Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2)

by Matthew Storm

  “Meow,” said Jeffrey.

  Oliver returned to the windowsill and carefully placed the plate down between the two cats. “And now I guess I’ll go in the other room,” Oliver said. Jeffrey nodded at him as the other cat began to eat. Oliver went back to the pan, plated the rest of the shrimp for himself, and went into the living room to watch television.

  Half an hour later he went back into the kitchen. The plate on the windowsill had been licked clean and both cats were gone. Oliver took the empty plate and put it in the sink. He’d deal with the dishes later. He couldn’t help but wonder where Jeffrey and the other cat had gone. What did cats do on dates? Was that a date? Did cats even think in those terms?

  He went back into the living room to find his cell phone buzzing, with Tyler’s number on the display. “Hey,” Oliver said.

  “Hey. How was work?”

  “There’s nothing going on.”

  “Good. Did Seven find anything interesting with the cyborg?”

  It occurred to Oliver how much his life had changed in the last few months. Was there anything interesting besides being attacked at their office by a cyborg from a parallel Earth right after they’d come back from killing Dracula? “Just that it was already dying by the time it got here. It had some kind of teleportation device it used, but we don’t know much about that yet.”

  “They’d been working on that for a while,” Tyler said. “Good thing the war was over before they got it working, or we’d all be screwed.”

  “Probably,” Oliver said. It would have been difficult for anyone to fight an enemy that could disappear at will and reappear anywhere they wanted. “How’s Sally doing?”

  “She’s been like a zombie, but she’s coming out of it. Sally’s a warrior. We’ll be in the office tomorrow. I’d just as soon we had something to do to keep her busy and keep her mind off things.”

  They talked for a few more minutes, Oliver mentioning Jeffrey’s “cat date,” which Tyler found hilarious. “I can’t believe you cooked them dinner,” he said. “At this rate you’re going to wind up with a litter of talking kittens.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Oliver said. Then again, he didn’t know that wasn’t how it worked. He hoped not, anyway. One talking cat was already a handful. Half a dozen would be another matter entirely. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night.”

  Chapter 7

  Sally and Tyler were indeed back in the office the next day. Sally looked a bit on the ragged side to Oliver’s eyes, as if she’d been up all night and keeping herself going with far too much coffee. Oliver wondered whether she’d been unwilling or unable to sleep. He could well imagine her dreams were never pleasant ones.

  On any typical morning when they were all in the city, the team would gather in the conference room for tea and their morning briefing. Artemis would advise them about any situations they were monitoring or give them new assignments. There was nothing urgent happening today, though, and the most interesting thing anyone had to talk about was Jeffrey’s “date.” Tyler brought up the idea of talking kittens again, which he still seemed to find enormously funny. “Could that actually happen?” Oliver asked Artemis. He’d have had to admit he’d been warming up to the idea, if only a bit.

  “Unlikely,” the girl replied. “He is biologically still a cat, after all.”

  “But his brain works differently now,” Oliver pointed out. “He doesn’t think like a cat. He thinks like a person.”

  “He can think any way he likes, but it does not alter what he is. If you began speaking Chinese, would your babies be Chinese?”

  Oliver wasn’t sure that was the best analogy in the world, but he was willing to let it go. Seven had perked up, though. “I can do a brain scan on him,” he offered. “I’d love to map his neural pathways. Of course, I’d need another cat for a baseline, but I could probably work out how extensive…”

  “That will do,” Artemis said. Oliver doubted the cat would have been willing to sit still long enough for a brain scan, anyway, even if he wouldn’t have considered it a gross invasion of his privacy.

  “So you think he’s not genetically different from other cats?” Tyler asked.

  “Perhaps in some ways, but I would not think in any of the ones that matter.” She looked at Oliver. “He can talk because you wanted him to talk. He can think because if he could not, he would have nothing to say. As you explained it to me, he was changed because you desired companionship. I doubt very much you were considering…” she paused. “There is no way to say that delicately.”

  “Just talking,” Oliver said quickly. “Definitely not...anything else.” While Oliver had been lonely at the time, he’d never been that lonely.

  “Should we be gifted with talking kittens…” Artemis sighed. “Well, Mr. Jones, you must understand I couldn’t have them, or at that point Jeffrey, running loose in the world.”

  Oliver nearly gasped. “You wouldn’t kill them…” he began.

  “No, certainly not. We have a place set aside for things that must be contained, in the event we can’t control them.”

  “The island,” Tyler said.

  “We were going to send you there if you decided not to join us,” Sally said. It had been the first time she’d spoken all morning. She looked at Artemis. “I’m pretty sure you almost sent me there once, too. Maybe you should have.”

  Artemis looked at her for a long moment. “And yet, I did not. You have value in this world, Salera. Do attempt to remember that, won’t you?”

  Sally took a sip of tea. “That’s not my name anymore.”

  Artemis watched her for a moment longer and then looked away. “I think that’s enough for this morning,” she said. “Mr. Jones, you have files to review. I expect you to be a bit more up to speed the next time we talk. You are all dismissed.”

