Double Cross

by Carolyn Crane

  “With your background, Shelby,” Avery says, “coming from a place where public institutions turned against the people, I’m surprised you’d choose to be an enforcer for this arm of the government.”

  If he only knew what she really did.

  Shelby slides a glance to me. “I do because I have no choice.”

  Avery looks over at us now. I eat more fries as Shelby amends this with her usual spiel on how there is no freedom, but only prisons of one kind or another, and their walls merely change shape. This is a subject she can go on about endlessly. Good, I think. That’ll shut Avery up.

  “Does not matter in end,” she continues. “Happiness. Pfft. Is illusion.”

  “How can you say that?” Avery replies, shakes pills out of a bottle—antacid, it appears—and downs them with soda. “Of course it’s true that we’re doomed …” He screws the cap back on, lowering his voice, speaking furtively only to her.

  I munch a fry. Then another. They’re the best fries I’ve ever tasted.

  Shelby’s body language and occasional pffts tell me she’s disagreeing hugely with him. Their voices grow louder. “You operate under illusion that happiness is possible.”

  He slaps the counter lightly. “Of course I accept it, of course it is an illusion, but what do you do with that?”

  More mumbling.

  With a smile I flip the page of the newspaper. Nobody wins this argument against Shelby. Her dismal worldview is a cosmological phenomenon, like a black hole. If you don’t tune her out or change the subject, she will pull you down. It’s one of the things that makes her a powerful and dangerous disillusionist.

  Avery gives it his all. I hear him say things like, “One dungeon or another, of course it is true … unhappiness, no question.”

  It’s amusing until I realize Shelby has been uncharacteristically silent. Nodding. Leaning away from me. Closer to him.

  Avery gestures fast and furious. “Plummeting … destined for misery.” It seems he has his own sound track. “I’m destined for misery.” He growls a little louder now. “Fine, but I’ll choose my own damn misery—I won’t let a human, government entity, or highcap choose my misery and despair for me. Those who would have us …” More mumbling. “ … crash them down in flames alongside us.…” Something something. “ … pull them to the deepest pit of misery.”

  Shelby’s leaned even closer to him. I munch my fries, barely tasting them. Simon shuffles his newspaper. He’s wary, too.

  Finally Shelby speaks. “A fascinating and stirring view, Mister Koznik.”

  Avery says, “Please, call me Avery.”

  “Fascinating, Avery. And stirring.”

  He pays similar compliments to her view. “Your formulation,” he calls it, “is not only fascinating and stirring, but utterly enchanting.”

  I stuff some fries into my mouth, catching Simon’s eye.

  “Houston,” he mutters under his breath,” we have a problem.”

  After lunch I fire up the accounting program on my computer and proceed to stare senselessly at a column of numbers. Just weeks ago I had everything almost perfectly managed and buttoned up. Now I have the frightening feeling that things are spinning out of control—the exact feeling I’ve spent my life trying to avoid. The highcaps are being hunted and killed. My relationship with Otto is imploding. The memories I’ve worked so hard to pack neatly away might start leaking from my brain—while I sleep—for Packard’s and Ez’s entertainment. Or worse, I’ll visit Packard’s and Otto’s boyhood chamber of horrors once again.

  And then there is Shelby, who seems dangerously fascinated with Avery. And Simon’s up to something. I become aware of a tingling above my left ear. How long is it since I zinged? Is the stress of all this exerting inside-out pressure on the vascular network inside my skull?

  I sit up and take a deep breath. Staring into my screen, I perform a positive visualization. We get the list and everything we need to decode the names, and help solve the case. The killers are brought to justice. I imagine the relief on Otto’s face, eyes soft again. And the warmth and trust is back when he looks at me. Because we want the same things, and he believes in me, and he needs me.

  And maybe I’ll urge my fellow disillusionists to step up the pace—hell, I’d take five cases a day—ten, if possible, to get the highcap criminals turned and released once and for all, freeing Otto’s craniovascular system from stress and impingement. He’ll understand that he can count on me. He’ll see that my not telling him about Ez was just a stupid mistake.

