To you, maybe, I thought. “One more question. If you get into TWIXT, will you still be my bodyguard?”
“I’ll insist on it, though I’m quite sure you’re part of Spare’s scheme. Through you, he can keep in touch with the Agency whether they officially link up or not.”
At one o’clock, Spare14 arrived. He was wearing a blue business suit with a white shirt and a diagonally striped red, blue, and yellow tie. He carried his briefcase. We all shook hands, and he sat down in one of the wood armchairs covered in maroon leather. The briefcase sat on the floor next to him. Ari took the couch, and I stayed standing.
“Nathan,” Spare14 said, “I’ll send you e-mail with details on the examination as soon as I have them. There’s some talk of setting up a special session to speed you through the process.”
“Thank you,” Ari said. “We’ll see how things go, then.”
“Just so. And my dear O’Grady, I hope you have some news for me.”
“The Agency’s taken your proposal under advisement,” I said. “The top people will be having a meeting tomorrow.”
“Splendid! I hope that your surrendering custody of the Belial entity is just the beginning of our cooperation.”
I smiled. “Let me hand over the calamari in question.”
I’d already removed Belial in his antistatic packaging from the wall safe. I’d bundled him with the camcorder and a lot of bubble wrap in a box that was about eighteen inches on a side. The box currently sat on my desk, but I picked up a sheaf of printed forms first.
“I have some paperwork to fill out,” I said, “concerning the transfer of the suspect to your authority.”
“Very good. I have some for you, too.”
It took us twenty minutes to finish all the various forms and to make sure that we each ended up with copies of the complete set. Ari signed everything as a witness with official standing. When we finished, I gave Spare14 the box.
“I shall be leaving this world level soon,” he said, “to remand the suspect to Javert’s custody. He’ll arrive on the level you call Interchange in a few days.”
“I’d been hoping he could come here,” I said. “I’d like to meet him, but I suppose traveling in a water tank’s kind of difficult.”
“Very, actually, especially since he requires a specially trained world-walker to assist him.”
I sat down in the other armchair. Spare14 unbuckled the straps on his briefcase, which was about two feet long and ten inches wide. Its mouth opened much wider, of course, but I was still surprised when he slipped the box inside without any trouble. When Spare14 buckled the briefcase shut, it remained about ten inches wide despite having swallowed an eighteen-inch cube. I tried not to stare. He sat back in the chair and smiled vaguely at me.
“So,” I said, “I’d like to ask you about Javert. Is he a seconded officer?”
“He is, indeed, and seconded from a very well-developed police force. Most members of his species are ordinary, law-abiding citizens of their underwater realms. I really should make that clear. The Belials are the exception.”
“Every species has its criminals, then?”
“Unfortunately, that’s quite true.”
“I was wondering if Belial was acting alone, or if he was part of a gang.”
“The latter. Javert has been tracking the case for years.” Spare14 put his fingertips together and considered me over the arch. “They’re thieves, basically, though I’ve never been clear about what it is they steal. It’s very valuable, whatever it is. The name translates as the Silver of the Heart.”
Interesting, I thought. The concept of stolen property had just popped up again.
“That’s a bit opaque,” Ari remarked.
“Yes,” Spare14 said. “Translation between any human language and the languages Javert speaks is alarmingly difficult. Their brains are quite different from ours. Their language concepts are, too, or so I’ve been told. For instance, ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ mean very different things to them.”
“But psychic communication’s possible,” I said. “I had a detailed conversation with Belial, and a brief one with Javert.”
“He did mention that.” Spare14 gave me his unctuous smile. “Which is one reason, my dear O’Grady, that we’re hoping to liaise with your agency. Your group appears to have a somewhat different set of talents from those we have available in TWIXT. Pooling our resources would be valuable to both.”
“Oh, I agree,” I said. “Unfortunately, it’s not my decision to make. Whatever this silver stuff is, I wonder if Belial was hoping to find it here on this world. If so, he’d need human accomplices for the actual heist.”
