When he opened his eyes upon a seamless, all-enveloping, pale lilac light he immediately realized that he knew for certain these four things:
He was alive.
His name was Blue Andresson.
His official vocation was Investigator: privately established, financed, and (as a rule) client-paid; specializing in Difficult Interpersonal Relations and Potentially Criminal Conflicts.
And lastly, if he reached his hand out he would encounter—while his elbow was still slightly flexed—the surface of a soft, protective Heal-All within which he had been enclosed, and which had served to return him back to full physiological health over an unknown period of time, while he was seriously injured or chronically ill, and which a thrust-out fingernail would easily rip open.
There was one other thing he wished he knew but did not: What was he doing inside a Heal-All in the first place?
There would be time enough for that. His sense of his body odor was growing stronger by the second from long enclosure and he must get away from it. He reached out his right hand, struck the smooth surface, tore at it, and it collapsed all about him with a soft hiss.
Instantly a soft chiming began somewhere below the plinth upon which he lay.
He tried to sit up and found it difficult: His muscles wouldn’t work, not even supported by his hands. He tried again and felt slightly nauseated.
The room around him was an even softer lilac color, nearly pearl; its surfaces were smooth, indistinguishably similar, at least from this level and position.
He tried to sit up again and this time achieved an inch or two of head height. His body was unclothed and the Heal-All’s therapeutic dews were quickly drying in the ambient warming air. His chest hair was sparse, golden; his abdomen flat, muscled, his legs were long and also golden haired, his feet were large and personable.
A fourth attempt to sit up got him onto his elbows facing his large perfect toes, and what he now saw, since it slid open with a whoosh, was a door, through which three completely clothed and hooded figures stepped and immediately came to his side.
“You’re awake, Mr. Andresson? How do you feel? Not too disoriented, we hope?” said One.
“You must be thirsty. And hungry too, I’m guessing,” said Two.
He was. And nodded so.
“Your personal secretary has been notified,” said Three. “You’re unexpectedly early and she is out of town on her own business and can be here in a few hours. Should we contact her? Or a friend or relative? Your mother is listed as next of kin. There is as well as a relationship that might have been as close as fiancée before your injury.”
A slight transparent tube arrived from out of nowhere right at his lips and he received a delicious cold drip of water that he then sucked at greedily. After which he said, “No. Thank you, don’t bother anyone,” somehow surprised by the deepness of his voice (was it because of this resonant little enclosed chamber?). “In fact, my secretary need not hurry back if she doesn’t have to. I’d prefer her to finish her business already begun.”
What he wanted more than anything else was time, he’d already decided. Because now there was another unanswered question: “How long have I been here? In the Medical Cocoon?”
“Close to a year”: One.
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Andresson, you were very seriously injured”: Two.
“You’re fine now. Perfect, in fact”: Three.
No, I’m not, Blue thought. I don’t remember things. Things I believe I ought to remember.
The plinth tilted slowly and a shelf came out at his feet. He realized he was being stood up.
An opposite wall mirrored over and he could see himself in it.
“You see. You’re perfect”: Three, again?
He was in fact, physically perfect. Medium-height, handsome in a square-jawed, straight-nosed, blue-eyed way, with thin lips and a facial fuzz of light hair. His upper body was strong and muscular, with well-developed arms and legs. No scars apparent anywhere, naturally; the Heal-All would have gotten rid of any. No sign of any kind of deformity. Everything looked size appropriate, except maybe slightly larger than normal genitals. He figured he must be about thirty years old.
Why did all this seem ever so slightly, although by a mere hairsbreadth, off? Blue wished he knew.
There was more chiming now and One said: “Contamination is nonexistent. Quarantine off!”
Their masks melted off the medicals’ faces and two were revealed as females, one male.
“We’re going to stand here and help if you need help walking. Take one tiny step,” Female one said.
She and the male medical held out supportive arms for him to lean upon. Blue did put out his hands and he was able to stand away from the plinth for a few seconds before total exhaustion set back in.
“Excellent start. Your physical rehabilitation will set in later today,” female number one assured him. “It will be constant, and, I’m afraid, rather annoying at first.”
“But it’s necessary,” the male said. “If you’re to get on your feet and be a full member of our community again.”
“We think you can do it in a few days. Less than a week,” she added.
He lay back on the plinth and it slowly angled back so he was in a partially sitting position again.
They left and Medical Number Three arrived again with a tray in which he could smell simple food. Eggs, toast. He was ravenous.
The tray attached easily to the extensor sides that he just now noticed were part of his plinth-bed, and he could reach out for the transparent bulbs of food.
“We’ll begin therapy with you reaching,” Three said. She was the least attractive of the three medicals and the nicest.
“We’ll also be exposing you to visual, audio, and then intellectual stimuli,” she said.
A Vid-set suddenly turned itself on where the mirror had just been, with soft-focus moving pictures of the outer world: a countryside, a pond, an ocean, along with music he almost recognized.
“All you say is ‘more’ and it will provide you with stories, newscasts, weather, sports, specific information, whatever you ask,” she added. “You can also ask it to repeat. Or to be only music, or only voice.”
“I understand,” Blue said. “I can control it by my voice.”
“There is an important intercontinental air-race final taking place,” she suggested.
His hands could barely grasp and hold the bulbs containing 1) a poached egg 2) a fruit juice concoction 3) a weak herbal tea. When he dropped the last one it bobbed right up and floated toward his hand again as though somehow attached.
