Unshapely Things (25 page)

A burst of conversation surrounded me as I stepped out of a skylight and onto the deck. My eyes picked out faces I knew: Murdock, of course, his brother Bar, the commissioner, a couple of obvious cop-types, a neighborhood activist whose name I didn't think I knew, several more people whose identities I couldn't begin to guess.

"Glad you came," Murdock said from behind me. When I turned, he pulled back in mild surprise. "Whoa! Do I want to know what happened?'

"Let's just say it was a mugging that went bad."

He grinned. "You should have called the cops."

"I had some unexpected backup."

Murdock looked at me with curiosity, then smiled. "House rules: no business discussions on Sunday. Let me introduce you around." He ran through the guests, giving me brief bios under his breath. Nearly everyone had some political agenda, which was no surprise given whose house we were in.

"I never realized you can see the harbor from here," I said, changing the subject. The Murdocks' home sat in the middle of Southie, with the Weird and the downtown skyline beyond it to the north and the harbor directly east. West and south, the low-rise neighborhoods of Dorchester and the South End out to Roxbury spread out. If the neighborhood ever got discovered, they could make a mint selling the place.

"It's going to ruin the whole damn game!" said the man standing next to me and talking to the commissioner. Murdock had said he was a local political fund-raiser. I groaned inwardly because I knew what was coming. A fairy had just won a case before the Supreme Court, allowing him to play for the Red Sox. Always a place where baseball ruled the hearts, if not the minds, of its fans, most of Boston was in an uproar over it.

"I think we'll have to wait and see," the commissioner said diplomatically.

The man looked at him in horror. "Wait and see? Come on, these guys got powers the average Joe can't compete with. How are we going to keep 'em from flying from base to base? The only way to compete will be to just hire more of them until there ain't any normal people playing."

The commissioner seemed to look around to see who was listening. He glanced once at me before saying, "I agree that will probably happen eventually. The only way to fight fire is with fire sometimes." The fund-raiser nodded vigorously. The commissioner placed a companionable hand on his shoulder. "The fey may intrude in areas they don't belong, but God knows we need a better outfield."

"What!" the fund-raiser said, then almost choked on his own laughter. "You're too much, Commissioner."

He smiled indulgendy. "Yes, well, I believe dinner should be about ready." The fund-raiser laughed again and followed the commissioner downstairs.

I arrived in the blessedly cool dining room just as everyone was jostling for chairs and ended up sitting between the fund-raiser and a young black woman from a nonprofit arts council. The dinner was served family style, and dishes were passed with the overt politeness of people who did not normally share food. That is, until the banal pleasantries became exhausted, and someone said something more pointed.

I had only half an ear to an arts funding lament, when the woman next to me said, "And, of course, the fey don't help."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

She shrugged as she moved steamed potatoes around on her plate. "It's trendy to be associated with fey art, so fey artists attract money that should rightly be going to struggling organizations."

"But is that the fault of the fey or the people who buy their art?"

"Of course, it's the fey," the fund-raiser interrupted, as he took an oversize bite of pot roast. "They push in everywhere—sports, politics, the arts."

A quick glance around the table made me realize there were no other fey present, unless someone was a druid I couldn't sense. "Isn't that generalizing a bit?" I tried to maintain a neutral tone.

"It's hard not to be annoyed by someone who smears some paint on pointed ears, then rolls on the canvas. That idea is decades old, but it sells simply because a fey is doing it now," said the woman.

"And now they want to be categorized as a minority so that they can force themselves into other neighborhoods and destroy them like that Weird place," said the fund-raiser.

I sipped water from my glass to remain calm. I had grown up not two blocks from the table we were sitting at. "The fey live all over the city, even here in Southie," I said.

"Oh, I don't mean those. They're working folks like you and me. I don't think I've met you before, by the way."

"I'm a friend of Leo's," I said. It always felt odd for me to use Murdock's first name. "Are you on the force?"