  I make a change in one number and the numbers in another column all change.

  The door opens and Avery stomps out. “Shelby, are those glasses prescription?”

  “Magnifying.” She adjusts them. “One point five.”

  He disappears, then comes back out with three boxes, setting one in front of each of us. “I want you guys to have these. On the house. Starter kits. Antiradiation insoles, antielectromag tabs, and antihighcap glasses.”

  “Well,” Shelby says. “Thank you.”

  I open mine up from the end, pull out insoles, some shiny stickers, and the glasses, wrapped in plastic. “Wow, thanks.” I hold up the insoles. “You put these in your shoes?” Obviously I don’t want to pay special attention to the glasses, but I’m thrilled to own a pair.

  Avery nods. “They minimize the effects of geopathic stress on the human nervous system.”

  Simon unwraps his glasses. “Are these 3-D?”

  “Antihighcap,” Avery says. “They protect against highcap invasion of your privacy and person.”

  Simon smiles. “Highcaps, huh?” Like it’s a big joke. Simon’s good—I remind myself that it’s important not to forget that.

  “I don’t care if you believe or not,” Avery says nonchalantly. “My message to you is, they’re out there. This is not a joke. They’re reading your minds, they’re teleporting things out of your pockets, and your home, and committing all kinds of other crimes against you without your knowledge.”

  “Uh-huh,” Simon says.

  Shelby examines the glasses through the plastic. “Most citizens, I think they have two minds for highcaps. They half believe, I think.”

  Avery points at her. “Exactly. But that’s changing. Allow me.” He unwraps them for her. “Most of them do it subtly, or just don’t mess with you. They don’t want you to know they exist. But then you’ve got mass murderers, like the Brick Slinger last summer—you know that was a telekinetic highcap, right? Don’t answer. My message to you is, these would’ve saved lives. And there are your telepaths hanging out at the ATMs, the telekinetic pickpockets. They say certain highcaps can erase memories.” He tilts his head at Shelby, angling the glasses toward her. “May I, Shelby?”

  “Most certainly, Avery.” She pulls off her cat’s-eye glasses.

  Avery freezes for a second, so openly dazzled with her beauty that I feel uncomfortable, like I’m witnessing something private between them. I glance over at Simon, who widens his eyes while flaring his nostrils.

  When I look back, Avery is gently settling the glasses over Shelby’s smiling face. He steps back. “They look—incredible.”

  The glasses are dark like Shelby’s dark hair, and mannish in a way that heightens her femininity. And then she smiles, revealing that crazy chipped tooth of hers. The effect is alluringly feral. Avery swallows with seeming difficulty.

  “If nothing else, you really ought to wear them when you’re out in public,” he says hoarsely. “Concerts, malls.” He mentions the blurriness, except Avery calls it a field distortion. “Best of all, you’ll be protected from their influence.”

  “The glasses protect you?” I ask. “Like a shield?”

  “Oh, no. Shielding is so dense, so … yesterday. I know they’re my own product, but I have to say, they’re brilliant.” He smiles. “These glasses run on the principle of information. See, the highcap power travels via waves—think of it as a kind of natural electromagnetic signal that’s transmitted the way ra
dio signals are. All information, when you get right down to it, is carried that way.” He explains how the holographic chip in the glasses will protect you by setting up a counteractive signal that adds proprietary information to that highcap frequency, or wave, counteracting highcap power within your personal space. He talks excitedly, touching his forehead a lot, like his brain’s on information overload. I’d think he was mad if the glasses didn’t actually work.

  He tells us that once a highcap is hooked into you, say invading your dreams, or prognosticating you, it’s too late. “They have to pull out on their own. They’ve already set up the feed, if you know what I mean.”

  I do.

  “Amazing,” I say, wondering how he knows so much about the effects of these glasses—and how he tested them. Did he have highcap cooperation? Was it willing cooperation?

  Simon’s got his sticker open. It’s black with a yellow skull. “This is very punk rock, Avery.”

