Doc Sidhe (21 page)

She reached the end of the last page. "Think of him as a smiling man," Hedda had said. "The eyes of a wise man, the smile of a lover. Light shines from his face. Call to the light. Beg it. Ask for the wisdom behind it."

She did, effortlessly holding the image in her thoughts, relaxed, clear-minded, waiting.

Nothing.

She heard Doc sigh. She opened her eyes. He and Alastair stared at her from their chairs outside the conjuration circle; Doc shook his head.

She looked at Hedda, unhappy. "I did it wrong."

"No, sweet. You did it right. Every step true." The woman looked apologetic. "What confused Doc confuses me. I could feel your strength when we put the circle together. You have Gift. I wish I had your strength. But it does not come out."

"You're having the exact same results someone like Harris or Noriko would," Doc said. "But unlike them, you're full of the Gift. Your well of power just seems somehow capped."

"Sorry."

"Don't be." He rested his chin on his hand and stared morosely at her. "We've learned some things, today and in my tests. We know what you can't do."

"Such as?" Her tone was sharp.

"Don't be annoyed."

"I just don't like being told what I can't do."

"So I gather. Gaby, your Gift doesn't follow the traditional patterns. You have no Good Eye; you can't see the residue of devisements. You don't see the future. You don't see events imbedded in the objects that have experienced them. There's no sign of a cord between you and some twin, real or mystic. You can't melt your flesh and reshape it."

"People
do
that?"

"Not many. It's a dying art."

Hedda smiled. "Which is sad. It can be such fun."

"Today, we learned that you can't project your voice to the ears of the gods. You make no links between objects or places, even with conjuration circles. You do not weave patterns of your Gift into things you make with your hands. You do not send your sight away from your body. You do not affect fire, water, air, or earth."

"Does that leave anything?"

Doc didn't answer. Alastair said, "Well, yes, countless things. But they are so rare, and often—I will be frank—so irrelevant that there are no tests devised for them." He gave her an apologetic smile. "For example, a few years ago, I tested a woman who showed sign of Gift but didn't follow the usual patterns. I found that her Gift was directed inside her. All her sons grew up to look just like her father. Identical, to the last mole and birthmark. Except for the one who looked like Kiddain Ohawr, the star of stage and screen. You can't imagine the trouble that caused with her family."

She laughed, then sobered. "You're saying that this Gift could be something totally useless."

Doc nodded. "Yes. That would be a waste. You have so much of it. But you should prepare yourself for that possibility. Hedda, I'm sorry. I've taken up your whole afternoon."

"But not wasted. You are always good company. And the young lady likes my pastries."

On one Neckerdam broadcast channel, the talk-box showed square dancing. Not too different from similar stuff he'd seen on the grim world. On the other channel, it was the game they called crackbat—part baseball, part jai alai. Harris settled on it and concentrated on trying to figure out the rules.

The little talk-box, the one that acted as his telephone, rang. He picked up the handset without taking his attention off the screen. The runner in his padded suit, still holding the flat bat with the net at the end, charged the base and whacked the ball out of the net of its defender. He crashed into the defender and both landed on the base. "Hello."

"Goodsir Greene?"

"Yes."

"This is Brannach the Seamer. Three days ago, you brought in an order for demasalle trousers."

"Oh, right. Hi. Grace on you."

"And on you. They're almost finished, but I needed to know if the lady's trousers were also supposed to have buttons for suspenders."

"Suspenders? No, no, no. Belt loops. They're supposed to be worn with belts." Another batter was up. The pitcher threw the ball and hit him with it. The crowd groaned; the batter walked dejectedly away from the base. The next batter up took his place. "Did you put buttons for suspenders on my trousers, too?"

"Of course, sir."

"My fault for not explaining things better. All six pairs need to have loops for belts, but no attachments for suspenders. Is that going to cause any trouble?"

This batter ducked the first pitch. He managed to sway back and catch the second pitch in the net. He spun around, hurling the ball far out beyond the base defenders, and dashed for the first base, his bat still in hand.

