M. Harrison: Nova Swing

"Only I got work now. It's temporary."

"That's good news, Antoyne!"

The fat man didn't seem to know how to encounter the enthusiasm of this. "It's temporary work," he said.

"So how is Vic?"

Fat Antoyne swallowed the other half of his drink and stood up. "You know," he said, "I like the light in here. I always liked a low light to drink by. It's the music I don't like." He wiped his mouth and gave the band a look which he transferred somehow to Aschemann.

"I was leaving anyway," he said.

"There's no need for that," the detective insisted. "Look, I'll just sit here and have another drink. You should have one too." He would be hurt, he implied, if Antoyne went off like that. He pulled up the bar stool next to Antoyne's and took a moment to get comfortable on it. "You don't mind if I sit," he said. "We're both out of place here, surely we can sit together?" He took a matchbook off the barman-it had a tiny hologram of the Live Music Nightly sign, which he turned appreciatively this way and that-and then another glass of rum. "Do you mind if I just fold my coat," he asked, "and put it here on the bar?" He held up his drink to the light. He had a habit of smiling around at people to show that he was enjoying the evening the way it had turned out. He tapped his fingers to the music for a minute or two, then concluded, "Myself, I don't mind this. But what I like is that old New Nuevo Tango."

The fat man received the news without interest.

"A lot do," he acknowledged.

Aschemann nodded. "I heard Vic is taking more risks than he needs to," he said, as if that was part of the same discussion.

"Vic's OK," Antoyne said defensively.

"Still, people will get hurt."

"There's nothing wrong with Vic. Vic Serotonin to my mind never hurt anyone."

"And yet, you know, he's in and out of the site, like all those people. We can't stop them finding new entrances-" here, Aschemann gave a small chuckle "-sometimes we have our reasons we don't even want to try. But then the next day he's at the Semiramide Club. He's in bed with Paulie DeRaad. Are those kinds of connexions without risk, do you think? For someone in Vic's trade?" After a moment of reflection he added, "All those travel agents have a reckless streak, Antoyne. The trouble in Vic's life proceeds from that."

Something new seemed to occur to him. He touched the fat man's forearm suddenly to get his attention.

"Antoyne, has Vic upset you in some way?"

Antoyne shrugged.

"I won't give up Vic," he said, and walked off.

"Vic's giving himself up," the detective called after him mildly. "Not just to me. To whatever's in there."

Antoyne did not reply, but instead pushed his way more energetically between the crowded tables to the door. In the end there was a kind of fat dignity to Antoyne, which remained intact despite his habit of always putting himself at a disadvantage, of appearing to disentitle himself in a society where anyone could be what they wanted. No one understood why Serotonin tolerated him, but maybe that was why. For a moment or two Aschemann considered this. Then he retreated to his favourite corner, where he tried to recoup the rhythm of the Cafe Surf, taking his time over another glass, drinking in little sips which coated his mouth with the warm rum taste of burnt sugar. He thought about Vic Serotonin, also Paulie DeRaad, who, of the two, he liked the least. He thought about the tourist trade, or at least the sector of it which was his professional concern.

While he was thinking, the band squeezed out two or three thin boys in white singlets, earrings and studded leather belts. Aschemann watched closely their struggle through the toilet door and into the sticky prismatic light. They looked, he decided, surprised. They looked incomplete, and surprised to find themselves here. Then the music squeezed out an old woman in a hat and a blue print dress and for a moment all four of them swayed clumsily together as if in time to the music. There was a lacuna, a moment of awry-a moment like falling, which happened between them but spread itself out to everyone else in the bar; and then the Cafe Surf was itself again. The new customers bought drinks and headed out into the night.

Aschemann stood at the door and watched them go. The next night he had some of them arrested.

The way this came about was unforeseen. Three women and one man were picked up two miles from the Cafe Surf, in the back lot of another bar, where they were apparently trying to have sex with one another. There was some sense they didn't know how to progress with this but were willing to learn. Aschemann, who got notice of the event from the uniform branch, contacted his assistant and had her go down there. "Take them to a holding cell," he told her. "I can't go myself." He had other things to do-he was out on the edge of the noncorporate port investigating a long-running series of crimes against women-but it seemed pointless to waste the opportunity. "Don't interrogate them," he ordered. "Strictly, there is nothing wrong with trying to have sex in the back lot of a bar, otherwise we would all be in prison. Just settle them in and then you can go home. Oh, and one other thing."

"What's that?"

"Make sure no one hurts them."

She was back on to him perhaps an hour later. Things were fine, she said. It was like handling refugees. Though they were curiously pliable, they were slow to give names. They smelled a little. They didn't seem to be from an alien species. They didn't seem to be hungry. They were not chipped, she said, by any method the holding cell diagnostics understood, neither were any of the usual markers encoded into their DNA; she could therefore assign them no point of origin in the Halo.

"What do they look like to you?" Aschemann asked her.

"They look like idiots," she said.

When she last saw them, that was how they looked. It was perhaps two after midnight. They stood all night like that, puzzledly, in the centre of the cell, talking to one another infrequently in their slow, gluey voices; and in the morning they were gone.

"There's no explanation for it," she said.

Her skin ran with data. It was like a pore-bleed. Nervousness or anger was causing her to clench and unclench one fist, as if by pumping the forearm muscles she could pump the mathematics too. He wondered if she had been taught that, or if it was just a mannerism. "Look at the nanocamera record! We had saturating coverage. There was never a moment those people were specifically and exactly not there. In some lights there still seems to be a trace of them, even now. And even after the holding cell was empty, it turned out they had been seen in other parts of the station." She stared at her arm as if it had let her down. "What can have happened? There was never a moment they weren't there. They just seemed to evaporate.

"There's no explanation," she concluded again.

Aschemann scratched his head. "Higher up they might want one," he decided. "But we don't have to provide it right now." And then, trying to help her, "This isn't anything anyone could have predicted."

Next, she wanted them to raid the Cafe Surf.

"Not yet," he said. "But it's a nice day. Let's visit by all means."

She stared at him. "What?"

"It would make a change for you to drive," he told her, and gave his usual driver the day off. Twenty minutes later she was stuck with him. He sat in the front passenger seat with his arms folded, smiling around comfortably as the pink Cadillac convertible slipped down from his office, between the Moneytown palms and white designer duplexes of Maricachel Hill, to the Corniche. It had rained early, but midmorning sun was etching the last traces of humidity off the surface of the air. He loved to be driven, and he was proud of the car. After a few minutes he told her, "You see? You feel better already. Take your time."