DISCLAIMER: The World of Darkness, the Virtual Adepts, the Technocracy, the use of the words "Awakening" and "Empowering," and the rules of true magick in general is the property of White Wolf. The characters are mine, but their world is not.
Of course, anyone who is familiar with the setting will notice that I am shamelessly altering it to suit my story, but then, the fact that reality is subjective is the very cornerstone of the mages' existence, so I hope I can be forgiven… =]
I needn't have worried. Diana didn't seem to see anything strange with that excuse. She just asked me – without sounding too concerned – if I was all right, and said that she'd expect me an hour later. I actually found that attitude more bothering than the monster itself. Did this sort of thing happen to Empowered people regularly? Maybe I should request a licence for a gun. A very big one.
After having showered, bandaged and dressed myself, called someone to fix my window by tomorrow afternoon and called the restaurant to move my reservations one hour ahead, I managed to walk out the door with just a slight delay. The only thing that had required all that much effort was the restaurant. The whole point of reservations is that they are for a fixed time, so they can't really be moved. I had to inform the restaurant person of exactly how many people I knew who could make his life difficult if I just asked them nicely before he agreed to make an exception.
Six months ago, I wouldn't have considered doing something like that. Now, I just felt a bit ashamed of myself – and wasn't that a hint of naughty pleasure I felt, as well? That bothered me a little. Redefining myself a bit I could live with (unless I went insane from redefining every single bit of my personality), but I wasn't sure that I wanted to redefine myself into a conscienceless autocrat.
On the other hand, I did have an important date. Most people would probably be understanding. Well, most male people, anyway. At least if they got a look at Diana.
I managed to ring Diana's doorbell within forty-five minutes of my call to her. With my left hand. My right one didn't exactly feel poisoned, which was a bit of a relief, but it sure did ache.
Diana opened, and suddenly my hand was very far from my mind. I gaped. She was stunning in office clothes. Now she was wearing an armless white dress. The colour went very nicely with the warm brown of her skin, and as promised, that dress did look like it had been sewn on her.
She grinned at me and spun around like a model.
"What do you think?" she said.
Somewhere in my overheated mind I found the ability to speak.
"Luh… Lovely," I said, not too smoothly, but without making a complete fool out of myself for once. "You're beautiful."
"I know," she said modestly. "But it's nice of you to notice. Shall we?"
She held out an arm for me to take. I did so, after a moment hesitation. I managed to catch a glimpse of her apartment before she closed the door, though.
"Do you live in a workshop?" I asked as we walked down the stairs. She winced.
"No, I'm just doing some fine adjustments to my computer."
There was the C-word again. I was starting to wish curses and damnation over all microchips. Had there really been something wrong with a paper-based filing system?
"Fine adjustments? You've got strange electronic gadgets covering every flat surface!"
Diana smiled sheepishly.
"Well, 'fine' is a relative term…"
I dropped the subject. I wanted to ask her exactly what she was doing, but the answer was bound to give me a headache, if I even got an answer.
I'm fairly good at first dates, even if I do say so myself. I'm charming. I'm attentive. I'm genuinely interested in people's past and interests, which make them feel flattered. First dates have never really been a problem for me.
It's relationships I'm terrible at. After a while, women tend to get tired of me. I don't care enough, they say. I don't feel enough, they say. It's like I'm not even there, they say. A few has accused me of being afraid of commitments. Most of them just decide that turning me into decent boyfriend material is just way too much work, whatever my problem might be.
That used to hurt me when I was a great deal younger. I couldn't help what I felt, so why couldn't anyone take me for who I was? I told Patrick about that once, when he asked me why I was 'moping all the time.' His response was that mature women would be able to appreciate an efficient personality in a way that teenage girls didn't, so I should just bide my time until I got a bit older.
He was wrong, of course. Mature women are even less able to respect efficiency. Most of them want men who might make good husbands and fathers, and emotionally distant workaholics don't fit that description. And those who're just looking for a quick fling want exciting men, and I don't fit that description either. As I said before, I don't think Patrick is that interested in or experienced with women.
I had stopped dating almost entirely in the last few years. I guess I had resigned. I was apparently not fit for romance. I suppose not all people are. But I'm still good at first dates. Generally.
