Cursed . . . cursed . . . cursed . . .
Galetia’s fingers dug into soft skin. Alleksa’s eyes widened, bemused by the change, by the fountain, by Galetia’s presence. She did not try to break away; even fey, she had long learned she could not evade Galetia. But the constables rounded the end of the long fountain, and Galetia needed more than that. She needed Alleksa, returned to her senses—shedding the change, or using it. With the constables bearing down on them, she needed cooperation . . . she needed help. To do this on her own . . .
She could. Hurt, profoundly frightened for her own, for the future of the Scoria—Galetia could still do it.
But not without giving away just how much the citties had to fear.
She reached out to Alleksa, unable to imagine failure. She wrapped herself around that embattled mind, blanketing it, scrabbling against that smooth, polished surface that was Alleksa. And then she found her grip and she wrenched—
Alleksa’s eyes opened wider yet as the change drained from her face, as she twisted to look over her shoulder and her eyes finally took in more than just the mesmerizing fountain. Her mouth opened, those lips rounded to say everything that showed so clearly on her face, in her mind. Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know—!
“Go to Bodhan,” Galetia said, more roughly than she meant to as she pulled Alleksa away from the very grasp of the constables, trading places . . . shoving Alleksa hard enough to make her gasp, to send her reeling toward the crowd. Standing in the way with sad defiance—only an instant of it before she twisted her expression in a jeer and brought the change to the surface, deliberately flashing otherness within the very reach of the constables. Decoy.
We’re away!
She saw it on the faces of the constables—their realization that Alleksa was gone, their fury. They leaped for her, and Galetia slid out of reach, calling on all that frightened the citties to forge her own escape. No more than Alleksa could she be caught here, proving the very existence of her kind. If she made her way clear of the city, running out toward the mines and foundries, running nowhere near her beloved warrens . . .
Once she lost any pursuit, she could rest . . . she could make her way below the city and across the ridges to the fall-back warrens. Just as would Bodhan, escorting Alleksa changed . . . Alleksa in control. Alleksa who reached out to her now, full of gratitude and sorrow. I am whole, thanks to you, she said. We will be safe; we will lead them far away when they follow.
Perhaps Alleksa would be the one to escort Bodhan.
Galetia spun away from the constables, reaching deep for the change, unable to truly overcome her wounded legs. Her hood fell away to reveal her touched features, to draw another gasp from the crowd. “Cursed!” they cried, several voices as one. And again—“Cursed!”
No, blessed! She ran along the edge of the fountain, balancing on its narrow lip as the constables splashed awkwardly into the deep water, trying to cut her off. The elders spoke to her as one, a wash of pride and support and extra determination, although Galetia needed none. Alleksa and Bodhan were safe, and the Scoria had time to abandon the warrens, concealing them to start the waiting. Waiting to return . . . waiting until Alleksa’s strength could lead them to a new way of life. Galetia would have laughed out loud . . . had something not quite abruptly slammed into her ribs. Between her ribs.
She had only a glimpse—the hunter, returned from the arena trail alone, bruised and battered and bleeding. Her hands clutched cold bone handle, cold copper, quivering deep in her side.
She splashed backward into the water, sinking into its crisp grasp, eyes full of wet sparkle and light and the amazingly dark plume of her own blood.
Sinking. Numbed and sinking and unable to fight it.
No! Inner voices exploded into the sudden silence of water muffling her ears, crying out in communal agony. No!
But it was Alleksa’s voice that broke in to override them all. Cool, as soothing as the water. The ache in Galetia’s lungs became as nothing; the spear of fire in her side faded away. We are here, Alleksa said, suddenly old for her years. We are with you. And you will always be with us.
For the Scoria were never alone. The Scoria, dregs of this thriving city, took care of their own.
And when Alleksa returned, the city would understand.
Galetia did, and she smiled into the fading sparkle and light.
