Apocalypse to Go

Spare14 and Jan were discussing where to buy lunch. When they saw that I was waiting for them to finish, they both stopped talking.

  “Is there any chance,” I said, “of getting a world-walker to take us back to Four? I’ve got to go to my flat to retrieve something we need.”

  “Oh?” Spare14 said. “What, if I may ask?”

  “A set of world-walking orbs. They belong to my father.”

  Spare14 made a small choking sound. Jan goggled and fanned himself with the news sheet as if he felt faint. Ari allowed himself a brief smile.

  “I wondered,” Ari said, “when you’d remember those.”

  “When they became relevant,” I said, “and they have.”

  Spare14 reached for the telephone. “Let me just put in a four-oh-two request. That’s the second highest possible urgency level. The highest only applies if someone’s in danger of injury or death.”

  About twenty minutes later Spare14 announced that Willa Danvers-Brown would meet us at South Park. Ari and I went alone on the theory that two ragtag individuals would attract less attention than four. Since my mind had adjusted to the local lines of psychic force, and I wasn’t reeling from a botched Search Mode: Personnel, I figured that the trip should go smoothly.

  Although we walked fast, we did our best to blend in with the people on the street. Every now and then we paused to look in a shop window or to listen to a newsboy crying the headlines. No one seemed to pay any attention to us. I received no ASTA or SAWM until we reached the overgrown oval of South Park, version 3.0, and even then the warning felt muted and distant. I glanced around and saw a couple of teen boys in Dodger T-shirts sitting on a patch of lawn some twenty feet away. They had their backs to us, but they were the only possible source of the threat.

  Fortunately, we were leaving. Willa, dressed in her bright patchwork of torn clothing, was waiting for us on the dirty gray bench. When we sat down next to her, she took a blue-green orb out of her junk-filled shopping bag.

  “Nice to see you again,” she said. “They told me I’m supposed to stick with you once we hit Four.”

  “Good,” I said. “I need your opinion about something.”

  As before, the trip through the gate nauseated me, though Ari’s stoic expression never changed. From his SPP, though, I could tell that he was merely good at hiding how lousy he felt. What Willa experienced I had no way of perceiving without being hopelessly rude to a fellow psychic. The journey felt shorter, this time through, maybe about ten seconds in all. It brought us right back to South Park, version 4.0.

  “Let’s find a cab,” Ari said, “and go pick up the car. I still have the parking card Spare14 gave me.”

  “I’m shocked.” Willa grinned at him. “Old Sneak usually keeps that kind of thing clutched tight in his little fist.”

  “He probably thinks he does have it. I gave it back to him, then retrieved it again without his realizing it.”

  “You’re going to go far in TWIXT, Agent Nathan. I just have this feeling about you.”

  So Ari had other skills consistent with his ability to pick locks. Funny how you can live with a guy for a while and not notice details like that. They didn’t improve his driving any, of course. The whole way out to our flat Willa kept clutching her chest with one hand as if she feared a heart attack.

  My own moment of fear came when we pulled up in front of our building. The door to the upstairs flat stood slightly open. I ran a quick SM:L.

  “Someone’s in the garage,” I said.

  “Stay in the car!” Ari snapped.

  He slid out and drew the Beretta, took a couple of steps forward, then stopped. He laughed and holstered the gun just as a damp Itzak Stein walked down the driveway. I let out my breath in a gasp, which was the first evidence I had that I’d been holding it.

  “Are you guys back already?” Itzak said. “I was just washing some crap graffito off the front.”

  “What made you come out here?” Ari said. “Did someone break in?”

  “Someone tried, but I called the police when the alarm tipped my phone. More of that lousy Q wave, whatever it is.” He looked down at his wet white shirt. “You need to get a new hose. The old one leaks.”

  Willa and I got out of the car. I introduced her, and we all trooped upstairs. The alarm, Itzak told me, had signaled an attempted break-in on the lower flat, not the upper.

  “This time, though, we got a picture on the front camera,” Itzak went on.

  “I didn’t know we had a security camera,” I said.