  Oliver spent the rest of the morning reading old case files. If he worked anywhere else he probably would have found file review boring, but at Araneae opening each new file was like starting a new science fiction novel. He could probably spend the rest of his life in one of the vaults reading and investigating the objects earlier lineups of Artemis’s field teams had brought in. It wouldn’t be a bad way to spend his retirement, if retirement was something the Group offered.

  Did they have retirement? Oliver had never thought to ask before. Other than the ageless Artemis, nobody he had met working there was older than 40. Of course, if going up against lizard people and vampires was par for the course, maybe nobody lived much longer than that. Or maybe all of them eventually ran off to become priests in Cleveland, or conspiracy theorists, or…who knew what? Locked up in a mental ward didn’t seem outside the scope of possibility.

  Oliver joined Sally and Tyler for lunch at a Mexican restaurant down the street. A group lunch was a custom when they all happened to be in San Francisco at the same time. Seven joined them on rare occasions; Artemis never did. Whether that was a reminder that she was the boss or she just didn’t care to eat at lunchtime, Oliver didn’t know. He knew the girl did eat, having seen her do so, but it occurred to him that he didn’t know if she actually needed to. That might be worth asking at some point, if he caught her in good enough a mood that she wasn’t likely to take his head off for it. Artemis didn’t suffer a lot of personal questions.

  Sally only picked at her food as Oliver and Tyler ate. Oliver found himself wondering what he could say to make her feel better, but nothing came to mind. This wasn’t the kind of thing Hallmark made a card for. The store didn’t have a “sorry your past came back to haunt you” section next to birthday wishes and holiday greetings.

  Oliver had been back in his office for an hour when there was a gentle knock at the door. He was a bit surprised to see Sally standing just outside. Normally she just walked in if she wanted to see him. “You got a minute?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  Sally took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. That was another first; Oliver had nev
er seen her sit there before. “I wanted to ask you something,” she said, rubbing her hands together. Oliver waited. “It’s about the lizards. The Kalatari.”

  “I think I know where this is going,” Oliver said.

  “You wiped them out. Your power…it destroyed their entire race.”

  “I know,” Oliver said. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “Oh, I knew that. You felt terrible, I know. It’s just…” Sally leaned forward slightly. “I remember you said once you didn’t mean to kill them. You weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”

  “I doubt I could have hurt them if that’s what I’d been trying to do.”

  “Then how did you do it?”

  Oliver didn’t have a great answer. “You realize there’s no Hogwarts for this, right?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Really? You’ve seen Dracula but you don’t know Harry Potter?”

  “I started with the classics.”

  “Fair enough,” Oliver said. “I mean I didn’t go to school for this. What I’m learning here, I’m learning from this,” he held up one of the files, “but there isn’t anyone like me. Everything in my file is stuff I already knew or put in there myself.”

  “But you did those things. You made Jeffrey talk. You wiped out the lizards.”

  “Yeah. With Jeffrey, I’m not really sure. I said things would be easier if he could talk, and suddenly he started talking. I didn’t will for it to happen. I didn’t wave my hands over him and say magic words. It just happened because on a subconscious level I wanted it to. I don’t know if that makes much sense.”

  “It makes sense. What about with the lizards? You wanted them to leave you alone, so they all vanished?”

  “No.” Oliver thought about it. It wasn’t that he’d wanted them gone, and it wasn’t just because he’d wanted to live. It had gone deeper than that. “I didn’t want to kill them, you understand? I wasn’t trying to commit…” he stopped just short of using the word genocide. “I don’t think I’m putting this very well.”

  “You’ve thought about bringing them back, haven’t you?” Sally asked. “I know you must have.”

  “Is that what this is about? Bringing the cyborgs back?”

  “Maybe.”

  Oliver nodded. He’d seen this question coming. “Yes. I have thought about bringing them back.”

  “But you don’t. It’s because you can’t, isn’t it? You would if you could; you’re that kind of person. So what makes it different? Because it’s easier to destroy than to create?” Oliver blinked. He’d heard Artemis use that line before more than once. He might also have seen it on Star Trek.

  “No, because…you remember I’d been drugged more than once when all that was going on. I’d also been hit in the head quite a few times.”

  “One of them by me, I think. Sorry about that, by the way.”

  “It was actually the day before, but forget about it. I was barely aware of what was going on around me at that point. I thought I was delusional. I didn’t believe the Kalatari were real. I actually said that to the Matriarch just before…”

  “Just before they weren’t real anymore.”

  That was more or less it, Oliver thought. That, and the sound of rushing water that only he could hear that always seemed to accompany any manifestation of his power. It had been almost deafening when he destroyed the Kalatari. “Exactly. And the thing is, I can’t just convince myself now that they are real and have them reappear. I know they’re gone. I’d have to somehow trick myself into believing that they were up and walking around outside or something.”

  “You had to believe,” Sally mused. “And what you believed became real. Interesting.”

  “I guess.”

  Sally stood up. “Thanks. Good talk. It was really…therapeutic for me.”

  “Oh,” Oliver said. “Um…you’re welcome.” He watched as she left his office. That might have been the most unusual conversation he’d had in a while, he thought. It might have also been the longest he’d talked to Sally one-on-one before.

