by Garon Whited
“Diogenes?”
“There are intermittent signals from other vehicles,” Diogenes reported, “that are much stronger than other sources. The closest source, regardless of signal strength, is traveling with us. The antennas on the cyberlink are too close together for accurate triangulation, but the source appears to be somewhere near the front of the vehicle.”
“Thank you, Diogenes.”
“It is my pleasure, Madam.”
“Please take us back off the grid.”
“This function is a passive one and does not require broadcasting a signal of our own. We were never on the grid, Madam.”
“Even better.”
Mary came forward and sat in the passenger seat.
“Well?” she asked. “If we’re bugged, how do we find it?”
“I’m more concerned with what it means.”
“It means someone wants to find us.”
“It means someone already found us and didn’t want to jump us.”
“I don’t blame them,” she agreed, smiling. I chuckled, then stopped. How sophisticated are modern bugging devices? If it’s a beacon to locate us, fine. But could it also be a more traditional bug, listening to our conversations?
“Regardless, I’m hungry. Let’s find someplace to eat.”
Mary looked at me oddly; we ate in Syracuse, not half an hour ago. I pointed at my ear, then the front of the van. She was puzzled for only moment. Her eyes widened. She nodded.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “The pizza wasn’t quite all there for me. Burgers? Something quick, since there’s a disaster waiting for us on the I-90?”
“Seems fair. Then, forewarned and with a hot meal inside, we can go face danger and beat it to death.”
Woo-hoo! Firebrand offered.
I’m misleading any people who might be listening in, I replied.
Awwww.
We pulled over and I went into a fast-food place to pick up a dozen burgers. Mary examined the front of the RV. When I came out, she held a magnetic box in one gloved hand.
“No microphone,” she reported. “Extra ketchup?”
“In the bag; I ordered them plain,” I told her, as we boarded.
“Why?” she asked, putting the box in the glove compartment. “I like stuff on a burger. The more the better. Mustard?”
“Also in the bag,” I told her, as she rummaged. “I can’t stand flavorful food.”
“Seriously? You weren’t kidding about that?”
“Well, I can stand it if I have to. I hate it, but I can stand it. As you get older, you might notice your senses getting sharper. Including your sense of taste.”
“I already have. Does it really get that bad?” she asked, applying condiments like a madwoman with a mustard fetish. I shuddered.
“Yes. It’s like living in a crowd all the time. I ignore most of it, like ignoring a radio in the background, or static. You know how you don’t really feel your clothes on your body unless you concentrate—or unless you move and something binds a little too tight? It’s all still there, though, even if I’m not paying attention to it.”
“So, how much…?”
“See the guy over there, across the street?”
“The one sitting outside the store, talking on his skinphone?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“How should I know? I’m not too good at reading lips.”
I rolled down the window and focused. I paid attention and listened for something that matched up with the movements of his lips.
“He’s talking to his girlfriend, I think. He wants her to pick him up. They’re arguing because she’s at work and only gets a half-hour for lunch. He’s complaining he can’t get home without spending money on a cab because she’s the one with the Google Cabs account… Oh, he wants her to send a cab, not come get him. And he says he got the stuff on the shopping list.”
I rolled the window back up. Mary stared at me.
“There’s traffic between us and him.”
“Electric traffic,” I pointed out.
“And a parking lot.”
“Mostly empty.”
“Could you could hear her side of it?” she pressed.
“No, I inferred her side from his comments. Seeing his lips helped, too. I didn’t hear everything he said, but I could fill in the missing pieces with lip movement and logic. I wouldn’t want to try it on a street full of gas-burning cars, though. Much too loud.”
“And your tongue does what your ears do?”
“That’s why I don’t like mustard, or anything else with a strong flavor. Yeah. I also taste it all the way down. Monster tongue problems.”
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She sounded sincere. “Being hurt must really hurt if your sense of touch is overclocked, too.”
“It’s not so bad. Whatever process has upped my senses, it hasn’t done anything to my perception of pain. It might even have lowered it a little, but maybe that’s only by contrast. I can tell you whether the knife is serrated or not by it being in my flesh—even count the serrated grooves, if you like. It doesn’t really hurt any more than you’d expect. It’s one of those things you get used to. Eventually. Kind of like chewing with fangs.” I changed the subject by opening the glove compartment and looking at the box. Mary moved around into the driver’s seat.
“What do we do with this?” I asked.
“You can do the telekinetic tentacle thing. We’ll pick a passing vehicle and you’ll stick it on.”
“Fair enough. But please don’t call it a tentacle. I don’t like the word. It conjures up images of nasty things with lots of tentacles, and I’ve seen enough hentai to know how that ends.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, pulling out onto the road.
“Freak,” I accused, chuckling.
“Yep. Someday, will you try to pin me down?”
“Not in the van.”
“Oh, no! We might tear this thing apart by accident. I meant somewhere we can destroy the furniture and maybe the walls.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“If you’re not into that, it’s okay. I kind of like it once in a while. It’s like spicy curry. Once in a while, it’s great, but if that’s all you eat it’ll take the roof of your mouth off.”
