by Stevie Barry
What she said was more or less accurate, too. Von Ratched was incapable of fooling anyone for long, but Lorna had seen too much of his bad side to be fooled at all. "I care what you think," he said.
"Then you're a right idiot. You're not after me, you're after what you think you can turn me into."
That assessment hit unnervingly close to home. She could be a little too perceptive, Lorna Donovan.
"And why do you say that?" he asked.
She slurped her soup again, and he suspected she did it to annoy him. "There's nothing about me a man like you would like. If it weren't for my curse you'd never've so much as looked at me. I know what I am, too, Doctor. I'm common as mud, and you sit there like you want to be some kind'v aristocrat. You'd better get it through your head now that you can't change me, and save us both the bother."
Technically he was an aristocrat, but his history was not something he was willing to share with her yet. "You could be so much more, Lorna," he said quietly. "If you had a proper education, anything like basic manners, even --"
"I'm happy the way I am," she cut him off. "And if I ever make anything else'v myself, it'll be on my terms. I've got by just fine so far without so much as a Junior Certificate. Not everyone needs to be a bloody genius with a box full'v degrees. Someone has to grow the food and mix the drinks and take care'v all the things that're supposedly beneath people like you. If you want someone posh, find another telepath."
Why did she still have to be so stubborn? How could she be content to stay as she was? She had opportunities now she had never been given, and she had no interest. He knew she had the brains for it -- but then, perhaps it was just to spite him. That would change, in time.
"Eat your soup," he ordered, "and make me a list of books you would like."
There was something almost smug in her expression as he left, and he cursed her pigheadedness. Oh well. He'd known from the first that this wouldn't be easy.
Chapter Fifteen
Geezer had landed in the wilds outside of Anchorage. Unlike most cities, it didn't descend into suburban sprawl: the edge was sharply delineated, which gave him plenty of cover. Katje transfigured two of the bathrobes into normal-people clothes for him, jeans and a heavy jacket, and made copies of the twenty-dollar bill in Hansen's pocket. She said she could only make a thing if she'd seen it before, so Geezer hoofed it into town to get medical supplies, and see if he couldn't figure out who he was supposed to contact.
There was no snow yet, but the morning air was bitterly cold, turning his breath into pale fog. He warmed up soon enough, though, and managed to hitch a ride with a trucker halfway along.
His first stop was a pharmacy, where he picked up rolls of gauze, hydrogen peroxide, industrial-sized tweezers, and a big bottle of Tylenol. At a sporting-goods store he bought a reel of fishing line, and a fabric shop supplied him with a needle. There was no way to get a proper suture kit, but this would do in a pinch.
Last stop was an Army surplus, where he bought several wool blankets, and then, loaded with plastic bags, he stopped for lunch. He'd need to get food for the others, and clean water, but he had to eat first himself or he'd drop. A big Philly cheesesteak took care of his hunger, and he rested for ten minutes. He still had to figure out who he was supposed to contact, and then it would be a long walk back to the chopper.
His waitress looked at him keenly as she dropped off the check. She was a bony woman of perhaps forty-five, with dark skin and inky-black hair that told him she was probably at least part Inuit. There was a second piece of paper in the receipt she handed him, and when he unfolded it he read Call Miranda Black of the DMA. She'll help.
Geezer looked up, but the waitress had already moved on. He left her a generous tip and went back out into the cold to hunt for a payphone. Now that the whole damn world ran on cell phones, it took him the better part of an hour. He punched in the number at the bottom of the paper, his heart pounding.
"Andrews Pizza Company. How can I help you?"
He blinked. "Uh, I was told to ask for Miranda Black," he said, shivering as a gust of wind knifed right through his jacket.
"Hold, please." Bland, mind-numbing Muzak assaulted his ears, and then he was addressed by a thickly Australian voice.
"This is Miranda," it barked.
"I was told to call you," he said. "Waitress in the Cheese Hut told me you could help."
