The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  Chapter 10

  The press of traffic made the Estival’s progress agonizingly slow. But nobody stopped the car.

  Evi’s view sucked. She was wedged in the footwell of the rear seat. Anyone observing Diana’s Ford would only see the driver, but Evi couldn’t see anything but an oblique cross section of Manhattan’s skyline.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of danger you’re in?”

  “Some.” Diana eased the car out of what seemed to be the mainstream of New York’s gridlock. “I counted at least five unmarked cop cars up and down Bank Street.”

  “Why the hell did you—” Evi kept thinking of Kris. “I could get you killed.”

  “What’s the diff between a cop shooting you in the middle of a pro-morey demonstration and getting blown away helping a quote-terrorist-unquote.”

  Evi shook her head. She had trouble following Diana and couldn’t decide whether or not it was the alcohol. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know who you are. Anyone who gives the PTB the shits like you did is okay in my book.”

  “Powers that be,” Evi whispered to herself. “You know who I am?” Evi asked, “Then who am I?” She wasn’t too sure any more.

  Diana chuckled. “You’re a radical pro-morey terrorist. Responsible for an attack on an Upper East Side condominium that caused at least three million in damages, not to mention a few dead cops.”

  Evi felt the bottom fall out of her stomach.

  “All bullshit, of course, but I’m intrigued by a girl who is in the middle of that much trouble.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “I never said I wasn’t neurotic.”

  “Is that what’s going out over the news?”

  Evi studied the side of Diana’s face. When Diana nodded, her right earlobe became briefly visible. She wore as an earring a small silver anarchy symbol. Before today Evi would have found such disenchantment with the government hard to relate to.

  “You’ve made the top story on every news channel. Largest manhunt,” Diana repressed a laugh and it came out a snort, “in the city’s history. Though so far you’re an ‘unidentified female.’”

  This was getting too bizarre, even for the events of the last twenty-four hours. “So naturally, when you realized who I was and that the cops were after me, you decided to pick me up.”

  “Just funny that way, I guess.”

  “You’re nuts.” Evi wondered if she should be looking to jump from the car.

  “What, are you complaining because I’m helping you?”

  “Yes, too many people have been hurt—”

  “Are you going to tell me that the moreau underground is suddenly working with Afghanis?”

  “What?” The Afghani canines were mercenaries who cared nothing for politics. They usually worked for humans; the pay was better. “No, but—”

  “You going to tell me that the morey underground had suddenly changed tactics and is going after civilian targets?”

  “No,” Evi said. The main thrust of moreau violence, as little as there was in the past few years, had been “military” targets—communications, power, police. She fell silent.

  The Hassan case in Cleveland echoed through Evi’s mind. Then, as now, there had been the attempt to pass off the Afghani mercenary activity as part of the radical moreau movement. Evi could see the same people using the same phrases now as they did six years ago. A group of people high up in the Agency didn’t want anyone following the canines to their source.

  Diane was continuing to talk. “So, are you going to tell me that you really are a terrorist and evil incarnate?”

  Evi stared at Diana and tried to make sense out of her benefactor. “I have the feeling if I told you I was the Antichrist, you’d just get excited.”

  Diana shrugged. “Going to bite the hand that feeds you?”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  “What is?”

  “The point is that someone could kill you if you hang around me.” Evi surprised herself with the force of her protest. Did she really want to have the only person to help her abandon her?

  Evi knew that she desperately did not want Diana to end up like Kris.

  Diana was silent for a moment before she spoke. “If my name’s on a cop’s bullet, it was put there back in the forties.”

  The Estival drove on in silence. It hit a bump, turned down a side street, and stopped. “Speaking of names, is Eve your real name?”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t look like an Eve.”

  Evi sat up and winced, she was feeling her shoulder again. Once she was upright, she could see where the Estival had parked. Diana had maneuvered the car into a bare alley between the back end of a line of refurbished brownstones and the blank cinderblock of an old warehouse.

  “It’s Evi. Evi Isham.” Evi picked up her pack and opened the door. “Diana, thanks for the help. But I can’t risk you—”

  Diana reached over the seat and put a hand on Evi’s good shoulder. “Wait.”

  Evi stopped and looked at Diana. The alcohol was mostly gone now, a benefit of an engineered metabolism. With the haze gone, she could feel some of her judgment returning. She tried to cultivate some of her normal suspicion as she listened.

  Diana squeezed Evi’s shoulder. “If the cops were going to land on us, they would’ve already. You aren’t going to drag me down unless you want to.”

  Evi ducked out from under Diana’s hand and stepped out of the car.

  Diana continued to talk. “I used to have close ties to the nonhuman movement, a long time ago. I know you aren’t a part of it. A human as high profile as the news is making you out to be, I’d know—everyone in the Village’d know.”

  Evi turned around to face Diana. Diana scooted across the front seat and stepped out of the passenger door in front of Evi. “The people in that bar have no love for the cops. Your shadows’ve been sent off in a dozen different directions. You’re safe. I’m safe.”

