Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (25 page)

"We're just glad you're back, Great Jack," said Kesh.

"We are indeed," Metch echoed. "Most glad."

"Kept this place safe for you, we did," Lep added. "Safe, safe indeed."

"As if you had a part, sluggard," Kesh admonished him.

They began to wrangle over just how much each had contributed to what they hyperbolically called the Defense of the Domain. John listened patiently—more accurately, tiredly. He didn't have the energy to put down the squabble. Soon enough they'd blow out their own fires. He started to doze, coming to attention when the three bogies silenced themselves of a sudden. Gorshin crouched atop a stack of crates, watching, his wings slowly unfurling and furling.

"Smelll blood on yuuu," the gargoyle said.

"Well, hello to you too." John didn't like the avidity with which Gorshin watched him. "Aren't you going to welcome me back?"

The gargoyle ignored John's question. "Hurrtt?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

The bogies reacted to John's statement with a hubbub of concern, shock, and apologies for their lack of prompt attention to his needs. They insisted he retire to his bed where they would tend his wounds. It sounded like a good idea to

John, so he went along. Gorshin remained behind. Along the way John spotted several of the shyer Faery folk who had moved into his slump. He'd seen so little of them that he couldn't tell how they were taking his return. He tried to stop and talk to the shellycoat who laired in the utility space under the first flight of stairway, but the bogies started to drag him up the stairs. Struggling against them hurt his back, so he went along. He could talk to the shellycoat later.

Having escorted him to his room, the bogies vanished. John shrugged off his coat. He was ready to collapse, but before he could, the bogies were back, each bearing a first-aid kit. Kesh's burden still flaked wallboard from the mounting he had torn from the wall. Despite the chaotic nature of their debate about who knew best how to deal with John's injury,they seemed to understand the use of the medical supplies. Metch demonstrated surprising gentleness in cleansing John's scabbed-over back. John let the bogies fuss over him, their deferential attention reminding him of some of the better parts of his stay in the otherworld. He'd been getting used to such attentiveness. Somewhere in the middle of the bogies' ministrations, he dozed off.

When he awoke it was still dark, though it wouldn't be for long. He was still bone tired, so he couldn't have slept the clock around. Still, he wasn't ready to sleep more, and he wouldn't be until he had a better handle on where things stood.

He dug the disk case out of his coat pocket. The first item on his agenda was determining if the disk was as false as the one who had given it to him. He got up, padded over to his perscomp, and hit the start. And got nothing. A glance out the window assured him that the area hadn't been hit with an outage. The failure was closer to home. He tried the light switch. Nothing. So it wasn't just the comp, power was gone too. He went out to the feeder conduit to check it out. His hacks into the nets had been chopped, leaving the wires dangling and useless.

Without leeches and limpets |o nick into the utility company's lines, his tabletop hardware was just so much scrap.

He'd have to score new taps before he could connect again. Normally, to avoid just that hassle, he would have removed the taps before the proles from NEUCO came through on their maintenance sweeps, but it seemed he had been in the otherworld long enough to miss one. When he'd left, the next one had been three months away.

Climbing back up to his bedroom, he worried at the passage of time. Apparently three months or more. Bennett had said that time would be different in the otherworld. John had spent a long while among those treacherous vipers, long enough for them to have gulled him into believing that they were his friends. But how long had it been? Hell, his time sense was shot. Could three months have passed here?

No, that didn't match with the weather. It was autumn out there. He
knew
that. His mother would have said that he was feeling it in his bones. His elven tutors would have attributed the knowledge to
shai
awareness. Three months would have put Providence into winter.

Maybe NEUCO
had
changed its policy. Maybe they
had
done an unscheduled sweep. Other things had changed around here, why not that? Sitting in his slump, without a tap to the nets, he had no way of knowing. It was too near dawn and he was too tired and sore to go hunting new taps, but he had an idea.

"Kesh, how long has it been since you saw Dr. Spae?"

The bogie shrugged. "She only came a couple of times after you left. Gorshin doesn't like anyone here when you're not here."

"We don't either," Metch said.

"Dr. Spae is nice, though," Lep said.

"You just like her because she's foolish enough to talk to you," Metch said.

Lep started to bluster, signaling an imminent outbreak of disputes. John cut it off. "Kesh, I want you to take a message to Dr. Spae."

Kesh gave John a "why me?" look.

"I'll do it," Lep volunteered.

"Ixp is better at sneaking about," Kesh said in a rare display of honesty.

John recognized motivated self-interest when confronted with it, even if he didn't understand the motivation. "All right, Lep. You can go. Give me a minute to write out the message, then you're off. I want it delivered straight, no side trips."

Lep nodded solemnly.

John started to look for something to write with. Metch had a scrap of paper ready for him by the time he found a pen. John wrote his note and handed it to Ixp. "If you can't get it to her directly, leave it where she'll find it soon."

Ixp scampered off. John didn't see that there was much else he could do just yet. It was nearly morning, and he couldn't go outside in the light looking like an elf. He thought about sending one of the other bogies with a note to Spillway Sue, but he knew the Faery folk made her nervous. besides, he didn't know if she could read. He'd see her soon, soon as he found out what was on the disk. If he'd been away for a while, a few more hours wouldn't hurt. Feeling tired and sore and more than a little depressed, he went back to bed.

It was late afternoon when Metch whispered in his ear that Dr. Spae was coming. He dragged himself out of bed, brushing away the bogies who wanted to change his bandage. His hack felt a lot better. Scrounging up a T-shirt, he pulled it on and went to the window. Dr. Spae had come alone, as he had asked. He went downstairs to meet her but didn't bother going to the door; she knew how to get in.

