by John Helfers
As soon as the four of us climbed out—Rachel and Gimlet on one side, Dog and I on the other—the Cadillac backed silently out of sight down the tunnel with ponderous dignity. Presentation; real showmanship is in little touches like that.
The worthy in classic wizard garb regarded us regally as the two guards stepped up to check us out. Professionals, they checked Rachel and Gimlet as carefully as they checked me—scanners, then a pat-down. Making sure I hadn’t planted anything on my escort for later retrieval.
One of them surprised me by having the presence of mind to scan Dog. Nothing showed but canine, of course: twelve kilos of terrier-sized hound packaged in russet and white stockings. The goon visibly relaxed and finished the quick rub-over with a scratch behind the ear he probably imaged Dog enjoyed.
“What is he?” he asked. His gravel voice implied a poorly healed throat injury.
“Basenji.”
“Thought so.”
“Some kind of spook dog?” the other goon asked with a hint of nerves.
“African hunting dog,” the dog fancier answered. He took another breath to elaborate, but caught Rachel’s cocked eyebrow in time. Sketching an apologetic salute, he stepped back without a word.
I’d been pretending to ignore the costumed mage by the door throughout the guards’ inadequate pat-down. With no other legitimate distractions, I went for slightly startled—like I hadn’t noticed he’d been giving me his best steely stare for the last forty-three seconds—when I met his gaze. Must have looked authentic, because the moment he thought he had my attention he struck a more dramatic pose, the fist on his hip pulling his cloak open enough for me to see the runed hilt of a mageblade.
The astral scent of his weapon conveyed much; as did the fact he thought such a display was necessary or prudent. I made a point of ducking my head a bit, keeping all responses in the physical as I let him know I was suitably impressed. Then I ignored him again, focused on following Rachel’s hips out of the chamber.
They led me down an unadorned hallway and through what was evidently the servant’s entrance to a penthouse office only slightly larger than the garage. There were ornate doors at one end and a panoramic view of the sun setting beyond L.A. Harbor —which was itself made beautiful by distance and lack of smell—at the other. In between was a plush expanse appointed with objects so ugly they could only be art and antiques that were probably real. Subtle restraint by Fun City standards.
Not so restrained was Julius vanVijrk. Swathed in silk and reclining on a divan, the sole proprietor of vanVijrk Revitalization made a passable case for becoming the default icon for self-indulgence.
I managed to avoid tripping while kicking myself for not demanding six times my usual fee and made it safely to what was evidently the minion’s audience position—just to the right of his natural line of sight and nowhere near the guest chairs.
“Sebastian Automne,” Rachel presented me, making the Hispanic mistake of pronouncing the final e in my nom du job.
Julius stopped pretending he couldn’t see us and turned his hooded eyes to regard me with evident boredom. No doubt my cue to perform some obligatory obeisance expressing joy and gratitude for being in his presence. Since he was the guy covering my rent for the next six months, I dropped my chin an inch—acknowledging his eminence.
“Ork magic,” Julius pronounced in lieu of greeting. “Can you handle it?”
“Yes.”
I spent the longish pause watching Julius puzzle out I’d finished talking.
“Yes?” he demanded. “That’s it?”
“If you don’t trust my answers, don’t ask me questions.”
I felt Rachel shift weight. Dog, sitting next to my foot, turned his head to eye me.
For his part Julius stared at me like I’d grown a second head for a long three count. Then he laughed—a single, phlegmy bark.
“San Bernardino,” he slapped the ornate table at his elbow, rattling the wine decanter. “You can handle ork magic.”
Now that was useful. Very few people knew about San Bernardino. And if Julius thought ‘ork magic’ had been the challenge on that case, he’d been given corrupted data.
“We are undertaking a tremendous project—one that will improve the quality of life for thousands of people,” Julius explained, his jowls quivering with passion, “And orks are trying to destroy everything.”
I cocked an inquiring eyebrow—standard tactics for getting folk to say what’s on their mind.
