by Dan Stout
I rubbed my eyes. I needed to know whether I was imagining the tingling sensation and the surprising strength of the woman we’d encountered, and Guyer hadn’t been able to help. When it came to people with the expertise and discretion I needed to talk about this with, I had a limited set of options and it was dwindling quickly.
“It’s the end of the day,” I said. “I’m beat. What do you say we regroup in the morning? Grab breakfast before we start.”
“Sure,” he said. “Usual place?”
“Yeah, fine.” I held a breath. If anyone in the Bunker had earned my trust, it was Jax. I turned to my partner. “That woman on Ringsridge. You’re sure you didn’t feel her getting, I don’t know,” I waved my hands uselessly, “really strong?”
One of Ajax’s mandibles quivered, and a sound came from deep in his speaking mouth, like a marble clattering through a box of nails. “She was high and worried about her kid. Of course she was strong.”
“No, I mean like—”
“And then she pushed her way out of your left-hand grip. In the heat of the moment, I’m sure she seemed strong. I’m sure she was strong. But nothing beyond what you’d expect from someone with enough drugs in their system.”
I eyed him, not sure how to answer that.
Jax gave me a sympathetic whistle and a pat on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and walked toward the exit.
I turned away and rubbed my palms against my temples. When I raised my arms, I felt the crinkle of pink message slips against my chest. It was clear that I had one more call to make before I could head home.
7
SITUATED FASHIONABLY CLOSE TO THE Mount, Gellica’s office in 1 Government Plaza was designed to make visitors feel small. It was spacious, for one thing, a conscious conceit in a city packed into such a tight footprint. It held a small couch, coffee table and chairs, and an ornate desk so large that it half-obscured the human woman who sat behind it, flipping through files and taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
When I entered Gellica mumbled a, “Help yourself to a drink,” without looking away from her work. The room was hushed, and once her assistant departed the only sound was the scritch of fountain pen on paper.
I waved off the drink and claimed a seat on the couch. It was a significant step up from the threadbare sofa in my apartment. I idly traced the white-on-blue flower patterns, wondering how attached she was to the thing. Even if it didn’t fit in my place, I figured it had to be worth at least half a month’s rent at a pawn shop.
I cleared my throat to remind Gellica I was in the room.
From her desk she said, “I’m not ignoring you.”
“Yes, you are.” I kept tracing the flowers. “Nice couch, by the way.” It occurred to me that sooner or later the AFS would swap it out for a new one, and maybe I could talk Gellica into tipping me off when they did. A man with bills to pay should never be too proud to dumpster-dive.
“I’m not ignoring you,” she said more firmly. “I’m simply finishing what I was working on so that I can give you my full attention.”
“You’re upset that I took so long to get back to you,” I countered. “And now you’re making a point.”
“I am neither that petty, nor you so interesting, for that to be true.”
I looked up from the stitched flowers. Her eyes were fixed on me, paperwork forgotten. Like the couch, her suit was expensive but not ostentatious. Quality fabric and professional tailoring made for sleek style in a light blue that complemented her chestnut brown complexion.
“Huh.” I patted the pocket full of message slips. “All these calls must have been wrong numbers, then.”
“I’ll be with you shortly.” She exhaled loudly. “And of course it’s a nice couch. The whole point of an office like this is to impress visitors.”
“Works on me,” I said, and leaned into the cushions, which had a pleasant give. Gellica kept writing, pausing only to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. While I waited for her to decide I’d been sufficiently chastised, I glanced around the office. She hadn’t been lying—the entire room was decked out with signs of power and conspicuous wealth. Apart from Gellica’s desk clutter, the place could have been lifted from the pages of a catalog. Tasteful knickknacks sat on expensive furniture, seashells carved into abstract sculptures, hand-blown glass vases that were half as sturdy and a hundred times pricier than similar items with a department store tag. All selected by a designer to convey importance.
