“There are only a thousand or so of them here on the Islands, and nobody outside the Islands even knows where they are. If they did, what good would it do them? They can kill anyone, anywhere. They kill for fun, but sometimes they kill for a reason too. When one of them goes wandering for kicks he makes it a point to mess up all the transport and communications facilities he comes across—especially now, since they’ve stockpiled everything they’re likely to need for the next twenty years. We don’t know what they’re planning to do when the twenty years are up. Maybe they don’t care. Would you?”
Chandler drained his drink and shook his head. “One question,” he said. “Who’s ‘we’?”
Hsi carefully unwrapped a package of cigarettes, took one out and lit it. He looked at it as though he were not enjoying it; cigarettes had a way of tasting stale these days. As they were. “Just a minute,” he said.
Tardily Chandler remembered the quick grasp of the waiter’s fingers on Hsi’s wrist, and that the waiter had been hovering, inconspicuously close, all through their meal. Hsi was waiting for the man to return.
In a moment the waiter was back, looking directly at Chandler. He looped his own wrist with his fingers and nodded. Hsi said softly, “ ‘We’ is the Society of Slaves. That’s all of us—slaves—but only a few of us belong to the Society. We—”
There was a crash of glass. The waiter had dropped their tray.
Across the table from Chandler, Hsi looked suddenly changed. His left hand lay on the table before him, his right hand poised over it. Apparently he had been about to show Chandler again the sign he had made.
But he could not do it. His hand paused and fluttered, like a captured bird. Captured it was. Hsi was captured. Out of Hsi’s mouth, with Hsi’s voice, came the light, tonal rhythms of Rosalie Pan. “This is an unexpected pleasure, love! I never expected to see you here. Enjoying your meal?”
IX
Chandler had his empty glass halfway to his lips, automatically, before he realized there was nothing in it to brace him. He said hoarsely, “Yes, thanks. Do you come here often?” It was like the banal talk of a language guide, wildly inappropriate to what had been going on a moment before. He was shaken.
“Oh, I love it,” cooed Hsi, investigating the dishes before him. “All finished, I see. Too bad. Your friend doesn’t feel like he ate much, either.”
“I guess he wasn’t hungry,” Chandler managed.
“Well, I am.” Hsi cocked his head and smiled like a female impersonator. “I know! Are you doing anything special right now, love? I know you’ve eaten, but—well, I’ve been a good girl and I guess I can eat a real meal, I mean not with somebody else’s teeth, and still keep the calories in line. Suppose I meet you down at the Beach? There’s a place there where the luau is divine. I can be there in half an hour.”
Chandler’s breathing was back to normal. Why not? “I’ll be delighted.”
“Luigi the Wharf Rat, that’s the name of it. They won’t let you in, though, unless you tell them you’re with me. It’s special.” Hsi’s eye closed in Rosalie Pan’s wink. “Half an hour,” Hsi said, and was again himself. He began to shake.
The waiter brought him straight whiskey and, pretense abandoned, stood by while Hsi drank it. After a moment he said, “Scares you. But—I guess we’re all right. She couldn’t have heard much. You’d better go, Chandler. I’ll talk to you again some other time.”
Chandler stood up. But he couldn’t leave Hsi like that. “Are you all right?”
Hsi almost managed control. “Oh—I think so. Not the first time it’s come close, you know. Sooner or later it’ll come closer still, and that will be the end, but—yes, I’m all right for now.”
Chandler tarried. “You were saying something about the Society of Slaves.”
“Damn it, go!” Hsi barked. “She’ll be waiting for you. … Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. But go.” As Chandler turned, he said more quietly, “Come around to the store tomorrow. Maybe we can finish our talk then.”
Luigi the Wharf Rat’s was not actually on the beach but on the bank of a body of water called the Ala Wai Canal. Across the water were the snowtopped hills. A maitre-de escorted Chandler personally to a table on a balcony, and there he waited. Rosalie’s “half-hour” was nearly two; but then he heard her calling him from across the room, in the voice which had reached a thousand second balconies, and he rose as she came near.
She said lightly, “Sorry. You ought to be flattered, though. It’s a twenty-minute drive—and an hour and a half to put on my face, so you won’t be ashamed to be seen with me. Well, it’s good to be out in my own skin for a change. Let’s eat!”
The talk with Hsi had left a mark on Chandler that not even this girl’s pretty face could obscure. It was a pretty face, though, and she was obviously exerting herself to make him enjoy himself. He could not help responding to her mood.
She talked of her life on the stage, the excitement of a performance, the entertainers she had known. Her conversation was one long name-drop, but it was not pretense: the world of the famous was the world she had lived in. It was not a world that Chandler had ever visited, but he recognized the names. Rosie had been married once to an English actor whose movies Chandler had made a point of watching on television. It was interesting, in a way, to know that the man snored and lived principally on vitamin pills. But it was a view of the man
