We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle)

by Jeff Somers

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I know you must serve my interests, as the party who engaged you. And as I know you havta be engaged by someone at all times or you’ll suffer—your words, not mine!—I guess I’ll just havta swallow it, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He paused to see if she was finished, then nodded. “Three questions answered, safe passage in return for one question from you, answered. All parties’ safety guaranteed.”

  “Shit,” the girl said, not looking the least bit put out. “Very well, Mr. Vonnegan, ask away.”

  It all felt wrong, which didn’t make me a genius. I looked out the windows and realized I could see the faint, silvery outlines of buildings close by. Seeing the perfect pitch black of the night made no sense, because every light in the room was on, burning hot, pouring artificial light into the place. I turned and looked at Fallon. We stared at each other for a moment and then he cleared his throat and stepped forward.

  “Mr. Vonnegan wonders,” he said in his clipped almost-accent, “if any question he might now speak would be considered one of his three.”

  The Negotiator—Harrows—shook his head almost wearily. “The questions have been named already. They are the questions, no others.”

  “Evelyn Fallon,” the girl sang out, sending a plume of smoke into the air. “You look awful.”

  “Elsa,” Fallon said. “It has not been long enough.”

  “Evvy dislikes me, Mr. Vonnegan, though I do not understand why. We are old friends.”

  Fallon snorted. “We have never been friends, Elsa.”

  “Comrades, then, from past wars. Fallon’s a deadly one, you know. A lot of blood on those old hands.” She cackled, sounded like a preteen girl howling at some movie. “You’re too young, Mr. Vonnegan. Our wars were long over by the time you learned your first mu.”

  I did not feel young. I did not say this. I was terrified of saying anything.

  “I see you have . . . refreshed yourself,” Fallon said, his voice dry and emotionless.

  She smiled and ran her free hand from her throat to her belly, pulling up the thin T-shirt to expose an inch or two of flat, taut skin. “Oh, you noticed, you old charmer. Yes, being old and dried up, as you know, is no fun.” She frowned. “I do hate being this young. So much you can’t do. But you know, you have to start young. If you go in too late, they resist. I don’t know why a few years makes such a difference, but it does,” she concluded with a singsong lilt.

  A green lump formed in the pit of my stomach. There, I thought. There is the difference. I was no enustari, no matter how many volunteers I bled. I studied the girl in front of me. Pictured her playing video games, watching movies. Saw her, in a brief flash, shivering in Hiram’s apartment in tennis shoes covered with pink writing. Saw her strapped into a Fabrication under Mika Renar’s house. Saw them all, sitting there in that yellow boa.

  “What happens to her?” I asked before I remembered to be terrified.

  Outside, in the distance, there was an explosion, bright enough to make me wince and close my eyes, loud enough to rattle the glass and make the floor dance underfoot. When I looked back, something was burning a mile away, a blob of shifting light in the frame of the windows.

  The Girl Who Was Certainly Not a Girl looked at me for a long moment, one eyebrow raised. “I have her,” she said slowly, “safe and sound. And someday, when I am done with this body, I will give it back. It is a kinder forever, in some ways, than what that old bitch Renar has planned, don’t you think? One girl inconvenienced instead of a whole world dead? But Mika—Mika’s too fancy for other bodies. She doesn’t want to touch other people, much less inhabit their stinky, low-class bodies.” She shrugged and looked back at Fallon. “So you see, Evvy, I am not as wicked as you imply.”

  Fallon grunted. “The Fabrication, then, Elsa?”

  She smiled and stood up with an easy athleticism. “Why, yes, my ancient old friend. A Fabrication.” She crossed to the kitchen area, where the counter held several small objects that looked like jewelry boxes made from bone or ivory. She picked one up and stood staring at it, her back to us. “She is very safe. I am merely borrowing her bones for a bit.”

  “Mika,” Fallon said, sounding bored, like this was a conversation he’d had before, “does not like to work, Elsa. You know this. The constant changing of bodies, it wearies her. Easier—for her—to engage a final solution to her mortality problem.”

  All of them, crazy and terrified of death.

