Skywatcher Read online

  Perhaps it was just the novelty of the thing. Every three months the fanatics from New Jersey or New Mexico or wherever they hung out faithfully dispatched their missive, stocked on every page with the most fascinating items of trivia: what their favorite stars were doing now (the English girl sold real estate; the computer expert was directing a cop show); funny little short stories extrapolated from the series basics (Jarrod has both eyes poked out and has to spend the rest of his life translating top secret Spy Squad files into Braille); want ads (“Wish to buy old Dr. Kildare photos and Spy Squad bubble-gum cards”)…

  And Anthony, it seemed, was their best customer. That much, at least, Robin thought, was hysterical. If these people had any idea who Tony Raymond, Agent 18, from Canada, was, Anthony would have been swamped: long-distance telephone calls, registered mail containing photo-booth snapshots, proposals of marriage…

  As it was, The Son of Spencer had already systematically collected every paperback, coloring book, T-shirt, comic, game, button, poster, script, videotape, record, and bumper sticker that was available. He was covertly trying to get a replica Spy Squad gun into the country without arousing the interest of Canada Customs. And he seemed to have every episode memorized. It was enough to incite their stepfather to inquire, at least once a month, when the hell Anthony was going to grow up and move out and start to pay his own way in the world.

  Robin looked up as his mother came into the room, carrying her knitting. “How was the program?” she asked. “Is it over already?” She’d hung onto her English accent—cultivating it, Robin used to think, until he’d realized that things like that never really disappeared altogether.

  “It’s not over, it’s terrible,” he answered, giving the head of the robot a twist. It beeped, protesting. Mrs. Peel glared at it with button-box eyes.

  “Bad story?” Gwennie guessed.

  “Bad everything: script, production, direction. It’s not Evan’s fault, he’s doing the best he can with what they gave him.”

  Gwennie sat down at the table and continued with her knitting. The saga of troubles associated with that aspect of show business was no longer her concern. She had asked, Robin supposed, only out of her need to stay in touch.

  “Did Anthony happen to mention to you what time he’d be in this evening?”

  Robin shook his head. “He’s trying out for a play. It could be hundreds of years.”

  The knitting needles tapped out a rhythmic pattern. Mrs. Peel extended one black paw and took a tentative swipe at the robot.

  Down in the lower part of the house, Ian suddenly shrieked with laughter. “Robin!” he hollered up the stairs. “You’re missing the best part. It’s horrible!”

  “Excuse me,” Robin said to his mother. “I have to go watch my father make an absolute fool of himself.” He abandoned the robot to Mrs. Peel, swung around the banister and plunked himself down on the blanket-covered couch. The snake psychiatrist, for reasons unknown, had crawled onto a window ledge ten stories above the street and was carrying on a deranged conversation with an uncaged rattler and two cobras that had slithered out to join him.

  “Watch,” Robin said, “he’ll lose his balance.”

  Evan’s character’s knee slipped off the narrow parapet. He clung to the crumbling concrete shelf with desperate fingers.

  “Think he’ll fall?”

  “Snakes’ll get him first,” said Ian.

  There was a long shot up from the ground. Robin checked the clock on the wall by the staircase. “He’s only got two minutes. Can you die from snake venom that quickly?”

  “Maybe somebody down below’ll shoot him and put him out of his misery. He’s rabid, you know.”

  “God, I missed that part.”

  “He was attacked by a bat,” Ian said, trying to keep a straight face.

  They watched in fascinated silence as Evan’s character scrambled to the corner of the building, lost his balance again, and hung off the edge by only the tips of his fingers.

  “Thirty seconds,” said Robin. “The snake or the street?”

  “Snake,” Ian maintained.

  With moments to spare, the rattler sank its fangs into Evan’s hand, precipitating a hundred-foot plunge, complete with agonized screams, to the pavement below. The camera pulled back for a full view of the neighborhood in the dark, the ambulances, police, floodlights, rain, extras.

