Fury_ A Novel Part 4

The back-story of events on Galileo-1 had taken on a proliferating life of its own. Never before had Solanka needed-wanted-to go into such detail. Fiction had him in its grip, and the figurines themselves began to feel secondary: not ends in themselves, but means. He, who had been so dubious about the coming of the brave new electronic world, was swept off his feet by the possibilities offered by the new technology, with its formal preference for lateral leaps and its relative uninterest in linear progression, a bias that had already bred in its users a greater interest in variation than in chronology. This freedom from the clock, from the tyranny of what happened next, was exhilarating, allowing him to develop his ideas in parallel, without worrying about sequence or step-by-step causation. Links were electronic now, not narrative. Everything existed at once. This was, Solanka realized, an exact mirror of the divine experience of time. Until the advent of hyperlinks, only G.o.d had been able to see simultaneously into past, present, and future alike; human beings were imprisoned in the calendar of their days. Now, however, such omniscience was available to all, at the merest click of a mouse.

On the website, as it came into being, visitors would be able to wander at will between the project's different storylines and themes: Zameen of Rijk's search for Akasz Kronos, Zameen vs vs. the G.o.ddess of Victory, the Tale of Two Dollmakers, Mogol the Baburian, Revolt of the Living Dolls I: The Fall of Kronos, Revolt of the Living Dolls II (This Time It's War), The Humanization of the Machines vs vs. the Mechanization of the Humans, the Battle of the Doubles, Mogol Captures Kronos (or Is It the Dollmaker?), the Recantation of the Dollmaker (or Was It Kronos?), and the grand finale, Revolt of the Living Dolls III: The Fall of the Mogol Empire. Each of these in turn would lead to further pages, plunging ever deeper into the multidimensioned world of the Puppet Kings, offering games to play, video segments to watch, chat rooms to enter, and, naturally, things to buy.

Professor Solanka was intoxicated for hours on end by the Puppet Kings' six-pack of ethical dilemmas; was at once fascinated and revolted by the emerging personality of Mogol the Baburian, who turned out to be a competent poet, expert astronomer, pa.s.sionate cultivator of gardens, but also a soldier of Coriola.n.u.s-like blood l.u.s.t, and the most cruel of princes; and was deliriously entranced by the shadow-play possibilities (intellectual, symbolic, confrontational, mystificational, even s.e.xual) of the two sets of doubles, the encounters between "real" and "real," "real" and "double," "double" and "double," which blissfully demonstrated the dissolution of the frontiers between the categories. He found himself inhabiting a world he greatly preferred to the one outside his window, and thus came to understand what Mila Milo had meant when she said that this was where she felt most alive. Here, inside the electricity, Malik Solanka emerged from the half-life of his Manhattan exile, traveled daily to Galileo-1, and began, once more, to live.

Ever since Little Brain's censored remarks to Galileo Galilei, questions of knowledge and power, surrender and defiance, ends and means, had gnawed at Solanka. "Galileo moments," those dramatic occasions when life asked the living whether they would dangerously stand by the truth or prudently recant it, increasingly seemed to him to lie close to the heart of what it was to be human. Man, I wouldn't have taken that stuff lying down. I'd have started a f.u.c.king revolution, me Man, I wouldn't have taken that stuff lying down. I'd have started a f.u.c.king revolution, me. When the possessor of truth was weak and the defender of the lie was strong, was it better to bend before the greater force? Or, by standing firm against it, might one discover a deeper strength in oneself and lay the despot low? When the soldiers of truth launched a thousand s.h.i.+ps and burned the topless towers of the lie, should they be seen as liberators or had they, by using their enemy's weapons against him, themselves become the scorned barbarians (or even Baburians) whose houses they had set on fire? What were the limits of tolerance? How far, in the pursuit of the right, could we go before we crossed a line, arrived at the antipodes of ourselves, and became wrong?

Near the climax of the back-story of Galileo-1, Solanka embedded one such defining moment. Akasz Kronos, a fugitive from his own creations, was captured in great old age by the Mogol's soldiers and brought in chains to the Baburian court. By this time the Puppet Kings and the Baburians had been at war for a long generation, locked in a stalemate as debilitating as the Trojan War, and ancient Kronos, as creator of the cyborgs, was blamed for all their deeds. His explanation of his creations' arrival at autonomy was rejected by the Mogol with a snort of disbelief. There followed, in the pages Solanka wrote, a long dispute between the two men on the nature of life itself-life as created by a biological act, and life as brought into being by the imagination and skill of the living. Was life "natural," or could the "unnatural" be said to be alive? Was the imagined world necessarily inferior to the organic one? Kronos was still a creative genius in spite of his downfall and long penurious concealment, and he proudly defended his cyborgs: by every definition of sentient existence, they had grown into full-fledged life-forms. Like h.o.m.o faber h.o.m.o faber, they were users of tools; like h.o.m.o sapiens h.o.m.o sapiens, they reasoned and engaged in moral debate. They could attend to their ills and reproduce their species, and by shedding him, their maker, they had set themselves free. The Mogol rejected these arguments out of hand. A malfunctioning dishwasher did not become a busboy, he argued. By the same token, a rogue puppet was still a doll, a renegade robot was still a robot. This was not a fit direction for their discussions to take. Rather, it was for Kronos to recant his theories and then provide the Baburian authorities with the technological data required to bring the Peekay machines under control. If he refused, the Mogol added, changing the tenor of the conversation, he would of course be tortured and, if necessary, torn limb from limb.

The "recantation of Kronos," his declaration that machines had no souls whereas man was immortal, was greeted by the deeply religious Baburian people as a mighty victory. Armed with information provided by the broken scientist, the antipodean army created new weapons, which paralyzed the cyborgs' neurosystems and rendered them inoperative. (The term "killed" was forbidden; what was not alive could not be dead.) The Peekay forces fled in disarray, and a Baburian victory looked a.s.sured. The Dollmaker cyborg himself lay among the fallen. Too egotistical-too "consistent"-to have created any replicas of himself, the Dollmaker was still one of a kind; thus his character was erased with his termination. The only person who could have re-created him was Akasz Kronos, whose fate was obscure. Perhaps the Mogol killed him, even after his abject surrender; or perhaps he was blinded like Tiresias and permitted, by way of further humiliation, to wander the world, begging bowl in hand, "speaking the truth that no man would believe," while from every quarter he heard tales of the collapse of his own great enterprises, of the reduction of the great Kronosian Puppet Kings, the sentient cyborgs from Rijk, the first machines ever to cross the frontier between mechanical ent.i.ties and living beings, into piles of useless junk. And while n.o.body would now believe the truth that he had himself denied, he himself had no choice but to accept the reality of the catastrophe that his own cowardice, his lack of moral fort.i.tude, had brought about.

