Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

Limberg’s hound-dog eyes turned upward towards Michaelmas’s face. He said: “It is not honours that cause one to accomplish such things.”

“No, of course not.” Michaelmas turned to Frontiere. “Ah, Getulio. And where is Ossip? I don’t see him.”

“Mr Sakal is a little indisposed and had to leave,” Limberg said. “As his co-host for this reception, I express his regrets.” Frontiere nodded.

“I am very sorry to hear that,” Michaelmas said. “Getulio, I wonder if I might take you aside and speak with you for just a moment. Excuse me, Dr. Limberg, Walter. I must leave for my hotel almost immediately, and Mr Frontiere and I have an old promise to keep.”

“Certainly, Mr Michaelmas. Thank you for coming.” Suck suck. Wisp.

Michaelmas moved Frontiere aside with a gentle touch on the upper arm. “I am at the Excelsior,” he said quietly. “I will be in Switzerland perhaps a few hours more, perhaps not. I hope you’ll be able to find the time to meet me.” He laughed and affectionately patted Frontiere’s cheek. “I hope you can arrange it,” he said in a normal tone. “Arrivederci.” He turned away with a wave and moved towards where he had seen Clementine chatting beside a tall, cadaverous, fortyish bald man with a professorial manner.

Clementine was wearing a pair of low canvas shoes, presumably borrowed from a crew member. She smiled as she saw Michaelmas looking at her feet. “Laurent,” she said with a graceful inclination of her head. He took her hand, bowed, and kissed it.

“Thank you.”

“Merci. Pas de quoi.” A little bit of laughter lingered between them in their eyes. She turned to the man beside her. His olive skin and sunken, lustrous, and very round brown eyes were not quite right for a pin-striped navy blue suit, but the vest and the gold watch-chain were fully appropriate. There were pens in his outer breast pocket, and chemical stains on his spatulate fingertips. “I would like you to meet an old acquaintance,” Clementine said. “Laurent, this is Medical Doctor Kristiades Cikoumas, Dr. Limberg’s chief associate. Kiki, this is Mr Michaelmas.”

“A pleasure, Mr Michaelmas.” The long fingers extended themselves limply. Cikoumas had a way of curling his lips inward as he spoke, so that he appeared to have no teeth at all. Michaelmas found himself looking up at the man’s palate.

“An occasion for me,” Michaelmas said. “Permit me to extend my admiration for what has been accomplished here.”

“Ah.” Cikoumas waved his hands as if dispersing smoke. “A bagatelle. Your compliment is natural, but we look forward to much greater things in the future.”

“Oh.”

“You are with the media? A colleague of Madame Gervaise?”

“We are working together on this story.”

Clementine murmured: “Mr Michaelmas is quite well known, Kiki.”

“Ah, my apologies! I am familiar with Madame from her recent stay with us, but I know little of your professional world; I never watch entertainment.”

“Then you have an enviable advantage over me, Doctor. Clementine, excuse me for interrupting your conversation, but I must get back to Berne. Is there an available car?”

“Of course, Laurent. We will go together. Au voir, Kiki.”

Cikoumas bowed over her hand like a trick bird clamped to the edge of a water tumbler. “A revenance.” Michaelmas wondered what would happen if he were to put his shoe squarely in the man’s posterior.

On the ride back he sat away from her in a corner, the comm unit across his lap. After a while she said :

“Laurent, I thought you were pleased with me.”

He nodded. “I was. Yes. It was good working with you.”

“But you are disenchanted.” Her eyes sparkled and she touched his arm. “Because of Kiki? I enjoy calling him that. He becomes so foolish when he has been in a cafe too long.” Her eyes grew round as an owl’s and her mouth became toothless. “Oh, he looks, so— comme un hibou, tu sais? — like the night bird with the big ears, and then he speaks amazingly. I am made nervous, and I joke with him a little, and he says it does not matter what I call him. A name is nothing, he says. Nothing is unique. But he does not like it, entirely, when I call him Kiki and say I do not think anyone else ever called him that before.” She touched Michaelmas’s arm again. “I tease too much.” She looked contrite, but her eyes were not totally solemn. “It is a forgiveable trait, isn’t it so, if we are friends again?”

“Yes, of course.” He patted her hand. “In the main, I’m simply tired.”

“Ah, then I shall let you rest,” she said lightly. But she folded her arms and watched him closely as she settled back into her corner.

The way to do it, Michaelmas was thinking, would be to get pieces of other people’s footage on stories Horse had also covered. A scan of the running figures in the mob, or the people advancing in front of the camera, would turn up many instances over the years of Watson identifiably taking positions ahead of other people who’d thought they were as close to the action as possible. If you didn’t embarrass your sources by naming them, Domino could find a lot of usable stuff in a hurry. You could splice that together into quite a montage.

Now, you’d open with a talking head shot of Watson tagging off: “And that’s how it is right now in Venezuela,” he’d be saying, and then you’d go to voice-over. Your opening line would be something like: “That was Melvin Watson. They called him Horse,” and then go to your action montage. You’d rhythm it up with drop-ins of, say, Watson slugging the Albanian riot cop, Watson in soup-and-fish taking an award at a banquet, Watson with his sleeves rolled up as a guest teacher at Medill Journalism School, Watson’s home movies of his wedding and his kids graduating. You’d dynamite your way through that in no more than 120 seconds, including one short relevant quote from the J class that would leave you only 90 for the rest of it, going in with Michaelmas shots of Watson at Maracaibo.

You’d close with a reprise of the opening, but you’d edit-on the tags from as many locations as would give you good effects to go out on: “And that’s how it is right now in Venezuela…” and then a slight shift in the picture to older, grimier, leaner, younger, neck-tied, cleaner, open-shirted versions of that head and shoulders over the years… “in Kinshasa… on board the Kosmgorod station… in Athens… in Joplin, Missouri… in Dacca…” And then you’d cut, fast, to footage from the helicopter that had followed Watson into the mountains: blackened wounds on the face of the mountain and in the snow, wild sound of the wind moaning, and Michaelmas on voice-over saying “and that’s how it is right now.”

The little hairs were rising on Michaelmas’s forearms. It would play all right. It was a nice piece of work.

“We are nearly there, Laurent. Will I see you again?”

“Ah? What? Oh. Yes. I’m sure you have good directorial talent, and I know you have excellent qualities. There’ll certainly be future opportunities.”

“Thank you. If you get a chance to review the footage, I think you will find it was good. Crisp, documentary, and with no betrayals that the event was essentially a farce.”

“How do you mean?” he asked quickly.

“There are obvious things missing. As if UNAC and Limberg each had very different things they wanted made known, and they compromised on cutting all points of disagreement, leaving little. They were all very nice to each other on camera, yet I think it may have been different behind closed doors. And why did Sakal leave without so much as a public exchange of toasts with Limberg? But I was not talking business, Laurent. I was suggesting perhaps dinner.”