Behold a Dark Mirror Read online

  The hangar was built behind the waste piles where miners had dumped worthless rock dug by necessity to reach the paying ore. The hangar, enormous like everything else on Doka, was on a scale with the rest of the mine. Yet the waste dumps managed to dwarf the building: With the passing years, they had become big enough to look like natural hills.

  Nero remembered hordes of children sneaking through the security fences to brave the tops of the dumps. Now everything was quiet. Everyone else was gone; only the hum of the buzzer defied the whisper of the wind. He stopped the engine, and the wind became louder probing gently the uneven texture of the walls and roof of the building. Nero listened for an instant, as if hoping to hear some familiar noise like another human voice, but of course there was none. He entered through a small metal door, which swung on oiled hinges on its way to slamming open when caught in the wind, but Nero was prepared. He held it firmly while letting himself in, keeping the door from hitting its stops. After stepping through the threshold, he latched it with a clang that faded into diminishing echoes.

  Shade wrapped the interior of the hangar where unreclaimed remains of machinery stood cold and still. Only the secondary reactor was engaged, powering an emergency backup now acting as a line generator. A whiff of mist from the boiler hissed against the shadows and the silence.

  The hangar was too large for people. Nero enjoyed the still lingering mood of past glory and decayed power: He rolled its eerie flavor in his mouth, swished it through his teeth, coursed it in his nostrils appreciating its taste: exotic, bittersweet, it proved that disgrace was not for him only. On a cosmic scale, the majestic landscapes of Doka remained unscathed except for this small blemish dug and built by mankind, which nature would soon consume leaving wilderness in charge once more.

  Zochar-the-pale-sun, lurking through tall windows, cast beams across the empty spaces. Blades of light stabbed the void, bashing onto concrete blocks where now-missing equipment had once been bolted. Metal refuse littered the floor. Nero walked to the control room, the faint echoes of his footfalls vanishing into remote and dark corners. And then, the hair on the nape of his neck began to tingle.

  It's coming, he thought, with a hint of apprehension.

  Years ago, just after Hi was established and Doka was becoming a busy platinum mine, a Boy Scout troop left for a long hike, planning to be away for a week. A terror-stricken mayday call came in: The troop reported that something was harassing them. "We're surrounded!" they said, "Creatures that stand still in mid-air! No wings! They're watching us!"

  It's here.

  "Capture?" the Scoutmasters yelled, "We can't even touch them!" Ten youths and two adults consistently transmitted identical details. All returned; the troop was shaken up but unharmed.

  Nero walked on; the hair on his arms started tickling.

  Government authorities at first dismissed the episode as a harmless freak incident; all resumed their usual lives, with recurring nightmares for some. Boredom took over the mining town of Hi once more, but that troop's story soon became famous as the first of many.

  A thin flash of light shone across the hangar, marking the arrival of a yellow spherical form.

  Blue, green, red, yellow floating balls the size and shape of large round watermelons appeared in downtown Hi. Suspended in mid-air, they moved as if self-guided, and appeared or disappeared at will. Nothing scared them away. Nobody could touch them. Yet nothing really happened, except for popular rumors of a new exotic disease plaguing Doka.

  Nero watched the yellow creature hover next to the turbines, then haunt overhanging equipment throughout the building.

  On Earth, distance and ignorance fueled an irrational fear that grew and grew from thin air: Quarantine was put in force. Yet platinum shipments continued, and no one got sick on Doka or Earthside; shipnetting was known to kill anything transported: virus, bacteria, plants, animals. Anything alive died: It was a strong inducement not to hitch free rides.

  The creature moved with impossible stops and turns; Nero's gaze couldn't keep up.

  Time passed without casualties; rumors died. Reassured, the rulers of mankind thought it worthwhile to investigate: The stylish uniforms of Tower officials appeared on Doka. By then, the evidence had vanished. The fuzz-balls had lost interest in mankind and disappeared without trace, except for a few unpredictable appearances. Doka had given birth to a new myth. The fuzz-balls became taxonomic relatives of werewolves and yetis, if of a gentler inclination. All good people with a positive attitude agreed–except the residents of Hi.