“I’m not touching that one. Whenever we don’t mind wrecking the bed, sure. I’m not an unreasonable man.”
“You mean you’re a unicorn?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a reasonable man? That is, a unicorn? Meaning you don’t exist?”
“Ah, but unicorns do exist.”
Mary was silent for several seconds while merging into traffic.
“They do?”
“I’ve seen one. They aren’t as nice as you might think.”
“Um. You’re not kidding me?”
“Nope. Saw one in Karvalen. A guy was hunting it and using a girl as bait.”
“Do you think I could get to see one?”
“Probably.”
“Excellent!”
“Remind me when we’re there. Can I pick up the box, now?”
“Sure. Get a glove, though.”
“Why?”
“Caution?”
I put on a glove. The box was surprisingly heavy, doubtless packed with electronics or batteries. I rolled down the window and waited. Mary headed us back down toward the I-90 junction and pulled up alongside a bus. I floated the thing out and affixed it to the rear bumper. Then she drew away from the bus and we passed the junction, still headed south.
“Still want to visit the falls?” Mary asked. “We can get back on the state highways.”
“Up to you. I’m more interested in seeing what happens to the bus.”
“How?”
“A small mirror.”
“You’re so smart. But you can’t do that inside a power circle, right? Or did I miss something on the theory?”
“I like that name. And you’re right; I can’
t. I can take it down while I’m scrying, though.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything.”
“I hope so.”
“I hope you know the answer to this one. Is there anything left in the burger bag?”
“Here.” I handed her the bag.
“You’re so smart.”
I made sure the amulet was working before I took down the RV’s power circle. We cruised along while I used the mirror to keep track of the bus. It was the first time I really tried to keep track of a moving target while I was also moving. It was tricky. Using a radial coordinate system with the scrying mirror as the zero was difficult. Normally, it wouldn’t matter; people don’t usually use a crystal ball from horseback. Most scrying is done in quiet, stable situations, like a lab or other special room.
I didn’t have time to rewrite a spell to use the ground as a fixed reference. Later, maybe. It would take serious work to get two mobile points to coordinate in a fixed reference frame. It would have to track both the target and the mirror, and that was going to be a pain in the forebrain. I wasn’t looking forward to it. If I could get it to work, I could use a mirror on a plane, train, or RV and keep track of someone in orbit. For now, it was all a case of manual control.
Interplanetary travel would be another sort of problem. I’ll tackle that if I ever wind up in a spaceship.
And I might.
With that for a chilling thought, I focused on keeping the bus in sight. I had to pull back and view it from fairly high up, then constantly adjust for the changes in direction and other relative motions. It wasn’t too bad, once I put the viewpoint at altitude.
The bus drove past a quartet of police cars. There was a brief delay, then the cops fired up the lights and chased it down. They overrode the autodrive and pulled it over to empty it out and search it. I didn’t see anyone other than law enforcement personnel and passengers, so I closed the mirror and put the Ascension—I put the power circle back up.
“Nobody unusual,” I reported. “Just cops.”
“Just?”
“Well, no obvious magi sitting by the side of the road and no vampire servants in emo-goth outfits hanging around.”
“If they’ve gotten to the point of trying to get us arrested, that tells us something,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but I’m not sure what. They bugged the van to keep track of us. That means they want to know where we are, not necessarily kill us.” I moved forward to the passenger seat. Mary had left me one lonely, uncondimented burger; I unwrapped it and ate it while we talked. “If they wanted us dead—really wanted us dead—a couple of those flying-wing drones with explosives would do the trick.”
“They might not have many,” she pointed out. “Or they might think you have some way to detect them and destroy them. You did it once. They don’t know it isn’t easy.”
“Huh. You mean they might think I’m a competent enemy?”
“After the incident at the farmhouse?” she asked. “They think you’re terrifying. I do.”
“Yes, but you like it,” I pointed out. She blushed. “But what if it isn’t the vampires?”
“Magi?”
“Could be.”
“What for?”
“They don’t know all my spells. They also don’t know how to get them out of me. I get the impression the houses of magi don’t get along any better than other groups of people with common interests. Some of them want to kill all vampires. Others don’t seem to care too much. Others want to be left alone—an attitude I can appreciate. They only thing they all seem to have in common is a desire to learn more spells. Developing them from scratch is difficult, or so I’m told. They only have instructions, not theory.”
“And the vampires,” Mary added, “are probably divided in similar ways. They all want your blood, of course. Aside from that, some want to kill you, some want to use you, and some want to avoid being noticed by you or the Elders.”
“I’m guessing the last category is probably the biggest category on both sides.”
“Probably.”
“So, here’s the riddle. How do we convince the ones who are trying to kill us to stop trying, but also without causing the other two categories to go nuts with fear and anger, prompting them to become part of the first category?”