  “There’s Susan,” Robin said. “Dressed up like a hooker.”

  Ian threw a pillow at the TV. “Rank nepotism. She’ll have lines next.” He folded his arms. “Anthony should ask him about being an extra in Blockbuster. What’s he auditioning for tonight?”

  “Waiting for Godot,” Robin said.

  Ian made a face.

  On cue, the bright beams of Anthony’s Austin-Mini cut through the darkness at the bottom of the driveway. He switched off the engine and wandered into the house through the lower patio doors.

  “Hullo,” he said, flopping down on the couch. The credits and closing music were rolling by on the screen. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Ian answered.

  Robin glanced at his older brother. Last year, at the very end of the winter term, Anthony had sauntered through the front door wearing a punk army brushcut and a diamond stud earring. The parents had not been impressed. This year, the earring was gone, and most of Anthony’s hair had grown out again—coarse and slightly wavy, and a bit less mouse-colored than before the trendy razor-wielders on West Tenth had got hold of it. The big thing now was an intriguing little braid, about half an inch thick, tied up with a length of black ribbon dead center at the back. Their mother didn’t like that much, either, but Robin thought it made Anthony look rakish, in an Errol Flynn sort of way.

  “Did you get a part?”

  “Uh-huh.” Anthony appeared to be very pleased with himself.

  “Vladimir or Estragon?”

  “The Tree,” he replied.

  Robin looked at him. “I wasn’t aware Waiting for Godot had a character called The Tree.”

  “It didn’t,” Anthony said, “until we got hold of the script.” He dangled his legs over the arm of the couch. “Can you imagine the concentration this role is going to require? It’s a very demanding part.”

  “I’ll bet,” Robin said. “What are you going to do on stage for two entire acts, Ant—exfoliate?”

  “Are you a willow, a shrub, or a mere bush?” Ian inquired, from the other end of the chesterfield.

  “A diseased elm,” Robin suggested, helpfully. “A flowering maple with spider mites—”

  “A two-hundred-year-old ponderosa pine,” Anthony replied, “about to topple over and crush two very small upstart seedlings.” He looked at the TV set. “Check out the local news. There was a suicide on campus tonight. A jumper. Gage Tower.” He paused for effect. The student residences were visible on the university bluff from all the way across English Bay. “She made quite a mess.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  “Don’t think so. She looked like one of those cases who spare-change people out along Granville Mall. Incredible hair—orange, pink, white—”

  “No!” Robin exclaimed.

  “Yes—and vivid red where her face got mashed.”

  “No…I mean…I know her. Knew her. Sort of. I met her today. She gave me something.”

  “Communicable?”

  “Ian, this is serious.”

  He jumped off the couch and bolted upstairs. Mrs. Peel was on her back under the dining room table, the robot trapped between all four paws, the head locked in her teeth. Robin crawled beneath the table and yanked the toy away. Mrs. Peel glared at him, then rolled over and stalked off, tail flicking.

  Robin sat on the floor, cradling the little robot in his hands. What did it mean? What had been the significance of a $9.99 bit of plastic, thrust at him by someone he’d never before met in his life?

  Chapter Three

  Thursday

  The story was in the next morning’s Province. T
he front page carried the headline DEATH LEAP in bold black letters, while inside, a hazy but graphic photo and several lurid columns took up half of page three. The dead woman was identified as Rosie Mladenovicki, age thirty-six, a free spirit who’d held down a number of jobs, the latest being as a telemarketing representative, one of those people who dialed your number from a list, read you a prepared script, and tried to sell you magazine subscriptions or carpet-cleaning services.

  “She was depressed these last few days,” a friend was quoted as saying. “She had just broken up with her boyfriend and was having trouble with her landlord. He wanted to evict her. She was visiting me at UBC. I only left her alone for a few minutes…”

  There it was, then. A clear-cut case. Robin stared at the black-and-white photograph of the crumpled body, eerily illuminated by the headlights of a campus patrol car.

