Powers of Detection

by Dana Stabenow

  “One day after Buster had become a young man, he found a bit of pink flesh on the beach, flesh that looked like no flesh he had ever seen. He put it up to what was left of his nose to smell it, and amazingly, it became his nose. The flesh just sort of oozed onto his face, and where he had not had a nose, he now did, although it stayed pink for a long time, and even when it tanned, always remained slightly lighter then the rest of his face.

  “Many months later, he found another bit of flesh, one of his fingertips. Over time, over many, many years, bit by bit he regained the parts of his body the seagulls had eaten. He realized that what happened was that the seagulls had shat him out. The seagull crap took time to gather together and become that which the seagulls had eaten. And then, of course, it took time for the flesh to wash up on the beach, and for Buster—he long ago quit using that name, though—to find those small parts of his body. It took many bags of trash, junk, and some treasure for him to haul off, but there you go.”

  Travis glared at him now, become again a surly boy. “Ah, that’s just a story,” he said. “It’s not true.” He held out his hand for the bit of blue beach glass.

  “Oh? You think not?” Uncle pulled off his gloves, finger by finger, and showed Travis his wrinkled hands. “See these fingers? See how the tips look a different color? And see my lips, how what you think is scar is just that part of my lips the sea gave back? And see my nose?” Uncle lifted up the corner of his hat, then, showing the boy his empty eye socket. “And see my lost eye, the eye I have searched for ever since that day long, long, ago when the boy who chased seagulls learned his lesson.”

  “Creepazoid!” the boy yelled, and ran away before Uncle could whack him with his bamboo staff.

  Uncle watched the boy run back up the beach, toward town. Along the way, Travis deliberately veered from his path to run through a flock of seagulls, only one or two of whom grudgingly flew up. They had grown tired of the boy’s game.

  Uncle turned and continued on his way, back to his tiny driftwood shack heated by coal, back to his single bed, his single room, and the junk and treasure he scavenged and sometimes sold. As the sun moved down below the bluff above town, one last flicker of light caught a shiny something on the beach. Uncle reached down and picked it up. At first he thought it might have been a child’s marble, ground cloudy by the beach, but when he held it up to inspect, the marble rolled into his empty socket and became his eye.

  Uncle looked at the world in stereo again, the world no longer flat but wider, although a bit fuzzier with the cataract in his old and weathered eye. Well, he thought, that’s the last of it, the last bit of flesh returned from the sea. His cabin and his bed awaited him, and he wondered if he’d bother to make a fire for the night, or if he even needed to.

  Must have made my peace with the sea, he thought, with the seagulls.

  And Buster, born as Percy, now known as Uncle, went home, perhaps to die, perhaps to live another day, but never, ever, ever to chase seagulls.

  Palimpsest

  LAURA ANNE GILMAN

  “That had better be coffee.”

  “Hazelnut. Double.”

  “You’ll live.” Wren’s arm reached out from under the blanket and snagged the cup out of her partner’s hand. Without spilling a drop, she raised herself on her elbows and took a sip.

  “God. I may be human after all.” She peered out from under a tangle of mouse-brown hair at the man standing in the dim light of her bedroom. He looked broad-shouldered and solid and reassuringly familiar. “What time is it?”

  “Nine. A.M.,” he clarified. “Rough night?” Sergei sat down on the edge of her bed, forcing her to scoot over to make room.

  “No more so than usual. The Council came down hard on the piskies who were dragging people under the lake, so there’ve been some minor temper tantrums in protest, but other than that everything’s quiet. Well, quiet for them, anyway.”

  There had been the equivalent of a gang war in Central Park earlier that year between water and earth sprites. Fed up, the city’s independent Talents—lonejacks—and the Mages’ Council had declared truce long enough to make sure things didn’t get out of hand again. Wren, like all lonejacks, distrusted the Council on principle, and the Council and their affiliates thought lonejacks all were troublemaking fools, so it was an uneasy truce to say the least.

  Wren took another sip of the coffee and decided that there was enough caffeine in her bloodstream to move without breaking apart. She got out of bed, cup still in hand, and staggered to the dresser to pull out a clean T-shirt.

  “You know if the Cosa ever did get itself organized . . .”

  “Bite your tongue.” She ran one hand through her hair and peered at herself in the mirror. “Oh, I look like hell. Thank God I don’t have another stint of babysitting for a couple of days. I could sleep for a week . . .”

  Suddenly his presence there clicked, and she turned to glare at him, the effect in no way diminished by the fact that she was naked save for a pair of pink panties.

  “Sorry, Zhenechka. We’ve got a job.”

  Wren closed her eyes tightly, seeking balance, then kicked back the rest of the coffee with a grimace and handed the cup to him. “Shower first. Then details.”

  She stopped halfway to the door. “Is it at least going to be fun?”

  “Would I sign you up for anything boring?”

  “The last time you said something like that, we spent two nights in a Saskatchewan jail. And if you say ‘it wasn’t boring,’ so help me I’ll fry your innards.”

