Eerie stood and stared, ignoring Derrida’s insistent nudging. Haley wondered if she had come off as pathetic.
“I’m sorry,” Haley said, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to put you off...”
“No,” Eerie said, standing stock still. “It’s just that I understand.”
“Huh?”
Derrida fell onto his back, displaying his tan stomach and hopefully waving a paw at Eerie.
“You can keep petting him,” Haley encouraged. “Don’t mind me.”
“No,” Eerie said sadly. “I can’t. I probably did too much already.”
Haley was puzzled.
“Why not?”
“Because, my touch...I’m not sure if it is safe. For dogs. For anyone, really. I’m actually a lot like you, in that way. My metabolism...”
Haley remembered hearing something about this.
“Oh! Right. I think someone told me about that. Something about causing hallucinations, right?”
“Or worse. I never know. I try not to touch anyone.” Eerie glanced remorsefully down at Derrida, who whined with eagerness. “I probably shouldn’t have pet him at all. I could have hurt him. But I really wanted to. And Derrida is so cool!”
“Is it really so dangerous?”
Eerie nodded solemnly.
“I am not the same, not human. Not really. And the chemicals my body generates, they can...it’s hard to explain. Hard to know till it happens. Most people don’t like it. Sometimes they even get sick.”
“That’s horrible,” Haley said sympathetically, crouching to scratch Derrida’s stomach. “You poor thing. That must be so lonely.”
“It was,” Eerie agreed. “Before Alex. Now it isn’t, not as much.”
“Pardon me if this isn’t an appropriate question, but I’m really curious – why is it different with him? Isn’t it...dangerous for him, too?”
“Oh, yes. Very much so. But you know...” Eerie leaned close, and lowered her oddly musical voice. “I think maybe he likes it.”
***
“Are you averse to company?”
Mitsuru didn’t bother to look to see who was behind her. She was running a surveillance protocol, so there was no need. She had identified him before he took three steps in her direction, though they had never actually met before.
“Karim Sabir,” she said, letting a handful of wet sand fall through her fingers in clumps. “Feel free. The beach is open to all, as I understand it.”
The Kurd sat down half a meter away, grunting at the dampness of the sand. He had two paper plates resting carefully atop each other in his hands, and offered her either.
“Chicken or lamb? I wasn’t sure which would be to your taste, and I wasn’t certain if your diet allowed pork or beef...”
“I follow no such restrictions,” Mitsuru said woodenly. Curiosity quelled her initial impulse to reject both, and she took the chicken and set it down beside her, having no intention to eat. Karim seemed pleased with her decision, and selected a kabob from his own plate. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Sabir.”
“Karim, please. And I could say the same of you, Miss Aoki.”
“Call me Mitsuru,” she said tiredly. “The children have ruined my last name for me.”
Karim laughed and nodded. She watched him while he ate, completely unselfconscious despite her staring.
“Did you have a particular intention in joining me, Karim?”
“Hmm?” Karim wiped sauce from his fingers on a napkin while he considered. “Not as such, no. I suppose I wanted to introduce myself, since we will be working together.”
“We will meet at the briefing tomorrow. Is that not sufficient?”
“Perhaps it is. Then again, perhaps not. I must admit to harboring a certain amount of interest in you, Mitsuru.”
Her gaze hardened, but Karim took no notice, maintaining a friendly smile.
“Why is that?”
“Your reputation, I suppose. You see, despite my exile, I do occasionally have the opportunity to get a little news from Central – rumors from home, as it were, from sympathetic parties. The occasions were few and far between, naturally, but when they arose, I was always eager to hear whatever stories were shared.”
“I see.” Mitsuru queried the Etheric database, requesting records of every Operator who had visited Iraq or worked an assignment there in the last several years. “Please, continue.”
“Let’s just say that I admire your determination. I doubt there has ever been an Auditor whose path to the job was more difficult. I envy your clarity of purpose.”
“My challenges were self-inflicted,” Mitsuru pointed out coldly. “I am hardly admirable.”
“Not if you allow for the bias of my point of view,” Karim said jovially. “We are none of us angels, Mitsuru. After my punishment was finished, I was not forced to redeem myself again. And by some measures, my crimes were greater than those assigned to you by rumor.”
“Desperate times, Karim.” The implant scrolled a list of names with corresponding dates in the HUD in her vision. She scanned over rose-colored text until she found the name she was looking for, and instructed the system to highlight any reoccurrence. There were eight different visits. “But enough about me. Why don’t you tell me how you know Alistair?”
Karim smiled as if the line of questioning pleased him.
“Exactly what I wished to discuss with you, as it happens.” Karim set his plate aside and clasped his hands. “I knew Alistair primarily in a professional context. You are aware of my work as a contractor?”
“Yes.” Mitsuru’s face was impassive. “I have reviewed your record. According to the files, your official tally was sixteen cartel members killed in eleven different incidents, carried out over the course of six years.”
“And, as I’m sure you are aware, the official record notes only those contracts that were made public, as part of a vendetta or a legitimate feud, as recognized by Central and sanctioned by the Committee-at-Large. The actual number is a great deal higher. Sanctioning feuds and vendettas, I might add, has become increasingly rare in recent years, or so I am made to understand.”
