Apocalypse to Go (11 page)

“I was hoping you’d want to bargain for a second look at it.”

“Nope. Sorry. No more of that fancy stuff.” I was half-sincere, half-teasing him, because the entire experience with the handcuffs and so on had turned out to be much more pleasurable than I’d anticipated. “You’ll have to wait until I want some more classified information out of you.”

“I’d better do well on that exam, then. Nothing like a little motivation.”

“If you pass, will they give you more data?”

“So Spare14 gave me to understand. Which reminds me. While you were off communing with the saints, I told Spare about our burglar and that bluish sphere. He confirmed that the device had transport capabilities.”

“Does he think that guy will come back?”

“No. He admitted that the transport type of orb is very rare.”

“Which means there are other types.”

“I can’t confirm that.” He was grinning at me. “You don’t have the right clearance.”

“Very cute, Mr. Nathan.”

He laughed, then kissed me. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.” It felt surprisingly good to say. “I really do.”

“Then why won’t you marry me?”

I suppressed a snarl. “Because you’re a stubborn bastard who doesn’t know when to stop badgering me about it.”

“That should be a recommendation, not a drawback. It shows I’m sincere.”

I groaned and slipped out of his grasp. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said. “After all that exercise, I’m hungry.”

A
FTER A BRIEF EXCHANGE OF E-MAIL
, I received Y’s permission to turn Belial’s consciousness over to TWIXT. By contrast, the TWIXT offer of liaison presented difficulties. In a trance meeting late on Wednesday morning, Y tried to explain.

“For one thing, I’m worried about security,” Y said, “since TWIXT has psychics. The threat you call the Cryptic Creep is bad enough, and now you tell me that this Spare fellow managed to get information that Nathan thought was classified.”

“That’s true, but if we liaise with TWIXT, they’ll be our allies, not another threat.”

Y’s trance image crossed its arms, stuck out its lower lip, and sulked, but only for a few seconds. The image blinked out. Hiding your emotions in the trance state sometimes requires an image reboot. In a second or two he returned to his usual august self, a Japanese-American man of middle age, his thick hair streaked with gray, but still a good-looking guy, really, even with his wire-framed glasses.

“Don’t forget,” I said, “that Saint Maurice vetted Spare14.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Y heaved a dramatic sigh. “At times we must throw the fishing line of truth into the waters of
darkness and see what takes the bait. I’ll admit to being relieved at having Belial off our hands.”

“So am I. And I think you’ll find Spare easy to talk to, if you decide to arrange a face-to-face meeting.”

“All in good time, Nola.” His image betrayed him with a scowl, and he changed the subject. “About this Cryptic Creep person, any more visitations?”

“None so far.”

“Good. Where do you get these names, anyway? You must have read comic books when you were a girl. Batman, things like that.”

“I did. I was obsessive about the X-Men. But, look, Spare14 will be here in an hour to pick up Belial. What shall I tell him about the liaison?”

“That his proposal is under advisement. We’ll be having a top-level meeting about it tomorrow.”

With that, Y closed down without even a good-bye. The sulk baffled me until I mentioned it to Ari.

“He’s afraid of losing control of his unit,” Ari said, “or of having to share the control. I saw a lot of that in the army. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want a military career.”

“You mean he’s jealous of Spare?”

“No, not personally. He merely sees Spare as a threat of sorts to his power base within the Agency. Or so I’d guess. I don’t know the man, of course, but it’s a common pattern.”

“It makes perfect sense,” I said. “But at the same time, Spare’s offering something Y really wants, that policing capacity.”

“True. He must feel torn.”

I worried for reasons of my own about one aspect of this sudden involvement with TWIXT. Before Spare14 turned up, Ari had assured me that as an Interpol officer he had no authority to interfere with my efforts to bring my father home. As a member of TWIXT, he’d be duty-bound to stop me and Michael from breaking the terms of Dad’s parole—assuming, of course, that he’d been paroled—by taking him from his world to ours. I doubted if we could find out where he was and get him out of there before Ari became a sworn officer of the trans-world police.

“By the way,” Ari went on, “speaking of Spare14 and all that, my request for leave’s been approved.”

“How much do you have accrued?”

“Three weeks. That should be more than enough to study for the exam. The legal material’s fairly simple.”

To you, maybe, I thought. “One more question. If you get into TWIXT, will you still be my bodyguard?”

“I’ll insist on it, though I’m quite sure you’re part of Spare’s scheme. Through you, he can keep in touch with the Agency whether they officially link up or not.”

At one o’clock, Spare14 arrived. He was wearing a blue business suit with a white shirt and a diagonally striped red, blue, and yellow tie. He carried his briefcase. We all shook hands, and he sat down in one of the wood armchairs covered in maroon leather. The briefcase sat on the floor next to him. Ari took the couch, and I stayed standing.

“Nathan,” Spare14 said, “I’ll send you e-mail with details on the examination as soon as I have them. There’s some talk of setting up a special session to speed you through the process.”

“Thank you,” Ari said. “We’ll see how things go, then.”

“Just so. And my dear O’Grady, I hope you have some news for me.”

“The Agency’s taken your proposal under advisement,” I said. “The top people will be having a meeting tomorrow.”

“Splendid! I hope that your surrendering custody of the Belial entity is just the beginning of our cooperation.”

I smiled. “Let me hand over the calamari in question.”

I’d already removed Belial in his antistatic packaging from the wall safe. I’d bundled him with the camcorder and a lot of bubble wrap in a box that was about eighteen inches on a side. The box currently sat on my desk, but I picked up a sheaf of printed forms first.

“I have some paperwork to fill out,” I said, “concerning the transfer of the suspect to your authority.”

“Very good. I have some for you, too.”