  “Would you care for a demonstration?” she asked, striding over towards me with the box in a loopy, off-balance trot, then almost crashing into me. She pulled up, laughing, holding the box out towards me. “It’s fucking easy. Wantta see? Maybe on your big dumb friend there? All you do is . . . touch ’em . . . on the forehead . . .” She reached the box up towards my face until I flinched away. “And bang! Transference.” She smiled a dopey, thick smile, admiring the little box in the light. “A fuckin’ work of art.”

  “Always talented, Elsa,” Fallon said. “Always you could do amazing things. And yet always, your amazing things are horrifying things.”

  The girl-thing snorted. Turning and stumbling back the way she came, she replaced the box on the counter. I kept staring at it. A soul, someone in there. Trapped until this mercurial captor let them out. I imagined being twelve fucking years old and then boom, waking up and you were seventy. Or your body was. Was she aware, in there? Did she know that time was passing while some fucking Archmage used up her body? Would that be better?

  Touch ’em on the forehead.

  “You’re one to talk. Better, Evvy, than hiding in that basement for thirty years, no? Better than pretending nothing was going on outside my walls, then making a pathetic ass of myself at the last minute, then spending the last two years following this Trickster about.

  “Now,” she said, draining her glass and dropping it onto the floor, “business. Mr. Vonnegan, you drive a hard bargain. Three questions. Let’s get them over with.”

  She dropped back down on the pillow and crossed her skinny legs in front of her, biting one nail as she stared at me. A Fabricator in Fallon’s class.

  I licked my lips with a dry tongue. I realized that Mags and I hadn’t moved at all. “Where,” I said deliberately, “is Mika Renar?”

  The Girl Who Was Not a Girl stared at me for a moment. Her expression was thoughtful, with a slight frown, the sort of look I’d seen a million times a second before a subtle Charm took hold and shifted everything in my favor. Then it shifted and became a half-puzzled, half-amused frown, like she assumed there was a trick but couldn’t be sure. “Helsinki, last I heard.” The smile bloomed into a lopsided, mean-spirited snarl. “I don’t really know.”

  The Negotiator, months ago: Mika Renar did not contract for you.

  Abdignale: You are not the only person working to bring Renar to justice.

  I’d been conned. And stupid. I couldn’t remember why I’d just assumed I could just ask where Renar was, except that Renar was everywhere, behind everything. I’d been conned.

  I thought back to the Negotiator formalizing my terms, and then I wanted to kill him.

  I wanted to kill her. Instinctively, I raised an arm in anger, and then I heard a choked grunt and felt Mags landing next to me. One of his hands began crushing my forearm as he took hold of it. I could feel him, his insides, burning with rage. He wanted to kill her, too.

  This Girl Who Was Not a Girl had fucked us, and looked happy to be doing so.

  We did nothing. I willed myself to move. To teach her a lesson about what years of pent-up frustration bought you. She was right there. But I couldn’t move.

  “Lem,” Mags breathed, his voice hot and angry. And again, but now frightened and confused. “Lem.”

  We couldn’t do anything. Because we’d bargained in good faith, and our deal included safety guaranteed. I heard the voice of the Negotiator: The things I say become the truth. We had guaranteed everyone’s safety. He had guaranteed me ans
wers, but tricked me into asking the wrong fucking questions. Serving the interests of his employer.

  I tried to move towards her. Anything. I tried clearing my mind of intention, imagining nothing, a field of static in my mind’s eye. I was still bolted to the floor. I heard a slow, dry creaking noise and realized it was Pitr Mags’s shoes as he strained against the geas.

  “Your second question, Mr. Vonnegan? We are pressed for time. We havta get out of this craphole before the whole fuckin’ city burns to the ground.”

  The Girl Who Was Not a Girl tilted her head slightly and lit a cigarette, smiling at me. She looked, for a moment, like any twelve-year-old girl at the fucking mall.

  I turned to look at Fallon. “Who the fuck is she?”

  “Mr. Vonnegan!” the girl sang out in a lilting, childish voice. “We do not have time—”

  I kept my eyes on Fallon and just pointed at her. “Our fucking deal had no fucking time dimension, so shut the fuck up and I will stand here as long as I fucking like.” I turned to look at her. “And my safety is fucking guaranteed, too.”

  She stared at me, still smiling. Then she glanced over at the Negotiator. Whatever he did in response, she sighed and looked back at me, nodding. “As you say.”

