Last Summer at Mars Hill (25 page)

For an instant it hung in the air and he could imagine it flying, could almost imagine that perhaps it thought its wings would carry it across the courtyard or safely to the ground. But in that instant he caught sight of its eyes, and they were not a birds eyes but a woman’s; and she was not flying but falling.

He must have cried out, screamed for help. Then he just hung over the balcony, staring down at where it lay motionless. He kept hoping that maybe it would move again but it did not, only lay there twisted and still.

But as he stared at it it changed. It had been a pale creature to begin with. Now what little color it had was leached away, as though it were bleeding into the concrete; but really there was hardly any blood. Its feathers grew limp, like fronds plucked from the water, their gold fading to a gray that was all but colorless. Its head was turned sideways, its great wide eye open and staring up. As he watched the golden orb slowly dulled to yellow and then a dirty white. When someone finally came to drag it away its feathers trailed behind it in the dust. Then nothing remained of it at all except for the faintest breath of ancient summers hanging in the stale air.

For several days he wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even responding to Claude’s cruelties or his father’s ineffectual attempts at kindness. His mother made a few calls to Tangier and, somehow, the drop was changed to an earlier date in Athyr. On the afternoon he was to leave they all gathered, awkwardly, in the dormitory. Father Dorothy seemed sad that he was going, but also relieved. The twins tried to get him to promise to write, and Ira cried. But, still without speaking, Paul left the room and walked down to the courtyard.

No one had even bothered to clean it. A tiny curl of blood stained the concrete a rusty color, and he found a feather, more like a furry yellowish thread than anything else, stuck to the wall. He took the feather and stared at it, brought it to his face and inhaled. There was nothing.

He turned to leave, then halted. At the corner of his eye something moved. He looked back and saw a spot on the ground directly beneath his father’s balcony. Shoving the feather into his pocket he walked slowly to investigate.

In the dust something tiny wriggled, a fluid arabesque as long as his finger. Crouching on his heels, he bent over and cupped it in his palm. A shape like an elongated tear of blood, only with two bright black dots that were its eyes and, beside each of those, two perfect flecks of gold.

An eft,
he thought, recognizing it from the natural history book and from the argala’s vision. A juvenile salamander.

Giant Indian stork, feeding upon crustaceans and small amphibians.

He raised it to his face, feeling it like a drop of water slithering through his fingers. When he sniffed it it smelled, very faintly, of mud.

There was no way it could have gotten here. Animals never got through by-port customs, and besides, were there even things like this still alive, Below? He didn’t know.

But then how did it get here?

A miracle,
he thought, and heard Father Dorothy’s derisive voice—
How could something like that tell you that it loved you?
For the first time since the argala’s death, the rage and despair that had clenched inside him uncoiled. He moved his hand, to see it better, and with one finger stroked its back. Beneath its skin, scarlet and translucent, its ribs moved rapidly in and out, in and out, so fine and frail they might have been drawn with a hair.

An eft.

He knew it would not live for very long—what could he feed it, how could he keep it?—but somehow the argala had survived, for a little while at least, and even then the manner of its dying had been a miracle of sorts. Paul stood, his hands folding over the tiny creature, and with his head bowed—though none of them would really see, or understand, what it was he carried—he walked up the stairs and through the hallway and back into the dormitory where his bags waited, past the other boys, past his mother and father and Father Dorothy, not saying anything, not even looking at them; holding close against his chest a secret, a miracle, a salamander.

I don’t write much science fiction, and have always found it particularly difficult in the short story format; this takes place in the same universe as my first three novels. I had read Connie Willis’s “All My Darling Daughters” and was taken with the idea of setting a tale on a space station. Bill McKibben’s
The End of Nature
was still very much on my mind; thus the little red salamander at story’s end.

“I
T’S A PRETTY RITZY OFFICE,”
the agent at Kahn Temps warned Rebecca, staring pointedly at Rebecca’s uneven hem where the faint glint of a staple hinted at what was holding the worn skirt together at the knees. “I don’t know why they don’t just hire a permanent receptionist. Don’t want to pay for benefits, I guess. But it’s your assignment if you want it.”

“Thanks,” squeaked Rebecca, promising herself that she’d pay off her credit-card bills and start from scratch, really save some money this time and clear her credit rating.

