The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

by Tim Pratt

  “Jane, take it easy,” Lindsay said. “We’ll go our way, and you go yours, okay? We didn’t mean to bother you.”

  “Shut up,” Jane said. “I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to her. To the prison guard, the traitor to her sex, to Marzi.” She spat the word.

  Marzi should have been terrified, and in some distant compartment of her mind she was, but mostly she felt a sort of cold rage, a steel core of determination whose origin was mysterious to her. She shook Lindsay’s hand off her arm and stepped forward. “What’s this all about, Jane? You’ve got a problem with me? What is it?”

  “I changed my mind,” Jane said. “I don’t want to talk to you. There’s no use talking to a door, to a lock, and that’s all you are, the lock on a prison for a goddess. You’re just the bars in the window. An obstruction to be broken down.” Jane lifted her hands, her fingers long and impossibly sharp. Marzi thought of swinging her bag at Jane, but there wasn’t much weight in it, just a sketch pad, a paperback book, and the toy pistol inside—

  The pistol. Suddenly that seemed like the perfect solution, exactly what Marzi needed in her hand, exactly what she needed for this showdown. But before she reached into her bag, she realized that didn’t make any sense. The gun was a toy, just metal and plastic; it wouldn’t even scare Jane, it certainly wouldn’t hurt her.

  Then Jane’s hands closed around Marzi’s throat, squeezing, choking her at arm’s length. Marzi and Lindsay clawed at her arms, but they might as well have been scratching stone.

  Suddenly Jonathan was there, covered in sand but standing, coming up quickly behind Jane, and once he got into striking distance, he planted one foot and brought the other leg around in a hard, sweeping roundhouse kick, right into Jane’s side. Should have gone for the knee, Marzi thought, the voice in her mind cold but recognizably her own. Hitting her in the side would piss her off, maybe knock her down, but wouldn’t disable her.

  But Jane didn’t fall down; at least, not right away. Jonathan’s foot, clad in a heavy hiking boot, passed through Jane’s body, mud spraying where blood might have been expected, and he spun almost completely around, stumbling before regaining his footing.

  Jane howled, releasing her grip on Marzi’s throat. She stared around, eyes wide and white, and then her torso fell away from her waist, thumping on the sand, leaving her bodiless legs standing for a moment, separated. Jane had been kicked messily in half.

  “Great holy fuck,” Jonathan said, and for the first time Marzi heard real fear in his voice. She recognized the tone—it was the sound of someone who has realized his part in an irrevocable action.

  Jane’s legs fell over, next to the rest of her body.

  Jonathan stared down at her, his mouth opening and closing, soundlessly. “I—I didn’t—” He didn’t complete the thought.

  “That’s impossible,” Lindsay said, and she took hold of Marzi’s arm again, squeezing too tightly, her voice high, touching the lower registers of hysteria. “Marzi, that’s not—”

  “She’s moving,” Marzi said, calmly, and she found that this development was not entirely unexpected, that somewhere inside she’d thought something like this might happen.

  Jane rose up on her arms, looking at them all, still grinning. “You see?” she said. “The goddess has made me immortal. I am one with the earth. Will you try to lock up the earth itself, Marzi?”

  Marzi took two steps toward Jane and kicked out, driving her foot straight into Jane’s face, mud spraying on impact. Lindsay and Jonathan gasped. The small white stones that made up Jane’s smile scattered. Her torso fell over—though not, Marzi knew, for the last time. She wouldn’t die that easily. Maybe if they threw her into the sea, she would dissolve . . . but even that might fail, and Jane might emerge later, dripping, composed of mud from the ocean floor.

  Marzi knelt and picked up a pebble from the sand. One of Jane’s teeth. She clenched it in her fist.

  “Let’s go to my house,” Marzi said. “I think I’ve had enough of the beach.”

