Murmur

by Tim Earnshaw

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

You have a view of the Pacific from your woodframe house out at Palos Verdes. You have the car with the Zen silence engineered in, and the cool drive up the coast to your studio office on the 23rd floor. You have the occasional blonde in your bed and more money than you want to spend. You have life pretty well taped. But you've spent the last twenty years learning to forget, learning to live without a drink in your hand. Twenty years taming the monsters. Then suddenly, the voices are back. But this time they're for real, and your life is about to be blown apart.

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 196

Sample

It was the silence. It had cost him a lot of money. It was why he’d bought Japanese. They’d engineered the silence in, built the car around it. Had a listening team working with the designers and engineers from day one, just using their ears. The doors closing, the servos in the electric windows, the switches in the dash, the leather, the hushed litany of the powerplant. These were sounds respectful of the silence they inhabited, and served in some way to define it. What all this meant, ultimately, was that Leverton could hear the faint embryonic pulse of an idea behind the rush of his thoughts. See through the glitter of the surface to where the big dark fish rolled. The big, beautiful ideas that his clients paid big, beautiful money for. The money that paid for the car and the house. And the quiet. The big, beautiful quiet.

Ken Leverton woke at six without an alarm, habitually, in the cool of his woodframe house out at Palos Verdes. Showered, took the first of his two daily shaves. Shaved with a blade, as the fretful insect buzz of an electric razor bothered him. Exercised naked in front of the full-height mirrors on the closet doors, measuring his breathing against the tensions in his body. Sleep often left him ricked out of shape, stiff as sticks, and the exercises were for realignment rather than muscle building. Still, he thought, recognizing the insidiously familiar whisper of self-flattery, not bad for an old guy. Normal height, normal build, maybe a little heavy-set. Thick dark hair cut decently short, touch of wave in it. Not handsome, not ugly. Normal guy. He slid into the cool of his judo robe and opened the deck doors, airlock suck and kiss of the rubber seal letting in a warm wave of morning heat. He looked at the palms above the low red roofs across the street, decals laminated on the bright opal panel of the sky. Closed his eyes, watched negative mercury trees sliding over the pulsing blood-black of his eyelids, breathed in the blue air off the ocean. And the sounds; crystalline, echoless, desiccated by sunlight. Tibetan bicycle bell, kid’s cartoon laugh, furry ripple of exhaust.

From here he could just see the tiny figures of the whale-watchers down the hill at Point Vicente, climbing into their high canvas chairs for the long day ahead. Save a chair for me, guys, he thought. I’ll be needing it any day. Name stitched on the back, notebook, binoculars, faulty prostate. Inevitable.

Little rituals. Spiraling his mantra off into silence. Buttered multigrain toast, lowfat milk so cold it made the glass sweat. In the living room, he unhooked his guitar from the wall. He’d sold the amplifier a lifetime ago, but kept the guitar. It held certain resonances he treasured, embedded into the wood and wire. And he liked its unamplified tone – barely audible, even in the silent room. He stroked the ball of his thumb over the strings, improvising on a mood set by his dreams. He no longer punished himself into remembering his dreams upon waking, no longer probed the turbid entrails for portents. There’d been too many bloody, blind, suffering monsters he knew to be his own dreadful babies. So this little ritual. Some kind of cleansing. This was when he might hear the last murmurs from the cave of sleep, the muddy mutter that had held his head in dream. Occasionally, in a sudden, quietly savage atonality, he could still feel the monsters roil. More often these days (these years), the mood had been meditative, simple, clear as a glass bell. This morning, some trailing thread of doubt had compromised the strength of every major chord with a slide into the lingering uncertainty of its major seventh. This subtly melancholic shift, did it augur anything? He let the final chord fade, unresolved, until he could hear the silence behind it, until he knew he could lift his fingers from the fretboard without killing the vibrations in the strings. He held the guitar up to the wall bracket, a gentle offering, and the small, vertical crease between his eyebrows deepened.

Little rituals in his clear white house. No radio, no TV. Rush sandals on sanded boatdeck floor, white tile. White canvas couch, director chairs. White walls. One closed white door with the handle removed. Passing it without a look, without a thought, same as every morning. Control. Triple-glazed windows and curling black Spanish wrought-iron bars. A raku bowl filled with knotted grass stems. A small Paul Klee drawing – spidery birdman in a twisted wire house – in a zinc frame. Aircon rendered noiseless after they’d replaced it twice. Noiseless, it had said, Leverton pointing to the word in the brochure. Noiseless or your money back. He didn’t care about the money. He had money. He wanted no noise. He wanted cool and quiet, while the hot world whirled around him. This simplicity of order, this quiet, this white haven, all this had taken more work than he liked to think about, and more time than he cared to admit.