With Diana, I felt inferior. Listening to the story of her life would take significantly much more than this one evening. Diana had done everything.
"Wait," I said at one point. "Could you step back for a moment? I think I'm a bit lost."
We were currently enjoying a very good steak at the restaurant. In candlelight. I may be unfit for romance, but I know what it's supposed to look like.
"Sure." Diana managed to eat twice as fast as I did, without breaking good table manners noticeably. She was currently attacking her vegetables with knife, fork and a warrior spirit. "Where did you get lost?"
"Well, you were twenty-four, correct?" I said. "And you were broke, which was what made you marry this Henry Silverberg…"
"Well, he was cute too," Diana said shamelessly. "But the fact that he was working his way through his sixth million at the time was the heaviest weighing factor of my decision to say 'I do,' yes."
"Well, what happened to the modelling job?" I said. "How did you get broke all of a sudden?"
"Oh, that." She chuckled. "I stopped doing that the year before. I mean, it pays well, but it's a lot more work than you'd think. And since gaining weight means losing a job, you can't eat." She impaled the last bit of her steak on the fork and held it up for inspection. "And I need my three meals a day to keep my sunny disposition." She ate the meat with great pleasure.
"I thought you had a metabolism to take care of that sort of thing?" I said.
"Eh." Diana fumbled for words for a moment, then rolled her eyes self-ironically. "Would you believe it just sort of appeared when I hit thirty? No? Well, there are ways to speed it up a bit, once you know what you're doing. I can't talk about that. Sorry."
"I see," I mumbled. "Ways. Well, go on. I'm assuming that you're not married to him anymore?"
"No." She pouted. "We were married for two years, and then the son of a bitch started cheating on me."
"Shameful," I agreed, thinking that if I had been married to Diana, I wouldn't have strayed for all the world. She might have, though, once she realised how boring I was. But I might have been able to forgive her for that. I would have brutally murdered her lover, but I might have been able to forgive her for that.
"And would you believe that the girl he cheated on me with wasn't even as sexy as I am?" she said with mock-outrage.
"I don't find that hard to believe at all," I said gravely.
Diana hesitated for a second, then laughed. It felt like a very great thing to make her laugh.
"Thank you," she said. "You're not so bad yourself. But anyway, when I had the nerve to complain, he threw me out. With the clothes on my back and nothing else, I might add. That's what you get for signing prenuptial agreements when you marry for money."
"I'll make a point out of never doing that," I promised solemnly. "Hmm. I think I've heard that name before. Wasn't there a huge scandal around him or something?"
"Yeah, I think so," Diana said innocently.
"Specifically, didn't he get arrested when they found all those pictures of him in, hmm, compromising situations with children?" I said.
"Possibly."
"And if I remember correctly," I said slowly, "that happened pretty soon after when you said he divorced you…"
"Could be," said Diana. She was still trying to look innocent, but the fact that her shoulders were shaking made it somewhat difficult. I gave her a flat gaze. That made her burst into wicked laughter.
"It's not clever to mess with us Empowered people, is it?" I said dryly. "Or, for that matter, anyone else who can get a photography of an event that never, strictly speaking, took place…"
"Nope," Diana said, still laughing. "Not clever at all."
I shook my head. I wasn't sure what I was feeling. Shock, amusement, disgust, admiration, fear… Was this what it all boiled down to? To use whatever skills or resources you had to get anything you wanted? Power without shame? I had bent the rules tonight, moving my reservation. Not everyone would have been allowed to do that, but I had a certain amount of power. And Diana had – apparently – access to a very advanced technology, so she had power, too. More than I had, maybe.
How long would it take until this… personality adjustment… started to eat through my deepest ethical values? I had heard people say that moral decayed a little bit at the time, and I had no reason to doubt that. I felt uneasy.
And at the same time, a part of me was cheering. Not clever to mess with us Empowered people! Not clever at all!
Diana's laughter died when she saw the look in my face.
"Okay, I know, I shouldn't have," she said sincerely. "But I was pissed off."