He could do this, Blue decided.
Three fussed about him, covering his body with a light sheet, tucking it in, beneath. As she was leaving he asked:
“What was it?”
“What was what, Mr. Andresson?”
“My serious injury?—I can’t seem to recall it.”
“You really can’t?”
“Not at all. No.”
“That’s probably because you were shot in the brain.”
“I was shot in the brain?”
“Yes. Twice. Once in each lobe. In the brain twice and once each in the kidneys, the liver, and the heart.”
With that, she sailed out of the room, humming to herself.
*
Andresson Investigations inhabited a stylish three-room suite on the ninety-eighth floor of an upscale bronzed glass building at the northwestern transportation-hub edge of the city. The rooms were spacious, comfortably lighted with diffused and slightly dimmed afternoon sunlight, and with built-in storage areas. His own office appeared to be the most functional and most characterless of the rooms.
Another, slightly smaller office, had been converted by his secretary for use in her new part-time business, which as far as he could figure out involved stock option bids on speculative off-world futures. It was filled with computers and printer-scanners, all merrily chugging away by themselves, accessible to his secretary he assumed through the Vid-net. The third room, the outer waiting area, had received the most attention of the three in terms of design and expense—fine carpets, posh furniture, gleaming coffee tables, sculptures of lighting, individual framed artwork, etc. It all showed Andresson Investigations to be a successful business—to have been once successful.
It was six days after he’d awakened and Blue was just too bored and itching to do something, anything, to remain in the Heal-All Center. When he’d checked out, he’d been warned by Medicals One and Two there that he was still only at about seventy-four percent of his required physical capacity to continue his vocation as usual and that he would have to continue therapy for weeks more.
He’d noted with satisfaction in the downstairs lobby of this edifice that a new health club had opened twenty-six stories below. He’d sign up later today.
His secretary, a woman approximately forty-five years old, had not yet appeared except by Vid-screen phone. When she did, she remarked that although his vocational insurance had covered all the expenses included in keeping the agency afloat for six months, that she had become quickly immersed in her own sideline, and that she’d begun showing profits early enough in that sideline that she took over the suite’s lease, utilities, and other incidentals for the following five and three-quarter month period.
She told Blue she was prepared to share the quarters with him for as long as he wished. She had no interest at all in his line, she stated rather bluntly, being a “fearful type, unlike yourself,” whom she characterized as “curious and adventurous.” She had referred his newer clients to a competitor at the other end of the city who was prepared to refer clients back as soon as Andresson was once again in business. She doubted that he would need a secretary for another few months yet, and she agreed to hire one for Blue when he did.
I’m an investigator,” Blue had thought, the first time he’d clearly been able to think about his past and future in the Heal-All Center. “I’m privately established, financed, and client-paid. So I must have been pretty good. And I specialize in ‘Difficult Interpersonal Relations’ and ‘Potentially Criminal Conflicts.’ So I must have been very good.”
It wasn’t lost on him also that he couldn’t have been all that good, or at least all that lucky, since he’d ended up so seriously wounded that it had required almost a year to return to health. Surely something or someone he’d been investigating had been responsible for putting those five bullets into fatally strategic spots of his body.
As an investigator it was his job to find out how that had happened—and why.
But right now it was his job to find out who he was, since that also remained alarmingly unfilled and in fact mostly blank.
His desk had six drawers. Two locked, one with a touch-print, the other with a key and vocal recognition. He had the key, and while the drawer’s primitive system hesitated at first, it must have been voice-keyed because it did open upon the second utterance of a simple sentence, “Open up for me. Go on, open!”
In the first were leather billfolds filled with cheques and cash cards. Confirming that he was quite well off in business. The other drawer held six files that had still been “open” at the time that he was so seriously injured.
He began reading them.
Looking for a stylus to take notes with, he rummaged in a bottom drawer and there Blue came upon a small leather woman’s purse. Inside it, no ID. but the expected articles: lipstick, compact and powder, breath mints, eye shadow, etc. Presumably, he thought, it belonged to the fiancée who had been mentioned in the Heal-All Center twice, but who had made no attempt to see Blue while he’d been there.
No surprise. He probably wouldn’t have seen her if she had tried to contact him. The reason being, he didn’t remember her at all. Didn’t remember any kind of close sexual or affectionate relationship with a woman. He could bring up no face, voice, nor perfume that was at all familiar.
Some other faces did come up as he remained awake and pensive, if very slowly: his mother’s (after four days) and just barely, and actually just before he accepted a Vid-screen phone call from her, confirming that’s who she was. She rather looked like a much more refined version of himself, at least from the neck up, with a porcelain complexion and a darker version of his light hair. She also had a familiar-sounding voice, but Blue didn’t truly recognize her, and he didn’t hide that fact, and she was sweet and accepting about that fact, saying twice how she’d been certain he’d never awaken and certainly not with a full memory, not after what the medicals had told her when he’d first entered the Heal-All Center.
Once Blue had seen some Vids of her, his former secretary also seemed somewhat if again not deeply familiar. She’d been fairly new anyway, he’d been told, having only worked for him for four months before his shooting, so there was no big surprise there.
In what little there was of Blue’s memory beyond the cognitive, the practical—i.e., what the brain surgeon-bots had hurriedly worked on getting reconnected before sticking him into the Heal-All cocoon a year before, there had been traces of memory of a male his own age, or thereabouts, nice-looking, darker-haired, slender, named Bern or Burn, something like that.
