“Not too fast, though, Dad. I need to run a few scans.”
The drive out on Geary went smoothly, at least on the mechanical level. Although Dad hadn’t driven a car in thirteen years, the reflexes came right back to him. That we met barely any traffic on the street helped. My scans turned up nothing specific, but the closer we came to the ocean the more my feeling of dread grew. At the dirt crossroad that stood in for 19th Avenue, the dread crystallized.
“Sean’s in big trouble.”
Dad hit the accelerator. The wagon jumped forward. In a few seconds we reached a narrow street, partly paved, that would have been Point Lobos Avenue back on Four. He parked at the crest of an overgrown hillside that sloped down to the ocean beach below.
Once, here just as on my home world, Adolf Sutro’s mansion, a huge house set in a terraced hillside garden, had existed as a masterpiece of American wealth, the showplace of a self-made man. His staff had created flower beds and little groves, long lawns and flagstone paths. Sutro had imported copies of the world’s most famous statues, all of them made of the finest marble. I’d seen photos of the walks and stone parapets, the lacy white wrought-iron benches, and the utter bad taste of everything—the Venus de Milo stuck on a garden wall, a flower bed depicting an American flag.
When the Sutros died, both Sutro version 3 and Sutro version 4, they’d left the property to their respective cities. Neither city, San Francisco or SanFran, had the wherewithal to take care of it. Squatters moved into the mansion and inadvertently set it on fire one cold night. Vandals and decay gutted the gardens. At home, once the Great Depression began to lift, the San Francisco city government had hauled away the ruins and turned what was left into a tidy little park with spectacular views.
Not so here on Interchange, where depressions of all kinds had never ended. The area covered by the gone-wild garden looked twice as big as the park back home. From the street I could see the concrete foundations of the burnt-out mansion poking through the rampant shrubbery, a tangle of greenery that shouted “danger.” Although the others piled out of the wagon, I sat for a moment and ran SM: Location scans. I picked up a distant trace of Sean, but the collar stopped me from pinning it down.
“Bad situation?” Ari opened the car door for me.
“You bet. Someone’s in there. I’m not sure if they’re waiting for us or not.”
He swore under his breath. I got out of the wagon and took a good look around. A grove of trees, thick with underbrush, lined the street side of the gardens. In that riot of untended botany any number of enemies might have been lying in ambush.
“Here’s something worse,” I said. “I can’t find the Axeman at all. We know he doesn’t have the talents to hide himself.”
“Damn!” Spare14 said. “Perhaps he’s found some sort of interference device. Something that works like the StopCollar without having the drastic effect on the user.”
“Perhaps,” Ari said. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and I’m not even psychic.”
The men readied their weapons. I gathered Qi in a loose skein. Spare14 insisted that he take the point himself, the most dangerous position. Ari walked just behind him, rifle at the ready. Dad and I occupied the middle of the line, and the two patrolmen took up the rear guard.
It took some searching among the trees lining the street, but we finally found a dirt path in. We walked between a pair of headless marble lions, covered in graffiti, and under the twisted remains of a towering wrought iron gate, blood red with rust. Panels of scrollwork dangled precariously above us from sagging pillars. I heard a bird chirp twice, then silence. The entire entrance area, I realize, had fallen silent, much too silent.
As we walked through the gate, I heard a whistle off to one side and distant. Human or bird? I couldn’t tell. We came out to a long view down the terraces. Eighty years of neglect had let the trees grow tall and shrubs and weeds fill in between them. High grass, clover, and wild mustard, all of it drying out here in early summer, had turned the flower beds into strips of meadow bordered with bushes and tangles of weeds. Everywhere I could see fallen statues, some smashed to pieces. Graffiti, most of it foul, covered every exposed bit of stone.
About twenty yards in, we came across a circular area that once had been paved—a carriage drive, I guessed. The paving stones had kept down the weeds and formed a clearing of sorts. From it, graveled paths sloped down to overgrown lawns streaked with patches of tumbled stones and mud. In the troubling silence I could hear the distant murmur of the ocean far below.
