Borderless Deceit (52 page)

“But you'll come back, won't you? For the christening. Anne-Marie too. The four of us. I'd like you two to be god-parents. I want you in the family.” I was deeply moved.

I parted from Rachel on the day Iain would be arriving. Nothing much was said. She was wearing a long turquoise dress which her swelling belly pushed forward. She extended her arms. I went to her. We pulled each other in. “You were good for me, Carson. I never had a better companion. Promise me you won't be gone long.”

When the door of Diego's taxi slammed shut and the hobbling journey over the track began, it struck me how Rachel having placed a final kiss firmly on my cheeks made me feel I had completed a reversal. Having arrived at the casa as a villain, I was leaving as a paragon. I lost Rachel in Turrialba, but, really, for all time I had gained her.

The arrangements were that Diego would drive me to the bus terminal, wait there, and bring Iain back later. He became excessively busy at the bus station, lugging my pack from the car to a posted schedule, then to the ticket counter, and back to the car. This happened
several times. The random fluttering of a butterfly. “Diego,” I ordered when it was time for me to climb into the bus, “stand still.”

“Señor?”

I handed him a thick envelope. “This is your retainer for this week, plus for next month. Also, your car needs new brakes and tires. There's money for that too. Please have it done. Señora must be driven safely.”

“
Gracias,
señor.”

“I'll be back after the baby is born.”

“
Si,
señor. I drive you.”

“I would like that.”

“
Si,
señor.”

“
Adios,
Diego.”

He took my hand and pressed it to his chest. “
Adios,
señor.”

On buses heading in opposite directions, somewhere between Turrialba and San José, Iain and I passed each other in a wordless changing of the guard.

Where in San Francisco would Jaime be? Flying in from San José, unconcerned that my last minute booking had initiated a pinging sound somewhere, I debated how I would find her – and what would happen now. First thing, I planned to check into a rooming house so as to send a physical address to the place in cyberspace.

But none of it was necessary. At the luggage carousel as I retrieved my pack I felt my shoulder getting tapped. A figure behind me asked if I was Carson Pryce. I nodded. “I'm Vincent, your chauffeur. Is that your bag?”

The vehicle was a stretch-limousine, twice the length of a normal car. Once on the freeway, I had to know. “Who sent you, Vincent?”

“Dunno. Internet booking. Taking you to this address.” He passed me a print-out. A string of x's filled the space for the name and number of the credit card holder. “Look under
Special Instructions
. It says to ring the doorbell of the lady on the ground floor.”

The arrangements had a corporate feel. Hugh-S? Had he picked me up the second I booked my flight?

The area Vincent wheeled into was up-scale urban, clean, orderly, dotted with bookstores, coffee hangouts and boutique restaurants. “Not a warehouse district,” I said.

“I'm not proud,” Vincent replied. “I'd have taken you to one of them too.” He stopped before a two-storey house with a wood-carved
outside staircase. “Press the bell for the lady downstairs,” he reminded. I fished in my pocket for a tip, but Vincent's hand wave cut it short. “All paid for.”

The black woman opening the door had taken her cues from the neat flower boxes decorating the street. She wore a tidy dress and refined jewellery, and her hairdo was nicely coloured and aligned. But the accent was ghetto. “Yous Cahsun, Mr. Cahsun Pryce?” I nodded. “Ah'm Florence. Jus' a sec, honey.” She was soon back with a key. “Round the side, upstaihs. Place's yohs.”

“Mine?”

“Shuh thing, shuga.”

“Who asked you to give me the key?”

“Yuh dunno? Pretty little thing. Sorta like icin' on the cake.”

“Eyebrow rings?”

“This one? Nah. A proppuh lady. Classy vibes. If Ah was you, Ah'd get on fahtin' terms with her real fast.” She motioned to me to go round the corner and get on up there.

No one home. I investigated the apartment. It was sparsely furnished and scarcely lived-in. Four rooms plus a bathroom and kitchen all connected to a long corridor. One room had two computers, just brought in, still unwired. Cases of peripherals stood pushed in a corner. On a rolling chair in the middle of the room there was a note.
Yo, road dawg. Park your carcass. Home from the grind at five
.

