The Supernaturalist (13 page)

But there was another reason for Ditto’s guilt. There were things Stefan needed to know about him. Certain talents that he had. He should have confessed to his friend years ago, but the time had never been right. And he had become so accustomed to keeping his gifts a secret. In comic books, people with gifts became superheroes; in
real life they became outcasts. And Ditto did not want to be an outcast from the only group of people who had ever cared for him.

Lucien Bonn had been christened Ditto by a sharptongued girl in the Bartoli Institute. It wasn’t a very smart nickname. Obvious, really. Ditto had a habit of repeating whatever people said to him. This gave him a moment to think of a reply. Not that he was slow, quite the opposite in fact. He just wanted to be sure that whatever he said didn’t give anything away about his special talents. It was bad enough being a Bartoli Baby without everyone thinking he was crazy too.
Hey, did you hear? The midget thinks he can see ghosts.
No, thank you.

Ditto’s suspicions that he was abnormal were confirmed on his ninth birthday. Until then he had hoped that he was merely short for his age. But by the time he was nine, it was getting pretty obvious that the arrested physical development mutation so common among Bartoli Babies was beginning to affect him.

Doctor Bartoli himself had called Ditto into his office for his monthly measurements. He stood inside the great man’s door, shivering in his paper jumpsuit. Doctor Bartoli liked to keep the air conditioning at eight degrees centigrade. He said that cold was good for the intellect.

‘Well now, Lucien,’ said Bartoli, opening Ditto’s file on his computer. ‘Let’s see how you are progressing. Stand on the spot.’

Ditto positioned himself on a red circle in the centre of the floor. Bartoli circled him with a measuring tape and cranium calipers. He hummed and hawed as he measured each of Ditto’s limbs, his trunk and his head size.

‘Another failure,’ he said eventually, slumping into his office chair. ‘Just like the rest. Where did I go wrong?’

Ditto didn’t answer. The doctor was talking to himself as he always did.

Eventually Bartoli addressed the small shivering boy.

‘Well, Lucien. I am sorry to tell you that you will in all likelihood grow no taller. Your head is one quarter the length of your person; by nine years it should be only one fifth. The Bartoli bug has bitten.’

Ditto felt his heart sink. He had been so hoping for a normal life outside the Institute.

‘But all is not lost. Perhaps you have other gifts. Something to elevate you above us normal humans. Perhaps Doctor Bartoli opened a door somewhere in your mind? Eh, Lucien? Do you have other gifts?’

Bartoli was pretending that the question was a casual one, but his entire body was tense, waiting for the boy’s answer.

Ditto was only nine years old, but he was no fool. Years of smart drugs and intelligence exercises had left him quite perceptive. He knew the importance of this question. He also knew what happened to Bartoli Babies who admitted to having gifts. They were moved to another wing of the Institute and observed twenty-four hours a day. They
were medicated, injected and interrogated for as long as Bartoli could hold on to them.

The doctor leaned forward in his chair.

‘Do you see things, Lucien? Some of the other children claim to see strange beings. Do you see beings, Lucien?’

Ditto could have told the truth then.
Yes, Doctor, I see them all around us. The blue creatures. They can see me too. Sometimes they visit. And that’s not all. I can help people. Make them feel better just by touching them.

He could have said all of that, but he didn’t, for to reveal his talents would have meant spending the rest of his life as an experiment. So Ditto looked Bartoli straight in the eye and said, ‘I saw a werewolf once, outside my window. I thought it was a dream.’

The doctor sighed. ‘Very well, Lucien. There is nothing extraordinary about you. As a special favour I will personally see to it that you are sent to a State school and not Clarissa Frayne. You can go.’

And that was it. No apology. No compensation for being born a mutant. Within six months, Ditto had been moved out of the Institute into a State school, where he stayed until the age of sixteen. In all that time he never told anybody about any of his gifts. His secrets stayed secret until Stefan came into his life. And even Stefan did not know everything. But soon he would, and there would be hell to pay when his friend found out.

