“Nothing.”
“How about our various research projects?”
“Not too much. Hang on and I’ll bring it up.”
Jaguar looked at her prisoner, who sat blissfully clutching her bags, oblivious to anything beyond them.
Rachel returned to Jaguar’s screen. “On who could delete my files, or Alex’s,” she said, “the answer is any governor. Without notice. A supervisor can do the same but they need permission from a governor.”
“So it’s a governor,” Jaguar said.
“Looks like it. And I bet you’re next question is which governor, but I can’t answer that yet.”
“Okay. Keep working on it. Anything new on Barone?”
“He owns nothing up here yet, and he’s met all the governors at one point or another. He has regular correspondence with some of them – Shafritz, Malor. Those two are the highest counts of calls. Less with Miriam Whitehall and Paul Dinardo.”
“Check on Miriam,” Jaguar said. “For any connection, however remote.”
“Any particular reason?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t like her taste in sunglasses,” Jaguar answered.
“Whatever you say,” Rachel agreed, and signed off.
Jaguar turned back to Karena. “Fun’s over,” she said, taking her arm. “We’ve got work to do.”
* * * *
As they left the mall, Karena was still lost in the ecstasy of purchase. She crossed the parking lot with her head ducked down, clutching her bags as if they might escape before she got to the car.
Jaguar, clipping along beside her, grabbed her elbow. “Wait,” she said.
Karena stopped and twisted her head around to face Jaguar.
“Look,” she said, pointing skyward. “It’s the moon. She changes everything she touches, and she touches everything.”
Karena lifted her head to the moon, a little past full. Her ruddy cheeks caught the light, reflecting it back across the surface of skin cells, the whites of her eyes. She opened her lips and a hiss of breath escaped them like steam forced out of a tightly closed pot. The muscles around her eyes tensed and she pulled back, lowered her head as if burned.
“She calls us back to ourselves,” Jaguar said, her voice low and intent. “To the place we can’t escape.”
A sound like a rumbling started low in Karena’s belly and worked its way up. Jaguar smiled at her. “She makes us face our desire.”
Jaguar stepped back as Karena’s rumbling fury reached the zenith of a piercing shriek and became motion as she flailed her arms, bags waving like clumsy wings. She ripped at them with her nails and her teeth as she tried to shed them, her strangled voice going from scream to a series of yips coughed up like old hiccups, leftover from a party she couldn’t remember much about. People leaving the mall stopped to stare, and Jaguar saw a few, obviously workers in the prison system, who had their hands on belt sensors, ready to call in trouble.
She ignored them, and let Karena whirl her way through her rage. When all her packages lay like dismembered bodies in the lot, Jaguar put a hand on her heaving shoulder, and pressed her other hand against her forehead.
See who you are, she whispered into her. Be what you see.
The poverty of abundance. Jaguar felt it moving in her. She used getting as a substitute for doing and being. Like eating when you’re lonely. Fucking when you’re afraid. It was the wrong material, and so it was never enough. She gorged herself, then was enraged because she was still hungry. It moved in and through her, and under it was the something else she wanted, wild and without encumbrances, empty and light enough to fly.
Yes, Jaguar said into her. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s what you want. Who you are. It will hold you.
Karena whimpered and crumpled to her knees. Jaguar wanted to push, knowing the sooner she cleared Karena, the faster she’d find out about Brendan Farley, but she also knew the dangers of rushing a prisoner into a healing they weren’t ready for. She stepped back and gave her space, watching as she crouched on the ground, holding her hands in a cup in front of her, crooning into them as if they contained something precious.
Was she holding something? One last precious purchase she wouldn’t relinquish? Jaguar saw moonlight glint off the surface of it.
She took a step toward her, then stopped.
“Karena,” she asked, “what’s in your hand?”
Karena didn’t lift her head. Jaguar took another step forward, and when she was close enough to spit on her, squatted down in front of her, reached over, felt her hand close on something smooth and cool, and took it from her prisoner.
