Cruel Zinc Melodies (21 page)

This wasn’t the Tinnie I was used to. That Tinnie is the personification of self-confidence. I’m the one who panics when personal talk gets personal.

I had a premonition. Here came a time to panic. “Oh? Yeah?” I squeaked, too.

“I’m out of excuses. For everybody. Including me.” Her voice kept going higher.

“So... Uh... What do you think?” I shoved my hands into the back of my pants. She didn’t need to see them shaking.

“Uh... I think...” Her voice was up there in mouse talk range. “We’re grown-ups.”

“So we ought to be able to act like grown-ups.”

That didn’t come out smoothly.

“Yeah.”

“Grown-ups manage this stuff all the time.”

“Every day.”

Both of us could hear dozens of absent voices muttering that our behavior was worse than juvenile.

Tinnie went on. “And we are grown-ups. Aren’t we?”

“Have been for years and years. Though some would argue.”

“People years younger than us manage perfectly well.”

“They do, don’t they? And we’re professionals. We’ve dealt with tough people and tougher situations.”

Talking all around the central issue. Not getting to the heart but relaxing the defenses a little, here and there.

It went on. The consensus was, we couldn’t just keep on keeping on. There were people in our lives. Something had to give. But the risks were huge.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Bill! I thought you went back to the tavern.”

“I did. Then I had a thought. On the house. Because about a dozen of those giant bugs are running around out there, even in this weather. Which means the problem could get really awful when the weather turns warm. If everything isn’t straightened out by then.”

Tinnie seemed more relieved than aggravated by the interruption. Though the subject still had to be addressed. Soon.

I said, “You could give me more information about what’s going on down there, then.”

“I could. If I had anything. I can’t without going down there to look.”

I could arrange that. I didn’t tell him out loud.

He might have read my mind. “Find yourself a real, legal expert. Not a necromancer, either.”

I didn’t press. I knew where to find Bill. He was thinking that, too. And regretting it, maybe.

He said, “That’s what I wanted to tell you. That whatever is down there, it’s so ugly that you need to get a really big stick onto it. Fast. Before it really wakes up.”

He regretted having come back. But something wouldn’t let him just cut me loose.

He wasn’t shaking now. He had been when he’d first come back outside, earlier.

It might be a good idea to take the evidence to the self-proclaimed experts after all.

I glanced at Tinnie.

I could use some expert help over there, too.

Back to Bill. I got the impression there was more on his mind. A lot more. Some of it personal. His twitchiness seemed to be the sort that comes when you think somebody is stalking you. Then, too, there must be something he thought I ought to know but couldn’t bring himself to say.

I said, “The brewery will send a nice fee along to the Busted Dick. With a retainer. So we can call on your expertise again.”

“Retainer?”

“A fee you get for keeping yourself available. The brewery has several specialists on retainer. Me among them.” My heels clicked hollowly on the floor planking. I heard scratching sounds. “There’s what’s been spooking our troops.” I glanced behind me, past Tinnie, expecting to see a big-ass bug looking for a way to escape the underworld.

I saw a ghost instead, and very, very faintly heard some kind of music.

No other way to put it. I didn’t want it to be, but that was a ghost. Someone I knew was dead. Someone who had been dead for a long time. Swaying to the music.

That was a ghost I’d seen before. As a ghost.

“Garrett? What is it?”

“Eleanor.”

“What?”

“See? There? The woman in white?” Becoming more real by the second. Smiling. “The one in the magic painting in my office.” The music grew louder by the second, too. And less melodic.

Tinnie wasn’t happy. She didn’t know the whole story about Eleanor, though. Lucky for me. She hadn’t had as much claim on me then.

I was amazed and dismayed that so much emotion still lurked within me. That so much hurt still surrounded that beautiful dead lady.

She smiled as she came toward me, glad to see me, reaching with one delicate, pale hand. Backed by vague music that was turning into half-heard clanking.

“I don’t see anything, Garrett.” Just a little put out. Then, “Oh! Oh, gods! It’s Denny!”

Bill said, “You’re both seeing people who had a powerful emotional impact in the past.”

Tinnie said, “Uncle Lester.”

