The siren faded.
“I’m sorry, Deputy,” Porter said. “We are not in the wrong here—and we’re leaving.”
“I’ll know who’s wrong and who’s not after I talk to Ira and Bonnie. You best not have hurt them.”
“Is Ira the proprietor?” the mummy said. “He is well, but I presume he is upset about the mess and his frightened customers. I’ve apologized, but please do pass along my additional regrets. I am not certain that Bonnie is inside.”
“Miss, I’m counting to five,” the deputy told Rain. “When I get there, you drop your weapon. I mean it.”
He made it as far as four.
Porter flicked his staff in a compact circle. The deputy’s bullets clattered out of his gun and onto the hood, where they rolled around in tight arcs before going overboard and bouncing off the asphalt.
The Envoy headed for the van.
The deputy scrambled to grab some of his ammo and reload. His gun disappeared. “Hold on!” he said. “You—”
“Your holster,” said Porter.
Sure enough, the pistol was at his side. Flummoxed, he went for the riot gun in his car, but couldn’t get to it. He was handcuffed to the side-view mirror with his own cuffs.
Checking his duty belt for the key, he came up empty. His face turned red.
“It’s on the number-three gas pump,” Porter said. “Ira will retrieve it for you, I’m sure.” He motioned for Paul and Rain to get into the van.
The mummy and monk made their decision wordlessly. Leaving the fuming lawman behind, they waited for Paul and Rain to get settled and climbed in back.
“I’ll follow you,” the deputy said.
Halfway into the driver’s seat, Porter leaned out and moved the top of his staff in another fast loop.
Liquid splashed out from under the police car. The deputy looked down at an alarmingly large puddle of motor oil pooling around his uniform shoes.
“Don’t,” the gray man said. “You have a job to do. But so do I.”
Porter started the van’s engine. They pulled away.
Paul watched the deputy shake oil from his feet as the growing distance shrunk him in the frame of the van’s rear windows.
The monk, in the seat beside Paul, watched, too.
When the deputy was out of view, Paul spotted an eyetooth, edged in red at its root, on the leather seat. It must have fallen from a fold in the monk’s robe.
The monk saw the tooth and offered Paul a full, reassuring grin. It was not his.
How could this little man with the pleasant face be capable of such damage? Paul had known some hard cases, to be sure, but the fight in the diner had reached a whole different level. Then again, the skinheads would have done just as bad or worse to their intended victims, who were only trying to enjoy a meal to start their day.
The monk rolled his window down a crack and tossed the tooth out. After closing the window, he reached over to give Paul’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.
As soon as he made contact, his expression shifted to one of confusion, then concern. He tilted his head, viewing Paul through a different lens. He let go slowly, as if disengaging from something unstable.
“What?” Paul said.
The monk offered no answer. But he appeared to have questions of his own now.
15
Tell Her Goodbye Again
Zach’s mother went to bed before dark. She did not say goodnight.
She’d never done that before. Not in New York, in 624 East Seventieth Street’s apartment 14, where his bed had been in the tiny arched front room, and Zach’s mother’s bed had been a fold-out sofa on the other side of the curved entrance, next to the part of the floor that gave him a splinter in his foot one Christmas morning.
Not in their basement apartment at 1351 West Seventeenth Street, where the roaches were bigger than two fingers put together and flew if you knocked them off the wall, and the neighbor, Sean Hulce, cried because his gecko escaped and ate the roaches until there weren’t any left, and Zach’s mom found it dead, dried, and crunchy when she pulled the refrigerator out to clean behind it.
The pink pills Zach’s mother swallowed a lot made her sleep. She took them because her knee hurt. Zach knew that because when he talked into his tape recorder and played it back, the taped version of himself told him so.
Everything the tape recorder said to him turned out to be true. Zach was afraid for his mother, but his tape-recorder self said she would be okay if he did what it told him to do and tried his hardest. Well, it didn’t know for sure, but Zach and the directions he had to follow were their best chance.