  The world was eerily silent, wrapped in the blowing snow. The way the sounds were sucked into the night reminded Evi of the Jordanian desert. Evi felt alone, and she felt that Diana was taking advantage of that feeling. It was a twisted feeling. If anyone was being exploited, it was Diana.

  Diana was trying to force Evi to use her.

  “Damn it.” This was pissing Evi off. She turned on Diana and yelled, “Why do you want to help me?”

  “You want to know why?”

  Evi tossed her pack to the ground and spread her arms wide, ignoring pain in her shoulder. “Yes, I want to know why. Why someone would choose to get involved in this shit. This isn’t your fight!”

  Diana shrugged. “In the bar, I saw how you looked. I’ve seen it before—” Diana looked up into her eyes-so deeply that Evi raised her hand to make sure the sunglasses were still there. “Ten years ago. Smuggling nonhuman refugees into the country. Saw a lot of people with that look.”

  Evi lowered her arms. “What look?”

  “Despair, loss, lots of fatigue. The look of someone who’s lost everything. Someone who’s been running too long—Close?”

  Evi could feel her shoulders slumping. She still tried to cultivate her instinct for suspicion, tried to see Diana as a potential foe. But even Abdel was remaining mute on the subject.

  “Damn.”

  “Close to calling it quits, weren’t you?”

  “You’ve made your point,” Evi whispered. She wasn’t going to get out of this without trusting someone. She sighed. “God. I need a rest.”

  Diana closed the car door, picked up Evi’s pack and shouldered it. “The offer’s still open, to crash at my place.” As an afterthought, she added, “I have a couch.”

  “Where?”

  Diana hooked her thumb at the warehouse and started toward it. Evi followed.

&nbs
p; The entrance to Diane’s apartment was a decrepit freight elevator that could fit the Estival inside it, but no way could have lifted it. They shuddered up four floors, past converted studio apartments, to the sound of an overtaxed electric motor. Evi smelled grease, rust, and static electricity, and as the haze of alcohol continued to lift, she could smell Diana. Jasmine touched by a hint of sweat and beer. And . . .

  The elevator chunked into place and the smell of incense wafted in, overpowering any subtler odor.

  Diana opened the gate on an impressive studio apartment. A small kitchenette to their right, a wall of glass block to their left, and, in between, a low entrance hall that opened out into a vast open space. They faced a vast sweep of windows that looked out over the Hudson River.

  When they walked out into the room, grudging lights came on, erasing the skyline of Jersey City out the window.

  “My place.”

  “I’m impressed. I didn’t think there were places like this left on Manhattan.”

  Evi walked toward the couch that formed the centerpiece of the room. It faced an old comm that squatted in front of the windows. She rotated, slowly, until she was facing Diana and the elevator. Above the elevator was a loft draped with curtains.

  She stood there a moment taking it in.

  After an uncomfortable moment Diana shook her head. “I’m being a poor host. Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

  Evi ran her hand through her hair and winced when it caught in the tangled mess. “Thanks, but I’d like to clean up first.”

  Diana stopped in mid-step toward the kitchen and turned toward the glass block. “Yes, of course. The bathroom’s over here.”

  The bathroom was cavernous. The shower could have easily accommodated a half-dozen people. “Leave your clothes by the door, and I’ll try to find something clean for you to wear.” Diana put Evi’s pack down between the john and the bidet. Diana fidgeted a moment or two before she left.

  The bathroom was nearly eight meters on a side by five high. Half the walls were tile, half glass block. One wall was faced with mirrored tile; the upper half of the opposite wall was eaten by ranks of windows. The view out the windows consisted of glowing swirls of white flakes against a totally black background.

  Evi shucked the jacket.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. The sound bounced off a dozen walls and the corrugated steel ceiling before it laid itself to rest.

  She emptied the pockets of the jumpsuit, including the clips for the Mishkov, back into her pack. Then, slowly, she unzipped the jumpsuit.

  She kicked the boots and the jumpsuit back by the door and walked to the shower, not looking in the mirror.

  She’d forgotten how good a long, hot shower could feel. She stood under the stream of water for nearly five minutes before she realized she still had on her sunglasses.

  She put them in the soapdish.

  Once out of the shower, she looked in the mirror. She expected to look worse than she did, after what she had been through. Again, the benefits of an engineered metabolism.

  The bruise on her calf had faded to a dull yellow, while her tear-gas irritated eye was more-or-less normal looking. The shoulder, however, was an ugly sight. The shrapnel wound had closed up, but from the wrenching injury in the car crash, the entire area had turned a dark purple.

  Evi tried each axis of movement in her left shoulder and each sent a shuddering wave of pain.

  “This could be a problem,” she told her reflection. Even with her metabolism, it could be three days before she could even think about using that arm.

  She opened her pack. Most of her medkit had fallen out, but the bottom of the bag was littered with items that had spilled out of the kit. The mess was mostly drug cartridges that were useless without the hypo, but she thanked the gods that one of the items that stayed was the heat-activated polymer support bandage.

  She strapped up her injured shoulder. Her body heat was supposed to fuse the white bandage into a single tight piece. Her metabolism wouldn’t cooperate on that score, but Diana’s dryer did just as well.

