Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “It was perfect,” Parian said. “We dealt with him, and it’s all been quiet. I feel bad for thinking it, like I’m violating the sanctity of it all, but I can’t help but wonder if things are legitimately cool or if this is just the calm before the storm.”

  Tattletale said, “That’s kind of why I called you guys here. But there’s no point dwelling on it before the others arrive. Can I grab you something?”

  The pair shook their heads.

  “Right. As far as the peace and quiet go, take advantage of it while we have it. Rogue thing is going okay?”

  “I dunno if you can call it rogue stuff. It’s more like what we were doing in the bay, but with some legit business on the side.”

  “Legit business you’re paying for with less legitimate money,” Foil said.

  “I didn’t say I liked how it turned out.”

  “But you accept it,” Foil said.

  “I accept it,” Parian said.

  Foil nodded, as if satisfied.

  “Can I ask how your friends and family are doing?”

  “You can ask, but I dunno if I have much to tell you. Better, but not as good as it could be? Best surgeon in the world changes their faces and bodies, it’s a hell of a project to get things changed back. Especially when a good share of the surgeons out there are dead.”

  “I could put you in contact with Panacea. I don’t know what she’s doing, really, but I know that Bonesaw wouldn’t go over well, and Panacea might help out in her place.”

  “Lily already tried, talking to some people she knew from before.”

  Tattletale sighed. “Damn. Want me to pull strings?”

  “Sure. Please, If you could.”

  Tattletale nodded.

  “You’re being nice. What’s the deal?” Foil asked. “You’re buttering us up.”

  “Two years in the company of evil, and you still can’t give any of us bad guys the benefit of a doubt?”

  “I can give lots of bad guys the benefit of a doubt,” Foil angled her head slightly upward, her eyes moving up to where Parian was resting her head.

  “She doesn’t count,” Tattletale said.

  “Even others. But you… well, I wonder sometimes.”

  Tattletale moved her chair back a bit, propping one foot on the table’s edge. “Accepting my offers for help with one hand, keep the other hand clenched in a fist in case I do something you don’t like?”

  “Let’s not fight,” Parian said. She sat straighter, moving her hands until they rested on Foil’s shoulders. “Not today.”

  “Can we compromise?” Foil asked. “Accept that maybe you need a skeptic in your company? Someone to watch you and call you on bullshit manipulation?”

  “If we can even call that a compromise,” Tattletale said. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “Changing the subject to something more pleasant,” Parian said. “I need cloth, if I’m going to keep making designs. Will you connect me, and how much are you going to want?”

  “I can, up to a point, and I want four percent on any profits.”

  “Four? That’s more generous than your usual.”

  “Four, but fold that in, I want to buy the product, using-”

  The door opened. Rachel loomed in the doorway.

  “Hey, mighty hunter,” Tattletale said.

  “Hey,” Rachel said. She glanced around, then entered the room, snapping her fingers to call Bastard.

  “Managing the first winter okay?”

  “Managing.”

  “You know you can send an email or make a phone call, keep in touch some.”

  “Didn’t have power to recharge stuff,” Rachel said. “No gas for the machine, couldn’t be bothered to go get gas. Having quiet and darkness is nice, some nights.”

  “True, but what if there’s an emergency?”

  “I can handle most emergencies.”

  “And the ones you can’t?”

  “For those, I have gas, now.”

  Tattletale sighed. “You’re good, then? Or do you want scheduled gas deliveries, so you don’t run out?”

  “Sure.”

  Tattletale nodded.

  Rachel settled into a seat opposite Foil and Parian, Bastard sitting to her left. She scratched the wolf’s head, apparently content with silence.

  There wasn’t enough time for the silence to get awkward. Imp returned, and she had Forrest, Charlotte and Sierra in tow. A little boy rode on Forrest’s shoulders.

  “I’ve brought testosterone!” Imp announced.

  “Chairs,” Tattletale said. “Take them. There’s an abundance. We’re just about set.”