  The sound of the shower started up, and Sergei allowed himself a faint smile. “Wasn’t boring.”

  -

  Under the pounding of steaming hot water, Wren swore she could feel the particles of her body coming back into focus. She ducked her head under the stream of water, then reached for the shampoo, massaging it into her scalp with a sigh of pleasure as the deep herbal scent wafted through the air. She could rough it with the best of them, but after a night wrassling with earth spirits peevy at everything that moved, a little luxury was nice. And if the coffee’s any indication, this may be the last luxury I get for a while. He only buys the Dog’s coffee when he wants to soften me up.

  Rinsed, dried, and dressed, she walked out of the bathroom drawing a comb through her hair, wincing at the tangles. Her partner leaned against the counter in her tiny kitchen, drinking a mug of tea and reading the newspaper. “All right, you know you’re dying to tell me. So spill.”

  “Seven grand down.” He gestured to the counter where the coffee machine was just starting to send out scented steam. “Another ten when you retrieve their package.”

  “We’re working cut-rate this week, I see.” They had three price scales. High-end was the stuff that was snore-worthy: divorce settlements, insurance reclamations. Situations that required thinking and ingenuity were slightly cheaper. Sergei knew, by now, what would pique her interest, and was willing to dicker a little less sharp for them. And third . . .

  Don’t think about the third. If you think it, they’ll call.

  Third was working on retainer for the organization known as the Silence. Wren had been with them for a little more than a year now, Sergei for far longer than that. Human, nonmagical, and utterly without mercy or compassion, the Silence were nonetheless one of the Good Guys. She thought. She hoped.

  “So, what’s the deal?”

  “Stow-and-show. Special interest group, wants nine-tenths of a particular display.” Translation: Several someones, acting in concert, wanted her to steal something—possession being nine-tenths of the law—from a museum, the “stow-and-show.â�
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  “You have got to stop watching those god-awful heist movies. Life’s not a caper, Serg.” The coffee machine finished perking, and she grabbed a mug from the sink and filled it. “Paperwork?”

  He jerked his chin at her kitchen table, and she noticed the sheaf of papers awaiting her perusal.

  “They’re organized, I’ll give them that.”

  “Organized, and chatty. Guy wanted to tell me every detail of his life, his job, and the weather in Timbuktu.”

  Coffee in hand, Wren sat down at the table and drew the blueprints toward her. “And how is the weather there, anyway? Oh Christ on a crutch, the Meadows.” She had hit them twice in four years—by now she and the alarm system were old friends. “And still people loan them exhibits. I just don’t get the world, I really don’t. What’s the grab?”

  “Painting. Smallish, should be easy enough to stow in the tube. In and out, seventeen minutes, tops.”

  “I can do it in eleven, if it’s in the main gallery.” It wasn’t ego if you really were that good. And she was. Possibly—probably—the best Retriever of her generation.

  He waited a beat, then dropped the other shoe. “And we got a Call.”

  She heard the capital letter in his voice, and her head lowered to rest on her crossed arms on the table. “Of course we did. Because my life just wasn’t full to the brim with joy already.”

  “Beats unemployment.”

  “Easy for you to say, Mister Stay at Home and Cash the Check.”

  Which wasn’t fair, she knew. Sergei had warned her about working for the Silence. They wanted first call on her time, always and ever. But it had seemed a worthwhile trade-off at the time.

  And their checks always, but always, cleared.

  -

  “You going to need to charge up?”

  “Now you ask?” They were sitting in the car—a yellow sedan, mocked up like a cab, the quintessentially invisible car in Manhattan—outside the Meadows. Although she knew the answer, Wren reached deep inside, touching the roil of current that always rested within her, the sign of a Talent. A gentle stroke, and it uncoiled, sparkling like glitter in her veins. “No, I’m fine. Soaked up a bit when the last batch of storms rolled through, in case things got ugly in the Park.”

  She had loved storms since she was old enough to lurch against the windowsill. “You’re a current-user, kid. You’re always going to crave the storm.” Her mentor’s voice, years and lifetimes gone. You could recharge current off man-made sources, and there were lonejacks who preferred that. Safer, more readily accessible, and no hangover if you pulled down too much. But Wren went to the wild source every chance she got.

  She didn’t have much chance to rebel, these days.

  “If you draw down too much, remember that there’s a secondary generator over here.” And his index finger stabbed the blueprint on the seat between them.

  “Yeah, saw that.” They’d been over the plans half a dozen times already. But it made Sergei feel better if they rehashed everything just before she went in. Normally he wouldn’t be anywhere near the scene on a simple grab like this, but the transit workers had gone on strike, and she couldn’t risk hailing a real cab to get home. So he would drop her off, go drive around for a while, and come back for her.

  “Try not to pick up any long-distance fares while I’m gone.”

  “Not even if they offer to tip like a madman,” he promised.

  She laughed, touched his cheek for luck, and slipped out into the darkness.

