Love on the Run

  “You really should have known that,” he said finally. “About our circle, that is.”

  “Look, I just realized something. I’m not the Nola you think I am.”

  He stared at me openmouthed. “What do you—ai! Wretched power circuit!”

  His voice faded, and his image disappeared. The black circle slowly vanished after him.

  “Crud!” I said. “I wanted to ask him about the illusions.”

  He might have known something about the attempts on my life, I figured, since he’d referred to “our enemies.” I sat for a moment staring at the blank computer screen. Out of our entire conversation, I focused on one phrase as the key to a good many riddles: “Nola, come back home.” When I told Ari about the exchange, he agreed.

  “As for the rest of it,” Ari said, “it’s a lot of sodding nonsense, religion. His strikes me as particularly odd.”

  “What counts isn’t the religion itself,” I said, “it’s his faith in it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Peacock Angel construct looks to be the dominant religion of his world. Or I should say, one version of that construct. I’ll bet he’s a churchman. They’re always sniffing out heresies.”

  “I take it he’s found some.”

  “Yep. The Valentinians for one. The Yaldaboath believers are still around, even though they died out in our world level a long time ago. He also knows about some form of Christianity. Huh, I wonder if the Peacock Angel church persecutes Christians? That would be a nifty example of karma in action.”

  Ari laughed his real laugh, the one he usually reserved for Roadrunner cartoons. When I considered how my co-religionists had treated his over the centuries, I couldn’t begrudge it to him.

  “So,” I continued, “I know now why I wanted to study all that material about the Gnostics. Cryptic Creep is one.”

  “Yes, and a member of that Peacock Angel cult. Nothing but trouble, that lot.”

  “Maybe. There could be more than one interpretation of the angel figure. More than one cult, I mean. I get the feeling that old C. C. here is a man who follows the Order principle, not Chaos.”

  I’d given Cryptic Creep his name because I had believed him to be a member of a dark Chaos cult. Now I was having doubts. His catechism, his horror at the thought that his version of me might be sliding into sin, his explanation of the arrow and circle symbol—they didn’t fit a member of some Chaotic nightmare mob.

  “Well, you’d know better than I would,” Ari said. “I can’t even see him when he contacts you. Very rude of him, I must say.”

  I had to smile at that. “I suspect that Cryptic Creep could tell us a lot of things we need to know.” A gloomy thought occurred. “Of course, I may have blown it by blurting the truth. He’s probably decided I’m not worth contacting again. The wrong Nola, that’s me. Somewhere there’s one of my doppelgängers who’s related to this funny uncle. Lucky old her.”

  Ari sighed and sat down on the couch. He reached for the remote control.

  “Going to watch TV?” I said.

  “If you’re going to do e-mail, yes.”

  “I don’t have to do the e-mail now.”

  “Well, it’s a little early to go to bed.” He looked my way and grinned. “Unless, of course.”

  “Unless what?”

  The grin deepened.

  “It’s not that early,” I said. “Let’s.”

  I got up, he got up. We met in the middle of the room for a long kiss. But before we went to our bedroom, Ari checked out the entire security system and put all the alarms on high. I sealed the doors with Chaos wards as well. As I told Uncle Jim, being a secret agent has its drawbacks.

  CHAPTER 2

  ON MONDAY MORNING, I woke early from a nightmare. Since I see visions, at times it’s hard to tell what’s an ordinary dream and what isn’t. Even if you’re pretty sure that what you’re experiencing isn’t a dream, it can be difficult to find its source. In this particular dream-incident a chunk of fallen masonry pinned me to the floor as flames crept toward me. I could see nothing but smoke and hear nothing but women screaming. I knew that in a minute or two I’d be burned alive. I tried to pull free of whatever had trapped my legs, but my hands slipped on a floor slick with blood. The agonizing pain of my crushed legs made me scream aloud.

