Apocalypse to Go

by Katharine Kerr

  “By all means,” Ari said. “That thing must have been irritating beyond belief.”

  Dad nodded and rubbed his neck with both hands. He tipped his head back and smiled up at the sky. Ari handed the dormant collar to Spare14, then turned back to my father.

  “Someone’s here to meet you.” Ari stepped out of the way.

  Dad glanced around and saw me. “Nola?” He wept, two thin trickles of tears. “Noodles. You’re all grown up.”

  I felt the secret, the wrong he’d done to the heart of my family, like a monster crouching between us. He’d lived a lie with my mother, lied to all of us for years and years, and worst of all, made us lie all unthinkingly to the world around us. I hesitated, sobbed once, then kicked the secret out of the way and ran to him.

  What the hell, he was still my dad.

  He hugged me, held me tight, and we wept together. He pulled back, caught me by the shoulders, and gazed into my face. “Is it true what they’ve been telling me?” he said. “About Sean and Michael?”

  “It is. This isn’t the way we wanted to welcome you home, but I’m sure glad you’re here.”

  He managed a real smile at that. For a few seconds the grayness enveloping him lifted like fog, only to close back in again when he noticed the huddle of TWIXT officers standing nearby.

  “It’s quite a welcoming committee,” Dad said. “A fair number of guns, and then The Squid himself.”

  “That’s because of the kidnapping. Michael’s a world-walker like you, Dad. Didn’t they tell you that?”

  He muttered something under his breath and shivered. “They did not. A world-walker, and he’s part of some gang? No wonder we’re getting the reception we are.” He focused his gaze on Spare14. “That’s what you get for taking me away. How was I supposed to raise the boy right?”

  Yep. Still my dad. Spare14 stammered, then forced out a smile but said nothing.

  “Nola,” Ari said. “Let’s get you and your father off the street. Davis needs to take Javert down to the ocean.”

  “Good idea, yeah. Dad, come on.”

  Ari lingered to speak to Davis. We left the TWIXT officers standing by the tank and climbed the stairs up to the apartment. Dad walked into the middle of the living room and stood looking around him with a slight smile.

  “Uh, Dad? There’s something I should tell you right away. The guy who took the collar off you is my boyfriend, and he’s Jewish, and we’re not married, but we live together.”

  He raised a hand. I ducked. I heard the truck outside start up, and footsteps on the stairs. “A cop?” Dad said. “You’re living with some damned Britannic cop?”

  “He’s not Brittanic! He just learned his English there. He’s Israeli.”

  “Oh. Well, then, that’s a bit better.”

  “You don’t care that he’s Jewish?”

  “Hell, no! The Palisteenis have always been good friends to us Hibernians. We’re in the same boat with the damned Brittanics and all. But a cop?”

  At that precise moment Ari walked in. He opened his mouth, but I shot him a glance that kept him silent. Dad crossed his arms over his chest and glared at both of us impartially.

  “Well, I’m kind of a cop, too,” I said, “but this isn’t the time or place to tell you about the Agency I work for.”

  “All right, I’ll wait for the bad news. What do you mean, you’re not married?”

  “Well, we’re not. Come on! You know damn well that times have changed. Couples live together all the time.”

  “I don’t care what other people may do or why. You’re my daughter, and I tried to raise you right.”

  “You mean by the rules of that lousy church, don’t you? Well, I don’t—”

  I stopped because Dad shut his eyes and hissed a sigh from between clenched teeth. I remembered the gesture all too well, the calm before a storm of tirade. I also remembered the secret and felt my rage-fueled Qi rising to match his.

  “Hey,” I snarled. “You’re a fine one to get down on me, after what you and Mom—”

  His eyes snapped open, two dark blue pools of fear. I’d never seen him frightened before. The gray fog swirled thick around us both as he brought his Qi back under control and I squelched my own rage.

  “Well, Mr. O’Brien?”

  “You know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do the rest of them know?” His voice shook.

