shoat can tell you himself. The important thing is that it will take you deeper than the reach of any law. There are zones where extradition doesn't exist. They won't be able to touch you, down that far. But you need to act immediately.'
'You work for him?' Ike asked. Slow this thing down, he was telling himself. Find its footprints, backtrack a bit, get some origin. Sandwell gave nothing.
'I was asked to find someone with certain qualifications. It was pure luck to find you in such delicate straits.' That was information of a kind. It told him that Sandwell and Shoat were up to something illicit or oblique, or maybe just unhealthy, but something that needed the anonymity of a Sunday morning for its introduction.
'You've kept this from Branch,' Ike said. He didn't like that. It wasn't an issue of having Branch's permission, but of a promise. Running away would seal the Army out of his life forever.
Sandwell was unapologetic. 'You need to be careful,' he said. 'If you decide to do this, they'll mount a search for you. And the first people they'll interrogate are the ones closest to you. My advice: Don't compromise them. Don't call Branch. He's got enough problems.'
'I should just disappear?'
Sandwell smiled. 'You never really existed anyway,' he said.
There is nothing more powerful than this attraction toward an abyss.
– JULES VERNE, Journey to the Center of the Earth
7
THE MISSION
Manhattan
Ali entered in sandals and a sundress, as if they were a magic spell to hold back the winter. The guard ticked her name off a list and complained she was early and without her party, but passed her through the station. He gave some rapid-fire directions. Then she was alone, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to herself.
It was like being the last person on earth. Ali paused by a small Picasso. A vast Bierstadt Yellowstone. Then she came to a banner for the main exhibit declaring THE HARVEST OF HELL. The subtitle read 'Twice Reaped Art.' Devoted to artifacts of the underworld, most of the exhibit's objects had been brought back to the surface by GIs and miners. All but a few had been stolen from humans and brought into the subplanet to begin with, thus 'twice reaped.'
Ali had come well ahead of her engagement with January, in part to enjoy the building, but mostly to see for herself what Homo hadalis was capable of. Or, in this case, what he was not capable of. The show's gist was this: H. hadalis was a man-sized packrat. The creatures of the subplanet had been plundering human inventions for eons. From ancient pottery to plastic Coke bottles, from voodoo fetishes to Han Dynasty ceramic tigers, to an Archimedean-type water screw, to a sculpture by Michelangelo long thought destroyed.
Among the artifacts made by humans were several made from them. She came to the notorious 'Beachball' made of different-colored human skins. No one knew its purpose, but the sac – once inflated, now fossilized as a perfect sphere – was especially offensive to people because it so coldly exploited the races as mere fabric.
By far the most intriguing artifact was a chunk of rock that had been pried from some subterranean wall. It was inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphics that verged on calligraphy. Obviously, because it was included in this 'twice reaped' display, the curators had judged it to be human graffiti that had been taken down into the abyss. But as Ali stood pondering the slab of rock, she wondered. It did not look like any writing she had ever seen.
A voice found her. 'There you are, child.'
'Rebecca?' she said, and turned.
The woman facing her was like a stranger. January had always been invincible, an Amazon with that ample embrace and taut black skin. This person looked deflated, suddenly old. With one hand locked upon her cane, the senator could only open one arm to her. Ali swiftly bent to hug her, and felt the ribs in her back.
'Oh, child,' January whispered happily, and Ali laid her cheek against the hair cropped short and gone white. She breathed in the smell of her.
'The guards told us you've been here an hour,' January said, then spoke to a tall man who had trailed behind her. 'Isn't it what I predicted, Thomas? Always charging out ahead of the cavalry, ever since she was a child. It's not for nothing they called her Mustang Ali. She was a legend in Kerr County. And you see how beautiful she is?'
'Rebecca,' Ali rebuked her. January was the most modest woman on earth, yet the
worst braggart. Childless herself, she had adopted several orphans over the years, and they had all learned to endure these explosions of pride.
'Oblivious, I'm telling you,' January went on. 'Never looked in a mirror. And when she entered the convent, it was a dark day. Strong Texas boys, she had them weeping like widows under a Goliad moon.' And January, too, Ali recalled of that day. She had wept while she drove, apologizing again and again for not understanding Ali's calling. The truth was that Ali no longer understood it herself.
Thomas stayed out of it. For the moment, this was the reunion of two women, and he kept himself incidental. Ali acquired him with a single glance. He was a tall, rangy man in his late sixties, with a scholar's eyes and yet a hard-beaten frame. He was unfamiliar to Ali, and though he was not wearing a collar, she knew he was a Jesuit: she had a sense for them. Perhaps it was their shared oddity.
'You must forgive me, Ali,' January said. 'I told you this would be a private meeting. But I've brought some friends. Of necessity.'
Now Ali saw two more people circulating through the far end of the exhibit, a slight blind man attended by a large younger man. Several more elderly people entered a far door.
'Blame me, this was my doing.' Thomas offered his hand. Apparently, Ali's reunion was at an end. She had thought the entire day belonged to her and January, but there was business looming. 'I've wanted to meet you, more than you know. Especially now, before you started out for the Arabian sands.'
'Your sabbatical,' the senator said. 'I didn't think you'd mind my telling.'
'Saudi Arabia,' Thomas added. 'Not the most comfortable place for a young woman these days. The sharia is in full enforcement since the fundamentalists took over and slaughtered the royal family. I don't envy you, a full year draped in abaya.'