When Gravity Fails (34 page)

I understood. “I know you don’t need trouble. When I was robbed, my companions didn’t know that I always keep a little extra cash in my bag. They greedily took everything in plain sight, leaving me with enough to live on for one or two days, until I can make my way back and demand a lawful accounting of them.”

The man just stared at me, waiting for something magical to appear.

I unslung my zipper bag and opened it. I let him watch me shove the clothing aside—my shirts, my trousers, socks—until I reached down and pulled out a paper bank note. “Twenty kiam,” I said sadly, “that’s all they left me with.”

My new friend’s face went through a rapid selection of emotions. In this neighborhood, twenty-kiam notes made their presence felt with noise and shouting. The man may not have been sure of me, but I knew what
he
was thinking.

“If you would give me the benefit of your hospitality and protection for the next two days,” I said, “I will let you have all the money you see here.” I thrust the twenty closer to his widening eyes.

The man wavered visibly; if he’d had big, flat leaves, he would have rustled. He didn’t like strangers—hell,
no one
likes strangers. He didn’t like the idea of inviting one into his house for a couple of days. Twenty kiam, though, was equal to several days’ pay for him. When I looked closely at him again, I knew that he wasn’t sizing me up anymore—he was spending the twenty kiam a hundred different ways. All I had to do was wait.

“We are not wealthy people, O sir.”

“Then the twenty kiam will ease your life.”

“It would, indeed, O sir, and I desire to have it; however, I am shamed to permit such an excellent one as you to witness the squalor of my house.”

“I have seen squalor greater than any you can imagine, my friend, and I have risen above it even as you may. I was not always as I appear to you. It was only the will of Allah that I be flung down to the deepest pits of misery, in order that I might return to take back what has been torn from me. Will you help me? Allah will bring good fortune to all who are generous to me on my way.”

The
fellah
looked at me in confusion for a long while. At first, I knew he thought I was just crazy, and the best thing was to run as far away from me as possible. My babbling sounded like some kidnapped prince’s speech from the old tales. The stories were fine for late at night, for murmuring around the fire after a simple supper and before sleep and troubled dreams. In the light of day, however, a confrontation like this had nothing to make it seem plausible. Nothing except the money, waving like the frond of a date palm in my hand. My friend’s eyes were fixed on the twenty kiam, and I doubt that he could have described my face to anyone.

In the end, I was admitted into the house of my host, Ishak Jarir. He maintained a strict discipline, and I saw no women. There was a second floor above, where the family members slept, and where there were a few small closets for storage. Jarir opened a plain wooden door to one of these and roughly shoved me inside. “You will be safe here,” he said in a whisper. “If your treacherous friends come and inquire about you, no one in this house has seen you. But you may stay only until after morning prayers tomorrow.”

“I thank Allah that in His wisdom He has guided me to so generous a man as you. I have yet an errand to run, and if everything occurs as I foresee, I will return with a bank note the twin of that you hold in your hand. The twin shall be yours, as well.”

Jarir didn’t want to hear any of the details. “May your undertaking be prosperous,” he said. “Be warned, though: if you come back after last prayers, you will not be admitted.”

“It is as you say, honorable one.” I looked over my shoulder at the pile of rags that would be my home that night, smiled innocently at Ishak Jarir, and got out of his house suppressing a shudder.

I turned down the narrow, stone-paved street that I thought would take me back to the Boulevard il-Jameel. As the street began a slow curve to the left, I knew that I’d made a mistake, but it was going in the right direction anyway, so I followed it. When I got around the turn, however, there was nothing but the blank brick rear walls of buildings hedging in a reeking, dead-end alley. I muttered a curse and turned around to retrace my steps.

There was a man blocking my way. He was thin, with a patchy, slovenly kept beard and a sheepish smile on his face. He was wearing an open-necked yellow knit shirt, a rumpled and creased brown business suit, a white
keffiya
with red checks, and scuffed brown oxford shoes. His foolish expression reminded me of Fuad, the idiot from the Budayeen. Evidently he had followed me up the dead-end street; I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

I don’t like people catfooting up behind me; I unzipped my bag while I stared at him. He just stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and grinning. I took out a couple of daddies and zipped the bag closed again. I started to walk by him, but he stopped me with a hand on my chest. I looked down at the hand and back up at his face. “I don’t like being touched,” I said.

