A Lunatic Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

“I know. Just - be careful.” Stupid to say that, she knew, but someone had to.

  Jaguar offered a tense and tired grin. “Absolutely no unnecessary risks,” she said.

  She put a hand on Rachel’s arm, squeezed it once, and turned away.

  Chapter 14

  Home Planet, Connecticut

  Pasquale looked perfectly at home in the livingroom of Larry Barone’s family home – a 6,000 square foot tudor sequestered on about 100 acres of land in the woods of Connecticut. His massive shoulders and head were not out of place among the portraits of Barone’s ancestors, and his large hands held fine china as gently as if they were tying ribbons in a little girl’s hair.

  He’d been here before quite a few times, and always found the business as good as the food he was offered. Today, he thought, would be even better.

  “I told you,” he said to Larry, “I don’t do take out. And I can’t recommend anyone who does. You’re on your own.”

  Larry, who looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping well lately, stopped stirring his tea. “How do you know that’s what I want?” he asked.

  “I can smell it on you,” Pasquale said. He lifted his head half an inch and breathed in through his nostrils. “Smells like fear.”

  Larry felt a muscle in his arm jerk, as if he was about to throw a punch. Pasquale always knew too much, and said too much about it. Showing off, Larry thought. “You don’t make any exceptions?”

  “No,” Pasquale said. He sipped his tea and leaned back in his chair. “This is nice,” he said. “What kind is it?”

  “White tea mixed with jasmine. My own blend.”

  “Nice,” Pasquale repeated.

  “What if,” Larry said, choosing his words, “What if you had compelling reasons to make an exception?”

  “I never found any yet.”

  “Self-defense?” Larry suggested.

  “That’s not killing. That’s – self-defense.”

  “But you have had reason to use it, haven’t you?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “What about protecting your client?”

  Pasquale put his teacup on the table. “Say what you mean.”

  “Miriam has plans to kill me,” Larry said grimly.

  Pasquale chuckled. “You sure? Maybe it’s just a little communication trouble.”

  Larry grimaced. “I know her. She wants it all, and that’s her plan.”

  “Yeah. But I’ll bet she wants to marry you first.”

  “So?”

  “So, don’t marry her. Then she won’t kill you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Larry said, his jaw tight and his teeth clenched. “For all I know, she’ll kill me as soon as the Hague repeal comes through and I’ve got my –“ He shut his mouth hard. Pasquale should know as little as possible. Though from the way his silent eyes looked on, Larry imagined he already knew it.

  “Skip it,” Pasquale said, and his face expressed disgust for a man who couldn’t even come up with a good story to buy a hit. He leaned across the coffee table and tapped a broad finger against Larry’s knee. “I tell you what. It’s your woman. Why don’t you kill her – in self defense, of course.”

  Larry retreated from Pasquale’s gesture. “I’ll give you 5 times to your usual rates,” he said.

  Pasquale picked up his teacup and stirred it. He sipped at it, stared at the ceiling, then put the cup back down.

  “I’ll have to go the Planetoid,” he said. “Take care of it there.”

  “I can arrange – “

  “I make my own arrangements,” Pasquale cut in. “But I want you there. If I’m protecting my client, client’s gotta be there, right?”

  Larry shifted in his seat. He didn’t want to visit the Planetoid until after their plans were complete, which should be within the week. Certainly he didn’t want to be there when it happened, though Miriam said she would be. It would look better, she said, and she knew how to protect herself.

  Of course, if he was there, perhaps to meet with governors like Shafritz who supported the processing plant, then maybe he could make it seem like Miriam died in the general chaos. And he’d be on hand to survey the damage, take an immediate hand in what happened next.

  But the timing was crucial. She couldn’t die before she had Brendan complete his task, and she shouldn’t be around too much after that.

  “Tricky timing,” Pasquale echoed his thoughts, keeping his observant gaze steady. “And the other players – they’re not so easy to get around.”

  “Other players?” Larry asked.

