“You don’t understand us, do you?” Reed said, and climbed in. He looked at the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. “These, for instance, don’t belong in a 21st century pimped ride.”
“Well, I like them, and they were in my last one,” John said. He started the Matrix and drove it out of the parking garage and on to the surface streets, straight pipe muffler roaring. No sissy EVs for him! His nearest lair sat in South Bend, a house at the edge of the Notre Dame campus. He located all his lairs near major Catholic institutions, simply for the small comfort it gave him against the ravages of the modern world. “You probably want to know what’s going on, don’t you?” Given the traffic, they had at least an hour’s drive ahead of them.
“What I’d like to know is what changed your mind about involving me,” Reed said. His voice nearly cracked as he shouted above the noise of the car. “I’m not exactly Vanessa Binglehauser, you know. She doesn’t even think I count as a Telepath.”
John laughed, trying to put the term Telepath firmly in his mind, instead of the old term he was more familiar with, Mystic, which today referred to a different brand of abnormal human, instead of all of them. Moderns! “Nessa’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t she?” John said. Reed nodded. “I hadn’t realized you’d met.”
“I had the dubious pleasure of meeting her in Los Angeles, before she vanished,” Reed said. Reed had the ability to pick up the emotions of those nearby, even through walls. “She tried to recruit me for some private investigator firm, and when I refused she called me every name in the book, marched me around like a puppet, then let go of my mind and apologized profusely.”
“That’s her,” John said. “Steel yourself, my boy, I plan on contacting her not too long from now. She and Ken Bolnick are the only two full-powered Telepaths troubled enough by the 99 Gods to be working against them.”
“You found Vanessa? Where’d she go?”
“Alaska,” John said.
“So, where are we going?”
“My place, for supplies, then down to a place near the wonderful town of Green Hill, west of Lafayette.”
John took an on-ramp on to the appropriate freeway, thanking God there hadn’t been any unavoidable innovations in driving in the past fifty years (though he was starting to get worried about the advertisements he had been seeing about self-driving vehicles). It had taken him long enough to learn how to drive the crazy things. “Have you given any thought to the little problem I dropped in your lap?” When he had turned down Reed’s initial offer of help, he had given Reed a few thought problems to chew on. Several generations back Reed would have likely been a scholar, but the brilliant and well educated had more employment opportunities these days than in times past. Not all of the brilliant became scholars. He didn’t think highly of Reed’s degree, in Hungarian literature, given that Reed had grown up speaking Hungarian as a young child. His parents had immigrated to the United States just after he turned five. Reed hadn’t appreciated the life of modern scholars, it appeared.
“Your question about the distribution of the Territorial Gods? Yah, it’s real screwy. There’s a lot of blog speculation on the subject, but none of them…”
“Blog?”
“Where’ve you been the past twenty years?” Reed said. “A form of personal internet publishing.”
“Gotcha,” John said. He had mostly accepted the internet’s existence, yet more modern magic he hadn’t taken the time to understand in detail. He tried not to let his lack of understanding keep him up late at night.
“Anyway, no, nobody’s figured out…”
Reed chattered on about the strange distribution of the Territorial Gods and, later, the various theories about their names. According to the Gods, the Ideological Gods numbered 33 and the Practical Gods 22. He knew of only seventeen of the Ideologicals and Practicals by name. “Remind me when we get to my home to get you to give me the names of the Ideologicals and Practicals you’ve figured out.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Reed said. He punched fake buttons on the car’s computer screen that controlled the high tech radio equipment John couldn’t make work for the life of him, something about satellites. Soon, one of the era’s appalling versions of music blasted his ears, some urban man rhyming in incomprehensible slang around a catchy beat.
John drove on.
Reed toured John’s South Bend home while John raided the hidden floor safe for the gold coins and silver ingots he knew the Indigo crazies preferred.
“This place has ambience, that’s for sure,” Reed said, from another room. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an actual claw-foot bathtub before. What a relic.”
John’s South Bend home had been built before electrification and still smelled of candle smoke and coal gas, despite the fact that he had broken down and had it wired during the second World War. Reed had already frowned at John’s choices in curtains and wallpaper. “It’s a functional bathtub, very soothing,” John said, going to another safe and its contents, copies of his hand-written journals. There! These two detailed the trick he planned to use. Permission to read his journals would be worth more to the Indigo researchers than the hard currency.
“What’s with the plumbing? Wait, don’t tell me, the house didn’t have indoor plumbing when it was built, did it?” Reed said.
“I had the plumbing added in the teens.” John wandered over to the bathroom, following Reed’s voice.
“Which teens?” Reed said. He took in the sights, including the pull-chain water closet in a far corner of the bathroom. He closely inspected the plumbing around the tub.
“That’s called an English Telephone Faucet,” John said. “This doohickey on top serves as the shower head.” Reed picked up the shower head and connecting hose, which did look vaguely telephone like, and held it above his head.
“Whole ‘nother world,” Reed said, softly.
“Almost there,” John said. “Just past this big yellow-painted farmhouse on the left, the road goes up a steep grade for a quarter mile, and we turn right. We need to look for a white arrow on an orange background.”