“A barbaric practice. The Director should have banned it when he first took office.”
“I always considered it something of a safety valve, myself.” Karim smiled ingratiatingly. “A method of dispersing the inevitable tension between the cartels without resorting to full-scale warfare, while assuring that the conflict would be conducted in line with legal guidelines for the use of force, and resolved in a way that reduced the risk of collateral damage.”
“You were a paid killer, Karim.”
“As are you, Mitsuru. I admit freely to having killed at the order of a variety of employers, whereas you have only one – beyond that distinction, I see no functional difference between our roles.”
“I operate within the boundaries of the law.”
“True enough. I suppose that I could be said to have played a bit fast and loose with the whole idea of ‘legitimate’ feuds. On the other hand, I have never participated in the wholesale extermination of any cartel or family in Central. Can you say the same, as an Auditor?”
“I am not interested in contesting the moral high ground. I am interested in your relationship with Alistair.”
“Very well.” Karim chuckled, removing a toothpick from a container in his pocket and placing it between his teeth. “Alistair hired me infrequently during my tenure in Central to resolve disputes, when it would have been inappropriate for the Auditors to intervene directly. Approximately five years ago, however, Alistair surprised me in Tripoli, where I was conducting some civilian work, and invited me to have dinner with him. Naturally, I accepted, if only to receive news from Central and interact with another of my own kind.”
“Hold.” Mitsuru raised one hand and looked at Karim speculatively as she queried the Etheric Network. “Did the terms of your exile not forbid you from finding employment in any sort of industry related to your original occupation?�
�
“Of course.” Karim nodded in affirmation, apparently untroubled. “A prohibition I honored for the first three years of my exile, when I still had hope that the Director might review my case, or that my petitions for reversal might be heard in the Committee. When both possibilities were denied, and I had ample time to experience what a return to mundane life entailed, I decided that the worst consequence of returning to my original occupation would be death, either in action or at the hands of the Auditors. At the time, death seemed a preferable alternative to living a diminished life among civilians.”
“Understood. Continue.”
“At the dinner, it quickly became apparent that Alistair’s intentions were hardly social. Of course, I suspected as much from the start, as we were hardly friends. After a brief feeling-out period, Alistair offered me indirect employment, working for him through a variety of fronts and subsidiaries. I was led to believe that I would be performing tasks at the behest of the Audits department, tasks with which they could not be publically associated.”
Mitsuru’s eyes narrowed.
“You suspect that you were not working for Audits?”
Karim nodded, laying out the materials for rolling a cigarette on his thigh as he spoke.
“Alice Gallow confirmed as much during my debriefing.”
Karim added a pinch of tobacco to a rolling paper while Mitsuru ran additional searches on the Etheric Network, downloading the summary of Karim’s debriefing. There were nearly twenty operations detailed, all taking place during the course of his exile, which were already cross-indexed by the technicians at Analytics. Mitsuru reviewed the references while Karim finished rolling his cigarette.
“They were hits on a variety of cartel interests,” Mitsuru reported, her voice tinged with the wooden tone of Etheric networking. “Most likely, they were in service of the Anathema.”
“So I’ve come to understand. Not the most pleasant revelation.”
Mitsuru tagged the files for a later, more thorough review, and disconnected from the Etheric Network.
“Very interesting. But why bring this to me? If it was operationally relevant, I am certain that Alice Gallow would have briefed me on it…”
Karim lit his cigarette and turned to face her, studying her with an unabashed intensity that would have made Mitsuru uncomfortable, even made her suspect his intentions, had his gaze not been so utterly clinical.
“You know what I do, right? How I operate?”
“I have been briefed,” Mitsuru acknowledged. “You are a sniper and a wideband telepath. You operate your protocol for concealment, and for target location. As I understand it, your protocol has unprecedented range, but no ability to modify or alter thought.”
“That’s about right. I haven’t heard the mission briefing yet, obviously, but I think it’s a safe bet to assume that I will facilitate telepathic communication for the team and provide long-distance precision fire support as necessary. As I understand it, you are generally on point during recon and assault missions.”
Mitsuru nodded.
“It’s no secret what the Auditors are up to these days – hunting the Anathema. Alistair in particular, for obvious reasons. I figure Alice Gallow must have a pretty good lead, to recruit someone like me and then drop me into the mix so quickly. Which makes me think that we might be encountering Alistair sooner rather than later.” Karim glanced at his half-smoked cigarette with evident distaste, grinding it out on his partially eaten plate of kabobs. “We mostly talked shop, when he came to visit, but Alistair did mention you. I’ve been doing a bunch of background reading for the last couple days, getting caught up on what’s happened around Central while I was out of the loop. I understand that you have some personal reasons for wanting to take Alistair out yourself – and I don’t blame you.” Karim smiled out at where the ocean should have been, but instead there was only undifferentiated darkness. “I just wanted to share a little relevant history, maybe come to an understanding before things become complicated.”
Karim stood up, collecting the remains of his meal and her untouched plate.
“I am sorry if I disturbed you.”
