“Hey kitty,” he said, hoping it wasn't aggressive. He crouched down and rubbed his fingers together in its direction.
It made an unhappy, basso “mmrow,” and turned away in digust, dissolving into the lilac shadows.
Jude stood up and drew out his gun, sliding the safety off. He could smell fish and something else he didn't like. He began to try rooms, searching them one by one. The first was the man's bedroom, tidy, his desk covered in papers and diskettes in stacks. The second was the bathroom. The third was the living room and it was dominated by audio equipment and a vast climbing gym. Silvery fur coated the sofa and the gym surfaces like spider silk.
The kitchen was last. Knowing the cat was already there and not nervous he assumed no other strangers were in there either. A draught blew the front door shut and he jumped, fresh sweat springing onto his skin. He put the light on.
The cat was crouched by Tetsuo's head where he lay, spread-eagled and cock-eyed, between the units and the cooker. It was licking and grooming one of its owner's eyebrows with long, white teeth, half-heartedly nipping the skin. Jude scowled in revulsion. The back of the guy's head had been blown off and it looked like the cat had been making free with the bits.
Jude waited a few seconds for his gorge to settle down, then drew out a pair of vinyl gloves from his jacket and went to check if the body was still warm. It was cool on the surface, so he must have come straight home and been killed immediately. Blood and matter coated the doors behind him and had spread on the floor in a spray. The smallest spatters there that the cat hadn't bothered to clean up had dried in the arid air pumping from the con unit.
He searched Tetsuo's pockets quickly, found his Pad and a toy mouse with an elastic tail, nothing else. Had he come back here to get whatever it was he'd promised Jude?
Looking at the cat was making him feel sick. Jude moved to get its scruff but the cat sidled away from him with a sly look and padded across the body quickly, like a big fat lady trying to dash across the street in high-heeled shoes. It preceded him, looking back as he shooed it out of the room, but as he searched the cupboards and drawers he caught sight of it often, standing just near him, looking up with dilated pupils, calculating.
He found the cat chow and put a dish of it in the hall. The cat ignored it and continued to follow him from room to room, never closer than leg-length away, never further. Occasionally it made a disapproving sound and once he heard its claws ripping at the ropes on its playposts behind him as he moved through the living room. As he glanced at the gym the cat sprang with surprising lightness to a shelf at Jude's waist height. It rubbed its cheek against a wooden column and followed his gaze as he looked up to the higher surfaces. They were all clean.
Jude gathered by the lack of fur that the cat hadn't been up to the top in some time. He was admiring Tetsuo's dedication and invention in making the construction when he saw a toy, fur matted, lying on its side on the highest section where a long tube ran up to a small platform covered with plush carpet. He reached up and brought down a fat teddy bear with both eyes missing and most of its seams ripped out. Kapok stuffing hung in clumps here and there. At the sight of it the cat half-heartedly pawed at Jude's suit leg, its claws snagging the cloth. He swore, pushed it aside, and stuck his finger into Teddy's chest. There was something in there.
It was a small cardboard carton, labelled with CDC marks that had been hastily scrubbed out with a marker pen.
The cat made an ominous, caterwaul-type revving sound in its throat and he tossed Teddy at its head, “You can shut up, owner-eater.”
Inside the box was a fine-foam container, about an inch thick. Inside that was a vial of smart-lead-lined safety glass of the type used to transport Micromedica products, sealed. Jude put the empty box back on the gym's high board and placed the foam container in his inside pocket. He called the police, anonymously, as he left, locking the kitchen so the cat couldn't go back in. It followed him to the door and stood staring after him.
Whoever had killed Tetsuo might not be far away. They couldn't have looked for anything, or Jude wouldn't have found it. They could even have planted it there. He didn't know. It didn't matter. He had to get back and test what he'd got. There was no help for poor Tetsuo now, especially since the cat had probably eaten most of the ballistics evidence. He shuddered at the memory of it sitting there, vacantly licking the man's face.
Outside, the sweltering sun had begun to go down. The air felt like a warm tongue, lying against Jude's exposed skin. He called a cab and got the hell out.
Nostromo still had no answers for him about Natalie or Dan. He called home. White Horse recognized his personal number.
“Everything's fine,” she said. “Mary was here to see you. She's going on some trip and wanted to let you know. I told her she could stay, and she did a while, but then she had to go. She said she'd see you day after tomorrow. She's going to stay home and do the paperwork.”
At least something was going right.
Late that night, just before they closed, he delivered the vial to one of the lab specialists at his offices who could deal with BSL-4 and other organisms.
“You don't have any idea what it is?” Nell Rush looked down at the innocuous vial with deep suspicion.
“I think it came out of the CDC.”
“Unauthorized?” she seemed unwilling to touch the foam packing with more than the lightest support necessary. “This looks like nano to me. Microware. Maybe not. He worked where, this informant?”
“Antiterrorist.”
“Shit,” she said and closed up the packing over it. “Okay.”
“Nell.” He caught her sleeve.
“I know, I know. Don't discuss until I've seen you. Give me tonight and tomorrow. I'll try and check it by then, but I have a ton of other work on from Meyer and his partner. Ghetto eugenics.”
