Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) (8 page)

“I'm not. I can help you. I know things that you don't know. Things that you need to know.”

Catskinner didn't answer her. After a while I did, slowly, stumbling over the words. “Do you know what you're asking me? If Catskinner decides you're dangerous, he'll kill you. He'll use my body to do it and I won't be able to stop him. Do you understand that? I'll have to watch you die.”

“Is he really that much stronger than you are?”

I shrugged. “Yes. No. I don't know. Strength really isn't the issue. It's . . . he's so fast. When he acts, I usually don't even know what he's doing until it's over.”

She chewed that over. “I do understand, James. I won't make you watch me die.”

I wished I could believe that. Inside I said, she's no threat to us. Honestly.

you want her with us.

I do.

it is a mistake.

Maybe. But she really does have useful information.

No answer, at least no answer in words. Instead I felt his focus, shift, relax a bit. It was if Catskinner was no longer painting a target on her forehead—that's the best way I can explain it.

I relaxed, too.

“I'm not going to throw you out of the van,” I said.

She smiled at me. “I like you,” she said. “It's like Stockholm syndrome.”

“What?” It wasn't the most flattering thing anyone had ever said to me.

“It's when a hostage falls in love with her captor,” Godiva explained.

“I know what it is,” I groused. “You're not a hostage. I tried to get rid of you, remember?”

She looked up at me, her sunglasses reflecting my face back at me. “What am I?”

a mistake.

Catskinner's tone was amused. Aloud I said, “You're the princess.”

She smiled at that, and her tongue flickered over her lips. “And you're the knight who rescued me.” She leaned up against me. Catskinner didn't react at all.

“No, I'm the dragon,” I corrected her.

She chuckled. “Silly. The dragon doesn't rescue the princess.”

“I never was any good at playing by the rules.”

She moved in her seat and we were no longer in contact, but I was intensely aware of her closeness.

“We should get cell phones,” she said suddenly. “So I can call you if I have to move the van or anything. So we won't get separated.”

I nodded, just to be agreeable. I'd never had a cell phone. I'd never had anyone I wanted to keep in contact with before Victor, and he never left his office. Thinking about cell phones made me think about the future. I'd never been good at that. Life had always been to simple for plans—I was the monster and the world was filled with villagers with pitchforks and torches, and all I had to do was stay away from them. Victor had shown me that I wasn't the only monster in the world, but working with Victor had been close enough to working alone that I scarcely noticed any difference.

Godiva felt different. I didn't know why. I had known her less than two hours. I didn't really know anything about her except that we were both caught up in something that neither of us understood. I didn't even know if we were on the same side, or how many sides there were, or what any of them were trying to accomplish.

Screw that. Life was simple. Catskinner and me, we were one side. Everybody else, the other side. And as far as I was concerned, they were outnumbered.

The Good Earth was a freestanding building that looked like it used to be a fast food restaurant. Half the lot—the half that included the drive-thru window—was fenced off. Inside the fenced area was a collection of lawn decorations—concrete fountains, statues of nymphs and gnomes, trees in pots. The other half of the lot had only one vehicle, a battered white pickup with a camper shell. If that was Keith Morgan's truck then there shouldn't be any customers. Good, we could get right down to business.

I parked the van and Godiva next door, at a convenience store.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me.

“Ask him some questions. After that . . .  I dunno. Play it by ear.”

“Be careful.” She looked serious.

Catskinner smiled back at her.
“i won't let anything bad happen to james. keeping him safe is my job.”
 

And then we were across the empty parking lot and at the door. Catskinner put my hand on the door, but I opened it.

 Chapter Seven

“there is always more that isn't than that which is.”

The space was big and cluttered. The internal walls and partitions had been torn out and shelves put in, big industrial shelving units, some metal, some plastic, none of them matching. On the shelves merchandise was strewn, in no evident pattern.

Directly in front of me was a display of aquarium supplies, chemicals, fish food, bags of that weird colored gravel. A plastic mermaid sat at eye-level, faced turned towards a ceramic figure of a diver in an old fashioned brass helmet.