I grinned. So not Hugh-S. Jaime had been keeping an eye open; she must have found a way to penetrate purdah. It was to be expected, I supposed. But what of the rest? The limo service, paid for by credit card, this fashionable apartment, and she – the icing on a cake.
A proppuh lady
. Jaime?

Florence had been right. The eyebrows were no longer metal-laden. And a pinstriped business suit had replaced T-shirts and bleached jeans. But when Jaime came through the door the bracelets jangled as always and her eyes had the same bewitching fire.
Pixel pusher! You made it!

One day, in a wicker chair drinking tea on a verandah with a view of a volcano; the next, sipping pop from a can on a bare kitchen floor. Two women, two styles, both beguiling.

Jaime did the talking while I studied the pinstripes, the male-sized burgundy shirt, the gold bangles on her wrists. I studied her eyebrow for leftover marks from the piercings, but all that had cleared up. And the platinum hair strand was gone too. So she'd moved on. From soft-punk she'd migrated towards some sort of avant garde. I planned to tease her over it.
Gone swank?
But despite this she was still spangly, still brassy, and was telling me that after several months passed and I hadn't surfaced anywhere she nearly threw in the towel. “No hot poop, no cold poop. Nothing nowhere.” Then came the signal, as if from somewhere far out, a radio crackle from the other end of the Milky Way sent off by a being desiring to communicate.
So yeah, I went zonkers
.

By then she'd been in San Francisco for weeks. On account of the job. What job, what was making her dress up like an accountant? “Murky stuff, Carson. Like you did, except different. Advanced. Neural networks. You're my model. Getting my computers to be like you – so they have your fab hunches and dead-sure reading of the tea leaves. The crooks and terrorists should be quaking.” Jaime grinned.

My jaw dropped. Had it come to this? I, a model, a still and patient object in a studio, there for a specific purpose, with no value outside it? Was Jaime intending her machines to evolve to become stand-ins for my neurons? Did she not know that my neurons in their billions were tired of games? Did she not see they now sparked as one and that she – with her lovely mental sharpness and physical tautness – was the target? Perhaps she thought I hadn't changed.

I wanted to tell her what I'd gone through, going back a good way, starting with the moment when she had said,
Gotta hug ya
and walked away. But her hand rose from the pop can and a finger drifted forward to press solidly against my lips. Was I to kiss it? Or was she signalling it wasn't yet my turn to speak?

Her eyes shone. “I sent something impressive to your chum. The one at the other end of the pipeline. Wowie. He got back fast when he saw it. Wanted me on the team as of the day before yesterday. San Fran, I said. Won't go anyplace else. So I joined development, not operations. The lab here, whammo. Good coin too, but, man, it's piggen' hush-hush.”

Jaime recruited by Hugh-S? It hit like a cold shower. Jaime's finger on my lips had tingled, but instantly that stopped. My brain went into a
different gear. Urgently I tried to form another kind of picture. Hugh-S, Vincent, the limo, Jaime – was all this one? I recalled the parting words of Minding Merrick. Was he in on all this too? Was Jaime a plant from the start, someone he had put in to keep an eye on Heywood's fuzzy lack of thoroughness?

Again I tried to speak, wanting to know more. But now Jaime's finger moved to her lips. Shhh. Her smile signalled a conspiratorial delight. Glumly I wondered if this was the end of it, that is, of her and me. With her existence classified, Jaime would become what I once was, an empty container – all the things that matter taken away and put in cold storage by the indoctrination pledges. When
Shhh
is the sole answer you can give if somebody asks,
How was your day?
– what's left for ordinary conversations? For me it had been that way…
Shhh
every day…for twenty years and now that's how it was for her. What chances were there for us of a future that was vibrant?

Eventually she inquired into my plans. “I'm not going back.” It spurted out of me.

And what did that mean? she wanted to know. Not going back to where? To the Service? To Turrialba?
To her
?

“To the shadows, Jaime. No more piggin' hush-hush living for me. I plan to work in the open.”

She clapped her hands. “Hey, that's hot. So you'll be a straight shooter.” And what would I be doing in the full light of day? What would the product be?