“Thanks.”
“Don't mention it. Just keep sending the cheques.”
Jude stood in the Washington night outside the building and looked at the sky. No stars were visible, only a wash of light pollution reflecting from the clouds. Out there somewhere a lot of things were happening, and he was glad right now that he didn't know any more about them. But as he turned his eyes towards the road and started walking to the Metro he couldn't shake the memory of the vacant stare of that big, fat cat.
White Horse knew of Mary, although they'd never met. Mary seemed pleased to see her, and annoyed when she heard that Jude wouldn't be back until later that evening. White Horse invited her to wait, thinking he wouldn't be long—he'd said by seven. They sat down together in the white room and let the TV play quietly in the background. White Horse drank coffee. Mary had tea, which White Horse couldn't find, but Mary knew the kitchen better and located it first look.
“Huh,” she said, looking at the box. “Run out again. He never remembers to get it at the store.” She was going to leave the empty pack out, but on second thought picked it up and put it back in the cupboard, manicured hands adjusting its position perfectly. White Horse glanced at her own hands, burnt and callused, but she made no effort to hide them. Mary could think what she liked.
At first the conversation was tough going but, White Horse realized, once they'd got onto the only subject they had in common—Jude—it was clear that Mary was closer to him than she was. She tried not to notice the possessive jealousy that grew on her as they spoke; it was her fault the years had gone by in silence. At least this terrible set of circumstances would give her a chance to fix that now.
Mary, relaxing in the couch, began to tell her about their long-term pursuit of this one guy, omitting details she said she couldn't mention because of their secrecy. White Horse could see how much the flippancy of her telling revealed the kick she got out of having access to power and inside information.
“We first came across him when we were trying to convict these Russian mafia thugs for running steroid simulants into their pet basketball players in the Leagues—you know they're big on sports here.
These drugs, they'd been altered in some real clever way to fool the body into thinking it needed to produce more of particular chemicals itself. Then, after, there was another set they used to filter them out of the bloodstream, so that whenever testing was carried out there wasn't much chance of them getting caught. You know, after all that nandrolone hoo-ha was finally sorted out the legal ranges for a lot of 'natural' chemicals had to be recalculated and they played on that…so, there they were, trading players and making money and Jude and I finally catch up with them in Detroit where they've got a warehouse full of this stuff and a laboratory set up in one corner churning it out…but the guy who orchestrated it all, Ivanov, is already long gone on to something else.”
She paused and finished her tea and White Horse waited for more. She thought Mary'd assumed she wouldn't understand some of it and was deliberately dumbing it down but she didn't say anything. She wanted to know about Jude.
“No way to get a conviction on him, as none of them would talk and there was no documentation. So, a few months later we're looking into some suspected small-time anthrax brewing, down in ‘Bama where they still think that either they can use it to finish the government or, when the time comes, donate it to the national defence effort if the A-rabs decide it's time we were napalmed for blasphemy or whatever.” She shook her head of bright, copper curls and snorted a laugh, in the way White Horse associated with white politicians ready to make a condemning statement against some person they'd got it in for.
White Horse smiled and nodded, to show she agreed how stupid they were.
“So, we'd got these four real home boys down at the police station and one of them decides he's gonna be a patriot. No way is he gonna take the rap and not drag down the foreign guys who've set them up, over the Internet, with the necessary know-how. He starts talking about this group we recognize as mafia names, traders in all sorts of survivalist shit they bring over from Eastern Europe, you know, knives, ex-military guns, and those tool things and all that Living in the Woods baloney…”
White Horse nodded. She knew it very well. Mary meant International Publications, and she had some of their books. It wasn't the best woodcraft or country living as White Horse would have understood it, but it would have worked. They also had regular magazine issues on violent revolution and other activist, anarchist stuff. The way Mary talked she didn't think much of it.
“…And we trace them through the Net to the places they're getting the original seed kits from and who is it but Ivanov's mob, another branch, ferrying chemicals and biological agents out of old Soviet installations and with old Soviet scientists working for them back in the homeland. A real industry of old weaponry and old ideology!” She grinned. “They were our biggest bust—we worked them through the mill together with the ATF and Customs. Jude did the best on that. He was the one who went undercover and got to know them so we could make some easy setups. His Russian is native speaker. Does he talk Cheyenne?”
White Horse was disarmed by the question. “He can,” she said, truthfully. Then she added, “But he doesn't.”
“I hear you had a falling-out a way back,” Mary said, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “But it's something he doesn't like to talk about. Are you getting it together at last?”
Her interest seemed too blunt to White Horse but she made herself answer. “We're talking.”
“Good,” Mary crossed her long legs and twitched her top toe playfully. “To be honest, Jude takes work much too seriously. When he took off to his mom's…which parent is it you share?”
“Father,” White Horse said, thinking She must know that already, or has he said so little about me? Us? Even though her image of Jude had been one of a white boy who'd sold her out, an image she knew was melodramatic and fundamentally untrue, she was disappointed by this. Had he been able to pretend she didn't exist?