She held it up to the moonlight and watched it glow. A stone. Smooth and grey and glowing in the moonlight. Crystal in the tightness of its molecules, but ordinary in its color and shape.
Unexpectedly, the coiled wind of empathic space engulfed her.
Kill her before she kills you.
Jaguar gasped, looked at Karena, who lifted a face that had become a mask of rage, pulled her hand back and slammed it into the side of Jaguar’s head.
Jaguar went down and caught the cement with the side of her jaw. That would hurt like hell pretty soon, she thought, and hoped she didn’t break anything. The stone flew from her hand. Karena screamed in rage and lunged for her. Voices spoke to Jaguar.
Kill her before she kills you. She’s going to kill you be careful.
She blinked, looked up, saw Karena lunging toward her. Saw that she had - a gun? Where did she get that? A gun?
Jaguar pressed the button at her wrist that released the knife she kept up her sleeve.
She meant only to slash her arm, make her drop the gun, but Karena reached her, fell on her, and there was blood everywhere. Blood sprayed across her face, the face of the moon, her prisoner. Blood, everywhere.
Saw Karena falling. Falling again and again. Heard voices. Someone in the parking lot screaming. Saw Karena fall and then land with a sickening thud like the sound of punching into a pillow, like the sound of a blade hitting bone under flesh.
Saw that she was on the ground, Karena on top of her, pinioned by her blade, her eyes staring death into the full of the moon.
The darkness unfolded, and she blinked, lifted her face and looked around. A crowd had gathered. Cellcoms were being used.
Jaguar lay her head back down on the cement and waited for what would come next.
* * * *
Those who patrolled the city streets of Planetoid Three’s replica cities had a fairly easy job of it. Their most demanding task was making sure they didn’t inadvertently interrupt a Teacher’s program, mistaking it for a real crime. Usually, they were kept well enough informed of the running programs to avoid this, but once in awhile, a Teacher would take on an action that couldn’t be predicted far enough in advance to warn the police.
For that reason, Officer Bailah took time to observe the body that lay washed up on the shore broken and bloody at the bottom of the bridge which crossed the bay outlet just outside of the Toronto Replica city limits. He couldn’t be sure if it was a plant from a program right away, so instead of investigating, he called it in and waited for backup, confirmation that this was indeed a real body, really dead.
When the coordinating offices confirmed that this was, in all likelihood, the case, he picked his way toward her, and knelt next to the body of a young woman who lay on her back, staring into eternity. Clutching something in her hand.
The officer wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and carefully pulled the something away from her. Held it up and looked at it.
It was an ID tag, ripped off a belt he supposed. And it belonged to someone he happened to know. Someone he’d worked with before. Someone he couldn’t believe would have anything to do with anything like this.
It belonged to Supervisor Alex Dzarny.
Chapter 10
Color flitted from tree to tree, accompanied by the sound of song. Explosions of yellow. Blue flying sapphires amid the deep emerald canopy above them, and now and then a
shot of blood red flung through the air, singing about beauty because that’s what they understood best.
Brendan and Alex were in the tropical rainforest, and there were birds everywhere.
Alex breathed in deeply of the smell of heat and humidity, leaf and rot and growth. It was a good place. He liked it here.
Brendan wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Life,” Alex said. “There’s a lot of it going around here.”
“I don’t like it,” Brendan said. “It’s too active.”
Right, Alex thought. Thanatos drive. He sat down next to him on the side of a small hill. Listened to the edge of his energy field, and felt how forcefully it sucked inward, into that spiral of suicide that would get you at the pit of your stomach if you weren’t careful. It made you understand the relief of death, how it solved all problems and made all pain cease. It was a compelling force, seductive as sex, which was its opposite and its partner. Eros and Thanatos. Two sides of the same coin.
He’d dealt with suicidal prisoners before, and knew their presence shifted the way the world looked, but he’d never felt anything as powerful as he did with Brendan, as if despair had been boiled down into its elemental form, a vapor that permeated his whole system. Alex knew it wasn’t his own despair, but it turned him to stone. Stone like the stones Brendan carried. Like the one he found with Nance. As it had on the bridge when he couldn’t pull the woman up. Couldn’t save her. Almost went over the side with her.
