Dave semaphored quizzical eyebrows. Betrayer had burned most of the left one off, so he suspected their usual wizard-eyebrow effect didn’t work this time.
“For instance, do you remember the night before we left Eklutna?” Elorie said. Dave reddened and nodded, remembering Nessa’s frisky antics. “After what Nessa did, she should have made love to you.”
Dave froze. Marriage didn’t mean monogamy? “El?” Perhaps he had been gone from New York for too long. He would think on this later. “If I may ask, then, why were you fighting with me?” he said, confused.
“I didn’t like being screwed out of consideration for leadership, or your relationship with Diana.” She snorted. “Okay. I was jealous, because she and her personality and her mysteries press all your ‘be interested’ buttons. Yes, I understand I’m not being fully logical here. No, don’t you dare say a thing.” She bit her lip.
Dave grunted. “What about Dana?” He worried more about his reactions to Dana than to Diana.
“More relationship contingency planning?”
Dave shook his head. “Not in this case. I’ve never caught myself evaluating her, uh, the way I evaluated Diana. With Dana this was more of an instant, irrational, attraction. On both of our parts.”
“All emotional, eh? How not reassuring.”
“That’s why the attraction worries me,” Dave said.
Elorie slowly brought his face over to hers, and kissed him. “I understand. It’s like when I decided I might accidentally hurt Richard.” She dropped her voice to a near whisper. “…which has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought, because he’s a goddamned Territorial God. Utterly irrational.” She sighed. “We’re caught up in these nonsense coincidence pool games no matter what we do, despite our immunities.”
Dave stroked Elorie’s shoulder and she didn’t object. “I don’t want to lose you, El. I love you.”
That brought tears to her eyes, which he kissed away.
Things progressed from there.
“You’re serious, then,” Dave said, later. Sweaty and messy. Damn but this jail cell bed was crap for this sort of activity. “You don’t want to go back to be all family-like with Nessa and Ken?”
“Correct, if I don’t have to fight you on the subject,” she said. “Separate beds. Less intimacy. I foresee dicey negotiations. Of course, that’s if we can live through this idiocy we’ve fallen into, lover. Partner.”
Dave nodded. “You’re stronger than I am.” Her strength made Dave shiver. He didn’t have her strength, he didn’t measure up. He still didn’t think he could stand up to Nessa.
Elorie didn’t answer.
“Dave, I think I can get us out of here,” Elorie said, quiet and cautious. “My idea’s risky, and we’re going to have to trust each other a lot more than we have been.”
“Tell me,” Dave said. She had been building up to this ever since she had pushed their personal issues to the forefront. Oh, yes, she was good at this.
Elorie told him her plan.
“Your idea isn’t ‘risky’, it’s insane,” he said, with a smile, after she finished telling him her heroic extreme sports-like scheme. “Let’s do it. And break Persona out as well. Between the three of us, with our disparate abilities, we ought to be able to stand off Betrayer long enough to force her to make a deal with us. I’m goddamned tired of taking her and everyone else’s shit.”
43. (Nessa)
“I’d like to know more,” Diana said.
Both Diana and Uffie sat close to her as Ken flew them over the mountains. Moonlight illuminated pines and cast eery shadows over the rough landscape of the Rockies. Nessa loved flying at night, all silence and moonlit magic, but not tonight. Neither Uffie nor Diana trusted Ken’s ‘telekinetic vehicle’ and they flinched when Nessa wanted skin. She missed Dave and Elorie so much. Necessity, though, always a nasty bitch.
“I wish I knew,” Nessa said. Ken provided an aerodynamic shield around the flying platform, so the wind didn’t tear Nessa’s words away. “Dana’s dead, but it hurts like she’s gravely wounded, not dead. So I’m not sure she’s dead even though I know we’ve been told she’s dead. This makes my head spin.”
Everything made Nessa’s head spin, ever since Orlando came up with his bright idea and sold Dave, Elorie and the twins to Betrayer. At least she hadn’t had a full breakdown yet.
