by Sue Perry
"I do not feel him gone. Nor do I feel him present. But I am not the one to know. My need shrouds the sun."
I clung to Monk and felt my love flow through him and back to me. I don't know how long we stayed like that when Zasu shouted, with equal parts anger and fear, "The Cysts cannot win!"
"We cannot predict the decision. The Keepers have many surprises," Anya warned us. "The only certainty is that the decision will not be unanimous."
"There can't be a unanimous agreement?"
"Never has there been one."
Anwyl snorted. "Some say they pretend to oppose one another."
"You don't think much of the Framekeeps, do you?" I stated the obvious.
"There have been noble Framekeeps, and wise ones, but too many ignore their obligations. Each vows to set aside Frame and deny fortune, but few do so."
"What if Warty Sebaceous Cysts bought the Framekeeps votes?" Zasu gasped.
"The Framekeeps would not sell these votes. This petition is not important enough for them to risk so much."
"So Maelstrom only bought their votes on big petitions?"
"Maelstrom used threats, not payment, to change votes. He held families hostage and he tortured friends. For this petition, we looked carefully and found no sign of danger or threat to the beloveds of these Framekeeps."
"Or we did not recognize the signs," Anwyl said.
Anya shared Anwyl's view but not his anger. "As a librarian, Pent-Up Angst has no beloveds. Yet Warty Sebaceous Cysts swayed him."
"So if I understand this right - sometime in the last two days, the Cysts found out that Pent-Up Angst talked to you, and they hurt him - or threatened him - enough to get him to change his story."
"It does no harm to see it so," one of them replied, with the phrase that I now recognized as Framespeak for close enough for rock 'n' roll.
"If this lowly Neutral can see that, surely the Framekeeps will, too."
"If they choose to see. Some Keepers once chose to help Maelstrom, and did so without threats." Anwyl continued his cheery interjections.
"Maelstrom is not free to attract such fervor." Anya's optimism seemed to have devolved to Pollyanna blinders, but maybe that was just in comparison with Anwyl's bleakness.
"Maelstrom is not free for now," Monk corrected and this provoked silence. I imagined the others were remembering the bad old days of Maelstrom. I let my imagination run amok, trying to envision the universe they knew, but I gave up quickly. It's no fun imagining terrible and I'm no good at it. Instead, I noticed the warmth on my skin. At home I would have baked in this much sun, but here the heat was tempered by a lawn that evaporated a continuous cooling mist; and by thin low clouds that positioned themselves to block direct sun for the clumps of waiting participants.
I took the plunge and directed us to the subject that I couldn't stop thinking about. "Overall I couldn't read Framekeep reactions, but most of them looked negative when you talked about that prophecy."
Anwyl grimaced at Anya. "We should have foreseen mention of the prophecy. We were not prepared. That could bring harm."
"The prophecy is awesome!" I exclaimed. What a thrill to learn that a prophecy foresaw me with Anya and Anwyl! Well. Implied. Maybe. The words were too vague to identify anybody conclusively.
Anya smiled. "Prophecies persist through all the eras, only attitudes change. Some assemblies of Framekeeps have been secular, as is true today. In other eras, Framekeeps have shown more faith."
"In some eras, Framekeeps have shown too much faith!" Anwyl added.
"Faith grows when darkness comes," Monk said.
Anya positioned herself to address all of us. "And this we must remember. We are here today because the darkness grows, and this petition is but one small matter. Victory today has never been assured. Whatever today's decision, we must and will continue to expose Warty Sebaceous Cysts, to block their progress."
Perhaps she sensed that it was time. The three assistants exited the building, ringing large booming bells. Anwyl and Anya looked at one another with surprise. "A decision already!"
Back inside, lights blazed throughout the cavernous room. The Cysts lounged at their table as though they hadn't left. All three of them winked at me, which was as pleasant as your grandma smoking meth.
The lights shifted to illuminate only the assistants' table. The assistants filed in and called, "All rise." As we rose, the lights shifted to the Framekeeps' table.
The Keepers filed in, we sat, we heard boilerplate yadayada about why we were here today. Then they served the main course.
