Back from the Undead

by DD Barant

  “But you know my name.”

  “It’s how your possessions think of you.”

  Right. Animist magic, the basis of most sorcery in Thropirelem. Everything has a spirit, and some of them are apparently quite chatty. “I’m here on a government visa.” I pull out the piece of paper Gretch gave me before we left. “All nice and legal.”

  He reads the paper, frowning all the while. “This doesn’t say what your nationality is.”

  “I’m American.”

  “Then why do you need a visa?”

  “Not this America. Parallel world. Doesn’t the visa say that?”

  He looks at me with flat lem eyes. “I’d like more information.”

  “I’ve been assured that piece of paper is all I require.”

  “Not by me.”

  And there it is. This guy doesn’t care about what some other bureaucrat says; I’m on his turf now and he’s going to make me play by his rules. Which, no doubt, will change depending on what his mood is.

  “This is America,” he says, thumping the end of one stubby finger against his desk. “Wherever you’re from, whatever you call it, it’s not America. Now—what is it you do, exactly?”

  “I’m a psychiatric consultant.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “I’m a specialist in how people think.”

  He frowns harder. “There’s nothing here about telepathic shamanism.”

  “I’m not a telepath. I study behavioral patterns.”

  “Why?”

  To better understand morons like you leaps into my brain. It’s successfully tackled by my common sense, who’s been working out lately and eating right. “It’s my job.”

  He grunts. “Sounds like a scam to me.” Now he’s being deliberately confrontational, so I let it pass. Common Sense beams and pats me on the back.

  “What’s your political affiliation?”

  “I don’t affiliate. Not before marriage, anyway.” The Wiseass in my head slips that one past Common Sense, who wags her finger disapprovingly. Wiseass responds, using different finger.

  “Are you refusing to answer?”

  “I don’t have any political affiliations, all right?”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  It’s one of those blindingly stupid questions with no actual answer, designed to leave you sputtering in a combination of indignation, frustration, and fury. And while you’re thrashing inarticulately in the throes of indigfrustury, they like to follow up with something even worse.

  “How do I know you’re not a criminal? Or a sexual deviant? You could even have some sort of communicable disease—I have no way to know. I have no way to verify any of this.”

  He’s looking at me with open contempt. Not suspicion, contempt. I’m not guilty of a damn thing—except concealing the fact that I’m a cop—but in his mind I’m already a convict. I’m not a citizen he’s trying to help, I’m a crook. Not because of the evidence—there isn’t any—but because it’s convenient for him to think of me that way. It gives him an excuse to exercise his power.

  “Maybe I’m not any of those things,” I say. “Maybe I’m a good person. Maybe I was brought here to help people.” I try to keep the anger out of my voice, and pretty much screw that up.

  He leans back. “Yeah, sure. I’ll bet you’re practically a saint. You want to know what I see? A human being. And you know what I am, right?”

  A big, sandy asshole? the Wiseass tries to scream. Common Sense has her in a headlock, but it’s a losing battle. “A lem.”

  “Golem,” he snaps. “My race was created by yours. Created to be their servants, to build their cities, to die in their wars. But that was a long, long time ago. Your kind isn’t doing so well now. Pretty soon, there won’t be any of you left at all.”

  My kind.

  I should have seen this coming. But I’m so used to Charlie that the idea of a lem that resents humanity never really occurred to me. And this angry little civil servant is going to dump a lifetime of that resentment on me.

  “Look,” I say. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. The world I’m from, the culture I’m from, that didn’t happen—”

  He cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Save it. Your world, your culture doesn’t interest me. You’re here, now, and your smart-mouthed attitude isn’t going to get you anywhere. You understand me?”

  Whatever sympathy I might have had for him vanishes. He doesn’t want commiseration, he wants a target. “Yes.”

  “I need to verify this visa,” he says, gets up, and stomps out of the room.

  FOUR

  Three hours pass before he returns.

