by Ilsa J. Bick
Ketchum cut in, his eyes cop-flat. “Let’s get some things real straight, okay? First thing, I’m not your friend. Second, one of those dead bodies wasn’t more’n a boy, and the other was my friend. Third, don’t give me any crap about Kodza. I’m out after a crazy killer, and some baron—”
“Count,” Garibaldi interjected.
“Whoever.” Ketchum swiped the distinction aside. “Some legate who’s probably got his own personal ass wiper, some damned count orders Kodza’s release while I’m kinda preoccupied, you’re going to chew my ass because your legate gets his spy out of my town? Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Garibaldi. I do not rise every day to greet the sun so I can think about how I’m gonna be pleasing you.”
It went on like that until Garibaldi’s face got purple as a Denebolan plum, but Ketchum didn’t give a centimeter. When it was over and Garibaldi winked out, Ketchum sighed, leaned back, laced his fingers over his middle, and squinted up at Ramsey who stood in his usual place: by the coffeepot, holding up the wall. “That was kinda fun.”
“Not if you end up as the personal servant to the count’s ass-wiper.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Amanda said. She shifted in her chair, and winced. There were new bruises on her face and neck, a long gash along her left cheek, and more bruising along her torso and legs but hidden beneath clothing. “Kodza’s a spy of some kind, right? Blakist, Kittery Resistance.”
“Clan,” Ramsey said.
“Or some other faction we don’t know about. She comes all this way because she wants Limyanovich’s body, right? But then she disappears, and Limyanovich is still here. Dickert took some of Limyanovich’s jewelry and I still don’t get that.” She punctuated with a shrug. “I don’t get it.”
“Only one thing you don’t get?” Ramsey asked. He was marginally better off than Amanda, but that was only because he was pretty beat up to begin with. He went to tuck his hands into his back pockets then winced when the bandages snagged. Carruthers said he didn’t need a hand specialist, gave him pain meds, commented on how Ramsey had so much scar tissue and callous from boxing that his skin was already like tanned leather, and then threw in stitches: ten on the left, and eight on the right. The right hand, his gun hand worried him a little. “I’m still trying to digest the idea that there’s been this whacked-out, vigilante religious cell of anti-Blakists who still go around tracking down and executing people. And this trinity, Triumvirate, whatever: I mean, talk about overheated imaginations.”
“Well,” Ketchum said, “I can see it. Besides, what Kodza said about Isaiah rings true.”
Amanda was solemn. “What’s worse is that Doc covered up Isaiah’s murder for the wrong reasons.” They had discovered from Gillis and the hospital surveillance what Summers wanted to confess. Desperate to secure some peace for his dying wife, Summers had stolen narcotics for his son: a bribe to keep Adam Summers out of their lives. “We might’ve been able to stop all this.”
Ketchum looked glum. “A lot of that was my fault. There was stuff I just didn’t see because I didn’t want to believe Isaiah could be anything more than an accident. If I’d just seen it, I might’ve been able to help Doc and do justice to Isaiah, all at the same time. But this way”—he shrugged—“I got nothing but graves.”
* * *
Amanda said, “Dickert mentioned data crystals, and Kodza said the same thing. But now Dickert’s gone and whatever he had is gone and Kodza’s gone.”
“And what did he want to see again?”
“The jewelry. He took the red diamond.” Then she and Ramsey looked at one another, and she said, “Oh, my God.”
“What?” Ketchum asked. “What about the diamond?”
“That’s just it,” Amanda said. “It wasn’t a diamond.”
* * *
“How are the boys?” Ketchum asked.
“Better,” Amanda said. “I checked on them after Carruthers let me out of the ER.”
“Let you out,” Ramsey grunted. “I could hear you yelling all the way down the hall. Let you out.”
She ignored him. “As soon as the ICU nurses figured out what was what—about five seconds after Sandra Underhill recognized Dickert—they dialed back Noah’s IVs. Carruthers was talking about taking him off the ventilator tonight.”
“So he’ll be okay.”
Amanda’s lips curled halfway between a smile and a frown. “Okay? His father is dead, his brother is dead, his mother’s in a psychiatric wing, and he’s lost a chunk of his arm and will need bone grafts. I don’t think he’s going to be okay, Hank. What I think is he’ll live—probably with his aunt and sister, and not in Farway. He won’t be okay for a long time.”
“What about Troy?” Ramsey asked.
“He can probably go home tomorrow morning. What happens next is really up to Sandra, but she might leave town, and I’m not sure I blame her.” Amanda’s eyes held Ketchum. “Small towns don’t forgive and forget.”
* * *
Amanda and Ramsey were just leaving when Amanda turned back and pulled something from her hip pocket. “I almost forgot. Carruthers gave me this when he turned me loose. The nurses said they found it in Noah’s pockets. In all the excitement, Carruthers forgot to give it to Hannah, and now, well”—she handed the item over—“he thought I should let you see it.”
