by John Ridley
"Not before he murdered a real human being."
A wave of pain made a run over Herbert. He was doped up, but the doctors had been stingy with the painkillers. Herbert had asked a cop to tell the docs to give him more. The cop laughed. Herbert closed his eyes, waited for the pain to pass. It dimmed but didn't go away."You were able to stop Clarence, and we were glad for that."
That hit Soledad sideways."How's that work?"
"Clarence was an addict, a psychotic and a killer."
"Same as the rest of you."
"Do you know what we are? We're scared people. We run and hide when someone stares at us thinking they know we're different when maybe all they're looking at is just a stain on a shirt left over from breakfast. It's how we live; that frightened. It's the way you've made us. We, our kind, we used to be heroes—"
"Used to be," Soledad was quick to point out."You're nothing but murderers."
"I know a hundred sixty-eight people in Oklahoma City who would say otherwise."
"And I know six hundred thousand people in San Francisco who'd say something against that. If they could say anything. Except they can't. Except they're dead."
The pain came back for Herbert.
Soledad didn't care. Soledad kept swinging."You… you freaks, you're nothing but a bunch of animals. Like pack dogs; less than human. I'll tell you something, if I had it my way, I'd put down every one of you."
Herbert laughed a little. Laughter did nothing to help the hurt.
"That funny to you?"
"The way you talk: We're animals, less than human. You'd kill us all… That's the kind of crazy hate talk they used to throw at Jews, gays." Herbert's sleepy, sedated eyes went sharp for a second. They looked right at Soledad."And at blacks."
Not even a flinch."Gays, blacks, Jews never took out half a city."
For a second it was quiet enough to hear the drip of the IV.
Soledad said: "These freaks that you know so well, all your little freak friends: Let's talk about them."
A couple of tired swings of Herbert's head signified no."I won't tell you anything about my friends."
"Think before you answer. Things don't look so good for you.
Violating the Executive Order regulating the activities of metanor-mals is a—"
"I'll tell you about Vaughn."
"Who's Vaughn?"
"The one you're after. The telepath."
"You don't want to talk about anyone else, but him you'll flip on?"
"Two reasons. He's a murderer. Think whatever you want of us, but those of us who remain have a strict code: We must never use our gifts to take life."
Now it was Soledad who did the laughing."For a bunch of people who don't like to kill you've got racking up a body count down to a habit."
"When I was a child, when I first realized I was… different… well, I thought of myself as you think of me: I thought I was a freak. I thought there was something wrong with me. I never told people about my abilities. I figured they'd laugh, call me names at best. At worst… I thought they would put me in a lab, cut me open and study me. Then one day Pronto made his first appearance. Do you remember? San Ysidro. You're young, but you must… That crazy with the gun in a fast-food restaurant. He would have killed how many people? Except along comes a man who could run faster than the speed of sound. A man who could snatch bullets out of the air. A man who dedicated himself to fighting injustice and serving mankind. Do you know how that made me feel? Can you imagine the joy in my heart to know that I wasn't some kind of mutation, but that I was given a special gift and with it I could help, I could make a difference?"
Soledad didn't have to imagine the feeling. She knew it. Knew it well. It was the same way she felt first time the Nubian Princess went into action. A crew of five bank robbers armed to the eyebrows with automatic weapons, all brought to their knees by a black woman in tribal wrap and Egyptian gold. Just now, remembering the moment, the feeling came racing back. The feeling of a young black girl living in an all-white neighborhood, going to an all-white school. No matter those white people were usually decent… usually… the girl always felt different. Never felt special in a good sense until the day she saw, on television, on the news, someone who looked like her being extraordinary.
And quick as the feeling came back, Soledad chased it off with a mantra: Freaks kill.
"I had always hoped," Herbert went on,"to use my gift to help people, to follow in Pronto's… pardon me, footsteps." He paused."That was before San Francisco."
Soledad said her mantra aloud: "Freaks kill."
