Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) (21 page)

Of course, Russwin really
was
a federal agent who worked outside of the ordinary chain of command in order to conceal evidence of alien activity, so maybe they were on to something after all.

We ordered sodas at the bar. I asked for some whiskey in mine. As far as I could tell, alcohol had no effect on Catskinner's functioning at all and I needed to relax.

No one was actually sitting at the bar, so we took the two stools in the middle. Convention attendees came and went, getting drinks, drinking them, and leaving again. A sign at the door said that alcoholic beverages couldn't be taken from the room, but nobody wanted to miss anything by hanging out longer than it took to slug back a cup of booze.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“Waiting,” Russwin said simply.

“Waiting for what?”

“For them to stop playing games and offer us a deal.”

“
i won't accept it.
”

Russwin raised his eyebrows at Catskinner's words. “Let's hear what it is first.”

“He didn't accept the last deal Morgan offered,” I pointed out. I was getting used to Catskinner injecting himself into conversations.

“Yeah, but that was before you took out the minraudim and the tin man. Your bargaining position is better now.”

And Morgan had Godiva, and Alice, which meant his bargaining position was better, too. At least with me, but he didn't really want to make a deal with me. Hostages wouldn't make any difference to Catskinner. He hadn't changed that much.

Russwin turned to look back so I looked, too. Our shadows were talking to someone.

She was all in red. Polished boots with spike heels, stockings, short skirt, tight blouse, even her hair was a uniform shade of bright red. I wondered if she was one of those ambimorphs—her body was good enough. She looked over at the pair of us and smiled, and her lips were the same shade. In contrast her skin seemed pale, washed out. She walked to the bar, smiling, striding confidently.

The negotiator had arrived at last.

She spoke when she was still a few feet away, heading for the chair next to me. “Most of the people in the building are completely innocent.”

It seemed an odd thing to say. Catskinner answered her, “
that means nothing to me.
”

“True,” she agreed, sliding into the chair beside me, “but it means something to Adam.”

“My name is James,” I told her pointedly, “and I think you overestimate my concern for innocent bystanders.”

“James,” she said, “that's right. I'd forgotten. I'm Agony Delapour.” She looks past me, “And this must be Corbett Russwin.”

“Charmed,” Russwin said. “Agony, huh?  Cute name.”

“It is, isn't it?” She smiled. Her teeth, like her skin, seemed unnaturally white. I wondered if they were false, like Godiva's.

“So, you're here to offer us Morgan's terms?”

That earned a laugh. “Oh, heavens, no!”  She gestured to the bartender. “Mike, if you would?”

The bartender nodded, opened a small fridge below the bar, and brought out a white bucket. He lifted it up so that we could see into it without showing it to the crowd who still mingled aimlessly behind us.

In the bucket was a human head, with ice packed around it. Keith Morgan's head. Frozen blood rimed the stump of his neck.

Well. I wasn't expecting that.

I drained my drink, set the empty cup on the bar.

“Gimme another. No ice.”

Another laugh from Agony.

Russwin sighed deeply, but when he spoke his voice was calm. “What do you want?”

“From you? Nothing. You're not really a threat, and I don't see how you could be useful.” She looked back at me. “You, on the other hand, are a very useful threat.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't think Catskinner's going to deal with you. He wouldn't take the contract that Morgan offered him.”

“Covenant,” Agony corrected me. “And Morgan was very foolish, which is why he's a head in bucket now. He underestimated what you are.”

“Okay, then, you've got Godiva and Alice. How about you let them go and I leave you alone?”

“Perhaps I don't want you to leave me alone.”

I sighed. “What?  You want me to kill somebody for you? It's all I'm good at.”

“You also underestimate yourself.” She stood. “Enjoy the convention.”

“Wait!” I stood, face to face with her. In her heels she was as tall as me. “Where are they?”

“Oh, they're around here someplace.” She waved her hand at the rest of the convention center. “If you touch me you'll never see them again, of course.”

I stepped back. “I'm tired and I really don't have any patience for this shit. Tell me what you want.”

She leaned forward and said softly, “I just want you to be happy, Adam.”

