Love on the Run

by Katharine Kerr

  “Trotter was in charge of them. He requisitioned orbs from HQ as needed and dispensed them to agents who had to travel.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Very, but he wasn’t the only one with access to the safe. They keep other crucial supplies in it. Everyone had the combination.” Ari shrugged in annoyance. “Well, not the clerk, but all the agents. If the orbs are gone, that will make finding the thief more difficult, of course. Too many suspects, though Trotter’s the most likely.”

  “Trotter was the most likely suspect for a lot of things, but now he’s dead. When thieves fall out, maybe?”

  “Again, likely, but we don’t know.” Ari thought for a moment. “If he was the man behind the IED attempt in the lift, then he failed. He may belong to a group that dislikes failure enough to punish it.”

  Like the Peacock Angel cult, I thought. While we waited, Ari phoned in the news of the murder to Parra y Cruz, who promised to relay the message to Spare14 over the trans-world router. De Vere drove up just as Ari was putting the communicator away. When we got into the car, de Vere announced that the dog would recover.

  “I’ll adopt him, of course,” de Vere said. “One good thing I’ll say about Trotter, he loved poor old Rodeo. Least I can do is take care of his dog.”

  “Quite,” Ari said. “I take it that Trotter wasn’t the most popular man in the group.”

  De Vere snorted at the thought and started the car. We drove straight back to the office building and parked nearby. We checked in with the security people in the lobby, then took the elevator back up to the second floor. The first thing Parra y Cruz asked about was the health of the dog. She never mentioned Trotter. No, Trotter had not been a popular man with his coworkers. Nice dog, though, apparently.

  “About the orbs,” Ari said. “I suggest we open the safe and see if any are missing. I think Trotter’s murder may be related to thefts that have happened on other world levels.”

  “Good idea,” de Vere said and glanced at Parra y Cruz.

  “Yes, I agree,” she said. “By the way, I did manage to reach JaMarcus and give him a report. He can’t get away today, but he’ll be coming back as soon as possible. The S.I. may come with him. Unless he’s already here.”

  Everyone turned to look at Ari, who smiled with a twitch of his mouth. “Not me, I assure you,” he said. “I’m too new to know the proper procedures.”

  Everyone relaxed. I could understand why Parra y Cruz had pushed the point. She was still smarting from finding out that I was an agent, not some innocent witness.

  One of the doors at the rear of the long room led to a storage area and the wall safe. Parra y Cruz confirmed that all of the agents knew the combination. When she opened it, I saw a large, deep space, about five feet on a side, divided by three shelves. One held weapons and ammunition; another, flat boxes of official forms and the paper currency of various deviant world levels. The third was empty.

  “Suspicion confirmed, Nathan,” Parra y Cruz said. “We should have had an array of twelve transport orbs here.”

  “Were any for Terra Three?” Ari said.

  “Not that I remember.” She frowned in thought. “No, we had orbs for One, Two, and Five, and then Six, of course, so we could get back again if need be. Our unit rarely sees linkage with cases on Three.”

  “That may be about to change,” I said. “The suspect that Nathan and I are tracking has ties there.”

  “HQ is going to have to give us a restock,” Parra y Cruz said. “I’ll put in a requisition.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” de Vere put in, “since we’re flat out of all of them. This is quite an expensive loss.”

  Ari’s communicator beeped. He took the square of shiny black plastic out of his pocket and flicked it on. “Nathan here.” He walked out of the room while he listened to Spare14—I could pick up that overlap. Apparently their trans-world router could service the entire office.

  De Vere, Parra y Cruz, and I stayed where we were and all stared at each other. I ran a tentative SPP on Parra y Cruz. When she gave no sign of feeling it, I ran a stronger version of my profiling talent and found her honest, as Spare14 had told me, bewildered, a little frightened at the responsibility that had fallen on her as lead agent. Nowhere did I pick up a trace of grief for the dead Trotter.

  “A question,” I said. “Is long hair a popular style for men on this world level?”

  “Not in San Francisco,” de Vere said. “You see it in New York City, though. Especially during the winter. Keeps their necks warm, I guess.”

