I stood panting for breath and rubbing my wrist with my other hand. Ari stooped down and picked up the cell phone, then stood and put it into his shirt pocket.
“As your Aunt Rose might say,” Ari said, “the female of the species is more deadly than the male. I don’t know what’s so wrong between you and Deirdre, but I’m not going to aid and abet it.”
“You just did.”
Ari sighed and set his hands on his hips. My blouse had gotten disrupted during our tussle. For anger management rather than modesty, I pulled it down and smoothed it, then ran my hands through my hair to get it off my face.
“Look,” I said, “when I was a teenager, something happened that made my mother kick me out of the house just when I needed her the most. I ended up living at my aunt’s. Without Eileen, I would have ended up on the streets, probably. Mom has been self-righteous and self-justifying ever since.” I felt the anger rising in my blood. “And all the time she—”
“Hush!” Ari laid a hand on my shoulder, but he’d softened his voice. “Nola, please! I’m trying to understand, so please, sit down.”
I sat, and he joined me on the couch. “Understand what?” I said.
“What was so wrong between you and your mother.”
“Oh, okay! I got pregnant. There. Now you know.” The memories rushed back and threatened me with tears. I shoved them away again.
“That’s not Michael, is it?”
“No! I was ten when he was born.”
“A bit young, yes. Well, it’s none of my business, actually.”
“Really? Most guys would think it was their business, if they’d been badgering some girl to marry them, and then they found out.”
“I’m not ‘most guys.’”
Now that I never would have denied. I turned slightly so I could see his expression: solemn, but not overly so. I could read sympathy in his dark eyes.
“It wasn’t my child,” Ari went on, “so it’s none of my business. But—” He hesitated. “I take it you didn’t carry it to full term.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been in a position to tell.” He turned a faint pink. His accent grew more British by the word. “Rather a lot of times now, actually, over the past few months.”
It took me a moment—well, a couple of moments—but I finally understood what he meant.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You’ve had affairs with married women who did have kids. They had stretch marks, but I don’t.”
“Only one!”
“Only one woman or only one kid?”
“Only one married woman and only one child. But that’s true about the marks on her stomach.”
The pink on his face turned to red. We sat in silence considering each other’s sins. Finally Ari sighed. His color had returned to normal.
“Um, that affair?” he said. “It was some years ago, when I was still in the army. Long since over.”
“Ooh, you must have looked really sexy in a uniform. I bet the women were all over you.”
I was expecting a blush, but he merely smiled. Smugly.
“One last thing.” The smile disappeared. “I’d prefer not to think of my professions of undying love for you as ‘badgering some girl.’”
“Okay. I’ll just think of it as ‘badgering me,’ then.”
He rolled his eyes and caught my closer hand in both of his. I had the SPP feeling that we were on our way back to normal, whatever normal meant in a relationship like ours.
“You put up with a lot from me,” I said.
“I’m glad you recognize my sacrifices.” He gave me one of his genuine smiles, neither tigerish nor ironic. “Do you want to hear my news? What I was about to tell you just before the storm.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Your father was paroled some weeks ago. Since he’s out, Spare14 and his supervisor at TWIXT see no reason to waste his talents when they need world-walkers so badly. They’re going to help us bring him home.”
At that moment, I never wanted to see Dad again. The irony of it made it hard to breathe. I’d get what I wanted just as I no longer wanted it.
“What’s wrong?” Ari said.
“The thought of seeing Dad makes me feel sick.”
“You might change your mind, you know. People can get used to the most appalling things, given a little time.”
“You have a point. Everyone else still wants him home, anyway, whether I do or not.”
Michael and Sean, of course, I did want to see, my poor brothers, children of incest, like we all were. It occurred to me that I needed to find a favorite insult to replace “bastard.” I was in no position to call anyone else that.
“What about Michael and Sean?” I said.
“I told Spare about the kidnapping. He’s on his way over to discuss the problem.”
“Oh, yeah.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I already knew that. I told him about it, too. I’d forgotten for a minute there.”
“This information really upset you. I’m rather surprised.”
I opened my mouth to berate him. He clapped a hand over it. I nearly bit him.
“Sorry,” he said. “My shortcoming, not yours.” He took his hand away. “You’re usually so at home with unusual phenomena that your reaction took me by surprise.”
“Oh, okay, then.” I took another deep breath. “The Church gets you so young, Ari. You can’t imagine how deep their claws sink in. For a minute there I was the good Catholic schoolgirl again, seeing her parents damned by the doctrine, seeing herself as an outcast, sinful and guilty as hell.”
“That is hard to understand.”
“There’s this guy, Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits. He said, ‘Give me a child till he’s seven, and I’ll make him mine for life.’ They call him a saint.” My hands clenched into fists. I made them relax. “But he might as well have bragged about pulling the wings off butterflies.”
I would have said more, but the doorbell rang. Ari took the remote from the coffee table and flicked on the TV’s security channel. Spare14 stood on the porch outside our front door.
“I’ll just go let him in, assuming he’s not being used as a shield by an enemy.” Ari drew the Beretta in his usual pleasant way of greeting someone. “We can discuss religion later.”
