Authors: Ros Baxter
I felt a wave of fondness and gratitude looking at him. For saving me, for protecting Cleedaline. Maybe just for being a big, comforting presence in a freakin’ spooky couple of days.
And there was another thing.
Mom’s never going to warn me off this guy
.
But as I watched him, Carragheen’s rangy body and wolfish beauty floated before my eyes. Less buff, more ballet dancer. A warm flush crept up my neck at the thought.
Doug looked me quickly up and down. “Oh, sister,” he breathed. “What happened?”
“What?” I asked quickly, checking my reflection in the hall mirror, wondering if the horrors of Aegira had left some indelible stamp on my features.
“You look different,” he said, like he couldn’t quite work out how. “You look… loose.”
“Loose?”
What?
“Y’know, relaxed. Did you go get some home town lovin’?” Doug was going for nonchalant but there was vulnerability in the question in his eyes.
“Maybe,” I hedged my bets. There was no way I could go into the Carragheen thing with Doug. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t approve of the whole married-with-a-kid thing. And he definitely wouldn’t like the sneaking around caves stuff. And I’m not sure at all how he would feel about another guy, period. “But enough small talk.”
I tried to sift through what I could actually tell Doug about what had happened over the last couple of days and came up with: not much. So I drilled him instead. “What’s been going on here? No-one snooping around?”
“’Round Blondie, y’mean?”
“Her name’s Cleedaline.” It was out before I could stop myself.
Doug paused. “Right,” he said. He looked at me carefully, weighing what he could read on my face. “Course it is. Strange name, Sheriff. And how d’ya know that?”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Forget it,” he let me off the hook. “Ask no questions.” But he looked like he really, really wanted to.
I smiled at him by way of reward. “Thanks, Doug. So what’s the gossip in town?”
“Man, this place is all lit up with Blondie,” he said, shaking his head sadly at me. “Who she is, where she went, what the hell Billy did to get her lost. Everyone knows, and Aldus is pissing his pants that he’s gonna get the rap for it all. Almost as much as Billy.”
“Huh.” What I’d expected really. At least no-one was asking crazy questions, trying to connect dots. “Thanks, Doug, for looking in on her. I’d better get going.”
“Where y’off to?” He had that looking-for-action face on that I’d seen too many times.
I hedged. “Why?”
“Oh, I dunno,” he started. “Wondered if you might need some company.”
“Nah, Doug,” I replied, although I wanted to say yes please.
He looked at me steadily. “Y’know, Sheriff. You’re not responsible for saving the whole world.”
I wanted to say “If only you knew” but he went on before I was tempted.
“People who do bad things, they’re doin’ ’em to all of us. You need to take some help.”
His words warmed me, but unfortunately, it seemed that there were things I was totally responsible for. It was me who called this hell down upon this town, whatever it was. And it did actually look like I may be responsible for saving the whole world. In fact, for changing the course of freakin’ destiny and saving the world entire. Entire, mind you. That’s big.
And I knew one thing for damn sure. There was no way I was taking anyone along for the ride this time. Or ever again. As scary as that is, it sure beats the hell out of feeling responsible when someone you care about gets hurt. And this big guy might look bullet-proof, but I was in a better position than anyone to know he’s got a hundred scars to prove he’s not.
“Look, thanks for the offer. Gotta go see a lady in Williamstown. She might know where Cleedaline was before she came here.”
Williamstown is the closest city to Dirtwater, and it’s also where I can find The Link.
“Well, Sheriff,” Doug drawled, less pirate than usual, more cowboy. “Guess this here is your lucky day. I’m heading there myself right now. I can give you a ride.”
“Is that so?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Heading there for what end, pray tell?”
Doug feigned outrage at my suspicion, his hand clapped dramatically over his heart. “I have to see a man about a dog, for your information.”
“A dog?” Now I was confused.
“You really don’t need to know,” he finished. “Yet.”
I was curious, but I could tell by his secretive tone that he really did have some kind of business in Williamstown. Actually, a ride might not be a bad idea. Least that way I could think on the way over there. “This dog wouldn’t be able to launch rockets, would it?”
“Oh, baby,” he sighed. “Ask no questions.”