At the eleventh hour, however, the tide turned. The Puppet Kings regrouped under a new, dual leaders.h.i.+p. Zameen of Rijk and her cyborg counterpart the G.o.ddess of Victory joined forces, like twin Ranis of Jhansi rising up against imperialist oppression, or like Little Brain in a new, double-trouble incarnation, leading her promised revolution. They used their combined scientific brilliance to build electronic s.h.i.+elds against the new Baburian weapons. Then, with Zameen and the G.o.ddess at their head, the Peekay army began a major offensive and invested the Mogol's citadel. Thus began the Siege of Baburia, which would not end for a generation or more ...

In the world of the imagination, in the creative cosmos that had begun with simple doll-making and then proliferated into this many-armed, multimedia beast, it wasn't necessary to answer questions; far better to find interesting ways of rephrasing them. Nor was it necessary to end the story-indeed, it was vital to the project's long-term prospects that the tale be capable of almost indefinite prolongation, with new adventures and themes being grafted onto it at regular intervals and new characters to sell in doll, toy, and robot form. The backstory was a skeleton that periodically grew new bones, the framework for a fictional beast capable of constant metamorphosis, which fed on every sc.r.a.p it could find: its creator's personal history, sc.r.a.ps of gossip, deep learning, current affairs, high and low culture, and the most nouris.h.i.+ng diet of all-namely, the past. The ransacking of the world's storehouse of old stories and ancient histories was entirely legitimate. Few Web users were familiar with the myths, or even the facts, of the past; all that was needed was to give the old material a fresh, contemporary twist. Trans.m.u.tation was all. The Puppet Kings website went on-line and at once achieved and sustained a high level of "hits." Comments flooded in, and the river of Solanka's imagination was fed from a thousand streams. It began to swell and grow.

Because the work never settled, never stopped being a work in progress but remained in a condition of perpetual revolution, a degree of untidiness was inevitable. The histories of characters and places, even their names, sometimes changed as Solanka's vision of his fict.i.tious universe clarified and sharpened. Certain storyline possibilities turned out to be stronger than he had at first realized, and were greatly amplified. The Zameen/G.o.ddess of Victory strand was the most important of these. In the initial conception, Zameen had simply been a beauty, not a scientist at all. Later, however, when Solanka-prompted, he had to concede, by Mila Milo-understood how important Zameen would be in the story's climactic phase, he went back and added much material to her early life, turning her into Kronos's scientific equal as well as his s.e.xual and moral superior. Other avenues turned out to be blind alleys and were discarded. For example, in an early draft of the back-story, Solanka imagined that the "Galilean" figure captured by the Mogol was the cyborg Dollmaker, not the vanished Akasz Kronos. In this version the Dollmaker's denial of his right to be called a "life-form," his confession of his own inferiority, became a crime against himself and his own race. Later the Dollmaker escaped from his Baburian jailers, and when news of his "recantation" was spread by the Mogol's propaganda machine with the aim of undermining his leaders.h.i.+p, the cyborg hotly denied the accusations, announcing that he had not been the prisoner in question, that in fact his human avatar, Kronos, was the real traitor to the truth. Even though he discarded this version, Solanka retained a soft spot for it, and often wondered if he'd been wrong. Eventually, benefiting from the Web's fondness for variora, he added the excised story to the site, as a possible alternate version of the facts.

The names Baburia and Mogol were late additions, too. Mogol of course came from "Mughal," and Babur had been the first of the Mughal emperors. But the Babur of whom Malik Solanka had been thinking wasn't an old dead king. He was the designated leader of the aborted "Indo-Lilly" parade-demonstration in New York, to whom, in Solanka's opinion, Neela Mahendra had paid far too much attention. The parade had started out as a poor affair and ended up as a brawl. At the northwest corner of Was.h.i.+ngton Square, under the faintly interested scrutiny of a.s.sorted cold-drink salesmen, magic tricksters, unicyclists and cutpurses, one hundred or so men and a handful of women of Indian-Lilliputian origin a.s.sembled, their numbers augmented by American friends, lovers, spouses, members of the usual left groupuscules, token "solidarity cadres" from other diaspora-Indian communities in Brooklyn and Queens, and the inevitable demonstration tourists. Over a thousand in toto, the organizers claimed; around two hundred and fifty, said the police. The parallel demonstration of the "indigenous" Elbees had been even less well attended, and had shamefacedly dispersed without marching. However, groups of disgruntled and well-lubricated Elbee males had found their way to Was.h.i.+ngton Square to taunt the Indo-Lilly men and hurl s.e.xual insults at the women. Scuffles broke out; the N.Y.P.D., looking amazed that so tiny an event could have generated such heat, moved in a few beats too late. As the crowd fled the advancing police officers, several quick knifings took place, none of them lethal. Within instants, the square was empty of demonstrators, except for Neela Mahendra, Malik Solanka, and a hairless giant, who stood stripped to the waist, holding a megaphone in one hand and in the other a wooden flagstaff bearing the new saffron-and-green flag of the proposed "Republic of Filbistan"-the FILB stood for "Free Indian Lilliput-Blefuscu" and the rest was added on because it sounded like a word from "home." This was Babur, the young political leader who had traveled all the way from his distant islands to address the "rally," and who now looked so forlorn, so shorn of purpose as well as hair, so unexpressed, that Neela Mahendra hastened to his side, leaving Solanka where he stood. When he saw Neela approaching, the young giant let go of the flagstaff, which thumped him on the head as it fell. He staggered but, to his considerable credit, remained upright.

Neela was all solicitude, evidently believing that by giving Babur the full benefit of her beauty she could make up for his long, useless trip. And Babur did indeed brighten, and began, after a few moments, to address Neela as if she were the enormous and politically significant public meeting he had hoped for. He spoke of a Rubicon being crossed, of no compromise no compromise and and no surrender no surrender. Now that the hard-won const.i.tution had been abrogated and Indo-Lilly partic.i.p.ation in the government of Lilliput-Blefuscu so shamefully terminated, he said, only extreme measures would suffice. "Rights are never given by those who have them," he declaimed, "only taken by those in need." Neela's eyes brightened. She mentioned her television project, and Babur nodded gravely, seeing that something might be salvaged from the rubble of the day. "Come," he said, taking her arm. (Solanka noted the ease with which she slipped her arm through her countryman's.) "Come. We must discuss these things for many hours. There is much that needs urgently to be done." Neela left with Babur without a backward glance.

Solanka was still in Was.h.i.+ngton Square at closing time that night, sitting wretchedly on a bench. As a patrol car was ordering him to leave, his cell phone rang. "I'm really sorry, honey," Neela said. "He was so unhappy, and it is my work, we did need to talk. Anyway, I don't need to explain. You're a smart man. I'm sure you worked it out. You should meet Babur. He's so full of pa.s.sion it's scary, and after the revolution he may even be president. Oh, can you hold on, honey? It's the other line." She had spoken of the revolution as an inevitability. With a deep rumble of alarm, Solanka, on hold, remembered her own declaration of war. I'll fight alongside them if I have to, shoulder to shoulder. I'm not kidding, I really will I'll fight alongside them if I have to, shoulder to shoulder. I'm not kidding, I really will. He looked at the bloodstains drying on the darkened square, evidence here in New York City of the force of a gathering fury on the far side of the world: a group fury, born of long injustice, beside which his own unpredictable temper was a thing of pathetic insignificance, the indulgence, perhaps, of a privileged individual with too much self-interest. And too much time on his hands. He could not give Neela up to this higher, antipodean rage. Come back, he wanted to say. Come to me, my darling, please don't go. But she was back on the line, and her voice had changed. "It's Jack," she said. "He's dead, his head's been blown off, and there's a confession in his hand." You've seen the headless Winged Victory, Solanka dully thought. You've heard of the Headless Horseman. Give it up for my headless friend Jack Rhinehart, the Wingless, Horseless Defeat.

