Harsh Oases Read online

  Picture neon-red spandex bottoms topped by faux lizardskin. Picture acid-green lurex leggings disappearing beneath purple leather supple as cloth. Picture leopard-patterned plyoskin tights matched with orange fur.

  Picture any combination you can, chances were someone was wearing it.

  As fads went, it wasn’t bad. Flattering to the female form, anyway. So for months I watched them, these feminized Arcadian outlaws, looking rather like Shakespeare’s plucky heroines in male disguise (and exactly how, I always wondered, could the King fail to distinguish that this stranger in doublet and hose was, uh, shaped somewhat differently?), as they stepped boldly off the hydrofoil ferry from the mainland and onto our oil-stained dock of prestressed-concrete, dispersing from this common point, singly or with friends, all over the Hesperides, where, in the course of my duties, I was always being surprised by the sight of some gaudy Ardenite stepping from behind door or tree.

  One thing I noticed was that no one wore black. Black was out, black was declasse, black had been done to death. This was the Neochrome ’Nineties, after all, the fin de siecle. The Wilderness Years were over, it was damn the smart torpedoes, and full-fusion ahead. Who wanted to wear black? Not the upper crust, not the underclasses, not even the few disaffected.

  No one, in fact, except Nadya Tajir.

  It all began so innocuously, with a bundle of wet grey leaves lying in the white sand. It still seems impossible now, that they could have led where they did.

  I was out for my morning run along the beach. I stayed on the wetter, more compact sand below the highwater mark, but still the mutable footing pulled at muscles in my legs that no pavement ever did. The strain felt good. I thought about my years as a detective with the LAPD: taking my exercise on city streets, breathing exhaust, going in to my job-more and more reluctantly each day-to face the paperwork, the strictures, the orders, the tension. This morning, with the salt air filling my lungs, and myself my own boss, those days seemed ineffably far away. I looked to my right, toward the mainland, just to make sure it hadn’t vanished. There was a light haze over the sea, veiling the coast, and I could almost pretend the California shore really wasn’t there. But I knew the haze would bum off later, and the mainland and all it held would return.

  It was still early—or, if you had been up all night, like many Hesperideans, just growing late enough to contemplate falling into bed—and the big island was quiet as a sleeping child. The Comiche road that ran atop the cliffs on my left was empty of scooters. Only the sporadic cries of gulls and the uneasy murmur of surf broke the silence. Soon enough, I’d be hearing the self-indulgent braying of the rich inmates of the islands, and the shrill exclamations of the daytripping tourists. I savored the silence now, while I could.

  Rounding a curve where cliff pushed the beach out toward the water, I came upon it.

  There was something in the way the sunlight caught on the cellophane that attracted my eye. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have passed right by it as unimportant flotsam. As things went, however, I was moved to stop and kneel by it.

  A soggy chunk of some kind of small-leafed shrub wrapped in heat-sealed plastic, like a vending-machine sandwich.

  I couldn’t make any sense out of this wave-delivered package. The stems did not terminate in any sort of roots, so it couldn’t be meant for planting. A botanical sample for some pharmaceutical firm? An odd souvenir? I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother to carefully package up such a thing. Were they coco leaves? I bit one. Nope. What then?

  The mysterious package stirred bad feelings in me. So many odd, disturbing things were always washing up on my refuge. I thought of Kid Charlemagne’s murder, a year gone by now. It hadn’t been far from here that I had found the tab of estheticine, whose lure had underpinned his death. Was this piece of stormwrack to lead to something similar?

  I had no answer. Picking up the bundle, I continued my run, gripping it by one corner and pinning it beneath my arm against my side. It leaked tepid water into my shirt, soaking the fabric like the thin colorless blood of a rare species of fish.

  Back home I changed into white trousers, a blue polo shirt, and beat-up huaraches on bare feet. The bundle sat in a little puddle on an endtable, holding my thoughts focused on it. I brought it with me to my office on the waterfront promenade, a couple of small rooms which were situated then between Ybarrondo’s hotel and Bascombe’s art gallery.

