by Tom Deitz
“Small world,” Scott muttered. “But as I was sayin’, where do I fit in?”
Again Mims tapped his photos. “You know how to survey, don’t you?”
Scott nodded dubiously. It was grunt work, but you didn’t major in geography (as he had briefly done) and avoid exposure to that. So was this Mims’s big offer? A summer spent surveying?
“I see what you’re thinking,” Mims said—having paused to catch the eye of a passing waiter so that food could actually be ordered. “And yeah, you’d be doing some surveying. But we also know you like to tromp around in the woods, so we thought that might sweeten the drudgery a little. And there’s always the small matter of the gemstones.”
“Gemstones?”
“One of the largest star sapphires in the world was found one county away. Scads of amethyst and other quartz variants from up there, never mind gold. We need you to check out the whole shoreline a mile to either side of that road in the picture, which is how much we hope to lease from the state, which appears to own it. I’d hate to try to build a resort when I ought to be building a gold mine; on the other hand, a little recreational prospecting on the side wouldn’t hurt attendance. Needless to say, anything you find on your own’s yours to keep.”
“Uh, how long would I be doing this?” Scott ventured. “I’ve still got a dissertation, and all.”
“Given that these can be construed as extraordinary circumstances,” Green broke in, “I can probably get you one more extension. Frankly, though, I think you ought to take it. Ralph here tells me they’ve other projects afoot and could use a staff geologist.”
“We pay well,” Mims added helpfully. He wrote down a figure on the napkin that had just arrived with his Bloody Mary, and turned it around to face Scott.
“Better than Barnett’s, anyway,” Scott managed, trying hard not to be too impressed—though he was.
Mims stretched a plump arm across the table, offering Scott his hand. “Fine, then; you’re on.”
Scott shook the hand mechanically, feeling as though these two men had completely hijacked his life, and wondering whether he liked it. (And what was that gnawing away in the back of his mind, telling him he shouldn’t do this?)
Oh well, it solved some problems and postponed others. It seemed the thing to do—for the nonce. And frankly, he did as well acting on impulse as after careful deliberation, most of the time. “Thanks,” he murmured, trying to sound grateful and low key all at once.
Mims cleared his throat. “What’re you doing this afternoon?”
Scott glanced at Green. “I, uh, had some stuff I was supposed to turn into you…sir.”
Green shrugged. “It’ll keep.”
Mims fairly beamed. “Fine, so you’ve got time to ride up there with me?”
Scott shrugged in turn. “Have hikin’ boots will travel.”
“Good!” Mims crowed, slipping him a hundred dollar bill. “Buy yourself a new pair. You’re gonna need ’em.”
Scott paused before pocketing the cash, but Mims waved it aside. “Now that that’s settled,” he proclaimed primly. “I think I know what I’d like to order.”
“Champagne,” Scott told the waiter, who had finally reappeared. “And… Oysters Rockefeller.”
“That a pun?” from Green.
“Huh?”
“Rockefeller. Rocks. Geology.”
Scott felt very foolish, “Oh, right. I see.”
“Oysters, hell!” Mims roared, shutting his menu with a snap. “Let’s have caviar!”
“But sir,” the waiter began. “We don’t have—”
“Well, get some!” Mims shot back. “Cost be damned!”
Chapter VII: Reunion
(Athens, Georgia—Friday, June 20—midafternoon)
David wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he eased through the door to Myra’s studio, with his brain half fried from an anthropology final he’d likely aced, but it wasn’t Wainamoinen, Lemminkainen, and Ilmarinen.
Yet there they were: arrayed in perfect tableau on a low pedestal beneath the skylight: three of his buds frozen in place in the guise of the three great Finnish heroes. Actually, identification hadn’t been quite that easy—they could’ve been any number of archetypal macho men. But it happened that Myra had some months back won a very lucrative commission to paint covers for a new edition of classic myths, and had already mentioned several times that the Kalevala—the Finnish national epic—was next on the agenda.
He propped himself against the doorjamb, watching.
