White Queen (6 page)

He woke up in somebody’s front parlor. He was lying on a mattress on a concrete floor, under a brown and grey goats hair blanket and wearing some stranger’s pajamas. The concrete was very clean, the mattress thin as cardboard. At the foot of his bed a chunky CRT monoscreen tv stood blankfaced on a plastic crate, on top of it a Christmas centerpiece of holly and christmas roses. There was dawnish light coming through unglazed windows, and the muddy resmelted roofing.

He closed his eyes, recalling the second unscripted wilderness experience of his life. He and Braemar Wilson must have fallen in about fifteen rivers, climbed in and out of hundreds of thorny ditches, before they found their way to this suburban street. Reports of Mother Nature’s demise have been exaggerated. He didn’t care to think about what had gone before. He felt a complete fool. At least he didn’t seem to have woken up in a spaceship. That would have been unbearably banal.

When he opened his eyes again Braemar was there, going through his personal effects surrounded by a mess of children. The monoscreen was blaring away, two African grown-ups in country clothes were watching it, sitting on the floor. Braemar had just managed to open Robert’s mobile home. Robert flopped out. She yelled, the children shrieked with laughter.

“Hey! That roach is under my protection, Ms. Wilson!”

If she was embarrassed she brazened it out pretty well.

“Put the box down.”

Johnny leaned out of bed and rapped on the concrete with his knuckle. “Everything’s okay, Robert. You go home.”

The big roach tasted the air in Johnny’s direction, then crept obediently back into its den.

“Smarter than your average orthopteron.” She came over. The way she looked at him was a lot too knowing for comfort. “My friend, the cockroach. Oh, Johnny. Why don’t you let them do their own dirty work?”

“He’s a souvenir,” explained Johnny. “We were in hospital together once. One day the world will be ready for cute roaches. Then I press the self-replicate button and restore my ruined fortunes. What d’you think?”

“Too many legs.”

“What happened to my clothes?”

“They’re being washed.”

“I pissed myself, didn’t I. How disgusting. Thank you for looking after me: I was totally helpless.”

“It’s called culture shock.” Her face was still painted, but barely. Beautiful women have to do it. Surely paint was better than the never-ending surgery, or the newer kind of cosmetic treatment that could go so horribly wrong.” Have you ever had anyone close to you die, Johnny? I have. It’s strange. It’s like, Africa. There are parts of ourselves that we can keep at bay, the way we fend off, where we live, the parasites and bugs that own this continent. If it breaks through, or if we go to find it, Africa is what it always was: inimical paradise, that made us but God knows how…. When you run into a big unevolved emotional nexus, such as death of a spouse, such as meeting an alien, you fall back into Eden. Doesn’t matter how sophisticated your conscious responses: things get strange.”

“You didn’t collapse.”

“I wasn’t in the car when it came alive. And I didn’t meet that friend of yours, she didn’t talk to me.”

Johnny sat bolt upright, appalled.

“Bella!”

“Oh shit. Johnny, it’s all right. I called your wife. Your little girl is home and safe.”

“I told you?”

“Yes, you told me. You came out of whatever happened in the fort thinking the aliens had kidnapped your daughter. It’s just fugue, Johnny. Come on, you know all about it. Remember the scenarios. You’ve been drip-fed those scenes since you could sit up unaided.” She pulled her phone from her bag. “I’ll try to get through again. You could listen.”

He could not speak to his daughter. Izzy wouldn’t allow it. She said she had to protect the child. The thought that Braemar Wilson
knew
this stung him so that it took him a moment to read the full implication of her offer.

“You have my ex-wife’s phone number.”

She nodded.

He gave her a long, thoughtful look. He didn’t keep phone numbers in his pockets. He held the ones that still had meaning in his head. What else did she know? How deep did she get? No point in protesting. A US quarantine subject becomes a ward of the state, as far as data protection is concerned. Johnny had absconded, so he didn’t even have that meager protection. There was nothing he could do, no legal or practical recourse. Anyone who chose could delve into his private places.