"No
trouble
, sir. I'm afraid I'll have to charge an extra four dec for the additional work. And they probably will not be ready for a couple of bells more. We are open until five bells, though, and they will certainly be ready by then."

"That's great. I'll be by then for them." He hung up, wondering why the runner on third base looked as though he were preparing to hurl his bat at the pitcher.

Harris hadn't felt imprisoned since he'd begun his walks outside the Monarch Building. He did follow Jean-Pierre's advice, not leaving at the same time or by the same door every day, varying his route, staying alert. Nothing ever happened.

It was time to further expand his options.

He stuck his head in the laboratory door. Joseph and Jean-Pierre were there. Joseph was lifting a barbell that looked impossibly heavy. Jean-Pierre, stretched out on a couch, took notes on a pad of paper. Harris waved to get their attention. "Hey, you guys, I'm going out to get my pants. Either of you want anything?"

"Hot xioc," Jean-Pierre said. "Joseph?"

The giant shook his head. He set down the barbell and began adding weights to it.

"Be back soon."

But instead of descending to the lobby, Harris went down two, to the garage. The mechanic, Fergus Bootblack, listened to his request.

"Take the Hutchen," Fergus said. "You
can
drive, can't you? Good. Are you carrying fire?"

"Fire? Like a cigarette lighter?"

"No, no, no." Fergus pointed his finger, miming a gun.

"Oh,
fire
. Yeah."

"Good. Oh, and Doc wants you and the lady Donohue to use the faraway ramp whenever you leave the building."

"Use the what?"

Fergus pointed to a shadowy far corner of the garage. There, a dimly lit concrete corner led away from the garage at a right angle to Harris' line of sight. "That leads to a ramp that comes out one block over. Anyone waiting for you outside the Monarch Building will miss you. Come back in the same way."

"Sure thing." He looked around. "What's a Hutchen?"

The Hutchen turned out to be an anonymously boxy dark green two-seater; it had a high clearance and looked a little like pictures of the Model T. Fergus had Harris wait a couple of minutes while he logged the car out on the records in his office, then showed him which button started the ignition. It took Harris a minute to reacquaint himself with the concept of the choke, but fortunately he'd learned to drive on his grandfather's archaic pickup truck and not on a more modern vehicle. He groped around for the seatbelts for a long minute before realizing, dismayed, that there were none for him to find.

He managed to get the Hutchen into gear without embarrassing himself—the gearshift was an H-pattern, floor-mounted stick familiar to him—and carefully guided it into the opening Fergus had pointed out.

A long tunnel, four sides of concrete and bare lightbulbs overhead, it traveled at least a block. Halfway along, Harris was sure that he heard the rush of a subway train beneath him.

The ramp at the far end took him up to where the tunnel terminated in a large warehouse-type door. There had to be unseen operators at work; in the rearview mirror, he saw a similar door slide into place behind him before the exterior door slid open. Beyond, quick and noisy traffic zipped by in both directions. Streetlights gleamed atop Greek-style columns, moths fluttering their lives away around them.

At last, he was vehicular again. It felt pretty good. He eased the Hutchen forward; during a break in traffic, he turned left onto King's Road, staying alert to the simple fact that traffic here ran on the wrong sides of the road. It felt like he was sixteen again, with a freshly minted driver's license, trying to keep all the rules in mind at the same time.

Harris stuck his hand out the window and signaled, bicycle-style, the way the other motorists did it, for his right turn from King's Road onto Damablanca. He passed the glowing green-and-gold sign over Banwite's and threw a salute his one-time benefactor couldn't see.

There was no parking space open in front of Brannach's. Harris sighed and drove on past. Parking was better in Neckerdam than in New York, but he might have to go around the block once or twice before he found a spot for the Hutchen.

Still scanning for a place to park, he continued a block, then turned left onto the two-lane northbound-only avenue labelled Attorcoppe.

A horn blared behind him and he heard a sickening crunch, felt the Hutchen shudder as its right rear quarter slammed into something.

He cringed. He knew, without having to turn and look, what had happened. Coming off Damablanca, distracted, he'd gravitated like an idiot into the right lane. At least on this one-way street it hadn't been a lane full of southbound traffic. He slowed and looked over his shoulder at the car he'd hit, preparing to mouth an apology to its driver, something to tide him over the few seconds it would take to pull the two cars to the side.

