Back From the Undead (6 page)

“Deep spirit scanning,” Eisfanger says. His voice has a strange resonance to it, like I’m hearing him through a bad phone connection. “Don’t worry, it’s completely safe. Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Side effects have been documented,” he admits. “In a very small percentage of cases. Less than two percent.”

“What
kind
of side effects?” Suddenly I’m feeling nauseous. Feels like the ants are crawling around
inside
me now, which is exactly as disturbing as it sounds.

“Memory loss. Synesthesia. And occasionally … vestigial growths.”

“So I could forget my own name, start smelling purple everywhere and have an extra
nipple
sprout from my forehead?”

Eisfanger doesn’t answer. On reflection, I decide I don’t really want to know.

The blue light fades away, leaving me feeling like I just had a whole-body colonoscopy. A voice that sounds as if the speaker is about six inches away from my right ear intones, “You’re going to need an interview. Park your vehicle in the lot to the right and wait for an escort.”

“Terrific,” I mutter.

At least we get to leave the box. I wonder about who’s on the other side of those cage walls, and what the blue light let them see. And then I do my best to stop thinking about that, because I’m already ticked off and getting angry is only going to make things worse.

Charlie parks. There are already three other cars in the small lot, including the station wagon that was ahead of us. Eisfanger starts to open his door, but Charlie turns in the driver’s seat and stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“We wait for the escort,” Charlie says.

And we do. Another twenty minutes passes. I do my best to stay calm, but I’m no good at waiting unless I’m on a stakeout. I try to get into that mind-set, but it’s not easy when you feel like a suspect instead of a cop. What I’d really like to do is walk in and flash my badge—NSA trumps Border Patrol—but we’re supposed to be traveling incognito. So I sell the concept to myself as a personal challenge: If I can endure this without losing my temper, I win. After all, if Ricky the lem-pire can keep his cool, then so can I, right?

Our escort finally shows up. A big black sand enforcement lem, just like Charlie—and just like in Charlie’s story. Even without guns, it’s funny how much the cops in Thropirelem look like the cops in my world; this one’s wearing body armor over his uniform, he’s got a big leather belt loaded with every kind of gear except a pistol, he’s even got a pair of mirrored sunglasses tucked in his pocket. His attitude is brisk but professional, and when he marches all three of us into the building, he politely holds the door open for us. I start to think we’re going to be okay.

But then he parks us on the end of a long wooden bench facing a counter, and disappears through a door. More waiting ensues.

Five minutes go past until the door opens again. It’s not our escort that comes through it, but the family from the station wagon. One of the kids is crying as quietly as she possibly can, while the mother tries to comfort her. The other kid looks stricken, like some essential part of his world was just smashed in front of him. And the father—

The father is an average-looking guy, short brown hair, a little paunchy. And at this moment, I doubt even Charlie would want to get in his way; he’s got the rage of pure murder in his eyes, and it’s being held back by the thinnest of leashes. The whole family stalks past us, and once they’re gone I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“So,” I say brightly. “
We
shouldn’t have any problems, right?”

A squat, yellow sand lem with a clipboard steps into the doorway. “Jace Valchek,” he says.

We all stand up. “Just Valchek,” the lem says. He turns and trudges back inside. I follow.

The room is small and windowless and has a table bolted to the center of the floor. He takes a seat on one side, I take the other. The chairs are bolted down, too.

“Miss Valchek,” the lem says. He’s got a brass name tag pinned to his white shirt that reads
DELTA
. He doesn’t bother introducing himself, and I’m a little weirded out by the fact that he knows my name when I haven’t shown anyone my ID yet. “I have a few questions.”

“About what?”

“You’re not in our database.”

“But you know my name.”

“It’s how your possessions think of you.”

Right. Animist magic, the basis of most sorcery in Thropirelem. Everything has a spirit, and some of them are apparently quite chatty. “I’m here on a government visa.” I pull out the piece of paper Gretch gave me before we left. “All nice and legal.”

He reads the paper, frowning all the while. “This doesn’t say what your nationality is.”