  Bert Tanager was waiting there for his morning’s orders.

  (Normally, I had two men working for me, but I had recently discharged one for unnecessarily roughing up a feisty drunk who had turned out to own half of Brazil.)

  Tanager was a former linebacker for the New England Patriots, and looked the part, being almost my size. His presence at the bar of La Pomme d’Or had stopped many a fight before it could even begin. Given Tanagers tight-lipped nature, I was probably the only person on the islands who knew that he also held a degree in medieval French literature, and collected old 78’s.

  “How was the crowd last night?” I asked.

  Tanager shrugged. “The same.” He glanced at my bundle of leaves, but said nothing. I handed him the soggy lump.

  “I want you to run over to the mainland this morning and get this analyzed. Wait for the results.”

  Tanager said, “Okay, Mister Deatherage,” took the package and left.

  I went through the day’s mail that had just come over with the first boat. There was a letter from the big rent-a-cop firm that leased me and my men to the management of the Hesperides, reminding me that my quarterly report was overdue. That was about as much interference as I ever got from my nominal, distant bosses, and I resolved to placate them immediately so they’d stay away.

  When I was done with the deskwork, I went outside into the hot sun and cool breezes. During the couple of hours I had been busy, the promenade had filled with tourists. I stood with my back against the wall of my building and watched the women for a while, in their silly cocked caps with feathers nodding. It was nice work if you could get it

  One woman in particular intrigued me. Dressed like the rest, she seemed to be alone. I observed her as she idled in front of store windows, took a turn down the walkway, then stopped to rest her arms on the promenade’s railing, gazing out to sea. Boasting a fine figure, she wore her short blonde hair moussed into spikes. She seemed awfully familiar .…

  I jolted upright, knowing suddenly that I knew her. Knew her well. Was I being self-deceitful, or merely blind, not to have recognized her for half an hour?

  I walked over to her. She didn’t hear my steps—no one does if I don’t want them to—and so she remained leaning forward until I spoke.

  “Hello, Ruth.”

  She started visibly, but recovered quickly enough to turn slowly. She had had a facial biosculpt, but I recognized now the basic contours I had known during our marriage. Except now there were no bruises on her skin.

  “Hello, Leon,” she said in a calm but stiff voice. “This is a surprise. Are you on holiday too?”

  “No. I work here now.”

  She seemed genuinely astonished. “You left the force?”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. You knew better than anyone what it was doing to me. I had a breakdown shortly after we split. Now I’m a glorified security guard. An old cop’s last refuge. Hell, I even gave up smoking last year. I couldn’t stand another one of those damn vegetable cigarettes.”

  She said nothing. Neither did I. She studied my face. I studied hers. I spoke first.

  “It’s your hair.”

  “What?”

  “It’s your hair more than your new face that threw me. I couldn’t picture you as anything but a brunette. Don’t get me wrong, though, I like it.”

  She smiled tentatively. “You do?”

  “I do. Really.”

  Her smile lasted a minute, then disappeared as old memories swarmed up behind it. “You seem changed, Leon. But I forget sometimes it’s been three years. A lot can happen i
n three years, can’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  She locked glances with me forthrightly. “But not enough to erase everything, Leon. Not by half.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  We were silent again, each looking uncomfortably out to sea, as if for instructions on how to behave. Again, I broke the silence.

  “How’s the practice?”

  “I run a clinic now, Leon, under my own name. The Weatherall Clinic for Sexual Dysfunctions. Have you heard of it?”

  I’m afraid I was a little bitter. “Caters to rich neurotics?”

  “Hardly. My clients are mostly rape victims who need to relearn their bodies. I also deal with a lot of expatriated political prisoners who have been sexually tortured. And I’ve even got a couple of women who were traumatized by their abortions.”

  This latter category of patients surprised me. I wasn’t aware that there were any more such unfortunates.

