Asimov's SF, Oct/Nov 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "The old problem of Skill.” Germaine tugged her lip. “Aristides hates that. All things are possible, but you can choose only one. He has dreams of organizing a world of Skilled, building powerful Fives to make changes for everyone.” She laughed. “He also thinks reading Colors is little more than a parlor trick. But that's most of what there is to Seeking. My Skill."

  Sally felt the same little mental jump she had in the restaurant, like a puzzle piece falling into the pattern. Was her Skill stirring once more? The idea frightened her, but it also pleased her. She turned the newborn puzzle around in her head, considering what Germaine had told her. This wasn't about Maman. Aristides’ ambition underlay Germaine's problem, surely as the sun rose in the east. “Aristides told you that?” she asked. “About organizing the world of Skilled?"

  "Yes.” Germaine slipped one hand out of Sally's lingering grasp to sip from her coffee. Her face settled into an unaccustomed stillness. Sally wondered what echoed in Germaine's memories.

  "Slave lines,” Germaine continued, “we have a different view. Kind of like witch lines among the white folks. Having a few predecessors burned, not too different from having a few hands chopped off. ‘Never more’ is what Aristides says. Skill is a way to make sure things get done, to make sure some things never happen again. At least,” she paused to sip again, “not to us."

  "'Skill is a way to make sure things get done.’ That's very coercive,” Sally said in a careful voice. Her thinking was getting better, clearer, like being back in the apartment with Wei-Lin. Being pushed to think was a good feeling. “Top down, authoritarian logic. Not at all how my Five was taught. Not how I was led to believe that Skilled work together."

  "Hmm.” Germaine continued. “Aristides wants things to happen, for him, for his people. He sees Skill as a way to make it so. I wanted to be a Seeker, so I Sought for him for a few years before I moved on."

  "And the rest of your Five?"

  "Still with Aristides, I suppose. We don't talk much since I left New York."

  Sally worked the puzzle in her mind. It was like rediscovering muscles she'd forgotten she ever had. “Tell me, did Maman come to you last night?"

  Germaine smiled broadly. “I never slept, girl. I spent all night with my nose in your honey hair and thought bad thoughts."

  This time, they both laughed for real.

  * * * *

  The two of them looked at the tattered sheet of paper Germaine had pulled from the refrigerator door from under a pair of “Free Tibet” magnets. Nine pairs of names and skills were written on it, each line of words radiating out from an invisible center. They were like a penciled sunburst coming from a blank hole in a paper sky.

  "This is them?"

  "Yes,” said Germaine heavily. “Maman's list. I woke up one night standing at the kitchen counter. Had a twelve-inch kitchen knife in my right hand and a pencil in my left. Don't usually write left-handed."

  "I can tell.” The writing was blocky, odd, uneven. Sally turned the paper in a slow circle on the kitchen table. Unsurprisingly, she didn't know any of them. “Five of these names look French to me."

  "Six or seven, maybe. George is a perfectly good French name, and so's Nancy."

  "Or Haitian?"

  Germaine shrugged. “Maman knows who Maman knows."

  "I don't see any pattern in the Skills."

  "And?"

  "Well, there was a pattern in your Bringing Five. Wei-Lin would have called that a ‘power Five.’ My Five, we were mixed. She used to call us a ‘basketball Five.’”

  Germaine sputtered coffee as she laughed, spraying brown drops across the hit list. “What, girl? You jacking me!"

  "No, no, like a pick-up basketball team. You know, a Crafter and a Necromancer and a Projective. No theme, no mission. Just teaching people to use what they have. Not all organized like Aristides’ dark-side social activism."

  "And these Skills?"

  "If your Maman is executing a great work on the Other Side, there would be a pattern. She would look for binding Skills, or reaching Skills, or destructive Skills. Not this random collection."

  "Maybe she's filling in gaps.” Germaine didn't seem to believe her own words.

  Sally tried again, the puzzle in her head continuing to shift. “What obsesses Maman enough to keep her close on the Other Side for this great work, as you put it? Vengeance? Hatred? She must have been a good human being to raise a nice girl like you. How did she find so much bitterness later in her life?"