A relatively strong trace memory of affection was connected with him. Perhaps they had been boyhood pals who’d remained friendly after they’d grown up. That would be okay. He would probably be trustworthy—if anyone could be considered so in a life that had nearly ended, violently, explosively, like his almost had. No word from this friend, of course, and frankly Blue hadn’t trusted his “mother” or his own memory sense of her well enough to ask her who this male friend might be.
But he had no trace memory of any woman. So whom did this purse and this make up belong to?
“Face it, Blue,” he said to his bathroom mirror, shaving before leaving the Heal-All Center, “She could be anyone. You’re a hot and handsome man.” Medical Number Three had slipped in while he was napping on Awake Day number two and made her own investigations of certain lower body areas of his physiological condition. When he’d joked about it to Medical Number One, she’d asked, “Would you like that to stop? Or continue?” He’d said “continue, please” and she had replaced the lower-status doctor with herself. This also had not been surprising. As far as he could figure, his personality structure was undoubtedly that of a person who’d had great looks and who’d used them to get what he wanted and needed. Except…
Odd, this memory business.
Now Blue recognized that he had the most difficult job of all: finding out which case had come so close to doing him in. He’d need to know that. He hadn’t decided whether to avoid anyone and anything connected with it in the future or not. Maybe, some little mental itch suggested somewhere in the periphery of his mind, maybe he might also figure out why he’d been targeted.
*
It was later that afternoon that the downstairs auto-desk called and told him he had a visitor. A Vid showed her to be a woman in her mid forties, made up rather severely, dressed carefully, and surprisingly ethnic looking, perhaps from off-world? He knew from the Vid-channels he’d been watching that very few people chose to highlight their ethnic origins by retaining inborn characteristics. Especially when it was so easy to lose them. The name given for her was Dusk Martila, with no matronymic or patronymic supplied, and which meant nothing to him.
Naturally Blue asked the auto-desk if she’d been to his office before, and it named the date he’d been told he had been killed. Negative. Several weeks before then and once since, the auto desk said, so Blue let her come up. The auto lift CT scanned her for metal and other types of weapons or powders or explosives. Negative.
“What can I do for you?” he greeted her at the door. Close up, Martila was taller, and more prepossessing. Her voice was somewhat guttural, too, with a slight and difficult to place accent, so she’d not had vocal cord reparation either. On purpose, it must be, as she dressed well-to-do to be able afford the simple operation.
“Blue Andresson?” she asked, slightly surprised.
“We’ve not met?” he asked. Then added, “You heard of my Heal-All experience?”
“We have met, yes, but you are—changed,” she said.
“Only physically,” he assured her. “You didn’t take Davis’s suggestion to go to my colleague, Mr. Chango Lock?”
“I did. We met. I didn’t trust him. Not like you,” Martila said, not looking to be all that trusting in Blue either; at least not at the moment.
They sat and his work screens brought up her case and the work done so far, and in seconds they were discussing the business she’d come for: which had apparently been held in abeyance for almost a year. It was a Missing Person: and both a Difficult Interpersonal Relation with a Potentially Criminal Conflict. Her first husband had vanished three years previously, mysteriously, from his place of business, which he shared with his wife. Through Blue’s earlier efforts, she had already received permits to continue operating the family business in full sole authority, and even sell and or lease it out. But now she had met a countryman, she said, and he wanted her to get a more permanent declaration so they could unite their businesses and “other matters,” which Blue took to be interpersonal and probably marriage. “Also,” she added, “before you ended up in a Heal-All, you left a message saying you thought you had an idea where my husband might have gone to. I took it you were looking into that idea.”
Blue didn’t recall that at all, of course. And if he had, he had left no clue to himself among these screen files on the case.
Martila renewed the bank number where money could be deposited into his agency’s account and left. For the next half hour, Blue listened to his many notes on the case as the auto-Vid played them back to him. To his surprise, he made a mental connection that the pre-Heal-All Blue had never made before, concerning a bank account and an important client.
He caught Martila by pad-phone in her private vehicle, not very far away from his office, and checked the information. The minute Blue mentioned it, she grew excited.
“Yes,” she said, darkly, “this I can well believe of this person,” and she used some kind of foreign obscenity. Blue said he would need as much information as she had on the new suspect, and he would delve into it more deeply.
Feeling renewed, and suddenly comfortable in his new skin now that he had proved to himself that he was useful, he strode over to the floor-high windows and stared out through the triple-paned, multiply tinted glass. The blue-white sun was setting, quickly falling behind the artificial-looking skyscraper scrim of the city’s far horizon. Only the dull orange sun still hung in the crepuscular sky, casting a warm evening glow.
*
“It was a lovely funeral, Blue,” Andre Clarksdotter gushed. “I spared no expenses. After all, you’re my only child. Our life insurance was all paid up and it had accrued so well; it’s been decades since anyone has died and I decided to do it up full scale. Everyone came. Family, of course, they flew in from all over. Many of your school friends, and even some of your clients.”
She’d pre-fed the Vid-screen before arriving at his flat and it now showed moving Vids of the ceremony—sound turned down—and afterward at the celebratory feast. He could clearly see sitting next to his mother the very same young man who’d popped into his memory upon awakening, and who appeared at least as upset as she was. Then the Med Center people arrived and Blue’s inert and by then fully cocooned body was ceremonially placed in the Heal-All, people said their good-byes, and it was floated out.