  I sat up in bed with a yelp. Ari had already gotten up. Around me, the sunny bedroom had never looked so good. I even liked the sight of his dirty clothes lying on the floor. I got out of bed and washed the emotional dregs of the nightmare away in the shower, but its content stayed with me. The big question: was it a vision of something that might happen to me in the future? Or something that had happened or was happening to someone else? Or a symbolic presentation of arcane information from the Collective Data Stream?

  Ambiguity is a way of life when you’re psychic. I knew that. It annoyed me, anyway. I mean, if you’re going to face the possibility of being burned alive, you’d like a clear message on the subject. It would also be nice if you could see a way to avoid it. I wrote up the dream or vision or warning, whatever it was, in my private journal, but I decided that I’d wait and see if it proved important enough to send to the Agency.

  I did file my report on the shooting. I added the illusions I’d seen the night before. The Agency runs a site on the Internet for e-mail and a bulletin board, TranceWeb as we call it. Not only is the location secret and the material heavily encrypted, anyone accessing it has to go into trance to read it, a requirement that keeps the vast majority of hackers out. As usual, I found a long list of official e-mail waiting for me. As the head of the San Francisco bureau, I had administrative details to handle, mostly concerning things like health insurance premiums and official changes to the reporting format.

  As the day went on, I learned nothing about the dream but far more than I ever wanted to know about rivalry between various law-enforcement agencies. I could have directed a movie called, “When Bureaucracies Collide!” It began when Ari in his official capacity as my bodyguard filed a report with Interpol about the shooting. Ari also phoned his mentor, who was part of a top-secret unit attached to Interpol. They call it TWIXT—Transworld Interpol X Team—though they added the X only to prevent the acronym from spelling “twit.” As the name implies, TWIXT handles cases that cross world lines, that is, they’re responsible for tracking down criminals who operate on more than one deviant level.

  Although Ari had applied to join TWIXT, he had an important bureaucratic step left to take. That morning his mentor, Austin Spare14, gave him the news he’d been waiting for.

  “My qualifying examination’s finally been scheduled,” Ari told me. “Tomorrow. They certainly don’t give you time to worry over these things, do they? There’s a difficulty. It’s being held on a different world level, not here on ours.”

  “Which?”

  “Terra One, Spare’s own home world. It should be quite interesting to see. When I told him that you’d been attacked, he said he’d get clearance for you to accompany me. I’m not leaving you unguarded.”

  “Thank you! I’ll tell the Agency.”

  That’s when the trouble started. About ten minutes after I’d sent the e-mail, my handler’s secretary called to set up a trance appointment. Immediately, she said, if at all possible, which meant that the situation was serious. I told her yes, then hung up the landline.

  “I don’t like this,” I told Ari. “We know that the higher-ups want the liaison with TWIXT to go through. But Y really hates the idea.”

  Even though I’ve worked with this handler for years, I only know him as Y.

  “If he sees it as a threat to his authority,” Ari said, “you’ll have to be very careful in what you say.”

  “You bet. Walking on eggs is in order.”

  I grabbed a notebook and a ballpoint pen from my desk to record any automatic writing I received while in trance. For privacy’s sake, I went into the bedroom because at times I speak aloud during trance. I knew that Y would resen
t it if he thought Ari could overhear. I lay down on the bed and let myself drift into the proper frame of mind.

  During these sessions I seem to be sitting in a chair in the middle of a gray mist. Another chair appears in front of me, and Y walks out of the mist to sit down in it. His image mirrors his physical self, he tells me, a middle-aged Japanese-American man, very distinguished, with silver streaks in his black hair. Since I’ve never actually seen him in the flesh, I have to take his word for that, but I tend to believe him. That particular morning I could tell that he was angry the minute his image walked into view. He sat down in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You don’t want me to go to a deviant world level in the company of a couple of TWIXT agents.”

  “Damn right, I don’t!” Y glared at me. “The higher-ups may be taken with these people, but I think we should be more cautious. This offer of liaison sounds good, but we haven’t properly researched them yet.”