  "I don't know,” said Germaine. “I just don't know. As Maman got older, she drifted away. Too many dead to talk to. But she never held things hard in her heart, not even near her end."

  "And now this woman wages war in heaven?” Sally snorted. “Come on, Germaine. Something doesn't fit. Your Maman wouldn't be stalking Skilled now, not if she never did in life.” Aristides, on the other hand, she thought, sounded like a man who would do anything.

  "But it is truly Maman in my dreams. I see her Colors."

  "All right. You see Maman's Colors in your dreams. So tell me, what do these people have in common besides being known to Maman?"

  Germaine stared at the paper. “I cannot say. But I know of a Venator, a huntress, out on the west side of town. She's a busy woman, but she sometimes makes time for Skilled with problems. She might help us."

  "Venator, huh?"

  "They're pretty close to what the unSkilled think of as psychics. Object resonance, clairvoyance, that kind of stuff."

  "Speaking of psychics, I think I can find my car today,” Sally said.

  They both smiled.

  * * * *

  The Venator's house was up on Cat Mountain in West Austin, a rambling brick ranch home of the sort usually found with expensive British or Japanese four-wheel-drive vehicles out front. The green Range Rover in the driveway was true to form. A little Mexicano in dark blue work clothes hunched over in the pansy bed, ignoring Sally's battered gold Toyota as it pulled into the concrete driveway.

  Sally's nerves had gotten the better of her. “So, what, we knock and say, ‘Hi, we're Skilled?’”

  Germaine pursed her lips. Somehow, Sally thought, even that was cute. “You been running since that night in the wine country, girl. There's an etiquette to these things that you've forgotten."

  Or never learned, thought Sally, as Germaine rang the doorbell. Sally wished she had gone to the Laundromat for a change of clothes. Germaine looked terrific in a pale green silk pantsuit with a little round cap in red, black, and green Afro-Caribbean colors. Sally wore the same cotton print blouse from yesterday, the one with the flying fish and the beer bottles. Not to mention barbecue stains. Her jeans felt grungy and tight.

  The woman who answered the door was pure Junior League, a former debutante without a hair out of place. She looked at them both briefly, then glanced down the street. “You all'd better come on in."

  The Venator wore a starched white oxford shirt, khaki pants, and a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots with silver toe-clips. Her frosted blonde hair was stacked up in an echo of a beehive do, and she wore more makeup than Sally used in a year. Her accent was the pure dee corn pone you found among successful attorneys and advertising executives around Austin. She could have been any age from thirty-five to fifty.

  "In the kitchen,” the woman said, leading them through a limestone-walled living room done in about thirty shades of taupe.

  They all gathered at a large butcher-block table under a rack of shiny copper pans that showed no signs of use. The big steel-door refrigerators had some half-hearted children's drawings clipped to them with Bible verse magnets, but the pictures looked lost in the brushed metal immensity. The hum of compressors buzzed in Sally's ears. The kitchen smelled new, like no one had ever cooked in it.

  Germaine smiled at the Venator. “Thank you for your time, ma'am,” she said in a quiet, formal voice.

  "Don't thank me yet.” The Venator sounded almost kindly. “You have come to me, so you should begin."

 
"My name is Germaine, and I am a Seeker. I was Brought by Aristides, a Skilled from Haiti. Aristides was Brought by Marie-Paul, who was Brought by Carlito, and so back to Izangoma Mbele, Master at the head of our Bringing. Ours is a slave line, Brought generation to generation in the dark of night in fire and blood."

  Both women looked expectantly at Sally. She trembled, palms sweating. Yesterday when she had told Germaine her line of Bringing was the first time Sally had recited the formula since the night of fire and water where Mallory and Ben had died. But this ritual was expected, even normal among Skilled. Sally was terrified, her new-found confidence in Skill deserting her.

  "I can see fear in your Colors, young woman,” said the Venator, “but life has certain patterns. Believe that I will honor your trust."

  Refusing to think about it further, Sally opened her mouth and spoke. “My name is Sally, and I am a Finder.” The lie lay easily on her lips before she realized that, perhaps, finally she wasn't lying any more. “I was Brought to Skill by Wei-Lin, a Skilled from San Francisco. She was Brought by Cassidy, who was Brought by Hiroshige, and so on back to Hildegarde, Mistress at the head of our Bringing."

