George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

I left the Budayeen and crossed the big avenue into a rather pricey collection of shops; these were more like boutiques than like the souks you’d expect. Tourists found just the souvenirs they were looking for here, despite the fact that most of the junk was made in other countries many thousands of miles away. There probably aren’t any native arts and crafts in the city at all, so the tourists browsed happily through gaily colored straw parrots from Mexico and plastic folding fans from Kowloon. The tourists didn’t care, so nobody had any kick coming. We were all very civilized out here on the edge of the desert.

I went into a men’s clothing store that sold European business suits. Usually I didn’t have the money to buy half a pair of socks, but Papa was staking me to a whole new look. It was so different, I didn’t even know what I needed to get. The clerk gave me the fish-eye. I let him know I was serious — sometimes fellahin go into these shops just to get their sweat all over the Oxford suits. I told him I wanted to be outfitted completely from the ground up, I told him how much I was willing to spend, and let him put the wardrobe together. I didn’t know how to match shirts and ties — I didn’t know how to tie a tie, I got a printed brochure about different knots — so I really needed the clerk’s help. I figured he was getting a commission, so I let him oversell me by a couple of hundred kiam or so. He wasn’t just putting on an act about being friendly, the way most shopkeepers do. He didn’t even shrink away from touching me, and I was about as scruffy then as you could get. In the Budayeen alone, that takes in a wide range of shabbiness.

I paid for the clothes, thanked the clerk, and carried my packages a couple of blocks to the Hotel Palazzo di Marco Aurelio. It was part of a large international Swiss-owned chain: all of them looked alike, and none of them had any of the elegance that had made the original so charming. I didn’t care. I wasn’t looking for elegance or charm, I was looking for a place to sleep where no one would sizzle me in the night. I wasn’t even curious enough to ask why the hotel in this Islamic stronghold was named after some Roman son of a bitch.

The guy at the desk didn’t have the attitude of the salesman at the clothing store; I knew immediately that the room clerk was a snob, that he was paid to be a snob, that the hotel had trained him to raise his natural snobbery to ethereal heights. There was nothing I could say to crack his contempt; he was as set in his ways as a sidewalk. There was something I could do, though, and I did it. I took out all the money I had with me and spread it out on the pink marble counter. I told him I needed a good single room for a week or two, and I’d pay in cash in advance.

His expression didn’t change — he still hated my guts — but he called over an assistant and instructed him to find me a room. It didn’t take long. I carried my own packages up in an elevator and dumped them on the bed in my room. It was a nice room, I guess, with a good view of the back ends of some buildings in the business district. I had my own holo set, though, and a tub instead of just a shower. I emptied the zipper bag onto the bed, too, and changed into my Arab costume. It was time to pay another call on Herr Lutz Seipolt. This time I took a few daddies along with me. Seipolt was a shrewd man, and his boy Reinhardt might give me problems. I chipped in a German-language daddy and took along some of the body-and-mind controls. From now on I was only going to be a blur to normal people. I didn’t plan to hang around anywhere long enough for someone to draw a bead on me. Marîd Audran, the superman of the sands.

Bill was sitting in his beat-up old taxi, and I got in beside him on the front seat. He didn’t notice me. He was waiting for orders from the inside, as usual. I called his name and shoved his shoulder for almost a minute before he turned and blinked at me. “Yeah?” he said.

“Bill, will you take me out to Lutz Seipolt’s place?”

“I know you?”

“Uh huh. We went out there a few weeks ago.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Seipolt, huh? The German guy with the thing for blondes with legs? I can tell you right now, you’re not his type at all.”

Seipolt had told me he didn’t have a thing for anybody anymore. My God, Seipolt had lied to me, too; I tell you, I was shocked. I sat back and watched the city scream by the car as Bill forced his way through it. He always made the trip a little more difficult than it had to be. Of course, he was avoiding things in the road most people can’t even see , and he did it well, too. I don’t think he smacked a single afrit all the way out to Seipolt’s.

I got out of the cab and walked slowly to Seipolt’s massive wooden door. I knocked and rang the bell and waited, but no one came. I started to go around the house, hoping to run into the old fellah caretaker I’d met the first time I’d come out here. The grass was lush and the plants and flowers ticked along on their botanical timetables. I heard the chirping of birds high in a tree, a rare enough sound in the city, but I didn’t hear anything that might mean the presence of people in the estate. Maybe Seipolt had gone to the beach. Maybe Seipolt had gone shopping for brass storks in the medinah . Maybe Seipolt and blue-eyed Reinhardt had taken the afternoon and evening off to make the rounds of the city’s hot spots, dining and dancing under the moon and stars.

Around the big house to the right, between two tall palmettos, was a side door set into the whitewashed wall. I didn’t think Seipolt ever used it; it looked like a convenience for whoever had to carry the groceries in and the garbage out. This side of the house was landscaped with aloes and yucca and flowering cactus, different from the front of the villa and its tropical rain-forest blossoms. I grabbed the doorknob, and it turned in my hand. Somebody had probably just gone into town for the newspaper. I let myself in and found myself looking down a flight of stairs into an arid darkness, and up a shorter flight into a pantry. I went up, through the pantry, through a well-equipped and gleaming kitchen, and into an elaborate dining room. I didn’t see anyone or hear anyone. I made a little noise to let Seipolt or Reinhardt know I was there; I wouldn’t want them to shoot me down, thinking I was spying or something.

From the dining room I passed through a parlor and down a corridor to Seipolt’s collection of ancient artifacts. I was on familiar ground now. Seipolt’s office was just … over …

… there. The door was closed, so I crossed to it and rapped on it loudly. I waited and rapped again. Nothing. I opened the door and stepped into Seipolt’s office. It was dim; the drapes were closed across the window. The air was stifling and stale, as if the air-conditioning wasn’t working and the room had been shut up for a while. I wondered if I dared go through the stuff on Seipolt’s desk. I went up to it and riffled quickly through some reports on the top of a stack of papers.

Seipolt lay in a kind of alcove formed by the bay window behind his desk and two file cabinets against the left-hand wall. He was wearing a dark suit, stained darker now with blood, and when I first glanced over the desktop I thought he was a charcoal-gray throw rug on the light brown carpet. Then I saw a bit of his pale blue shirt and one hand. I took a few steps toward him, not really interested in seeing just how badly cut to pieces he was. His chest was opened from his throat to his groin, and a couple of dark, bloody things were spilled out on the carpet. One of his own internal organs had been crammed into his other stiff hand.

Xarghis Moghadhil Khan had done this. That is to say, James Bond, who worked for Seipolt. Until just recently. Another witness and lead obliterated.