“Good riddle, Sphinx. Way better than the stupid four-legs, two-legs, three-legs thing.”
“Thank you. I think.”
“You’re welcome. What’s the answer?”
“Will you be terribly disappointed in me if I say I don’t much like the over-computerized nature of this world and plan to avoid the problem altogether by running away from it?”
“I don’t know. Why? Do you think it’s the sort of thing you’re likely to say?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“I doubt that,” she chuckled. I cocked my head at her, perplexed. She glanced at me and laughed.
“Look,” she went on, “from what you’ve told me, when large groups of powerful people start to bug you, you go after them. An organization of fanatic vampire hunters? You try to lure them into a trap. A major religious organization? You work toward their downfall. A coalition of magicians with interdimensional gates? Tornado. Armies of nasty fantasy creatures? You open the doors and let them in to kill them and eat them. Am I going too fast for you?”
“I had good reasons for everything I did,” I mumbled, defensively. I felt defensive, anyway.
“I never said you didn’t. If someone killed my lover, I’d be ready to beat heads in or rip them off, too, which bodes well for any postmortem vengeance you might hope for. What I’m getting at is we don’t necessarily have to run away.”
“Oh? Who do we talk to—or kill—to make the vampires stop bothering us?”
“Aside from a generalized and unhelpful ‘The Elders,’ I have no idea,” she admitted. “But so what? The ones who bother us get turned into ashes. Is that a problem?”
“No, I’m okay with that.”
So am I!
“I thought we might count on your support,” Mary answered.
Just making sure we all know where we stand.
“Trust me; we won’t forget.” She turned to me again. “Let me try this another way. Why are you thinking of abandoning a perfectly good planet for somewhere else? Is it an urge to go home? Or do you miss Tort that much? Or Lissette? Or those guys, the knights—Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar?”
“That’s a good question. Off the top of my head, my first answer is the police.”
“Police? You’re worried about a bunch of mortal men with pistols?”
“They’re being used to hunt us down, and that’s a problem. Thirty vampires show up, thirty vampires get whacked. Thirty cops show up, thirty cops get whacked, and four helicopters, eight more cars, two SWAT teams, and the National Guard show up. That’s the problem with a world so tied together like this. If we’re not leaving by the time they suspect criminal activity, we’re not going to get away cleanly—possibly not get away at all. And I don’t want to get arrested during the day and wind up in a holding cell during sunset. It might have a window.”
“Aww. It’s so difficult, being a blood-drinking creature of the night, isn’t it?” She made a sympathy noise. “Poor widdle vampire.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I understand your aversion to being arrested; I share it, in fact. It’s one of the reasons I try to avoid having anything to do with the police, myself. I’ve always found running preferable to fighting, but sometimes you have to fight your way out before you can run. I didn’t think you were too worried about it, but I see your logic.”
“Thank goodness. I think we get by so well only because we stay off the radar. If law enforcement gets our descriptions and we get pulled over—which may be exactly what was about to happen back there, if not for your nap—we could be in serious trouble. Using violence on the police may, sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, be necessary, but in the long run it�
��s going to bite you. Policemen get annoyed by that sort of thing and tend to shoot you forty-nine times while you’re resisting arrest.”
“It’s not like they have bullets that can kill us. At least, not at night,” she pointed out.
“True. Now, let us add in a bunch of magic-working idiots and some vampire morons who may be using the police for their own purposes.”
“Hmm.”
“I predict if we’re ever arrested during the day, we’ll either find ourselves in westward-facing cells or bailed out by sympathizers—that is, people who want something from us. Considering the drone I swatted down was loaded with explosives, I’m going to guess the odds of which is which to be around fifty-fifty.”
“You may be right. I’ve been avoiding police for decades, and I’m always careful not to leave any traces leading back to me. With the inevitable trouble vampire hunters and hunting vampires bring to the table, let’s say that’s going to trip us up. You still have the ball of basic badness to find.”
“And that’s a problem,” I agreed. “That thing is trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Ball.”
“I feel as though you’re quoting something again, but I have no idea what.”
“I’m misquoting,” I informed her. “But the ball can wait. If it’s been broken—which might account for me not being able to find it—then the damage is done and I’ll deal with it. If it’s still whole, then it can’t be broken by the forces available here and I’ll find it eventually. Provided,” I stressed, “I’m not locked up in a prison or secret government laboratory.”
“Or conjuring circle. Or staked in a coffin. Or—”
“I see you get the idea,” I interrupted, drily. “I think we need to disappear for a while.”
“All right. You have a plan. What is it?”
“First, get back to Karvalen. I’m still probably persona non grata, but I’ll have access to enough magic to make it worthwhile. We can hide there while I get updates from T’yl, Amber, Lissette—all the people who might not want to kill me immediately. More important, I can also finish refining my gate spell and do some searching. When I find a likely-looking universe, we move our base of operations there. Then I can start planning in earnest.”
“So, move from fire to frying pan, then see about jumping to the countertop?”
