Double Cross [2] (18 page)

He seems to be in quite the grand mood as he passes silverware rolls down the line—Shelby, me, and Simon on the far end. “You’ll find out that the auditors who came before weren’t incompetent as you imagine,” he continues. “I’m just that careful and law-abiding.”

Simon leans forward to address Avery across me. “I hope you are, my friend.” His manner is jolly. Is this his accountant persona?

Avery leans forward and eyes Simon. “I am.” Avery directs us to watch Lenny, who is slicing real potatoes into French fries and throwing them into the fryer. “None of the frozen crap,” Avery says. Apparently the burgers and hot dogs here are genuine, too, whatever that means.

I’m wondering what Simon’s angle is, and if I should get him thrown off the project. My allegiance is to catching the killers and making the streets safe. And making things right with Otto.

Lenny slides our baskets in front of us. Simon and I pass the ketchup back and forth, and are simultaneously horrified that Avery and Shelby both load their hot dogs with horseradish paste, and nothing else.

“Yuck,” I say.

“Is good,” Shelby says.

Simon grabs an abandoned newspaper while Avery asks Shelby more questions. I stiffen when they stray into the area of her career.

“With your background, Shelby,” Avery says, “coming from a place where public institutions turned against
the people, I’m surprised you’d choose to be an enforcer for this arm of the government.”

If he only knew what she really did.

Shelby slides a glance to me. “I do because I have no choice.”

Avery looks over at us now. I eat more fries as Shelby amends this with her usual spiel on how there is no freedom, but only prisons of one kind or another, and their walls merely change shape. This is a subject she can go on about endlessly.
Good
, I think. That’ll shut Avery up.

“Does not matter in end,” she continues. “Happiness. Pfft. Is illusion.”

“How can you say that?” Avery replies, shakes pills out of a bottle—antacid, it appears—and downs them with soda. “Of course it’s true that we’re doomed …” He screws the cap back on, lowering his voice, speaking furtively only to her.

I munch a fry. Then another. They’re the best fries I’ve ever tasted.

Shelby’s body language and occasional pffts tell me she’s disagreeing hugely with him. Their voices grow louder. “You operate under illusion that happiness is possible.”

He slaps the counter lightly. “Of course I accept it, of course it is an illusion, but what do you do with that?”

More mumbling.

With a smile I flip the page of the newspaper. Nobody wins this argument against Shelby. Her dismal worldview is a cosmological phenomenon, like a black hole. If you don’t tune her out or change the subject, she will pull you down. It’s one of the things that makes her a powerful and dangerous disillusionist.

Avery gives it his all. I hear him say things like, “One dungeon or another, of course it is true … unhappiness, no question.”

It’s amusing until I realize Shelby has been uncharacteristically silent. Nodding. Leaning away from me. Closer to him.

Avery gestures fast and furious. “Plummeting … destined for misery.” It seems he has his own sound track. “I’m destined for misery.” He growls a little louder now. “Fine, but I’ll choose my own damn misery—I won’t let a human, government entity, or highcap choose my misery and despair for me. Those who would have us …” More mumbling. “ … crash them down in flames alongside us.…” Something something. “ … pull them to the deepest pit of misery.”

Shelby’s leaned even closer to him. I munch my fries, barely tasting them. Simon shuffles his newspaper. He’s wary, too.

Finally Shelby speaks. “A fascinating and stirring view, Mister Koznik.”

Avery says, “Please, call me Avery.”

“Fascinating, Avery. And stirring.”

He pays similar compliments to her view.
“Your formulation,”
he calls it, “is not only fascinating and stirring, but utterly enchanting.”

I stuff some fries into my mouth, catching Simon’s eye.

“Houston,” he mutters under his breath,” we have a problem.”

