She practiced. She thought about Turtle, and practiced. Alone in home's stuffy silence, trying to find a space in her mind where her power would work on demand. Yes, the dustcloth flew around the counters, her old Snoopy barked and chased the elusive rag, the little toy soldier raised his rifle. But now, she had him shoot bursts of laser light that left smoking holes in the playing cards she set up as targets.
Trying to convince herself that no one would notice, that no one would see her excitement when she animated something, that no one would recognize the sexual tension she felt while she worked. She had tried to animate things when the Escorts were around, trusting that they wouldn't pay much attention, or maybe even notice what had happened. She hadn't been able to do it.
And then she would pick up the phone, and try to convince another one of the latents to leave the country.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
You'll be fine at the hearing tomorrow. Say this. Don't say that. Remain calm. Respond only to what is asked. Don't volunteer information. Mendlen's instructions echoed in Zoe's head. Furtive, watching the streets, she wanted to get home and she didn't want the Escorts to see her, but Needles danced up beside her. He was up early. It was barely past lunch.
"Dude sent this for you," he said. What he slipped into her hand was an El Al ticket.
"Who?" Zoe asked.
"Short little nerd. Kept wigglin' his nose, like it stinks round here or something."
Nosy? What the fuck did this mean?
"You told him where I lived?"
"Not exactly," Needles said. "We was just cruising, you know. So this stupidass nat shows up and we, like, in-terror-gated him a little."
"Uh-huh," Zoe said. First class, priority ticket, that identified her as an executive of Subtle Scents, Jerusalem. Maybe Nosy figured she would run, and look like a fool. Keep the damned thing? Would its use set off an alarm at the FBI or something?
But she didn't have the money to buy another. Mendlen's secretary had taken a big cnunk today. Zoe Harris, CEO, was tapped out.
She stuffed the ticket in her purse. Bjorn waited on the stoop. Needles nodded at him and ducked away.
"Why are you home so early?" Zoe asked. He was out of uniform, freshly shaved; he wore a polo shirt under his sport coat.
"I thought you could use a little company," Bjorn said. "A little distraction."
"Possibly I could." Zoe tried to smile at him.
"Your mom's on her way to Jerusalem. She fussed, but there was an open seat and she took it."
Brave momma. "Good," Zoe said.
"Let's see if I can say this like she would." Bjorn cleared his throat.
"Say what?"
"Dahling. Let's go shopping!"
"Perfect!"
"God knows I've heard it often enough."
"And groaned every time."
Bjorn had a great groan. He groaned it now, a subdued roar that seemed to vibrate the wrought iron on the stoop.
"Daddy. We can't spend any money. Are you nuts?"
"You'll feel better tomorrow in a good little suit," Bjorn said.
"I won't feel better in a good little suit."
"An expensive little suit?"
"Daddy, you're impossible."
"You're my daughter. You deserve to look wonderful."
Autumn in New York was the best of the city's seasons. The leaves were turning. A light breeze lifted most of the smog. Fifth Avenue's windows showed the fall collections, the furs, the silhouettes. Fuller skirts, smaller shoulders. Shorter fitted jackets with definite curves in their lines. The keynote color was green, which Zoe in no way could wear, but the season's stones were topaz and amber, big faux chunks of them. Topaz brought out cat colors in Zoe's hazel eyes. Very good.
Mary, Queen of Scots, wore a red silk petticoat to her beheading. Zoe would stick with a business suit, black, perhaps, with a closely fitted jacket. A Hermes scarf at the neckline, white and some bronze tones? Perhaps.
Bjorn limped along beside her on his ever-sore feet. Zoe pretended not to notice.
But she noticed, as always, the movement in the street around her, the moiling mix of shoppers and the aimless. A black mannequin in the Saks window wore a Donna Karan dinner dress, bias cut and loaded with long looped chains of gold and topaz, reminiscent of the thirties. It was a gorgeous ensemble.