To my left was a dead end, a pallet stacked with bags of fertilizer. So I turned right. There were shelves of vitamins and supplements and such, in bright colors with words like organic and healthy all over them. Then the aisle turned right again. The store wasn't laid out like a regular store, the shelves were butted together, making a single path that wound along side the front windows—charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid to my left—then turned again, to the right again.

I still hadn't seen anyone, but my eye caught movement in the center of the store, behind the shelves.

“Hello?” I ventured.

“Good afternoon,” a voice called back. Cheerful and male.

I went around the next corner and saw more of the same: a single aisle stretching around the side wall leading to yet another right turn. The place was a spiral, I realized. Shopping for obsessives.

I kept going.

Do spirals mean anything to you?

difficult places to get out of.

Yeah, they meant that to me, too.

I made two more right turns, winding my way to the center of the shop. Along the way I passed shelves of plant cuttings, a display of what seemed to be air tanks, bags of pea gravel, more vitamins—these labeled in some Asian language—a rack of knives. If there was any method to the inventory I couldn't see it.

“Looking for something?” the cheerful voice asked.

“Just . . . looking.”  I could see glimpses of the man in the middle. He looked short and fat and blond, that was about all I could tell.

Right turn, right turn, past bug spray and T-shirts and hard candy, dried fish in crinkly plastic bags, right turn past a pallet loaded with bolts of cloth that looked like silk, and I was in the center of the spiral.

The counter in the center of the store was more normal looking than I expected. A big box with a Formica top and a cash register and a display of lighters with skulls and flags on them, and behind all that a short pudgy guy with long blond hair and goatee wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. He smiled at me.

“Welcome.”

“Are you Keith Morgan?”

“I am. And you're James Ozwryck.”

“Then you know why I'm here.”

“I could guess, but I'd rather you told me.”

“Why did you kill Victor and try to kill me?”

“I didn't do either one. I wasn't even there. I'm sure Madeline told you that much.”

“You gave her the Seal of Solomon. That almost killed me.”

He frowned, nodded. “That was a bad move on her part. But, honestly, what would you have done if she released you?”

Catskinner answered for me. “
torn her apart.
”

He nodded again. “See? There really wasn't a good move for that situation. By leaving you she gave you a chance. Obviously, it worked.”

“Why Victor?”

He sighed. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Catskinner's attention was focused on Morgan’s hands like a laser, but he just shook a cigarette out of a pack and lit it with one of the lighters from the display. Clove, by the smell.

“Okay,” he let out a cloud of sweet smoke. “You know Victor was undead, right?”

Undead?  I suppose that word fit what I knew of his condition, but it seemed overly theatrical. I shook my head.

“I know he was my friend.”

“I know he's a vampire, but he's still my brother!” Said with a grin.

“He never drank blood. Whatever he was, he wasn't a vampire.”

“Sorry.” Keith waved a hand. “Lost Boys reference. I'm guessing pop culture isn't your strong suit.”

“I want to know why we were attacked.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette and let out his answer with the smoke. “I know, and I'm getting there, but I'm not sure how much I have to explain. I assume you know about the Macrobes?”

“No.”

“Eldila? Outsiders? I'm not sure what you call that passenger inside you—”

“Catskinner.”

He smiled at that. “Very appropriate. Well, it is what I call a 'Macrobe', a form of life that does not require a physical form. Such things are not bound by laws of physics that apply to physical objects. They exist as information, as permutations in the patterns of matter, but not actually material. You see?”

Is this true?

it's as true as that one can understand.

I nodded.

He smiled. “Good. Now, the relationship that you and . . . Catskinner have is rare. Almost unique. Most Macrobe/human interaction is more symbolic. Macrobes communicate by inspiration, visions, dreams. As I said, they are information. Information is to them what flesh and blood is to us.”

“Victor.” I prompted.