  With the bandage in place she could use the arm, a little. Very little.

  Diana had done as promised and left her some clean clothes in place of the jumpsuit and leather. She had been thoughtful enough to leave a number of things to choose from. After trying on a few items, it was clear that Diana had no clothes to fit Evi’s relatively compact scale.

  She finally settled on a red kimono that would be a racy number on Diana’s six-foot tall, robust frame. On Evi it was a modest robe that came down past her knees and covered her rather completely.

  Sunglasses . . .

  She looked at her reflection in the mirror and at her eyes. The pupils were narrowed in the light. She wished she had contacts.

  She put the sunglasses back on. She would rather explain away that than try to deal with the reaction her eyes might cause. She kept remembering Chuck Dwyer’s face. “You’re a frank.” Like she was a piece of diseased meat.

  “So, I’m a frank,” she told her reflection. “No need to bother her with that fact.”

  She picked up her pack and the extra clothes and left the bathroom.

  “If she asks, it’s because I have sensitive eyes.”

  Diana never asked.

  In the kitchenette, she served her tea and some Chinese dish with pork and tofu. Evi ate ravenously while Diana seemed to abort her own attempts at conversation.

  She was fully prepared to answer most of the questions Diana should have been asking. But she wasn’t asked. After a few false starts, they ate in relative silence. Evi could smell a host of confused jasmine-flavored emotions floating off of Diana. She didn’t press.

  Eventually, Diana led her to the couch in the middle of the studio’s main room. Diana left her there in the dark. Evi took off her sunglasses, wrapped herself in a blanket, and fell asleep instantly.

  Chapter 11

  Something brushed her hair and Evi snapped awake. Her hand had struck out before she was fully aware of what was going on.

  According to her time sense, she’d been sleeping for four hours.

  Diana was perched on the end of a coffee table, backlit by a streetlamp shining through the growing snowstorm. Evi had reflexively grabbed her wrist. Diana’s fingers were barely touching her hair.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Evi could see Diana’s flush as a slight infrared pattern in her face. The combination of blush, red hair, and reflected light from Evi’s borrowed kimono gave Diana a rose glow, as if an internal fire illuminated her.

  The black lipstick was gone.

  Evi slowly released Diana’s wrist. “Old reflex. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “No,” Diana said. She was looking down at her lap and had let her arm fall to her side. All she wore was an oversized satin pajama top.

  Evi sat up and looked at Diana, who had perched herself on the edge of the table, long legs crossed under her. The pose showed off her calves. More rounded and shapely than Evi’s legs. Something to be said for more than four percent body fat.

  Evi realized that the silence was stretching out to an uncomfortable length. “Is something the matter?”

  Diana looked up and shook her head, rippling her hair. “I don’t know.”

  That was another thing Evi envied. Long hair was a liability in her line of work.

  Her former line of work.

  Diana was staring into her eyes.

  No!

  Evi’s hand shot out toward the coffee table and grabbed her sunglasses.

  “Evi?” There was a quavering note in Diana’s voice.

  Damn, damn, damn! The eyes, why did it have to be the eyes? No one was ever going to be able to relate to her normally because of the damn eyes. Evi put on the sunglasses in a vain hope that Diana hadn’t seen them.


  She was still putting them on when she felt Diana’s hand on her own.

  “Your eyes—”

  Go on, say it. I’m not human. I’m a goddamn frankenstein—say it.

  Diana slowly pulled her hand down, along with the sunglasses. She didn’t bother resisting the pull. Diana kept staring into her eyes.

  Evi wanted to scream.

  “Why do you hide them?” Diana’s voice was barely a whisper. “They’re beautiful.”

  She stared for a fraction of a second, leaning forward. Then, with a gasp and a violent shake of her head, Diana turned around and fled to the window. Evi was left sitting on the couch, confused, sunglasses halfway to her face.

  Did she hear right? All of a sudden she felt very warm.

  Diana was standing in front of the windows, arms clutched around herself, staring out at the snow. The white top she was wearing took on a glow from the streetlight. No fires raged now. She looked like an ice sculpture.

  Diana’s shoulders were shaking.

  Evi put down the sunglasses and walked up to the window. Diana was softly crying, leaning her forehead against the glass. Evi put a hand on her shoulder, forgetting that Diana knew she wasn’t human. “What’s wrong?”

  “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  Diana gave her a look telling her she should be perfectly aware of “what.”

  She supposed she was. “I really don’t mind.”

  Diana turned around and sat on the floor, back to the window. “I do. You said you didn’t have any intention of ‘crossing the median.’”

  She had, hadn’t she? Even so, there was no denying the way her pulse was accelerating. It could be despair, fatigue, or the fact she needed someone, anyone . . .

  But explaining it didn’t make it go away.

  Evi shrugged, hurting her shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to change my mind.”

  “You have no idea.” Diana was shaking her head. Moisture on her cheeks threw back frozen glints from the streetlight outside. “I knew this guy once. The sleaze took pride in seducing and ‘initiating’ poor, naive, young college kids. He bragged about the kind of damage he did.”