Emma Bull (31 page)
Authors: Finder
I grinned. "Oh, if you're going to make it
personal
…"
"You never listen if I don't. The Borderlands are the kingdom of change and transformation. The children of this drug may be more truly the children of the Border than any of us. I told you that there was something in Tiamat that seemed to me more elf than human."
"I'd hate to think that the natural result of being a child of the Border is that you croak early."
"So would I. It would suggest that the Borderlands themselves could not live. And this is my home." She sighed. "I wonder when it became so? It's not mere spite any longer, that makes me say I have no wish to return to the Elflands. This place is strange, uncertain, difficult, and beautiful—and mine. I would not leave it."
"Except for the 'beautiful,' that's a good description of your apartment."
She pulled a pillow out from behind her head and threw it at me, which set her coughing.
"You're not supposed to do anything," I reminded her.
"Then see you don't provoke me. What's for dinner?"
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"Takeout from Godmom's."
"Lavish."
"Well, you don't want to eat
my
cooking, do you?"
The Ticker slept on the couch, because it was easier than going up and down the platforms to and from the bed on the highest level. I set up a cot near the workbench because I didn't want to get too
comfortable, in case Tick-Tick wanted to wake me up in the middle of the night. Consequently, when she did wake me up in the middle of the night, it didn't take any time at all.
She didn't do it on purpose; she was in the throes of a fever dream, and the tossing and muttering were enough to rouse me. I put the kettle on before I went to her.
Her skin was hot and dry. My hand on her forehead woke her up, and she stared at me blankly for a second.
"Orient? But I thought you—no, I dreamed that, didn't I?"
"I don't know, but probably. It's time for some willow bark."
She coughed. "And the loo."
I helped her to the bathroom door, and helped her back to the couch, and made the tea, and felt
reasonably capable. But reasonably capable wasn't quite enough to ensure either the Ticker or me an easy, uninterrupted night. That was why I was only half-asleep at dawn, one arm thrown over my eyes to keep the light out, enduring just a little too much brain activity to make it really worth the effort.
The Ticker sick, and Linn. Rico looking worn to the bone; Ms. Wu looking worn to the bone; and me probably added to the list as soon as I gave up and got out of bed. The girl Tiamat looking the way the girl in the hospital bed probably had before she got quite so far along. So far along what? Was the thing that Tick-Tick hadn't said, but strongly suggested, true: that, up to a point, the drug worked? That'd be one in the eye for the Lords of Elfland. A little tuck and shuffle in the old DNA, and you could make an elf from a human. Except they'd already sort of got that one in the eye, because human-elf crosses produced fertile offspring, which meant that we had to be pretty near neighbors genetically as it was.
So far along. Which was how far? How far was "up to a point"? How long did humans have on that passport to the Elflands, before their visas were cancelled in a big way? And why did the transformation fail?
All to get into the Elflands, when as many kids ran away from it as ran away from the World. Or maybe that wasn't why they did it. Maybe the human kids had come to Bordertown to be somebody or
something else, and found out they couldn't change enough to make it happen. They were still
themselves, and their selves had never been good enough. Maybe they didn't give a damn about getting across the Border, except to be able to say that they were different, and could do it.
My self had never been good enough; for me, for my mother, for my father, for the people around me who I wanted to be my friends. I'd come to Bordertown, too, with only that, and found it still wanting in
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this new p
lace. I'd become a River addict, trying to erase the parts of me I couldn't live with. Then I'
d
found Tic
k-Tick, who'd been a mirror, a shoulder, and a friend. She'd polished my self on her
sleeve and
handed it back, so that I could finally tell the real flaws from the tarnish. Without her, my road to the Border would have ended in the river or a box. I wanted to think I'd done a little of the same thing for her, but she'd started stronger, and angrier, and hadn't sunk as low as I'd had before coming back up.
What would I have done, if someone had offered me a synthetic alternative to self-respect? I'd have taken it. I knew it because it was just what I had done, and I'd done it with less justification than any poor elf wannabe. They at least had a goal in mind when they took up with their dangerous drug.
Would it make them elves? It wouldn't make them Tick-Tick, with her quirky mix of human and fey
idiom, her steady confidence and stubborn principles, her strange notions of how to decorate an
apartment. What about the prohibitions that Tick-Tick had tried to explain to Ms. Wu; if elves were born with them, what would happen to an elf who wasn't born, but only grew?
But they weren't becoming elves. They were becoming dead.
I finally acknowledged that I wasn't going to fall asleep again, and got up. I needed to give Rico her answer; if I wrote a note, I could find somebody to take it by her place, or by Chrystoble Street Station.
Depending on what I wrote, it might be safe to leave it at the copshop.