The two men stared at the gold medal, that blue ribbon for a few seconds, Ketchum turning it this way and that. The sheriff looked a mute question at Ramsey who shook his head and shrugged.
“Guardian?” Ketchum said, finally. “Guardian of what?”
Thursday, 19 April 3136
That afternoon, Dickert washed up fifteen klicks downstream: his body bloated and his eyes and lips and nose nibbled away by hungry fish overjoyed at an early season feed. Much later, when Amanda did the cut, she would find Dickert had an assortment of broken bones, a macerated liver, a collapsed lung, and a depressed skull fracture.
She would also find that Dickert had two bullet holes: one in his left flank and the other drilled right between his eyes. The hole in his flank, the one that Ramsey knew came from a rifle because he’d heard the shot, was a 7mm Magnum load of a make Ramsey had never seen or heard of. The second bullet, the one between the eyes, was a .357 Mag of a fairly rare vintage—like, essentially extinct.
The thing was, none of Ketchum’s marksmen—and he’d hauled out two—carried 7mm Mags. As for the .357, Ketchum would swear up and down that only one man he knew who’d ever owned a handgun that used a bullet that big was Isaiah Schroeder. But a search of Schroeder’s gun safe and residence failed to locate the weapon.
Friday, 20 April 3136
After lunch and a bottle of wine, in front of the fire:
Ramsey was drifting off when Amanda said, “In all the excitement, I almost forgot. You remember that weird peak? In Limyanovich’s DNA?”
“Mmmm?” Ramsey was warm and a little dozy from good food and wine on top of pain pills. Amanda’s head rested on his chest, and Ramsey cupped her head in his left hand. Amanda’s hair smelled clean and sweet and a little bit like warm baby powder. “What about it?”
“I finally figured out what that stuff was. It’s fish DNA.”
“Fish? As in hook and worm?”
“Yup. A Tharkad species that can survive in very extreme, very cold conditions. Essentially, its blood acts as a kind of anti-freeze and they stay alive under the ice for a very, very long time.”
“How cold?”
“Cold.” She pushed up to stare at him. The bruise and cut along her cheek had swollen her left eye halfway shut, but she still took his breath away. “As in frigid.”
“How frigid?”
“Think deep freeze. Think.” And now she took a deep breath as if unwilling to finish. But she did. “Think cryohibernation.”
The only sound for several seconds was the crackle of the artificial fire and the tick of her antique mantle clock. That and the rumble of Dickert’s cat who drowsed on a throw rug at Amand
a’s feet: a long story.
Finally, Ramsey said, “Cryohibernation. As in keeping someone asleep and alive and in deep freeze for a really, really long time?”
Amanda bobbed her head. “Until, maybe, it’s time for him to wake up.”
Ramsey was silent.
Amanda opened her mouth, shut it. Said: “You remember that medal—Limyanovich’s, not Isaiah’s—that gold one on the chain? I ran it through the database. It doesn’t really match up to anything, but there are two or three symbols that are similar.”
“Like?”
She ticked them off on her fingers. “The sword: we know that’s World of Blake. But that red heart, it’s not a heart. I think it’s a teardrop, a red teardrop, or maybe some sort of sun-disk. The only thing that fits is the symbol of this old, isolationist Clan that died out years and years ago. They were called Clan Blood Spirit, and get this. The only name I could find in the database references a nonexclusive Bloodname: Zadok.” She spelled it, then said, “Kodza. It’s an anagram.”
“For Zadok. Oh, my God,” Ramsey said. “You mean, Kodza is Clan?”
“It gets even better. In Old Testament times, Zadok was the last true Levitical high priest before the Temple fell, and New Testament prophecy says that when the Messiah comes, the priesthood of Zadok will be reinstituted.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, not Jesus,” Amanda said. “Devlin Stone.”
* * *
Amanda said, “Jack, if we find something more . . . if Kodza, or Zadok or whatever her name is, if even some of what she told us is true, what do we do about it?”
“We hand over the information, that’s for damn sure. Then it’s not our problem.”
“But there might be other people in this cell . . . why are you shaking your head?”
“Kodza got what she came for. Why else would she drop hints and then leave? She knows that there’s nothing left of any value or importance here. She gave us a lot of information, only we don’t know how much is true, do we? And now she’s gone. They’re gone,” he said, and then repeated, “They’re gone.”
Her face worked, and her eyes were watery-bright. “But this is my town,” she whispered. “You said it. We live here. It’s our planet.”
“I know,” Ramsey said. “But it’s their Sphere.”
That night, Ramsey jerked awake. Amanda’s bedroom was dark, and Amanda slept on her side, facing away. He thought he’d heard something but realized after a moment that, no, he’d been dreaming. He stared into the blackness above the bed, trying to recapture what he’d seen in the dream. Something about sunlight, the sun?
Then he knew. Kodza and Zadok and anagrams and double meanings. Threes, and a Triumvirate. And, finally, Guardian—and the sun-disk on that medal.
A play on something? Not sun—but Son?
