“This way!” shouted Carl.
They went that way.
They scarpered down the hall as fast as present conditions allowed — present conditions including rain-soaked pants, slippery floors, and the occasional high-speed passage of frightened scholars helter-skeltering up the corridor and generally taking up space that Ian would like to have used for other purposes. Ian, Rhinnick, and Carl ran past filing cabinets, newspaper dispensers, drinking fountains, notice boards, and assorted vending machines. They blew past a line of phone booths, a unisex bathroom, a donut kiosk, and one of those folding plastic sandwich board devices that say Caution, Wet Floor.
They failed to exercise caution, and the wet floor did its thing. Rhinnick, Ian, and Carl extricated themselves from the tangled pile of limbs and keisters they’d formed right after skidding through a puddle. The phrase “arse over teakettle” came to mind.
The percussive sound of jackbooted feet, stomping thumpily up the hall, announced the inconvenient arrival of several more examples of the local constabulary — examples who chose this very moment to round the corner and step into the hallway less than a stone’s throw behind Ian, Rhinnick, and Carl.
An unannounced barrage of gunfire suggested that the Long Arm of the Law meant Business.
Ian, Rhinnick, and Carl leapt around another corner at top speed, buzzed past half a dozen or so closed doors, and dove behind a conveniently upturned Shoopy Cola vending machine. Ian and Rhinnick quickly crammed a few overturned chairs and a smattering of unidentifiable debris up against the cola machine, forming something of a barricade.
It’s funny how the mind chooses a time like this one — when the detailed appreciation of local colour isn’t topmost on the agenda — to take a vivid snapshot of its surroundings. Ian’s took one now. The hall in which he crouched was lit by long fluorescent tubes and featured four vending machines and a drinking fountain. It was lined by exactly fourteen interchangeable doors, differentiated by numbered plates as well as newspaper clippings taped over each door’s small, square window. You could tell from a distance that the clippings were a mix of letters to the editor and those single-panel, black-and-white comic strips that you sometimes get on a newspaper’s back page.
Ian knew at a glance that these were academic offices.
“Do either of you chaps know how to use one of these thingummies?” said Rhinnick, producing a pair of Vera’s high-yield blaster pistols from his waistband. “I mean to say, I’m more decorative than combative, you know, and not strictly cut out for —”
Whatever it was that Rhinnick wasn’t strictly cut out for was drowned out by the universally recognized sound of high-calibre bullets striking an upturned Shoopy Cola machine. Ian and Carl bravely hit the deck while Rhinnick, demonstrating what he himself might have called remarkable perspicacity and intrepidity, propped himself against the cola machine, poked the barrel of each blaster over its side, shouted a few well-spoken lines of passable action-hero dialogue, shut his eyes, and fired the blasters in no particular direction.
The effect was profound. First, the attacking members of the serve-and-protect brigade let loose a series of heartfelt cries that demonstrated their keen grasp of obscene vernacular. Second, the firing squad temporarily cheesed its abuse of the cola machine and dove for cover, some bursting through closed doors and others corralling passing scholars for a bit of highly qualified human shielding.
“This is getting a bit thick!” shouted Rhinnick, still blasting like he’d never blasted before, which of course he hadn’t. “I mean to say,
“Return fire!” bellowed some officer-or-other from down the hall. A hail of bullets hinted that the command had garnered approval.
A bullet ricocheted off the wall beside Ian, caromed off an overhead panel, and buried itself in the floor approximately 1.5 centimetres nor’east of an especially tender and non-bulletproof part of Carl’s person.
Carl sat on the floor behind the Shoopy-Cola barricade, staring blankly at the slightly smoking scorch mark in the linoleum. He burbled something along the lines of “eek,” or possibly “meep,” although it was difficult to be sure, what with the thunder of Rhinnick’s blasters and the pingety-ping of ricocheting shells.
Ian shimmied to Carl’s spot, wriggled into a sitting position, and grabbed Carl by the collar.
“What do we do?!” he shouted, making himself heard over the crossfire.
“Surrender!” shouted a cop from down the hall.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” cried Ian.
“Still, it’s a good idea!” shouted the cop. “It’ll make things easier!”
“Maybe for you!” shouted Ian.
“You’re only putting off the inevitable!”
“Suits me fine!” shouted Ian, before subjecting Carl to a vigorous shake of the pull-yourself-together variety.
“We’ll . . . we’re . . . we’re going to be fine,” stammered Carl, staring at tender bits of his person that had recently come within a hair’s breadth of perforation. “It’s . . . It’s all going according to plan.”
“Some plan,” shouted Rhinnick.
“Whose plan?” said Ian.
“The divine plan,” said Carl. “It was all foretold by Norm.”
A hail of bullets — possibly predicted by Norm, possibly not — Swiss-cheesed the ceiling above the barricade, causing chunks of drywall and plaster to rain on Ian, Rhinnick, and Carl. This resulted in an assortment of bruises, mild contusions, heavily dusted clothing, and severely compromised hairdos.
“Norm predicted this?” said Ian, spitting out a mouthful of plaster.
