by Alex Hughes
She pressed the button for the ancient elevator, then turned around. “Are you okay?” she demanded, but there was concern there too. “The knives thing wasn’t . . . wasn’t some Freudian thing, was it?”
That made me laugh. “Um, no. Even-odds it was just a dream.” I didn’t want to tell her about the Guild thing, not before I told Paulsen.
She was uncomfortable again. “How come I don’t see the dreams at night?”
I turned, and realized all at once how very, very close we were. I had to take a step back and recite multiplication tables to prevent my body from reacting.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
The elevator arrived and I moved all the way to the back of it. I could still smell her perfume. I could still want . . .
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m just tired. I’m just tired and stressed and not tracking well. Probably it was just a dream. If it’s not . . .” Meyers had thrown out his knives, my brain reminded me.
“If it’s not?” she asked.
“If it’s not, it’s either a bleed-over from Mindspace in the interrogation rooms, though I’ve never had that happen, or a vision, or my brain processing. It’s a dream, damn it, Cherabino. They’re not supposed to be analyzed.”
“We need to avoid knives for a while?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. I really don’t.” I changed the subject. “How’s Jacob?” She liked it when I asked about her family, and since I’d helped her identify him as a telepath/teleporter and get him private training, I had an interest. He was a nice kid, even with the health issues that held him back.
“He’s doing okay,” Cherabino said. She pulled out a little billfold and handed me a picture, only slightly creased from wear. “She had new pictures made.”
A boy about ten—though very small for his age—looked out at me with a gap-toothed smile that reminded me of Cherabino’s sister. The dark, thick hair he had was all Cherabino, though. “He’s gained a little weight,” I said happily. His serious autoimmune digestive disorder made that difficult, and the last time I’d seen him he was practically skin and bones. Now the hollows in his cheeks were almost gone.
“My sister has him on a new diet from the doctor and he’s actually getting most of it down. His body seems to crave the calories,” Cherabino said. She was pleased; that was an unexpected result. Thanks for arranging for that Irish teacher. He’s made all the difference, and my sister is thrilled to have him home.
Teleportation burns a lot of calories, I said. I hadn’t heard of it improving digestion, but it wasn’t like I’d met many kids like Jacob. You still need to be vigilant, I said. We don’t know how he’s going to react long-term. The Guild will force him into the boarding school if they discover him.
I know, she said, and the cheerful moment was over.
We walked through the main floor, the secretaries’ desks empty, the cops’ desks and Booking full. The reception area (mostly two chairs and a ring of plants) had an odd clump of teenagers splattered with something that looked disgusting . . . and oddly, as we passed, smelled like creamed corn. I was paying so much attention to them that I nearly missed it as a man I knew opened the door and walked in.
Cherabino stopped, moving away from the teenagers. “Special Agent George Ruffins,” she said. “I thought you weren’t coming to the office until tomorrow, for the task force meeting.”
“Something’s come up,” Ruffins said, following her to the side. He was with the Tech Control Organization, the guy who’d brought all the new evidence against Fiske, and it was no secret that he disliked me. He was dressed in the white-shirt, black-suit getup of a federal officer, jacket over his hand, ID badge clipped to his shirt. On his left wrist was a tattoo like a thick multicolored striped bracelet. With his tattoo technology he could feel when I was reading him with telepathy, so I couldn’t do it unless I wanted a lot of negative attention.
He held up a hand. “You’re investigating the murder of one of my informants.”
“Your informants? Which case?” Cherabino asked.
“Noah Wright. He was Informant Number 3041 in the task force file.”
“Oh,” Cherabino said. Her mind flashed a picture of a file. “That’s a problem.”
He looked at her, absolutely no sense of humor. His presence in Mindspace was twitchy, with a low-level buzzing I recognized, but that’s all I could get without an active read. He scratched the tattoo on his wrist. “We’re going to have to figure out how to coordinate the two cases. We can’t let the task force falter over something like this.” He looked at me. “Still no patch, I see.”