“Wrong question, Hank,” he whispered. “It’s not guardian of what. It’s guardian of whom.”
Saturday, 21 April 3136
0730 hours
A gray day in the Kendrakes, misty and cool. She had done quite a bit of traveling, mainly to accommodate the Handler who could not afford to draw immediate attention, and so this had eaten time. But time? She had time.
Now Dani Kodza tramped up a mountain path to a cabin nestled in a grove of evergreens. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen needles, and to her right, Kodza heard the splash of water gurgling over rocks. A square of yellow light from one of the cabin’s windows played over dead pine needles, and a streamer of blue smoke rose straight up from the chimney because there was no wind.
The front door was unlocked. Inside, she was greeted with the aroma of fresh coffee, cigarette smoke and sweet yeasty bread. A globe threw out a warm, golden, welcoming light, and a lively fire crackled and spit. Kodza inhaled gratefully. “That smells good.”
The Handler smiled. “They do say that. Far behind?”
“At last report, I do believe the Bureau was looking toward Zadipos.”
The Handler exhaled a snort of smoke. Her chain, with its minutely engraved pendant, shimmered like golden water. “I think I will stay here for a time.” Gesturing with a cigarette tweezed between two fingers. “I have everything a person needs: fresh air, trees, solitude.”
“And cigarettes.”
“True. No need to go back, of course. We have recovered our property, and my work here is done. As I said, I simply needed to stay on for appearances”—a jet of smoke—“and the funerals.”
“Mmmm.” Kodza inclined her head at a paper sack squared on the table. “Those for me?”
“Yes, very good sweet rolls with pecans that I baked fresh this morning in that very nice wood stove there. Just with three of the rolls? Watch where you bite.”
“Excellent. What is it, they say?” Kodza reached for the paper bag. “All good things come in threes?”
“They do.” Then Kodza’s third and best ghost—the Handler—smiled because all good things did indeed come in threes. “Have a nice trip,” Ida Kant said.
1000
The link screamed. Swathed in sheets, Amanda moaned, rolled over, croaked, “ID, audio.” When the link told her who was calling, she came alert, said, “Privacy,” then plucked up an earbud from her nightstand. She sat up, sheets puddling around her naked, still-bruised middle and poked a hummock of sheet on her right. “I know you’re up. You want to take this, or shall I tell dispatch to tell Captain Pearl that you need your beauty sleep?”
Groaning, Ramsey pulled the sheet from his head. “How many people in town don’t know about us?”
“Life in a small town.” Eyes serious, she held out the earbud. “Jack, you better take this. I think it’s about McFaine.”
“Oh, God.” Now Ramsey rolled over, very, very slowly. Amanda was a big bruise, but he was a big bruise plus a whole lot of ache. (All that made for some fairly creative love-making.) Amanda plumped up a pillow, and he pushed to a sit, took the earbud—but didn’t screw it in right away.
McFaine. With all that had happened he’d forgotten about that. If this was bad news, what would he do next? Could he live without his life back there in the city? Without the adrenaline rush that came with putting monsters down? Without the job?
Then he thought back to everything that had happened over one short week, and thought there were plenty of monsters, some in the most unexpected places.
His eyes roved the bedroom, the view of the lake shimmering through glass, the face of the woman who even now simply watched and waited—and he thought back to what she’d said: I hear your heart.
It had been so long since anyone had bothered to listen.
“Come here,” he said, lifting his left arm. “Snuggle up.” And as she slid alongside, he put the bud into his ear and said, “Yeah, it’s me. Go ahead. I’m listening.”
About the Author
Ilsa J. Bick is a writer as well as a recovering child and forensic psychiatrist. She is the author of prizewinning stories, such as “A Ribbon for Rosie,” Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II; “Shadows, in the Dark,” Strange New Worlds IV; and “The Quality of Wetness,” Writers of the Future, Volume XVI. She’s written for BattleCorps.com devoted to the Classic BattleTech universe, including “Memories of Fire and Ice at the Edge of the World” and “Surkai.” Her novella, “Break-Away” was the first installment of the Proliferation Anthology. She is currently at work on several more Classic BattleTech stories, including “A Mystery Before Dying,” part of the anthology The Wedding Album.
Other work has appeared in SCIFICTION, Challenging Destiny, Talebones, Beyond the Last Star, and Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits, among many others. Her Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers e-book Lost Time was released in April 2005 and the SCE two-part e-book Wounds appeared in August and September 2005. Also forthcoming is “Bottomless” in the Star Trek: Voyager anniversary anthology Distant Shores.
Her first published novel, Star Trek: The Lost Era: Well of Souls, cracked the 2003 Barnes & Noble Best-seller List. She is the au
thor of Daughter of the Dragon, a MWDA novel chronicling the rise of Katana Tormark. She is currently at work on a sequel, Dragon Rising, slated for release in 2006.
When she isn’t working, she enjoys long bike rides, obsessive exercise, martinis—and the occasional breakdown.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue 1
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Epilogue
About the Author