"So do normal humans. But we are different from you, Bullet. The difference comes with the responsibility to use our abilities for positive change, not to do wrong. And those like Clarence and Vaughn who cross the line, they deserve punishment. We would have it no other way. There's an old salvage yard just off Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood. As best we know, that's where you'll find Vaughn. Believe it or not, we really hope you stop him."
"How many of you are there? Do you communicate on a regular—"
Herbert made a big show of being in pain and tired, of being unable to answer any more questions.
Still, Soledad had a last few."You said there were two reasons why you'd tell me where this Vaughn is. What's the other?"
"He wants you to find him. Not just the police, but you, Bullet."
"Stop it."
"That's what we all call you. We call you Bullet."
"If you call me that again, I'll—"
"What? What will you do to me, Bullet?"
Wounded, in a hospital, exposed as a freak and facing a life of sedation in a cell. What else could Soledad do to Herbert Lewis?
Nothing.
So she ignored his taunt."Why me?"
"You killed Michelle."
A blank stare.
"The angel. You killed his wife."
Soledad responded to the statement in no particular manner. She remembered that Lesker, her partner at the time, had called the woman, white skin and gliding through the air on wings, an angel as well. All Soledad saw was a freak. And now she saw a conspiracy of freaks. They communicated with each other, knew one another's whereabouts and actions. They even sat in judgment of each other. Forget MTac, the advances in technology, in strategy and skills. The freak problem was getting worse, not better.
Soledad looked at Herbert Lewis, took a second to study his face. She wanted to be able to gauge, after she asked what she was about to ask, any change in his expression no matter how subtle or how quickly it passed. She wanted to be able to tell if Herbert responded with truth or lie.
She asked: "What's revelation?"
"Revelation?" Herbert asked back, as nonplussed as if Soledad had asked him what's water."A revelation is a disclosure or something disclosed by or as if by divine or preternatural means."
Zeiss photographic lenses, of any length, were good. Their long lenses were just about the best in the world. What a longer lens does for you, it provides more subject magnification at a given distance. By moving back, you reduce the magnification ratio between the front and back of your subject because the distance ratio is diminished. So you can get farther from whatever you're shooting without the image ending up too small.
The Air Support Division cops doing a photo recon of a salvage yard in the Valley couldn't keep far enough away from the target they were shooting: the possible locale of a telepath that, if it wanted, could real easy make the pilot fly his 206 Jet Ranger straight into the ground at max throttle. Most photo recons take ten minutes. This one—shot with the longest lenses the LAPD had on hand—took three minutes, and would've taken less if the cops had it their way, before the pilot yanked the stick and peeled the helicopter for Piper Tech.
The photos processed, printed, unspectacular as they were— B&W shots of a ramshackle building center of the salvage yard— were taken to Em Ops for Tannehill and Rysher and Ostrander and Bo and Yar and Soledad to view for all the little the pictures revealed.
Bo, pointing to the building: "This is the only structure on the property. It's been built on a few times over the years. This outer part is all wood, the rest sheet metal."
"And with relatively few people in the vicinity," Ostrander noted,"it will give the freak an advantage in sensing anyone looking for him."
"Able to get any blueprints?" Yar asked.
Bo: "The additions were done without permit, so there's nothing on record."
"So we don't know the layout. Whatever we send in is going in blind." There was a tightness where Tannehill's neck met his shoulders, an aching knot that'd been living there for years but making itself felt with severe pain since the day Valley MTac put itself down. As professional, as detached as he tried to be, had to be, doubt and guilt and stress seeped through Tannehill like a slow-working poison manifesting itself inside him in a thousand ways. A tightness here, a twitch there. Heart palpitations more often than not. Although he believed in the work he did, Tannehill's work very truly, gradually, was killing him."If the telepath's there at all."
"You don't believe the speed freak?" Soledad asked.
"I've learned not to trust where freaks are involved."