Eventually she gathered the papers, rolling them tightly before sliding them into a plastic tube the size of my forearm. Sealing it with a twist, she stood and stepped to one of the many elaborate filigrees that decorated the walls. A gentle tug pulled the detail away, revealing a cutaway entry point into a hollow plastic pipe. She slipped the carrier into the void and pressed down on the surface, closing the seal. It went off with a whoosh-thunk, followed by a menacing hiss as air refilled the tube.
When she resumed her seat Gellica’s attention was fully focused on me. “I’m glad you called.”
I steeled myself for the conversation ahead. The problem with coming to Gellica wasn’t that I disliked her, it was that I liked her too much. It was too easy to think of her as a friend, and forget the danger she posed. The only reminder I needed hung on her office walls. While most of the decorative art consisted of photos or paintings of historic treaty signings, there was a single, notable exception: a single portrait of a steel-eyed human woman with a dimpled chin and tightly cropped dark hair—the voice of the Assembly of Free States in Titanshade, Ambassador Paulus. She was one of the most dangerous people in Titanshade . . . and she was Gellica’s boss, mother, and master.
Gellica pulled a small glass jar out of her top desk drawer. She opened it and dipped her finger inside, bringing out a pea-sized ball of ointment that she massaged into her hands. The room immediately took on the smell of sandalwood mixed with an earthy hint of proilers.
“Long day?” I said.
She tipped her head and rubbed the base of her hands together. “They’re all long. But it’s worth it. I love my job. Or,” she amended, “at least I love the impact the job has.” The cream gave a slight sheen to her skin, a gloss not unlike the polished wooden legs of her desk, each one carefully carved to appear as if they hid monstrous claws.
“The impact, huh?” I stood and took a stroll around the room, examining the small sculptures and mementos before gazing out the office window onto the flashing neon lights of the city at night. “Impact on what? Employment? Quality of life? The price of lobbyist kickbacks?”
“There’s more to politics and administration than corruption and graft.” She’d switched to her fingers, running her index finger and thumb of the opposite hand over each digit, squeezing and rotating as she went. “A little like there’s more to policing than bribes and abuse of power.”
“You should give a speech at the Bunker,” I said. “They’d love you down there.”
A harsh, humorless laugh. “I think Ambassador Paulus has more friends in service reds than you think.”
“I don’t know about friends,” I said, “But I can believe she’s got a lot of sons-of-bitches in her pocket.”
“Hmm.” She sounded both amused and put off by the thought.
“So why’d you want to see me?” I rapped the window with a fingernail, pretending to enjoy the view. The smell of sandalwood was thick in the air. “Why the flurry of phone calls?”
“Officially?” Her chair squeaked as she stood, a rare bit of equipment in the AFS machine that needed to be oiled. “Ambassador Paulus wants to extend an invitation to you. For the Responders’ Remembrance ceremony.”
“Last I heard it’s a public event. I don’t need an invitation.” Part of the lead-up to Titan’s Day, the annual Remembrance ceremony honored the police, firefighters, and EMTs who had died in the line of duty. A memorial to se
lf-sacrifice.
“You do to be on the stage.”
“And do what?”
On the window, Gellica’s reflection stretched across dark outlines of apartment buildings. The wood and brass table lamp threw her silhouette against the wall behind her, a hulking shape that held its own secrets. It was a disquieting reminder of the transformative creature I’d seen once before, shifting and flowing between shadow and three-dimensional shape. But it was that strange, magical nature that made me risk coming to talk to her.
“Nothing much,” she said. “Be visible during the ceremony. Remind people who you are.”
I coughed out a laugh. “I’m okay with people forgetting.”
“Stop catching criminals, and they will.” She paused. “I’m not going to try and sell it to you, but I think it’d be a good thing to go to Remembrance.”
I put my back to the city skyline. “Why?”
“Not for Paulus’s reasons,” she said. “She’s maneuvering for the 24th Ward’s special election, trying to keep the wheels from coming off the City Council.”