“I’m American.”

“Then why do you need a visa?”

“Not
this
America. Parallel world. Doesn’t the visa say that?”

He looks at me with flat lem eyes. “I’d like more information.”

“I’ve been assured that piece of paper is all I require.”

“Not by me.”

And there it is. This guy doesn’t care about what some
other
bureaucrat says; I’m on his turf now and he’s going to make me play by his rules. Which, no doubt, will change depending on what his mood is.

“
This
is America,” he says, thumping the end of one stubby finger against his desk. “Wherever you’re from, whatever you call it, it’s not
America
. Now—what is it you
do,
exactly?”

“I’m a psychiatric consultant.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“I’m a specialist in how people think.”

He frowns harder. “There’s nothing here about telepathic shamanism.”

“I’m not a telepath. I study behavioral patterns.”

“Why?”

To better understand morons like you
leaps into my brain. It’s successfully tackled by my common sense, who’s been working out lately and eating right. “It’s my job.”

He grunts. “Sounds like a scam to me.” Now he’s being deliberately confrontational, so I let it pass. Common Sense beams and pats me on the back.

“What’s your political affiliation?”

“I don’t affiliate. Not before marriage, anyway.” The Wiseass in my head slips that one past Common Sense, who wags her finger disapprovingly. Wiseass responds, using different finger.

“Are you refusing to answer?”

“I don’t
have
any political affiliations, all right?”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

It’s one of those blindingly stupid questions with no actual answer, designed to leave you sputtering in a combination of indignation, frustration, and fury. And while you’re thrashing inarticulately in the throes of indigfrustury, they like to follow up with something even worse.

“How do I know you’re not a criminal? Or a sexual deviant? You could even have some sort of communicable disease—I have no way to know. I have no way to verify any of this.”

He’s looking at me with open contempt. Not suspicion, contempt. I’m not guilty of a damn thing—except concealing the fact that I’m a cop—but in his mind I’m already a convict. I’m not a citizen he’s trying to help, I’m a crook. Not because of the evidence—there isn’t any—but because it’s convenient for him to think of me that way. It gives him an excuse to exercise his power.

“Maybe I’m not any of those things,” I say. “Maybe I’m a good person. Maybe I was brought here to
help
people.” I try to keep the anger out of my voice, and pretty much screw that up.

He leans back. “Yeah, sure. I’ll bet you’re practically a saint. You want to know what I see? A human being. And you know what
I
am, right?”

A big, sandy asshole?
the Wiseass tries to scream. Common Sense has her in a headlock, but it’s a losing battle. “A lem.”

“Golem,”
he snaps. “My race was
created
by yours. Created to be their
servants,
to build their
cities,
to die in their
wars
. But that was a long, long time ago.
Your
kind isn’t doing so well now. Pretty soon, there won’t be any of you left at all.”

My kind.

I should have seen this coming. But I’m so used to Charlie that the idea of a lem that
resents
humanity never really occurred to me. And this angry little civil servant is going to dump a lifetime of that resentment on me.

“Look,” I say. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. The world I’m from, the culture I’m from, that didn’t happen—”

He cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Save it. Your world, your culture doesn’t interest me. You’re
here,
now, and your smart-mouthed attitude isn’t going to get you anywhere. You understand me?”

Whatever sympathy I might have had for him vanishes. He doesn’t want commiseration, he wants a target. “Yes.”

“I need to verify this visa,” he says, gets up, and stomps out of the room.

FOUR

Three hours pass before he returns.

Making you wait is the bureaucrat’s most effective weapon. Paperwork is a close second, but it’s really only waiting with the illusion of doing something.

I spend the time planning.

When he finally comes back, he just opens the door and motions me outside. Gives me my visa back and tells me I can go. I’m not surprised; it’s more or less exactly what I was expecting. I smile at him sweetly and leave without a word, joining Charlie and Eisfanger in the car.

Charlie eyes me like he would a polar bear on PCP: cautiously. “Jace? You okay?”

