by M. G. Herron
“Don’t forget, Gunn,” the Gatekeeper called. “You are one of my many resources.”
3
After that encounter with the Gatekeeper, my nerve endings were on fire. I paced around my kitchen. The place felt foreign to me. I’d been spending so much time at work lately. Admittedly feeling a bit paranoid, I locked all my doors and windows, then took a long hot shower. That helped refresh me, but I found myself unable to sit still afterward, constantly peering through the windows into the darkening night, wondering if a Daacro was still spying on me.
I thumbed through a thriller novel that I’ve had sitting on my bedside table for a month. When that failed to hold my attention, I tried to watch a day-old football game on TV. I couldn’t focus on the story or the game.
Eventually, I gave up trying to rest and drove downtown to Moretti’s Pizza. I parked out front and went inside looking for my friend, Vinny Moretti.
Vinny’s restaurant was tucked away on a side street downtown. One of those hidden treasures just off the main thoroughfare. Vinny also happened to be an offworlder himself. Pangozil were known for their possum-like snouts and prowess in the kitchen. Unlike the Gatekeeper, I trusted Vinny to give it to me straight.
I’d only discovered Vinny’s origins were extraterrestrial about a month ago, on the same night one alien attacked me and another tried to recruit me to their extraterrestrial police force—or some variation of it. Instead of ruining our friendship, my discovery seemed to cement it. He was more open with me after I found out who he really was. And, once I learned that Federation regulations for offworlders living on what they call “silent planets” insisted on secrecy at the risk of extradition and punishment in a Federation court halfway across the galaxy, I didn’t hold his deception against him. I could empathize with an instinct toward self-preservation.
Tonight, I found Vinny exactly where I always found him—in the kitchen next to a wood-fired brick oven, sweating over his legendary pizzas. Like all offworlders who lived among humans, he used a reflective photon cloaking field to disguise his appearance. The visage he chose was a dark-haired, mousy-looking man with an overly large nose. I waved to him and then slid into one of the few unoccupied booths while he served a long line of late-night customers. Apparently, people were finally starting to wise up and figure out how good Vinny’s pizza was. Presently, one assistant manned the register while another young woman I’d never seen before worked the oven at his side.
I waited patiently, more relaxed in Vinny’s place among the bustle of the dinner rush than I had been at home. Once the line cleared out, and only a few customers remained loitering in the restaurant as they waited for their pies to be pulled from the oven, Vinny ducked out of the kitchen, still wearing a flour-dusted apron, and slid into the booth across from me.
“Business must be good,” I said. “Congrats.”
“I don’t want to brag, but I had to hire another cook this week. How are ya, Gunn? Haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”
“Been on the road.”
“I figured that. Anna came in the other day and asked after you. Seemed a bit worried. Have you spoken to her lately?”
I winced. “She called a couple times, but we keep missing each other.”
“Hello? Earth is in an unprecedented age of technological innovation. You have a phone. Call her back.”
“You know how it is. I’ve been busy.”
I lifted my hands and let them drop to the table. I felt my face heat up as Vinny slowly shook his head.
“Think you mighta hurt her feelings, ducking her like that.”
The truth was, I had been avoiding her. Around the same time I found out about Vinny’s heritage, Alek sent Annabelle Summers to help me with the dumpster fire I called my finances. As the bail bondsman’s in-house accountant, she was a whiz with numbers, and while helping me dig my way out of the mess I’d made paying for my dad’s hospital bills with money I’d received from a business loan, something sparked between us.
But then I found out that Anna had an alternate identity, too. Turns out, in Austin, Texas, no one is who they seemed to be. Keep Austin Weird—right? Under the pen name Marsha Marshall, she maintained a paranormal sightings and investigations blog with a cult following. I’d been reading her off-the-wall takes of high-profile cold cases for years. I’d always loved reading stories of unsolved mysteries, and she was an entertaining, if not original, storyteller.