"On this matter, our decision is divided," the Cactus said.
The dolphin explained, "Warty Sebaceous Cysts, you may never outlive the memories of your past deeds and that is a part of justice perhaps."
"However much you may change," a humanoid added.
"Some of us believe you are capable of change, some do not," the dolphin added.
"We have concerns about much we have heard here today," the Construction Crane added.
"But concerns are vapors," a humanoid mused.
"We cannot send creatures to prison on concerns," the tiny winged creature from Shastina sighed.
"Yet, some facts we see clearly. Your business venture exploited the Gumby people and was never in their best interest. Throughout the eras, sophisticated Travelers have exploited the naive. Still, we do not and must not condone such acts," a humanoid said.
"We cannot send you to prison on this evidence, but we restrict the terms of your freedom. For ten times ten cycles, you are forbidden to Travel or conduct business outside the central Frames," the cactus ordered.
"Ten times ten cycles!" Center Cyst protested, but I could tell he was smug and happy. Anya listened with resignation, Anwyl with fury.
Then Zasu screamed and pointed at the redtail hawk within his cubicle. Pent-Up Angst hung upside down, talons gripping the glass lattice at the top of his cubicle. He released one leg to hang by one leg. "I am a warrior, not a liar," he said flatly. "With this I sound the alarm." His free leg moved so fast I couldn't register what was happening.
"No!" Anwyl jumped over his table toward the cubicle as screams and cries erupted through the room. I replayed the moment and saw the bird rake talons across his own throat, then stab one talon into an artery. Blood flooded over his head onto the floor. His grip on the overhanging glass lattice slackened and he fell, dead. It was all over before the guards could extinguish the blue electric shield - and they were fast.
"Librarians are not know for stability," Left Cyst sniffed to Right Cyst, as Middle Cyst shook his head in mock horror.
I saw little of the aftermath. Anwyl and Anya knelt in the cubicle, with hands out as though attempting to help. Someone ran from the back carrying a cauldron of dirt I assumed held healers. The blue electric field expanded to surround the cubicle and emit a pulsating glow that hid activity inside it. My view was further blocked because cupid guards on books surrounded me at shifting altitudes, to protect the ground and airspace around me. I appreciated the protection. With so much attention on the hawk's cubicle, the Cysts had too much freedom.
"Nica, to me!" Monk called and - I admit it - I ran to him. Tucked under his girders I felt safe and the guards must have agreed, because they left me with him and joined other guards to patrol the room.
The lights shifted to illuminate the front of the room. "We now resume," the three assistants called as one from their table.
Cherub guards escorted me to my seat. The blue light shield was gone, the hawk was gone, the hawk's cubicle was gone. Anwyl and Anya stood by their chairs.
"Anya and Anwyl, the Framekeeps find that you have also done ill," the cactus said. The noise in the room crescendoed then dropped, as the cactus swept his eyes around the room, looking for perpetrators. "Prophecies, like other aspects of cults and religions, must be kept within the home Frame and must never motivate actions across the Frames."
"Your use of Neutrals is illegal and immoral," the female cobra
chastised. "By your own admission, you brought a Neutral to another Frame, merely because he walked from an elevator as you prepared your Travel. This is negligent and dangerous."
"We the Framekeeps censure you for these acts, and forbid them in future. Moreover," the cactus continued, "from this moment forward, you must have no contact with Nica of Los Angeles."
"What! Wait! That's -" I exploded, then imploded when I caught the look the assistants gave me.
"Should you disobey this ruling, you will spend one year in prison for each infraction." The cactus looked at Anwyl as he said this.
"Nica of Los Angeles, we wish you a long and loving life in your Frame. Guards will escort you back there now."
"They made her a Guide," Middle Cyst finked.
Left Cyst yelled, "We confiscated it for evidence," and whipped it out of the pocket of his tennis skirt. The assistant scurried to take it.
The cactus ad-libbed, "Anwyl and Anya, we forbid you to make another Guide for Neutrals."
