Streams of Babel (35 page)

He said the guy turned and looked at my dad. And my dad started to yell wildly—to yell and curse and kick dirt—and it was all unbelievable, because neither of us have ever seen my dad curse or kick anything. And then he fell down on the ground and started to cry ... cry and say my name, and curse and say my name.

I try getting a picture of this in my head, and all I can come up with is the image of Hildy Kirkegard.

Owen can't keep a secret for the life of him. And after telling me, and after me pretending the story didn't terrify me so it wouldn't terrify him, he promptly fell asleep and left me awake. Don't ask why I want to marry this guy. I can't answer that.

SHAHZAD HAMDANI
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
9:45
A.M.

TYLER KNOCKS AT Aunt Alika's door on Saturday morning, and I let him in. I try not to look unhappy, but his arrival adds much complication.

My aunt and Inas are still upset with me for cutting the school. Inas still thinks that I know Tyler only as the boy who spoke to me in the lunch line. Neither my aunt nor Inas know I am fired from my job at Trinitron, not that they ever knew I was a USIC employee in the first place. My aunt thinks of me as "high maintenance," the word she used three times last night when she heard that the school called to say I was missing. I reminded her that it is not a law to go to school in Pakistan after age thirteen and said simply that I had become confused. I had wanted to go to work at Trinitron instead.

Beyond the complications with my relatives, Hodji and I had a huge fight over Tyler while driving from his house last night.

Once we were in his car, he changed his tune quickly, telling
me to stay away from Tyler at all costs. He said that he can detect a drug taker from miles away, and that Tyler is one, and that he seems haunted by something, perhaps a molestation or abuse. I said such things are not a person's fault and he was being unfair. Hodji said that I sounded awfully American for only having been in school for one full day.

But from all this, I gathered they were not expecting to hire Tyler in a year. Hodji finally came clean with many grumbles, his excuse for lying being that they would say anything to keep a minor away from dangerous men who could hurt him. And besides, Tyler is too strange to be hired, he said.

I vowed never to speak to Hodji or anyone in USIC again. While Hodji and I had certainly engaged in many lies together to many extremists, I had never seen him lie to
me.

It was Hodji's unremorseful confession to lying that turned me from a well-behaved person to an f-word-flinging monsoon. Hodji flung the f-word back, and I marched out of the car upon reaching my aunt's. I told him do not call me again, ever, and ended with "May you drink the Red Vinegar I just found for you for free, you spoiled ingratiate."

However, this does not mean I want to see Tyler or that I will tell him this atrocious news. I do not know what to say when he appears on Saturday morning.

Tyler reaches a hand out to shake with Aunt Alika across the kitchen table. "Hello, I work at Trinitron with Shahzad." Aunt Alika accepts his lie, and I try not to flinch.

Inas is watching cartoons in the living room, and she watches us through the doorframe, giving Tyler her big, American, unshy smile. "Wow, I didn't know you worked at Trinitron, Tyler. That's decent."

"Now you know." He turns to me. "I thought you might want to go out for bagels"

"Baggles?" I repeat in confusion. "I don't very much like the baggles."

He steps on my foot as Uncle used to when he would want me to curb my tongue. "How about doughnuts? I can introduce you to Krispy Kremes. They're beyond sadistic."

I nod. Aunt Alika's view of my feet is obstructed, but she watches my eyes.

"Can I count on you to stay out of trouble?" she asks. "I can't imagine what trouble a teenage boy could find on a Saturday morning, but I want you back here in an hour."

I look at my watch, nodding dutifully. "Again, I am sorry. About the school misunderstanding"

She waves at me with a long sigh, and Inas keeps smiling at us. I think that Tyler will ask her to go, but she is dressed in long purple snowman clothing, which I am sure he will recognize as pajamas. I pull him out the door, wondering at American girls, who will not flee to the bedroom rather than let boys peruse their purple and snowmen.

Outside, Tyler says, "Thank god she wasn't dressed. I thought she would ask to come, or your aunt would sic her on us. I want to say a couple of things to you alone, and then I'm taking off."

"Where are you going?" I ask, and he ignores that question.

"First, the deal is off. I can never work for American intelligence."