The woman's tone changed immediately, morphing into something businesslike. "You in Anchorage?"
"At the moment. I've got people outside of town, though, and one of 'em's injured."
"Can you hold out for another day?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No," Miranda said, a little dryly. "We'll find you as soon as we can."
"How?"
"We have ways. This is supposed to be a secure line, but you never know. Hang in there."
The line went dead, and Geezer stared at the black receiver. If this was to be their salvation, it was a damn weird one.
He didn't make it back to the helicopter until late afternoon, and found two of his charges shivering and miserable. Ratiri was still completely out of it, and Hansen practically pounced on the medical supplies.
Katje wrapped herself in a blanket and devoured a roast-beef sandwich. Warmth and food brought a little color back into her face, though she went a little green when she surveyed Hansen's handiwork.
Now that they weren't flying, Geezer assisted, giving her a break. "He gonna make it?" he asked.
"If we can get him to a hospital soon," Hansen said, dousing the wound in hydrogen peroxide. It fizzed and bubbled, and Geezer had to look away. Blood was one thing, but for some reason that was just too gross.
"People coming for us tomorrow," he said. "Help. They'll set him right."
Hansen looked too tired to question it. There were deep purple shadows beneath his eyes, and his face was grey with worry and sorrow.
"Eat something and get some sleep, kid," Geezer said. "I'll look after Ratiri a while."
Hansen only managed half a sandwich before he fell asleep, curled up with Katje in a nest of wool blankets. Ratiri was well wrapped-up, so Geezer took the last blanket himself, and wished like hell he had a cigarette. They were out of the wind, but it was still like a meat-locker in here. Come night their breath would frost the windows, and he really hoped that Miranda woman would pull through before Ratiri died. With a leg wound, he should have regained consciousness by now -- though it was a good thing he hadn't. It would be bad enough later, when they were somewhere safe.
Geezer shivered, and settled in for a long vigil.
----
Katje woke to the sound of another helicopter, and automatically flailed for anything she could use as a weapon.
"It's all right, lass," Geezer said. "This is the help I promised."
She rubbed the frost off the window with the corner of her blanket, and watched a massively tall blonde woman crawl out of the second chopper. She wore American army fatigues, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she sported three visible guns. What had Geezer found?
A second woman hopped out, just as odd as the first. Quite a bit shorter than the blonde Amazon, her spiky hair was bright purple, and she sported enough facial piercings to set off a metal detector. An intricate tattoo looped up above the collar of her coat, a Maori pattern dark against her brown skin. Her long coat was black wool rather than military camouflage, and she shivered in the chilly morning air.
Geezer wrenched the door open and stepped out, and Katje strained to hear what he was saying.
"--four of us, one with a gunshot to the leg. Think he's in shock. Debrief us later, once he's been looked after."
The two women returned to their helicopter, and came back with a stretcher. Katje automatically started gathering their supplies together while Ratiri was loaded onto it, and braced herself to step out into the cold. It was just barely sunrise, the eastern sky faintly pink, and the ground beneath her thin slippers was so frozen it sent h
er feet numb after five steps.
She took over the back corner of their new transport, which was much bigger than the last one -- a proper medical helicopter, with a place to secure the stretcher. The purple-haired woman fussed over it while the Amazon fired up the engine, and Katje let herself relax a little. It was warm in here, and at this point she didn't care where they were heading, so long as it wasn't the Institute. It was far too loud to sleep, but at least she could doze, and doze she did.
It had to be a good two hours before they touched down again, landing on the roof of a drab green building in the middle of a vast expanse of forest. "Is this hospital?" she asked, when the blonde killed the engine.
"Way-station," the purple-haired woman said. "Come on."
From what little Katje saw as they passed through, it did look like little more than a bunkhouse, utilitarian and undecorated. They reached a plain steel door with a keypad beside it, and the Amazon entered a code. "This isn't gonna make much sense to you, but hold the questions 'til we're settled, right?"
