I thought I did fairly well with breakfast, considering that I didn't know the Karnes' kitchen and it wasn't that well stocked—I got the feeling they ate out most nights. But I managed omelets and if the biscuits didn't rise much no one complained. It was nice, all of us eating together as we planned the day.
We headed out into the morning commuter traffic, Marji driving this time. Our first stop was the train station just past the gates of Summerisle where Jake got off in his sharp gray suit and briefcase.
Then Marji dropped Karin off at her studio in Pickmantown, parking at the curb and walking upstairs with her for what seemed to me to be an unreasonable length of time. Then, finally, I was able to go home. I waited for Marji to drive out of sight and then hurried around the building and up the service elevator. One has standards, after all, and I was not about to let my doorman see me in firefighter's jumpsuit. People talk.
I took a long shower with the bathroom door open, listening for the phone. I wasn't sure how long it would take Marji to worm Vetch's current address out of whatever contacts she had. As it happened, I was gloriously clean, shaved, dried, and dressed—charcoal casual suit, dove shirt, with amethyst studs and a midnight purple silk cravat that Marji had given me, for the memories—and still no call.
I wished that I had thought to borrow the book I had been reading, picked up my issue of Amazing Adventures instead. I made myself concentrate on the story, which was pretty good. Some egghead had invented a machine to send people back in time, and the hero went back to before humans had come to the occupied lands. After some encounters with wild Gentles and some beasts that I'm pretty sure the writer just made up the hero encounters some ancient ruins and we learn the kicker—he hadn't gone back in time, he went forward to a time after human beings died out.
It was a nice twist, and I hadn't seen it coming.
Then I got up and paced a while. I was feeling restless. I wanted to go down to my athletic club, but I didn't know how long it would take Marji to come up with the information and I didn't want to miss her call. I went through my kitchen and put together a shopping list, then called it in to my grocer. If I was out when the deliveryman called the doorman would let him in to put things away.
Time passed.
The doorman called that my groceries were here, so I let him in, signed the bill, and put my food away. Picked up my magazine again and tried to get through another story.
Finally Marji called. “Is Karin with you?”
Not what I had expected to hear.
“No,” I said. “She should be at the studio.”
“She's not answering her phone there.” A pause. “I'm worried that she went over to see Vetch by herself.”
“You gave her the address?” I asked.
“Yes,” in a small voice. “I told her to wait for me. I had some business I needed to take care of, and then we could see him together. But now she's not answering her phone.”
“Where is this Vetch? And where are you?” I asked.
Vetch turned out to be in Leeshore and Marji was out in Shell Beach. It didn't make sense for her to come inland to get me.
“I'll take a cab to Vetch's place,” I told her. “I'll meet you there.”
I called my doorman and he had a cab waiting by the time I made it down the elevator to the lobby. When I gave the cabby Vetch's address he asked for the fare up front. Unlike Pickmantown, there was nothing fashionable about the poverty of Leeshore—it was simply a slum, plain and simple. Exactly the kind of place you'd expect an ex-con to be living, a maze of narrow dark streets lined with decaying buildings.
Vetch's resident was a narrow tenement wedged between two warehouses. The sign above the door read, “The House Of Hope” which had to make it the most inaccurately labeled building in the history of the Occupied Lands.
“You want me to wait, ya gotta give me an advance,” the driver said as he pulled to the curb.
“I don't want you to wait,” I told him, getting out.
“Your funeral,” the driver observed, then pulled a neat u-turn in the middle of the street and high-tailed it out of there.
I passed by a battered old messenger motorcycle with a sidecar chained to the iron handrails for the steep concrete steps leading up to the door. Someone had used the sidecar for a trashcan, it looked like.
Inside the lobby was wide counter watched over by a thin old man in the uniform of City Auxiliary Services—probably a retired copper, given a job watching over a bunch of retired crooks. He gave me a sour glance.
“I'm here to see Leonid Vetch,” I announced with a smile.
His cold flat glare didn't waver. “You, too?” he observed. “Vetch's lucky day.”
“He is here, isn't he?” I prompted.
The guard jerked his head towards a doorway—the one that didn't lead to a stairwell. “Inna common room,” he admitted. “Got a girl with him. You gonna bust them?”
I shook my head, holding onto my pleasant smile by force of will. “Just an old friend of the family,” I said.
The guard snorted and I headed for the common room.
It was a large room, stuffed with various pieces of furniture, all second hand, none of it matching. A couple of long tables and several conversational groupings of armchairs. A crooked shelving unit against one wall held a collection of books—mostly battered paperbacks—and a stack of board games. The room was clean and tidy, though, and the furnishings lacked the cold impersonal feel of an institution. Not a great place to retire, but better than a jail cell.
