Love on the Run

  He winced and scowled. “Oh, I suppose so!” he said eventually. “I’ve always preferred to ignore them, but doubtless you’re right.”

  “She told me some very interesting things. Say, do you know anything about the Beni Elohim?”

  “I’ve heard the name. They appear in the Tanakh, don’t they?”

  “In Genesis, yeah, but she suggested I look in one of the apocryphal books for more information. All Genesis says is that they were angels who mated with the daughters of men. My girlfriends and I giggled about it when we came across it in religion class. We wondered what it would have felt like, if we’d been some of the women, I mean, all those feathery wings and stuff. Sister Peter Mary gave us all demerits.”

  “I should think so!” Ari paused for a sip of coffee. “Don’t you ever think of anything besides sex?”

  “It’s your own fault. You’re the one who’s so good in bed.”

  He blushed scarlet.

  “Have a nice talk with your mom?” I mentally chalked up a point for me and changed the subject.

  “Yes, quite. She approves of you, by the way. She even promised she’d fly over for the wedding. Well, if we ever do marry. Eventually.”

  I screamed. Ari muttered his grim chuckle. Point to him!

  “I’m going to call Spare14,” he said. “I hope he’ll have some concrete information for us about today.”

  “So do I. I’d better see if Y’s answered the e-mail I sent him last night.”

  Ari took his coffee back into the kitchen to make his phone call. I logged back onto TranceWeb and found no answer from Y. As far as the e-mail program knew, he hadn’t even read my missive of the night before. I considered deleting the original and substituting a milder version, but in the end I left it the way I’d written it. I wanted to be forceful. Somewhere in my back brain I had the feeling that getting official status could be extremely important. I decided to call the office, in fact, and see if I could get a trance appointment, only to have the secretary tell me that Y had taken a “personal leave” day thanks to “stress.”

  “Does this have something to do with the liaison question?” I said.

  “You guessed it, honey,” she said. “Gosh, you must be psychic.”

  She laughed. I didn’t. I thanked her and hung up. The situation wasn’t serious enough for me to use our psychic emergency frequency. My one hope: Y sometimes worked through holidays, though if he was stressed because of the TWIXT offer, I doubted if he’d read e-mail from me on his day off. I was scowling at the computer monitor when Ari returned.

  “They want us back on Six,” he announced. “HQ are shutting down the TWIXT office there, and the S.I. wants that memorial envelope shipped down to L.A. We also need to take your fingerprints in front of witnesses, so they can be eliminated in the dust-out.” He glared. “Why did you pick it up like that?”

  I should have used a tissue or handkerchief. I knew that. “I’m afraid,” I said eventually, “that’s how my talents work sometimes. When I come across important information, my hands itch. I grabbed that envelope because I knew it was relevant.”

  “If it’s relevant. That’s what the S.I. needs to find out.”

  “Okay.” I decided against arguing the point. “I wonder if Izumi has a police record, maybe under her real name.”

  “Um, real name?”

  “Well, it could be Izumi, I guess, but do you know what that name means in Japanese?”

  “No. I’m afraid I’m utterly ignorant about Asian languages.”

  “It’s the word for fountain.” I smiled. “I think it might be her working name, not what her parents gave her.” Saying the word “parents” made my mind twitch. “We know that the Axeman is Ash’s dad, which explains why Ash is in the gang. I wonder what Izumi’s story is?”

  “Any girl raised on Interchange is at risk for criminal behavior, I should think. They probably run an even higher risk of being a victim of it.”

  “Unfortunately, yeah. When is the world-walker due at Spare 14’s?”

  “Soon.” He glanced at his watch. “Around nine-thirty, he told me.”

  “I should get dressed.” I paused to yawn. “God, I’m sick of all this level-hopping. I feel like one of those electrons, y’know, bouncing around from atomic orbit to orbit.”

  “More or less, we are. That’s one of the analogies the study guides give. The world levels are called levels because they have a certain similarity to atomic orbits. World-walkers can transfer their wave packets up or down the levels as needed. Their home level, the one they were born on, functions like the most stable orbit, the innermost.”

