“HQ’s not just gone, it’s unmade,” mutters Mario as they dodge through the street market. “Scrubbed out of this whole damn line.”
“If we could stop moving,” says Girard, swiping at a chicken, “set up a decent backcast–”
“You don’t think Barrister will be waiting for that?”
“So what!” shouts Girard. “I’m lab, not field, why’d you even bring me!”
Mario hustles him away from the staring stall owners. “I need you, Girard, okay? But we can’t do anything he’ll expect.”
“You want to ask them for help,” says Girard slowly. “The Blue Man Group.”
Mario bites his lip and nods.
Neveah and Cinjun meet Ormond at a charity auction.
“A million dollars for a night with your wife,” says Ormond.
“No!” say Neveah and Cinjun. They think about it. “Yes!” they say.
Neveah never gets to show off her teddy: she and Ormond stay up late talking, drinking good wine, walking the riverfront. Around four she’s asleep in her recliner. He covers her with a coat.
At eight-thirty she walks out, groggy, leaving their number on a paper towel; she takes the heavy briefcase with her. A week later Ormond calls.
“Listen,” he says, “I’ve got another million to burn.”
Telomir pulls the fabric and the surface of the world rushes by: trees, hills, a cliff. Corinna’s white-shock hair stands out against the horizon.
“Found you,” he grins, touching the rune in his belt called Zoom In. The veil blurs, and he’s there.
“Corinna,” he starts. She glares at him and spits: tentacles with teeth boil out of the rock. He touches Edit This Page and turns them to butter. She’s already flickering; when he gets to the edge she’s flapping away, a monstrous bat.
Telomir breathes deep, whispers “true name of the hawk,” touches I’m Feeling Lucky, and jumps.
When Lieutenant Kitty Spinoza and her platoon are thrown into the hot dark aluminum prison, they have a simple cypher ready within hours: boring sentences, their word order changed to mean “cell checks tonight” or “southwest corner.” The laundry room becomes a post office. As they end up in solitary, one by one, they write a better tapping code than Morse.
When they disassemble the prison and it’s all a hoax, an experiment, the Major congratulates her personally. “We regret the deception,” he smiles, “but your squads should be proud. You’ve yielded some valuable data.”
Kitty understands: this is another code.
“Little Devotchka’s decided to die today,” says Lakshmi, and to Pavel it’s a slap in the face. He manages to turn it into an open-mouthed smile.
“He’s only six!” Pavel shakes his head. “Our little prodigy. I should be surprised it wasn’t sooner.”
Lakshmi offers him her hand, but he doesn’t take it yet. His hair’s gone shamefully gray, but he can still walk to the temple, to see his grandson reach inside himself and turn off his life. To watch, as he watched his wife and children go in bliss. To know that he is watched himself. To fear.
Romper decides to make a body. She gets a shirt from the closet and some rubber feet from the bottom of the blender. She gets some blood. She gives it a heart and bellows, a porkpie and glasses: she draws a moustache on a potato. She sews on three fingers she found in the trash. She wants her friends to like it. She wears it to a party.
“Aiieee,” say most of her friends.
“Bodies are for people,” sneer most of the rest.
“I like your body,” murmurs Spads, wearing a bowl of dog food.
“Fresh!” blushes Romper, and slaps him.
It’s a summer cabin, but air-conditioned, and that means insulation. The space heater keeps the bathroom warm enough. Theremin fills the bathtub with pillows and books. She shuts the door on winter.
The space heater glows and its cord is frayed; its metal grille recalls a goalie’s mask. It’s dangerous just to be near it, moreso to keep it on all day. Reading a paperback means toasting its edges brown.
Theremin runs out of food and keeps reading. The cabin’s owners will notice the electricity bill. They’ll find her. She’ll already be in the tub. She’ll never be cold again.
Cosette reaches down into the void. She feels a crack and, inside, two small objects; she hides them in her hand.
“Wealth death dearth hearth heat teeth,” she whispers.
She opens her hand. They’re pills with names on them. One is TRUTH, and translucent. The other, orange, says HEALTH.
Cosette watches Millicent blindly try to wash herself. She sits down and picks her up, opens the kitten’s mouth and drops in HEALTH, strokes her throat and believes, believes that it will heal her eyes. She swallows TRUTH to make it so.
Millicent lies down in Cosette’s lap and doesn’t move anymore.
Grip tape on her deck and Swiss ceramic bearings: Chicago likes the language of skating, the tumble and slide of it. It says what it is.
But cars, gah. Their language is so bent and angry, so tired: crankshaft gasket manifold. Ding. Chicago’s got a permit but, she reflects as she hauls him into the passenger seat, they never did get around to those driving lessons. So what. She’s seen a key cranked, she knows about mirrors. How hard can it be? One of them is gas, the other is brake, and she’s got this empirical test to distinguish between them.
Yohon is running out of mans. “Maybe if you jump on his head you can grab the fire escape,” he advises the next one.
“DEEDOODEET,” the man agrees.
“Start!” says Yohon. The man majors in accounting, graduates, gets married, lands a high-pressure securities job, hires escorts for stress relief, gets caught, pays certain family gentlemen to hush it up, gets audited, turns states’ evidence, enters a dark alley and tries to jump on a thug’s head. The thug pulls him down and brains him with an aluminum bat.
“CONTINUE?” screams the next man.
“Gotta slide this time,” Yohon mutters, wincing.