The Forever Drug (16 page)

I kept an eye on the cat in the window, hoping it wouldn't wake up. I didn't want the little fiend spotting us, and trying any of its tricks.

"How long has your cat 'owned' you?" Dass asked sweetly.

I couldn't hide my disgust. I knew it was a popular joke among owners of house cats, but the joke still turned my stomach. I had to glance away so the old man wouldn't see the expression on my face.

"About a year," John said. "The Mi'kmaqs gave her to me."

That made my ears perk up. I turned back to the old guy and gave him a foolish-tourist grin. "Mi'kmaq Indians?" I asked. "I didn't know there were any living around here. I thought this area was all Acadian."

"They come and go."

"By boat?" I asked.

Maybe my voice had been a little too eager. The old guy's eyes narrowed. I could smell a whiff of nervousness coming from him.

The silence stretched out between us until Dass broke it. She'd been peering in the open door on the tower's ground floor.

"What's in the tank?" she asked.

"Gribble grubs."

"What?" I wondered if I'd heard John correctly. Was the old man making up nonsense words now?

John walked to the door on unsteady legs and waved us inside with an age-mottled hand.

"Come and see," he said with a grin.

The main floor of the tower turned out to be one large room with bare metal walls and a concrete floor. At the center of the room was a huge glass-sided aquarium, filled with what smelled like sea water. A tube ran into one side of the tank, from a pump on the floor, and another tube ran out the other side. Smaller pumps directed the water flow inside the tank. At the center of the tank, bolted to the bottom of it, was a large piece of wood, one side of which looked vaguely like a face.

"Look closer," John said with a grin. He bent to the pump and pushed a button. The pump started up with a hum, and the water level slowly began to rise in the tank.

Peering into the water, I could see tiny wormlike creatures the size of grains of rice, floating on the surface of the water.

"Gribble grubs," John said, tapping the side of the tank. "They eat wood. They nibble away at wooden pilings, and as the tide goes up and down you're left with a piling that looks like a spindle. I sculpt with 'em—make portraits."

The nervousness I'd smelled on John earlier was gone. Now he was all enthusiasm as he explained, in his high, wheezy voice, the intricacies of keeping the water flow just so, in order to keep the gribble grubs nibbling away at a specific spot. I could see that, if we let him, he'd prattle on for hours about the pumps, tubes, and filters. He seemed more interested in the mechanics of the project than he did in his "art."

"Your cat," Dass prompted. "Did you know she was magical?"

"Oh, sure," John said with a dismissive wave. "That's why I wanted her for my wizard's tower."

"Wasn't she expensive?" Dass asked.

"She was a gift," he answered. "I helped the Mi'kmaqs fix their bilge pump and—"

He shut his mouth, as if he'd said something he shouldn't have. But he was too late. I'd caught the gesture Dass had made behind her back as she cast her spell. Even now, she was probing his mind, listening in on the words he was speaking only in his head.

Her lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, and I knew she'd learned something important.

John shook his head, as if dizzy. His face paled.

"Frig," he said. "I feel funny. Are you a wizard or something?"

I had to change the subject. Fast. I looked around for something to comment on. "Who's the gribble grub portrait of?" I asked.

"Huh?" He was still shaking his head. "Oh, that's Jane."

My hackles rose. Was it just coincidence that he'd chosen that name? It was one of the most common on the planet. What were the odds that it was
my
Jane he was talking about?

Pretty good, considering that this fellow also had a blackberry cat that had been given to him by Mi'kmaq Indians.

"Who is Jane?" I asked.

His expression softened. "A doctor," he said. "I met her six years ago, when she came here to give me the tests. She reminded me of my daughter. When she walked through the door my knees went weak. I thought my daughter had come back from the dead." The wistful tone in his voice told me that he'd loved his daughter very much.

"That's the trouble with living so long," he added bitterly. "Everyone you care about dies before you."

"What tests was the doctor performing?" Dass asked.

"Medical tests. She was curious about me, because I'm so healthy for my age, and was trying to figure out why I'd lived so long. I'm ninety-nine years old, can you believe it?"

I couldn't. But that didn't matter. My mind was still reeling at the fact that he knew Jane.

"Have you seen her since?" I blurted.

He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he'd answer. I looked at Dass and raised my eyebrows, silently asking if her mind-probing spell was still active. She nodded.

"I never thought I'd see Jane again," John said at last. "But after she came back, I decided to start sculpting her."

"When was that?" I held my breath.

"Two days ago."

"And ..." I kept my voice as neutral as I could. "And where is she now?"

"I don't know."

I shot a look at Dass. She nodded, confirming that the old guy really didn't know. Then she scratched her ear—the signal we'd agreed to previously that meant we needed to debrief.

I was standing behind John, where he couldn't see me. I jerked a thumb at the ceiling and made a clawing motion with my hand, silently asking if we were still going after the blackberry cat.

Dass gave a slight shake of the head.

I grinned. Obviously we were going after something more important. Which meant that Dass had a lead on the folks who were smuggling the paras. I was at least one step closer to Jane.

I pretended to glance at Dass's watch.

"Frig!" I said. "Would you look at the time? We'd better get going, honey, if we're going to make it to Yarmouth before the antique store closes."

It was as good an excuse as any. Taking my lead,

Dass started babbling about grandfather clocks and antique rocking chairs. We beat a hasty retreat back to the car, leaving the old guy with his wizard's tower, his mind-controlling cat, and his sculpture of a woman who reminded him of the daughter he'd lost, years ago.

12

The abandoned freighter was our target, after all. When Dass had used magic to eavesdrop on Crazy John's thoughts, she picked up a mental image of a large, watertight chamber in the hold of the ship, kept dry and livable by a series of battery-operated heaters, lights, air filters, ventilation systems—and bilge pumps, which John had helped to repair.

