Chapter 9 They Think It’s Gone
Chief Sordid of City Intelligence had come to the Picnic to make one of the several reports to the public that followed the Mayor’s speech, his being a very brief and fraudulent account that concluded by affirming that the annexed land was absolutely safe. He was a poor public speaker, but it had scarcely mattered in the thirty or forty seconds it had taken him to uncover a white board, point to the lies written on it, read them aloud, and sum up. Like all the other experts, he had received his polite applause.
He had intended afterward to join other City employees in the Mayor’s tent for lunch and a few drinks, but was called aside to the parking lot where a large black car sprouted multiple antennas. Two of his own intelligence agents were there, one of them, agent Anger, seated in the driver’s seat with a phone to his ear and an intent, listening expression on his round face. The other man, Councilman Fear, spoke to Sordid in quiet tones, though no one was near.
“It’s about the man the ambulance took away.”
“Yeah, I’ve already been told he was dead. Who was it?”
“It was Null.”
“What? Our Null?”
Null Ecks was one of Sordid’s agents.
Fear nodded. “He came out here early this morning with the setup team just to keep an eye on things.”
“Yeah, I asked him to do it. His car is here; you can just see it over there by that blue tent. So what happened?”
“The tent company workers and the police and the rest were all here but I guess none of them were keeping track of him. Why should they? He must have walked out alone to one of the little canyons over on the north side. One of the guests, a good City man named Discreet, noticed some tracks in the dust, followed them out, and found the body.”
“He wasn’t murdered?”
“Looks like suicide. Slit wrists.”
“Geez!” Sordid winced as he thought it over. “Couldn’t he have made it less obvious? Where was his loyalty? I don’t care if he wants to off himself, but he could have at least left the impression that it was murder.”
Fear looked at him without full comprehension but also without shock. Sordid steadied himself. He had said a little too much and must change the subject. Even Fear, both an agent and a councilman, must not know or guess everything. He would just have to take his cue that Null’s suicide was neither wholly unexpected nor completely discussible.
“Captain Bleeder said there was no ID on the body, right?” Sordid said.
“Right, Chief. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket, and all his ID must have been in it. The jacket’s probably in his car.”
Sordid nodded vigorously. “That’s a break. You two circulate and make sure that no one who was here early this morning remembers seeing Null. He wasn’t here. I’ll go to the hospital and close some mouths. Nobody is to know that this was one of ours. Who identified the body?”
“Grudge did at the hospital, but he says he hasn’t told anyone but us.”
Grudge was another City intelligence agent.
“He’s smart,” Sordid said. “Officially this is a case of a John Doe. And Discreet knows to say nothing? Good. So I’ll go to the hospital and make sure this gets covered up like a casserole. I’ll take Null’s car so it isn’t noticed here afterward. One of you drive mine back. Oh, hell, I left my easel and white board and some things on the platform, and I don’t want to go back there now! It’s time to move fast and seal this thing like an envelope.”
He noticed his page Prevarica walking by at a distance and called her to him. She came accompanied by a boy, another page.
He smiled at the kids. “Looks like I have something to do in town,” he said cheerily, “and it can’t wait. I don’t want to push back through the crowd and get my things off the platform, so you two get them packed up and find somebody to take them to the front desk at City Hall. One of the police or one of the Mayor’s clerks will do it. OK?”
“Sure, glad to!” the girl said.
“Fine. Tell whoever it is just to… Oh, hell, my briefcase is with that stuff. It’s got to be locked up. All right, here…” He gave Prevarica a key. “Make sure it’s a policeman and give him this key to my office. Tell him to dump the stuff there, room 302, and leave the key with the front desk. There’s someone on duty there this morning because of the picnic, just to take calls and coordinate. You understand?”
She did, so he hurried off to Null’s car.
A few minutes later, the two pages were leaving the platform with Sordid’s possessions. When they came to a car parked not far off, Prevarica stopped to speak to an elderly man who was unlocking it.
“Say, Mr. Passerby, you must have got permission to drive instead of take one of the buses.”