  The creature's hue of yellow was so intense it almost glowed. Its blinding shifts came to a sudden halt a couple of meters in front of Nero's face.

  At parties, Doka's sole indigenous animal had become a topic comparable to weather and fashion. Once, a beautiful conversationalist had called the creatures Cheshires, in analogy to the famous disappearing cat. The nickname persisted.

  The Cheshire that Nero, during his stay on Doka, had come to name Mr. S. Pook–or Pook for short–now floated in front of his face. He could distinguish no features in it; calling it fuzzy was an approximation that meant its contour appeared indistinct.

  Nero took a slow half-step forward. His discomfort became more intense, but no more precise: His body could not translate the alien feedback. Pook's dangling tail was a meter long. The last time Nero had seen Pook, the tail had been half that length.

  Another imperceptible flash of light–Pook was gone. No, it wasn't. The Cheshire now roamed over the control room, restless as a tiger in a cage. Then–flash–it disappeared.

  Nero was among the few who could perceive the thin flash, which wasn't really light. It wasn't really there, either. Trying to read with the corner of one's eye gave a pale idea of the feeling, as if the Cheshire lay out of range of the five senses.

  As after an intense dream, when reality is not yet convincing, Nero felt confused. Every time he had been that close to Pook he had felt this way. Now he took a deep breath and looked around: Everything was normal again.

  His steps clanged as he climbed the metal stairs to the control room. From there, he could have a view over the turbines, cuddled next to each other like sleeping twin giants. Spent, not worth removing, the two behemoths were special witnesses of the past purpose of the hangar. In the control room, Nero checked out that all working panels were flashing the right colors, and no dials misbehaved.

  He turned to hit the Play button of a music machine. A tune echoed through the void, trying to fill a space that was too empty by orders of magnitude. Nero inhaled, filling his lungs with Doka's air, assaying its tinges of lubricant and dust and nothing else. He stooped to examine the track of the energy recorder. A sharp spike on a flat line drew a smile to his face: mail. He'd have to stop at the way station to pick it up.

  Few still remembered him, but those who did were fond correspondents: Doka was too far and too expensive for casual scribbling. He left the music machine playing to accompany his exit; it would turn off on a timer he had set a long time ago.

  Outdoors the temperature was falling as Nero headed for the way station. Zochar hesitated along its twisted path, neither setting nor rising, an erratic companion to the sanguine Rook. The housing complex came in sight, neat rows of abandoned trailers: Once, people sipped drinks and barbecued in the common yards, and children played and laughed.

  Young children... Like his own, who were now dead.

  A curtain of silence wrapped the buildings. Everything was waiting as if to be dusted. Nero parked the cart in the lot reserved for management exactly in front of the main access to the way station.

  The door squeaked as he entered; he made a mental note to grease its hinges. The hall had a cozy ambiance, welcome after the power hangar. There were couches and wall-to-wall carpets; a layer of dust covered an imitation antique tea table longing for some company. He stopped to thumb the latch o
f the mail room door.

  Some day I should get rid of this lock, Nero thought.

  The room was dark. Nero flipped the light on, and there it was: an envelope, regurgitated through a hole in the wall, lone inhabitant of the collating equipment’s innards. On the other side of that wall, the machine room idled. He picked up the letter: no return address.

  Nero had his mail, and darkness and frost were looming. Time to go home, even if "home" and "Doka" didn't go well in the same thought. Yet solitude was the essential ingredient of life for him now, and Doka provided all the solitude he could wish for.

  His heart accused him: You have failed! Nero's conscience pointed sharp fingers: You killed your family and half the crew. You and only you are responsible.

