Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1) (21 page)

“More or
less,” Oliver said. “It wasn’t enough that you gained the ability to speak.
That wouldn’t have done much of anything, really. In order to talk, to make
conversation, a lot more about you had to change. In a way, you aren’t a cat at
all, not anymore. You’re something unique.”

“Eat,
eat, lick balls, sleep,” Tyler continued. 

Jeffrey
thought it over.  “Screw you guys,” he said finally.

The cat
went back to looking out the window. After a while Tyler said, “Hey, Oliver.”

“Yeah?”

“We had
some fun, didn’t we?”

“Did
we?” Oliver asked. Assassination attempts, vampires, and lizard people didn’t
seem all that fun to him. 

“Kind
of, right?” Tyler asked. It seemed important to him. In a strange way, Oliver
thought, it sounded like Tyler was trying to say goodbye.

“I guess
we did,” Oliver admitted. “It’s certainly been quite an experience.”

“Try to
remember that,” Tyler said. Then he turned on the stereo and Hawaiian music
came over the speakers. Oliver kept expecting him to say something else, but he
was silent.

They
were driving east toward the Financial District. Oliver wondered which building
their “base” was in. He expected they operated out of some kind of mysterious
underground lair, like the Batcave, maybe. Or maybe the penthouse floor of a
skyscraper downtown, someplace that overlooked the entire city and had a
helipad so they could rush off to…wherever…at a moment’s notice. Oliver was
sure that whatever it was would be impressive.

Instead
Tyler turned the car into Chinatown and pulled up in front of a run-down
restaurant called “Sang Min’s Double Happiness.” Oliver looked at the sign
skeptically. “Are we stopping for lunch first? You sure you want to eat here?”

“We’re
not eating,” Tyler said. “This is the last stop. Come on.” He got out of the
car and waited for Oliver on the sidewalk.

Jeffrey
was still seated in Oliver’s lap. “Why don’t you wait out here?” Oliver
suggested.

“Why? I
could eat. I’ll get me a little
dim sum
, a little rice…”

“I’m not
sure what’s going to happen now,” Oliver said slowly. “But I’m not sure I’m
ever coming out of there.”

Jeffrey
gave him a worried look. “Then why go in at all?” the cat asked, putting a paw
on Oliver’s chest and looking him in the eye. “Hit that fool dog in the head
and let’s get out of here.”

Oliver
shook his head. “I’m going to see this through,” he said. 

“Why?”

“Because
I’ve been running for days and I don’t want to live like that. And honestly, I
don’t know what else to do.”

Oliver
stepped out of the car and placed Jeffrey carefully on the sidewalk, stroking
the cat once along the back before following Tyler into the restaurant. He had
thought the place might be abandoned, but there were a few people dining
inside, and a waiter was taking a tourist couple’s order a few feet away.
Nobody was acting as if anything were amiss.

Artemis
was seated alone in a distant corner booth. She raised a hand and motioned
Oliver over. Today she was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt with a cartoon
monster on the front. Oliver was sure he had seen it before, from a children’s
television show. “Pikachu?” he said as he reached the booth.

“Yes.
You seem surprised.”

“I’m
just surprised you like Pikachu,” he said. “Seems like kid stuff, and one thing
I’m sure of is that you’re not a kid.”   

“Everyone
likes Pikachu,” she said matter-of-factly. “Have a seat.”

Oliver
turned but Tyler wasn’t joining them. He’d taken a seat on the other side of
the restaurant and was speaking to the waiter. No doubt ordering five or six
courses, Oliver thought. As an appetizer. Oliver sat down.

“So this
is your secret base?” he asked the girl.

“No,”
she said. “This is a restaurant I like.”

“Oh.”

“Is this
what you imagined a ‘secret base’ would look like?”

“No. 
Not really.”

“Well,
then.” There was no food on the table, but there was a teapot and two small
handle-less cups. She poured tea into one for Oliver, then refilled her own. She
took a sip of hers and sighed contentedly. “That is
very
good,” she
said. “It’s hard to find good tea.”

“Tea all
tastes the same to me,” Oliver said. She stared at him disapprovingly. “I guess
I just haven’t tried enough,” he offered.