But ever since I had come to the realization that Anna and Marsha were the same person, I had been trying to figure out how to approach her about it.
“I haven’t been ducking her,” I shot back. Before the words rolled off my tongue, I knew they wouldn’t sound convincing. “She lied to me,” I added, too bitterly.
“I lied to you—directly, for years. And you’re still talking to me, ain’t’cha?”
“That’s different,” I grumbled.
But was it? I silently weighed the difference between the two: Vinny not telling me he was an alien from outer space, and Anna not telling me she was a journalist. Needless to say, I felt stupid.
“What am I supposed to say to her?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? Start with ‘Sorry’ and go from there.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him. I could always count on Vinny to be real with me. Even if it was the last thing I wanted to hear.
“Dyna wiped her memories of that day,” I said. “I can’t confront her about her little secret without revealing how I figured it out. And if I explain that, then I’ll have to explain about offworlders living in Austin, and the Federation, and how her memory got erased in the first place.” I pulled my fingers through my hair. “Well, at least I can console myself knowing that Dyna wiped her memories of our first date, too.”
“Umm…” Vinny said. “Hate to be the one to break it to ya, but…”
My blood froze like I’d been dunked in an ice bath. “Oh, no. She didn’t?”
I had really been hoping for a complete reset.
Vinny gave me a pity-filled smile. “The Peacekeepers only erase relevant memories. There’s nothing damning about your date,” Vinny said. “Well, some people think Hawaiian pizza is a blasphemy, but they haven’t tried mine yet.”
I buried my face in my hands. The realization that Vinny had already come to slowly sank into my thick skull. “She must think I’m a complete prick.”
“From her perspective, your date got cut short and then you never called. What would you think if a girl did that to you?”
What was I saying about Vinny telling me the truth no matter what I wanted to hear? He was right. I had the full story, and Annabelle didn’t. From her viewpoint, I took her on one date and then nada. Only a fool would leave a bombshell like Annabelle in the lurch like that.
“Damn it,” I said. “You’re not making this any easier.”
Vinny shrugged. “Bad break for you, amigo. If you’re not careful, she’s gonna realize how out of her league you are. Then it’ll be too late.”
Silence stretched between us while Vinny watched his assistant chef pull a pizza out of the oven, box it up, and pass it off to a waiting customer. The bell on the door rang as the woman shepherded two bickering teenagers out to a waiting minivan.
Damnit, but he was right. Too right. Annabelle was a catch—beautiful, smart and funny, with long legs that climbed up for days. And I was screwing it up worse with every second that passed. I’d thought about calling or texting her back a million times in my weeks on the road, but with each day, it became easier to hold my silence. I told myself I was too busy with work, or that I should wait so I could talk to her face to face. Or, and here was where the bullshit started to stink, that I was playing hard to get.
I was ashamed to admit it, but I had been relieved last week when she stopped calling. If we didn’t talk, I didn’t have to dance around the secrets I was keeping—offworlder secrets like Vinny’s true identity, which I knew her mystery-loving alter ego, Marsha Marshall, would be
keenly interested in.
I watched Vinny as he watched his new employee wipe the counter after the last customer departed. He gave her a thumbs up. She beamed.
“She’s going to make a great manager,” Vinny said. “I think I’ll let her close up on her own tonight, see how she does.”
I banished the dark thoughts from my head and looked around to make sure no one was listening in. “I actually came here to ask you about something else,” I said in a low voice. “Might be better if I come back in an hour, when you’re not so busy.”
“Can’t,” he said immediately, eyes straying toward a clock on the wall in the kitchen. The hour hand had just crawled past ten. “I’ve already got plans.”
“The Gatekeeper just tried to hire me.”
Vinny took a sharp breath in and peeled his eyes away from the kitchen. The tension in his voice was thick enough to brace yourself on. “What do you mean, tried to?” He muttered cuss words under his breath. “You know what, don’t tell me. Hey, Willow.” Vinny took a step toward his new employee.
