Authors: Finder
"Ammonium nitrate and hydrazine."
"Why does that sound familiar? Wait—rocket fuel?" I asked, appalled.
"Different hydrazine. Not so viciously toxic, nor so difficult to lay hands on, though it must be sought assiduously and worked with caution. But once combined with the nitrate, it is dependably stable outside the presence of fire or spark, even under the influence of magic, and powerful in very small quantities. I have used it and made it and traded it, as have many other people in the Borderlands with the knowledge and the need." Her voice, and her eyes, which didn't waver from mine, were steady and cool. The clinic could have air-conditioned the whole building with her. "But the gifts placed at Walt Felkin's house were not that. No, my dear. They were gelignite. Gelignite contains nitroglycerin, which cannot be made dependably stable in the Borderlands no matter what you dope it with. Anyone who uses it here is either an unlettered fool, or a lettered one of appalling
hubris
. I would sooner keep a polar bear than I would a corn-kernel of gelignite."
"If it's that bad," I said, "why would anybody have it here at all?"
"Because there are, without question, fools in Bordertown. Sensible people, when they find caches of unstable explosives, have them confiscated, thus reducing the communal price of folly by a few
pennies."
The dissertation on explosives was entirely Tick-Tick-like. The apparent change of subject in mid-rant was not.
"This has something to do with why you're so angry, doesn't it?"
She stared at me and chewed the inside of her lip. "Yes," she said finally.
"Can you explain it?"
"To a thoughtful analyst like yourself? Probably not." Her gaze left mine, finally, to consult the ceiling. I could have told her it was blank. She folded her hands the other way, left over right. "Astrolite requires some know-how and experience to use efficiently, and time and care to set up at the site. Whoever blew the ceiling of the apartment building had all those. What was done at Walt Felkin's was not unlike deer hunting with a grenade. I'm sure Linn will squeeze all the relevant details out of you later, but he's assured me that the most cursory observation of the site indicates a woefully inefficient use of materials.
The blast at Felkin's and the demolition of the apartment building might have been done by two different people. Under the circumstances, that seems so unlikely as to be laughable."
"So that's not what scares you."
She shot me a glare, as if I wasn't supposed to notice that she was scared. "What
is
likely is that someone with the knowledge and experience to use explosives wisely and well has, under pressure, used them sloppily and without regard for the wider consequences. Such a person, under pressure, will make no distinction between targets and bystanders."
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My fingers had closed on the bl
anket, gathering
it in two knots. "I don't know if this person believes in
the conc
ept of bystanders."
Tick-Tick stood up with a sharp exhalation, and paced to the foot of the bed. (
Was
it the same bed? If so, that was where I'd stood.) "And that's why you won't leave it be."
Until then I hadn't considered whether or not I meant to leave it be. I'd still thought of myself as having been pressed into service by Sunny Rico. But I hadn't behaved, the night before, like someone who was working against his will. Maybe I was as bad as the Ticker herself was, when faced with a puzzle.
Whatever my motivation was, I didn't feel up to analyzing it immediately. "I don't know."
She stood erect at the foot rail, as if behind a lectern. She looked, in fact, like a preacher who wasn't very fond of the congregation. "Your duty as an honest citizen of Bordertown is to deplore evildoing. You are not obliged to tie a cape over your shoulders and search the alleys for it. You have a job, which you should do well, and leave others to do theirs. You did what you could for Rico. Then you did what you shouldn't have, which harmed you and muddied the waters generally, I suspect. If so, no doubt you'll hear it from Rico." She leaned forward, her forearms pressing down on the railing. Her expression was noticeably less composed. "Leave it, Orient. Let it go. The police will take over."
I had a headache banging at the front of my skull, and the smell of antibacterial soap was making me a little bit queasy. "I sort of thought you'd mention the consequences of my actions right off. You left out getting Walt killed and the evidence destroyed."
Tick-Tick shook her head irritably. "Linn thought the doors were wired. Were they?"
I nodded.
"Then he would have opened one with or without you. Wallowing in unearned guilt won't save you.
Will you give it up now, or not?"
I hadn't thought about it, and I wasn't going to think about it then. "I'll think about it," I said.
"I do hope you'll practice on something else first."
I might have said something unforgivable, if Rico hadn't appeared in the door to the room. I felt like a kid caught waging a name-calling fight. Rico looked from the Ticker to me, and said, to neither of us in particular, "This is a bad time, right?"
"That depends entirely on what for, and for whom," Tick-Tick said, making all the consonants count.
Rico blinked. "I'll figure that out and get back to you." She turned her attention full on me and nodded.
"My, you look lousy."
"But I feel terrible," I assured her.