  Making you wait is the bureaucrat’s most effective weapon. Paperwork is a close second, but it’s really only waiting with the illusion of doing something.

  I spend the time planning.

  When he finally comes back, he just opens the door and motions me outside. Gives me my visa back and tells me I can go. I’m not surprised; it’s more or less exactly what I was expecting. I smile at him sweetly and leave without a word, joining Charlie and Eisfanger in the car.

  Charlie eyes me like he would a polar bear on PCP: cautiously. “Jace? You okay?”

  “Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “Wow,” Eisfanger says. “You were in there a really long time. They checked our ID, asked us a few questions, and then booted us out. We’ve been sitting here waiting for you ever since—”

  “Let’s. Go.”

  Charlie’s radar is a lot better than Eisfanger’s. Damon seems to suffer from the thrope equivalent of Asperger’s syndrome—an inability to correctly read social cues and react accordingly—so Charlie tries his best to head off a Jace meltdown by moving the conversation in another direction. “Vancouver. Last I heard, they had a pretty hot swing dance scene. Maybe we can find a little time to hit the floor.” Charlie knows I love to swing dance, and he’s not too shabby at it himself.

  “That sounds like fun,” Eisfanger says. “I mean, I don’t dance myself, but it’s fun to watch. Hey, maybe we’ll even see some celebrities!”

  “Could happen,” Charlie says. “Plenty of them there, from what I hear. I don’t know how many we’ll find in swing spots, though. Stars tend to hang out in the really trendy clubs.”

  “True,” Eisfanger admits. “And those are hard to get into. Long lines outside. We could be waiting a long, long time—”

  He abruptly shuts up. There’s a long silence, broken by Charlie sighing.

  “Guys,” I say. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. The pin of the Valchek Grenade is firmly in place.”

  “The what now?” Eisfanger says.

  “I’m not going to lose it.”

  “Oh. Uh, good.” Eisfanger still looks a little confused, but that’s a expression I’m used to seeing on his face. I smile at him reassuringly.

  I have a plan. Oh, yes, I have a plan.

  “Sounds like half the celebrities in the city are movie stars and the other half gangsters,” I say. “Interesting mix. On my world, a lot of movie and TV production happened in Vancouver because of a weak Canadian dollar and local tax breaks—plus it wasn’t that far from LA, just up the coast. I’m guessing this kind of border security wouldn’t have let that happen here.”

  “No,” says Charlie. “The film industry in Van is pretty much homegrown, in more ways than one.”

  “How’d that come about?”

  Charlie shrugs, one hand on the wheel. “Gangs with too much money. Started with porn, but that just generated more income. And you know gangbangers—it’s all about ego. All it took was one guy making an action movie starring himself as the antihero, and pretty soon all the other warlords had to outdo him. Snowballed from there.”

  “Sounds a little like Hong Kong on my world, with Triads financing martial arts epics.”

  “Here, too. Lot of them got their start over in HK—but here’s where the big money is.”

  We�
�re driving through farmland now, cornfields lining the highway on either side. A hawk circles overhead in wide, lazy loops. Traffic is sparse, mainly big rigs hauling cargo to or from the port. I wonder how easy it is for them to get through customs.

  Strangely enough, Charlie didn’t have any problems getting his weapons across the border. They ignored my gun, of course—but they confiscated my scythes. Charlie wisely refrains from telling me this until we’re at least ten miles away.

  “Sorry,” he says. “They could tell the scythes were yours. Apparently you didn’t have the right permits.”

  A fact that Officer Delta refrained from mentioning. A final parting shot from Mr. Civil Servant. “That’s fine,” I say, and smile.

  Charlie takes one look at me and shuts up for the rest of the trip.

  * * *

  Farmland gives way to urban sprawl interspersed with plenty of green space, stretches of tall fir or pine rising up next to gas stations or roadside restaurants. The highway becomes a freeway, which routes through a mostly industrial area called Richmond, over a bridge and then into the city of Vancouver proper. It looks a lot like Seattle at first, but that changes once we hit the downtown core.