I grabbed his sleeve and looked around the restaurant. There were still too many people here to talk about it out loud. “Where are you going? I’ll drive you. I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Uh, Gunn. Is that your truck parked out front?”
I blinked at the sudden shift in topic. “It is.” Maybe he didn’t recognize it because the new panels I put on the truck were mismatched grays and blacks. “Turned out to be cheaper to get it repaired than buy a new one. Had a new windshield installed. It still looks like a beater, but I think that gives it a little charm.”
“I think you just got a ticket.”
“What?!”
I jumped up and ran outside. The meter maid ripped a ticket off the top of a pad and stuck it under my windshield right as I stepped out of the door. She looked at me from under lowered brows and stepped around the far side of the vehicle to avoid me.
“Hey, come on, I was just leaving.”
“Fifteen minute limit, buddy. Read the sign.”
“I was just talking to my friend. Can’t you give me a break?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t make the rules, just write the tickets.”
A squawking laughter echoed down from above me, sounding almost like a blackbird, but rough around the edges and more sinister. A Daacro was up there somewhere, spying on behalf of the Gatekeeper, and in all likelihood getting a real kick out of my misery.
“Sneaky little bastards,” I mumbled.
“Excuse me?” the meter maid asked.
I ignored her and she walked away while I stood glaring upward into the sky. I didn’t spot anything, but they’d really been learning some new ways to avoid detection now that I was on to them. Was it a cloaking field, or just clever positioning?
I sauntered back into the restaurant. Vinny had disappeared into the back part of the kitchen. I figured, hey, I already got a ticket, I might as well milk it. So, I ordered a slice of pepperoni from the new girl to make myself feel better while supporting my friend’s business. That helped. A little.
While I was savoring the pizza, contemplating how the perfect ratio of sauce, mozzarella, and crispy pepperoni combined to make Moretti’s so delicious, and wondering whether Vinny added some kind of addictive, Pangozil substance that made my stomach growl for more, he returned without his ever-present chef’s apron, wearing a collared shirt with the top buttons undone to reveal an expensive gold chain around his neck.
“Whoa!” I said, affecting an impressed expression. “Very nice.”
He shook a gold and leather flask in my direction. “If you’re driving, and we’re talking about what I think we’re going to talk about, I’m going to need this. Let’s go.”
4
Step on it,” Vinny said as he took his first hit from the flask. “I’d hate to miss the opening ceremony.”
I laid my foot on the gas and merged with the bustle of downtown traffic. “You’re not taking me back to Harbor, are you?” I asked. “That’s probably not wise, since the Gatekeeper owns it…”
“This place is way better. You’ll see.” Vinny made himself comfortable and studied the skyscrapers lining the street. Once, I’d have thought he was simply admiring the architecture. Now, I figured he was searching for eavesdroppers, spies, or worse. He pulled his eyes away from the window and turned to me. “So what’s this about the Gatekeeper trying to hire you?”
“He asked me if I’d take a job.” I became acutely aware that the parking ticket I’d gotten was sitting in the cup holder among food wrappers and receipts. I shoved the ticket into the center console and threw the rest of the trash into the backseat to get it all out of my sight.
“And?”
My mouth went dry. I swallowed once, twice, and then switched lanes to zoom through a yellow light at the next intersection. “I refused.”
Vinny shook his head and took another swig from the flask. “You got a death wish?”
“I don’t want any more of his dirty money.”
Vinny’s beak of a nose twitched. “Ah, hell. Here I was, thinking you still needed the cash.”
“Not from him. Between what I got for helping get rid of Elekatch, and the job I just finished for Alek, I’m current on all my payments. What I’ve got left gives me enough runway for at least a few weeks. That’s enough time to figure out my next move, take another job from Alek, or get a new client. Maybe even take a day off.” I sighed. “A day off sounds like a dream.”
