Black Helicopters

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Enough is goddamn enough, she thinks. No one can blame me for canceling on a tête-à-tête that’s never coming. I’ll call Barrymore and lay it all out, start to finish, and, if I’m lucky, he’ll tell me to take the next plane the fuck out of Ireland. She leaves a generous tip, then abandons the warm sanctuary of the restaurant and steps out into the raw and windy night. Ptolema buttons her coat and turns up the collar against the cold. She follows O’Connell Street south and crosses the bridge, then stands at the edge of Aston Quay, watching the dark waters of the peaty Liffey sliding past on their way to the sea. She folds up the collar of her coat and winds her scarf more tightly about her face. This wind’ll strip the skin right off your bones, and here it is not even November yet. The freezing air smells like the river. It smells like the algae clinging to the constricting stone channel through which the river flows. On the opposite shore, back the way she’s come, Eden Quay is a garish spray of neon signs.

  Ptolema isn’t aware the redhead is standing only a couple of feet away until the woman speaks. “I’d say I’m sorry about being late,” she says. “Only I’m not, and I’m not in the mood for lies, if you catch my drift.”

  “You might have let me know.” Ptolema unwinds the scarf from her face, so her voice won’t be muffled by wool. The redhead has dropped the phony accent, so at least there’s that.

  “Might have, but I did not. Bury the past. Move on. Keep on truckin’. Here we are now, and now we can conduct our business beyond the attentions of any we desire not to know our business.”

  “You think I don’t have other problems besides you?” Ptolema asks her. “You think you’re at the very fucking top of my list of priorities?”

  “I do,” the woman says, and she lights a cigarette. She exhales smoke and the fog of her breath. “At the very tippy top, or near enough. I thought you wanted me to drop all the deceits, Miss P.”

  “So, we’re going to stand out here in the cold and have this conversation? I’m going to placate you and freeze my ass off because you’re afraid someone might overhear us in a fish-and-chips shop?”

  “If you actually want to hear whatever it is I have to say. I know you Y sorts. I know if there’s one of you, then there’s two, and I know if there’s two, there’s four. I’m keen to your exponential support protocol.”

  “Our what? You just fucking made that up.”

  The redhead takes another drag on her cigarette and shrugs.

  “Are you here to listen, Miss P, or are you here to talk?”

  Ptolema takes a punt Éireannach from a pocket and tosses it into the Liffey, a shiny red deer cast in nickel and copper for goddesses forgotten or goddesses who never were.

  That there, that’s not me—I go where I please—I walk through walls, I float down the Liffey . . . In a little while, I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone. Must then my fortune be . . . wake by the trumpet’s sound . . . and see the flaming skies. I’ll be gone.

  Her random thoughts, that come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

  O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag.

  “Fine,” Ptolema tells the redhead. “Twisby and the twin, the twin named Bête.”

  “You don’t like what I got to say, if you think I’m bullshittin’ you, you got orders, don’t you? Terminate. Terminate, with extreme prejudice, just like Jerry Ziesmer tells Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. That’s how it is, I know.”

  Ptolema chews at her chapped lower lip, smothering impatience.

  “And we shall play a game of chess?” the redhead asks her and laughs.

  “No more games. No more stalling.”

  “But what about your recording, Miss P? Your creepy child’s voice from out the ether. Is it not commanding that we do just that?”

  Ptolema wonders how many years or centuries the coin will lie lost among the rocks and silt on the riverbed. After even she’s dead. Long after this crisis has come and gone and is only an ugly shred of occult history. The X would build an entire equation around the consequences of her having tossed a punt into the river.

  “Twisby and the twin,” she says and leaves no room in her voice for any more nonsense from the redhead.

  “Like the Bard himself done said, as you like it,” she replies. “Yeah, I saw ’em both. I talked with ’em both, but that’s the part you already know, and fuck all if I dare waste your precious time.”

  “This was after you met Ivoire.”

  “You know that, too. Yeah, it was after, down at Kehoe’s pub, but you also already know that. So, fast forward. Total cunt of a day, and mostly I was just wanting to get drunk, but I have friends who hang out there, so I was hoping to see them. Two birds, one stone. But that night, none of them showed, which was a bummer—”

  “I’m not here to discuss your social life. Twisby and the twin.”

