Love on the Run

by Katharine Kerr

  “I didn’t mean to upset her,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Ari sighed and reached for a bottle of beer. He would probably nurse one all evening, I figured, knowing him the way I did. He was just pouring some of it into his glass when the doorbell rang.

  “That’s Sean now,” I said. “And probably Al with him.”

  Dad growled and drank about a third of his glass off in one gulp. Ari got up, drew the Beretta, and headed for the stairs.

  “Do you have to wave that gun around?” I said.

  “I never wave a gun around,” Ari said. “It might not be Sean.”

  “Nonsense!” Dad put in. “As if Nola wouldn’t know that her own brother was at the door!”

  Ari ignored us both and hurried down to open the front door. I stood up and wished I’d never laid aside my teenage desire to become a nun. In a minute or two I heard Sean’s voice on the stairs, saying, “I know he’s here. That’s why I came over.”

  Sean led the way. His partner, Al Wong, followed more slowly, and Ari brought up the rear. All of us O’Gradys are decent looking, but Sean is gorgeous—perfect features, wavy black hair, big dark blue eyes, lean but muscled. He was wearing jeans, a black leather jacket, and a long-sleeved 49ers T-shirt that night, perhaps for the macho implication, more likely because the clear red flattered his tanned complexion. Because Sean looks so perfect, people tend not to notice Al, who’s a good-looking guy himself, as handsome as any Hong Kong movie star.

  Sean charged into the living room. Dad set his beer down on the coffee table and got up to face him.

  “Why the hell,” Dad said, “didn’t you tell me yourself?”

  “I was going to,” Sean said. “Mom jumped the gun. I’ve got too much respect for you to let you hear it secondhand.”

  Nicely played, I thought. For a blessed minute Dad stayed silent, staring at him.

  “All I want is for you to accept me like I am,” Sean said. “I love you, Dad. I wish you could love me.”

  “Of course I love you,” Dad glared at him with narrowed eyes. “Why else would I be concerned about your immortal soul?”

  “What a load of crap!” Sean said. “Can’t we leave the damned church out of it?”

  “No, we can’t! Of all the stupid things to say!”

  Ari opened a bottle of beer and handed it to Sean. Al and I exchanged a glance and retreated into the kitchen. Ari could play referee, I figured. The Beretta he was wearing in its shoulder holster would lend him a certain authority. We could hear Dad and Sean yelling at each other about Saint Paul.

  “Anyone who thinks men choose to be gay,” Al remarked, “should have to listen to this.”

  “I wish Dad had left religion out of it,” I said. “It’s a Catholic thing, I guess, to drag it in.”

  “I suppose so. Sean’s tried to explain all that to me. I don’t get it.”

  “Is your family Buddhist?”

  “No. Presbyterian. I’m not sure if that’s worse than Catholic or not.”

  “Well, I know your dad has problems with you being with Sean.”

  “That’s because of the grandchildren. I’m the oldest son. I’m supposed to procreate whether I want to or not.”

  We shared a moment of gloom. The yelling continued in the living room. Occasionally, I could hear Ari’s voice. He was trying to stay calm and logical, which was having zero effect on Sean and Dad. No, I was not surprised.

  “Well, anyway,” Al said. “When are you guys going to get married?”

  “Never, if I have my way. We got engaged to keep Dad off our backs. I don’t want to marry anyone. Ever.”

  “Weird, isn’t it? Everyone’s pushing on you to get married. Sean and I want to, and we can’t.”

  “Weird, and kind of sad.”

  Al sighed and nodded his agreement. I would have said more, but my cell phone rang.

  “Kathleen,” I told Al and picked up the phone to answer it.

  “Nola!” Kathleen said. “What is going on over there? Mom just called me, but she didn’t make any sense at all.”

  “She rarely does,” I said. “But she told Dad about Sean.”

  “Ohmigawd! Look, we’d come over, but Jack doesn’t want to leave Maureen and the kids here without us on guard.”

  “That’s fine!” I thanked Whomever for small favors. “There’s nothing anyone can do. We’ve just got to let them thrash it out.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Mike’s here,” I said. “He must have walked over.”