“Yes, Prevarica, my health is not the best. I would have been miserable on one of those hard, straight bus seats.”
“And now it looks like you’re heading home,” she said cheerily. “You are? Would you drop off Wisdom and me in town? And I hope you don’t mind hauling all this stuff we’re taking back with us?”
“It was supposed to be a policeman,” Wisdom said to her quietly.
“It doesn’t matter,” she shot back. She added more pleasantly, “Mr. Passerby is a friend of my dad and he doesn’t mind, right?”
Passerby assured them that he did not mind.
Wisdom felt his chest tighten, for something about this reminded him of various subterfuges Prevarica had practiced in the Sandhill neighborhood, plots that had started out looking simple but had quickly become complex. He had read somewhere that Mark Twain had invested a fortune in a type-setting machine with so many moving parts that it had broken down regularly. The old man had lost his shirt too. Prevarica liked nothing better than to invent a scheme with too many moving parts. But this was only a feeling, he told himself. So far they were still doing more or less what Chief Sordid had told them, which was as much as he could reasonably expect from this girl. Besides, he was getting to go someplace almost alone with her, something he had never done before.
“After we’ve dropped these things off for the Council,” Prevarica was saying to Passerby, “maybe you can take us home? Oh, thanks.”
She chatted gaily all the way to Town Hall, and then, when Chief Sordid’s briefcase and equipment were lying on the sidewalk outside the car, thanked Mr. Passerby repeatedly and told him that she and Wisdom needed no help, that they would carry the things in and be right back.
Small as she was, she managed somehow to grab up almost everything and start off, saying, “Come on, Wisdom, we don’t want to keep Mr. Passerby waiting.”
As he followed her into the building, carrying the briefcase, Wisdom’s conviction deepened that he was indeed getting pulled into the equivalent of Mr. Twain’s disastrous investment. No one was seated at the front desk, but lights were on in that corner of the foyer, a sweater was hung over the back of the chair behind the desk, and a magazine and a pair of reading glasses were lying on the desktop.
“It was supposed to be a policeman,” he said again to Prevarica, knowing it would do no good, “and the policeman was supposed to take the things to the Chief’s office and then bring the key back to this desk.”
“There’s more than one way to do the same thing, doofus,” Prevarica said, while panting her way up some stairs. “What are you, a hall monitor?”
He gallantly took the whiteboard from her, leaving her only the easel and some markers to carry.
“What are you planning?” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing! We’re just doing exactly what we were told. Why are you so suspicious?”
In the echoing stairwell, Wisdom suddenly realized that he was no longer just almost alone with Prevarica but was absolutely alone with her. It had never happened before. They might have a private conversation of sorts. He might even—well, actually he could not imagine telling her how he felt about her, but conceivably he co
uld do even that. As she ascended the stair ahead of him, he looked at her skinny back and pretty hair and kept his silence. This was almost, sort of, and by quite a stretch, like a date. His breath became shorter than could be explained just by stair climbing.
When they reached room 302, they found that the hallway, like the stairs, was empty. Hardly surprising on a Saturday, especially since anyone who might have wanted to come in and do a little work on the weekend would have gone to the Picnic instead. After Prevarica produced the key and turned it in the lock of the tall, old-fashioned door, they carried the things in and put them down.
Sordid’s office looked very ordinary and uninteresting to Wisdom, just the usual desk, files, computer, hat rack, and so on. And yet this room was magic because he was alone with her. Already, he was mentally savoring this as a memory, the moment alone with Prevarica, that he would carry with him from now on. He did not really think he was going to say anything lovish to her. They would just go now.
But momentarily Prevarica began snooping around, darting here and there, looking at papers on the desk and notes on a calendar. She began to open a file drawer that, to Wisdom’s dismay, was unlocked. What kind of intelligence officer did not lock his files?
