“Bitch,” Christine said. “Try me.”
“I thought I already was,” Betrayer said, and made her point by walking through Christine.
Damn. Dave stood on the dais, putative leader, and couldn’t fink out and melt into the crowd. Time to bait the high and mighty again, or in this case, the medium tall, horrifically powerful and supremely treacherous. He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, forcing himself to talk. “Why should we believe you, Betrayer?” Dave said, fighting the sort of buttermouth he got around the few Gods he had met.
“How about this?” She raised her hand toward him, and then lowered it. “Oh, right. If I gave you the data it would just fall out of the many holes in your pathetic short term memory.” She turned to Nessa and Uffie. “You two, however, possess the requisite brainpower…bwah hah hah.”
Up went Betrayer’s hand. Both Nessa and Uffie screamed and slumped over.
“So stay away from Dubuque!” Betrayer said, and vanished.
When the room quieted, Nessa cracked open some now bloodshot eyes. “Cross Dubuque off the list. The fucking bitch is right. He’s far too strong, even for a stealth mission.”
Uffie just groaned.
“So, Diana, you think we should do some more rescues?” Abe said, after a long pause of chaotic mutterings and physical reassurances. “Why exactly?”
“Because of the Armageddon war and what precedes it,” Diana said. Her mother, Epharis, nodded. “This war is our deaths, as Mom predicted. The only hope involves all of us being together at the end, pooling our strength, and lucking out. The more of us you can rescue, Abe, the better our chances for victory. Be ready. Rescue well.”
“Your comments imply…”
“Yes,” Dave said. “Diana and I independently came up with a necessary alteration in our group structure. Tracy needs other-style training, and she won’t get any of this with us. Hell, she needs rescuing from us, and that’s a big part of what you people do. Diana’s not a combatant; there’s a reason why she got kidnapped, despite her knowledge of the future or whatever you call her tricks. She’s also not happy with the rest of you, even if she does love you to death. She belongs with us; our minds mesh better and we can protect her better.”
Tracy stood. “I don’t agree. You should have talked to me first, Dave.”
“Dave’s right,” Uffie said. Tracy growled, looked at Uffie, and sat back down, frowning. Elorie echoed Tracy’s frown. “Now, if we only had the time to train him using the old Scholar methods, he’d be a real Doyen…”
“That’s train him in the Indigo Heroing skills, Uffie,” Abe said.
“He’s mine,” Nessa said, leaning into Abe’s face.
“Temper, Nessa, temper,” Christine said. “Remember the lessons. Be the loveable child, hold the image of a loveable child in your head.”
“She fucking died, killed by Blind Tom, so back off,” Nessa said to her mother. She looked at Dave and for the first time ever Dave sensed hatred in her, hatred of Blind Tom, a bad thing for any Telepath to hold. “The switch will work, Dave.” She turned to Abe. “What Dave didn’t mention is that my Soft Hand Lady also needs to train your Kara in combat, and although my Soft Hand Lady might not have your fancy bafflegab training, she does have years of real world martial arts experience, something your trainer, the Godslayer, hasn’t had in over forty years.” Abe blanched bone-white. Dave had no idea what Nessa was talking about, and had a gut feeling he shouldn’t ask right now. “That’s just as important as completing my Soft Hand Lady’s training. We’ve got Gods to stop, my friends, and any chances we can conjure out of nothing are better than no chances at all.”
“The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible. One therefore ought to seek good reasons for believing something. Faith, revelation, tradition, dogma, authority the ecstatic glow of subjective certainty – are all recipes for error, and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge.” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature
“You’re the Child of Morning.”
12. (Dana)
The sound of rain pattered to a sudden halt, tweaking Dana’s attention away from her dry paperwork. She glanced around her sodden office tent to check if perhaps Orlando had stopped by to gift her another rose bouquet, or perhaps another handmade knickknack, but she didn’t sense him nearby. Something had eaten away her attention, giving her a figurative diarrhea of worry. She pushed out her magical senses among the normal hustle and bustle of her tent city, accentuating the strange and amplifying the abnormal. S’up and Bob practiced with Lydia over by the mess tent, something complex and beyond her comprehension. Orlando’s Supported guards stood at their stations, fighting boredom with blood-spattered fantasies of Dubuque combat. The other five Natural Supported gathered around a laptop computer, doing something involving Lias and pointed cutting comments about personal looks and hygiene.