The smugglers had allowed sea water to fill the rest of the ship's hull, which was then sealed and fitted with UV lights and water-circulating systems. The water wouldn't stop an astral intruder from getting into the freighter, but it would slow them down and make it uncomfortable for them. Most mages would do what Dass had done—assume that the entire hull was filled with water, and turn back.

The freighter was a holding pen, a temporary storage for exotic paras that were smuggled to the UCAS coast by ship, then delivered up and down the coast by smaller boats. Which explained the distribution pattern on the geographic profiling map. The smugglers were delivering to coastal cities on the mainland of Nova Scotia—the areas that south shore locals would be most familiar with—and to major UCAS cities across the bay.

We weren't sure whether any of the smugglers were on board the freighter, or whether the animal holding pens in its hull were empty or full—or whether Jane was on board. Dass's mind probe spell only picks up what a person is thinking about at the time, and we couldn't very well ask Crazy John to think about something that we weren't supposed to know about.

Instead we had to resort to an old-fashioned police procedure: the stakeout.

Fortunately, we didn't have to do it in person. Lone Star's Division of Paranormal Investigation has a number of magically active personnel who are capable of entering astral space. While Dass and I sat in the Yarmouth offices of Lone Star's Department of Shore and Water Patrol, waiting for the call, these mages maintained a twenty-four-hour astral surveillance of the derelict freighter in Short Beach while their physical bodies lay on beds in Lone Star's Halifax headquarters.

They liaised regularly with Dass, who also took a rotation on astral surveillance. Meanwhile the rest of us cooled our heels and waited. There were five of us on Dass's hand-picked team: myself, three combat mages attached to the Division of Paranormal Investigation, and Hunt, the officer who'd piloted the hover out to Georges Island on the night I'd met Jane. Dass had requested Hunt specifically; he was the best rigger the Magical Task Force had, and we'd need his skills to chase down the smugglers.

The combat mages—two males and a female, all human—were edgy at having to wait, but I could see that they were used to working together and were a tight unit. They spent the down time playing endless rounds of Randomizer, a fast-paced poker game that used cards that randomly changed their suit and numeric value according to a pre-set pattern. By memorizing the pattern of each of the fifty-two cards, you could predict the suit and value that was coming up next. If you didn't get a headache first.

I watched their game for an hour or two, and when I thought I had the gist of it, I asked if I could sit in. I lost fifty-three nuyen on the first hand and twenty-seven nuyen on the second. It was an expensive lesson in not trying to beat experts at their own game.

I didn't mind losing the money nearly so much, though, as the comment I overheard one of the males make when I left the game. Something about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I'd heard the joke dozens of times before, but never with the same sarcastic inflection that was placed on the word "dog."

I got my revenge by chewing up the handle of his taser baton. Then I realized what a stupid move that had been, and cajoled Hunt into helping me swap the damaged baton for one from the equipment room.

After that I mostly hung out with Hunt and watched the trid in the off-duty lounge. I had to get my mind away from endlessly speculating where Jane was
somehow
, and mindless trid seemed the best way. Hunt and I argued at first over what to watch: he liked the high-speed VTOL races on one of the sports channels, and I preferred the nature shows. We eventually compromised on a medical special report that talked about the cybernetic augmentation of guard dogs. That show got the rapt attention of both of us.

Although the combat mages lounged about in civilian clothes inside the Yarmouth DSWP offices, they came with all the trimmings. When the call came, they would suit up in armored pants and jackets with magical task force stenciled across the back in bold yellow letters, and helmets with low-light vision enhancers built into the visors. Although they were armed with Uzi III submachine guns with laser sights, taser batons, and tranq guns, they had an even greater arsenal of spells. They could use these to take down criminals in any number of different ways: by paralyzing their muscles; by overstimulating their nervous systems until they were unable to differentiate horizontal from vertical, let alone aim their guns; by manipulating their emotions until they collapsed in fear and despair; by weaving a web of confusion around them until they were unable to tell friend from foe; or by simply blasting them with a bolt of magical energy, as Jane had done to the elf Galdenistal.

I hadn't forgotten the golden boy. I also used the time we spent waiting to do a bit of digging in an effort to find out more about him. Dass obliged me by authorizing some time on the Lone Star computers. I wasn't able to get much more on Galdenistal Tathem, but what I did find out was interesting. His father was Lord Shen Tathem, head of the Information Secretariat, the government body in charge of internal security for Tír Taimgire. Galdenistal himself was a paladin, a noble who had formally sworn allegiance to a member of elven royalty: Sean Laverty, a member of the Council of Princes of Tír Taimgire.

None of which told me why Galdenistal had come to the UCAS to kidnap Jane. When they were arguing on the container pier, golden boy and Jane had mentioned Laverty's name several times. But I still had no idea what her connection was to Laverty. And without a decker to crack the Tír government's formidable databases, I wasn't going to get much more.

We waited a total of two days before the stakeout produced any results. The call came late at night, when I was napping on a pile of blankets in the corner of the off-duty lounge. I woke up to hear Dass speaking excitedly into her cell phone. As usual, the combat mages were playing Randomizer. But they were suited up and ready to rock in less time than it took me to shift into human form and pull on my clothes.

We scrambled into a Surfstar Marine Seacop, a high-powered patrol boat. It was a hydrofoil with jet turbines, capable of cruising comfortably at 200 klicks. The boat rode on blades that caused it to lift out of the water in much the same way that an airplane's wings provide lift: the greater the speed, the greater the lift. And it maneuvered like a hot damn, turning sharply while remaining perfectly level, without any of the roll experienced by an ordinary boat.