PART three.

15.

Nothing made sense. Jack's body had been found in the Spa.s.sky Grain Building, a Tribeca construction site on the corner of Greenwich and N Moore whose developers had recently come under union fire for employing scab labor. It was a fifteen-minute walk from Jack's Hudson Street apartment, and he had apparently strolled here with a loaded shotgun in his hand, crossed Ca.n.a.l-still busily crowded in spite of the late hour-without attracting attention, then broken into his chosen location, taken an elevator to the fourth floor, positioned himself by a west-facing window with a good view of the moonlit river, placed the snout of the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and fallen to the rough, unfinished floor, dropping the weapon but somehow holding on to the suicide note. He had been drinking heavily: Jack Daniel's and c.o.ke, an absurd drink for an oenophile like Rhinehart. When he was discovered, his suit and s.h.i.+rt were folded neatly on the floor, and he was wearing only his socks and underpants, which, for some reason, or perhaps by chance, were on back to front. He had recently cleaned his teeth.

Neela decided to make a clean breast of it and told the detectives everything she knew-the fancy-dress costumes in Jack's closet, her suspicions, everything. She could have been in trouble, withholding information being a serious offense, but the police had bigger fish to fry, and, besides, the two officers who came to her Bedford Street apartment to interview her and Malik Solanka were having troubles of their own in her presence. They kept breaking pencils and stepping on each other's feet and knocking over ornaments and bursting into simultaneous speech and then falling blus.h.i.+ngly silent, to none of which Neela paid the slightest attention. "The point is," she concluded as the two detectives b.u.mped heads in eager agreement, "this so-called suicide smells strongly of fish."

Malik and Neela had known that Jack owned a gun, though they had never seen it. It dated from the black-Hemingway hunting-and-fis.h.i.+ng period that had preceded his Tiger Woods phase. Now, like poor Ernest, most feminine of great male American writers, destroyed by his failure to be the phony, macho Papa-self he had chosen to inhabit, Jack had gone hunting for himself, the biggest game of all. That, at least, was what they were being invited to believe. On closer examination, however, this version of events became less and less convincing. Jack's building had a doorman, who had seen him leave the premises alone at around seven P.M. P.M., carrying no bags and dressed for an evening on the town. A second witness, a plump young woman wearing a beret who had been waiting on the sidewalk for a taxi, came forward in response to a police appeal to say that she had seen a man answering to Jack's description getting into a large black sports utility vehicle with smoked windows; through the open door, she had briefly glimpsed at least two other men, with, and she was quite clear on this point, large cigars in their mouths. An identical SUV was seen driving away along Greenwich Street soon after the established time of death. A couple of days later, a.n.a.lysis of the technical data from what was already provisionally being called the crime scene revealed that the damage to the Spa.s.sky Grain Building's temporary access door had not been inflicted by Rhinehart's shotgun. No other instrument capable of breaking down the very solid door-wooden, with a reinforcing metal frame-was found on or near his body. Moreover, it was strongly suspected that the damage to the door had not been the means of gaining entry to the premises. Somebody had had a key.

The suicide note itself was instrumental in establis.h.i.+ng Jack's innocence. Rhinehart was famous for the polished precision of his prose. He rarely made an error of syntax, and never, never made a spelling mistake. Yet here among his last words were solecisms of the worst kind. "Ever since my war corespondent days," the note read, "I have had a violent streak. Sometimes in the middle of the nite I smash up the phone. Horse, Club and Stash are innocent. I killed their girls bec they would-not f.u.c.kme, probably bec I was of Color." And, finally, heartbreakingly, "Tell Nila I love her. I know I f.u.c.ked up but I love her true." Malik Solanka, when his turn came to be interviewed by the police, told them emphatically that even though the note was in Jack's strong, unmistakable hand, it could not have been his freely written work. "Either it has been dictated by somebody with a far lower level of language skills than Jack or else he has deliberately dumbed down his style to send us a message. Don't you see? He has even told us his three murderers' names."

When it was established that Keith "Club" Medford, last lover of the late Lauren Klein, was the son of the wealthy developer and unionized workers' bete noire Michael Medford, one of whose companies was handling the conversion of the Spa.s.sky Grain Building into a mixture of high-end lofts and townhouse-style residences, and that Keith, who had been asked to plan the project's opening-night party, possessed a set of keys, it became clear that the killers had made an irretrievable mistake. Most murderers were stupid, and a life of privilege was no defense against folly. Even the most expensive schools turned out badly educated dolts, and Marsalis, Andriessen, and Medford were semi-literate, arrogant young fools. And murderers, too. Club, faced with the acc.u.mulating facts, was the first to confess. His buddies' defenses collapsed a few hours later.

Jack Rhinehart was buried in the depths of Queens, thirty-five minutes' drive from the bungalow he'd bought his mother and still-unmarried sister in Douglaston. "A house with a view," he'd joked. "If you go to the end of the yard and lean all the way over to your left, you can just catch a what?, call it a whisper whisper, of the Sound." Now his own view would forever be of urban blight. Neela and Solanka got a car to drive them out. The cemetery was cramped, treeless, comfortless, damp. Photographers moved around the small group of mourners like pollution floating at the edges of a dark pond. Solanka had somehow forgotten that there would be media interest in Jack's funeral. The moment the confessions had been made and the story of the S & M Club became the society scandal of the summer, Professor Solanka lost interest in the event's public dimension. He was mourning his friend Jack Rhinehart, the great, brave journalist, who had been sucked down by glamour and wealth. To be seduced by what one loathed was a hard destiny. To lose the woman you loved to your best friend was perhaps even harder. Solanka had been a bad friend to Jack, but then it had been Jack's fate to be betrayed. His secret s.e.xual preferences, which he had never inflicted on Neela Mahendra, but which meant that not even Neela would finally have been enough for him, had led him into bad company. He had been loyal to men who did not merit his loyalty, had persuaded himself of their innocence-and what an effort that must have been for a natural finder-out and muckraker, what delusionary brilliance he must have employed!-and consequently had helped to s.h.i.+eld them from the law, and his reward was to be killed by them in a clumsy attempt at scapegoating: to be sacrificed on the altar of their invincible, egomaniacal pride.