In the glare from the streetlights, he saw that the driver of the car was staring at him, cursing. No surprise. Two of the three men in the car with him were also glaring.

The last man, the rear-seat passenger on the left side of the car, was half out of the window, reaching down for something bouncing and teetering on the car's running board. Harris glanced at it.

It was a Klapper autogun, the same sort of brassy submachine gun Alastair had used when the assassins struck at Doc's lab.

The same sort of gun the other two men in the car were now bringing up to aim at Harris.

"
Damn
it!" Harris hunched down, mashed the accelerator, jerked the car to the left.

There was a roar from the other car, like the world's loudest lawn mower starting, and Harris felt hail batter the side of the Hutchen. He flinched and ducked as low as he could. The shuddering went on and on.

He felt hot stings in his back and neck. It couldn't be gunfire—that would hurt worse, stop him, wouldn't it?

He wheeled left at the first cross-street, automatically slid into one of the lanes to the right of the median, and realized that all the traffic he could see was headed his way. Headlights ahead swerved and horns honked. There was a moment's break in the gunfire from the other car. Then it started again, from directly behind; the back of the Hutchen shook under dozens of impacts.

Harris swore. The car pursuing him was a long, low-slung, fast-looking job like one of Doc's. He wouldn't be able to outrun it.

One of the oncoming autos roared past him in the other lane. A few hundred feet ahead, both lanes were occupied by oncoming headlights.

Harris yanked the wheel left, aiming for a gap between two trees in the median. He felt a tremendous bang as his front wheels hit the curb; the Hutchen bounced up, slowed as it plowed through a bush planted between the trees, and rocked as it came down the curb on the far side.

An oncoming car in his lane screeched as it braked; it swerved but managed to skid to a stop just feet away. Harris turned right, finally traveling with the traffic.

There was the sound of an impact behind him, followed by a metallic crunch. Harris looked in the rearview mirror—to no avail; it was shattered, pieces of glass still falling from the frame. He glanced over his shoulder.

The pursuing car straddled the median. It was motionless, pinned between the two trees Harris had cleared.

"And then you returned to the Monarch Building?" Doc persisted.

"No, I went back and got our blue jeans."

"That would seem to be a foolish choice."

"Damned right it was. But I was mad." He shrugged. "After that I did come right back. You should have seen Fergus' face when I drove in and he saw what had happened to the Hutchen."

"And what about you, Harris?" Doc peered over Harris' shoulder. "How is he, Alastair?"

Harris winced as he felt the doctor's tweezers tug at his bare back again.

"Not bad," Alastair said. "A few pieces of shrapnel that probably used to be car door. Nothing serious."

Harris glanced again at the faces around him. Doc looked thoughtful. Jean-Pierre was frowning. Gaby was worried. Noriko's expression was, as usual, serene, but Harris thought he saw tension in her pose. And Joseph, standing near the door, arms folded, looked just plain mad.

Harris' attention was drawn to a jar on the nearest laboratory table. The jar held a brain and eye-stalks floating in what looked like red jelly, and he had the sudden disconcerting feeling that the eyes were looking at him. As soon as he glanced at them, the eyes looked away. He shuddered.

"Anyway," Harris continued, "my guess is that they were just getting ready to shoot me when I accidentally sideswiped them. I figure that the impact made the first guy drop his gun. I think maybe I was saved by my bad driving."

Jean-Pierre asked, "Did you ever return fire?"

"Nope."

"Did you drive past the car once it was stopped to see what condition the gunmen were in?"

"No."

"Did you contact the Novimagos Guard?"

Harris shook his head, impatient. "That's what I'm doing now, right? What are you getting at?"

Doc interrupted: "Who knew you were going out?"

Harris thought it over. "Jean-Pierre and Joseph. And Fergus."

"And who knew you were going to Brannach's?"

"No one. No, wait. I told Jean-Pierre and Joseph."

Jean-Pierre stiffened. "What are you suggesting?"