“The latter is not going to happen,” Atlanta said. She hadn’t been sure before she said it, but at the mere mention of such a thing, she imagined the entire Host screaming in her mind about pulling the plug on any such idiot. “Our creators won’t tolerate any such activity.” She paused, and took in Jan’s surprised look. Atlanta guessed she had spoken with the voice of the Lord again, this time by accident. “And by ‘won’t tolerate’, I mean end the God stupid enough to do any such thing.”
“They can do that?”
Atlanta nodded. “We were told there were big lines we couldn’t cross, and we would recognize them if we threatened to cross them. The most obvious is large-scale indiscriminate slaughter; this one wasn’t obvious to me until you mentioned the possibility.” She licked her lips and thought through a few thousand scenarios. “For instance, in the spirit of whatever screwy alliance we have going” she flickered her eyes toward the treehouse where Dana had stopped, enraptured by something strange and unnatural “I’m willing to tell you that joining up with anyone trying to stop an actual Hellspawn, whatever they may be, is almost as high a priority for a Territorial God as stopping a national war by those in her Territory.”
Her comment elicited a smile from Jan. “And in a similar spirit, if we’re called upon to work against any of the 99 Gods, it’s going to bother us immensely, at a moral and psychological level. We’ll have many of our sensitive types having mental breakdowns and, um, temper tantrums.”
Dana’s distant aura brightened tenfold in Atlanta’s mind, and the normally reserved and polite woman let out a ‘holy shit’ Atlanta could almost hear with unenhanced ears.
Dammit! So that’s what they were up to. “Making Dana one of yours, and initiating her into your mysteries, is not going to help me trust you.” Atlanta fumed as Jan nodded.
“It’s necessary,” Lara said. “She can’t help you with us unless she understands us and where we’re coming from.”
“Your mysteries are not for us 99, are they?” Atlanta said. She was half-ready to stalk out and give up on them, for playing games with her and hers. It made her feel powerless, which didn’t make any sense to her at all.
“No, they’re not. At least not now,” Jan said. Dana wouldn’t be telling Atlanta anything, she translated. “But they will be, second hand, through Dana. Not as abnormal tricks, as those take years of training. But as knowledge. The more your companions understand, the more their knowledge will help.”
Well, if she didn’t want screwy, she shouldn’t have ever gotten herself involved with the Indigo. It was her own damned pre-Apotheosis fault, getting her fortune read in the back of the Anime Café all those times back when she was a nerdy smart-ass mortal kid. She even suspected Lara recognized her from the past, though Atlanta didn’t look or sound anything like her old self.
“Okay, I get it. You’re helping me in your own screwy way.” They had lured her in with the talk of mysteries, and they kept selling themselves with more mysteries. “However, interfering with my relationship with Dana means to me you’ve agreed to my offer. No, I won’t promise not to use you on violent missions, but I will take your reluctance into account.”
Jan and Lara nodded, taken back by Atlanta’s forceful insistence. “Now, where do you want me to put the divine defenses on this crazy place, anyway?”
“In the face of such an exposition as this of the weakness and credulity of poor human nature in this enlightened country of common schools and colleges, in the boasted wide awake nineteenth century, who shall deny that we can study with interest and profit the history of impositions which have been practiced upon mankind in every possible phase throughout every age of the world, including the age in which we live ?” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World
“I’m not some sort of crazy.”
29. (Nessa)
Quiet as a mouse, Ken had said. His comment necessarily led Nessa to thinking about mice, then sensing through the local mice, a more pathetic adventure than could be imagined. Rats were better. No rats in this area, but she found a few in the storeroom of the Albertsons across the road.
“Alton Freudenberger?” Ken said. “We’d like to talk to you.”
Alton looked up from his grocery cart full of frozen dinners and junk food. He paled, amazing for someone as pale as he was, and ran. He wore a torn but well starched EMT uniform with the name ‘Alt’ emblazoned over his left shirt pocket. Ken gave chase and Nessa followed. As she expected from someone who hadn’t made the transition to mature adult Telepath, his aura was all mixed up and difficult to parse. They caught up with him as he fumbled with his keys to his beat-up Ford SUV. Alton was tall, thin and had big feet. Nessa studied his feet. They stayed big.
“Go away,” Alton said. He turned away from them, bowed his head, and squished his eyes shut almost violently.
“We just want to talk,” Ken said.
“No you don’t!”
“You stay away, too!”
Ken stopped and looked at Nessa, giving her a thumbs up. Alton had picked up Nessa’s telepathic message, a good sign for someone as mentally messed-up as he was.
