Immutable

by Cidney Swanson

  “Hello,” said Gwyn, “has it occurred to you to ask this personage for some ID?” She gave a tiny yawn, stretching and resettling herself in the chair.

  Sam didn’t know how Gwyn kept her calm. Not after what had happened to her mother, Bridget Li, three months ago.

  Sir Walter smiled. “Were he—or she—to materialize into solid form, I might perhaps act upon Mademoiselle’s suggestion.”

  A shiver ran up Sam’s spine. “Are you hearing someone?” Sam asked softly.

  Sir Walter’s right hand drifted to his goatee. He stroked it absent-mindedly. “Indeed, Mademoiselle Samanthe. I believe I am hearing someone. In any case, I have been hearing something all day. I am hearing music. And the broadcasting of music is an effective means to mask other things.”

  Sam’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “Someone’s using music to mask thoughts?” asked Mickie. Her hands were clasped tightly together and her shoulders were drawn in.

  “It’s something I’ve done,” murmured Sam. “I tried, well, not music exactly, but the time Hans Lieberman kidnapped me, I counted in my head. So he wouldn’t overhear my thoughts.”

  “He would not have,” said Sir Walter. “Like his father Helmann, Hans was deaf as the proverbial pot.”

  “Doorpost,” muttered Gwyn.

  “Mademoiselle?” asked Sir Walter.

  “The saying, here, is ‘deaf as a doorpost,’ not ‘deaf as a pot.’”

  Sir Walter made a tiny bow in Gwyn’s direction. “Old habits of thought. Forgive me, Mademoiselle….”

  Mickie, across the room, was glowering at Gwyn.

  “And this new … interloper?” asked Will. “Do you think he’s deaf, too? I mean, to the rest of us?”

  Sir Walter shrugged. “There is no telling.”

  “Sir Walter,” said Sam. “I’ve been hearing music, too. I thought it was a song I couldn’t get out of my head.”

  “An earworm,” said Chrétien.

  “Yeah,” replied Sam, wondering where Chrétien had picked up this bit of lingo.

  “That was my first thought as well,” said Chrétien. “Mademoiselle Gwyn was so good as to provide me the coinage of the word for such a thing. But I became, as is mon père, persuaded this was no ordinary worm of the ear.”

  Gwyn snorted a tiny laugh and crooked her finger, inviting Chrétien to place his ear beside her mouth. Sam looked aside. How could Gwyn be flirting with her boyfriend at a time like this?

  Of course, Gwyn never let the appropriateness of a situation interfere with what she did or how she acted.

  “That makes three of us who have heard from our mysterious guest,” said Sir Walter, tugging gravely at his tiny beard.

  “I hear classical music,” said Sam. “In case that helps.”

  “Oh,” said Mickie. “You mean like this morning? When you asked me about the Vivaldi concerto?”

  Sam nodded.

  “I have heard strains of Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel,” confirmed Sir Walter.

  “I, as well, have been hearing such strains of modern music,” said Chrétien.

  “It’s called classical music, darling,” said Gwyn. “Those dudes haven’t been modern for a long time.”

  Chrétien bowed his acknowledgment of Gwyn’s superior understanding, resembling Sir Walter a great deal as he did so. If Sir Walter were young and hot. Sam had no actual interest in her several-times-removed cousin, but there was no denying his was an attractive appearance, if you liked blue-eyed blonds. Sam preferred brown hair and eyes.

  She slipped her hand into Will’s.

  “So what’s our level of danger?” asked Mickie. “Yellow? Orange? Red?”

  Sir Walter frowned. “I am uncertain. However, I believe it would be prudent for the hearing members of our group to keep near to the, ah, doorpost-like members of our group for the time being.”

  At this recommendation, Gwyn’s mood shifted. Her brows drew close and she reached for Chrétien’s hand, as if holding it tightly could protect her. Which it could, Sam had to admit. When Gwyn spoke, her voice was several notes higher than it had been so far. “Do you think Fritz is targeting Ma again?”

  The old French gentleman shrugged. “There is no way to be certain. I am sorry, Mademoiselle.”

  “We know Hansel, and possibly Georg, are able to hear thoughts, right?” asked Sam.

