Читать книгу A Lunatic Fear - B. A. Chepaitis - Страница 7

Chapter 4

Alex’s workday often finished at odd hours, depending on the assignments under his supervision and his involvement with them. For the next few weeks, he knew, that involvement would be deep, and the hours would be long. He didn’t want this one to get too far out of his sight when it exploded. After reading Rachel’s research, he knew it was a matter of when, not if.

Brendan Farley’s history deepened Alex’s suspicions about his exposure to Artemis. He was an eco-terrorist with a long history of petty vandalism in service of his cause. He focused primarily on pesticides, and had done his share of lawn shredding, independently of any environmental group. Whenever he was charged he claimed self-defense. Pesticides poisoned him and his mother, he said. He had every right to defend himself.

Newspapers picked up on his story as he went from town to town, and he actually managed to get some local ordinances changed, but the prevailing mood on the home planet about such cases was one of peevishness. People didn’t want some crackpot getting between them and their quest for the perfect lawn.

Then, a month ago, he leapt from his irritating but fairly benign protests to setting off a pesticide loaded bomb in a mall, killing about a hundred people and making the place into a toxic waste site. He used the same kinds of pesticides he was protesting, the ones everyone said were safe. Alex supposed in that sense, he’d proved his point.

He told the Planetoid testers that the world was clearly going to hell in a hand-basket, and he just wanted to help complete the process. Get it over with, he said. Put humanity and the earth out of their mutual misery. Because of this, testers said his core fear was death, which had transformed into Thanatos syndrome – a complex similar to Stockholm syndrome, where death was the captor.

Thanatos driven prisoners saw themselves as kidnapped by death, and overcame their relentless terror by becoming friend, partner, lover, to their captor. It was a common syndrome of the Killing Times, and they still saw it pretty frequently on the Planetoids. It made sense as Farley’s core fear.

All this was the kind of reaction Alex would expect to see in a man exposed to Artemis, but it could also be intergenerational trauma or even some genetic defect created by exposure to biobombs. His crimes didn’t necessarily connect him to Artemis, but his work history might.

He had a degree in mineralogy and geochemistry and started his career with Galactic Net Communications, doing bench-work with transmission lodestones. He moved on to Assured Insurance, where he tested post-disaster materials for toxic elements. After two years there he quit, and in what seemed to Alex a most unusual career move, he went to work for La Femme, women’s beauty and health products, doing lab work in vitamins and makeup.

He left them less than a year ago, and from what Alex could tell, went on to be a free-lance madman. And Rachel’s research had turned up one small piece of information that, for Alex, connected the dots into a cohesive whole.

All the companies Farley worked for were different divisions of one large parent company called Global Concerns, Inc. That company had invested enormously in the initial moon mining concerns, and had gone on to throw all its weight at the Hague to prevent a ban against it. Now they controlled the biggest lobbying efforts for a moratorium repeal. In a small side jaunt in her research, Rachel also learned they already had an ad campaign ready for the many uses of Artemis compounds.

When Alex read that, every fiber of his precognitive capacities started to hum in recognition. He figured if this case wasn’t filthy with Artemis, he’d just have to hang up his title of Adept.

What he read next, from Rachel’s research on Board governor’s memos, made him also figure he and Jaguar were about to dive head first into a political and corporate quagmire. That was why, though it was well past midnight, he sat in his rocking chair facing the window that looked out over the replica of Lake Ontario, reading over the files one more time.

They told him no more than they had the first three times he read them, so he tried another source. He closed the file, let his hand rest palm up and open on top of it, breathed himself into the empathic space he knew best.

Sometimes he would sit like this for an hour, and emerge with nothing more specific than an intuitive sense of the next action he should take. Tonight, he was lifted and tossed roughly into an image that sizzled its way across his mind, and just as quickly disappeared.

The moon as a woman curled in on herself, bleeding from a gaping wound in her breast. A man whose face he knew flying to her, pouring something from a vial into the wound. Medicine? Something to heal?

No. Poison.

Searing pain and fire that he felt in his own body like a knife. He jerked back from the shock of it, gasped for air. Then, darkness.

Alex opened his eyes, stared down at his hand which was now a fist. That was it, he supposed. And it was enough to give him food for further contemplation.