“Because they’re orks,” Julius snapped at the prompt. “Without honor, incapable of rational thought, no sense of debt to their betters. Trust them and they turn on you.”
Julius took a couple of deep breaths, impressing me with the amount of flesh he could lift with only his diaphragm.
“Forgive me,” Julius said after calming his nerves with a sip of wine. “Pembroke, a dear associate of mine, lost his granddaughter to orks only yesterday.”
“Orks?”
Julius cast me a suspicious glance and I hastily replaced incredulity with inquiry.
“There has been sabotage,” he explained. “My people have not determined how it is being done, but they tell me the magic involved is definitely orkish.”
I refrained from telling Julius his people were either idiots or had learned to tell him what he wanted to hear. Judging from the contrast between Rachel’s respectful demeanor and racing pulse, I suspected the latter was endemic to his organization.
“I wanted outside talent, a specialist, to deal with this threat,” Julius was saying. “I made inquiries. Someone well placed in the thaumaturgical department at CalTech recommended you as an innovative investigator with a nose for the exotic.”
I did not wince.
That last phrase was a direct lift from Jesalie’s master’s thesis— an otherwise fine piece of research into the world of occult investigation marred by a few romantic misconceptions. Last I’d heard she was teaching intro-level courses at Pasadena City College. Evidently she’d parlayed that into a weighty position at CalTech since. Good for her.
I made a mental note to thank her for boosting me for a high-nuyen gig. Then full memory kicked in and I amended the mental note to read: ‘arrange for a third party to convey my gratitude.’
“Rachel,” Julius interrupted my mental noting. Then, apparently taking a deep interest in the Harbor at sunset, he presented his profile.
I looked to Rachel and she indicated the door through which we’d entered with a sweep of her hand. Subtle confirmation of my suspicion we’d been dismissed.
A short trip farther along the staff corridor led to a much smaller chamber without windows occupied by a large oval table with chairs and decorated with Gimlet eyes and the trideo idol mage. Hector and Franz respectively, I learned when Rachel made introductions.
“Ork magic?” I demanded.
“That wasn’t me,” Franz said in a heroic baritone. “The lackeys he calls security merely confirmed his paranoia.”
“And as a card-carrying combat mage you don’t bother to tell him there’s no such thing?”
Franz shrugged. He probably meant to imply there was no point in arguing with Julius, but the message I got was he found his boss’s ignorance useful.
“However misidentified the source, the sabotage is real,” Rachel said. “And magic we can’t identify—and can’t defend against—is involved.”
“Show me.”
The data dump was devoid of business-specific details such as costs and materiel sources, but the overall picture was clear enough. There was a major project scheduled for the near future, date obscured, that would reclaim most of a shallow bay in the east Harbor, near where the I-5 bridge launched toward Downtown. Looked like sixty to eighty blocks to my untrained eye.
“vVR is bigger than folks think,” I said.
Hector grunted, Rachel smiled, and Franz looked disdainfully down his nose. He had a good nose for it.
“That is an upcoming Horizon Corp project,” Rachel said
. “They don’t know we have this projection.”
I refrained from comment.
The visual updated and a stretch of real estate about three blocks wide connecting the newly reclaimed land to the northwest corner of the Fun City enclave glowed a cheery gold.
“This is the vanVijrk project.”
Julius wasn’t pulling terra firma from the briny, he was revitalizing rubblefield—buildings tumbled by the Twins. Areas of L.A. abandoned by their previous owners were a wilderness of SINless squatters and street gangs lacking the chops to control profitable turf—free land for anyone with the nuyen and balls to rebuild. vVR was building a secure, upscale conduit linking the new Horizon enclave to the northwest corner of Fun City, with the cheery gold spreading out to cover a half dozen blocks hard against the outer face of the Fun City wall. An area that already had a more somber color code of its own.
“That’s the center of the PCC resettlement.”
