“Haven’t seen you at our public forums before,” said the man brightly.
He continued to grin up at Ralph.
“Uh . . . no.” He squeezed his voice out into the air. “I’m new in L.A.”
“Well, we’re always glad to see some fresh faces around here.” The smile evaporated, and the man sighed. “Sometimes you get a little, you know, wax museum feeling around here. Know what I mean? Same old people all the time.” He fell silent for a moment, then beamed at Ralph again. “Just curious?”
“Huh?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
“Did you come just because you’re curious, or are you, you know, into political stuff?”
“Well—”
“I mean, it’s all right,” said the short man. “Lots of people start out just curious, and then become interested, I guess you’d say.” He clapped Ralph with enthusiasm on the arm. “So stick around. Peter is really a great speaker. And he knows this Ximento matter from the inside out—he was in Brazil a couple of years ago for a conference.” He paused, looking as if he were waiting for something to be said.
“Sounds interesting, all right,” said Ralph.
“And we’ve got a good pamphlet on the subject, too. Just a dollar. Sometimes it’s hard keeping the printed stuff up to date, the way things go so fast. Sometimes a whole issue’s forgotten before you have anything to show people about it. But we were already researching this before the Front started moving north, so we just had to kind of rush it into print, is all. It’s over there on the table. I’d buy you a copy, so you’d have it to read, but that’s sort of frowned upon. It’s supposed to be the sign of a . . . well, serious person to buy their own literature.”
“I’ll have to get a copy.”
“Yeah, do that. You’ll enjoy it.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist.
“Hey, almost time for the forum to start. I’d better go make sure we got enough chairs out. See you in the meeting hall in a few minutes.” The short man turned and hurried away.
He didn’t recognize me, thought Ralph as he wandered over to one of the book-covered tables. He didn’t make the connection. The room was filled with people who had entered from the stairwell while they had been talking. The crowd was clustered into groups conversing, or individuals looking over the bookshelves by themselves.
Ralph found the knot gone and air pouring into his lungs again. At least he had penetrated this far safely—although nothing had been made any less mysterious yet. From the table, he picked up a thin pamphlet with the word “Ximento” in the title. Not very much for a dollar, decided Ralph, putting it back down and heading for the entrance of the meeting hall.
“Hey, buddy. Give me a hand with this, will you?”
He stopped and turned towards the voice. A door he hadn’t noticed before stood open, revealing a large kitchen. A huge, ancient stove, like a squared-off battle ship, and deep iron sinks stood beneath the bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The short man was pointing to a massive cylindrical coffee urn standing on a counter by the door.
“What’s the matter?” said Ralph.
“Help me carry this thing into the other room.” The short man grabbed one of the urn’s handles. “It’s for refreshments after the forum.”
Ralph shrugged and stepped into the kitchen. He grunted as he lifted up on the urn’s other handle. “Maybe you should’ve moved it first,” he said, “and then—” He stopped, sensing the door suddenly closing, shutting off the sounds of the crowd in the bookstore. Letting go of the handle, he stepped backward away from the short man. A dull noise he barely heard and a wave of pain swept over him from the back of his head.
“Hell,” somebody was saying as Ralph staggered into the counter. “Not like that—you can break somebody’s skull like that!” He couldn’t lift his head, and saw only the dark and swimming floor as he groped his way out.
A pair of boots—they looked like old battered military issue—stepped into his vision.
“Hey, get him!” another voice said. How many were there in the room?
“Don’t let—”
“For Pete’s sake.” Somebody grabbed Ralph, pinning his arms to his sides. “Give me that thing.”
“Careful.”
The room tilted on its side, darkening from red to black.
“Hey. Come on. Wake up.” The voice sounded familiar somehow.
Ralph started to raise his eyelids but the first narrow crack of light bounced off the back of his skull like a mallet. He clamped his eyes shut again, his head throbbing with his pulse. “Go away,” he said.
“No, no. Come on,” coaxed the voice.
It was no use. Consciousness welled up in him with each imploding wave of his blood. Where had he heard that voice before? He gripped the sides of the cot he was lying upon and ran his tongue over his dry lips.
“What’d he hit me so hard for?” He groaned.
“We’re sorry about that.” A different voice, a woman’s. “We didn’t know....”
He grunted, braced himself and opened his eyes wide. Yellowish electric light clamored like a siren in his skull, then faded into a dull headache.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Ralph lifted his head and turned it to one side. He found himself looking into Stimmitz’s face. For a few seconds their eyes met, then Ralph laid his head back upon the cot. “Go to hell,” he said. A cold and bitter current seemed to pour out of his chest like a tide as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Hey, man, it’s not what you think—”
“I don’t care,” said Ralph in disgust. “I don’t care how you did it, or why you made me think you got torn to pieces on the dreamfield. I don’t care about any of that stuff. Real cute trick, all right.” He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up, pulling his head down between his shoulders to ease the clanging in his head. Past Stimmitz he could see two or three other people in the room. “Do you mind if I leave now?” he said, the corner of his mouth bending into a snarl. The bitterness had become clearer, refined into a sense of betrayal and anger at having been fooled for so long, whatever the obscure motivation for the fraud had been. No more, he thought. I’ve had enough.
“You are Ralph Metric, aren’t you?”
“Come on.” He kneaded his forehead without looking up. “Cut it out, Stimmitz. I don’t know what all of this has been for, what the point was of making me think you were dead and everything, but enough’s enough.”
A few seconds of silence passed. “I’m not Michael Stimmitz,” the other said quietly. “I’m his brother Spencer.”
“Huh?” Ralph jerked erect. “What? His brother! You’re kidding.” He looked into the other’s face. The differences became obvious—a thinner nose, closer set eyes than the Stimmitz he had known out at the Opwatch base. “I . . . he never said he had a brother.”
Spencer Stimmitz shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think you needed to know.”
“I don’t get it.” Ralph’s anger had drained away, leaving his former confusion. “Why’d you hit me over the head?”
“We didn’t know who you were.” Just behind Spencer was the short man. “We thought you might be one of Muehlenfeldt’s agents.”
“Me? I thought you were.” Ralph looked past Spencer at the others crowding the small room. The short man was there, looking more grim-faced than he had in the Progressive Bookstore. Towering over him was the man whose battered Army boots he had glimpsed in the kitchen, the one, he guessed who had knocked him out. There was something subtly wrong about the wide-staring eyes and the hands fidgeting inside the pants pockets. I’m lucky my skull’s still in one piece, thought Ralph. If it is.