  “That’s one of the things Ari and I installed on Sunday. When LaDonna was here.” He sighed and looked forlorn for a couple of seconds. “Anyway, let’s take a look at what’s on the hard drive.”

  The camera recorded to a DVD. The DVR linked to the TV in our living room. Willa, Itzak, and I sat on the couch, but Ari stood, pacing back and forth, while Itzak scanned through the stored images with the remote control.

  “Here!” He froze an image onscreen.

  Even in the gray-scale picture, I recognized whom I was seeing: Miss Leopard-Thing herself, in her long skirt and a human jacket, two sizes too big across the back to accommodate her three pairs of breasts in front. At her throat the silver chain necklace gleamed.

  “The Maculate psychic,” I said. “She came herself this time.”

  “The what?” Itzak snapped.

  “We’ll explain later,” Ari said. “Run the recording.”

  Itzak followed orders. Ari stopped pacing and concentrated on the screen. In flickering images the Maculate tried the door handle, then laid her claw-tipped fingers on the wood. I suspected that she was erasing the wards I’d put on the door, or trying to. All at once she pulled her hand away and spun around, glancing this way and that.

  “The alarm must have gone off,” I said.

  “It’s silent.” Itzak paused the recording and looked my way.

  “That wouldn’t matter. She’d still know.”

  Itzak started to speak, then merely shrugged and pressed play on the remote. Onscreen, the psychic ran down the stairs and out of camera range, but a few frames later a flare of light turned the screen white. The flare slowly receded to reveal the empty porch.

  “Illegal transport orb, what’ll you bet?” Willa said. “She ran right back to her den on Two.”

  “What?” Itzak said. “Nola, will you please tell me what’s going on? I won’t waste my breath asking Mr. Closed-mouth Nathan over there.”

  I debated, then decided that the simplest possible explanation was the best. “She’s a were-leopard,” I said. “She wants the stuff we’ve come back to get. She thinks it’s in that desk in the lower flat.”

  Itzak heaved a sigh worthy of grand opera. On the screen the recording continued to display a view of empty porch. Itzak hit fast-forward. We all watched the long sequence of next to nothing until at last a police officer bounced into the fast-forwarded view. Itzak shut the recording off.

  “I arrive a few minutes later,” he said. “Nothing more to see. Move along, folks. Et cetera.” He put the remote onto the coffee table, then turned to me. “Now look, don’t you think I deserve some kind of explanation? Sorry, but I don’t think ‘were-leopard’ really fills in the data fields.”

  Willa shook with suppressed laughter.

  “Has LaDonna told you about the job offer yet?” I asked Itzak.

  “Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Everything, that’s what. Are you going to take it?”

  “I’m seriously considering it, yeah.”

  “Then you know about the Agency.”

  “I wouldn’t call it knowledge in any certain sense. I’m inclined to believe what LaDonna told me. She doesn’t strike me as crazy, but you never know with mathematicians.”

  “She’s telling the truth,” Ari said.

  “You might as well join up, Tzaki,” I said. “Because by watching that recording, you’ve learned too much for the Agency to let you go.” I glared at him. “We have w
ays of making you forget. None of them pleasant.”

  “Oh, come on now,” Willa said with a snort. “That’s not true!”

  “Well, yeah, but it was really fun to say.”

  “I should have known better than to go out to dinner with you and Ari,” Itzak said. “I should have realized that LaDonna was an evil temptress, too.” He grinned at me. “Not that I mind being tempted. We skype each other a couple times a day, by the way.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” I returned the smile and stood up. “Ari, why don’t you fill Tzaki in? Tell him more than what you think he should be allowed to hear. Willa, come with me, okay? There’s something I want to ask you.”

  As we walked down the hall to the bedroom, I took a good look around. The only things out of order were Itzak’s suit jacket and laptop lying on the kitchen table, where he must have put them when he’d arrived.

  Although I had a paranoid moment before I got the wall safe open, I found the set of boxes where I’d left them. I brought them out four at a time and set them on the bed while Willa made assorted noises of shock and delight.

  “Sixteen!” she said when I finished. “Oh, my God, I’ve never seen a full set of sixteen before. Are these transport or focus?”