  Jeffrey was waiting at Oliver’s house when he got home later that night. “I was thinking we should have Thai food tonight,” the cat said. “Something spicy with noodles.”

  Oliver had decided he wouldn’t bring up the subject of talking kittens, but he was still curious about last night. “How was your date?”

  “It was fine. She liked the shrimp, and she thinks you’re very well-trained.”

  “She said that?”

  “Not in so many words,” the cat said. “We don’t really have language. Well, not the way I do now.”

  “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Oh,” the cat said. “Thank you. I won’t pee on your bed anymore.”

  “Thanks.”

  Later, over rice noodles that Oliver had cut into very tiny pieces so the cat could eat them without making a mess, Jeffrey said, “Do you think you could?”

  “Could what?”

  “Make her talk? Make her like me?”

  Oliver sighed. Was this all anyone was going to ask him about anymore? “No. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you really want me to?”

  The cat thought it over as he toyed with a piece of chicken. “It would be nice to have someone like me around. It gets lonely, being unique.”

  Oliver nodded. “I guess that makes sense. Maybe someday, when I have some control over this thing I can do. I can’t now. I’d probably just turn her into a clock or something?”

  “A clock? Why would you turn her into a clock?”

  “It was just an example.”

  “Oh. Okay. Do you want to watch Star Trek tonight? You’ve earned it.”

  “No.”

  They watched Doctor Who instead.

  Chapter 8

  A week went by during which nothing of any special note happened. There were no incidents involving ancient vampires, none with werewolves, and no aliens made their existence known. To be fair, Oliver had yet to meet an alien and wasn’t entirely sure they really existed. Then again, he wouldn’t have been at all shocked if during his reading he’d learned that Artemis and one of her previous teams had repelled an invasion from another galaxy at some point in the past. Very little took him entirely by surprise anymore.

  Oliver finished going through the files he’d been assigned just before lunchtime and went into Artemis’s office to report. He waited as she set a clothbound book she’d been reading aside and was surprised to see he recognized the title. “The Other Side of the Sky?” he asked. “That seems like an odd choice for you.” He’d read the book as a teenager. It was the first in a series of fantasy novels about a man who traveled to a magical world and became a wizard.

  “Why is that, Mr. Jones?”

  “Because it’s not an ancient text written in a language I can’t understand. I didn’t know you read for fun.”

  “I do, but today I am not. You are familiar with the book?”

  “I read it a long time ago. It’s kind of a Tolkien knockoff, if I remember it right. Elves and fairies and all that. Did you know the author disappeared? I think it was during the 1950’s. He went for a walk one day and nobody ever saw him again.”

  “That may not be entirely correct,” Artemis said. “However, it is not important at the moment. You have finished the files I gave you?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you learn anything interesting?’

  Oliver thought it over. Everything he had learned had been interesting, but he knew full well Artemis was going to want him to say something specific. “I was surprised the Loch Ness Monster was real.” According to the file, it had died of old age in 1847.

  “Ah, yes,” Artemis nodded. “The poor, lonely creature. Last of its kind for all those years.”

  Oliver hadn’t thought of it that way. The file hadn’t referenced other Loch Ness Monsters, but logically, the creature had to have ancestors. “Yeah
. I guess being unique really isn’t easy.”

  “Are you referring to me, Mr. Jones?”

  “No, I was thinking of Jeffrey, actually. He said it could be lonely. I guess the same thing is true for you, though.”

  “Is it?”

  Oliver’s eyes widened. “Oh, my god,” he said. “Are there more of you?”

  The corner of Artemis’s mouth twitched up ever so slightly. “No, Mr. Jones. Not anymore, anyway. But that is an entirely different set of files.”

  “Really?”

  “No. There are no files on me.” She tilted her head slightly. “Well, that is not entirely true. There are certain texts in which one can find references to my existence. When I was younger and did not have the luxury of being anonymous, I had to keep a higher profile. There were certain tribes, long ago, that worshipped me as a living deity.”

  “Really?” Oliver asked. He hadn’t heard this story before. “How did you convince them you were a god?”

  “By the many miracles I performed.”

  “You can perform miracles?” Other than her apparent immortality, Artemis had never demonstrated any other kind of power.

  “Behold.” She studied Oliver’s head carefully. “What is that, Mr. Jones, behind your ear?” She leaned forward, plucked a quarter from the space just behind Oliver’s right ear, and then displayed it to him. “And that is only one of my many amazing powers.”

  “But that…” Oliver sputtered. “That’s just sleight of hand! It’s the oldest trick in the book!”

  “Of course it is, Mr. Jones. But a long time ago, it was the newest trick in the book. Sleight of hand kept me safe for a very long while.”

  “Wow. I never even thought of that.”

  “If you have a hat, I have another miracle involving the production of rabbits.”

  “You’re just messing with me now.”

  “Yes,” Artemis nodded. “But I am pleased that you have been learning. As we have very little else to worry about at the moment, this is the perfect time to further your education.” She pressed the intercom button on her phone. “Seven?”