by Pam Uphoff
"My parents . . . George's mother. I'm going to have to tell his mother . . . "
Snow started drifting down. From here he could see a few lumps of cars in the parking lot. Even once the roads were open they'd have to dig out the parking lot. The toe of the avalanche had come in from the left, but it had already run out of steam. He couldn't tell from here if there were cars under it. He hadn't the faintest idea where Dirk and Andy had parked the rental cars.
"Not even noon and it's getting darker." Char shook her head and turned away from the window. She propped herself in a comfy chair near Rior. "You're here with the Guy in the Suit, aren't you?"
The Black Wolf looked over at her. "Me? Certainly not. I'm with the ladies who are going to kill him if he doesn't learn to leave them alone."
"Oh, sorry, wrong group."
The pale blond boy ran up for a quick hug and then off to rejoin his friends. They seemed to be building a fort out of miscellaneous broken furniture and table cloths in the far corner. It must be fun to have two 'brothers' always on tap.
"How many of this herd of children are yours?"
"Oh, we've all been raising all of them. But that one, and the three five-year-olds are all mine genetically."
"Wow."
He shrugged. "The women like babies."
Jim pondered Rior's black hair. Dyed? The kids were all so fair. Fair haired. Even the redheads had tanned complexions.
He prowled back to the windows. There were no lights showing in the gloom. No rescue was going to get here soon, probably not until hours after it finally stopped snowing. He could see the reflection of the room in the windows now, see Bellamiso entering the room with his wife and two bodyguards.
The physicist's widow looked over at the kingpin as he sat down. "I thought it would be such a nice vacation, but they really came to meet him."
Berkeley.
Physicists.
Drug Lord/Arms Dealer/Expediter/Arranger.
Add them together and what do you have? A new energy device that wasn't funny when blowing up a suburb of Tech Valley was mentioned? I've been reading too many thrillers. He tried to focus out on the storm, but it was too dark. Overly melodramatic ones.
Bellemiso is not going to leave here with anything but the clothes on his back and handcuffs. The Animals have never killed anyone. If they escape, we'll just have to catch them later.
***
The best thing about being snowed in with a batch of criminally inclined magicians was that they were rather nice fellows.
Ajha shuffled cards and dealt. They were playing poker at two tables, and the deputy had pointedly said that there would be no gambling, that everyone would walk away from the table with as much as they brought, and the coins were just for keeping score. Some of the ladies were off playing bridge.
Fean, of all people, was sitting on the floor with a baby in her lap, chatting with Betelgeuse, the mother of one of the toddlers. One! He'd like to kidnap the whole bunch of the Fallen, the way they glowed. He was breathlessly afraid to ask if Fean had had any of that infamous wine while romping with her Fallen wizard. Did she realize that he just might be able to get her pregnant? He needed to warn both her and Baik about that. No telling whether they'd like the idea or be horrified. Baik's glow hadn't changed. Sensible cautious Neartuone that she was. Hmm, the woman, the wife of the man with bodyguards had a nice glow as well, and the lady next to her as well. He looked carefully at the rest of the people. The head FBI man had a touch of glow as well. For all the genetic engineering phobias on this world there were a fair number of people running around with enough of the right genes to be at least subconsciously magical. On this world, the moratorium on human experimentation was more or less honored, there hadn't been any armies of 'supersoldiers' since the Russian troops had run amok in Delhi, when they were supposed to be providing technical assistance to their Pakistani allies. And even that was just a rumor.
Still, three out of the sixteen Natives in sight, was rather surprising. I certainly wouldn't have thought nearly twenty percent were engineered. I'd better pick up a larger sample size before we leave next week. And check the other Worlds.
Speaking of duties. He walked cautiously down the north hallway to his old room. The building hadn't collapsed yet, so he really ought to collect all his gear. Not that he had much, but no need to lose even a little alien tech here. He hauled it all back to his new room, and sat down to contact the other Information Teams and ask if they'd noticed an unusually high frequency of engineered natives on the World-page.
