Apocalypse to Go (22 page)

“There are times—” Ari punched his left hand with his right fist, though not as hard as usual. “I suppose you’re going to make my life miserable again, wheedling it out of me.”

“Your life? Last time it only took ten minutes before you cracked.”

“That’s very unfair of you.”

“I’ve got need to know. I want that file.”

“Nola! I’ve decided I want to join TWIXT. I don’t want to jeopardize my chances by giving you access that you’re not entitled to have.”

“Last time—”

“Last time I didn’t know if I wanted to join or not. The issue wasn’t as important.”

“Hah! Then it’s your career you’re worried about, not the ethics of the thing.”

“I don’t see why that has anything to do with the matter.”

“You keep sounding more and more British. That means you know you’re on shaky ground.”

He growled at me. When I ran a quick check on his Qi, I felt frustration and annoyance, but not his core rage.

“Let’s see,” I said. “We could do the handcuffs and the garter belt again, and I suppose I really do deserve a spanking for this.”

His Qi level rose, but not high enough. I thought of various inducements, all of which I’d disliked in the past, but with Ari as a partner, it was possible that I’d enjoy them. I sat up and smiled at him.

“Or you could tie me down this time, not just use the handcuffs,” I said. “To the bed, I mean. Ankles, too. Spread out. You know?”

His Qi spiked. He stared at me in sad-eyed, droop-mouth martyrdom.

“I’ve been an awfully bad girl, Ari,” I said.

He groaned, leaned over, and kissed me. I made him print out the SanFran file before we went any further.

When I got around to reading it, much later that afternoon, I found three pages of background and twenty pages of crucial detail. It listed the most important people and families, noted the prominent buildings, named the important public officers. It also described the existing neighborhoods and gave them a danger rating, most of which were high. Although the information was far from complete, I had a few details of my own to fill in some of the blanks, thanks to the most recent notes from José and Sophie. I collated their information as I read the stuff from Ari.

Politically speaking, two top dogs ran SanFran. The elected mayor—and he did seem to be elected the old-fashioned way—was in charge of the hilltop enclaves of the wealthy, both middle class and outright rich. The big prize in the underworld was the job of Chief of Police, currently held by the leader of the top gang, the Blue Force as they called themselves. The Chief dominated everything and everybody else. As long as he kept the general population under control, the mayor and his kind paid him well.

Where was all this money coming from? Gold. On Terra Three the big mines in the Sierra had never been picked clean. Individuals still panned and prospected in the mountains. Over in the East Bay hills, in a world where no one thought in terms of parks, green belts, and ecology, a few small mines still leaked mercury into the Bay and gold into the pockets of investors. All of the gold, and a little silver as well, came through SanFran, where some of it kept the rich rich and the Chief of Police employed.

Getting that top job for the Axeman, the Storm Blue boss, was going to mean a gang war as well as a lot of bribe money changing hands. A world-walker could command high fees from all the people who wanted out of SanFran and off of Interchange for good. Sophie was right. The kidnapping was all about the money.

I was still reading when Ari wandered in from the bedroom. He’d put on his jeans and a blue T-shirt, frayed around the neckband with age. White Hebrew letters marched across the chest in two peeling rows.

“What does that say?” I said.

“Microsoft Windows. I got it free at a trade show in Tel
Aviv.” He paused for a yawn. “Tzaki was visiting, and he insisted we go.”

I’d fallen into one of my standard mistakes: thinking of Israel as the biblical land of ancient mystery. Ari sat down at my left on the couch and put an arm around my shoulders to draw me close. I slid the printout under the cushion to my right.

“I’m not going to grab that from you,” he said. “Don’t you trust me?”

“After what I just let you do to me, how can you even ask that?”

“Point taken.” He hesitated on the edge of embarrassment. “Er, you weren’t just pretending to um, well, enjoy all that um, well, kind of sex, were you?”