He shrank back as if he had defiled the holy of holies. “A thousand pardons,” he said weakly.

“You following me for some reason?”

“I thought you might be interested in what I have here.” He indicated an imitation-leather briefcase he carried in one hand.

“You a salesman?”

“I sell moddies, sir, and a wide selection of the most useful and interesting add-ons in the business. I’d like to show them to you.”

“No, thanks.”

He raised his eyebrows, not so sheepish now, as if I’d asked him to go right ahead. “It won’t take a moment, and very possibly I have just the thing you’re looking for.”

“I’m not looking for anything in particular.”

“Sure you are, sir, or you wouldn’t have gotten wired, now, would you?”

I shrugged. He knelt down and opened his sample case. I was determined that he wasn’t going to sell me anything. I don’t do business with weasels.

He was taking moddies and daddies out of the case and lining them up in a neat row in front of his briefcase. When he was finished he looked up at me. I could tell how proud he was of his merchandise. “Well,” he said. There was an anticipatory hush.

“Well what?” I asked.

“What do you think of them?”

“The moddies? They look like every other moddy I’ve ever seen. What are they?”

He grabbed the first moddy in the line. He flipped it to me and I caught it; a quick glimpse told me it was unlabeled, made of tougher plastic than the usual moddies I saw at Laila’s and in the souks. Bootleg. “You know that one already,” the man said, giving me that sorry smile again.

That earned him a sharp look.

He pulled off his
keffiya.
He had thinning brown hair hanging down and covering his ears. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. One hand popped out the moddy he’d been wearing. The timid salesman vanished. The man’s jaws went slack and his eyes lost their focus, but with practiced speed he chipped in another of his homemade moddies. Suddenly his eyes narrowed and his mouth set in a hard, sadistic leer. He had transformed himself from one man to another; he didn’t need the usual physical disguises: the entirely different set of postures, mannerisms, expressions, and speech patterns was more effective than any combination of wigs and makeup could be.

I was in trouble. I held James Bond in my hand, and I was staring into the cold eyes of Xarghis Moghadhîl Khan. I was staring into madness. I reached up and chipped in the two daddies. One would let me get unnatural, desperate strength from my muscles, without weariness or pain, until the tissue actually tore apart. The second cut out all sound; I needed to concentrate. Khan snarled at me. There was a long, vicious dagger in his hand now, its hilt of silver decorated with colored stones, its guard of gold. “Sit down,” I read his lips. “On the ground.”

I wasn’t going to sit down for him. My hand moved about four inches, seeking the needle gun under my robes. My hand moved a little and stopped, because I remembered that the needle gun was still beneath the pillow in the hotel room. By now the chambermaid would have found it. And the seizure gun was zipped away safely in my bag. I backed away from Khan. “I’ve been following you for a long time, Mr. Audran. I watched you at the police station, at Friedlander Bey’s, at Seipolt’s house, at the hotel. I could have killed you that night when I pretended you were just a goddamn robber, but I didn’t want to be interrupted. I waited for the right moment.
Now,
Mr. Audran, now you will die.” It was wonderfully simple to read his lips: the whole world had relaxed and was moving only half as fast as normal. He and I had all the time we needed. . . .

Khan’s mouth twisted. He enjoyed this part. He stalked me back deeper into the alley. My eyes were fixed on his gleaming knife, with which Khan intended not only to kill me but also to hack my body to pieces. He meant to drape my bowels over the filthy stones and the refuse like holiday garlands. Some people are terrified of death; others are even more terrified of the agony that might come first. To be honest, that’s me. I knew that some day I’d have to die, but I hoped it would be quick and painless—in my sleep, if I was lucky. Tortured first by Khan: that was definitely not how I wanted to go out.

The daddies kept me from panicking. If I let myself get too scared, I’d be souvlaki in five minutes. I backed away further, scanning the alley for something that would give me a chance against this maniac and his dagger. I was running out of time.