“They still haven’t made one up for the police telepaths,” I said evenly. I’d been enjoying the anonymity of life without a patch identifying me as the enemy, thanks much. “Still carrying the divining rod, I see.”
He felt stressed, though I couldn’t tell about what.
“You’re setting off the detector like you wouldn’t believe. It’s distracting. If you’d let the detective and I talk for a minute . . .”
I looked at Cherabino. This okay?
I’m afraid so, she said with a mental sigh. If Wright is connected with the Fiske case, well . . . we’re going to have to figure out how we want to handle things, and quickly. She added: I don’t need to tell you to keep the Fiske timeline to yourself, do I?
I can keep a secret. You know that.
“Give us a minute?” she said out loud.
“I was just leaving anyway,” I said, a bit worried. “Good to see you again, Agent Ruffins.” It wasn’t, but it was the standard greeting.
Ruffins watched me all the way out the door, and I piggybacked on the Link with Cherabino long enough to make sure she was okay before I got out of easy range. I could “listen in” on her through the Link at any time, but it became more work as we were farther apart, the noise of the universe adding up between us. Cherabino liked this effect, as it gave her her much-lauded mental privacy. I hated it because trading too much on the Link despite the distance strengthened it, like pairing two particles in a quantum state. And I’d promised I’d let her go eventually.
The wind blew, cutting through all my layers of clothing, and I shivered again. At least my hands were warm.
• • •
Swartz met me at the coffee bar, already in our usual booth when I walked in. A cane leaned against the booth next to him, a dark, inlaid-wood antique I’d bought for him a few weeks ago. I’d said it was to give him something interesting to lug around and whap people with, but the truth was, I hadn’t been able to stand the look of the geriatric five-footed white formed-resin cane he’d been carrying before. It made him look weak, and old.
Just a few weeks before, he’d been knocked to the ground by a heart attack, and every time I saw him face-to-face, it hit me again. He looked frail, like he’d aged ten years in a few months. The doctors said he was lucky, lucky to be alive, lucky to be recovering so quickly, lucky not to have had the brain damage they’d been expecting. But he hadn’t been lucky. He hadn’t been a candidate for an artificial heart. He had been a hairbreadth from dying. And you could still see it on his face.
So I’d traded everything I’d ever earned and more besides—incurring a debt to the people I hated most, the Guild, to arrange for him to be treated by a Guild medic who could repair the heart with microkinesis. It wasn’t perfect; he was frail, and would likely be frail forever now, but he was alive. I’d do what they asked to pay that debt, because I’d said so. Because they’d saved Swartz’s life and I owed them for it.
“You’re late,” Swartz said, just barely loud enough to be heard.
“Three minutes,” I said, and scanned the faces of the other people there just in case. All the time with the cops had rubbed off on me, sure, but what really made me check a room before I entered was the months I’d spent with no telepathy at al
l. I’d temporarily burned out my Ability and I’d been a normal like everyone else, and even now it was hard to break that instinctive feeling of wariness.
I stopped by the bar to pick up our drinks. The bartender, a burly man with a faded navy tattoo and a beard, looked up from an antique paperback labeled TOM SAWYER, to point to a metal tray a few feet to his left. The thing was stained from years of use, but if you looked closely, you saw it was scrupulously clean. On top was an ugly ceramic pot and two uglier cups.
“Decaf?” I asked.
He nodded. “Licorice is a little stronger to make up.”
“Thanks.” I set my papers on one side of the tray, rearranging so everything else was on the other side. Sad part was, it balanced. The papers were that thick. I picked up the tray and bused it to our table.
Bartender was getting lazy, but what did I care? I set the tray down, its metal edges scraping the old wooden table, the scrapes adding to generations of others. Then I started pouring the dark licorice coffee.
“Three things,” Swartz said. Every week for the last—well, forever—he’d asked me to come up with three things I was grateful for.
