“I’m in trouble,” he said. It was blatantly irrational for him to tell her this, since she had no recollection of any sort of him. But over the years he had become accustomed to laying his troubles before her—and listening to hers—and the habit had not died. The habit ignored what he saw the reality situation to be: it cruised on under its own power.
“That’s a shame,” Heather said.
Jason said, “Nobody remembers me. And I have no birth certificate; I was never born, never even born! So naturally I have no ID cards except a forged set I bought from a pol fink for two thousand dollars plus one thousand for my contact. I’m carrying them around, but, God: they may have microtransmitters built into them. Even knowing that I have to keep them on me; you know why—even you up at the top, even you know how this society works. Yesterday I had thirty million viewers who would have shrieked their aggrieved heads off if a pol or a nat so much as touched me. Now I’m looking into the eyes of an FLC.”
“What’s an FLC?”
“Forced-labor camp.” He snarled the words at her, trying to pin her down and finally nail her. “The vicious little bitch who forged my papers made me take her out to some Godforsaken broken-down wop restaurant, and while we were there, just talking, she threw herself down on the floor screaming. Psychotic screaming; she’s an escapee from Morningside, by her own admission. That cost me another three hundred dollars and by now who knows? She’s probably sicced the pols and nats both on me.” Pushing his self-pity gingerly a little further, he said, “They’re probably monitoring this phone line right now.”
“Oh, Christ, no!” Heather shrieked and again hung up.
He had no more gold quinques. So, at this point, he gave up. That was a stupid thing to say, he realized, that about the phone lines. That would make anybody hang up. I strangled myself in my own word web, right down the old freeber. Straight down the middle. Beautifully flat at both ends, too. Like a great artificial anus.
He shoved the door of the phone booth aside and stepped out onto the busy nocturnal sidewalk…down here, he thought acidly, in Slumsville. Down where the pol finks hang out. Jolly good show, as that classic TV muffin ad went that we studied in school, he said to himself.
It would be funny, he thought, if it were happening to someone else. But it’s happening to me. No, it’s not funny either way. Because there is real suffering and real death passing the time of day in the wings. Ready to come on any minute.
I wish I could have taped the phone call, plus everything Kathy said to me and me to her. In 3-D color, on videotape it would be a nice bit on my show, somewhere near the end where we run out of material occasionally. Occasionally, hell: generally. Always. For the rest of my life.
He could hear his intro now. “What can happen to a man, a good man without a pol record, a man who suddenly one day loses his ID cards and finds himself facing…” And so forth. It would hold them, all thirty million of them. Because that was what each of them feared. “An invisible man,” his intro would go, “yet a man all too conspicuous. Invisible legally; conspicuous illegally. What becomes of such a man, if he cannot replace…” Blah blah. On and on. The hell with it. Not everything that he did or said or had happen to him got onto the show; so it went with this. Another loser, among many. Many are called, he said to himself, but few are chosen. That’s what it means to be a pro. That’s how I manage things, public and private. Cut your losses and run when you have to, he told himself, quoting himself from back in the good days when his first full worldwide show got piped onto the satellite grid.
I’ll find another forger, he decided, one that isn’t a pol informer, and get a full new set of ID cards, ones without microtransmitters. And then, evidently, I need a gun.
I should have thought of that about the time I woke up in that hotel room, he said to himself. Once, years ago, when the Reynolds syndicate had tried to buy into his show, he had learned to use—and had carried—a gun: a Barber’s Hoop with a range of two miles with no loss of peak trajectory until the final thousand feet.
Kathy’s “mystical trance,” her screaming fit. The audio portion would carry a mature male voice saying against her screams as BG, “This is what it is to be psychotic. To be psychotic is to suffer, suffer beyond…” And so forth. Blah blah. He inhaled a great, deep lungful of cold night air, shuddered, joined the passengers on the sea of sidewalk, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
And found himself facing a queue lined up ten deep before a pol random checkpoint. One gray-clad policeman stood at the end of the line, loitering there to make sure no one doubled back in the opposite direction.
