Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“His Name was Yacrod , not Myzzt ,” Edda said, breaking the silence.

“ Yacrod ?” Haifan was surprised. “Then the nails were unnecessary. I had a good knife. It would have worked just as well.”

Yacrod meant: “From sleeping.”

“Haifan, and your son?” asked Ra Mahleiné.

“The fratricide? I knew that this night was to be the cleansing of Davabel, so I had to deal with him also. Unfortunately he woke when I began to tie him, and he struggled. But the Spirit of Sleep didn’t let you hear it, because my cause was just. I tied his hands and feet and put his head in a bucket of water, because he was a Flued . He didn’t even kick that much. Then he got properly cold and stiff. I fell asleep just as the sun came up, the first sleep I had in a long time. I’ve told you all this, leaving nothing out, because the spirits required it. Davabel is now purified. Do you know the number of the police station, Dave?” he asked, lifting the receiver.

“Four nines,” Edda said.

Haifan calmly reported the triple murder to a dumbfounded official, then ate his portion of pasta with great appetite, not bothered by the fact that the tomato sauce had congealed.

“Edda, bring the pizza quickly, before they come. The interrogation will take a long time, I’m sure, so I’ll need my strength to tell them everything.”

The police sirens started just as he finished his pizza. Edda went and opened the door. Haifan got up, identified himself, and asked that handcuffs be put on him. The policeman in front just blinked.

But they put the cuffs on Haifan after they found the mess and bodies in the Hannings’ apartment and then Tad’s bedroom. A plainclothes detective asked the preliminary questions. The man’s name was Bharr Tobiany. He was over six feet tall and massive.

His children must be clumsy hulks, Gavein thought. Even if Mrs. Tobiany is small and energetic, the father’s genes can’t be ignored.

In charge of the investigation, Tobiany sat at the table behind a cold pizza tray that had only one piece missing. The bodies were carried out. Then the policemen left. Tobiany asked the tenants not to go anywhere. The Hanning and Tonescu apartments were sealed.

When the last police car drove off, it became as quiet as it had been while Haifan was telling them about the spirits that moved the world. Edda’s eyes never left Gavein.

“I’ll make everyone some bitter tea,” said Ra Mahleiné.

“I’ll help you,” said Helga.

Edda bored through Gavein with her eyes.

Zef turned on the television. It was an old film starring Lola Low.

“Thin as a toothpick,” he said. “She has more voom now.”

“More voom and fewer clothes,” Gavein remarked.

The telephone clattered. It was Wilcox. He knew that at this hour Gavein would be sitting in Edda’s dining room. He had taken a book home with him, unable to stop reading it. He asked for two days off, Monday and Tuesday, so he could finish it. Gavein said yes. He was surprised by Wilcox’s request. The man could easily have hidden himself behind the pigeonhole desk during work hours.

“We should move,” Ra Mahleiné said when they were in bed. “Edda looks at you as if you were the murderer of those three. I felt like giving her hair a yank.”

He put an arm around her. She snuggled like a kitten.

“Next month, you’re going to the hospital,” he said. “The waiting list for whites is long, but I managed to get a place for you on the one for grays. That, and better treatment. As of a wife written into a passport.”

“And then we’ll look for another place.”

The interrogation, though overseen by Tobiany, came to no satisfactory conclusion. Haifan succeeded in opening the veins of his wrist with the sharp edge of a spoon. The guard, instead of collecting the eating utensils from the prisoners after the meal, had fallen asleep in front of the TV and didn’t wake until three in the morning, which gave Haifan enough time. They had kept him in isolation, unobserved, though his Significant Name— Sulled —clearly pointed to what could happen.

Wilcox did not part with his book, which had a stamped cover that resembled a mosaic. The title seemed assembled with colored stones: Nest of Worlds . He carried it with him everywhere. The book was falling apart; it had been read by so many. He still had not got beyond the first chapter.

Gavein asked to see the beginning—to see what the book was about—but Wilcox refused.

The man stopped taking care of himself. He would sit until late in the bookstore, poring over the first few pages, then come in around noon the next day, saying that he had been reading.

“It would be nice to read something that absorbing,” Ra Mahleiné remarked when Gavein told her about Wilcox. “The TV commercials are turning my brains to mush. Yesterday, when you were at the bookstore, they showed an old movie with Maslynnaya. Her striptease was interrupted three times by ads. Potato chips, corn flakes. It’s such garbage. In Lavath they had more respect for the television viewer.”

Two days after that, Wilcox’s wife came to see them: Ra Bharré. She asked them to call her Brenda. A blonde, she was small but plump as a bun. She seemed so much younger than Wilcox that at first Gavein assumed she was his daughter.

“Don’t apologize, Dave. Everyone makes that mistake. Harry aged a lot on the force. He wasn’t cut out for it, but if a person spends his whole life daydreaming, that’s how he ends up. As a kid, Harry wanted to be a private eye, like in the movies. What did he become? A cop on the beat.”

Wilcox’s first name was Hvar, the word for a dwarf shrub, remarkably resistant to cold and wind and growing in the north of Lavath. The plant was a symbol of endurance and strength of character. Brenda had changed the name in the Davabel manner.

“You’re surprised by our difference in age?”

“Yes.” There was no point denying it.

“Our story is so romantic. A teenage girl watches a program one day about the dangerous work the police do. It shows a policeman in a hospital bed, hit by a stray bullet. That seems so noble to her, she writes a letter. Receiving an answer, she pays a visit to the hospital. Here I am thirty years later.”

“Ours is less romantic,” Ra Mahleiné said. “Four years separated us, and we compensated for that by my taking a prison ship. A kind of personal victory over time. The two of us. Or a personal defeat,” she added grimly.

“You had the courage to go by prison ship?”

“No one told me it would be a prison ship.” The few thin scars on her face turned red.

“True. It’s not generally known. Harry knew things like that, but he was a cop. I did without him, pined for ten years in Lavath rather than travel with compensation to remove the age difference. My best ten years. And then meeting the old Harry, that was awful. I hadn’t found anyone else in that time,” she said lightly, “so I came to him. He had waited for me.”

All three of them knew what a married person remaining in Lavath had to do.

“I didn’t even have the chance, you know,… on that boat,” said Ra Mahleiné. “But how did you get around the difference in category?” To change the embarrassing subject.

“I was too young to pay attention to that in Lavath. And here? I don’t even think Harry was aware he got a three.”

“You came to see me, Brenda?” said Gavein. He was put off by her breezy tone. He had some idea of the lengths Harry must have gone to to secure for her the rights of a legal wife.

“Yes. It’s about Harry and that book. He doesn’t wash. He sits up all night. He thinks of nothing else. He doesn’t even know I’m there. All he does is read. What’s in the book?”