  The Venator looked surprised. “I might have guessed you were of a witch line."

  "In a manner of speaking, she is,” Germaine said, “as fire and water both dominate her past. But quite recently and not in the way that you think."

  "No matter. I am Billie Sue, and I am a Venator. I was Brought to Skill by Laytha, a Skilled from Fentress. She was Brought by Wayne, who was Brought by Flora Lee, and so on back to Joanna, Mistress at the head of our Bringing. Ours is a witch line, Brought generation to generation in the face of trial by fire and water."

  "Thank you, Billie Sue,” said Sally.

  "There's always a price to pay somewhere, even though I don't often collect it personally. Now what brings you girls here?” It was clear Billie Sue was pressed for time, but she spoke with patience and grace even as she glanced at the clock above the sink.

  "I have a problem in the Skill.” Germaine smoothed the hit list out on the butcher block. “Sally thinks I am not seeing it properly."

  "We're looking for the connection between these Skilled,” Sally added in a rush.

  Billie Sue picked up the paper, rotating it slowly in her hand. She touched the scrawled graphite of the penciled words, gently rubbed the vacancy in the middle. She held it up to the light, examined the watermark in the paper, then glanced at Germaine. “This your hand that wrote this?"

  "Asleep, with my off hand.” Germaine flexed her left hand, studying it as if it were newly sprouted from her wrist.

  "Not you, then.” Billie Sue handed the paper back to Germaine. “Someone writing through you. I reckon you have a theory about whom, but I don't want to hear it yet. Give me a telephone number, and copy that list in your true hand. I need to think, to hunt some on this."

  Germaine pulled a business card out of her silk jacket, scribbled on the back with cramped, tiny writing as she rewrote the hit list. Sally caught a glimpse of the face of the card as Germaine passed it to Billie Sue, saw the words “at law.” She gave Germaine a sidelong glare.

  "Thank you, Billie Sue,” said Germaine. “I am in your debt."

  "And I will answer for her debt at need,” Sally added, dredging up the formula from Wei-Lin's lectures years earlier.

  "The debt belongs to all of us.” Billie Sue rubbed Germaine's card with the fingers of her right hand. “You all know where to find the door. I'm fixing to leave in a moment myself, so don't set around in the driveway too long."

  * * * *

  Sally drove down Cat Mountain toward Ranch Road 2222, finding their way back into town. The steep street lined with juniper confounded her perspective, so she concentrated on following the curb line. “I saw your card. Back there.” It was a challenge, the first fight brewing in their not-quite relationship.

  "So?"

  "You apparently forgot to tell me you were a lawyer.” Sally found her voice hardening in spite of herself.

  "What does it matter?” Germaine's voice rose in pitch. “I told you about my dead Maman, I'm supposed to mention Columbia Law? Would you care if I was a glass blower?"

  "Lawyers are different.” Sally felt sullen, stupid, even as she said it. Out of the corner of her eye, Germaine seemed to flare red. Was she seeing Colors as well, now?

  "Lawyers are people too,” Germaine grumbled. “We get bills in the mail and pee sitting down just like everyone else."

  That last image broke Sally's concentration, completely derailed her anger. Relationships, like Skill, took practice. Thank God this was just a little stumble. Giggling, she said, “I thought you paid law clerks to pee for you."

  Germaine's big smile returned. “No, they just wipe for us."

  They laughed together all the way to the highway.

  * * * *

  "Look, honey.” Billie Sue's voice crackled over Germaine's cell phone, dropping in and out. Sally hated the gadgets, but Germaine had pulled it out of her jacket and handed it to Sally before disappearing into the Travis County Courthouse, “on business.” Sally drove repeatedly around the block, looking for a place to park and watching her gas gauge fall. “I found a connection, but there's a powerful lot of Skill watching those names. You girls need to be careful."

  Sally tapped the brakes, slowing to make a turn. “We're careful, I promise. What did you find?” She hung a left onto Lavaca Street, to quarter the far side of her little drive while passing the Governor's Mansion for the seventh time in the past few minutes.