  “Caution is always good, yeah, but I’ve worked with Spare14 now, and I know he’s trustworthy. Honorable, even, in his way.”

  Y’s expression turned sour. “Why do you always refer to him as Spare14? That strikes me as suspicious. Is he one man or a team?”

  “Just one man. He’s a clone, actually, grown from cells of the British artist, Austin Osman Spare. The fourteenth guy in that clone cluster.”

  Y’s image froze for a long moment. Finally it moved, and he sighed. “I should have known,” he said, “that it would be something outré like that. The advanced tech level of their society—that’s what’s intrigued our higher-ups. They think they can get some futuristic gadgets from these people.”

  “They probably can. I’ve seen some amazing communication devices, like I’ve told you in my reports.”

  Y made a snarling sound, and his image froze again. I waited until it moved.

  “I’ve already had one series of attempts made on my life,” I said. “Maybe two if that shooter was after me, not Maureen.”

  “Yes, I’ve read the reports. I’ll admit, they worry me.”

  “If I remove myself to a different world level, it’s bound to throw the assassin off my trail, at least for a while.”

  “That’s a good point.” Y drummed his fingers on his knee while he considered. “We certainly can’t have you left on your own without a bodyguard, and it would take too long to find a temporary replacement for Nathan. We’d have to go through TWIXT for that anyway, I suppose.”

  “We couldn’t even be sure that the replacement was completely trustworthy. We know that Nathan is.”

  “Yes, that’s true. Congratulations on your engagement, by the way. Just never marry him. He’s not an American citizen.”

  “I have no intention of doing that, don’t worry.”

  “Good.” He continued thinking and drumming. Finally he shrugged. “I can’t give you an answer now. I have to conference with the higher-ups. I don’t want you going in any official capacity. You work for the Agency, not their outfit!”

  “I know that, you know that, but best of all, they know that.”

  Y scowled again and disappeared. I shut down, woke up, and sat up to see what kind of automatic writing my hand had scribbled while I’d been in trance. Not much—only the word “careful” in big letters. Perhaps my hand had written that word because there was a giant squid in the bedroom. To be precise, a large silvery cephalopod was hovering over the dresser about six feet away. It stared at me with one yellow eye and made a gurgling noise.

  It looked so solid, with its clustered tentacles and long, torpedo-shaped body, that I figured it had to be a Chaos creature rather than a mere projected image. I sketched a Chaos ward in the air with one hand and sailed it straight for the beast. It scooted to one side but too slowly. The ward smacked it right in the eye. It shattered into a cluster of squid chips, which dissolved and vanished.

  Chaotic, all right. Yuck! I got up and shuddered.

  When I returned to the living room, I found Ari standing by the bay window, Beretta in hand. Not to shoot anyone, I’m glad to say, but to study the street. He usually wore his shoulder holster even at home. Every hour or so he’d make the rounds of the windows in our flat and peer out, looking for any sign of anything unusual that might presage trouble.

  “How was the session?” Ari said.

  “Sticky. Y does not want to agree to let me go.”

  Ari sighed and holstered the Beretta. “I’ll just give Spare14 a ring, then.”

  Ari went into the bedroom to talk in private. When he got off the phone, though, he immediately passed intel on to me.

  “Y may be doubly suspicious because of the situation with Michael,” Ari said. “Spare14 admitted that TWIXT would very much like to recruit him. So, of course, would the Agency.”

  “Has Spare actually done anything like contact my aunt?” Eileen was Michael’s legal guardian for a variety of complex reasons.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. He admitted that it was a mistake. Apparently, she told the Agency representative about it, honest soul that she is.”

  “Honest like hell! I bet she’s playing one against the other to get the best deal she can for Michael’s college fund. You’ve never seen her bargaining for vintage clothes at a flea market. I have. It can be scary.”

