Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 62

"I feel like me?" He watched her in the mirror, silent. Waiting for what she'd say next. "Would I know, if-?"

"I don't know," Reyes said. "What do you think is going on?"

"Breakthrough," she said, looking down at the logo on the lid of the laptop on her knees, jammed against the back of his seat. The printer, between her feet, began to chatter. "I'm manifesting. A real manifestation, not a half-a.s.sed one like seeing colors. An external ability."

"Hafs," Lau said, back against the pa.s.senger door. Todd's hand was inside his jacket. She didn't blame them at all.

She said, "The network is me."

"I concur," Reyes answered. And then he glanced sideways at Todd, and continued, "This could be a normal stage of the beta cycle, okay? Don't freak yourself out."

"Maestro?"

"Yeah?"

She held up her hand. Her big silver ring spun loosely on her finger. Her watchband drooped from her wrist. "I'm really, really hungry, man."

"Okay." He turned down a side street. Reflexively, Hafidha checked the GPS. They were still headed the right way. "We're on a timeline, here. I need you. If we don't stop, are you going to eat anybody in the car?"

Not a joke. Not given some of the things they'd seen over the years. Rather, a perfectly reasonable request for vital information. The fact that they had a job where that was a perfectly reasonable request for vital information notwithstanding.

Hafidha's hands tightened convulsively on the edges of the laptop. "No. I think I can survive without resorting to cannibalism. Lau, don't think I didn't see you reach for that gun-"

"Actually," Lau said, and handed Hafidha two fortune cookies, palmed from her pocket. She must have shoved them there on the way out the door.

"Marry me," Hafidha said, and ripped the first one out of the wrapper.

"Eat fast," Reyes ordered, pulling the purple Intrepid to the curb in a semi-rural residential neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Hafidha glimpsed cornfields through the cottonwood trees behind the ranch-style houses. "We're here. Unless you need to wait in the car."

"Not on your life," Hafidha said, through crumbs. "Sorry, chief." In her best Max Smart. He was letting her come with them?

Yes, of course. Where the team could keep an eye on her. Where the guns were, if everything went wrong.

Reyes was a gambler at heart. And you never won big unless you risked big. That was the way the game was rigged.

Hafidha tore the warrant off the printer one-handed. The appropriate house was immediately obvious: half a block down the street, and the only one with a van with handicapped plates in the driveway, and a wheelchair ramp up to the front door.

"Do we go hard?"

"He's a cornered gamma," Reyes said, as two tactical vans pulled up behind them. "What do you think?"

All the shades in the una.s.suming white ranch were drawn, and behind them, all the lamps in every room seemed lit. In a movie, there might have been a shadow cast against the curtains to tell them where the bad guy was. But all they had was speed and ten SWAT guys in black armor and face masks.

Lau and Reyes went down the street informing the residents to bring their kids and pets inside, though Hafidha was certain that the instant they turned away, faces would be appearing in every front-facing window.

Doors are not as easy to kick down as they look on TV, and Brady was back in Virginia. But n.o.body needs melodrama when they have a hooligan tool. Todd retrieved the fireman's forcible-entry wrecking bar from the trunk while Hafidha was velcroing her body armor on, and the team split up. Half the SWAT group and two Federal agents each front and back.

Hafidha went to the front, with Todd. Reyes watched her walk away through narrowed eyes. She felt it like a pressure coming off her shoulders when he turned away.

It was okay. Duke would keep an eye on her.

Reyes and Lau reported that they were in position at the back door. Todd inserted the claws of the hooligan tool into the crack around the door and twisted it to pop the lock. The doorframe splintered on the bolt, and the panel swung heavily inward. "FBI!" Hafidha shouted. "Federal Agents!"

She swung left as Todd swung right, clearing the living room-all tile floors and plenty of room for a wheelchair-pus.h.i.+ng back, the SWAT guys a widening arc behind them. "Clear," Todd called, and she yelled back an affirmation. A sunporch on her side. Reyes' voice from the kitchen. And then from across the living room, Todd: "Here, here.

Federal Agent! Mister Cauldwell, we have a warrant-"

Hafidha spun, crossed the living room, ducking between SWAT guys to reach Todd, silhouetted in a doorway leading to an empty s.p.a.ce beyond. She came up beside him, hard hold, front stance, the Glock locked at the apex of a modified Weaver grip. Todd sidestepped to make room. The two of them filled the door.

This must once have been the den.

Now it was an empty room with a white tile floor. A broad-shouldered double amputee of about sixty, cheekbones bright through his skin above the beard, sat in a manual wheelchair at the far end. A young man knelt beside him. Four other students crouched on the floor between Cauldwell and the door like huddled frogs, pens in their hands, each bent over scattered sheets of the same eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper that was stacked against each wall. Piles of it, all covered over with handwriting, the paper crumpled and randomly arrayed.

They were writing, each one scribbling away as if oblivious to the SWAT officers and the shouting FBI agents, as if writing-relentlessly, with tongues protruding in concentration-were the only way to stop the end of the world.