I wasn't intended to hear their reply. Two of the tiny women who gather memories pulled my hands; cherub guards prodded me toward an exit. "Wait. Your honors, excellencies, worships. May I please have a few minutes to say goodbye?"
"Farewell, Nica of Los Angeles," the cactus replied.
"Anya. Anwyl. Zasu. Oh, Monk!" were my last words to them. They were forbidden to reply.
The tiny women and the guards pushed me the last few feet and I tumbled to the ground outside the Connector. For once, I was miserable to arrive at the Griffith Observatory. I spent an hour convincing myself that I could not get back into the Connector on my own. I don't know why I tried. If I had succeeded, they would have spit me right back home.
I was screwed. So were the free Frames, p.s., because the Cysts had won the day.
39. A What-If Explosion
What they did to me can't be legal. It has to break a moral code, at least. You can't introduce a person to the free Frames, then make her go back to being a Neutral. Boring ordinary. Cut off. I am a citizen of the free Frames. I can't return to Neutrality. Yet here I am.
No fair no fair no fair.
I could not accept this fate. And so, that day, I pushed forward and carried on. Hernandez was nowhere to be found, so I did some digging with the plans and permits folks, found more Digby construction locales, rented a car, cased the Digby sites. There were no signs of visitors from other Frames, and nothing felt odd or unusual at any of the sites. I went to Watts. It looked like they had started to reconstruct Miles, then stopped because new damage endangered the workers. At the Largo, I saw no visitors emerge from either Connector, and could of course not enter either Connector, myself.
What was most disturbing was how normal every place felt, even locations that had felt non-Neutral to me before. Had something changed at the locations, or within me? To determine this, I silenced the inner voice that accused me of having a death wish and visited the dangerous Digby sites, the ones where Anwyl and Hernandez got hurt. I encountered no dangerous dogs nor hostile beings. Over the last couple weeks, in so many places, I had sensed something off or weird - and I had been right. Now there was nothing funny, no place.
It was well past midnight before I made my last desperate attempt. I went up to the roof of the Henrietta. None of the doors stuck to delay my ascent; the building herself seemed oblivious to my presence today. I shoved open the stairwell door and stomped across the roof to stand in the alleged garden, now a patch of dirt with no plants. So? What? The last couple weeks were a dream sequence?
My suspicion was that the Framekeeps had altered my perceptions to enforce my return to Neutrality. My next favorite suspicion was that the Cysts were messing with me. Either way, I had to let them win. When the stakes are high enough, I can be patient. I would bide my time ... until ... when? And ... then what? Crap. Trying to answer those questions made me feel hopeless.
Deep down, some part of me kept whispering, "It's over. You know it's over. Give up. Move on." As I slumped into bed to abandon this miserable day, I was exhausted of body, mind, and soul. I couldn't think of any music I wanted to hear - which was a first for me. I fell into a state that was as close to comatose as it was to slumbering. As I fell, my last words were to that whispering voice. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
The next morning, I awoke with a chip on my shoulder the size of Nebraska and twice as cheery. I grabbed my shower gear and stomped down the nine flights of stairs to the street outside the Henrietta. I stomped to the gym and waited outside until it opened at dawn. The guy who unlocked the front door always saw me early, but this was the first time I was the first entrant of the day. He tried a flirty joke about hope I had enjoyed being up all night. I didn't see where he was going with it and after he saw my expression, we both forgot he had tried to converse.
I went straight to the punching bags. Man, that's what I needed. By the time I left the gym, I had also shoved weights, pounded a treadmill, and yanked a rowing machine - so I felt approximately human again. It was a strenuous workout all around, but I credit the punching bags for my restoration. I kept them as imaginary playmates the rest of the day. Whenever it all started to add up, I would close my eyes and place myself back in the gym, whacking the shit out of an unyielding bag.
During my second stint on the rowing machine, I replayed the Framekeeps hearing and the suicide of Pent-Up Angst - and I froze, for so long that some guy snapped fingers in my face. When I refocused my stare on him, he got defensive. "You have a stroke or something?"
