No Dogs in Philly, page 3
There was another tremor, greater, and then noises, hundreds of bodies scrambling to their feet, cans and garbage kicked around, and then a mass of people. All around them the elzi were rising from their stupor and shuffling or scrambling or sprinting if they hadn’t decayed too far. A herd leapt into the pit of the subway track and began racing south. Another group scrabbled for the sewer entrance. The hips thrust themselves up to their feet and looked wildly around for the danger. Ria stayed seated and stared at the dog. The dog stared down the subway tunnel.
“What do we do?” the young girl asked.
“Run,” the man with the flask said, but it was a question more than an answer.
“No,” Ria said, “We can’t, not yet.”
She felt that same cold sweat like when she couldn’t find booze, and a queasiness in her stomach. All the hairs across her back stood on end, but she knew they couldn’t run. There were too many elzi, clogging the exits with their mass, dumb beasts getting stuck and crammed in the narrow exits. If they tried to follow, one of them would touch an implant and then the elzi would rip them all apart.
“Shit,” the man with the flask said. “Shit, shit, shit…”
“What about the tunnel?” the androgynous one said. “We could run down that way. Follow the elzi.”
This seemed like the only answer, but as she thought it the dog turned and looked at her and she knew it was wrong.
“No, we can’t.”
“Fuck this.”
The androgynous one ran to the platform edge and hopped down. After a second’s hesitation the man with the flask followed far less gracefully, and then the other man. Ria stayed where she was and the young girl’s head jerked between her and the others now running down the tunnel. The androgynous one disappeared into the black beyond the firelight and then the young girl sprang after them screaming:
“Wait, wait for me, don’t leave me!”
They disappeared.
Ria sat there, staring at the black mouth of the tunnel where they had gone. Her heart pounded a thousand beats a minute. She felt the sweat wetting her clothes again. The scrabbling of the elzi began to fade. It was quiet, so quiet she could hear the drip drop of water falling from the ceiling. She was alone, except for the dog. It walked toward her slowly, coming as close as it ever had, touching her, and then not stopping, entering her body. It was a strange feeling, like heat and cold at the same time and a thousand needle pricks on every inch of skin. She looked at her hand and saw that it both was and wasn’t, understood that only her eyes could see the hand before her, that the light no longer obeyed the rules of a dumb universe, but a new set of rules, rules of a magical ghost dog that said, “Back, away, this person is not yours to touch. She is hidden.”
There was a sound, a slithering nail on a vinyl record, a sound that crawled inside her ears and wriggled down her spine and made her want to jam knitting needles in her tits and scream. In the flickering light of the trash fire the creature looked like a train-sized centipede, countless legs jutting out at strange angles, scratching along any surface they could grasp to push the body forward. At the front was a mass of flesh—bodies, at least a dozen torsos, crammed together, and they were alive. They moved together, swaying like seaweed, eyes all closed, and as they passed she saw their mouths all twitching together as they whimpered—a dozen men, women, and children all whimpering together in tenors and basses and sopranos.
The creature stopped and then reared its head, its mass of human bodies, twenty spindly metal legs clawing into the floor and walls and ceiling to force the head up to the fire to bring the dozens of bodies within five feet of her, and in unison their eyes opened and they stared at her, right at her, and she sat, frozen in terror and horror. The whimpering stopped. They reached, arms grasping as far as they could out from the fused lump of flesh they shared, licking their lips. And then they spoke: “Come…come…come…come…” a whisper, all of them over and over in her ears and in her brain: “Come…come…come…come…”
The words trickled through her nerves, nudging her, moving her, she felt herself stand. The arms were welcoming; it was her family, they wanted her, they loved her. She felt it, the warm beam of love from her family drawing her in. She would reach out, touch them, join them.
A jagged pain cut through her, a dagger of ice cutting through the warmth. It was that damn dog! It had taken everything else from her and now it was taking this too! She took another step, and another dagger of ice and then another and two more in her eyes and she saw herself suddenly inches from the grasping hands, the fingertips worn to yellow bone from scratching, the eyes white and dead, the lips cracked and torn and bloody, and she screamed. The hands drew back and the eyes rolled wildly and the mouths shot open and screamed back at her. Then the creature reared up and crashed back onto the tracks, shaking the ground and showering dust and bricks and tile from the ceiling. The legs twitched frantically and it tore down the tunnel, segment after segment of twisted metal, and was gone.
Chapter 4
The Gaespora were a group of scientists who had pushed human experimentation to the point of becoming a new (superior) species. They were invaders from another dimension. They were people born naturally with psychic powers. They were a hoax perpetrated by the American oligarchs. They could have sprung from radioactive dog shit for all Saru cared—the fact that mattered was they had her clit in a vice and were predisposed to squeeze.