“We’ve hit the mother lode here,” Prevarica giggled, flipping through the folder tabs. “Did you know that my Councilman, Mr. Fear, works for Chief Sordid as one of his spies? Fear doesn’t know I know, but I do. Dad told me. Anyway, Fear told me the other day that Sordid has the goods on everybody in town. Everyone! Woo-hoo, here’s one that says ‘Confidential Report to Mr. Power’! Oh, crap, the folder’s empty. Never mind, let’s try the computer.”
Following her back to the desk, Wisdom prayed that the computer would be turned off and password-protected. But when Prevarica shifted the mouse, the screen lit up and the desktop picture appeared, a photo of J. Edgar Hoover looking dour and accusing.
“We’d better get out of here before someone comes along,” he said.
“Who would come along? Nobody even knows we’re here.”
She was hurriedly opening files at random but soon stopped as a deep blush covered her face. Looking over her shoulder, Wisdom saw that she was looking at a photograph of some naked people. Not pornography, he thought, but evidence on somebody. She closed the file hastily.
“Sure, whatever,” she said roughly. “That’s what intelligence agents do, they gather dirt.”
“Come on and get out of here,” he said again.
She clicked on the screen’s Recycle Bin icon.
“What are you looking in there for?”
“Because that’s where you find the good stuff. The lady that used to be my nanny—you remember Confusion—has been a secretary too, and she told me.” Prevarica laughed. “She says people are so stupid that they think if it’s deleted it’s gone. And what have we here? ‘Confidential Report to Power—Summary,’ only this time…” she moved the file to the desktop and opened it “…it’s really here. Jackpot!”
To Wisdom’s alarm, she right clicked and selected Print. A printer nearby began to operate loudly and soon was shooting out pages, but only two. Since he was close to the printer, he grabbed the pages, intending to take them home and burn them.
“OK, let’s go.”
She smiled at him and, taking the papers from his hand, carried them to a window for better light. He followed, looking at them over her shoulder. They began to read together.
To: Mr. Power
From: Chief Sordid
Date:
Subject: Confidential Report—Summary
Sorry I took so long to put this together. The full report is attached. You asked for solid facts and solutions for each of the bullet pointed headings that you gave me and in the order you gave. You also wanted short summaries in this cover memo. I admit I’m supplying more facts than solutions, but please don’t shoot the messenger. You may want to get a drink in hand before you start this.
The Mayor’s Plan. Once again, this cannot be seriously attempted. The annexed land around the City is boiling with volcanic fire, has sterile soil, and is sometimes roamed by violent Hellites. [Source: The Development Office’s secret report.] At any rate, the Mayor’s predictions of prosperity were suspect even if the land had been safe and fertile, and for two reasons. First, the amount of free cash held by citizens is limited. If we somehow exhaust the available funds in private hands, it still will not come close to paying our Hell debt (see next bullet point). And we have no prospect of outside buyers. Therion seems to hope no one will notice that, if the annexed lands are sold to some citizens, the City as a whole will be just as poor. Second, the City does not need more land; there is no crowding within the present limits. We do not even need land to grow our own food; our imported food is plentiful and reasonably cheap.
The City’s debt to Hell. You’ve seen the numbers. The bottom line is that it could not be repaid if we had a hundred years and no more interest accruing on the loans. The actual debt amount keeps changing due to restructuring of the loan and mounting interest, but as of this date we are looking at 1.2 trillion dollars. The City has about 60,000 residents, so that’s 20 mil each for every man, woman, and child. During recent years we have actually paid only a tiny bit of the interest and nothing on the principle. [Source: Your secret accounts, supplied by your assistant Miss Abject.]
The Heavenite threat. An invasion is expected, probably inevitable, and cannot be repulsed. The Gloria Dothan has the City under her guns, and considering what those guns did when just a few shells fell on Sandhill Street three years ago, we could easily see the whole City burning in no time. We also estimate enough land operating forces quartered on the Dothan to readily occupy the City. [Source: City intelligence agent Null Ecks.] As for increasing our military preparedness, nothing has been budgeted for it. The Mayor is raising a volunteer force of citizens as neighborhood patrols, but we do not have arms for them. Estimated time of invasion: whenever they want. We really do not know what has been holding them back.
