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.
“Sorry,” she said, softly. “That was stupid.” Then a thought occurred: “Wait, won’t this creature interpret any feasters as a threat and ‘overreact’?”
“It may,” he said. He picked up a clump of dirt from around the boulder and massaged it into his wound. “When you find the girl you must gain her trust, convince her to follow you of her own free will. We will provide transportation to take her far from the city, far from the reach of the feasters, where she will be safe and we can observe the being. Do you understand?”
Away from Philadelphia, a place where she was safe. Jeeze, take me with you.
“Surprisingly, I do,” she said. “So now the real question: what does all this pay? Keep in mind the imminent destruction of the universe and my uniquely moronic qualifications—I don’t know if you’ve seen the feeds lately, but I’m a celebrity too.”
“We are prepared to offer you the same contract we offered Dr. Friar. Ten million American dollars upon successful closure. Five hundred thousand to be paid up front for necessary expenses.”
“Holy shit!” Saru yelled. “Why didn’t you just spit that out at the beginning instead of all this mumbo jumbo bullshit? Holy shit!”
She jumped up and half jogged to the glass box of the elevator, then jogged back to grab her prod and then jogged back again. Holy shit, holy shit, ten million dollars! She had to find this bitch. ElilE was jogging after her; he was saying things and yadda yadda yadda. Holy shit! Ten million dollars!