“Odiferous man,” Tayyar said, muttering.
“The passages farther up, do they go over this area?” Dave said.
“Some do, it’s hard to tell. This place is riddled with passages, especially the farther up you go. Don’t forget, these were once dwelling places for people to escape raiders,” Tayyar said. “Many of the best passages are blocked, difficult to find and impossible to map.”
“Not if you have the right equipment,” Dave said.
“Your seismic equipment, the crazy stuff you and Elorie had shipped here?” Georgia said, turning to Dave. “You can’t use explosives here. That would wreck this place and might even bring it down on our heads.”
None of the others had showed the least bit of interest in Dave’s equipment. He figured that of all of them, Georgia would know the right questions to ask when his equipment finally became relevant. “Nothing so primitive and nothing so advanced,” Dave said, carefully professional. “The relevant equipment is set up for shallow work, tomography – three dimensional surveying. We used them to find passages in rock and soil, such as smugglers’ tunnels, as well as more prosaic things such as lost underground metal storage tanks. The sound source, well, you pick the sound source to fit the circumstances. In soil you need a significant source. Here, we won’t need explosives. A heavy steel plate and a sledgehammer will do just fine.”
“Well, that will probably scare away those ghosts,” Darrel said.
Haluk snorted. “You pay Tayyar well enough and the ghosts will stay away, without your equipment,” he said.
“Your mother was a goat,” Tayyar said, under his breath, and turned to lead them out.
32. (Nessa)
Nessa focused her mind on the here and now when Lorenzi entered Portland’s low-ceilinged office in the fallout shelter. He had left his flunky magician behind, to deal with the pallets of crap she and Ken had retrieved.
She should have left the rats here. They didn’t deserve to be rat-free. They weren’t thinking with logic but with their emotions, damn them. Not that she would be able to convince anyone but Ken. They hadn’t been through enough hell to ice their emotions and just dammit think when they had to.
“You get to talk to Satan?” Portland said.
“Never found her. I’ll bet she’s gone to ground, taking a vacation. Even worse, I just got jumped by Caregiver,” Lorenzi said.
“Caregiver?” Montreal asked. “How’d you piss her off?”
Nessa peeked in Montreal’s mind to learn about this Caregiver God. Practical, nurse style. No fun at a party. Well, the last was just Montreal’s opinion.
Nessa caught a sudden mental image of Montreal’s, of an elderly nurse going after Lorenzi with a cane. Not accurate, but funny. She laughed. Everyone but Ken and Lorenzi frowned at her.
“I didn’t do a thing,” Lorenzi said. “She jumped me, out of the blue, accusing me of hurting her people at some hospital I’d never heard of. This wasn’t the first time for this sort of nonesuch. Last week, Charity pinned me down and chewed me out, and when I objected, Charity tried to pick a physical fight. Add in the expected normal bank account and investment harassment, I’m el totally at wit’s end.”
Charity was an Ideological God, one Nessa thought of as part of Portland’s Helping Hands. So much for what she thought she knew.
“It’s Dubuque,” Alt said.
“Impossible. The vicious miscreants didn’t bear any of the signs of Dubuque control,” Lorenzi said.
“Nevertheless.”
“I’m afraid it’s become part of the overall Mission of the 99 Gods to keep you under control,” Boise said. “Portland and I aren’t moved because we think we already have you under control as an ally.”
Lorenzi studied the other Gods in the room. “Where’d this come from?” The Gods shrugged. “Can’t you protect me?”
“To protect you, we need to know why,” War said.
Nessa took in the audience and the extra Gods and non-Gods who had appeared since she had zoned out. She ruffled through the God-minds, fishing for information. Yes, she had guessed correctly. Only War and Boise had the sensitivity to sense this problem. She turned to Dana. “Dana, you’re sitting on something I can’t understand.”
Dana frowned, exchanged a significant glance with Orlando and War, and then turned back to Nessa. “You’re in my mind? I didn’t sense anything.”
“She’s in all of our minds,” Boise said. “This is Nessa at full functionality. It’s too bad we don’t have Dubuque here…”
Here we go again. Damn but these Gods wanted a deus-ex-machina from her. Ironic. “If Dubuque was here, I might not be at ‘full functionality’,” Nessa said. “Trust me, it’s not that easy. I’m not a weapon you can just point and shoot.”