  “No. Only Ari.” I gestured Ari’s way. “That’s Ari.”

  More footsteps sounded on the stairs, and I heard Jan’s voice, telling Spare14 some story about Javert.

  Dad let out a puff of breath and unfolded his arms. “You’re right enough. I’m not one to look down my nose at anybody.” He glanced at Ari. “Sorry.”

  “Quite all right,” Ari said. “I’ve never been in prison, but I can see how you’d feel that way about us.”

  They considered each other, both wary, both silent, until I felt like a bone between two dogs.

  “What counts now,” I said in desperation, “is finding Michael and Sean.”

  “Quite right,” Ari said. “I’m sure we all realize that.”

  “No matter what else we’ll all fight about later?” I managed to smile at my father. “Dad, now you know you’re really back.”

  “So I do.” He glanced at Ari. “I see that one thing hasn’t changed in my family. We’re not ones for peace and quiet.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Ari said. “Believe me, sir, I’ve noticed.”

  Spare14 and Jan walked into the room to intensify the awkward moment, even though they both kept their facial expressions perfectly neutral. Jan carried a gray duffel bag. When he set it down by the couch, I noticed black letters printed on it, “O’BrienFM H-Block 814.” Ari and Dad never looked away from each other. I decided that screaming to break the tension would be a bad move.

  “Dad,” I said instead, “I’ve got your set of orbs. They’re here.” I gestured in the direction of the bedroom. “Want to check them out?”

  His smile broke through the fog. “Thank God,” he said. “I’ve been worrying about those for thirteen years, wondering if you mother would sell the damned desk with everything still in it.”

  “Not likely! She’s kept all of your clothes, everything you ever touched.” I realized that there was a thing he must want to know, and badly. “She never remarried, either.”

  For a moment I thought he might weep again. He curbed his Qi and followed me into the bedroom.

  As soon as I closed the door behind us, the boxes sounded their notes in a scramble of chords and dissonances. Dad knelt down by the suitcase and tossed its contents onto the mattress to reveal the set. In the dim room the bright-colored boxes seemed to glow. I sat down on the floor next to him.

  “Michael said they remembered you,” I said.

  “He’s right.”

  As Dad touched each box, the orb inside sang out, one pure note. Each lid snapped open for a few seconds, too, so I could glimpse each one and see that their colors matched their boxes.

  “Good. They’re still functional.” He looked up, abruptly solemn. “Speaking of Michael and the family, the releasing magistrate warned me that Pat was dead. Spare14 must have told her.”

  “Yeah.” I heard my voice catch. “He was murdered. It was because of the lycanthropy.”

  “He did develop that, then, did he? That’s another thing I’ve been worrying about.”

  “He was shot by a nutcase who hated werewolves on principle.”

  Dad winced, shook his head, and looked away. “Did they ever catch the murderer?”

  “Yes. I helped track him down. He resisted arrest. He was armed, and so Ari shot and killed him.”

  Dad considered this in a long troubled silence. “Well,” he said eventually, “maybe you’ve made a good choice for your man, after all.” He looked at me and scowled. “Why won’t he marry you?”

  “He wants to marry me. I keep saying no.” I felt my Qi rising, a hot point of pure rage. “How can
you lecture me about marriage when—”

  “I know! Peace, peace, Nola! Don’t you think I realize what a rotten, sinful thing we did, your mother and I?”

  “Did she know?”

  “Eventually. Not at first. I knew.” He caught his breath with a sob. “Can you understand? We were both so damned young at the time. She was so beautiful, and so like the Deirdre I’d lost.” He glanced my way. “I had a twin sister, you see, back home on Five. I watched her die one night of a fever.”

  In a silence as thick as winter fog, we locked our gazes on each other. My anger trembled just beyond my reach. Listen, O’Grady! I told myself. Stop judging and listen!

  “And there she was again, grown up and beautiful and not truly my sister, not in any real sense. Can you understand that?”

