Annie B pocketed it.
The Tsar sighed, but didn’t complain. “So . . . payment?”
Annie B nodded. “I owe you a favor.”
“Can I have a moment with your young friend?” the Tsar pointed at me.
Annie B sighed, but didn’t complain either. “Don’t take too long, I want to get home before dawn.”
The Tsar motioned for me to follow him to the other side of the room. Even with Annie already heading down the stairs, she had vamp hearing after all. The Tsar put an arm around my shoulders like an uncle would a troubled nephew. “You know how dangerous she is, yes?”
“I know.”
“You know how dangerous Vega is, yes?”
“I know.”
“Don’t trust either of them.”
“And you?”
“Especially don’t trust the Tsar.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll talk to JoJo for you.”
“One more thing . . .” the Tsar huddled closer, whispered so even I could barely hear him, “you know the Curator?”
My face spoke for me again: murder.
The Tsar sighed. “I thought so . . . dangerous?”
“The Curator wants the world and everyone in it to bleed,” I told him.
The Tsar sighed even deeper. “Thank you for confirming some most troubling rumors . . . and for sending my best to Jordan. JoJo . . . I like that name for her.”
Auction, tomorrow night.
Fuck me . . . that meant another day on the couch.
Session 45
After Farmland Kansas came Kansas City, after Kansas City came Omaha, after Omaha came Des Moines and after Des Moines came Iowa City.
America’s heartland, all in one go. One day after another.
Ultra Class ‘13 gonna have some serious redneck crackers in it.
Ceinwyn and I developed a pattern of waking, packing the car, visiting the recruit in question, then leaving for the next stop. It was strangely exhausting to be sitting in the car for so many hours each day. Made me realize why truckers and travelling salesmen always die so young. Sitting in a car, eating bad food, locked up in a motel room for the night. This was not the trip I’d imagined it to be.
Hadn’t had a chance to chase a single bit of tail.
Well . . . there was the Omaha recruit’s older sister, but Ceinwyn deftly handled that situation by making me more included in the conversation with the parents. “Why do you care what I do with my cock so much?” I angrily asked once we were in the car.
“Quit thinking with that cock and start thinking about the effect your little bout of flirting could have on the recruit and his parents,” she scolded me. “If one of my actual Recruiters pulled what you just tried, he’d be fired on the spot.”
“Good thing I ain’t an actual Recruiter then, just a summer intern, ain’t it?”
I was pretty tired of Ceinwyn’s little maneuvers with me, but at the same time I respected her even more for it. Like watching a famous artist paint or a famous chef cook. The way she played the recruits and the parents, the way she took me aside and told me exactly how the conversation would go down before it even started, plus where and when I should intervene, and what aspects of the Asylum life I should focus on to do the most good with this specific recruit.
Sometimes the conversation would be honest about the Mancy, other times it would be filled with euphemisms like ‘gifted’ or ‘very talented.’ In Des Moines I was used to take the boy aside and talk to him about accidental anima discharges, in Kansas City I stayed and distracted the parents while Ceinwyn did the opposite.
Recruiting is an art form really. Psychological warfare and emotional violin playing rolled into one.
Yeah, after that first week on the road my respect for Ceinwyn grew leaps and bounds.
The trip wasn’t all work and no play.
Had my first real barbecue in Kansas City.
Went to the movies in Omaha to see some flicks I’d missed while at the Asylum.
“Why are you disappointed?” Ceinwyn asked after one.
“He killed like half of Metropolis and didn’t even give a shit!” I hotly geeked out.
I even snuck away from our hotel room in Iowa City to bluff my way into a college bar for a few rounds before people started to get suspicious about Pablo Jimenez’ ID and the fact his skin wasn’t as dark as pictured. Sometimes being able to mimic your Mexican friend’s Spanglish pays off, that’s all I’m saying.
After those stops came St. Louis, Missouri.
St. Louis is where our recruiting trip had itself a detour.
This time it was my fault.
Totally my fault.