“It
doesn’t matter now,” she said. “So. How are you?”

“Fine,
thanks. How are you?”

“No,”
she said firmly.

“No?”

“I have
no tradition of small talk, Mr. Jones,” she said. “When I ask you how you are,
it is because I am interested in the answer. So once again, how are you?”

Oliver
shrugged. “I’m tired. Even though I slept for as long as I did, days I guess,
I’m still tired. I’m still confused about all of this, but not like before. I
feel this…I don’t know…
resignation
. Is that the right word?”

“No,”
she said. “The word you are looking for is
depression
.”

“Oh.” He
considered that as he took a sip of the tea. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Your
exhaustion is entirely natural, as such things go, given the amount of energy
you expended without any practice.”

“Practice?”

“Rather
like if you decided to take up jogging, and on your first day out ran a
marathon. It’s a lucky thing the stress didn’t kill you.”

“I feel
like you’re telling me how the story ends and skipping the beginning,” Oliver
said.

“Oh?”

Oliver
looked the little girl in the eyes. “How did I do it?  What am I?”

“Oh, I
see,” Artemis said. She took another sip of her tea. “It took me a while to put
that all together. Too long, really, but in my defense it is an exceptionally
rare thing. And the truth is, I don’t know. Not exactly. In a manner of
speaking, I can tell you the symptom, but not the disease.”

Oliver sighed.
He had been hoping he was finally going to get some answers, but that was
looking less likely now. “All right, then. What’s the symptom?”

“You
change reality,” the girl said simply.

“I…” he
stared at her. “Change reality? Are you making a joke?”

“Do I
strike you as someone who makes jokes?”

“No.”

“Then it
is not very likely that I began doing so just now, is it?”

Oliver
opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. “I’m going to need a little
more than that,” he said.

“I have
little more. I have only heard stories about it, back when I was very young.
You have the power, or perhaps I should say the ability, to alter reality.
Using only this,” she said, tapping her index finger against her temple.

“That’s
obviously not true,” Oliver said. “If I could change the world at will I’d…I’d
be rich, for one thing. And taller.”

“You
certainly would, if you had any control over it.”

“Excuse
me?”

“It’s
clear to me that everything you are capable of doing occurs on an almost
entirely subconscious level.  You didn’t will for any of the strange things
that have happened to happen, did you? Did you say, ‘Oh, poor me. I’m so
lonely, I wish my cat could talk.’”

Oliver
considered making a rude remark, but decided against it. “No.”

“No, you
did not. You wanted a companion, and suddenly your cat spoke to you. Did you
wish for the Kalatari to be wiped out of existence?”

“No.”

“What
did happen?”

The
memories were hazy, but Oliver knew the answer. “I’d been hit in the head so
many times I couldn’t control my mind anymore,” he said. “I thought I was
hallucinating. I thought I must have brain damage and that everything that was
happening was a fantasy.”

“And?”

“I
convinced myself that none of it was real. That it
wasn’t
happening.
Lizard people
aren’t
real,” he said.

“And as
such, they are no longer real,” Artemis said. “There are none left.”

“Yeah.” 

“You may
have committed genocide, Mr. Jones, but it would be fair to say that you did it
by accident. I think without the drugs and head trauma, you could never have
pulled it off. Perhaps that will help you to sleep at night.”

Oliver
blinked. “That’s supposed to help?”

“Why
not?” the girl shrugged. “I myself was surprised to learn that the Matriarch
did indeed have the gift of prophecy. Of course, it was that same prophecy that
led directly to her ruin. If the Kalatari had left you alone, they’d all be
alive today. Or at least until their natural extinction, which wasn’t far off
anyway.”

John
Blackwell had given the Kalatari another hundred years, Oliver remembered. “But
doesn’t all of that make me…”

“Unbelievably
dangerous?” the girl asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yes, it
does,” Artemis said. “You may be the single most dangerous person on this
planet.”

“Oh.” 

“And not
in the least to yourself. You willed the Kalatari out of existence, albeit
unwittingly. What is to say that you couldn’t do the same thing to yourself?”

“You can
do
that?”

