Technomancer (28 page)

“I don’t know that much. I only have one, and I know how to use it. Most of the time, I try to avoid them, or eliminate
them, or return them to their powerful owners. That’s my job. I’m a peacekeeper and for that, the Community likes me and gives me—special considerations.”

“Go on.”

“The objects are all trouble. Every one of them will give you bad luck in the end, and using them is like bad karma. The main reason for this is they tend to attract one another. Power draws power to itself—no one I’ve talked to knows why. That’s one reason why you’ll tend to meet people with only one object. The more objects you have, the more bad things tend to be attracted to you. Like gravity.”

“I don’t follow,” I said, although it sounded a lot like what Jenna had told me before. “You should still run into people with more than one object. I mean, if they attract one another, then someone is bound to mug someone else and have two objects.”

“Right. But the thing is, those people usually end up dead—really fast.”

We cruised for a time, but McKesson’s watch ticked away normally, showing the proper time rather than indicating a new rip in space. Deciding to call it a night, I talked McKesson into dropping me off on the Strip. It was getting late, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep for hours. I thought about visiting Holly and Jenna, but I figured they were probably safer on their own than hanging around with me and my load of objects. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

The gaudy lights were still on, but the Strip was relatively quiet. During the day, all six lanes were buzzing with tourists. After 2:00 a.m., the sparse traffic consisted largely of cabs and cop cars. Walking north, I passed the Miracle Mile shopping mall and continued on to the mini Eiffel Tower, where construction projects were underway. They always seemed to be building something new along the Strip. Besides the cabs, tourists, and cops, there was a significant population of…unusual people. I passed a man wearing
a well-used backpack. He had a bushman’s beard that was shot with gray-white stripes. His glasses were shaded green, but appeared to be prescription. Despite the cool night sky, his face was leathery from a thousand sunburns and he wore a cap with a visor like a duck’s bill. Like so many before him, he sized me up as I approached the lamppost where he’d stationed himself. I could almost see the gears working. I looked like I had more money than he did, but he could tell I wasn’t likely to give it to him. Out of habit or sheer stubbornness, he tried to talk to me. The unintelligible words came out as a wheeze.

“No money,” I said.

He shook his head, indicating that wasn’t what he was asking for. I had no idea what was on his mind, but I stopped and rummaged in my pockets. I found McKesson’s cigarette pack and lighter. I must have shoved them away automatically. I wasn’t sure if I was a smoker or not, but either way I didn’t want to try one. I might be kick-starting a dead habit. I handed them over.

They were received with an appreciative cough. “Thanks, buddy,” I heard.

I kept walking. A cluster of businessmen approached next. Their conversation was loud and alcohol-fueled, punctuated by laughter. I thought to myself that here, at least, were some people enjoying themselves. When we drew close and passed by, my one body to their four, they stepped aside and quieted. They gave me as much space on the sidewalk as they could.

Why was that?
I asked myself. How did they
know
I was different? What instinct or facial expression had tipped them off? Sure, I had a gun in my pocket that probably still stank of gunpowder from being recently fired. But they had no way of knowing that. I wore fresh clothes, including a
hoodie, but I wasn’t bug-eyed and scowling. Still, they somehow knew to be wary.

The encounter disturbed me more than others I’d had because I’d already begun to suspect I was a walking disaster. The more I learned of my life, past and present, the more it involved danger for anyone who came near.

What had Rostok said about my past? To work with what I had. That meant the photo, I’d supposed at first. I had studied it, and come up blank. There was no date on the back. The picture looked new, even though it had obviously been taken many years earlier. I suspected that was due to the fact that it was an object. If they couldn’t be burned, they were probably immune to the effects of time as well.

What else had he said? He’d asked me about my earliest memories. He seemed unsurprised I’d lost my memory. There were no questions about that. Was amnesia so common a thing that it would go unremarked upon? I didn’t think it was. Where did that leave me? I thought hard for a while, and there was only one person I could come up with: Dr. Meng. She’d let me go and asked me to keep doing what I was doing, to get at the bottom of the deaths. I certainly hadn’t found many answers, but I knew enough to make a report. I decided I would return to the sanatorium in the morning and talk to Meng again. Maybe, with the new information I had, she could fit more pieces into this puzzle, and we could help each other.

At the next corner, I paused for a red light near a bus stop. Two Asian girls leaned sleepily together on the bus stop bench. Their heads touched to form a pyramid for mutual support. One wore a spray of magenta spikes, while the other’s hair was a tropical blue. They both sported nose rings and clusters of what looked like staples punched through their ears. Flame-shaped tattoos grew up out of
both their blouses to lick their necks. They were young and pretty, despite their best attempts to the contrary. I could tell they were tired, rather than destitute. The pair caused me to smile faintly. They were only travelers, far from home. I suspected the dyes could be washed out and some of the metal bits were just clip-ons. Maybe the matching tattoos were spray-ons as well. In any case, they were clearly up past their bedtime.

Something about the two girls on the bench made me dig out my cell and call Holly. I figured she’d probably gone home by now. I’d avoided it up until now, not wanting to explain Jenna or apologize for meeting her. There had been a waiting game going on between us, I realized. Neither of us had called the other all day. I had to admit, there had been a lot going on and I hadn’t really thought about it much. But I figured she probably had been thinking about us. I wasn’t sure how my call would be received. Had she grown angrier, or cooled off? There was only one way to find out.

“Hello?” a familiar voice said.

She had answered on the second ring at 2:00 a.m. I figured that was a good sign.