  I looked at Fallon. The old man pushed his hands into his pockets and looked down at the floor. “Elsa,” he said slowly, “was my urtuku fifty-three years ago.” His eyes lifted to meet mine. “She is . . . talented.” His gray eyes moved to land on the girl’s body. “She is . . . dangerous.”

  The girl burst into a fit of giggles. “Oh, poor Evelyn!” she hooted, twisting on the floor in orgiastic physical freedom, as if she could not believe how good it felt to be twelve. I wasn’t old, but I was stiff, aching. I imagined, for a sick moment, sliding into a new body. No aching back. No old scars up and down the arms. “Poor, poor Evvy!” She pointed her cigarette at him. “You begged me to leave you alone, you wept and beat your breast because I had surpassed you, and I left you alone as a kindness. And you buried yourself in that hole and tinkered. The only reason that cunt Renar hired you was because she knew I wasn’t dumb enough work with her. You built her something grand, Evelyn, I’ll give you that. It was grand. But it was the best you’ll ever do, and you didn’t even get dealt in.” She dissolved into laughter again.

  I felt our hearts pounding, Mags’s and mine. I forced myself to look at her. Wanted to shut her up. “What is the kurre-nikas?”

  She didn’t shut up. She cackled. She kicked her legs in the air and dropped the cigarette on the carpet, where it smoldered and smoked. She rolled around howling. Then she was up, so young and lithe it was like an animal hunting in the wild. She vaulted over to Fallon and he took two hurried steps backwards, his face screwing up into a mask of fear. I’d seen Ev Fallon vaporize people just a few hours ago, and here he was backing away from a tiny girl.

  She stopped and stretched up on her tiptoes. “You know, Evvy, but you do not tell him because you are a coward. You were a coward in ’56 and a coward in ’71 with that ridiculous fat friend of yours and a coward in Belfast and a coward in Munich—and you are still a fucking coward today. We are at war, and you went to ground. And now you are not hiding anymore, but you are on the wrong side.” She spun and faced me but was still talking to the old man. “I gave you everything, and you went to ground like a fucking coward. You are not the man I thought you were.”

  He stared back at her, his face expressionless.

  She spun to face me. “The kurre-nikas,” she said with a little bow, “as your friend here knows full well, is capable of some serious mischief.”

  Fallon stared at the back of her head as if contemplating the well-placed arc of a blade. “You are mad.”

  The little girl leaped on him—spun and sprang and wrapped herself around the old man, forcing him to stagger backwards, twisting his torso away from her shining eyes, her sharp white pebble teeth.

  “Fucking coward fucking coward fucking coward!” she screeched. “All of you so fucking afraid—all of you so fucking afraid! I did not build the fucking thing for her, Evvy! I am trying to save us, you goddamn coward!”

  With a snarl, Fallon took hold of her shoulders . . . and then froze. They wobbled there for a moment, each prevented from hurting the other. Each struggling against the force of the spell—a spell cast years ago, still suspended between the molecules of the universe.

  Slowly, she climbed down. He released her almost reluctantly. Watched her back away from him with wary eyes.

  “Mika has built it, Evvy. Mika has built it to try and right a wrong, or what she perceives as one. And I am merely trying to even up the playing field. Because where the fuck have you been during all of this?” She snorted and spat on the ground at Fallon’s feet.

  I stared at Fallon. Who was still a stranger after all this time. “You fucking do know what it is,” I said. “You lied to me.”

  “For your protection, Mr. Vonnegan,” he said, staring daggers at the Girl Who Was Not a Girl. “There was once a time when our order knew how dangerous knowledge was. It was portioned out when people were ready.” He turned his head to look at me. “Kurre-nikas,” he said slowly. He was slightly out of breath, his mysterious accent somehow suddenly thicker, making him sound like he was biting his words off one by one from some sheet. His yellowed eyes bore into me. “I apologize, Mr. Vonnegan, if I was reluctant to speak of it. I am old-fashioned. It is an ancient design. Predating the modern era. There was a time when knowing of it was a death sentence.” He smiled thinly. “Luckily for us, the wars Elsa refers to destroyed much of that . . . civilization among us.”

  The girl spat on the floor and padded over to the bar. “Cunt,” she hissed over her shoulder.

  “If built correctly—precisely—the kurre-nikas does one simple, impossible thing: It alters a single moment in the past.”