And instead of calling that in, instead of bringing Brendan in, he was here. He still wasn’t sure why. Sometimes the Adept space moved him physically in ways he wouldn’t take on his own, so it could be that. Or it could be the stones, and his inability to resist them. He sincerely hoped it was the former.
“We could go elsewhere,” Alex said. “There’s an arid eco-site. Pretty sparse landscape.”
Brendan shook his head. “I don’t think it’s close enough. This is - well, I think it’s what the Mother wants. Those birds make a lot of noise, though.”
Alex laughed. “I thought you were an environmentalist. This is the environment. With birds and plants.”
“Other people called me that,” Brendan said. “It’s not what I am.”
“I see,” Alex said. “What are you then?”
“Nothing,” Brendan said. “Like everyone else. Like you.”
Alex turned away from the bait. “Now that I think about it, you couldn’t be an environmentalist if you worked for La Femme. So maybe you’re an anti-environmentalist?”
Brendan peered out somewhere far away from Alex. “I worked to make it stop. It all has to stop. You know, of course, they’re destroying the world.”
“La Femme?” Alex asked.
“Women,” Brendan replied.
Alex frowned. “Pardon?”
“Women,” Brendan repeated. “You know. Men get blamed for raping the earth, but women want us to have babies and homes and all those things that damage the planet. Not that they can help it. It’s their nature. Virulent, as opposed to virile. Or, you might say virulent, so we’ll be virile and they can have their babies and their sex and love and - you know.”
He turned his pale eyes to Alex. “It’s about life. They insist on it. And it has to stop.”
Alex held his gaze. There was slowness gathered here like dreams when your legs won’t move though you have to move. A thick hopeless absence of motion because what was the point of motion anyway. This, he knew, was not Adept space. Not at all. He averted his gaze and took a step back.
“Women,” he repeated, staying neutral.
“Women,” Farley echoed. “They ruin everything. And I wanted them. All the time. I’ve had a lot of them, too. In college I had twins - Maria and Dolores. They were so succulent, it made my mouth water. They thought I was a stud because I was in geology. Outdoors a lot and so on. I thought I was a stud, too. Then I found out there’s really only two things you can do with my degree - manufacturing and mining, or insurance. Unless you get a research grant, which I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting. You had to know the right people for that, and I didn’t know anybody except Maria and Dolores. I went for insurance because they were supposed to be doing something valuable, but - well, you know what they were after.” He waved a hand toward the sky.
“Actually,” Alex said, “I don’t know.
Brendan regarded him with suspicion. “You don’t?”
Alex shook his head. “I’ve been busy here.”
“Oh,” Brendan said. “Of course. Well, they made it a lot easier to poison the earth. Provided a cushion for the industrialists, so they didn’t have to be responsible for their stupidity. Just pay someone else to do a half-ass job, and make it all look good for the press. You remember the Holton disaster?”
Alex did. Holton dealt with nuclear waste disposal left over from the closed nuclear power plants. They repainted the barrels to hide what they contained, then left them in the basement of a school abandoned during the Serials. They remained hidden for a year after the children returned to the school, and nobody could figure out why they were getting sick and dying until a janitor discovered the leaky barrels. The parents and the town got about $56 million for the cleanup, but insurance paid Holton twice that. After costs, they made a $5 million profit on the whole mess. And the kids were still dead.
“Assured paid for that,” Brendan said. “They lobbied for new pesticides, too. I read the memos about it in their files. That’s when I left and went into cosmetics research. I thought I’d be more pure somehow, because I still thought women were pure.”