The office was nice, she had to admit, top floor of the Vericast building, open air, with an ungodly expensive cloud shear to cut through the smog and bring real, honest-to-God daylight down around her. She had seen the light from the ground of course—the bright, golden beam that swiveled around the big, funky skyscraper in the city center—but she hadn’t realized it was the sun. It felt good, the light; it was warm, and gazing up she saw blue. There were birds up here, and not just pigeons and crows—little blue birds and red birds and birds with big funny tufts and brightly colored feathers. They sang and flew from tree to tree, more trees than she had ever seen. She couldn’t even believe there were that many kinds of trees in the world—short and fat and tall and with wrinkly bark and smooth bark and apples and long limbs that drooped down; there must have been hundreds. There was a pond too, and the water was clear and reflected the blue of the sky. It was so perfect and beautiful it made her angry. She felt like crying and she didn’t know why.
“We had planned to shear the whole city,” ElilE said, making his third attempt at pleasantries. “But the city council would not partner with us. Imagine: sun and sky for all of Philadelphia.”
“Then why didn’t you just go ahead and do it yourselves?” she said, taking the bait, even angrier now that she’d spoken. “Who would stop you?”
“We are guests in this world. We act only in partnership with humans.”
“Bullshit,” she laughed (but why did she still want to cry?) The man, ElilE, was definitely human, even if he had a fairy-ass name. Human face: check. Human body: check. He was barefoot like all the other Gaesporans—they had winced as she stomped through the grass in her steel-toed boots—ten human toes: check. He even wore a high-fashion black and silver pinstripe caji suit like any other dickhole bizman…and yet there were things that were odd about him. His eyes, green, normal, but so steady—yes, steady, that was the word. She wasn’t a psychologist by any stretch, but she’d talked to a fair spectrum of humanity and could identify some cause-and-effect emotions: I whack your knee with a bludgeon; you scream. I accuse you of fucking your sister; you look shocked—or at least feign it. I drop hints and clues and suppositions—subtle and not—and your eyes twitch or your tongue licks your lips, or you blush or redden or sweat or gasp.
There was none of that with ElilE. He sat cross-legged on a smooth, moss-covered bolder—they’d brought her a chair, hard wood that made her sit too straight—hands on his knees, staring and sometimes giving words. He was still, perfectly still. His breathing never varied, his eyes blinked but it was strangely regular. She decided to risk a scan, a quick visual—camera based—that wouldn’t trigger any alarms. He might notice the dilation of her pupils and the processing power might cause her to slur a word or skip a beat, but for all he knew she was drunk and high.
Amazing. Eight breaths a minute in even intervals. Six blinks per minute, again in even intervals. Pulse: forty. He was controlled for sure, but that didn’t signify anything inhuman. Good dopple training could get you the same result, or psycho yoga, and of course there were drugs you could take to make your body do anything you wanted—drugs manufactured by the Gaespora.
“Okay, what do you want? Why did you bring me here?”
It was time to get this over with. The chair was starting to hurt her back and the sun was in her eyes—damn it was bright, and it felt like it was burning her skin. She wanted to get back into the cool shade of the city below, away from this wind and bright and the goddamn loud-ass birds chirping everywhere. Also, she was fairly certain that something had crawled up her pants and was biting its way to the money spot.
“You are a private investigator,” ElilE said.
“Obviously you know that already.”
“We want you to find a girl.”
“Kidnapping?”
“We don’t know. She is in danger. There are others looking for her. If they find her they will kill her.”
“What kind of ‘others’ are we talking about? I don’t do riv jobs. I play nice with my fellow PIs.”
“We believe she is hunted by feasters.”
She stopped scratching her thigh. Well that was interesting.
“Sorry, I’m not the one you want. You need to talk to Morgan Friar—he deals with that mumbo jumbo.”
“We have already contacted Dr. Friar. He has refused. You are our second choice.”
If this was a ploy to grab her attention it had worked. Friar refusing a case? Doctor Friar? He’d never mentioned he was a doctor. Did he think it was a goose chase? Or was it real, too real, too dangerous? She thought again of the pudgy little man hunting down feasters—creatures, if rumor was to be believed, that made vampires look like fairies.
“Why didn’t he take the case?”
“He would not say.”
“Why do you think he turned it down?”
“We do not speculate.”
“Honey, this whole case is speculation so far. You believe she’s in danger? You believe there are feasters involved? The only fact you’ve managed to produce is that the best man for the job doesn’t want it.”
Seven blinks—an extra half-blink at the end. Did that signal annoyance? Frustration? Persuasion? She took it as a victory she’d managed to stick a pinhole in his poker face. He said nothing. He closed his eyes. The vast, glassy, sail-like wind shear suddenly stopped—she hadn’t even noticed the sheen of energy across it until it stopped. The wind picked up, the birds chirped more frantically, the black clouds of smog spiraled overhead.
In a fraction of a second, ElilE darted forward, so quickly her eyelids had just reached their peak in surprise as his finger touched her forehead. She blinked; it was night, quiet, the birds chirping softly, the sound of insects in the bushes, a black sky overhead crowded with a billion stars, so bright it lit the world around her—and color, she had never known there was so much color in the universe. ElilE sat across from her still, as though he had never even moved. He stared and his eyes reflected the sky—black, so black, with a billion points of light.