Two more females began to form behind Eleanor. For a moment I thought one was my mother. But she was too young. Kayanne Kronk. My first love, so long ago. The other was Maya, a street gang girl who had grown up to become a serious entanglement - till I ran her off by being the same way with her that I’ve always been with Tinnie. But Kayanne and Maya were both still alive, insofar as I knew. And they didn’t go around accompanied by bad music so soft you had to strain to be irked by it.

Both women faded as soon as I thought that.

Tinnie was distraught. Bill grabbed hold and hustled her out of the theater. I stumbled along behind, ten percent of me clinging desperately to present reality. My brother Mikey had begun to materialize behind Eleanor. Who looked real enough to bite now.

I saw Tinnie’s ghosts, too, but they had no form to my eye.

The light outside helped. “Bill, that was all inside our heads, wasn’t it?” I suspected that because of my long exposure to the Dead Man.

He shrugged. “You’d think. But I bet if you faced your ghosts long enough they’d come alive on their own.”

I told Tinnie, “I begin to see why Alyx was upset. Her ghosts must’ve been her brother and sister. Maybe even her mother.” All people whose deaths she’d have no trouble blaming on herself.

Tinnie had nothing to say. She’d gone missing inside herself.

41

Safely away from Eleanor and Mikey, I thought I understood why people refused to talk about the ghosts. Mine hadn’t been awful. And I see weird all the time. But what would the impact be on people for whom ghosts were the hardware of scary stories? People who had skeletons or heavy guilt in their closets? Which so many do. “Hey, Bill. Did you see anything in there?”

“Not this time. I did before. It was hairy. And there was some kind of ghastly music in the distance.”

“Garrett!” Tinnie was as pale as death. She pointed. I expected to see a street full of ghosts.

“Cypres Prose! Get your young ass over here! Now! Your friends, too.”

Kip Prose had been sneaking along in the shadows on the other side of the street, between two of his Faction friends. One was the chunky kid from the abandoned house. The lover of bugs, Zardoz. The other had been with Kip last time he came past the World.

The youngsters hadn’t expected anybody to come busting out of the theater. Especially not that fierce defender of order and propriety, Mama Garrett’s boy.

All three kids thought about running. Kip decided there was no point. I’d tell his mother. He wouldn’t like what came of that.

Kip came over staring at the ground a yard in front of his feet. His cronies tagged along. The thinner kid was a ringer for Barate Algarda, only younger.

“Kevans and Zardoz, I presume.”

They weren’t startled. Except Kip, who knew he hadn’t given me information enough to give Kevans away.

“Kip. Why are you down here this time?”

He wouldn’t meet my eye. “We left some stuff.”

“Of course you did.” Bugs still wandered around on the outside of the World. “Kip, I don’t get it. You’ve got stuff to do at the manufactory that ought to keep you busy twenty hours a day.” He had a million inventions inside his head. His job was to get them out and explained in a way the rest of us could understand. “So why the hell are you down here rooting around under a slum with a bunch of goofballs?”

The redhead jabbed me in the ribs. Just reminding me that I wasn’t Kip’s father.

And wasn’t being smart, disrespecting his friends.

He stopped staring at the pavements. “What are you doing down here? You could have a real job at the manufactory
or
the Weider Brewery. But you’re down here chasing insects and harassing kids.”

Tinnie chuckled.

Wow. Up on his hind legs and barking back. Which left me speechless.

I do what I do because I don’t want to be a wage slave. I’m doing what I want to do. Usually reluctantly. I’ve got a lot of dog in me. Like most hounds, I don’t want to do anything more than the minimum needed to get by. I’m good at that.

I’m sure my mom and dad are spinning in their graves. Maybe Kip could come up with a clever way to tap that rotational energy.

I could hear my only surviving relative, antique Medford Shale, telling me my main problem is, I’ve never been hungry. If I’d ever been truly hungry, I wouldn’t have all these pussy, wimp-out excuses for not nailing me down a real job.

“You score a couple points. But you’re not exactly following your passion by helping social and emotional cripples off the Hill hammer society by creating a plague.” I felt like an idiot as soon as I said that. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say.

“And I’m nothing like them, am I, Mr. Garrett?”

