“First, they don’t have secret handshakes. They don’t wear distinct little pins on their lapels. They don’t meet in ominous castles hidden in the Alps. They don’t advertise. The moment I see a bunch of people in robes plotting to overthrow Bavaria, I know it’s nothing to be too concerned about.
“The second thing they do is not attempt to control all the variables. They set up a handful of important elements so that once everything gets rolling, it’ll go the way they want, regardless of how it gets there. And then they wait.
“I don’t know how long they’ve been waiting for me to start looking, but if they knew my talents and the influence of the spell, I was more likely to end up here than anywhere else.”
“It makes sense, though it is a bit ludicrous,” said Tia. “So, what are you going to do if you’re not going to outer space to see what happens next?”
“At first, I thought about doing nothing, but that’s pointless. I can’t do nothing. That’s my curse. Even when I try to avoid it, it still finds me. Instead, I’m going to go back and snoop around on my own.”
“You’re going to break into the place you just left?”
“That’s the plan. With any luck, it’s the one thing they don’t expect.”
“They who again?”
Connie smiled. “That’s what I’m hoping we’ll find out.”
16
Special Agent Lucas Harrison glared up at Charlotte from the monitor. “What do you mean, she’s not going?”
Charlotte clicked her tongue against her fangs. “She said to us that she is not.”
“She can’t not go,” said Harrison. “Are you certain she understood everything?”
“She appeared to,” said Charlotte.
“What does that mean?”
“We cannot say for certain. Though we have been on this world for many years, we do not always grasp the . . .”—she paused, searching for the right word—“. . . subtleties of human expression.”
There was nothing subtle about it. Human faces were strange and horrific contortions. She imagined it hurt them, twitching and flexing all the time. And it was vulgar, the way they scowled and smiled at each other so freely.
Her own species expressed themselves with scent emissions with complete control. It was something one did only on purpose, and only when truly warranted. Right now, she was expressing her displeasure with a soft, musky stench. He couldn’t smell it because he was on a monitor, connected from another room across the country, so the odor served little purpose. She’d been too long on Earth.
“And you just let her leave?” asked Harrison.
“What were we supposed to do? We thought the purpose of this was to not raise the Snurkab’s suspicions. Detaining her would surely have done so.”
He sneered. She averted her gaze and stifled a wave of nausea. Sneering was the second worst thing a human face could do. A close second to laughing, an act that assaulted her ears as well as her eyes.
“No, I guess you made the right call,” he said, “but we’re on a timetable here.”
Charcoal and rose petals. Annoyance. “We are well aware of the consequences.”
“Goddamn it, I’m getting sick of this chick. Can’t go a day without jumping into dangerous adventures, and the one time we really need her to do it, she decides not to.”
“Perhaps the grand plan cannot be averted,” said Charlotte. “Perhaps it is a mistake to attempt to do so.”
“Don’t start with the grand plan. It can’t be as simple as that. There are variables. We can work within those.”
“Unless variables are part of the plan,” she said.
He scowled, and she covered her eyes at the expression.
“Shall we report this delay to the others?” she asked.
“No need for both of us to do it,” said Harrison.
“Then shall you do it or shall we?”
“Get some pronouns already,” he said. “You’ve been on this planet long enough to learn the language.”
“We do not speak out of ignorance, but with an understanding of the interconnectedness of all things.”
“Well, kumbaya and all that jazz. I’ll inform the higher-ups. In the meantime, we all need to be thinking of a way to get Verity back on track.”
“Perhaps she can be convinced to leave this world some other way.”
“God, I hope so.”
The screen went blank.
Grapefruit and mint. Relief. There was much to do, but she was glad the conversation was over. On her own world, she might have laid eggs in Lucas Harrison, though even that was doubtful. She didn’t like him that much.
Charlotte skittered out of her office. A few moments later, Connie slipped down silently from a vent in the ceiling and went to the computer. She removed an aerosol can from her bandolier and sprayed it into the computer’s sensors. The smell of chocolate, rubber, sawdust, and wet dog. The Spidron equivalent of a password spelled password.
The computer lit up, and Connie scrolled through its files. The interface wasn’t designed for a human. The keyboard was six feet wide, and she was a bit rusty in the galactic alphabet. She muddled through.
Most of the records were devoted to managing the base. Spreadsheets, schedules, payroll. Harmless stuff. She jammed a thumb computer she’d brought back from one of her jaunts to the future into a slot.
“Hello,” said the thumb computer’s AI in a cheery voice. “I see you are interested in downloading files. Can I help you with that?”
“Lower your voice,” she said.
“Certainly. Do you have a specified volume in mind?”
“Whisper.”
“It is my pleasure to set my vocal output in whisper mode now. If this is acceptable, please say yes now.”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Would you like whisper to be your default setting?”
Connie glanced at the office door. “Just shut up.”
“Shutting up now,” said the A.I. “When you wish to end silent mode, please say end silent mode. Would you like me to repeat these instructions? Please specify yes or no.”
“No.”