"No. I run an art gallery for druids."

The fund-raiser chuckled. "Everyone's a comedian today."

"I don't think that's funny," the arts woman snapped as she shifted her back to me slightly. That pretty much killed the conversation. As I finished eating, I glanced up at the commissioner. He was nodding as the man on his left spoke, but his eyes were on me. He didn't change his expression for a long moment, then the slightest smile fluttered across his lips. No business on Sunday, my ass, I thought.

After the meal, I lingered in the parlor mentally debating how long I had to remain in the name of politeness. The conversation often veered into complaints about the fey— sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. I kept quiet, merely nodded at occasional remarks to fend off any actual verbal exchanges. It struck me at how vocal people could be with their animosity when they found themselves in like company. I had done it myself at the Guild, but the level of anger, even hate, in the room surprised me, all the more so considering so many of those in attendance were theoretically civic leaders.

After another hour, I approached the commissioner when he was briefly alone.

"Thank you for dinner. I'm sorry I can't stay longer, but I have an appointment," I said.

"Really?" he said in a way that made me feel instantly guilty. I wanted to say, no, I just can't stand being around your guests anymore, but I refrained. He continued smiling. "Well, it was good to see you under less unfortunate circumstances. Have a good evening."

Maybe from his point of view, I thought. We shook hands, and I made for the door. As I stepped outside, the doorknob pulled out of my hand, and I turned to see Murdock standing on the threshold. "Leaving so soon?"

"Why did you invite me today?"

He glanced over his shoulder, stepped fully out of the house, and closed the door. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You knew who was going to be here today, but you invited me anyway. I haven't heard so many sophomoric comments about the fey since, well, since I was a sophomore."

He crossed his arms and leaned against the arch of the doorway. "I thought it was important for you to see you're not the only one who dislikes the Guild."

"You could have just told me."

He shrugged. "You wouldn't have heard me."

Annoyed, I looked away up the street. I didn't like being played, but he was right. After a couple of calming breaths, I felt the anger in my chest dissipate. Murdock was one of the few people I knew who could get away with a stunt like this, especially when he was right. "Okay, lesson learned. Happy?"

"Satisfied is more like it. You have a tendency to get incredibly focused, which is a good thing sometimes. But you need to keep it in perspective. The Guild doesn't do what it does just to personally piss you off. It pisses off a lot of people."

"What, so I should ease up on the Guild?"

He gave an exasperated sigh. "No, I'm just trying to tell you that the only way to change the Guild is to work with it, not against it. Though they wouldn't say it quite that way, most of the people inside the house understand that. That's what they work for every day: change everyone can live with."

"Even people who hate me?"

"The way of the world is conflict, Connor. That won't change. You can only change the resolution."

I looked at him curiously. "When'd you become such a philosopher?"

He grinned broadly then. "I keep telling you not to make things personal. You'll accomplish more and regret less. If that makes me a philosopher, then, hell, kiss my ring."

The air felt slightly damp on my skin and it moved enough to persuade me it would be bearable to walk. I like walking everywhere, but the ongoing heat was getting to be depressing. As I moved northward, the neat, trim row houses of Southie gave way to a section of warehouses that still served as offices and storage. Long blocks empty of even parked cars stretched out, ranks of loading docks closed tightly against the Sunday silence. Crossing over Congress Street and into the Weird proper brought more traffic but no one on the sidewalks. It was like taking a walk from content to depressing.

Murdock's little speech about working with the system got me thinking. It only made sense if both sides were willing. And for the moment, the Guild wasn't playing. So I decided it was time to help them cooperate.

I got on my computer and put in motion a chain of user accounts I had set up on various servers. I watched as one account after another opened and closed, hiding my tracks through the Internet. The accounts jumped from Boston to Texas down into Mexico then over to Japan. From there I traveled to a cybercafé frequented by kids who liked to launch poorly written viruses from Malaysia. The server there was a chaotic mess as a result, but nice camouflage. From there I set a random jump to Morocco, which brought me to the log-in at the Boston Guildhouse. I typed in my user ID and password and hit enter. The screen refreshed and asked me to reenter the password. On the off chance I had mistyped, I entered it again. I got another reenter password and jumped out.