A gospel singer had been hired to sing a farewell medley of spirituals and more contemporary material: "Fix Me, Jesus" was followed by Puff Daddy's tribute to Notorious B.I.G., "Every Breath You Take (I'll Be Missing You);" then came "Rock My Soul (In the Bosom of Abraham)." Rain looked imminent but was holding off. The air was moist, as if full of tears. Here were Jack's mother and sister; also Bronislawa Rhinehart, the ex-wife, looking simultaneously devastated and s.e.xy in a short black dress and high-fas.h.i.+on veil. Solanka nodded at Bronnie, to whom he'd never found anything to say, and muttered empty words at the bereaved. The Rhinehart women didn't look sad; they looked angry. "Jack I know," Jack's mother said briefly, "would've seen through those white boys in nine seconds flat." "Jack I know," his sister added, "didn't need no whips or chains to have himself some fun." They were mad at the man they loved for the scandal but even madder at him for having put himself in harm's way, as if he had done it to hurt them, to leave them with the lifelong pain of their bereavement. "The Jack I know," Solanka said, "was a pretty good man, and if he's anywhere at all right now, I'd say he's happy to be set free from his mistakes." Jack was right there with them, of course. Jack in the box from which he would never rise up. Solanka felt a hand tighten around his heart.

In his grief's eye Solanka pictured Jack stretched out in an upscale loft conversion while the whole world gossiped over his corpse and photographers frothed about. Next to Jack lay the three dead girls. Released from the fear of his own involvement in their deaths, Solanka mourned them too. Here lay Lauren, who had become afraid of what she was capable of doing to others and allowing others to do to her. Bindy and Sky had tried and failed to keep her inside their charmed circle of pleasure and pain, but she had sealed her fate by threatening the club's members with the shame of a public expose. Here lay Bindy, the first to comprehend that her friend's death had been no random killing but a coldblooded execution: which comprehension was her own death warrant. And here lay Uptown Sky, game-for-anything s.e.xual athlete Sky, the wildest of the doomed three and the most s.e.xually uninhibited, her m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic excesses-now meticulously detailed in the delighted press-sometimes alarming even her s.a.d.i.s.tic lover, Brad the Horse. Sky, who believed herself immortal, who never thought they would come for her, because she was the empress of their world, they followed where she led, and her levels of tolerance, her thresholds, were the highest any of them had ever known. She knew about the murders and was crazily aroused by them, murmured in Marsalis's ears that she had no intention of blowing the whistle on so much man, and whispered to both Stash and Club in turn that she would be happy to stand in for her dead friends in any way they wanted, just name it, baby, it's yours. She also explained to all three men, in separate, luridly retold encounters, that the killings bound them together for life; they had pa.s.sed the point of no return, and the contract of their love had been signed in her friends' lifeblood. Sky, the vampire queen. She died because her killers were too scared of her s.e.xual fury to let her live.

Three scalped girls. The public talk was of voodoo and fetis.h.i.+sm, and above all of the icy ruthlessness of the crimes, but Solanka preferred to ponder the death of the heart. These young girls, so desperately desirous of desire, had only been able to find it at the outside extremes of human s.e.xual behavior. And these three young men, for whom love had become a question of violence and possession, of doing and being done to, had gone to the frontier between love and death, and their fury had worn it away, the fury they could not articulate, born of what they, who had so much, had never been able to acquire: lessness, ordinariness. Real life.

In a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand horrified conversations buzzing over the dead like stench-seeking flies, the city discussed the murders' most minute details. They killed one another's girls! They killed one another's girls! Lauren Klein had been taken out by Medford for one last grand night on the town. She sent him home, as he had planned, because of a quarrel he'd deliberately provoked near the evening's end. A few moments later he phoned her, pretending to have had a car accident just around the corner. She ran out to help him, found his vintage Bentley unmarked and waiting with its door open. Lauren Klein had been taken out by Medford for one last grand night on the town. She sent him home, as he had planned, because of a quarrel he'd deliberately provoked near the evening's end. A few moments later he phoned her, pretending to have had a car accident just around the corner. She ran out to help him, found his vintage Bentley unmarked and waiting with its door open. Poor babe. She thought he wanted to apologize Poor babe. She thought he wanted to apologize. Annoyed at the deception but not alarmed, she climbed in, and was. .h.i.t repeatedly on the head by Andriessen and Marsalis, while Medford drank margaritas in a nearby bar, announcing loudly that he was drowning his sorrows because his b.i.t.c.h wouldn't put out, obliging the bartender to ask him to shut up or leave, and making sure his presence would be remembered. And then the scalping. They must've put down plastic sheeting to make sure the car wasn't stained. And the body thrown like garbage in the street And then the scalping. They must've put down plastic sheeting to make sure the car wasn't stained. And the body thrown like garbage in the street. The same technique worked on Belinda Candell.

Sky, however, was different. As was her way, she took the initiative, whispering her plans for the night to Bradley Marsalis over their last supper. Not tonight, he said, and she shrugged. "Okay. I'll call Stash or Club and see if they're up for some fun." Furious, insulted, but obliged to stick to the game plan, Brad said good night at her lobby door, and phoned her a few minutes later, saying, "Okay, you win, but not here. Meet me at the room." (The room was the soundproofed five-star hotel suite booked year-round by the S&M Club for the use of its noisier members. Bradley Marsalis, it was revealed, had made the booking several days in advance, which went to prove premeditation.) Sky never reached the room. A large black sports utility vehicle pulled up beside her and a voice she recognized said, "Hi, princess. Climb aboard. Horse asked us to give you a little ride."

Twenty, nineteen, nineteen, Solanka counted. Their combined age had been just three years more than his.

And what of Jack Rhinehart, who lived through a dozen wars only to die miserably in Tribeca, who wrote so well on much that mattered and so stylishly on much that didn't, and whose last words were, deliberately or by necessity, both poignant and inane? Jack's story was all out in the open, too. The theft of the shotgun by Horse Marsalis. Jack's invitation to his S&M Club induction ceremony. You made it, man. You're in You made it, man. You're in. Even when they arrived at the Spa.s.sky Grain Building, Rhinehart had no idea he was close to death. He was probably thinking of the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut Eyes Wide Shut, imagining masked girls naked on podiums, waiting for the sting of his sweet lash. Solanka was weeping now. He heard the killers insist that, as part of the ritual, Rhinehart needed to drink a br.i.m.m.i.n.g jug of Jack and c.o.ke, the spoiled kids' tipple, at high speed. He heard them order Jack to strip and reverse his underpants, in the name of club tradition. As if it were being tied around his own eyes, Solanka felt the blindfold they had used on Jack (and afterward removed). His tears soaked through the imagined silk. Okay, Jack, are you ready, this'll blow you away.-What's happening, guys, what's the deal?-Just open your mouth, Jack. Did you clean your teeth like we said? Good job. Say aah, Jack. This'll kill you, doll Okay, Jack, are you ready, this'll blow you away.-What's happening, guys, what's the deal?-Just open your mouth, Jack. Did you clean your teeth like we said? Good job. Say aah, Jack. This'll kill you, doll. How pathetically easy it had been to lure this good, weak man to his death. How willingly-giving five high, getting five low-he stepped into his own hea.r.s.e and took his brief last ride. Lord, rock my soul Lord, rock my soul, the singer cried. Good-bye, Jack, Solanka said silently to his friend. Go on home. I'll be calling you.