There was graph paper in the drawer of Tick-Tick's workbench, and a fountain pen. I wrote the date at the top of the page and paused over it, thinking about what Rico had told me about time, and wondering what the real date was. No, local time was as real as anybody ever got. I could settle for Bordertown consensus reality.
I stopped again over the salutation. "Rico," by itself, was curt and hostile. "Sunny" was too friendly—I didn't think I'd ever called her that to her face, so why start on paper? "Ms. Rico" made it sound as if I put her in the same category as my high school geography teacher. "Detective Rico" would do—but as soon as I started to write it, it seemed too cold. And should I put "Dear" in front of it? It seemed wildly foolhardy to think of using the word to Sunny Rico.
By this time the ink had dried on the point of the pen, and I had to lick it to make it write again. This was damned silly. It was a note, not the soliloquies from
Hamlet
. It only had to be short and businesslike. I tore the sheet in half, threw away the part I'd muddled over, and wrote on the rest: I can't help—Tick-Tick's sick, and I have to take care of her. Hope you find out what you need to know.
Now that I'd written it, it looked thin and withdrawn and kind of mean-spirited. In my head, it had sounded brisk and professional. I wanted, suddenly, to commit to paper all the things I'd been chewing over that morning while I should have been sleeping, to see if they struck any answering chord in her. If I did that, though, the possibility of leaving the note at Chrystoble Street would be right out. I compromised:
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Did I tell you that Tick-T
ick thinks the stuff almost sort of works?
That, now that it was on paper, looked downright cryptic. Well, if she wanted to know more, she could stop by. As soon as that occurred to me, it seemed like a very good idea, and I was suddenly pleased with the unintelligibility of the sentence. I signed my name. Then I thought of something else. I considered starting the letter over on a new sheet, but graph paper was expensive, and since the note was already pretty addled-sounding (I'd veered from being pleased with it to despairing over it in mere seconds), I'd settle for:
P. S. Ask Ms. Wu to have a look at Linn.
After all, if Ms. Wu was tracking epidemics, she ought to be able to authenticate as many cases as possible. And something about this illness had bothered Rico, and nagged at me. Maybe something
would come of the exchange of information.
I folded the note up into a packet, rummaged in the drawers for sealing
wax
and couldn't find any, gave up and used epoxy instead. (There were times, in the Borderlands, when epoxy wouldn't set. But Tick-Tick claimed that this was an improvement on Superglue, which according to her, wouldn't work at all here. I told her that was nonsense. She told me, no, it was magic.) I wrote "Sunny Rico" on the outside of the note, put the cap on the pen, and turned around to find that Tick-Tick was awake.
"Love letter?" she whispered.
I felt my face get warm. "Of course not! Note to Rico."
"Ah." She nodded and widened her eyes at me.
"Is that supposed to mean something?"
"No, no, my dear. But I hope she appreciates the effort involved."
"How long
have
you been awake?"
"Since I heard the desk drawer open."
I thought back over what I'd done since I got the paper and pen out, and what it must have looked like. "I just wanted to make sure it didn't give anything away if the wrong person read it."
"Oh," she said, sounding about the way she had when she'd said, "Ah."
I made a disgusted noise and pushed the chair back from the workbench. "Criminy, she's a
cop
."
The Ticker nodded. I sat down in the chair next to the couch, to save her voice, if she insisted on having this conversation. "She is indeed a cop. It's that very fact that makes me so concerned for your
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susceptibl
e heart."
"I. Beg. Your. Pardon."
"Didn't I say, not so long ago, that your preference was for women that any reasonable male would ward off with garlic and crucifixes? I'm afraid that in Sunny Rico, my dear, we see your ideal romantic object."
"Huh-uh. No way. You," I said firmly, leveling an index finger
at
her, "have a fever."
"Yes, I do, but a fever's always at low ebb in the morning."
"Then I'm counting on you being delirious by noon, because you're already seeing things."
"I always see things. But if you prefer, I won't tell you what they are. After all, I'm at your mercy."
"Good grief," I said, and went to stick my head out into the atrium, to see if anybody else was up yet.
Nobody was.
However, it wasn't long before a guy came past in the street below, selling eggs out of his bike basket. I bought
some
and gave him the note to carry, and went back upstairs to make breakfast. Yes, I can make a perfectly decent breakfast, no matter what sort of comments may have been made to the contrary. But the Ticker hadn't much appetite, and seemed almost too tired to wield her fork if she did have.
"I didn't mean it, about the delirium," I said.
"Faugh. I wouldn't give you the satisfaction. No, I'm only weary. I mean to doze the day away, so if you yearn to run errands, feel free."