“She’s right,” Lorenzi said. “If Telepaths had the logical prowess you are extrapolating, they would have taken over the world ten thousand years ago. Her functionality is a reflection of our power and our attitude toward her. Even those of us who think she’s, well, difficult have soft spots in our hearts for her. Put a real enemy here and everything would change.”
He meant ‘a bitch’, not ‘difficult’. Nessa smiled. “Boise’s right, though, about the functionality. I can even pick up John’s thoughts today; normally, I can’t. Speaking of which, don’t dilly dally, John. We’re not squeamish. Rig up your scry bowl and do the scry right in front of us.”
Somewhere, her urge to get Dana to explain what she was sitting on, something vaguely important about the fight against the Seven Suits, got lost in Nessa’s mind and slipped away. She got a mental hug from Portland, though. Portland would follow through with the question, later.
Lorenzi sighed. “Soft spots in our heart despite how difficult she is about everything.” He turned to Portland. “With your permission, Portland…”
“Certainly.”
“There’s a sink still in its shipping crate on seven,” Ken said. “I’ll get it for you.”
Thoughts of what Lorenzi could do with a helpful and powerful telekinetic servant wafted through Lorenzi’s convoluted mind, and Nessa tuned him out. The guy had no ‘quit’ in him, and no shame.
Lorenzi did his scry. Nessa noted that his mental gyrations when he directed his magic had around a twenty percent overlap with what Portland’s Grade One Supported did, and about a forty percent overlap with what Lydia Gibson did when she did her thing. She hadn’t seen this before.
Portland’s training.
Nessa sent.
Lydia sighed.
Nessa paused.
Lydia wasn’t stupid, just eighteen. Nessa ruffled through Ken’s mind until she found a good synopsis of all the horrific things that had been happening, as well as the meat of the discussion so far, and dumped them into Lydia’s mind as an undifferentiated blob of data.
Lydia arrived mid-scry; she and Portland exchanged words, but Portland relented when Nessa jabbed Portland’s mind.
“I’ve decided my training’s over and I’m going to join with Alt and help him,” Lydia said.
“What would life be without women making decisions for me?” Alt said.
“It’s karmic payback for being the Recruiter,” Nessa said. “Humor me, Lydia. Do one of your scrys, about, say, who among Portland’s operatives are thinking about selling out to Dubuque.” Lydia nodded. Nessa turned to the rest, ensuring Godly attention with a variety of gentle to potent mental tweaks. “Watch her mind, if you can, or sense what she does. Compare what she does to what John’s doing. Tell me if you notice what I noticed.”
They examined.
John looked up after his scry was finished. He frowned when he found Lydia, beside him, studying the results of her scry (she had used the basin two down from John’s – Ken’s ‘bathroom sink in its original crate’ had turned out to be an institutional four-holer, and she had finished her scry faster). “Dubuque now thinks I’m his most dangerous enemy,” Lorenzi said. His face had paled and sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Hey, that’s my job,” Alt said.
“You had your shot and you blew it,” Ken said.
“Chil-dren.” Portland.
Nessa chuckled and finished her chocolate bar. Then she frowned, ideas catching up with her thoughts. “Guys, this doesn’t make any sense at all. Uh, pardon my ignorance here, but why you, John?” she said.
“I don’t have the faintest idea,” Lorenzi said. “I’m not a direct danger to Dubuque. I’ve proven this far too many times. Nor do I have any plans that involve any attacks on him.” He rubbed his beard, thinking. “So, what’s with Lydia, here?”
“You’ve met?”
John nodded to answer Nessa’s question. “I would have liked to have been there for that,” Nessa said. “It has to be freaky finding a magician tuned to the magic of the 99 Gods.”
“I found five potential traitors,” Lydia said. Portland nodded and gave Nessa a quizzical glance.
“What? Why this? Oh, it’s because Lydia had to be doing something real and hard and allegorically identical to what John was doing,” Nessa said. “Did you sense what I sensed?”
“Their methodology and what happens within them are almost identical,” Boise said. “It’s only when you get to…” gobbledygook phrase “…that they diverge. The skills are not just related, they’re the same.”