Bo: "Why would it say the telepath is there if it's not?"
"A distraction," Rysher answered, guessing.
"A distraction from what? If the telepath wanted to go after cops, it could do that easy enough without dragging them to the middle of nowhere."
Rysher made a point of: "It lured one MTac element out. Why not do the same with another? Lures them out, then attacks another part of the city."
"He could do that without baiting us. Come and go before anybody knew what they got hit with."
The fingers of Yar's right hand did an unending tap-step over his palm. Talk, talk; all this… There was a freak out there. The freak had to be dealt with. How much talk was needed for that?
"He's there," Soledad said, no doubt in her voice."He's waiting there."
Tannehill: "For?"
Soledad: "A showdown. Kill or be killed. He takes out one element to show us how powerful he is. Now he's waiting to see if we've got the apples to ice him."
"If he wants to know if we've got the balls…" Yar didn't miss a beat.
Neither did Rysher."Let's go for a full strike: have all our MTac units hit him at once."
"Remind me to purchase shares in an American flag company. Undoubtedly their price will skyrocket with all the coffins that will need draping." Ostrander had a way of putting pitch-black into dark humor.
"You saw what it did to Valley MTac. It's going to take everything we have just to slow the freak down."
"I promise you he will turn your people against each other, and then the last man remaining against himself."
Rysher gave a cold reminder: "I'm familiar with the MO of these mind freaks."
"Then I'd suggest we take the knowledge and find another way to apply it."
"We could go with nonlethal weapons," Rysher offered.
"Well, that's a good idea." A sarcastic tone made it clear Yar thought otherwise."You can't take out druggies jacked on PCPs with nonlethals, and you want to use them against a telepath? The freak can make the operators choke each other, beat each other to death bare-handed, and they'd have no way to kill it."
"Your suggestion?" Rysher asked, pointed.
"One element. Make it a lightning strike. I'm volunteering Central."
Bo: "It's appreciated, Yar. But cowboy time is still a ways off."
"Yar's right," Soledad said."But for the wrong reason. It should be one element, should be Central. What the freak wants… I killed its wife. It wants me."
"You'd never make it out alive," Rysher said.
"That a fact or wishful thinking?"
A quiet hiss of nasty words came from Rysher.
Soledad ignored them."Look, we take out the freak, problem solved. But if we don't make it, if I don't make it… maybe that's payback enough for it. Maybe it's done and nobody else has to get killed."
Rysher: "So it kills a bunch of cops, and we just let the thing get away."
Yar, talking from experience: "If we can't put it down, you better hope it goes away."
"If we go after it, if we lose out, if the freak's not done killing," Soledad said,"then you don't stand any worse than you do right now."
"With the exception," Tannehill's hand working hard on his neck,"of four dead officers."
"Sooner or later, going against this thing, we'd be dead anyway. This way we just go down first."
"So you're volunteering," Bo, being clear about things,"for a suicide mission."
Soledad looked to Yar.
Yar grinned."To my hearing she's volunteering to get in the first kick to the freak's ass."
And Bo wished, for one split second, he could own that kind of fearlessness again.
Again?
Bo wondered: Did he ever own it? Or was what drove him for so long just the youthful delusion that with enough will you can live forever?
The call was Tannehill's to make. Nothing easy about making it. What was the best way to put down what maybe couldn't be put down; that could probably kill whatever you sent at it? And here, before him, were two cops begging to take the call. How many more in the PD would be happy to stand with them? Where the hell, Tannehill thought, did you get people like this? For whatever their reasons, for whyever they chose to do what they do, where did you find such people?
Tannehill: "I'll put out a warrant. Central gets the call. You go it alone."