Myra had certain rules when she worked. One was that though she didn’t mind having folks around, they were expected to remain silent unless she instigated conversation; thus Liz (who was a decent artist herself) was curled up on the sofa reading the latest issue of Graphis. Another was that she always required music—generally a high-energy film soundtrack, such as Conan the Barbarian or The Last of the Mohicans, though in this case she’d yielded to the obvious and was shaking the walls with the strains of Sibelius’s Finlandia.
A final quirk was that she insisted on using her friends as models. God knew he’d posed enough himself, clothed and sky-clad alike (that was another tendency, though generally only for pencil studies). Most recently Liz herself had stood for the previous volume in the myth series: Queen Maeve of Connaught in the Tain bo Cuailnge. His own time was yet to come—there wasn’t a ready market for short blond heroes, though he suspected Myra was eyeing him for Sigurd the Volsung.
As for the tableau—well, she was clearly making the best use of available resources. With his impressive muscles and acceptably heroic height, Gary had been the obvious choice for Ilmarinen, the master smith. Stripped to the waist, he loomed behind a cardboard box that she had already transformed in her sketch into an anvil. One brawny arm was upraised, brandishing a very real five-pound hammer; “to get the muscle tensions right,” was her standard line about such things. The other gripped a pair of salad tongs containing the stereo remote—a very odd Sampo indeed.
Beside him, Darrell had assumed the role of Lemminkainen, the warrior—risky, given Darrell’s perpetually foolish mien and spare frame. Or maybe not. Warriors were often fools of a sort, so perhaps she was sending a subtle message; certainly one who went a-venturing in the frozen north could quickly acquire a thin physique. (Besides, she’d draped him in skins, so his prominent ribs didn’t show that much.) His role in the tableau seemed to be that of anxious client, to judge by the way he was glowering while fingering a sword he might well have brought for repair.
As for Wainamoinen, the shaman-mage, Myra had lived up to her threat of the morning and cast Calvin in that capacity. Like Gary, he was shirtless (and also like him, showing some waistline pudge David hadn’t noted earlier); like Darrell, he was contemplating something in his hand. No, actually (as a closer look determined), he was contemplating the hand itself—if you wanted to dignify what far more resembled a cougar’s paw with that term.
David frowned at that, and not for the first time that day, either. Cal was a shapeshifter, that was a fact. He had a talisman—a scale from an uktena, a serpent-monster from a nearby World—that let him change form, at certain risk.
David knew he’d been working hard at learning how to shift without it, and to control the change either way—as now, when he’d altered only part of his body.
Still, it made him angry. For one thing, it was using magic frivolously, which wasn’t smart in principle, and which David happened to know Calvin’s mentor, Uki of Galunlati, had banned in the most explicit terms. And for another thing, if he was using the scale to effect the change (you primed it with your own blood, generally by closing your fist around it and wished to be whatever beast whose shape you would assume), he was running a second risk, for each scale carried a finite but nonspecified number of charges, and there was always a chance (especially with an oft-used scale) that you could get stuck in some alternate body. Having a friend with cougar claws permanently attached to his right hand was not a notion David re
lished, never mind the effect it would have on that friend’s musical endeavors.
He’d ignored the matter earlier, first from surprise, then from genuine delight at seeing his friend, and finally from the assumption that apparent frivolity or no, Cal usually knew what he was doing—that last borne out by the way his friend had tried to second-guess him upon arrival, with all that cryptic talk of things having “changed,” coupled with a host of warning looks and whatever. And if truth were known, he was a little pissed at himself for having left with the matter unresolved, given the way it had haunted him throughout the final he’d just completed.
But he’d waited long enough, dammit, and had just started to address the situation, in spite of Myra’s ban, when she sighed, laid her pencil down, and turned the stereo off with a snap. “Okay, guys: break time. Good job, so far, except Darry you really do have to learn how to scowl—oh, and Cal, you can have your old hand back. I’ve drawn the paw in special detail, and there’re always the photos, just in case.”