“Just so,” Spare14 said. “Javert’s planning on getting the truth of that once Belial’s two halves are reunited. Plea bargaining for information received is part of their justice system, too.”
“I see. If you could relay some of that information once Javert obtains it—”
“Certainly, assuming Belial is forthcoming.” Spare14 glanced at the briefcase where said suspect currently resided. “Now, O’Grady, I have a rather nosy question to ask you. Do feel free to tell me to mind my own business. It concerns your brother.”
“Ah,” I said. “Which one?”
“The youngest, I think. He’s the one who must be a world-walker.”
“Yeah, that’s Michael. Someone spotted him on Interchange, I take it.”
“You’re quite right. The someone was myself, actually. I realize that he’s young, and doubtless needs to continue his education, but we’d be very interested in recruiting him once he reaches his maturity.”
“I can see why,” I said, “but the Agency has already expressed the same interest. They’re offering him a college scholarship in return for a commitment.”
Spare14 set his lips in a tight line, then forced out a smile. “I see,” he said. “Well, we may be able to match that generous offer. The talents you and your brother display really do seem to be extraordinarily strong. Um, I take it you have other siblings?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I can’t speak for them.”
I smiled; he smiled.
“Very well.” Spare14 took a leather card case out of his inner jacket pocket. “Allow me to give you my cards. I meant to do so the first time we met, but your visitation from a saint—Maurice, was it? yes, Maurice—rather startled me, and I quite forgot.”
Spare14 studied his surprisingly thick card case before removing any cards. I took two from him, and he handed a pair to Ari. Each gave a different address, one in my San Francisco with a zip code, and the other, in a version of the city called SanFran, with the simple postal code of NE. The interesting detail, however, came after the post code. The address in my San Francisco included the designation “Terra Four,” and that on Interchange, “Terra Three.”
“Now, about that Terra Three office,” Spare14 went on. “You’ll notice that I’m not identified as an Interpol officer on that card.”
“From what I know of Interchange,” Ari said, “you don’t want to admit that you’re an honest police officer. Very bad for your health.”
“Oh, yes. The locals assume that I’m running some sort of exclusive numbers racket. Should you ever go to SanFran, could you kindly keep up the fiction?”
“Not a problem,” I put in. “You can count on us.”
“Thank you.” Spare14 nodded in my direction. “I’ll return to my office here after meeting Javert. If I may telephone you when I do?”
“That would be fine, yes,” I said. “World-walkers are in demand, I take it.”
“They’re quite rare,” Spare14 said. “People with talents just don’t seem to have those big families anymore.”
“Is that one reason for cloning?”
“Um, well, yes. But I really can’t go into details about that.”
“There are some levels, aren’t there, where world-walking is a crime?”
“Not so much world-walking in itself, but using the talent wrongly, suc
h as transporting criminals out of the jurisdictions where they’re under warrant.”
“Is that common?”
“No, certainly not, but it does happen.” Spare14 hesitated. “How do you know that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t go into detail about it.”
He set his lips tight together. I caught Ari suppressing a grin. Now that I knew Michael’s talents were so valuable—and I speculated that Dad’s collection of boxes would be, too—I could wait to bargain with Mr. Spare14. My father’s talent might supply another bargaining point if, of course, he’d agree to work with the police after spending time in prison. I had my doubts about that.
We parted with another handshake all round. Ari escorted Spare14 to the front door. I wondered if the various subjects of our conversation had left Ari wishing he’d been an insurance adjustor. When he came back upstairs, he admitted to feeling stressed.
“I was thinking of going to the gym for my weights routine,” he said. “But I shouldn’t leave you here alone. Come with me.”
I groaned. “No, I’ll be perfectly safe as long as I stay inside the security system. Spare told you that our prowler isn’t likely to come back, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“Ari, please! I don’t want to argue about the damned gym.”