“Someone’s cleared these paths recently,” Spare14 said. “O’Grady, do any personnel appear on your scans?”
I ran an SM:L. “Someone—something’s in here,” I said. “I don’t read them as hostiles.” I tried another scan and picked up half-formed talents. “Outcasts, maybe, people born with bad disabilities.”
“Well, we’ll do our best not to cause trouble for them.” Spare14 spoke loudly and clearly. “We do not want to harm the harmless. We’re only hunting a murderer.”
I heard rustling among the nearby shrubbery, quick steps fading away, as if a person scampered deeper into the gardens. Distant whistles sounded. Although the silence felt as thick as ever, I sensed another person approaching. His SPP radiated a desperate hope mingled with terror.
“Hold up,” I whispered. “A messenger.”
Among the tangled bushes and brambles a human face appeared, topped with red hair as wild as the foliage, then a pair of hands in thick leather gloves. With a rustle and a grunt a little person, his body a classic case of dwarfism, he parted the tangle and stepped out. He wore patched-together clothes of old denim. I went down on one knee to look at him eye to eye. He smiled, and his terror began to ease into simple fear.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Are you hunting the leopard man?” His voice was a pleasant tenor.
“Among others, yeah. Has he been giving you trouble?”
“He’s murdered three of us.”
I remembered the corpse in the meat locker that I’d mentally labeled as chimpanzee. Obviously, I’d been wrong. Miss Leopard-Thing traded in human flesh, all right. My stomach twisted.
“He comes from under the goddess,” the messenger said. “He must have a tunnel.”
“Is there a door?” Spare14 stepped forward.
“We’ve never been able to find it. If we had, we’d have blocked it.”
“Quite so. Well, if we can, we’re going to put a stop to it today.”
“One way or another,” Ari put in. “Thanks for the tip-off.”
The little person smiled, then turned and slipped back into the foliage. His hands in their leather gloves parted the brambles as if he were swimming the breaststroke. I heard a rustling, a footfall cracking a twig, then nothing, yet I could psychically tell that he was still moving away from us.
“A tunnel, again,” Dad said. “That must be where the gate is. I think we’d best hurry.”
He led us to a terrace that still stretched level and solid, thanks to the stone wall that contained it. More broken statuary lay among the weeds. The remains of rusted filigree marked the location of the once-white benches. I nearly tripped over a huge marble head, stained with rust and bird droppings.
“This doesn’t bode well for Diana,” I said.
“Oh, she’s not done too badly,” Dad said. “You’ll see.”
Since he’d scouted it out, Dad took us straight to the statue. Near the concrete foundations of the long-gone mansion, Diana the Hunter in her tunic and tall boots stood on a high plinth. She was about to draw an arrow from her quiver. A hunting hound stood on its hind legs beside her, caught in the middle of a joyous leap. Her marble gleamed, clean and polished. Someone had clipped the grass all around the plinth. Someone had laid offerings at her feet: decaying roses, candle stubs, a chipped white bowl coated with the red scum of evaporated wine. “The little people’s goddess,” I said.
Dad walked over to the statue. He paused and
looked up at her as if asking permission, then laid his hands on the base. When he swore under his breath, I knew he was confirming Ari’s bad feeling. I remembered the blonde girl again, slipping out of Mission House. If she was a fast walker or had a vehicle, she would have reached the Axeman in plenty of time for him to escape.
“Someone’s used this gate recently,” Dad said. “In the past quarter hour, I’d say, but that’s just an estimate.”
“I suspect we know who it must have been.” Spare14’s voice ached with frustrated fury. “I just hope he didn’t take the hostages with him.”
“Let me just see about that,” I said.
I walked a little way away from the group around the statue. A normal Search Mode: Personnel for Michael told me immediately that he existed on this world level and nearby. Ari hurried over to join me.
“I’ve picked up Mike,” I said. “I think he’s down under Playland.”
“Good. That’s one of them.”
I held up my hand for silence. When I sent my mind out in a call for Javert, I felt him answer. He was jetting through open ocean, heading for Seal Rock, while Davis followed along onshore in the milk wagon.