  Eight stories out of a window of the Walter H. Gage Residences was a pretty final statement, he thought. He scratched his nose. Why had she been so insistent that he take the robot?

  He glanced across the breakfast counter at the toy. He realized he was treading the waters of pure and idle speculation here, but what if somebody really had been chasing her yesterday? What if she’d been pushed out of the window deliberately?

  “She was a spy,” said Anthony, scanning the article over his brother’s shoulder.

  “Yes, trust you to say that. Let’s try to keep a slender grip on reality here, all right?”

  “The robot contains microfilm,” he said, sitting down on the other side of the counter with his orange juice.

  “Of course.”

  “Really, Pooh! How do you think these things work? It’s no good smuggling confidential documents out of the country in a briefcase with TOP SECRET stamped across it in large red letters.”

  Robin gave his brother an amused smile. “Why a robot, then, Ant? Why not, I don’t know…an empty compartment in the heel of somebody’s shoe? Or a camera? Doesn’t anybody carry film around in cameras anymore?”

  Anthony drank his orange juice.

  Robin looked at the grainy photograph again. It gave him a funny feeling, knowing that the day before, this woman had been alive, walking and talking—talking to him. He wasn’t very good with death. Everybody he knew was still breathing, right down to all five grandparents (his mother’s father had died before Robin had been born) and a football stadium full of uncles, aunts, and cousins.

  “Let’s say, for the sake of speculation, that she was a spy.” Anthony was at it again. Patiently, Robin listened. “Let’s say the microfilm contains stuff on the Canadian government. Classified information on the care and maintenance of natural gas furnaces on Parliament Hill.”

  “That’s really good, Ant. I know I’d want to risk my life for something like that.”

  Anthony ignored him; he was on a roll. “Let’s say there’s all this classified information on the Canadian government and Rosie’s a foreign spy and she’s stolen the secrets and the Security Squad’s after her. She has to dump the robot before they catch her, or it’s curtains.” He cut his finger across his throat.

  Robin looked at his brother. “With microfilm on Parliament Hill heating systems? Get real.”

  “It’s a code.”

  This had to stop. If CSIS had been chasing Rosie, they might have been responsible for her death…but only because she was provoked into jumping. Canada’s fledgling spy network would never push a suspect out a window…would they?

  “There’s one absolutely surefire way to find out,” Anthony said.

  “About what?”

  “The microfilm.”

  Robin looked up.

  “Take the robot apart and see.”

  The robot stared at Robin with clear, unblinking plastic bubble eyes. He felt really dumb. He couldn’t believe he was actually going along with this. The boundary between fact and fantasy in Anthony’s meandering mind was often obscured by dense dramatic fogs. Microfilm. The only microfilm he was ever likely to encounter was in the main library, where they kept celluloid copies of old newspapers and journals stored in little cardboard boxes, half a year at a time.

  He picked up the toy. English majors weren’t, as a general rule, noted for their mechanical aptitude. He’d once taken a portable typewriter apart to see what was wrong with the ribbon assembly and had ended up paying a repairman sixty dollars to put the thing back together again. That, and a few excursions around the back of the TV set to hook up Anthony’s VCR, was about the extent of his handyman involvement.

  He ran his fingernail under the door to the battery compartment, flipping it open. The two AA cells tumbled out onto the counter. Robin peered inside the empty slot.

  Nothing.

  Maybe there was something loose inside the body. He held the toy up to his ear and shook it vigorously. No clunks. No giveaway rattles. He got up and rummaged around in a utility drawer by the kitchen sink until he found a small case of bright-handled screwdrivers.

  The robot’s body contained an ingenious collection of mechanisms, cogs, and metallic bits that didn’t mean a thing to Robin. Ruthlessly, he took them apart, laying them all out on the counter in the unlikely event that he would remember in what order to put them back afterward.