  “It’s a tab. Antielectromag tag. Similar principle.” He explains how it adds harmonizing information. He turns to Shelby. “The insoles, now, those are gross shields, but you need that. You don’t want to know what’s down there.”

  Simon sticks his electromag tag in the middle of his case. “Got anything for extraterrestrials?”

  Avery glowers. “When and if their existence comes to light, I will study them, and I will develop something.” He tromps out of the room, closing his door firmly behind him.

  Simon smiles.

  Shelby narrows her eyes. “Do not disparage him. He gives these out of kindness.”

  “It was kind of him,” I say, turning up the radio.

  “Yeah, he’s a fucking humanitarian,” Simon says. “Him and the you-know-whos.”

  Shelby lowers her voice. “He did not make the glasses for killing; he made them for protection.” With a huff, Shelby turns to her keyboard. This isn’t the best scenario. She already distrusts Otto and his supposedly growing grimness, and dislikes his having us disillusionists and countless highcaps as a kind of secret police at his command. And now there’s this attraction between her and Avery.

  I lower my voice. “By taking the baseline data, we’re helping him out of a dilemma,” I say to her. “We’re helping him keep his brand promise, and we’re saving lives.”

  Shelby just stares at her screen.

  I feel Simon’s eyes on me, but I won’t look at him.

  “Right?” I say.

  “Do not worry,” she mutters in her usual monotone, “I am with program.”

  I finally meet Simon’s gaze. We both heard the implied for now in that.

  I take little breaks to call Otto now and then, but he doesn’t answer, and I feel more despondent as the day wears on. It’s so unlike him to ignore me. Is he okay? How deeply have I damaged things?

  That evening after I drop Shelby and Simon off, I swing by the government building, hoping to catch Otto at work. Gone. But one of his commissioners suggests Otto could be working off-site today. Off-site?

  I try his home, his favorite coffee shops, and a restaurant he works at sometimes. Nada. So I swallow my pride and leave a message for Sophia. She’ll know where he is. But will she tell?

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  “YOU’RE HERE!” Ez rises from her chair behind the coat check window. “Where have you been? I want you to look at my liver area.” She eyes a couple leaning over the railing a few yards away. “Maybe when they’re gone. If you stare at it long enough, it looks like it moves on its own—like it expands, and then it contracts by the tiniest degrees.” She watches my eyes for reaction. I give her none. “And sometimes I can feel the sensation of it all the way up to my throat. Is that a bad sign?”

  “Did the Klosamine come?”

  “Yes. And I’m doubling it.”

  “Don’t, that’s too much. That can actually make the next generation of organisms immune.”

  She gasps, still awash in fear from the last time. My fear. It’s a horrible and devastating power that I wield. I catch sight of the photo of Otto on the wall behind her, and feel bad all over again.

  “What? Shit! Something else is wrong. You just thought of something bad, I saw it in your eyes!” She fixes me with her pixie gaze. “Come on, out with it!”

  “I thought of something bad, but it’s not connected to you.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Of course you’d say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “You don’t.”

  She screws up her lips and fixes me with a silly look. “Touché.”

  I snicker. “Look, stop focusing so intently on the feeling and it’ll go away. Okay?” A woman in furs trundles up. “Okay? I’ll be right back.” I head down the staircase to the bar below.

  Stop focusing on the feeling. That was helpful advice, and I’m not here to be helpful. What was I thinking? I should’ve acted secretly concerned. I have to stop this compassion thing.

  I buy myself an ouzo. Up above on the catwalk corridor, the woman’s handing over her coat. Even though Ez hasn’t asked about the field descrambler, I have this crazy urge to give it to her.

  I think about what Packard said—that she collages memories to create action. Maybe that’s why she keeps trying to get me to discuss handing the thing over—so that there’s a memory of a conversation to stir up. Could that be enough?