“Fine. You start Monday.” The agent’s glance slipped from the frayed skirt to a run that began just below Rebecca’s knee and arrowed to the curled edge of her old loafer. Rebecca knew the look. She cleared her throat and smiled, tugging furtively at the loose pocket of nylon behind her knee as she fidgeted in her seat. The agent wrote the name and address of Lorimer Brothers on a little pink business card, then handed it to Rebecca.

“Thanks,” said Rebecca, coughing as she stood and lined her left foot behind the right, so the agent wouldn’t notice the broken heel curled like a blackened sliver of dried beef. “I have to run now. Shopping.” She smiled brightly. When the agent turned to answer the phone she fled.

On Monday she didn’t feel so good about the new skirt. It didn’t actually go with last season’s gaucho jacket, and her old pumps were the wrong color: ecru when they really should have been toast. The skirt had cost her one hundred and seventeen dollars, even on sale at Glumball’s; but sale items couldn’t be returned, and besides she’d had to charge something or they were going to close out her account. Now she stood too long in the lobby of the vast corporate office building, squinting at her reflection in the black marble walls and wondering why she hadn’t bought the moleskin cardigan. By the time she got to the eighty-seventh floor she was late.

“This is your station,” barked a woman in a fire-engine red Italian suit. She pointed to a slab of polished gray marble surrounded by a low smoked glass wall, the whole thing facing the hallway; Rebecca’s head suddenly felt very light. She rested her hand on the edge of the dark glass wall to steady herself. It was so cold, its edge so sharp that she gasped and snatched her hand away, checking her fingers for blood. The office manager pursed her lips and took a tissue from her wallet, then wiped the offending glimmer of Rebecca’s fingerprint from the glass.

“I assume you’ve worked the Magister telephone system before?” The office manager coughed discreetly, dropping the tissue into a steel cylinder. Rebecca followed her into the workstation and nodded, lying.

“But maybe you’d better go over it with me to make sure,” she said, settling into an ergonomic chair shaped like a tiny velvet S. The office manager regarded her with wide surprised eyes, then shook her head.

“I’ve never actually used it. I’ll see if I can send Victor out after he’s got my coffee.” She smoothed the narrow band of scarlet leather across the top of her thighs, shrugged and returned to her office.

It took Rebecca a week to learn the phone system. For the most part, her duties began and ended with answering the phone and screening visitors. Occasionally a secretary would hand her something to type. Then she’d get to use the tiny word processor, with its printer that hummed as it spat the neat pages onto her marble desktop. She could see through the smoked glass wall to the banks of elevator doors in the corridor, and straight across the wall to the glass elevator that slid up and down the outside of the building like a silvery water spider on emerald cables.

Only one other office occupied this level, its door catty-corner to Rebecca’s station. If she positioned herself just right she could see everyone who came and went there, too. Not that the other office had many clients; certainly not as many as the young and stylish firm of Lorimer Brothers.

“What do they
do
?” Rebecca finally got up the courage to ask one of the secretaries, after she’d stayed late the previous evening copying out a complex tiramisu recipe for her.

“Who’s that?” The secretary scanned the recipe, tapping her fingernail against her lower lip so that it left a faint half-moon in her lipstick.

“That other office. The World Business Forum.”

“Hmmm? Oh—
them
?” She tilted her chin towards the door and slid the recipe into her portfolio. “Nothing, actually. Just a bunch of retired businessmen. Dinosaurs who couldn’t keep up with the times. They rent the office space and play ‘corporation.’ Kind of sad, really. Like all these old guys who used to be important and now they can’t quit, even though they’re retired. No one ever really talks to any of them.”

Rebecca talked to one of them. Every evening when she left the office she took the glass elevator downstairs, floating along the outside of the great steel and marble tower and watching the flickering spans of lights in the financial district, like an earthbound aurora. It was a languorous descent, and for this reason the brokers and analysts and accountants used the interior express elevators, whose doors barely hushed shut on the eighty-seventh floor before they gaped open upon the glossy lobby. So each night Rebecca rode down alone, imagining herself sole witness to the city’s silent shimmering display.