Andre already knew of Blue’s memory loss and couldn’t have been sweeter or more explanatory as he asked who each person shown was. When he reached the bereft, handsome young man with the dark curling hair, she said, “Bruno. Of course.”
“Bruno?” He tried it out and it sounded right.
“Bruno Thomasson, your adoring fiancé. He hasn’t found anyone else, you know, in all the months since. In fact, Blue, from what he was saying the other day when I called to tell him of you, I do believe he wants to try to see you again.”
“Bruno?” Blue now asked, stunned. “Then I was…”
“A woman. Yes, Blue. Didn’t anyone explain it to you at the Med Center? We seldom come back the second time as the same gender. Your aunt / uncle Clay Clarkson? the one who died in that fall, climbing the Capsilian Mountains? She once explained all the complex genetics of it to me, but you know how dense I can be about scientific matters.”
“So that’s Bruno!” Blue now said, not Burn, of course, and looked at the Vid-screen as the compelling figure was highlighted and zoomed in on, the large dark, misty eyes, the downturned full lips and picturesquely sunken cheeks.
“You don’t have to see him, you know, if it makes you—nervous,” Andre settled on, and changed the subject back to those in the family she would never speak to again because they simply never even acknowledged Blue’s death, never mind Andre’s grief.
It all began to make sense now: the purses in the office and at Blue’s flat with no ID in them. The scarcity of male clothing in the closets: two suits—both new looking. Scarcely anything in the way of male accessories. Only the most basic toiletries in the bath. It also explained the rare photos: all of them of other family members, not one of them showing Blue.
He had to ask, “Mother? What kind of woman was I?”
Andre only wavered a second. “Frankly, Blue, you were a complete pain in the ass. You were a physically tough, emotionally cold, adventure-loving, overconfident, thoughtless, hard-living, self-absorbed egomaniac to almost everyone but Bruno. You drove me crazy as an adolescent. I needed most of the family and sometimes City Services, too, to help raise you. In truth, you were such a bitch to most of us that it was a constant wonder that someone didn’t kill you years ago.”
As Blue absorbed that, Andre added, with a nervous little laugh, “We’re all hoping that those qualities will fit you better—now that you’re a male.”
When Blue chuckled, Andre added, “You know, Blue, while it’s a difficult adjustment for many, some people only begin to really find themselves when they’re second-born.”
*
Chango Blocksson’s Vid-screen image was of an older man, but his voice was older than his appearance and Blue was forced to conclude that he’d done at least one expensive voluntarily short period in a Heal-All age-proofing himself. Blue’s mother had done two of those herself and looked almost Blue’s age.
Two of the cases Blocksson had taken from Blue’s six had been solved. Cases closed. Two of the clients, Dusk Martila and another woman, had chosen to not to accept Lock’s services. And two cases remained in progress: one a long-term private investigation by two wealthy brothers of their industrialist father’s concerns: “Very straightforward and utterly paranoid,” according to Chango. “They think he’s hiding their eventual heritage.” Another, an equally long-term search for an amateur pilot, a playboy, lost over Oceania, whom his family needed declared dead—or alive, and non-compos mentis, they almost didn’t care which.
“I don’t buy anyone involved in these two cases as even possessing a weapon, never mind using one on you,” Lock declared. “Their motives aren’t impelling enough,” he added, even before Blue could ask his opinion. But it confirmed Blue’s own surprisingly strong investigative intuition.
“This Martila woman, however…well, her I just don’t know. They’re off-worlders, you know: Albergrivians, and whatever those people do is weird and mixed up with that cockamamie religion they’ve got.”
“The sixth case?” Blue asked. “Did you look at that long enough to see if it was more than a simple potential female infidelity?”
“It looked like a simple female love triangle. By the way, you look terrific,” Chango added. “And I’ve got to thank you. I met my fourth wife at your funeral. A second or third cousin of yours who came along with others. We’re married five months: So we’re now distantly related. She says you should come to dinner. Bring that guy Bruno, too, if you’re still seeing him?”
“Should I be?” Blue asked.
“Everyone at the funeral seemed to think so. He was all busted up. But of course things may be a little iffy between the two of you.”
After Chango signed off, Blue made a Vid-call to Bruno. Luckily, he wasn’t in and asked for a message to be left. This close up, Bruno’s photo made a very strong impression. Shaken, Blue left no message at all, even though he knew the Vid would take a trace of his call.
All the rest of the day, Blue threw himself into the Martila case. Leads had developed in the year since he was gone, and suddenly they began edging out into possibilities.
One lead directly shot into a Albergrivian Benefit Society, and its president, a publicity-shy character named Aptel Movasa who had moved the organization out of downtown to a local Civic Center hub, only a few streets from Blue’s office. Perhaps a drop-in visit was in order?
Blue had used the transportation hub stations there but he didn’t recall ever going beyond the little concentration of public buildings another two streets over to the commercial area, which, now as he walked that way, was clearly evident by the increased pedestrian traffic.
The familiar, male-female, two-headed bust stood at one end of a pedestrian-only street, and it was also marked that it tolerated none but ultra-light, public, surface vehicles. The second thing Blue noticed were several storefronts given to inter-world transport, inter-world freight, and inter-world currency conversion. In each window, the strangely square script of the reformed Albergrivian alphabet translated simple phrases.