“So when you said you ‘had things covered’, you’re talking about yourself, not Dana?” Diana said. She patted Nessa’s hand; Nessa took it, greedy for human contact. She took Uffie’s as well, which discomforted the older scientist. Two. Like her twins, lost to Betrayer, who had better be keeping them safe or there would be hell to pay… Outside Ken’s teek swirled freezing air; enough blew in to cool down Nessa and remind her of her adopted Alaskan home.
“I can’t say,” Nessa said. “Well, I could say, but saying would be breaking a confidence.”
“Ah hah,” Uffie said. For security reasons, everyone had their minds bundled up tight.
“Ah hah, what, you!” Nessa shook her head and pointed at Uffie.
“Was that a question?”
“Of course it was a question.”
“Your philosophy of not lying does have a few holes.”
“I’m not lying, Uffie. I’m being up front and forthright about the fact I can’t tell you about things like this, confidences and agreements made with other people.”
“What sort of other people?” Diana said, all coy dimples.
“The…” Nessa stopped. “You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you?”
Diana giggled. “Yes,” she said.
“Nasty.” Nasty nasty nasty. Nast EEE boots.
“Do your socks agree about what’s going on with you, Dana’s death and whatever else you can’t talk about?” Uffie said.
Nessa didn’t answer. She shifted positions instead, so that she ended up with her head on Uffie’s lap and her feet draped over Diana’s lap. They tensed, gave each other knowing glares, and then did the grit-teeth version of relaxation. “No,” she said, tiny voiced. “Left Sock’s convinced I need to betr…, um, stop honoring this confidence. The hunches go both ways, though. No matter what I do, there’s bad consequences. Only there’s different bad consequences.” This. She had fallen so far the others knew about her socks. Egad. Barf. Puke.
“What’s the risk?” Uffie said.
“Blabbing risks a chance at Dubuque, keeping quiet risks my sanity and, well, us. My family. The twins.”
Uffie shivered. “This must be a hell of a good chance at Dubuque for you to risk the twins. I thought the whole point of giving up the twins to Betrayer was that somehow Orlando and the two of you” her and Ken “trusted the untrustable monster to keep them safe.”
Too close to the target. “The decision’s eating at me,” Nessa said. “Dana’s death doesn’t make what I’m doing any easier. You know me. I hate carrying such a responsibility all on my lonesome.” She paused. “Geez this is getting maudlin. Change the subject, pretty pretty pretty please?”
“Okay,” Diana said. She stared off into space. Uffie fed Nessa some chocolate. “Tell us about Portland.”
Where they headed. Portland’s new digs hid in the hills above Eureka, California, some multi-millionaire’s estate donated to Portland for the usual services rendered: miraculous healing, stock market tips, big buxom mistresses, whatever. Nessa didn’t know or care. Ken thought this showed a little progress, that Portland actually bartered for something legit. Apparently the putative leading light among the Territorial Gods had Godded her way into her previous headquarters by awe and order.
“It’s a difficult mother-daughter relationship,” Nessa said. She didn’t remember much more than a few moments of her interactions with Portland right now, unfortunately.
Diana winced. “Yes?”
“Don’t expect fully rational behavior from either of us. The highs are high and the lows are low.” Nessa sniffed. “We might even fight. Uh, and Ken thinks it’s dang
erous when Portland and I fight.”
“Can you predict her?” Uffie said. Meaning ‘will Diana and I be able to predict her?’
“Not consciously, not right now,” Nessa said. “For instance, I knew Diana’s idea to save a visit to Portland until after we’d pestered Boise, Akron and Montreal was the correct one.” But not exactly why. Nessa had the hunch she was using hunches in place of rational thought, which confused her a little, because she had never been able to cough up hunches in the past. Something must have changed, something she couldn’t remember.
She missed Dave and Elorie so much…
“Does the way we dealt with Akron help or hurt?” Uffie said.
Nessa licked her lips and reveled in the gritty taste of powdered chocolate. She paged through her memory and relived their time in Akron’s lair. She knew she hadn’t been able to do such tricks before, and the page-able memory stopped about half way through their visit to Boise. She had been a burbling nutcase before the Boise visit, done in by the loss of Dave and Elorie. This memory trick had to be something she had picked up from Diana.
