400 Boys and 50 More (66 page)

As he stood staring up at the shelves of dark wood, gilded leather volumes standing arow, a voice like polished Florentine marble spoke out of the air behind him.

“Promoted to Sergeant? You’ve come up in the world since I last saw you.”

He turned slowly. “It would have been impossible to sink any lower without going under. Angelica.”

If he had expected her to rush into his arms, to smother him with kisses and the scent of her perfume, he would have been disappointed. But it had never been that way with them, and he was ready for the worst. She stood in the doorway, a jade fan slightly spread in one hand, the other outstretched. Her eyes told him nothing, not even when he straightened from kissing her soft brown fingers and risked clasping her hand firmly for a moment. He was the first to draw away.

“I apologize for my appearance,” he began.

“Not at all, you look rather dashing. It’s a change from your white frock, I’ll admit, but I’ve always loved the soldiers, you know.”

“I remember. Angelica—”

She waved away her name. “Don’t be rushed, Joseph. You’re not being followed, I trust?”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I were.”

“Then you’ll join me for lunch?”

Somehow he had not thought of food until that moment; he had gotten out of the habit. A memory of Angelica’s table, like a sumptuous dream, momentarily weakened him. He managed a smile but his reply was a rude gasp: “Lunch!”

“Come then.” She slipped her arm through his and led him down the hall toward the sound of silverware. He watched her in profile, her coffee and cream complexion blurred and illumined by the sunlight falling through the windows they passed, filtered by white curtains; deep Tibetan carpets muffled their footsteps. Her green-eyed Persian cats watched them pass, inscrutable; he had never trusted the animals, with their serpent eyes, but Angelica had them everywhere, all alike.

“You look well,” he said. “More beautiful than ever.”

“And to a man dying of thirst, hydrochloric acid must look inviting.”

Her tone, and the image, sobered him. He realized that he had been softening toward her, bending in a ridiculous direction, slipping into the role he had played in overturned times; the man she loved had died six months ago at the President’s hand. Stupid, stupid of him! Thank God Angelica did not lend herself readily for his support; he must stand on his own feet,now more than ever. He wanted to thank her, but there were no words to express his

feelings. He seated her at the long white table; her eyes when she thanked him for the courtesy were sharp and unsentimental. She understood his situation better than he himself. In that moment he no longer feared her; she was the last true friend he had on the planet.

He took the chair opposite her, and for several long minutes—while cold soup was served, wine poured—he was unable to meet her eyes. Any contact now would have been highly charged. What was said at this table would determine many things, among them his fate. He had never realized before what a focus of power she had become in San Désirée. He saw how inevitable it had been that he would come to her; it had taken six months, but in all that time he had felt the tugging.

“You expected me,” he said finally, and took a first sip of wine which dried his mouth and set his brain spinning above the conversation. He groped for a soup spoon, hardly remembering that he had just spoken.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “I hoped I would see you again. It’s good to know that you’ve managed to live out there. You have been on the outskirts, haven’t you?”

He nodded, his throat so soothed by the cream soup that he was reluctant to speak.

“I’ve thought of you often, wondered how you managed to survive. I see you’ve managed, barely.”

He felt ashamed, sitting there in the oversized uniform, stinking up her dining room, but there was no hiding the strain of the recent past. He felt his stomach turn over and come to life like an ancient engine. Nausea welled up, along with the taste of soup, and he realized too late the effect of the wine and rich food on his metabolism. She must have known what was happening.

“Excuse me,” he blurted, staggering to his feet.

“Nonsense, stay where you are. Leon!”

He waved at the air by his face. “The wine, I’m not used to this life. . . ”

But there was no need for further explanation, and in fact he would have been unable to elaborate. He collapsed across the table, suddenly shivering and dizzy, and the last thing he felt was a cold smacking kiss that nearly covered his face. He had fainted into his soup.

-4-

“I’m sorry I must turn you out so soon,” she said to him an hour later, when he was quite revived and the soup had been scrubbed from his uniform. “You might have been seen coming in, and if you do not leave presently I’m sure there will be some pointed questions asked. But don’t fear, Joseph, this time I’m not throwing you to the dogs.”