“Every bit of it,” said Carl. “You, Socrates, Tonto, the police — he was right. About all of it. It’s amazing. I suppose that’s why he sent me. He saw my doubt. He knew that I needed proof of —”
“Perhaps we could moot the ins and outs of prophecy on some future occasion,” shouted Rhinnick, still shutting his eyes and firing wildly. “This isn’t the time for the discussion of religious Norms, however prescient.”
“But it’s all playing out as he predicted,” said Carl, his face glowing like an especially fervent lightbulb. “It’s why he sent me. I’m sure of it. He saw my doubts. He knew I needed proof of —”
“So Norm has television,” said Ian, who was getting used to this sort of thing.
“Sort of,” said Carl. “But he doesn’t see the future, really. He speaks it. He sort of fades off into a trance, mumbles to himself, and then says something about the future. It usually rhymes. The poetry’s not bad, but the predictions are where the real money is. He’s one hundred per cent accurate.”
“They’ve all come true?” said Ian, wedging himself closer to the barricade and brushing bits of plaster and drywall from his upper slopes.
“Well, no,” said Norm. “Not yet. But there’s still plenty of time. A lot have already come true, though. Especially in the last few weeks. Loads of hits. He’ll explain them when you see him. There was the one about the City Solicitor’s rise to power, and the one about your escape from the hospice, and the one about sending you to Vera so she could direct your path, and the one about that rash I had on my —”
“And Norm’s a priest,” said Ian. “I didn’t know Detroit had priests.”
“New development,” said Carl. “It started about twenty years ago when the OM first appeared. It carried word of the world beyond the Styx, where—”
FWOOMP.
“Fwoomp?” said Ian, who, like the lion’s share of Canadian regulatory compliance personnel, was unfamiliar with the sound of a tear gas canister being fired toward his position.
It may be worth
noting, at this juncture, that police forces in Detroit specialize in the use of non-lethal weapons. It’s even more valuable to remember that in Detroit, all weapons (apart from a few on Socrates’ belt) technically count as non-lethal.
“Incoming!” shouted Rhinnick, displaying uncharacteristic economy of language.
The canister sailed over the barricade, landed directly in front of Ian, and, perhaps believing itself to be out on a first date, resolutely refused to release gas.
“It’s a dud,” said Ian, peeping out from behind raised arms.
“It’s a sign!” said Carl, devoutly.
Ian picked up the unexploded canister and lobbed it back over the barrier. It bounced twice and rolled into the midst of a particularly dense group of particularly dense coppers, who scattered.
“Just wait until Norm hears this!” said Carl, aglow. “It confirms everything about you. I mean, we knew that Norm was accurate, and the OM made it obvious that —”
“Enough about Norm!” cried Ian. “Enough about prophecies and scriptures and priests and the OM. We have to get out of here. Right now!”
He’d placed enough topspin on the words “right now” that he very nearly made Carl jump. Carl probably would have jumped had he not been sitting on the floor. As it was, he merely bounced.
“But I must tell you of the OM,” said Carl, settling down. “Norm predicted this conversation. I’m supposed to tell you about the OM. How it was born of the river at the time of the Intercessor’s coming, and how it contains the great truths. It —”
“Listen,” said Ian, “You’ve got to pull yourself together. We can’t stay pinned down behind a —”
“It was written in the beforelife,” said Carl.
“Wait . . . what?”
Bits of drywall and plaster, spent cartridges, and cans of soda rained around them. Ian stared at Carl intently.
“What did you say?” said Ian.
“It’s true,” said Carl, pausing to lob a handy can of Diet Shoopy over the barricade.
“But that would mean —”
“Exactly,” said Carl. “It means that the border between our world and the beforelife isn’t sealed. It means —”
“It’s my ticket to finding Penny,” said Ian, eyes widening. He pulled Carl closer and unleashed a bit of un-Ian-ish fervour. “Tell me everything,” he said. “What does the OM say?”
“Oh, many things,” said Carl, pulling his jacket over his head for added protection. “The OM carries instructions on living your best life, being your authentic self, and unlocking your happiness potential. It tells us how to use the Laws of Attraction, how to refresh our style, and how to be bikini-ready for summer —”
“Excuse me?” said Ian.
“One of the lesser writings,” said Carl, dismissively. “But the OM also carries the hidden truths. It tells us of the beforelife, and reveals the truths of she who dwells therein. But of course you know that,” he added, doing a fairly impressive job of eyeing Ian reverently despite ricocheting bullets and falling debris.
The air was suddenly split with a cry.
“CHARGE!” roared an officer with more chevrons than sense.
“NO!” cried his more sensible insubordinates.
“I’m sorry, sir,” shouted one, scarcely audible over Rhinnick’s barrage of blaster fire. “It’s just that . . . well . . . they have blasters, Cap’n. Big ones. And they really, really hurt. And it’s not as though these fellas have actually hurt anybody, right? They’re just princks. No sense gettin’ ourselves blasted over a bunch of loopy —”
“The orders come straight from the top,” shouted the captain. “The acting mayor has ordered that we —”
“I don’t see any bloody acting mayors jumping in front of blasters,” said a deep-voiced mutineer. “Easy enough, giving orders behind a desk. Hardly any mental patients firing blasters at you behind a desk. Stands to reason. But here in the field —”
“Here in the hall,” said a pedantic colleague.