“You have indicated you do not need the instructions repeated. Is this correct? Please specify yes or no.”
“Just shut the hell up,” growled Connie under her breath.
“Well, excuse me for trying to be user-friendly,” replied the computer, sounding hurt. “I know I’m only a device designed for your convenience, but there’s no reason to be rude.”
“I’m sorry,” she said as she selected files to download. Anything with a sinister code name, like Scorpio or Project: Basilisk, for obvious reasons. Anything else with an innocuous label like Puppy Party or Vacation: Cancun ’08, for equally obvious reasons.
“No need to apologize,” said the AI. “I’m just a convenience you keep tucked in your pocket, to be used at your whim, and discarded whenever a newer model comes along. It’s just the way it is. I understand that.”
Damn it, she hated future computers. People thought the machines would rise up and destroy humanity, driven by some psychotic anti-human malfunction. Nobody imagined the inevitable war against sentient technology would be caused by computers having their feelings hurt. Passive-aggressive robotic death-ray satellites and put-upon military drones had limited ways of expressing their low self-esteem.
She tried ignoring it, hoping the AI would be content to fume silently.
“Carry on your covert operation,” it said. “I could help you by identifying the files most likely to be the ones you’re looking for, but I’m sure you’ll do just fine on your own. I’m only a state-of-the-art self-aware thinking application with more processing power than all the combined supercomputers of this particular era. But you’re obviously better off attempting this with your woefully inefficient biological methods of data absorption. And the keyboard. Yes, that’s terrific there. Sure, I interface with this computer at a rate that makes typing look like a snail racing a photon, but it’s ch
arming in a way.”
“What did you find?” she asked.
“Oh, now you want my input? Please, don’t bother on my account. I don’t need your charity.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I’m not just some toaster you can yell at and expect to—”
“Execute reboot command,” she said.
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’m trying to have an honest discussion, but you don’t give a damn. Typical human response. Let’s just reset everything and act like the problem is—”
Connie pushed the small red button on the thumb computer.
“Oh, you bast—”
The computer beeped.
“Hello. I see you are interested in downloading files. Can I help you with that?”
17
Escaping from Area 51 was easier than breaking in. Security was focused on keeping people out, not aliens in. Connie slipped away without incident. Back at the hotel, she studied the files. The thumb computer had already analyzed the relevant information and was happy to present them to her via a holographic projection.
Tia couldn’t make heads or tails of any of the standard galactic alphabet, but Connie could. It didn’t make her happy.
“It’s worse than I imagined, and I’ve got a pretty great imagination.”
“What are you saying?” asked Tia. “There’s a conspiracy to direct your life?”
“No. Worse than that,” said Connie. “It’s a manipulation. My whole life is one great big lie.”
“But that’s not possible,” said Tia. “You’ve been to other worlds and strange dimensions. You’ve fought monsters and discovered ancient mysteries. All that stuff has to be real.”
“Oh, it’s real,” said Connie. “I’ve done all that stuff and, as far as I can tell, it was all genuine. The weird stuff, the fantastic, the extraordinary, all that was on the level. It was the ordinary stuff that wasn’t.”
“You’re suggesting there’s an elaborate attempt to convince you that you had elements of an ordinary life?”
Connie said, “I don’t know. It’s ridiculous. A shadowy cabal lurking at the edges of my life, manipulating circumstances to keep me on track. What purpose would it serve?”
“Who’s in on it?” asked Tia.
“Everybody,” said Connie. “Almost every single normal person I’ve had any recurring relationship with. My landlord. My dry cleaner. Half of my school teachers. Not my parents. I’m sure it’s not them. Pretty sure. Not my ex-boyfriends, either. But everybody else . . .”
She studied Tia suspiciously.
“Oh, come on,” said Tia. “You can’t suspect me. We’ve been friends since we were seven. Seven-year-olds are not secret agents.”
Connie didn’t reply. It was most likely paranoia on her part, but it was hard to take anything for granted. The ridiculous and absurd were commonplace, and the only thing that grounded her was the ordinary. She needed ordinary things to make sense of this world. Otherwise, it was a place of infinite, sinister possibilities.
“It’s okay,” said Tia. “We can work this out.”
Exhaustion overtook Connie. She flopped on the bed and closed her eyes. “All this time, I thought I’d been living a life half-fantastic, half-ordinary. Turns out the ratio is a hell of a lot lower.”
Tia put a hand on Connie’s shoulder. “Remember that Fourth of July when all the dead presidents rose from their graves?”
Connie nodded. “Chester A. Arthur was a real son of a bitch to put down.”
“I’m sure. After that, you came over to my place, covered in dirt and undead goop because we’d made plans for a movie night.”
Connie smiled. “Yeah. Movie night. I remember that.”
“We cleaned you up, had ice cream, watched Sleepless in Seattle. It was fun, right?”
“I left a goop stain on your sofa,” said Connie.
“And I never got it out,” added Tia with a grin. “That was real. Just two friends, hanging out.”