  “Another question. Does the name Peacock Angel mean anything to you?”

  It didn’t. Their SPPs made that amply clear.

  “I’m investigating a peculiar secret cult back home,” I said. “I was wondering if it had turned up here.”

  “Send me a report with cross-agency authorization,” Parra y Cruz said. “And I’ll double-check our records.”

  “Thank you! That would be a great help. And I’ll send you my information on the Axeman rather than doing a deposition here.”

  Ari returned. “Spare wants us back on Four, O’Grady,” he said. “Parra, you’ll be receiving a call from HQ shortly. They’re quite concerned for your safety. Do you have family here?”

  “No,” she said. “This is my first trans-world posting.”

  “Good. De Vere, I take it you’re established?”

  “Yes. I’m new to TWIXT, but I was born here on Six. I’m married. And of course, I’ve got dogs to worry about.”

  “HQ will be calling you, too.” Ari glanced around the room. “Since I’m an outsider, I may be coming back to continue the investigation. No one knows anything definite at the moment. Trotter is the first TWIXT agent lost in twelve years. His murder’s caused something of an uproar at HQ, Spare tells me.”

  “Well,” Parra y Cruz said, “we all knew that the job had its dangers when we signed up. But I’ll be glad to get that call.”

  Ari and I used one of our transport orbs to return to our home world and McLaren Park. The Saturn was waiting where we’d parked it. Ari pointed out at some length how much more convenient driving was than taking the bus. I agreed and ignored most of his tirade against the local public transportation. My mind kept circling around the evidence but always returned to Ash and the Axeman.

  “After you check in with Spare14,” I said, “I want to go over to Aunt Eileen’s and talk with Michael. He’s the one who knew our suspects. Entirely too well, in the case of Ash.”

  “Brilliant,” Ari said. “Let’s. And I wouldn’t mind finding lunch somewhere, as well. I’m quite hungry.”

  I gagged again. The image of Trotter and his dog, lying in a mixture of their own blood, rose in my mind.

  “Sorry,” Ari said. “I can wait to eat until you don’t have to watch.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure Aunt Eileen will feed you if you ask.”

  We arrived at the TWIXT office without incident. Spare14 mostly wanted Ari to sign the recruitment papers. Although they did discuss the case, I had a hard time listening to Ari’s rehash of the details. An insight nagged at me, just out of reach in my memory, until I heard Spare14 say the words “black market in orbs.”

  “Wagner’s bookstore in SanFran,” I said. “He told us that he didn’t know where the guy who sold him orbs came from. Think it might have been Trotter?”

  “Possibly,” Ari said. “We really should go back and ask. We might be able to pick up more information about the Axeman as well.”

  “I can get you a picture of Trotter,” Spare14 said, “the one from his ID file if nothing else. If you get a positive ident, it would be very helpful. Let me see what I can arrange.”

  I nearly groaned aloud. Me and my big mouth! SanFran on Terra Three was the last place in the multiverse that I ever wanted to see again.

  As I’d predicted, when we reached Aunt Eileen’s house, and Ari mentioned that he’d not had time to eat lunch, she immediately took him into the kitchen where she could
, as she put it, “scrounge up something halfway decent,” a feast by most people’s standards, I assumed. I went upstairs to Michael’s room, where he was supposedly studying his Latin homework. Through the door I could hear sounds of a baseball game. Our local Giants’ announcers aren’t known for broadcasting in Latin. I knocked. The sounds disappeared. When Michael opened the door, I could see his computer screen, which displayed a passage from Cicero and various translation aids.

  “Funny,” I said. “I thought I heard a radio.”

  “I don’t have a radio,” Michael said, all innocence.

  “Then you’ve set it up so you can get the Giants’ games over the Internet.”

  He winced. I walked into the room which, as usual, sported wall-to-wall litter as its main decoration. His little blue Chaos critter, Or-Something, was lying on his unmade bed and chewing on an empty soda bottle. It looked up at me and wagged its scaly, skinny tail, then returned to trying to gnaw through plastic. I tossed a couple of stinky T-shirts off a wooden chair and sat down.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I need to talk to you about Ash and the Axeman. Professional business.”