‘Miss Faustino was right, you know,’ said Cosmo tentatively. ‘It isn’t your fault, Stefan. You were just doing your best. How could you possibly know the electricity was making them reproduce.’

Stefan did not respond. After saying goodbye to his old tutor, guilt and helplessness had dealt him a double blow. It was a combination that would be hard to shake.

So Cosmo did what any teenager would do. He raided the fridge, stuffing his pockets with as many snacks as he could cram in. Whatever wouldn’t fit, he ate. Fourteen years in Clarissa Frayne had taught him never to leave food behind. It was quite possible that the combination of acid vat and junk food would have him throwing up for the next day or two, but if he left any food he would regret it for years.

Stefan broke his silence six streets west of Abracadabra Street.

‘Anywhere here is fine.’

‘President Faustino said I was to drop you at the door,’ objected the driver.

‘Maybe she did,’ said Stefan. ‘But I’m not ready to give up the location of my headquarters just yet.’

The driver laughed. ‘1405 Abracadabra Street. I’ve already sent the coordinates to the Satellite.’

Stefan sunk even deeper into his foul mood. The Supernaturalists were no longer a secret organization. There were adults involved now. The corporations were involving them in their schemes. The next thing you knew, they’d all have dental plans and pensions.

‘Where have you been?’ demanded Mona, wrapping one arm around Stefan’s shoulders and the other around Cosmo. ‘We thought you two were in jail for sure.’

Stefan shrugged her off. ‘Set up the Parabola on the roof. I want it running twenty-four seven.’

Mona stepped back from the pair, as though she had been slapped.

‘We were worried, Stefan, about the two of you. Don’t we deserve an explanation? Aren’t we supposed to be a team?’

Stefan almost talked then. He nearly shared his burden, but the guilt and the helplessness were still too strong.

‘Not now, Mona. OK? Just set up the dish.’

‘The Parabola?’ said Mona. ‘That never worked before. I don’t even know if it’s charged.’

‘Just set it up, Mona,’ said Stefan, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Please.’

The youth stumbled towards his cubicle without another word. With each step he seemed shorter. The group watched him go in silence.

‘What happened to him?’ asked Mona, when the echo of Stefan’s footfalls had faded. ‘I’ve seen him upset before, but not like this. It’s like his life is over.’

‘Not over,’ Cosmo replied. ‘He just has to start it again.’

He explained what had happened at Myishi Tower. How blasting Parasites just speeded up their reproduction process. Three years of helping your enemies to populate the planet. The words seemed to hang in the warehouse air. Damning their actions. How many people had had their life force drained because of them?

‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Ditto. ‘Those blue bubbles are baby Parasites?’

‘Not babies. They come out all grown up and thirsty for life force.’

Ditto climbed up on a stool beside the table. ‘It’s the energy-scrubbing part that interests me. These creatures are part of nature. Like us. Maybe we should think about what helping them to reproduce means to the ecology.’

Mona rounded on him. ‘The ecology! These monsters
are sucking the life out of people! You wouldn’t be worried about nature if you’d ever had one sitting on your chest.’

‘Hey, come on, Mona, don’t blow a valve. I’m only saying that we have to find another way. Speeding up the Parasite’s reproduction process is not good for anyone.’

Mona took several breaths, then punched Ditto gently on the shoulder. ‘You’re right. Of course. It’s a shock, that’s all. I thought we were doing the right thing. Actually saving people. Now I don’t know and Stefan, well, he won’t even talk to us…’

Ditto walked across the table, wrapping his short arms around Mona’s shoulders.

‘He’s supposed to be our leader. But sometimes we forget how young he is. Stefan will be OK in the morning, you’ll see. Now you set up the dish. Take your time, we won’t be going hunting tonight.

Mona sniffed. ‘OK.’ She turned to Cosmo. ‘Sorry about the dramatics. I am glad to see you back safely. Let’s go up on the roof and I’ll show you how to operate the Parabola.’

Cosmo nodded, smiling, but Ditto slapped a thermostrip on his head.