"Remind me never to… make you feel that way," I said dryly. But my lips twitched. It was kind of funny, in a sick sort of way. Infidelity didn't really warrant a ruined reputation and a long time in prison, but I could see how she had reasoned at the time. No one treats me like this and gets away with it. I had had thoughts like that a couple of times during the last few days.
Diana tilted her head and gave me an uncertain smile.
"Promise never to do it again?" she said humbly.
I gave off a snort of laughter.
"All right, all right." I winced. "But then you were broke again."
"Then I was broke again," she agreed. "But you have time to learn a thing to two when you're a housewife whose husband can afford to hire people to do the cooking and cleaning. So I, uhm, cheated a bit and got myself a job at a software company. Dull as hell, but it did pay the bills."
I decided not to inquire further into the whole 'cheated a bit' issue. The evening had been very nice so far, and I didn't want to get into a fight. Besides, it could have been worse. It could have been transferring money from other people's accounts to hers. I had no doubt that Diana could pull that off. Not if she could forge photos of her ex-husband that the best and brightest of the police couldn't see were anything but authentic.
Come to think of it…
"It occurs to me that you're monstrously overqualified to be a secretary," I noted.
Diana grinned modestly.
"Maybe just a little," she agreed.
"And it's not like you couldn't get hired anywhere else," I mused. "So either you're, I don't now, hiding from someone or something, and you just happen to work with me, or this not-quite-conspiracy of yours placed you with me."
Diana eyed me, her expression amusedly attentive, but said nothing.
"The way things are going, I don't believe much in coincidences right now," I said.
"And you shouldn't," Diana said peacefully, "but this isn't something I can talk with you about." A smile appeared and disappeared no her lips, like sunlight peeking through the clouds for a brief second. "The others would eat me alive if I did."
I nodded thoughtfully. I didn't like to be shut out like this. I didn't like to be denied information I wanted, and I didn't like the fact that she didn't thrust me. Though that last part was a bit unfair. She had already imparted a lot more information on me than she probably should have. Just a moment ago, I had been bothered by the thought of her breaking the law, so how could I demand that she break the rules of her… society, or whatever it was… just because I told her to?
"When did it happen?" I asked quietly. "For you? When did you get…?" I hesitated to say the word.
"Empowered." She said it for me. "I was seventeen. My parents had just split up. I was living with my mother and her new boyfriend, who was a complete jerk. I felt like no one really cared. I felt… at edge, I suppose. You remember what it was like, being a teenager, right?"
I suppose I must have given her a blank look. She sighed.
"Don't tell me, your parents told you to skip the 'search for identity' nonsense and pay more attention to your homework… Okay, look, most teenagers are confused, frustrated and feel constantly out of place. Well, multiply that by, oh, fifty thousand or so, and you'll know where I was."
Actually, she was very perceptive – my parents, along with Patrick, had told me in no uncertain terms what my identity was, and that I should get with the program and stop thinking about such silly things. And so on. My adolescent had been very peaceful. Or empty, depending on how you saw it.
"I think I can understand that," I said slowly.
"Well." She shrugged. "Eventually something just… snapped. I woke up one morning, and everything was just… different. A whole lot of things I had believed in just didn't make sense anymore. And then things started to happen to me. Things that had no business being possible. You know the kind I mean?"
I thought about a monkey-like creature with sharp teeth climbing out through a computer screen.
"Yes, I know."
"I had some friends, by then. People I'd met in chatrooms and stuff. I guess they had been waiting for it to happen to me, so they took me under the shadow of their wings almost immediately." She chuckled. "Such as it was. Basically, they just gave me a few pointers of what I could do, and told me a few things that I under no circumstances was allowed to do, and that was it. Everything else I had to figure out for myself, or trade for."
I didn't say anything. What little hold I had had on this thing had just slipped. I had assumed that Diana had access to science beyond what most people could dream of, but I hadn't been sure how to connect that with the emotional upheaval that she called the Empowering. I had more or less figured it out like this:
Empowered people accepted fewer limits, that much I thought I had gotten out of Diana's none-too-helpful comments and my own situation. They could think outside of the box. That had to make them valuable as scientists, agents of the law, or pretty much anything else that required creative thought and imagination. So it was only logical to assume that the government had some Empowered boys and girls stashed away, working at whatever governments consider to be important. For example, developing fairly extraordinary computer programs and hardware. Patrick was obviously involved. Any federal agency would have been proud to hire someone like him, so obviously one had done so.