“Can’t you pass it, friend?” the pol said to him as he involuntarily started to leave.
“Sure,” Jason said.
“That’s good,” the pol said good-humoredly. “Because we’ve been checking here since eight this morning and we still don’t have our work quota.”
6
Two husky gray pols, confronting the man ahead of Jason, said in unison, “These were forged an hour ago; they’re still damp. See? See the ink run under the heat? Okay.” They nodded, and the man, gripped by four thungly pols, disappeared into a parked van-quibble, ominously gray and black: police colors.
“Okay,” one of the husky pols said genially to Jason, “let’s see when yours were printed.”
Jason said, “I’ve been carrying these for years.” He handed his wallet, with the seven ID cards, to the pols.
“Graph his signatures,” the senior pol told his companion. “See if they superimpose.”
Kathy had been right.
“Nope,” the junior pol said, putting away his official camera. “They don’t super. But it looks like this one, the military service chit, had a trans dot on it that’s been scraped off. Very expertly, too, if so. You have to view it through the glass.” He swung the portable magnifying lens and light over, illuminating Jason’s forged cards in stark white detail. “See?”
“When you left the service,” the senior pol said to Jason, “did this record have an electronic dot on it? Do you remember?” Both of them scrutinized Jason as they awaited his response.
What the hell to say? he asked himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know what a”—he started to say, “microtransmitter dot,” but quickly corrected himself—soon enough, he hoped—“what an electronic dot looks like.”
“It’s a dot, mister,” the junior pol informed him. “Aren’t you listening? Are you on drugs? Look; on his drug-status card there isn’t an entry for the last year.”
One of the thungly pols spoke up. “Proves they’re not faked, though, because who would fake a felony onto an ID card? They’d have to be out of their minds.”
“Yes,” Jason said.
“Well, it’s not part of our area,” the senior pol said. He handed Jason’s ID cards back to him. “He’ll have to take it up with his drug inspector. Move on.” With his nightstick the pol shoved Jason out of the way, reaching meanwhile for the ID cards of the man behind him.
“That’s it?” Jason said to the thungly pols. He could not believe it. Don’t let it show, he said to himself. Just move on!
He did so.
From the shadows beneath a broken streetlight, Kathy reached out, touched him; he froze at the touch, feeling himself turn to ice, starting with his heart. “What do you think of me now?” Kathy said. “My work, what I did for you.”
“They did it,” he said shortly.
“I’m not going to turn you in,” Kathy said, “even though you insulted and abandoned me. But you have to stay with me tonight like you promised. You understand?”
He had to admire her. By lurking around the random checkpoint she had obtained firsthand proof that her forged documents had been well enough done to get him past the pols. So all at once the situation between them had altered: he was now in her debt. He no longer held the status of aggrieved victim.
Now she owned a moral share of him. First the stick: the threat of turning h
im in to the pols. Then the carrot: the adequately forged ID cards. The girl had him, really. He had to admit it, to her and to himself.
“I could have gotten you through anyhow,” Kathy said. She held up her right arm, pointing to a section of her sleeve. “I’ve got a gray pol-ident tab, there; it shows up under their macrolens. So I don’t get picked up by mistake. I would have said—”
“Let it lie there,” he broke in harshly. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He walked away from her; the girl skimmed after him, like a skillful bird.
“Want to go back to my Minor Apartment?” Kathy asked.
“That goddamn shabby room.” I have a floating house in Malibu, he thought, with eight bedrooms, six rotating baths and a four-dimensional living room with an infinity ceiling. And, because of something I don’t understand and can’t control, I have to spend my time like this. Visiting run-down marginal places. Crappy eateries, crappier workshops, crappiest one-room lodgings. Am I being paid back for something I did? he asked himself. Something I don’t know about or remember? But nobody pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you’re not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven’t I learned that by now, if I’ve learned anything?