After lunch I fire up the accounting program on my computer and proceed to stare senselessly at a column of numbers. Just weeks ago I had everything almost perfectly managed and buttoned up. Now I have the frightening feeling that things are spinning out of control—the exact feeling I’ve spent my life trying to avoid. The highcaps are being hunted and killed. My relationship with Otto is imploding. The memories I’ve worked so hard to pack neatly away might start leaking from my brain—
while I sleep
—for Packard’s and Ez’s entertainment. Or
worse, I’ll visit Packard’s and Otto’s boyhood chamber of horrors once again.

And then there is Shelby, who seems dangerously fascinated with Avery. And Simon’s up to something. I become aware of a tingling above my left ear. How long is it since I zinged? Is the stress of all this exerting inside-out pressure on the vascular network inside my skull?

I sit up and take a deep breath. Staring into my screen, I perform a positive visualization. We get the list and everything we need to decode the names, and help solve the case. The killers are brought to justice. I imagine the relief on Otto’s face, eyes soft again. And the warmth and trust is back when he looks at me. Because we want the same things, and he believes in me, and he needs me.

And maybe I’ll urge my fellow disillusionists to step up the pace—hell, I’d take five cases a day—ten, if possible, to get the highcap criminals turned and released once and for all, freeing Otto’s craniovascular system from stress and impingement. He’ll understand that he can count on me. He’ll see that my not telling him about Ez was just a stupid mistake.

I make a change in one number and the numbers in another column all change.

The door opens and Avery stomps out. “Shelby, are those glasses prescription?”

“Magnifying.” She adjusts them. “One point five.”

He disappears, then comes back out with three boxes, setting one in front of each of us. “I want you guys to have these. On the house. Starter kits. Antiradiation insoles, antielectromag tabs, and antihighcap glasses.”

“Well,” Shelby says. “Thank you.”

I open mine up from the end, pull out insoles, some shiny stickers, and the glasses, wrapped in plastic. “Wow, thanks.” I hold up the insoles. “You put these in your shoes?” Obviously I don’t want to pay special attention to the glasses, but I’m thrilled to own a pair.

Avery nods. “They minimize the effects of geopathic stress on the human nervous system.”

Simon unwraps his glasses. “Are these 3-D?”

“Anti
highcap
,” Avery says. “They protect against highcap invasion of your privacy and person.”

Simon smiles. “Highcaps, huh?” Like it’s a big joke. Simon’s good—I remind myself that it’s important not to forget that.

“I don’t care if you believe or not,” Avery says nonchalantly. “My message to you is, they’re out there. This is not a joke. They’re reading your minds, they’re teleporting things out of your pockets, and your home, and committing all kinds of other crimes against you without your knowledge.”

“Uh-huh,” Simon says.

Shelby examines the glasses through the plastic. “Most citizens, I think they have two minds for highcaps. They half believe, I think.”

Avery points at her. “Exactly. But that’s changing. Allow me.” He unwraps them for her. “Most of them do it subtly, or just don’t mess with you. They don’t want you to know they exist. But then you’ve got mass murderers, like the Brick Slinger last summer—you know that was a telekinetic highcap, right? Don’t answer. My message to you is, these would’ve saved lives. And there are your telepaths hanging out at the ATMs, the telekinetic pickpockets. They say certain highcaps can erase memories.” He tilts his head at Shelby, angling the glasses toward her. “May I, Shelby?”

“Most certainly, Avery.” She pulls off her cat’s-eye glasses.

Avery freezes for a second, so openly dazzled with her beauty that I feel uncomfortable, like I’m witnessing something private between them. I glance over at Simon, who widens his eyes while flaring his nostrils.

When I look back, Avery is gently settling the glasses
over Shelby’s smiling face. He steps back. “They look—incredible.”

The glasses are dark like Shelby’s dark hair, and mannish in a way that heightens her femininity. And then she smiles, revealing that crazy chipped tooth of hers. The effect is alluringly feral. Avery swallows with seeming difficulty.

“If nothing else, you really ought to wear them when you’re out in public,” he says hoarsely. “Concerts, malls.” He mentions the blurriness, except Avery calls it a
field distortion.
“Best of all, you’ll be protected from their influence.”