But having a free spirit meant being unreliable. Unavoidably, there had been some scientists, agents or whatever who had left their jobs for one reason or another, taking some of those Empowering-related inventions with them. Which was where Diana came in, her and her not-quite-conspiracy. A neat and tidy explanation, I had felt. There were some things that it didn't explain, but it allowed for them to have happened.
Except for the fact that Diana wasn't talking about having stolen technology, which was what Patrick had implied that someone had done. She seemed to be saying that she had just picked it up – as if superadvanced science was just floating around for any Empowered to pick up.
What I could do.
Everything seemed a bit off. Could it really be possible for even an Empowered person to create high-tech devices more or less from scratch? And if it wasn't, what was I to make of all this?
"I've given you more questions than answers, I think," Diana said. There was a hint of compassion in her voice. A very small hint. Mostly, I think she found it amusing to see me squirm. Mind you, I might have agreed that it was a little bit funny, if it hadn't been happening to me…
"That seems to be the way of the world lately," I said wryly, which made her laugh again.
"I'm starting to feel pretty unfriendly, saying 'I can't talk about that' all the time," she said. "Can't we talk about you for a while?"
I shrugged.
"There's nothing much to say," I said.
"Oh, come on." She leaned over the table and gave my chest a light push. "Don't be all modest here. I mean, for example, what do you like to do?"
"Working," I said with a touch of bitterness. True, I had a social life of sorts, but that was all about work too. When I went to a party, it wasn't to make friends, it was to get connections. I was good at that, for roughly the same reason I was good at first dates. I had lots of numbers for people I could call up for a favour, but very few for people I could call up for a pleasant chat.
"Liking your work is a fine thing."
"I'm not sure I do like it," I confessed. "It's just what I was meant to do. I was supposed to have a career. I'm doing pretty well so far."
Diana winced.
"Now you're depressing me."
"I think I'm depressing myself. I told you I'm a bad topic for conversation."
"I'm not giving up that easily." She leaned forward over the table. Her hair fell around her face in a very attractive fashion. The view I got of her cleavage wasn't exactly unattractive, either. "You have to do something except work and sleep."
"Well…" I tried to think of something I did except those two things. "I like to read, when I've got time."
"Now we're getting somewhere!" Diana said triumphantly, leaning back again. "Okay. I've been known to sit back with a book occasionally. Have you ever read anything by P.G. Wodehouse?"
"No, I don't think you understand." I felt acutely boring. "When I say 'read,' I mean books on physics and chemistry and things like that."
Diana looked at me, an expression of amused disbelief on her face.
"Schoolbooks," she said flatly.
"More or less." I was actually moving up to the university level now. I doubt that I have anything resembling a decent education on the subject, but I do know the basics of How The World Works.
"You read that for fun?"
I thought about sitting down in my comfiest armchair, reading about quarks and forces and mixtures and whatnot. It was a pleasant thought.
"Yes," I said simply.
Diana stared at me for a moment longer. Then she started giggling. The giggling turned into chuckling, the chuckling turned into laughing, and before I knew it she sat there howling with mirth at me. Without being able to help myself, I joined in.
We got some pretty strange looks from elsewhere in the restaurant, but right then, it didn't seem to matter.
"You're surreal," Diana proclaimed when we had regained some control. Her shoulders were still shaking, and tears made her eyes glitter. "You really are."
"I guess so," I agreed peacefully.
"I'm glad our customers don't know this," she said, rolling her eyes. "The director of the publishing department…"
"… fantasy and science fiction division, no less…" I interjected.
"… right, that guy doesn't read fiction. You have no idea what it is you're selling!"
"I've got people whose job it is to read those books," I defended myself. "I trust their judgement."
"Trusting people's judgement?" She shook her head with mock-firmness. "That's dangerous. Here's a piece of advice for you, young one. Assume that everyone but you are idiots, and idiots who think they're smart, at that. It'll get you a long way."
"Is that how I should see you?" I said.
"You might as well. Just in case."
"And is that how you see me?"