Because he knew she had dealt with elves, he decided that caution was in order. Although she knew that he was Bennett's son, she had never seen his elf face. He wanted to give her a chance to get it set in her mind that he was not an impostor. He waited in the shadows for her, cloaking himself in the same spell Faye had once used to hide him from assassins. She walked right by him.

"Thanks for coming, Doctor," he said, stopping her in her tracks. "I appreciate your promptness."

"I had begun to think that you weren't coming back," she said, turning toward his voice. She looked puzzled not to see him. "John?"

"Didn't I say I'd be back?"

"Yes, you did," she said guardedly. She was searching the darkness for him. Apparently her mage sight was not a match for his spell. "John, is there something wrong?"

Yes, but nothing to do with you.
"I'm fine."

"Why are you hiding?"

"I wanted you to have a chance to assure yourself that it really was me."

He dropped his spell and stepped out of the shadow. She gasped in surprise when she saw him, but recovered quickly.

"I see you got the disguise spells lifted." She nodded, eyes wide. "The resemblance to Bennett is uncanny."

She didn't have to insult him. "Seen one elf, seen them all, eh? Did you bring a machine?"

Her mouth twitched a little. Annoyance? She patted her shoulder bag. "I brought my old Romer™. I don't use it much anymore. It's a bit out-of-date. You're going to have to show me how you learned to hide from mage sight."

"I've learned a lot recently, Doctor. Some of which I'd be happy to share with you, but right now I'm not very interested in magic. If the comp's battery is good, it'll do what I want." The disk casing was a bit out-of-date, too. A Sony-mac Romer would be just about the right vintage. He held out his hand. "I'd like to get started."

"I see manners weren't in the curriculum you were studying," she said gruffly, but she did hand over the comp.

Marianne Reddy hadn't raised him to be rude. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I've had a lot dumped on me lately, and I haven't gotten much sleep. I'm pretty tired."

"You're not the only one. You're lucky I came. I half thought that your note on my desk was some kind of decoy. If I hadn't spotted Lep leaving ... Never mind the alterna-lives. I'll be honest with you, John, I'm not in the mood for a new mystery. I've had my fill of them lately. I'll feel a lot better if you tell me what this is about."

Why not? She had trusted him. "I've been given a disk. It's supposed to have information about my mother."

"Your real mother or your foster one?"

Real? Real had been raising and caring for him, not pumping him out and dumping him on somebody else's doorstep. "Marianne Reddy."

"I thought you said Bennett wanted to keep you from finding out what happened to her?"

"I didn't get this from Bennett."

"You're trying to make a mystery out of this."

"Sorry." Talking about it made him uncomfortable. Dr. Spae had been his teacher, not his friend. Some things you just didn't talk to teachers about. "Maybe we should just see what's on the disk."

That seemed to satisfy her. With her help, John didn't have to waste any time figuring out the Romer's protocols. When it was time to slot the disk, John hesitated. Was this going to be another hoax? Only one way to find out. He slipped the disk into the Romer. Icons appeared on the screen. The disk wasn't empty, as he had feared it might be. There were Mitsutomo surveillance reports and clippings files that dated back to his disappearance and alleged death. There was a relocation-of-residence order, also Mitsutomo, more recent surveillance files, and even medical records, showing Marianne Reddy to be in good health. Most interesting to John was the termination-of-surveillance order. It would seem that Mitsutomo had lost interest in Marianne Reddy's doings. There was other stuff, too. A lot of material, too much to just skim through. The worth of the data remained to be seen.

There was another thing he needed to know. He set the comp to display the dates on the files. They had last been updated six months after he'd left. In the spring. He didn't like what he was thinking.

"Doctor, I wonder if you could tell me how long I've been gone."

"Don't you know?"

"There aren't a lot of clocks or calendars in the other-world."

"No, I suppose there aren't." Her eyes searched his face; presumably she was trying to find something in his elven features to clue her in on a tack to take. She bit her lip, then tentatively said, "Just about a year."

He closed his eyes, felt his shoulders sag. Bear had told him never to trust an elf.
Time passes differently.
He should have known better. "A year and a day, maybe?"

Dr. Spae smiled, worried and sympathetic. "I'm afraid I don't remember the exact date of your departure."

"The date doesn't really matter," he assured her. Scammed again, and left overdrawn at the promise bank. What
had
he done to Bennett to be jerked around this way?

"A lot has happened while you were away, John."

He could say the same thing. Fraoch's laugh echoed in his ears. Yeah, a lot had happened, but he wasn't going to talk about it.

Dr. Spae, however, had something she wanted to talk about. She told him about a killer "thing" that seemed to be haunting New England. For reasons that weren't entirely clear to John, she believed that the thing was related to Quetzal, but even the hint of a connection chilled him. She didn't have a clear connection that she could point to between this
Wisteria
killer and Quetzal because, she said, her investigations had been frustrated. "They've got me running after a thousand stupid little outbreaks from the otherworld," she told him. "Every time I try to get focused on this whatever-it-is, something else weird comes up, and they send me off to investigate it, pointing out, all too reasonably, that there may only be one opportunity to look into these other things. I can't seem to make them understand how important this threat may be."

"What am / supposed to do, Doctor? I don't even know what you're talking about."

She looked at him as if she wasn't sure what she wanted from him. After a bit, she said, "John, I could use your help."

"I'm not interested in helping you hunt down any monsters. We did that once before, and nearly got ourselves killed. I've got a hunt of my own to take care of, one I've put off for far too long."

"You're still not ready to do that. You haven't verified the data yet." She paused a moment before offering him some bait. "At the firm we have good computer access. You could run cross-checks."