Doranna Durgin was born writing (instead of kicking, she scribbled on the womb) and never quit, although it took some time for the world to understand what she was up to. She grew up attached to college-rule notebooks and resisted all attempts at separation. Eventually she got a college degree (Wildlife Illustration) and had grand adventures on horseback in the Appalachians before turning fulltime writer and ending up in the Southwestern high country with her laptop, dogs, horse, and uncontrollable imagination.
Doranna writes eclectically and across genres, with backlist in fantasy, tie-in, SF/F anthologies, a mystery, and romance. You can find a complete bibliography at www.doranna.net, along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and contact info. And just for kicks, Connery Beagle has a LiveJournal (connerybeagle) presenting his unique view of life—drop by and say hello!
THE GATHERERS’ GUILD
Larry Niven
FROM A FEW hundred feet up in the moonless Northern California night, the restaurant was invisible. A redwood forest ran up a mountain, with no work of humanity in sight. I followed the pale light of my GPS indicator down, trusting it knew what it was doing.
I’m a Gatherer, but my branch is Sales Tax. I’d never yet seen Gregor’s, a favorite hangout of the IRS elite.
A shadowy mass sank past me, too fast, no lights. I veered, not bothering to curse. Too many idiots already fly cars. I dread the day taxpayers find out they can fly. Flight belts are much safer for the people below—but several hundred million flying taxpayers would still be too dangerous, and Jeez, what if they got cars?
I was below the treetops now, surrounded by trunks. Below me, the car mushed out on silent fans, then settled on a lawn. I glimpsed light in a narrow line: windows showing below the restaurant’s roof. I edged toward it, easing around a redwood’s thick trunk.
Blocked by the redwood, I saw light flaring around the trunk’s curve on both sides.
Somehow, I instantly accepted that Gregor’s had exploded. I eased forward against the tree as the sound blasted me. It slapped me against the bark. I hung for a moment, dazed.
Gregor’s burned. I saw the car catch fire, too. I eased to the ground and crawled into some bushes to watch.
Maybe fifteen people ran, staggered, and crawled out of Gregor’s. Guards came running from the forest to help them. I couldn’t guess how many were left inside. I didn’t see Marion. I feared she was still inside, and I feared to go and look.
“Mel,” Woody said, “Why didn’t you try to help?”
I started to answer, but Christine came into the room. Woody’s wife is a taxpayer. We held off while she poured coffee from the secret fields on Mount Hood. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes. I called room service,” she said.
After Christine left, Woody added meager splashes of century-old Hawaiian rum.
“I didn’t want to push my luck,” I told him. “Friday the thirteenth, and Gregor’s was burning. I was afraid to help. They were all IRS people. They’d have taken me for the bomber.”
It was still dawn, not office hours yet. I’d come to Woody’s penthouse apartment in Portland for refuge.
Woody said, “We’ll give it to the media as a mob hit. Now tell me what you were doing there in the first place.”
“I had a date.”
“At an IRS site?”
“Marion Nye is IRS, or was.” I swallowed. I hadn’t really faced it: Marion could be dead. I hadn’t seen her emerge from Gregor’s. “She’s mid level in Creative Math. We met last May at the gathering in Jamaica, and went on to her villa in Spain. It wasn’t espionage, Woody. Just sex.”
“You should hav
e told us.”
“You’d have had me spying on her.”
“Oh, I might like to ask her about that Beverly Hills thing—”
“Hell, I’m still deciding how serious we . . . are. Spy on each other or get married? I wanted to see what her friends were like. Woody, what’s it like, married to a taxpayer?”
He shrugged. “I have to keep a few secrets. She never wonders how I can afford this place, and she doesn’t know about the Hawaii house. She just thinks I make wonderful coffee.”
I laughed.
Woody was looking at his four-foot-by-six-foot computer monitor. He said, “Okay. There were three dead in the blast. Eleven injured. Marion Nye is in the secret hospital in Portland.”
“Good! How is she?”
“Stable, it says. So that gives us anywhere between five and eight suspicious deaths, all IRS, all within the last two months, and nobody knows who’s doing it. It’s driving the IRS crazy. They could start bombing us.”