  Shadow Riders

  * * *

  Denis slept for most of the day, and when he got out of bed he decided to clean his boots at last. There was no point in pretending things were normal anymore. Better to acknowledge the mess his life had temporarily become, and turn his attention to moving on. He knelt and scrubbed his boots in the tub, which had quite a ring around it now, thanks to Jane. He wondered where Jane was, what havoc she was wreaking, whether he’d see her again, but as he washed the mud from his boots, he tried to rinse her from his mind, to cleanse himself of her stain. He wanted his mind to be smoothly oiled antique machinery again, all brass flywheels and golden screws, not clogged with the grit of her. He shook the water off his shoes and put them in the sink to dry.

  It was time to get on with his life, and put this lunacy behind him. Jane had gone wherever spirits go; her body was buried where it wouldn’t be discovered for a long time, if he was lucky. People would realize she was missing, yes . . . but there were plenty of people who could confirm that she’d been acting strangely lately. Denis had already dealt with the police, and if necessary, he could do so again. As long as he kept his wits about him.

  The phone rang. Denis gripped the basin of the sink with his hands, the mud remaining on his fingers marring the white porcelain. He listened to the phone ring. After nine rings, the answering machine picked up.

  “Denis?” said a cheerful, faintly bewildered voice, instantly recognizable.

  Denis sighed, relieved, then wondered what he was relieved about, what he’d been expecting—cops? Jane? But it was only Beej.

  “You’re my other one phone call,” Beej said. “They’re not so strict around here, really, it’s not like it is on TV. Anyway, somebody could come bail me out, and I wondered if it could be you? I’d pay you back, you know, if you want money, I can find money, but I can put in a word for you with the earthquake god, maybe you can stand with me in the calm places, and not die, how’d that be? That’d be worth some bail money, I think.” Beej’s voice dipped, conspiratorial. “See, I have to get out, because I have to set the earthquake god free, because then everything can begin. My whole life’s been nothing but a waiting room, and I can’t believe there are these silly bars between me and my destiny, it seems like such a small thing, metal that could be torqued into spaghetti by the right ripple of the earth. . . .”

  And on and on. Why the hell did I get a digital answering machine? Denis thought. If he had an old-fashioned answering machine, with a tape, Beej would’ve been cut off by now, but he could keep rambling for hours if he wanted, and the machine would turn it all into numbers, little bits of data that could be played back, binary lunacy.

  Denis went into the living room and picked up the phone. “Don’t call here again,” he said.

  “Hey, Denis! You’re there!”

  “Not for long. I can’t help you, Beej. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh,” Beej said. “You don’t have any money?”

  Denis started to respond with something cutting, vicious—if anyone deserved to have some sense lashed into them, it was Beej—but he was too tired for that. There had been too much venom and tension in his life since Jane’s accident in the mud. “Yeah, Beej. I’m sorry, buddy, but I’m broke. Good luck, though.”

  “It’s not so bad here,” Beej said. “Except for being imprisoned. The food’s okay.”

  “Glad to hear it. I have to go.”

  “Could you do me a favor? Could you go to Genius Loci and free the earthquake god? If something happens, and I can’t do it myself . . .”

  Denis frowned. There was the shared delusion again, the gender-flip of what Jane had raved about. “What’s all this about an earthquake god?”

  “It’s the spirit of desolation, what happens when the earth grinds its teeth, and it’s trapped. I don’t know where—in the building, under the building, through the building. But I’m pretty sure anyone can set it free, that all it will take is a crowbar, maybe not even that
; maybe just a hand in the right place.”

  “Right. If I see the door to the prison, I’ll open it, okay?”

  “You’re the best, Denis!” Beej said. “Uh. Gotta go.” And then a click. Presumably Beej was being taken back to his cell.

  “Crazy little fuck.” He’d found Beej interesting, for a while—for all his repulsive mannerisms and basic lack of sophistication, he had some fascinating ideas about art, and there was no doubt of his talent; his photo montages were eerily resonant and emotionally affecting, even for Denis, who prided himself on an intellectual approach to art. But lately Beej had grown steadily stranger, and his usual poor hygiene had become something nastier, bordering on the pathological.