I was developing a suspicion that Doug was higher up the food chain in the shady organization he worked for than being just a gun for hire. But I knew one thing for sure: I did trust him. “Okay,” I conceded. “Let’s go.”
The ride up to Williamstown was uneventful, with the only break to the monotony of the highway the scattered road kill rotting in the heat. It took two hours and Doug stayed blissfully quiet, so I could think and plan. He only talked to check radio settings and climate control.
I was stroking the larbra scale bag that I still hadn’t opened but had brought with me. Stroking it in some ancient, rhythmic wave. I kept thinking about Mrs Tripe saying I’d know when the time was right, and I wasn’t not sure plain old curiosity was enough. I didn’t know why I’d grabbed it as I headed out and brought it along for the ride. For luck I guess.
While we drove, I thought again about the sound weapon, getting goose pimples all over as I remembered how it had felt as it blasted me, blasted into me. I wondered if it was the weapon that was meant to be the end of me. Soon. Very soon, according to the Seer. I thought about Mom, and Suzie. Lecanora. Mrs Tripe. The people who needed me. Then I gave myself a little slap and tried to focus again on the sound weapon, puzzling over what it could be. Seemed to me the damage was triggered by a single, perfect note, sung at a particular pitch.
But what kind of technology did it use to wreak its peculiar brand of hell?
What did it look like? Was it big, small? Would I know it if I saw it?
And, most importantly of all, how could I stop it? I mean, it looks like if I’m on land, ear plugs help, at least enough to get me away from ground zero. But if I’m in water, the poisonous sound is carried in the very vibrations around me. Mom sang me out of it, but that wasn’t such a reliable antidote. I couldn’t carry my Mommy around with me while I tried to work it all out.
I decided to take some time to question Doug. “Doug?”
“Yup.” It was like he could feel an interrogation coming, and was already buttoning up.
“You know you mentioned that weapons test you saw?
He nodded noncommittally. I knew he’d seen some bad things. “Yup.”
“Any idea how the technology worked? What it was?”
“I’m a soldier, not a pointyhead.” He scrunched up his face. “Look, my guess is it was some kind of nuclear thing, and the sound was just the… delivery mechanism, I guess. The geeks who ran the test, they had these little boxes, no bigger’n a small TV, I guess. And they sort of… tuned the frequency in, I guess you could say. And then wham! A world of pain.”
“You had plugs in?”
He nodded.
“So how do you know what the weapon could do?”
He looked at me and I could feel his melancholy. “Ask no questions…”
I decided not to, and we passed the rest of the trip in silence til he spoke again.
“Up here, yeah?” I noticed we’d pulled over next to some dumpsters. It was a seedy part of town, and I clocked the square set of Doug’s shoulders and the almost imperceptible movements of his face as he scanned the block. “Maybe I should come in too?”
“You’ve done enough, D,” I said gently, giving his hard-as-rock arm a little squeeze.
His puppy-brown eyes held my gaze for a couple of seconds, checking.
Words were not Doug’s thing. But I could tell he was remembering last time, and he was worried. It occurred to me that while there was a deep, wild part of me that Carragheen resonated with, like a shadow of my own self, there was also something about this guy that met a part of me too. It was like Carragheen touched the parts of me that were mermaid – the parts that sing and yearn. And Doug spoke to the parts of me that were human, practical,
cop
.
I reached deeper inside myself for some words of reassurance. “Anyone tries to hurt me, I’ll just arm wrestle them,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel.
“Yeah, right,” he sighed, and I watched his big biceps bunch as he worked the stick shift. “Pick you up at Fatso’s at noon.” He checked his watch, and I checked mine too.
“Two hours,” we confirmed in unison, and I thought it again: cut from the same cloth.
I looked up at the big old project blocks in front of me, so tall they threw the street into shade. I’d only been here a couple of times in my life. Both times I was a kid, and I was scared. Something about the sullen misery of the faces around me, and the trash and the noise. This time, stereos were singing out their rackets, people were yelling at each other and the acrid smell of despair was carried toward me on a stiff mid-morning breeze. This was a place that hope left years ago, if it ever made a stop here in the first place. It was sad, but I wasn’t scared. I had a lot of years under my belt since I came here with my Mom, and I’d seen enough bad shit to know these people were just poor. And poor don’t necessarily mean bad.
