The Devil's Eye

TWENTY-TWO

By the end of the day, the living room looked resplendent in its new coat of gold paint, as did the cables. We spent the evening and most of the night getting set up. At one point, we heard a skimmer pass overhead, and our hearts sank. I ran outside and, when I saw it wasn't the government vehicle, I waved like a crazy person. But I don't think they saw me at all. We were up early next morning to begin working on the overhead. I began to think we might actually have a chance to pull it off. But the final preparations were difficult, and I spent a lot of time on the extension ladder, inserting ceiling hooks into the overhead dome, stringing cable, attaching and finally loading the blankets. When I'd finished, I climbed down and put the ladder back in the shed. Then I went back inside, glad to feel the warmth again. Alex walked me right back outside. "We need to get them in the middle of the living room," he said. "That shouldn't be hard." We went back onto the deck and looked inside through an open door. Speaking barely above a whisper, he said, "They'll need a table to do the procedure." "The lineal block?" "Yes." There were two side tables, a coffee table, and a dining table. "We don't want them using the dining table," he said. Absolutely. It was out of the target area. "When we go back in, we'll pile dishes on it. Glasses. The toaster. Laundry. Hardware. And anything else we can find." "Okay." He looked around the living room. "Let's give them the coffee table." "It's not exactly in the target area." "I know. And you're right." He thought about it. "Okay, we can load that up, too. That leaves one of the side tables." "Isn't it going to be a little obvious if you pull one of them out into the center of the room?" "Get the chess set," he said. He removed a lamp from the side table and pulled the table into the target area. Then he put the chessboard on it and set up the pieces to create a game in progress. We took the two chairs from the dining table and put them on either side. When it was finished, he looked around the room. He didn't say anything, but he looked happy. We went back outside. "Anything else, Alex?" I asked. He studied me and bit his lower lip. "Can you cut your hair a little shorter? To look like Krestoff's?" It would take more than cutting it shorter. Krestoff was sporting a local style that apparently emphasized taking advantage of wind resistance. "Sure," I said. "Do it." He sighed. "Pity we don't have some dye." "So I could go blond?" "Yes."

"I don't think I have the right complexion for it." "In the dark, nobody's going to notice." After that, it became just a matter of waiting. That, of course, is when you start worrying. "You know," I said, "maybe they're just going to leave us here. Or maybe they're hoping we'll try to climb down and get ourselves killed." "No," said Alex. "If they'd wanted anything like that, they'd have pushed us off themselves. They would not be happy trying to explain how we turned up dead. Or missing. And for another thing, they don't know whether other people are aware why we came here." He kicked off his shoes and propped his feet on a stool. "The last thing they need is for something to happen to us."

We'd expected Krestoff to return within a day or two. But the days passed, and the skies remained empty. We saw a few aircraft, though they were too far or too high after that first time for us to have any realistic chance to signal for help. It presented a problem. We couldn't risk having them arrive, say, in the middle of the night. Or slip in when we were watching the HV and not paying attention. If they took us by surprise, our escape plan would evaporate. So we set up a system. Twelve-hour watches during which one or the other of us was constantly on the lookout. We rearranged the furniture and relaxed as best we could, with one of us always posted by the window or the front door. What do you do with your time when you know somebody's coming to pick apart your brain? For me, it was mostly watching stuff that didn't require my paying attention. Comedies where people fell down a lot and thrillers that were mostly chases. And light reading. Material that didn't require emotional input. I had no emotions left. We took our meals together, and in the early evenings we sat around the living room with the lights about halfway down. Alex was reading Their Finest Hour . He had the book on the coffee table and turned each page cautiously. He'd stop occasionally to read me a passage. He especially enjoyed doing Churchill's lines for me: Never before in the history of human conflict ... And, Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be ... "I wish we had him here," he said. "Which side was he on?" Alex rolled his eyes. "The civilized side." He grew thoughtful. "It's a pity they didn't have avatars. He was too early." On the ninth day, a monster storm hit and left us buried in snow. We opened the door when it was over and had to climb a snowbank just to get outside. I hoped that maybe Peifer would discover we'd gone missing and would be hot on the trail. But that was a long shot. When I mentioned it to Alex, he asked how Peifer could possibly track us to that lonely outpost. Since it was election season, we got to watch the various candidates going on about how they'd make life better for the world. Everybody made it a point to take a stand against the Mutes. They differed, of course, on the details. Some wanted to bring in the Confederacy. But the Confederacy wasn't all that popular on Salud Afar, where it was seen as a distant power that, given the chance, would happily make off with the world's resources. I got the impression politicians on Salud Afar made it a habit to run against the Confederacy, to paint it as a threat. Other news was generally inconsequential: the unexpected death of a well-known one-time beauty queen, the scandal caused by the discovery that a former world-class athlete was a bigamist, a show-business celebrity arrested for obscene behavior. Another entertainment icon was being accused of having thrown his wife down a staircase. He claimed someone had broken into the house and done the deed. There were reports of still another brush with Mute ships. "No shooting this time," said a young, enthusiastic male journalist, "but these incidents are becoming increasingly numerous. It looks as if we'd better prepare for the worst."

That evening, we picked up an interview with an economist who claimed that something unusual was happening. "A lot of the major corporations," he said, "especially the places heavily invested in real estate, are divesting themselves. Downsizing in an extraordinary way."

I looked at Alex. "That's what you were saying, except it sounds a bit bigger than you thought." "Why?" asked the interviewer. "Don't know," the economist said. "It could be coincidental, but I doubt it. I suspect a downturn is coming." "But the economy's strong, isn't it, Cary?" "It was a few weeks ago, Karm. But it's become pretty wobbly suddenly." "Why?" "I have no idea. The long-term trends are all up. The only thing I can think of, and I want to emphasize this is only a wild guess-" "Go ahead, Cary. Let's have it." "It may be that war is coming. War with the Mutes." "But wouldn't that be a spur to production? Wars historically are good for business." Cary nodded. "That's right, Karm. If you win them."

I must have been getting morose. Alex told me to cheer up, hang in, that we'd be all right. "We'll get out of here," he said. "And we'll get Belle and go out to the Lantner world and find out what's going on." In the evenings, sometimes, I wrapped up in a blanket, turned off the outside lights, and went out on the deck to look at the sky. At the haze that was the rim of the Milky Way. Or in the opposite direction at Callistra. On the evening that we heard the economist, Alex joined me. We stood for a while, standing in the darkness. "They should be here soon," he said.