  Maybe the cops will give him a good delousing, he thought, and then dismissed Beej from his mind.

  It was time to get back to his own work, to his paper about the French surrealists. The same subject that had precipitated his falling out with Jane, which had led to their making up, and the aftermath . . . but that didn’t bear thinking about. If his mind was a mechanism, surely there was a way to route its operations around the areas pertaining to Jane, to slice every bit of her existence out of the operant loop?

  Denis put on his jogging shoes and went out into the fading afternoon, walking to Genius Loci. He went to the café at the same time every day, if possible; his days were easier when they had a focal point to orbit around. The usual scattering of people sat on the deck, neo-hippies and goths and punks, bikers and clean-cut students and desperately uncool freshmen with dyed hair and fresh body piercings, reveling in their illusory freedom. Denis went up the steps, feeling subtly wrong, and in a moment he realized why: He was used to the solid reassuring thump of his boots on the nine wooden steps. The jogging shoes were too soft and silent, and it felt strangely like he was going into a different place, a changed place, though of course it was he who had changed. He would get strong coffee, sit at a table in the peaceful blue corner of the Ocean Room, and think about the surrealists. Their dreams were far more baroque than Denis’s own. He dreamed almost solely of the machine that grinds, all threshing arms and chrome, too neat by half for those artists with their bird-headed matrons, their talking cats, their fantastic landscapes superimposed over cheap furniture. Denis couldn’t imagine having dreams like that, like the aftermath of a mental tornado.

  He’d only gotten three steps into Genius Loci when Hendrix began shouting at him, his pale face rising from behind the counter like the proverbial bad moon, his dreadlocks flying as he shook his head. “No, Denis, beat it, get out of here, you’re banned for life.”

  Everyone in the café within earshot looked at him. A few people even stood up from tables in the other rooms to see what the fuss was about. Denis froze, feeling like a bug pinned under a magnifying glass. “What?”

  “You. Are. Banned. For life.” Hendrix flapped his hand—like he was waving away a gnat—and said, “Beat it. Don’t ever come back. Go to Javha House or the Marigold or something.”

  “But . . . you don’t understand . . . this is where I go, every day.” Denis was appalled to realize he was whining, when all he wanted to do was bring logic into this improbable argument. “I’m a regular.” In truth, the coffee shop was integral to his life. Denis took comfort in his habits and routines—routines that had been brutally upset in recent days. Losing Genius Loci on top of all that was just too much, and he felt the leading edge of hysteria rising, and forced it down. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to control his uglier emotions, though, if the stresses assaulting him didn’t ease up.

  “Look, I don’t care where you go, but you can’t come here. We won’t serve you, understand? And you can’t hang out in here if you aren’t buying something.”

  “That’s a catch-twenty-two,” Denis said.

  “Good literary reference. Two points,” someone said, and laughter followed. Denis whipped his head around, but there were several people looking at him openly and chuckling, so he couldn’t single out any one for his glare.

  What would you do, anyway? a small voice in his mind wondered. Stab him? Suffocate him?

  “In about ten more seconds, I’ll decide you’re trespassing, Denis, and I’ll have to call the cops. Then you can join your buddy Beej in jail.”

  Light dawned. This wasn’t as Kafkaesque a persecution as it had seemed at first; it was just a misunderstanding. “No, Hendrix, you don’t understand. I wasn’t trying to break in here last night. I just saw Beej and came to see what the fuss was about. I explained it to the cops, you can ask them—”

  “You think I haven’t talked to the cops enough already? Since five in the morning I’ve been talking to cops! I don’t care what you told them; I know what Marzi told me. You and your crazy girlfriend are both banned for life.” He looked at his watch. “I believe your ten seconds are up. Banned for life. This is your final official notification. Piss off.”

  Denis turned away. Marzi! He’d never thought about her much before. She was either a service drone—and thus a total nonentity—or she was that comic-book girl; she didn’t interest him greatly in either aspect. But now she’d arranged to have him kicked out of his favorite place, a place where he spent more of his waking hours than he did at home. And for what? He’d tried to restrain Jane, he’d held her back from smashing in the door and doing whatever it was she felt she had to do in Genius Loci! He’d done Marzi a favor, and this was his reward?