“I’m waiting for Javert,” I said. “When he’s close enough, I’m going to try overriding the StopCollar to find Sean.”
“Is that safe?”
“Of course not! Is it safe for you to go charging into Playland with that rifle in your hands? Are you going to do it anyway?”
“Of course I am.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Very well. You’ve made your point. Proceed as planned.”
I felt Javert come online, psychically speaking, that is. He told me that he’d achieved a good hover despite heavy surf. The moment that we joined minds, I felt a surge of water Qi flooding into my aura. I sat down on the ground, leaned against a tree to support my back, and drifted into trance. I drew up Qi from the earth until the view before me danced and shimmered like a drug hallucination.
GO! Javert said.
At first the SM:P threatened to overwhelm me. I felt as if I were falling a long way down toward water, the same water that would turn hard and smack me senseless when I belly-flopped.
UP!
I flew. Skimmed the water, arched up into the sky. Below me the earth spun and dipped. I sent out my mind for Sean and felt him clearly. My physical mouth opened without my conscious decision. Reflexively, I spoke aloud and told Ari what I was seeing.
“He’s in a tunnel beneath the statue. He’s caught there. Get Dad to walk him out before he suffocates.”
BACK TO BODY! SPY KNOWS!
I followed Javert’s orders and let myself glide down. I felt my body envelop me, warm and comforting as I came out of the trance. I heard Ari yelling the information at my father and returned my attention to Javert.
GOOD! I GO SOUTH. WAIT OFFSHORE.
Hey, I didn’t expect you to wait on the beach.
Javert rippled with laughter and took himself off-line. When I staggered to my feet, Ari caught my arm and led me back to rejoin the squad at the statue. Spare14 stood with a pistol in one lax hand and stared at the Diana figure. The two police officers kept glancing around them, turning this way and that, utterly gob smacked. Dad had disappeared.
Dad reappeared—not precisely out of thin air, but close. One moment, no one stood at the base of the statue, but the next, he did. One officer yelped; the other stepped back fast. Dad had one arm around a weeping, shivering Sean, still half-naked, still bound by the white gold collar around his neck.
“What happened?” Ari said. “Does he know where the Axeman is?”
“He’s not going to be able to give us a coherent story,” Dad said, “until we get this damned collar off him.”
Ari reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a glass tube. “Code Twelve,” he said. “Activate.”
A green line pulsed along the edge of the tube. Spare14 made a choking sound.
“Where did you get that?” Spare14 said.
“Davis gave it to me the morning that O’Grady arrived,” Ari said. “No one ever asked for it back.”
Spare14 started to speak, then merely sighed. Ari held one hand up under the collar. When he touched the metal with the tube, as before it seemed to leap off its victim’s neck into Ari’s waiting hand. He handed Spare14 the collar and, this time, the code tube as well.
Sean sat down on the grass in a motion that just barely missed being a faint. Dad and I knelt down to either side of him. Dad stripped off his denim jacket and helped Sean put it on.
Sean steadied himself and gasped out the words, “Where’s Mike?”
“I sensed him under Playland,” I said.
“What the hell? Why doesn’t he just walk out of there?” Sean leaned against Dad and kept on shivering. “He knows they don’t have me anymore.”
“I don’t know why,” I said. “I don’t have that much overlap.”
Sean shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “I just found him. Nola, this sucks. He’s got a gun. He’s hunting Scorch, and Scorch has a gun, and he’s hunting Mike. Hide and seek with guns.” He opened his eyes wide. “Mike’s looking for something, too. I don’t know what. Something important.”
Ari knelt down in front of Sean. “What about the Axeman? Where is he?”
The two patrolmen and Spare14 crowded close to listen. Spare14 took out his communicator, ready to pass on the intel.
“I don’t know,” Sean said. “Some other world. Look, Mike had everyone convinced that he’d gone Blue. He was glorying in it, he said, being rich and important. He wasn’t just the youngest O’Grady any more. The girls were all fighting over him, too. Nola, can our baby bro swagger! Even I believed him, but maybe that was just that fucking collar.”
“Sean!” Dad snapped. “Watch your language in front of your sister!”