“You know who we are, then,” Nessa said. Stains and dirty grime marked Alton’s starched uniform, keeping company with several small tears and a split seam along his left side. The uniform matched his mind. He was young, but not callow. He wore an AFA patch on his left shoulder, which confused her, since she couldn’t get ‘AFA’ from Iowa, Davenport, or Quad Cities. She wasn’t sure why Alton wore his uniform when off duty, but perhaps they worked different here, or Alton liked to break rules. “You’ve probably known who we were your entire life.” It wouldn’t be the first time she had run into a fellow Telepath who had picked up on her and Ken and their exploits long distance. The stark terror was a consistent give-away. Nessa approached, slowly, and reached out to put a hand on Alton’s shoulder.
He took two steps away, about to run, but found Ken in front of him. He stopped and turned on Nessa. “Back off, dammit! I’ll hurt you.”
“How?” Nessa said, and blinked as coyly and innocently as she could. Of course, the last person she confronted with the innocent routine, a fading Telepath tourist last year back home in Eklutna, had climbed out of her rental and run screaming into the forest. She couldn’t let Alton run. They needed him.
Alton’s eyes opened, angry, pinpoint pupils. He swung his right fist at her and connected, sending Nessa skittering back in surprise. He had muscles for one so thin. Alton yelled in pain.
Nessa gathered herself and walked up to Alton. She got into his face, possible only because the six two or three Alton hunched over in pain. “God dammit, Freudenberger, hitting me wasn’t called for,” Nessa said. “Do that shit again and I’ll blast your fucking brain out your fucking ears and leave you with a month long headache. What the fuck gives you the right to take a swing at someone who’s trying to talk to you?”
“Stay away from me, bitch,” Alton said. “I don’t want to deal with anything like you or your friend. I don’t know what the fuck you are or who the fuck you represent, but I don’t want anything to do with you. I have enough problems in my life without you mucking things up and making things worse.”
Nessa didn’t back off. She reached forward to grab Alton’s arm and steady his mind. He wore ample mind shields, which she expected from someone on the slippery slope back toward Mindbound. She couldn’t do anything to help him unless she touched him.
Alton yanked his arm back. “Don’t touch me! Stay the fuck away!” He rubbed his bruised and bleeding fist.
“Not going to happen, dickhead,” Nessa said. She flickered her eyes to Ken, and at Alton’s left hand, which held his keys. Ken caught the idea from her mind and telekinetically yanked Alton’s keys out of his hand. “Your place. We’re going to talk, whether you like it or not. Back seat, motherfucker.”
“Fuck you,” Alton said. Bark chips and rocks exploded nearby, phat pow bing, the commo
n poltergeist-teek display when Ken’s anger management techniques took a header.
The door to the back seat opened on its own, Ken’s work. Alton’s eyes opened wide and his resistance crumbled. She motioned him into the back seat and Alton complied. Nessa slid in beside him. Ken shut the door behind her, climbed into the front seat and started Alton’s pollution machine. The transmission gave the heavy thunk of incipient death when Ken put the vehicle into gear.
“You can’t do this,” Alton said. “I’ll go to the police.”
“Sure you will,” Nessa said. “Go ahead, tell them all about car doors opening and shutting on their own, peanut brain. They’re going to appreciate that.” Nessa took a deep breath to steady herself. The initial rush of contact with Alton faded. He looked so forlorn, huddled up as far away from her as he could get in the back seat of his own SUV. Nessa’s anger at Alton’s intransigence vanished into little lost puppy dog feelings. “I’m sorry,” she said. Well, perhaps a rather oversized little lost puppy dog. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. We just want to talk. We don’t mean you any harm at all.”
Alton’s eyes flickered at Ken, then at the scenery. “You know where I live?”
Nessa nodded. Alton cursed under his breath.
“How’s your hand?” she asked Alton.
“It’s like I hit a brick wall,” Alton said. Well, that’s how Nessa’s teek shell was supposed to work, save for the skittering back when someone hit her. Embarrassing. Alton looked Nessa over. “Which is impossible. There’s nothing to you at all.”
“Lots of things are possible,” Nessa said.
Alton backed away farther into the angle between the door and the second row seat. His eyes flickered back and forth, nervous. “You didn’t speak, but I heard you. This is insanity.” More mental shields sprang up around Alton. He wouldn’t be hearing her telepathy any more.
Ken was jealous of her interest and attention. How sweet!
“Normally, Alton…or do you prefer Alt?”
“Alt.”
“I’m Nessa. He’s Ken. Alt, normally, I’d never approach someone like you. It’s not fair to you.”
The SUV rumbled over a set of train tracks and made a right turn. “I hear a ‘but’,” Alt said.