He swallowed the last of a cup of weak tea, ate one more soda cracker, and stood up, brushing the crumbs from his lap.

“I have much to tell you, Angelica.”

“Listen to me, Joseph, and don’t get yourself in a fit. All you need do is walk several blocks to the Regency Hotel, wait in the alley behind it, and I will send a car to pick you up immediately. You’ll be brought back here invisibly this time. Now all you have to tell me must wait. I can probably guess most of it.”

“I would not be surprised.”

“By the time you return, I’ll be properly prepared. I have some of your belongings, you know.”

“You have—”

“Calm, calm, and do as I say.” She brushed him away. “Leon will show you the door.”

“I can’t believe . . . you have . . . Angelica, you really . . . ?”

“Go, you baby, or I’ll have you thrown.”

Disbelief silenced him. He turned numbly away from her, remembered his manners, returned to give a formal farewell, and found that she had already gone away. Leon waited at his elbow, and Leon closed the door on him once he was outside. Joseph walked slowly, seeing nothing of his surroundings, surfacing from his thoughts occasionally to check his whereabouts. There had been some changes in the neighborhood, but not many; the houses were an amalgamation of colonial originals and modern townhouses. The greatest change in the estate community must have been its residents. There would be more developers waiting out the heat behind the drawn shades, and fewer of the old-money aristocrats and colonial hangers-on who had for reasons unknown chosen San Désirée as their home. It had always been possible to live like royalty here if your currency was printed elsewhere. But San Désirée meant nothing to him now, and he resented the intrusive musings that the city provoked. He wanted to know what Angelica had meant with her talk of his belongings. What could she have of his? What would have been worth saving, except for the attars?

How could she have acquired them? He tried to imagine her in the first hours of the coup, hurrying along their secret path to his house, risking everything she had to rescue the things that were most precious to him. What an amazing woman!

He stayed where she had sent him, skulking in an alley, until her silver limousine glided past and he could duck in.

The chauffeur made no comment on seeing him, and Joseph was thankful for the discretion. In minutes they had slipped into the garage adjoining Angelica’s house, and he was taken through the kitchen, then upstairs into the dark reaches of the manor, finally to a small bedroom where fresh clothes smelling of sachets were laid out on a luxurious bed. It was the bed that held his attention, more than the clothes. Six months since he had last felt a mattress beneath him. This thought was accompanied, inevitably, by the thought of Angelica. Another thing he had been without for half a year. Another thing? It was not things he missed, not possessions, but companionship.

There was a door on the far side of the room, slightly ajar, and beyond it the sound of rushing water. He went to the threshold and saw a bathtub, almost full. The water was cool to the touch; without delay he stripped and immersed himself.

Adrift, dreaming, he began to forget his perfumes, his plight, while the waters did their work. He felt himself dissolving.

A knock woke him. It was Leon with a bathrobe.

“Sir, Madame is ready for you. She asks me to inform you that there is some urgency.”

He dressed quickly. Leon was waiting for him in the hall, and he led Joseph to Angelica’s private salon.

“I hope you are ready for me, Joseph,” said Angelica. She sat in a high-backed chair; the window behind her faced the rear of his former home. He could almost see into his old room.

Sitting opposite her, he said, “I have no intention of wasting time, Angelica. I only came to tell you that I plan to leave Bamal as soon as possible, with or without your help. I think it would be difficult without it, but—”

She laughed merrily. “With my help it will be difficult; without it, impossible.” She covered her mouth lightly with several fingers, seeming apologetic. “I shouldn’t say that. You’ve surprised us many times, Joseph. Still, if you would accept my assistance—if, as you say, you came seeking it—I am prepared to offer what I can. This may not be much, but surely it is more than you have at the moment. You know I have friends outside Bamal.”

“It is the enemies within Bamal who worry me. How can I get on a plane without a passport?”