  “Indeed,” replied Sir Walter. “They would be aware of the danger of allowing their thoughts to … escape.”

  Mickie cleared her throat. “Pfeffer told me Helmann didn’t offer much training in the area of protecting yourself from being overheard.”

  “As with other skills Helmann did not, himself, possess, he undervalued both the benefits and dangers of silent communication between ripplers,” agreed Sir Walter.

  “So it can’t be Fritz,” said Mickie, looking relieved.

  “You forget Fritz spent time in company with Hansel and Georg,” said Sir Walter. He steepled his forefingers and tapped them against his chin. “Fritz was well-briefed in their abilities. I fear they may have brought much to his attention of which it would have been preferable for him to remain in ignorance.”

  “So it could be Fritz,” said Gwyn, chewing her nails as she spoke.

  “We know not the identity of the musical personage,” said Chrétien.

  Sam asked what she thought was the obvious question. “So what do we do?”

  “We wait, my dear Samanthe,” replied Sir Walter. “We wait to see if our invisible guest wishes to make himself known. For the present, I should like to return to my caméléon form, so as to better listen.” He stood.

  As he did so, Chrétien stood as well, followed by Sam, Will, Mickie, and Gwyn. Sam knew Sir Walter wouldn’t vanish while he had guests. They needed to leave so he could start listening with better bandwidth again.

  The group moved toward the front door in a pregnant sort of silence.

  “Should we return unto your mother the remaining desserts?” Chrétien asked Gwyn.

  “God, no,” replied Gwyn. “She’ll make us eat them for dinner.” Turning to Will, she said, “Please? Take them home with you? You’d be doing me a huge favor.”

  Will grinned. “I don’t have a problem with that.” Instantly, he rippled, reappearing seconds later with the platter in hand.

  Mickie looked ready to be offended by the proffered “charity,” but seeing her brother’s delight, she must have decided to hold her tongue. Sam smiled softly.

  “Everyone ready?” Mickie asked.

  Sam and Will nodded, said goodnight to Sir Walter, and turned to go.

  “I shall accompany you, Mademoiselle,” Chrétien said to Gwyn, “placing myself invisibly at the café so as to listen best.”

  Gwyn purred a soft response.

  “For what it’s worth,” said Sam, “I don’t hear anything now.”

  The group paused in Sir Walter’s entry foyer.

  Sir Walter tipped his head to one side and closed his eyes.

  “I hear it yet, father,” said Chrétien. “Do not you?”

  Sir Walter’s eyes opened slowly. “Indeed. Indeed, I do.” He sighed heavily. “I ought, as a matter of practicality, to mention that our enemy Fritz Gottlieb fancies himself an aficionado of classical music.” Having said that, he rippled.

  6

  EXPOSURE TO KRYPTONITE

  San Francisco, California

  Fritz liked killing things, but he preferred to wound them.

  Father had made half-hearted attempts to curb this behavior. Fritz had spent many hours lying to Father, pretending to be sorry. Pretending he wouldn’t do it again. But that was all it was—a pretense. Fritz felt no remorse when he tormented a living creature, be it plant or animal or fellow human. He liked it. He learned to hide this from Father.

  In time, he grew bored with inflicting physical pain, which was the only sort an animal could be supposed to feel. He developed a taste for inflicting suffering of a more exquisite sort. Take away what a human valued mos
t and they suffered far more than if you merely broke a limb.

  And, Fritz found, it was best to take away something intangible. The human psyche, it turned out, was designed to accept, over time, the death of even the most beloved. Whereas, if you killed something intangible—an ability, say, or a dream—the anguish produced would last for decades. The athlete who lost the ability to compete, the artist who lost the ability to render, the loyal servant banished from service—these were sufferings from which there might be no recovery.

  Superman permanently disabled by exposure to kryptonite was so much better than Superman killed by a kryptonite bullet.

  So, when Fritz thought about how to defeat de Rochefort, it was in these terms he thought most often. What gifts or talents or abilities did de Rochefort value most? Take these away and the man would be ruined indeed. Death was such a short-sighted solution, really. Too clean and tidy for Fritz’s tastes. So, what did de Rochefort value?