  “Not really, but I’ll try.”

  He winced again.

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

  “Oh, but I did. Finally. She was still living at home, and so I went over to take her to a movie, or so Dan and Nora thought. Instead we went to the park to talk. I was going to tell her everything and end the affair and then throw myself off the bridge. The trouble was, she had something to tell me first.” His eyes drooped, weary with memory. “She was pregnant—with Dan, that was—and so there we damned well were.”

  Everything I thought I knew about my mother dissolved like fog in hot sunlight.

  “She’d make love with you,” I said, “but no birth control?”

  “I should think not! Piling one sin on top of another would have done us no good.”

  I decided that I could save that hurricane-force argument for later, much later. Like, never. I knew without being told that my mother never would have had an abortion, legal or not. I remembered her contorted face, her pure animal rage, when I admitted that I’d been to the clinic and had the procedure. No wonder—I’d taken the way out of my trap, a way closed to her for all kinds of reasons.

  “I had some stupid idea,” Dad went on, “that we could marry, have the child, and then live apart in the same house as brother and sister. You can guess how long that lasted.”

  I nodded. Maureen had been born sixteen months after Dan.

  “And in time, in a way, we forgot. That I suppose you won’t be able to believe, that we both grew so used to everything, my work, our babies, our normal life, being treated just like any other young couple, that we pushed the damn secret out of our minds.”

  “Until TWIXT came for you.”

  “Until then, yes. I never thought they’d hop so many levels to get me. The Brittanics put pressure on them, probably. That’s what they do, the arrogant bastards, act as if they still own half the damned world.” He gave me a wry smile. “I got careless, that night, and didn’t take an orb with me, so I couldn’t get away when the cops ran my truck off the road. I tried to jump out of the cab and get clear enough to—” He hesitated, then finished the sentence. “—to just walk fast. I suppose you must know what that means. There were too many of them. I couldn’t get free of them.”

  “What if you had gotten away? They still would have been after you. You’d have been on the run. We still would have lost you.”

  “At least I’d have been able to come home one last time and say good-bye.”

  “That would have helped, yes.”

  “Did you ever get the letter I sent?”

  “Yes. Reb Zeke got it to me before he died.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yeah. Long story. Let’s see, I bet you’d like to hear all the family news. Dan’s in the army. They just sent him to officer school or whatever they call that.”

  I ran through the last thirteen years, though I deleted a few facts, like Sean being gay. Dad was troubled enough by Maureen’s divorce. While he listened, Dad began picking up the clothes and other stuff he’d tossed out of the suitcase to get at the boxes. He put them back one thing at a time, folding the clothes, shaking his head over the carton of ammunition Ari had brought along, until he came to my pad of paper.

  “And what’s all this?” He gestured at the notes.

  “Psychic information I’ve picked up over the past few days. Stuff relating to Michael and Sean’s disappearance. I don’t understand all of it, like that bit about the Laughing Woman. I saw her in trance, and she creeped me out.”

  Dad held the pad out at arm’s length to read the note. He’s nearly sixty now, I thought. His vision’s changed.

  “Huh,” he said. “You wouldn’t remember this, most likely, not with the front of your mind, anyway. That’s Laughing Sal from the old Playland amusement park. You must have been what?—six or seven—and for your birthday we went to that museum of mechanical toys under the Cliff House. She scared half the life out of you. You didn’t believe me when I kept telling you she was just a big wind-up doll.”

  The memory flooded back: the enormous automaton, bobbing and swaying, her horrible mechanical laugh, and the way I cried until Dad picked me up and carried me away from her. With the memory came a stab of knowledge.

  “She gave generations of children nightmares, I’d wager,” Dad was saying. “A damned ugly thing she was.”

  I laid a hand on his arm and interrupted. “Playland! It was down by the beach, wasn’t it?”

  “Practically on it. Now, it was long gone by the time I arrived in San Francisco, but there were pictures with the exhibit.”