No one was on the network at the moment, so he left a brief open message. Then he keyed up a complete report and downloaded that to everyone as well, with a note to the effect that they would deliberately miss their first pickup, so all the other groups could get home first, then he and his team would need to go straight into isolation due to probable exposure to Fallen von neumanns.
When he got back to the lobby, Fean was watching in fascination as the Cook and the Witches baked bread in a big covered pot on the coals of the fire. They had two big pots of something that smelled delicious simmering to the side. Apparently being snowed in and without power wasn't that bad of a fate, when you had cooks from a Medieval level world around.
Ajha got pulled back into a poker game and was shortly fighting to keep his pennies out of the hands of both friends and enemies. The bodyguard type couldn't play worth beans, and finally gave up. The other table was about played out as well, and they all decided to eat lunch and possibly play more later.
***
Jim cursed silently and let himself out of Rior's two rooms. He was clean. No sign of a mask, only six hundred in cash. He'd recorded the serial numbers on the bills, but left them there. He eased down to the next room. The Fox's room was clean. The next room was now occupied by Jade the Black Cat and Betty the Badger. The door opened to the manager's key he snagged in the office, and he slipped inside. No mask, but bingo! A whole bunch of money. Bundles of hundred dollar bills. He snapped pictures and took a couple of bills. The setup at the table was especially interesting. A stack of consecutively numbered bills, and in front of it a shorter stack with a different series of numbers. Or rather, the same numbers scrambled. If these were from the same series as the first stack, numbered consecutively . . . they'd each had two to four numbers swapped. He snapped pics and took one bill from each pile.
He decided to limit his further risks and retreated to the door to the balcony and outside stairs. He'd left his boots and coat outside and shivered as he hastily donned them. The wind was coming up a bit, but he took care down the stairs and only skidded twice. He stayed in his room long enough to warm up, much longer than he needed to check the lists of the serial numbers of the bills stolen in Atlanta. Three of his four bills were on the list, only the one he suspected was altered was not. Martha followed a tap on his door.
"What are you up to?"
"Burglary." He showed her the bills and she compared the numbers and then dragged out a magnifier and examined the altered bill.
"Damn good swap, this. I think you're right, but I can't see a thing. Where's an expert when you need one? No wonder we haven't found any of the stolen money. If they can do this with any speed at all . . . I wonder if they pay in cash here? We may be able to find bills from the other robberies as well. Really slam them!"
Jim nodded, and she eyed him sharply. "What else are you plotting, Boss?"
"Bellemiso. What are four physicists doing meeting him? He supplies guns, ammunition, tanks."
"And a new power source?"
"At best. You heard the lady better than I. Something about nuclear power. So they have access to hot stuff."
"Umm. Plans for building a nuke are all over the internet. Did they actually build one?"
"And is it out there in a car trunk under a layer of snow?"
"Huh. I thought you had a more refined taste in reading than I do." She grinned up at him.
He winced. "Umm, have I ever mentioned my g
randdad in the army? Percival Delta, they called him. Great old fellow, I really miss him." He turned and tried to stare out the window. Unfortunately all it gave him was the reflection of Martha sitting down suddenly.
"I'm sorry. I should have told you sometime, said something." The Greek alphabet last name was a dead give away, a freak straight out of the vat.
She shook her head and shivered. "No, don't look like that. It's not . . . it's my mother, or rather, my father. My grandfather's company had an office in New Delhi, you see. She was fourteen, when the Paki's closed in on the City, with their Russian 'advisors.' They put her on that train to be evacuated. The train they stopped. The Russian supersoldiers that got away from their controllers. They took a few of the young women with them. Once she got away from them it still took her months . . . Things were really chaotic, she had to run for it, figure out how to stay ahead of the fighting. She couldn't speak the language, didn't even know what country she was in. By the time she got home, she was very pregnant."