  “Okay, yeah. I’ll turn the other stuff off.” Michael kicked a pair of dirty jeans out of the way and returned to his computer. He fiddled with it for a moment or two, then put it on standby.

  “Where’s Sophie, by the way?”

  “Off with her wolf pack. It’ll be the full moon soon, and they’re having a prelim meeting.” He hesitated. “Larry, the alpha guy, he came to pick her up. I sure don’t like the way he looks at her.”

  “He doesn’t like her, or he likes her too much?”

  “Too much. Way too much. I guess from what she said, they don’t have an alpha female in their pack. So I bet he’s on the prowl.”

  “You sound so indignant, bro. After you and Ash—”

  He winced again. “That was dumb of me, okay?” he said. “I’m sorry I ever screwed her.”

  “Well, it wasn’t fair to Sophie.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry about that. Seriously. Besides, Ash is kind of a dangerous girl.”

  “Kind of? She may have just slit someone’s throat. That’s why I need the information.”

  His eyes went wide. “I wouldn’t put it past her,” he said after a moment or two. “Yeah, I really wouldn’t.” He sat down on the edge of his bed.

  For a week or so Michael had been somewhere between a prisoner and a member of the Axeman’s gang on Interchange. As a world-walker he’d been a crucial part of the Axeman’s grandiose plans. The gang wanted to charge big money to take desperate inhabitants of that deviant level to worlds like Terra Six, which despite the terrorists was better than Three. A real world-walker who could use focus orbs would spare them the expense of buying the transport version on the black market.

  “I’ve never understood,” I said, “what these refugees were going to do once they got to Terra Six. I mean, there they’d be, no ID, no money, no family to go to.”

  “Yeah, you’d think.” Michael said. “But the Axeman did change the money for people. He took a big commission, of course. He talked about getting them fake IDs once they’d made the run. And some of them had jewelry and stuff to sell once they got there. I dunno where they went, though. The Axe talked about some kind of village he wanted to build or take over. Up in the Sierra, like around Tahoe, y’know?”

  “What were these people going to do once they got there? Open a ski resort?”

  Michael shrugged. “I wasn’t there long enough to learn everything. The Axeman never really trusted me. He isn’t stupid. Maybe if I’d, like, stayed there longer and kept up my act he’d have trusted me, but thank God you guys rescued me. I thought maybe you’d just leave me there. I mean, it was hella dumb of me to go through the gate. Especially with Sean along.”

  “I was afraid you’d develop a taste for the life of crime.”

  Michael grinned at that. “Ash thought I was hot, and she worked on her dad to let me be a regular gang member, but he kept telling her it was too soon.”

  “Who was her dad?”

  “The Axeman. You didn’t know that?”

  “No.” My voice may have squeaked. “Somehow he didn’t strike me as the paternal type.”

  “Huh? Yeah, he is. He really thinks Ash is special and way cool. That’s why he wouldn’t let her work the streets.”

  “How sweet. Touching, even. Did she have a friend who looks Japanese or Japanese-American?”

  “Yeah, Izumi. She was the number two girl in the gang, and she went through the gate with Ash. The one I opened, I mean. Is that, like, important?”

  “You bet. This Izumi, did she work the streets?”

  “No. She had a few special customers, though, but only a few.”

  “Special? What did she do?”

  Michael turned a bright red and squirmed in his chair. I took that as meaning she’d offered him a free sample.

  “Uh, well,” he said, “you don’t want to know.”

  “Something really kinky?”

  He nodded.

  A thought occurred to me. “Let me take a wild guess,” I said. “She liked to pee during the um well, the process, let’s just say. A golden shower queen.”

  The red turned darker, dangerously close to purple. Michael managed a strangled “Yeah.” He stared firmly at the floor. “I thought that was real gross. She offered, and I said no. Seriously.”

  “I believe you. I would never have done it, either.”

  “ ’Course not.” Briefly his facial expression reminded me of Dad. “Not my sister!”