"Of course not!" she said immediately. "The very idea."
"Why, thank you."
"You know that you're nowhere near as clever as I."
In retrospect, I guess I should have seen that one coming…
"Do you know what I just realised?" I said. "There's no one here but us. Wasn't there other people here a moment ago?"
The lighting was a bit sparse, but you could still see that no one was sitting by any of the other tables. There were no waiters either. And hadn't it been a very long time since I heard any cars drive by on the street outside?
I didn't exactly feel surprised. I was a man with a wound on my arm that I had gotten from a killer ape computer program. Such a man adapts a stoical attitude towards things that can't possibly be true. Just because something was impossible, it apparently didn't mean that it couldn't happen.
And it did keep life from getting predictable, I had to admit as much. Besides, this time around I had an expert with me. Diana probably went through things like this on a daily basis. She would take care of it. I decided that I should just hang around for the ride.
Diana slowly looked around, noting the complete absence of other people.
"Oh, shit!" she said flatly.
I decided that on further consideration, I should probably get a little worried.
The streets were empty. There were parked cars, but no running ones; the street lights were on, but all windows I saw were dark. It was as if Humanity had suddenly decided to immigrate to Mars and forgotten to tell me and Diana. Our steps sounded unnaturally high in the complete silence as we walked down the street.
I wonder just what might have happened here. Everyone couldn't just have disappeared into thin air. I did not base that assumption on any claims of knowing what was possible and impossible, mind you; I had just noted that there weren't any cars on the streets, and no burning wrecks that had crashed into each other when their drivers vaporised. If there was a power capable of removing every single human being in the city without leaving a trace, would it bother to make them park their cars neatly by the sidewalk first? I rest my case.
Diana was shifting between muttering under her breath and chewing on her lower lip. The expression in her face was hard and focused – very far from her normal easygoingness. I couldn't help wonder just how bad this was, if it got her like this. She was wearing a long, black coat over her dress – she had reclaimed it from the restaurant wardrobe before leaving – and it was flapping around her for every step. She looked menacing. I didn't envy whoever had done this, though I did feel that he had deserved it. Imagine, interrupting my first date in years! Some people had no manners. And before I had even gotten to the dessert…
On the other hand, I had eaten two courses that I hadn't had to pay for. Always look at the bright side, I suppose.
"Where are we going?" I said conversationally.
"To your car," Diana said, softening her expression a bit as she glanced at me. "Hopefully, it'll still be there. I have no idea how thorough he's been."
"Who's 'he?'"
"Good question." Diana smiled faintly. "No idea. Ask me again once we've gotten back home and I've had a chance to twist some arms."
I tried to imagine Diana twisting someone's arm. Somehow, the image didn't feel all that unlikely. There was more to her than showed. Though I suppose I had known that for some time now.
"Do you think it's the guy who sent me that toothy little present?" I asked.
She shrugged.
"Maybe. It could be one of my enemies, though." She grinned mischievously at me. "You might just have gotten swept along, you poor sucker."
I felt quite a lot like a poor sucker. So I was Empowered? Well, when was I going to learn how to perform all those tricks? The idea of being able to defend myself was appealing, but what I really wanted was to know how it was done. I've always been the kind to want to know in what sleeve the conjurer actually hid that card. That's supposed to ruin the experience, but I've always cared very little for illusions and very much for the ways and means to create them. Now, I had walked into a world where the tricks weren't illusions – and I was more eager than ever to learn how they were done.
Of course, I could always try my resident know-it-all, despite knowing fully well that she probably wasn't going to be very informative…
"Are you going to tell me what has happened to everyone?" I asked timidly.
"We've been relocalised a minor distance on the existential axis," Diana said immediately. "No further than a microturing or two, but enough to move us out of Primary and into Secondary."
I gave her a flat glance.
"To put it in layman's terms," she added innocently, "nothing has happened to everyone else, it's we who're in another dimension."
I considered that for a moment. I patiently listened to my mind screaming 'Impossible!' until it tired. Then I nodded soberly.
"All right," I said.
She looked at me with hint of amusement.
"You're coping pretty well with this."
"Thank you. So are you."
"Yes, but I'm used to it."
"Uh-huh. People push you into Secondary a lot, then?"
