“No food or drinks allowed inside the library, Professor. Naughty, naughty.”
“Yes, well, ‘Doctor Danger,’ that’s me.” He winked.
“Thanks.” Ellen tore away the mini straw from the side of the box and punched it into the small, foil-covered hole.
Chance nodded towards the two mountains of books between them: books on psychology, Greek and Roman mythology, ancient Egyptian and Babylonian religion, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonic philosophy.
“So, this is where your studies are leading you?” he asked.
“I think they will lead to things much further out than what these books contain.”
Matterson frowned. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What you’re afraid of,” Ellen rejoined, “is how having approved my thesis will reflect upon your reputation.”
“I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind.”
Ellen cleared a path between the mountains of books, and reached for Chance’s hand. “Danger looks good on you, Doctor.”
“Yeah?”
Ellen nodded and took a sip from her juice. “Mm-hmm,” she purred, fixing her flirtatious eyes on the professor’s.
“Whew,” Cyrus said. “Time to stick a fork into these two. They are goners. Why was I even called in for this one?”
He reached behind with both hands and withdrew two dove-feathered, gold-tipped arrows from his quiver. He held them out across the table, ready to plunge them into Chance and Ellen’s hearts, and seal the deal.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Ellen said. “I haven’t submitted the paperwork yet.”
“And if I did,” Chauncey said, “you’d just use your charms to dupe another pathetic sap into signing on as your advisor, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And this,” he nodded towards their playful, intertwining fingers, “would come to an abrupt and humiliating halt?”
“Is that the sort of woman you take me for, Doctor Danger?”
“I don’t know you well enough to say one way or another, to be quite frank.”
“And how might we remedy your lack of discernment?”
“Dinner, for starters.”
“Now?”
“Why not? It’s not too late. Come on. I’ll carry your books.”
“What if someone in the department saw you carrying such moonshine?”
“Ellen, it’s nearly nine o’clock on a Friday night. I think you’re the only person left in the library.”
“Funny,” she said, “because I haven’t felt alone.”
Cyrus withdrew his arrows from striking position. He rested them horizontally across his shoulders.
Chance hid his uneasiness with a chuckle. “Yes, well, libraries do have a way of making a scholar feel in good company.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Ghosts?” He sighed.
“No, but…never mind.”
“Ellen, really, all this reading is wreaking havoc on your imagination. If you are going to believe in spirits or angels or other such hooey before you even examine the evidence, that’s not very scientific. Do that and you are liable to believe in almost anything, like Bigfoot or God. For believers, no proof is necessary.”
“And for disbelievers, no proof is sufficient,” she rejoined.
“Rather than mocking me and the grand scientific method, how about coming up with some concrete, undeniable evidence for the paranormal. Can you do that?”
“Nothing that would satisfy your skepticism. Not yet, anyway.”
“Then how do you expect any sober scholar to take your research seriously?”
Ellen withdrew a sheet of paper and pushed it in front of the professor.
Matterson glanced at it, and frowned. “A flyer?” He read from the page:
“Do you think you might be psychic? Have you experienced something extraordinary? I believe you! Come be a part of my study…”
He handed it back to Ellen. “You can’t be serious.”
“Sure I am.”
“Do you know how many nuts and fruitcakes are going to be knocking on your door? Need I remind you that this is a university campus? A university is a veritable lunatic asylum. The line outside your office will stretch to the soccer stadium and back.”
“I realize that. But I don’t need a dozen examples. To prove the existence of a flying pig, one needn’t discover a pen of flying pigs. Just one. If I can find one person who exhibits one psychic or paranormal power, that is all that is necessary to prove the existence of such phenomena, and open the door for more study.”
The printer in the corner of the room suddenly awoke and began to buzz and squawk. Startled, Chance jumped in his seat.
“It’s a wireless printer,” Ellen said. “You see, I’m not the only person here.”
“Anyway,” Matterson continued, regaining his composure. “What if, after interviewing and testing every would-be psychic on campus, you don’t find a single person who passes muster?”
“Then that is what I’ll report.”
“I don’t know, Ellen. It seems to me a terrific waste of your time, talents, and, well, worse, your reputation. I really wish you’d reconsider. Surely the two of us can put our heads together and come up with a thesis that would suit both your enthusiasm and the needs of our profession.”
They heard a tap at the door. A moment later, a shaggy-haired student in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt peered inside. The face of the twentieth-century reggae icon Bob Marley plastered his sweatshirt.
Ellen pointed to the printer in the corner of the room.
“Thanks,” the youth said.
“You know this printer is for faculty use only, don’t you?” Professor Matterson admonished.
“Sorry. I don’t know why it printed here. I sent it to the student printer, but it didn’t show up. I was told to check here. There must have been a glitch of some kind. After all, your printer requires a password, you know.”
The student retrieved his copy. He held it up for Ellen and Chance to see and said proudly, “It’s for my marketing class. It’s a logo for a new Internet company. The idea just kinda came to me out of the blue. What do you think?”
Ellen turned to Chance and bounced her eyebrows. “I love it,” she said.
