Apocalypse to Go

  I did my best to fill him in on thirteen years of digital progress while Ari and Spare14 fiddled with the router and the cell phone. They swore now and then in several languages. At last Ari smiled and held his phone to his ear.

  “It’s ringing,” he announced.

  We all fell silent, staring at Ari, until he grinned and spoke in Hebrew into the phone. I only recognized one word, “Tzaki.” It was enough, especially since they switched to English after a few exchanges.

  “No, I’m not having a joke on you,” Ari said. “You saw the footage, didn’t you? Well, that’s one of them… Yes, with the claws… What?… I have no idea if they’d cook you or eat you raw, but I’d rather we didn’t find out… Stay away from the flat. We don’t care if she claws the furniture… Yes, by all means tell LaDonna everything.”

  At that point Ari lapsed back into Hebrew, and I assumed that Tzaki was doing the same. In a few minutes he clicked off and sighed in profound relief.

  “There,” Ari said. “He won’t go near the place unless the alarms sound, and if that’s the case, the police will be there ahead of him. I don’t suppose our spotted harridan will risk meddling with the police. They’re armed if she does.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “A dead Maculate on our steps—that’s all we need! I wonder what the neighbors will say about that to Mr. Singh?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.” Ari turned to Spare14. “Do you have any idea where they’re finding the transport orbs?”

  “I don’t, no.” Spare14 looked faintly mournful.

  I felt my father’s impulse to speak, quickly stifled, and turned to look at him. He looked blandly back, as innocent as the morning dew, to use one of his favorite phrases. Neither Spare14 nor Ari had noticed. Jan, however, quirked an eyebrow and gave Dad a pointed glance. I decided to change the subject.

  “You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about what happened to Nuala, the girl who was the Chief’s mistress. You told me that all they found of her was one leg, right? I wonder if the rest of her ended up in a Maculate’s stomach?”

  Talk about a successful ploy—the others forgot orbs and looked as sick as I felt. Spare14 cleared his throat several times with a little gulp.

  “Good God,” Spare14 said. “I surmised she’d been murdered by a rival gang.” He cleared his throat again. “But it never occurred to me that she might have been eaten.”

  Jan went dead pale and wiped sweat from his forehead. Ari appeared utterly unmoved, but I could feel the cold Qi of rage pouring out of him.

  “That renegade Maculate with Storm Blue,” I continued, “the one that broke into my LDRS. He must have transport orbs at his disposal. I’m sure he’s the guy we chased off our front steps.”

  “Wait,” Ari said. “If he’s a world-walker, and he’s in the gang, why would they need Michael?”

  “You don’t have to be a world-walker to use a transport orb,” Dad broke in. “You trigger it by shattering the outer shell.”

  For instance, I assumed, by throwing it hard onto a sidewalk.

  “Thank you.” Ari nodded his way, then turned back to Spare14. “We can use this. When Hafner finds out what happened to his mistress, no doubt he’ll be willing to help us.”

  “A sudden change of heart,” Jan muttered, “about the CBI.”

  “Let me think.” Spare14 drummed his fingertips on his desk. “We need to decide how to approach him. Perhaps we should let the rumors circulate before we do. When are you meeting the leader of the BGs—José, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s his name,” Ari said. “At three o’clock. Soon, in other words. I agree about waiting to bring in Chief Hafner. For one thing, I don’t think we should try to follow up on the Playland tip till after I’ve spoken to José.”

  “I agree, too,” Jan said. “We need all the advance information we can get before we move into the ruins. Especially if Storm Blue have an ape-hunter in their ranks.” He glanced at me. “You don’t think he’s a professional, do you?”

  The memory of the meat locker rose in my mind. What I’d thought were chimp parts might well have been the remains of children. I nearly gagged but steadied my voice. “He could be a pro, yeah. If he is, what do you bet he comes here to hunt? The cops don’t care what happens to people who don’t have money and who do have physical problems. The outcasts, in other words. He can get away with murder.”

  “Oh, yes.” Ari’s voice was quiet and steady, but I could pick up his rage. “The helpless always make good victims.”