“No, I sure wasn’t.” Much to my surprise, I’ll admit, I’d found it intensely pleasurable. “You know, it made me think about things. There are times when I really feel Chaotic. Like I could spin out of control. Sometimes I do go over that edge.”

“Such as those walking trances? And the leopard women?”

“Yeah, exactly. Mostly I can keep it together, when I’m working or with my family. But other times—” I hesitated because I disliked the insight I was facing. “I’m really serious about serving Harmony. I hate feeling like a Chaotic.”

“And so you feel safe when I take charge of you in bed. Safe enough to really let go, I mean.”

I winced. Even though I tried, I could not bring myself to look at him. “Yeah,” I said eventually. “That’s it.”

“It’s fine with me, mind. I’m hardly complaining.”

“That was obvious, yeah.”

He chuckled under his breath. I rested my head on his shoulder and wondered if I was blushing. If so, he never mentioned it.

“I have to admit,” Ari said, “that when you announced you wanted that data, my first reaction was to wonder what you’d offer me for it.”

“You bas— I mean, you creep!”

“I was rather ashamed of myself.”

He sounded so sincere that I ran an SPP. Yes, he was ashamed, though not very.

“Which reminds me,” I said. “I take it you told Spare14 what you knew about my father’s criminal offenses.”

“No, actually, I didn’t. He probably looked up the file before he came over. Given his position in TWIXT, I’m sure he has access to whatever intel he needs.”

“Then please forgive my suspicious mind,” I said. “You know, neither of us are nice people.”

He sighed. “True,” he said. “I love you anyway.”

“Is that an insult or a compliment?”

For an answer he kissed me.

Although I debated, I finally decided to call Aunt Eileen and tell her that we were going to Interchange. She’d only dream about it, and I wanted her to have clear information. She was pleased to learn that Interpol had what I termed “resources” to help us. As usual, she was too tactful to insist on more information.

“I suppose,” I said, “there’s no use in telling you not to worry.”

The only answer I received was a long drawn-out sigh.

“I thought so,” I went on. “Well, do your best, okay? And feed Sophie tranks if you have any.”

“I do have some. I got her a prescription when she started displaying the symptoms. You know. For the other problem.”

“Right. I’d almost forgotten that. Lycanthropy seems so ordinary now.”

Aunt Eileen laughed with only a bare trace of hysteria. I had to admire her self-control.

“Will you call Al for me?” I said. “Tell him that we’re on our way to get his domestic partner back home.”

“I’ll do that. He’ll be so relieved.” She hesitated. “I just hope you can find them and be safe yourselves.”

I dredged up every bit of confidence I possessed and put it into my voice. “I’ll call you the minute we get them back home.”

I could only hope the confidence was justified.

While Ari put together a scrappy dinner, I called my
second-in-command, Annie Wentworth. I told her that Ari and I would be following a case out of the area and that she’d be in charge until we returned.

“Just stay on Chaos watch, basically,” I said. “I’ll file a report with the Agency later tonight and tell them what’s going on. I’ll copy it to you. You’ll need to stay in touch with Y.”

“All right,” Annie said. “Do you think you’ll be gone long?”

“I hope not. If we’re not back in ten days, say, ask Y for temporary help from Washington.”

“I’ll do that. Do you want Jerry to come stay in your flat?”

“No. Ari’s already taken care of that. His friend Itzak’s going to keep an eye on the place.”

After we ate, Ari and I drove to a local chain drugstore, one of those where the actual drugs are hard to find among the kids’ toys, snack foods, cooking equipment, cosmetics, and whatever else they can cram in. While I loaded up on beauty supplies, Ari wandered off, probably, I figured, to find an aisle displaying more manly goods. I went looking for him and finally saw him thumbing through magazines at the front of the store.

Just as I turned down the aisle and started pushing my cart toward him, the goddess Diana materialized between a bin of on-sale Easter candy and stacks of soft drinks. Dressed in a white hunting tunic and high boots, she glowed with a silver light that came from her chalky white flesh. In her hands she carried a bow, and a quiver of arrows hung at one hip.