The north side of the street, for most of the block, was given over to what seemed a modern enough looking hotel named Rha Cantrobergle and described as an “Alberge for Off-Planet Travelers.” Sure enough, across the street, the next half dozen shop fronts on the southern side were given over to Albergrivian ethnic food specialties, what appeared to be native clothing and other dry goods, and what might be a combination tea room and Skimko parlor.
His phone-pad went off and he read the tea room’s address as the same as last given for Aptel Movassa.
He knew he would look out of place the second he stepped in the door, so he didn’t attempt to be anyone but himself.
Through the haze of Spital-Leaf smoke, only one person of the dozen or so elderly Albergrivian gentlemen seated around floor-mounted smokers looked up from the games at their complex Skimko boards.
“Zha Andresson,” Blue introduced himself to a clerk. “Seeking Zha-Kas Movasa.” The ethnic honorific got a few more heads turned his way.
“Does Zha-Kas know the Zha?” the tea-counter clerk asked. He was young, thin, typically unattractive, and given his awful complexion, unquestionably addicted to carbonated drinks.
“Unfortunately, this Zha has not had the pleasure,” Blue said. He knew he was being scanned from another office or at least being checked out by some minion just making a Skimko move at a table nearby.
The clerk caught a nearly invisible signal and brought one refill to a pair of ancient players, and a barrage of Albergrivian chatter ensued. The clerk bowed away, taking the used cartridge with him.
“Zha-Kas Pirto remarked how more lovely than an Albergrivian woman are the young men of this world,” the clerk tittered.
Blue turned and bowed to the flatterer, who curlicued an age-spotted hand in response, without looking up from his complex, three-level game.
Behind his counter again, the clerk apparently read off a message, because he said, “Will the Zha follow, please.”
Behind the back wall curtain of red-reed, a small elevator slid open and Blue stepped in.
Just as the doors closed on him, Blue heard a baritone shout he was certain was directed at himself; too late for him to worry how hostile it might be.
The lift flew up twenty-five floors and flashed open onto what seemed to be a rooftop garden with a central fountain. Beneath an awning, a standard desk much altered by colorful ethnic throws and runners, and behind it was an elderly Albergrivian, almost hidden within a throne-like chair constructed of the same red-reed, this time twisted into arabesques.
Blue bowed slightly three times approaching and used the correct honorific and Movasa waved him to a seat. A slender youth almost identical to the clerk downstairs immediately brought them wide-mouthed mugs of a fragrant purple-tinged tea, and vanished. Movasa quickly sipped his, to show it was harmless and tasty.
Blue followed and presented his credentials.
“A simple case of a vanished businessman,” Blue explained. “It eluded my predecessor. She apparently was unaware of the wide-ranging knowledge of the Zha-Kas.”
“To the contrary,” the soft-voiced, unattractive old Albergrivian said. “She sat where Zha Andresson now sits, and she lacked all the social graces. How could a person speak to her?”
“How indeed! Apologies.”
“She might have been a sibling to yourself, Zha.”
“We never met,” Blue truthfully said, couching it so that if lie detection were built into the table or chair he would not be suspect.
“She was lovely, like the women of this world. But she could not equal yourself, Zha. Already in the tea parlor below they are replaying the Vid taken during your brief visit and perhaps saying and doing unclean things…in your honor, Zha.”
Blue had done enough homework on Albergrive society to believe this might be taken either as a provocation or as a compliment: he decided to take it as a compliment. He smiled.
“Worse than her attitude, Zha,” Movasa went on, “Was her ignorance of proper manners.”
“The Zha who wishes to”—Blue purposely used an Albergrivian word that could either mean “crucial conversation” or “sexual intercourse,” depending solely upon its tonal inflection—“with a Zha-Kas must acquaint himself with proper manners.”
Movasa laughed at the double-edged witticism.
“Tell, me Zha Andresson, how may this old Zha-Kas be of help?” Movasa asked.
“An attractive woman client”—and here Blue used the Albergrivian term he’d especially learned to describe one who was both widowed and yet not—“seeks her husband long missing.” He produced his phone-pad and flashed the most flattering videos of her he could locate. “This Zha naturally believes the Zha-Kas would be able to assist. Her name is Zhana Martila. She wishes to now be Zhannia Martila,” making it clear that she wanted to be single again.
“To remarry a Zha of this world?”
“Indeed not. To marry an Albergrivian. But,” Blue quickly added, “I believe one who is mainstreamed into this world’s society and work.”
“A lad ignorant of the ways of his people,” Movasa said.
“Or one who is knowledgeable and…uninterested.”
“More and more such Zhaos exist,” Movasa sighed, using a term unfamiliar to Blue. “Perhaps seduced by love. And Zhanna Martila? What does Zha Andresson think of her?”
“We have only met once, briefly. But she is honest, and she seems without external motive. Three years her husband is gone. The Zhana seems to be beyond anger, reproof, or even revenge.”
“On our world, one favor gives birth to another,” Movasa said.
“This Zha will of course be in your debt in the future,” Blue admitted. He suspected this was how the old power-broker worked anyway.
“This Zha will put out a”—here Movasa used a word meant to signify query but also demand—“for this missing Zha Martila. You will hear from me in three double sunsets.”
“Whatever future, non-illegal, request you make of this Zha will be yours,” Blue assured him.
They sipped their tea and watched the blue sun prepare to drop below the horizon. The sky flashed green several times, then settled into dull orange.
Movasa was called indoors, and Blue stood up and began bowing to leave, but the old man pulled him over and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “So lovely, these males!”