That was why Zach practiced in the mirror. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, and that Zach’s mother would have been upset to see him practicing if she weren’t taking the pink pills. That was why he couldn’t think about her knee hurting. Because he had to get good at the mirror.
His tape-recorder self said that. So when Zach’s mother was at work or asleep late at night, he tested himself—to prove to his tape-recorder self how good he was getting.
His tape-recorder self wouldn’t let him stop practicing. It wouldn’t let him be not good at the mirror game. Because it was time to play for keeps.
For keeps wasn’t how his tape-recorder self wanted him to think about it. It wanted him to see it as an adventure. Only not a game. It wasn’t something he could mess up and start over. It was a very hard thing Zach was supposed to do.
It was about Zach’s mother. And Paul, the boy on the bus.
Now Zach’s trick counted. It hadn’t before. Now it did.
He stared at himself, eyes on eyes, until the only thing he saw were the pupils of the Zach in the mirror. His tape-recorder self told him what to do. How to do it. The way it would work.
Why it must.
He had to bring all three of his selves together—the Zach in the bedroom, the Zach in the mirror, the Zach in the tape recorder—and then pull them apart again. He also knew what his tape-recorder self hadn’t told him: if he did it wrong, all three would go away and not come back. The trick was to know it was dangerous, know it was hard, and then use that knowing to erase everything but doing it right.
He raised his right hand, like the teachers always asked him to do, though he never did it when they wanted it. He’d raise his left for them instead, which always made them write in their notebooks. They never realized that for him, it was about having the power to make them scribble.
But he raised his right hand now in order to receive other, more important powers. Mirror Zach raised his hand, too.
Zach lowered his hand. So did Mirror Zach.
He listened to Tape Recorder Zach once more. He wanted to make sure he got the next part right.
He raised his hand again. Mirror Zach did, too. But this time, when he put his hand back down, Mirror Zach kept his up.
Tape Recorder Zach spoke. Zach stared into Mirror Zach’s eyes until the room was nothing but pupils again, until the pupils made black tunnels through the glass.
The room changed and changed again. Zach was aware of it in steps: Tape Recorder Zach’s voice no longer came from the machine Zach held; it came from the recorder in the mirror. Tape Recorder Zach spoke faster, saying that Zach had to finish and finish now. So he did.
Zach—real Zach—was now in the mirror version of the room, hand down, and Mirror Zach was in the real bedroom, his hand still up. The windows in the room and in its mirror version brightened as nighttime left and morning arrived.
Tape Recorder Zach said to go deeper into the glass. Zach obeyed, leaving the apartment, the pink-dream home of Zach’s mother, behind.
Before he left, he looked back at Mirror Zach, who’d traded places with him and was now stranded there in the real bedroom, hand in the air. Mirror Zach looked disappointed, like he’d just realized no one would ever call on him.
Zach wished he could step back through, say he was sorry to Mirror Zach for tricking him, and then go down the hall to wake Zach’s mother up on
e more time.
He wanted to tell her goodbye again.
16
Bad Metrics
Truitt knew what was coming when Mr. Brill ordered him to bring Carol Laird to his office. She, of course, had no warning. So she went.
Carol Laird had caught Mr. Brill’s attention when he was returning from a Ravager review. He happened to deviate from his habitual route to his office and caught a glimpse of her at her desk.
Poor Carol Laird.
She was the kind of pretty that Mr. Brill preferred. The most beautiful girl in her suburban high school, she was middle-of-the-pack in Los Angeles or New York. Her discovery of her low rank after moving to one of those places—her wretched heartbreak—was the kind of pain that got his attention.
Mr. Brill liked a girl who knew she wasn’t going any further. He lived for her dejection—for when she forgot to keep it off her face.
He loved nothing more than a broken spirit.
Carol Laird showed up in an interview suit that was probably the only good outfit she’d ever owned. After all, she had no idea what he had in mind. Don’t blow an opportunity, right?