  In some ways, the strike was a nice bit of luck. In her dark grey tracksuit and black sneakers, if stopped by anyone she could claim to be heading home from a late night at the office. A knapsack slung over her shoulder held a lightweight dress and strappy heels to back up the story, plus a thin, strong nylon rope coiled in an inside pocket, her lockpick set, and a wallet with realistic-looking identification and enough cash to get home for real should something go wrong.

  Pausing just beyond the reach of the closed-circuit cameras, Wren took a deep breath, let it out. Ground. That was the key. Focus. Center. Ground.

  As though she had grown from the earth, Wren felt the weight of its comfort rise up through her, from bedrock into flesh and bone. Soothing the serpent of energy and coaxing it up her spine, into her arms, down her legs. It was like an orgasm, a muted one, pleasure sparking every nerve ending until she was completely aware of everything around her, but not so much that she was overwhelmed by it. Balance. Balance . . . There was a thin line you had to ride, when you directed current. It wasn’t enough to be able to sense it, or to be able to direct it. You had to convince it to do what you wanted, when you wanted.

  Taking the faintest hint of current, she lifted her hand, drawing the camera’s attention. It was like weaving without a loom. Flickers left her fingertips as she concentrated on the circuits and wires of the camera system. Too much, and you burned it out, setting off alarms. Too little, and a sharp-eyed watchman might spot her. Just a hint of static, something that could be brushed off, so long as it didn’t go on for too long. Just long enough for her to move, crouched low and flowing across the grounds like the low-flying bird she was named for, until she reached the relative safety of the decorative overhang. God bless old buildings. The Meadows had started life as a mansion, and still boasted any number of odd architectural details that created enough shadows for Wren to wrap herself in.

  Letting her heart rate slow down to normal, Wren pictured the assignment in her mind. It was a small thing, barely twelve-by-twelve, set in a severe silver frame. Part of a traveling exhibit of paintings that were as of yet unattributed but considered by a number of experts to be “rediscovered” works by various Impressionist masters. The art world was wild over the find; Sergei had been to see the exhibit twice even before they got this gig. If she knew her partner, he’d want to hold on to the painting for a few days until they handed it back, just to have one of the so-called Fabulous Finds in his possession.

  Actually, if she’d been prone to liking artwork, she thought she might want to own something like this too. The colors were almost alive, creating a wash of light on the landscape that reminded her of the photograph Sergei had in his own office, the black-and-white nature photographer, the guy who took all those pictures of national parks.

  Art critique later she told herself. Clock’s tick tick ticking . . .

  The thing about museums is, they weren’t stupid. They knew that technology was fallible, and that humans were fallible. But most of them also had serious budget restrictions. The Meadows had a top-of-the-line electrical alarm system. It would probably have stopped any casual intruder, or at least alerted the police to the incursion. But the Board of the Meadows had one serious disadvantage. They had never heard of current, the magical kind, or the Cosa.

  Magic wasn’t the fairy dust and wild imaginations science liked to claim. It was real, and tangible . . . if you were part of the small percentage of the human population able to sense it. An even smaller percentage of those humans, like Wren, were able to direct the current into anything useful.

  And Talents like Wren, who honed her skills for the specific purpose of larceny, were called Retrievers.

  A light touch to the door, and she felt the tingle that meant elementals were around, drawn to the current that was bound into electricity, no matter what form. A quick push of current bridged the gap in the alarm system long enough for her to open the door and slip inside. She started to move in the slow-slide fashion she had perfected for not creating footfalls, when she stopped and returned to the lock. Placing her hand on the alarm pad, she waited. Elementals had the reasoning ability of inbred hamsters, but you could use them, if you knew how. She di
d.

  Come on, you know you’re bored with that stale, man-made electricity . . . come taste some of mine . . .

  They came to her tentatively at first, then swarming in their eagerness. Natural current “tasted” better to them. She let them feed for a few seconds, nibbling around the edges of the current curling up from her belly, twining around her spine. All right. Earn your keep. She visualized clearly what she wanted them to do. A faint hesitation, and the swarm was off, splitting into a dozen different directions as they moved along the museum’s state-of-the-art wiring.

  A pity they couldn’t call back to warn her if someone else was in the hallways; but if a person didn’t have current, elementals didn’t know he or she existed.

  The painting was in a little alcove off gallery #11, in a space that had probably once been a servant’s room. Or a closet. What did she know, Wren thought, listening with part of her Talent to the sounds of the elementals causing chaos in other parts of the building. She grew up in a double-wide trailer, for Pete’s sake. They didn’t even have any mansions in Redwater.

  Palms held over the frame, and the current surged, creating the illusion again that the alarm hadn’t been breached. Moving quickly, she fit a small ceramic knife into the frame and slit the painting carefully along four sides, sliding it out and rolling it up. Tucked into an aluminum tube, the tube stowed in her backpack. And then it was time to go. She checked the digital readout on her knapsack, far enough away from her body that the current didn’t futz it too badly. Fourteen minutes. Damn. Getting old, Valere. You’re getting old.