  “I see.” Ari pondered this for a moment. “It’s rather a moot point, though. Will Michael even be able to go to college? He’s not done well at all in his secondary school.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Eileen’s taken him out of school altogether. He’ll have to get his diploma by examination. California has that program, the GED.” I grinned at him. “Father Keith has volunteered to do home schooling for Mike and Sophie. Mike will end up working his butt off, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer little brother.”

  “Serve him right, yes.” He paused to reach up and finger the minimally longish hair above his collar. “You know I really need a haircut.”

  “I like it that length.”

  “It’s too shaggy. I don’t want to look like a hippie.”

  “Ari, darling, you could never look like a hippie no matter how hard you tried.”

  He glowered. I sighed.

  “Okay, I’ll call Maureen,” I said. “That’s how she’s been earning her living. Cutting hair.”

  When I phoned her, Maureen had nothing better to do than earn twenty-five bucks. I insisted that we’d pay her for the trim. We drove over to Diamond Heights and my mother’s apartment in a fairly new, nicely designed complex right across the street from a small park. She had a two-bedroom place in a pleasant wood-shingled building with plenty of windows and a view from the living room of eastern San Francisco. Dad let us in, then went back to playing Chinese Checkers with Cattie and Bren. I took a good look around. Thanks to the unpleasantness between us, I’d never seen my mother’s apartment before. Her taste ran to severe Scandinavian furniture in muted yellows and browns, but she compensated by scattering framed family photos and silver knickknacks on every available surface.

  “The kids are going stir crazy,” Maureen said. “But I’m terrified to let them go outside. They can see those swings and the jungle gym from the window, but I won’t let them go over there to play.”

  “Good,” Ari said. “It’s a common form of revenge, in these cases, for the man to kidnap the woman’s children.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Maureen turned pale, but her voice stayed steady. “Come into the kitchen. I’ve set up in there.”

  Maureen gave Ari a really good haircut—the one he wanted, shorter than I thought it needed to be. She was just sweeping up when her cell phone rang. She took it out of her shirt pocket but waited till the caller ID displayed before she answered.

  “Hi, Mom!” she said. “What’s up?” She paused. “Today? Okay, I’ll get ready to go. A suit would be best, huh? Yeah, thought so. See you soon.” She clicked off. “Mom’s found a lawyer already. We’re going to go and get the restraining ord
er.”

  “From what I’ve heard, you really need a lawyer,” I said.

  Ari nodded his agreement.

  “You bet,” Maureen continued. “I checked it out online last night. The worst part is you’re supposed to tell the guy that you’re asking for the order.”

  “What? You mean you tell him so he can come beat you up and stop you from doing it. Who wrote that law?”

  “A man, obviously.” Maureen hesitated, considering me. “I guess you don’t want to be here when Mom arrives. She’s on her way.”

  I reached for my shoulder bag and stood up. Ari joined me.

  “Anyway,” Maureen went on. “I’ll leave the kids with Dad. They should be safe enough inside.”

  Ari and I were just leaving when I saw my mother drive up in her little blue sedan and park in front of the building. I froze in the doorway, then decided it would be better to face her in the open air. If something unpleasant happened, I didn’t want the kids upset. We stepped outside and walked down the short concrete path to the sidewalk. Mom finished locking up the car, turned, and saw me. She’s a tiny woman, about five feet two and slender, with an auburn wash over her hair to hide the gray. That morning she was wearing a navy blue skirt and a frilly white blouse. She paused to look me over with her usual piercing glare and little twist of a smile. Cataloging all my flaws, I figured. It’s kind of a hobby with her.

  “Hi,” I said. “Mo was just cutting Ari’s hair.”

  “It needed it, yeah,” Mom said. “Did you pay her?”

  “Of course,” Ari snapped.

  They scowled at each other while I felt a strong danger warning—not from them, but from close by.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Chuck’s around here somewhere.”

  Ari reached under his jacket for the Beretta. I’d expected Mom to argue, to tell me that I was being stupid, that I couldn’t possibly know. I’d misjudged her. She knew that her grandchildren’s safety was at stake.

  “Where?” she said. “What direction?”