Until the evening she met Mr. Lancaster. Office talk had been of rain, although Rebecca never saw a window to check for herself. She dashed from her console into the corridor, wrapping a vinyl scarf around her head and wishing she’d bought an umbrella last week instead of charging those gila-lizard print gaiters at Frothingale’s. At the end of the hallway the glass elevator glistened and shuddered in the rain. Rebecca tugged her scarf tight, shivering at the thought of seven blocks of storm before she reached the subway. And so, her head bowed and swathed in cerise vinyl, she didn’t even see the old man rushing into the glass elevator until she smacked into him.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry!” squealed Rebecca, unraveling her scarf to peer crestfallen at an elderly gentleman catching his breath beside her. “I didn’t even see—no one ever rides this one—Gee, I’m sorry.” She stood awkwardly, the vinyl scarf falling in crackling ribbons as the elevator door sighed shut.

“That’s quite all right,” the old man coughed, smoothing an immaculate fawn-colored trenchcoat and drawing a large white handkerchief from a pocket to dab at his cheeks. He replaced the handkerchief and slid a pair of glasses from another pocket, placed them on his nose and regarded Rebecca thoughtfully. “Are you lost, my dear?”

Rebecca fumbled to stuff her scarf into her purse. “No—I, uh, I work here.”

The man tilted his head to stare at her above the rims of his spectacles. “Here?” His tone was somewhat doubtful.

Rebecca flushed, fingering a hole where she’d lost a button on her coat. “A temp—I’m a temporary. A receptionist.”

“Ah.” He removed the glasses, nodding slightly, as though relieved. “Forgive my curiosity. We don’t socialize much with our neighbors here. I didn’t recognize you.” And he smiled. “I am Hugh Lancaster, of the World Business Forum.”

“Rebecca Strunk.” Rebecca pumped his hand earnestly. “Of Kahn Temps Inc.”

“Ah,” Mr. Lancaster repeated, absently this time, and he leaned forward to touch the elevator controls. “Lobby, Miss Strunk?”

“Yes, thanks.” She let her breath out in a wheeze and tried to stand up straight. Rain battered the heavy glass walls as the elevator began to slip down the side of the building. Rebecca cleared her throat. “No one ever takes this one, you know. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen in it besides me.”

Mr. Lancaster adjusted the fleece-lined collar of his trenchcoat and smiled. “I prefer my own company at the end of a busy day. As I imagine you must as well, Miss Strunk.”

Rebecca nodded eagerly, delighted at being addressed as
Miss Strunk.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Lancaster! It’s such a nice view—” And she turned to press her cheek against the cold glass and stare out at the steel canyons awash with reflected light.

Mr. Lancaster looked at her more closely for this unguarded moment, noting the broken heel and missing button, as well as the dangling slip that Rebecca herself had yet to discover. Then he took a step closer to the glass wall, nodding as he surveyed the shining frieze of scarlet and amber lights that wove through the somber canyons below. “It is a lovely view,” he agreed. “I often wonder why no one else travels this way to see it.”

Rebecca shook her head. “They all say it’s too slow,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek to dispel the chill.

“A shame,” remarked Mr. Lancaster. “When I work into the evenings, I always ride down alone. But now I hope to occasionally have company.” And he smiled gently as the elevator finally settled into the lobby, and waited for Rebecca to step out of the elevator before following her.

“Shall I hail you a cab?” he asked as they poised at the main entrance, among the gleaming crowds shaking raincoats and umbrellas onto the slick marble floor.

Rebecca shook her head hastily, wrapping the scarf around her neck. “Uh—no thanks, a—um—a friend is picking me up.” She smiled brightly then impulsively stuck out her hand. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Lancaster.”

“Likewise, Miss Strunk,” replied the old man, and his warm gloved hand shook her bare cold one. “Have a pleasant evening.”

“Oh, I
will
,” Rebecca assured him. “See you soon, Mr. Lancaster.” And she shoved her way through the crowds into the stormswept night.

She did not see him soon, although she watched for him through the glass walls of the Lorimer Brothers office and even worked late in hopes of meeting him in the elevator again. Sometimes she saw other elderly men entering or leaving the World Business Forum office, all of them impeccably attired in expensive but unfashionable suits. None of them ever rode the glass elevator with her, and none of them greeted her as Miss Strunk.