Neela took Malik back to Bedford Street, opened a bottle of red wine, drew the curtains, lit many scented candles, and disrespectfully selected a CD of Bollywood song cla.s.sics from the fifties and early sixties-music from his forbidden past. This was an aspect of her profound emotional wisdom. In all things pertaining to feeling, Neela Mahendra knew what worked. Kabhi meri gali aaya karo Kabhi meri gali aaya karo. The teasingly romantic song lilted across the darkened room. Come up and see me sometime Come up and see me sometime. They hadn't spoken since they left the graveside. She drew him down onto a cus.h.i.+on-strewn rug and laid his head between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, wordlessly reminding him of the continued existence of happiness, even in the midst of grief.

She spoke of her beauty as something a little separate from herself. It had simply "showed up." It wasn't the result of anything she'd done. She took no credit for it, was grateful for the gift she'd been given, took great care of it, but mostly thought of herself as a disembodied ent.i.ty living behind the eyes of this extraordinary alien, her body: looking out through its large eyes, manipulating its long limbs, not quite able to believe her luck. Her impact on her surroundings-the fallen window cleaners sitting splay-legged on various sidewalks with buckets on their heads, the skidding cars, the danger to cleaver-wielding butchers when she stopped by for meat-was a phenomenon of whose results, for all her apparent unconcern, she was sharply, precisely aware. She could control "the effect" to some degree. "Doesn't know how to switch it off," Jack had said, and that was true, but she could play it down with the help of loose-fitting clothes (which she detested) and wide-brimmed hats (which, as a sun hater, she adored). More impressively, she could intensify the world's response to her by making fine-tuning adjustments to her stride length, the tilt of her chin, her mouth, her voice. At maximum intensity she threatened to reduce entire precincts to disaster areas, and Solanka had to ask her to stop, not least because of the effect she was having on his own state of body and mind. She liked compliments, described herself as a "high-maintenance girl," and at times was prepared to concede that this compartmentalization of herself into "form" and "content" was a useful fiction. Her description of her s.e.xual being as "the other one" who periodically came out to hunt and would not be denied was a clever ruse, a shy person's way of tricking herself into extroversion. It allowed her to reap the rewards of her exceptional erotic presence without being troubled by the paralyzing social awkwardness that had plagued her as a stammering young girl. Too astute to speak directly of the strong sense of right and wrong that quietly informed all her actions, she preferred to quote the cartoon s.e.x bomb Jessica Rabbit. "I'm not bad," she liked demurely to purr. "I'm just drawn that way."

She held him close. The contrast with the Mila liaison was very striking. With Mila, Solanka had allowed himself to sink toward the sickly allure of the unmentionable, the unallowed, whereas when Neela wrapped herself around him the opposite was true, everything became mentionable and was mentioned, everything was allowable and allowed. This was no child-woman, and what he was discovering with her was the adult joy of unforbidden love. He had thought of his addiction to Mila as a weakness; this new bond felt like strength. Mila had accused him of optimism, and she was right. Neela was optimism's justification. And, yes, he was grateful to Mila for finding the key to the doors of his imagination. But if Mila Milo had unlocked the floodgate, Neela Mahendra was the flood.

In Neela's arms Solanka felt himself begin to change, felt the inner demons he feared so much growing weaker by the day, felt unpredictable rage give way to the miraculous predictability of this new love. Pack your bags, Furies, he thought, you no longer reside at this address. If he was right, and the origin of fury lay in life's acc.u.mulating disappointments, then he had found the antidote that transformed the poison into its opposite. For furia furia could be ecstasy, too, and Neela's love was the philosopher's stone that made possible the trans.m.u.ting alchemy. Rage grew out of despair: but Neela was hope fulfilled. could be ecstasy, too, and Neela's love was the philosopher's stone that made possible the trans.m.u.ting alchemy. Rage grew out of despair: but Neela was hope fulfilled.

The door to his past remained closed, and she had the grace not to push against it just yet. Her need for a degree of personal and psychological privacy was considerable. After their initial night in a hotel room, she had insisted on using her own bed for their encounters, but made it clear that he wasn't welcome to spend the night. Her sleep was filled with nightmares, yet she didn't want the comfort of his presence. She preferred to battle her dream-figments alone and, at the end of each night's wars, to wake up slowly, and definitely by herself. Having no alternative, Solanka accepted her terms, and began to grow accustomed to fighting off the waves of sleep that habitually rolled over him at love-making's end. He told himself that it was better for him this way as well. He was, after all, suddenly a very busy man.

He was learning her better every day, exploring her as if she were a new city in which he had sublet s.p.a.ce and where he hoped one day to buy. She wasn't completely at ease with that idea. Like him, she was a creature of moods, and he was becoming her personal meteorologist, predicting her weather, studying the duration of her internal gales and their sideswipe effects, in the form of cras.h.i.+ng storms, on the golden beaches of their love. Sometimes she liked being seen in such microscopic detail, loved being understood without speaking, having her needs catered to without having to express them. On other occasions it annoyed her. He would see a cloud on her brow and ask, "What's the matter?" In response she'd look exasperated and say, "Oh, nothing. For Pete's sake! You think you can read my mind, but you're so often so wrong. If there's something to be said, I'll say it. Don't meet trouble halfway." She had invested a great deal of effort in building an image of strength and didn't want the man she loved to see her weaknesses.

Medication, he soon discovered, was an issue for Neela, too, and this was another thing they had in common: that they were determined to beat their demons without entering the valley of the dolls. So when she felt low, when she needed to wrestle with herself, she would retreat from him, wouldn't want to see him or explain why, and he was expected to understand, to be grown-up enough to allow her to be what she needed to be; in short, for perhaps the first time in his life he was being required to act his age. She was a highly strung woman, and sometimes admitted that she must be a nightmare to be around, to which he replied, "Yes, but there are compensations." "I hope they're big," she said, looking genuinely worried. "If they weren't, I'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't I?" He grinned, and she relaxed and moved in close. "That's right," she comforted herself. "And you're not."

She possessed immense physical ease, and was actually happier naked than clothed. More than once he had to remind her to dress when there was a knock at her door. But she wanted to guard some secrets, to protect her mystery. Her frequent withdrawals into herself, her habit of recoiling from being too acutely seen, had to do with this very un-American-this positively English-awareness of the value of reserve. She insisted that it had nothing to do with whether she loved him or not, which she deeply and bewilderingly did. "Look, it's obvious," she replied when he asked why. "You may be very creative with your dolls and websites and all, but as far as I'm concerned, your only function is to get into my bed whenever I tell you and fulfill my every whim." At which imperious dictum Professor Malik Solanka, who had wanted to be a s.e.x object all his life, felt quite absurdly pleased.