“Pueblo Corporate Council-built refugee camps are temporary shelters and classified as undeveloped land under reclamation protocols,” Rachel briskly quoted—whether from regulations or an investment prospectus I could not tell. “Refugees have no legal standing. Refugees displaced by legitimate redevelopment are permitted to apply for housing at another facility.”
I nodded sagely. One did not question the rationalizations of one’s paying clients. Which may have had something to do with Franz staying mum on the absurdity of ‘ork magic.’ I didn’t bother changing my opinion of him.
Aloud I said: “I take it folk currently living in the neighborhood Julius is about to revitalize are primarily orks.”
“That portion of the refugee camp is predominantly, but not exclusively, ork,” Rachel acknowledged the coincidence. “Mr. vanVijrk has reason to believe it is a Sons of Sauron stronghold.”
“Julius believes his problem is racism?” I asked.
Gimlet—Hector—pursed his lips. I made a mental note to scale back the sarcasm.
“If ork separatists are sabotaging his project,” I went on, infusing my voice with professional analysis, “He needs street enforcers, not an occult investigator.”
“The sabotage has relied on magic in every case,” Rachel said. A dozen sad blue dots appeared along the happy golden corridor of vVR revitalization. “Either direct assault with damaging spells or obscuring spells shielding saboteurs.”
Data windows blossomed beside the blue dots. A quick read told me a couple of the “shielding spells” had been sloppy security. But in other cases the spellwork was very sophisticated—performed by someone with skill and long periods of uninterrupted proximity to the target.
“You’re still framing the central skeleton of the elevated causeway,” I said. “Are the buildings underneath occupied?”
“The refugees and squatters near the camps have not been evacuated, and there are no doubt squatters in the rubblefield,” Rachel said. “The buildings will not be leveled until phase two, when their construction materials are recycled to build the walls enclosing the ground-level cargo concourse.”
“Good,” I said, rising. “Are my quarters in this building?”
“Excuse me?”
“First I need to feed Dog,” I explained. “Then I need to rest. Come midnight, Dog and I will stroll the length of this project of yours and see what we can find.”
• • •
Sight is not my forte. I’ve been told my visual illusions stink out loud and I never have much luck penetrating visual effects thrown my way. It’s a limitation, but I’ve learned to deal with it. Case in point, flat in a two-AM puddle staring over the sights of my pistol, I was not surprised my eyes couldn’t pierce the dark nothing filling the alley.
Giving up, I canted my ears—listening to the alley. A rustle without weight—a dried leaf or scrap of paper in the breeze. A drip. No life—not even rodents. At least nothing moving.
Cold seeped into my chest and belly. I hoped the water I was lying in was only leaching away my body heat and not soaking through my jacket. Ballistic should be waterproof, right?
Still not willing to get to my feet, I lifted my chin a little, focusing my canid olfactories on the alley. Scents of garbage, mostly vegetable; urine from a few hundred rats—all of which were still not moving; something remarkably soapy-clean; and a lingering trace of gunsmoke.
That last one surprised me by being a recipe I recognized. Lone Star custom, the rent-a-cop corp’s trademark homebrew for the Ruger Thunderbolt. As far as I knew it didn’t increase the effectiveness of their favorite sidearm—but the sinus-stabbing jolt of cordite was their way of making sure everyone knew they were the ones pulling the trigger.
Which made no sense. Fun City had their own gunsels. There was no reason for a Lone Star or a Knight Errant or even a Pueblo Corporate Council constable to be within a dozen klicks of my puddle. Of course, the fact the shooter had missed me at forty meters implied there wasn’t. And since when did Thunderbolts fire flechettes?
Guerilla saboteurs using disposable assets and disinformative clues? Unheard of.
Dog, evidently certain nothing was happening, found a dry piece of pavement and sat. I lay prone and soaked in an empty street with my gun lined up on blackness. After six slow breaths during which nothing at all moved, I decided Dog might have been on to something.
The darkness began fading. Either my inaccurate assailant was towing the spell directly away from me as he made his escape or he was long gone and the blackness was dying a natural death.