“Could it be us?”
Woody didn’t answer. The top levels at Sales Tax don’t tell us everything.
“What if we could solve this ourselves?” I asked.
Woody’s lips pursed. “First you’d have to find out who’s doing the killing. Then it has to be someone that isn’t us. We don’t know that yet. Then you have to make the IRS believe it. You like mysteries?”
I grinned.
Room service appeared. We stopped to eat, and made conversation for Christine’s benefit, before we settled in for some computer work.
Eloise Stern had drowned. That was seven weeks ago at “June in Jamaica,” mid-June 2005, when the upper ranks of all the United States tax gathering bureaus met for four weeks of riotous excess. If the Jamaican police had done a proper autopsy, they’d have found her lungs filled with champagne from the swimming pool.
Fourth of July: Harry Greene had been poisoned. Woody stared. “Poison? Doesn’t the IRS have garnetine?”
Garnetine is an inoculation against most poisons. I said, “No, that’s just ours, just Sales Tax. One day we’ll trade garnetine to them for something we need.”
“Damn office politics.” He read on. Washington DC police found Greene’s death puzzling. Stomach contents: both beluga and salmon caviar, with onion and chives and chopped egg as condiments. Odd things to find in a government employee earning $80,000 a year and spending the night alone.
Three might have been ringers, but they’d died very close together. Jane Hennessey was descending Everest when she’d had a stroke. Samuel Jefferson and Keki Tomomato had died within days of each other, both from heart attacks or strokes, no autopsies yet: the only deaths ever recorded (except that their presence never would be recorded) aboard the International Space Station. All in July, 2005.
“Too many strokes,” Woody said.
I said, “Coincidence happens. Strokes happen when the oxygen’s thin.”
He said, “Say Jefferson and Tomomato pulled rank: that would get them up to the Space Station without training. Their hearts stopped all by themselves. Hennessey’s probably did, too.”
“Yeah.” Why murder her on the way down from Everest? Why wait?
“Which leaves five killings and not many suspects. We’re looking for an organization, right? No single person could do all that.”
I nodded. I was keeping half an eye on Woody’s computer screen. We might be getting more word of Marion.
“What have we got for suspects? There’s Sales Tax, that’s us. There’s Hidden Tax. There’s the IRS itself; it might be some kind of internal war. They’ve got the power and the dominance games, too. We’d like it to be Hidden Tax, because if it’s internal IRS, we won’t know which side to talk to. What do you know about Hidden Tax?”
“They’re pretty secretive.”
Woody sipped coffee, waiting me out.
“Oh, all right. They’re ungodly rich, even compared to the rest of us. They were a fringe group once, a branch of Revenue when it was just one branch, until they put the country on a silver money basis. First silver, then just paper. There isn’t any real money anymore. They can get all the wealth they need by printing it. We have to play numbers games.”
“Where’s their motive? Why would they bomb a restaurant, or poison people? Hidden Tax were the ones who took all the gold away—”
“Roosevelt era. Before you were born.”
“And then let the taxpayers play with it again years later! They didn’t need it! What would they have to gain from a few murders?”
“What do any of us have to gain? Rich people don’t fight each other. They’ve got too much to protect.”
“And yet wars happen.”
“Woody, there are other suspects. What if Congress—”
Woody snorted. “Congress. The Army. The President. Mel, those people are all chosen for mathematical illiteracy. They can’t tell a million from a billion. When they pay eight thousand bucks for a hammer, where do they think the money goes?”
“Maybe it’s Customs Collection,” I suggested.
“They’re too small.”
“It turns them mean. Jealousy.” I stood up. “I need to see Marion.”
“I’ll come with you. After that, we’ve got better search programs at the office. Let’s see if the victims had anything in common.”
Marion was awake. We had to shout; the blast had left her a little deaf.
“I wasn’t that close,” she told us. “I was watching the entrance for you, Mel. I saw him come in.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know. He didn’t look like one of us. He looked like a backpacker.”