And the asshole fairy that dragged me into the Mississippi River.
[CLICK]
St. Louis is the third largest Asylum hub outside of the Asylum itself and Washington D.C. There are others around the world equally important for mancers—St. Petersburg, Paris, London, Beijing, the usual suspects—but for the good ol’ United States of America, those are the three cities that correspond with mancer government—and with mancer government comes mancer power.
The Midwest ESLED Bureau and the Recruiter Heartland Office shared the same building together, ESLED with the bottom floors and the Recruiters with the top, all under the feigned company of Elemental Solutions Incorporated. Can’t have those pesky ‘mundanes’ getting wind of the secret, can we?
I didn’t get to see the ESLED offices, so I can’t tell you about them really. Cops and me ain’t exactly ever seen eye to eye, don’t matter if they wield a nightstick or a lightning bolt.
Far as cops go, ESLED ain’t so bad.
I guess.
If I have to admit it.
They’re more into keeping a visible line between the mancer world and that normal one, cleaning up messes and the like, than they are about jailing people. Mancer has to do some serious shit before ESLED comes after them. Murder of another mancer, mostly. Might even let theft slide on by if it’s not too flashy in the anima conjuration department.
Outside of the big crimes, they keep watch on regulating mentimancers, grant convenient alibis to mancers in trouble with the law who are unable to explain away fireballs or marauding Constructs without getting locked up in a real asylum, and provide a backbone against Weres or Vamps overstepping themselves.
Even if I was fine with ESLED, there was a major rivalry between ESLED and the Recruiters and it only got worse by the year. As Ceinwyn is proud to state, the operating budget for the Recruiters had more than doubled since she took over as Head of Recruiting. ESLED . . . not so much.
This made the two groups competitive and secretive of their fiefs. I was with Ceinwyn Dale. That made me a Recruiter even if I was only a student. Shut all the ESLED doors in my face. I saw the lobby of Elemental Solutions Incorporated, on up the elevator I went, then I was in Recruiter Land once the doors opened.
Once again I was reminded that for our closeness, for how well we got along, and for all we treated each other like long lost family, there was a side of Ceinwyn Dale that was a mystery to me . . . and to everyone else. Here she wasn’t the brief blast of energy, here and gone again with new recruits nodding in her wake, but the Boss.
More than the Boss. The Recruiters—from the agents themselves, to the office personnel, to the management—treated her like a god. Or at least an empress. They leapt to please her and she commanded them in every little detail. A reminder alright, that she might be Auntie Badass, but she’s also got a few thousand people under her command and has a seat on the Learning Council.
And the Lady is just an old bag with saggy tits.
And Keith Gullick is a kindly teacher.
And Mordecai Root . . . is still a stuck up asshole really.
We received the tour.
Three floors of tour.
Kill me now.
The Heartland Office was run by Alfred Pemberton. He was British. I tried not to hold that against him. He was also a faunamancer, an Ultra,
a Beasttalker. This I did hold against him.
Why?
There are five types of faunamancer: Cat People, Dog People, Bird People, Weird Motherfuckers, and Crazy Ass Bastard Gonna Eat Their Face Off One Day.
First three are self explanatory, ain’t they? That’s where the vast majority of faunamancers fall. There’s diversity inside of them, sure, but generally they’re all pretty straightforward with their animal loving natures. Some Bird People like eagles or falcons, others like ducks or chickens or songbirds. Some Cat People stick with tabbys, the more adventurous go for tigers. Some Dog People go for purebreds, others strays, others wild wolves or even cat killing coyotes.
It’s basically what you’d expect out of them.
Weird Motherfuckers go for the odd shit. Rats. Horses. Rabbits. Pigs. Dolphins. Deer. Bears. Shit like that. It’s a little weird and you wouldn’t let them babysit your kid, but it’s still an understandable affection.
Crazy Ass Bastard Gonna Eat Their Face Off One Day are into the fully weird shit. Snakes. Lizards. Amphibians.