He was deeply absorbed in considering it when he felt warmth at his back.

He didn’t shift. Didn’t lift his head or twitch. He just sat and felt it. Warmth. Like breath applied by a mouth held close to the back of his neck. It glowed and spread through him, and he let it, without moving. Warmth explored him, and he let it.

Jaguar.

He hadn’t heard anyone enter his apartment, but he never heard her when she chose to be silent, and he never missed her when she chose to be heard. He caught the scent of sage and smoke in her hair, and her warmth was balanced as the earth, holding fire at its core.

“When you make love,” she asked, “do you keep your eyes open, or closed?”

He let the question settle in someplace where it wouldn’t cause too much trouble. Then he smiled.

“That depends, Jaguar,” he answered, without lifting his head.

“On what?”

“The woman. The context of the lovemaking. With certain women I won’t name, I can’t imagine ever turning my eyes away again. Would you like specific examples and illustrations?”

He felt her shift behind him. He had disturbed her. That was a good thing.

“Your point,” she noted. “We’d better move on. And by the way, the women all have Phase Psychosis, induced by exposure to Artemis.”

He twisted in his chair and faced her. She resonated fire and moonlight, held calmly in her skin and her eyes, beautiful and distracting. He didn’t have to ask if she was sure. He knew from what he’d seen, and he read it in her flesh.

She walked around to stand in front of him. “My guess,” she continued, “is that it’s heavy and direct exposure, over a fairly long time.”

He held her gaze steady. “What makes you think so?” he asked.

“I can smell it,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“I smell it. In their sweat. Direct contact. Not airborne.” She stared at him hard, daring him to tell her she was wrong. He didn’t.

Instead, he kept his dark gaze steadily on her sea eyes while he reached up and took her hand. His thoughts moved into hers easily. They’d done this so many times, in so many ways, there was very little to block contact unless one of them chose to actively push the other away. She didn’t choose that tonight.

Show me, he requested.

Easy as a sigh, she opened. She drew him in to her experience, what she saw and felt from the women in the sweat lodge. He felt the swirling of energy that told her what was happening within them. Wordlessly, she took him through the entire sweat, through their experience and her own, including her vision in the sweat lodge.

Both the content and the feel of it almost jolted Alex out of contact with her. Blood on the moon, and a man with blood on his hands. And the first man she saw – he startled at the brief glimpse of a face, so soon covered in blood. His surprise was so sharp that Jaguar halted in her sharing.

Alex?

Okay, Jaguar. Just – give me a second here.

She let him linger in the vision, and at his signal moved on though the night and into the morning, where he observed her at her work with Terez.

The sun on her bare back as she leaned over the stream and dipped her hand into the water. The curve of her hips as she swayed with Terez, dancing her flesh into desire. He felt it directly, as if it was injected into his veins. Fear and desire and power. The most potent and potentially combustible combination he knew, and Jaguar danced with it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Every motion of her hand seemed both effortless and inevitable. What she did with her body was only what the laws of the universe had insisted on from the beginning of time. Yet, he also felt her concentration, her focus on the task. She danced lightly, but she understood the forces she partnered with.

Fear and desire, saturated with the power of the moon. The intensity of it, and her willingness to give herself so completely to it in this dance were more than he could bear right now.

He withdrew, pulled his hand back from hers. She leaned back against the windowsill, tilted her head at him.

“Problem?” she asked.

“I’ve seen enough to - to understand. Unless there’s more I need to know?”

She shook her head. “I’m good.”

He resisted all possible responses he could make to this. Instead, he stood and pressed his hands against his lower back. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I want some coffee, and we have to talk.”

She padded behind him, talking as they went. “Terez is coming along already,” she said. “The others should clear just as quickly if I keep sweating them.”

“We still need proof,” he said, then hushed her impending protests. “I mean, proof for the Hague.”

“What kind of proof?”

He sighed. “Not the kind you just showed me.”

He led her into his kitchen, and made coffee in the warm darkness, the aroma creating a comforting intimacy. She perched herself on his counter while he worked, watching him silently from this post, swinging her legs back and forth. He felt her gaze on him, still full of the moon, as he moved from stove to cupboard, making coffee, being normal, trying not to let his hand slip and find itself suddenly on her thigh.