Reflected in the Saks window, something changed in the street's motion. In a flicker of vision, Zoe saw a movement like the turning of a school of fish. Shaveheads in padded, pale denim, interchangeable faces with dead stupid eyes and one of them moved too fast. His hands snatched at the collar of Bjorn's shirt, jerking it open. Another shavehead circled behind Bjorn and pulled his sport coat down, trapping Bjorn's arms. The afternoon sun brought out gold highlights in Bjorn's thick auburn fur.
"Joker!" someone yelled.
The pack was on him. One of them shoved Zoe aside. She stumbled and caught her balance against the smooth glass of the Saks window. Bjorn went down, hidden under pounding fists and flailing arms. Zoe grabbed the shoulders of the thug in front of her, but her fists striking his back had no effect at all.
Yelling help, please, somebody help, but her voice didn't carry over the chorus of obscenities.
"Joker!"
"Mutant!"
"Fucking monster! Abomination!"
She ripped her fingernails across the throat of the thug in front of her. He jerked his elbow back, a hard punch that caught her in the stomach. The back of her head struck the glass. It boomed with the impact, but didn't break. Over the heads of the shaveheads, she saw the cyclops eye of a camcorder, a Japanese tourist filming the show.
She heard her voice yelling out "Stop it, stop it, you're killing him!" but it was as if someone had turned the volume down too low. Bjorn roared and growled. He kicked out and one of his shoes went flying. His naked foot, blunted claws and fur, connected with a thug's leg and the man yipped in pain. The shaveheads circled their prey like a dog pack, except for one, who humped away on top of Bjorn in a horrid parody of screwing. Zoe saw the flash of a knife in the thug's fist.
She drove her shoulder against the plate glass, again, again. Break, damn it, I need shard, sharp, weapon, silicon brittle edge, damn it, break! Bjorn kicked out hard and a shavehead slammed into the window next to Zoe, ass-first through the window, his arms and legs spread like a starfish. Above the crashing noise of the breaking window, Zoe heard a siren wail. She spun around and hoisted herself up onto the display shelf. The flesh of her palms parted on broken glass. She tackled the black mannequin and went down flat across its torso, her mouth pressed to the molded, elegant lips. One breath. Another. The total program, that's all you get. It's now or never, baby.
Zoe rolled away as the mannequin spun into motion. The animation leaped through the window, the gold and topaz necklace suddenly a garrote in inhuman, strong hands, looping around the shavehead's neck and twisting, twisting. The mannequin yanked back, hard, and the thug's head made a funny little jerk, as if he'd just heard someone say something really interesting.
Limp, the dead man and the mannequin sprawled over Bjorn's motionless body.
The Japanese tourist leaned forward and adjusted the focus on his camcorder.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
In the ambulance, while terse EMT's said little and worked hard, pounding on Bjorn's chest, Zoe realized what the tourist had been doing. He wanted a closeup of Bjorn's face, of glassy eyes staring into nothing.
And if he took his little recording to the police? From embezzlement to murder in two short weeks. Turtle would be impressed.
Something in the attitudes of the paramedics told her Bjorn was dead. She watched while the gurney bumped across the concrete with its limp burden, and the doors of the ER hissed open.
"Daddy, what do I do now?" she whispered.
The door closed. She did not enter.
Stay and face charges. Act like a responsible citizen. Bjorn would want her to do that. Or would he?
Running away can be the
only good choice, sometimes.
She had used her ace and killed a man. Yes, but the man who had killed her father would never kill again. It didn't feel right. It felt wrong. Being a killer felt wrong.
Stay. Let the process of law decide her guilt or innocence.
But what is innocence in a time of genocide? They killed my father in front of my eyes!
Never again.
The embezzlement mess could wait. The "stolen" funds were frozen, and Subtle Scents hadn't lost a dime. Let the lawyers sort it out.
Anne was in Jerusalem by now, the home of the Twisted Fists. They killed five for one, and managed to live with it. Perhaps they had some things to teach a fledgling, angry ace.
If the cabbie noticed her hands were bleeding, he didn't say anything. He took her to Kennedy.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Night flight to Jerusalem. Hassidim and their sober, beautiful children, a collection of Hadassah women chattering like magpies. Zoe followed the line through the corridor into the plane, heading for the Promised Land. She looked for her seat number, thinking, they haven't stopped me yet. The FBI isn't here. The cops haven't delayed the departure. So far, so good.