  “That’s where Mike and Sean must be, in Playland, or the place in this world level that corresponds to where Playland was in Four. Or maybe Playland’s only where we should start looking. I don’t know exactly, but it’s a crucial clue.”

  He whistled under his breath. “We’d best go talk to dear old Inspector Spare14. Huh, he’s come up in the world since I last saw him.”

  “Wait a minute! Was he the one who arrested you?”

  “Oh, yes. He led the team. He was just an ordinary cop, back then, but that’s one reason the magistrate on Five listened when he asked for me. She figured he’d know if I was a safe release or not.”

  And was that why Spare14 had gone looking for me back on Four, when I was hunting down Belial? He must have known all along that my father had a big family, and that at least some of us were bound to have talents. Sneak. He could be that, all right. I decided that I could confront him later. We had more pressing problems to solve.

  “I see,” I said. “Before we join the others, can I ask you a question about the orbs?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where did you get them? A Maculate woman’s been telling me that they’re stolen property.”

  He laughed, just softly and briefly. “No doubt she sees it that way. My guild on Five confiscated them from the Maculates. They attuned them to me when I passed my apprenticeship. Huh! It’s taken her long enough to find them—no, wait.” He paused to count something up. “The spotted hag that owned them originally must be long dead by now. I suppose this one learned about them some way or another and set about tracking them down.”

  “Why do the guilds keep them away from the Maculates? Or is that a secret?”

  “No real secret at all, though I’m not sure who knows about it. It’s something I learned in prison.” His voice trailed away, and for a moment he looked out at nothing. “You hear a lot of strange stuff inside. Some of it’s even true.” He forced out a smile. “But I believe this particular story. Some of the Maculates hunt for ape. It’s their favorite food. Not many apes are left on their home world, so they have to hunt elsewhere. The meat fetches a very high price on the black market back on Two.”

  “Black market?”

  “Well, the Maculates are civilized. Most of them would never eat a sapient species. But there are always a few, you know, in any race, who like crossing the lines. Eating ape gives them a thrill, I suppose.”

  “Sapient?” I turned cold when I remembered the meat locker I’d seen in the mirror-vision. Chimp and gorilla parts? I only wished. “You mean us, don’t you? Human beings.�
�

  “Yes.” He smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I’m afraid I do.”

  I scrambled up from the floor. “There’s something I’ve got to tell Ari right now.”

  “Oh? About Playland?”

  “That, too. But we left his buddy guarding our flat back home, and two of the Maculates have already tried to break in.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “YOU CAN USE THE TRANS-WORLD ROUTER in my desk,” Spare14 said. “Do you think you can reach your friend that way?”

  “Let’s hope,” Ari said. “Let me just get my phone.”

  Ari strode across the living room and charged into the bedroom. Dad and I sat down on the couch. Jan drew his Beretta—on general principles, I supposed—and took up a watch at the window while Spare14 fussed with the equipment in his desk drawer. I concentrated on banishing Possibility Images of a half-eaten Itzak.

  “I could take your Ari back to Four,” Dad said, “not that I want to face your mother just yet or Eileen and Jim, either.”

  “You wouldn’t have to,” I said. “There’s an overlap area in South Park. The vitrification, you know.”

  “Ah. I used to know where other gates were here in SanFran. The entire level is full of them.” He smiled. “Like a Swiss cheese. But it’s been a long time since I walked round this city.”

  Spare14 glanced our way and pushed out a sickly smile that might have been an apology. He returned to working on the router. Ari strode out of the bedroom with his laptop in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

  “Come sit down,” Spare14 said to him. “I’ve set up a separate password for you.”

  “Thanks,” Ari said. “Let’s hope I can reach his phone. I’ve got no idea how often he picks up e-mail.”

  “If he’s skyping LaDonna,” I put in, “he’s bound to be online a lot.”

  “If he’s doing what?” Dad muttered.