Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  Belial derived his strength from the ocean. If I could lure him inland, the odds would swing in favor of my team. The problem became finding the right bait. I spent half an hour and two cups of coffee trying to come up with an alternative, but in the end I admitted what I knew all along: the best bait was going to be me. If he stayed true to the Chaos master type, Belial would want revenge for his follower’s death.

  And once we had him, what then? I discussed the problem with Ari a little while later, once he’d gotten up and had his coffee.

  “Belial’s not really here,” I told him. “What we’re experiencing is some kind of weird linkup to his actual self. He’s got some kind of vehicle for his consciousness, kind of like the powers of that casket thing in AVATAR. We don’t understand either the link or the vehicle.”

  “True,” Ari said. “We don’t even know what he is when he’s at home.”

  “Actually, I have a theory about that. A sapient squid from another planet.”

  Ari choked on his mouthful of granola. I tactfully looked away while he corrected the problem.

  “Another planet,” Ari said eventually. “A sapient what?”

  “Squid.” I returned my gaze to my partner and found him cleaned up and respectable again. “But I mean a cephalopod in general, not exactly a squid, but a similiar line of evolution.”

  “Oh. That makes it ever so much better.”

  I ignored the sarcasm and continued thinking aloud. “Even if his body were on this planet, how could you arrest him? Do you know how to scuba dive?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “And even if I could figure out how to terminate him,” I went on, “it’s against Agency policy unless he’s directly threatening another sapient being’s life. If I use myself as bait, he probably will be threatening my life, of course. He’s already done that once.”

  “The more you natter on about this,” Ari said, “the less I like it.”

  “I’m not real keen on it myself. But I can’t allow a Chaos master to wander around in my territory causing trouble.”

  Ari started to speak, caught himself, and considered what I’d said for a couple of moments. “True.” He spoke quietly without a trace of sarcasm. “You can’t.”

  I caught myself before I said something gushy. “Glad you understand,” I said instead. “Thanks.”

  It took some time and many phone calls before Annie, Jerry, and I finalized our plan. We needed to meet indoors for our séance to prevent an interruption from some curious bystander. Annie and I both lived too near the ocean. Jerry’s roommate dealt so many different drugs that I refused to let Ari inside their apartment. We finally settled on a hotel room as the only alternative.

  “I’m going to get a suite, because we’ll need plenty of room on the floor,” I said. “What about the place where we spent our first night together?”

  Ari smiled. “You do have a sentimental streak after all.”

  “Actually, I was thinking that it was quiet and not too expensive.”

  The smile vanished. “As you’d say: whatever.”

  Since the tourist season had yet to start, I had no trouble renting a suite at the Daly City hotel for that night and the next. It came with wireless access, so I took my Agency laptop with me as part of our respectable amount of luggage. I also wore the glen plaid pants suit, a further touch of respectability. I didn’t want the staff wondering what we were doing in that suite. Ari and I checked in late that afternoon. Annie and Jerry would arrive on the morrow.

  “I need some time to bait Belial,” I told Ari. “I’ve got to make sure he attacks when I want him to.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Running scans. Lots of them, simple ones at first. I’ll start pushing him tomorrow morning.”

  Whoever had decorated the two rooms of the suite loved brown. We had pale brown walls and lots of dark brown furniture, relieved by white curtains and bedspread and the occasional touch of orange in a lamp base and throw pillows, all very restful and earthy—exactly the mood I wanted for trapping a restless soul who belonged in the ocean.

  I began by taking my crayons and large-size pad of paper to the table for an LDRS. I picked up no trace of Belial, but then, I hadn’t expected to. Next I ran an SM:P. Again, nothing. I repeated this procedure at intervals throughout the afternoon. After dinner, I stepped up the pressure by throwing Qi behind the scans. Eventually, somewhere around ten o’clock, I felt a faint stirring of interest out on the aura field. Although Belial came no closer, I knew he’d smelled the bait.