There were three people in the room. Sitting at the table closest to the front window was a big young man, unshaven and lank-haired, with clumsy tattoos on both of his lean arms. He glanced at me with something like hope, then looked quickly away and continued his morose vigil, staring out the front window at the empty street.
Seated on a couple of armchairs by the empty fireplace were the other two. One was Karin, dressed in black trousers and some kind of leather aviator's jacket open to show a crisp white blouse. The third had to be Leonid Vetch.
He was older than I had expected, maybe fifty, with gray hair in a military cut. He was small, in an ill-fitting brown suit, and had a hunched way of sitting that made him look even smaller. He was smiling at Karin and held her hand in both of his. I got the feeling that it was his first smile in a long time, and I hated to intrude, so I walked slowly to where they sat, giving them plenty of time to notice me.
Vetch saw me first and looked up with a worried expression. Karin caught the direction of his gaze and sighed.
“Sam,” she said. “I suppose Marji sent you?”
I nodded and took a seat. “She was worried.”
“Mr. Vetch,” Karin said formally, “This is Sam Jackknife. He's my babysitter.”
I ignored her and extended my hand to Vetch. “Sir,” I said, “pleased to meet you. Karin tells me you were her teacher.”
He took my hand gingerly, as if fearing a trap. “Yes,” he admitted, his voice low and cautious, “at the Community Art Institute. Before my troubles, of course.”
“I've seen her studio,” I said. “She's very talented.”
Vetch's answering smile was genuine. “Yes, she has a wonderful eye for composition.”
The kid at the table stood and went to the window, intently watching someone outside. I expected him to press his nose against the glass. Vetch glanced in that direction and shook his head sadly.
“I assume that Karin has explained her situation?” I asked.
Vetch slid his eyes to me, giving nothing away. “She has.”
“Can you help?” I asked.
He sat back in his chair. “Do you know what I do for a living, Mr. Jackknife? I work for a fishmonger. After hours, cleaning the shop and the equipment. I can't work as a teacher, you know, not as a convict. I haven't held a brush or a charcoal for eight years. I work for six hours a night, six nights a week. On my day off I go to the pier and I feed the gulls.”
Someone came into the room and we all looked up. A thin man, pale and effeminate looking, in a flowing black raincoat, a wide hat pulled low over his face. He glanced at us and then headed to the table where the young man sat, now nearly bouncing in his seat from repressed excitement.
The two of them began a conversation in whispers, heads bent close together.
I looked back to Vetch. I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound either condescending or glib, so I just nodded. After a moment he nodded back.
“I've kept my silence, for Karin's sake,” he said.
“Oh,” Karin said, reaching to touch his hand, “I am so sorry.”
Vetch waved that off. “Getting you arrested wouldn't have done me any good. Nothing you could have done to help me.”
The man in the long coat stood and headed out of the room. His motions were oddly fluid and I focused my awareness on him. For a moment his veil slipped and I saw him—no, it—clearly. Pale, slender, with large violet eyes and ruby lips, strands of bright green hair slipping from under its hat. Not a man, a rashling. You're a long way from Bascose, my friend, I thought.
And then it was out the door and gone. Odd, but not my business. Minding one's own business would important in this place, I was sure.
Vetch continued talking. “I have little to lose, but Karin has a future. Talent, prospects,” a small smile, “powerful friends.”
The kid got up and left the room, walking quickly. Good, maybe Vetch would speak more openly with him gone.
I nodded. “Yes. Will you help her?”
Vetch started to reply, and then looked up. The kid was back, with a mug in his hands. He went back to his table by the window and as he passed I could smell a thick musky odor mixed in with the smell of the coffee. Tigerberry. Some folks took it in coffee, I knew.
Vetch's nose wrinkled in disgust. Visibly he calmed himself. “What can an old, broken man do?” he asked.
“Tell us about the Magus, what his real name is,” I said. “Then we can put a stop to this.”
He shook his head. “There is no stopping this,” he said. “It's bigger than you can imagine.”
The kid let out a loud groan that sounded almost sexual in its intensity.
Vetch turned his head and said, loudly, “For goodness sake, Pietr, take it upstairs.”
The growl that answered him wasn't remotely human.
All three of us turned to look. The kid, Pietr, had his head thrown back and was clutching the edge of the table. He seemed to be having a seizure. The noises he was making were bestial.
“Shit,” said Vetch, getting up. He crossed quickly and quietly to the door and said softly but firmly, “Hey, turnkey—you wanna call the whitecoats? Pietr just hotshotted.”
Vetch turned back to us. Disgustedly he said, “They're gonna give him the cure again. Not that it works...”
He gestured. “Let's take this outside.”
Before I could get to my feet Pietr was in motion. He knocked the table over, the coffee mug shattering on the floor, and crossed the floor to Vetch on all fours, bounding like a wolf.
Vetch never had a chance. He was bowled over by the larger man and a moment later I saw blood on Pietr's face.