  The psychic atmosphere in the room turned morbid. And Miss Leopard-Thing, then, could sell his kills back at home. No wonder she could afford all those silver chains.

  Before we left, Spare14 gave Ari a wad of local currency and a pair of keys to the front door, a compromise, I supposed, to keep him from picking the locks again. I repaired my makeup and put more curl in my hair. I also told Dad to call me Rose, not Nola, and explained why.

  “All right.” Dad glanced Ari’s way and made a snorting sound. “My wild Irish Rose, eh?”

  “I’ve asked her to marry me a hundred times,” Ari said. “In any sort of ceremony she’d like.”

  I’d never heard him sound defensive before. It had a certain charm.

  Dad turned my way and looked at me with a gimlet eye worthy of Aunt Eileen. “I see that we’ll have to all sit down and discuss this later.”

  I felt a dark cloud of lawful wedded doom hovering over me.

  Rather than stay in the company of two TWIXT officers, my father came with us when Ari and I went to meet José. Getting to walk down a street with family, being outside without the StopCollar—it was all a grand luxury to him, he told me, even if we were on Interchange.

  I was too aware of the Chief’s bounty on Nuala to enjoy anything. Some of the people we passed stared at us openly, although I realized that most were looking not at me, but at my father’s gray hair. He looked poor, and he was a lifer—not the usual combination in SanFran. Still, every now and then I noticed someone studying me. I could practically hear them drooling at the thought of Chief Hafner’s reward.

  We walked over to Mason, then caught a cable car down to Market. We sat on the outside bench and clung to poles like the apes we are. I was painfully aware that I sat between father and boyfriend; occasionally they glanced across me to each other but never smiled. After a few uncomfortable blocks of this, Dad leaned back against the wooden bench and studied the passing view as if he were memorizing it. At the Sutter Street stop, he turned to me.

  “About those transport orbs,” Dad said, “it’s Wagner the Fence we’ll be wanting to see—that is, if he’s still in business. His establishment used to be just down the street from Lefty’s.”

  “Uh, Dad, you know this guy?”

  “I did a bit of business with him years and years ago.” He frowned, thinking. “The old man might well have passed on by now. Well, we’ll see.”

  The shop had indeed survived where Dad remembered it. Wagner and Son, Used Books filled the ground floor of a soot-stained brick building a few blocks up from Market. A big sheet of orange cellophane covered the front window. Through the orange glow I could see stacks of books, piled any which way on top of a table. A small brass plaque on the door read, “Mitch Wagner, proprietor.”

  Before we went in, Ari unbuttoned his denim shirt to reveal the shoulder holster, then held the door for me. It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the gloom. Dust motes drifted in the orange light from the window. Strands of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and swayed in the draft from the door. Dad went straight to the back of the store, well, as straight as anyone could walk in there, because books crammed the entire small store, on shelves up to the ceiling, in piles on the floor. Ari followed Dad, but before I could join them, St. Maurice appeared in the crowded aisle.

  “Libri,” he said. “Abest TTT. Specta, stulta!”

  He disappeared. Books, right, full of information in a place that had no Tela Totius Terrae, that is, no Worl
d Wide Web. I looked around as ordered, saw a shelf marked “Local History” and went right for it. I riffled through the decaying volumes and pamphlets fast. Even though my hands got filthy and itchy, I found treasure: Playland As We Knew It, a crumbling volume with blurry pictures, but pictures nonetheless. I hurried after Ari, who was standing at the back of the store with my father.

  They were facing the counter, talking with a guy who looked around thirty. At first I thought I was seeing Itzak Stein. Mitch was a short guy, kind of stocky but by no means fat, with the same sort of looks as Itzak, neither handsome nor unattractive, with thinning hair cut real short. But the smile—not Itzak’s charming grin—was a predatory twitch of his mouth, and his dark eyes stayed narrow behind his wire-rim glasses. He wore faded jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that once upon a time had been white.

  The son, I assumed. As Dad had suspected, the old man must have died. I picked my way through the narrow aisles between bookcases and dodged around unstable stacks of books. Mitch was standing behind a counter scattered with magazines. An old-fashioned mechanical cash register sat at one end, a gooseneck lamp at the other.