Gun in hand, Ari hurried out of the room. I leaned back into the couch cushions and wished that I had a good stiff drink.
CHAPTER 9
SPARE14 ARRIVED WEARING his baggy khaki slacks, a white shirt, and a slightly scruffy navy blue blazer with an embroidered patch on the chest pocket. I recognized the abbreviation “Oxon.” Although I had no idea which particular college the patch represented, Oxford University apparently existed on his home world. He carried his trans-dimensional briefcase, which he set down next to his armchair. Ari and I took the couch.
“So,” Spare14 began, “Michael gets his world-walker genes from your father. Your family becomes more and more interesting.”
I winced. Spare14 tilted his head to one side and blinked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a sore wrist, and I just tweaked it.”
“That’s a pity.” Spare14 looked properly sympathetic. “Now, your father’s name on his home world was actually O’Brien. It’s certainly a common Hibernian name. Irish, I mean.”
“Yeah, it is, and it can be spelled a bunch of different ways.” I managed to keep my voice steady and change the subject. “This thing about Hibernia. Is that what they call Ireland on my dad’s home world?”
“It’s a province of Britain,” Ari put in. “A much smaller version of the British empire still exists there. It no longer holds India or much else, really, except for Hibernia and Palestine.” His voice twisted into bitterness on the last word.
“Quite so,” Spare14 said. “I see you’ve been studying the online material for the exam, Nathan. Very good.” He turned his attention back to me. “I see no reason why we can’t get your father’s terms of par
ole modified.”
“Wonderful! I take it you’ve looked at his file.”
Spare14 blinked several times and smiled. He was hiding something, but before I could confront him, he said, “Of course, this does depend on his willingness to cooperate.”
“Cooperate?” I said. “Collaborate with TWIXT, you mean.”
At my choice of verb, Spare14 stiffened in his chair.
“Dad’s been in prison for thirteen years,” I went on. “How do you think he’s going to feel about law enforcement generally and specifically about the operation that put him there in the first place?”
“How did you know—” Spare14 began.
“Simple logic,” I said. “What other agency would have jurisdiction over this sort of crime?”
“Um, well, er.” Spare14 glanced away.
“You’ve been telling me for some time now that TWIXT has police capability,” I continued. “Peacock blue uniforms, right?”
“How do you know that?” Spare14 sounded annoyed. “It’s not even in the material Nathan’s been given to study.”
“She’s good at this,” Ari muttered. “Ferreting things out, I mean.”
“I received information from an eyewitness to another arrest,” I said. “There’s nothing mysterious about it.”
“Oh.” Spare14 deigned to look at me again. “I have to agree, O’Grady, that your father’s first reaction is going to be reluctance. Being released from the StopCollar and allowed to come home might be enough of a consideration to change his mind.”
“This StopCollar thing,” I said. “What exactly is it?”
“Consider how Nathan’s interference generator scrambles listening devices.” Spare14 tented his fingers and considered me over the arch. “The collar works in a somewhat similar way. It prevents the exercise of psychic talents by generating a supra-magnetic barrier field.”
“So it causes countercurrents in the aura. Does it suppress all of the person’s talents?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s a nasty bit of work, really. On Terrae One and Five it can legally be used only on world-walkers and polyshifters—the two classes of the talented who might escape justice without it.”
Polyshifters? The term was a new one on me.
“If the effect is anything like the procedure the Agency calls a Shield Persona,” I said, “then Dad’s miserable.”
“No doubt. That’s why its use is so restricted.”
“What’s the collar made of?” Ari leaned forward. “Some sort of metal, I’d assume.”
“Yes, primarily platinum, but it’s an alloy with silver. It has a nickel coating of some sort as well. The most common shape is a narrow torus. They all lock on.”
A kind of necklace, like the one Aunt Eileen had seen Sean wearing in her dream? It was possible, I realized, though why the gang would collar Sean instead of Michael puzzled me. I listened to the technical details with only half a mind. I needed to sort out my reactions.
Whether Sean was wearing one or not, we knew that Dad was. I was furious with my father. At the same time, the thought that he was living a tortured existence thanks to white gold locked around his neck made me furious as well, just in a different direction. My deduction: although I could never forgive him, I still loved him under the rage.
I realized that Spare14 had just asked me a direct question.
“Sorry,” I said. “Could you ask that again?”
“I was wondering if any other members of your family were finders. If so, perhaps one could accompany us.”
“No, unfortunately. Sean’s the only one. I’ll need to bring my crayons instead.”
Spare14 gave Ari a furtive glance, as if he was perhaps wondering if I were crazy.
“For an LDRS,” I said, “Long Distance Remote Sensing. Automatic drawing is a part of it, and the crayons are an easy way to add color.”
“Oh.” Spare14 smiled in deep and evident relief. “Yes, by all means, bring whatever you need.” He let the smile fade. “Now, we have a problem that concerns you, a complication, we might call it. A woman who must have been one of your doppelgängers was quite an important personage in the city. She was the mistress of the current chief of police.”
“Was?” Ari said.
“Yeah, she’s dead,” I said. “She told me so earlier today.”
Both men stared at me. Spare14 took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead as if it hurt.