The normal dark revealed the alley wasn’t exactly an alley. Light from the sodium lamps mounted high on the skeleton of the vanVijrk causeway washed over the front half of what looked like some sort of delivery area: A space just deep enough to let long-haul trucks get off the street and broad enough to let them back up to a pair loading docks barely discernable in the far wall. The back of some no-doubt once fancy establishment facing the next street.
A fading thermal glow emanating from a person-sized metal doorframe between the docks implied it had just been flash-welded shut. I had a momentary hope my incompetent shooter had melted himself into the door, but there was no scent of seared flesh. The quartz-glass security window that had given him line of sight on me was too small even for my narrow frame and carving through the metal would take time. It looked like my shooter had made his escape and sealed off pursuit.
If it weren’t for that soapy-clean smell from somewhere inside the blind alley, I might have believed I was alone.
Abandoning the illusionary safety of lying prone in a puddle, I got to my feet. The ice in my knee had turned to fire and the damn thing nearly buckled on me. I stood a moment, letting my knee adjust to the weight. Opening my long coat, I flapped the heavy fabric to circulate air. A stupid move when going into potential combat, but I wanted my shirt to dry.
Besides, if anyone in the alley wanted me dead, the first shot would have passed to the left of my right ear.
Trying not to limp, I moved toward the alley and the soapy-scented witness who might have some answers. Dog kept pace. The tick of his trotting toenails against the pavement brought home the fact that the world around us was absolutely silent. This near the refugee camps the street should have been alive with late-night entrepreneurs and their clientele. Either the jungle drums had warned the natives to stay away or something was persuading folk to take their business elsewhere.
By the time I reached mid-street, the part of my brain that understood the vagaries of breezes and the wafting of scents had narrowed her location down to three or four square meters of deeper shadow between an overflowing dust bin and the right-hand loading dock. And there was no doubt it was a her. Mixed with the soapy cleanness was the unmistakable musk of a young human female.
Human-ish, I amended, with an acrid tang I couldn’t place. I’d never smelled anyone quite like her.
Once my nose told me where to focus my ears, I found her breath—slow and shallow as she tried to be silent—and her heart hammering like sh
e was on the last leg of a marathon. I didn’t swing the muzzle of my Manhunter toward her—let her think I was still trying to puzzle out an empty alley as I cut off her escape.
Truth was, I was ignoring the alley and casting my senses wide to search out who else might be about. I counted seventeen whos else at the very edge of my senses, none moving in our direction. Dog moved a little away from me, following a path that made sense to him. I didn’t bother turning my head to follow.
Three entertainment drones in loose formation whirred overhead, ignoring me as they searched the sprawl for exciting footage to pipe back to their masters in Fun City or Hollywood. Evidently one guy with a gun leveled into an alley did not constitute exciting footage.
Solidly between the very clean girl and her only chance to escape, I lowered my gun. I wasn’t quite trusting enough to put it away, but muzzle to the ground was a pretty universal sign of nonaggression. I let her know I knew where she was by pointing my face directly at her hiding place.
The breathing stopped.
“Come on out,” I said, putting no power behind the words. Just basic, civil communication. “I don’t intend to harm you.”
I stood silent through the long pause that followed.
Finally the girl shape rose from behind a busted crate of junk beside an overflowing dust bin. She stood, not moving, until I holstered my Manhunter. Then she stepped hesitantly into the open.
I saw immediately why she had a human-ish scent—one of the few cases of sight trumping scent. She was mid-Expression.
Sometimes when an ork and a human got together a kid resulted. If dad was human and mom an ork, she’d have a litter of orks with maybe a human thrown in. If dad was the ork and mom human, the kid looked human until puberty. Then it was a fifty-fifty crap shoot; emphasis on the crap. At an age when most humans were getting sweaty-palmed over the idea of their first date, hormones hit the poor kid with seventy-two hours of metamorphing hell.
By the time the process was fully done, there’d be no sign she’d ever been human. But mid-process …