  There’s a new generation of sexually active kids who’re too young to remember the time before the “morning-after” pill. I wasn’t. I distinctly recall the excitement that followed the discovery by Professor Etienne-Emile Beaulieu, working for the French firm of Roussel-Uclaf, of RU-486, a steroid that functioned as a side-effect-free chemical abortifacient. There had been a tremendous uproar by morality watchdogs of all stripes when the pill was initially marketed, but attempting to halt its dispersal was like trying to beat back the waves. Within a few years of its release, the drug had reduced the number of yearly D&C abortions in America from millions to several thousand. The effects worldwide, except in a few theocracies, were similar. Not only had hundreds of “planned parenthood” clinics gone out of business, but so had dozens of fundamentalist sects that had capitalized on the abortion issue.

  I was impressed by Ruth’s new career. “Sony to mouth off without knowing more. It sounds like you’re making the world a better place. Unlike me.”

  “I try. But don’t knock yourself. You’re doing a useful job, and you seem happy.”

  “I guess.”

  Ruth moved away from the railing, obviously anxious to be off. “Well, it was nice to see you again, Leon.” She extended her hand, and I took it. “Don’t forget me.”

  Her hand was warm and familiar. It felt like something out of another life.

  “I couldn’t,” I said. “I won’t.”

  * * *

  That night I sat in my dark house, tense as one of the graphite cables that held undersea stations anchored to the ocean floor. Tanager had returned, but without any results. The lab we normally used—a small one in San Diego—had been unable to pin down the leaf, other than to identify some psychoactive components, so they had sent it on to a better-equipped facility, one which did a lot of work for the big government agencies such as the FBI. Knowing the stuff was some kind of drug, but not exactly what, irritated me. I was more sure than before that its presence on the island would turn out to be significant, not an accident.

  Encountering Ruth had also pulled my strings tight. Too many memories, both good and bad. I needed to relax. Drinking didn’t appeal to me. So I powered up my old Atari for a game of go.

  Go had been one of the last games to be formally modeled. More complex than chess, it had eluded encoding for decades. A fifteen-year-old prodigy from Cal Tech had finally succeeded in programming it. He had picked up a ten-thousand-dollar prize from some foundation or other, which he had used as start-up capital for his own software firm to market the game. Last I heard, he had just made the Forbes Four Hundred.

  The software needed at least one meg of main memory to run, making the Atari the first home machine that could support it. I had gotten hooked on the game when I had a lot of time on my hands during my recovery.

  As I moved the mouse around now, depositing icons of white stones on the screen (the speakers emitting a soft, realistic click with each one), trying to outflank my encoded silicon opponent, watching my stones be surrounded and go dead, I felt all the tension drain away out my fingers, leaving me as nothing but an agent of The Game, and also somehow simultaneously an inert oval counter of polished stone, which was played willy-nilly on the board, and which, when killed and removed, felt nothing at all, not remorse or grief or pain.

  * * *

  The next day I was kept too busy to think about my personal problems, or the mysterious leaf. I had to inspect the security arrangements on one of our houses, in preparation for the new owner.

  The place was a rambling old glass and redwood building, built in the ’Forties by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s students. It had stood empty until recently, amid a grove of wind-twisted pines, high atop a knoll. (The previous owner, whose wealth came from holdings in various energy industries, had experienced a sudden and precipitous change in his fortunes a few years back, when room-temperature superconductors came online, and had been forced to sell.)

  Approachable only by a rocky footpath, the place was almost a fortress, ringed by sensors and anti-personnel devices. The energy-magnate had been something of a bug on terrorism and kidnapping. I supposed that the remoteness of the villa and the presence of these gadgets were the reasons why the new owner had chosen it.

  I ran my checks, making sure that none of the booby-traps was accidentally armed. It wouldn’t do to have the newest inhabitant of the Hesperides blown up upon arrival.

  Having finished, I went down to the dock to meet him.