  Still no microfilm.

  A single large screw attached the robot’s head to its slender red neck, and this was countersunk and sealed over with a tiny white plastic plug. Robin dug in with one of the screwdrivers, worrying at it until the piece of plastic popped off.

  The copper-colored screw was another matter entirely; it wouldn’t budge. After several attempts sitting down, Robin got to his feet and wedged the robot’s head between his knees. Forcing the screw to give way took both hands on the screwdriver and totally stripped its star-shaped tip. Disgusted, Robin hurled it into the sink.

  Cheap equipment.

  He sat the severed head on the counter and stared into the sightless bubble eyes. Microfilm. Where would you hide a strip of microfilm? He’d looked everywhere: battery compartment, hollow arms, driving motor…

  The neck tube.

  He peered down the tiny hole at the top of the head. Too small, too dark. He went back to the utility drawer and sifted through the household accumulation of scissors, masking tape, and putty knives until he found an old pen flashlight, still working, though somewhat diminished in intensity. Perfect. Hanging over the kitchen sink to employ the additional light from the window, he probed the tube once more.

  There was something down there.

  He checked the drawer again, pulled out a fondue fork, and picked at the inside of the tube with one of the long, slender tines. If he could just hook it under the bottom of whatever it was…There. He pulled it out gently.

  Microfilm.

  “Anthony,” he called, his voice shrinking. “Anthony…”

  Anthony was not answering. Robin glanced out the kitchen window at the driveway: the Mini was gone. He’d be halfway out to UBC by now.

  For a few minutes, Robin leaned on the sink, holding the coiled roll of film in the palm of his hand, uncertain what to do next. From the outside, it really didn’t look very much like an item of top secret material. It wasn’t even proper microfilm. It was more like about a third of the length of regular 35mm camera film.

  He picked off the strip of masking tape that fastened the roll shut, and slowly unfurled it.

  It hadn’t even been developed.

  Well, he thought stupidly, that was the end of that. He’d just exposed about ten frames’ worth of emulsion to glaring daylight. No wonder the screw had been so difficult to get off. Whoever’d put it there had wanted to make absolutely sure it wasn’t opened except in the protective environment of a darkroom. And if there had been anything from the Canadian government hidden there, it was long gone now. What he held in his hand was a low-budget equivalent of the celebrated exploding suitcase.

  Ingenious.

  Anthony was intrigued. “Is it color or black-and-white film? Can you tel
l?”

  “It’s black-and-white. Color film has a shiny black emulsion—this is gray.”

  “Then we should try developing it. Don’t you think?”

  They were sitting at a table in the SUB cafeteria. Anthony was holding the little strip up to a window, as though images might magically appear with the application of daylight.

  “It’ll just be all black and overexposed, Ant. There’s nothing there, not anymore.”

  “The trouble with you, Pooh, is that you don’t think like a spy.”

  “And the trouble with you, Ant, is that you’re always thinking like one. There’s probably a perfectly rational, simple solution to all of this. Nothing to do with espionage, nothing to do with the Canadian government or furnaces on Parliament Hill. Nothing to do with anything even remotely top secret.”

  “Such as?” Anthony countered.

  “I don’t know. That’s the whole problem.”

  “I have a friend,” said Anthony, “who has access to a darkroom.” He looked at his brother. “I think we should give her a call.”

  Downtown, the traffic was horrendous. Robin angled The Wreck into a spot on the top floor of a multilevel parkade and trailed his brother down the steps to the street. Around the corner, next door to a Christian Science Reading Room, was a video rental outfit. Next door to that was a photography studio, festooned with large color portraits of poodles and toddlers, soft-focused brides, and important-looking graduates. Robin opened the door. Inside, the air smelled of cameras and developing solution. There was a woman behind the counter separating passport photos with a miniature paper cutter.

  “Giselle,” said Anthony, with great familiarity. “This is Robin.”

  “Hello,” she said.