Identity Matrix (1982) (7 page)

Still, it brought me back to the question that lurked about me now, one that I couldn't avoid for very long. What was I going to do now? This ship, in three more days, would put me into Seattle, but then I'd be on my own. Being Indian I could accept. If I made my way back East it'd be an asset instead of the handicap it was west of the Mississippi. Being female, too, I could ac-cept, although it would take a lot more adjusting to. But there was no way around the one central thing that I was that stood in the way of any job, any way to a new life at all. I was at most thirteen years old, for God's sake! Too young for a social security card, driver's li-cense,
any
of the things needed to turn labor into money. Child labor laws stood in the way of any gainful em-ployment, and I wasn't even legally responsible for anything. The world was quite certainly effectively organized to deny any of the basics of life to a thirty-five-year-old pre-teenager.

An hour or so wandering with such gloomy thoughts brought me to an outside stairway on the upper stern deck that I hadn't noticed before. I climbed it, curious, and reached the top deck of the ship, an area which looked flat and barren for a ,moment, dominated as it was by the giant dark blue smokestacks and mast. But—no, not empty of interest after all, I saw. There
was
an area behind the stacks with people, open on this side but closed on the other three sides and with a roof. The sign said it was the Solarium—which I discovered, was filled with plastic-slatted chaise lounges and camp-ing gear and was heated, sort of, by strong, bare coils attached to its roof.

I ran to it and into it, perhaps a bit too exuberantly, and immediately tripped over somebody's backpack, which in turn sent me sprawling right into someone.

"I—I'm sorry," I mumbled, then looked up.

It was a young woman's face, perhaps eighteen or so, that I saw smiling sweetly at me. She was dressed in a heavy red flannel shirt with red stocking cap, tough-looking jeans and hiking boots, yet she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my entire life. Her reddish-blond hair hadn't a hint of dye, her bright, deep blue eyes sparkled with life and inner beauty, and her face, bereft of makeup, was both tre-mendously sexy and yet somehow angelic.
Angelic
. The word might have been created for her.

"Well, young lady, you were really in a hurry to go nowhere, weren't you?" she said laughingly, her voice soft and musical. "You're not hurt, are you?"

I picked myself up and sat on the cold deck, arms around my knees. "It's kinda wet," was all I could manage, unable to take my eyes off her.

She picked one of the chaises and sat down, looking at me. "You're an Indian, aren't you? What tribe?" She was being friendly with just a hint of patronizing that was inevitable when talking to someone of my age.

I nodded. "I'm a Tlingit," I told her, echoing Dan's lie. For all I knew it could be the truth.

"A Tlingit! Then you come from around here."

I nodded, drawing a little more on Dan's story. "Ad-miralty Island," I told her.

"Then you'll be getting off soon," she responded, ges-turing slightly to her right. "There's Admiralty over there."

"No," I told her. "I'm going all the way to Seattle."

"Seattle!" Her patronizing tone was growing and get-ting a little hard to take, but I had to grin and bear it. Like it or not, I'd better get used to this sort of thing. "What takes you there?"

I considered my answer carefully. Until this moment I hadn't really considered a cover story, and my creativ-ity was being sorely tested. Still, I had to gamble some-time on somebody else—and she seemed as good as any and less threatening than most.

"They were gonna put me in an orphanage," I told her as sincerely as I could. "

Daddy was killed in a boat accident and Mommy's been—gone—for some time.

Do you know what kinda orphanages they got for Indians? Horrible, drafty places out in the middle of nowhere run by a bunch of white bureaucrats—no offense—who are just there for the fat paychecks. A
prison
'
s
better than those places."

She looked suitably concerned. Blonde and blue-eyed young women generally felt a lot of social concern at this stage in their lives. I'd taught enough of them to know that it wasn't much of a gamble to play on her inevitable social conscience.

"Oh, come on. I've been to a few orphanages in my time and they aren't that dreadful at all." She pro-nounced "been" as "bean" and I marked her as a Canadian.

Looking as sadly indignant as I could, I responded, "
White
orphanages.

