by T. A. Pratt
“Where’s the train headed?” Marla asked, following Bethany into the engine car. This compartment was more like a comfortable living room than a train car, with lounge chairs, a couch, a flat-screen television, and ranks of humming black component electronics. A small control panel with sterling fixtures stood beneath the curving front window, but otherwise there was little to mark this as a functional rather than a living space. Bethany sat in a lounge chair—leather, of course, as was all the furniture—and gestured for Marla and the others to seat themselves.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Bethany said. “The journey is the destination. The train simply circles the track. This is where I live.”
“Constant movement,” Marla said. “Good for screwing up location spells.”
“A girl has to be careful when she lives in such a bad part of town,” Bethany said. “I’d love to have a train that goes somewhere, but there’s not a lot of room for surreptitious subterranean expansion under here. I’ve always wanted to live on a train, so I built this little loop. It’s just a toy train set writ large, I suppose. I like to play.” Bethany flickered her tongue.
Something in the front window went zipping past, a flash of gleaming blue on the wall of the tunnel.
“A toy,” Marla said. “Spinning in a loop past runes inscribed on the tunnel walls, generating kinetic energy, turning widdershins, keeping a magical field humming along. Right?” Finch got power from his sex parties, Dalton from his computers, the Celestial from ancient objects and an apothecary of rare herbs and potions, and Bethany had her train. Marla found it all intriguing, if a bit foreign, since in recent years she’d drawn her power from the bustling activity of the whole city she watched over.
“Good eye!” Bethany said. “Dalton rode this train a dozen times—well, his mirror-selves did, mostly, Dalton One didn’t go out much—and he never noticed the runes on the walls. Of course, he usually had other things to occupy him.”
“It’s a clever system,” Marla said. She had always admired fabricators and macro-magicians, people who made things. Marla had always been better at tearing things apart, at least on the physical level (though she liked to think she was good at building more theoretical things, like the complex structure of loyalty, fear, and obligation that kept things running back home). And while Marla had little patience for people who wore ostentatious piercings and tattoos, in Bethany’s case she could believe that body-modification was just an extension of that urge to change the shape of the natural and make the world accord with her own desires. “But are you clever enough to stay alive? There’s a sorcerer named Mutex picking off your associates, and he’s good at what he does.”
“Yes,” Bethany said, tugging thoughtfully on the ring in her lower lip. “He’s becoming more than an annoyance. I just got word about Dalton, a bit before you arrived.”
Rondeau, who was clearly already beyond mere boredom and well into the realm of utter distraction, began humming and tapping his feet. He was on to Sergeant Pepper’s now.
“Are your boys hungry?” Bethany said. “There’s a dining car a couple of compartments back, with a well-stocked fridge. I’m sure there’s cold meat and bread back there if they want to make sandwiches for themselves.”
“Scamper, you two,” Marla said. “And stay out of trouble. If you notice any frogs or hummingbirds, give a shout.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Rondeau said, nodding at Bethany. B nodded and started to follow Rondeau out.
“Wait!” Bethany said. “Are you Bradley Bowman?”
“So they tell me.”
“From Hollywood to the hidden world,” she said. “I hope I get to hear the tale of that journey someday.” She returned her attention to Marla, dismissing B and Rondeau from her attention. “I’m not clear about your interest in Mutex,” Bethany said. “I’ve heard you’re pursuing him, and that you were on hand to witness his murder of Finch and Dalton—which makes you seem like bad luck, so you’re lucky I let you onto my train at all—but why, exactly, are you after him? And what are you doing in San Francisco anyway, besides making enemies?”
“Mutex killed my friend Lao Tsung.”
“Right, Lao. We came to the city at about the same time, though beyond that we didn’t have much in common. I envied his longevity.”
“He wound up dead, just like everybody does,” Marla said.
“So you’re operating out of simple revenge?”