I was vaguely aware of the special election, triggered by the recent death of an alderman. The winner would join the City Council at a crucial moment in the debate over armed AFS forces occupying the manna strike. According to the talking heads and pundits, the future of the city was at stake. I thought of political buttons on a backpack and slogans painted on alley walls. I thought of Jane’s lifeless body and a gangster accountant, both abandoned on Ringsridge Road. Smack in the middle of the 24th Ward.
“They’ve got a formidable political machine down in the 24th,” she said.
“The CaCuri twins.” I thought of their images on Dungan’s file tabs, and painted larger than life in Jane’s mural.
“That’s right.” Gellica massaged her knuckles, cracking each one in turn. She was almost a literal political brawler. “But it’s the rich guy, Louis Mah, who’s leading the polls. We simply prefer a sane candidate take the alderman’s seat.” She grinned. “I feel very good about our chances.”
“Who’s Paulus’s candidate?”
She stretched her legs and feigned indifference. “The AFS supports any duly elected official.”
“But . . .”
“But Meredith Plunkett is certainly preferable to the other choices on the ballot.”
I frowned. “Never heard of her.”
“She’s brilliant, with a long-range vision for the city. She’ll make a great alderman.”
“And she’ll take orders, I’m sure.” I raised a hand, cutting short Gellica’s protest. “I’m not standing on a stage and leading cheers for anyone. Tell Paulus she can ask all she wants—it ain’t gonna happen.”
Gellica cupped her chin in one hand. “Okay. I told her you wouldn’t do it.”
I nodded, pleased with the small victory, but couldn’t help from asking, “You said I shouldn’t do it for Paulus’s reasons. What other reason is there?”
She looked me in the eye. “Because you care about the names on that monument.”
I frowned. She knew what to say, at least. Too bad it wasn’t going to work.
“Not happening.”
“Fine,” she said. “I did my job. If you change your mind, let me know. Now . . . why are you really here?”
“Hey, you’re the one who called me.”
She stood, squaring her shoulders. “For weeks you’re a pain in the ass to reach, and all of a sudden here you are. What do you want?”
I rubbed my jaw, and winced as the stumps of my fingers ground against chin stubble. Unnaturally cauterized stumps, painful reminders of events I tried daily to forget. Suddenly I wanted that drink.
“I needed someone—” I shifted my weight, a motion that rustled the message slips in my pocket. “I have questions about manna.”
Three elegant strides brought her to within an arm’s length, and when she spoke her voice was lowered to a hush.
“It’s about time.”
“I don’t want to talk about the strike,” I said.
“I do.”
Her shadow loomed on the wall, intimidating, almost pulsing with the mysteries it concealed. My hand throbbed, and I pushed back memories of a desperate scramble, a fight with an oversized Mollenkampi and the snap of his jaws closing, the spiral of pain that danced up my arm, and the strange pull and tear as the last fabric of my fingers gave way. Memories of spray as a drill struck not oil, but manna—the most precious liquid in the world—spraying it in the air and letting it rain down, landing on me and soaking my clothes, drenching my skin, seeping into my makeshift bandages and that strangely soothing pain as it penetrated the wounded stumps of my fingers. Gellica’s voice pulled me out of the reverie.
“We’re both touched by magic.” She reached for my shoulder. “It saved you. It’s part of me.”
“It didn’t save me,” I said. “I had a bandage and clotting compound on already.” I hid my mangled hand in a pocket, but I didn’t draw away from her touch. “And you’re more than—” I cut myself off, remembering her secret visit to my apartment, the eerie magic as her shadow distorted and extended, turning into a living thing of darkness and power. A transformation far beyond even what I’d seen at the hands of DO Guyer that afternoon.
“You’re more than Paulus’s guinea pig.”
Her hand fell away.
“I see.” She walked back to the desk, pretending to review papers she’d already processed and sent on their way.