  That was easy. The same gift Fritz valued: the ability to vanish from sight.

  TWO

  Nice, France

  Ten Days Earlier

  7

  ACETAMINOPHEN AND STORIES

  Nice, France

  Martina worked carefully, removing the last of thirty-seven splinters from the six-year-old girl’s forearm. Officially, the clinic had been closed for two hours already, but with ten patients remaining, Martina knew it would be at least another hour before she would be done. Last night, she hadn’t gone home at all, instead curling up in the clinic’s linen closet. “Home” wasn’t the same without her half-brothers around. And lately, thanks to Pfeffer’s “generosity,” they were never around.

  “That’s not the end of the story, is it?” lisped the splintered child.

  “What?” said Martina, stirring from her reverie. “Oh. No. Of course not.” She picked up the thread of the abandoned story. “So, Dorothée looked down at her silver slippers. They didn’t look very magical, covered in soot and damaged by water. They looked like very ordinary shoes, in fact, except for one or two spots where the silver still gleamed.”

  Martina wriggled the last sliver free.

  “And then what happened?” demanded the child.

  Fatigue was taking its toll. Usually, Martina could work and tell stories at the same time. It was why she was assigned the pediatric cases in the first place. That, and her youth. She was only seventeen, if you took out the year she’d spent in a sort of suspended animation, waiting for Helmann to awaken the Angel Corps sleepers.

  “And then the magician told Dorothée to click her heels together three times, while chanting, ‘Home is where the heart is, Home is where the heart is, Home is where the heart is.’ And then there was a sound like a great rushing wind, and Dorothée was frightened, thinking of the storm that had brought her to the magical land in the first place.”

  Martina placed salve and a generous bandage over the child’s arm.

  “And then, before Dorothée had a chance to become really and truly afraid, she found herself standing before her own home where her foster mother stood waiting to embrace her. And they lived happily ever after.”

  The child clapped.

  “Well,” said Martina, “it looks like your arm is working just fine.”

  The little girl nodded, solemnly examining the bandage. After a very big yawn, she said, “I want to go home where my heart is.”

  So did Martina. Wherever that was. Not the tiny apartment she shared with her brothers.

  The evening had worn on into deep night. Martina cleaned and salved and bandaged and told story after story to patients in varying stages of wakefulness and pain. The ones who required serious medication for pain were sent elsewhere, but Martina saw plenty of tears (from the children) and hand-wringing (from distraught parents.) She administered acetaminophen and stories, which were a potent painkilling combination, in her experience.

  Somewhere between the last few sprains and alarming bug bites, Dr. Pfeffer sent a message confirming their appointment tomorrow morning.

  Time for her bi-weekly Neuroprine and enzyme therapy. Already.

  Since she’d followed her brothers Friedrich and Günter, relocating from Montpellier to Nice, the weeks had flown past her like birds fearing an early winter. Martina shook her head. It was summer that approached, not winter. Summer: the season in which, as children, she and her half-siblings had been granted “Chameleon’s Holidays”—days during which they were taught the allowable uses of their powers of invisibility. Winter had been the season for training in hypnosis, spring was for advancing into the next level of rescue and triage, and fall was for survival training. The children had, in addition, been schooled year round, but Martina had always liked summers best. There was nothing like those days spent outside the confines of her physical body.

  She smiled because she had a secret: tonight, she would enjoy a few such precious hours. The dose of Neuroprine Dr. Pfeffer administered every two weeks wore off ten to twelve hours early, for her. Martina did not plan to reveal this secret to the doctor anytime soon. She’d never even told her brothers.

  She had been shocked when Friedrich and Günter had traded their abilities for a university education. Of course, Friedrich had always longed to be a surgeon. Dr. Girard himself—no, Helmann, she reminded herself—had praised Friedrich’s cool head and steady hand often enough. You will be a healer above ordinary healers, my son, Helmann had told him. The children had known very well that Dr. Girard—Helmann—was biological father to all save a handful who worked as laborers in the compounds, but their father only called them by the epithets “my son” or “my daughter” when he wished to single them out for praise.