  “Jesus fuck, lady. I’m getting to them, okay?”

  The October wind is a wailing phantom through the bare limbs of the few skinny trees lined up along the quay. Ptolema shivers at the sound, though she knows perfectly well there’s nothing the least bit ominous about it. There’s nothing at work but her exasperation, exhaustion, and imagination. Nothing but the reports and rumors from Maine. That, and this Twisby person and the twins to set her nerves on edge.

  A red deer on a coin.

  Cervus elaphus scoticus.

  Deer Isle.

  Odocoileus virginianus.

  The Commissioner has warned her time and again not to let it get inside her head, that miasma, the muddling aura that surrounds every last agent of the X. But Ptolema knows it’s exactly what she’s done. The redhead is talking; Ptolema curses and wonders how much she’s missed in the lapse.

  “ . . . not the same shade as mine, but more like an auburn. Tied back. She wasn’t drinking anything, and she hardly said one word the whole time. It was mostly the twin, mostly this Bête girl said what was said. It wasn’t all that much, mind you, but it was enough. Frankly, more than I wanted to hear, seeing as how Ivoire and I were already close enough to friends. Well, as close as you get to making friends these days, right?”

  Ptolema quit smoking nearly fifteen years ago, but she almost asks the redhead for a cigarette. She’s still shivering and tries to stop. It’s a sign of weakness, and you never let an Xer see that kind of shit. They drink it up like nectar.

  “I can’t recite it word for word, but the gist of it was Bête knows it was someone on our side made her sister sick, someone on our side set up this whole masquerade about her sister having been kidnapped. Put it in Ivoire’s head—brainwashing, menticide, thought reform, hypnosis, don’t ask me—that she’d lend her not inconsiderable talents to the cause and march off to that unholy fucking shitstorm in Maine, or else her sister would be tortured, raped, ravaged, tagged and bagged, whatever. That it was the X sending Ivy the goods.”

  “The drugs?” Ptolema asks her, and the redhead nods.

  “Ivoire, she told me it was just pills at first, but that wasn’t enough. The pain was way beyond vikes and percs, you know. And, from what she said, it was like whoever was in back of this operation knew that, which is when the heroin started coming, instead.”

  “But Ivoire’s never seen who delivers the packages?”

  “Nope. They just show up. Sitting on a fence post with her name written neatly on the brown paper wrapping. Or tucked into a knothole in a tree she just happens to pass. Shit like that. Happenstance. But every time she’s running low, the deliveries show up like clockwork. Tick tock.”

  “And now it’s heroin.”

  “Yeah. Not as if she had any say in that. She told me when they cut off the oxy, she scoured the whole goddamned island, top to bottom. But after the looting and the fires, wasn’t nothing left. Piddley-shit, one-whore place only had, what? Two drugstores to start with. Fuck it.”

  Ptolema rubs her hands together. The gloves aren’t helping at all. If the cold bothers the redhead, she’s doing a good job of pretending it doesn’t.

  “And her sis
ter knows all of this? Bête?”

  “Miss P, I’m pretty certain that’s what I just said. We’ve . . . they’ve . . . got her buyin’ into that whole utilitarian, greater-good crapola. Hook, line, sinker. There’s her sister out there, her fucking lover, sick as a dog and probably dying, and now she’s a junkie, and there’s hardly ever a moment she doesn’t seem terrified about what’s happening to Bête, but Bête, this Twisby woman has her full fucking cooperation, wrapped around her pinkie finger. Nothing’s going too far.”

  Ptolema stops rubbing her hands together—it’s pointless anyway—and she says, “This can’t be the first time you’ve seen them pull this level of shit on someone.” The redhead is quiet. She doesn’t answer the question that, to be fair, wasn’t really a question. She doesn’t say whether she has or hasn’t seen this sort of shit before. Which, Ptolema knows, means that of course she has. It’s de rigueur, business as usual in the trenches of an invisible war that’s never had honor or a code of conduct or a Geneva Convention and never fucking will.