"Gotcha," Geezer said, speaking for all of them.
They stepped through the doorway…into a foyer much too big for the tiny bunkhouse. This looked like the lobby of a very plain hotel, with a dark tile floor and off-white walls plastered with signs and notices. There was even a desk, manned by two guards in plain black uniforms.
The blonde woman tilted the pair a salute, and led the escapees through a long corridor. The walls remained papered with notes and signs and what looked like advertisements, as though the old ones were just covered over rather than taken down. There had to be decades' worth, plastering every available surface. Where were they? It didn't look like any military installation Katje had ever heard of, and the purple-haired woman certainly wasn't wearing any kind of uniform.
The corridor opened out into another, this one as wide as any city street. It was even divided into lanes that were busy with bicycles, scooters, even a few four-wheelers loaded with boxes. None of these people wore uniforms, and few enough were dressed even remotely alike. It was warm in here, and there were women in halter tops, men in garish surfer shorts. A pair of tall Masai women in traditional garb walked past on what Katje could only think of as the sidewalk, their beaded jewelry clinking softly. A bevy of Indian men and women followed, and behind them hurried a medical team, who descended on Ratiri like helpful vultures.
"Sorry about the heat," Purple Hair said. "We keep different sections different temperatures, and this one's the hot zone for people like our Aussie here. No, Doctor, you come with us -- he's in good hands."
Gerald made a halfhearted protest, but he looked as boggled as Katje felt. The two of them and Geezer stood out even among this odd crowd, filthy, sooty, smelling of sweat and smoke and gasoline. Wherever they were going, she devoutly hoped they had coffee. She followed their rescuers like a kitten on a string, the warmth reminding her ever more of how much she needed a shower. Coffee, a shower, a toothbrush, and eventually a real bed, and she could die a happy woman.
The strange pair of women led them to what looked like a conference room, a big place with long Formica tables and a whiteboard taking up one entire wall. Katje's heart sank a little -- God knew how long they'd be stuck in here, explaining who knew what to who knew who.
"I just need to ask you some questions," the blonde woman said. "Then I'll let you eat and get cleaned up. There's a lot of people who are gonna want to talk to you later. The first thing I need to know is where the hell you got that helicopter."
Katje all but collapsed onto a hard plastic chair as Geezer outlined their escape, with occasional input from Gerald. She herself was so tired that her English wasn't up to the task. To explain it would be to re-live it, and she wasn't up to that, either.
The blonde woman, however, was riveted to a degree that was almost unsettling. Her manic blue eyes were afire with something Katje didn't want to interpret. "We wondered where that rat bastard had gone," she said. "He dropped entirely off our radar, and that's never happened before."
"You know about Von Ratched?" Geezer asked, incredulous.
"Of course we do," the woman snorted. "We've been trying to kill him for the last forty years. Nobody knows for sure where he came from or when he was born, but he's a lot older than he looks. So far he's been too smart for us -- everyone we've sent after him's either turned up in bits, or never turned up at all."
"Forty years?" Geezer demanded. "Just how fuckin' old is he?"
"Honestly, we don't know. All we do know is that he's been working for the U.S. government since the early fifties, and that he's hardly aged at all. Why, or how, is probably something only he knows. He's caught all our assassins before they could send any information back."
"It's his telepathy," Gerald said, rubbing his temples. "Normally he can see anything coming. We wouldn't have made it out without our telepath. And she died back there."
"No, she didn't," Geezer said. "I know she'll escape eventually, but not when or how. Seen her in the future, but I dunno how she winds up there. Her hair's got a lot more grey, and I think she and Ratiri had got kids, so who knows. That's another thing," he added. "That guy we brought in is gonna be a handful when he wakes up and finds out she's not here. Better keep someone strong with him."
"We've told you our story," Gerald said. "Now tell us -- what is this place? Who are you people?"
"Department of Magical Affairs," the blonde woman said. "DMA, for short. I'm Miranda -- I more or less run this place, or try to. We're all like you."