It took us twenty minutes to finish all the various forms and to make sure that we each ended up with copies of the complete set. Ari signed everything as a witness with official standing. When we finished, I gave Spare14 the box.

“I shall be leaving this world level soon,” he said, “to remand the suspect to Javert’s custody. He’ll arrive on the level you call Interchange in a few days.”

“I’d been hoping he could come here,” I said. “I’d like to meet him, but I suppose traveling in a water tank’s kind of difficult.”

“Very, actually, especially since he requires a specially trained world-walker to assist him.”

I sat down in the other armchair. Spare14 unbuckled the straps on his briefcase, which was about two feet long and ten inches wide. Its mouth opened much wider, of course, but I was still surprised when he slipped the box inside without any trouble. When Spare14 buckled the briefcase shut, it remained about ten inches wide despite having swallowed an eighteen-inch cube. I tried not to stare. He sat back in the chair and smiled vaguely at me.

“So,” I said, “I’d like to ask you about Javert. Is he a seconded officer?”

“He is, indeed, and seconded from a very well-developed police force. Most members of his species are ordinary, law-abiding citizens of their underwater realms. I really should make that clear. The Belials are the exception.”

“Every species has its criminals, then?”

“Unfortunately, that’s quite true.”

“I was wondering if Belial was acting alone, or if he was part of a gang.”

“The latter. Javert has been tracking the case for years.” Spare14 put his fingertips together and considered me over the arch. “They’re thieves, basically, though I’ve never been clear about what it is they steal. It’s very valuable, whatever it is. The name translates as the Silver of the Heart.”

Interesting, I thought. The concept of stolen property had just popped up again.

“That’s a bit opaque,” Ari remarked.

“Yes,” Spare14 said. “Translation between any human language and the languages Javert speaks is alarmingly difficult. Their brains are quite different from ours. Their language concepts are, too, or so I’ve been told. For instance, ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ mean very different things to them.”

“But psychic communication’s possible,” I said. “I had a
detailed conversation with Belial, and a brief one with Javert.”

“He did mention that.” Spare14 gave me his unctuous smile. “Which is one reason, my dear O’Grady, that we’re hoping to liaise with your agency. Your group appears to have a somewhat different set of talents from those we have available in TWIXT. Pooling our resources would be valuable to both.”

“Oh, I agree,” I said. “Unfortunately, it’s not my decision to make. Whatever this silver stuff is, I wonder if Belial was hoping to find it here on this world. If so, he’d need human accomplices for the actual heist.”

“Just so,” Spare14 said. “Javert’s planning on getting the truth of that once Belial’s two halves are reunited. Plea bargaining for information received is part of their justice system, too.”

“I see. If you could relay some of that information once Javert obtains it—”

“Certainly, assuming Belial is forthcoming.” Spare14 glanced at the briefcase where said suspect currently resided. “Now, O’Grady, I have a rather nosy question to ask you. Do feel free to tell me to mind my own business. It concerns your brother.”

“Ah,” I said. “Which one?”

“The youngest, I think. He’s the one who must be a world-walker.”

“Yeah, that’s Michael. Someone spotted him on Interchange, I take it.”

“You’re quite right. The someone was myself, actually. I realize that he’s young, and doubtless needs to continue his education, but we’d be very interested in recruiting him once he reaches his maturity.”

“I can see why,” I said, “but the Agency has already expressed the same interest. They’re offering him a college scholarship in return for a commitment.”

Spare14 set his lips in a tight line, then forced out a smile. “I see,” he said. “Well, we may be able to match that generous offer. The talents you and your brother display really do seem to be extraordinarily strong. Um, I take it you have other siblings?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I can’t speak for them.”

I smiled; he smiled.

“Very well.” Spare14 took a leather card case out of his inner jacket pocket. “Allow me to give you my cards. I meant to do so the first time we met, but your visitation from a saint—Maurice, was it? yes, Maurice—rather startled me, and I quite forgot.”

Spare14 studied his surprisingly thick card case before removing any cards. I took two from him, and he handed a pair to Ari. Each gave a different address, one in my San Francisco with a zip code, and the other, in a version of the city called SanFran, with the simple postal code of NE. The interesting detail, however, came after the post code. The address in my San Francisco included the designation “Terra Four,” and that on Interchange, “Terra Three.”

“Now, about that Terra Three office,” Spare14 went on. “You’ll notice that I’m not identified as an Interpol officer on that card.”

“From what I know of Interchange,” Ari said, “you don’t want to admit that you’re an honest police officer. Very bad for your health.”

“Oh, yes. The locals assume that I’m running some sort of exclusive numbers racket. Should you ever go to SanFran, could you kindly keep up the fiction?”

“Not a problem,” I put in. “You can count on us.”

“Thank you.” Spare14 nodded in my direction. “I’ll return to my office here after meeting Javert. If I may telephone you when I do?”

“That would be fine, yes,” I said. “World-walkers are in demand, I take it.”

“They’re quite rare,” Spare14 said. “People with talents just don’t seem to have those big families anymore.”

“Is that one reason for cloning?”

“Um, well, yes. But I really can’t go into details about that.”

“There are some levels, aren’t there, where world-walking is a crime?”

“Not so much world-walking in itself, but using the talent wrongly, such as transporting criminals out of the jurisdictions where they’re under warrant.”

“Is that common?”

“No, certainly not, but it does happen.” Spare14 hesitated. “How do you know that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t go into detail about it.”

He set his lips tight together. I caught Ari suppressing a grin. Now that I knew Michael’s talents were so valuable—and I speculated that Dad’s collection of boxes would be, too—I could wait to bargain with Mr. Spare14. My father’s talent might supply another bargaining point if, of course, he’d agree to work with the police after spending time in prison. I had my doubts about that.