  Only a few days before, Denis would have found the concept of “getting back at her,” of any sort of revenge, ridiculously simplistic, something from the movies, something far too messy to attempt in real life. But recently, he’d discovered a higher tolerance for messiness than he’d previously believed himself capable of. Perhaps revenge wasn’t outside the scope of possibility. Perhaps there were ways to sting her as he’d just been stung. Or worse.

  He went down the steps in his soft shoes. It didn’t sound like he was leaving the same place. It didn’t sound like he was the same person leaving it.

  Beej hummed in his cell, shifting his weight on the hard bunk. It was more comfy than the beach, where he’d been sleeping lately, or the temple of the earthquake god, where he’d tried to sleep one night, until the religious experience of his dreams had proved too powerful to allow him rest, but he still didn’t like it. The cell was too clean and antiseptic, all concrete and steel. One good quake would shear the bars, twist the walls out of true, render all right angles meaningless.

  Beej listened for earthquakes, but didn’t hear any coming. He had the feeling that the earthquake god had expended a lot of energy reaching through the door of his prison to touch Beej. Surely someone would throw open the door to the god’s prison. Beej knew it would be easy; the prison was designed to keep the god in, not to keep anyone out. The god said there were guardians—one guardian outside the prison, and one on the inside—but that they could be easily sidestepped, that all it would take was a little plain human muscle to open the door. And then . . . Beej had dreamed of the aftermath, the world a jumbled mess, like a photo collage in three dimensions, like the world’s biggest found-object sculpture, strange juxtapositions of cars and steel girders, humped-up concrete, water running where it wasn’t meant to, fires illuminating everything.

  When the earthquake god burst out, the whole town would become a work of wrecked art.

  Beej went to the bars of his cell and held on. He closed his eyes and turned himself into a seismograph, the newly shaped plates in his head poised to vibrate in sympathy with any tremors in the crust of the earth, but nothing came.

  “That’s okay,” Beej said quietly, cheerfully, to no one, opening his eyes. “I can wait.”

  Dream Sack

  * * *

  The three of them walked back to Marzi’s place quietly, all wrapped in their own thoughts. Marzi let them into her apartment, and Lindsay went straight to the kitchen. “We’re drinking your wine, Marzipan,” she called.

  Marzi flopped onto her couch and tried
to relax, tried to pretend the world hadn’t gone insane by degrees over the past days. “Make mine a double, barkeep.”

  Jonathan stood outside the doorway for a moment, brushing the last bits of sand from his body and taking off his shoes before coming inside. He stood in the middle of the room, scowling at the carpet, and finally said, too loudly, “Why is no one talking about the fact that I just kicked a woman in half?”

  Lindsay came back with three wineglasses in her hands, held by the stems, and the way the glasses rattled delicately together revealed her trembling. She put them down, carefully arranging them on the table, and said, “I’m not sure that’s what I saw. It was dark. Really dark. Maybe you just grazed her, and she fell.”

  Marzi didn’t speak. She knew what she’d seen, and she couldn’t unsee it now, but Lindsay and Jonathan hadn’t used up their reserves of rationalization and repression yet.

  Jonathan shook his head. “This isn’t the first fight I’ve been in. I connected, but it was like kicking . . . I don’t know. I’ve never kicked anything my foot went right through before. I saw the dirt go flying—”

  “She was covered in mud,” Lindsay said, annoyed, as if this discussion should already be behind them. “You kicked her, and some mud flew off her, so what? I’m not saying you didn’t do good, you did, but . . . there’s no way you kicked her in half.” Lindsay knelt by Marzi’s stereo, sorting through her CDs with occasional sniffs of disdain, tossing aside Uncle Tupelo, the Two Dollar Pistols, Whiskeytown, Wilco, all her cowpunk and insurgent country discs, until she finally found a Portishead disc and put it on.