He set his hands on his hips and scowled at me. I glared in return. Finally, he said, “Very well, if you’re sure you’ll be safe.”
“I am. Really. I can protect myself, y’know. Besides, I know where the alarm nodes are, and if I have to, I’ll punch the panic button and set everything off. The noise alone will send the criminals away screaming.”
Ari smiled, but grudgingly. “I’ll do a shorter workout than usual. I should be back in about an hour and a half.”
On this compromise, he grabbed his sports bag and left.
I sat down at my computer and filed the usual reports and took care of the usual e-mail, then logged off and shut down. Although I waited for a few minutes, Cryptic Creep never appeared on the monitor. I flopped onto the couch to think. Spare14’s mysterious briefcase had reminded me of something that had happened years before.
I needed to recover the memory, and at last, it rose. I remembered sitting on my father’s lap, which meant I was eight at the very oldest, and laughing when he showed me a secret drawer in his desk, the same one that I now had downstairs. What, I wondered, did he keep in it, and was that something still there? I ran an SM:D and felt no threats in the vicinity. I checked the clock: almost time for Ari to return. I decided, therefore, that I could go downstairs safely, even though I’d have to spend a brief minute outside on the front steps.
I got out of one flat and into the other with no trouble, nor did I see or sense any threat nearby. The downstairs flat, shut up for so long, smelled of dust and damp. I decided against opening a window, just in case a trans-world prowler came around while I was there. Dad’s desk, a heavy oak number with drawers on each side of the kneehole, sat in the oddly shaped antechamber, a tiny room with a big walk-in closet on the back wall.
I pulled up the desk chair and sat down to examine the desk. A solid oak slab about an inch thick topped it. Under that, a shallow drawer hung directly over the kneehole. It slid in and out in the ordinary way. It also ran across the entire depth of the desk with no room for a second compartment in back. None of the other drawers allowed for extra space. I got up and examined the back panel just to make sure.
Yet I vividly remembered Dad doing something one-handed underneath that central drawer and pulling out a secret compartment. Maybe someone had dismantled it at some point in the desk’s history. I crouched down to look at the bottom of the existing drawer. Not one mark or scuff indicated damage, not a nail hole or chip. I sat back in the chair and let my mind range back to the memory.
“Where is it, Dad?” my child’s voice said.
“Not in this world, sweetheart,” Dad said.
In the present moment I said aloud a word that my father would have slapped me for saying. At the time I’d thought he was teasing me. Now I realized that he’d told me the simple truth. The drawer doubtless existed in some other world or dimension, a place only he could access. Probably this meant that something very important lay hidden in it, not that it was going to do me one damn bit of good.
Michael, however, might have enough world-walking talent to find the mystery drawer and retrieve the important whatever. I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and called him. He answered promptly.
“You’re not in class, are you?” I said. “I’ll sign off if you are.”
“Uh, no. Actually uh—”
“You’re cutting school.”
“Well, yeah. I’m working on the map. I’m failing Civics anyway, so I figured I might as well just cut. It’s the last class of the day.”
I would have enjoyed yelling and lecturing, but they would have been wastes of time and breath.
“I’ve got something else in that department for you to work on,” I said. “But I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
“Cool! I’ll be right over.”
“Where are you? What about Sean?”
“I’m up by the Cliff House. I think there’s a gate in Sutro Gardens. Sean couldn’t meet me today, but maybe he can find it tomorrow.”
“You can look after you get out of school.”
“Sure. Uh, I’ll be right over.”
Michael appeared on the covered porch so quickly that I assumed he’d hitched a ride. I let him into the lower flat. The first thing he did was pull out his cell phone and text Sophie to tell her where he was. For an encore, he took off his down-filled jacket and dropped it on the floor. With his jeans he was wearing a short-sleeved orange Giants T-shirt over a long-sleeved red 49ers T-shirt, not what I’d call a successful combination. I picked up the jacket and hung it over the back of the desk chair.