When the brew was finished, he poured her a cup, set it down at his small kitchen table and took a seat. She sat across from him, letting the steam rise to her face and breathing it in deeply.

“We need to establish the source,” he said. “Odds are the women know how they were exposed. They might even know where the manufacturing’s going on. Can you get them to talk?”

“I think so,” she said. “Two of them are desperate to do penance as it is.”

“How long until they’re clear?”

“Two weeks tops, if I don’t run into any snags.”

“Okay. I’ll have Rachel dig up anything she can find about the people in their lives. Husbands. Bosses. Family. If the exposure’s that heavy it must be someone they see all the time, or a place they’re at all the time. You get what you can from them, too.”

He swirled his coffee in his cup, brooded over it a minute. “Jaguar, what do you know about phase psychosis in men?” he asked.

She blinked. “What?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Just tell me what you know.”

“Same as everyone else. Nothing. No one admitted it existed in women, much less men, who never reported trouble with exposure to Artemis. Of course, I’ve got my own theory about that.” He waved a hand, inviting her to continue, and she did. “Given what we call acceptable male behavior, nobody would see it as a problem. Now tell me why you ask,” she said.

He stirred his coffee, brooded over it a moment.

“Shaking your web, Spider Magus?” she asked, as she always did when she thought he’d been using his Adept skills.

“Yes. Though, apparently, I don’t have to,” he said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Your vision in the sweat. I saw something similar.”

“I’m not an Adept,” she said immediately.

He grinned. She wouldn’t like seeing herself that way. “Don’t worry. Actually, I think you saw it with your clairvoyance. That just means it’s closer than either of us would like.”

“How close?” she asked.

“Here. The man in your vision – he’s here. A prisoner.”

“You know who he is?”

“Brendan Farley,” he said. “Got in trouble in Connecticut. And he used to work for La Femme.”

She sucked in breath. It was unusual for Adept space to be that specific. Usually information was metaphoric, tricky to interpret. That’s why she trusted so few Adepts. What they saw was a gift. Their ability to interpret well took great skill, which most didn’t have. Alex, she had to admit, was damn good. But this vision needed little interpretation.

“La Femme – one of my women worked there. Karena. But her personnel file’s missing.”

“I know.”

“Farley’s?”

That’s here, but it doesn’t say much.”

“So why - or how - did he show up in my sweat lodge vision?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think it means more trouble.”

“Do you mind,” she requested, “being more specific?”

He turned sharp eyes to her. “Specifically, corporate trouble. Big money and big politicking trouble. Specifically, when we drag all this out into the light, someone’s bound to get pissed off, and we’ll be standing right in line to get pissed on, if we don’t manage it right.”

“You think you can manage moon madness?” she asked, “It’s like gold fever. Greed and fear are in charge of this one.”

He considered his next words carefully. They would light a fire under her, but maybe she was already warm enough. On the other hand, he promised not to hold back.

“Listen,” he said, “it may be worse than that.”

She leaned back and sipped at her coffee. “Go on,” she said.

He stirred his coffee, put the spoon down on the table. “I’ve been hearing some rumors, so I asked Rachel to track private Board memos. She found a bunch between some CEOs and governors talking about support for moratorium repeal, and discussing the idea of renting Planetoid space to Global Concerns - for lunar crystallization plants.

He didn’t have to say more. She was suddenly and fully alert. “Which governors do we need to dodge?”

She tumbled to that quick enough, he thought. “Could be all of them. The memos were from a variety.”

“Rat fuck,” Jaguar said.

“Dry and hard,” Alex agreed. “So the connection between Farley and Global Concerns gets important fast. Rachel’s pursuing that.”

“Global - that’s Larry Barone’s outfit. More Rat fuck.”

He was always surprised at the bits of information she did and didn’t carry around in her head, but this was very unexpected. High finance ranked nowhere on her continuum of what was important. That she knew the name of a CEO seemed about as likely as governors inviting her to dinner.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“I read,” she said cryptically. Then, she added, “And I’m very fond of Anna Burhasa’s writing.”

“Oh,” he said. “Burhasa. I should’ve guessed.”