  “I’m hoping you can tell me that. I do know they belong to my dad. My brother, the one who’s missing, has seen them. They have a real affinity for him. They sang when he touched them.”

  “May I try?”

  “Sure. I don’t think we should open any, though.”

  “I agree. I just want to touch the box. Ah, here’s the blue-green. That’ll be the safest, because we’re here on Four already.”

  Willa touched the box with the tip of her index finger. No note sounded, but she nodded in satisfaction. “Focus orbs,” she said. “Tuned to your dad and his son, from what you just told me.” She took her hand away. “You need to be real careful with these. They’re worth a fortune. Maybe two fortunes. How did your dad get them?”

  “I don’t know, but I think he swiped them. The Maculate told me they were stolen property, anyway. Hers, I guess.”

  “Not legally. Maculates are expressly forbidden to own orbs.”

  “They are? By some kind of treaty?”

  “No, by us, the Walkers Guild on One.” Willa grinned at me. “The Maculates don’t agree, of course. Now, this spotted lady must have transport orbs, which means a supplier for them, because you can only use those once.”

  “No wonder she wants this set, then.”

  “Yes, but unless she knows how to retune them, they’re not going to do her one damn bit of good. What have you got to carry these in?”

  I rummaged through the closet and found a black backpack, but when I brought it out, Willa shook her head.

  “That’s got Giants logos all over it. We’re going to land in Dodger territory.”

  More rummaging brought me a shabby brown shoulder bag that had once carried my laptop, back when laptops were four times as thick and a lot heavier than they are now. The boxes just fit inside. The whole thing weighed far more than it should have, given the weight of the boxes themselves. When I slung it over one shoulder, I staggered. I flopped the bag onto the corner of the bed. The mattress groaned and sank an inch or so under it.

  “They think you’re stealing them,” Willa told me. “Better let Agent Nathan carry that.”

  “He’ll have to. I’ll never get up the hill to Sneak’s office hauling that around. Will they keep getting heavier and heavier?”

  “Nah, I doubt it. Usually they only have a single setting on the theft protection app.”

  I managed to haul the bag and the orbs down to the living room. As Willa and I reached the doorway, I heard Itzak say, “You wouldn’t lie to the bosom buddy of your boyhood, would you?”

  “Tzaki,” Ari said, “I don’t have enough imagination to invent all this.”

  They shared a grim laugh. I brought the carrier bag in and placed it on the coffee table with a grunt. Ari quirked an eyebrow.

  “The boxes,” I said. “They can manipulate gravity.”

  “They what?” Itzak snapped. “Nothing can do that!”

  “These can.”

  Ari picked up the bag in one hand, winced, and set it down again. “Apparently true.”

  “They access the curled dimensions. The ones beyond the macro four we see and move in.” Willa tried to be helpful. “On the quantum level, the gravitons emanate from one of the hidden seven spatials, you see. That’s why normal gravity’s so weak compared to other basic forces.”

  Ari and I stared at her like the pair of idiots we were.

  “I get it,” Itzak said. “So they can induce a flow of gravitons when they need to.”

  “Yes.” Willa smiled at him. “The associated AI chip holds the danger parameters that activate the effect.”

  Ari sighed his insurance adjuster sigh. I wondered if I should have been one, too.

  “Nola,” Ari said, “you did remember to lock the wall safe, didn’t you?”

  I turned around and hurried back down the hall. Sure enough, I’d left the safe standing open. I shut the door, then twirled the lock and replaced the Monet poster. Before I left the bedroom, I changed into clean underwear. When I changed the radiation badge over to the clean bra, I noticed that the blue line on the gel had spread over a third of the surface. I longed to take a proper shower. The shower in Spare14’s office had mold in all the corners. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my makeup with me. Washing off what I was wearing would put me at risk.

  I started to return to the living room. As I passed the kitchen door, I heard a whimper. Or-Something materialized on the counter and gazed at me with piteous eyes. Its snaggly brown teeth spoiled its attempt to look cute.

  “Hungry?” I said. “Okay, let’s see what I’ve got.”

