The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  “Are you sure? I doubt you’ll find anything; the police have gone over all those lost-people homes.”

  “But not with precognition. The Lamb thinks he can find it.”

  “Find what?”

  “What we need. Whatever it is.”

  “Go for it,” he agreed, kissing her. One of the things she loved about him was his reliable support of her endeavors, whatever they were.

  She went for it, trusting the sheep. Banner took care of Bela at home, while Elasa drove with the animals to the deserted office of Yon the Private Eye. Guided by the Lamb she sneaked around to the dark back door. It was locked, of course. But Python slithered into a vent, and before long the door opened, unlatched from inside. Elasa, Bunky, and Vulture entered. They were successful housebreakers, or whatever. There did not even seem to be an alarm.

  Inside Elasa used a small flashlight, though she could fairly readily make her way in darkness, as could the animals. Vulture stood guard at the open door, in case anyone came. Guided by the Lamb and continuing thoughts, Elasa made her way to the kitchen, opened the panel of the cupboard beneath the sink, saw dirty sponges and bottles, reached in, found the grimy knob, and turned it. What was she going to get, a drip of filthy grease? In a moment it swung out, revealing a small compartment. Oho! No wonder the police had not tried this. Yon had had a cunning notion how to hide something private. She reached in and found a small machine: a pocket recorder. Bunky’s thought confirmed it: that was what they had come for.

  She tucked it into a pocket, closed the compartment, and followed the animals out of the house, carefully closing the door behind her. With luck no one would know they had even been there, let alone found something the police had missed.

  “I wonder what is on this, that makes this so important,” Elasa mused as she drove home with the Companions. “I hope it’s not a message from the grave, as it were.”

  Bunky bleated, amused.

  When they got home, Elasa checked the unit more closely. It was a standard almost antique model with a battery backup. She plugged it in so as not to drain the battery, and turned it on. It turned out to be a somewhat jumpy narration by the subject, Yon Yonson, who apparently did not fully trust modern devices like holo recorders or the Internet and had kept this very private verbal record for his own information. Until he disappeared.

  This was exactly what they needed. She listened, entranced.

  Chapter 2:

  Yon Yonson

  My name is Yon Yonson. I don’t live in Wisconsin, ha-ha. I’m a would-be private investigator who washed out of training for making too many stupid mistakes. So I’m a fucked-up dick. So now I work at the local jute mill and dream of PI glory on the weekends.

  Well, this wealthy family contacted me for a gig. I told them I didn’t have the badge, but they said they knew that, what they wanted was my expertise, off the record. Really off; no BingGoogle, no official records, nothing that could be traced or that would alert the authorities that anything was going on. They already tried that and got nowhere anyway. So I had to leave electronics out of it and do it the old fashioned way, physically, no record. Strictly low profile, gumshoe. That is, sneaking around. So okay, they paid my fee in advance, in cash, and I got on it. I guess I was what they could afford, who would do it their way and stay out of the news. Why not? I have no family, no living relatives; I was adopted as a baby. I could move about without making a scene.

  It seemed their daughter, a pretty gal named Adela, age eighteen, abruptly vanished. No trace whatsoever. Police thought maybe she just ran away. No, they were sure she wouldn’t do that. Was she abducted, raped, murdered? No sign of foul play. She was on her way to a college class, and didn’t get there, and it was hours before anyone noticed. She was quietly gone. Anything in her background? Not so you’d notice. Her dad had been in space, one voyage to that colony planet, what’s its name, Jones, setting up a business connection. Odd coincidence: my dad too made such a voyage; that’s the one thing they knew about my anonymous parentage. Lotsa people did, especially crewmen, which they had to replace often because they didn’t like being stuck in space with only fembots to play with for a year at a time. The pay was good, very good, which was why they did it once, but that was enough. Once the exchange technology was developed, few folk traveled there physically any more anyway; it wasn’t worth it. Anyway, no clue there.

  I went out by night, checking out the scene. Just classrooms, walks, bits of grass and hedge, nothing out of order. Then I checked by day, students galore, many pretty girls, guys surreptitiously gawking at them. Nothing unusual there either. Adela, by her picture, was one of the best to gawk at, with her pretty face, hourglass figure, and what they told me was extreme poise. She didn’t dress to encourage it, but she couldn’t be mistaken regardless of clothing. She could wear a fish barrel and still be eye candy. But she had a sharp tongue to put boys in their place when she needed to. She was smart without advertising it either; again it couldn’t help showing when she focused on a point in class. She could handle herself physically, too; she took martial arts classes and was good at them. Maybe her folks were prejudiced, but I looked at a yearbook, and others said it too. A gal I’d liked to have known.

  So what happened to her? It was as if she had simply walked off campus and into empty space. Never came back for her stuff at home, never said good-bye to anyone, never used her ID or credit cards. Nobody else did either, so they weren’t stolen. She just disappeared. I hated to think it, but it looked from here as if some love-struck goon might have grabbed her, chloroformed her, and taken her away in his van, never to been seen again. Yet even that scenario didn’t work well, because there were surveillance cameras everywhere. One showed her on the day she vanished, walking nonchalantly along, no care in the world. The next one didn’t show her. That had to have been where it happened. But in a crowded campus she couldn’t have been abducted. Only maybe if she was lured to a car, someone asking for directions to the next class. Someone she knew. And nobody she knew would have hurt her. So it still didn’t make sense.