“Seek me,” she said. “Remember this well: seek me.”

She vanished before I could ask for clarification. I continued on down the aisle and fetched up next to Ari, who was leafing through an issue of
American Rifleman
. He smiled at me and returned the magazine to the shelf.

“Ready to go?” he said.

“Yeah. I just had a visitation from another goddess.”

He sighed, deeply and in some distress. “I’d best be the one to drive home, then,” was all he said.

When we got back to the flat, I found a message from
Spare14 on the landline, saying that he’d heard from the “personnel department about the temporary help.” I called him immediately.

“Tomorrow at ten AM,” Spare14 said, “the world-walker’s due to arrive in my office. If you could be there?”

“Promptly,” I said. “Where’s the gate we’re going to use?”

“Reasonably close by, actually—to my office here, I mean. Unfortunately, it debouches a good distance away from my office there.” He emphasized the word “there.”

“I take it you don’t want to use the gate in my aunt’s house.”

“The Axeman’s gang must be keeping a watch on the BGs and their territory. They may even suspect that the house gate exists.”

“Ah, I get it. If they do, and we come through it, they could be waiting for us.”

“Exactly.”

“One last question. Is there somewhere safe to leave Ari’s car?”

“Oh, yes. Here, let me speak to him, and I’ll fill him in on that sort of detail.”

I handed the phone to Ari, then took the drugstore bags into our bedroom. I shut the drapes, turned on the light, and spread the things I’d bought out on the bed. I was organizing the various items when Ari came in.

“What is all that?” Ari asked from behind me.

“My disguise,” I said. “In the morning I’m going to be a SanFran sex industry worker, and you’re going to be my pimp.”

He said something in Hebrew.

“Look, Ari, I know you don’t like this idea, but we’re going to a place where there are other psychics all over the place. What if someone spots me as a foreign influence? I might have to run a Shield until we get to Spare14’s office, which means I’m going to feel drunk out of my mind.”

“True. But what—”

“So I’ll be a working girl that you’ve strung out on drugs. That’s normal for there. Can you think of a better cover story? If you can, we’ll go with that instead.”

He shoved both hands into his jeans’ pockets and contemplated the floor for several minutes. “No.” He looked up with a shrug. “It’s the logical choice for our destination. Although, given the radiation levels, instead of drunk you could perhaps pretend to be brain-damaged. That would take less effort, too, since it would come to you naturally.”

He stepped back fast before I could kick him.

“Very funny. Ha ha. I hope I can avoid putting up the SH. I’ll feel crummy enough until we get my brothers back.”

“Assuming we can.”

“Yeah.” I turned cold. “Always assuming that.”

O
UT OF SHEER ANXIETY I WOKE
at dawn and crawled out of bed to take a shower. By the time I finished, Ari had dressed, started the coffee, and was stumbling around in the kitchen boiling granola in milk to make his version of oatmeal. When he insisted, I choked down a bowlful. Once we’d eaten, I concentrated on getting ready to go. Since Nuala apparently wore a lot of black, I wore tight jeans, a white sleeveless top with a low-slung cowl neckline, and a pink hoodie. I packed some clothes, my crayons, and other psychic supplies in Ari’s sports bag

“Do you want to take your Agency laptop?” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’ll be okay in the wall safe.”

“Very well. I can’t risk leaving mine here, safe or no safe.”

Probably not, I figured, considering all the quasi-legal things he did with it.

There remained the job of hiding me. I went into the bathroom and got to work with the curling iron on my hair. I made the curls just tight enough to spread out and fall gracefully like a halo around my face. Heavy bronzing powder on my hands and lower arms, my face and neck, my ankles—any skin that might show got darkened. With brown lip liner I created a fake shadow around my mouth to make it appear more prominent. I blended the edge into
the bronzer with a cotton swab. I set the powder with theatrical makeup spray, something I normally hate, but in this case, I could put up with the lacquered feeling.