"Department?" Gerald asked, bewildered. "Department of what entity?"
"There's always been a few people like us in the world," Miranda said. "Not many, but the DMA's the closest thing we've got to a government. Up until now, everyone like us was born that way -- we train our kind to use our abilities, and relocate them if we have to. Up 'til now, we've managed to stay hidden."
"How?" Geezer demanded. "This place has to be huge. How could you hide it?"
"We're in our own pocket dimension," Purple Hair said. "The DMA's been around a very long time, under different names. Even we don't know when it was founded, or who found this dimension. Some of our records go back over two thousand years, and they hint that we've been here a lot longer than that."
"Jesus," Geezer muttered. "So why are we suddenly everywhere?"
"Your guess is as good as ours," Miranda sighed. "All we do know is all the idiots who can't control their shit are playing hell with our regulators." She looked from Geezer to Gerald to Katje and back again, pensive. "I guess there's no harm in showing you," she said. "It's not exactly secret. C'mon."
Great. Movement. Katje followed, and the words of the others blended into a babble she couldn't sort out. Ordinarily she understood English much better than she spoke it, but even that was getting hard to manage. Instead she watched -- everyone got out of the way for this Miranda woman, automatically stepping aside. It was still a bizarre collection of people, from soldiers to Buddhist monks to Rastafarians, all moving with a purpose. Few of them looked twice at the dirty, ragged little group, and Katje wondered just what went on in here, that they didn't find the sooty, stinky trio odd.
They walked what felt like miles, until they reached a big steel door with another electronic keypad beside it. Miranda let them through, into a very peculiar room.
It was laid out like the pictures Katje had once seen of the NASA control center, long rows of consoles manned by personnel in all kinds of clothing -- no uniforms in here. The carpet was dark, the overhead lights like those she'd seen in movie theaters. The front wall was dominated by a giant window, looking out on the most amazing thing she'd ever seen.
It looked like an indoor forest, but the trees were made of pure light. Huge trees, big as redwoods, but where there should have been bark there were luminescent threads, some as wide as electrical cables, others hair-fine. No two were the same shade -- they spanned every minute hue of the spectrum, and the light of each gently flared and ebbed, as though
each had its own heartbeat. "What are they?" she breathed.
"How we normally manage the magic in the outside world," Miranda said. "The Trees even it out, and suck up any excess so it doesn't do things like discharge itself in the weather. It worked fine until you people started showing up, but now we're scrambling day and night to stop you lot creating a hurricane."
"How does it work?" Gerald asked, awed.
"I'm the wrong person to be asking. Honestly, none of us know all the details -- the Trees are another thing that have been around longer than our records go back."
"Doesn't it bug you, working with something you don't totally understand?" Geezer asked.
Miranda smiled crookedly. "You have no idea. We all do what we have to do, and hope for the best."
"Meanwhile, Miranda here has an emergency plan for everything," Purple Hair said, with a slight groan. "Just wait until she puts the whole damn DMA through one of her drills."
Katje was too busy staring at the Trees to pay much attention to the rest of the conversation. She drifted toward the window, half wishing she could walk through that forest -- but at the same time, the force of its power set her teeth on edge. Here was something the like of which she'd never imagined, let alone seen. It made her forget her grief, her worry, her weariness -- made her feel, for the moment at least, like Katje Annetje DaVries again, self-possessed and fearless. Until the Institute, she had been afraid of almost nothing, and she wanted that back. She wanted herself back, and now that she was free, she was damn well going to get it.
She turned, returning to the others. "So what we do about Institute?" she asked quietly. "It has to go. Doctor has to go, and it looks like if anyone do this, it is you."
For the first time, Miranda properly looked at her. "We'll work on that. You three go eat and get cleaned up -- there's people you need to talk to. Julifer will get you some clothes and temporary apartments, until we can work out proper housing. You're safer here than you would be anywhere on Earth."