Alfred Pemberton’s the only faunamancer I’d ever met beyond a Crazy Ass Bastard.
Guy likes bugs.
Has them inside his clothes, has them placed strategically around the office so he can spy on all the workers.
As revolting as you can imagine.
Any moment them little legs gonna be crawling over your skin.
Heh.
Feel ‘em, kiddies?
Feel ‘em crawling on your skin?
Bet you did. Bet you’re scratching at it right now. Ain’t suggestion a wonderful thing? Now if I could only get these tapes to give people orgasms . . . I’d be a fucking billionaire.
Alfred Pemberton is a tiny guy.
Me, I’m a short guy, but I ain’t a tiny guy. Wide shoulders, thick neck, all that stuff.
Alfred is truly tiny, not even five-foot-five, probably barely weighs one-twenty. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out he shops in the kiddy department, that kind of tiny. Except he wears an office suit. Tiny little guy in a suit. Would have been funny if not for the tarantula sitting on his shoulder and the moth clinging to the rim of his ear. Occasionally he’d pause, listening to them like they spoke a language only he could hear.
Nope, ain’t freaky at all.
He’s tiny, he’s freaky, but Alfred Pemberton’s also got one thing going for him. He’s got this beautiful, deep, BBC radio voice that just resonates in the air around him. Kind of voice that could get woman to drop their panties just by saying ‘kumquat.’
Kumquat.
Say it out loud, kiddies.
Kumquat.
Makes you and me sound like some vegetable loving pervert, but Alfred Pemberton had the magic voice. You could listen to him go on and on about anything and be entranced by it. It was soothing and authoritative and if it wasn’t for all the freaky bug shit, I might exclaim myself as a fan of his.
Hard to like a guy with a centipede wrapped around his wrist like a Livestrong bracelet.
Also a bit of a smug cocksucker, I must admit.
“I’ve spent the last year instituting my new system,” Alfred explained to Ceinwyn as he led us from floor to floor. “Analytics on the bottom floor, support staff on the second, and field agents on top. The elevator has an automatic function to open on the fourth floor and no field agent leaves this building to visit a potential recruit without a mandatory reading of that recruit’s file. The file itself contains socio-economic status and a quick psych evaluation on the family, we even use our contacts in the financial sector to print out a full credit report.”
The bottom floor was filled with geeks at computers, lots of maps and files and charts. Kind of reminded me of Russell Quilt’s Testing Room back at the Asylum, only larger, with more people in it, and praying mantis’ and caterpillars hanging out on shelves instead of Transformers or Thundercats.
Can you still feel the little feet crawling on your skin?
Second floor had clerical staff and meeting rooms. Boring as shit. Especially when Ceinwyn took meetings I wasn’t invited to. That happened after the tour.
The tour was the bright spot of the day.
Now you can pity me.
“Your field agents haven’t rebelled?” Ceinwyn asked in the elevator moving up to the top floor. Ceinwyn herself having come up from the field agent side of things, she knew the type. Headstrong and can-do. They liked being given a list of names to cross off or an area of the country to scour, not this smart-bomb type of outlook Alfred was implementing.
Computers here, computers for Project Cassandra, computers just taking over all the fun stuff. Generationally, I’m considered a Millennial. I can work a computer just fine. Smartphone, tablet, whatever. Ain’t a dislike of technology that makes me worry about computers being everywhere and doing everything, if I had a dislike of technology I wouldn’t be an Artificer. Nah, I just wonder if computers are too powerful for a species as fucked up as humanity to have at their command. And if it’s too powerful for humanity then what about Weres or Vamps?
Vamps with Project Cassandra . . .
Fucking bloodbath.
Maybe I should have told Ceinwyn no.
“There were a few who refused to adapt,” Pemberton hedged, his moth flapping nervously.
Ceinwyn raised a questioning eyebrow.
“. . . Johnson, Uribe, Meyer.”
“Old, respected agents,” Ceinwyn commented neutrally. “How did you deal with them?”
