The Silver Glove (14 page)

“That's not what I said,” I muttered woozily.

He studied me a minute. Then he leaned across the desk and spoke quietly to me, seriously. “Your mother's safe. Couldn't you tell that when you saw her skating with me? That's why I showed her to you. She's safe and she's happy.”

“You're lying!” I said. Now we were on the subject, and that was the best I could do!

“You saw her,” he insisted calmly. “She was smiling, wasn't she? Think back. How did she look?”

“It doesn't matter how she looked! You put a spell on her, that's all. She doesn't know what she's doing.”

He pursed up his lips as if he was really considering what I'd said. “I'm sure a smart kid like you knows,” he remarked, “that it's very common for a child of divorced parents to have all sorts of fantasies about any man who seems likely to replace their real dad.”

A wave of dizziness washed over me. I shook it off. I said, “That's a lot of crap and you know it!”

“Is it?” he said mildly. He squashed the butt of his cigar out in the ashtray.

“Tell me how many kids like that make up fantasies about people's shadows being stolen—old people, street people, for cripes' sake—people who could disappear and everybody would say, oh, that's too bad but of course it happens!”

“Disappear?” he said, with this lazy smile that made me twist inside. “Who said anything about disappearing?”

“Then what is going to happen to them?” I said.

“Something fine and grand,” he said expansively. “A new life. A fresh start in a new place. Isn't that the American ideal?”

“What?” I said, bewildered. “What good is a fresh start to a bunch of old people and homeless?”

“Oh, not their worn-out bodies,” he said, flipping one thick paw in the air to dismiss this worthless notion. “Surely your grandmother figured this out and told you? I'm only taking spirits, souls, which I'm going to install in new bodies. Strong, new bodies; strong and young.”

That was the kind of thing necromancers do, Gran had said.

“And dead,” I whispered. “
Dead
bodies, right?”

“Clever girl,” he smiled. “Right at the moment, yes. But not for much longer. That's the whole idea.”

“Whose dead bodies? Where?”

“All right, I'll play,” he said, fishing a fresh cigar out of his breast pocket and clipping off one end with a little silver clipper. “Suppose there was a war going on, somewhere else, somewhere
far
.”

A war, Gran had said, taking up all the energies of Sorcery Hall.

“And suppose one side had a lot of casualties and was running out of recruits. That side might hire a very talented recruiter to go and find some new fighters. The very talented recruiter could be somebody very skilled, somebody who knew how to patch up dead warriors, bodies that have fighting strength and skill built into their nerve-paths and muscles and that aren't actually used up yet, just—damaged. Suppose he could get them up and moving around again, using souls lifted out of other bodies—old bodies, sick and crazy bodies.”

“You can't,” I said, feeling a little sick and crazy myself.

“Who said anything about me?” he said, shooting his eyebrows high in surprise. He lit the fresh cigar. “I'm talking about a figure out of fantasy, like a top-grade wizard from a role-playing game. I'm talking about the greatest necromancer ever seen.
That
person could do it. You bet he could.”

I swallowed, thinking of Dirty Rose. “They wouldn't fight,” I said. “Street people won't fight in anybody's stupid war!”

“Sure they will.” He actually chuckled. I have never heard such an evil sound in my life. “They get a quick fix for the major kinks in their miserable minds: first-rate therapy, absolutely free!

“Then they'll wake up totally disoriented in their new bodies, and before they can even think about it they'll be hustled into battle. The bodies, warrior-bodies, will know what to do automatically. Fear will do the rest. Men-souls, women-souls, it makes no difference—fear makes hard fighters. They'll fight so well that I'm sure this recruiter I'm talking about will get a contract for a return trip. There are lots of souls here on your pretty earth, enough to man even a really, really long war.”

He's really saying this, I thought, with Mrs. Denby's footsteps clicking by in the hall, as they did just then. But why not? If she did happen to overhear what he was saying, she'd probably think it was just some weird kind of therapy going on in the office of the new school shrink.