  “Remember me?” Dad said to him. “You were little more than a boy, the last time I was in here.”

  “Not real well, but yeah, you look familiar. A friend of my father’s?”

  “A customer of his, anyway. Years ago now, I bought some rare books from him.”

  “I think I do remember you.” Mitch smiled briefly. “You took a couple of items from the occult list.”

  “I did, the ones in Irish.”

  When I joined Dad in the pool of light, Mitch looked up and caught his breath. He went pale around the mouth.

  “Nuala,” he said in a less than steady voice. “Oh, my God! Nuala.”

  “What?” I put a snap in my voice. “What’s with this Nuala crap? My name is Rose, you sucker.”

  Mitch leaned over the counter and took a good long look at my face. “Shit,” he said eventually. “Yeah, you’re not her. Sorry. You’ve got to be related to her somehow.”

  “Maybe I am. None of your business, is it?”

  “None!” Mitch held up one hand like a Boy Scout and glanced at Ari. He focused a terrified gaze on the Beretta. “What is this? A heist?”

  “Not if you’re a good boy.” Ari patted the shoulder holster. “Jamaicans aren’t known for their patience, however, so I suggest you cooperate.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Information. You’ve been selling transport orbs to a Spottie, haven’t you? I know an organization that’ll pay me for a rat-out. Ever hear of TWIXT?”

  Mitch began to sweat.

  Dad joined in. “You don’t want to go inside on Five. Take it from me. I hear that slam on One is worse.”

  Mitch gulped, but he never looked away from Ari’s gun hand. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who’s the Spottie, and what’s he doing here?” Ari said.

  “I don’t have a name for him. He wouldn’t tell me, would he? He comes in with cash, a lot of cash. I’m not about to ask him where he gets it, either. I don’t want a faceful of claws. Get it?”

  “Don’t get stroppy with me, Mitch.” Ari stepped closer to the counter. “Unless you want a faceful of what I have on offer.” He drew the Beretta.

  “Okay, okay! He calls himself Claw. That name’s probably a pseudonym, though.”

  “Gosh gee,” I said. “Ya think?”

  Mitch made a sour moué in my direction. “Whatever. He’s got to be a renegade from Two. I don’t know if he works the meat market or not. I’d guess he does.”

  “Why?” Ari snapped.

  “He wants orbs that’ll take him to Two and then back here. He must have some reason to go back and forth.”

  “That makes sense. Does he ever ask for orbs to other worlds?”

  “Yeah, just lately he wanted a couple to Four. I had some, luckily.”

  Our world. Dad and I exchanged a knowing look.

  Ari kept after Mitch. “Is Claw Orange or Blue?”

  “Blue all the way. He came in here the first time with Scorch the Torch.”

  “Scorch vouched for him?” Ari holstered the Beretta. “So he’s linked to Storm Blue?”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Where are you getting the orbs?” I said. “From the cops?”

  “Not from any of Hafner’s men. If this guy’s a cop at all, he’s from some other force. I don’t know where he’s from or what he is. He’d kill me if I tried to pump him.”

  His SPP radiated truth and terror. “I believe you,” I said. “He’s not a pleasant customer, huh?”

  “No.” Mitch laughed in a high-pitched giggle. “Not pleasant at all. He comes in every couple of months, usually has a pair for sale. When I told him I had a steady customer for trips to Two and back, he started bringing those pretty much exclusively. I pay in cash. Honest to God, I don’t know his name.”

  “That I’ll believe.” Ari picked up the questioning again. “And then you get the word to Claw? How?”

  “I don’t do anything. He knows somehow. He told me once that the orbs call to him.”

  Ari glanced at Dad. “They could,” Dad said. “Which means he’s got talents of a sort. Most Maculates do. That’s what makes them such good hunters.”

  Ari considered Mitch for a moment. In a swift strike he reached across the counter with both hands and grabbed the fence by the shirt. Magazines plummeted to the floor. Mitch squealed and flailed, but Ari dragged him half onto the counter until they were face-to-face.

  “If I find out that you’ve told Storm Blue we were in to see you, I go straight to TWIXT with the tip.” Ari’s voice stayed perfectly calm. “Do you understand? They’ll take you off this level so fast you won’t have time to shit your trousers.”