  “Go on,” Ptolema says.

  “That sounds an awful lot like an order to me,” says the redhead.

  Ptolema rubs at her eyes. They feel as if they’re turning to ice. “Sorry. I honestly didn’t mean it to,” she says.

  “You watch that tone, then. Where was I?”

  “Twisby appears to be controlling Bête, and somehow they’re both controlling Ivoire.”

  “Right, so at first the Bête twin, she was all puffed up, pleased with herself and these sick machinations, pure, undiluted braggadocio. But then she mentions someone called Sixty-Six, apparently another good lil’ factotum shipped off to the Pine Tree State. That was about the first time Twisby perked up. Shot Bête this ugly stare, reproach, you know. Disapproval. But not like it was a secret that Bête shouldn’t have let slip. More like Twisby is carrying a beef of some sort with this Sixty-Six. More like that. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Ptolema stops rubbing her eyes. She’s afraid they might shatter if she keeps it up, the way a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen shatters when struck against a hard surface.

  “You know who this Sixty-Six character is?” she asks the redhead.

  “I got some intel. Not a lot, ’cause her profile is buried in lockdown. But I fished up some tidbits. She was deployed shortly before Ivy. They met afterwards. Sixty-Six’s not much older than the twins. Twenty-ish, so about the same age as the twins. She spent some time in a mental hospital in upstate New York. Her parents had her committed when she was just a kid. But, out of the goodness of its heart, JS sprung her.”

  “You know why?”

  The redhead looks annoyed, shakes her head, and flicks the butt of her cigarette at the river. A trail of embers follows it down.

  “How the hell would I know a thing like that? I’m sure there was some reason deemed sufficient and necessary to keep everything moving smoothly as shit through a goose.”

  “Okay, so Twisby doesn’t like Sixty-Six.”

  “Not if that glare meant anything. But after she gave Thing Number Two that nasty look, Bête’s whole demeanor changed. You’d have thought someone flipped a light switch in her soul. So, right off, seems to me Twisby has Bête on a short tether. But, as I said, this twin gets all twitchy, flinching, not half so talkative. Went virtually catatonic, then and there. I’m not ashamed to admit, gave me the willies even more than I had them already. That’s when the taciturn Doc Twisby begins speaking directly—”

  “Doc? Twisby’s a doctor?”

  The redhead mumbles something Ptolema can’t make out over the wind.

  “I strongly dislike being interrupted,” the redhead says, and she fishes another cigarette from a pocket and lights it. “Almost as much as I dislike taking orders.”

  Ptolema apologizes.

  “I figured that much out just watchin’ her, yeah. But afterwards I tapped a contact of mine at Cal State, and yes, she is a doctor. Neurology. Biopsych. Oxford and Yale alumnus. High profile in the APA. But then, plop, she drops off the academic radar, only to pop up on another radar. Three years, she was cryptologic, No Such Agency, Never Say Anything, black ops, clandestine research feces had her bouncing back and forth between the NSA and Homeland Security and OSIR. Mostly OSIR. Some highly weird goings-on, from what I was told. She—”

  “How did your contact learn anything at all? If ‘Twisby’ is only her alias—”

  “Two strikes, lady. Three, you’re out, and I’ll take my chances with your wrath.”

  This time, Ptolema doesn’t bother apologizing. The redhead continues.

  “As I was saying, if you will please fucking recall, Madam Doc Twisby was up to something unpleasant with covert funding from these various sources, shadow phenomenology bushwa, way above top secret. I’m guessing, obviously, some manner of next-gen weaponizing.”

  “It’s better if you refrain from guessing,” Ptolema says. The lights across the Liffey have her thinking of a carnival now. The redhead is silent long enough that Ptolema has begun to believe she’s not going to get anything else out of her, when the woman starts talking again.

  “We . . . they . . . pulled her. Not sure when, but, near as I can suss, no one in Washington raised a hand to prevent her departure. Even for the X, that’s kind of ballsy, dipping into TPTB’s talent pool with such complete confidence. Which sets me thinking there’s an arrangement in place, tit for tat, an exchange of information in the offing. Naturally, those fucks in the States won’t get anything but a stingy fraction of whatever comes of Twisby’s mouse-in-a-maze experiment. Whether or not they know this, bugger all if I can tell you.”