  I let that sink in. It got about an inch and then stalled. “What.”

  He shrugged. “Take a moment, a second, of your existence. You turn left and are attacked. So you go insane, you lose your humanity, you spend oceans of pain—”

  The girl, pouring whiskey into a glass, giggled and muttered, “Cunt.”

  “—and suffering—”

  “Cunt.”

  “—and blood—”

  “Cunt!”

  “—in order to create this Fabrication. The kurre-nikas. And you choose the moment when you went left, and you alter it so that you went right. And the universe, drawing on more oceans of blood and pain and suffering—”

  “Cunt, cunt, cunt,” she chanted.

  “—the universe, she adjusts.”

  I stared at him blankly. “Adjusts. It’s a wedge.”

  Fallon nodded. “Precisely. The sacrifice required to change reality wholesale is nearly as much as the Biludha-tah-namus. But to change one moment? Much easier. The moment changes. Every moment thereafter cascades in change as well. But at no blood cost. The universe repairs itself. You change one thing, the universe adjusts around it. Not always in predictable ways, of course; there is a lot of chance involved in the specifics. The universe chooses the details.” He pushed his huge hands back into his pockets. “So you see, Mr. Vonnegan: We do not speak of it unless we must. So that no one gets ideas.”

  The girl cackled again. “Ideas! Evvy, when was the last idea you had that was not planted in your tiny brain as an order!” She spun, sloshing whiskey everywhere. The tumbler was as big as her fist and filled halfway. She was plastered. How fast did you burn through a body like that when you drank enough for everyone in the room?

  “Mr. Fucking Vonnegan,” Elsa slurred, swaying on her feet, her tan little face bright red. “You moron. One more question, you fucking asshole.” She peeled her index finger from the glass and held it up, waving it slightly back and forth.

  My mind was racing. Changing moments, changing reality. The possibilities were fucking endless, but in a way, it made sense for one possibility: I’d come along and fucked up Mika Renar’s
bid for immortality. But what if I hadn’t? It wasn’t like I’d been some fucking hero, casting biludha and kicking ass. There’d been so much luck, so much dumb fucking luck. If one moment had gone differently, I would have been dead. Or simply failed.

  One moment.

  Easier than trying to do it all over again. With me and my Army of Assholes watching, looking for it. Fucking misdirection. For a second, shame and a weird fevered excitement crashed through me. It was a great con. We’d spent the last two years looking for the Biludha-tah-namus. They weren’t going to try that again. They were pouring their resources into the kurre-nikas. Tweak one moment, watch the future change around you. Reductive. Simple.

  Dread filled me. It filled Mags, his heart rate lifting slightly as he got that terrified look that meant he had no fucking idea what was going on.

  I knew my third question was a waste of time, and that once I’d asked it, I would be on the hook for her question, but I felt the pressure of the geas building behind me. I had to ask. I had another question suddenly. The Girl Who Was Not a Girl had no idea where Mika Renar was. They were on different teams—but what did that mean? What did she want, if not what Mika Renar wanted?

  I’d been conned so fucking hard, I was amazed my ears weren’t bleeding.

  The geas pushed me along. “Why,” I said thickly, “are you storing all the blood?”

  The little girl laughed again, a shimmer of girlish giggles, and then tripped and fell on her face. The tumbler crashed to the floor and she popped back up, nose bleeding, a thick stream like chocolate syrup. Gas in the air, strong, heavy, for the taking. Except I’d guaranteed her safety. I could feel the weight of the Negotiator’s geas like a wet coat, tightening in admonishment.

  “You mean why is she storing it, ’cause all we did was steal that trick. Why not? As dear Evvy has pointed out, there is no law anymore, no fucking secret society of mumblebeards keepin’ the peace. We’re not storing sacrifice to rape the world the way she is—we’re playin’ catch-up. Defense. Once we saw what that demented bat was up to, we figured out her battery idea and replicated it. Easy enough once you know the principle involved. I can see from your fuckin’ stupid expression that you know the answer, too, you fuckin’ moron. She needs it. For the kurre-nikas, of course!” Her voice had become a screech again. “Of course! And she did it right under your fuckin’ nose!” She spat on the floor again. “That’s the problem—we’ve been playin’ catch-up. But we’re gettin’ there.” She looked back at me. “And we’re takin’ out insurance.”