Khan’s lips pulled back from his teeth and he charged me, uttering wordless cries. He held the dagger overhand at shoulder height, coming at me like Lady Macbeth. I let him take three steps, then I moved to my left and rushed him. He expected me to flee backward, and when I went at him he flinched. My left hand reached for his right wrist, my right arm swung behind his forearm and held his hand steady. I bent his knife hand back with my left hand, against the fulcrum of my right arm. Usually you can disarm an attacker like that, but Khan was strong. He was stronger than that nearly emaciated body should have been; the insanity gave him a little extra power, and so did his moddy and daddies.

Khan’s free hand had me by the throat, and he was forcing my head back. I got my right leg behind his and pulled his feet out from under him. We both went down, and as we fell I covered his face with my right hand. I made sure to slam the back of his head into the ground as hard as I could. I landed on his wrist with my knee, and his hand opened. I threw his dagger as far as I could, then used both hands to beat Khan’s head on the slimy pavement a few more times. Khan was dazed, but it didn’t last long. He rolled out of my grasp and flung himself back on me, tearing and biting at my flesh. We wrestled, each trying to get an advantage, but we were grappling so tightly that I couldn’t swing my fists. I couldn’t even work my arms free. Meanwhile, he was hurting me, raking me with his black nails, drawing blood with his teeth, bludgeoning me with his knees.

Khan shrieked and heaved me to the side; then he leaped, and before I could get away, he landed on top of me again. He held my arms pinned with one knee and one hand. He raised a fist, ready to smash it down on my throat. I cried out and tried to roll him off, but I couldn’t move. I struggled, and I saw the lunatic light of victory in his eyes. He was crooning some inarticulate prayer. With a wild bellow, he slammed his fist down and caught the side of my face. I almost lost consciousness.

Khan ran for his knife. I forced myself to sit up and search wildly for my zipper bag. Khan found the dagger and was coming at me. I got my bag open and threw everything out on the ground. Just as Khan was three feet from me, I nailed him with one long burst from the seizure gun. Khan gave a gurgling cry and toppled beside me. He would be out for hours.

The daddies blocked most of my pain, but not all; the rest they held at a distance. Still, I couldn’t move yet, and it would be a few minutes before I could do anything useful. I watched Khan’s skin turn a cyanotic blue as he fought to draw air into his lungs. He went into convulsions and then suddenly relaxed completely, only a few inches from me. I sat and gasped until I was able to shake off the effects of the fight. Then the first thing I did was pop the Khan moddy out of his head. I called Lieutenant Okking to give him the good news.

18

I found my pill case in the zipper bag and took seven or eight sunnies. I was trying something new. My body was aching after the fight with Khan, but it wasn’t the pain so much; purely in the interest of science, I wanted to see how the opiate would affect my augmented sensations. While I waited for Okking, I learned the truth empirically: the daddy that cleared alcohol from my system at a faster rate also kicked out the sunnies, too. Who needs that? I popped that moddy and took another hit of Sonneine.

When Okking arrived he was buoyant. That was the only word to describe him. I’d never seen him so pleased. He was attentive and gracious to me, concerned for my wounds and pain. He was so nice, I figured the holo news people were around taping, but I was wrong. “I guess you’re one up on me now, Audran,” he said.

I figured he owed me a lot more than that. “I’ve done your whole goddamn job for you, Okking.”

Even that didn’t puncture his elation. “Maybe, maybe. At least now I can get some sleep. I couldn’t even eat without imagining Selima, Seipolt, and the others.”

Khan roused; without a moddy in his socket, however, he began to scream. I recalled how awful I felt when I took the daddies out after just a few days. Who knows how long Khan—whatever his real name was—had gone, hiding beneath first one moddy and then another. Maybe without a false personality chipped in, he wasn’t able to confront the inhuman acts he’d performed. He lay on the pavement, his hands cuffed behind him and his ankles chained together thrashing and thundering curses at us. Okking watched him for a few seconds. “Drag him out of here,” he said to a couple of uniformed officers.