  I smile as I sip my drink. She really is sparky, and fun to be around, which is pretty impressive considering she’s been isolated in that booth for three years. It takes a certain amount of inner strength to handle something like that—and to handle the fear I’ve been filling her with. I don’t need Packard’s psycho-sight to get the sense that she doesn’t add up as a sicko killer. I’ve dealt with plenty of lowlifes and depraved murderers at this point, and Ez doesn’t have the same feeling in any way. Is this really a woman who turned people into murderous cannibals for the fun of it?

  But an innocent woman wouldn’t be invading our dreams and trying to control us, and certainly Otto wouldn’t have sealed her up without proof. While we were screwing around at the Paranoia Factory, I read the Midcity Eagle’s online archive from the summer of the Krini Militia. It really was horrible how those people were eaten, and there was a great deal of evidence against Ez. She reportedly fled to Brazil. No doubt Sophia revised her friends and family to believe that, just as Packard’s friends and family were revised to think they saw him die all those years ago.

  I go back up the stairs. I think about what Otto said: Extreme circumstances call us to do things we’d prefer not to have to do. Until I’m presented with evidence of her innocence, I have to work on disillusioning her.

  Up top I head down the balcony past a chatty little group toward her little window. Nobody’s recognized her in there—not surprising, when you see the murky photos and police sketches of her. I suppose one day she woke up and found herself in there. What happens if she contacts her old friends, or tells the world who she is, and pleads her case from the coat check booth? Does she meet an even worse fate? Are there rules? Consequences? We disillusionists never get answers to these questions.

  I set my drink on her ledge. “I brought you something,” I say, low, so the couple gazing over the balcony rail won’t hear.

  “Is it what I most want in the whole wide world?” She raises her eyebrows. “You know how happy that would make me.”

  I do know. “Sorry,” I say.

  She frowns a pouty frown. “Well, can I just see it? What harm would it be for me to see?”

  This suddenly makes a weird kind of sense. What harm would it be? I hold up my arm.

  Her face lights up. “It’s the bracelet? That’s the descrambler?”

  “Shhh,” I say, feeling happy that she’s happy.

  “Let me try it on.”

  “No way.” I lower my arm, letting my sleeve fall over it, shocked that I just showed her. What was I thinking?

  “The bracelet all this time?�
�

  “I won’t give it to you, though. Ever.” And I’ll be zinging her with my other hand, too. Shit! Why did I show her? She can picture it now. Packard warned that she could gain limited influence during the day. “I have this for you instead.” I pull out Otto’s copy of Benvenuto Cellini.

  “Another book?”

  “I knew you were interested in the ingesting of diamonds—”

  She goes a little pale. “No. I really wasn’t.”

  “You have to hear this. It’s a fascinating anecdote.”

  “No.” She puts her fingers to her lips.

  “You’ll love it, Ez.” I launch into reading the passage about Benvenuto in the dungeon. She resists, but she’s simply no match for me. I’ll get her in the mood, I’ll zing her, then I’ll go. Soon I reach the passage where he’s sure he’s eaten the diamonds, convinced he’ll die a grueling death, and Ez and I discuss this thing I learned on the Internet today: that tiny shards of pounded diamonds get these barbed fishhook-like edges that can sink into the intestine walls over months—one person suggested it would be like a stinging jellyfish living inside you. Ez looks like she’s going to fall over. I don’t blame her. The idea of it terrified even me, and I never had perforated organ fears.

  I sense that her attention is turning inward. I should take her pulse right now and zing her.

  “You wouldn’t be able to even do an operation on that sort of thing,” she says vacantly.

  “Not unless they figure out how to transplant intestines.”

  “Or maybe they could bypass it. Maybe do a modified gastric bypass down to the distal end?”

  I bite my lip. This is not my area of expertise.

  “What is this, book club?”

  Ez blinks, as though she’s coming out of a trance. “Simon!”

  I spin around.

  Simon grins. “Hello Ezmerelda. Nurse Justine.” He’s still in his work outfit, but he’s added his big ratty coat and the antihighcap glasses, and his black hair, once slicked back, is now disheveled sideways, seeming to defy physics, for a look that’s insane, and bit menacing.