The lighting was dim. She sat across the aisle from a fairly handsome man, somewhat thin, with black hair, dark eyes, and a nose that would have been lovely if it hadn't had a marked bend toward the left.
"Hello," the man said. He yawned, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out what looked to be at least two pounds of chocolate-covered espresso beans. "Want one? They're Kona."
"Thank you, no," Zoe said.
The man began to munch on a handful. "Barely had time to get these before we boarded. I woke up in a cab and found I was an escort for a tour group to Jerusalem. Odd. What about you, young lady? Care for a bean?" He offered the bag to the person in the seat next to Zoe, a small person who seemed absorbed in a book. Useful Phrases in Hebrew. The child read by the light cast by her own eyes.
"No thank you, Mr. Croyd."
Zoe looked across the aisle and saw black and white jackets in the gloom.
"Hi, Jan," Zoe said.
"Shalom." Jan wriggled in her seat and pressed against Zoe's side like a friendly puppy.
The Color of His Skin
Part 7
There should have been a voice - Puppetman, or that nagging Jiminy Cricket who had manifested after Puppetman had died. There should have been someone else in here.
There was only himself.
And he despised the company.
He had run himself unconscious. He remembered streaking into the city after the murder of Rudo, managing to get headed roughly north and east to where Jokertown offered some hope of refuge. Somewhere near midtown, he'd blacked out, though ne'd had the impression that the body continued running. At least it seemed that his new form seemed to have the knack of finding a safe haven while on automatic pilot. Gregg had no idea where he was other than that it was dark and very ... fragrant. He also had no idea when it was, but he had the feeling several days, at least, had passed. It seemed there was a price to his hyperactivity, paid in lost time.
"Hey!" he said into the darkness. There was no answer, inside or out, just a metallic echo of that piping, high voice. He shivered. He sniffed, and took in a cornucopia of odors: the sewers. He was ravenous, too.
He tried walking, splashing through the black effluvium. He found that he could tell when he was about to hit something - a head sense that seemed to emanate from the silly clown-nose ears. "You'd have made a great cave fish, Greggie," he told himself.
No answer.
He was one. Only one.
A few hundred yards and two turns later, he saw sunlight streaming through the holes of a sewer lid. The finger-size shafts of light seemed like the glow from a dozen searchlights after the darkness. There were rungs set in the walls; he dissolved and ate the lowest one, just to take the edge off the hunger, then clambered up, discovering in the process that the body's multitude of legs seemed to have small, clinging suckers on the bottom pads.
Okay. Climbing wasn't a problem.
Gregg pushed at the sewer lid with his hands. It didn't budge. Gregg sighed, thought of his hunger, and ralphed up an enormous glob that splattered on the underside of the metal. He let himself fall; a few moments later, the lid sagged like heated plastic and clattered down beside him. He took a few quick nibbles of the feast and headed up.
He was in an alley, and it was either just after dawn or very near evening. From the odd collection of shapes and forms he saw walking along the street, he was also in J-Town.
What do I do now? Where do I go?
Silence. Unnerving, insistent silence.
Gregg padded out to the street, but discovered quickly that he wasn't going to find the anonymity he expected. He'd thought that he'd just be one of many there, another mishappen body in the midden of Jokertown; he'd thought that even those who might recognize his form as Battle's would ignore him. But ...
Even with his myopic vision, Gregg could tell that he was attracting undue attention, even from those who looked stranger than he did. A four-armed woman just down the street jabbed a companion in his chitinous ribs and pointed in Gregg's direction. They were upwind; Gregg could smell an odd, sour scent to both of them that suddenly intensified. The couple quickly ducked into the nearest storefront. Puzzled, Gregg went to the window of the store, lifting the front end of his body up so that he could look in. He squinted. In soft focus through the smeared glass, he could see the four-armed woman at the public phone. Her companion was looking out; when he saw Gregg, he tapped the woman on the shoulder.