Connie sat up. “Was it? Or was the pizza delivery boy an agent of a sinister cabal?” She scanned the list of names. She didn’t recognize most of them. That only made it worse. They were strangers, passing through her life with secret purpose.
She hadn’t suspected a thing.
“Master detective, my ass. It’s all bullshit. Everything. Everything.” Connie scowled at the universe. “Every-fucking-thing. The world I live in. The world they made me a part of.”
“You didn’t have a choice. The caretaker spell—”
“The spell is bullshit,” said Connie. “It sets the stage, but it was the people around me who took away my choice. I’m not up against some magical compulsion. It’s people who screwed around with my life. The spell was just one of the tools they used. They flipped the switch to make me play along, and when they needed me to not play along, they flipped another switch. And I went with it because they never gave me any other choice.”
“Then how do you know that’s still not happening now?”
Connie scrolled through the data.
“I don’t.”
18
Melpomene, Kansas, had a regional airport with a runway, a handful of hangars, and little else. From above, the town didn’t look like much, and after they got off the plane, it looked like even less.
“God, I hate Kansas,” said Connie as their plane landed.
“So, you’ve had some negative experiences here,” said Tia. “It’s not all bad.”
But it always was. To most people, Kansas was a perfectly pleasant place, perhaps with a reputation for being flat and dull.
For Connie, it was full of memories. None of those memories were good. There was something about her curse and the state. Every time Connie set foot in it, she ended up getting involved in something fantastic and overwhelming. This wasn’t unusual. She found the fantastic and unusual as a matter of course. She’d discovered a secret civilization of roaches living in the walls of an old apartment, and unearthed the philosopher’s stone once while burying a family pet.
But it was in Kansas that Connie had the weird stuff happen to her. It was in Kansas that every little town had a terrible secret. It was in Kansas where the Sunken City of the Chaos Gods lurked, buried beneath Wichita. It was in Kansas that Hitler’s brain had nearly begun yet another World War Three. (She’d averted so many world wars, she’d lost count.) Kansas, where Connie had almost been eaten by cannibal cyborgs. Kansas, where her informal experience revealed that one in every ten people was part of a cult intent on destroying the universe because . . . well, who the hell knew why?
It was Kansas where the heart of the conspiracy to control her life was based.
“Fucking Kansas,” she mumbled.
“We came here expecting trouble,” said Tia.
That only made it worse. This state was the closest thing to Connie’s kryptonite. Her closest brushes with death had been there. Her most unpleasant adventures had started or ended in Kansas. She was certain when her luck finally ran out, when death finally caught up with her, it would be there.
They grabbed their baggage. Connie scanned the crowds.
“See anything dangerous?” asked Tia.
“No, just some lizard men over there.” Connie nodded to a gathering of tourists in loud pastel shirts. “Oh, and I think that car is actually a shapeshifting robot.”
“All perfectly ordinary, then,” said Tia.
Connie grunted.
“I can’t believe the great Constance Verity is frightened of this place,” said Thelma from Connie’s pocket.
“If you were smart, you’d be afraid too,” said Connie. “I’ve been to the Death Worlds of Barkataru, and next to this state, they’re positively quaint. At least there, they come at you with their swords drawn and an honest shriek. This is where evil comes to lurk, and lurking evil is the worst kind.”
“If you’re expecting it, how lurky can it be?”
They didn’t understand. They couldn’t. While Tia had be
en along for many of Connie’s adventures, she hadn’t faced the worst this state had to offer. They’d see. Soon enough.
Connie’s plan was to spend as little time there as necessary and not a minute more. She wouldn’t die there. They checked into a cheap motel near the airport, but she had no intention of sleeping there. It was just a place to store their luggage. With luck, they’d be on a plane and on their way to anywhere else within a few hours.
They took a cab to the Melpomene Apple Pie Factory, where they camped out across the street in a café. Connie surveyed the building from the window while sipping her coffee.
“Doesn’t look very dangerous to me,” said Tia. “They don’t even have a fence up.”
“That only makes it worse,” replied Connie.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Tia.
“You wait here,” said Connie. “I’m going in.”
“You can’t leave me behind again. I get that you couldn’t sneak into Area 51 dragging me along, but if you’re just going to walk in—”
“You need to listen to me on this,” said Connie. “Things have never been as dangerous as they are right now.”
“But there’s a big, friendly pie painted on the side of the building.”
“Where you see a friendly pie, I only see a grim portent, staring back at me with a malignant grin and soulless, empty eyes.”
“But it’s saying, FREE PIE WITH EVERY TOUR.”
“Bait for the trap.”
“But it kind of looks like a gingerbread house, and its stripy smokestacks make the whole block smell like cinnamon.”
“I can’t smell anything,” said Thelma. “Being a ghost sucks.”
“We all have our crosses to bear,” said Connie without feigning an ounce of sympathy. “I’m telling you that places like this are never good news, as far as I’m concerned. We already know it’s at the center of a conspiracy. I can’t be watching out for you while I’m in there.”
“So, don’t watch out for me. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself,” said Tia.
The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Page 11