Of course she’d know about that. Anna Burhasa was a novelist, screenwriter, and poet at the turn of the century, and everything she wrote would be something Jaguar would appreciate. She started out poor and obscure, but the Pulitzer for one of her novels changed all that, and she grew to be very wealthy. Her money started the Burhasa trust fund, an organization that helped 13 Streams get solar technology.

Her personality was as colorful as her writing. She traced her roots back to the ancient Etruscans, and always wore her family crest – a leopard’s face surrounded by grapevine – in her jewelry. She was a political activist, frequently arrested for civil disobedience, and she threw the best parties in any town you cared to name. She traveled the world and wrote about it, took a variety of lovers, male and female, and wrote about that, too. She married three times, and the third marriage lasted until she was shot in the streets of L.A., an old, old woman busy rescuing children during the Killing Times.

Of course Jaguar would know about Anna Burhasa. That meant she’d also know about Larry Barone.

“You know what happened with her second husband?” Jaguar asked. “He accused her of witchcraft when he left her.”

Alex nodded. “The way she wrote, she must’ve been one of us.”

“Naturally. But it didn’t keep her money out of the wrong hands.”

Her second husband, Martin Barone, finagled rights to some of her early works, which she then refused to have published until after her death and his. But Martin’s son by another woman went to court for the proceeds and won. That was Larry’s father, and with the inheritance Larry financed the start of Global Concerns, Inc. If Anna was in a place where she knew her money was financing the Barone empire, Alex thought she’d be royally pissed.

“Larry Rat Fuck Barone,” Jaguar commented. “Alex, does he have friends here?”

“I have Rachel on that, and more. I’ll check on Farley myself. I know Nance, and she won’t mind. First, I’ll have a chat with Paul about moon mining plants.”

Jaguar leaned her elbow on the table, put her chin in her hand. It was late, and she’d been hard at it with her prisoners, but her green eyes were alert, sparking with questions.

“Do you think Paul’s for it?”

“My first guess is no. He’s many unfortunate things, but he’s not a gambler, and he doesn’t like to share turf.”

Jaguar chewed on this thought. “You’re right. So what’ll you do with Farley?”

“Find out what I can,” he said. “Same as you do.”

Her forehead creased in thought. “What’s his testing show?” she asked.

“Thanatos syndrome.”

At this, her aspect darkened further. “Be careful, Alex,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows, surprised. Jaguar advising caution was a new phenomena.

“I mean it,” she continued. “With Thanatos, if he’s been exposed, he’ll be a toxic waste dump. Lunar material - you have to handle it with absolute respect.”

“I know that, Jaguar. And like you, I know how to block unwanted empathic contact. I’m also old enough to vote and drink, choose my bed partners with care –”

She made a low noise at the back of her throat like growling, reached quickly across the table and grasped his wrist. Squeezed hard. Spoke into him.

Do not fuck around with this stuff. It will eat you alive.

Through her hand he felt the power of desire that flowed through the moon, through the tidal pull of blood in veins, through her.

She knew that the oldest wisdom was real. The moon exerted her influence, and if you tried to control or manipulate it without understanding, it would eat you. You had to take care, stay in balance with it, and with yourself. The moon was no more dangerous than a woman, in and of itself, but to play with either disrespectfully was potentially deadly. The Death Sisters were testimony to that.

Through her hand he could feel the tidal pull of it, a power she would let flow through and out of her. He knew the discipline it took to resist using that power, and he only hoped he could do the same. Power was as seductive as love or fear.

“You be careful, too, Jaguar,” he said softly. “It’s already in you.”

She turned a slow smile toward him. “It’s different,” she said. “I’m a woman. The moon’s cellular for me.”

“But politics and corporate scamming aren’t,” he said. “Far from it. So I repeat, be careful. Don’t make big moves without letting me know.”

“And you - will you let me know what you’re doing? What you know?”

“I will, Jaguar. I promise. Unless I’m physically prevented, I will.”

“All right,” she said. “Okay.” She stood and stretched her long arms toward the ceiling, breathed in and out deeply.

“Back to work,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

And quietly as wind, she was gone, leaving Alex to brood further over his coffee, his job, and the imprint of her fingers on his wrist.