  Martina had never enjoyed the now-dubious honor of being so singled out. She thought she would make as good a surgeon as Friedrich—she had stitched that five centimeter slice across Hansel’s forehead without flinching, and it had healed beautifully—but she wasn’t willing to give up her ability to turn invisible in order to study medicine at the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis with her brothers. Martina was stubborn. Stubborn as a little donkey, her beloved foster mother, “Mutti,” had called her.

  Mutti’s biological son Matteo had taught Martina a naughty American word for donkey, and the two had giggled, thinking of the naughty word whenever Mutti compared Martina to the obdurate beast.

  Martina pushed aside her memories of the good times with Matteo. He didn’t deserve to be remembered fondly. She was glad they weren’t blood-related. To have been even half-sibling to someone like him would have been hateful.

  Of course, when it had come down to it, her half-siblings Hansel and Georg had turned out no better, abandoning the good work they might do under Pfeffer’s supervision to serve Dr. Fritz Gottlieb instead. Martina had never liked Uncle Fritz. Not even in the days when she’d gazed in misty-eyed reverence toward Girard Helmann.

  Her throat tightened as she thought of Hansel and Georg. Mon Dieu, but she was tired. Tired enough to cry over brothers who didn’t deserve it. It was just that she missed having someone around who understood her. No. It wasn’t understanding, exactly. It ran deeper, the thing for which she yearned.

  Trust.

  That was it. She had no one to trust anymore. Her world had been small and contained, growing up. She had trusted Helmann implicitly, had yearned for the better world he said he would create with the help of his children, his Angel Corps. But that trust had been shattered—had been exploded—when she learned she and her siblings had been intended as deliverers of death, meant to vaccinate six billion people out of existence. She still shuddered to think how many would be dead by now, had not Dr. Pfeffer and Sir Waldhart de Rochefort stopped Helmann’s mad plans.

  But without those plans, without that future she had once looked to with such hope, who was she? And whom could she trust? Martina clung stubbornly to her last remaining siblings as if to one of the ridiculous life rafts the children had built during survival training. Friedrich and Günter were all she
had now. She had lost nearly everyone from her childhood. Her twin sister Katrin first, then Matteo, then a goodbye to Mutti when the children had graduated. After Hansel and Georg had fled, she’d had only Friedrich and Günter.

  She laughed bitterly as she dried her hands to treat her next patient. Friedrich and Günter were never around. We’ll be home, they said, tomorrow, tomorrow. But tomorrow was always put off another day. They spent only one or two nights a week at the small apartment Pfeffer rented for them and their sister, occasionally coming home to sleep all day while Martina worked. Martina had no idea where they spent their other nights.

  Martina treated her second-to-last patient for an ingrown toenail. The patient was an infant, so no story was required. Her mind was her own, and it meandered along familiar paths. What would she do with tonight’s half-holiday? Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. She was working late. She would have only nine hours to wander invisibly tonight. What was the funny word Pfeffer used? Ripple.

  Mon Dieu, but she loved to ripple. She prayed Pfeffer would never discover his mistake—whatever miscalculation led him to dose her inaccurately. Was it her larger body mass she had to thank for that? Martina wasn’t heavy, exactly, but she was, as her foster mother used to say, sturdy of mind as well as body. But Pfeffer would surely have included this in his calculations. It must be some quirk of her metabolism, then. Between them, she and Pfeffer would have been able to figure out why her body ran through the injections faster. But it was a conversation she would never, ever, have with Pfeffer.

  Martina released the ingrown toenail patient and turned her attention to the last child, fast asleep in its mother’s arms. The burn was easy to treat—the child probably wouldn’t have felt much, even awake.

  She mused on Pfeffer’s upcoming visit. Would he repeat his offer for the course of gene therapy? You can attend any university in the world, Martina. At no cost.

  But there was a cost. And it was too high. Immutin, the drug Pfeffer had designed to eliminate rippling, was not for her. She would forego higher education (and just about anything else) before she would give up invisibility. She’d been shocked when Friedrich and Günter had agreed to take Immutin. She knew Hansel and Georg would never have agreed. They’d run off on their own rather than continue to receive even the less permanent doses of Neuroprine.