“You know what I mean —”
“I gave you a direct order,” shouted the captain. “Now CHARGE!”
“No!” chorused the rising proletariat.
Meanwhile, behind the upturned Shoopy Cola machine, Rhinnick Feynman was growing antsy.
“Terribly sorry to insert myself into the proceedings,” he said, still blasting over the barricade, “but . . . mightn’t we move on? I’m doing a fairish job of keeping the regiment stalemated, but we’re ignoring the fact that all that stands between yours truly and Socrates is a girl who clearly admitted that she hadn’t a chance against him. So, if we could take the discussion elsewhere, say to a spot with fewer guns and a marked shortage of assassins, you might —”
“We’ll be fine,” said Carl. “I know we will. I heard it straight from Norm. He said that I’d bring the One safely to his presence.”
“The one what?” said Ian.
“The One,” said Carl. “You. The Intercessor. Chosen of the beforelife. He who is bound to the OM. He who has heard the hidden truths. He who’ll bridge the gulf between the beforelife and Detroit. The One whom City Council fears, who carries word of the —”
“That’s a lot of titles,” said Ian.
“You can’t possibly mean Brown,” said Rhinnick, squeezing off a shot or two in disbelief.
“Of course I do!” said Carl.
“But . . . Ian?” Rhinnick repeated, looking back over his shoulder while continuing his barrage. He winced with every pull of the trigger.
“I mean to say,
“Norm is sure of it,” said Carl.
“But I mean to say,” said Rhinnick, “Ian Brown?” He made an offensive sort of face that had “this timid little ‘I’m-not-a-copper’ bimbo?” written all over it.
Ian was making the same face.
“Ian Brown,” said Carl. “The prophecies make this clear.”
“The OM says that?” asked Ian.
“No,” said Carl. “The OM gives us guidance and instruction, not prophecies. But Norm’s prophecies make it clear. They foretell that the one Norm sends — that’s me,” he added, beaming, “will evade the forces of darkness, elude danger, and bring the One to the congregation, free of harm. And the OM says —”
There was a sudden crash from the general direction of the forces of darkness. One of their number had apparently recognized a good thing when he saw it, and had accordingly toppled a second vending machine onto its side. He was now coaxing his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms to push it slowly toward Rhinnick’s barricade with rhythmic cries of “Heave! Heave!” as the bulk of their ranks shimmied along behind.
“A point of order,” said Rhinnick, firing another blaster volley. “Let us take it as read that your prophecies guarantee that this ‘One’ will escape harm. I wonder if they shed any light on the fate of the One’s brainy companion? Say, for example, something along the lines of ‘and along came his bright-eyed pal Rhinnick, looking bronze and fit albeit a little bullet-riddled’?”
“Well, no,” said Carl, frowning.
“Then perhaps we could shove off? I strongly prefer to remain unpunctured. And if my finely tuned senses are any judge, which I think they are, a platoon of heavily armed goons will be in our midst in a shake or two of a duck’s foot.”
“But I need to know,” said Carl, grasping Ian by the hand. “You have to tell me
. What’s she like?”
“What’s who like?” said Ian.
“HER!” said Carl, rapturously.
Ian looked at him as blankly as one could manage while sheltering behind a vending machine with bullets bouncing around it. Up to this point in his career Ian had only met one woman who inspired this sort of rapturous awe in all who saw her, and he didn’t feel that now was the time to discuss her distinctive traits.
“Tonto,” said Ian, flatly. “Tonto Choudhury. She’s nice.”
“No, no,” said Carl. “Not her. I mean the Great Omega. She who authored the OM. The one who came before and dwells in the beforelife. The one who will send us her Intercessor in the time of revelation.”
“That’s you, I suppose,” said Rhinnick, a touch resentfully. “This chappy thinks that you’re this Omega person’s Chosen Interwhatsit.” Then he fired a few resentful rounds toward the police.
“It’s true!” said Carl. “You’ve seen Her and have spoken Her name. You will carry the Great Omega’s teachings to the people. You —”
“HEAVE!” cried the police, drawing closer. “HEAVE! HEAVE!”
“I don’t know any Great Omega,” said Ian. “I’m just trying to find my wife.”
“Oh,” said Carl, apparently caught off guard. “I’m . . . I’m sure you’ll find someone suitable in the flock. I mean, it would be an honour for any young woman or man to —”
“I have a wife,” snapped Ian. “Her name’s Penelope. I was told that I’d find her once I’d learned The Rules, whatever the hell that means.”
“What rules?”
“HEAVE!”
“The Rules,” said Ian. “That’s what Vera said. I’m supposed to learn The Rules and find Penelope. Vera saw it. She had television.”
“FIRE!” cried the captain. A cannon to the left of him volley’d and thunder’d. Another inexplicably non-exploding canister landed behind the barricade in a puddle of Shoopy Cola. It made a sad little squeak.
Beforelife Page 42