George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

I didn’t want to discuss it any further.

Bill drove me out to Seipolt’s. I always had Bill drive me when I went into the city for any reason. His insanity distracted me from the pervasive normalness all around, the lack of chaos imposed on everything. Riding with Bill was like carrying a little pocket of the Budayeen around with me for security. Like taking a tank of oxygen with you when you went into the deep, dark depths.

Seipolt’s place was far from the center of the city, on the southeast edge. It was within sight of the realm of the everlasting sand, where the dunes waited for us to relax just a little, and then they’d cover us all like ashes, like dust. The sand would smooth out all conflicts, all works, all hopes. It would swoop down, a victorious army upon a conquered city, and we would all lie in the deep, dark depths beneath the sand forever. The good night would come — but not just yet. No, not here, not yet.

Seipolt saw that order was maintained and the desert held back; date palms arched around the villa, and gardens bloomed because water was forced to flow in this inhospitable place. Bougainvillea flowered and the breeze was perfumed with enticing aromas. Iron gates were kept in repair, painted and oiled; long, curving drives were kept clean and raked; walls were whitewashed. It was a magnificent residence, a rich man’s home. It was a refuge against the creeping sand, against the creeping night that waits so patiently.

I sat in the back of Bill’s taxi. His engine idled roughly, and he muttered and laughed to himself. I felt small and foolish — Seipolt’s mansion awed me, despite myself. What was I going to say to Seipolt? The man had power — why, I couldn’t hold back even a handful of sand, not if I tried with all my might and prayed to Allah at the same time.

I told Bill to wait, and I watched him until I saw that somewhere down in his careening mind he understood. I got out of the taxi and walked through the iron gate, up the white-pebbled drive toward the front entrance to the villa. I knew that Nikki was crazy; I knew that Bill was crazy; I was now learning that I wasn’t entirely well, either.

As I listened to my feet crunching the small stones, I wondered why we all just didn’t go back where we’d come from. That was the real treasure, the greatest gift: to be where you truly belonged. If I was lucky, someday I would find that place. Inshallah . If Allah willed.

The front door was a massive thing made of some kind of blond wood, with great iron hinges and an iron grille. The door was swinging open as I raised my hand to grasp the brass knocker. A tall, lean, blond European stared down at me. He had blue eyes (unlike Bill’s, this man’s eyes were the kind you always hear described as “piercing” and, by the Prophet’s beard, I felt pierced); a thin, straight nose with flaring nostrils; a square chin; and a tight-lipped mouth that seemed set in a permanent expression of mild revulsion. He spoke to me in German.

I shook my head. “ ‘ Anaa la ’alham .” I said, grinning like the stupid Arab peasant he took me for.

The man with the blond hair looked impatient. He tried English. I shook my head again, grinning and apologizing and filling his ears with Arabic. It was obvious that he couldn’t make any sense out of my language, and he wasn’t going to try any harder to find another that I might understand. He was just on the point of slamming the heavy door in my face, when he saw Bill’s taxi. That made him think. I looked like an Arab; to this man, all Arabs were pretty much the same, and one of their shared qualities was poverty. Yet I had hired a taxi to drive out to the residence of a rich and influential man. He was having trouble making sense of that, so now he wasn’t so ready to dismiss me out of hand. He pointed at me and muttered something; I supposed it was “Wait here.” I grinned, touched my heart and my forehead, and praised Allah three or four times.

A minute later, Blondie returned with an old man, an Arab in the employ of the household. The two men spoke together briefly. The old fellah turned to me and smiled. “Peace be upon you!” he said.

“And upon you,” I said. “O neighbor, is this man the honored and excellent one, Lutz Seipolt Pasha?”

The old man laughed a little. “You are mistaken, my nephew,” he said. “He is but the doorman, a menial even as I am.” I really doubted that they were all that equal. Evidently the blond man was part of Seipolt’s retinue, brought from Germany.

“On my honor, I am a fool!” I said. “I have come to ask an important question of His Excellency.” Arabic terms of address frequently make such use of elaborate flattery. Seipolt was a businessman of some sort; I had already called him Pasha (an obsolete title used in the city for ingratiation) and His Excellency (as if he were some sort of ambassador). The old, leather-skinned Arab understood what I was doing well enough. He turned to the German and translated the conversation.

The German seemed even less pleased. He replied with a single, curt sentence. The Arab spoke to me. “Reinhardt the doorman wishes to hear this question.”

I grinned into Reinhardt’s hard eyes. “I’m only looking for my sister, Nikki.”

The Arab shrugged and relayed the information. I saw Reinhardt blink and make the beginning of some gesture, then catch himself. He said something to the old fellah . “There is no one by that name here,” the Arab told me. “There are no women at all in this household.”

“I am certain that my sister is here,” I said. “It is a matter of my family’s honor.” I sounded threatening; the Arab’s eyes opened wide.

Reinhardt hesitated. He was undecided whether to slam the door in my face, after all, or kick this problem upstairs. I figured him for a coward; I was right. He didn’t want to take the responsibility for the decision, so he agreed to convey me somewhere inside the cool, lavishly furnished house. I was glad to get out of the hot sun. The old Arab disappeared, returning to his duties. Reinhardt did not deign to look at me or address a word in my direction; he merely walked deeper into the house, and I followed. We came to another heavy door, this one of a fine-grained dark hardwood. Reinhardt rapped; a gruff voice called out, and Reinhardt answered. There was a short pause, then the gruff voice gave an order. Reinhardt turned the doorknob, pushed the door open just a little, and walked away. I entered the room, putting the dumb-Arab look back on my face. I pressed my hands together in supplication and dipped my head a few times for good measure. “You are His Excellency?” I asked in Arabic.

I was looking at a heavy, coarse-featured, bald man in his sixties, with a moddy and two or three daddies plugged into his sweat-shiny skull. He sat behind a heavily-littered desk, holding a telephone in one hand and a large, blued-steel needle gun in the other. He smiled at me. “Please do me the honor of coming closer,” he said in unaccented Arabic; it was probably a language daddy speaking for him.

I bowed again. I was trying to think, but my mind was like a blank parchment. Needle guns do that to me sometimes. “O Excellent One,” I said, “I beg your pardon for intruding.”

“To hell with all that ‘Excellent One’ bull. Tell me why you’re here. You know who I am. You know I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

I pulled Nikki’s letter from my shoulder bag and gave it to him. I guessed he’d figure it out quickly enough.

He read it through and then put down the telephone — but not the needle gun. “You’re Marîd, then?” he said. He’d stopped smiling.

“I have that privilege,” I said.

“Don’t get smart with me,” said Seipolt. “Sit down in that chair.” He waved me aside with the pistol. “I’ve heard one or two things about you.”