“Sophie’ll tell Aunt Eileen,” Michael said. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“Good. Sophie has her own phone now, huh?”
“It’s the one Aunt E used to have. She never used it much, because it was too complicated or something, so she gave it to Sophie.”
“Well, hey, that was generous of her.”
“I thanked her a whole lot, don’t worry. And I took out the garbage without her telling me to. A bunch of times.”
“Good. Now look, bro, we’ve got some problems on our hands. One: we can’t trust Ari to look the other way if we end up having to do something that’s—let’s just say dubious—to get Dad home. So say nothing.”
Michael nodded and held up one hand like a Boy Scout.
“Two,” I continued. “Do not mention gates and stuff like that over your cell phone. All those calls end up stored on some server farm somewhere.”
“Ah, come on, no one’s going to go over all that shit.”
“You never know.” I fixed him with a stare one notch above the gimlet eye. “In the Agency we do not take stupid risks.”
“Okay, okay. I won’t.”
“Good. Now, finally, I’ve got some bureaucratic business to deal with here. I can’t leave to go traveling across the worlds, not even to rescue Dad, until this job is finished. If things do work out here, we may be able to get top-notch help for the rescue, but it could take months.”
“Months? Jeezus H!” Michael pulled a long face. “I guess you can’t tell me what the problem is, huh?”
“You guessed right. There are drawbacks to having a sister who’s a secret agent. Sorry.”
His SPP radiated a profound sense of self-pity mingled with youthful impatience.
“Now, as to why I called you,” I said. “It’s about Dad’s desk here.”
After I explained the problem, Michael sat down in the chair. He laid both hands palm down on the desktop.
“I feel something, for sure,” he said. “But I dunno. I mean, hey, wait!”
With his right hand he reached under the central drawer, then grinned. He pul
led out a second drawer with the same twist of the wrist and flourish that I remembered Dad using. I squatted down and peered past his knees to see how the drawer hung—on narrow brass runners that had not existed earlier, at least not on this world level.
“There it is,” he said. “Epic cool!”
Inside the drawer lay a manila folder. Michael picked it up and handed it to me. “That’s the only thing in here.”
When he closed the drawer, it disappeared. So did the rails. I shivered, I admit it—me! who should have been the expert on such phenomena.
“Y’know,” Michael said. “We could put those boxes in this drawer.”
“Very sly, bro. So one fine night you could pick the lock on the front door and come in and take them?”
Michael gave me a grin of the “I’m just a goof don’t hit me” variety.
“I know they call to you,” I went on, “but you’ll have to wait to answer. Now, don’t forget your jacket.”
We returned to the upstairs flat. While Michael raided my refrigerator, I sat down in one of the armchairs to leaf through the folder. It contained a medium-sized stack of printer paper, slightly yellowed along the edges with age. The printout text, in the old Bunchló na Nod font, was mostly in Irish Gaelic, not that I was surprised. Dad had written notes by hand, also in Irish, all over the margins.
Michael came back with half a pastrami sandwich clamped in one hand and a bottle of turquoise-blue sports drink in the other. He stood next to me and craned his neck to see the paper I was holding.
“Jeez,” Michael said. “What is that weird shit?”
“Your ancestral tongue.”
“Oh. I guess I shouldn’t have called it weird shit, then.”
“You got that right.” I scowled at the papers. “It’s mostly Irish, anyway. I keep finding passages in a peculiar Latin.” I waved the bundle of papers in his direction. “It’s going to take me a while to translate these.”
“Is there anything in there about the boxes? Can you tell that much?”
“Not yet. Let me get my dictionary.”
He flopped down in the second armchair while I searched the bookshelves.
With the aid of the dictionary I could pick out meaning here and there. I could read the notes Dad had written, but the printout presented real problems. The parts in Irish Gaelic were written in a very archaic language, positively medieval in its constant invocation of various saints and dire warnings of damnation to fall upon anyone who misused the information for evil. Worse yet, not all the words were in my dictionary.