She didn’t know what Truitt knew.
Mr. Brill was at his desk, surrounded by rings of floating graphs of all sorts. The bad metrics were trending up, the good ones in the opposite direction.
The crossing of the lines in a negative manner explained the flat light in Mr. Brill’s eyes as he reviewed them. It also informed the worry emanating from Carol as she sat, ignored, at the conference table.
By this time, she recognized that she’d been summoned for a so not-good reason, as Truitt imagined she was likely to phrase it. She was a mouse in the pet-store tank with a python. The sole survivor of the dozen dropped in, she was free to wander the glass box only because the big snake’s hunger had been sated by number eleven.
For now.
“Sir?” Truitt said.
“I know.” The big man didn’t bother to look away from his data.
“Of course, sir. Would Ms. Laird like anything?” Truitt wouldn’t risk asking her directly.
She prepared an answer, but was cut off.
“Ms. Laird wants a glass of whatever burns,” Mr. Brill said. “In exchange for my considering her brother for an opportunity in our organization, she’s agreed to be my close personal assistant. Is that not generous, Truitt?”
“Very, sir.” Truitt was unable to tell whose generosity the big man meant.
“Indeed. She says he’s in a place right now where—what was the phrasing again?” He didn’t wait for her to speak. “Oh—where the heights steal his breath.”
Reminding Mr. Brill of a fellow charge’s suffering was no way to garner mercy, even if it was her sibling. Especially if it was her sibling. She’d given up on saying anything more, but that was wisdom acquired too late.
“You have an update?”
“Yes, sir. We’re monitoring the adjacency of the Brucker woman in her duties. It appears to be even better than expected.”
Neither Mr. Brill nor Truitt bothered to explain to Carol Laird the concept of adjacency. When seeking a target’s Essence, it was advantageous to use a data admin with some relationship to said target. And when measuring such an effort to ensure that the admin performed well, it was also best if the person doing that measuring was connected.
“Not better than I expected,” Mr. Brill said. “I knew it would work. The data admin was on the bus with the orphan kid. That’s why she has that job.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Who’s on top of that again?”
“The Medill woman, sir. She’s an exemplary project manager and has shown quite an aptitude for dosage. In this case, the amounts required to limit Brucker’s memory are high enough that her concentration can be an issue. But again, adjacency should more than compensate.”
That Mr. Brill allowed Truitt to discuss all of this in front of Carol Laird did not bode well for her. He wasn’t worried about her telling anyone.
“Make Ms. Laird’s drink a double,” Mr. Brill said.
He never once called her by her first name.
The snake tank in which Carol Laird was trapped had plenty of room for Truitt. He’d long understood that. And while he had no intention of finding himself cowering in the corner and waiting for his time to come, his fate was not under his control. The countless years of service to Mr. Brill, of staying in his good graces, meant not a thing.
His fate relied on the acquisition and exploitation of Essence, which, in turn, depended on many people who were not named Gerald Truitt. He had plenty of say in who reported to him and what their duties were, but right now his future state and welfare were in the hands of June Medill and, through her, Annie Brucker.
Which meant that Truitt had to spend more time than he would have liked with the Medill woman. And by more, he meant any.
Much to do, much to rue.
June had her own office, a wasteful use of Essence that Mr. Brill did not know of. But Truitt wanted to keep her happy—or, rather, as happy as she was capable of being. Brought from the web-covered warehouse space and placed in a larger cubicle than anyone else enjoyed, she’d asked for an office with a door to keep anything from crawling on her. That was her chief memory of the warehouse—the weavers. Morale having its worth, Truitt granted the request.
Truitt noted that June once again had her door open, which brought the veracity of her stated fears into question. She sat at her desk, a sensible steel affair that suited her nature, poring over three large ledgers.