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“Wow,” Eisfanger says. “You were in there a really long time. They checked our ID, asked us a few questions, and then booted us out. We’ve been sitting here waiting for you ever since—”

“Let’s. Go.”

Charlie’s radar is a lot better than Eisfanger’s. Damon seems to suffer from the thrope equivalent of Asperger’s syndrome—an inability to correctly read social cues and react accordingly—so Charlie tries his best to head off a Jace meltdown by moving the conversation in another direction. “Vancouver. Last I heard, they had a pretty hot swing dance scene. Maybe we can find a little time to hit the floor.” Charlie knows I love to swing dance, and he’s not too shabby at it himself.

“That sounds like fun,” Eisfanger says. “I mean, I don’t dance myself, but it’s fun to watch. Hey, maybe we’ll even see some celebrities!”

“Could happen,” Charlie says. “Plenty of them there, from what I hear. I don’t know how many we’ll find in swing spots, though. Stars tend to hang out in the really trendy clubs.”

“True,” Eisfanger admits. “And those are hard to get into. Long lines outside. We could be waiting a long, long time—”

He abruptly shuts up. There’s a long silence, broken by Charlie sighing.

“Guys,” I say. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. The pin of the Valchek Grenade is firmly in place.”

“The what now?” Eisfanger says.

“I’m not going to lose it.”

“Oh. Uh, good.” Eisfanger still looks a little confused, but that’s a expression I’m used to seeing on his face. I smile at him reassuringly.

I have a plan. Oh, yes, I have a plan.

“Sounds like half the celebrities in the city are movie stars and the other half gangsters,” I say. “Interesting mix. On my world, a lot of movie and TV production happened in Vancouver because of a weak Canadian dollar and local tax breaks—plus it wasn’t that far from LA, just up the coast. I’m guessing this kind of border security wouldn’t have let that happen here.”

“No,” says Charlie. “The film industry in Van is pretty much homegrown, in more ways than one.”

“How’d that come about?”

Charlie shrugs, one hand on the wheel. “Gangs with too much money. Started with porn, but that just generated more income. And you know gangbangers—it’s all about ego. All it took was one guy making an action movie starring himself as the antihero, and pretty soon all the other warlords had to outdo him. Snowballed from there.”

“Sounds a little like Hong Kong on my world, with Triads financing martial arts epics.”

“Here, too. Lot of them got their start over in HK—but here’s where the big money is.”

We’re driving through farmland now, cornfields lining the highway on either side. A hawk circles overhead in wide, lazy loops. Traffic is sparse, mainly big rigs hauling cargo to or from the port. I wonder how easy it is for them to get through customs.

Strangely enough, Charlie didn’t have any problems getting his weapons across the border. They ignored my gun, of course—but they confiscated my scythes. Charlie wisely refrains from telling me this until we’re at least ten miles away.

“Sorry,” he says. “They could tell the scythes were yours. Apparently you didn’t have the right permits.”

A fact that Officer Delta refrained from mentioning. A final parting shot from Mr. Civil Servant. “That’s
fine,
” I say, and smile.

Charlie takes one look at me and shuts up for the rest of the trip.

*   *   *

Farmland gives way to urban sprawl interspersed with plenty of green space, stretches of tall fir or pine rising up next to gas stations or roadside restaurants. The highway becomes a freeway, which routes through a mostly industrial area called Richmond, over a bridge and then into the city of Vancouver proper. It looks a lot like Seattle at first, but that changes once we hit the downtown core.

Plenty of skyscrapers, but I don’t spend much time looking up; it’s what’s at street level that’s riveting, and not in a good way.

It’s early evening. I see lems and thropes out and about, but none of the thropes are in human form; even the ones driving are in half-were mode. Those outside are almost all four-legged—packs of three or four roam together down the streets, darting and weaving through the traffic like suicidal bicycle couriers, bounding over and off cars. One slams into the DeSoto, claws screeching against the metal, and I can practically see the steam coming out of Charlie’s ears.

We’re on a street called Granville. Lots of neon, run-down hotels, bars, and sex shops, like Times Square before it was cleaned up. “No pires,” I point out.