  Slowly, the others found their seats. Forrest to led Aidan to a pair of seats next to Rachel, putting himself between the child and the wolf. The little boy cradled a bird, and a chirp got Bastard’s attention, the wolf’s head and ears perking up. Rachel quieted him with an order, and Bastard reluctantly lowered his head to the floor.

  “We had to bring some, couldn’t do the babysitter thing. Our kids are playing with the others in the lobby,” Forrest said.

  “Which translates to ‘let’s not dawdle too much’,” Imp added.

  “Two more,” Tattletale said.

  A knock at the door marked another arrival. Imp had left it open, so she was free to step inside.

  Cozen eyed the room. The thief folded her arms. She’d adopted a form-fitting jacket with a mink collar, her ample cleavage covered by the length of an overlong scarf. “I feel out of place.”

  “You were invited,” Tattletale said. “Sit.”

  Cozen made her way to the table. She stepped up to the seat next to Imp, but Imp reached out and put a poorly made doll in the chair. “Taken.”

  “I travel for three hours to come here, and you won’t give me a chair?”

  “I didn’t invite you,” Imp said. “And for reals, this isn’t me being a jerk. Or it is me being a jerk, but that’s not the big thing here. This is about symbolism and shit.”

  “Symbolism and shit,” Cozen said, sounding unimpressed.

  “Language,” Charlotte admonished them. She subtly indicated Aidan.

  “I’ve heard worse words,” Aidan said, quiet. “When Tattletale’s giving me lessons and she has to take a call, she has the soldiers watch me, and they know lots of bad words.”

  Charlotte glared at Tattletale.

  Tattletale offered an apologetic half-smile, “I’ll quiz the young sir on who has been swearing around him, and heads will roll. Until then, let’s get back on topic.”

  “Symbolism and stuff,” Imp said. “There’s lots of seats, Cozy.”

  “Cozy?”

  “No fighting,” Tattletale said. She sighed. “Listen, this whole thing is really simple. Let’s do this right, Undersiders stick around, I say what I need to say on other business, five or ten minutes at most, and we’re done.”

  Cozen frowned, but she circled the table and found an empty chair by the far end of the couch.

  The last person to arrive entered without fanfare. The door clicked shut, and she walked with a quiet assurance to the nearest available seat, which happened to be the one opposite Tattletale.

  “You made the trip okay?” Tattletale asked.

  “I did,” Dinah responded. “I saved some questions for the day, but I didn’t need them to navigate.”

  “Then,” Tattletale said, gesturing toward the center of the table, “Forrest, would you do the honors?”

  Forrest stood, taking hold of the wine bottle Tattletale had brought out of the fridge. He removed the cork.

  “Temperature should be perfect, I think I timed it right,” Tattletale said. “Oh, forgot the glasses. One second.”

  It only took a minute for the setup to finish, the red wine poured and glasses distributed. Imp and Dinah received wine glasses of soda. Tattletale glanced at Aidan. “Will he have wine or soda?”

  “Soda,” Forrest said.

  By the time Tattletale reached her seat again, everyone was standing, ready.
>
  “A toast,” she said. “I had to think for a good while, to decide what fit.”

  “Oh man, is this shit going to be pretentious?” Imp asked.

  Tattletale gave Imp the evil eye as she continued, “In honor of everything and everyone we fought for and saved. In remembrance of everything we couldn’t save.”

  The words hung in the air for a moment.

  “Works,” Imp conceded.

  Glasses clinked. Rachel had a grim frown on her face, mingled with a trace of confusion as she brought the glass in the direction of her mouth twice, before discovering there were more wine glasses to touch hers to. She seemed relieved when she could finally down the contents and thunk the glass down on the table.

  “And,” Tattletale said, “Worthy of special mention, entirely separate from the ones we just toasted, because I don’t give a fuck about my floors, and because I’m not going to fucking get in an argument about whether we saved them or doomed them, I’m going to suggest a libation for those who have passed from this world.”