He gave her a friendly nod, then turned back to the fire and the party that surrounded it. Mitsuru meant to watch him leave, but then the words came out of her, not exactly unbidden.
“You said that Alistair talked about me.”
“Some,” Karim agreed, his back to her.
“What did he say?”
Karim hesitated for a moment, though if he was a telepath, he must have had an inkling that the question was coming.
“He said you were the most dangerous person he ever met. That you vacillated between being effective and unstable. That you would either get killed or end up with his spot as Chief Auditor, and he wouldn’t have taken a bet either way.” Karim spoke without turning to face her. “Oh, yeah. He also said you were exceptionally beautiful. I can’t speak for the rest of it, but he was certainly right about that.”
Mitsuru watched him walk away, no emotion at all in her bloodshot eyes.
***
“It was no accident that I was never informed the Academy had a Fey student.”
“She’s not a full-blooded Fey – you know as well as I do we haven’t had direct contact with one of them in decades. She’s a Changeling of uncertain parentage, raised at the Academy since childhood.” Alice glanced at Michael, who was eating with Alex and Vivik near the fire. “And nobody told you about her because you would have wanted to dissect her or mount her in your butterfly collection, or something like that.”
“I’m appalled by your low opinion,” Dr. Graaf objected mildly. “You make me sound like some sort of mad scientist.”
“On this point, Miss Gallow and I are in agreement,” Gerald Windsor said, shaking out the match he had just used to finish lighting his pipe. “As is the Director, and Miss Levy, should you care to ask. You are a valued ally, Paul, but the students are our responsibility, Eerie included. We’ve given you a great deal of leeway here at the Far Shores...”
“...and look at the results!” Dr. Graaf cried out, pointing at the distant tower of the power plant.
“...but we aren’t going to include the children in the scope of your responsibilities.”
“Outside of the slight on my character that all of this entails, I believe that you are overlooking the tremendous possibilities that the girl represents,” Dr. Graaf said, alternating between them as if hoping for a more sympathetic audience. “Gerald – you know my work. You know that everything I have done has been strictly for the benefit of Central. The Ether – and biological interaction with the Ether – is at the very core of what we study here. And you saw the Changeling walk on top of it as if it were solid! She could be the key to everything that I have labored over for years!”
“She’s an eighteen-year-old girl, Doc,” Alice said, folding her arms. “Not a breakthrough. Not a specimen. A person, a student at the Academy, a resident of Central with all the rights and responsibilities that entails.”
“Surely you don’t believe that,” Dr. Graaf said, lowering his voice. “You must have read the histories by now, Miss Gallow, even if you have forgotten them. The Fey are not human. They are as alien as the Witches – and at one time, posed an even greater threat to Central, to human life in general.”
“Paul, my friend, you are wrong,” Gerald said, putting his hand companionably on the smaller man’s arm. “And this is the sort of talk that makes people nervous about your intentions. The Fey are long departed from this world. And Eerie is not a relic from darker times or some sort of resurgent threat from the past. She is a person; I can attest to it – I have known her since childhood. One could say I even had a small hand in her rearing. Her genes may not be entirely human, but I assure you, she is every bit as much of a person as you or I.”
“Maybe more than you, Doc,” Alice added.
“I would do nothing to harm or frighten her,” Dr. Graaf insisted, his forgotten ciga
r partially crushed between the tense fingers of his left hand. “I have no desire to perform research or experiments without her express consent. All I want is the opportunity to ask. Is that so much? Have my contributions to the well-being of Central earned me so little goodwill?”
Alice’s eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to respond, but Gerald Windsor cut her off smoothly.
“Come, Doctor, you are taking this all the wrong way.” Gerald gestured toward the children and the campfire, his voice filled with warmth and good humor. “Look around you, Paul. Your time of exile and observation is over. We have provided you with resources and granted you authority. Our most valued Operators are available to work with you at Miss Gallow’s discretion. We have even brought an entire class from the Academy to observe your work firsthand! If I wished to hide the Changeling from you, then I simply would not have brought her to the Far Shores. You must understand this is nothing personal. The children – all of them, Eerie included – are the responsibility of the Academy and its faculty. We do not delegate that responsibility or their welfare to outsiders, under any circumstances – neither to you, nor to any other interested party. Not only is the part of our professional responsibility, it is also key to our mandate from Central and the Board. Can you imagine the furor if the cartels discovered we were lending out students to your fringe group?”
“Politics,” Dr. Graaf huffed. “I offer you revelations and you respond with politics. Miss Gallow, you said that the Changeling is eighteen, correct? Then she is capable of making her own decision about whether she might be interested in participating in my studies...”
“They are all wards of the Academy,” Gerald reminded him gently, again speaking before Alice had the chance. “You know that age is not a factor. Until they graduate from the Academy, they remain our responsibility.”
“And this class graduates within the year, correct? Well, if I must wait...”
“Eerie is a special case,” Gerald countered, smiling pleasantly at Alice as if to defuse her obvious anger. “Because of her exceptional circumstances, her period of guardianship has been extended indefinitely. For her own protection, naturally. It is only fair, after all – the Academy is the only home she has ever known, and the only facility equipped to deal with her unique needs and physiology.”
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 36