  Since Ari was busy preventing a riot in the living room, Al got up and trotted off to answer the door.

  “I’d better let you go,” Kathleen said. “I hope they don’t get to the throwing things stage. I’ll call you tomorrow when we can have a normal conversation.”

  “Okay, great.” If, I thought, you can call any conversation about my family normal.

  I walked to the living room doorway and stood watching. Mike’s arrival brought a moment of silence. Sean and Dad had taken off their jackets, but they were still on their feet, glaring at each other. Ari sat down and had a swallow of beer right out of the bottle. Mike took off his black Giants logo jacket, dropped it on the floor, and helped himself to beer.

  “By the way, young man,” Dad said, “the drinking age in this country is twenty-one.”

  “What if I say please?” Mike gave him a smile calculated to charm. “It’s not like I’m driving, Dad.”

  Dad sighed. “Oh, very well, but don’t tell your mother.”

  “Promise.” Mike twisted off the cap with a practiced hand. He’d learned how to drink on a recent jaunt to Terra Three. Beer was better than the marijuana he used to smoke, I figured, so I said nothing against it. I would have drawn the line at whiskey.

  Al and I returned to the kitchen. I heard Sean say, “Mom accepts me like I am, y’know.” Dad squalled. I shut the swinging kitchen door to blunt the voices.

  “Did you want a beer?” I said to Al. “I’ll go get you one.”

  “Brave woman! But no, thanks. I may have to drive Sean home any minute now.”

  Distantly I heard the landline phone ringing. Since I felt no overlap, I stayed where I was. In a few minutes Ari opened the kitchen door and stuck his head in.

  “It’s the realtor,” he said. “Mr. Singh. The neighbors have complained about the incident over the neighbor’s parked car.”

  “You talk to him,” I said. “I’ve had all I can take for one night.”

  Ari retreated and shut the door behind him.

  I’m not sure how long Al and I cowered in the kitchen, listening to raised and muffled voices, waiting for the sound of thrown things hitting the walls. My supply of knickknacks had been depleted in a burglary about five months earlier, but the thought of all those beer bottles haunted me. Fortunately, I never heard a crash. I did hear Ari finally crack. He raised his voice and joined the shouting match.

  The landline rang again. I heard Ari bellow, “It’s Deirdre! She’s weeping. If you might be quiet for ten seconds altogether …”

  The shouting match stopped. Michael darted into the kitchen with a half-empty bottle of beer in one hand.

  “If I try to talk to her,” Michael said, “it’ll only make things worse.”

  “Yep,” I said, “you’re right about that.”

  He had a slug of beer from the bottle. My little brother was growing up into a man just like his father and brothers. How heartwarming. I suppose.

  I got up and opened the kitchen door just wide enough to peer into the living room. Dad was talking on the phone. Ari stood near him, and Sean was opening another bottle of beer. A cluster of empties stood on the coffee table. Dad turned and held out the receiver in Sean’s direction. I held my breath.

  “She wants to talk to you,” he said. “Son.”

  I let out my breath in a puff of sheer relief. Al managed a smile. Together we crept into the living room and stood unnoticed by the door, ready to run for the kitchen again like the c
owards we were. Sean said a few words now and then, but as was usual with my mother’s phone calls, he mostly listened to her. She tended to deliver a nonstop verbal downpour with the occasional high-pitched tornado thrown in. Eventually, he held out the receiver again. Dad took over the job of listening to her.

  “What was that?” he said at one point. “One of your eruptions … that crash and splatter I heard in the background … no, it’s not the neighbors, it’s you … listen to you, and you the wife of a man in the building trades! … why do you keep denying … oh, very well, have it your way! I’ll be home soon anyway.” Dad hung up the landline with a slam of the receiver and turned to Sean. “Now, as I was saying—”

  “Don’t say it!” I snapped. “Haven’t you guys argued enough for one night?”

  Dad stepped back as fast as if I’d threatened to bite him. I’d grown up in the time that he’d been gone, and he was finally realizing it.