“Nah, don’t bother. It’s the middle of the night. Too late for fairystories.”

Braemar nodded, and put the phone away. It was a fine, economical communication, that little nod. It accepted his unspoken contempt, almost with humility. She went on looking at him, giving him this humility like a present. Her eyes were brown: the iris not striated with grey or green as in most brown eyes, but opaque, glowing chestnut. In fascination he kept on returning her stare until it was like the preamble to a cat fight. One of them had to back away or else they had to fall on each other, clawing and grappling like maniacs.

She stood up.

“I’m old enough to be your mother.”

Their hostess had gone away and come back. She put a tray of coffee and porridge down beside Johnny and bent over him, looking concerned.

“On doit fai ’mene le para—”

“She thinks you ought to see a doctor.” Braemar became professional. “But I don’t think we want that. Too suggestive of the colonic irrigation in the spaceship, you know the one. Not right for us at all. The chopper’ll be here soon. I’ll ask her to fetch your clothes.”

“Come and have dinner with me,” she said, when they landed at L’Iceberg. “Have dinner with me, and we’ll talk.”

He returned to The Welcome Sight and spent the hours dozing, trying to work out what he really believed. He and Wilson had scripted the stance he’d take in the intro carefully. It was meant to put him on a level with the audience, no sneering disbelieving voyeur; and yet retain some intellectual credibility. It dealt with the likelihood that Johnny Guglioli would spin any kind of yarn to get attention for his plight, and made that part of the story. But what was the truth? Something had brought him to Africa. Something had held his peripheral attention, for years. He could not be counted among the believers. But a true disbeliever would reckon his files, his open-minded interest, so much crackbrained waste of time and memory. One had to face that.

Now he was inside one of those hapless real-life true stories. It had happened to him, and it still wasn’t evidence. It seemed to him that his only
evidence
was that gut-wrenching, bone-deep terror, far more vivid than the inconclusive and easily faked events. But Braemar apparently believed in something; something that made her willing to carry a deadly weapon. However she’d got hold of it, smuggled it, no journalist would take up a firearm lightly. It was ethically impossible. She’d be as career-dead as Johnny if anyone caught her with that.

Was she faking? Was she being used by some unknown agency? He felt very angry when he thought about the gun.

They ate in the Planter’s Bar, as if it had already become their sentimental rendezvous. She wore the glowworm dress, he’d hoped she would. Since it was her bill he chose fresh asparagus, carrot soufflé,
coeur de paume gratin aux truffes;
a silly confection of spun chocolate, cocoa liqueur,
marrons glacés,
and ice cream; and a fancy bottle of wine. She accepted his raid on the menu with quiet amusement, then put him down (childishly, he thought) with an African and frugal order of foofoo and the local “green stew.” His meal was more food than he’d seen in front of him for years. Unfortunately his stomach rebelled: he could not eat. He tried the wine. It smelled slightly of dog shit, and tasted like caramelized printing ink. Bob Marley was on their screen, Johnny’s choice. He stared at the tragic and beautiful prince of sound, Braemar’s gorgeous body and the alien’s swiveling joints entangled horribly in his mind.

“I wish he hadn’t died of cancer. That’s so defeatist.”

“You Americans. Can’t a person just fall ill, without being a moral degenerate?”

“Some diseases are willed. That’s fact, Braemar.”

“And some are thrust upon us, eh Johnny?”

She’d finished the wine, but showed no sign of it at all. She shook out a couple of small lozenges from the base of her cigarette case, and put them under her tongue. Johnny was intrigued. Maybe she favored taking her travel-protection by mouth. AIDS, polio, TB, malaria: you had to keep up your defenses out here. Strange drugs also had their place in the classic scenarios. He faced a possible ex-human, already in the thrall of the baboon-telepath invaders….