“You know, this four wheeled motorcycle of yours does have GPS,” Reed said.
“Never learned how to use it.” He wasn’t even sure if ‘GPS’ was the automatic map or the indecipherable side and rear camera system.
John made the right turn. A half mile down the pothole-infested road, with forest on the right and corn fields on the left, he saw the temporary sign made from two poles, with the white arrow on orange fabric stretched between. An artfully pruned set of seemingly untamed bushes hid a narrow driveway, into what appeared to be a closed in forest. As they passed, the sign flipped itself over.
“That’s strange,” Reed said.
“These people believe in security.” John turned right and into the narrow driveway, a barely visible grassy path, and made an immediate left turn, down a short but steep embankment, into the trees, and then another right, following the now better maintained crushed limestone driveway as it wound through the forest, invisible from the road.
Ahead of them, an automatic gate rolled open, a heavy thing more reminiscent of government installations than a farm. However, the people who lived here didn’t do much farming, save what was involved with testing their farm robots.
The living quarters hid under the forest canopy, a collection of nine small houses and one large warehouse-sized building that doubled as a workshop and central meeting area. Two armed guards appeared from disguised concrete-reinforced bunkers as the automatic gate rolled shut behind them.
“Mr. Lorenzi and friend,” John said, after rolling down his window. The visored guard paused and waved them through.
“Is that a Calder?” Reed asked, looking at a crazy piece of modern art to the left of the parking lot.
“No, it’s a gun blind,” John said.
“Damn,” Reed said. “What sort of flaming nutbars are we getting involved with, anyway? You do know that those guards were toting wearable comput
ers, and they checked you on some sort of visual database, don’t you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” John said. “They are paranoid here, though, and have every right to be.”
“Glad to see you again, Joe,” John said, reaching up to shake the man’s hand.
“Jurgen and Epharis are waiting for you inside,” Joe said, his voice one of the deepest basses John had encountered in years. Joe was an older man, about sixty. “They aren’t happy with your request.”
Which is why they sent Joe out here as a test. They didn’t trust Telepaths.
“As I’ve explained, Reed here has had my training. You don’t need to worry about him accidentally walking off with any of you.”
“Hooking us?” Joe said, as he led them into the trees, toward one of the small houses. “We’re more worried about who might be following you. Your fracas isn’t anything we want to get involved with.”
John nodded, and let Joe lead them on.
“How much have you told your pet Telepath?” Jurgen said, his words angry and forceful. He topped John’s bald head by a good foot and a half, with bristly short black hair and a full beard. His elegant wife, Epharis, paced the eclectically decorated living room, nervous, eyes never leaving Reed.
“Nothing,” John said.
The thrum of distant engines gently shook John’s feet; the Loweszki compound was a marvel of misdirection, with a huge two-level basement complex dug into the ground under the barnlike workroom. Keeping the basements dry was a continual chore.
“You ever heard of the Indigo research group, kid?” Jurgen said, to Reed.
“So that’s what this place is,” Reed said. “I’ve never met any of you before, but I know what Seers, Sybils, Mystics, Skeptics and Witches are.”
“We don’t use the term ‘witch’ anymore,” Epharis said, gently. She was a tall young round-faced woman with shiny black hair, though still short compared to her towering husband. “We prefer the term ‘Communicant’, and what we practice is The Craft.”
“The names are always changing,” John said. Jurgen gently cleared his throat.
“This is one of several Indigo HQs,” Jurgen said. “We aren’t normal humans, and we can defend ourselves arcanely, if we need to.”
Reed smiled at Jurgen’s gruff attack. “Believe what you will,” Reed said, apparently not in a backing down mood. “I know you’ve been expanding for a generation, incorporating other lost souls of your type from their failed organizations into yours, and I know that what you’re doing is unique, blending together different training regimes and blending the innate with the trained.”
“So, Telepaths do use a different terminology,” Epharis said. “We’ve never met any willing to talk civil.” She paused. “Let me guess. I’m innate, and most of the rest of us count to you as trained, and probably count to you as normal humans.”
Reed nodded.
“So, what are you trying to sell us on, John?” Epharis said. She paced around behind him, and he carefully kept his eyes on Jurgen. “You never come calling without trouble nipping at your heels.”
“You can’t avoid the 99 Gods by hiding,” John said. “Too many of them don’t like mortals with abnormal powers, and I’m afraid the number is going to keep growing. There’s already some hunting going on of us unnaturals, and some have already been captured and killed. And the hunters won’t care whether you’re unnatural because you were born that way or because you trained up normal human capabilities, either. I’m here to start doing something about this; in specific, I’m interested in using a trick to learn about my potential allies.”
Epharis stopped, and she and Jurgen stared at each other. Jurgen waved his hands in the air, and took several steps back, to the side of a high-backed chair, where he leaned, frowning behind his black beard.
“Your comments aren’t news to me,” Epharis said. “You were attacked, personally, then? I know you, John, and you wouldn’t be saying any such thing if this wasn’t personal.” He and Epharis went way back, to when she was an abnormally powerful witch-child, before the forming of the Indigo. She understood why he had to check up on her regularly; although what she did as a witch wasn’t magic, enough of her kind did go bad if they began to mess with the wrong things. She was one of the few who thought him too passive, too willing to let potential trouble sort itself out on its own.