Oh…there. Up in the air, Dana located an area she couldn’t sense – and there it wasn’t, coming toward her tent. Straight down, not even fast enough to rustle the foliage. Possibilities for visitors passed through Dana’s head, a near endless list, most with ‘God’ in their names, so not feeling foolish in the slightest she sent a calm ‘watch out for strangeness’ warning to Bob, as well as to the various regular and Natural Supported.
The protected invisible area landed with barely the registering of mass. Improbably, Dana’s tent flap opened, visible to the world.
“Okay, who’s there?” Dana said. She raised an eyebrow and prodded the invisibility with some analysis probes. Nothing.
“What’s with the hostility?” an older woman’s voice said.
“I do believe a certain someone forgot to turn off the invisibility,” another woman’s voice answered. “Yet again.”
Flash. A mob of people appeared in Dana’s tent and Dana relaxed her defenses back to normal. She recognized two of the formerly invisible visitors: the Telepaths Nessa Binglehauser and Ken Bolnick. The two infants in their arms had to be their twins. A host of others came with, not a one from Nessa and Ken’s last set of bodyguards. None of the others looked like Nessa and Ken’s usual bodyguard choices. In fact, they weren’t bodyguards at all. Dana gawked at two older fashion models (one male, one female) who had better go back to making money before their souls paid the price, a granny and of all things an Indigo woman laden down with crystals, encircled stars and well-used Celtic jewelry. An Indigo woman Dana had never met, one so deep into the Indigo she practically cast purple shadows.
“Hi, Dana,” Nessa said, bouncing on her toes. “Ooh, roses! You have a friend?”
“Someone from the cast of Desperate Boyfriends, perhaps,” the woman fashion model at Nessa’s side said, eyeing the rose collection. As Lydia might say, this woman’s rich contralto voice was to die for. “Hello, I’m Elorie, that’s Dave, these two are Diana and Uffie, and you know Nessa and Ken. Excuse our Telepaths. They aren’t a hundred percent human today.” She paused and continued with an exasperated mutter of “I can’t believe you left the invisibility on…”
“Dana Ravencraft,” Dana said, fighting a grin at the fashion model’s over-acted complaint. Nessa and Ken continued to watch things that weren’t there. “The guy’s not a guy, it’s Orlando.”
“Ah. Right. He’s trying too hard,” Elorie said, staring at Orlando’s rose bouquet from the day before yesterday. “White and yellow roses? You only get rose combinations from someone deep into the meaning behind rose colors.”
“Rose colors have meaning?” the man named Dave said, putting his hands on his exquisite hips. “Ah, I understand. More romantic mysticism.” Elorie poked Dave in the ribs with a long elegant fingernail, eliciting a quiet ‘owwh’. Ahh – the other couple. Which meant Orlando’s crazy and dangerous plan had worked. They had attracted the whole lot of them.
Dana needed to get both of these fashion model types alone for some serious conversation. Elorie was drop-dead gorgeous,
a pouty-lipped dark-haired hourglass-shaped glossy-magazine-class head-turner with extreme fashion sense and the money to use it. And to Dana’s Supported senses, utterly not there. An Immune, and a powerful one. Unfair. The Telepaths always dredged up the most interesting people, though the Indigo witch had to be going crazy, having to hang around with Ken and Nessa.
“Uh huh,” Elorie said, giving Dave the slit eyed glance and a well-practiced moue. She continued with a little rose interpretation. “In this case, Dana, Orlando thinks you belong together.”
Right.
“What brings you here?” Dana said, not wanting to talk relationships. A certain ring on her finger weighed heavy. Why weren’t they bothering him, instead of her, though?