After making love, she lit a cigarette and went to sit naked by the window to smoke it, knowing his hatred of tobacco smoke. Lucky neighbors, he thought, but she dismissed such considerations as bourgeois and far beneath her. She returned with a straight face to the question he had asked. "The thing about you," she offered, "is that you've got a heart. This is a rare quality in the contemporary guy. Take Babur: an amazing man, brilliant, really, but totally in love with the revolution. Real people are just counters in his game. With most other guys it's status, money, power, golf, ego. Jack, for example." Solanka hated the laudatory reference to the smooth-bodied flag-bearer of Was.h.i.+ngton Square, felt a sharp twinge of guilt at being favorably compared to his dead friend, and said so. "You see," she marveled, "you don't just feel, you can actually talk about it. Wow. Finally, a man worth staying with." Solanka had the feeling that he was being obscurely sent up, but couldn't quite identify the joke. Feeling foolish, he settled for the affection in her voice. Love Potion Number Nine. That was the healing balm.

India was insisted upon everywhere in the Bedford Street apartment, in the overemphasized manner of the diaspora: the filmi filmi music, the candles and incense, the Krishna-and-milkmaids calendar, the dhurries on the floor, the Company School painting, the hookah coiled atop a bookcase like a stuffed green snake. Neela's Bombay alter ego, Solanka mused, pulling on his clothes, would probably have gone for a heavily Westernized, Californian-minimalist simplicity ... but never mind about Bombay. Neela was getting dressed as well, pulling on her most "aerodynamically" body-hugging black outfit, made in some nameless s.p.a.ce-age fabric. She needed to go to the office in spite of the late hour. The pre-production period on the Lilliput doc.u.mentary was almost over, and she would be leaving for the antipodes soon. There was still much to do. Get used to this, Solanka thought. Her need for absence is professional as well as personal. To be with this woman is also to learn to be without her. She tied the laces on her white street flyers-sneakers with flip-out wheels built into the soles-and took off at speed, her long black ponytail flying out behind her as she raced away. Solanka stood on the sidewalk and watched her go. The "effect," he noted as the usual mayhem began, worked almost as well in the dark. music, the candles and incense, the Krishna-and-milkmaids calendar, the dhurries on the floor, the Company School painting, the hookah coiled atop a bookcase like a stuffed green snake. Neela's Bombay alter ego, Solanka mused, pulling on his clothes, would probably have gone for a heavily Westernized, Californian-minimalist simplicity ... but never mind about Bombay. Neela was getting dressed as well, pulling on her most "aerodynamically" body-hugging black outfit, made in some nameless s.p.a.ce-age fabric. She needed to go to the office in spite of the late hour. The pre-production period on the Lilliput doc.u.mentary was almost over, and she would be leaving for the antipodes soon. There was still much to do. Get used to this, Solanka thought. Her need for absence is professional as well as personal. To be with this woman is also to learn to be without her. She tied the laces on her white street flyers-sneakers with flip-out wheels built into the soles-and took off at speed, her long black ponytail flying out behind her as she raced away. Solanka stood on the sidewalk and watched her go. The "effect," he noted as the usual mayhem began, worked almost as well in the dark.

He went to FAO Schwarz and sent Asmaan an elephant by mail. Soon the last vestiges of old fury would have been dispelled by new happiness and he would feel confident enough to re-enter his son's life. To do so, however, he would have to face Eleanor and confront her with the fact she still refused to accept. He would have to bury finality like a knife in her good and loving heart.

He telephoned to tell Asmaan to expect a surprise. Great excitement. "What's inside it? What's it saying? What would Morgen say?" Eleanor and Asmaan had been holidaying in Florence with the Franzes. "There's no beach here. No. There's a river, but I douldn't swim in it. Maybe when I'm bigger I'll come back and swim in it. I wasn't stared, Daddy. That's why Morgen and Lin were shouting." Scared Scared. "Mummy wasn't. Mummy wasn't shouting. She said don't be stary, Morgen. Lin's so nice. Mummy's so nice too. That's what I think, anyway. He was being a bit stary. Morgen was. A tiny bit. Was he trying to make me laugh? Probably. Do you know, Daddy? What was he saying? We went to look at statues, but Lin douldn't come. That's why she was trying. She stayed at home. Not our home, but. Ai caramba." This, Solanka understood after a moment, was I can't remember I can't remember. "We stayed there. Yes. It was very good. I had my own room. I like that. I've got a bow and arrow. I like you, Daddy, are you coming home today? Sat.u.r.day Tuesday? You should. 'Bye."

Eleanor took over. "Yes, it was difficult. But Florence was lovely. How are you?" He thought for a minute. "Fine," he said. "I'm fine." She thought for a minute. "You shouldn't promise him you're coming back if you aren't," she said, angling for information. "What's the matter?" he asked, changing the subject. "What's the matter with you?" she replied. That was all it took. He had already heard the telltale wrongness in her voice and she in his. Thrown off balance by what he had just understood, Solanka made the mistake of retreating into Neela's dialogue: "Oh, for Pete's sake! You think you can read my mind, but you're so often so wrong. If there's something to be said, I'll say it. Don't meet trouble halfway." Coming from Neela this had sounded genuine enough, but in his mouth it came across as mere bl.u.s.ter. Eleanor was scornfully amused. "For Pete's sake?" she wanted to know. "As in 'Jeepers creepers,' 'Jiminy Cricket,' or 'What the heck?' When did you start using Ronald Reagan's lines?" Her manner was sharper, more irritable, nonplacatory. Morgen and Lin, Solanka thought. Morgen, who had taken the trouble to ring him up to scold him for abandoning his wife, and whose own wife had informed Solanka that his behavior had brought her and her husband closer together than ever before. Mm-hm. Morgen and Eleanor and Lin in Florence. That's why she was trying That's why she was trying. Asmaan's evidence left no doubt. Because she was crying Because she was crying. Why was she crying, Morgen? Eleanor? Would you care to fill me in on that? Would you care to explain, Eleanor, why your new lover and his wife were quarreling in the presence of my son?

The fury was pa.s.sing from him, but everyone else seemed to be in exceedingly poor humor. Mila was moving. Eddie had hired a van from a company called Van-Go and was uncomplainingly hauling her possessions down from the fourth floor while she stayed in the street smoking a cigarette, drinking Irish whiskey from the bottle, and b.i.t.c.hing. Her hair was red now, and spikier than ever: even her head looked angry. "What do you think you're looking at?" she yelled up at Solanka when she spotted him watching her from his second-floor workroom window. "Whatever you want from me, Professor, it's unavailable. Got it? I'm a person engaged to be married and believe me you don't want my fiance to get mad." Against his better judgment-for she had worked her way through most of the fifth of Jameson's-he went down to the street to talk to her. She was moving to Brooklyn, moving in with Eddie in a small place in Park Slope, and the webspyders had opened up an office there. The Puppet Kings site was fast approaching its launch date, and things were looking good. "Don't worry, Professor," Mila said blurrily. "Business is great. It's just you I can't stand."