  “Libation?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yeah,” Cozen spoke. Without looking, she turned and poured a thin stream of her wine onto the floor to her left. “An offering. It’s why I’m here, since I was with him the most towards the end.”

  Tattletale looked at the empty seat beside Cozen. She’d guessed the number of guests right. Just the right number of empty chairs.

  She could only hope that Taylor hadn’t caught on, that in her final moments, she hadn’t found out about everyone she’d really lost, that Grue hadn’t made it off the oil rig.

  A white lie for a friend. Taylor would have blamed herself, maybe rightly, maybe not.

  “I like to think it’s a kind of payment, more than an offering,” Imp said. She shifted her chair a bit, then poured wine onto the carpet to her right, just in front of the crude doll with the white mask and silver crown that she’d placed in the chair. “You’re missed, dude.”

  “I’m glad we could do this,” Tattletale said. “We’ve been through too much shit together, and I was having trouble keeping us networked. I thought we needed to touch base. A little bit of ritual to remind us of the important bits.”

  That said, she held a glass out to her left, and she poured a splash out onto the carpet in front of the empty seat in the corner.

  Despite her best efforts, Tattletale couldn’t help but meet Dinah’s eyes.

  ■

  The teenager entered the mall. People were thick in the space, flowing in and out of a food court with a high-end veneer. Spinach pizzas were on display alongside a window displaying a wealth of cuts of meat for sandwiches a step above the norm.

  Once free of the chill of winter and the periodic blasts of cold from the mall entrance, the teenager pulled off both hat and scarf and undid the large buttons on the jacket.

  The old woman had commented on how the world was getting better. Hard to believe, but it was a nice thought. It was nice, even, that someone could believe it. The heavy clothing had been a sort of protection against the world, both against people and against the world itself. The protection felt just a fraction less necessary than it had before the discussion.

  Navigating the mall was easy enough. It was in the midst of an area with fancy high rises and major law firms, and everything here seemed to reflect that. Even the people.

  A brief feeling of trepidation.

  That feeling reached a climax as the teenager came to a stop.

  There, just around a corner, there was a point where a coffee shop sat opposite a small multilingual bookstore. A woman sat at one table outside the coffee shop, a bag placed beside her. Willowy, taller than the average man, she wore a high end dress suit, and her dark curls were long. She had a wide mouth that quirked a little as she read something, and her eyelashes were long enough that she looked like she was asleep, sitting there with one leg crossed over the other, her head lowered as she read the open book that rested on the table in front of her, one hand resting on a steaming paper cup.

  The teenager surveyed the area, wary, looking for threats and surprises.

  Nothing.

  No traps, at a glance.

  Easy.

  This is easy. Do it.

  One foot in front of the other.

  A rising sense of anxiety.

  The teenager paused a short distance away, almost paralyzed at the idea the woman would look up.

  And then what?

  Three more steps. Still, the woman didn’t look up.

  The teenager placed two hands on the back of a chair, just beside the woman.

  “May I?”

  The woman glanced up, and the teenager tensed.

  Only a glance. Her eyes returned to the book. “Take it. I’m not expecting anyone.”

  She thinks I want the chair.

  “I meant… is it okay if I sit?”

  Another glance, confusion.

  “Are you a former client, or-”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. If this is random conversation, or solicitation for something religious, then I’ll respectfully decline. I only get an hour and twenty minutes for lunch, and I’d like to spend it quietly. Please.”

  “I know, I mean, I know about the way you read most lunches, or you go across the street to the museum and wander by yourself with headphones in. The private inves…”

  The teenager trailed off.

  “Private investigator?”

  “I’m doing this wrong.”

  “Just a little,” the woman said.

  The teenager sat, then shrugged off the backpack, letting it drop to the floor. “I- I’m your daughter.”

  The woman frowned. Her eyes moved to the nearest exit, then to nearby tables and the barista inside the coffee shop. Checking for a way out.

  “I… I know that sounds a little crazy.”

  “I’m your mother?”