It is as if he overheard Hodji and me, and I blush. Then I detect that his meaning is personal. "Let's just say that ... I wouldn't pass a background check."

"You have committed a crime?" I guess. I know of his
hacking crimes, but it seems to me that these would be quite pleasing to those hiring someone to hack.

"Yeah, I committed a crime. I was born," he says evasively.

"You don't have to tell me. But you can," I encourage him.

"No, I can't. And I didn't come to talk about that. I just wanted you to know that after we get doughnuts, I'm going to Colony One."

I reach for his wrist. I don't want him to do this thing. "Why? Omar is probably in jail by now. We turned him up."

"I don't think USIC was fast enough. I cached a bunch of chatter last night. My translations on BabylonDoo were pretty horrible, but I got the gist. That ShadowStrike assassin, the one sent to the hospital to finish off the girl, was arrested by USIC yesterday."

I freeze, terribly interested. And after my argument with Hodji, my deal is off, too. I do not want to work with people whom I cannot trust to tell me the truth.

"The assassin Omar referenced in his phone chatter with Manuel? He was arrested?" I ask.

Tyler nods. "Omar got itchy, went to the hospital, and overheard some nurses saying that a terrorist attacked one of the patients suspected to be sick from the poisoned water. The guy was taken away in a cop car. I imagine Omar's hiding now. But he might still be in the area."

"How do you know?" I ask.

"I don't. Catalyst e-mailed me this morning. He wanted to say thanks for the software, Blizzard. I was all 'You're welcome.'
Asshole.
We did a small talk back and forth, and he mentioned a party he'd been invited to at Astor College. I guess I sounded jealous in my reply. Wasn't hard to sound jealous—I never get asked to parties. He asked me to come. It's this afternoon. Maybe they'll
mention where Omar is. Hell, it's a party. Maybe he'll fuckin' show up. Maybe they'll even try to recruit me,
pfwaa.
"

"These men are dangerous," I repeat, my deepest instincts alerted.

He laughs. "Find me a twelve-step for people with death wishes, and maybe I'll have more willpower. Right now, all I can picture is me calling USIC with the whereabouts of Omar. That would, uh, make up for a lot of sins in my family."

I don't know what he means.

"You could call them now," I say, but realize that he has just made a promise to them and already he has broken it. They would probably put him in juvenile jail just to keep him out of the way. He would need a bigger tidbit to soothe them down.

"Let's go get doughnuts before I take off," he says.

"I want no doughnuts," I mumble, but for some reason, I get in the car anyway.

He comes slowly around to the driver side, drops into the seat, and says, "So?"

I realize I have left my asthma canister in the house. I am wheezing already. I try to ignore it while I say, "I have longed for a day when I might see the sick people in Colony One. I have worked hard for them. I feel ... connected to them. I will risk my aunt's anger, because tomorrow they might be died."

"Dead," he corrects me and laughs sadly. "Your aunt's anger will be nothing compared to my mom's. This is her Audi, which she never lets me drive. But fine. I'll take you to Colony One and the hospital. But when we get to Astor College, I want you to promise me you'll go for a walk or something—you'll let me go in there alone."

I mumble "we'll see" in Punjabi.

TYLER PING
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
12:30
P.M.

MY MOM'S NOT what you'd call a savory character, but she has become American in one classic sense: Her car is her holy temple. I love driving it. Yet I feel like I'm falling over a cliff, because I'm doing so many things that would piss off so many people, and her anger haunts me the most. It's all in the name of being a good American. Life either makes no sense or is boring as hell.

I showed Hamdani how to change the songs on the radio, and it was amusing to see what stuff he was attracted to. He stopped pushing buttons when he came upon Eric Clapton, the Who, and the Beatles, and when I tried to tell him those people were older than his aunt, he looked confused, as if the concept of a generation gap was lost on him.

The parkway had gotten more narrow and emptier the farther south we got, and the trees had changed on either side of
the road. First they had looked like plain forest, but below exit sixty it had changed to these knotty, ugly pine trees with beach sand on the forest floor.

"Pine Barrens," I told him. "You gotta be nuts to live down here."