The waiter left them with coffee and Armagnac. Johnny refused both. She touched off the screen, breaking contact with the hotel’s systems.

“Alone at last. Shall we talk about aliens?” She smiled at him. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes. So do all these other people.” There were two tables of other diners, far away in the recesses of the red cavern. “Why don’t you take up a clean modern habit, liking chewing betel?”

Braemar sighed.

He reached across the table and picked up her purse.” Fair exchange is no robbery, okay?” He shook out the contents onto the cleared tablecloth.” Take your phone. Don’t tell me you never use it to record private conversations, just let me see you disable it. We’re not going to say anything important. Call it a small courtesy.”

Smiling, she pulled out the powerpack.

He flipped open her cigarette case, removed two of the lozenges, wrapped them in a scrap of paper napkin and put them away. She used a European Citizen passport not a British/European one. He read the first page, being careful not to touch the biometric stripe. “I see we belong to the same one-eighth of the world’s population. That’s handy. A good colleague on this circuit has to be a blood brother. Or sister. Isn’t that right?” He leered bitterly. Johnny’s blood was good for nothing.

“Do you have an ex-husband, Brae? Can I have his number?”

“If I had it, yes. I don’t.”

“Why ‘Braemar,’ anyway. It sounds disgustingly Brit-suburban: the name of a semi-detached villa on Acacia Avenue.”

“That’s exactly right. It’s the name of the place where I was living when I made my first tv sale. I thought it was appropriate for an obsolete housewife.”

“You don’t look much like an obsolete housewife to me.”

“I was a lot older then. But the name still fits. I am the place. You are the thing. I am the place that you come into.”

She dropped her eyes, glowing like a blowtorch.

“Generically speaking, of course.”

Oh, it was a fun game, flirtation. He wondered how he could stand all the fun he was going to get if this partnership materialized. He wondered if she was just a clever tease, purely faking the heat that seemed to come back at him. He swept stuff back into her purse.

“I’m not into gender reification. I thought we were supposed to be talking about aliens. As we both know, you can lie through your teeth and there is nothing I can do to defend myself. You can turn me inside out and I can’t touch you. But tell me some sort of story. For the sake of appearances.”

“Okay. This is what I have. There were three landings. There’s an area in North America and another in Thailand. At both places there may be aliens, interacting with the local people. But there’s a—a wall. We can’t get near. The humans who know about the aliens won’t talk: I mean literally not a word, not to anyone. It seems the aliens don’t wish their presence to be known, and have ways…. I have friends in this search. We are almost if not entirely convinced that it’s real this time. The Asa UFO was part of the same cluster but it was reported confusingly: we got onto it late. I came to Fo. When I found you here of course I looked you up. Anyone who’s interested in aliens is interesting to me right now; I knew at once you must be on the same trail. I asked a few questions. I learned you had a contact of some kind. I made my offer. That’s all.”

“You truly believe that those characters last night were, are, aliens from outer space?”

“Could be. And one of them is interested in you. And you’re still talking. It’s my intention to keep you talking.”

He recalled, horribly, the utterly disorienting sound of that voice in his mind. He believed nothing, except that there was a lot Braemar wasn’t telling…and yet his simpler instincts cried out that she must be mad if she wanted to share the experience he’d had last night.

“I see. I kiss and tell. You sell my story to the world.”

“Don’t be disingenuous. You have the contact. I have the access to systems. I’m not trying to rip you off. All I want is to be close to them. From the first. To be one of the few.” She grinned. “I’m a space-invaders groupie, and I think you can get me into the dressing room.”

Johnny was meant to be the observer, that was his role. He did not like this reversal. But if he was to be bought then he wanted Braemar Wilson’s body, which he could not have. At this juncture, frankly, no other trade was remotely interesting. He’d rather have her, right now, than his old life back intact.

A laughing, talking mob of Africans came streaming by.