Vinny continued to frown. “What did he want to hire you for?”
“To find an offworlder supplying some kind of alien drug to humans.”
“Wobbling wormholes! Are you serious?”
I nodded.
“Peacekeeper command won’t like the sound of that.”
“That’s what he said. And I saw the result of it, too, so the Gatekeeper’s not lying. At least, I don’t think he’s lying. Honestly, it’s hard to tell.” I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the steering wheel. The leather was slick with sweat from my palms. “This is the weird part. Right before he offered me the job, when I was picking up my last skip, I ran across a drug addict with her eyes colored orange. Not like jaundice. I’m talking neon orange with bright specks of white. Never seen anything like it before. What kind of drug can do that?”
A faraway look fell like a shadow over Vinny’s face. He stared out the window, the flask forgotten in his hand. I could tell he was no longer seeing any of the brightly lit buildings that scrolled past. He was looking elsewhere—at a memory, or maybe a nightmare. I waited for him to come back to me.
“It’s called Ora,” he finally said. None of the excitement that had been in his voice before remained. His enthusiasm for tonight’s outing had been replaced by a cold, drawn-out dread. “It’s found in the roots of Ora trees. ‘Vision’ trees, in the language of the shamans of Panec Durga.”
“What does it do?”
“In low doses, the drug gives you feelings of euphoria, hallucinations, a sense of one-ness with the universe.”
“And when you overdose?”
Vinny sighed before taking a quick sip of alcohol. “Glowing orange eyes, for starters. Takes a lot to do that. Its effects can last for days.”
“Can it kill you?”
“It’s more likely to put you into a coma you never wake from. Different species react to it in their own way, but make no mistake, that junk is lethal. Even the low-dosage recreational version is outlawed on the core planets. You can still find it you know where to look, but it’s difficult. Out here, though, on the fringes? It’s a lot more common. I’ve never seen it on Earth myself, but I know it’s around. If someone’s selling it to humans… well, that’s a different story.”
“And what happens when word of this reaches the Peacekeepers?”
“They’ll send someone to take care of it. If you thought Annabelle getting her memory erased was bad, you haven’t seen what a company of Peacekeepers can do in
a planet-wide purge.”
The idea of a group of alien super soldiers wiping the memories of a large swathe of the population had me grinding my teeth and tilting the gas pedal to the floor.
“Maybe the Gatekeeper knows you better than you think,” Vinny said.
I blinked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Gunn, if you were a cat, you’d have lost all nine of your lives by now. You’re too curious. The Gatekeeper must have known that you wouldn’t be able to leave it alone once you saw the effects of the drug with your own eyes.”
There was something else, too. Something Gonzalez knew but that I hadn’t yet shared with Vinny. Dyna, the Federation Peacekeeper who had tried to recruit me, asked me to keep my eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary that might be connected with a group of dissidents known as the Tetrad. She thought they might be trying to establish a foothold on Earth. I had no proof that they were behind this Ora supplier the Gatekeeper was after, but the thought had certainly crossed my mind.
One option was to send a preliminary message to Dyna and let her draw her own conclusions. But I wanted to be sure I had the whole story before I did that. As Vinny pointed out, ringing the alarm would likely bring the Peacekeepers in full force. Not to mention the lag it would take to transmit a message across the galaxy. My message had to be relayed via orbital beacon back to Dyna—wherever she happened to be deployed in the universe. In that time, there was a good chance all of this would have blown over.
Soon, Vinny and I were bouncing down a bumpy dirt road twenty miles east of the city. Although the airport was nearby, and housing developers were beginning to reach their avaricious tendrils farther out into the countryside, you mostly found cow pastures and rural townships out this way. The turnoff from the paved road that Vinny had me take wasn’t even marked with a sign. When my headlights illuminated a low cattle fence, Vinny hopped out and swung the gate wide, then closed it behind us before we drove onward.