  “Judge not lest ye be judged!” I went on. “That’s what the gospel says, isn’t it? Since you want to drag in religion.”

  Dad set his hands on his hips and scowled. All I’d done was draw his fire. It’s time, I thought, to bring out the nuclear bomb.

  “Besides,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage. “Being gay is pretty much a matter of genetics, isn’t it? It’s not like Sean can help it.”

  I knew he understood the reference to The Secret by the way his face went utterly expressionless. He cleared his throat twice and turned to Sean.

  “There’s no use in upsetting your mother any more tonight. Or your sister, either.” He glanced my way. “You look tired, Noodles.”

  “You finally noticed?” I said. “Yeah, I’m exhausted, wiped out, worn out, wrung out, brought down, and anything else you want to add to that list.” For a brief moment everyone in the room looked like a squid to me. Phantom tentacles reached out to claim my attention. “Out!” I snapped. “I have had enough!”

  Ari got to his feet and glowered impartially at everyone except me. Dad opened his mouth and shut it again. Al stepped forward and grabbed Sean’s arm before he could drink from the newly-opened beer.

  “Let’s go home,” Al said. “Mike, need a ride?”

  “Nah,” Michael said. “I’ll just walk home. Y’know, like Dad does.”

  “Oh, God,” Al muttered. “Another O’Grady mutant!”

  Sean put the full bottle down and grabbed his jacket from the couch. He waved good-bye as Al propelled him in the direction of the stairs. Mike and Dad finished their last swallows of beer and left soon after. They took the remains of the six-packs with them. I turned off my phone and put the landline on the answering machine.

  “Enough,” I said. “Enough, enough, enough!”

  “Quite,” Ari said.

  “This is only Round One, y’know. Dad’s not going to let this go that easily.”

  “Yes, I assumed that. Unfortunately.”

  I took one step toward the couch, but the long day bitch-slapped me. All my suppressed terror and stress rose to the surface in the form of tears. I hated myself for it, couldn’t stop, stood there in the middle of the room like an idiot and sniveled. Ari put his arms around me and pulled me close. I buried my face against his shirt and finally managed to stop crying. When I looked up, he kissed my face twice, one gentle kiss under each eye. He picked me up before I could even say thank you. I slipped my arms around his neck.

  “I know what will make you feel better,” he said.

  He carried me into our bedroom. He was right. It did.

  CHAPTER 7

  AFTER A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP, things looked better in the morning, at least, that is, until I logged onto TranceWeb and found an e-mail cluster from Seymour about the end of the world. Well, okay, about the end of Interchange, but there were further implications that I disliked. A lot.

  Seymour had found a top-flight astrophysicist, Dr. Amanda Weinstein, to comment on my vision. Not only was she good, but she was open-minded, a necessity in our line of work, as well as willing to keep certain things secret. To interpret my vision, Seymour also consulted NumbersGrrl, that is, LaDonna Williams, PhD, our mathematical expert. The team’s analysis provided a perfect example of how—and why—visions need interpretation. Taking them literally gets you nowhere. I read their entire exchange of ideas before replying.

  They’d come to the conclusion that I’d seen the results of an enormous thermonuclear reaction near Interchange’s version of Earth. Such a catastrophe would have had two results. First, it would have stripped off most of the ozone layer, which my vision symbolized as the blue sky drawing back to reveal the naked black of night. Such depletion would have resulted in the high level of X-rays that Ari had previously detected on Interchange.

  Second, and worse, it would have produced an electromagnetic pulse that ionized the lower atmosphere—the evil rainbow waves of my vision. The pulse would have produced enormous lightning bolts, erratic magnetic fields, and other ill effects until all the electrons finally got back to where they belonged. Since a nuclear war would also produce a pulse, this effect probably lay behind the belief of the survivors living on Interchange that they’d suffered such a war.

  The rainbow colors I’d seen might well have corresponded to the colors that the world-walkers used as symbols of the various deviant levels, or so Seymour thought. LaDonna Williams agreed, citing studies of psychic access to the Collective Data Stream.