  “Dzarny and Addams. I hear she’s especially difficult, though he’s no slouch either. Just not as flashy.”

  “They’re both under control.”

  “And you’re counting on that?”

  “Are you offering to take care of them, too?” Larry shot back.

  “Only,” Pasquale said, “if it’s in self-defense. Or in defense of my client, of course.”

  Larry paused. That might be a good back-up plan.

  “Of course, that sort of thing can be arranged, but it ain’t easy,” Pasquale continued. “And sniffing through all that shit Miriam’s got ain’t easy either. You’re screwing yourself with that moondust, you know that?”

  Larry found himself once again irritated with Pasquale’s arrogance.

  “What we do to screw ourselves pays you, Pasquale. I wouldn’t complain if I was you.”

  “I’m not complaining. Just telling you. It means extra work for me. Takes more thought and involves more risk.”

  So that was it. Pasquale could squeeze hell out of a job, always accepting the usual rates, then adding expenses from here to the poor house. “Then maybe a bonus would compensate you for your trouble,” he suggested. “10 percent?”

  Pasquale rubbed thoughtfully at his rock-like jaw, and the muscles of his thick face manipulated the possibilities. “I think 5 times the normal rate should be 10 times. And I think I should get half up front, half right before the job’s done.”

  Larry swallowed hard. “That’s a little steep, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the return you expect? Maybe you’ll walk away with a Planetoid?”

  At that, Larry smiled. When he was completing a job he didn’t allow himself the luxury of fantasizing about the rewards. But to hear it said like that felt better than anything he’d ever known. He was out to own a Planetoid. A whole world to do with what he wanted. It was like being God.

  “10 times,” Larry said, “Half up front, and half after completion. Expenses in between.”

  “Good enough,” Pasquale said. He pressed his broad hands onto his knees and pushed himself to standing.

  “When do you want me on the Planetoid?” Larry asked.

  “I’ll let you know. Soon, though, so be ready. And tonight, I want you to call your old lady.”

  “What for?” Larry asked.

  “Tell her you’re worried about her. Women like it when you worry about them. Tell her you’re so worried, you hired her a bodyguard.” Pasquale grinned. “That would be me.”

  “She won’t go for it. She doesn’t like to be interfered with.”

  “She’ll do it if you put it right,” Pasquale said, and then made a sound of derision. “Don’t you know anything about women? You soft-soap her. Talk up the danger. Tell her I won’t be in the way. In fact, she’ll hardly see me except once so I can introduce myself. But you’ll feel better just knowing I’m there. That’s the truth, ain’t it?”

  “Okay,” Larry said. “The timing – “

  “Leave that to me. Like I said, I make my own arrangements.”

  He shook down his pant legs, jiggled his keys in his pocket, and gave Larry one last grin. “It’s always a pleasure,” he said, “doing business with you.”

  When he’d left and the door closed behind him, Larry muttered, “I wish I could say the same.”

  * * * *

  They were having a philosophical discussion. Alex recognized his own voice, saying words he d
idn’t know if he believed, but saying them with conviction. His hand was stretched out in front of him, and in it was the bottle of what Brendan called poison. He stopped speaking, mid-sentence.

  “What?” Brendan asked.

  “Nothing,” Alex said lamely. “Never mind.”

  He looked around. It was dark out. The stars pierced light into a blackened sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet, and they cast the only light he could find, either outside or in. As he sat and thought about it, he realized he felt horrible. His skin itched, he’d give a lot of money for a toothbrush, all his muscles ached, and his belly felt weighted with sorrow, heavy and complete.

  “No,” Brendan said. “You were saying something important. You were talking about the Killing Times. That it was a matter of population control, and with ten million people dead, the planet had a chance to renew herself a little. Please keep going.”

  They were still at the edge of the rainforest, he saw. In fact, he didn’t seem to have moved from the stump he’d been sitting on, so not that much time had passed since the world appeared to him last. But he had no memory of what he’d been saying, or why he’d been saying it. The Killing Times as population control? Certainly he’d heard that theory expounded, but he didn’t subscribe to it. There were better ways to create zero population growth than that.