“Working on a broader view of things. I don't know. Challenging existing orders. Putting out anti-disinformation.” I tried to make it sound blasé.

Anti-disinformation? Anti
all
disinformation?

“Topics which strike me as needing it most.”

The possibilities were endless and as this dawned on Jaime – as her picture formed – excitement boiled over. With bracelets jangling, she drew arcs in the air.
Carson, knight-errant!
She saw governments pierced, sham truths punctured, and politicians freaking out. “Carson, that's mega-mega! That's you!” She slipped her fingers into her hair, took her head and shook it.

I shrugged. Knight-errantry? I was under no illusions. Whatever fights I'd chose, they would be minor additions to the existing
pandemonium of public opinion. It would take time to carve out a profile and have impact. But there was a new dimension now. “With your job,” I said, “we could be in opposing camps. Suppose I take a run at the self-pleasing nature of most intelligence work. What then? What do we do if we come into conflict?”

Jaime didn't see this as a problem. “I'm not in operations, Carson. I only want to mimic how you think. That means you gotta share your thoughts with me. The way I see it, you'll be in one world, I'm in another. We'll take care we don't cross over. So why don't we promise that neither of us peeks. Sound okay?”

“Does Hugh-S know I'm here? Did he help you get past purdah?”

“Can't tell you that, Carson. Sorry. Didn't you hear me. We gotta take care we don't cross over.”

“You knew I was arriving. You must have peeked.” “That was 'cause we hadn't promised anything yet. I promise now, you too, then that's how it is. From this moment. Okay?”

A disengagement in cyberspace. Why not? With my plans to counteract disinformation, open arguments suited me. Yet I wanted to know something else. “And what happens when you come out of your world and I come out of mine? Is my thinking process all we share?”

Jaime cast her eyes down and sat still. She seemed to struggle for words. Finally she said: “First, tell me about her. Miss Dunn. Was she the reason you played dead so long?”

Beside me Jaime had fallen asleep. She led me to this room in the apartment with nothing in it except a sleeping bag and a camping mattress.

What's the colour of the mat?
She had come close to tug at my shirt.

Green
.

What kind of green?

Um, forest green
.

Close. It's moss green. What's the thing to know about moss?

Jaime…

Never to waste it
.

Jaime, I…

Shhh. I'm going to unbutton your shirt 'cause I wanna wear it tomorrow. Pass out if you want. I'm used to it
.

We had sunk down.

And now, under the sleeping bag spread, opened as a blanket, flat on my back, Jaime curled against me, I allowed my thoughts to run free.

Did I black out? I may have groaned as we were sinking. We were in a free fall together and I'd forgotten how that felt. There was weightlessness and ecstasy and that caused me to groan. Jaime was making similar sounds, proving she was weightless too. We fell for a while, then we floated, and eventually after much energy we had our transcending moment. Once through that we filtered back into this terrestrial domain. I still felt the points of reference of the journey – biting kisses, digging fingers, clothing becoming evanescent, and for the longest time no room for daylight between us. All of it had felt real. So, no. No black out. I'd moved on from that syndrome.

But moved on to what? I owed Hugh-S a message, though with Jaime in his tent he wouldn't need me anymore. Perhaps I could finally meet him now that I was free – for old times' sake. I could join him on that fishing boat when he took a holiday with his young son. I could watch them snag their marlins. And, thinking of fishing boats, I owed Francis Merrick some contact too.
A fish has jumped into my boat
. I could write him a postcard. It could be of a killer whale. Or should it be of a loveable dolphin? But for all I knew, as of today, he already had that news. Hugh-S, Jaime, Minding Merrick. Were they a trinity? Having sworn never to go back, I now assumed this was something I'd never know. On the mat under the sleeping bag, with Jaime fast asleep, I contemplated the irony of it. Of course, they were other ironies. The greatest one was that Rachel was taking time out to become a mother, that I, in my own way, was assuming her mantle, and that Jaime, with her finger on her lips, was now me. A lot of shifting. Were someone to explain all this to Diego, he would probably point at his head.
Si. Si. Lógico
.