“All right. I apologize. I was getting emotional. There was no need for that. Stipulated. Your friends aren’t likely to be weirder than Cypres Prose. On the other hand, Cypres Prose doesn’t have family on the Hill who want to get involved in my life. Or who hire people to follow you around.”

“Huh?”

“Tinnie. Can you keep these two entertained while I show Kip what’s going on inside the World?”

The redhead sneered. Two teenage boys? She’d turn them to jelly, then set them howling at the moon like werewolves lamenting the change.

She didn’t know about Kevans.

I didn’t plan on exposing Kip to the ghosts of the World. I just wanted to shed the audience so I could give him the word about Lurking Felhske. I’d forgotten how sensitive he was, back when we’d been involved with the sky elves who’d helped spark his mechanical genius.

I told him, “Most of your friends are from the Hill. Some have big personal problems. You’ve got a girl who pretends she’s a boy. You’ve got a boy who wants to be a girl. You’ve got somebody who’s so interested in you that they’ve hired the slickest assassin in TunFaire to follow you around.” All right. I exaggerated. Lurking Felhske might not be a high-powered lifetaker. But I’d dealt with Kip before. You have to get his attention. “You’ve got somebody who’s so interested in what you’re doing that they’ve even tried leaning on Colonel Block. Any idea who that might be?”

He had none. Nor did he believe me.

He did show more than sullen interest, though. “I know about Kevans and Mutter.” He shrugged. “We all do. Mutt is just a freak. But Kevans has got real problems. You’d understand if you knew her family.”

“I do. Barate Algarda came by my house. He wanted to pound me till I changed my attitude toward you guys. He didn’t have much luck, though.”

“Your smugness tells me you didn’t get much out of him, though. You won’t. Not him. Not even with a Loghyr to paw through his head. He’s a tough old man.” I saw him wondering about his own brief visit to a Loghyr with Kyra. “You know about the compliance device?”

I confessed that I had no clue. “Unless you mean that thing that’s supposed to get a woman ferociously interested.”

The light was weak but Kip’s blush was visible. “Actually, Kevans invented that. With help from Mutt. And that’s not what it does.”

“What, then?”

“It’s pretty simple. You take some common, off-the-shelf spells and braid them so they have a heterodyning effect. The device isn’t anything special. A spool wound with silver threads that anchor and store the spells. The spool is mounted in a wooden frame. You rotate till you get the right frequency and relative strength. That gives you an idea what somebody’s chemistry is. Doesn’t matter what sex they are. It’s just more likely that males will use it to look at females. That’s the way the culture is stacked.”

“I'll take your word. Even if I don’t know what the word means.” I felt like I’d just sat through a lecture by somebody ten times smarter than me, who had tried to dumb it down. I did agree that guys would be more likely to deploy the gimmick. If it did what I thought. “Why would Kevans want to know if somebody was interested or aroused, or could be engineered into it?”

“Sometimes girls want to know the odds, too, Mr. Garrett.”

I smelled the reek coming off that. “And being able to manipulate the other party?”

“Uh... The influence part was serendipity, Mr. Garrett. It wasn’t planned that way. Not so guys can improve their chances. It doesn’t do that very good, anyway. Kevans wanted to find a way to read people’s emotions and intentions. The rest of us all went in on it because we thought we could use it to help us not do the usual inappropriate stuff that scares people off. You’ve seen me go around with a foot in my mouth like a hunchback goes around with his hump. And then you saw me with Kyra.
Kyra Tate!
”

“I was curious. But not too much. I didn’t want to jinx myself with Tinnie.”

“Yeah. Well, listen. I’m the gleaming social butterfly of the Faction. I’m the master of slick in that crew.”

“All right. I won’t disagree, based on what I’ve seen so far.”

“Really, honestly, the compliance device was only supposed to warn us when we were doing dumb stuff. So we’d stop. Plus, Kevans hoped it would help her get along better at home. But we couldn’t ever get the damned thing to do what we wanted it to do. It just let us figure out if somebody was in the mood. If you knew that, you could fiddle the spool a little and kind of tune them in.”

Then he made a little squeaky noise. His eyes bugged. And I faced off with another invocation of the law of unintended consequences.

“Power up its ability to influence. Figure out how to mass-produce it. You'll get richer than Max Weider in a week. Call it the Shortcut. Something like that.”