“Passports can be acquired. Plane tickets, and custom agents, can be bought. Of course, flights are unreliable; we can’t have you waiting in line two weeks, under the noses of the military. On the other hand, the only private jet in Bamal belongs to the President, and I can’t see you riding with him.”

“Buique,” he said. “I’d as soon ride with Dodo.”

Her eyes looked half-open, sleepy, as she said, “We’ll get you out of here somehow, never fear. But I’m concerned with where you will go after that. You say you have friends. Who can these be?”

From an inner pocket of the clothes she’d found him, he removed the soiled sheet of text that he had rescued from the bulldozer in the night. “Colleagues,” he said, extending it for her perusal. “The greater scientific community. Scientists are always defecting from one place or another where they can continue their research with liberty.”

She looked up from the sheet. “These are Americans.”

“Well?” He didn’t see the point; her expression was problematic. “Then I’ll go to America.”

She shook her head. “You’re out of touch, Joseph. America takes in no one these days; the new President Burdock’s policy is strict. Buique has been flattering the United States with every conceivable manner of fawning since his election, but without avail. You know he counted on American support because he instituted what at first glance is a democracy in Bamal, but none has been forthcoming.”

“Then where did Mome go? I thought they would have begged to add the old tyrant to their collection.”

“I doubt your reason, Joseph. There was never much to Mome except what you distilled. He couldn’t have fled Bamal with more than a few vials of charisma, and that would hardly have impressed them over any distance. There’s been no method of transmitting odors until quite recently.”

“What do you mean, until recently?”

She would not meet his eyes now. “You must promise not to get upset, Joseph.”

“Upset? With you?”

“Oh no, that’s secondary; I’m not afraid of you. But don’t you dare damage what I’m about to show you.”

He remembered his attars, was about to ask after them, but she got up and went to a cabinet, unlocked it with a tiny key, then opened the doors to reveal a radio. A radio? Were they to listen to music?

“I thought you said this was urgent,” he said.

“Patience.”

She brought the radio over and set it on a tall round table at the side of her chair. He noticed that it was not like other radios; attached to it was a small glass container with a rubber stopper in one end. Pale yellow liquid sloshed in the little bottle.

“I’ll find the afternoon broadcast,” she said, twiddling the dial through a symphony of static until, out of the fuzz, a stuffy voice emerged. The station was loud and blaring, because so near. Bamal Free Radio filled the room with the President’s easily imitable voice; Joseph had heard children in the streets pinching their noses and mocking his accent.

“By beaudiful, beaudiful beoble. Thag you so buch for tudig id agaid to Babal Free Radio. I would like to thag each ad every ode of you for electig be your Bresidet. This job bead so buch to be—”

Joseph’s head jerked up from the monologue. He sniffed the air. What was that smell? His heart began to pound to a military beat, his blood sang an anthem in his ears. The Emperor was near.

Mome had come, he had come again to lead Bamal to freedom, to world dominance. Joseph cried out his loyalty, thrusting back the chair as he rose to his feet, immersed in the scent of roses.

“Emperor, where are you?” he cried. “I can’t see you, but I smell you. I know you are here. Here…”

And the moment passed, leaving him standing awkwardly at attention, saluting no one but Angelica. She smiled, shook her head, and he could read her disappointment easily.

“You really did believe in him, didn’t you, Joseph? How could you believe in anything, especially a scent that you devised?”

“But that wasn’t him!” he shouted, still caught in the splendor of the vision, the aroma of roses not yet completely gone. “That was Buique’s voice. What was I doing? I’ve gone mad, utterly mad.”

“Buique’s voice, yes, but Mome’s smell as you well know. It’s here.” She turned the radio until the vial of yellow liquid was exposed. “It’s driven into the air while he speaks, broadcast along with the sound.”

He advanced on the radio cautiously, as though approaching a venomous insect.

“Remember, you must not harm this radio. I promised to keep it safe and you know I keep my word.”

“Who?” he whispered, frightened. “Who made you promise this?”

“Joseph, who else could have built such a thing? Kmei Dodo.”

Kmei Dodo.

Dodo.

The name hung in his mind, conjoined with the picture of the evil radio and the last fading smell of empire.