“Well, she did.” I shrugged. “It took me by surprise, too. Especially since she knew Latin.”
“Nuala?” Spare looked up and peered with glasses still in hand. “Latin? Hardly! Are you sure—”
“She had short spiked hair and too much makeup, but otherwise she looked just like me.”
“That must have been her, then.” Spare14 put his glasses back on. “But Latin? No. She really did rise from the streets, poor girl. Some say she could barely read English.”
Very interesting, I thought. Someone or something masquerading as Nuala had given me a tip. The question: could I trust it?
“So, this problem,” I continued. “What if someone sees me and thinks I’m Nuala who’s not dead after all. Is that it?”
“Precisely. At the moment, the Chief of Police has no idea who murdered his woman. The circumstances were very odd, and her body was never found. Or at least, not all of it.”
“What do you mean, not all of it?”
“Just that. Someone put a woman’s leg, wrapped in Nuala’s bloodstained clothing, on the Chief’s doorstep one night. They have no way of doing DNA testing in SanFran, so a positive ident was impossible, though apparently the leg seemed to be hers. She had tattoos, you see. When I read over the file, it seemed clear that the murder was meant as a slap at the Chief. The poor girl meant nothing in herself.”
“They play for keeps over there, huh?”
“Yes, it’s really not a very nice place.”
“I’ve noticed. How did this chief guy take it?”
“Badly. He seems to have been honestly fond of her, odd, really, for a man like that, but I suppose even the worst of us have our good qualities. Be that as it may, what if word reaches him that she’s been seen alive?”
“Will he want her, I mean me, back?”
“Possibly. Unless he feels that she’s somehow double-crossed him, or pretended to die to get away from him, or some such thing. If so, he’s likely to want you killed.”
Ari growled.
“Quite,” Spare14 said. “He’s really a very suspicious fellow, I gather. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and all that. He’s surrounded by armed guards at all times.”
“And this is the job that the Storm Blue head guy wants,” I said. “Is he crazy or something?”
“The Axeman?” Spare14 paused for a look of faint disgust. “That’s what he calls himself. It’s a joking reference to a taxman. His actual name is Allan Moore. What? O’Grady, you look so shocked.”
“You can’t mean this gangster is Alan Moore’s doppelgänger. You know, the guy who wrote Swamp Thing.”
Both Ari and Spare14 stared at me in some distress.
“And Watchmen.” I was trying to be helpful, but I got the same stares. “Uh, you don’t know, do you? The Alan I mean is an author. A comic book writer.”
“Oh.” Spare14’s voice stayed polite out of sheer will power, or so his SPP told me. “I doubt it very much. The Terra Three Allan Moore is not the creative sort, except perhaps when it comes to extortion.”
“Comic books again.” Ari looked at me with eyes loaded with reproach. “Nola!”
“You don’t need to be such a snob about it. You’re the one who’s culturally deprived.”
We glared at each other.
“Um, well,” Spare14 broke in, “let’s move along, shall we? The gangster Allan Moore is also known as the Moore of SanFran. He’s rather fond of ghastly puns.”
“He’s read Othello?”
“Yes, he comes from an educated background of sorts, not that educa
tion seems to have improved his character. He runs a protection racket among other nefarious activities. He comes to my office regularly.” Spare14 shuddered at the memory. “I pay him, of course. Otherwise his assistant might set the office on fire, quite possibly while I’m inside it.”
“Right,” Ari said. “He knows you’ll pay up because of your supposed numbers racket.”
“Yes, exactly.” He shuddered again. “I’ll reach my radiation limit soon, and then a younger man will take over the SanFran office. I shall be very glad to leave it behind.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I said. “Um, about this radiation—”
“I’ll make sure that you each have a standard TWIXT radiation badge. We’ll leave if the levels become dangerous. There is medication for excessive dosages, but it has rather painful side effects, I gather. I’d prefer that none of us verify that from personal experience.”
“So would I. I just hope we can get Michael and Sean out of there before they need the meds.” A worse thought occurred to me. “And before the radiation causes permanent damage.”
Ari winced. Spare14 looked grim and nodded his agreement. Rather than brood on the worst-case scenario, I returned to the Nuala problem.
“It’s too bad I’ve got this real dark hair. If I try to bleach it, it’ll just turn that weird orange that screams ‘fake’ to every woman around. And I’ll need a new name. Nola’s too close to Nuala. How about Rose? That’s my middle name.”
“Very good, yes.” Spare14 grinned at me. “On Terra Three I’m afraid I’m known as Sneak.”
I laughed. Ari merely smiled.
“Should I take a new name?” Ari said. “Are there any Jews in SanFran?”
“Some, yes, though I doubt if any member of any religion is very observant. I think you’d best pretend to be a relative of mine. We have similar accents. Everyone thinks I come from Jamaica.”
“Jamaica?” I said. “Why Jamaica?”
“The disaster that created Interchange destroyed Great Britain along with the rest of northern Europe. That was back at the end of World War One. Just as here, there was a British colony in Jamaica, and quite a few refugees arrived to swell the ranks. Ever since, the colony’s clung to the old ways. They sound more British now than the actual British ever did.”
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