“I . . . worked out a deal to transfer them with Crush McCollum in D.C. He promoted them. I got five of his newest, more malleable Recruiters in return.”
Ceinwyn lost some of her smile. “You didn’t think that informing the home office of this would be wise?”
The door to the top floor opened on the elevator and we stepped out. Here was a completely different atmosphere than the analyst floor. For one, it was a maze of disorganized cubicles, surrounded by small offices along the walls. Second, it was largely deserted—two-thirds of the cubicles bearing ‘In the Field, Don’t Steal’ signs that were probably an in-joke.
The equipment was different, almost something you expect among a group of private investigators, with binoculars and other spying equipment prevalent. The only bit of free and clean space was around a huge chunk of the wall dominated by a whiteboard. One half was row after row of destinations written next to each Recruiters name, while the second half had potential students listed.
I recognized some of the student names from our road trip.
Damn it, none of them are in Miami.
West Virginia? Kentucky?
Fuck me! I’ll be cleaning the coal ash off my balls for months!
Pemberton lead the way through the cubicle maze, making a non-apology, “What I didn’t see was a need to bother you with three troublemakers quickly transferred to more suitable positions.”
Ceinwyn shook hands with the few Recruiters still in the room. The reaction between how they treated Pemberton—an interloper—and how they treated Ceinwyn—a rock star—couldn’t have been more different. I got the usual: you’re the guy who burnt down the Mound, right?
It wasn’t until we were in an office that the conversation continued. “I supported your proposal, Alf,” Ceinwyn reminded him, “and I still do, but those aren’t your calls to make. I had those three Recruiters here for a reason; they have ties in the communities.”
“You promised autonomy for results,” Pemberton complained, his tarantula hissing on his shoulder.
Eww.
“I did,” Ceinwyn agreed to calm him down. Behind his back, she rolled her eyes at me.
Pemberton further explained, “Ties in the community aren’t required for this method. That’s the point. A singular method that works for any Recruiter, you recall the discussions when we started together? Finding order in the chaos of each Recruiter having his or her barony? And his or her style that might or might not work . . . all because we haven’t a clue or any statistics on wh
at does work or what doesn’t work. You saw it out there, Ceinwyn! They’re a bunch of cowboys!”
“Sometimes you need a cowboy,” I muttered with a fake drawl.
Pemberton squirmed, waiting for Ceinwyn to punish him.
She let him stew, walking around the office with a smile on her face, picking up one knickknack after another. It took her eventually sitting behind the desk for me to realize it was her office. She threw a pair of long legs up on the desk, leaning back in her chair.
Pemberton squirmed even more.
“What would you do in my place, King Henry?”
“Kick ‘em in the balls.”
Her smile twitched. “Always your first reaction, with ‘fuck you, bitch’ being your second. What’s your third?”
I thought about it for a bit. “Why you care? The politics of it? Might get back to the Lady or Root and shit? Dale don’t know what her own organization is doing, stuff like that?”
“Mostly.”
I thought about it some more. “Guess it matters if the new system is working or not.”
Pemberton was happy to seize the out I’d given him. “Required visits by a Recruiter for each recruit have fallen from 4.6 to 3.8 already, within another year it should fall further.”
I shrugged. “Can’t fire a man for succeeding.”
Ceinwyn enjoyed that phrase so much her smile almost went sideways. “You very much can.”
“Ceinwyn!” Pemberton pleaded, “You wouldn’t!”
She shushed him with a raised hand. “A public commendation for you and a private guarantee that you and Crush never play Fantasy Recruiters ever again.”
“Of course!”
“A point-eight drop already,” Ceinwyn mused, glancing out the window at St. Louis. “Good work, Alf.”
Suddenly the tiny, weird guy was a bashful schoolboy with a pretty girl. “Can I . . . keep going then?
“Yes . . . and bring in the first employee, please. These reviews take more than today and I’ll fire you no matter how many medals you have pinned on your jacket.”
[CLICK]
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 21