‘Absolutely not. Cosmo needs to get some sleep. Oh, I’m sure you two youngsters would love to spend the day discussing circuit-breakers beneath the smog. But this young man is not properly healed from his adventure on the rooftop. If he doesn’t rest, we could be looking at a
fever or even rejection. He must be dead on his feet.’

As soon as Ditto said it, Cosmo began to feel tired. Suddenly his forehead ached and his knee sent twinges of pain from ankle to hip.

‘Actually I am a bit tired. Maybe I could come up later…’

‘That’s OK,’ said Mona. ‘You sleep as long as you need to. Ditto is right, you’ve been through a lot. I can show you the Parabola tomorrow.’

Cosmo nodded. He would sleep now, even though he would love to spend the day discussing circuit-breakers with Mona Vasquez.

Cosmo woke with a start, tumbling from his bed on to the pig-iron floor. The military-green blanket was tangled around his legs and for a moment Redwood’s insane face hovered before his eyes.

Cosmo sat still for a moment, letting consciousness
get a grip on his vision. Gradually reality overpowered his dreams. The sleep, however troubled, had done him good. The swelling had gone down on his forehead and his knee barely hurt at all.

Once my hair grows back, I’ll almost pass for human,
he thought with a wry smile.

Cosmo stood up, pulling on the army-style fatigues provided by Stefan. You could never have too many pockets apparently. The warehouse was quiet apart from a croaking snore from Ditto’s cubicle. To look at him, you wouldn’t think the Bartoli Baby’s lungs were big enough to produce a noise like that. Stefan’s curtain was still pulled across, but Mona’s bed was empty and made. Either she was up already, or she hadn’t been to bed.

There was something else unusual. An absence of a noise that was as much a part of the Abracadabra Street warehouse as the curtains. The computer offline. Of course it was. There would be no more midnight jaunts. No more lightning rods and no more blue spheres. People would just have to lose their life force, as they had probably been doing for thousands of years.

Cosmo poured a cup of sim-coffee from the pot. More for the warmth of the mug in his hands than the actual taste. There was another cup on the table. Its chrome handle fashioned to resemble an exhaust pipe.
Mech-lube,
said the letters on its face. Cosmo filled the mug and headed for the elevator.

There was a small breeze-block hut on the roof. Squat and basic, with no luxuries except for power lines twisted through a foam-insulation-stuffed hole in the wall. On the low roof stood a mike and dish apparatus. It looked like an old-fashioned digital TV antenna, but closer inspection revealed three modern chip boxes soldered to its base. Obviously this was the Parabola Stefan had referred to.

Mona was inside on a plastic bench, wrapped in a foil sleeping bag. Lightweight and superinsulated, the bags had been pioneered by astronauts and made popular by homeless people the world over. Mona’s head lolled back against a large cushion with Styrofoam balls leaking from one corner.

Cosmo took a moment to study her. She was pretty as far as he could tell, but not like the girls on TV. Pretty in a real person kind of a way, as if there were feelings behind the face.

‘Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there?’ said Mona without opening her eyes.

Cosmo tried to speak.
Say something clever,
he ordered his brain.

It’s not going to happen,
his brain replied.
You have enough spare cells for one word. Make it a good one.

‘Coffee,’ blurted Cosmo. It could have been a lot worse under the circumstances.

Mona stretched like a cat, her wiggling toes peeking out from under the unzipped sleeping bag.

‘Little piggies,’ said Cosmo’s mouth before he could stop it.

Mona opened her eyes, swivelling them to spear the unfortunate youth.

‘Excuse me, Cosmo?’

‘This little piggie went to the market. It’s a rhyme… for babies.’

Mona drew her toes beneath the foil. ‘I’m not a baby, Cosmo.’

‘Sorry. There was this boy in the orphanage. He used to say that every time he saw a piggie.’

‘So now I’m a piggie.’

‘Exactly. No, no. Not you, your toes. How could you be a piggie? You’re too…’

He prayed silently that Mona would cut him off before he could finish the sentence, but she had no intention of doing so. She sat back, tilting her head to one side.

‘I’m too what?’