I ran to them and kicked Pietr as hard as I could in the back of the head. He crumpled to the floor but bounded back up in a moment. He dropped Vetch's body—the old man's neck and chest soaked in blood—and leapt at me.
The kid's face had changed, flattened and sprouted hair. His open mouth was a hell of jagged teeth.
This was going to hurt.
We went down in a heap and I did my best to keep my arms in front of my face. He savaged them with his teeth. I was right, it hurt, but at least he wasn't getting my face. Until he got his hands up to my head, that is. His fingers had twisted and shriveled into paws armed with nasty curved claws.
I got a knee up but didn't seem to hit anything important. I could feel his legs had changed form as well. I had seen tigerberry overdoses before, but nothing like this. Usually the drug just sped up the users metabolism and sharpened his senses. Musicians I knew claimed they could feel the beat better, play with more energy and keep a set going longer. Long term users got hairy, and I've heard that some guys kept fingernail scissors in their gig bags because their nails grew so fast they had to clip them before every set. There was a street name for the condition—“tigerhands.”
This kid, though, was turning into a one-man zoological exhibit before my eyes. It was all I could do to protect my head from his attacks. I shifted my weight as hard as I could, trying to turn us over so I'd be on top. I didn't get very far—the bestial kid was inhumanly strong. He must have taken a huge dose of pure 'berry to have it affect him like this.
He was grunting and barking—his altered throat couldn't have made anything like human words. Something hit the kid, hard, and he half turned to look up. Karin stood there with a chair in her hands, and she swung it again. I don't think he even felt it, but it did distract him long enough for me to give him a solid punch on the nose. He felt that, all right, and he turned back to me with murder in his flat black eyes.
Someone yelled “Get back!” and then a gunshot roared. The kid jerked and I shoved him back. My ears were ringing, but I heard a second gunshot—and felt it, too. I don't know if it missed the kid or passed through him, but it got me in my hip.
“Hey!” I yelled, as loud as I could, which wasn't very loud.
Then another shot—this one definitely got the kid and missed me. He went limp for long enough for me to shove him off me and roll away. Then there were two more shots.
I rolled over a couple more times and hit a table. I didn't try to get up, but I curled onto my side to look at the kid. He was spasming on the floor, painting the hardwood with his blood. They shot him a few times more, and the spasms stopped.
There were a lot of cops in the room and one of them came up to me and knelt down beside me.
I pushed him away,weakly. “I'm fine,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”
He didn't give me a minute, but at least he poked and prodded me fairly gently. He wrapped my forearms in bandages—I could see him deciding that he couldn't really be seeing the bites closing on their own—but by the time he got around to checking my hip there was no sign of the gunshot wound. I could feel the bullet it there, itching.
I let him pull me to my feet and guide me to a chair. A cop in a cheap civilian suit came and stood over me, a pair in uniform flanking him.
“So,” he asked idly, as if he didn't really care, “what happened here, exactly?”
I sighed and gave him the bare bones of the story, knowing that it was just the first of many times I would be telling it. I told him that Karin wanted to look up her old teacher, and I that I met here because I was concerned for her safety.
“And how do you know Peitr Orlov?”
I said I didn't know him, we just happened to be in the room when he went berserk.
“Oh,” he said, and went away, leaving the uniformed men standing over me.
I sat there for a while, my hip itching like crazy. After a while I felt the lump of the bullet moving and then with a little pop it passed through my skin and fell to the floor. After that I was a lot more comfortable.
I didn't see Karin. The cops stood around and after a while a group of men in white uniforms came and took Vetch and the kid away.
The cop in the suit came back and told me to stick out my arms. He put a pair of handcuffs on me and pulled me to my feet by the bar between the cuffs.
I didn't ask where they were taking me, I just went along. There's a procedure to being arrested, and you have to respect the process. Arguing along the way just makes it slower and more uncomfortable than it has to be. I followed the cop out and didn't talk back. I'd have plenty of time to talk later. We passed by the old turnkey at the front counter who was having a whispered conversation with one of the uniformed cops.
Once we got outside there was more of a commotion, and in the middle of it was Marji. Clearly no one had ever explained to her about respecting the process and she was insisting that the police release Karin and I at once, demanding the badge number of everyone involved, and threatening an immediate investigation into the entire department, starting with that guy right there—all without raising her voice.
It was as impressive as it was useless. I sighed and looked to the plainclothes officer escorting me. He shrugged.
“Marji,” I called. “It's okay. Just meet us down at the station, we'll get it all sorted out there.”
Marji looked over at me, seemed about to say something, then nodded.
Then she got into her car and the cops put me in the back of their wagon. Karin was already there, looking grim but calm. There were also two other uniformed officers, so I didn't try to talk to her, I just nodded and she nodded back.