springy stuff was holier than he needed his air to be.
But give me a little more time, Farkas thought. I’ll get to like it.
He said to Olmo, “The merchandise is said to be stored in a place called El Mirador. My courier will be taking me there later in the day to inspect the warehouse.”
“Very.”
“Do you have any reason to think so?” Olmo asked.
“Just intuition,” said Farkas. “But it feels right.”
“I understand. You have senses that are different from our senses. You are a very unusual man, Victor.”
Farkas made no reply.
Olmo said, “If the merchandise is to your satisfaction, when will you want to make shipment?”
“Very soon, I think.”
“To the home office?”
“No,” said Farkas. “That plan has been changed. The home office has requested that the merchandise be sent directly to the factory.”
“Ah. I see.”
“If you would make certain that the cargo manifests are in proper order,” Farkas said, “I’ll let you know as soon as we’re ready to transfer the goods.”
“And the customs fees—”
“Will be taken care of in the usual manner. I don’t think Don Eduardo will have reason to complain.”
“It would be very embarrassing if he did.”
“There won’t be any problem.”
“I said there’d be compensation, didn’t I?”
There was sudden new force in Farkas’s tone, and Olmo’s image responded by changing color ever so slightly, deepening from cobalt blue almost to black, as though he wanted Farkas to understand that the possibility that the necessary bribes might somehow fall through was disturbing to him and that the eyeless man’s implied rebuke was offensive. But Farkas saw Olmo’s color return to its normal shade after a moment, and realized that the little crisis had passed.
El Mirador was midway between hub and rim on its spoke. There were great glass windows punched in its shield that provided a colossal view of all the rest of Valparaiso Nuevo and the stars and the sun and the moon and the Earth and everything. A solar eclipse was going on when Juanito and Farkas arrived, not a great rarity in the satellite worlds but not all that common, either: the Earth was plastered right over the sun with nothing but one bright squidge of hot light showing down below like a diamond blazing on a golden ring. Purple shadows engulfed the town, deep and thick, a heavy velvet curtain falling over everything.
Juanito tried to describe what he saw. Farkas made an impatient brushing gesture.
“I know, I know. I feel it in my teeth.” They stood on a big peoplemover escalator leading down into the town plaza. “The sun is long and thin right now, like the blade of an ax. The Earth has six sides, each one glowing a different color.”
Juanito gaped at the eyeless man in amazement.
“Wu is here,” Farkas said. “Down there, in the plaza. I feel his presence.”
“From five hundred meters away?”
“Come with me.”
“What do we do if he really is there?”
“Are you armed?” Farkas asked.
“I have a spike, yes.” Juanito patted his thigh.
“Good. Tune it to shock intensity, and don’t use it at all if you can help it. I don’t want you to hurt him in any way.”
“I understand. You want to kill him yourself, in your own sweet time. Very slowly and in the fullest enjoyment of the pleasure.”
“Just be careful not to hurt him, that’s all,” Farkas said. “Come on.”
It was an old-fashioned-looking town, a classic Latin American design, low pastel buildings with plenty of ironwork scrolling along their facades, cobblestone plaza with quaint little cafes around its perimeter and an elaborate fountain in the middle. About ten thousand people lived there and it seemed as if they were all out in the plaza right this minute sipping drinks and watching the eclipse. Juanito was grateful for the eclipse. It was the entertainment of the day. No one paid any attention to them as they came floating down the peoplemover and strode into the plaza. Hell of a thing, Juanito thought. You walk into town with a man with no eyes walking right behind you and nobody even notices. But when the sunshine comes back on it may be different.
“There he is,” Farkas whispered. “To the left, maybe fifty meters, sixty.”
He indicated the direction with a subtle movement of his head. Juanito peered through the purple gloom down the way, focusing on the plazafront cafe that lay just beyond the one in front of them. A dozen or so people were sitting in small groups at curbside tables under iridescent fiberglass awnings, drinking, chatting, taking it easy. Just another casual afternoon in good old cozy El Mirador on sleepy old Valparaiso Nuevo.
Farkas stood sideways, no doubt to keep his strange face partly concealed. Out of the corner of his mouth he said, “Wu is the one sitting by himself at the front table.”
Juanito shook his head. “The only one sitting alone is a woman, maybe fifty, fifty-five years old, long reddish hair, big nose, dowdy clothes ten years out of fashion.”
“That’s Wu.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“It’s possible to retrofit your body to make it look entirely different on the outside. You can’t change the nonvisual information, the data I pick up by blindsight. What Dr. Wu looked like to me, the last time I saw him, was a cubical block of black metal polished bright as a mirror, sitting on top of a pyramid-shaped copper-colored pedestal. I was nine years old then, but I promised myself I wouldn’t ever forget what he looked like, and I haven’t. That’s exactly what the person sitting over there by herself looks like.”
Juanito stared. He still saw a plain-looking woman in a rumpled old-fashioned suit. They did wonders with retrofitting these days, he knew: they could make almost any sort of body grow on you, like clothing on a clothes rack, by fiddling with your DNA. But still Juanito had trouble thinking of that woman over there as a sinister Chinese gene-splicer in disguise, and he had even more trouble seeing her as a polished cube sitting on top of a coppery pyramid.
He could practically feel the force of the hatred that was radiating from Farkas, though. So he knew that this must really be the one. The eyeless man was going to exact a terrible vengeance for the thing that had been done to him at birth, the thing that had set him apart from all the rest of the human race.
“What do you want to do now?” Juanito asked.
“Let’s go over and sit down alongside her. Keep that spike of yours ready. But I hope you don’t need to use it.”
“If we put the arm on her and she’s not Wu,” Juanito said uneasily, “it’s going to get me in a hell of a lot of trouble, particularly if she’s paying El Supremo for sanctuary. Sanctuary people get very stuffy when their privacy is violated. She could raise a stink and before she’s finished with us you’ll be expelled and I’ll be fined a fortune and a half and I might wind up getting expelled too, and then what? Where would I live, if I had to leave here? Have you thought about that?”
“Don’t worry so much,” Farkas said. “That’s Dr. Wu, all right. Watch him react when he sees me, and then you’ll believe it.”
“We’ll still be violating sanctuary. All he has to do is yell for the Guardia Civil.”
“We would need to make it clear to him right away,” said Farkas, “that that would be a foolish move. You