Earlier in her tenure, Truitt had been mildly interested when the monitors she’d been given disappeared and were replaced by leather-bound paper—a reflection of her identity and preference. Earlier. Right now, he didn’t care a whit.
“I know, Mister Truitt,” she said when she saw him. “I’m aware of our performance issues. I prepare the reports, and they disappoint me even more than they disappoint you or Mister Brill, I promise you.”
“I doubt that.” He sat in her guest chair and made a mental note of two more areas of waste—its ample cushioning and a lone iris in a glass vase on her desk. From the angle his seat afforded, the flower appeared to hang from her left nostril.
“I want you to know that I’m up to our current challenge, sir.”
“Do you understand the challenge?”
She nodded and smiled, showing little white teeth made for grinding.
Truitt tried to guess at how vividly, if at all, she recalled having those lips sewn together. “Impress me.”
“Essence is who we are and what we do. Its trust is earned, its care paramount.”
“Is that from the manual?”
“Verbatim.”
The iris was a distraction. He picked up the vase and set it down to the side with a solid clunk. “Memorization is not helpful if you don’t comprehend the words’ import. Do you understand the challenge?”
“I can summarize.”
“By all means.”
She leaned forward, eager to please. She understood, at least, that she needed to get this right. “Before Mister Brill, The Commons was an unjust and inefficient place. It molded itself to each person and Journey. People entered with Essence, and when their Journey was complete, their Essence left with them. It was a waste of resources and chaotic as well. No one had control over their fate until Mister Brill stepped in.”
Truitt nodded her on. He would have preferred to avoid enduring this beginner’s recitation of the obvious, but she needed to isolate the matter at hand in her own way.
“Mister Brill was willing to help and accepted the challenge. Through his diligence, a system came about that collected people’s Essence as they entered. It eliminated the need for individual Journeys and arbitrary outcomes. It kept Essence in The Commons, where it belongs, and stored it in an orderly, predictable, and efficient manner.”
“Correct. And the challenge?”
“To continue executing Mister Brill’s vision of ma
ximizing growth and minimizing expenditure.”
He waited for her to demonstrate the tiniest sign that she’d thought things through on her own and reached a deeper understanding of their predicament. Instead, her dumb silence indicated she was finished speaking. He considered sewing her mouth closed himself, then and there. “You’ve increased the Brucker woman’s dosage?”
“To the point where distraction is no longer a factor. She concentrates on her work.”
“How do you know?”
“She hasn’t sought out Charlene Moseley since the bump-up. And then there’s her little boy.” She frowned, as if enduring a cramp. “She doesn’t discuss him. At all.”
“Is that a concern?”
“Maybe. Yes. Before, she would talk about him when asked. Now it’s as if she doesn’t even want to think of him. He’s alone all day. I think there are some sort of educational tapes she leaves him to listen to—she’s mentioned them—but I don’t know what they are or where she obtained them.” She looked to Truitt for some level of sympathy. “Sir, he’s her son.”
“I don’t care.”
“Sir?”
He let the question hang on her idiot face. If she truly sought understanding, perhaps fear might be of assistance. “What does one damaged little monster of a child matter so long as his mother performs in the fashion in which we need her to perform?” He leaned on the desk, elbows nudging it hard enough for the water in the iris’s vase to register the disturbance.
She watched the water shudder.
“I will explain this in the simplest of terms, and then I should never have to do so again,” he said. “Throw your manual out. It’s propaganda. Dogma. It will not serve you. There is no morality to what we do. Mister Brill is a thief who steals what rightly belongs to the universe. He victimizes and we help him, lest we become victims ourselves. Essence is not easily taken, stored, or used. We expend a great amount of effort to control it. Some theories hold that Essence is sentient—that it remembers how The Commons used to be and wishes to return to that state. I don’t believe that, but I do think that it’s like water. If you allow it to do so, it will leak and promote corrosion, rot, and all of the associated issues. Mister Brill sees it as data. Its representation matters little to me, so long as it is ours to command.”
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