"I like beach sand," he said. He looked peaceful, for once. Frankly, I hadn't seen him happy since he ate that bagel and shook hands adventurously with the Jews in the White Mound.

We got off the parkway right around twelve thirty, and followed signs to Trinity Falls. The place looked like it had been dropped out of a family movie. Huge oaks lined the roadbed, making arcs like canopies. There were old Victorian houses and colonial homes, and nice gardens and a few shops in what looked like a business district, only too pretty. I figured I could give up on Xanax for calm nerves if I lived down here.

I got out my MapQuest directions, and Hamdani navigated. I guess maps are universally understandable. We parked six blocks from the hospital and walked the rest of the way. Let's say I was paranoid about having my mom's car impounded if I got arrested somehow. I followed him into the hospital lobby.

"Do you want to see a patient?" the woman asked us.

"Yeah, we go to school with the Ebermans." I remembered their name from the mother's obituary and hoped I sounded convincingly casual.

"Well, you can't see Scott. He's in intensive care. Only immediate family. Owen and Rain are in isolation to prevent them from catching any other germs. You have to wear a cap and gown and stand outside their door. Right now, there are four kids up there already. You have to wait until one of them comes
down. It could be a while." She rolled her eyes with a pleasant smile. I like women who prattle on in that friendly small-town way. I wished she was my mom.

She asked for a photo ID, which made my heart dance a bit, because that is unusual. I showed my driver's license and Hamdani showed his school ID, which blatantly revealed that he did not go to school with the Ebermans. It was a tricky moment, but she just made sure our faces matched our IDs and didn't write anything down.

"Sign in and have a seat over there." She handed us a clipboard.

I signed "Kim Chow," who is a guy in school I hate.

Despite my high jinks, Hamdani signed his own real name.

"They're gonna see that," I growled as we headed over to the sitting area with a blue visitor's pass, though I couldn't quite figure out what harm it could do.

"Perhaps good," he said. "Maybe USIC sees that they are big liars and I am not."

He pulled a copy of the
New York Daily News
off the coffee table and into his lap, and with a finger under each word, he read the news about our troops in Afghanistan and some remote possibility of going to war with Iraq.

It ogled my brain that the kid could know so much about so many things and bag on English. Computer geeks can do that these days because of the translation programs, but it burned my ass. I hadn't been here a year, and I knew English so well you would have thought I was born in Queens. I like words, I guess. Words don't hate me like people do.

Two strapping jocks got out of the elevator, each carrying a fistful of light blue fabric—probably a mask and a surgical cap.
One had his arm around the other, who was looking at the floor and pushing tears off his face. That must be two of the four visitors. Therefore, we could go up—if we both wanted to. My stomach is a lot less firm than I let on, sometimes. I turned to Hamdani.

"I'll stay here. This is
your
inspiration. I already have mine."

Hamdani didn't question me, though he looked at me again like he had when he asked me to tell him my huge problem. When I waved good-bye in his face, he walked off slowly toward the elevator, but with some glint of determination in his unusually deadpan face.

SHAHZAD HAMDANI
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2002
12:45
P.M.

THE NURSE ON the sixth floor hands me a little cap and a mask and a blue paper robe that you have to put on backward. She leads me to a doorway. I cannot see inside because two other robed boys are standing in the way talking to the patients. They are very big, full of muscles, and I cannot see past them.

I try to think of what I will say. I had not considered this a problem until now. However, I remember I am a stranger who speaks with an accent, and I could look very suspicious simply by saying that I had heard of them and wanted to meet them.

A man sits in a chair beside the door. He reads the newspaper until his eyes gaze upward to mine. It is in my instincts now to smell USIC ten miles away.
This is an agent. He has been ordered to guard the door without arousing suspicion of visitors.
I recall Tyler's tale of this morning, that an assassin had been arrested here. I am glad for this agent.

However, I detect that he is profiling me and trying not to. I look like someone he might find untrustworthy. I step back away from the two visitors and pretend to adjust my mask, so the man can see my whole face and realize that I am not old. Perhaps he will see my sharp elbows and skinny arms, from asthma always making me too winded to exercise. He looks into my face and I see him relax slightly. But before I can put the mask back on, I run into a trouble I did not predict.