  I found half a can of tuna and some ancient salads in the fridge and put those out for the critter. While I watched it chow down, inspiration struck. Aunt Eileen had given me a special pad of paper for grocery lists—not that I ever remembered to use it. I found it and a pencil and wrote a note to José, asking for his help. Telling him the address of the office, however, would put Spare14’s cover story at risk.

  “I need to talk with you, but I can’t get out to BG territory. Can you tell this critter to find me in your SanFran? I’ll be in North Beach off Columbus in a little while.”

  I wrapped the note in stale pita bread and held it out.

  “José,” I said. “Take it to José.”

  Or-Something snatched it, gobbled it down, note and all, and disappeared into Interchange, or so I hoped.

  Which was where we needed to go, even though I loathed the thought. I wondered if the Maculate could discern that the orbs had left the premises. I hoped she could, so she’d stay away. I could imagine her trashing the flat in a fit of temper. When I voiced the problem, Itzak offered to stay until we got back.

  “I might as well start composing my resignation letter for the bank,” Itzak told me. “It’s obvious I’m in too deep to get out now.”

  “Well, hey, I was just kidding. No one will do anything to you if you turn down the job.”

  “Oh, I know that. I’m intrigued, is the problem. I want to know more about these deviant worlds and Qi talents and all the rest of it. I’ll skype LaDonna later and tell her.”

  The rest of us were just about to leave when the landline phone rang. Since I received no mental overlap from any of my family members, I let the answering machine pick up.

  “Miss O’Grady, this is Mr. Singh, the realtor. I have gotten more complaints from the neighbors about firecrackers on the sidewalk and strange persons wearing cat costumes. I have explained to them that you are not at fault, but they do not seem placated. Please call me at your next convenience.” He clicked off.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea when my next convenience will be,” I said. “Poor guy. We’re probably taking years off his life. But that reminds me. Tzaki, that graffito—wh
at was it?”

  “Just some dirty words.”

  “Good. Look, if you see a black circle with arrows coming out of it, leave it alone. I’ll take care of it when we get back.”

  “Another mystery.” Itzak rolled his eyes. “Well, good luck on wherever it is you’re going. And I hope you get back.”

  “Yeah, so do I. I sure hope we do. All of us.”

  CHAPTER 14

  WILLA RETURNED US TO INTERCHANGE, then departed for her next job. The afternoon shadows had lengthened, and the entire sky blazed orange and red with sunset. On Market Street, when we reached it, a jumble of streetcars and patched-together automobiles honked and clanged. A uniformed policeman stood in the intersection with Second Street and directed traffic with a whistle and hand signals. He wore big white gloves like a cartoon character. Thanks to this legitimate function of Chief Hafner’s police force, we made it across safely and started up the hill toward Spare14’s office.

  Ari had slung the shoulder bag containing the boxes bandolier-style across his body in such a way as to leave his gun hand free, but the strap would interfere with a smooth draw of the Beretta should he need it. I had such a bad case of nerves that I gathered Qi for an ensorcellment reserve. I felt the same distant warnings I’d felt down in South Park, but they never grew any stronger or more focused, merely persisted like an ugly whisper in my mental ear.

  As we made our way uphill, I noticed that well-dressed people outnumbered the scruffy. They all walked fast, mostly downhill, looked straight ahead, and traveled in pairs or little groups. Workers, I figured, heading home for the evening, and very aware that the nights in this city belonged to the underclass, not to them. Some of the best-dressed women walked with beefy young men whose grim expressions and obvious shoulder holsters marked them as bodyguards.

  In all the blocks up to Columbus, I saw only one person who looked older than forty, a lifer with big money, I figured, from his beautifully tailored gray suit and his bodyguard. In the warm day, and thanks to the close crowd, I realized something else about Interchange. No one used deodorant.

  Now and then we came across beggars with radiation-caused birth defects: a man with no legs sitting on a square of wood with wheels, a woman blind because she had no eyes, only flesh where they should have been. Some of the well dressed dropped coins into their laps as they hurried on by. Others swung wide to avoid them.