  That night I dreamed of oceans, vast beautiful oceans with clear turquoise water, edged by white sand beaches. Plants in various shades of green and purple grew on the bottom of the sea, and enormous coral reefs spread out to the size of cities. Fishlike creatures in pinks and yellows darted through the water. In the dream, I floated on the surface and looked down on these marvels. When I woke, I wanted to believe that I’d seen Belial’s home seas, but I distrusted the easy explanation. It never pays to take dreams literally, no matter how beautiful they are, unless of course you’re Aunt Eileen.

  We ordered breakfast from room service, then got to work with our laptops. I was filing a provisional report with the Agency when I heard Ari say, “What?” I looked up from the screen.

  “This must be some sort of joke,” Ari said.

  “What is?” I said.

  “Sorry. This e-mail. It says ‘Tell O’Grady to keep him pinned until Javert can reach us physically.’ This particular account comes through Interpol. They shouldn’t know anything about you. The sender ID is typical, AOS14, but I can’t find whoever it is on any directory.”

  “Isn’t there any routing information?”

  Ari hit a couple of keys. “Yes, a standard encrypted route for agents. It’s the lack of information about the sender that’s odd. I’ll send tech support an inquiry.”

  “Please do.” I paused to run an SM:D but felt no particular danger from any quarter. “That message is really strange.”

  It occurred to me that if we, however AOS14 defined “we,” were waiting for Javert to reach us physically, then it was possible—and logical—that he’d already reached “us” psychically. I decided against speculating out loud. Ari could only handle a few psychic weirdities at a time.

  I encrypted and sent my report, then logged off. “It’s time to start harassing Belial again.”

  “Shouldn’t you wait till the others arrive?”

  “For our big move, yeah. For now I’ll just be agitating him.”

  I ran a couple of high-Qi SM:Ps for Belial. The second one hit home. I received a clear impression of anger tinged with fear. I found his fear reassuring even though I had to admit that I felt the same emotion. When I tried to do an LDRS for his location, however, I picked up nothing but a tenuous, possibly inaccurate impression of a solidly raised Shield Persona.

  Just before the rest of the team arrived, Ari checked his e-mail again. He snarled and looked up from his laptop. “I’ve heard back from tech support about that e-mail,” he told me.

  “Oh? What did they have to say?”

  “That there’s no such e-mail address for any agent.” He scowled at the screen. “That’s impossible. If this person could access that part of the e-mail system, he has to be an agent. I told them to look for a security breach.” He glanced my way with an injured look worthy of a tragic actor. “They’re accusing me of having a joke on them.”

  Maybe it was just the tension, but I laughed.

  Annie and Jerry cabbed down to the hotel together. Since I’d given them the room number in e-mail, they came straight up. Jerry was wearing men’s clothing for a change, a pair of chinos, an oxford cloth gray shirt, and a jeans jacket. Annie had put on a blue pants suit that actually fit her and a flowered blouse.

  “New clothes?” I said.

  “Well, I got this used.” She ran a hand down the front of the jacket. “But I was so tired of slopping around in sweatshirts that I indulged myself.”

/>   Ari called room service and ordered breakfast and coffee for everyone while I got out the equipment we were going to use. I opened the special suitcase where I had my CDEP material, the Chaos Diagnostic Emergency Procedure, that is. After room service had been and gone, the others pitched into the food. I spread the black velvet cloth, decorated with a large pentagram painted in white, out on the floor, and placed the black candles at the four directions.

  “I first made contact with Belial using this,” I told the group, “so I think it’s our best shot of attracting him.”

  “I agree,” Annie said. “Jerry and I should sit to each side of you, probably on cushions so we don’t waste Qi on the floor.” She sighed. “I used to be able to get into the lotus posture, but those days are long gone.”

  Jerry grinned at her. “I think I can still do that,” he said. “My job, you know. You have to be flexible.”

  Annie snickered. Ari’s expression turned into a credible imitation of stone.