  Mitch made a gurgling sound that amounted to “Yes.” Ari let him go. Mitch slid off the counter, got his feet under him, and began fussing with his torn shirt. I noticed Dad watching Ari in admiration. The dark cloud of doom crept closer.

  “I want to buy this.” I waved the Playland book in Mitch’s direction.

  Mitch merely stared at me as if I’d spoken in Latin. For a moment I wondered if I had. Ari took a dollar bill out of his jeans pocket and tossed it on the counter.

  “There,” Ari said. “Shall we go have lunch?”

  “A fine idea,” Dad said. “I might be back another day, Mitch, to look at that occult list again.”

  Mitch forced out a smile, grabbed the dollar, and gibbered an “Okay, yeah, swell.”

  So this was where Dad had gotten the Hisperic document I’d found in his desk drawer. As we left the store, I was thinking about how normal he’d appeared, back when we were all children, the hard-working construction foreman, the father of a typically large Catholic family, a superior sort of ordinary blue-collar guy. No wonder his sudden disappearance had baffled everyone for so long!

  “Dad,” I said, “you sure know how to keep secrets.”

  “I’ve always had to.” He gave me a quick smile. “I’ll tell you about Hibernia sometime.” The smile disappeared. “It would explain a number of things.”

  Lefty’s Hofbrau catered to the Orange side of SanFran. Orange-and-black leather upholstered the booths. Giants’ memorabilia plastered the dark wood-paneled walls: pennants, photos, game programs, and bits and pieces of uniforms. I noticed a Willy Mays jersey, lovingly framed under glass, and saw a couple of gloves signed by pitchers I’d never heard of. Both doppelgängers and individuals unique to the world level must have made up the team.

  In the front a cafeteria setup featured indeterminate animal parts in gravy and lots of potato dishes. The smell of heavy food made me gag.

  “I can’t eat any of that disgusting stuff,” I said. “You guys get what you want.”

  Dad shot me a sharp glance. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No. Dad, please!” I turned away to look the place over. “I don’t see José anywhere. They’ll pr
obably be late.”

  They were, and the minute they walked in, I knew why. José was dying. Skinny, bald, dead pale except for the thick crust of growths that covered half his face, he walked slowly and kept turning his head to see out of his one good eye. The two guys he’d brought with him watched every step he made, and they kept their arms out away from their bodies, ready to catch him if he fell.

  When I’d last seen José, about a month earlier, I’d noticed that the wartlike growths had crept toward one eye. They’d reached it and filled in the socket. His rock-bottom Qi level told me that they were sending tendrils into his brain. I recognized one of his two friends: Little Sam, who stood well over six feet, a barrel-big and barrel-solid teenager missing half his teeth. The other guy I’d never seen, almost as tall as Sam but slender, with dark curly hair and dark skin. His right hand looked normal. Where his left should have been he had only a smooth stump of wrist, too smooth to be due to an injury.

  When they sat down in the oversized booth we’d snagged, José introduced him. “This is Orlando. He’s going to take over the BGs when I’m gone. That’ll be in a couple weeks probably, maybe a month.”

  I had to admire the way he refused to hide from the obvious. I figured he didn’t want sympathy, either.

  “Okay,” I said. “You know Ari, and this is my father, and Mike’s, too, of course—Flann O’Grady.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” José held out a six-fingered hand in Dad’s direction. “Looks like you’ve been inside.”

  “Yeah, on Five.” Dad shook hands with him. “I don’t recommend the experience.”

  Everyone laughed except Ari, who smiled.

  “Lunch is on us,” Ari said. “Let’s go get in line, but I’m paying.”

  “We’ll get stuff for José.” Orlando had a pleasantly dark voice. “Sam, try not to eat the man into bankruptcy, okay?”

  Everyone laughed again as they got up and trailed after Ari, but as soon as we were alone, José let out his breath in a long sigh.

  “Hey,” he said, “sorry you have to see me like this, BG Sis. Wanna ask you, how’s Sophie? She okay?”

  “Yeah, if you mean her health, but she’s developed lycanthropy.”