“Hi,” I said, trying to sound neutral, as if all was well. “I’m out on the Strip—”

“Looking for another place to stay the night, is that it?” she snapped.

“I was the one who took you in last time.”

“Still, you’re looking for a bed, aren’t you? What happened? Did she have to go home to take care of her kids?”

“Holly, you’re jumping to conclusions.” I was going to continue, but hesitated. I’d been about to say that Jenna and I had never slept together—but we actually had slept in the same bed. Then I was going to say we hadn’t had
sex—but we
had
kissed. And I’d have been lying if I said there wasn’t something going on between the two of us. I felt a little hot, despite the cool evening breezes.

“What were you going to say?” Holly asked.

“Look, Jenna isn’t my girlfriend. I’ve been helping her find her husband, who stepped into one of those rips and never came out again.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s different. So there’s nothing between you two?”

“There have been some emotional moments. I’ve hugged her—you know, to comfort her.”

“I see,” Holly said. Her voice had turned cooler again, but not angry, not icy. Wary. Finally, she sighed. “I’m sorry then. I’m just tired of players, you know? I’ve been messed with too many times.”

I wanted to tell her I’d been under the impression we’d had some casual fun the night before, and I hadn’t figured we’d gotten engaged yet. But none of those words would help me, so I didn’t bother. Instead, I told her a heavily edited story about my day. I left out unpleasant details like shooting McKesson in the shoulder.

“I could use your help,” she said when I was finished. “I need to go back to the apartment and get my stuff. Just a few things.”

“You mean the money, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Haven’t you slipped back inside and gathered all that hidden cash up yet?”

“I tried, but they put up a new door and the cops have it taped up. My key didn’t work. But I know you can get in.”

“Yeah, OK,” I said. “Come pick me up.”

I gave her the address and ten minutes later we were driving in her car. She was quiet at first and I thought she
was still angry. I thought about giving her an apology, but I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. We drove quietly through town in sparse traffic.

Holly let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right,” I said, thinking she meant her tirade concerning Jenna. “I understand the confusion.”

“No, not about—whoever.”

“What then?”

She paused for a moment, as if struggling with words. “You’ve been very nice, Quentin,” she said at last. “You don’t deserve someone like me in your life, that’s the truth.”

I glanced at her. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet.

“Remember when we first met?” she asked.

“Sure, at Tony’s.”

“I didn’t show up there by accident. I was sent there.”

Alarm bells went off in my head. I recalled thinking Holly’s appearance was a big coincidence at the time, but I’d somehow forgotten about that. I began to worry. Maybe I wasn’t paranoid enough.

“Who sent you?”

“Gilling.”

Slowly, I nodded my head. “Why’d he send you?”

“To find and steal the sunglasses. To find Tony’s stuff—whatever he had. Instead, I found you.”

My head began to pound. She’d been working for the cultists. “That’s why I found you in his basement, then? Because you failed to rip me off?”

“I didn’t plan to rip you off. I didn’t know it was going to be
you
I met at Tony’s place.”

“Why did Gilling chain you in his cellar?”

“I think he was trying scare me into giving his money back. But I’d already spent it by that time, even though I didn’t bring him what he wanted.”

“Let me get this straight, you took money to snuggle up to me and take my objects?”

Holly shook her head and reached out a hand to touch my arm. “No. It wasn’t like that. I went down there to look around for the sunglasses. You had them, so I followed you around for a while. But I never tried to take them. I guess you kind of grew on me. Anyway, Gilling became tired of waiting and grabbed me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this when I found you in the basement?”

She shrugged and looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. I liked you. I didn’t want you to dump me.”

I wasn’t sure what I felt about Holly now. I fumed all the way to her apartment door.

“Are we still friends?” she asked me quietly, standing there in the dark.

I nodded after a moment. “Yeah.”

I worked my magic on the door and it popped open. I had time to give Holly a smug smile. She kissed me on the cheek and pushed her way through a mile of yellow tape and stepped inside.

I should have been on my guard. I should have gone in with my gun in my hand—but I didn’t. I was too busy thinking about Holly and impressing her with my little sunglasses trick.

The Gray Men were waiting for us.

The door had been sealed, but of course that didn’t matter to them. They could go anywhere they wanted. The first Gray Man was standing right there in front of the coffee table as we stepped inside and snapped on the lights. Only, it was a Gray Woman this time. She was the first alien female I’d encountered—unless Ezzie counted. I was surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. She wore a hood, as
had others I’d seen. I noticed her hands didn’t have spurs on the backs of them. Perhaps the females of the species didn’t get spurs.

In the split second before I fumbled in my pocket for my gun, I realized the alien was examining objects on the coffee table. She had Holly’s TV remote in her hands, holding it high. She ran some kind of cube-shaped, metallic device over it. The metal seemed to shine and twist in her hand as she scanned the TV remote with it. I had no doubt it was some kind of scientific instrument.

“Hey, that’s mine,” Holly said, reaching for the remote. I came in behind her, and I had my gun out now, but no clear shot with Holly in the way.

The alien glanced at us, and Holly froze. I think she hadn’t realized the stranger wasn’t human until that moment. She hadn’t seen the gray fingers and understood what they meant. The eyes were particularly strange—they were gray as well, but looked more like silver due to being wet. The hood slipped away from the head, and I got a good look at her. There was no hair on her head. None at all. A smooth gray skin covered everything except those eyes.

I took aim. But that’s when something touched my head from behind. It touched me just behind the ear. A blinding jolt of pain and numbness filled me. I tumbled forward, passing out. I stayed conscious long enough to see the second alien step over me and grab Holly, applying his weapon to her skull as well.