“Backpacker? The guards should have got him.”
“Yeah. The maître d’ stopped him, and then boom.” She tried to wave her hands, then let them fall.
Woody said, “Marion? Is IRS serious about Bev Hills?”
She smiled wearily. “Beverly Hills belongs to Sales Tax. Playing tourist there isn’t a hassle. Of course that’s just me talking. Mel, I’m tired.”
I kissed her and started to leave.
“He had a funny T-shirt logo,” she said. “A propeller with too many blades.”
The hypersonic subway from Oregon into Washington, DC, ends at the tenth subbasement of the Watergate. Security was a hassle; it has been ever since Nixon’s CREEP squad tried to burgle our secrets. The elevator took us down to the forty-second.
Down the hall they were questioning a huckster. We listened for a few seconds.
These days there are programs to keep track of sales tax. The only judgment a merchant needs involves where to apply it. This Martin Massoglia was a dealer at conventions, a traveling show, and that left him more chance to make mistakes.
Glyer is a huge man, a mountain looming over the little huckster. Massoglia looked bravely up at him. “Doesn’t it strike you as crazy, turning every shopkeeper and restaurateur into a tax collector? We’re not all math whizzes like you guys. We only want to buy and sell.”
Mike Glyer belly-laughed. “Internal Revenue turns every citizen in the country into an accountant, and jails him if he won’t play. Is that unfair?”
Massoglia said, “Yeah!” and Mike chortled. Woody and I kept walking. We’d heard the argument too often.
Gatherers, tax collectors, have to be good with numbers. We get more than our share of mathematical genius. Woody was a little worried about putting our programs to work in the office computers. Someone might notice.
“Tell them it’s a game,” I said. “Maybe even get them involved.”
“I’m running just these five victims,” Woody said.
I got us coffee at the hidden pot, avoiding the coffee we keep for taxpayers.
“They were all married,” Woody said. “In fact, they were all married to taxpayers.”
“Mean anything?”
“Let’s see if . . .” He typed. By and by he said, “Last two months, four suspicious deaths in Sales Tax, two married—but not to taxpayers—and two singles. Harry Tanne
r just disappeared.”
“Maybe they all cheated?”
“Let’s see if Tanner had a significant other . . . okay, he dated some. Mel, do you remember Grace Wembley?”
“Sure.” She worked here. We’d shared dinner twice. She also dated taxpayers, though; she hung out in the better bars. Then—“She was mugged. Poor damn Grace.”
“She always talked her head off. I never knew how you could stand it.” He was typing. “And she dated Harry.”
I said, “See if any of the victims was considered a Security risk.”
Of nine possible deaths by foul play, seven were considered Security risks. “Maybe they talked to the other Gatherer clans. Or even to taxpayers,” Woody said. “That could be bad, couldn’t it? What happens to Security risks in the IRS?”
“Or here in Sales Tax? Nobody quite knows. Woody, let’s see how far back this goes.”
It must have started slow. The first disappearance that fit the pattern was in autumn of 1978. Then nothing for four years. Then it started building up, deaths and disappearances.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. There were dozens. “Five on Independence Day, various years. That mean anything?”
Woody said, “Yeah, that was the other thing they had in common. July fourth, and lots more on the thirteenth of every month. It’s two different messages, Mel, and that’s why the program didn’t catch it.”
“What’s it mean? Bad luck? And . . . independence.”
A long silence ensued. Then Woody asked, “Have you ever listened to old Monroe Kennedy?”
“I try not to.”
“He’s over a hundred twenty. In his day the Gatherers were sure that no tax should ever go over twenty percent. You could double—and triple-tax them, but if any tax went over double-tithe we’d all be found hanging from lampposts.”
“Obviously he was wrong. Your point?”
“They fixed it by taxing smaller groups. Any one group might want someone else’s taxes to go up instead of his. Graduated income tax, it’s called, and property tax increases. It’s worked for years, decades, but how long can it last?”
Under Cover of Darkness Page 3