He knelt and put his arms around her, and she flung an arm around his neck. "I've never told anyone that. I've been telling myself all day that you of all people wouldn't turn away from me. But I was afraid to . . . I've been trying to make myself casually mention it to you for a couple of years now."
"Do you mean we've wasted a couple of years being overcautious?" He started laughing. "Let's get out of here before someone finds us doing something really embarrassing."
"Bag your evidence. Whatever Bellemiso is up to, we've got the Animals solid."
"Yeah. I'm going to almost feel bad about jailing the Deer. Devlin says he pulled him out of the solidified snow in the dining room, and then hunted down those physicists, and then went into the kitchen and lifted a door off two of the kids, and dug out the manager. She was almost gone, he said she wasn't breathing. Eldon did some quick first aid on the kids, then helped pull the rest of us out of our rooms—and the people on the ground floor were seriously trapped, one of them knocked out cold."
She nodded. "Give him a medal, then throw him in jail."
They walked back out in silence and joined the rest for lunch.
Chapter Nine
Monday 14 November 2015
Dice Creek
Eldon ran his eye over the prospects and sighed. The pretty people were done. Fean had been fun, but there'd be no romping in the snow today. She was back to being a professional Oner Team member. He'd ceded Baik to Heso, so she was off limits. The police women, and the Park lady was also sort of a cop, well, he wasn't insane, had no death wish at all. He grumbled good naturedly and checked the Cook's kids. The boy's leg was looking swollen and sore.
"You're running around on it too much. Bones take time to heal, even with me giving you the magic wine. Got that? Right. Now drink some more. Where's your sister? Cousin? Whatever" The girl's hand looked good, all the bones nice and straight and healing. "If I leave this off, will you remember to go easy on it? It'll take another two weeks before these bones are as strong as they used to be."
She nodded shyly. "I'm sorry I used to be so afraid of you."
"Aw, that's just common sense. Anybody will tell you that. Just 'cause I'm good at first-aid doesn't make me nice."
"We shouldn't have done the Voodoo." He caught a glimpse of a memory of a fire and drums and dancing. A chicken and a doll made out of wax.
He chuckled. "Voodoo? Now that sounds like fun." She was damn near old enough to be interesting, so he removed himself from her vicinity quickly.
One of the maids met his eyes across the room with a smoldering hot gaze, and slipped away into the north wing. It was the younger, darker one, Kesha, the dancer in the girl's memory of this Voodoo thingy. He grinned and followed her down to the last room. She had it all ready, but not the way he'd expected.
"Ah, Bawon Samedi, your horse has come." She lit candles.
"Huh?" Eldon studied the obviously prepared room as the other maid lit the incense sticks in the black bowl in the middle of the room. Marree went to the corner and started thumping a small drum. Kesha was stripping off her clothing and dancing to the rhythm. Whatever. He produced his flask of wine, took a sip and offered it to the dancer.
"Bawon Samedi, come and ride your horse, I lie at the crossroads and I don't want to go to Guinee. Come ride your horse and tell again that I am not to die."
"Die? No way." He cleared his throat, the incense was powerful stuff and he was completely plugged up and sounding nasal and odd. "You drink this. Your drummer drink this." He slipped on something and flailed a bit. "Drink this, Mambo, strong Mambo. Come and dance with me." What?
She danced up against him and placed a silly big hat on his head, and took three long swallows of the wine. Then she danced around the smoke column.
Eldon stooped to put the flask within reach of the drummer and started chasing her.
"Ride your horse, Bawon Samedi, and let me live."
"Let me catch you and I'll show you how alive you are." He tried dodging around the other way, and she laughed as she spun out of his grasp.
"Ride him, let us please you, anything you want Bawon Samedi."
He spun around in the smoke, feeling very off balance and disoriented. He could barely see the drummer, draining his flask and then the pace of the drumming picked up and the dancer whirled and teased and laughed and when he tripped and fell, leapt on him and rode his pony good. He didn't even manage to get up off the floor before the drummer deserted her post and pulled him down on her. And then he drummed while they both danced and he chased them around a bit and caught them several times. He let out the goat and deer and then the pony as well.