“And we're left with what?” I said. “Their own, real bodies? A whole bunch of people keeling over dead all of a sudden?”

He shrugged. “So what? Is Dirty Rose, for instance, happy in that lumpy old beat up carcass of hers? Think of it as a favor, and not only to her or the others. This planet is wildly overpopulated. A little culling of the least fit will be good for the rest.”

“You really stink, you know that?” I gasped.

He made a tsk-tsk sound. “Your mother said you read a lot. Do you always get so worked up over a mere story?”

“My mom's no—no warrior,” I said. Against my wobbling will, my eyes filled with hot tears.

“Oh, there'll be no zombie-battlefield for her, don't worry about that.” He sipped smoke from the cigar and his expression became bland.

“You may find this hard to believe, Tina,” he purred, “but I've grown very fond of your mother, and she knows it.

“Or to put it another way, she's something very special and
I
know it. She has great potential, which I can put to use, if she'll let me; and she will. She's smart enough to know what a terrific team we could make, the two of us  . . . I don't really need a fetch in her case. I only fashioned one, a very special one made of light instead of shadow, as a form of basic insurance. She'd come with me willingly without that.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said. ‘Even when she finds out about Ushah?”

“Ushah,” he said, taking another puff and waving smoke away, “gets wild ideas sometimes. She over-rates herself, don't you think? It's your mother I want for my wife.”

“You have a wife!” I yelled. “Lots of wives! Ushah told me! You're some kind of lousy rotten Bluebeard!”

“Calm down,” he said. “You don't really know what you're getting all excited about. A girl like you, even a very bright girl with a very smart grandmother, shouldn't mess around in things she doesn't understand yet.”

I jumped up and stood there weaving and glaring, hanging onto the edge of Brightner's desk, my throat all dry from blue cigar smoke.

“We'll stop you,” I said. “Gran and me and—and Sorcery Hall!”

“Sorcery Hall?” He grinned. “No, Tina, not Sorcery Hall. This is their war we've been talking about, those know-it-alls! They're much too busy defending themselves to even notice a little scuffle out here in the boondocks, let alone divert any of their own forces to try to influence its outcome. You're on your own in this one, you and the old lady. Against
me
.”

He paused to let that sink in. Then be said, “It would be better, much better, for you to stop struggling and give in. You could start by bringing your grandmother to me tonight. I'm willing to take the three of you into my household. You could all be together. There would be great advantages.”

He leaned toward me, talking in a gruff, wheedling tone, smiling at me with his dark, hound-dog eyes.

“Do you want your mother to be happy? She would be, with me. Do you want your Gran's mind cleared to its old sharpness? I could arrange it. Do you want to practice magic yourself? I could teach you.”

“Leave me alone,” I said, or anyway I tried to say it.

“I think we need to negotiate,” he said. “But to talk properly with a fellow like me, you have to descend to my level. I'm a plain man, from plain people, remember? You and I should start over, with the basics. Such as an old-fashioned handshake. With the left hand. I'm a lefty myself, didn't you notice? But not with a glove on, that would be an insult.

“So you'll have to take the glove off, won't you.”

I actually took hold of one finger and began to pull off the glove. The cigar smoke had to be a drug, eating up my willpower and turning me all around.

I had to get out of there. I turned hazily and lurched in what I hoped frantically was the direction of the door.

He said, “Think about it. You have till closing time.”

I stopped, rocking on my feet. “What do you mean by that?” My voice sounded far away in my own ears.

He said, “Tonight I expect to fill out my initial draft of recruits. I'll be leaving. With your mother, of course. Definitely with your mother.”

“Closing time,” I said. “What's closing time?”

“Think about it a little. Clever kid like you, you'll figure it out.”

As I stumbled out of his office, he called after me, “I'll be watching for you. You're a real scrapper, I can see that. We'll take off the
gloves
, right? And really settle this, once and for all.”