Geological Plate Shift. As we suspected, the City has started moving again toward the mountains. It will eventually reach a sunken lake of fire between us and the front range. Then it will be engulfed and destroyed. No estimate of how long we have left can be made because of the start-and-stop nature of the movement. If the speed of shift were to hold steady as is, we would all burn in less than seven years. [Source: City Intelligence Agent Ecks, based on data from Mammon Mart University’s Observatory. He updated his report just today.]
How to Buy Time. The Mayor’s Plan is probably our best shot to buy time with the citizenry, keeping them optimistic and uninformed. Since it cannot be denied that the City infrastructure is crumbling (for example, care of Founder’s Grove has been turned over to its Marshal), an optimistic answer to all problems had to be manufactured. Funding for basic City functions is covered in the next point. As to buying time for the other matters addressed in the bullet points above, I don’t see any way.
Plan for Mammon Enterprises. ME is to be bled dry to keep basic City services running for a while—a plan conceived by Lawyer Temptation. Mammon is senile and Mammonette has no way to fight this. You know the details. [Source: secret report from the City lawyers to you and the Mayor.]
Mayor Therion’s background and intentions. Far from being the City’s savior, Therion was handpicked by the Hellite brass to oversee the end of the City. He does not want this because it will mean an end to his authority, but he will obey, since he is himself a Hellite. Proof of this is that under his turban he is hiding horns that have sprouted since the shelling. When surgically removed, they grow back. He is sporadically incapacitated—at times a “useless wreck” as Temptation puts it—but usually rouses himself for important public appearances. If he becomes completely incapacitated, the new 3-D images of him will serve the purpose of his Hellite masters. [Source: Lawyer Temptation’s report to his own fir
m.]
Plan to Save the City. There is no conceivable plan to save the City. All is lost.
Almost all of this was known to Wisdom at least in a general way. The fate of the City and the desperate dodges of the Mayor, all the dark secret plans of the fiends and of the fiendish, were occasional matters for discussion around the Grace House dinner table. So Wisdom was surprised only by the account of Therion’s horns and of the plan to raid Mr. Mammon’s riches for use by the City; and he was not disturbed by anything he had read.
Prevarica, however, had begun to gasp asthmatically as she progressed through the memo and was now leaning both gloved hands on the desk as if overcome by some grave illness. Wisdom’s attempt to comfort her was worse than clumsy.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess you thought it was just your house and a few others that are promised to Hell, but really it’s almost all of them in town. You know, I never talked to you about, uh, converting, but—”
“God Almighty!” she almost screamed. “At this rate, I’ll never see twenty-one! Not even if…if…”
“Even if your house doesn’t collapse,” he finished for her gently.
She darted an angry look at him as if this answer were wrong and beside the point, but she did not explain.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t finish your sentences for you. Look, Prevarica, us Heavenites really do have help for this kind of thing. You’ve just got to conclude that, uh…”
“No conclusions!” She started up, snatching the papers, which she had laid down, and hurriedly folding them. “I don’t believe in conclusions. I’m not changing anything about me, you can be sure of that.”
She slipped the papers into a pocket of her slacks.
“You can’t keep that!” he said.
“The hell I can’t. Listen, it’s a report that Chief Sordid compiled for just Mr. Power alone. If this got out, if this got to the media or even if the Mayor saw it, well…!”
Wisdom did not need to read her mind. He already knew the kind of things Prevarica did with other people’s private correspondence. To her, anything that fell into her hands was all hers, to be used merrily and ruthlessly.
“No, Prevarica, this is no time for blackmail. You’ll end up in jail.”
But the girl had returned to the computer and was dropping the electronic file of the memo back in the Recycle Bin. Then she right clicked on the Recycle Bin and emptied it.
“That way Sordid won’t even know it was still on his computer,” she commented. “If he remembers it at all, he’ll think he deleted it. Nifty, huh? And I’m shutting down the computer so he thinks he did. OK, come on, Mr. Passerby is waiting for us.”