Soledad and Ian were having dinner at Soup Plantation, which was their favorite place to have dinner. Not so much their favorite place to eat, but they liked getting the two-for-one special. Soup Plantation didn't actually offer a two-for-one special. What it did offer was an all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar run by college kids and underprivileged illegals working for minimum who didn't much notice or care if one person in a party of two went to the bar and got food that the other person had paid for. More than the okay food, Soledad and Ian dug the" we're getting away with something" pleasure that came with it. Made them feel like they were a couple of kids, like they were back in high school. Even though getting something for nothing was, in this case, illegal. Even though Soledad was a cop. There weren't any freaks involved. No freaks involved, Soledad gave no more thought to scuffing the law for pleasure than anybody else. She chalked that mostly to Ian. Day by day he was making her feel like a regular girl.
Ian said: "You put too much dressing on your salad."
"I like dressing."
"I know, but you put too much on."
"What's too much?"
With his fork Ian reached over to Soledad's plate, lifted some of the lettuce. Blue cheese dressing sloshed from the leaves, the cheese falling like boulders in a goo-slide."That's too much. What's the point of eating healthy if you're going to use that much dressing?"
" 'Cause it's good for you."
"It's nothing but fat."
"The salad's good for you."
"But you've got more dressing than salad."
Soledad speared a forkful of lettuce, lifted it slow to her mouth. Dressing dripped, dripped from her lips and chin. It was funny. Was sexy too. For a sec Ian wished he was the kind of guy, ballsy enough, to slap their trays to the floor, put Soledad on the table and make love to her right there.
They were doing that now. They'd graduated from having sex to making love. From sharing space and screwing to sharing themselves and having something like a relationship. Something like. All that made Ian happy. When it didn't make him scared.
"You just want," Soledad's mouth full of blue cheese dressing and some very little bit of salad,"to eat at Johnny Rocket's."
"I don't want to eat at Johnny Rocket's. I'm just saying if you're going to eat healthy, eat healthy; otherwise… Actually, yeah, I do want to eat at Johnny Rocket's. That crap's good. Life's too short to try and eat healthy and live forever."
"Am I a bigot?"
"We
're all bigots." As left field as Soledad's question was, Ian didn't miss a beat answering."I don't care what anybody says, we all carry some baggage in us."
"Am I worse than most?"
"It's all bad, so how do you—"
"Answer me straight. Please."
Now Ian took his time. Thought. Asked: "Why do you care?"
"Served a warrant on a freak. It said I was no better than people who hated Jews and gays. Blacks."
"Hate is hate. So, no, I don't think your hate is any better—"
"You've never talked about how you fall on things," cutting him off, getting a little sharp."You soft for freaks?"
"We're talking about you."
"You are soft for them."
"You asked me a question. Don't take the conversation somewhere else when you don't like the answers I give."
And for a second it was Soledad looking hard at Ian, Ian looking hard right back to her. Then Soledad sat back in her chair, realizing, just then, how forward her little outburst had carried her.
"I think," Ian said,"some of the hurt you have, the reasons you feel the way you do… I understand it, even though it's intangible." Some kind of little laugh from Ian."I shouldn't be—"
"Go on. Say what you're going to say."
"I know why you have it, but I wish you didn't have the hate you do. For what it does to other people, but mostly for what it does to yourself. If I'd known how you felt first off, we wouldn't… there's no way I could've been with you. But I was, I guess I was lucky; I got a chance to see the good in you first. And now, that this metanor-mal would say things to you, that you would care what it said, that you would care what I think… Even in the time I've known you, you've changed, Soledad."
"Well, fuck. Everything around me's changed."
"What? Things aren't supposed to? That's a shock to you they do?"
"Yes, Ian. It is. From half a city being torn away right up to people I thought had my back selling me out." Soledad used a cold, factual tone to make her point."There is no gentle transformation in any of that, so, yeah, I'm shocked."
"Sometimes it's not; sometimes it's not gentle. But however it came, you've changed too. You have. You'll change more. You and me both. And hard as things are for us, for trying to get along in our relationship, or whatever you want to call it… hard as it is, I want to be around when all your hurt is gone. I live for that."