“I
can’t,” Artemis said. “You could.”

The
waitress appeared with a fresh pot of tea, whisking the old one away. Oliver
wondered if food was coming. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d
eaten. Had they fed him intravenously while he had slept? He hadn’t noticed any
equipment for that in the room.

“So,”
Artemis said. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Do with
me?”

“I
suppose you could return to your life,” Artemis said. “Go back to your house.
We cleaned it up for you. Got rid of the bodies and fixed your window, even.
You could go back to work tomorrow.”

“How am
I going to pull that off?” Oliver asked. “The last time I was at my office…”

“It
would take me exactly one phone call,” Artemis said. She looked directly at
him.  “Do you really doubt I could do this?”

“No,”
Oliver said.

“So
then. Back to your old life. You’ll have Jeffrey, of course. He seems attached
to you. But everything else will be just like it was. You’ll work on those
spreadsheets of yours all day and then go home to eat Lean Cuisine.”

“I don’t
eat Lean Cuisine,” Oliver lied.

“Of
course you don’t,” Artemis said. She sighed. “But it does occur to me that
perhaps you’d like to do something more with your life.”

“Such
as?”

“Well,
you’re smart. You’re capable. You have some experience now with the paranormal.
For that matter you
are
the paranormal, and you’ve dealt with rapid
changes in your life fairly well.  A man with a lesser mind would have required
institutionalization by now.”

“Thanks.”
Oliver still wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t really lying unconscious
in a bed somewhere, while all of this around him was a fantasy.

“What
I’m saying is that I could find a place for you on my team. I think you would
be an asset.”

Oliver
blinked.   “You’re offering me a job?” he asked.

“I
thought I had made that clear,” Artemis said.

“But…even
though I can’t…” Oliver wiggled his fingers in the air. “Go ‘woo woo’ and make
things appear?” He wondered what good he could possibly be to her.

Artemis
rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mr. Jones, in spite of the fact that you can’t go ‘woo
woo,’ I’d like you to join us.”

Oliver
considered it. This was all moving very fast. “Can I have a few days to think
about it?”

“No,”
Artemis said. “You already have all the information you need to decide right
now. Either I’m going to find a desk for you back at our ‘secret base,’ or I’ll
thank you for your time and Tyler will drive you home, never to see any of us
again.”

Oliver
opened his mouth, intending to refuse, but then he caught himself. Just a few
days ago he’d been lamenting about how dull his life was. Then all of this
craziness had happened. He’d been chased by an assassin. Drank wine with a
vampire. Been bitten by another vampire. And he’d annihilated an entire species
of lizard people, although in his defense they had been trying to murder him at
the time.

Life
didn’t have to be dull. There was so much more out there in the world, and he
had to admit, he wanted to see more of it.

“I’m
in,” Oliver said.

“Oh,
thank god,” Tyler said from behind him. Oliver turned his head.  Tyler had
crossed to their side of the restaurant unseen, and was standing adjacent to
the booth just behind them. More disconcerting was the sight of Sally Rain, who
had seemingly appeared from nowhere and was now standing directly behind
Oliver. She held a sinister-looking syringe in her hand, pointed directly at
his neck.

Sally
capped the syringe and put it in her jacket pocket with god knew whatever else
she kept in there. “Welcome aboard,” she said.

“Great
job, buddy,” Tyler said.

Oliver
turned back to Artemis, full of shock and anger. “What was that?” he asked.
“You were going to kill me if I said no?”

“No,”
she said, her face impassive. “It would be too dangerous to kill you. I’m not
sure what would happen if I tried.”

“What
was that about, then?”

“Quarantine,”
the girl said. “You would have woken up somewhere far away from here, where you
wouldn’t be a danger to anyone.”

“Why?”
Oliver asked.

“Mr.
Jones, do you really think I can have you running around out in the world
unsupervised? Knowing the things you can do? I would turn you loose on this
world no sooner than I would provide an infant access to a nuclear weapon.” She
thought about what she had just said for a moment. “Although I suppose in that
analogy, you are both the infant
and
the weapon.”

“But you
could have just said that, instead of pretending to give me a choice!” Oliver
protested.