  Plenty of skyscrapers, but I don’t spend much time looking up; it’s what’s at street level that’s riveting, and not in a good way.

  It’s early evening. I see lems and thropes out and about, but none of the thropes are in human form; even the ones driving are in half-were mode. Those outside are almost all four-legged—packs of three or four roam together down the streets, darting and weaving through the traffic like suicidal bicycle couriers, bounding over and off cars. One slams into the DeSoto, claws screeching against the metal, and I can practically see the steam coming out of Charlie’s ears.

  We’re on a street called Granville. Lots of neon, run-down hotels, bars, and sex shops, like Times Square before it was cleaned up. “No pires,” I point out.

  “They mostly stay indoors here, except at night,” Charlie says.

  “Why?”

  “Because a popular gang initiation is to catch a pire outside during the day, and see how many times you can slash open his daysuit before he catches on fire.”

  “Ah.”

  We head for an area called Gastown, the oldest part of the city. When I’d visited Vancouver on my own world, I’d spent an afternoon there; like heritage districts in many cities, it had been spruced up into a tourist attraction, with old brick buildings now housing upscale restaurants and souvenir shops. Red cobblestone streets, an enormous steam-powered clock, and turn-of-the-century gaslit lamps completed the picture.

  Well, the cobblestones are still there, as are some of the buildings—though in much worse condition, and a lot filthier. The gas lamps have been replaced by the harsh orange glare of sodium vapor, and many of the lots are either weed-filled and fenced off with chain link, or hold only a burned-out husk of crumbling brick and charred wood. To my surprise the steam clock is still there, though obviously nonfunctional; as our car creeps past, I see that it’s only a shell, the empty interior visible through a missing access panel. Even the hands on the clock face are gone.

  It’s no worse than many neighborhoods I’ve been to, but it hits me harder than I thought it would. It’s because I’ve been here before—well, been to a version of it, anyway—and now it feels like visiting a place after a natural disaster has swept through, a hurricane or an earthquake. The landscape’s familiar but everything’s been damaged, torn down, swept away.

  The disaster here, though, isn’t a natural one. It’s a wave of crime and drugs, of violence and corruption. Inner-city decay as bad as a case of gangrene, feeding on greed and poverty, desperation and indifference. I don’t need to see the compounds the warlords live in to know they’re just as opulent and decadent as this place is squalid and grim. That’s how it always is.

  Gastown was the original settlement that sprang up around the port, the place where the longshoremen and merchant marine would go to spend their hard-earned paychecks. Bordellos and speakeasies would have lined the streets in those days, maybe a few gambling parlors or opium dens. The oceanfront is visible through the buildings, only steps away, but there’s a set of railroad tracks and at least two razor-topped fences between here and there.

  The only people out and about seem to be the drunks, junkies, and hookers, all three of which seem to favor the non-hairy look. I remark on this, and Eisfanger informs me that the baseline human form burns fewer calories. I reply that we also look a helluva lot more attractive in fishnets, and he concedes the point.

  The hotel we’re booked into is called the Royal Arms, and the only thing royal about it is the castle-like security. No moat, but we have to buzz through two separate doors to get inside, both of which are heavily armored. There’s also a big sign on the first one stating that illicit activities are not allowed and will not be tolerated, which I understand to mean the rooms are not available by the hour.

  The lobby is old and dusty and features furniture that might actually qualify as antiques if they weren’t held together with duct tape and baling wire. The clerk, a droopy-eyed pire who looks like he hasn’t been outside in a few decades, signs us in and takes an imprint of my credit card. We’ve got three rooms on the top floor, the third. Charlie takes the car around to the underground parking, while Eisfanger and I grab some luggage and head upstairs.

  The place isn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Old, tired, and dingy, sure, but it’s clean and doesn’t stink. The rooms are larger than I would have expected—built when cubic footage was cheap—and the radiator in mine gives off a nice warm glow. Charlie shows up with the rest of our bags and announces that the parking lot is fairly secure, even has a lem guard.

