I adjusted my posture fruitlessly. Interrogation by travel-agency security might be a pointless proposition for most, but for me it was definitely a positive changing of the tides. I nodded for him to continue.
The Levant are a curious breed, known for several millennia of regional conflict prior to the Last War. Most significant to my situation, their now-shared culture prohibits human teleportation. An artifact of religious edicts still in practice from the old days before the war.
Moti took another small, considered sip of his coffee, then swallowed. “Your fingerprints and irises match a man named Yoel Byram.”
“Yes. Joel Byram,” I corrected him. “That’s me.”
He disregarded my correction. “But your comms come up unregistered. Do you understand that I am curious why?”
Something about his broken English and calm demeanor terrified me. But I was also somewhat relieved that we didn’t have to beat around the bush.
Remember your goal: reach Sylvia.
“Uh, yeah,” I answered. “My comms seem to be on the fritz.”
“What is this word fritz?”
“My comms aren’t working. One minute they were working fine, and the next”—keep things close to your chest, Joel; you don’t know who you can trust—“I found myself at your doorstep.”
“Are you in trouble? Would you like us to call the police?” Moti asked.
“Yes, but—no! Don’t call the police!” I yelled, then quickly checked myself. Calmly, I said, “Look, there was this woman. Her name was Pema. She told me to come here. That you guys could help me.”
Moti took my answer in and reflected upon it for a few seconds. “Please, finish your coffee.”
I nervously sipped the rest of the warm black syrupy beverage, careful to avoid the grit at the bottom. I had briefly dated a Levantine girl in college who had taught me how to drink Turkish coffee. Since the drink is boiled rather than filtered, you have to drink at a specific angle and pace, lest the sediment in the bottom of the cup end up in your mouth—
As it just had in mine. “Ugh!” I spat out the bitter grit on my tongue—to the wry amusement of my host.
Ifrit reentered the room, placing a glass of water in front of me while Moti briskly yanked what remained of my coffee from me, then covered the cup with its saucer and flipped it upside down.
What the hell is he doing?
As he moved the cup around in his hand, I noticed his focus was on the sticky residue at the bottom of it.
Tasseography.
I’d heard of it before from my ex-girlfriend, but never seen it done. Reading coffee is one of the oldest cultural practices in the Middle East, dating back to the eighteenth century. One examines the coffee grounds left after someone has consumed a cup, studying the shapes and images that form in the dark grounds. From this, they can supposedly divine information about the drinker’s past, present, and—most relevant to me—future. Very cool, although one of the last people I might have expected to read my fortune from the bottom of a cup was the head of security at a travel agency.
Moti put the cup down and tsk-tsked. “Zaki!” he shouted. “Zaki, come. Bring the clipboard!”
Clipboard? What are we in, medieval times?
Almost immediately, another guy walked through the wall to my left. The seemingly solid barrier molded and bent around him like water as he passed through it. At first I thought he was a projection, but there was no telltale flicker. I was also curious why Ifrit bothered to use the door if she could just have walked through the walls.
Theatrics, maybe. What sort of travel agency is this?
The man named Zaki reached the table. He was tall and he had big hands and shoulder-length sandy-brown hair. He wore all black, a casual black button-down shirt tucked into tight black jeans, and shiny black loafers on his feet. His face was round and flat like a pancake. There was a gentleness to it, even through his stiff, thousand-yard stare, which didn’t waver as he handed Moti a thin metal clipboard. I had never seen one of those analog antiques in real life.
Moti grinned at my obvious surprise. “Sorry. We are a bit old-fashioned here.” He stroked the clipboard with a boyish fondness, his eyes sparkling. “I do love the older things. Paper and pen. Much harder to steal than bits and bytes.” He paused before continuing. “Did you hear what he said, Zaki?”
Zaki casually replied in a deep baritone voice, “Yes. I hear.”
Moti reiterated anyway, “He said people are trying to kill him.”
Zaki shrugged. He walked over to the printer and said, “Cigariot.” A pack of TIME cigarettes appeared, a Levantine retro cigarette brand coming back into fashion with the hip professional crowd. Zaki removed a cigarette from the pack, then twirled it in his hand.
Moti kept his eyes on me. “Yoel, I believe you.” Then, without shifting his glance, he asked, “Zaki, do you believe him?”
Zaki seemed to consider the question just long enough to make me shift uncomfortably. He twirled the cigarette in his hand once again. Fidgety people make me nervous. “Yes,” he said. The guy’s voice was so heavy, he might have been an operatic bass in another life.
Moti flipped through a few scribbled-on sheets of actual paper until he found one devoid of writing. “Zaki, pencil!”
Zaki didn’t seem affronted as I imagined someone of his build might be after being shouted at so forcefully. He reached into the long hair behind his ear, manifested a tan pencil, and rolled it across the conference table to Moti, who stopped it with his index fingertip and picked it up. “Beautiful. The origin of planned obsolescence,” Moti said, gazing at the writing utensil. “A sucker for old things, I guess.” He paused before continuing: “So today, where were you going?”
“Costa Rica.” He made a note on his clipboard. “My wife, Sylvia, was already there—”
“Your wife?” he interrupted. “So your trip was for pleasure?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s a vacation with my wife.” Another note. “She left a couple of hours before me.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Moti winked.
“What?” I asked, taken aback.
“I’m sorry, we travel agents, we see a lot of folks go on vacation, and you get a—shall we say sense—of these things.”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean—shit, man, people are trying to kill me, and you’re asking me about my marital issues? Look, I’m supposed to be in Costa Rica right now with my wife. I went to the TC, sat down in the foyer, and the next thing I know, people are trying to kill me!”
He cocked his head at me, curious. “Yoel, I have two questions. First, who is trying to kill you?”
All right, Joel, focus. Right now your needs are pretty basic. Don’t get killed. Get to Sylvia. The longer this guy interrogates you, the more time you have to think of how to do that. But think fast.
“You’re not going to believe it.”