Anarchaos

XXXVI

Jenna came to the room half an hour after I’d gone to bed, as I had known she would, but she never mentioned the notebook until much later, after we had been together a couple of hours. I don’t know if that was the result of planning or impulse, though I would say her excitement was genuine. False excitement would have chosen objects other than my scars and left wrist.

When at last she brought the talk around to the business of the night, she began obliquely, murmuring, “I wish you were rich. I wish you were the richest man I knew.”

I moved my shoulder, beneath her head, to a more comfortable position, and said, “Why?”

“Because I am a very expensive girl, and I wish you could afford me. I wish we could just pack up, you and I, and go off together, travel from world to world, see everything, do everything.”

“You couldn’t be a poor man’s wife?”

She laughed throatily. “Can you see me back on Earth, in one of those three room project apartments, riding down once a week to market floor for my shopping, setting my own hair, spending my evenings in front of the entertainment wall? Can you really visualize me there?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

She raised up a little and looked at me, smiling. “Can’t you ever be rich?” she asked. “Don’t you suppose some day you might be beautifully wealthy?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t know any way to make a lot of money.”

“What about Gar’s notebook?”

“You think I should make a deal with the corporation?”

She smiled and shrugged, saying, “I’m not working for the corporation now, Rolf. For all I know someone else might offer you more than the Colonel. Haven’t you thought about it yourself?”

“No.”

“The Colonel thinks you have.”

I said, “What did you do to Gar?”

“What?” Surprise and confusion made her sit up and look around the room as though she’d lost something. “Do to Gar? I didn’t do anything. What kind of question is that?”

“In his notebook—”

In sudden agitation she leaped up from the bed, crying, “I don’t want to hear about it!”

“You don’t want to hear what he said about you?”

“You know I don’t!” She prowled about the room, nude and beautiful, like a caged animal. “Do you think I like myself?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Listen,” she said, her eyes blazing. “Listen to me, I don’t know if you’re a fool or what you are, but watch the Colonel. He’ll never let you get away with that notebook, he won’t let you go until you tell him what the code says.”

“I don’t know what it says.”

“You won’t get him to believe that. He’s convinced you’ve already decoded it.”

“I haven’t.”

She came back and sat on the edge of the bed again, saying urgently, “I never meant to hurt Gar. I wasn’t used to his kind of sincerity; I didn’t know when it stopped being a game.”

“All right,” I said. “I can see how it would happen.”

“I’ll tell you this because you’re his brother, to make up for it. The Colonel sent me here tonight.”

“I know.”

“You know?” She sat back, frowning at me. “Then why didn’t you kick me out?”

“I wanted you. It’s been a long while for me. Besides, you wanted to be sent here. Does the Colonel think he can hold me prisoner?”

“He won’t let you go until he knows where the strike location is.” She leaned forward, intent and sincere, saying, “Don’t you see? If he can find it, claim it for himself, he can make his own arrangements with the corporation, make up for what he did that sent him here.”

I lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. It wasn’t over yet. What was it I’d been told, long ago, before ever coming here? “It was the colony that killed your brother.” And in a way that was right. It was the colony that made these situations possible, that created the power vacuum into which these hungry and immoral Colonel Whistlers and General Ingors moved. The spreading responsibility washed back and back, endlessly. It was the colony that killed my brother.

But even that wasn’t the end of it. This colony was an abortion, a monstrous growth; without outside assistance it couldn’t survive a year. So that if it was the colony that had made the murder of Gar possible, it was the Union Commission, in its turn, which made the colony possible. Without the UC there would be no imports or exports, no monetary exchange, nothing. The colony would die.

I opened my eyes and looked at Jenna. I said, “I cannot kill them any more one at a time.”

“Kill? You mean the Colonel?”

I saw that she hoped I meant to kill the Colonel, that her telling me the truth had been at least partly in the hope that my response would be the Colonel’s death. I said, “You know, of course, where he sleeps.”

“Rolf—”

“And in his absence,” I said, “you have his authority, have you not?”

Doubtfully, she nodded.

I said, “Get dressed.”

“Rolf? What are you going to do?”

I got up from the bed and took from under the pile of my clothing on the chair the yellow notebook. I held it up and said, “You were right, I do know what the code means. It’s a code Gar and I made up together when we were children.”

A sudden smile lit her face like sunlight. “Rolf!”

“I was going to go on my own,” I said, “but I see that’s no good. I’ll give you a half share, if you’ll help me.”

Already I could see the calculation behind her eyes, though she masked it very well. I knew she would stay with me until we were safely clear of Anarchaos, that she would make no attempt to double-cross me while we were still in this lawless hellhole. What she said was, “Of course I’ll help you. For the money, naturally for the money; I told you I’m a very expensive girl. But not for the money alone. For Gar, too. And for you.”

“All right. Do you have the authority to order a plane for us?”

“If the Colonel isn’t around to countermand it.”

“He won’t be. And there are some other things I want, too. Have them put on the plane.”

“Of course.”

She said of course, but then she questioned me, wanting to know why I needed such things. I told her I would explain later, and said, “The plane is for you and the Colonel. Everyone else is to continue to wait here for the Sledge ship.”

“All right. Shall I carry the notebook?”

“I think not,” I said.

We kissed in the corridor outside the room, with a great show of passion. Then she hurried away to make the arrangements, and I went off to strangle Colonel Whistler in his bed.