Either way, I also knew I could take care of myself.
Aegira keeps a Link in every nation on earth, someone who helps set up base for the watch-keepers, organizes their papers, housing, clothing. They stay under the radar, and the Williamstown projects are about as far under as you can get. The Link could live much more comfortably, with all she gets from Aegira, but she grew up here. To her, it’s home.
Doug had barely disappeared down the street when a small black girl grabbed my hand and tugged on it. “This way,” she ordered solemnly, pulling me with her to the narrow corridor between the high grey buildings. “Mom’s ’pecting you.”
I followed, watching the girl’s skinny shoulders through her too-small dress as she jumped and skipped over discarded bottles and puddles of God-knows-what. She reminded me of Susie, roughly the same age, I figured. I made a mental note to ask The Link why she subjected her children to this hellhole. But once I was standing in front of her, the thought was chased away by what I saw in her eyes.
The Link was scared.
It’s like a chemical thing, a smell you recognize once you’ve smelled it enough times.
She wasn’t doing anything different, just taking my coat, fixing tea, pulling out a chair from the Formica kitchen suite. But it was sticking to her, the way cigarette smoke gathers in the folds of your clothing and the pores of your hair after a big night out.
She commanded the kids to leave, and sat opposite me.
I was onto her. “What is it?”
The Link cocked an eyebrow.
She was a huge woman. As a child, I’d found her astonishing bulk reassuring among the noise and waste. But today she looked smaller, shrunken. I took a moment to quell the racing of my pulse, breathing like my trainer at the academy taught me when I was learning to shoot. Sweat was pooling in the deep grooves of her face and her eyes looked wide and wet, alert.
She didn’t pull any punches. “Dey know you here, mermaid. Dey know all about you.”
Thud, thud, thud. Time seemed to slow down as my heart rate sped up.
I’d forgotten. Forgotten that accent, and that way of speaking, full of portent.
“Who are they? What do you know?”
“Nothin’,” she responded quickly, and just as I knew she was afraid, I could see it was the truth. “But the kids tol’ me. Dey followed you here, mermaid. Followed you to me. The kids, dey saw dem. Dey’ve been in here too. I knows it. Dey been through all da papers.”
“Is that how they knew where to find me?” I could smell bitter fear over the sweetness of peppermint tea.
“No.” She eyeballed me straight on, challenge in her stare. “No records of you girls here. Yo Mama’s case too old.” She sighed. “But I real sure it’s how dey found Cleedaline.” She sighed again, the action causing her chin to wobble. “And I guess dey followed her t’ you.”
“How did you know about Cleedaline?” How could The Link know she was dead? She’d only been gone a heartbeat. No-one back in Aegira even knew yet. So how did The Link?
“We was supposed to meet, yestaday. You don’t break a date ’less you can’t come.”
“Because you’re dead?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The clock ticked noisily into my head. I could hear young children outside, singing a song about all falling down. They were chanting it, nursery rhyme style. It made me shiver and I shook it away. “Did you tell Cleedaline where to find me?”
“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head, quickly. “Nuh-uh, you know da rules. No-one knows where da watch-keepers are, unless dey placed at da same time. Sometimes dey get together, but only ever in twos. For company, like. Udderwise, we never tell, not allowed. Not to anyone.”
I looked around. “So whoever it was, they broke in here?”
She shook her head, and the long, droopy arc of flesh underneath her chin wiggled again. “No. Dey didn’t have to. I fink dey just hydroported right on in. Me, I was at church. Musta left on foot though. Because da whole file was gone.”
“Gone,” I repeated. She nodded. “Can you tell me where she lived?”
She hesitated, then obviously decided the code didn’t count anymore. “Over on Filmore,” she whispered. “Corner of eleventh. Da top floor.”
I went to leave, and The Link touched me. I could see her eyes were wet with tears. “I never lost one before, mermaid,” she said, breathing cigarettes and peppermint tea. “You know dat? I never lost one until now. And she was so…” She cast her eyes up and to the right, searching. “She was like moonlight.”
“I know she was,” I whispered, holding her hand briefly on her landing.
“Whatcha gonna do?” Her eyes cast about rapidly, wet and huge in her face.