Gregg dropped down and hurried on, trying to convince himself that he was being paranoid. A block further down, an NYPD squad car passed him going the other way, obviously from Fort Freak since the patrolman driving had the face and hanging jowls of a bulldog. Gregg heard the car pull over behind him, smelled the exhaust and the sudden odor of stale cigarettes as the doors opened. He didn't look back, trying to convince himself that the cop wasn't stopping for him, but the jokers in front were suddenly moving aside, wide-eyed, and Gregg felt a prickling chill along his spine.
There was a scent of metal, of burnt gunpowder, of oil, of shoe leather, of tobacco.
"Battle!" a gruff voice like a talking St. Bernard growled. "You're under arrest. Stop right there."
Gregg thought about running, but he didn't know how to shift his body into hyperdrive without getting hit first. That didn't leave many good options, and Gregg suspected that if he was taken into Fort Freak he might end up being one of those suspects found accidentally dangling from the end of their belts in their cell.
At least he was still hungry. He turned around.
Bulldog-jowls had his gun out, standing just behind Gregg.
Gregg puked.
He had decent velocity and aim - in fact, he told himself, he was getting pretty damn good at this. The viscous globule splattered messily and noisily over Bulldog's gun hand. The officer recoiled involuntarily, staring in disbelief and disgust. The moment was enough. The short barrel of the official issue 9 mm. automatic drooped, the chamber sagged, and the vinyl grips were pressing against each other as the metal frame turned to tafly. The cop dropped the weapon as if it were molten, shaking his hand as what looked like cream of steel soup dripped from his unhurt fingers. Everyone watching was suddenly giving Gregg a wide, cautious berth.
Gregg didn't need a second invitation. He ran, nightmare-slow at first, but accelerating all the time. If Bulldog-jowls had had the inclination, he could have tackled Gregg before he moved five feet.
About three blocks down the street, the world finally shifted into slo-mo about him.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
It was days before he dared to come out from the sewers again. He let himself run until exhaustion slowed him more, even though this time he didn't black out. He returned to the alley and the open sewer hole, and let himself climb down in a half-stupor. Gregg didn't fight the weariness.
You're defeated. Done. As far as the authorities are concerned, you are George G. Battle, the murderer of Pan Rudo, and you can add assaulting a police officer and flight to avoid prosecution to the charges.
So he slept, so that he wouldn't have to think.
Part of him hoped that he'd never wake again.
The weather finally drove him out. His new body didn't seem to mind the cold as much as his old one, but the temperature suddenly dipped drastically. He woke up shivering, with icicles hanging from the gratings above him and everything around him frozen solid.
"This is no way to live, Gregg," he said aloud mostly to hear a voice, any voice. "You need a place to stay. You need money. You need to find Hannah and let her know what's going on."
It was snowing. The night air was luminous, and the sounds of the city were hushed and muffled. Gregg could smell the moisture and the cold like mint. He hesitated in the alley before going out onto the street.
Where to? Can't get to any of my funds - by now, my estate's been settled. If I'm seen, someone's liable to call the cops. The Oddity's apartment isn't far away, but if John's in charge he's liable to kill me before I get a chance to explain, especially after the last time. Finn might know where they are, but the clinic's not going to be safe. Who ...?
He knew.
His secretary, Jo Ann, lived on the edge of Jokertown near his old office. The brownstones crowded shoulder-to-shoulder might have looked impressive a century ago, when trees had lined the street and gaslights had shed their warm glow on the dark fronts. Now they simply looked shabby and tired. Gregg eased his body up the worn steps to the front door. He had to climb the wall to get to the doorbell. As soon as he heard it ringing, he dropped back to the stoop.
The inner door opened. A man looked out through the screen door, then down. The skin showing around the sweatshirt proclaiming THE ROX LIVES! was beaded like a Gila monster with swirling patterns of glossy orange, black, and red - actually rather striking, Gregg thought. The eyes, startlingly human, squinted as the man peered down at Gregg through the mesh. Gregg could smell supper in the warmth that cascaded from the house into the chill air: baked potatoes, carrots, chicken: none of it smelled as appetizing as the cheap aluminum screen door frame.
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