Marla considered. She didn’t know how much Bethany already knew. Dalton had believed Marla was responsible for killing Finch, and he’d known about the Cornerstone disappearing, but how much had Bethany heard? Surface anomalies aside, Bethany reminded Marla of herself—competent, no-nonsense, straightforward, savvy, mostly businesslike, with none of Finch’s power-games, or Dalton’s monomaniacal boorishness, or the Celestial’s rudeness or avarice. Marla didn’t trust Bethany, but then, if by some quirk of space-time or magical mishap Marla happened to come face-to-face with her own identical double, she wouldn’t trust her, either. Marla was too smart to go around trusting people promiscuously. “Revenge is as good a reason as any,” Marla said. “Don’t you think? I owe Lao Tsung a lot. But you should be more concerned with your own life. Mutex is coming for you, to kill you for giving him the brush-off and, not coincidentally, to rip out your heart and offer it up to his gods. But instead, how about we capture him?”
“You mean kill him, surely,” Bethany said. “Unless you want to keep him alive for a while, to torture him. But that’s not a good idea with a sorcerer as adept as he’s proven himself to be. Every moment alive is an opportunity for him to regain the upper hand, as I’m sure you know.”
Marla didn’t see an easy way to bluff past this, so she gave in. “I can’t kill him right away. He has something I need, and I have to find out where he’s hidden it.”
“Mmm,” Bethany said. “I didn’t think you were the type to indulge in revenge for its own sake.”
“Revenge is nice as a side dish, though,” Marla said.
“I’m sure. Capturing him will be more difficult.”
“I don’t care how good he is. He can’t be as good as the two of us working together.” Marla would have said that with more confidence if Ch’ang Hao had ever answered her summons, and brought her the rare jungle snake she needed, but with Bethany’s help, on Bethany’s apparently well-protected turf, they probably did stand a chance against the mad Aztec.
“You’re probably right,” Bethany said. She went to the control panel and made some imperceptible adjustments, then returned to her chair. “I’m glad your interests coincide with my own need for self-preservation. All right. Let’s take him. But you’ll owe me—and my city—a favor, in exchange for not killing him outright, and letting you get the information you need. It’s not in my best interests, after all, to keep Mutex alive for any length of time.”
Marla could appreciate that. “A favor it is.”
“Do you think he’ll come here?”
“He seems to like house calls.”
“How much time do you think we have?”
“No telling. Let’s assume he’ll be along any minute now.”
“Fair enough,” Bethany said. “I should get warning once he opens the main door or touches the stairs, just like I did with you.”
“And then?”
“Oh, I have tricks. I like building things, and there are lots of nice traps secreted on the platform. I just hit you with the bright lights to let you know I was watching, but I’ve got nastier things at my disposal. We’ll hit him with remote Tasers—I’ve got the wireless kind, where the current travels on a spray of fluid, which comes from nozzles in the walls. That should drop him for long enough that we can secure and interrogate him at our leisure. I owe him a little revenge, too. I used to fuck Dalton, sometimes, and I was fond of him. He wasn’t much in bed alone, but when he brought along a couple of his mirror-selves, it could be pleasant.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Marla said.
; Rondeau burst into the compartment, B close behind. Rondeau had his butterfly knife open, and B was pale and wide-eyed.
Marla shot to her feet. “Mutex?”
“Uh-uh,” Rondeau said, pointing at Bethany with his knife. “Her.”
13
H er, what?” Marla said, looking sidelong at Bethany.
“She’s got a freezer full of hearts back there,” B said. “Rondeau says they’re human.”
“And we know someone else who likes to snack on hearts,” Rondeau said. “So I’m wondering if maybe we haven’t found ourselves one of Mutex’s cohorts and co-conspirators.”
Marla looked at Bethany.
“That chest was locked,” Bethany said, scowling.
“Rondeau picks locks,” Marla said. “It’s like a nervous habit. He’s also curious, intrusive, and has no concept of personal privacy. Those are some of the qualities I value in him. Explain yourself.”
“Don’t command me on my own train,” Bethany said, rising to her feet. “But, since we were getting along so beautifully, I will explain, in the interests of continued friendliness. If you’d opened the other locked ice chests, you would have found other things—livers, kidneys, lots of things, each in its own place.”