Eddie Ford came down the front stairs carrying a computer monitor. When he saw Solanka, he scowled theatrically. This was a scene he had been wanting to play for a long time. "She doesn't want to talk to you, man," he said, setting the monitor down. "Do I make myself plain? Ms. Milo has no f.u.c.kin' desire to f.u.c.kin' converse. You apprehend? You want to see her, call the office and seek a f.u.c.kin' business appointment. Send us e-mail. You show up at her f.u.c.kin' place of residence, you'll be answerin' to me. You and the lady got no personal relations.h.i.+p no more. You're f.u.c.kin' estranged. If you ask me, she's a f.u.c.kin' saint to want to do business with you at all. Me, I'm not the saintly type. Me, I just want five minutes. Three hundred seconds alone with you would suffice for my f.u.c.kin' needs. Yes, sir. You follow me, Professor? Am I on your frequency? Am I comin' through?" Solanka bowed his head quietly and turned to go. "She told me what you tried on her," Eddie shouted after him. "You're one f.u.c.kin' sad and sick old man." And what did she tell you, Eddie, about what she tried on me? Oh, never mind.

"Ah, Professor." In the corridor outside his front door he ran into the plumber, Schlink; or, rather, Schlink was waiting for him, waving a doc.u.ment and bursting with words. "All is good in ze apartment? No toilet problem? So, so. What Schlink fixes stays gefixt." He nodded and smiled furiously. "Maybe you don't remember," he continued. "I vos frank viz you, eh?, my life story I shared viz you for nossink. From zis you made a cruel choke. Maybe a movie, you said, could come from my poor tale. Zis you did not mean. You spoke, I am sure of it, in chest. So grand, Professor, so patronizing, you piece of s.h.i.+t." Solanka was greatly taken aback. "Yes," Schlink emphasized. "I make free to say so. I came here particular to tell you. You see, Professor, I haff followed your advice, zis advice vot to you vos chust a schoopit gag, and sanks Gott, success has blessed my effort. A film deal! See for yourself, here it is in black and white. See here, ze studio name. See here, ze financial aspect. Yes, a comedy, chust imagine. After a lifetime vizout humor humor I vill be played for laughs. Billy Crystal in the t.i.tle role, he's on board already, he's crazy for it. A surefire hit, eh? Lensing soon. Opens next spring. Lotsa buzz. Goes boffo right off. Big opening veekend. Vait and see. Okay, so long, Professor a.s.shole, and sank you for ze t.i.tle. I vill be played for laughs. Billy Crystal in the t.i.tle role, he's on board already, he's crazy for it. A surefire hit, eh? Lensing soon. Opens next spring. Lotsa buzz. Goes boffo right off. Big opening veekend. Vait and see. Okay, so long, Professor a.s.shole, and sank you for ze t.i.tle. Jewboat Jewboat. HA, ha, ha, HA."

16.

The inadequate summer closed overnight, like a Broadway flop. The temperature fell like a guillotine; the dollar, however, soared. Everywhere you looked, in gyms, clubs, galleries, offices, on the streets, and on the floor of the NYSE, at the city's great sports stadia and entertainment centers, people were readying themselves for the new season, limbering up for action, flexing their bodies, minds, and wardrobes, setting themselves on their marks. Showtime on Olympus! The city was a race. Mere rats need not bother to enter this high-intensity compet.i.tion. This was the main event, the blue riband contest, the world series. This was the master race, whose winners would be as G.o.ds. Second place was nowhere: "Loserville." No silver or bronze medals would be struck, and the only rule was victory or bust.

Athletes were all over the airwaves that Olympic fall: disgraced Chinese turtle-blood drinkers, Marion Jones's mouth murmuring into a microphone, Marion Jones's husband testing positive for nandrolone, Michael Johnson running along a telephone and breaking records. What Jack Rhinehart had called the Divorce Olympics were hotting up, too. Solanka's ex-wife Sara Lear Schofield's antique of a second husband, Lester, died in his sleep before their final day in court, but not before he'd cut her out of his will. The bitter war of words between Sara, the Brazilian supermodel Ondine Marx, and Schofield's adult children from earlier marriages pushed the Concrete-Killer Murders off the front pages at last. Sara emerged as the clear winner of these preliminary verbal hostilities. She released photocopied extracts from Schofield's private diaries to prove that the deceased had heartily detested all his children and sworn that he'd never leave any of them so much as the price of the toll on the Triborough Bridge. She also engaged private investigators to get the goods on Ondine, the sole beneficiary of Schofield's last, hotly contested will. Details of the model's bis.e.xual promiscuity and fondness for surgical improvement flooded the press. "She's not my type, but they say she's a great tuck," Sara commented acidly. Ondine's history of drug abuse and her sleazy p.o.r.no-movie past also featured prominently; and, best of all, the Pinkertons unearthed her secret liaison with the handsome Paraguayan descendant of a n.a.z.i war criminal. These revelations led to the model's investigation by immigration officers and rumors of the imminent cancellation of her green card. I'm still a foot soldier here but Britpack Sara commands battalions, Malik Solanka thought with a kind of admiration. I'm just a face in the crowd, but she's one of its killer queens.

PlanetGalileo.com, the Puppet Kings project, his last stab at the big time, had acquired powerful allies. The webspyders had spread their nets well. Backers and sponsors were eager to get in on the ground floor of this important new launch by the creator of the legendary Little Brain. Major production, distribution, and marketing agreements with key players-Mattel, Amazon, Sony, Columbia, Banana Republic-were already in place. A universe of toys was in the pipeline, everything from soft stuffed dolls to life-size robots with voices and flas.h.i.+ng lights, to say nothing of Halloween-special costumes. There were boxed games and jigsaw puzzles and nine kinds of s.p.a.cecraft and cyborg neutralizers and scale models of the entire planet Galileo-1, and, for the real nuts, its entire solar system, too. Amazon's pre-orders for the back-story book Revolt of the Living Dolls Revolt of the Living Dolls were close to the Little Brain phenomenon's record-breaking fever-pitch levels. A Playstation game was close to being s.h.i.+pped and was already being heavily marketed; a new fas.h.i.+on line bearing the Galileo label was ready to show during the 7th on Sixth fas.h.i.+on week; and, driven by the fear of a major actors' and writers' strike in the coming spring, a big-budget movie was on the verge of being green-lit. Banks competed with each other to lend money, sending the interest rate on the huge loans required spinning daily lower and lower. The largest mainland Chinese ISP had asked to come in and talk. Mila, as the webspyders' frontwoman, was working around the clock, with extraordinary results. Solanka's relations with her remained on ice, however. Plainly, she was far angrier at being dumped than she had initially allowed herself to appear. Solanka was kept well informed by her of all developments and instructed to prepare himself for a media blitz, but as far as human contact was concerned, barbed wire might as well have stretched across the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, with duplicated, three-headed versions of Eddie Ford guarding over both. In the electronic world, Solanka and the webspyders worked closely together for hours a day. Outside it, they were strangers. That was, apparently, how it had to be. were close to the Little Brain phenomenon's record-breaking fever-pitch levels. A Playstation game was close to being s.h.i.+pped and was already being heavily marketed; a new fas.h.i.+on line bearing the Galileo label was ready to show during the 7th on Sixth fas.h.i.+on week; and, driven by the fear of a major actors' and writers' strike in the coming spring, a big-budget movie was on the verge of being green-lit. Banks competed with each other to lend money, sending the interest rate on the huge loans required spinning daily lower and lower. The largest mainland Chinese ISP had asked to come in and talk. Mila, as the webspyders' frontwoman, was working around the clock, with extraordinary results. Solanka's relations with her remained on ice, however. Plainly, she was far angrier at being dumped than she had initially allowed herself to appear. Solanka was kept well informed by her of all developments and instructed to prepare himself for a media blitz, but as far as human contact was concerned, barbed wire might as well have stretched across the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, with duplicated, three-headed versions of Eddie Ford guarding over both. In the electronic world, Solanka and the webspyders worked closely together for hours a day. Outside it, they were strangers. That was, apparently, how it had to be.