Matterson looked at the Photoshop mockup of a line of winged pigs sailing through the air like birds. “Soaring pig dot-com? I can think of at least one person who might shop at such a store.”
“Cool!” said the youth, and disappeared back out the door.
Ellen cocked her eyebrow and said, “Well?”
“Hey, I never said I didn’t believe in coincidences.”
“Are all coincidences the same?”
“They are what they are,” Matterson said. “Serendipity, happenstance, flukes.”
“But what are the odds that—”
“Doesn’t matter, Ellen. We don’t need otherworldly explanations when there are plenty of worldly ones that will do just fine.”
“What if the ‘otherworldly’ is the worldly? Is absence of proof, proof of absence? Surely the law of relativity didn’t come into being only after Einstein formulated it. It was always there just waiting to be discovered.”
“It was a stupid flyer, Ellen. A coincidence, not a philosophic treatise on the occult. Now how about that dinner?”
“Why do you put up with me?” Ellen asked, smiling.
Chauncey Matterson shrugged. “Why do you put up with me?”
Ellen Veetal shrugged.
“Good question,” Cyrus said, scratching his head with the tips of his unused arrows.
He stuck the arrows back into his quiver, and rose. From his utility belt, he withdrew a chunk of compressed black powder the shape and size of a sugar cube. He placed it on a little copper dish, and lit it. Smoke uncurled from the cube and wafted upwards. Cyrus took a step back and unsheathed a Japanese ninjato sword.
It would take about thirty seconds
before Cyrus could verify his suspicions. He waited, weapon at the ready, hoping that he was wrong. He was wrong about the thirty seconds. It took forty-five.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
16
Swerve
Cyrus sat on Volk’s deck outside his modest bungalow and gazed in contemplation at the brilliant Milky Way. Volk joined him, setting a bottle of imo shouchu—Japanese potato sake—on the table, two glasses, and a bucket of ice.
Volk clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, baby.”
“It’s been too long since we’ve done this, V.”
“Way too long.” Volk plopped some ice into each of their glasses and poured the shouchu, adding an equal amount of Japanese green tea to top it off for a refreshing drink called ocha-wari.
“Kampai,” they toasted. The captains clinked glasses and sipped.
“Umai da na, kore ga,” Cyrus said in Japanese. Good stuff. He relaxed into his chair and took another sip. “So, did you see Kohai today?”
Volk nodded. “I’ve been working on his ruach.”
“And…?”
“He should be much further along by now. The kid thinks too much.”
Cyrus nodded in recognition. “He suspects, but he’s afraid to ask us.”
“When are we going to tell him?”
“Soon,” Cyrus said. “How’s his energy output?”
“I’d say it has about doubled. Enough, anyway, to open the Midrasha. Ever since you introduced him to it, I admit he’s been a lot less annoying.” Volk shook his head grimly. “But sorry, C. I’m still not convinced he was the right cadet for the job.”
“He’ll be fine,” Cyrus said assuredly. “He just lacks confidence. One day it’s all going to click for him. I was the same way, you might recall. I started training almost two years before you, but you caught on in half the time it took me.”
“You don’t think we’re moving too quickly?” Volk said, still unconvinced. “We need to make sure we keep this one. Remember Cadet Valentine?”
Cyrus nodded regrettably.
“That’s right,” Volk said, scowling at the memory. “Five visits to the Midrasha and he thought he was some sort of demigod.” He shook his head. “The damned fool twirled down to Earth thinking he could single-handedly take on every yetzer inside the United Nations. The freaking Tower of Babel! Yetzer central! They still use his bones as toothpicks. We don’t want a replay of that, do we?”
Cyrus put an edamame contemplatively to his mouth, stripped it of its shell, and chomped the three tasty, lightly salted soybeans.
“You’re right,” he said. “We have to think long term. Slow it down a little if you think he needs it. We’re training Kohai to be more than just a soldier. We need a teacher—someone who can carry on after we’re gone.”
Volk slid Cyrus a shrewd, smirking glance. “C, after centuries of friendship, you think I can’t tell when you’re hiding something?”
Cyrus grinned and tossed the green husk into an empty bowl. “So your adventures with Grace haven’t dulled your senses?”
“There’s nothing dulling about that woman, let me tell you,” Volk rejoined.
“How far do you trust her?”
“As far as Kohai can throw me.”
“Good.”
“Why are you asking?”
“She’s not one of us.”
“She’s not one of them either,” Volk said.
“She’s a celestial. A bureaucrat. A leggy, voluptuous, very hot bureaucrat, but a bureaucrat all the same.”
“I know, but she’s wiser than she lets on. I think she wants out.”
“There is no out, V. Not for her and not for us. We both know that.”
“Not without disgrace, anyway,” Volk said, his words laced with insinuation. “Or worse.”
Cyrus smiled and poured them both another drink. “We’re sending mixed warnings, V. What became of just saying what’s on our minds? We can only read each other’s minds when we want them read. And neither of us is doing that.”
“Am I clenching as tightly as you are?”
Cyrus chuckled. “You’re pinched tighter than a fart in the presence of the five righteous daughters of Zelophehad.”