He shivered, whether from revulsion or fear Alex couldn’t tell. He pulled a stone from his pocket and turned it over and over. “Then I began to understand. It’s the women who make us what we are. We wouldn’t need nuclear energy if they didn’t have to be beautiful with their blow dryers and their hair dyes and nail polish. Their hair is always like silk. And the smell of them, everything they do. It’s all meant to keep us breeding, keep the machine producing, the vermin multiplying. I loathed myself for wanting them.”
Desire, and fear. Fear of desire. That was all he had, but it was a lot.
“Y’know,” Alex pointed out, “not all sex leads to procreation. In fact, most of it doesn’t, and the population is at zero growth right now, so I’m not sure if your self-loathing is justified.” He knew reason wouldn’t touch Brendan’s complex emotional core, but he wanted to see what response it drew. That would tell him more about the structure of the beast in him, maybe show him how to start dismantling it.
“Sex,” Brendan replied pointedly, “leads to all manner of hell, whether we’re procreating or not. Possessiveness, the urge to dominate and own and - and consume. We consume what we desire, and we’re consumed by it. And if we’re going to keep selling cosmetics and blow dryers and big houses and fancy wings, we need sex to be uppermost in our minds. Sex sells, so sell sex. It’s the new opiate of the people, since religion went west.”
Alex listened hard, trying to understand beyond his words. His age placed him as too young to remember the Killing Times, so he was a child of the storm, subject to the told memories of an event he could never deal with directly since he hadn’t directly experienced it. He’d only known the fears of his parents and elders - and they never named it for him properly, so it seeped into his psyche and he had to build one for it. His exposure to Artemis had amplified his burden of free-floating despair, his Thanatos syndrome driving him to explode pesticide bombs in malls. It also gave him the power to make others live out his death wish for him.
Rehabbing him would actually be an easy program, if he could get the Artemis out of the way.
“So you left cosmetics,” Alex said. “And started poisoning people in malls instead.”
Brendan stopped playing with the stone. Turned a hard stare on Alex. “What’s it to you?” he asked.
“Nothing much,” Alex said. “Just seems like you might have tried some other moves first.
Celibacy, maybe, if sex bothered you that much.”
Brendan shook his head. “I couldn’t do it. I was too weak. No matter what I did, I wanted them. You know how that is, don’t you?”
He tossed the stone up and down, rubbed it thoughtfully. Alex could feel the temper and measure of his need for and terror of women, how he turned desire inside out and saw death as the only way to stop it. Yes, this was simple. It could be cleared. How strange of Jaguar to be so afraid for him.
“Sometimes I wanted a woman so bad, I was afraid of what I’d do to her if I had her,” he said. “You know that feeling, too, don’t you?”
Brendan stared at him, his fear moving out to find Alex and take up residence in him. His desire for Jaguar, so strong he wasn’t sure if it would consume her, or consume him. But no. That was different. That wasn’t his. Wasn’t hers. It belonged to Brendan.
“No,” Alex said. “No.”
He watched Brendan turn the stone over and over in his hand, saw the way it absorbed then gave off light, as if it swallowed pieces of the sun and then returned them, soft and glowing, to the world. Small moons, he thought. He leaned toward Brendan and touched his hand lightly.
“What are they made of?” he asked. His words were thick and slow. He wasn’t sure what they were attached to. No, something said in him. No.
“A gift,” Brendan said, “from The Mother.”
He held it out toward Alex, who saw his own hand reach for it. His hand, slow and thoughtful, reaching for what he wanted. What he wanted.
Haven’t you ever wanted a woman so bad you were afraid?
“No,” he said out loud, hearing his words tempered by their motion through air.
That you would hold her so tight she’d be crushed. Hold her so tight because you’re angry at her for making you want her enough to crush her, angry at her for making you want her, for tormenting you with desire. You want to save her from herself, and she won’t let you. So you hate her instead and wish you could crush her, and it would be over.
No, Alex thought. No.
He wanted to say this out loud, but his mouth wouldn’t move fast enough to make the words. Brendan tossed the stone up and down, and the motion made soft trails of light around his hand. Alex watched, saying no to something. To what? Something.
A Lunatic Fear Page 10