Cosmo felt as though his brain were expanding. Surely the plate in his head would pop right off.

‘Too… eh… human.’

Mona stared at him. ‘Have you ever had, like, a conversation with another person before?’

Cosmo shrugged. ‘Not really, unless you count “Yes, Marshal. No, Marshal. Whatever you say, Marshal, sir.”’

Mona accepted the mug of sim-coffee and thankfully let the subject drop.

‘Thanks, Cosmo. What time is it?’

‘Sunset,’ said Cosmo.

Mona peered through the hut’s window.

‘Purple tonight. People with allergies are going to suffer. Did you ever see a movie sunset, Cosmo? All orange and pretty. Do you think sunsets were really like that?’

Cosmo shrugged. ‘Maybe. I doubt it. They can do anything with special effects these days.’

Mona took a sip of the sim-coffee. ‘You’re probably right.’

She shrugged off the sleeping bag, leaning forward to a control box balanced on two blocks and a plank. A green light winked on the display.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Fully charged. Now we can spot any Parasite within a kilometre of Abracadabra Street.’

Cosmo studied the box. It didn’t look sophisticated
enough to make toast, never mind track ghostly creatures.

‘If this thing can track the Parasites, surely we can find out where they live?’

‘It can spot them,’ corrected Mona, ‘not track them. As soon as they leave the dish’s footprint, they’re gone. The Parabola was invented by the big power companies to pinpoint power leaks, not track Parasites. It operates on the same principal as a platypus’s bill, which uses inbuilt sensors to hone in on electrical charges generated by living beings. I saw that on one of those nature vids that Stefan makes us watch as part of our
education.’

The Parabola control box was plugged into an ancient laptop computer. Mona booted it up, opening a 3D grid program.

‘Whenever the Parabola dish picks up a Parasite’s spectrum, it logs its position, speed and direction. Over time we get a build-up of information.’

‘Could this lead us to where the Parasites live?’

‘No,’ said Mona. ‘It’s a complete waste of time. They can come from anywhere, at any time. Their direction depends on what disaster they’re heading for. And the dish only has a footprint of a kilometre.’

‘So why are we doing it?’

Mona checked behind her to make sure they were alone. ‘Desperate measures. We ran this program for over a year with nothing to show for it. We should be out there, hunting them.’

‘But even if we find them, what can we do? The lightning rods just help them to breed.’

Mona ran her fingers through her tousled hair. ‘I don’t know. What about water? Maybe we could spray them down. There must be something.’

A blue blip appeared on the screen.

‘There’s one, look. A hundred metres north-east. Travelling at sixty kilometres per hour.’

Cosmo hurried to the window. In the distance a lone Parasite disappeared over the lip of a building.

‘So what good is that to us?’ pouted Mona. ‘None, unless we can catch him.’ She leaned back on the cushion, hugging the foil blanket tight. ‘What we need is a miracle.’

Cosmo smiled. ‘Well we’re in the right place.’

‘You got that right, Cosmo. Abracadabra Street. You know why it’s called that?’

Cosmo sat beside her on the bench, shaking his head.

‘Years ago, the geniuses who designed Satellite City decided that there would be specific sections for the artisans. That’s why you have Van Gogh Arcade and Whitman Heights. All the painters were supposed to live in Van Gogh and all the poets in Whitman. Abracadabra Street was for Vegas people. Magicians, lounge singers and dancers. It was a stupid idea. You can’t put art in a box. Nobody with real talent is going to be told where to live. Stefan picked this place up for a song. He doesn’t even pay taxes. Smart guy, most of the time.’

‘Most of the time,’ said Stefan’s voice behind them. His tone did not resonate with cheer. Nobody would be asking Stefan to play Santa in the Christmas pageant, even if there were more than a couple of million people still celebrating that holiday.

‘Mind if I take over? I need to talk to our new Spotter.’

Mona got to her feet, holding the blanket around her shoulders.

‘Sure. I could do with a few hours in a real bed. Who knows. I might even go out in the daylight, now that we have the nights off.’

Mona bent low so her face was level with Cosmo’s.