Mary was blithe. “Yes, when he took off to Seattle I was glad, really, he had to chill out; even though it meant I was left on my own with the latest Russian thing—baby-doctoring, would you believe? The man has his fingers in everything.”
“So why haven't you arrested him yet?” White Horse asked.
“He has government protection.” Mary pulled a face to indicate that she thought that was too bad. “He must have. Every time we try to pin him down the evidence vanishes, the people shut up or die or…” She waved her hands around. “Hell, anything to make sure he escapes. Had plastic surgery, too, in his time—changed passports, houses, cars, everything.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew. It's a bitch.” Mary rolled her eyes. “I think he must be bringing in expertise that the government likes to use, pulling strings they can't officially touch—there's more than one of that type of guy out there. They're allowed free rein as long as they occasionally drag in something that the DoD wants or needs. And if our investigation touches on those things, then they keep us out.”
White Horse smiled in agreement: she knew about that. But she was curious; the machine and her house were on her mind. And her likelihood of survival. She rubbed carefully at a burn and tried not to appear very interested. She wasn't sure if Mary had followed this line for a reason, if Jude had told her everything.
“If you tried to pursue it, what would happen?”
Mary smiled, “I don't know exactly. Probably end up in an accident or get pulled in and fired…blown so low that nobody'll believe a word you say about anything. End up in ‘Bama trying to make bombs to stick in the president's car and writing articles for the National Enquirer.” She looked at her watch, “If he doesn't get here soon I'm gonna go. I have a stack of work waiting at home.”
“More tea?”
“Just a glass of water.”
As White Horse picked the mugs up Mary said, “Forgive me for asking, but, what happened to your…” and she indicated with her finger an area around her own neck, ears, and hands.
“There was a fire at my house,” White Horse said. “Electrical. I got out okay. It's not serious.”
“Looks bad.”
“I have pills.”
“Staying over while your place is fixed up?”
“Yeah.”
Mary followed her to the kitchen and leaned on the breakfast bar, watching White Horse pour herself another cup of coffee. “Hey,” she said, “you know, I'm not being a hundred percent with you. Jude told me, you know.”
White Horse glanced at her and saw her making a goofy kind of face to cover her embarrassment. Under her pale skin a pink blush rose and fell briefly. She gave White Horse a sympathetic look and took the offered glass from her. “It's difficult for him, you know, to offer his help investigating like that. His job is on the line. Maybe his life, if it's as bad as you think.” Her blue eyes were deadly serious and tiny lines around her coral mouth dug deeper.
White Horse felt guilty. “If we don't do something then the People will lose the land,” she said finally.
Mary sighed. “Yeah. I understand. My parents got kicked out of their old home when the place was redeveloped for a much better paying market. They didn't understand that the lease meant they didn't have to leave. They thought a few hundred bucks was a good deal for a bunch of ex-coal pickers.” She shook her head and her gaze was distant, misty. When she glanced back she smiled and gave a firm nod. “Luck o' the Irish, huh? You've got to try and hang on.” She drank the water and handed the glass back. “Thanks. You know, if I can help you at all…you're going to need more than a shit-hot legal, someone who's not afraid of the worst that the government will throw. Someone who can pay for protection. You need a journalist. I can make a few calls, let you know.”
“Thanks.” White Horse showed her out, feeling that Jude must have done something right out here. “I'll tell him you were here.”
“Tell him he'd better call me or there's trouble!” Mary waved from the hall.
She had a nice smile, White Horse thought.
Dan scrubbed the kitchen floor on his hands and knees. The soapy water was as
hot as he could make it. His hands were sore. He felt a bit of an idiot, like some Catholic going through the motions in the stupid hope that it was going to make a sod of difference to what he was, had done, would be.
It was the last thing in the flat to clean. Everything else was polished, waxed, scrubbed, washed, beaten, aired, laundered, ironed, sent to the dry cleaner, or thrown out. He was exhausted. The clock on the wall that had ticked away every hour he'd lived there with Natalie said it was an impossible four in the morning. He was exhausted, but he wanted to carry on. He did the last four inches again. He didn't know what he'd do when he got to the last foot or so. Wait for dawn, the time to die.
Natalie would never come back. Dan sat on his heels and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, feeling its spongy heat with both satisfaction and despair. The Ministry had sent her off with her father and he'd heard, from the rumour mill that was the staff lounge, that she'd agreed to go to America, on some faster, more perfect version of the big project. She hadn't called him and he hadn't been able to get through to her number or the house on the Mount which, until that man came, she'd avoided like the plague.
The way she'd looked at him in Q-1, though. She had been changed. She'd just known. He was a bastard. He'd told on her to that Shelagh and he couldn't tell her about it, but he hadn't had to. That system really had made her more intelligent or something. When she'd looked into his face—he shuddered and bent down to the floor, rubbing as hard as he could at a tiny yellow mark on the flooring.
“Out, damned spot,” he said to himself. “Out, out, out,” and laughed, because he was a fool and fools had to say this dumb thing and make that fatal mistake and then laugh about it. But Lady Macbeth had been an ambitious bitch, and that hadn't been his problem at all. Lack of ambition, really. A fatal kind of happiness in his mediocre lot.
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