Halo: First Strike (22 page)

his dresser.

Anonymous, unmonitored, he passed through the living room and

out the door and walked away.

#

Gonzales strolled alongside Ring Highway, drawn to nothing in

particular but absolutely unwilling to go back to the empty block

of apartments and the isolation and anxiety waiting there.

He found himself in the Plaza, where Lizzie had taken him and

Diana their first night at Halo.  He passed across the square, by

the sign that read VIRTUAL CAF, then stood motionless, watching

the flow of people around him.  Some walked alone, striding

purposefully, or moving slowly, lost in thought; others walked

together, talking cheerfully or intently:   monkey business,

Gonzales thought, wondering what HeyMex would say about these

people and their movementswhat did it all mean?

"Gonzales," he heard, his name called in a high-pitched,

unfamiliar singsong.  He turned and saw the twins.

As they approached, one was muttering in a fast, low,

gibberish; she wore black coveralls and stared sadly at the

ground.  The other was smiling; her face was daubed with white

paint, and she wore a white blouse and a peculiar skirt of light-

blue cloth that had been rough-cut and stitched together without

benefit of measurement or seams; on its front a crude likeness of

a rabbit had been drawn in red neon paint.

The smiling twin, the one whose dark skin was streaked with

white, said in clear tones and formal cadence, "Today she is

Alice."  She pirouetted clumsily, her skirt billowing around her. 

She said, "Her sister is Eurydice."  She pointed to the other

girl, who buried her face in her hands.  She said, "Alice is

sweetness and smiles, small steps and starched crinolines;

Eurydice is sorrow and languorous repose and black silk.  Between

them they measure the poles of dream."  She stepped back and

smiled; her twin smiled with her.  "Are you having problems,

Mister Gonzales?" she asked.  "The collective believe so.  We

believe you are lost between worlds.  Is this so?"

"Perhaps I am," he said.

"Well, then," she said.  She put the index finger of her

right hand to pursed lips and her eyes looked back and forth. 

"I'm thinking," she said.  Seconds passed, then she said, "I know

what you must do."

"What's that?" Gonzales asked.

"Follow us," she said.  The other twin nodded, spoke

gobbledygook, looked at Gonzales through a mask of intense sorrow,

as if on the verge of shedding endless tears.

"To where?" Gonzales asked.

"Don't be stupid," the Alice twin said.  "Where would Alice

and Eurydice take you?"

"Down the rabbit hole?" Gonzales asked.

The Alice twin smiled; the Eurydice twin shook her head

"Underground?" Gonzales asked again.

The twins smiled in what seemed to be perfect

synchronization.

#

At the bottom of Spoke 2, where a lighted sign announced

ELEVATOR ARRIVES IN 10 MINUTES, the twins led Gonzales through

an arched tunnel under the spoke.  As they walked, the two ahead

of him muttering back and forth in their unintelligible patter, he

realized the floor must be curving downward, passing underneath

the main level of the ring.  Blue globes down the center of the

ceiling provided soft light.  After about another hundred steps,

they came to a door at the tunnel's end.  Across the door, bright

red lighted words said:

CASUAL SIGHTSEEING DISCOURAGED BEYOND THIS POINT.

DO YOU WISH TO ENTER?

The Alice twin turned and pointed to the sign.  She shrugged

elaborately, as if to say, well?

"I want to enter," Gonzales said.

"Come in," the door said, and it slid sideways into its

frame.

The three stepped into a dim vastness, a world beneath the

world, and followed a central walkway marked with flashing arrows

and an intermittent legend that flashed, UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

FOLLOW LIGHTED PASSAGE.

They passed a series of workshops, partitioned cubicles

screened behind containment curtains.  Light came from one open

doorway; the twins stopped, and the Eurydice twin gestured for

Gonzales to look inside.

Hundreds of pots stood on shelves that lined the small room's

walls from floor to ceiling.  Many were simple, almost spherical

containers with wide top mouths, in baked red clay.  Others of the

same shape were glazed and painted and marked with a single band

of color around the waist: bright primaries against clear pastels. 

Still others were of complex shape and design, difficult to take

in at a glance.

An old woman sat bent over a potter's wheel.  She crooned

tuneless gibberish as her large hands shaped the wet, spinning

clay.  She looked up at Gonzales standing in the doorway.  Her

face was deeply-lined, her skin pale; she had straight brows above

dark eyes.  She wore an off-white dress that fell to the floor and

an apron of a black rubbery material.  Her hair was covered by a

dark blue scarf that was pulled tight and tied at the back.