“Interesting, but not germane,” Portland said.
Every Telepath in the room simultaneously thought
Lorenzi winced.
Nessa sympathized with him. she sent to his mind. Lorenzi nearly busted his oversized gut at the unexpected telepathy, and then stuck his hands in his ersatz scry bowl.
The Gods did their thing.
“Puzzling and unnerving,” Portland said, afterwards. “Alt’s still Dubuque’s biggest personal danger. However, John’s danger isn’t to just Dubuque, it’s to all of us. Including me.” Lorenzi’s hairs stood up on end. Too bad none of them were on the top of his head. Nessa gave him a metaphorical hug, readied an invisibility illusion and had Ken plot the fastest way out of here. “This is a prompt from the Angelic Host, one they’ve specifically kept away from me.”
“Horse… Excuse me.” Lorenzi took his hand out of the bowl and wiped it dry on a handkerchief. He had absentmindedly drained the sink as if it was hooked to the lair’s plumbing. Where had the water gone? Oh. Right. Ken. “Pardon my language. Your answer startled me. This still doesn’t answer the question about what I’ve done, or plan on doing, to trigger this response.”
“There’s a way for me to find out, not something I normally do in public,” Portland said. “But since this is a day for us to be unnerving of our allies – which, mind you, I think is necessary given the dire situation at hand – I’ll do it.”
“Crap,” Persona said. She flickered into a different physical form, random middle aged woman, complete with a skin-tight defensive shell around her Nessa thought might be able to stop atomic bombs. Not that she knew atomic bombs from Adam, but…
The projections stood and edged over to Boise. Boise’s face grew stony. Whatever Portland planned didn’t fool him or the other Gods.
“Host, appear,” Portland said, and willed. Surely Portland’s pulling our legs, Nessa thought. She can’t mean them, can she?
The tidal wave of Portland’s willpower flowed through and past Nessa, and she gritted her teeth. Every time Portland showed her power, something like this happened. Nessa was glad that Portland wasn’t an enemy and wasn’t militarily oriented. If Portland was, well, luckily she wasn’t.
Nessa didn’t drop her preparations to save Lorenzi, in any case.
A single being – humanoid, non-human, glowing white and visibly indistinct, appeared in the air – right next to Nessa. Nessa blinked. Just as advertised, and quite disconcerting. An Angel.
Oh, a challenge? She couldn’t pass up a challenge. Nessa readied herself, but waited. She wanted to listen to Portland’s deviousness and find out why Portland had summoned in the Angel close enough for Nessa to kiss before she tried anything.
“Observer of Virtue, I have a question for you,” Portland said.
“Ask, then,” the Angel said in a kind and soothing voice. A projection, Nessa realized, just like the projections of the 99 Gods. The projection had a different aura than Lorenzi’s projections and one of the 99 Gods projections, but a projection nevertheless. She wondered if she could con the Angel into doing a scry so they could compare Angelic magic to the others and decided she needed to know much more about the Angels, first. For one thing, they might not be able to scry. She had a hunch otherwise, though.
“Why has the Angelic Host declared John Lorenzi a danger?” Portland said.
John and Dana had paled to paper white and Alt’s crew nearly shat their britches. Ken, on the other hand, had eyes only for her, and he had a telekinetic protective shell poised to spring into existence around the both of them. He trusted her preparations.
“The projects he generates, not his personal actions, are the danger to the 99 Gods,” Observer of Virtue said.
“Could you elaborate, please?” Portland
said. “The danger is to more than the 99 Gods, isn’t it?”
“You are correct. Even We are in danger, which is unacceptable. You choose to support him, still?”
“Until you prove this danger is more than a possibility or supposition, yes,” Portland said.
Observer of Virtue puffed up in angelic importance. “Since you have chosen of your own free will to support him, you, Portland, are no longer in the Sight of the Angelic Host. You may make amends by rescinding your support of him.” Ooh, strong arm tactics. These were the nasty Angels, eh?
“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense, Observer,” Portland said. She continued with a mixture of apology and umpire-arguing. Nessa decided she had heard enough and gently stuck a mental probe into the Angel’s mind. Time to learn more!
Wow, Nessa thought. Angel. God. Wow. There He was. Neato!
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 40