“What, are you an anatomist?” Marla said. “Or do you have a stake in the organ trade?”
“Both good explanations,” Bethany said. “But, no, neither. I’m a cannibal.”
“Jesus,” B said.
“Jesus advocated a limited sort of cannibalism,” Bethany said. “But he’s not the subject under discussion right now.”
“A cannibal,” Marla said neutrally.
“Do you disapprove?” Bethany said.
“That depends. Don’t get me wrong, people-eating isn’t something I’ve ever been interested in personally, but I’m aware that it’s, ah, a complex subject. There can be power in it, I know.” In the sorcerous world, the pro-cannibal/anti-cannibal debate was as ferocious as the arguments about abortion in the ordinary world. Marla just tried to stay out of it, though she found cannibalism disgusting, on a visceral level, much as she’d been disgusted by Finch’s predilection for ghost-fucking.
“You can get diseases from eating people,” Rondeau said. He hadn’t put away his knife. Marla hadn’t told him to.
“You can get diseases from eating nearly anything,” Bethany said. “I don’t eat brains or spinal tissue, so I’m safe from nasty things like Creutzfeld-Jacob.”
“Where do you get the meat?” Marla said.
“Ah. This is what your approval depends on, yes?”
“I frown on murdering people and eating their parts, yeah,” Marla said. “It’s a subject I’m extra-sensitive about lately, since Mutex wants a return to the bad old days of theocrats getting fat off the meat of unwilling sacrifices. So, what, do you have people in morgues and hospitals, harvesting for you?”
“No, I do the butchering myself,” Bethany said, sitting back down. “With the help of a couple of apprentices.”
“Shit,” Marla said. “I’m as morally flexible as the next guy, but there are some things I have trouble bending my judgment around. You kill ordinaries? People from your own city? For food?”
“Yes,” Bethany said. “But before you try—and I stress the word ‘try’—to execute me for crimes against humanity, let me assure you that I only eat the willing. I have no shortage of volunteers. Sometimes they even stay alive while I amputate a limb or two, and dine with me on their own flesh.”
“You expect us to believe that?” B said. The whole situation clearly outraged him.
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t,” Bethany said.
Marla nodded to Rondeau, and he flipped his knife closed. “It’s true,” Rondeau told B. “There are people who want to be eaten. With all the billions of people on this planet, there’s no shortage of people who are into weird shit. And Bethany probably offers incentives to the suicidal and the terminally ill—pleasure in their last moments, shit like that.”
“Occasionally, yes,” Bethany said. “More so in the old days. Now it’s mostly people who just want to be prey. It’s a kink for some people, a fetish, though an almost invariably terminal one. They come from all over the world. I pay their travel expenses. The Internet has helped immensely. There are whole online communities, anthropophage newsgroups and mailing lists, everything. It’s made my life a lot simpler.”
“I’m pretty grossed-out right now,” Rondeau said. “I’m going to go away and think about unicorns and fluffy bunnies and other noncannibalistic things for a while.”
“Go with him, B,” Marla said.
“I’m still confused,” B said. “Is she one of the good guys?”
“Oh, B,” Marla said. “We’re so far past questions of good and bad that I can’t begin to answer that. But if we can define ‘good’ as ‘willing to stop Mutex from bringing primordial monsters to life and instituting a theocracy based on ritual human sacrifice,’ then, yeah, Bethany counts as a good guy.”
Bethany grinned at him, flickering her forked tongue. “I’d have expected less outrage from one of the most notorious party-boys from the Hollywood scene.”
“I did a lot of crazy stuff, but I never ate anybody,” B said. He left the car.
“Sorry to make you uncomfortable,” Bethany said as Marla sat back down. “I didn’t expect the subject of my eating habits to come up.”
“Right,” Marla said. “But if you don’t mind me asking, what’s the benefit? If you’re mostly eating people who want, in their deepest hearts, to be prey animals, then it can’t be the usual contagious-magic thing where you devour the flesh of brave and noble adversaries in order to take their strength for your own.”