Dressed in a collarless shirt, buttoned at the neck, an undyed linen suit and black canvas Charles Jordan shoes with no socks, he drove his Zen rock garden car up the coast to Marina Del Rey before cutting across to the office at Century City. It took longer than using the freeway most days, but he liked the calm along the coast, the view of the ocean. He drove slowly, hands resting lightly on the wheel. Liver spots on the tanned backs of his hands. Evidence of the years. Changing his grip, he took a right at the red light, a bum in rags mouthing something terrible at him from the curb, mouth like a slash in a cinema seat. Something inaudible.

Maitland Leverton Associates Corporate Communications took the twenty-third floor of the copper-glazed SS&T tower at Century City. The partners had widescreen ocean-view offices, the designers and writers shared an open-plan bullpen in the center, and the account executives occupied a long room on the other side, looking into the prismatic perspectives of Century City. Leverton always got there early, before anyone else, unless the creatives had been working through the night. As they had this morning. Amity leaned on the laserprinter, examining a shiny print tonguing into the tray.

—Hey, Amy. Any midnight oil left?

She stretched, rolling her head on her neck, the hem of her surf top rising to show a silver ring piercing her belly-button.

—Just burned the last drop on TasteLicious, she said. A pig to get right, for some reason. She took Leverton’s wrist in her hand and looked at his watch. Be slapped up for nine-thirty, no problem.

—Get you a coffee?

—Thanks, Ken, she said, sniffing at her underarm. I think I’ll take a shower and get changed. Kinda skunky.

Leverton watched her gather the prints and walk away between the partitions, an unstudied little girl’s walk, all slouch and scuff, the backs of her vintage sneakers sawn away so she could slip them on without bothering with the laces. He walked to his office and pressed the code on the door lock and went inside. The sea-colored blinds glowed like yacht sails in a flat calm, filling the room with shadowless pacific light. On his left, Fiona Cavaunagh’s desk, with its integral computer workstation and frosted green vase with tiny white flowers she replaced every day. Polished woodblock floor, painted ash furniture. Neutral grasscloth walls, no pictures, no prizes, no patterns. Each of the partner’s offices had a circular elemental feature. Leverton had for many years a Zen stone garden, raked gravel around a couple of rocks, but he got tired of the lifelessness, so changed it for a pool with a low slate surround, where two skeleton carp conspired below ace-of-spades leaves, mute as memory. Invariably, they hung at right angles, so he’d given them street names. Sutter and Van Ness. Partners in a detective agency on stake-out, watching, witnessing.

Leverton did very little actual work here. In fact, he did very little actual work. This management stuff, conversations, meetings, just being there, doing a little bit of creative direction, this wasn’t work. Amity worked. Like he’d worked a long time ago. So his long table at the window was entirely clear, or should have been. Pale-blue file card placed dead center. It had been the first thing he saw on entering. He ignored it while he raised the blinds and squinted at the sparking wire of the ocean, burned brown by smog to the south, way out over the powder-gray quartz grid of LA. He looked down at the cars beading the thread of Beverly Glen Boulevard, cocktail colors snuffed out by the shadow of the tower. Blue file card.

The elevator doors opened down the hallway, and he heard Peter Reitz’s voice buoyed up by a woman’s laugh. Yok it up, Peter. He took a heavy aluminum shaker from a drawer and fed the fish, dimpling the skin of the water. Their feeding mouths wattled the featureless reflection of his head. Blue file card. He went to his faded leather chair, replaced the shaker, unfolded his old man’s eyeglasses from his jacket pocket, picked up the card.

It wasn’t just that he didn’t know who’d left the note that bothered him. It was the fact that it was handwritten. Sharp pencil, all caps. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anything handwritten. He wondered what his own handwriting looked like, if it had withered and died, untended, a parched vine crabbed against a wall. He didn’t even own a pencil, now he came to think of it. Blue file card, five by three. They didn’t use them. Paperless office, made a point of it. No memos, no minutes, no notes.

CALL AMBIENT PARAMETERS

And a 310 LA number. What the hell was this? Who the hell was this?

He had thirty minutes before the big swinging dicks from TasteLicious foamed up for the presentation. He flexed the card between his fingers, slid open the telephone drawer and dialed, raising his chin a little so he could see the numbers through his graduated bifocals.