“The glasses protect you?” I ask. “Like a shield?”

“Oh, no. Shielding is so dense, so … yesterday. I know they’re my own product, but I have to say, they’re brilliant.” He smiles. “These glasses run on the principle of
information
. See, the highcap power travels via waves—think of it as a kind of natural electromagnetic signal that’s transmitted the way radio signals are. All information, when you get right down to it, is carried that way.” He explains how the holographic chip in the glasses will protect you by setting up a counteractive signal that adds proprietary information to that highcap frequency, or wave, counteracting highcap power within your personal space. He talks excitedly, touching his forehead a lot, like his brain’s on information overload. I’d think he was mad if the glasses didn’t actually work.

He tells us that once a highcap is hooked into you, say invading your dreams, or prognosticating you, it’s too late. “They have to pull out on their own. They’ve already set up the feed, if you know what I mean.”

I do.

“Amazing,” I say, wondering how he knows so much about the effects of these glasses—and how he tested
them. Did he have highcap cooperation? Was it willing cooperation?

Simon’s got his sticker open. It’s black with a yellow skull. “This is very punk rock, Avery.”

“It’s a tab. Antielectromag tag. Similar principle.” He explains how it adds harmonizing information. He turns to Shelby. “The insoles, now, those
are
gross shields, but you need that. You don’t want to know what’s down there.”

Simon sticks his electromag tag in the middle of his case. “Got anything for extraterrestrials?”

Avery glowers. “When and if their existence comes to light, I will study them, and I will develop something.” He tromps out of the room, closing his door firmly behind him.

Simon smiles.

Shelby narrows her eyes. “Do not disparage him. He gives these out of kindness.”

“It
was
kind of him,” I say, turning up the radio.

“Yeah, he’s a fucking humanitarian,” Simon says. “Him and the you-know-whos.”

Shelby lowers her voice. “He did not make the glasses for killing; he made them for protection.” With a huff, Shelby turns to her keyboard. This isn’t the best scenario. She already distrusts Otto and his supposedly growing grimness, and dislikes his having us disillusionists and countless highcaps as a kind of secret police at his command. And now there’s this attraction between her and Avery.

I lower my voice. “By taking the
baseline data
, we’re helping him out of a dilemma,” I say to her. “We’re helping him keep his brand promise,
and
we’re saving lives.”

Shelby just stares at her screen.

I feel Simon’s eyes on me, but I won’t look at him.

“Right?” I say.

“Do not worry,” she mutters in her usual monotone, “I am with program.”

I finally meet Simon’s gaze. We both heard the implied
for now
in that.

I take little breaks to call Otto now and then, but he doesn’t answer, and I feel more despondent as the day wears on. It’s so unlike him to ignore me. Is he okay? How deeply have I damaged things?

That evening after I drop Shelby and Simon off, I swing by the government building, hoping to catch Otto at work. Gone. But one of his commissioners suggests Otto could be working off-site today. Off-site?

I try his home, his favorite coffee shops, and a restaurant he works at sometimes.
Nada
. So I swallow my pride and leave a message for Sophia. She’ll know where he is. But will she tell?

“Y
OU’RE HERE
!” Ez rises from her chair behind the coat check window. “Where have you been? I want you to look at my liver area.” She eyes a couple leaning over the railing a few yards away. “Maybe when they’re gone. If you stare at it long enough, it looks like it moves on its own—like it expands, and then it contracts by the tiniest degrees.” She watches my eyes for reaction. I give her none. “And sometimes I can feel the sensation of it all the way up to my throat. Is that a bad sign?”

“Did the Klosamine come?”

“Yes. And I’m doubling it.”

“Don’t, that’s too much. That can actually make the next generation of organisms immune.”

She gasps, still awash in fear from the last time.
My
fear. It’s a horrible and devastating power that I wield. I catch sight of the photo of Otto on the wall behind her, and feel bad all over again.