The student who knelt by Cauldwell, an Asian boy who looked like he should still be in high school, wrote also. His paper was propped on the armrest of the wheelchair, and he seemed oblivious to the fact that Cauldwell held a Ka-bar fighting knife against his throat, stroking his hair with the other hand.

The room was brilliantly lit by torchieres and a hanging chandelier. Hafidha could see the vacant expressions, the tears s.h.i.+ning on the student's cheeks. The creak of SWAT officers breathing behind her was almost drowned out by the buzz of adrenaline's ugly, alluring song.

Awful.

She was an awful human being to miss this so much.

She cleared her throat and said, "James Cauldwell. Federal agents. Put down the knife."

As, beside her, Todd said, "Reyes," and stepped to the side as Reyes and Lau came up through the SWAT team.

Act V The children just kept writing. Hafidha had the shot. Reyes told himself he was only worried about the knife. The knife, and five children scratching words on paper. "James Cauldwell?" he said.

"Don't tell me. You're from the government and you're here to help." Cauldwell stroked the hair of the boy in his lap. He was gray-haired, bearded, his upper body ma.s.sive from using his arms for everything his legs could no longer do for him. He must have been getting adequate nutrition because he still carried that muscle, though his face had been whittled gaunt by his illness. He had light eyes, framed by a squint, and his b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt was open at the collar.

He looked like Santa Claus.

"James. I'm Stephen Reyes. I'm with the FBI and I need you to put the knife down now, man. n.o.body's died. You haven't done anything that can't be fixed." A patent lie, with five children in mental inst.i.tutions, but you used what you had. "n.o.body has to die. We want to get you some help." Reyes had three good agents at his back, and a hallway full of SWAT guys. He tipped his head at Hafidha: tall, implacable, a comic-book heroine in her black jeans and ballistic vest and beaded yellow-streaked this-a-way that-a-way braids. "But you should know that my partner here is a very good shot."

"Bullets," Cauldwell said. "Who cares?"

Carefully, feeling his way, Reyes slipped his semiautomatic back into the high-impact plastic holster on his left hip. It clicked as it settled into place, and he brought his left hand back up slowly. "Is this how you teach your students to defend themselves?"

Cauldwell lifted the restraining hand from the boy's hair, but the boy stayed crouched before him, pressing his throat willingly to the blade of Cauldwell's knife. "I teach them to take care of themselves. I teach them to fight. It's for their own good. It's a jungle out there."

He laughed at his own joke; Reyes schooled himself not to wince at it. "I met one of your students at the college," Reyes said. "You teach them how to defend themselves, all right. And I met another one of your students at a mental inst.i.tution. Melanie. What did you teach her?"

"I taught her to remember," Cauldwell said. He touched the hair of the boy writing beside him. "This is Peter. His parents were refugees. It might have been me that made them refugees. Peter is a medium. His spirit guides put him in touch with the other side."

"His spirit guides," Reyes said. "Baker. Clemente. Macgillivray."

"They can teach you about the jungle. They try protect us all," Cauldwell said. "But there are too many of us. They would teach you, too."

Cauldwell used Peter's name. He personalized him. Not just for Reyes. For himself. "James," Reyes said. "Listen to me. Put down the knife. You don't want to hurt Peter. I know you don't."

Cauldwell s.h.i.+vered. "n.o.body can protect him. You can't protect him, Stephen Reyes. I've tried. I've tried to save him."

Todd and Hafidha still had the door. Lau was right behind them. Reyes gritted his teeth, thought about their line of fire, and said, softly, gently: "The way you couldn't protect Jessica?"

Cauldwell looked into Reyes' eyes, and Reyes feels the reach. The touch, the hard clutch, the black-water calm of the anomaly. And then jungle, sweat, heat, swamp, savagery. The way the knife goes into flesh, the sc.r.a.pe on bone and the suck when you pull it free. The burning children. The trickles of red thin blood left behind when you pry loose the leeches. The young refugee women, so emaciated they look like old men. The hard bulge of a fat tick in your ear, filling the ca.n.a.l, too swollen on blood to pry loose in the field.

You can feel the legs wriggling, sometimes.

"Exorcise it," Cauldwell says. "It's okay. Give it voice. Give them voice. Exorcise them. Here. I'll show you. You have to learn, Stephen Reyes. It's for your own good. You can't save anyone."

He raises the black, glittering, enormous pen, brandishes it with a dramatic flourish. A sheet of white paper spreads, waiting, across his lap, ready to be scribed with red irrevocable words.

"No," Reyes cries, lunging forward, because of course what the gamma has in his hand isn't a pen- The loudest sound in the world knocked Stephen Reyes to his knees.

The knife rose. Reyes dove, impossibly far. There were still four victims on the floor between him and Cauldwell and the hostage.

Hafidha rolled her finger on the trigger.

Gamma.

She fired once. Twice. Cauldwell's powerful shoulders bulged as he heaved himself up in the chair, lifting the knife. Thrice. A fourth time. He might be dead already, but four bullets would not stop him. Gamma. Hafidha was in front of Lau, and Reyes lunged up into her line of fire. "Dammit!" Somehow, she stopped the fifth shot. Sent it into the ceiling, upward jerk of her hands. s.h.i.+t. Not gun safety, man. "REYES!"