I resumed rowing without reply, swept up in my realization. Pent-Up Angst hadn't let Anya down. He had died a hero, ensuring that the truth, not his testimony, would hold sway. After the Cysts threatened him, he could still testify to help our side - and they would kill him. Or, he could testify to help their side - and they would kill him after a discreet time had passed. Whatever he said from the witness stand would be undermined in a he said versus they said debate. He had killed himself to elevate his credibility and prove coercion. No one takes his own life because he just told the truth and was never pressured to do otherwise.
And so the Cysts had killed yet another of the good guys. I returned to the punching bags to process my new understanding.
When I left the gym, I was in the mood for confrontation and I had a doozy to enjoy. It fell to me to get the cops off Benny's back. That had to be the purpose of his suicide note, after all. I knew he hadn't offed himself, but the cops needed to believe it. The note meant he needed to disappear and I would have no idea where he was or when I might see him again. Which made me so mad, I could spit molten lead then swallow it again. Which is not to say that I was out of control.
I knew better than to confront cops on my own, so I took a friend with me to police headquarters. Sure I was mad, but punching is for bags, silly. Publicity is for cops.
My friend is a reporter for one of the local TV stations. She's as close to a muckraker as you can get in this era of muck being all around and wallowed in, regularly. Old-time muckrakers didn't have to work so hard to shock people with exposed secrets.
But I digress. Fatima Jones, that's my friend, and all the cops know her. Many of them hate her, but it's hatred underlain by respect, even when her cameraman's gear is packed away. She's tough, she's relentless, she's honest, and she's fair. So, at Parker Center, when we told the Desk that we needed to see the captain and the chief, we didn't spend much time in the waiting room and we got the captain plus a top assistant chief. All I had to do was keep Fatty visible.
Yes, that is her nickname and no, she doesn't mind. I think she's the one who came up with it; she thinks it was I; the truth is lost in the prehistory of middle school. Back then, she had the physique of a chopstick. Nowadays, she's a chopstick with big hair.
The cops didn't know I had instructed Fatty to keep the camera off - to spare Ben the notoriety. (While he was in hiding, he didn't need some true crime fan recognizing him after a news bite.) The cops assumed the cameraman stood beside us as an unspok
en threat. Cooperate, and no footage will be shot.
We read Ben's note aloud together. I told them about Benny's unstable efforts to get his life back. I described my personal experience with Mathead and Scabman, and voiced my suspicion that they were somehow entangled in the bogus charges against me. I demanded that the cops should help me get closure by finding Benny's body: I figured this was a demand that boosted my credibility without adding to Ben's risk. Either Ben really was dead, or he was long and far gone. He would not have left the note if he could be found tooling around town. My last demand made me realize that a scratching nagging piece of me did fear he was dead. I embellished that genuine fear when I spoke with our uniformed audience; it made me all the more convincing.
Our hosts made no commitments, but I could tell that Ben's days as a refusnik stoolie were over. I could tell from the way the captain asked to see Fitzpatrick. I could tell from the way Mathead looked when she left the building, maybe twenty minutes later. By then, Fatty and I sat in the front of the news van, munching corn chips and watching the steps outside Parker Center. The cameraman, Mikal, had told us we should wait and see what happened after we left.
"Mikal, you're a genius," I crowed.
Fatty pointed a chip at Mathead. "That one. I know her. She's a cunt. Follow her."
"In the news van? Subtle."
Fatty had already shed her interview duds and striking jewelry; she switched to shorts and a tanktop the instant we got in the van. Mikal had ignored all the skin - they'd been together longer than most spouses. Now, she dragged her silken coiffed tresses into a low-lying ponytail and stuck it out the back of a soiled Angels' hat. Cheap shades and student sandals and she was out the door. Mikal locked the van and caught up with us.
Mathead was easy to tail: straight five blocks, down three, over two. Not yet noon and already my toes felt scorched through the soles of my sandals. Fortunately, our prey's pace slowed with each block through the beating sun. In this section of downtown Los Angeles, the buildings are shorter than in my neighborhood and plenty of sun reaches the sidewalks, all day long.