  He searched the rounded out corners of his skull to see if any possible reason why he might have been talking about that appeared, but nothing did except that he had better think of some way to move Brendan along, or he’d end a worse case than his prisoner.

  He turned the bottle over in his hand. Had he agreed to help with this? He had a feeling he had. Not a surprise. It was a good strategy to use with a prisoner like Brendan. But did he mean it? And if he said it, would he actually go through with it in one of the strange dream states he kept falling into? He and Jaguar speculated about the effects of Artemis on men, though that seemed like another lifetime. They thought it would increase aggressiveness, and he supposed in a way it did. Maxxed it out. But mixed it so with passivity that it didn’t look or feel like aggressiveness. It was just the inexorable surge of death. Thanatos and Eros, at odds.

  Jaguar once told him she had a theory about men and death. Women, she said, faced death regularly, bleeding every month, having babies at the edge of possible disaster. It was built into their lives. That wasn’t true for men, so they chased death, looking for ways to face it down by acting badly, bravely, or foolishly. At the time, he told her she was generalizing wildly. Now he thought maybe she was just right. Conquering death might be what wars were about after all.

  But for Brendan, death’s appeal was different. He wouldn’t be a conqueror. He would perhaps be rescued by the Mother if he was a good boy and did as he was told. Or he would merge with her in death, relinquishing all self into the void she promised him.

  And his own relationship with death? It wasn’t the Thanatos syndrome Brendan exhibited. He wanted to beat it, or save others from it. Brendan liked the martyr role. Alex preferred to be a hero. He wondered if that would keep him from killing whoever Brendan and the Mother wanted him to kill.

  Brendan walked a little bit away from him and dug his toe in the dirt. “What’s this place made of, anyway?”

  “Dirt,” Alex said.

  Brendan bent down and picked up a handful of soil, put it to his tongue and then spit it out. “It doesn’t taste right,” he said.

  Alex twisted around to look at the trees growing in back of him. “They like it,” he said.

  He stood and walked to Brendan, his legs a little wobbly from sitting for so long, but still holding him up. If he wanted to play the hero, he should make a start while he could. He had a few things to clear up, first. For instance, he had to know if Brendan had another communication device, or if it was only the stones that worked empathic space around him.

  He regarded Brendan’s profile for a moment, then put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. Brendan blinked at him, but seemed to feel no threat in the gesture. He smiled softly, sadly, as if at someone who refuses to understand. Alex reached a hand tentatively toward him, ran it over the space around him. If there was a transmitter, he should be able to feel it pulsing just below the surface of skin.

  He let the air flow between his hand and the surface of Brendan’s skin, feeling for the different blip that indicated technology. Nothing in his neck or head. Nothing in his arm. Nothing along his back or in his groin or his legs. Nothing, finally in his feet.

  Nothing.

  Which meant it was empathic. Or madness, because he supposed there was still the possibility that Brendan was communicating only with the inside of his own head, and that was somehow catching, like a virus.

  Brendan stood very still, but seemed to somehow approve of what Alex did. When Alex put a hand to his forehead and their eyes locked in the beginnings of empathic contact, Brendan smiled. “You’re like her, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “The Mother. You asked how she talked to me. I think you talk the same way. I wish I could, too.”

  Alex took a chance and went subvocal.

  How does The Mother talk to you?

  “Like that,” Brendan said. “Just like that.”

  That, Alex thought, answered his question. Brendan wasn’t an empath, but the Mother was. Or her own contact with Artemis gave her empathic capacities, which worked out to the same thing. And the stones were the conduit. He hoped he’d be able to remember this, retain it the next time he fell into Artemis space with Brendan. He also wondered how many people knew about that, and found himself hoping like hell the Pentagon didn’t.

  “I want to do something,” he said softly. “I want to talk to the Mother inside you. Will you let me do that?”

  Brendan nodded. “I think she’d like you, anyway. She’s not like other women. She likes men.”