And then he was sitting on the floor, his sinuses killing him, his bones aching, the hat and drum and bowl gone. Nothing but him—when had he lost his clothes? Oh yeah, even before he started doing morphs. His clothes were all over the place, and the empty flask was sitting in the corner. "Dang. I think that was fun." He scooted over to his clothes and dressed without trying to stand up. Corked the flask and pocketed it, then grabbed the door frame and pulled himself up to his feet. "Wow. Right. I can walk." He staggered down the fractured hallway and back to the lobby. The fresher air helped enormously, his sinuses squeaked and his ears popped. He slipped around to the kitchen and hunted around until he found where they kept the wine. He filled his flask and tested it, yes, there'd been enough joy juice left to turn more, then he pocketed the flask and found a wine glass, hell several, and another bottle and took them out to an empty table. He filled a glass, caught Rior's eye and received a nod.
He handed over a glass and sat beside him. "So, when we going to pack up and leave?"
Rior shrugged. "Falchion, Jade and I talked about it. We think we ought to go back to Comet Fall for a short break. Catch up on news, see if we can find out what happened to the rest of the gang. So Falchion figures she needs about fifteen minutes to open a gate there. She says home is easy to find."
"Humph. Well, it's a nice enough place. But there's no TV, no football. But I might be able to get one of my buddies to cough up some info."
"Yes. And I think we should look into the gold mining situation again. We need a stable home for the children, and a mining claim—with of course modern amenities—would do. We could sell enough gold locally to be credible, and sell the rest in modern worlds getting all the goodies we're used to."
"Huh. Yeah, that would be good. Nice. Maybe get our own hot springs. I'm gonna miss football, though."
Rior nodded. "I'll miss the libraries. But not for long. We can, after all, move as often as we wish."
Eldon nodded and settled back to doze off. He roused briefly to see the Suit bothering Betelgeuse. He smirked a bit and wonder how long the fool would last if he tried that on Jade.
He wandered over and listened to the man's interesting underlying precepts. At the same time he desired Betelgeuse, his contempt for all women leaked through. Eldon shook his head. "That's stupid. Why don't you like women? They're marvelous, beautiful,
fun, friendly, sexy. Why the hatred and contempt?"
Bellemiso had spun around at his first words, snapping out a weak attempt at a push. Eldon batted it away without bothering to shield. The Suit paled, and Eldon felt the shock of fear shoot through the man. "Get out of my mind Freak! Women are parasites, vicious, backstabbing, cheating, money grubbing . . . "
"Man, you're chasing a different class of woman, here. You better play nice or you'll get hurt in a way you never realized was possible." Eldon walked off shaking his head. How did a man come to hate women like that? Bellemiso turned back to Betelgeuse and found she'd escaped and was in the children's area. He followed. Eldon watched him thoughtfully. He was obviously attempting to collect witches . . . He turned his eye to the man's scruffy little wife. Not so much scruffy as having given up. Pathetic. Defeated. Even her little bit of glow looked disheartened. She definitely needed to be bucked up.
***
Jim shivered a bit as he saw the Deer decide to seduce Bellemiso's wife. Or girlfriend or mistress or whatever she was. Bellemiso was so tied up in looming over the Badger, that he didn't notice Eldon cross the room, pour more wine and accost the woman. Badger, had someone said her name was Betelgeuse? Whatever. She could see the byplay beyond Bellemiso and played him along a bit.
Jim concentrated on Bellemiso, as he listed the perks a . . . witch . . . would have in his employ. Or better yet, his bed. There had always been rumors about the 'uncanny' abilities of the engineered. Mind you, a dog had fifteen times as acute hearing as a human, so being able to hear three times better than a man wasn't hardly uncanny. But some people always believed, and apparently Bellemiso was one of them.