Then she turned and walked away. I stood there and watched her go. I didn't know what else I could do.

Beside me Russwin stood. “We better do what she said.”

“What do you mean?”

“Enjoy the convention. Godiva and Alice are around here someplace.”

Agony had left, leaving most of the crowd staring after her. Not our shadows, though, the biker and the giant were back to watching us.

I reached for my drink, finished it, set it back down. “Okay, let's look around.”

I pulled the program out of my pocket. The Adamski panel was still going on, but in Room A the Bell's Conjecture discussion would have ended, and something called “Suppressed Evidence: A Slide Show” was starting in a few minutes. In the Screening Room
Chariots of the Gods
was about half over.

“Where do you want to start?”

Russwin looked over my shoulder. “Suppressed Evidence,” he said. “It's what's starting next.”

We headed down the hall and our shadows followed.

Chapter Twenty

“welcome to the butcher's hour.”

I expected the thugs to follow us, but I wasn't expecting them to step up to the table in the front of the room. There was a laptop set up, cables snaking back to a projector on a rolling cart in the aisle between the ranks of folding chairs. The biker fiddled with it, frowning at the screen. The giant stood silently behind him, watching us.

There were a score of conventioneers scattered randomly throughout the room, most of them standing and talking. One stood by herself in the corner of the room. She looked familiar—

“Alice”, Russwin said softly. He crossed the room quickly, I followed. Alice brightened to see us.

“Oh, thank God, Cobb—I'm so sorry about Tom—they were waiting in the parking lot—” She was near panic. Russwin put his arm around her.

“Tom's at Christian Northeast,” he said quietly. “The doctor said he's got a chance to recover. We just have to wait and see.”

Alice breathed a sigh that seemed to deflate her. “They did drop him off. I didn't think they would.” She switched her attention to me. “Godiva's here. I don't know where. They separated us, told me to wait here.”

“Who's they?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don't know. They act like nestlings, but I don't think they're local. I guess Morgan brought in some out of town muscle.”

“Not Morgan,” Russwin said.

“Morgan's dead,” I said. “We just saw his head in an ice chest.”

Alice gasped and Russwin glared at me. “Sorry,” I said. I guess Alice didn't really need all the details.

She recovered nicely, though. “But . . . what the fuck?”

“There's a new player. Calls herself Agony Delapour. She evidently took out Morgan. I guess she's taking over his empire.”

Alice shook her head. “Don't know her.”

“Excuse me.” Even amplified the biker's voice was surprisingly hesitant. “We're kind of on a schedule here, so if everyone could just take their seats...”

I looked around and saw that was mostly directed at us, since just about everyone else was seated.

We moved to take the nearest folding chairs under the disapproving scowls of the conventioneers.

“Thank you.”  

They'd set up a projection screen at the front of the room. Oh, yeah, this was going to be a slide show. “Do we have to stay for this?” I asked Russwin in a whisper.

“Delapour wants us to see this for a reason. Until we know what that is, yes.”

“Now, uh,” the biker's voice over the PA was at odds with his grizzled appearance. He sounded like the ninety-pound weakling from the old Charles Atlas ads. “Could someone get the lights, please?”

Someone got up and the lights went out. The projector illuminated the room with a blue screen and the words “No Signal” across the screen.

“Now, just hang on a second,” the biker said, mostly to himself. He fiddled with the laptop connections and the screen lit up with a shot of the laptop desktop. The wallpaper was a blurry snapshot of a kitten and a German shepherd sharing a wicker chair on somebody's sun porch.

Quite the professional presentation. I chuckled and voices out of the darkness shushed me.

He clicked around on the screen and a title card came up. “Evidence Of Extraterrestrial Infiltration” it read.

“Okay, now, what you're about to see is pretty disturbing stuff. It's new—very, very new—and I've only seen the images once myself. Be warned.”

The title card was replaced by a picture of Godiva. She was standing in an empty white room dressed in the clothes I'd bought for her, her glasses on, her teeth in place. She was looking at the camera, bright lights casting dark shadows behind her. She looked very scared, and very alone.