  “Haven’t seen too many of those, either,” I say. “Lems, I mean. Do the gangs do terrible things to them, too?”

  “It’s not that,” Charlie says. “There are plenty of lems here, but you don’t see them on the street much. No reason for them to be there.”

  “Guess not. They don’t get high, drunk, or laid, and that’s about all this place has to offer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I hear the local ballet company is to die for.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Plenty of things here to die for…”

  * * *

  We get settled in, and then I call the number Stoker sent us and leave a message. I don’t tell him where we are, just that we’re in town and ready to meet.

  And then we wait.

  I clean my gun. Eisfanger leaves to grab some takeout, and Charlie goes with him for backup. They’ve been gone all of ten minutes when my cell phone rings.

  It’s coming up as a private call, number blocked. I answer.

  “Jace,” Stoker says. “You came.”

  “You knew I would.”

  “I did,” he admits. “But I’m not playing you. I don’t expect you to take that at face value—but try to remember what happened the last time we met.”

  “You did your best to kill everyone I know.”

  “Well, yes. But it was only a bargaining tactic.”

  Which, weirdly enough, is true. “Won’t work again. I had that chronal spell thing nullified. And you know that sooner or later I’m going to take that damn sword away from you.”

  “True. Because it’s already happened in the future and will have happened in the past. Don’t you love time-travel magic?”

  “Not even a little. What’s your point?”

  “That I promised not to kill any of your friends if you let me go, and I’ve kept that promise. Doesn’t that get me a little credibility?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “And so is Mr. Aleph, I assume. How was the border?”

  “Better than being force-fed rocks before being beaten to death with my own intestines. Theoretically.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that. But that’s what it’s like for human beings here—even when they work for the NSA.”

 
Hang on. How does Stoker know I didn’t just flash my badge and sail right on through—is he even better connected than I thought? Was the whole ordeal with Delta just another hoop he wanted me to jump through so I’d empathize with him as a fellow non-supernatural?

  No, that’s not it. I just forget how smart Stoker is, sometimes. Smart enough to deduce I might try to slip across the border incognito—which I’ve just confirmed. He knew what kind of reception I would get in that case, and that I wouldn’t miss a chance to grouse about the experience. Now he knows that I’m here and that I have no official backup. Goddamn it.

  “The real hassle was waiting for them to process the whole team,” I say. “You’d think they could bypass a little paperwork for National Security, but cross-agency cooperation has a long way to go. You ever run into that in terrorist circles? One cell just has to prove its equipment is bigger than another’s?” I hold my breath.

  “Nice try. I know you brought a shaman along to verify my story, but other than Charlie that’s all you have.”

  “Interesting theory. Doesn’t make much sense, though. Why would I—”

  “Jace, please. As much as you’d like to come after me with all the resources you could muster, it’s politically unfeasible. And while my own resources aren’t terribly robust at the moment, it’s not hard to keep an eye on a single entry point for a day or two.”

  I curse silently. He saw us come across—or had someone else who did. Which means he knows exactly where I am right now—

  “Calm down, Jace.” He sounds amused. “Yes, I know where you are. But if we’re going to be working together, sooner or later we have to establish a certain level of trust, don’t we?”

  “I suppose.” I’d prefer a level that didn’t involve him knowing where I sleep, though.

  “Look, we should meet. I’ll let you pick the spot, all right? The three of you and just me. Would that make you feel a little more secure?”

  “I’ll get back to you.” I hang up on him, which might seem petty but in fact sends an important message: I can still walk away, anytime I choose.

  But I won’t. And Stoker knows that, too.

  When Charlie and Eisfanger come back with the food I tell them about the call. Charlie nods as Eisfanger unpacks Styrofoam containers from a white plastic bag; he doesn’t seem surprised that Stoker’s one step ahead of us.