  Next I got out the camcorder, the relic of my first days at the Agency. Despite our technician’s modifications at the time, by then it was far from state of the art. For one thing, it recorded to a clunky-looking flash card rather than a thumb drive. Most likely that particular variety of memory wasn’t even for sale any longer. Luckily, I’d been given several of them, one of which I’d never used. I handed the machine and the card to Ari, who had new batteries ready. While he tested out the camcorder, we talked through our plan—twice, just to make sure we’d anticipated all the possibilities.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s do it. Now or never and all that jazz.”

  I lit the black votive lights and lay down on the black cloth with my head between two of the points of the pentagram. Jerry sat in the lotus posture at my left hand, Annie on a couch cushion to my right. Ari went into the bedroom. He propped the door into the living room, where we were, open with a stack of phone books, then pulled a chair around to the side of opening. Although he’d be mostly hidden, he still had a good clear line of sight.

  “When Annie says go,” I told him, “start recording. When she says save, save the file.”

  “Yes,” Ari said. “I know.”

  I stretched out my arms to either side. Jerry and Annie each took one of my hands.

  “If the going gets tough,” Jerry said to Annie, “let her start tapping my Qi first.”

  “I’m not that old!” Annie frowned at him.

  “No,” Jerry said, “but you’ve had cancer.”

  “He’s right,” I put in. “I don’t want to risk your health, Annie. You’re going to need it.”

  At the moment, the Qi balanced out normally. Feeling the reassuring flow between the three of us made it easy for me to slip into trance.

  At first, I floated in a black void. I had the usual sensation of rising through the air while a daylight brightness grew around me. When I could finally see, I felt as if I were floating upright, not lying on my back. The glow revealed nothing, though distantly I heard the sound of the sea, murmuring on a graveled beach. I bent my mind toward the sound and called for Belial.

  I became aware of him as a kind of psychic smudge on my inner horizon. I called again. He drifted toward me but stayed sensibly out of range.

  “Hey!” I called out. “Calamari! Deep-fried!”

  On a tide of rage, he swept toward me. I gathered Qi, shaped it into a lightning bolt, and threw it in his direction. I heard his snarl of fury echo through the bright void. In a churning vortex of water he surged toward me. I could clearly hear his fish tank bubble. Within it, words formed.

  “Your kind eats my little brothers, ape girl! Squid, octopi! Hatred shall be your bitter sauce.”

  “My species will eat just about anybody,” I thought to him. “Don’t take it personally.”

  Once again he snarled and bubbled. “Let us have it out between us, thou and I!”

  From his way with words, I gathered that he listened to Goth rock when he was on our planet. I answered in the same spirit, “Indeed, for the time has come to see who will be the greater master.”

  I threw another sizzling blot of Qi straight at him. Thunder cracked the inner sky as blue fire enveloped the waterspout, but his image held. In return, he thrust a long spear of ice straight for me. I dodged and summoned Qi. When he thrust the spear again, I sent a blaze of fire along it. The spear melted and disappeared.

  The waterspout veered off, drew back, then with a howl of rage, it charged straight for me. I dodged, leaped, threw a flaming ball of Qi into its midst. Steam rose, but still he kept coming. I danced away. He followed. I pulled Qi from deep within and felt it replenish like a leap of flame along my left arm. Jerry was online.

  I called upon the desert wind. It came, a scorching blast, and struck the waterspout. Drops scattered and dried. Belial pulled back and drew more Qi into himself. He appeared as a flood, like a breaking green wave—then screamed, again and again, a high-pitched shriek of rage, not pain. I held back my last bolt as the waterspout began to shrink, spiraling around and around like water going down a drain. I could hear him bubbling and sobbing as the vast vortex of water shrank down to the spray from a hose.

  “No, no,” he said. “You don’t fight fair!”

  “Tough,” I said. “Grow up!”

  I heard a sound like a kid slurping up the last bit of soda through a straw. Belial vanished. I woke myself up and found that I was still lying on the velvet pentagram. Annie was calmly pinching out the flames of the black candles. A sweat-soaked Jerry grinned at me.

  “Oooh,” he said, “better’n sex.”

  At that point I knew I was fully back. I sat up. Since Ari had walked into the room, I refrained from pointing out that in a nonphysical way, Jerry and I had had sex.

