Hot Sky at Midnight

looked up into the Kyocera man’s extraordinary face once again.

“You’re really serious about this thing?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Go on, then. Tell me more.”

“Come with us to Los Angeles, if you want to learn more. But there will be no turning back for you, once you do. You will be one of us; and you will not have the option of withdrawing from the group.”

“You are serious.”

“So you believe me, now?”

“If this is any kind of joke, Farkas, I’ll kill you. You better believe me. I mean what I’m saying.” Carpenter wondered if he actually did.

“There is no joke.” Farkas put out his hand. After a moment, Carpenter took it.

“Dinner is served!” Jolanda called, from another room.

“We will talk further, afterward,” Farkas said.

As they were walking toward the dining room, Nick Rhodes came up alongside Carpenter and said, “What was that all about?”

“A strange business. I think he was making me a job offer.”

“With Kyocera?”

“Free-lance work,” Carpenter said. “I’m not sure. It’s all very fucking mysterious.”

“You want to tell me about it?” Rhodes asked.

“Later,” said Carpenter. They went inside.

It was two that morning before Carpenter got his chance to tell Rhodes about the conversation with Victor Farkas, after they had returned to Rhodes’ apartment from the dinner party, and after Isabelle had finally gone home, explaining that she had to be in Sacramento the next day for a professional conference and couldn’t stay over. After seeing her out Rhodes and Carpenter stood for a time in Rhodes’ living room, in the quietness of the warm humid night, looking out at the bay.

Though they had all had plenty to drink at Jolanda’s, Rhodes wanted a nightcap. He brought out a dark, odd-shaped bottle bearing a label that looked at least a hundred years old, antiquated typeface, browning paper. “Actual cognac,” Rhodes said. “From France. Very rare. I feel like celebrating a little. What about you?” He looked inquiringly at Carpenter.

“What the hell. But only one, Nick. I can’t manage another looper like last night.”

Rhodes poured carefully. Very rare stuff, yes, no doubt of that. Carpenter drank slowly, thoughtfully. It had been a curious evening. He felt as though he had moved past some strange boundary into the realm of the completely unknown.

But Rhodes had crossed a boundary too that evening, it seemed, and wanted to talk about it.

“It was sixty-forty last night, remember? And then seventy-thirty. But all this evening the numbers kept going up, and when they got to ninety-ten I knew it was clinched.”

Carpenter looked up at him wearily. “What are you talking about, Nick?”

“The Kyocera job. I’m definitely going to take it. I decided around midnight.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Tomorrow, I’m supposed to let Walnut Creek know which way I mean to go. Nakamura, the Level Three who head-hunted me, is waiting for a call. I’m going to tell him that it’s a yes.”

Carpenter lifted his brandy snifter in a formal salute.

“Congratulations. I like a man who can make up his mind.”

“Thank you. Cheers.”

“I’m going to take a new job too,” said Carpenter.

Rhodes, who had his glass to his lips, sputtered and put it down.

“What?” He looked incredulous. “Where?”

“With Farkas. Doing something illegal on a space habitat.”

“Smuggling? Don’t tell me that Kyocera runs drugs on the side!”

“Worse,” Carpenter said. “If I tell you, I’m making you an accomplice before the fact, you know. But I will anyway, and to hell with it. They’re going to knock over Valparaiso Nuevo, Nick. Some kind of joint Israeli-Kyocera venture, carried out by thugs from Los Angeles, Jolanda’s wonderful friends. Seize control of the place, run it for their own private profit. Jolanda and Enron and Farkas seem to have cooked all this up last week, when they were together on Valparaiso. And now Farkas has invited me in. I’m not sure what my exact role is going to be, but I suppose it’ll be something peripheral, like spreading disinformation and general fog and confusion while the coup action is taking place.”

“No,” Rhodes said.

“No what?”

“You aren’t. This is crazy, Paul.”

“Of course it is. But what other choices do I have? I’m not only unemployed but unemployable, on Earth. The place for me to go is space. But I can’t even afford a ticket up.”

“I could buy you a ticket.”

“And if you did, what then? How would I earn a living once I was up there? Crime, I suppose. White-collar crime of some kind. This is simpler and quicker. Anything goes, out in the habitats. You know that. There’s no such thing as interplanetary law, yet. We push over the Generalissimo and the place is ours, and nobody will say a word.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“I don’t believe I’m saying it. But I’m going to do it.”

“Listen to me. I know a little about this man Farkas, Paul. He’s completely cold-blooded, utterly unscrupulous. A monster, literally and figuratively.”

“Fine. Just what’s needed for this kind of thing.”

“No. Listen. You get mixed up with him, you’ll wind up on the scrap heap somewhere at the end of it all. He’s dangerous, amoral, full of hate. He doesn’t give a damn what he does, or who he hurts. Look what the world did to him. He’s spending his whole life paying it back. And what does he need you for, anyway? He’ll take you in for a little while and then when it’s all over he’ll throw you out.”

“Jolanda trusts him,” Carpenter said. “It was Jolanda who talked him into inviting me into this.”

“Jolanda,” Rhodes said, scornfully. “She thinks with her tits, that one.”

“And Enron? Does he think with his tits too? He’s Farkas’s partner. He also appears to trust him.”

“Enron doesn’t trust his own big toe. Besides, even if Enron and Farkas are in bed with each other, what protection does that give you? Don’t go near them, Paul. Don’t do it.”

“May I have a little more of that cognac?” Carpenter asked.

“Sure. Sure. But promise me: stay away from this business.”

“I don’t have any other options, do I?”

“Your fatal flaw,” Rhodes said. “Always to make a bad moral position look like something unavoidable.” He refilled Carpenter’s snifter. “Here. Drink. Enjoy. You cockeyed son of a bitch, are you really going to do it?”

“I really am,” Carpenter said. He raised the snifter. “Here’s to you and me. Our dazzling new career moves. Cheers, Nick.”

26

davidov said, “we will plant one of the bombs on each spoke, seven in all, each within five hundred meters of the hub. Which is six bombs more than we really need, but redundancy is the key to the success of this enterprise. I have no doubt that the Generalissimo’s counterintelligence is capable of finding two or three of the explosive caches, but finding all seven within the time allotted would probably be beyond anybody’s capabilities. Besides, we want them to find one or two.”

“Why is that?” Carpenter asked.