  The noon ferry arrived on its stilts amid sheets of spray that sparkled in the sun, lowering itself to a berth. I had expected that there would be a few tourists aboard. But I hadn’t reckoned with Major Zaid’s paranoia, for I soon saw that he had commandeered the whole boat

  First off were burly identical East German-trained bodyguards in suits and shades, carrying stubby Uzis. They pushed back the crowd awaiting passage to the mainland. Next to step ashore was the head of Zaid’s guards, the Major’s combination of personal secretary and lethal pet ferret

  I had met Hamud al-Qasimi once before, when he came to arrange purchase of the house for Zaid. He was a thin, supple man dressed in Italian linen. His skin was a sallow hue, like an old bruise when it goes yellow, and he wore a narrow black mustache, impeccably trimmed. His face was always composed. Nothing in our previous brief meeting had encouraged me to take a shine to him. Todays tactics, which I assumed he had masterminded, likewise failed to impress me with his congeniality.

  Once ashore, al-Qasimi turned back to face the boat. With a curt flick of his fingers, he signaled that all was fine for Major Zaid to step down.

  When the man raised his hand, his unbuttoned jacket opened, and I saw his rhino-horn dagger—the Yemenese jambiyya—at his waist.

  Zaid appeared. He wore the understated grey uniform, with a minimum of gold braid, proper for the North Yemen major he had been before the coup. Although he ruled the country now, he kept the title he had borne when he overthrew the previous ruler, in a gesture of his humble aspirations and dedication to the welfare of his nation. He was a corpulent man who walked with a perceptible waddle, as if he were perpetually uncomfortable in clothes of any sort.

  Following Zaid came some male advisors and a flock of women in chadors and veils, the latter s eyes fixed modestly on the ground.

  Now that the party was assembled, al-Qasimi looked around and, spotting me, snapped his fingers as summons. I ambled over.

  Al-Qasimi’s English was perfect. “Where are the Major’s cars for his entourage?”

  “I explained to you earlier, when you requested cars, that none are permitted on the islands.”

  Al-Qasimi looked momentarily baffled, as if unused to being thwarted. I couldn’t believe he had assumed I would circumvent regulations just because he had demanded it. I was really convinced that he had simply not heard my earlier refusal, since it was so alien to him.

  “How does one move about the island then?”

  “We walk. Or ride scooters.”

  Al-qasimi’s lips twitched. “Impossible.”


  “There are some electric carts—”

  “They must do. Bring them here.”

  Taking my time, I walked over to the rental agency on the promenade and asked Rob Trowers to send all his carts down to the dock, and bill the Major.

  In half an hour or so, a procession of green-canopied electric carts—each carrying four persons, except for the pair with only a driver and luggage—was winding away slowly uphill, their occupants looking quite conscious of the ridiculous image they presented. I smiled broadly at al-Qasiini when he glowered back at me. It was perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but I couldn’t resist.

  Back in my office, I sent for Tanager. He took a while to arrive, and when he did, looked sort of beat. I knew he had spent a rough night tending a rowdy crowd intent on celebrating the successful landing of the unmanned Mars Rover. (I doubted that half the celebrants even knew whether Mars was in the solar system or not, but the motto of the Hesperides was: “If it hasn’t happened before, it’s a reason to party.”)

  “The Major and his group have arrived. I’m not sure how long they plan to stay. I guess it all depends on when he’s needed in Washington for the negotiations. In any case, we’ve got to be a little sharper while he’s around. I don’t want any of his bozos trampling our other residents or their guests.”

  Tanager nodded wearily, and, feeling sorry for him, I said, “I’m sorry about being shorthanded, Bert. I’ll press headquarters about sending us someone fast. But we can’t take just anyone. We tried that last time, and you know what happened.”

  “I understand,” said Tanager, and left.

  The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. I was just getting ready to leave for the day when a visitor let himself in. I had been half expecting this man, or someone of his ilk.

  “Hello, Dick. How’s life with the NSA? What’re you up to lately?”