“True,” Bethany said. “It’s complicated, magically, but the gist of it is that I’m now at the absolute pinnacle of the food chain. I am the uncontested apex predator of San Francisco. I can eat anyone, and nothing can eat me. I run the Tenderloin, the most dangerous part of the city, and being the best predator in a neighborhood full of human predators is essential. You see?”
“Yeah,” Marla said thoughtfully. No mugger or killer or rapist would be able to take Bethany out in a dark alley or something, in part because she literally did eat people like them for breakfast.
“Plus, I like the taste,” Bethany said. “So now we wait?”
“I guess. Do you have a deck of cards?”
Bethany inclined her head toward the television monitor and the humming black electronics. “I’ve got some good video games.”
Marla’s entire experience with video games began and ended with a brief period working as an enforcer, many years before, when she’d had to occasionally beat protection money out of a pimp who ran a video arcade on the side. “You mean like Pac-Man?” Marla said.
“I think I can do better than that,” Bethany said. “Dalton made a game for me, set in San Francisco, where an avatar based on motion-captures of me goes on a rampage to kill off all the other bosses in the city—except Dalton, of course. It’s pretty good, and there’s a great chaos engine, so there’s a lot of randomization every time I play. Dalton calls it my hostile-takeover tutorial, because he made the AIs that run the enemy sorcerers base their behavior as closely as possible on the real thing. He said in five or ten more years he’d have fully sentient in-game avatars who really believed they were Finch, Umbaldo, the Celestial, all of them. Once we got to that point, it would be trivial to magically link the avatars to their real-life counter-parts, so I could hurt them at a distance—like versatile voodoo dolls that really work. Guess I’ll never see that version of the game now.”
Marla, who had pretty well followed the drift of that, said, “That’s funny, since Dalton believed this world was just a computer simulation, with all of us being self-aware avatars.”
“He had some strange ideas. But, to his credit, the irony didn’t escape him. Care to play?”
“How about I just watch you—”
The lights flickered,
and the train slowed noticeably. “What the fuck?” Bethany muttered, rising and going to the control panel, which had gone dark. She pressed a few buttons and tugged a steel lever, which didn’t move. “Shit,” she said. “The controls are dead, and all my surveillance is out.” She jerked her head up, eyes widening, goat-slit pupils narrowing nearly to the point of vanishing. “And there’s somebody on the stairs.”
“That’s our Mutex,” Marla said, standing up. “Better get your Taser spray up and running.”
“It’s offline,” Bethany said. “I control it from here!” She slammed her hand against the control panel. “Fucking Dalton! This all used to be practically fail-safe, gears and wheels, pistons and engines, parts that moved, and I knew them better than I know the articulation of my own skeleton, it was a perfect retro-scientific steampunk wet dream, with magic filling in for the places where engineering broke down, but Dalton convinced me to upgrade to something modern and digital, all run with computers, and now somebody else has cracked my security, and they own my train!”
“Take it easy,” Marla said. “I’m surprised Mutex is so technologically savvy—I figured obsidian knives were about the pinnacle of his tool-using skills—but we’ll deal with it. So we don’t have aerosol-mist Tasers. We’ll improvise. You’re an apex predator, and I’m no defenseless bunny rabbit myself. We know he’s coming. He moves fast—blurry-fast—and he’s got a lot of poison frogs and surprisingly invincible hummingbirds, but we can beat him, if we get our shit together.”
“That bastard took my train away,” Bethany said, her face twisted in a silent snarl, the rings in her nose glistening. “He’s not getting back into daylight alive.”
“Anger is good. Keep being angry.”
“I can get the emergency lights on anyway,” Bethany said. “They’re just battery-powered.” She flipped open a panel on the wall and clicked a few switches. Faint red light emanated from recessed panels around the ceiling and floor of the train car. It was like being in a submarine in a movie.
Marla glanced around. “How many ways are there for him to get onto this train?”