"Damn," I muttered. Rubbing my eyes, I leaned back in my chair. My back door into the system had been closed. Someone had done a sweep and found me, or rather the bogus identity I had set up. Taking a deep breath, I started again, except when I reached the final log-in at the Guild, I used the user ID of a temp account I knew in payroll. It let me in with no problem. No problem except it was a low-level account with no privileges.

I began poking around in the directories but stopped. It would take too long to set up another account. I debated whether to crack macDuin's. The beauty of having worked at the Guild was that I knew the system, how passwords were set, and where to look for them. The downside was that I might be discovered. I had no idea when they had found my account or whether they were monitoring for illegal code more than usual. I knew the folks in the tech department were pretty good. I had taught them a fair amount. I decided to go hunting for a remote access number instead.

Since I was already in, I made my way into the system's password files. It's a lot easier than you would think. I found the file I wanted, then looked for another account with the same dial-up access number. I was only slightly surprised that I didn't find what I was looking for. A little burst of inspiration hit me. I jumped into the system log, scanning for the access number from the first password file. I had to go back a couple of weeks, but I finally found a remote dial-in. There was a routine, obviously permissible, log-in at 1:32 A.M. followed by a logout a little later at 1:48. Two minutes later there was another log-in from a different access number, an access number that was so different, in fact, it didn't belong on the Guildhouse server. But it was there. I smiled broadly. Knowing Meryl, she had wired it herself and was working an untraceable line from the phone company.

"Gotcha" I said softly to the screen. I went back into the password directory, used the illegal phone number as a search criterion, grabbed a copy of Meryl's backdoor password file, and logged out. I then dialed in to a random local university, launched my password cracker program, and set it to work on Meryl's password. Local universities expected extensive CPU activity. They tended to let students mangle the system as long as it didn't slow it down too much or screw up someone's work.

It would take a while for the program to run, so I made coffee. I settled on the futon with Woodbury's Stone Magic: The Simple Explanation. It clocked in at over one thousand pages in very tiny type. Despite its density, the author had endeared herself to me with some very simple advice about stones: When all else fails, throw 'em. I made my way through a good chunk of the selenite section. There were an enormous number of uses for the crystal, and it would take some time to follow up on all of them. My computer chimed.

I strolled into the study sipping my coffee and pulled up the chair. The program had cracked the password. It was "HiConnor." I sat stunned as I stared at the screen. Then I laughed so hard, I almost fell out of my chair.

I dialed in to the Guild on Meryl's illicit line. A plain box opened asking for user ID and password, and I typed them in and hit Enter. I knew Meryl's skills well enough to know that once I was in, no one at the Guild would know I was there.

The screen became a black hole, and I was in. A cartoonish white stone gate slowly resolved itself into view with an inscription on the lintel: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Very cute. The gate faded and a standard Windows desktop appeared. A text box popped up that read "Answer the Phone."

The phone rang, and I jumped. I picked it up.

"You took only slightly less time to get in than I thought you would. I'm impressed," said Meryl.

"Are you enjoying playing with my head?"

"Oh, hold on," she said. I heard what I thought sounded like a lighter and some muttering. A wave of static welled out of the phone and encased itself around my head. The receiver stuck to my ear, and I couldn't move my hand. Meryl giggled. "Now I'm playing with your head. I don't want anyone tracing the call or listening in."

"How did you know I would break in?"

I could hear her take a drag on a cigarette. "Only two kinds of people don't ask about my computer setup when they see it: those that are completely clueless and those that know exactly what it is. They did a cleanup recently, and your account got wiped. I knew it was only a matter of time."