“The smell of late fall in the air. Peanut brittle soy-chocolate muffins. And gloves—Cherabino gave me gloves. Good gloves. Maybe too good gloves.” My voice had gotten soft on the last. I straightened, and busied myself arranging things and finishing up the coffee.
Swartz looked at me. Just looked. “They’re gloves. I’m a little out of touch with the current market, but I don’t imagine they’re worth much of your particular brand of poison.”
I shrugged, pretending it didn’t matter.
“Why did she give you gloves?” Swartz asked me as I scooted into the old leather booth, its surface cracking audibly. A homey sound.
I sipped the coffee. Hot, and the fragrant licorice stung my sinuses and filled up my head. I coughed, a little. Too much would be unmanly. “Ahem. For my birthday.”
“Ah,” he said. “That is about now, isn’t it?”
I looked up, expecting him to have a little package wrapped in recycled paper waiting for me. Instead he just looked embarrassed.
He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten? Swartz had forgotten my birthday?
He rubbed at his chest absently. The coffee sat untouched in front of him. He looked pale and tired. His thoughts were slow, limping along without any force behind them.
In an effort gargantuan in its selflessness, I forced myself to think about him. It hadn’t been that long ago he’d had major heart surgery. He probably didn’t even remember what week it was, or what month. He was in pain. There were reasons he’d forgotten my birthday. Real reasons. And he’d shown up late at night for me anyway. There was no need to be an ass.
“Adam, I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine. Really. I was going to ask, how’s the breathing?”
He blinked, thought, concern floating over his brain, and finally settled. He took the out. “Better. Doctor says it’s a good thing I quit smoking. Saved my life. Still can’t make it up the stairs without a rest break.” He made a face. “But at least it’s only one now.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” The smoking hadn’t had a lot to do with it, of course, but I hadn’t told him, and his wife likely didn’t have the words. “Any news as to when you can go back to teaching?”
“I’ve got to manage to stay awake the whole day first,” Swartz said. “It’s not going to be this semester.” He looked down at the coffee, still untouched.
I caught the edge of the information-thought: doctor said he couldn’t have caffeine. He wanted the licorice, but his chest still hurt too much to be stupid about something like that.
“It’s decaf,” I said.
“I still can’t—”
“It’s fine. I’ll get you an herbal tea.” I stood up and went over to the bar, angry with myself. I should have remembered. I should have! But nothing was normal anymore. Nothing. Damn it.
I returned with a stupid cinnamon apple thing in a tall floral china cup, and set it gently in front of his side of the table. Thing would break if I looked at it wrong.
“I’m not an invalid!” he barked at me, and coughed.
“And I’m not usually an idiot. Drink the tea.”
He stared me down and finally took a sip.
“Time for us to do our reading yet?” I asked, twitchy, not sure what to do. Usually he was a lot more in charge. Usually he would be making me feel better.
He swallowed and set the china cup down gingerly. “She gave you gloves, you said? Does she usually give you a birthday present?”
“Well, no.” I frowned at him. I wanted to talk about missing the meeting earlier in the week. I wanted him to pull the situation with the Guild out of me. Instead he was harping about gloves? I was trying not to think about the gloves. Or overthink the gloves.
“What do you think the change in behavior means?” he asked carefully.
“I don’t know,” I said quickly.
“Ah,” he said.
“No, really, I don’t know, not for sure. And anyway, you were the one who told me I couldn’t have a relationship until I could keep a plant alive.” I had another four bioluminescent plants on my windowsill at the apartment this week, two of which were clearly dying. I had high hopes for the fourth one, which was only a little droopy.
“Maybe I was wrong about that,” Swartz said.
And the world tilted on its axis. “Wh-wh-what?”
He looked at the stupid china cup pensively. “I’ve been thinking a lot about life, since I almost lost mine. I don’t know what I would have done without Selah. Not just because she was there, all the time, in the hospital, at home. But when it was me on that floor with doom barreling in on me, when it all went to hell, I thought I had to get through this for Selah. I couldn’t leave her alone. I’m not afraid of death, you know that. God and I are on good terms. But I fought—and fought hard—to stay with her. I’m still fighting.”