  “You’re my mom, but you aren’t my mother.”

  “I have two boys, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t… however old you are. So you weren’t switched at birth.”

  The teenager took in a deep breath. “I’m from Earth Bet. My name is Taylor Hebert, and my mother was Annette Rose Hebert. Anne-Rose.”

  Taylor watched with bated breath as Annette took that in. The realization and connecting of the dots was quick enough. Annette’s hand moved, and she lost her page.

  “Oh,” Annette said. “Wow. Wow.”

  “If this is too much, or if it’s inconvenient or awkward, just say so.”

  “But they sealed this world off. Someone on the other side, they used a device to close all of the doorways, because it looked like there was going to be rioting or war, with too many refugees wanting in.”

  “I know,” Taylor said. Except the device wasn’t on the other side. “Yeah. But they sent back everyone that belonged here, and a few of us slipped through before the doors closed.”

  “Oh. Sometimes I’ve idly wondered, ‘what if I met the other me’, but you don’t really think it’s going to happen.”

  “I know. You should know, just so I can give context to this whole thing, the other you is dead. She has been for six and a half years. A car accident.”

  “My condolences,” Annette said. “I… it feels wrong to give condolences for my death.”

  Taylor smiled just a little. “I think it’s allowed, to feel weird about this. I just, um, forgive me for being selfish, but I kind of wanted to see your face. Or her face.”

  Annette nodded. She exhaled slowly, almost but not quite whistling.

  “If you want me to go, I’m gone. Your life returns to normal.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Annette said, her voice quiet. “But I don’t think it’s fair, doing it like this. I want you to stay because I’m curious, while you have a very real, very profound attachment to me… to the other me. I’m worried I’ll hurt you.”

  Taylor nodded. “I can live with that. Don’t worry about me too
much. I’m tougher than I look. I’m willing to satisfy your curiosity, answer any questions.”

  “You’re…?”

  Taylor took a stab at answering the question. “Taylor. Eighteen.”

  “I would have been in college.”

  “You were. She was. She met a magnificent dorky guy with a warm heart and an awful lot of passion. He worshiped her, and she… I think he gave her permission to do what she really wanted to do in life, at a time when her parents were being controlling. Her mother never really forgave my dad for luring you off the track she’d set for him, getting you pregnant with me so early in life.”

  “And my dad?”

  “Gramp liked him, but not enough to admit it to Gram.”

  “Oh. My mother refused to let my children call her Gram.”

  “I think my mom and dad encouraged it with me as a kind of subtle payback.”

  Annette smiled. “What did she end up doing?”

  “Teaching. She was a professor at a University, teaching English.”

  Annette’s eyes moved to the books, but when she responded, it was a negation. “I can’t really see that, I’m afraid.”

  Taylor nodded.

  “Your father?”

  “He came over to this earth with me. He’s picking me up in a short bit, we’re staying at a hotel for a bit while he does some job interviews, and then we go back to Boston if he doesn’t have any luck. I brought up the subject, and he said he didn’t want to see you. He might try to sneak a peek when he picks me up, if the opportunity arises, but losing her broke him. He and I, we’re both mending a bit, on a lot of levels.”

  Annette nodded. “Some news from over there made it over here… it’s impossible to believe. We took some damage, but it was comparatively minor. If you can call a death toll of five hundred million minor.”

  “No, it was comparatively minor,” Taylor agreed.

  “I’m… I admit, I’m finding myself more and more lost for words, as my curiosity is sated. I feel like I should say something meaningful, so you didn’t spend all this time trying to find some woman without anything to say. It would be easier if I knew what you wanted. It makes it hard to tailor my response.”

  “I’m not expecting anything profound or special,” Taylor said. “I thought I’d visit, refresh myself on what she looked like. I… I’m sort of in the same boat as you. There’s a lot I want to say and explain, when it comes to me, I want to raise ideas that have been crossing my mind lately, but I’d have to tell a really long story before I could even begin, and I’m not sure I’m brave enough to tell that story.”