Not listening. No, both hands on the gamma's knife wrist, scrambling over the Asian kid, who was rolling on the floor, being kicked, clutching his pen, jabbing through paper, still writing.

Cauldwell might not have any legs from mid-thigh down, but he had inches on Reyes across the shoulders, and the Kevlar wouldn't do much against a stab. The gamma tumbled from his wheelchair, pulled Reyes to the floor, rolled atop him. Matte-finished knives don't glint, but Hafidha swore the thing winked wickedly as Cauldwell reared back, kneeling on his stumps, broke Reyes' grip on his wrist. Cauldwell's blood fountained with every breath.

One shot, Hafidha thought, as Todd stepped up beside her.

She took a hard grip on the b.u.t.t of her pistol, dropped her gaze to the front sight, and pressed off one more as Todd's gun roared on her right.

The gamma jerked. The knife didn't fall.

Follow through. Resight. Press. And again. And again. Todd, too. One more. The gamma's head was a fine red mist now, let's be honest, but once the adrenaline starts pulling the trigger, the trigger gets pulled. She rattled like shaken paper. It was okay.

One more- Cauldwell teetered and the last pair of rounds-hers, and Duke's-caught him square in the chest and knocked him back. The knife in his convulsing hand c.h.i.n.ked off the floor.

Reyes rolled to the side and squirmed out from under, pulling his knees up, grimacing behind a mask of blood. His mouth worked. He wouldn't spit at the crime scene, but Hafidha didn't blame him for wanting to.

She lowered the firearm, but kept it ready, listening to the last hiss of Cauldwell's breath through his ruined face. He looked like the autopsy photos of Bugsy Siegel.

"Blood precautions," Reyes said. "How's the kid?"

Todd picked his footing through the room like a stag moving through the woods in autumn. He knelt beside the Asian boy, who curled tight, face to knees, shoulders shaking with panicked breath. Gently, he prised the pen from the young man's fingers.

No response.

"He's stopped writing." Todd laid the pen back down beside his hand.

This time, Todd was waiting when she came in. Not behind the desk, in the alpha-wolf chair, or in the nappy burnt orange lounger... but seated leaning forward on the ratty sofa beside the door. She didn't see him at first; she expected the visitor to have taken the position of power, and she scanned the far side of the room, her forehead wrinkling. "Melanie," he said. Softly, so she didn't jump.

The antipsychotics were probably making her thick-headed anyway, and then there was the schizophrenic suppression of affect. Her eyes were glazed, the blink-rate too slow. But, eventually, she focused on him.

"Sit down?" he said.

She nodded. He expected her to share the couch, but she plunked down on the floor. Oh, no. I wonder where I've seen that before?

He scooted off the couch and landed crosslegged in front of her, corduroy binding his thighs. "I just came to see how you were doing. I'm-"

"Agent Todd," she said. "I remember you. You're one of the FBI guys."

He nodded.

She said, "My mom brought me newspaper clippings. She said Jim used drugs to make us see things that weren't real?"

Todd looked down at his hands, at the hangnail on his right thumb. "We're not exactly sure how it worked."

"I liked him." She closed her eyes. "He was nice to me. Not like-"

Yeah, kid. Todd wanted to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder, but that would be inappropriate. Sorry your surrogate father-figure turned out to be a monster, too. And it wouldn't help her at all for him to tell her it wasn't Cauldwell's fault. Go ahead and hate him for a while. It makes it easier. "It wasn't your fault," Todd said. Sometimes, all you can offer is absolution.

She licked cracked lips. Her eyes stayed down. "The doctor says I'm making progress. But I can still feel-"

The heat. The brush of leaves against your face. The way your foot slips in mud inside a waterlogged boot.

"He broke my life," she said. "I want it back. I want it-"

"Hey," Todd said. "Melanie. Look at me."

She lifted her chin.

"It's like a car wreck, okay? It happened. You got hurt. But the war is over, kiddo. You made it through. Everything is going to be okay now."

"Really?"

And Todd took a breath and smiled, and lied like a fox. She'd figure it out eventually, the lie and the reasons for it, after she didn't need so badly to believe it anymore.

"Really. It just takes time, is all."

Upon due consideration, Chaz concluded that the real reason Reyes usually didn't bring Hafidha into the field was that they missed her too much during the administrative leave, should she happen to shoot somebody. Todd was out too, of course, also due back today. And Worth, Brady, Falkner, and Lau were on a case in Seattle, leaving Chaz and Reyes to mind the ranch, keep the home fires burning, and wrangle cliches.

Fortunately, so far the field team had been getting by on old fas.h.i.+oned street- pounding, but Chaz had been quietly terrified that the call would come in for some heavy database herding and he'd be the only one available to do it. So when somebody said from the doorway, "Hey, Platypus, get out of my chair," he almost crowed with joy.

Instead, he blanked and locked the screens-reflexively: Falkner was a bit of a martinet about it and Hafs was worse-rose awkwardly and said, "Hey! It's Eliot Ness! There's still six doughnuts in the kitchen."

She tipped her head and smiled. "You wrote it on your calendar."