“My call,” Dave said, attracting Dana’s attention. He matched her height in heels, a well-built man with the sort of spine-melting good looks one only found on the covers of romance novels. He had a narrow waist, broad shoulders, enough muscle definition to notice, a chiseled face and beautiful long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had pegged him as a male bimbo, mindless eye candy, but those two words, crisply and confidently spoken, forced her to reassess. He spoke with an experienced voice of command – not politician quality, but certainly business class. “As one of the few who hasn’t knuckled under to the City of God, I figured we needed to talk.” Dave’s marvelous diction also implied intelligence, so Dana studied him some more, now using her willpower tricks. Another Telepath? No, a powerful Psychic, which fit Nessa and Ken’s standard MO.
Nessa and Ken circled Dana’s large tent once, oblivious to the conversation, and curled up arm in arm in the far corner of the tent, the infants still in their arms. “Okay, let’s talk,” Dana said. “I don’t have enough chairs for…”
Chairs appeared – 99 God work. Dana tensed.
Everyone sat.
No idea on who Persona’s ‘them’ could be, or why Persona hid inside the normal old granny.
“You want me to get Bob or Orlando?” Dana asked Dave, their boss of the moment.
Dave shook his head. “Nah. Let’s leave this among us mortals, at least for now,” he said. Then his eyes bugged. “Yow! Not counting you, oh great and gracious Persona.”
Dana covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Dave and Elorie were at least more personable than the Recruiter’s group. Some of Alt’s people had been disgusting.
Time to start the show. “Before we get down to business, I do have one request…that you don’t tell me any information about the Watchers,” Dana said, coiling power inside just in case. “I have enough troubles as it is without the Angelic Host declaring a jihad against me.”
“I can’t promise you they won’t declare a jihad on you just for agreeing to talk with us, but it’s time to talk anyway,” Dave said. “The Host is one of the many things we’d like to talk about. We’ve come to the conclusion the Host has been, well, less than truthful about what’s going on. On a wide range of subjects.”
“They’re good about not telling the truth without actually lying,” Elorie said. She tapped her elegant fingernails on her chair. Dana felt underdressed, a rare occurrence. “However, if you don’t want to learn the big dark secrets, that’s easy, just don’t go poking into any of our minds.”
“So, has your group come up with any way to stop the City of God?” Dana said. Her tent could use a cleaning as well, she decided. Sheets spilled off the side of her cot, and clothes burst over the top of an open trunk. When was the last time she washed her hair, anyway?
Elorie shook her head. “Not a thing.”
Dana nodded. Her hopes stayed dwindled at her standard bare minimum – survive day by day and pray for miracles. She tossed aside her worries to concentrate on her visitors with the politesse her mother would expect.
She didn’t smile, though, disquieted by the unexpected interpersonal dynamics in the Indigo and Telepath group. Dave the Psychic male bimbo fell into the mold of Dr. Phil Blackburn: the intelligent advisor. Except Dave projected as more leader-like and far less intellectual than Blackburn. Elorie the Immune, Dave’s partner, had to be the poor schmuck dragooned into bossing around Lorenzi’s crazy ‘Ecumenist quest’. Yet another successful leader.
Why didn’t Elorie lead today, then? Dana scanned her. Perhaps, perhaps…yes. Elorie wasn’t a Telepath, Psychic or Mindbound, and didn’t even have any of the Indigo’s mind-shielding tricks or any of their weak-ass unnatural talents! Dana hadn’t ever seen this among any of the Telepath’ retinues. Why wasn’t Elorie a burbling wreck? Had Nessa upped and decided she needed to run around a second body or something equally noxious?
The granny, Uffie, had a familiar name, and after some thought Dana recalled Nessa had rescued someone by the name of ‘Uffie’ from Nairobi. This one, who Dana pegged as an outer circle Indigo member, was quite brainy, a real academic. The last of the crew, Diana of the Indigo, was as hard bitten as Nessa, but appeared to be younger than Dana, perhaps still a teen. Of course, with the Indigo, appearance and age often meant nothing. Dana had to work hard to peg her as anything, as she showed almost none of the Indigo training tricks. Diana met Dana’s non-gaze with a raised eyebrow, implying she sensed Dana’s scan.