Gary exhaled expansively and lowered the hammer, reaching up with his other hand to massage what was obviously a very tired shoulder—not that he’d ever complain, not Mr. Testosterone Man. For his part, David grimaced in dismay. What Myra had done was not cool, if she had indeed photographed Cal in mid-shift. Christ, hadn’t they all agreed long ago not to risk such things? In paper, print, or paint, alike? The dratted enfield was bad enough (and he suspected Aik was about to make good his threats about enfield X-Rays, if he hadn’t already), and now to provide yet more hardcopy!
“You look like a blond stormcloud,” Myra informed him calmly—having evidently noted his glare in one of the studio’s many mirrors. “A small one,” she added with a smirk.
David bit his lip to keep from snapping at her. There was too much chaos circling already; he didn’t need to inject more tension. On the other hand, he really had sat on his anger long enough. “Been practicing, Cal?” he hissed, as he helped himself to a Guinness from the fridge before flopping down beside a very sleepy Liz.
Calvin shrugged. “Always. And since you seem disinclined to wait until we’ve got time for the long tale, the short form is that, first of all, it’s a new scale, fresh from Galunlati. And second, I’ve figured out how to keep track of the number of ‘charges’ left in it, and let me tell you, that one’s got plenty.” At which point Gary offered him a Guinness of his own—which he refused politely. Some bans, it seemed, Calvin still observed.
David lifted a brow, resisting the urge to ask for elaboration on a matter which Calvin seemed strangely reluctant to discuss. “You been back there?” he asked, instead.
A nod. “Uki was watchin’ me in his ulunsuti back in February—during the Great Snow—and saw how bummed I was by all that, so he zapped me off for a vacation in—excuse me—Indian Summer.”
“Friends in high places,” Gary muttered to Darrell, who was already inhaling Guinness number two.
David shook his head. “I dunno, man; still seems risky to me.”
Calvin cuffed him on the shoulder. “Can the serious shit, okay? You’re supposed to ask how Uki is, or whether I’ve decided to marry one of the Thunder Sisters, or something, not give me grief about responsibility.”
David masked his grimace with another swallow. “Something’s goin’ on,” he burst out. “I can feel it. The chaos beast is loose and something’s just waitin’ out there to dump on our heads.”
“Possibly,” Myra agreed with authority. “But don’t forget what night it is; don’t forget how tuned we are to that kind of thing; and don’t forget that everybody we’ve seen today is tied up with…magic somehow. I mean, think, lad; that’s bound to skew all our perceptions.”
“And speakin’ of perceptions,” Calvin cried, leaping to his feet, “I’ve just perceived the sound of a Ford V-8.”
“Should’ve named you Sharp Ears ’stead of He-goes-about,” David snorted. Edahi—Cherokee for “He-goes-about”—was Calvin’s tribal name, which he anglicized as Fargo.
“Shoulda named you Smartass ’Possum, ’stead of White ’Possum,” Calvin shot back, already halfway through the door.
Myra lifted a brow at a smirking Liz. Then: “You don’t have one of those handles too, do you?”
Liz shook her head. “Missed that particular soirée.”
“I’ve missed ’em all,” Myra admitted. “Except one—which was enough, thank you very much.”
“Hasn’t hurt your paintings,” David retorted. “Don’t think I don’t know you only go Trackin’ with us ’cause you hope you’ll get to see the real thing.”
Myra sighed wistfully. “Well, it’d be nice to have the genuine Nuada Silverhand pose for one of my covers. Probably not handsome enough, though.”
Liz looked up from her reading. “No danger!”
Myra started to reply, but footsteps had sounded on the stairs: several sets, of various weights and pacings. She sighed again and eyed her refrigerator speculatively. “How did I wind up being ground zero?”
“Free beer,” David advised—and promptly rose to score another.
Two, rather, a second for himself and one for the voice he’d recognized from the cacophony now assailing the upper landing. An expected voice, as a matter of fact, with whom Cal was conversing animatedly. But there was also a third that sounded suspiciously—and disturbingly—young.