—Ampar …

What? He could hear one of those pingy digital music chips, like you get in greetings cards. He knew this tune. The theme from that TV show with Elizabeth Montgomery. Bewitched. The hell with this. He put the phone down.

—Line lost.

Huh? He frowned at the telephone, set in its custom-made drawer. Thinking the connection was still open, he picked it up, heard the soft burr of the dead line. He replaced it carefully, feeling the click under the handset.

—Up down up down.

He grinned up at Fiona Cavaunagh, dropping her purse on her desk.

—Hey, Fee. Listen, could you check out my phone? It’s talking to itself.

—Hi, Ken, she said, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a Kleenex. Talking to itself. Sure, I’ll get right onto it. Her own phone flashed. She sat on the edge of her desk and took the call, hooking her blond hair away from her ear. Morning, Brian, she said, rolling her eyes at Leverton. Her daily hot-ear session with Brian Mulready, their guy in NY. Might as well be their guy in her lap for all the time he spends on the phone, Leverton thought. He watched Fiona replace the flowers, cradling the phone between her chin and shoulder, crossing her legs, saying Okay, and Sure, no problem.

Kirby Klein put her head around the door, her copper bob swinging in a bright blade.

—Ken? You want to give the TasteLicious thing a quick pre?

—Surely. It’ll have to be quick, too. Uh, Fee, we’re in the Green Room?

He joined Klein in the bullpen. She was wearing a tight little charcoal suit over a dull black silk shirt with a pewter clip at the neck, black stockings, patent pumps. He always thought of her as taller somehow, maybe because she was so beautifully proportioned, and surprised himself again by how short she was standing next to him.

—Achingly fabulous ensemble, he said. Have I seen this little combo before?

—Little? she said sharply, not letting the patronizing adjective go by. It’s Donna, she said, grabbing a cup at the watercooler. And I didn’t pay retail.

—That’s five.

—I’m sorry? Leverton said, turning to see where the voice came from, seeing nobody.

—I didn’t pay retail, she repeated, dropping the empty cup in the recycling bag. You okay, Ken?

—Yeah, he said, rubbing his jaw. Satellite delay. He opened the Green Room door for her. Framed awards on the walls, non-hierarchical ameboid table, bottle-green Thai silk wallcovering, seamless white curved presentation wall at the end. Amity and a guy from the art room rushed by behind them and Klein said, Twenty minutes. Yo, they said, tripping over each other.

—Pre me up, Kirb, Leverton said. If I can look as though I know why I’m here it may be a plus.

Klein leaned on the table, touching her fingernails on the blond wood. Predatory. Her eyes, heavy-lidded, met his as she talked.

—Essentially, she said, they’re scared shitless. They come on like corporate hard-ons, but it’s all flounce. They’ve been with Wendell’s since Martin was with Lewis, and everybody’s tired. They want to move but they don’t want to move. So we have two routes. More of the same, but different. Or different, but more of the same. I’m taking neither. It’s worse than they think, and I’m going to rub their face in it.

Leverton smiled opaquely, said nothing. This means nothing to me, he thought. Then, at the same time, they both turned and saw Curtis Maitland in the doorway. He had that power over them still. The ability to magnetize attention, quick as a trick. After all these years, he could still do it. It was what made MLA different, and the clients knew it. Take him away and you’ve got yourself just another hot-shop full of great teeth and ponytails and pushy guys with Prozac wives. Something to do with the stature of the guy, for sure, the height, the strength in the stance, but more to it than that. He had the bearing and the confidence of the handsome, and gave the impression of being good-looking in a severe way, but his face was a little too planar to be beautiful, his broken nose set too harshly, his eyes set too deep. Yet he was thought of as handsome. There was an intensity, almost a density about him, a bright mineral quality to his pale gray eyes and an edge to his voice that expressed a clarity, an authority, a total lack of doubt that seduced and convinced immediately. When you thought of Curtis Maitland you remembered the shape – the profile, perhaps, or the silhouette he cut in a doorway – as a sequence of almost monolithic images, not as a moving thing at all. Like a series of shapes printed on cards, which when fanned by the thumb give the illusion of animation, each shape was a character in his own private alphabet. He moved from pose to pose – from letter to letter – but the pose was the man, not affectation. Soberly suited, his evenly graying hair just curled over the collar to his button-down Oxford-cloth shirt. His club tie had a full Windsor knot, and his black brogues gleamed like licked licorice. Leverton always felt rumpled when Maitland was in the room. He pushed a hand through his own hair uselessly, apologetically, unconsciously. Mait. . .