“Relax, I'm getting there. There is an entire Macrobial ecology. There are big ones, little ones, predators, prey—just like the biological ecology we have on Earth. Many Macrobes have an interest in terrestrial matters—they find physical life just as fascinating as we find immaterial life. They communicate with humans, some humans, those that they find . . . interesting. They make deals.”

He was warming to his subject, talking with his hands. He talked like he was explaining a new religion to a possible convert.

I wasn't impressed. “When do we get to the part where you tell me why I shouldn't kill you?”

“Soon,” he promised, holding up a hand. “Victor was in communication with a particular Macrobe, one that passed on to him certain information, technology, if you will. That's how he was able to maintain an anathanotic homeostasis—how he became undead.”

“And Dr. Klein?”  

“Is in communication another one. One from a competing . . . tribe, you might say. Two alien intelligences at war, using human pawns to do their fighting in the physical realm. Essentially, you got caught in the crossfire. Since your . . . tenant is not allied with either side, the decision was made to neutralize you, but not kill you. You do realize that Dr. Klein could have simply cut your throat while you were paralyzed.”

“I still don't have an answer to my question.”

“Why you shouldn't kill me? There are a number of reasons.” He ticked them off on his fingers, “First, I'm no threat to you. I function as an intermediary between the Macrobes' human envoys. I am, myself, not directly aligned with any celestial faction. Secondly, I would be dangerous for you to kill, for the same reason. I am valuable to many very powerful creatures. As you've observed, continual communication with these intelligences has a teratogenic effect on human beings. They change, and those changes can make it difficult for them to interact with the mass of humanity. I do a fair amount of legwork for things much more dangerous than you. Thirdly, I can be useful to you—we can be useful to each other. I am well aware of your unique abilities. I can put you in touch with those who would pay handsomely.”

He smiled and curled his outstretched fingers into a fist. “Lastly, you might find that I am not as easy to kill as you suppose. The Macrobes pay their employees in strange coin.”  

I nodded. What he said made sense. Something didn't add up, though. “Dr. Klein said that you paid her to kill Victor and destroy his book.”  

“Did she now?” for a moment his affable manner dropped and his eyes were cold. Then the smile came back. “I suppose she was trying to deflect your ire from herself. I assure you, she approached me for the Seal, and she paid me for it. I had no reason to attack Victor or you.”  

“And she paid you to arrange the workers from the Manchester nest?”  

A slow nod. “Yes, she did.”  He smile was starting to look forced. “As I said, I'm a middleman. A broker, if you will.”  

What do you think?

he probably is too dangerous to kill.

Did you know about other Macrobes working with humans?

i know that there are thrones and dominions in the vasty deep and the wars of heaven are mirrored and shadowed in this tide pool. as above, so below, as ever was.

Were you planning to mention this to me?

were you planning on telling me that you didn't know?

I shook my head. Infuriating as always.

Keith was watching me warily.

“Suppose,” I said at last, “that I did want you to broker my services. How would that work?”

The smile was back, wider than ever. “Take a walk with me,” he suggested. He came out from behind the counter and began walking the spiral path to the door.

“I'm surprised the fire department lets you operate with this setup,” I said, falling in behind him.

A laugh. “They don't know I exist. This is a hard place to find if I don't want it to be found.”  

“One of those strange coins?”

He glanced back at me. “Exactly so.”

He walked briskly passed the random merchandise.

“Dr. Klein mentioned blue metal boys and the nova crew. I guess those are other Macrobe factions?”

He didn't look back at me. His voice was cold. “You certainly caught Madeline in a garrulous mood.”

Catskinner answered through my mouth.
“i induced a garrulous mood.”

That earned a look back. “I expect you did. Is she still alive, by the way?”

“She was when I left her.”

That seemed to satisfy him. “Yes, I do business with a half dozen Macrobe envoys. There, perhaps, fifteen or twenty operating on Earth at the moment. Some don't operate in this area, some are . . . insular, and some I refuse to work with.”  We stopped before we reached the front door, and I noticed a small side door between two displays that I hadn't seen on the way in. Keith pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked it. “Believe me, your Catskinner isn't the worst entity on this planet, not by a long shot.”