Oh. This was Epharis’s estranged daughter, Diana, the distant mirror of Knot, the Diana from another timeline. This Diana was a Communicant Oracle, overflowing with witchy tricks and well shielded from willpower probes.
She and Uffie also considered Dave as their leader.
“What’s with Nessa and Ken today?”
“They’re worried,” Dave said. “We yanked Santa Fe’s tail hard a few days ago, and they’re worried the City of God’s found a way to track us.”
Wonderful. They float in like butterflies on a soft wind with, potentially, an army of the City of God’s nastiest chomping on their tail. Not that Dubuque didn’t already have an army in the area looking for Dana and Orlando and crew. This didn’t strike Dana as polite.
However, her thought did bounce up another bubble of worry: how had the Telepaths found them, anyway? Whatever happened to Dana’s (and Orlando’s) magnificent anti-Telepath protections?
At Dana’s thought, Nessa fixed one eye on Dana and mentally chortled at her.
Gaaah.
Dana took a deep breath, glanced around her bedraggled tent, winced again that she hadn’t cleaned it recently, and decided she didn’t want to know how the Telepaths had breached their security. Yet. Whatever trick they abused had to be better than whatever information the Recruiter could give to Dubuque – by logic, since Dana and Orlando’s groups hadn’t been pinned down yet and blown into Heaven, Hell and all places in between.
“Have you picked up anything new about the City of God in your gallivanting around?” Dana asked. Something useful, anything useful, would be a – ahem – godsend.
“A little of this, a little of that,” Elorie said. She closed her eyes and telepathically chattered to her mentally barriered husband, both the two screwy Indigo women and Nessa and Ken. Now, that just wasn’t right. It said so right there in the rules Dana had invented on telepathy. “Dubuque’s pulled his people in to defend his headquarters due to the nasty we pulled on Santa Fe.” To Elorie’s far left, Diana fought off a smile and fidgeted. Cued in, Dana scanned Diana again and found the bodily traumas associated with the side effects of massive healing, all with Persona’s signature. What had happened to this poor woman, anyway? Run through a body-sized meat grinder, perhaps? Why wasn’t she burbling somewhere safe? Even chewed up Indigo inner circle types took longer to recover their sanity. “Beyond that? Nessa estimates Dubuque’s army of worshipper-backed combat-ready Supported now n
umbers somewhere between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred. None of us spotted any new tricks, though. Dave thinks Dubuque’s training up a new batch of Supported after getting his nose bloodied trying to bring Salvador” the Brazilian Territorial God “into the City of God.” Salvador, one of the few remaining stalwarts of the World Peace faction, had gone all Gandhi on Dubuque and Lima (of Peru) and had grabbed several hundred of the attackers’ Supported with an enhanced aura of peace, love and happiness.
This was the sort of trick that made Dana wonder if she and Bob should join World Peace. On the other hand, the rumor mill hinted that World Peace didn’t want them. Where had she gone wrong?
“Fourteen hundred?” Dana said. How long before his infernal white-suited nastiness went after Bob and Orlando with his full army of goons, sycophants and fanatics? So far, Dubuque hadn’t done more than minor harassment, if these numbers were correct. “We can’t stand up against an army of that size.”
“He has to find you to hit you, and finding you isn’t easy,” Dave said. At least that was something. “I suspect we’re still in more danger. Next up for us is an extensive conversation with the dolphins.” Uffie nodded at this. Ah. The official reason for why they had appeared, stage left, the thunder of hooves behind them: they needed Orlando’s permission or tacit approval to do some dolphin-talking in his territory. “We could easily get pinned down and the City of God’s real pissed at us now.”
“It’s hard to believe he’s more pissed at you than he is at us,” Dana said, her voice a low whisper, letting her hate and disgust at the City of God shine through. She took a deep breath and buried her belief in God’s evil at tolerating Dubuque’s madness deep within her. “I’ve got one for you: the Kid God says the Host isn’t fully supportive of the City of God, and they’re backing the Kid God’s rebellion. Tacitly.”
“That’s good news,” Elorie said. “Unless Orlando and the Kid God have joined the anti-Telepath jihad.”
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 15