“Guess what’s at the top of my shopping list for tomorrow,” Kathy was saying. “Dead flies. Do you know why?”
“They’re high in protein.”
“Yes, but that’s not why; I’m not getting them for myself. I buy a bag of them every week for Bill, my turtle.”
“I didn’t see any turtle.”
“At my Major Apartment. You didn’t really think I’d buy dead flies for myself, did you?”
“De gustibus non disputandum est,” he quoted.
“Let’s see. In matters of taste there’s no dispute. Right?”
“Right,” he said. “Meaning that if you want to eat dead flies go ahead and eat them.”
“Bill does; he likes them. He’s just one of those little green turtles…not a land tortoise or anything. Have you ever watched the way they snap at food, at a fly floating on their water? It’s very small but it’s awful. One second the fly’s there and then the next, glunk. It’s inside the turtle.” She laughed. “Being digested. There’s a lesson to be learned there.”
“What lesson?” He anticipated it then. “That when you bite,” he said, “you either get all of it or none of it, but never part.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“Which do you have?” he asked her. “All or none?”
“I—don’t know. Good question. Well, I don’t have Jack. But maybe I don’t want him anymore. It’s been so fucking long. I guess I still need him. But I need you more.”
Jason said, “I thought you were the one who could love two men equally.”
“Did I say that?” She pondered as they walked. “What I meant was is that’s ideal, but in real life you can only approximate it…do you see? Can you follow my line of thought?”
“I can follow it,” he said, “and I can see where it’s leading. It’s leading to a temporary abandonment of Jack while I’m around and then a psychological returning to him when I’m gone. Do you do it every time?”
“I never abandon him,” Kathy said sharply. They then continued on in silence until they reached her great old apartment building with its forest of no-longer-used TV masts jutting from every part of the roof. Kathy fumbled in her purse, found her key, unlocked the door to her room.
The lights had been turned on. And, seated on the moldering sofa facing them, a middle-aged man with gray hair and a gray suit. A heavy-set but immaculate man, with perfectly shaved jowls: no nicks, no red spots, no errors. He was perfectly attired and groomed; each hair on his head stood individually in place.
Kathy said falteringly, “Mr. McNulty.”
Rising to his feet, the heavy-set man extended his right hand toward Jason. Automatically, Jason reached out to shake it.
“No,” the heavy-set man said. “I’m not shaking hands with you; I want to see your ID cards, the ones she made for you. Let me have them.”
Wordlessly—there was nothing to say—Jason passed him his wallet.
“You didn’t do these,” McNulty said, after a short inspection. “Unless you’re getting a hell of a lot better.”
Jason said, “I’ve had some of those cards for years.”
“Have you,” McNulty murmured. He returned the wallet and cards to Jason. “Who planted the microtrans on him? You?” He addressed Kathy. “Ed?”
“Ed,” Kathy said.
“What do we have here?” McNulty said, scrutinizing Jason as if measuring him for a coffin. “A man in his forties, well dressed, modern clothing style. Expensive shoes…made of actual authentic leather. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taverner?”
“They’re cowhide,” Jason said.
“Your papers identify you as a musician,” McNulty said. “You play an instrument?”
“I sing.”
McNulty said, “Sing something for us now.”
“Go to hell,” Jason said, and managed to control his breathing; his words came out exactly as he wanted them to. No more, no less.
To Kathy, McNulty said, “He’s not exactly cowering. Does he know who I am?”
“Yes,” Kathy said. “I—told him. Part of it.”
“You told him about Jack,” McNulty said. To Jason he said, “There is no Jack. She thinks so but it’s a psychotic delusion. Her husband died three years ago in a quibble accident; he was never in a forced-labor camp.”
“Jack is still alive,” Kathy said.
“You see?” McNulty said to Jason. “She’s made a pretty fair adjustment to the outside world except for this one fixed idea. It will never go away; she’ll have it for the balance of her life.” He shrugged. “It’s a harmless idea and it keeps her going. So we’ve made no attempt to deal with it psychiatrically.”