  With a small smile of triumph, Ari handed me the camcorder. When I looked into the tiny playback screen, I saw a shape like a cloud of white smoke. Belial was twisting, turning, swirling around and around. Finally, he stopped and hovered, a wisp of trapped and exhausted mist. He raised the lumpish shape that I assumed was his head and pointed it in my direction.

  “I know where your father is.” His voice bubbled in my mind. “Let me go, and I’ll tell you.”

  “I’ll find him on my own,” I said. “Sorry.”

  I hit “eject” and the flash memory card popped out into my hand. From Belial, I received a brief glimmer of panic, then an eerie sense of nothing at all.

  “Is he dead?” Ari said.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I think he’s in a state that’s a lot like deep sleep. He’ll stay that way until we figure out what to do with him.”

  “Why not just delete the file?” Jerry said. “The little motherfucker’s a murderer, after all.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to be one, too.”

  “Ever high-minded, that’s you, darling.”

  “Someone has to be around here.” I glanced at the flash card. “I need to keep this safe till Javert gets here.”

  “Who?” Jerry said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But someone sent Ari an e-mail saying Javert was coming for our friend Belial. Sort of like waiting for Godot, I guess.”

  “No, no,” Annie said with a laugh. “Not Godot. Les Miserables . Javert’s the police officer who keeps dogging Jean Valjean.” She thought for a moment. “Well, he does in the book. I don’t know if they had room for him in the musical. I’ve never seen it. They cost so much, those big shows.”

  “A squid cop!” Jerry rolled his eyes and grinned. “I wonder what kind of cuffs they use?”

  “You would,” I said.

  “It’s because of the tentacles.” Jerry put false dignity into his voice. “You do have a dirty mind, darling. I was just wondering how many loops you’d need to cuff a squid.”

  “Plenty, no doubt.” I got up off the floor and staggered over to the table, where I’d left my shoulder bag. “Would someone get me a glass of water?”

  Annie trotted into the suite’s bathroom. I pu
t the flash card back into its silvery antistatic packaging and tucked it into a zipper pocket of my shoulder bag.

  “Sit down.” Ari pointed to the couch. “You’re white in the face. I saved some food for you, and you’re going to eat it.”

  “Great,” I said. “You know what? I’m actually hungry.”

  CHAPTER 18

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, ARI AND I WAITED for the mysterious Javert, but he never arrived. I began to think that the e-mail Ari had received was just a joke on the part of one of his colleagues or even someone in Interpol’s tech support. Ari had assumed that no one in Interpol would know who I was. I figured that their internal security had investigated the woman he was living with as a routine matter. My Agency certainly would have.

  Several times a day we checked the front wall of the building for graffiti. Although we saw the normal obscene scribblings, which Ari promptly washed off, it wasn’t until Wednesday, just at sunset, that the unbalanced Chaos symbol made another appearance. While Ari asked the various neighbors if they’d seen the “artist” who’d drawn it, I waited on the sidewalk and stared into the circle with the seven arrows.

  The face appeared: the oddly familiar-looking white guy with blue eyes and a bald head—a shaved head, I realized. During this manifestation, I saw stubble around the base of his skull. He spoke with the same high, fluting voice.

  “You’ve got power,” he said. “Good job on that squirt Belial.”

  “I take he was no friend of yours,” I said.

  “No, but he does have friends.” The face paused for a high-pitched laugh. “I can’t protect you unless you join us. Find the Angel, and you find me.”

  He disappeared before I could sketch a Chaos ward. I threw it anyway, but the graffito was only paint—no sizzle, no sparks, and Ari washed it off without any trouble.

  I reported the incident to the Agency, then did some hard thinking about the manifestations. Ari and Michael could both see the graffito, but only I could see the face. The images and the voice, therefore, had to be psychic phenomena, not recorded messages or anything that physically existed. Somehow, Cryptic Creep could tell when I was looking into the circle, then contact my mind if he felt like doing so. I disliked this “walk right in” attitude of his. How he could contact me so easily presented a real puzzle.