I should have simply left. But Gellica was the one person I could actually talk to about what I’d experienced without either being shunted off to the shrinks or treated like a specimen at a science fair. I followed her from the window.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“The technical term is takwin.” She stayed a step ahead of me, striding from the desk to the couch. “If you can’t remember that, maybe you could go with homunculus. Not accurate, but it’s in the ballpark.” She turned, blinking, eyes bright and voice artificially cheerful. “Or clone,” she said. “Clone works, too.”
Whatever Gellica’s relationship to magic, it was an essential element of her existence. She’d been a clandestine creation, a fusion of human life and manna itself. Raised by Paulus as something between a daughter and a useful experiment, Gellica spent her life slipping between shadow and light, hoping that in the final tally she’d do more good than harm. It was a calling I understood all too well.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have called you a guinea pig.”
“And?” She eyed me expectantly.
“And from now on I will only call you a . . .” The term escaped me, so I barreled ahead. “Magically-infused-clone-woman.”
Gellica squinted at me, then snorted out a half-laugh, threw up her hands, and flopped onto the couch. “This isn’t exactly how I thought this conversation was going to go.” She gave me a fleeting grin.
Jax had been right about one thing: her smile really was magic.
“Unexpected is sort of the norm for us.” I perched on the far end of the couch, facing her.
“To be honest, I didn’t think you’d show up, even after you called,” she said.
I shrugged. “You said you’d burn my coat.”
Her smile reappeared.
“You can keep it,” I said. “It was starting to shrink around the middle, anyway.”
She eyed the hint of roundness that circled my midsection. “That happening with all your clothes?”
I rewarded her with an exaggerated frown, which only made her smile widen. In a city of millions, where corruption and murder were commonplace, there were a handful of people I could trust to be honest, to listen without judgment. But even them, the Jaxes and Bryyhs of the world, none of them had the twisted connection to manna that Gellica and I shared.
“Let’s try again
,” she said, leaning forward. “What did you want to talk about?”
I took a deep breath, and the scent of sandalwood filled my lungs. Then I started talking.
* * *
I talked about Jane, left dead in an alley. I talked about the dead Harlq in the washer, about the tingle in my palm and the feeling of cobwebs wrapped around Ronald’s mom. At some point she pressed a glass into my hand, and the sharp bite of alcohol on my tongue encouraged me to say more than I’d intended. But we had so many secrets binding us together, and it seemed like a little more couldn’t hurt anything. I should’ve known better. “A little more” is what broke the tibron’s shell.
When I was finally done, Gellica looked at me from the corner of her eye.
“The tingling you felt,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like manna.”
We were still sitting on the couch, but now holding drinks.
“I know.” I’d been coated by manna when I was caught in the strike, and it produced something more like a pinch than a tingle. “But then what was it? And why did the woman have threads or cobwebs around her?”
Gellica sipped her drink, her silence telling me what I feared was true: it was all in my head. I pressed the cold glass of my tumbler against my temple. But then she surprised me.
“I don’t know what you experienced,” she said. “But if you feel it again, I’d like you to tell me.”
“You believe me?”
“It’s not about belief,” she said. “It’s about possibility.”
“I don’t know what that means. You think it’s possible that I’m making it up?”
“It means there’s no evidence either way,” she said. “But you’ve had more experience with the new manna source than anyone else. And the list of unknowns is extensive.” She began to tick them off on her fingers. “Manna from the ground? We don’t know what it is. That much manna in one place? We don’t know how it will act. Is this the greatest find in history or the beginning of a toxic disaster? Still don’t know!” She waved her hand toward the ceiling, demonstrating the mounting stack of uncertainties. “And me? I need it as much as anyone. I need manna to exist, and right now there’s only one place—” She cut herself off, staring into her almost-empty glass. There was no need for her to name the source of manna she depended on. Ambassador Paulus, her eyes so like Gellica’s, watched over us from the portrait on the wall.