Fortunately, Neela was still in town, though the reason for her continued presence was disturbing, and greatly distracted her. There had been a coup in Lilliput-Blefuscu, led by a certain Skyresh Bolgolam, an indigenous Elbee merchant whose argosies had all failed and who accordingly detested the prosperous Indo-Lilly traders with a pa.s.sion that could have been called racist if it had not been so obviously rooted in professional envy and personal pique. The coup seemed spectacularly unnecessary; under pressure from the Bolgolamites, the country's liberal president, Golbasto Gue, who had pushed through a program of const.i.tutional reform designed to give Indian-Lilliputians equal electorial and property rights, had already been obliged to reverse course and throw out the new const.i.tution only weeks after it had come into being. Bolgolam, however, suspected a ruse and at the beginning of September marched into the Lilliputian Parliament in the city center of Mildendo, accompanied by two hundred armed ruffians, and took hostage around fifty Indo-Lilly parliamentarians and political staff members, as well as President Gue himself. At the same time, Bolgolamite goon squads attacked and imprisoned leading members of the Indo-Lilly political leaders.h.i.+p. The country's radio and television stations and the main telephone switchboard were seized. At Blefuscu International Aerodrome the runways were blockaded; the sea-lanes into Mildendo harbor were likewise blocked. The islands' main Internet server, Lillicon, was closed down by the Bolgolam gang. However, some limited e-activity continued.

The whereabouts of Neela's friend from the New York demonstration were not known; but as news slowly filtered out of Lilliput in spite of Bolgolam's gags, it was established that Babur was not among those held hostage in the Parliament or in jail. If he hadn't been killed, then he had gone underground. Neela decided this was the likelier alternative. "If he was dead, this rogue Bolgolam would have released the news, I'm sure. Just to demoralize the opposition even more." Solanka saw very little of her during these post-coup days as she attempted, often in the small hours of the night on account of the thirteen-hour time difference, to make contact via World Wide Web and satphone links with what was now the Filbistani Resistance Movement (the FRM, or "Fremen"). She also busily researched ways and means of effecting an illegal entry into Lilliput-Blefuscu from Australia or Borneo, accompanied by a skeleton camera crew. Solanka began to fear greatly for her safety and, in spite of the greater historical importance of the matters presently claiming her attention, for his newfound happiness as well. Suddenly jealous of her work, he nursed imaginary grievances, told himself he was being slighted and ignored. At least his fictional Zameen of Rijk, arriving covertly on Baburian soil, had been looking for her man (though with what intent, he granted, was unclear). A dreadful further possibility presented itself. Perhaps Neela was looking for a man in Lilliput as well as a story. Now that history's mantle had fallen on the inadequate shoulders of the hairless, bare-chested flag-waver she so admired, was it not possible that Neela had begun to think this muscle-bound Babur an altogether more attractive proposition than a sedentary middle-aged merchant of fairy tales and toys? For what other reason would she plan to risk her life by sneaking into Lilliput-Blefuscu to find him? Just for a doc.u.mentary film? Ha! That rang false. There was a pretext, if you liked. And Babur, her burgeoning desire for Babur, was the text.

One night, late, and only after he'd made a big deal of it, she came to visit him at West Seventieth Street. "I thought you'd never ask," she laughed when she arrived, trying, by sounding lighthearted, to dispel the thick cloud of tension in the air. He couldn't tell her the truth: that in the past, Mila's presence next door had inhibited him. They were both too tense and exhausted to make love. She had been pursuing her leads, and he had spent the day talking to journalists about life on Galileo-1, an unnerving, hollowing kind of work, during which he could hear himself sounding false, knowing also that a second layer of falsehood would be added by the journalists' responses to his words. Solanka and Neela watched Letterman without speaking. Unused to difficulties in their relations.h.i.+p, they had forged no language for dealing with trouble. The longer the silence between them lasted, the uglier it grew. Then, as if the bad feeling had burst out of their heads and taken physical form, they heard a piercing shriek. Then the sound of something shattering. Then a second, louder screech. Then, for a long time, nothing.

They went out into the street to investigate. The vestibule of Solanka's building had an inner door that could usually only be opened with a key, but its metal frame was warped at present and the lock wouldn't engage. The outer door, the street door, was never locked. This was worrying, even in the new, safer Manhattan. If there was danger out there, it could in theory come inside. But the street was quiet and empty, as if n.o.body else had heard a thing. Certainly, n.o.body else had come out to see what was going on. And in spite of the loud crash, there was nothing whatsoever on the pavement, no broken plant pot or vase. Neela and Solanka looked around, bemused. Other lives had touched theirs and then vanished. It was as though they had overheard the quarreling of ghosts. The sash window of what had been Mila's apartment was wide open, however, and as they looked up, the silhouette of a man appeared and pulled it firmly shut. Then the lights went out. Neela said, "It's got to be him. It's like he missed her the first time but got her the second." And the breaking noise, Solanka asked. She just shook her head, went indoors, and insisted on calling the police. "If I was being murdered and my neighbors did nothing, I'd be pretty disappointed, wouldn't you?"

Two officers came to see them within the hour, took down statements, then left to investigate and never returned. "You'd think they would come back and say what happened," Neela cried in frustration. "They must know we're sitting here worried sick in the middle of the night." Solanka snapped, letting his resentment show. "I guess they just didn't realize it was their duty to report to you," he said, without making any attempt to keep the cutting edge out of his voice. She rounded on him at once, fully his equal in aggression. "What's eating you, anyway?" she demanded. "I'm tired of pretending I'm not hanging out with a sore-headed bear." And so it began, the sorry human tailspin of recrimination and counter-recrimination, the deadly accusative old game: you said no you said, you did no it was you, let me tell you I'm not just tired I'm really really tired of tired of this this because you need so much and give s