Kathy, quietly, had begun to cry. Large tears slid down her cheeks and dropped, bloblike, onto her blouse. Tear stains, in the form of dark circles, appeared here and there.
“I’ll be talking to Ed Pracim in the next couple of days,” McNulty said. “I’ll ask him why he put the microtrans on you. He has hunches; it must have been a hunch.” He reflected. “Bear in mind, the ID cards in your wallet are reproductions of actual documents on file at various central data banks throughout earth. Your reproductions are satisfactory, but I may want to check on the originals. Let’s hope they’re in as good order as the repros you carry.”
Kathy said feebly, “But that’s a rare procedure. Statistically—”
“In this case,” McNulty said, “I think it’s worth trying.”
“Why?” Kathy said.
“Because we don’t think you’re turning everyone over to us. Half an hour ago this man Taverner passed successfully through a random checkpoint. We followed him using the microtrans. And his papers look fine to me. But Ed says—”
“Ed drinks,” Kathy said.
“But we can count on him.” McNulty smiled, a professional beam of sunshine in the shabby room. “And we can’t, not quite, on you.”
Bringing forth his military-service chit, Jason rubbed the small profile 4-D picture of himself. And it said tinnily, “How now, brown cow?”
“How can that be faked?” Jason said. “That’s the tone of voice I had back ten years ago when I was an involnat.”
“I doubt that,” McNulty said. He examined his wristwatch. “Do we owe you anything, Miss Nelson? Or are we clear for this week?”
“Clear,” she said, with an effort. Then, in a low, unsteady voice, she half-whispered, “After Jack gets out you won’t be able to count on me at all.”
“For you,” McNulty said genially, “Jack will never get out.” He winked at Jason. Jason winked back. Twice. He understood McNulty. The man preyed on the weaknesses of others; the kind of manipulation that Kathy employed had probably been learned from him. And from his quaint, genial companions.
He could understand now how she had become what she had become. Betrayal was an everyday event; a refusal to betray, as in his case, was miraculous. He could only wonder at it and thank it dimly.
We have a betrayal state, he realized. When I was a celebrity I was exempt. Now I’m like everyone else: I now have to face what they’ve always faced. And—what I faced in the old days, faced and then later on repressed from my memory. Because it was too distressing to believe…once I had a choice, and could choose not to believe.
McNulty put his fleshy, red-speckled hand on Jason’s shoulder and said, “Come along with me.”
“Where to?” Jason demanded, moving away from McNulty exactly, he realized, the way Kathy had moved away from him. She had learned this, too, from the McNultys of the world.
“You don’t have anything to charge him with!” Kathy said hoarsely, clenching her fists.
Easily, McNulty said, “We’re not going to charge him with anything; I just want a fingerprint, voiceprint, footprint, EEG wave pattern from him. Okay, Mr. Tavern?”
Jason started to say, “I hate to correct a police officer—” and then broke off at the warning look on Kathy’s face—“who’s doing his duty,” he finished, “so I’ll go along.” Maybe Kathy had a point; maybe it was worth something for the pol officer to get Jason Taverner’s name wrong. Who knew? Time would tell.
“‘Mr. Tavern,’” McNulty said lazily, propelled him toward the door of the room. “Suggests beer and warmth and coziness, doesn’t it?” He looked back at Kathy and said in a sharp voice, “Doesn’t it?”
“Mr. Tavern is a warm man,” Kathy said, her teeth locked together. The door shut after them, and McNulty steered him down the hallway to the stairs, breathing, meanwhile, the odor of onion and hot sauce in every direction.
At the 469th Precinct station, Jason Taverner found himself lost in a multitude of men and women who moved aimlessly, waiting to get in, waiting to get out, waiting for information, waiting to be told what to do. McNulty had pinned a colored tag on his lapel; God and the police alone knew what it meant.