“You are a skeptic,” he said, and his voice was different now, not the tenor of a man, but a rustling many-voice of wind in trees and rippling ponds and clicking insects and even a few human sounds laughing on the sidelines.
“You do not believe in us. You think us human—and we are, but only so. Your world and our world are alike but not perfectly. We built this world ages ago, back when we were different from what we are now. We accept your presence here though it was unplanned. We recognize your existence and we are grateful for the shelter you provide, flawed as your doings are.”
He pointed up to the sky and her gaze followed, transfixed.
“Know that as many stars as are in this universe, there are universes within a higher plane of existence, which itself is as common as the universes within it. These universes are not static beings—they live and move and touch and consume one another. Your universe and our universe touch for we have made it so, and we can exist in your universe in the margin of similarity. We live as we can as thoughts within your kind and through thought we drive action and with action we bring your world closer to our own.
“There is another force that has touched your universe, a force which you would understand as evil but we understand as the impetus of hunger. It is a universe vaster than our own collective and far vaster than your own, and it seeks no such union, no shared knowledge, no balance, no compromise, no existence other than its own. It has consumed many other universes and grown in power with each consumption, eventually to stand alone and form the basis of a new universal plane, to ascend in existence and birth smaller existences based upon its own. We do not understand its ultimate motive—if it can be understood—but we know in its motion it will destroy and consume all other universes.
“You have seen this force and named it even; it is the dark place in your shared consciousness, the place you call the UausuaU. It besets your universe as it besets ours, and no action we have seen will stay its course. It grows in power as it turns the margin of similarity towards its own. We grow here, slowly, and as our powers increase we have seen other universes appear, sensing the kill, carving off what they can to strengthen themselves. Far beyond this planet are other organisms, other wars, other visitors to your universe.
“We see a girl. A girl with blue eyes and a dog that is not a dog. We know this creature—have seen it. It is strong and it fights, fighting the UausuaU across the universal plane. We see opportunity in this creature, yet it waits. We believe it waits for you, for mankind, to see if you will fight, if this corner of this universe is worth the battle.”
It was day, the sun shone, the birds were back to their annoying chirping and the chair was just as hard as ever. ElilE sat staring at her as he had been. When he spoke his voice was the normal tenor:
“This girl is very important. She is the foothold upon which this creature relies. The fraction of similarity that allows it to exist in your universe. The feasters serve the UausuaU though they may not know it. If they find this girl they will kill her and destroy the margin.”
“Well that’s fucking great,” Saru said. She took out her jacket flask (damn her hands were shaking, had it really just been night? Had they drugged her or hacked her implants?) and found it was empty. She got the hip flask and downed it. “What will you do if she dies?”
“We will do as we have always done.”
“And let the world be destroyed? Assuming I believe your hocus pocus.”
“Not destroyed—consumed. But yes, it is likely that all mass on Earth, at least, will disassociate from this universe and become part of the UausuaU.”
“Jesus Christ. And this is your plan? To hire one detective to track down this girl? Why not put out an APB, get the cops on it, the army, or at least get me a big fat load of mercenaries to come along.”
“There is…danger in that route. It would be a great loss if the girl were to die…but it would be…safer.”
“What do you mean, ‘safer’?”
“The creature that lives in her is powerful. Our understanding of it is…incomplete. We know it battles the UausuaU but its actions are at times unclear. It does not understand humanity well, does not communicate. It could interpret such pursuit as a threat and…overreact.”
“Like, what, kill somebody?” She was fairly certain that however this ended it was going to involve a few body bags.
“It would likely kill many…the city perhaps. We do not know its power or constraint.”
Saru began to laugh, a real laugh, not some bitter chuckle. This was funny. Oh man, Eugene was right, no wonder people loved working for these guys. A mission to rescue an alien that sure didn’t need her help, with a bonus of potentially destroying Philadelphia? Sign me up! She imagined the parking authority going up in flames, the rat-infested slum housing, the banking district with its swarms of self-righteous yuppies. She was perfect for the job—this was a pretty low-pressure consequence as far as she was concerned. And her qualifications—
“So basically you want me because I’m too clumsy to be seen as a threat, and simple-minded enough to be understood by the dumbest of aliens.”
“You are not subtle. You think and act directly. Yes, this could be easier for the being to understand. And the girl has had a difficult childhood; given your own difficult childhood, we think you two can relate.”
Ooh, bringing up her childhood. That was a foul. She thought about giving him a light tickle with the prod—nothing too subtle—and then did it. He caught the prod lazily and locked eyes with her, unblinking. She dialed up the power and returned his stare. His forearm shook, the blue arcs of electricity danced up and down his arm, little flames poked up from his hand and the scent of steak filled the air. He yanked the prod from her grip and dropped it on the ground between them. His hand was black and red, burned, destroyed. She felt suddenly guilty, sympathetic almost; she hadn’t meant to hurt him, had she even hurt him? There was that strange urge to cry again.