‘That was nice shooting with the tank. You saved me again.’

She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks.’

‘Welcome,’ mumbled Cosmo. His face felt as though someone had plugged it into a wall socket.

Mona laughed. ‘You keep this up and you’ll spend your whole day getting kissed.’

Cosmo finally got a sentence together. ‘Maybe next time you’ll save me. Then I’ll owe you a kiss.’ It was a grammatical masterpiece given the circumstances.

‘Maybe,’ said Mona, her eyes twinkling. ‘Maybe I will.’

She walked over to Stefan.

‘Are you talking to me now?’

Stefan didn’t look any happier than he had the previous
night. ‘Listen, Mona. Last night, I was in a bad way. My work got trashed.’

Mona poked his chest with a knuckle. ‘
Our
work. We’re the Supernaturalists. A team.’

‘You’re right. A team. I’ll keep it in mind from now on.’

She squeezed his forearm gently. ‘You do that, Stefan.’

Mona ran across the cold rooftop, taking tiny steps inside the silver cocoon of her sleeping bag. Stefan stepped inside the hut, closing the concertina door. He sat beside Cosmo.

‘So Cosmo, how are you feeling?’

Cosmo shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I feel like a TV screen with nothing on it. Blank. I haven’t had time to become a person.’

‘Satellite City can do that to you. This place has no respect for individuals. Fit in, do what you’re told and don’t ask questions.’ He twiddled a dial on the Parabola box. ‘You have time now, Cosmo. Time to be part of the group.’

‘Am I really? Part of the group?’

Stefan sighed. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been in a bad temper lately, Cosmo. But that’s not you, it’s me.’

Cosmo did not answer immediately, staring intently at the computer screen.

‘If I’m ever to be a real part of this group, you need to tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’ asked Stefan, though he already knew.

‘Why we’re doing this. What happened to you?’

Stefan’s face was grim for several seconds, then it softened. He had made up his mind. ‘OK, Cosmo. You deserve the truth. We all deserve the truth, but take my word for it, sometimes knowing everything doesn’t make it any easier to sleep at night…’

Stefan leaned forward, resting his face in his hands and began speaking. Hesitantly at first, but soon the words rolled out like pebbles from a sack.

‘Three years ago I was a hotshot cadet. Fifteen years old and at the top of my class. Professor Faustino, my tutor and a close family friend, had put my name forward for officer school. Then one day it all went horribly wrong. My mother called me at the academy. She needed a lift home from the clinic where she worked and I had just passed my cruiser jockey test. So I picked her up in the police cruiser. I figured I would swing by our apartment, then drop the cruiser off at Police HQ.’

Stefan kneaded his eye sockets with his fists.

‘Stupid. A police cruiser is always a target. Always. Innocent civilians are never supposed to be taken in the car. I knew that. What was I thinking?’

‘What happened?’ asked Cosmo.

‘We were halfway home when the car exploded. The boffins said it was a camouflaged mine in the chassis. They never found out who planted it.’

Stefan ran a finger along the scar at the edge of his mouth.

‘I was pretty broken up. Mother was badly injured too. Very badly. But she would have lived, I’m certain of it. I’ve seen plenty of wounds and she would have lived.’

‘If it hadn’t been for the Parasites?’ guessed Cosmo.

‘Those blue devils swarmed down on us like bees to honey. And I couldn’t move, I couldn’t save her. I just lay there pinned by the cab. Watching while they sucked my mother dry. Three of them landed on me. Arms and chest. With those big eyes staring down.’

Stefan took a break, dragging a sleeve across his eyes.

‘The paramedics were there in seconds. There happened to be a unit close by. Ditto saved me with a defibrillator. But for my mother, it was too late. I was too late. I failed her.’

Cosmo thought long and hard before speaking.

‘You didn’t fail her,’ he said. ‘The Parasites are natural. You can’t fight nature.’

Stefan draped an arm around Cosmo’s shoulder.

‘Thanks, Cosmo,’ he said. ‘That’s a nice thing to say, but whales were natural and we sure got rid of them.’