“We’re not trying to.”
“Then why are you trying to cut me out of the talks!”
“I’m not!” John looked injured. “Relax, Frank. We’ll hammer it out together just like we always have. Relax.”
Frank stared at his old friend, nonplussed. What to believe? He had never known how to think of John— the way he had used Frank as a springboard, the way he was so friendly . . . hadn’t they begun as allies, as friends?
It occurred to him that John was looking for Maya. “So where is she?”
“Around somewhere,” Boone said shortly.
It had been years since they had been able to talk about Maya. Now Boone gave him a sharp look, as if to say it was none of his business. As if everything of importance to Boone had become, over the years, none of Frank’s business.
Frank left him without a word.
• • •
The sky was now a deep violet, streaked by yellow cirrus clouds. Frank passed two figures wearing white ceramic dominoes, the old Comedy and Tragedy personas, handcuffed together. The city’s streets had gone dark and windows blazed, silhouettes partying in them. Big eyes darted in every blurry mask, looking to find the source of the tension in the air. Under the tidal sloshing of the crowd there was a low tearing sound.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, he shouldn’t. He knew John as well as one could know another person; but it had never been any of his business. Into the trees of the park, under the hand-sized leaves of the sycamores. When had it been any different! All that time together, those years of friendship; and none of it had mattered. Diplomacy by other means.
• • •
He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven. He had an appointment with Selim. Another appointment. A lifetime of days divided into quarter hours made him used to running from one appointment to the next, changing masks, dealing with crisis after crisis, managing, manipulating, doing business in a hectic rush that never ended; and here it was a celebration, Mardi Gras, Fassnacht! and he was still doing it. He couldn’t remember any other way.
He came on a construction site, skeletal magnesium framing surrounded by piles of bricks and sand and paving stones. Careless of them to leave such things around. He stuffed his coat pockets with fragments of brick just big enough to hold. Straightening up, he noticed someone watching him from the other side of the site— a little man with a thin face under spiky black dreadlocks, watching him intently. Something in the look was disconcerting, it was as if the stranger saw through all his masks and was observing him so closely because he was aware of his thoughts, his plans.
Spooked, Chalmers beat a quick retreat into the bottom fringe of the park. When he was sure he had lost the man, and that no one else was watching, he began throwing stones and bricks down into the lower town, hurling them as hard as he could. And one for that stranger too, right in the face! Overhead the tent framework was visible only as a faint pattern of occluded stars; it seemed they stood free, in a chill night wind. Air circulation was high tonight, of course. Broken glass, shouts. A scream. It really was loud, people were going crazy. One last paving stone, heaved at a big lit picture window across the grass. It missed. He slipped further into the trees.
Near the southern wall he saw someone under a sycamore— Selim, circling nervously. “Selim,” Frank called quietly, sweating. He reached into his jumper pocket, carefully felt in the bag and palmed the trio of stem patches. Synergy could be so powerful, for good or ill. He walked forward and roughly embraced the young Arab. The patches hit and penetrated Selim’s light cotton shirt. Frank pulled back.
Now Selim had about six hours. “Did you speak with Boone?” he asked.
“I tried,” Chalmers said. “He didn’t listen. He lied to me.” It was so easy to feign distress: “Twenty-five years of friendship, and he lied to me!” He struck a tree trunk with his palm, and the patches flew away in the dark. He controlled himself. “His coalition is going to recommend that all Martian settlements originate in the countries that signed the first treaty.” It was possible; and it was certainly plausible.
“He hates us!” Selim cried.
“He hates everything that gets in his way. And he can see that Islam is still a real force in people’s lives. It shapes the way people think, and he can’t stand that.”
Selim shuddered. In the gloom the whites of his eyes were bright. “He has to be stopped.”
Frank turned aside, leaned against a tree. “I . . . don’t know.”
“You said it yourself. Talk means nothing.”
Frank circled the tree, feeling dizzy. You fool, he thought, talk means everything. We are nothing but information exchange, talk is all we have!