As Blue stepped into the elevator, Movasa looked out of his office and said, “This will take you directly to the street. That way you may avoid disrespectful words.”
“You mean like those words I heard as I stepped in before?”
“Those words were not so much disrespectful as they were descriptive—if crude.” Movassa smiled.
*
Bruno Thomasson looked far better in a video than he did even in still photos. Blue found himself reminded of what the Albergrivians had said several times about the “lovely males” of this world. No wonder women like his mother worked so hard to keep up.
When he’d returned to his office after the meeting with Movasa, Blue had immediately taken a “crash-course” in that paired planet’s people’s interpersonal relations, with an especial look into their sexuality, a topic he’d ignored totally before going to meet Movasa, if not exactly to his peril, at least to his slight discomfiture.
He was surprised to see that same-sexuality was a fairly recent development among those off-worlders, and one that had only taken fire when the two planets had once made contact. Even now, it was not much practiced on their home world, and it seemed to be chiefly a cross-cultural phenomenon, actually more spoken of than acted upon, even here in the City, among those who visited or had immigrated. Among Albergrivian women it was all but unknown at home, and it was rare here; however, it seemed widespread among Albergrivian men who had relocated. But even among those newcomers, the author of the short documentary Blue watched believed, it was more spoken of and written about than actually practiced. Acceptable mostly because of some ancient Albergrivian texts and poems that everyone learned at school in their early years, detailing the legendary loves of great warriors and their teen male lovers.
Blue’s world’s athletes and male celebrities were the main fantasy choices of both younger and older Albegrivian men, who filled out their fan clubs and paid astronomical sums for porn-Vids of their idols (a few of whom seemingly and quite callously produced them specifically to cash in, ruthlessly locating and exploiting the very few existing Albergrivian beauties for their videos).
Blue wondered if he might bring this topic up later on at dinner, because at long last Bruno Thomasson had called back and left a message asking if they might meet for dinner.
Blue would have to see. He tried to recall what his mother had said about Bruno, besides the fact that he’d been smitten with Blue as a woman enough to propose marriage. Given the vast Thomas family holdings, its long and colorful history, and its political and financial status in the City, Bruno must have been crazy about such an unlikely mate for him as a tough woman investigator. So Blue was gracious as he could be on the Vid-screen responding and said he was “looking forward” to “seeing Bruno again”…
The restaurant Bruno chose was an expensive one, so he wasn’t hiding this meeting from his clan. In honor of such a classy date, Blue dressed as well as possible.
All the more of a surprise then when the maitre d’ showed him to a private table set apart from the rest of the diners by floor-high mirrors and metal panels.
However, at it sat not Bruno Thomasson but two strangers. They introduced themselves to Blue as Thomas family attorneys, and immediately asked if Blue would sign a quitclaim on the family.
“That’s not legally needed,” he said, only half surprised by this tactic. “As a Bi-Vivid I have no claim whatsoever upon Bruno Thomasson no matter what prearrangements were made.”
“Agreed. This quitclaim, however, provides you with the following sum”—the female of the two pointed to the line and the large amount—“but only if Bruno Thomasson also signs it.”
Meaning that if Bruno wanted out after this date, buying Blue off would be more or less legal.
“I’ll sign. But I may not ever claim the money. Wealth is so…boring! Don’t you think?” Blue asked, sipping his cocktail. He scrawled a signature almost as an afterthought.
Evidently they didn’t agree it was boring, because they got up and left without another word.
“That’s not something the old Blue would have done,” Bruno said. He’d been behind a panel or mirror observing and stepped forward now. His voice was velvety and higher than Blue would have expected. He was taller, too. Beautifully dressed, of course. “Or something she would have said,” Bruno added.
Blue smiled politely and held out a hand, saying “Blue Andresson. The Second.” He offered the cocktail already delivered to the table.
Bruno gestured, and Blue invited him to sit.
“Also, Blue the First would have phoned me immediately upon awakening from the Heal-All,” Bruno said.
“A year in a Heal-All does not, despite the popular myths, provide full memory retention,” Blue said. “And then there is the natural awkwardness of the situation.”
“You mean with the attorneys. Not my idea at all. I assure you, Blue.”
“I believe you, Bruno. But no, the awkwardness I meant was that both of us now use the same restroom facilities. My predecessor’s very flimsy personal file on Bruno Thomasson did not include or highlight…personal flexibility,” he ended up saying.
“Very flimsy file?” Bruno asked.
“Extremely flimsy…for such a professional investigator,” he admitted.
“Maybe she kept it all in her head?” Bruno suggested.
“Unquestionably.”
“Whereas she was herself quite flexible,” Bruno said, and smiled a bit.
“Your eyes are pale green,” Blue said. “That doesn’t show in photos or videos. There they look gray or blue. Is that color natural?”
“Completely,” Bruno said. “Do you like green eyes?”
“On you, yes.”
“You are the same size and general muscular build as the First.”
“Does that satisfy you?” Blue asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s order,” Blue said. “I’m hungry.”
Again Bruno’s smile. Blue’s predecessor had been as frank.
The dinner proceeded with discreet little references back and forth. Before dessert, Blue said, “I meant it before. I have no claim on you or your family at all. I died. And the fact that I’m alive again is merely a product of our inborn physiology, and has nothing to do with your previous engagement.”
“So you believe that theory that existence under double suns provides for double lives,” Bruno asked. “Bi-Vividism, you called it.”
“It seems irrefutable, at least among the higher vertebrates. And it seems to apply both to us and to the Albergrivians.”