“Sorry.” Sean flinched. “So this morning, the spotted dude kept saying something was wrong. Not about Mike, I mean, but the situation. Danger from wolves, Claw said, whatever the hell that meant, but the Axeman took it really seriously. When the news came back that the cops were planning a safe house raid, the Axeman figured that Hafner knew what was going on. He started getting some stuff together so he could bail.”
“You’re telling us he’s escaped.” Ari sounded quietly enraged.
“Yeah. Mike pulled a number on him, though.”
Ari swore in English, this time. Dad cleared his throat loudly. “Sorry,” Ari said. “Go on.”
Sean did. “The Axeman lied to his guys. To his gang brothers, for crying out loud! He sent them down to defend the houses. ‘I’ll be coming after you,’ he said, ‘with some more gunners.’ I heard him. He was lying through his teeth. But they went, the jerks. He told some other guys to go upstairs and keep watch for cops.”
“Upstairs is above ground?” Ari said.
“Yeah, in the ruins. So that left him, me, Scorch, Mike, and the girls. Not the hooker girls, they live in the safe houses. The gang member girls. Ash—that’s the girl Mike liked best—she’d been down in town trying to get a snitch killed. She came running back. That’s when we knew you were on the move, Nola. This black-haired bitch ensorcelled the knife man, she said. Mike and I knew it had to be you.”
I squalled but kept it short.
Sean went on, “So the Axeman said that’s it. We’re leaving through the gate.”
“Where is Michael?” Dad said to me. “Should I go after him?”
“No,” Ari snapped. “Too dangerous.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Dad said.
They glared at each other while I ran a quick SM:P and found Mike, furious but alive, still underground, still searching. “I can’t pin him down exactly,” I said. “He’s moving through too wide a space.”
“Yeah, it’s big, the complex, I mean.” Sean continued his story. “Mike tried to get him to leave me behind, or at least take the collar off me, but the Axeman was a little too smart for that. So we all start up the tunnel to the statue. Scorch ke
eps shoving me along at the rear. So Mike opens the gate. The Axeman and the girls go through. Mike tells Scorch to go through, but he won’t unless I go first. So Mike shut the gate. You should have heard Scorch howl.” Sean paused for a twisted grin
“But,” he went on, “It wasn’t funny when Scorch pulled a gun. I had just enough brain left to turn around and knee him in the balls, and Mike grabbed the gun. Scorch got away. He ran back down the tunnel. Mike ran after him. He yelled something at me about the collar, getting something for the collar, but I couldn’t figure out what he meant. I started down after them, but I heard someone fire a shot, and the ceiling started falling in. The gang dug the tunnel themselves, the jerks. It’s just dirt, no beams, no nothing. So I went back up to the top and sat down to save oxygen. I knew you were on the way, Nola. Dad, you’re just the biggest bonus in the world. I thought I sensed you, but I couldn’t believe it. I was praying the air would last.”
“And it did,” Dad said. “I’ll thank all the saints for that.”
“Me, too,” Sean said. “All of them. In alphabetical order.”
“If the tunnel’s collapsed,” Spare14 said, “we can’t use it for access. Damn!”
“Quite so,” Ari said. “We’ll continue with the operation as planned. Sean, how many men are left in the complex? Those guards you mentioned.”
“I don’t know for sure. With the collar on, I couldn’t make much sense of anything. Maybe three, maybe four.”
Spare14 had been relaying information into his communicator while Sean talked. He turned to Ari. “I just spoke to Chief Hafner. The raids went well. The safe houses are under police control. Oh, and there was no sign of the Maculate among the dead.”
“Very well.” Ari smiled with a twitch of his mouth. “Maybe we can rectify that down in Playland.” He turned to me. “Can you find Claw?”
I concentrated hard on an SM: Personnel. I’d seen Claw once, dashing down our front steps. He’d also eaten my doppelgänger, and because of that, I could place him as a bundle of energy, a pulse moving along Geary Street.
“He’s moving this way, as fast as he can.” I paused and felt his energy more clearly. “He’s desperate. There’s something he wants real bad. I wonder if his transport orbs are still down in the hideout?”