 

13
In the Bag

 

 

N
O WAY COULD I JUST WALTZ BACK
into a classroom after that. I hid out for a little while in the girls' room, slapping cold water on my face with my right hand—I didn't plan to ever take the silver glove off again—and blinking at my reflection in the mirror.

To look at me, you would never guess what I had just been through. Just let me try and tell anybody about that crazy conversation, and see where it got me!

After a while I picked up my bookbag and walked out of the school building. Maybe I would never see it, or my friends, or anything of that whole life again. I had no idea what to do now. None. There's a point, I guess, when you realize that what you're up against is just too much for you; that you are done-for.

Done-for is how I felt, but how could that be, when I was only fighting for what was right? My mom, our lives, people's souls, for cripes' sake? We were right, and we were going to lose, because I was outclassed, outgunned, and stymied. It was just me and Brightner now, in a little peripheral squabble while Sorcery Hall was busy with the main show, the wizard war, somewhere else.

Brightner knew he was way too much for me. I believed it, too. Why not? Just because I had managed not to get snagged by The Claw—so far?

What a record!

With this bitter thought thudding around and around in my head I trudged home, not looking left or right for fear of seeing some poor jerk walk by without a shadow—some jerk I couldn't do a thing to help.

I let myself into the apartment and checked on Mom. She was asleep on the living room rug with the shawl collar of her robe pulled up around her ears; hear no evil, I thought, and decided to let her be.

Then I went downstairs into the basement to do the laundry.

I suppose that sounds funny, but when you're all used up and sort of drizzling drearily inside instead of thinking while your body is buzzing and twitching with the energy of fear, a mindless routine task is just right. The kind of thing that normally you try to get out of doing.

Mom and I always took turns doing the laundry. She actually liked it, because down in the basement with the machines grinding around and around she could sit and read manuscripts without being interrupted by the telephone.

I generally hated the basement because it was creepy. Today nothing could scare me, not after my session with the Demon Shrink.

So after I checked the phone messages—including three solicitations from computers trying to sell me insurance—I emptied the hamper. I sorted the stuff out (there wasn't much; neither of us had been exactly going through our wardrobes lately) and lugged it all, with soap powder and some leftovers to nibble on while I waited and
The Count of Monte Cristo
to read, down in the elevator.

The basement is warm in cold weather, from the boilers. The walls are painted with green and yellow enamel to make the space cheerful, I guess, which it isn't. You have to walk past the wire cages of the storage room to get to the machines, for one thing.

I have always thought the storage area was incredibly sinister. Who knew what might be lurking in there in all that piled-up junk, watching you through the wire mesh? Things strong enough to break any of the assortment of padlocks on the doors, you can bet. Going by there was always good for a thrill.

Not that afternoon. I plodded on into the wash room without a single prickle of apprehension. I guess I was all terrified out.

The wash room is like a laundromat, with one row of washers down the middle, three dryers in a row at the end of the room, two tables for folding that people are always fighting over, and a set of molded plastic chairs in bright orange. Nests of pipes wind along the ceiling and the corners of the room, and huge black hoses snake into a row of sinks behind the washers, to drain the wash water. The floor is covered with dark brown linoleum tile.

The room was still and dim, the machines were silent. I switched on the fluorescent lights and got to work.

Most days people's hired houseworkers come down with washes to do, which is okay, except that sometimes they bring noisy radios or they smoke up the place so you can hardly breathe. There are bright-colored tin ashtrays with scalloped edges all over the place. Whenever I'm down there I try to sneak a few of them out with me and throw them away, as a subtle form of discouragement.

So I was glad to have the place to myself. I couldn't even get into
Monte Cristo
, though Edmund Dantes was just about to take his revenge on rotten Danglars, which is a part of the book I particularly like.

I had too much to think about for stories. Not all of it was terrible, though. In fact, I could see some ways in which the visit to Brightner hadn't been a total loss. I knew now that the glove did protect me from Brightner himself, at least in some ways and in some circumstances—unless he had been only pretending, misleading me so that later on I would trust the powers of the glove when it couldn't save me.