  I smiled and waited until his color had faded to pink.

  “It’s gross, yeah,” I said, “but it’s also an important clue. That’s why I’m here. I need to know everything you know, even if it’s embarrassing as hell.”

  “Okay.” Michael took a deep breath and looked at me again. “I’ve still got to get debriefed by TWIXT. I guess that hearing’s going to happen soon, so I’d better figure out what I’m going to say, anyway. Spare14 told me that the higher-ups weren’t real pleased that so many bad guys got killed.”

  His voice dropped, and he looked away. He’d shot one of the dead criminals himself. I held it to his credit that the act grieved him. Guilt has its place.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’ve been in contact with Spare14?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Nope. From now on, buster, I’d appreciate it if you’d pass this kind of news along to me right away.”

  “Sure. No one told me to keep quiet. I just thought you already knew.” He looked at me again. “What do you need to know?”

  I spent a profitable half hour picking my brother’s brains about the Axeman, his setup, his customers, and his lovely daughter, Ash the Knife. At times Michael could be a flake, particularly about schoolwork, but he was a lot smarter than he acted. He’d noticed all kinds of pertinent details. I took notes rather than risk forgetting any of it. We’d just returned to the subject of what all these refugees were supposed to do once they made it to their new world level when Ari came upstairs and joined us.

  “I just spoke to Spare14 again,” Ari told me. “He’s received the homicide reports on Scott Trotter’s murder from Six and sent copies to my laptop. You’re authorized for access.”

  “Oh, goodie,” I said.

  The sarcasm went zipping right by Ari, who blinked at me, then shrugged.

  “Trotter?” Michael said. “Who?”

  “A guy who was just murdered, possibly by your old girlfriend,” I said. “On another world level, that is.”

  “Trotter,” Michael said, “was Scorch the Torch’s real name. Scott Trotter. The guy I shot on Three. Y’know?”

  “Whoa!” I said. “That’s why the corpse looked familiar. Doppelgängers. Déjà vu all over again.”

  “Déjà vu means ‘already seen,’” Ari put in. “You’re being redundant.”

  “Yeah, I know, Mr. Helpful. It’s a joke.
”

  “Oh.” He digested this for a moment. “If you say so.”

  I stood up. “Thanks, Mike,” I said. “I really appreciate all this information. If you think of anything else, call me, okay? We need to get back to Ari’s laptop.”

  “I will for sure.” Michael sighed in deep melancholy. “And I really gotta get back to the homework. Father Keith’s coming over tonight, and I bet he gives me a quiz.”

  CHAPTER 8

  AS SOON AS WE GOT HOME, Ari brought his laptop out of our wall safe. He found the data from Spare14 and printed out a copy of the homicide reports for me. I always get printout from Ari rather than letting him transfer information to my laptop or desktop, because I’m always afraid he’ll transfer a Trojan horse along with it. I know he loves me, but he loves Israel more, and I don’t want him browsing my machines for tidbits to send home. Printout is sanitary.

  The homicide reports contained interesting details but no revelations. The person who lived across the hall from Trotter’s apartment had spent the night with her boyfriend and so had heard nothing. Like everyone else who’d known him, she was much more concerned about the dog than about Trotter. The boyfriend had confirmed her story, and he, too, was glad to learn that Rodeo would recover. They both agreed that Trotter had made several “really crude” passes at the young woman during the six months she’d lived in the building.

  “Those crude passes,” I said, “I wonder if they involved urine?”

  “Quite possibly.” Ari hesitated. “I take it you know what Trotter’s particular tastes in sex involved.”

  “It was kind of obvious from the scene in that bedroom. You look shocked.”

  “I’m merely surprised that you’re not.”

  “I really don’t care what consenting adults do with each other. Well, just so long as they don’t want to do it with me.” I grinned at him. “Or with you.”

  He returned the smile. “What I’m wondering is if he was paying Izumi or if she shared his tastes.”

  “According to Michael’s evidence, she got off on it.”

  “Then I suppose they had a relationship of sorts. Interesting. She must have seen something in him that no one else did.”