  “Okay,” Ptolema says, when she’s sure she isn’t interrupting the redhead. Sure, she has orders to kill her. But she doesn’t want it to come to that. Not just yet, not with an informant who could still prove valuable further down the line. Not just yet. This could, of course, change in a matter of seconds, with a phone call, a text, the tip of a fucking hat. “We have a former high-profile psychiatric wiz using these two twins for fuck only knows what. Julia Set has Ivoire—reluctant soldier—convinced her sister will be killed unless she follows orders, and, as added insurance, extra control, they’ve infected or poisoned her, turned her into an addict, and have her dependent upon them for heroin. Have you considered she might only think she’s sick?”

  “I have,” the redhead replies. “But, way I see it, pain is pain.”

  “Her twin,” Ptolema continues, “with whom she’s been involved in an incestuous relationship for seven years, since the two were thirteen, not only has no problem with this, she’s helping out.” Ptolema is suddenly, and, she thinks, unaccountably seized with a need to lean over the rail and vomit her dinner and all that beer into the river.

  “Sorry about that,” the redhead says. “The nausea will pass. Probably. My focus has never been spot on. Chaos can be goddamn chaotic and all.”

  “Fuck you,” Ptolema mutters and tries to concentrate, but she can taste bile. “After your confab with these two sweethearts, did either of them say they’d be in touch again?”

  “Nope. She did not.”

  “She?”

  “Doc Twisby. Got hostile there at the end. I ought to mention that. Stopped just short of making full-on, out-and-out threats. But close enough the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling. Sufficient tension in the air I was wondering if I could reach the Glock in my shoulder holster before she pulled some sort of telekinetic nonsense or what have you. Pyro- or cryokinesis. Quantum tunneling. Doesn’t matter if you wind up on the wrong end of the stick, now does it?”

  “She’s TK?”

  “That’s the vibe I got. Same with Thing Number Two, and, I’d bet a hundred large, same with Ivy.”

  Ptolema pinches her septum, hard enough her eyes water, because sometimes that helps when she’s motion-sick. And whatever inadvertent energy has sloughed off the redhead and onto her feels more like motion sickness than anything else.

  “But she didn’t do shit.
Little staring match there between me and the Doc, and Bête doing some sort of origami shit with a bar napkin. Oh, hey, I haven’t mentioned that, have I. See, the twin, she kept making origami swans. They looked top notch to me, but every time Twisby would shake her head and Bête would get all hangdog and start over. Fuck me in the ear if I know what that was all about. By the way, Miss P, is it true the twins are some sort of prodigies? Geology, some sort of something of the sort?”

  “Evolutionary biology,” Ptolema replies. The nose-pinching remedy has done no good whatsoever, and her stomach rolls. “Paleontology. They were both grad students before this began.”

  “So we’ve a crop of brainiacs all round, don’t we. Yeah, Ivy dropped hints to that effect. But I don’t always know what’s crap and what’s for true. Though, here’s what I still don’t get. Why is it you lot are chasing after this Twisby and her pale riders? Or is that need-to-know?”

  Ptolema shuts her eyes, then opens them again. She truly is going to puke. And it comes to her this isn’t an accident. This is the redhead’s safety net, just in case the meeting goes sideways and she needs an exit strategy. “You heard the recording,” she says quietly, and swallows.

  “‘Black queen white, white queen black,’” says the redhead, sounding amused. “You don’t look so hot there, Miss P. Gone a little green around the gills. But, the recording. Gotta admit, don’t see how it hooks up with the twins.”

  “Then you’re dumber than I’ve given you credit for. Think. Ivoire and Bête?”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Ivory beast,” says Ptolema. She knows that it’s only a matter of seconds now until she loses her battle with the nausea.

  “Damn, yeah. Dude, how did I not see that? White queen. Two white queens. Dangerous white queens. So, you’re thinkin’ the message refers to those two? You know, if the gods send worms, that would be kind, if we were robins.”