The old woman laughed, turned back to her wheel, and began to

croon once more.  Under her hands the clay began to grow upward

and acquire form.  She shaped it inside and out, demiurge reaching

into the heart of matter, until it became a squat-bottomed pot

rotating on the wheel.

The wheel stopped, and with quick, delicate movements she

placed the new-formed pot on a stand next to the wheel.  She

reached inside the pot and her hands worked, but Gonzales couldn't

see precisely what she was doingher body screened him.  Then she

took a rack of paints and brushes from a shelf above her head and

began to paint the surface of the pot.

As she worked, she looked up occasionally, but didn't seem to

mind the three of them standing there, so they stood and watched

Gonzales was fascinated by the quick intensity of her movements,

eager to see what the pot would look like.

Finally she turned it so they could see her work.  On the

pot's side was a face, its nose and mouth just painted

protuberances in the clay, its eyes painted oval dimples.  The

pot's bulbous shape distorted the features of the face, but as

Gonzales looked more closely at it, he saw

His own face, in malign parody, its features hideously

contorted.

The woman laughed, gleeful at his sudden recoil.  She picked

up the pot and looked at the face, then at him, then at the pot

again, and she laughed again, very loudly, and squeezed the pot

between her clay-spattered hands, squeezed it again and again,

until it was a shapeless lump of color-shot clay.  She threw the

lump across the room into a large metal bin that sat against the

far wall.

"Ohhhh," from the twins, their voices in unison.  "Ohhhh."

"We're not frightened," the Alice twin said.  The other twin

covered her face with her hands.  "Silly old woman," the Alice

twin said.

The old woman's eyes stayed on Gonzales as she reached into a

plastic bag full of wet clay and separated out another clump to

work on.  She was working it on the unmoving wheel when the twins

started making shrill hooting noises, and ran away.

Her crooning had begun again as Gonzales followed them down

the path.

#

Next to the path was a gateway, with a sign that said, in

glowing letters:

HALO MUSHROOM CULTIVATION CENTER

ABSOLUTELY NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

BEYOND THIS POINT!

About a hundred feet from where Gonzales stood, a metal

stairway led up to a catwalk that passed over the mushroom farm. 

He looked back along the shadowed way he'd come, then forward to

where small, isolated shafts of bright sunlight slanted down into

the mushroom farm, and beyond, to where shapes faded into

darkness.   Either the twins had left him, or they had gone in

here.

Gonzales stepped up to the gateway and said, "Hello, I'm

looking for two girls, twins."

"One moment, please," the gateway said.  As Gonzales had

expected, common courtesy would dictate that a gatekeeper

mechanism respond to those who didn't have the access key.

Gonzales stood bemused in the semi-darkness for some time,

until a woman came to the other side of the gate and said,

"Hello."  She was small and darkher skin a delicate brown, eyes

black under just the slightest epicanthic fold.  She wore black

boots to the knee, a long black skirt, a loose jacket of rose silk

with butterflies in darker rose brocade.  She was exquisite, the

bones of her face delicate, her movements graceful.  She said, "My

name is Trish.  The twins are inside, waiting for you."

"My name is Gonzales."

"I know.  Come in."  As she said the final words, the gate

swung open.  She waited, watching, as Gonzales stepped through,

and the gate closed behind him.

"How do you know my name?" he asked.

"From the collective.  I am friends with many of them  the

twins, of course, and others  Lizzie."  She stood solemnly

watching him, then said, "What do you know about mushroom

cultivation?"

"Nothing."  All over Washington state, he was aware,

mushrooms grew, and people hunted them with great dedication,

sometimes bringing back what they regarded as enormous successes: 

chanterelle, boletus, shaggy mane, morel.  In fact, to someone

from Southern Florida, the whole business had seemed not only

quaint and Northwestern, but also dangerous:  Gonzales knew that

what seemed a lovely treat could be a destroying angel.

"All right."  Trish stopped, and he stopped next to her.  She

turned to him, and he was aware now of her deep red lips and white

teeth.  She said, "Halo needs mushrooms as decomposersthey're

incredibly efficient at converting dead organic matter into

cellulose."  Gonzales nodded.  She said, "In a natural setting

whether here or on Earthspores compete:  many die, and some find

a place where they can flourish, grow into a mycelial mass that

will fruit, become a mushroom.  As mushroom growers, we intervene,