"Guess that proves you can't tell by looking."
Tick-Tick's eyes went back and forth between the two of us; then they stopped at me, and she raised one eyebrow. "Have you been studying Insouciant Copspeak?"
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"He's a natural at it," said Rico. And to me: "
The guy in white out front says you don't want to stay
here
."
"I don't, much."
"They can't check for internal injuries if you don't hang around. And the city's picking up the tab."
"I'd rather go home," I said. At the same time, Tick-Tick said, harshly, "He doesn't like hospitals."
I stared at her. I'd had no idea she knew that.
"Nobody likes hospitals," Rico replied. "Grit your teeth."
The Ticker straightened abruptly. "He can go home with me. I'll take responsibility for him."
Rico looked at her—looked up at her, where, absurdly, she stood with feet planted and chin a little out-thrust. You tend to forget the relative ages of elves; now I remembered that Tick-Tick was the elven equivalent of my age, more or less, and Rico was older than me. I wondered again by how much. Now Rico said drily, "And what does he say to that?"
"I'll go home with her. But I'll take responsibility for myself, thank you."
Tick-Tick bent a look on me that told me exactly how she would have responded to that if Rico hadn't been in the room.
Rico shrugged. "Take it up with his repairman."
I got another look from the Ticker, this one harder to read. Then she said, "I'll do that now." She gave the impression of gathering herself up, though she hadn't brought anything in with her. Then she stalked out of the room like the Queen of the Veldt. Grrr.
Sunny Rico sank her hands in the pockets of her trousers. She was in formal dress again: black suit jacket and pants and a maroon Edward n T-shirt. "Criminy," she said, gazing toward the door where Tick-Tick had gone out. "Why do I feel like I've been dismissed?"
I took the question seriously. "Force of personality. She has an awful lot of it."
"And all of it ready to launch in your defense. When I came in I thought she was kicking your butt."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean anybody else gets to. You know: Your sister can punch you, but heaven help the neighbor kids if they try it."
"It's a sisterly sort of relationship? I wondered if it was anything closer."
"God, I've never
had
a closer relationship. Including with my mother." Which reminded me of my surroundings, of course.
It must have shown on my face; Rico saw something, anyway. "Anything you want to mention?"
"No." Then I changed my mind. "My mom was a nurse. She went back to it after—after my father left
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her. Us. She was second shift E
R staff. Things were pretty grisly for us, and I
still associate the whole
I didn't sound very coherent, even to me, but Rico nodded. "Money problems?"
It would have been easier to say yes, but that wasn't, I discovered, what I wanted to say. I struggled with it for a moment, and shrugged, and looked out the door, since there wasn't anything to see out the window except the wall across the alley.
She said, "Kids always blame themselves when their parents get divorced."
I was startled enough to stare at her. Her expression was bland, but I think she made a mental note.
"Okay, let's get some work done," Rico said, and pulled a notebook out of her inside jacket pocket.
"Before the medical professionals decide you've had enough social life." She let her pen hover over a clean sheet and looked at me.
I drew a long breath, by way of organizing some brain cells, and began by summarizing the director'scut version of the dream, as I'd had it the night before. I explained why I had gone to Christoble Street with the new information instead of finding her, and she shook her head.
"Should have woke me up."
"Fine. If it ever comes up again, I'll remember that."
"What time was all this?"
"Ye gods, I wasn't really—wait, when I got to the station, it was pretty close to four a.m."
"Which side of four?"
"Maybe ten, fifteen minutes short?"
"Okay. Keep going."
I tried to do it in order: talking to Saquash, being interrupted by Vic's entrance (Rico nodded and muttered, "Vickie, God's Gift to Third Shift"), Hawthorn's entrance, telling Hawthorn about the dream and the bike, eating, waiting for authorization, falling asleep, Hawthorn sending me home…
"You fell asleep?" Rico repeated, a textbook example of skepticism.
"It wasn't something I'd been doing much of, until then."
"Didn't they think to wake you up?"
"They tried, I guess. I don't know if Hawthorn ever got his authorization, come to think of it."
Rico shook her head, and said, "Go on."
So I explained, or tried to explain, why I thought at the time it would be a good idea to track the bike
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down myself. Rico didn't
make all the faces Tick-Tick would have; she just wrote things down.
"Time," she prompted again.
"Um. Just before dawn. What's the legal definition of dawn, anyway? The sky was getting light. Call it somewhere around six."
I told her about recognizing where I was, when I got to Walt Felkin's, and explained how I knew who Walt Felkin was. Then I described the bike with great care, knowing that it didn't exist anymore. "I really did think it was a lock cable," I sighed.