I started in my seat, started to get up. Russwin grabbed my arm. “Steady, there, cowboy,” he whispered to me. “Let's see where this goes. The more we know, the better.”

I settled back, biding my time. I was going to find out what they knew and where she was, and then I was going to go get her.

“Now, uh, this looks like an ordinary person, I mean, a human person, right?”

Murmured assent from the crowd.

The scene changed. The next shot was Godiva's face. A pair of hands held her head. Her glasses were off and her green on green eyes were tearing from the lights. The murmurs became excited. Chairs moved in the dimness as people leaned closer.

“Uh, as you can see, there are some differences, though—”

The scene changed again. Now her teeth had been removed and the hands held her jaw open. Inside her mouth there was a cluster of dark tendrils—the strangeness that I'd glimpsed but never seen directly. Her eyes were closed tightly.

I shut my own. I knew how she felt about the changes that had been wrought to her and I felt her humiliation at being exposed this way.

You will have work to do tonight, I promised Catskinner privately.

wait. soon,
he replied.

The scene changed. I stood. Not soon, I told Catskinner. Now.

Godiva was lying on her back, held down by two sets of arms. She was naked and her legs spread wide. The crowd gasped, and there was a buzz of whispered conversation. I didn't care. The show ended now. I walked to the front table. Behind me I heard Russwin saying something, probably urging calm. I wasn't listening.

The biker saw me coming. “Now, just hang on for a few minutes, let me finish. I did say these images were disturbing.”

“The show ends now,” I said.

The giant moved to block my way. I felt Catskinner focusing, but he held back and let me stay in control of my body. I felt angry enough to tear the giant apart by myself.

“Now, you really have to see this in context,” the biker was saying, fumbling with the controls of the laptop.

The next shot showed Godiva on a steel table. She was lying on her back. Something transparent was covering her, something like a cocoon or a chrysalis. I stared, unable to make sense of the image.

“Here we have the creature restrained,” the biker was saying, and I realized what I was seeing. It looked like someone had taken a roll of that clear plastic that they used to wrap pallets and wrapped Godiva and the table together, binding her.

“Where is she?” I shouted. I pushed past the giant—not Catskinner, me—and I felt less in control than when he was riding me. The giant grabbed me by the shoulder and only then did I feel Catskinner reach out with my arm and toss him to the ground. The rest of me was still mine.

I heard Russwin hiss, “Stay down, big fellow,” and realized he was talking to the giant. I hadn't heard him come up behind me.

“That will become clear,” the biker said, “if you would please just—”

“Where. Is. She.” I was shaking. Make him tell me, I told Catskinner.

The screen changed again. More layers of plastic had been added, covering her face, obscuring the contours of her body. A slit was cut down the center of her form, through the plastic, through her skin and muscle, exposing her internal organs.

Dead. They had killed her. And then they had dissected her. I had seen death before. I had seen atrocities preformed by my own hands. Maybe I deserved this. Maybe the relatives of Catskinner's victims felt like this. I closed my eyes. I didn't care.

New plan, I said in my head. He dies. His big friend dies. Everybody in this damned place dies. Now.

Catskinner opened my eyes. My hands were already reaching for his knives. The biker started to say something and my hand lashed out with the modified screwdriver and thrust it into his neck until it grated against his spinal cord. The physical symptoms of the rage were gone, replaced by the cold distance of my body, but I still felt the need to do something, to react, and if I couldn't erase the fact of Godiva's murder I could damned sure erase the ones responsible.

“James—wait!” I heard Alice shouting. Neither Catskinner nor I reacted. We had business to take care of. My body started to turn. For once I felt unified with Catskinner, I understood him. I could see humans the way he say them, through his mind looking through my eyes and seeing chaos, walking filth, noise that cried out to be silenced. This wasn't murder, this was curing cancer.

Then Russwin came out of the darkness and bowled me over. Catskinner rolled with the impact and Russwin kept going, into the corner of the table and knocking it over. My feet were back under me and I was turning, facing the giant in the dim light reflected from the slide on the screen. There was steel in both my hands, and everything was in motion.