  One other thing: I had the sense of being watched. Now I may not be a good private eye, or even an average one, but this is basic: I know how to avoid being observed when I’m observing. No one was following me or spying on me, and I avoided surveillance cameras. So what was the source of this feeling? I trust my hunches. Someone was focusing on me, and I had no idea who it was or how it was being done. I did not pick up any hostility; it was more like a neutral study, like noting the spot on the suit of a passing businessman. But it was there.

  So here I am at the end of the day, stymied. Damned if I’ll give it up, though; I just have to come up with a new angle. What can that be?

  So I went out again to the nocturnal campus, after classes had finished and the buildings were locked. There was really no point in it; I just somehow thought maybe I could get a notion there. I went to the place near the surveillance camera, just beyond its range so that my presence wouldn’t activate it, and stood alone. “Where are you, Adela?” I asked the emptiness rhetorically.

  “I am here,” she replied behind me. I jumped, surprised; I had been certain I was alone.

  There she was, as pretty as her picture, definitely alive. “Adela, I could hug you!” I exclaimed stupidly in my astonishment.

  “As you wish.” She stepped close, opening her lovely arms to me.

  What could I do? I hugged her. She was completely solid and real and delightful in her limber slenderness. She smelled faintly of new mown hay, an unusual perfume. I was already coming to love her. I had studied her, trying to fathom her likely situation, and come to know her well enough. She was my ideal girl. Yes, I know: a PI never gets emotionally involved with a client. An excellent rule. I never said I was a good PI, did I? “But why!” I asked as she let me go.

  “We must talk, Yon,” she said. So she knew my name. She must have been the one watching me.

  “Whatever you wish. I presume you know that I’m a pri
vate dick hired to find you?”

  “Of course. And you have found me. But this is not the place to talk.”

  “Lead on, doll,” I said gallantly.

  She smiled, appreciating my feeble attempt to be a smart-ass dick, and led me to a room in an unoccupied building. She sat me down on a work bench. “We will not be disturbed here.”

  “Adela, you know your folks are worried sick about you,” I said. “They don’t know whether you’re alive or dead.”

  “I know, and I regret it. But I must cease to exist.”

  “Then why did you contact me? You know I have to report to your folks.”

  “You must not.”

  “I have to! That’s what they hired me for.”

  “No. No report.”

  “Adela--”

  She cut me off with a sudden kiss. It had its intended effect: it rendered me speechless.

  “I will tell you about us. You must agree to make no report,” she repeated.

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  She kissed me again. I did not get my mouth closed in time, and she tongued me. She was young but clearly no innocent.

  I got the message. “No report,” I agreed. “Anything you tell me will be like client/attorney privilege.”

  “Exactly. You may tell my folks just one thing: that I am alive and well, and love them. That they should stop hunting for me. They need to let me go.”

  “I will tell them that,” I agreed. “But--”

  She pursed her lips.

  “But no more,” I concluded, yielding to the inevitable.

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “But I still have a question. This one’s for me. Why tell me anything, if I can’t relay it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know! Adela, it makes no sense to contact me without good reason.”

  “I agree.”

  “So what is your reason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I eyed her. “Will you stifle me again if I try to say the obvious?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  My foolish eagerness for another kiss warred with what little was left of my professional ethics. “Why don’t I just shut up and you tell me what you choose to, off the record. Then you can kiss me if you care to.”

  “That will do,” she agreed. “I am an Aware. That is, I know exactly what to do in any situation. I don’t know why, only what. That gives me more power than you might think. For example, I can disappear.”

  “You did that before. That’s why your family hired me.”

  “Like this.”

  She disappeared. I was looking right at her, and she faded out. I blinked, but she did not reappear. “Adela, are you there?”

  “I am here,” she said behind me.

  I twisted on the bench. There she stood, touchingly close. “You have an invisibility cloak?”

  “No. I merely know how to escape notice. You were focusing on me so hard that you continued to see me where I had been, even through I moved. Then you realized I was gone. I never became invisible, merely unnoticeable.”

  “I have trouble believing that. I’m a trained observer, and--”

  She disappeared again.

  “Point made,” I said quickly. “But it sure looks like invisibility.”

  She reappeared. “But it’s harder to do when there is more than one person, so we tend to avoid crowds. And of course cameras aren’t fooled.”

  “Cameras!” I said. “The surveillance camera showed you, and then the next one didn’t.”

  “I became Aware, and knew to avoid the next one,” she explained. “But I’m not comfortable where the cameras are; it is too much effort to avoid them all. Similarly it’s awkward not being able to use credit cards, or the Internet, or anything that leaves a record. It’s also somewhat lonely, because I can’t talk to regular people, only other Awares.”

  “You could if you chose to,” I pointed out. “You’re talking to me now.”

  “Yes. I don’t understand that, but there’s surely a reason.”

  “It can’t be my great looks or magnetic personality,” I said.

