Janus (30 page)

Réjean Lafayette turned to Grebbel with a practiced-looking smile. He was a small man with bitten fingernails, white, even teeth and a thin grey moustache. There were deep lines between his eyes and curving from his nose around the corners of his mouth. His movements as he chopped vegetables in the kitchen were quick and nervously precise.

“You look happy in your work,” Grebbel commented after they had introduced themselves. “It must be an interesting job you’ve got there.”

Lafayette’s eyebrows lowered fractionally, but his smile did not waver. “Mustn’t complain, you know. You looking for a position here or something? I gotta tell you—they’ll only assign if you go through channels. They got real strict about that lately.”

“Is that right?” Grebbel frowned. “He didn’t tell me that. Just said I should come over and look at the work—even gave me your name. You know the guy, don’t you—Larsen at the Greenhouse.”

“I’ve met him.” Now Lafayette’s expression was carefully bland. “Didn’t know he was involved in work assignments, though.”

“Actually, it wasn’t anything official. He just thought you might be able to help me. Something about you owing him a favour.”

“Said that, did he? I don’t suppose he said what kind of favour?”

“It’s not the sort of thing we’d talk about in public, is it? I suppose I owe him the same. That’s really what I came to talk about.”

“You need help making the pieces stay fitted together, is that it, eh? Sure, I can help you keep your feet on the ground if that’s what you really want.”

“I was thinking we might be able to help each other. If you’re interested in more than chopping vegetables, maybe we can arrange to talk someplace where we won’t be disturbing everyone.”

So the first step was taken, Grebbel thought, and it could have been much less promising. Larsen had obviously been very ambitious and very busy when he started his reclamations. Grebbel decided he could begin by ignoring all those with irrelevant backgrounds—the irredeemable kleptomaniac, the two child abusers, the wife-poisoner—and most of the women. He would still have the makings of a reasonable core of helpers if those he approached were as sympathetic as Lafayette seemed likely to be. He considered his next moves.

He wasn’t sure if there were female sumo wrestlers, but if there were, Karina Fujiwara looked as though she could have been one. He found her in the vehicle maintenance shop, up to her elbows in transformer fluid. She heard him out quietly, without shifting attention from her work. He couldn’t read anything from her manner or her expression while he talked, but finally she nodded.

“You talk some more,” she muttered. “I listen. Then we see.”

In one of the workshops behind Hut Seven, Kurt Winter was using finely powdered rouge to grind the blank for an astronomical telescope. “It’s a bit more than a hobby with the boss,” he told Grebbel, “and a bit less than top priority. No question, though, we could use a mirror this size, in a permanent mounting. We’ve got a site marked out for the dome, and we hope to start building this summer.” He explained how he had helped modify the spare furnace and adjust the composition of the charge to cast good blank discs. He pretended to glance over his shoulder and winked. “I learned this back there. I think the boss guesses I’ve got more old circuits working than I used to have, but she says nothing, I say nothing, the work goes on.”

“You like being a glorified window cleaner?”

“Hey, when I was a kid, this was my dream. To build a real telescope. Like Newton, you know, like Galileo. Only I grow up and find they do everything by robot, unless you got three doctorates in engineering and a computer degree. Anything else, it’s just a toy. You wait for a power cut to take the streetlights away, and no cloud, and then you can see the power sats, if you’re lucky, through the photo-smog. And even the secretaries down the road, they all close their blinds before they get ready for bed. . . . Here, what I make is real. Even with the orbiters, even through this deep an atmosphere, there’s enough here for everyone. We’ll be doing real measurements with this one, a year from now, if she silvers right. That’s always the tricky part, getting the surface down good with what we’ve got to work with.” He seemed to be relishing the challenge.

“So all you were back there is behind you now.”

“Back there, I was someone who wanted to make telescopes. What else I was isn’t important, it isn’t real any more. It’s gone. Done with.”

“Say it often enough and maybe you’ll believe it,” Grebbel snapped, and immediately knew he had gone too far.

Winter peered intently at his mirror. “I’d imagine we’d both have more important things to be doing than talking about what’s best left alone. I can tell you I have.”

“Then I’ll let you get on with it.” Grebbel turned and walked out into the sunlight.

After Kurt Winter, he found Hendriks, Shelling, Abercrombie, DeWitt. Enough for the time being. He resisted the urge to cast his net wider and increase the risk of being discovered. He felt vibrant, confident in his decisions, so that where they led was almost irrelevant. If he had believed in such things, he would have said he had found the path to his destiny.

He met Partridge and delivered a package.

“Manna from heaven,” whispered the astronaut. “Ah, you’ve got a good heart in you, mate. The nights have been pretty rocky recently, I don’t mind telling you. And what do you want from the wind’s whispers for next time?”

“I’m curious about weapons,” Grebbel said.

Elinda watched the clouds blowing across the mountain peaks as she walked, snow and cloud mixed against the deep purple sky. She was haunted by unformed memories of liver-coloured skies and dark, greasy water. On days like this, when the memories seemed ready to congeal into reality, angular rhythms would sound in her head, like the outline of something from another room heard faintly in the night.

She knocked at Grebbel’s door and went in.

There was excitement in his manner when he saw her. “Surprise, surprise,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Where else?” she asked. “You haven’t been around anywhere else I’ve looked.”

He seemed uncomfortable for a moment. “I’ve been busy. Making plans. I’ve . . .” He shook his head and stared at her. “What’s been happening to you? You’re looking exhausted.”

“I’ve been planning, too,” she said. “Or trying to. Hard work, this planning, isn’t it?” She stifled what felt like the start of a hysterical giggle. “I think I need some help. Because I’ve gone so far now, I can’t give it up.” She tried to unknot her fists. Her arms were trembling as though she had been up to her elbows in icy water. Now he was closer to her than he had been for days, and there was a restlessness in his eyes, an animal intensity that suggested to her a predator turned prey.

“It’s in you too, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s fear—the fear you feel when you know you’re going to walk through the graveyard at night, and you could back out, but you won’t because you’ve committed yourself and something in you would break and die if you changed your mind.”

He looked at her steadily and nodded. “Break and die. Yes.” He had moved close to her. The corner of his mouth twitched, but his eyes still stared. He swallowed and seemed about to reach for her, and she felt herself quiver like a drum. Then he closed his eyes and twisted away.

He sat down at the desk by the window and pulled a box toward him. “I tore up all the props they gave me, all the mementos of my so-called past life.” He gave a short, choking laugh. “I was wondering what I would replace them with, when you came in. . . . You’re right: I’ve been avoiding you.”

She sat down. Now she was cold all over. “Because of what you’ve remembered?”

He nodded, not looking at her.

“What is it,” she said hoarsely, then cleared her throat. “What have you remembered?”

“Lots of things,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him. “A white stuccoed house on a quiet street. The colour of the first car we owned. My father’s aftershave when he kissed me goodnight. The smell of gin that sometimes went with it. The pictures in the anatomy texts I used to sneak away and read—the nightmares they gave me. And the cat. Lots of things, from a normal childhood.”

She swallowed, and uttered the words calmly: “What else?”