  He’d just shared TWIXT intel with me. I smiled at him fondly and said, “Thank you.”

  “Not at all,” Ari said. “You need to try to eat before we leave. And let’s take one of those power bar things along with us. You’ve skipped lunch too many days in a row now.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll need the energy. Sometimes I feel like we’re the ones on the run, not the perps.”

  Before we left, I checked my e-mail. Still nothing from Y. I also sent Annie a note, telling her that we were off and running again, and to contact the head office if anything Chaotic happened while I was gone.

  We arrived at Spare14’s office just as Willa did. She and her shopping bag both were filled with gloom over the prospects of getting us back to Terra Six. The shopping bag held extra orbs. Her mind held new information about the gates. The Guild had spent the previous evening running arcane diagnostics.

  “Something’s real wrong with Six,” Willa said. “We tried going in from a good strong gate on One. Very difficult. We did make it, and we made it back, but the president’s just declared that gate off limits till further notice. It used to lead into New York City, but who knows where it’ll go in a day or two?”

  “Good God!” Spare14 said. “Is there a chance it’ll repair itself?”

  “There’s always a chance. A real small one, in this case.” Willa turned to me. “It’s probably about as big as the chance your father will agree to work with the TWIXT division.”

  I held up my thumb and forefinger with about a quarter inch between them.

  Willa nodded her agreement. “We hope he’ll join the other Guild projects, anyway. We’ve got a research division.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ari said. “I thought your Guild was part of TWIXT.”

  “TWIXT would sure like to think so.” Willa’s voice drawled with irony.

  Spare14 pushed out a weak smile and glanced out a nearby window. Another damn layer of bureaucratic infighting! I kept that thought to myself.

  “I’m hoping we can at least get O’Brien—I mean O’Grady—Flann, that is—to do some research with the Guild,” Willa continued. “He’ll have to recover from being inside for so long first.”

  Spare14 began examining his striped tie for nonexistent gravy spots.

  “Dad’s tough,” I said. “He’ll recover sooner than later. I think getting back to Guild work could be the best thing for him.”

  “Good.” Willa smiled at me. “You know him better than any of us do. Can I pass that opinion along?”

  “Sure, as long as they know it’s just an opinion.”

  “They will. I’ll see to it.” Willa stood up. “Let’s get out to the Six overlap site. I want to get this over with. I warn you, though. If it’s not safe to go through, we’re not going. Let me give you the extra orbs now in case we can get through. Getting out again—you might have to throw two at once. Try using just one first. If that doesn’t work, throw two and pray.”

  I could feel Ari’s twinge of fear, quickly stifled, at what failure might mean. I was terrified myself. I put the extra orbs in my shoulder bag, which was filling up fast. I’d brought my crayons along as well as the packet of evidence we were delivering. That day, I wore a plain blue shirt and gray jacket, along with a pair of gray slacks that really were getting tight, so I took my sharp-cornered ID out of my pants pocket and put that in an
inside pocket of the bag.

  We drove over to McLaren Park and left the Saturn, locked and alarmed, on a side street just outside. A grim-faced Willa led us up the hill to the overlap site. Despite her fears, thanks to a transport orb as well as her focus, we did get through to Six successfully. As she was leaving, though, she warned us not to stay too long.

  “I can’t guarantee what this overlap’s going to do,” she said. “Or if any of the gates to Six will still be stable in a couple of days. I keep wondering if the terrorists on this level are doing something to disrupt them, but that may be too simple an answer. We don’t really understand how the multiverse works sometimes.”

  “How reassuring,” Ari said, “but yes, so I’ve noticed.”

  Willa held up her violet orb and vanished.

  Before we left the overlap site, I ran scans. Immediately I felt the Pull, that deep close tie to persons who had to be doppelgängers of my family members. I sealed it off before proceeding to the various types of Search Mode. I ran them all, Personnel, Danger, Location.

  “Nothing in the immediate vicinity that concerns us,” I told Ari.