“Yeah?” Volk rejoined. “You’re squeezed so tight that your id is halfway up the ass of your ego.” He smiled. “You go first.”
“Grace. I like her, but I don’t trust her. She knows more than she’s letting on. That last match, it’s not kosher. Ellen Veetal is not right for Chauncey Matterson.”
“C—”
“Wait, hear me out. I know that sometimes opposites can attract. I know we’ve made matches that were poor fits. In each case, however, the integrity of the couples’ virtues outweighed the sloppiness of their sins. We could still exorcise or slay the various yetzers that stood in the way and manage a decent, respectable match.”
“Surely this match is no different,” Volk said.
“But it is different. I detected no bogey.”
“C, everyone has a yetzer. Usually a clutch of them.”
“…At first.”
“At first?”
Cyrus nodded.
“Oh crap,” Volk said, comprehending the situation. He reached for the bottle and poured them both another drink.
“My words exactly,” Cyrus said, adding the green tea.
“Well, I’m glad to see you made it out alive,” Volk said. “How many did you nail?”
“None.”
“None? How many and how big were they?”
“Too many and big enough. I got the answer I was looking for, and bolted.”
“Look,” Volk said. “I’ll go back with you and we’ll take out those yetzers together, then it’s two dove-feathered golden arrows to the heart and we call it a day.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“It is that simple, but if you really think the yetzers are that nasty, I know some guys from Abishai’s SWAT team who’d love the excuse to get back into the action, though I’d prefer to do without the humiliation.”
Cyrus shook his head, indicating that Volk wasn’t following him. “I think Ellen Veetal is being set up. Compromised.”
“Huh? How? Why?”
Cyrus held up his drink and observed the glimmering Milky Way through the glass’s emerald liquid. “I think she might be a Swerver.”
“Ellen Veetal a Swerver?”
Cyrus nodded. “And you know that if a cupid interferes with a Swerver in any way—”
“She’ll be disqualified and won’t swerve,” Volk said. “But, Swervers only come around a few times a millennium. The odds that she could be a Swerver are close to nil. No cupid has ever met one, which is the point of a Swerver.”
“I know all that, V.”
“Well then, what makes you think she’s a Swerver?”
“She’s highly intuitive.”
“That’s not so unusual. Many humans are, they just don’t know what to do with it.”
“I think she picks up on me.”
“Big deal, C. We’ve encountered that plenty of times before.”
“She wants to believe.”
Volk spit a razz. “In what? Any warm, fuzzy, platitudinous nonsense that makes her feel smart or virtuous? Those folks are a dime a dozen, C. There is a whole species of bumper-sticker yetzers who mask themselves as faith.”
“My gut tells me that she might be the real deal.”
“Look,” Volk said. “It’s easy. Consult the Midrasha. If she’s a Swerver you ought to be able to find some indication of it in her past.”
“Way ahead of you, V.”
“You checked?”
“Tried to. Her files have been erased.”
“That’s impossible. Nothing in the Midrasha can be erased. The records are indestructible, immutable, un-mess-aroundable.”
“Fine, moved then. Hidden, camouflaged, shrouded—call it what you like.”
“We can observe the files,” Volk said. “We can experience
them. But we can’t alter them in any way. Besides, you viewed her history once before. You should already know everything about her.”
“I didn’t review her entire file. I took from it what I thought I needed, like usual. When was the last time we bothered to climb up a match’s entire family tree, other than for kicks? We rarely go beyond a person’s grandparents. We cover the key incidents and happenings—birthdays, graduations, holidays, traumas and dramas, defining moments, key persons, habits, medical records, emotional triggers and the like. It’s all the background that we require. I think I must have skipped something, and someone doesn’t want me to get a second look.”
“But that leaves the question of who could accomplish such a feat, and why?”
“Adaequatio applies to us as well as Kohai, V.”
“Go on…”
“Say Ellen Veetal’s files were transferred to a ‘higher shelf,’ so to speak.”
“We’d lack the adaequatio to see them,” Volk said. “Essentially, they would become invisible to us. We wouldn’t have the clearance level.”
“Exactly. We have the necessary adaequatio to observe much of the Midrasha, but not enough to read or fathom the full archives of, say, archangels, prophets, or the great patriarchs. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to, but for now, most of what their files contain is inaccessible to us.”
“But who do we know with the kind of power that could conceal a file from us?”
“Yes, who indeed?” Cyrus reached into the ice bucket. He tossed some cubes into both glasses. “Now it’s your turn, brother.”
“My—? Wait, you think Grace has something to do with this? You think Grace has such a power?”
Volk laughed and shook his head. He grabbed up the bottle of shouchu and refilled their glasses.
“Sorry, C,” he continued. “Grace may be a celestial and outrank us at the Academy, but celestials can’t access and read the Midrasha. Just like the rest of the Academy, they don’t even know it exists. So, no way, C. Besides, what would she have to gain?”
Cyrus plucked and peeled another edamame. “Dunno, but maybe she’s in cahoots with the Anteros Brotherhood.”5
Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3 Page 9