Nessa nodded but didn’t say anything. Time for explanations later.
Ken pulled them into an apartment complex parking lot and parked Alt’s SUV in front of his apartment.
Nessa reached over and touched Alt’s arm. His eyes lit up in shock.
“It’s like you’re not here,” he said. “I can’t... This is…”
“Something that never happened to you before, something impossible,” Nessa said. “Fancy that. Come. We need to talk.”
Clippings of hundreds of articles from the newspaper and printouts from the internet filled an entire wall of Alton’s apartment, all about the 99 Gods. Push-pins with nine colors of yarn connected the articles. White and black ribbons gaily accented several of the push-pins. Uh huh, full-fledged Telepath degeneration, soon to be full-fledged paranoid schizophrenia. Nessa had seen it dozens of times.
“Which ones are you?” Alt said, as Nessa and Ken stood side by side admiring the wall and Alt’s work. She couldn’t understand the connections he had drawn between the articles, or the deal with the ribbons. She did trace some of Atlanta’s murderous spree through the South, though.
“We’re not Gods,” Ken said. Alt skittered back, wary, nervous, eyes fixated on Ken.
“If you’re not Gods, then what the hell are you?” Alt said.
“We’re Telepaths,” Nessa said. “As are you.”
Oh. Right.
Alt sat with a thud on a long storage bench on the wall opposite the push-pin wall. “No I’m not!” Alt said. He buried his head in his hands, running his hands through his short-cropped curly black hair. “I’m not some sort of crazy. You’re crazy. I’m no New Ager fluff-brain who thinks they can predict the future or see around corners or read other people’s minds. Only crazies believe in that sort of shit.”
Dubuque’s curse wasn’t the only thing making Alt miserable today.
“This isn’t a matter of belief,” Nessa said. Alt was sort of cute, with all his balled up pain of denial and with the deep dark crevices in his mind he didn’t want anyone to see, where he feared he had sinned or done evil. Young and good looking, but no sign of a current lover in his life, if she trusted what she picked up in his apartment. “You probably have flashes of insight you don’t understand, you probably pick up on some of what other people are thinking, and likely things happen around you that you can’t understand, things that don’t happen to other people. Real events you don’t believe.”
“No. Not me,” Alt said. “I’m perfectly normal. You’ve got me mistaken for someone else. I don’t know what sort of fake magic you used to do all those tricks, but it didn’t work. I’m on to you.”
Ken’s spin didn’t sway her one bit.
“It’s not morally right to do this to me,” Alt said.
Nessa smiled.
“So, where did this thought come from?” Nessa asked Alt. She opened her hands and raised them to the sky, a question shrug. Alt looked at her as if she had grown a third arm.
“This is wrong what you’re doing to me,” Alt said. “Stop pestering me.”
Ken hadn’t mind controlled Alt; Ken didn’t have the mind control trick. Alt echoed Ken on his own, picking up Ken’s thoughts because of their high emotional content and the fact Ken telepathically blasted them at Nessa from only a few yards away from Alt.
Ken she would deal with later. He should know better than this.
“No, dammit, Alt! Pay attention. This is for your own good,” Nessa said. “Look at your wall. You understand the danger of the 99 Gods. How long before some bright God gets the inspiration to recruit weakling Telepaths like yourself? Wise up.”
“Get out of my apartment!” Alt said. He looked up and leaned over toward Nessa. “You’re evil, twisted, and insane. Get out!”
“Fuck you,” Nessa said. “Don’t be such a baby.”
Alt twisted around and flung out his arms, sending a table lamp crashing to the floor and strewing a stack of newspapers around him. Blood showed on a rag he had wrapped around his hand. “Get out!” He put his head in his hands. “Leave me alone, dammit.” The last he spoke as a plaintive plea.
Nessa didn’t move. “No,” she said, quietly and firmly. She intermixed her words with a mental order strong enough to get Alt’s attention.
Ken said. He walked over to the apartment door.
Nessa turned her back on Alt and walked over to Ken.
Nessa frowned and opened herself to Ken’s thoughts. She didn’t understand the strength of his feelings.
Ken feared she would climb into bed with Alt. He feared Alt would replace him. Ken’s subconscious didn’t believe Nessa loved him; he still fought his own insecurity, fearing Nessa would bolt for the first available man who came along. Especially a white Telepath.
Ken didn’t say anything or send anything, though the papers tacked to the wall fluttered from Ken’s anger, and the apartment frame moaned behind the walls. He raised his mental shields and stalked out of the apartment, across the courtyard, and out to the street. Nessa walked over and closed the door behind him. She rubbed her forehead and wished it still rained outside.
99 Gods: War Page 32