  “O’Grady has a very high success rate when it comes to the accuracy of her visions,” LaDonna wrote. “The colored radiation beams would then correspond to the gates the aliens were trying to open with their overload of destructive force.”

  Since all this talk of gates was news to her, Dr. Weinstein considered the explosion itself. A possible suspect was a supernova within ten light-years of the planet, but it seemed unlikely to her that a natural astronomical phenomenon would be confined to one deviant world level. Yet it had certainly never happened in our part of the multiverse.

  “Logically speaking,” she wrote, “that means it must have been artificially produced. Someone or some alien race made a star, probably a white dwarf, go nova on purpose, maybe to open those inter-world gates Agent O’Grady saw as holes in the Swiss cheese. If so, their tech level was extremely high.”

  Seymour disagreed about the supernova but agreed about the tech level. “If they had fusion bombs at their disposal, or something worse,” he wrote, “they wouldn’t have had to trigger a star.”

  All three of them found one question particularly urgent: were the aliens, whoever they were, going to do it all again? Like, on our world level?

  “The tech level of the city Agent O’Grady saw,” LaDonna wrote, “was low. I read it as early twentieth century, pre-WWI most likely. If they’d been coming, they would have been here by now. The splashback from that kind of event would have been enormous. I bet they bit off more than they could chew, and it was lights out for them, too. Could have been an accident, even, like an interstellar antimatter drive blowing up. You know, like the Enterprise.”

  Mixed metaphors and a Star Trek reference did provide some mental comfort, but I would have preferred hard data. Dr. Weinstein would have preferred it as well.

  “It would have taken a massive amount of antimatter to produce such an explosion,” she remarked. “If they’d collected that much fuel, they must have been deliberately intending to use it.”

  This made sense. Unfortunately.

  “But you must remember that I’m merely speculating,” Dr. Weinstein continued. “I’d need more data before I could reach anything we could call a conclusion. Seymour tells me that he might be able to arrange for me to read a paper from elsewhere in the multiverse. Dr. Williams and I are also trying to set up a meeting to exchange ideas and confer. Science gets done by teams these days. The lone genius is pretty much a myth.”

  I thanked all three, then logged off. Reading their e-mails had left me with a question none of them could answer: why would the aliens h
ave opened all those gates unless they were planning on using them?

  I brooded about this question all morning without finding an answer until, around noon, Spare14 called. He had news of a victory for common sense. The TWIXT higher-ups had agreed that Ari could be sworn in prior to fulfilling the exam requirement. Apparently, Ari had earned so many active duty credits, to say nothing of his long résumé of police work, that he only needed to get forty-five per cent of the answers correct to pass. I got the impression that TWIXT tended to run short of qualified candidates and thus grabbed any they found by any means possible.

  “There certainly aren’t any other candidates here on Four,” Spare14 told us during the conference call. “They’re doing this as a favor to me, actually. They know I’ll need Nathan fully qualified thanks to the cock-up on Six.”

  I shuddered when I realized that TWIXT had every intention of sending us back to that terrorist-plagued version of San Francisco. I reminded myself that I had Agency business there. A city plagued by terrorism would provide an ideal location for the Peacock Angel cult to work its own mischief. Ash and the Axeman would doubtless find scope for their talents as well.

  “How’s the investigation going?” I said. “Well—if you can say. I don’t want to intrude on your protocols.”

  “It’s quite all right, O’Grady. You are involved.”

  “True,” Ari put in. “More than I want her to be, speaking as her bodyguard.”

  How cheery of him! I thought to myself. Spare14 made a few dodge-and-hedge noises.

  “Standard procedure is proceeding,” Spare14 continued, “I’ve submitted my report to HQ along with O’Grady’s opinion as an addendum. HQ is sending a special investigator to the other liaison office in Los Angeles. Neutral ground, you know. I can’t be that investigator because JaMarcus and I are friends. He’ll be flying to Los Angeles to meet the S.I., who will then place everyone in the office on administrative leave if he—the S.I—thinks it warranted. O’Grady will still have to make a deposition about the Axeman connection.”