“Uh, the key.”
“Right, the key, I know.”
They ran together down to the bottom of the stairwell and then peering cautiously around a corner, saw that an elderly woman was now seated at the front desk. She had donned the reading glasses and was examining the magazine, completely unaware of them. Prevarica took the picture of some judge off the wall by them and with a great effort heaved it past the desk and on into a hallway beyond, where it slid across the floor and slammed against an unseen wall with a tinkle of broken glass.
The front desk lady looked up, called out, then slowly rose and went to investigate. As soon as she was out of sight, Prevarica dashed forward, dropped Sordid’s office key into the partly open desk drawer, and ran on to the main exterior doors. Wisdom had followed her only part way across the foyer. She gestured impatiently for him to follow, and he did.
Before he was quite out the doors, he heard the front desk lady saying, whether to herself or to someone else he did not know, “Oh, look, it’s fallen down and the glass is broke. I’d better call a custodian.”
As he and Prevarica returned to Mr. Passerby’s car, he had time to wonder at her luck. Far from becoming alarmed at what had just happened, the front desk lady did not even know that she had been diverted from her desk. Furthermore, no one would ever question Mr. Passerby about the ride he had given the two pages, for his connection with Prevarica was very slight and with Wisdom nonexistent. If Sordid were to find out that a copy of the memo had been stolen, he would of course question Prevarica, but she would reply that she had given the key to some policeman, not sure which one.
So the girl was probably getting away with it, that is, until she would try to blackmail Sordid with the paper or try to sell it to the newspaper or the TV news. He considered himself to be pretty safe because of his Heavenite citizenship: the Embassy would protect him from any repercussions. But Prevarica was playing with hellfire.
He was in the backseat and she was in front beside Mr. Passerby. “You want to give that to me?” he asked her, his heart full of pain for her sake. He knew she would know what he meant.
“No,” she said firmly, showing her teeth. “You want to mind your own business?”
He did not reply. They rode along. In all this activity, the girl’s scarf had slipped down a bit on her neck but she apparently had not noticed. It happened too that her hair was pushed back off her shoulder. Feeling a little too interested, he turned his gaze to what should have been either smooth, pretty skin or, if the girl could be believed, skin that was somehow diseased. His eyes widened in disbelief, for he saw neither. Instead he saw the inside of her collar on the opposite side of her neck.
He froze in shock. He was looking through Prevarica’s neck as if it were not there! It wasn’t. But how could that be? Above the missing neck, her head was exactly where it should be if the neck had been there. She was breathing, and plainly her body was following her commands. But was there a body there at all? ‘You’ll never see it,’ her little brother had said with a laugh, and at last Wisdom was afraid that he understood. How it had happened, he did not know, but most of Prevarica was invisible. This invisibility, he inferred from her past clothing habits, had been spreading for years until only her head remained.
After more thought, he remembered that her hiding of her legs, which had been her first eccentricity, had begun around the time that her house had received a City Seal. That same night the Gloria Dothan had shelled Leasing House and the street in front of it, and Prevvy had been in the crowd on the street when it happened. He had heard that the Heavenite bombardment had produced very strange and lasting effects on some of the people under it, so maybe the shelling had caused this invisibility. Regardless of the cause, he had to wonder what Prevarica would do when the ‘disease’ seized her completely, when she could no longer cover up and put on a front.
He pondered that her hiding of this creeping invisibility was not so very out of line with the thrust of her life in general. She lied and covered up about everything. This was just one of many poorly repressed disasters looming to engulf her. He listed to himself the others, including loss of friends, juvenile detention, mental illness, and the possibility of being murdered by City agents for stealing Chief Sordid's report. Maybe invisibility was the least of her threatening dooms. Maybe it could even save her from some of the others. At any rate, he made up his mind to keep her secret, since it was so very important to her. Though she would become completely invisible, he would always remember what she looked like.
Part 2 The Damnation of Leasing House