Whites are people. Indians are wards of the state. I'm thirteen now, but as far as the govern-ment's concerned all Indians are thirteen forever." Now the
coup de
grace
. "Aw, what's the use? You couldn't understand anyway."

It hit home, I could see that. Thanking my entire social science and teaching background fervently, I waited for her move.

Her face was serious now, and she looked at me thoughtfully. "So you're running away," she almost whis-pered. "How'd you get this far?"

I told her some of the story, altered to make it believ-able. I said I'd stowed away on a fishing boat north and gotten stuck in Skagway. Realizing I was in a dead end trap, I'd then used the truck trailer gambit to stow away again coming south, this time as far as possible. I told her, too, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs men were looking for me, which is why I had to be careful. I even showed her my torn jeans and skinned knee. The hard-est part wasn't the lie, which was less a lie than the truth would have seemed, but keeping to contractions and a slightly more childish vocabulary. I still came out sounding awfully bright for my age, but that was O.K.

The truth was, I really didn't know why I was telling her all this in the first place, nor had I any clear idea of what I could gain by all this. Mostly it was the insecur-ity, the terrible loneliness of my condition, and my sense of helplessness about it that craved some company, some companionship, some concern. I needed somebody now, even for a little while, more than I had ever needed anybody in my whole life.

"You aren't gonna turn me in, are you?" I asked warily.

She was genuinely touched and concerned, and it showed. "Come," she said. "

Sit by me," and I did. She lifted me into her lap and put her arms around me. It felt warm and secure and good. I was so overcome I felt myself starting to cry, and, try though I might, I couldn't really stop it. No gold, no wondrous prize of any kind, could replace that hug. It was a need beyond price.

After a few moments just lying there, weeping slightly, cradled in her arms, I looked up at her, bleary-eyed, and saw that she had tears in her own blue eyes.

"No," she whispered kindly, hugging me tighter, "I won't give you away. But where will you go? What will you do?"

"I'll go somewhere where they won't send me back," I told her. "Get in a city, maybe do a little begging. I'll get by."

She sighed. "Well, I'll do what I can as far as I can," she told me. She let go and reached down into her bag, coming up with some tissues and a hairbrush. "

Let's start by untangling your pretty hair."

She brushed and combed and took out the tangles, and did the sort of things I wanted to do but hadn't known how.

"I'm Dorian Tomlinson," she told me as she brushed and combed. "My friends call me Dory. What's
your
name?"

I hadn't thought of a name yet, but one seemed obvi-ous. Fortunately my male name had a feminine equiva-lent, as most did. "I'm Vicki," I replied. "Just Vicki—not Victoria or anything like that."

"Vicki what?"

I could hardly use Gonser, and it seemed better for the moment to just cop out. "You'd never pronounce it," I told her. "Let's just keep it on a first-name basis like real friends, O.K.?"

She laughed softly, "O.K., friend." She turned me around, straightening my crumpled clothes. "Well, you don't look so bad now you've been groomed. Now let's go downstairs to the ladies' room and I'll see what I can do about patching your pants."

My little sewing kit in expert hands made short work of the rip, and we adjourned to the cafeteria. She'd spotted the money when I'd reached in for the kit and I'd had to think fast and tell her it was my father's secret savings jar money. As I sipped cocoa and she tea I managed to turn the conversation away from me and towards her.

She was a college student, had just turned twenty, and she'd accepted an invitation by a classmate—a boyfriend—to go hiking and camping up in Glacier Park. She wasn't too clear on why they had a big fight, but I guessed it was more than just sex since she had to know he'd have some of that on his mind all out there in the wild, but, anyway, they'd fought and she'd stalked out and caught the next plane back to Juneau and caught the first ferry through. As a walk-on she had no chance at a stateroom and the solarium seemed to be the most private place other than a stateroom on the ship. She wanted to be alone, to think things out, she said.

For some reason I felt a consuming jealousy for that nameless young man. I couldn't really explain my emo-tional reaction, but the longer I was with Dory the more she seemed to loom ever larger before me, like some sort of goddess I was joyful in worshipping. It was much later before I realized that I was developing a mad, pas-sionate crush on her, one caused by her beauty and compassion, my need for a friend, my frustrated (male) previous life, and, probably, the glands of the near-woman I now was.