  “True.”

  I had half hoped she wouldn’t agree with my self disparagement. Oh, well. “You say Awares, plural. So there are others.”

  “Yes, and you will meet them too, if they choose.”

  “So these disappearances—all those folk are all right?”

  “Not all. Some are genuine abductions and murders. But most of the recent ones in this area are Awares like me.”

  “So is there anything else you care to tell me?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Let’s face it, Adela, you haven’t told me much. Just that there are Awares who can pretend to be invisible, and who don’t seem to care about their grieving families.”

  “We care. We just can’t return to them.”

  I sighed. “So is there anything else you care to show me or tell me? Before you fade out again, leaving me to think it was a dream?”

  “Yes, now that you mention it. We’re pretty much invulnerable.”

  “Like the man of steel?”

  “No. We merely avoid trouble. I can demonstrate. Fire your pistol at me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that!”

  “Then pretend to.”

  Reluctantly I drew my Glock and pointed it at her with the safety on. “Bang! You’re dead.”

  “No, you missed me.”

  “At this range? I’m not a perfect shot, but this is point-blank.”

  “Maybe another way. Grab me.”

  I put away the gun. Then without looking directly at her I suddenly grabbed her arm.

  My hand closed on nothing. She had moved just at that moment.

  I grabbed again, this time lunging, both arms extended. And missed her again. She was as elusive as a greased eel. “You’ve had training,” I said.

  “No. I simply know where to be to remain clear. Its part of being Aware.”

  I tried once more, this time grabbing for her knee so she couldn’t dodge. All I got was a wicked glimpse at her pink panties as she lifted her leg clear.

  “But if I already had hold of you, you couldn’t escape,” I said, disgruntled.

  “Take my hand.” She proffered it.

  I held her hand. I put my other hand on her wrist, clamping it tightly.

  She stepped into me and kissed me. I had forgotten about that tactic. I found myself standing there in a spot trance, empty handed.

  “Point made,” I said. “I can’t catch you or hold you unless you want me to. But what is the point of all this? You can’t be flirting with me for no reason.”

  “I suppose I am flirting,” she said, surprised. “You are sort of cute in your bumbling way.”

  I let that pass. “So what is the reason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I should have seen that coming. “Then let me guess: you’re lonely, and I’m convenient, so you’re teasing me until you get bored. Then you’ll fade out and I’ll never see you again. No way can I hold you without your acquiescence. So I’m safe to play with.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” she agreed thoughtfully.

  I hated it when she refused to disagree. “Let’s get serious. I can go tell your folks you are okay. No more than that, per our deal. But it would be better if you told them yourself.”

  “No.”

  “Here’s why: if I tell them they’ll think I’m making it up, since I’ll have no tangible evidence and won’t go into details. They’ll keep right on looking for you, maybe hire another dick. One’s who’s less bumbling and cute. So I’m just wasted time. Or.”

  She took the hook. “Or?”

  “Or you can come with me and show them that you’re okay. Tell them you’re on a special secret mission that they must not even admit exists, and that if they keep looking for you they’ll only put your mission and you in peril. So they can relax, knowing as much as they need to. Then th
ey’ll stop looking, and you’ll be more anonymous than you are now. That’s not only more effective, it’s far kinder to them. Because you do love them.”

  “You’re actually making sense,” she said, surprised. “You can tell them and I’ll confirm. You’re a better liar than I am.”

  I could have gotten annoyed, if she weren’t so pretty. “In person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” I pounced while it was hot. “Come now. Ride anonymously in my car. I’ll warn them about the conditions, then you meet them, then you go, and it’s done.”

  “That must be why I’m talking with you,” she said. “Because you can help me. I just didn’t know exactly how.”

  “This way,” I said, walking out of the room.

  She came with me, to my relief. I led her to my car, and she got in and I drove her to her folks house. “I’ll go in first,” I said. “Then you come in when your sense tells you it’s time.”

  “Yes.” She kissed my ear. There was that new mown hay fragrance again. It almost made me want to take up farming. “Thank you.”

  “God, I wish you were my girlfriend for real!” I said. Oh to roll in the hay with this doll. But I had the wit to stifle that part. Then I got out of the car and walked to the front door.

  Her mother answered. “Yon Yonson. You hired me. I have a report to make,” I said. “I found Adela.”

  “Come in!” she said gladly.

  In their living room I explained. “I found her, but she’s on a special mission. Not allowed to tell anyone about it. But I prevailed on her to tell you herself, so you wouldn’t worry any more. Then you’ll have to let her go. It’s better that way.”

  “Anything!” her father said. “Just so we know she’s alive and well.”

  “She is both,” I said. “Adela?” I hoped she hadn’t changed her mind.

  “I am here,” she said from an interior doorway.

  “Adela!” her mother cried, almost flying to her.

  They hugged, and tears flowed freely, Adela’s as well as her mother’s. I saw that Adela had really wanted to do this all along, but had not seen her way clear until I gave her the rationale. She was after all an ordinary smart beautiful girl who had suddenly achieved an extraordinary power and could use some guidance. I was supremely glad to have had the wit to give it.