Diana made Nessa sigh. The alternately perky and depressed young woman had so much of her self given over to other-style hunches it almost reminded Nessa of looking in a mirror. Save for the fact Diana didn’t look like Nessa at all, but that wasn’t the point. Way too similar. If only Diana would confide in Nessa, only Nessa had a hunch Diana had a hunch this might be bad for her. Sigh.
Nessa finished reliving the Akron visit. Akron, in Nessa’s opinion, was one beaten-down and thoroughly spooked God. The second time they had gone into Akron’s secret headquarters and confronted her, she had pulled the ‘you are not here’ act and had gone about her business, ignoring them completely. All four of them had decided Akron wanted to goad them into attacking her and violating her mind, giving Akron the moral high ground. Instead, they spent time spooking Akron’s relatively small posse of part-trained Natural Supported by goading them into projecting their minds and the minds of the Telepaths into various refugee camps. Akron’s people proved relatively reasonable and easy to sway without any mental violations at all. All of them, men and women, had ended up with wet salty tears on their cheeks.
“Portland’s going to respect our forbearance and won’t take what we didn’t do as a sign of weakness,” Nessa said. The relived memory gave her a clue about how to cope with her current self: focus on her alas short memory page-able section of her life and ignore the rest. Sort of like focusing on the ‘now’, but a ‘now’ with a lot more o’s. This helped.
“Okay, but what about Portland’s personality? What’s she like?” Diana said.
“When she hasn’t made a decision, which is most of the time, she’s thoughtful and listens to advice, open, and easy to deal with. When she’s made a decision, though…”
“Bad?”
“Impossible.”
“Worse than the Gods we’ve met? Worse than Columbia?” Uffie said.
Nessa waved her hands. She hadn’t met any ‘Columbia’ in her current ‘now’, so anything she dug up about this alleged God in her memories would likely be bogus anyway.
“The Gods you’ve met are pussycats compared to Portland,” Nessa said. She wiggled closer and made off with another chunk of the beaten-up dark chocolate Uffie had in her parka pocket. “No, you don’t need to point out that I’m jealous of her.”
They arrived at Portland’s place as dawn pastelled the morning sky. All stealthed up, Portland’s security didn’t bother them. Portland’s army bothered Nessa. Why would Portland need such a huge army, anyway? Bad things, bad contingencies. Portland was into contingencies and planning.
The fact the millionaire’s estate house wasn’t Portland’s residence, but her guest house for normal humans, bothered Nessa as well. Had Portland gone ascetic on them? Nessa didn’t trust the twist, not at all. Where would Portland keep her porcelain kitty-cats?
“Where is she?” Uffie said as they landed invisibly between the tennis court and the putting green. A coleus bed wound a complicated path between them. Nessa managed to avoid stepping in it, but only barely. Little nozzles sprayed their feet with water.
“Underground, away from the mansion,” Ken said. He placed a shield around their feet, but not soon enough. Watering systems didn’t engage his reflexes as a major threat.
“You can see the pattern and flow of the movement,” Nessa said. “The motion outlines everything like a map saying ‘Portland lives here, her army commanders live here, her research team’s over under that hill’ and so on and so forth.”
“Right,” Diana said. “I don’t like what you’re thinking…” No, she couldn’t read minds, just the future. Sort of. Good enough to be a pain the rumpus. Bumpus? Dumpus? No, that’s what she had done to Dave and Elorie. All to keep the twins safer.
Nasty cold-hearted bitch she was, she knew she had to do something to take her mind off the family subject. Otherwise, she would go crazy.
Her mental comment almost prompted a Betrayer-style ‘bwah hah hah’. Bad.
“Nessa, counting coup against Portland’s not going to help,” Uffie said.
“You’re right,” Ken said. “On the other hand, this will help us with Akron.”
The two antagonists glared at each other across the coleus bed, unfortunately nothing new. If Nessa had any doubt Uffie and Diana’s hunches and Ken’s hunches didn’t work the same way, well… No, there she didn’t have any doubt. She had a hunch.