  Yet, at the trial for Orlando's disaster, that ship's skipper had been found guilty on all accounts. Before the law, Nero and Far Lands Mining were victims of the skipper's negligence. Not so! Nero's conscience yelled with overpowering vigor and, Nero would say, merit. The skipper was the puppet responsible before the law, but Nero knew he had been the puppeteer. He was now prisoner of the chasm between his motivations and their devastating consequences: The past was haunting, the present frightful, the future irrelevant; and sorrow was his overwhelming, unrelenting filler of days that no repentance could dispel.

  His trailer sat on the corner of the park farthest away from the station. He had chosen his trailer at the time he first arrived, when the crowd was still thick and he wanted to avoid local hangouts. Later, after Hi had become a ghost town, he had never bothered to move.

  *

  Back indoors, a long shower was a ritual Nero indulged in daily. Drying, he appreciated with purpose the warmth and softness of his towels. He always massaged his sinewy back and legs, enjoying briefly the hot friction of the cloth against his skin, revitalizing circulation in his too-lean muscles. Nero shaved every day, using an old-fashioned razor, starting by the right ear each time, following the contour of his angular jaws from right to left and then back, avoiding with precision his fleshy lower lip and almost nonexistent upper lip. He then shaved from chin to Adam's apple, never in the other direction. Nero had thought about shaving his head bald, but decided he needed the discipline of conventionality to win his struggle for sanity and survival. Bald was too eccentric: He could not afford to be eccentric. Yet he wondered, as he wore his bathrobe and stepped into the living room. Bald. The electric space heater hummed, giving the interior of the trailer a smell of over-dried air. With the coming of darkness, the outside temperature was falling.

  He rummaged in the kitchen, annoyed at the constant necessity of eating. His food was nondescript; he didn't care. Later, he sank in his recliner for his nightly ceremony of music appreciation. He took a grain at random from his music library and dropped it in the projector, then dimmed the lights.

  A steady drumbeat flooded the room and thumped on his chest: rhythmic patterns from ancient popular songs. A band of four with several dancers appeared over his thighs; oops, he was watching a stage show from the wrong angle. Knob twisting brought the stage to eye level.

  The music was hard to appreciate, but the show was interesting. The dancers twirled as Nero rocked the recliner, looking forward to the mail that he would open soon. When the music stopped and the images faded, he reached for the old-fashioned lamp next to his chair and turned the dimmer up.

  The cone of yellow light shone brighter against the rest of the now-dark room: Another glacial night had fallen. He grabbed the envelope, tore the wrapper and pulled the optical card. The unmarked slice of coated polymer made him pucker his lips. It carried no serial number, no ID, no brand, no tax stamp... The card was illegal.

  He inserted it into the reader, which clicked. The screen lit up, but stayed blank: Nero's bootleg letter was a voice-only recording.

  "History is poised on your shoulders, my friend. I truly mean that the freedom of mankind will depend on what you decide after hearing what I have to say," a woman's voice announced.

  CHAPTER 3

  He was indeed a criminal, Jenus realized, looking in horror at the finger. The phone rang. Jenus paused to recompose himself.

  The phone kept ringing. He answered, disabling the video.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi Jenus. Why's the video off?"

  "Oh, Janet, sure... Hi dear. Oh, yes, I disabled it, I was... I'm taking a shower." We had a date tonight, I forgot! What time is it? 8:15 PM, not too late, I can still invent something. "My, I’ve wasted our reservations, I'm terribly sorry, I got caught up in some urgent stuff with the la... With my lawyer about... About taxes, yes, about taxes. He told me he needed to see me at once, so I went, and didn't realize how late I stayed."

  "I believe I'll forgive you, then. You sound so strange–is it serious? If a lawyer works on Saturday I imagine so. Are you in trouble?"