  "Those names, they were all Brought to Skill by teachers who were Brought by Marie-Paul. She's the one that Brought your friend's teacher Aristides to Skill.” Billie Sue pronounced the name wrong, “Heiress-titties.'” Everyone on that list is from the same slave line as Germaine, all from three teachers, including hers."

  * * * *

  "Who Brought your mother to Skill?” Sally asked Germaine. Sally drove too fast down Guadalupe, toward the river.

  Germaine bit her lip for a moment. “Marie-Paul, who was Brought by Carlito. Maman and I, we're out of the same slave line."

  Marie-Paul, who'd Brought the teachers of everyone on Germaine's hit list. More of the puzzle fell together in Sally's head. Her Skill seemed to itch, like new skin growing under a scab. She pulled over to the curb in a bus zone, drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “You said her English is better, too. Better how?"

  "Maman is speaking to me in English, not French or Creole."

  Sally plunged into the depths of her intuition. “Germaine, it ain't your Maman talking to you from the Other Side. It could be her voice and her Colors, but it ain't your Maman. It's Aristides, and maybe Marie-Paul through him. They want you to hunt down people from the Fives of Marie-Paul's Fives. You're being pushed to kill people from your own slave line."

  "We don't ever do that.” Germaine whispered to the window glass. “That's against everything we stand for. ‘Never again,’ he said."

  Sally grinned her nasty grin. The puzzle in her head made more sense all the time, the pieces sliding together in increasingly complex patterns. “Coercive, ain't it? I think Aristides is tracking down people who know too much about him, people that don't want to play his game any more. Eliminating loose cannons in his effort to organize Skilled, maybe picking up a posse on the Other Side in the process—just as a little bonus. All through your Maman."

  Germaine sucked her breath through her teeth, her entire body seeming to loom larger inside the little car. “Nobody uses my Maman that way and walks free, not on This Side or the Other."

  "Agreed,” said Sally, “but we need help for this."

  * * * *

  Sally grabbed a space in the parking lot of the Faulk Central Library, the mother ship of the Austin Public Library system. She marched in the glass doors, driven by the shifting puzzle in her head, while Germaine shoved quarters into the parking meter, then hurried to catch up.

  "Where you going, girl?
” Germaine gasped as she followed Sally up the stairs inside. “You peeled away from that curb and made for the library like your hair was on fire."

  "Reference.” Sally continued to work her mental puzzle as she marched across the second floor reading area and through the open book stacks.

  Germaine persisted. “Reference to what?"

  Sally walked to the aisle stocked with telephone directories from around the country. In one swift move, she grabbed a Pacific Bell directory for Marin County, opened it in her hand, and stabbed a finger down, without ever looking. Sally stared Germaine in the eye, defensive pride overflowing her face.

  Germaine craned her neck down to read the listing over the tip of Sally's finger. “Stabile, Petra. It shows a Mill Valley post office box for the address."

  "From my Five.” Sally's voice was tight. “You came to me for help, I Found us help."

  "I thought you said you didn't know where she was."

  "Germaine, I couldn't remember where the library was until I led us through the door."

  The two women looked at each other, sharing big, stupid smiles. Sally wondered when she and Germaine had become “us."

  She felt good to be an “us."

  * * * *

  Back in Germaine's apartment Sally sat on a Bedouin pouf, clutching the cordless phone like a safety line. The receiver clicked as someone answered. “Hello?” A woman's voice.

  Sally wasn't sure from the sound that it was Petra, but the puzzle in her head added more pieces. “Petra, this is Sally."

  There was a silence, only the echo of the line and very faint crosstalk in some tonal Asian language. Sally waited out the silence. She could hear Petra breathe, slow and ragged. “Sally. Sally Prescott?"

  "Yeah.” They'd had months of continuous contact, a fellowship deeper than most siblings ever had, followed by four years of absolute silence.

  "I—we—thought you were dead.” Petra took another deep breath. “In the hills above Highway 12 that night."

  "I'm right here. On This Side."

  "Gavin looked for months, on the weekends, trying to find your, um, your body."

  Sally could imagine pale, wiry little Gavin in Doc Martens and old blue jeans crossing estate fences and climbing through culverts searching for her. It was the kind of thing he would do.