  We’d walked maybe five yards when I ran into a scar on the time stream, a ripple of horror across the sunny day. I stopped and held up one hand to warn Ari. Fresh danger? No, it had happened, it had ended, but yes, the consequences surged and throbbed all around us. Danger—distant but overwhelming—fire, screaming, smoke—and—oh, God—the noise, the screaming, the sound of flames, and the booming crash of slabs of concrete falling, shattering— I let out a moan.

  “Nola!” Ari grabbed me by the shoulders. “What—”

  “Another bombing.” I could barely speak. “We’ve got to get down to the others. Fast!”

  CHAPTER 10

  ALTHOUGH A PLACARD in the lobby announced that the TWIXT office had closed, the security guards recognized us and let us through to the elevators. We stepped off on the second floor to find the door to the office locked. Ari took out his black TWIXT communicator and beeped a few buttons. In a minute or two de Vere opened up. I could feel his anger and grief like hot sparks on my skin, an impartial rage at others, not at me.

  “Have you heard the news?” he snapped.

  “About the bombing?” I said. “Where was it?”

  “At the airport. It happened about ten minutes after JaMarcus got off the plane. I was talking to him when—” De Vere stopped and brushed tears from his eyes. “I heard the explosion. His communicator went out. I haven’t been able to raise him since.”

  I knew, then. We all knew. Any explosion or falling debris that would have destroyed Spivey’s communicator would have been close enough to kill him along with it.

  “Shit,” Ari said. That he’d used English showed how upset he was. “I’m so sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah,” de Vere said. “Well, come in. We’ve got to carry on. The truck’s going to be here real soon. We’re packing up files and flexies to go down to L.A.”

  Big white-and-green cardboard cartons from some shipper called Republic Express littered half the office floor. At one desk the brown-haired clerk was putting handfuls of low-priority papers through a shredder. He was a skinny guy in his early twenties, with a long face and a circular birthmark of some sort on his high forehead. When I realized that I’d never heard his name, I asked him for it.

  “Dave Rasmussen.” His voice shook as he fought with pure grief.

  Lupe Parra y Cruz came out of the room that held the safe. Mascara mixed with tears streaked her face. She carried an armload of bundled currencies, which she dumped into the nearest carton.

  “That’s the last of it,” she said to Rasmussen. “Tape that up when you get a chance.”

  Since neither Ari nor I knew which papers went to L.A. and which to the shredder, we couldn’t help sort. Ari did grab a roll of cello tape and begin closing up full cartons. I took the memorial envelope, still wrapped in Ari’s blue-and-white silk handkerchief, out of my shoulder bag and held it aimlessly in de Vere’s direction.

  “What should I do with this?” I said. “The evidence we found on Three.”

  “I’ll take that. I’ve got a special priority carton for it.”

  “Is this stuff going to be safe?” I handed him the bundle. “From the terrorists, I mean.”

  “We’re shipping everything by armored truck. With a security guard escort. They’re closing down their office upstairs, too. The credit union’ll be moving next. Their downtown office is safer.”

  “I see. What about your people?”

  “My wife and kids are already in America. Her sister Megan’s in upstate New York. Thank God they flew out last night, not this morning.” His voice choked, sweat beaded his face, and for a long moment he shook. He’d not quite realized the implications of their departure time until that moment. With a gasp he pulled himself back under control. “The dogs are at my brother’s over in Marin. He’ll pick up Rodeo for me, too.”

  “I’m supposedly heading home for One,” Lupe put in. “I’ll take Dave with me. If the gate still works. HQ’s very concerned.”

  “If nothing else you can come with us to Four,” I said. “It’s easy access to One from there. De Vere, I don’t know how you’ll get to New York now.”

  He thought briefly. “I’ll go to L.A. with the shipment and get a plane out of the airport there. It’ll be good to have another gun along, and I hope to God they try to give us trouble. It would do me good to take a few of them out.”

  Lupe started to speak, then stifled it.