  "Well, yes and no." Trouble–can I tell you about this trouble, honeybunch? "In fact I am worried, but not too much. Nothing too serious." Good cover, but won't hold. "But that's shop stuff, let it not ruin the rest of the evening. What can we still do tonight? What about, say, dinner and a night club?" Maybe I should tell her everything. Maybe not, why get her into this? But if I don't and she finds out, I'm history.

  "Would you rather stay at home and cuddle, and talk?"

  Yes, yes, precisely—but too dangerous. "I don't think so, Jaya." And I don't want you in this mess altogether. Ah–did I think that? "I need some fun action. Let's drop shop talk for now."

  "Sure, if you want. Dinner and club is fine."

  "Can you arrange something for, ah, say, nine o'clock?"

  "Any preference?"

  "You pick. I'll get you at 8:55, your place."

  "What about dinner at a night club? Corinne was telling me about a new hangout she liked. It sounded interesting."

  "Corinne? That'll be something, then. I'll be there soon. Bye now."

  "Bye-bye," she said, and hung up.

  Clean the kitchen. Destroy that–that thing. Put all papers in a safe place–where? Shower. Get dressed: what should I wear?

  *

  Oh-eight fifty-seven PM, said his watch: He was on time. The entrance door to Janet's apartment was solid oak with brass decorations; it advertised a steel core to discourage burglars. How often do people expose themselves in the objects around them? Jenus thought.

  He rang the doorbell. Janet opened the door, flashing a smile from ear to ear. As Jenus stepped in, the door swung behind him and locked shut with a resolute metallic snap.

  "Jenus, I'm so happy you're here–let me look at you. How wonderful: Slacks, polo, and a blazer are perfect. Let me put back what I'd picked from your closet, you know, just in case."

  Janet wore a tailored fatigue, custom cut, made from soft military-green material. Her black hair hung loose below her shoulders, framing the white skin of her long neck and face in a Gothic shroud. The sharp lines of her jaws built an exciting contrast with her well-shaped nose and cheekbones and bewitching mellow stare. She was very pretty, but that was not as important as how she moved or walked or looked at you, the same way an uncoiling king cobra carries more meaning than its appearance.

  Janet turned away and disappeared into her bedroom. I dressed well, Jenus thought, that's a good start. Any recommendation of Corinne's was a wild card. He sniffed, relishing the fragrance of Enchantment, a perfume she’d had him mix for her and they’d named together. She always wore it on their dates.

  "Where are we going, Jaya?" He walked toward the bar, heels clicking on the wood parquet, and picked up a glass of thin crystal, very light. He held it in his hand while pouring soda in it, feeling the chill of the filling water through the diaphanous glass. "Drink?"

  She emerged from the hall: "No, thanks, we're leaving."

  She led his hand to put the glass down on the table,
and walked with him out of the apartment through the hall to the framepost all the while rummaging through her purse.

  "Where’s Corinne's hangout? Or should I say hideout?" Jenus said.

  "Ah! Be a good sport now. Corinne is a gold mine of information, she told me for a late dinner and some fun, there’s nothing better than The Clearing, and not to go there alone. I guess this will be exciting."

  "How did she find this place?"

  "She told me a friend took her there, but she wouldn't say more, other than he was handsome. Someone very important, she hinted." Janet winked, slid her card through the framepost. "Here, this is the number for the dispatcher."

  *

  At destination, humidity wrapped Jenus as soon as the airlock opened. Thick fingers of air too sticky and too hot to breathe engulfed his lungs. Janet, too, gasped, looking at him as if this was his fault. Jenus absorbed his surroundings: The paint was peeling off the building, mildew grew in patches on the walls, which were painted an offensive green; at least there were no graffiti. A sheen of sweat was appearing on his skin, none on Janet's, yet. Great makeup.

  Outside, they found a vehicle-rental booth. A bit farther away was a large masonry building with official-looking markings. Beyond that, forest. The sky was at dusk–or dawn?

  Janet approached the booth. She reappeared with a set of keys, and pointed to a four-wheeler. "Do you want to drive, or shall I?" She said.