He looked up. “You need a reason to fight, kid.”
“I have reasons to fight. A lot of them. We go through this every year.” I squashed down the unrealistic hope. He’d been through a lot. It was completely understandable he wanted to talk about it. “Cherabino’s great, she is, but—”
“You’re in love with her,” Swartz said flatly.
I stared. He’d never . . . “So what if I am? I’m a work in progress. ‘Adding another person to that mix is just making it harder to put the pieces together and might do more harm than good.’ That’s a direct quote from you.”
“Ask her out,” Swartz said. “This isn’t some random person off the street—it’s your partner. You’ve worked with her for years. She’s seen you at your worst.”
A huge black hole of possibility settled into my soul at that moment, me bracing myself against the gravitational pull of this idea . . . this thing. I wouldn’t be able to resist it forever, and I already had the Guild and Clark to deal with. “Swartz, if this is a test . . .”
“It’s not,” he said flatly. “Worse comes to worst, she says no, and you end up right back here where you are. Best case, she says yes. You get a chance to answer some questions you’ve had for a long time.”
“What if it . . .” I trailed off. He didn’t have to tell me. We’d talked about the thing with Kara enough. Despite her betrayal, the pang of seeing her married and all the anger I still carried about it sometimes, I wouldn’t go back and undo the time we’d spent together. I couldn’t see me feeling any different about Cherabino.
“There’s no sense staring at the problem,” Swartz said. “Your brain’s an enemy in this case. Ask her. This week. I’ll expect a full report at our next meeting.” He rubbed his chest, absently, and leaned forward with the help of a hand on the table. “Now, let’s do the reading before Selah comes back to fuss at me for being
out too long.”
With everything in the whole world different in the space of a few minutes, I nodded like a puppet and pulled out the Big Book without question. Reading about other people’s experiences with alcohol and drug recovery might help. It might not, not today. But it was something we did.
• • •
Swartz dropped me off at the apartment, and I climbed the stairs, exhausted. I still checked Mindspace and my own senses before I opened the door; I’d had too many unexpected visitors in the last few months.
Seemed clean, although I had a message light on the answering machine. I pressed the button.
“Hi, Adam, it’s Kara,” it began. “I’m so glad you got out okay. I didn’t mean to—”
I hit ERASE.
CHAPTER 9
Feeling like an idiot, I put on a hat and sunglasses and a coat against the weather and found my way to Freedom Park via the MARTA station nearby. This time of year, in mid-November, the bone-deep chill had settled into the wind, and even the tree line, trunks twisted waist-high from the Tech Wars, couldn’t shield me from it completely. Seemed awfully early to be out in this kind of cold, especially on a Saturday.
I settled down into a park bench designed to look like a smoothly curving shell of some kind; it was surprisingly comfortable, if a little cold and covered in graffiti. The arch fit my back nicely.
Around me, flat grass was dotted by the occasional line of trees and stones, some landscaper’s idea of “natural” surroundings. A running path led out to the left, a bank to the right separating the park from the edges of Freedom Parkway, a mammoth concrete-set road that rivaled the nearby Interstate 75/85 for sheer weight. Flyers darted in their lanes above the parkway, but the area in grass and stone around me was empty. Completely empty; it was too cold for casual park-going.
In front of me, the Tech Wars Memorial stood, a large twisting sculpture made out of ceramic and metal, with water flowing in smooth arcs around a flat panel, the water manipulated via antigravity fields into impossible shapes. That central panel, cradled in the curves of the water, the ceramic, and the metal, held all the names of those in metro Atlanta who’d died during the initial days of the Tech Wars, as a direct result of the actions of a madman. The ones who’d crashed when their automatic cars failed. The ones who’d starved to death or suffocated in their smart homes. The ones whose brains were eaten by viruses gone blood-borne. And the ones killed in bombs set off from military computers without their owners’ knowledge or okay.