  “Well, for God’s sake!” de Vere snapped. “He was one of the best men I’ve ever met, and now those warped stinking bastards have—” He stopped, gulped, and looked away. “And everyone else caught in the slaughter. My God! Women with kids!”

  “I know.” Her voice sounded steady out of sheer force of will. “I feel the same way, but we’re not here to add to the evil and the chaos.”

  I ran a quick SPP, but she’d used the word only as a word, not as signal to me. I could continue to assume that no one here knew about the Agency.

  “A question,” I said. “How many people work for the security firm and the credit union?”

  “Six office personnel for the security firm,” Parra y Cruz said. “Most of their employees worked elsewhere, of course. Twenty-seven in the credit union.”

  “So the terrorists would have killed thirty-three people,” I said, “to cover up the theft of the orbs? I’m assuming that’s why they wanted to bomb this building.”

  “It’s the only motive I can think of,” Parra y Cruz said. “And I’m assuming this is why HQ is shutting us down. How can you reason with people like this? Or even logically predict what they’ll do?”

  “You can’t. They think God’s on their side.”

  “The world’s most dangerous bullshit, yeah.” De Vere turned to me. “Let me take your fingerprints. We’ll enclose one sheet with the evidence package so they can sort things out. Or I will, since I’m going with it.”

  I sat down in a chair at the side of his desk. He opened a desk drawer, rummaged around, and brought out an ink pad and the heavy paper forms with their little boxes for each finger’s print. He filled in my name and the date with a pen. I held out my hand and let him ink each finger and roll them, one at a time, onto the paper. I’d had my prints taken before, when I went to work for the Agency, so I knew what was coming.

  “Jeez!” de Vere said. “You’ve got the strangest damn prints I’ve ever seen.”

  Sean and Michael had them, too, not that I was going to tell De Vere that. For all I knew, the rest of my family members bore the same mark. Except for Dad, no one else had ever had theirs taken. In the middle of each finger pad, the print showed a tiny, squashed oval. Straight lines, three on each side, radiated out of the oval for just over an eighth of an inch, then began to curve around like a more normal print. Ari leaned over my shoulder for a look.

  “I’ve seen something similar,” Ari said. “Not that I can rememb
er where at the moment.”

  “Squished bugs,” I said. “That’s what the guy who took mine for my ID called them.”

  No one smiled. De Vere wrote a brief note on the paper sheet and tucked it into the special carton with the memorial evidence. Back home, they would have digitally scanned the sheet. De Vere handed me a jar of lotion and a handful of tissues to clean off the ink, then got up and returned to his packing. I had a couple of tissues left over and shoved them in my jacket pocket without thinking.

  The landline on Parra y Cruz’s desk rang. Everyone yelped except Ari. Lupe answered in English, then switched to Spanish. She paused and put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “It’s the security people in the lobby,” she said. “There’s a girl who’s desperate to reach us. She says her name’s Izumi Hakura. She says she wants to turn herself in. Do you think she’s legit?”

  “I’ll go see.” I got up from my chair. “Tell them to hold her, but keep watch on the front door. Someone may try to shut her up with a bullet.”

  “If you’re going down there,” Ari said, “I’m coming with you.”

  “Of course. I sure as hell wasn’t going alone.”

  In the bronze box of the elevator car I found it impossible to run definitive scans, but I picked up no trace of nearby danger. When the doors opened at the lobby, I felt nothing but a distant threat that encompassed the entire city. At the security desk the two guards were standing in front of a young woman, maybe twenty at the most, with long black hair and ethnic Japanese features. She wore a pair of tight jeans, a discordantly pretty flowered blouse, and a black leather jacket. Her SPP radiated honest terror and a deep, gut-level disgust but not even a whisper of treachery. When she saw Ari and me, she began to tremble.

  “Quick!” Ari said. “Into the elevator.”

  She darted forward. He caught her arm and pulled her inside. I punched the buttons. While we rode up to the second floor, Izumi said nothing. She merely continued trembling. When we got into the office, she sank into the nearest chair and covered her face with both hands.