“Quiet,” Nessa said, eyes closed, in concentration, deep into her telepathic senses. The minds of the nearby world opened up to Nessa’s mind. “Left thirty degrees. Forward a hundred yards. Right a hundred and twenty degrees. Forward fifty and down twenty yards.” Betrayer had been right when she had stated Nessa would function better without the rest of her family around to distract her. She suspected, though, Betrayer didn’t know why. Nessa knew why: Uffie and Diana’s support sharpened Nessa’s mind a lot. It helped Uffie and Diana had been around beforehand, already a part of Nessa’s previous support. Nessa hadn’t gone dysfunctional for too long. Or so Right Sock said.
Nessa continued her whispered detailed directions as they wove through Portland’s estate and the God’s multitudinous static defenses. They stopped and paused in front of the big iron entry door to Portland’s underground hideout until one of Portland’s people came through. In they zipped.
From there they hugged the ceiling until they reached Portland’s office, Nessa giving directions by hand signals. Ken slid them into Portland’s office, following a flunky. Portland hadn’t changed; she remained short, perhaps five two or three and cosmetically in her mid-forties, black hair tied back in a bun, vaguely Hispanic. Or at least using Latina-style makeup and accessories, including silver hoop earrings. She dressed conservatively, in business garb. If anyone met Portland, without her divine awe, she would have passed as a mortal.
The flunky dropped a stack of paperwork on Portland’s desk. Two men and one woman already spoke with Portland, and from the barf-threatening conversation Nessa realized they had to be politicians of some variety or other. “The answer is no,” Portland said. “I know about the rumors, but no, I’m not breaking with the City of God. Therefore, I’m afraid I can’t support your plan to hold statewide elections and re-establish the government of the State of California.”
“I understand,” one of the men said. He was in his sixties, rail thin, with short white hair. “The people I represent are going to go ahead anyway, even if you don’t give us your approval or support.”
“If the City of God says I must crack down on your movement, I shall,” Portland said. “Otherwise, I won’t, so this is your call, and the consequences on your shoulders.” She glowered at the three. “Getting your protesters up here is not wise, either.”
“Wisdom is for the weak,” the woman said. Nessa guessed mid-thirties for her. She spoke with a faint Middle Eastern accent.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we will do what
’s necessary,” the woman said.
“I think this meeting is over,” Portland said.
“Then it is over,” the sixtyish man said. “You’ll be hearing from us again. Possibly in an unfortunate manner.”
The three stood, said their goodbyes, and left.
Portland sighed and stared at the closed door. “Okay, Nessa. I can sense you here. Somewhere nearby. Why don’t you come out so we can talk?”
Nessa queried Diana, Uffie and Ken. Ken nodded and the other two shrugged. Nessa spread her hands, momentarily one with Ken, and she landed them. Ken relaxed the invisibility Nessa had been maintaining; Portland turned to them and shook her head. “Well. Just four of you? Is this some sort of state visit? Where’re the twins?”
Diana and Uffie froze, unable to speak, daunted by Portland’s tiny bit of notice.
Damn. “Somewhere safe,” Nessa said. She glared at Uffie until Uffie unfroze. She refused to allow this sort of behavior from her people.
“The City of God’s going down,” Uffie said. “My name’s Eufemia Zumbrennen, but I prefer to be called Uffie. I believe you helped rescue me, which I thank you for. Diana here is a former Boise Supported.” Nessa beat around the edges of Diana’s mind, despite the fact she knew the young woman would take another minute or so to regain her balance, no matter what Nessa did. “If the City of God falls, where does that leave you?”
Portland didn’t answer for a moment, her eyes fixed on Uffie. “My,” Portland said. “Things have changed.” Portland leaned on Uffie’s mind shields, and got nowhere. Uffie glared back at the God.
Good.
“We’d like to talk, Portland,” Ken said. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
“Even with the lifting of the anathema against you, I’m not so sure we should talk,” Portland said. “You and Nessa have become a tremendous hazard; the City of God wants you neutralized. Since your neutralization is inevitable, why shouldn’t I be the one?”
“What you’re supposed to do is double the number of chairs so we can sit down, Mom,” Nessa said. “We’re truth and reality. Peace and harmony. Unlike some others, we only fight when someone corners us.”
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 47