  He closed his eyes, as if waiting for a kiss. Alex pressed his fingers against Brendan’s face and allowed the empathic space to open between them more fully. He would go in as far as he could, and come back out with as much information as was currently available.

  “Brendan Farley,” he whispered, “See who you are. Be what you see.”

  * * * *

  As Jaguar and Fiore boarded the shuttle, she knew nothing about the shit hitting the fan with Paul Dinardo, but if she had she would have been pleased both at his distress, and his response.

  Alex’s replacement supervisor, Rod Galentas, called Paul first when the news broke that Fiore was missing, taken hostage when a couple of big cats broke loose at the sanctuary. Reports coming in said that a tall woman with green eyes and dark hair subdued the jaguar. Rod knew who that was.

  So did Paul. Whether it was knee jerk response to avoid bad press, or he was actually doing the right thing would never be clearly ascertained, but his response was to tell a whopper of a lie. “It’s the Feds, Rod,” he said without breaking stride. “They took her. Weren’t you informed?”

  Rod deflated. He’d apparently been looking forward to a ruckus.

  “No, I was not,” he said sternly. He didn’t like any breach in protocol, which was probably why he hadn’t fared too well on Planetoid Three, where breach was a protocol all its own.

  Paul sighed. “Well, you should have been. And so should Peter. I put the paperwork through.”

  “This is highly irregular, sir,” Galentas said disapprovingly.

  So will I be, before this is all over with, Paul thought. “It’s probably your paperwork that’s the problem,” he suggested.

  Galentas looked appalled at the thought.

  “Not your fault,” Paul reassured him. “The situation is highly classified. I guess you and Peter would automatically be closed out. He just got the prisoner and you just got here. Your paper’s not in the computer loop yet.”

  “Classified?” Rod asked, his back stiffening. He did believe in this kind of protocol. “I wasn’t informed -”

  “Yeah, well I’
m informing you now. That prisoner has classified information, and the feds need her. And you’re to keep this quiet, Galentas. Understood?”

  “Of course, sir,” Rod said. “Of course. As long as you’re sure it’s all right.”

  “Yeah,” Paul lied. “I’m sure.”

  Chapter 15

  Home Planet, Connecticut State Wildlife Refuge

  Rachel had arranged to have a car waiting for Jaguar and Fiore at the home planet shuttle station. Fiore remained silent in the shuttle, in the car, all through the drive that took them to the wildlife refuge where they’d be doing their first round of work.

  She didn’t seem afraid. Didn’t seem anything, except perhaps patient. She sat, treelike, and looked ahead. Sometimes, she twisted her neck to peer out to window, up at the night sky.

  Jaguar set up rough camp about a mile into the woods and waited until the moon rose. Then she led Fiore deeper into the woods they occupied. When they were well out of sight of the others, she stopped and gave her a throwing knife.

  “See,” she said, demonstrating how it could be balanced on the edge of a finger. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she sent it flying into the bark of a tree. She retrieved it, and handed it to Fiore.

  Fiore held the knife as if it was precious, balancing it as Jaguar had done, caressing the edge of it. She lifted it to the moon, watching the light play against the metal, then brought it to her lips. Jaguar saw the tip of her tongue flick out to taste it. Then, sighing with profound pleasure, she brought her arm back and tried a throw.

  The knife turned end over end and landed true, with its point piercing a tree.

  “Good,” Jaguar said, watching as a broad grin formed on Fiore’s face. “Now catch me supper.”

  Fiore walked over to the tree, pulled out the knife, and then dropped to her knees. Jaguar observed the way she sniffed at the loamy earth, her fingers moving just behind her face to touch what she had just smelled. She trailed after her, staying within her shadow as she made her way sniffing into the forest.

  When she stopped, Jaguar stopped and watched as her hand folded in a satisfied way over something on the ground. She squinted at it, brought it close to her nose and inhaled, then smoothed it over her cheek, leaving a dark smear from the edge of her eye to her jawline.