“Dubuque killed me, but he didn’t finish the job,” John said.
“He should have tried harder, then.” John turned his head to the unexpected flat nasal voice, and spotted a beefy young man with a chiseled movie-star face, dressed in black jeans and a black shirt, walking in on their private meeting. He looked distracted, eyes focused on nobody in the room.
“Grover, what in God’s name are you doing here?” John asked. Grover March, one of the original Indigo members, normally hung out with the Anime Café crew in Athens, Georgia. At least when he was sane enough for his keepers to let him out of his rubber room. Here was the last place John expected to see Grover, as Grover didn’t get along with Jurgen.
John sympathized; he also found the people who lived in Loweszki’s compound far easier to deal with than the Anime Café group.
“We’re targets,” Grover said. “Why should we cooperate and be predictable?” Grover didn’t like John, his dislike powered by his paranoid fears.
“You?” Reed said, loud, backing away from Grover as he emerged from the shadows. “Get that thing away from me!”
“See, Grover? They’re all crazy about you being here,” Jurgen said, chuckling.
“Ga ga gaah,” Reed said, sputtering and falling ignominiously backwards. “I’m serious! He goes, or I go.”
Interesting. John walked forward and put himself between Reed and Grover. As he suspected, March didn’t remember Reed. “So, when did you two meet?”
“Awwwmaahgaawd, you brought a Telepath here,” Grover said, eyes now wild. As he spoke, to John half the room seemed to vanish. Grover’s half. “Are you crazy?”
“Desperate, Grover,” John said. “You probably don’t want to be here for what we’re going to try, son.”
“I can’t believe this,” Grover said, turning and sticking a thick finger on Jurgen’s chest. “I got the hell out of Georgia to avoid this idiocy, and, dammit, this is worse than Lara and Jan getting palzy walzy with Atlanta. Telepaths!”
“There’s only one of him, and John’s assured us he’s well trained and safe,” Jurgen said. “I don’t get any feeling of danger from him, either.”
Jurgen was what the Indigo termed an inseer, someone able to consciously access his subconscious mind, to pick up subconscious cues and the normally filtered-out arcane information the Indigo claimed all humans possessed. His wasn’t a born talent, but one that had taken about a decade to train. Jurgen’s inseeing ability was dwarfed by his real talent – he was a rich and successful inventor.
“Fine,” Grover said, his voice rising in tone and more nasal. Still not meeting anyone’s gaze, Grover turned and stalked out of the living room, slamming the door to some nether room in the house behind him. Grover’s null-zone vanished with him.
“Thanks,” Reed said.
“Someday, I’ve got to hear the story about how you two met,” John said. Reed shook his head, and Epharis came over to study the Telepath close up, kneeling beside him.
“Grover got startled and skepticked him but good,” Epharis said, to John, who winced. Grover was able to disrupt both magic and telepathy when his disbelief spiked. She turned to Reed. “Mr. Matús, it’s okay, he’s gone. You can relax, now.” And there went the herb satchel from Epharis’s hand to between Reed’s feet, typical witch…um…Communicant sleight of hand trick.
Reed relaxed.
Epharis nodded. “We can work together,” she said.
“But I haven’t told you yet what I wanted,” John said.
“We haven’t agreed upon a price,” Jurgen said, simultaneously.
“I’m bored,” Ephari
s said, which John translated as ‘enough of this damned tippy toeing around’. “I accept the gold and silver bullion payment in Mr. Lorenzi’s satchel, as will you once you count it. Let’s just get on with this.” Meaning that as a Sybil, in John’s terms, she had seen the future. Sort of.
Jurgen sighed and shook his head. He, at least, was used to such craziness.
“A bathtub?” Reed said. Not even a proper bathtub with claw feet, but a modern thing surrounded by a couple of walls and a toilet.
Epharis shrugged. “I know, it’s not a mystically impressive scry bowl, but for what Mr. Lorenzi wants I need size, not ambience.”
He turned to John. “So, what are we scrying for? Can I watch?”
“Not only can you watch, but you’ll be able to pick up their emotions with your empathic sense.”
“Freaky.” He took the opportunity to climb on the toilet to give himself a viewing point.
“We’re scrying for allies with power and declared enemies with power,” John said. He had explained the procedure to Epharis. This was new for her, this level of combining abilities between Telepaths, Sybils and Seers. To complete the sacred triangle, John had asked for and received permission to involve the Indigo’s best local Seer, a nervous looking man in his thirties named Gwydion Peters. As expected, he described himself in Indigo terms, calling his trained trick remote viewing, and didn’t think of himself as a Seer. Gwydion spoke with an Aussie accent and was clearly a newcomer. “Allies first. You get me?”
“Aren’t you afraid of being attacked?” Reed said. He paled at John’s comment about enemies.
“If we’re attacked, we run,” John said.
“Hush for a moment, please,” Epharis said.
99 Gods: War Page 19