“How scientific and how philosophical of you.”
“Isn’t it? So if you leave after dinner and I never hear from you again…well, that’s fine with me.”
“Is it, truly?” Bruno asked.
“I said it was.”
“Except, my dear Second, the spy camera my attorneys had placed under the table to ensure that you carried no hidden weapons also reveals something else.” Bruno froze the picture and passed the phone-pad to Blue.
“Oh that! Well, I’ve got an excuse. This body is new, and I never exactly know how it will respond to any specific stimulus.”
Bruno did something with a foot under the table and then froze that and passed the phone photo to Blue.
“I, on the other hand, have been in this body for many years. And I’m even more surprised to see this reaction.”
The photo he showed now was of his own lap.
Their desserts arrived: tottering cream and cake towers of deliciousness threaded with platinum candy.
“As my predecessor might say,” Blue looked at Bruno closely, searching for anything resembling an imperfection, “I’m pretty much ready for anything. Lead the way.”
“You see, Second. That’s new,” Bruno said. He picked up Blue’s hand and brought it to his mouth, where he nibbled on the edge of Blue’s palm before saying, “Your predecessor would have led the way…I think I’m going to like this change.”
*
The address Aptel Movasa had sent over was in the River Heights section of the City, and quite upscale. The Lanscro Vidis Air-Skimmer Showroom was a sixtieth-floor penthouse, all the better for off-the-roof test-drives, Blue assumed. It was quietly posh, with the fountain and gardens he’d come to expect with well-to-do Albergrivian business offices. A dozen of the luxurious Black Hawk and Silver Hawk models were strewn about the lawns and flower beds: ranging from the sportier four-seaters to the deluxe seven-door, fifteen-window limos with separated brougham-style driver pods, only available in muted colors. Blue’s eye, however, was immediately drawn to a tiny, quietly glowing, low-cut, cobalt blue two-seater, identified as a Thunder Hawk.
“The upholstery matches your eyes,” he heard behind him and turned to the voice belonging to a middle aged Albergrivian gentleman who was taller, stouter, and better looking than any off-worlder he’d ever seen.
“Zha-Kas Lascro Vidis?” Blue asked.
“None of that is needed. It’s Mr. Vidis to you. What do you think? Stunning, isn’t it? Brand new. We have the first three Thunder Hawks off the robo-assembly line in the entire City.” He continued on with specifications, speeds, handling and maneuverability reports. “Mr…?”
Of course the Vidis dealership would have the first three of the model. This was probably the highest-end and most successful air-skimmer dealer in town.
“Andresson.”
“Mr. Andresson. Well, should we wrap it up for you, Mr. Andresson?”
“Let me think about it. Meanwhile, I have come on a slightly less mercantile matter.”
“Ah.”
He immediately turned Blue away, heading him toward a two-story-high glassed-in office area.
“Zha-Kas Aptel Movasa believes you might be able to help me in locating…someone.”
“Aha. You see, my dear.” He turned to a woman in her late thirties, less slender than most of her race, with bright eyes and the typical straight black hair. She was dressed well, if very quietly. “I was telling my wife, Mr. Andresson, the minute we noticed you arrive, that you would be someone special. You know Movasa?”
Blue reached to take her hand but she bowed slightly and moved backward out of reach. He noticed she wore dark laced gloves. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Blue said.
She immediately and wordlessly withdrew as the two men sat on facing if not matching love seats, but she seemed to Blue to hover, and even listen in on their conversation. For all he knew she might even be recording it.
Blue explained his purpose and said that Movasa had somehow or other gotten word that Zha Martila might have worked in some capacity for Vidis.
The Albergrivian denied it, politely enough, and turned to just behind Blue to ask his wife if she remembered any such named worker either here or at their other showroom. Evidently not. She then said something and Vidis told Blue she had another appointment.
Blue then explained why he needed to find Zha Martila for his client. Vidis sympathized and assured him he would put out the word among those who worked for and with him for this fellow off-worlder.
They drank more of the purple tea, iced this time, with little pale yellow flowers crushed over the surface for a slightly spicy flavor. It was a pleasant, if inutile half hour, and Blue left relaxed but frustrated. Of course Movasa had promised, but then perhaps that promise was less substance than off-world formality.
Even so, as he stood in the lift dropping through the open courtyard of the center of the building, Blue felt odd, as though something were not quite right.
He’d come to realize in this short period since his renewal that his intuition was actually quite useful. It had worked with the meeting with Bruno last night; it had worked with Movasa, and now he explored it a bit more.
The problem wasn’t Vidis, who seemed about as straightforward an Albergrivian as any he’d encountered—one reason, Blue guessed, for his success in the City. The problem was Mrs. Vidis. She looked slightly off; she acted oddly, and those black laced gloves… Definitely something wrong.
He’d begun going to the exercise club in his office building, so he was both confident and ready for most anything when he stepped out of the lift and into what he only now saw with one step out was not the glittering lobby he’d entered from before, but instead a lower floor, possibly a basement.
One glance at the lift’s inner panel showed him he was two floors below the street. Not where he had signaled: so someone had brought him here.
Blue immediately flattened himself to a side wall, and thus missed the thrown kris that embedded itself into the lift’s back wall, as the doors closed. He dropped down and tumbled to the other side of the little corridor while a second kris embedded in the wall he’d just been at, and he rolled forward in a zigzag pattern hearing two blades more whizz by him.