“Sandy!” he yelped, as the door opened to admit a much-encumbered Calvin, followed by a blondish, denim-clad woman roughly Myra’s age and size, but with far more striking features of a vaguely (but inaccurately) Native American cast. Like Myra, however, she sported a lithe, athletic build and evinced a similar disdain for makeup. Her hair hung past her waist. Sandy Fairfax—a high school physics teacher whose North Carolina cabin Calvin had been sharing for years—looked confused for the merest moment, then dropped her own load of gear to give David not only the obligatory hug, but also a pair of smooches: one for each cheek. Even as they embraced, David dragged her away from the entrance.
“Dave!” she protested. “What—?”
“Been waylaid in that door too many times today,” David confided. “And best I can tell, there oughta be at least one more of you.”
Sandy broke free and returned to the landing, to peer down the stairwell. “Gone for the last load,” she explained over her shoulder.
David gnawed his lip. “Who…?”
“Brock.” Calvin replied beside him, his face a mix of resignation, bemusement, and despair.
David rolled his eyes. “I hope you know what you’re doin’.”
Calvin rolled his in turn. “Ask Sandy.”
“Brock?” Myra called from the door. “Oh, right: the English kid—”
“American,” a young male voice corrected from the foot of the stairs. “Savannah, by way of Tampa—”
“Like Piper,” Myra mused, joining him. “God, this is becoming Grand Central Station.”
By which time the owner of the voice had puffed his way up to the top of the stairs, his breathlessness accountable in large part to the enormous suitcase he was lugging. It was a boy in his early teens; slim and fair-skinned, but with a flag of black hair hanging nearly to his waist—nearly as long as Sandy’s in fact—and dyed, to judge by the much lighter roots. He had intense blue eyes and looked, David thought, a little fey—as though he’d seen more than a kid his age ought to have. Not, he hastened to add, that Brock (whom he’d encountered exactly once, at the tail end of one of Calvin’s adventures) was much younger than he’d been himself when he’d first met the Sidhe on a July night. The kid was gazing at him oddly, too: as though he knew more about David than David would like for him to know. And there was a bit of what he suspected was adoration present as well, or perhaps hero worship. Calvin, he feared, had been blabbing.
“Hi, guy!” David grinned, relieving the boy of the suitcase. “Welcome to Athens—again.”
“Cooler inside,” Myra urged from the door. “And if I’m gonna have more guests, I’d kinda lik
e to meet ’em.”
It was Calvin’s turn to blush. “Oh, right: I forget who knows who, since I know all you folks.”
“Right,” Liz chimed in. “Does everybody know everybody? I mean really, not just by reputation?”
“Myra Buchanan,” Calvin intoned formally. “Allow me to introduce Brock-the-badger No-name, hot off the boat from Merry-Olde.”
“Hot out of the car from Savannah, you mean,” Brock corrected, as he shook Myra’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he continued politely, with an accent which was an odd mix of British and Southern.
“Hi,” Myra beamed. “I’ve heard a bit about you myself, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, wow!” Brock enthused, blushing.
“That can’t be your real name,” Gary drawled, as he rose.
Brock froze, as though confronted with an ambulatory mountainside. “Brock’s an old term for badger, and badgers are real hard to kill. They also don’t have last names.”
“His real name’s Stanley Ar—” Calvin began.
“No!” Brock shouted so forcefully everyone stared. “Sorry,” he continued, blushing. “Just as soon you didn’t, though.”
“Sorry,” Calvin echoed, ruffling the boy’s hair—which provoked a scathing glare. More introductions followed (neither Gary nor Darrell had met Brock before), then a chaos of questions and answers which got everyone sorted out. That concluded, Gary donned his shirt, grabbing Darrell by the ponytail as an afterthought. “Beer,” he announced. “We need to get more beer. C’mon, Runnerman; let’s do some runnin’.”
“Surprised you didn’t bring Don Scott while you were at it,” David murmured to Calvin as they arrayed themselves around the studio. Brock’s eyes, needless to say, were huge. So much for being a jaded city kid. Then again, Myra’s collection of knickknacks would’ve made all but the most ardent pack rat forsake that vocation in despair.
“Actually,” Sandy admitted from Calvin’s other side, “I asked Don, as a courtesy, but he wasn’t interested. Said he really wanted to keep on pretending everything was normal.”