And I'd eaten a whole hamburger just because she'd asked me to.

As we walked around the ship afterwards, poking into things and looking through the little shop, this feeling grew ever stronger within me. Her merest gesture, word, glance, was heaven to me.

I was totally, madly, completely in love with Dorian Tomlinson.

We walked and talked for most of the afternoon, and generally enjoyed each other's company. I was too busy acting like a lovesick schoolgirl to have to pretend to anything, and later on, when the fatigue wouldn't go away, I went sound asleep in her arms, cradled against her warm, soft breasts.

"We'll be in to Prince Rupert before noon," Dory told me gravely. The comment sobered me, bringing me down from my secure high of the past day and a half. Dory was going home to Calgary, a long train trip from Prince Rupert but definitely out of my way.

"What happens then?" I asked apprehensively.

She sighed. "Well, I can't very well desert you here, and yet I have a train to catch."

"Let me come with you, then," I pleaded. "I don't eat much, and I could probably smuggle myself aboard any old train or something."

She laughed. "I don't think we're that hard up. But, yes, you're right. The only thing I can do now is take you. I have a small efficiency apartment just off campus you could stay at, at least for a while. Think you can talk your way past customs?"

"Sure," I told her. "Nothing to it. An Indian kid in Prince Rupert?" I was anxious, even eager for this. It seemed the way out of all my problems, even if it did shift the burden onto someone else. In my situation, I
had
to be dependent on someone, anyway, at least until I grew "old" enough to make my own way.

And I cer-tainly didn't want to leave Dory—anyplace she was was where I wanted to be. It looked like things were really working themselves out, and I wandered forward in the lounge, feeling content, wondering idly what the small crowd in front was watching. Curious, both Dory and I approached, and I suddenly froze solid, gripping Dory's hand as tightly as I could.

The crowd was watching a man do card tricks. He was quite good at it, and seemed to be having a good time. He was a medium-sized, ordinary-built man, but he'd stand out in any crowd. He was dressed in an old-fashioned black suit and string tie, wore a bowler hat, and had a huge, black handlebar moustache.

Although I'd only seen him briefly and at some dis-tance, he was impossible to forget—although the last time he'd been gripping a semiautomatic rifle and peer-ing off a cliff on a trail above Skagway.

Dory caught my fright and looked down. "What's the matter?"

"That magician," I whispered nervously. "I don't know what's with the funny getup but he was with the men looking for me."

She frowned and looked at me like I was crazy, but shrugged and turned.

"Let's just go back to the lounge and sit for a while, then, O.K.?"

She had no argument from me. We started to walk casually back, away from the strange man's performance. I was beginning to wonder about my original assess-ment of the pursuers as FBI or some such, though. Not only did the man dress outlandishly, but the patter I heard with his card tricks was in an unmistakable Irish accent.

What the hell was going on here, anyway?

I wondered when he'd gotten on. I'd pretty well cruised the ship since Skagway time and time again and I'd watched the passengers very carefully.

Nobody looking like that had been anywhere around, I was sure of it. If he'd been on from the start, he'd kept himself locked in a stateroom—but, if so, why come out so publicly now? The only possible answers weren't pleasant. I
knew
that he was a pursuer—and that implied that, if he were aboard, so were those he was chasing. He and his people had probably spent some time surveying the passengers even more closely than I had, but hadn't had any luck so far.

Although their quarry could be literally anybody, they seemed at least reasonably satisfied that the aliens or whatever they were were still aboard, and they hadn't been able to smoke them out. Moustache, then, would have kept out of sight up to now because he was easy to spot—but now we were only hours from Prince Rupert and through road, rail, and bus connections. Now Mous-tache would have to make his move, publicly reveal himself, try and get his quarry to panic, make a mistake.

I looked around at all the big people standing around the lounge area with renewed suspicion. Two men in particular caught my attention, one lounging on each side of the doorways going aft, looking relaxed but eyeing everybody who passed with more than idle curiosity. Moustache's pals, I knew instinctively. The ones who wanted to see who turned and ran when they spotted their easily recognizable boss.