He was inside a shallow doorway when he saw a figure in his peripheral vision and dropped down to miss the fifth and he thought last blade, then he exploded out and into the corridor, where he used his martial arts knowledge to jump atop the figure, wrapping his legs around its midsection, pummeling it with the sides of his hands as the figure fell down sideways and tried to escape.
It was Mrs. Vidis, as he’d suspected, And as she lay upon the corridor floor, he held down first one hand, then the other, and tore off the lace gloves.
Each thumb was deformed, thinner than normal, and artificially padded: often the sign of a recent, voluntary, Heal-All experience.
She turned to him, her eyes blazing with fury. “How could you possibly know?”
Blue wrapped her hands in a silk handkerchief and knotted it twice, then stood up and pulled her to her feet.
“Know what, Zha Martila?” Blue asked. “That you were my murderer? Or that you had undergone a gender transformation in a Heal-All?”
“Either,” she said, softly. “Both?”
“Surely you’ve already learned what an advantage it is being both genders? Take you, for example, ruthless as a man to hide your secret, and yet in the end with inefficient upper body strength to throw me off just now. Your trade-off worked against you, Zha. And mine worked for me.”
“Stop calling me Zha!” she pouted, not prettily at all, then said, “So now what? You turn me in?”
“Not necessarily. After all, I’m coming to like this body. Like your own new body, it feels a lot more natural to me than the other one ever did. I take it Zha Vidis knows nothing of this?”
“Nothing at all. He only knew that I needed an operation before we could marry. I paid for it myself.”
“I have recorded this entire encounter, Martila. This is what I’ll need, to keep your secret.” Blue outlined it: 1) a death notice for Dusk Martila. 2) a signed confession for the murder of Blue Andresson, the First, and 3) “appropriate compensation.”
“The confession is so that I won’t ever try this solution again?” she asked. “Yes. Yes. Of course, yes to all three of terms.”
*
He’d heard about and once, too (in another life, he believed), had even seen videos of the Bruno’s family’s in-City estate. It covered the rooftops of three buildings, in a giant L, those connected by various hundred-story-high transparent, enclosed galleries.
He’d driven into a large lift and had been lifted to a valet at a parking area, one floor beneath the penthouse itself opening to a large open to the sky garden. A young usher checked his face against the list, seemed impressed, and handed him off to an usherette, all of them clad in the bronze and teal family colors. She brought him to a raised deck opening onto several four-story-high, half-open rooms: scene of Bruno’s birthday party. People he assumed were family members were streaming across the galleries from other buildings onto the deck. Blue immediately spotted the two attorneys from last week, both of whom smiled, and one of whom even raised a glass in a toast.
As he stepped onto the top step of the deck and stood looking over the hundred or more guests, he heard a voice speak out, “Blue Andresson. Fiancé to Bruno Thomasson.” All heads turned to him, and a stylishly slender young woman with dark hair, closely encased in a platinum-threaded gown, sprang to take Blue’s hand, saying, “I’m Claudia, Bruno’s younger sister.”
When the meetings and greetings died down, Bruno appeared, casually dressed, unlike the others, in an iridium-threaded open-necked blouson and slate gray slacks. He was barefoot and bareheaded and he cut through the crowd to kiss first his sister and then Blue. Applause greeted him and even greater applause greeted these gestures.
An hour later, Blue had met most of the immediate family as well as a score of nephews and cousins and great aunts. He felt enveloped by all but perhaps Bruno’s mother, the family matriarch and current CEO of most of its holdings. She’d been polite but cool, and Blue thought he could live with that.
They had come to the toasts and well-wishings and the gifts, when they were all startled to see a Thunder-Hawk air skimmer approach and settle upon the roof, just beyond the deck. Its large, multicolored ribbons signified that it, too, was a gift.
Partygoers dropped down to look it over, and it was wonderful to see.
Blue heard the matriarch, Marcella Thomasdotter, saying to someone, “It’s not from me! I wish I’d thought of it as a gift for him.”
Bruno pulled Blue along and over to the skimmer, where someone had found a tiny gift card. He immediately turned and threw his arms around Blue, kissing him again and again. The applause rose and died down.
Sometime later on, Blue was just coming back to the party after a visit to freshen up when an usher intercepted him and led him to one edge of a large chamber where Marcella was seated. She swanned out a hand, which he took and kissed and then sat down across from her.
“I didn’t like you the first time I met you,” she said.
“I’m afraid I can’t remember that meeting, although I’ve tried,” he honestly told her.
“His adjustment is a wonderful proof of his continued commitment,” Marcella said.
Bruno, she meant.
“Yes, it is. And I’m grateful.”
That somewhat mollified her.
“And the bauble?” she waved in the direction of the air-skimmer. “I hope it didn’t set you back too much? That would be imprudent.”
“No. Not at all. It turned out that someone owed me,” he said with a casual shrug. “It was merely a piece of business.”
“He looks good in it,” she said; Bruno was in the driver’s seat and waving to them indoors.
“Diamonds always shine brighter for their setting,” Blue said. “That was one thing I learned—the first time around.”
“Live and learn. Then live again and learn even more,” Marcella quipped. She stood, and when he did, too, she took his arm and began to lead him out to the party. “Of course you’ll both live here in one of the residences when you’re in-City. But we really must find something unique for you in the countryside. Do you like the beach?”
“Does Bruno?”
“I think we’re going to get along, just fine, Blue. Just fine.”