"All right, maybe not, but it's happened before." She frowned. "Once, anyway."
"You apparently got out," I noted.
"Oh, yes."
"How?"
"Eh." She stopped walking and turned towards me, making an apologetic grimace. "I ran across a guy who, unlike me, knew how to get out of here, and who could be bribed into taking me along for the ride?"
I realised that things were about to get a little awkward. If Diana had learned how to leave this place on her own, she would have told me by now, if only to show off. Since she hadn't, she still didn't know – and there seemed to be a certain shortage of interdimensional travellers. Other than us, that was.
"I see," I said. "Do you have any kind of plan?"
"I always have a plan." She folded her arms over her chest. "Right now, it's to get back to the Secondary version of my apartment and see if the Secondary versions of the gadgets I keep there are still usable. They should be, in theory."
I noticed that 'in theory,' but decided not to comment it. There was no harm in trying, at least. Otherwise, we would just have to come up with some other way to leave. Being the last man on Earth didn't sound so bad if Diana was to be the last woman, but I still didn't want to spend the rest of my life trapped one microturing (whatever that was) from reality. This place seemed abandoned and bleak, and far less interesting than the real world.
"And then you can take us home?" I said.
"Well… no." She let her arms drop to her sides. "But I might be able to signal someone who can."
I shrugged.
"Let's give it a shot, then."
We started walking again.
"At least we're not in that much of a hurry," I mused. "If everything else is still here, there should be possible to find food."
"It is," Diana said absently. "Though you don't really need to eat here. And that's just one of the rules that don't apply."
Indeed? File that one away for later. I wondered if it might be possible to transport people from famished Third World nations here, and letting them wait for the weather to start co-operating enough again for there to be a decent harvest. Heaven knew that there was room enough for any number of people here.
"Well, good," I said. "And if we're the only ones here, it's not like there's anyone who'll hurt us."
Diana said nothing. I thought she said nothing with a bit too much force.
"There is something here that can hurt us," I said. It wasn't a question.
"Well, I didn't want to alarm you," she said. "But yes, this place isn't as empty as it looks. It's got… inhabitants. Most of them will just ignore us. Some of the others will be afraid to attack two… Empowered ones, so they'll stay away."
The pause was brief, but I heard it. She had meant to use some other phrase to describe us, then caught herself in time. More secrets. The thought gave me only the slightest of anger – mostly, I felt eager to get all those secrets out into the light, one way or another. Diana's duty to keep me in the dark had been failed several times already. I would make her fail it even more, when the opportunity presented itself.
"And the rest of the others?"
"Uhm. Will attack us on sight, actually."
Suddenly the windows overlooking the street seemed darker and deeper, like watchful eyes. I sighed.
"Wonderful."
She patted me on the back.
"Take it easy. We'll be out of here before any of them catches sight of us. And even if they find us, I might be able to deal with a lot of them. There's a reason why the lesser ones are scared of people like us."
I didn't feel very scary, but I had a feeling that she was just being polite by adding me to her own category. If I had been a hostile dweller of Secondary, I would have thought twice about attacking her. To say that she moved like a tiger would be exaggerating; Diana was no more agile or graceful than any other woman. But she moved as if she thought she was a tiger. Her entire body language screamed with self-confidence. And she certainly had some power, at least when given access to her machines and programs; Henry Silverberg could testify to as much. Perhaps she had some without them, too.
I didn't feel that weird being under the protection of a woman who was half a foot shorter than I and at least thirty pounds lighter, because sexism was another thing that my upbringing had made sure to eliminate. There was a trace of shame in me, though – an unpleasant feeling of being hopelessly inferior. Diana had been Empowered when she was seventeen. I had been Empowered when I was thirty-three. What did that say about inner talents?
"Let's just hope that we don't run into a furball," she added as an afterthought.
"A furball," I said tiredly. This was going to be a long night…
"Yeah. They think that Secondary is their personal property, and the rest of us should just make ourselves scarce."
"That's what we're trying to do," I pointed out.
"Furballs don't exactly have a reputation for listening to reason."
We reached my car, which stood peacefully enough in the parking lot where I had put it. Whoever 'he' was, either his imagination or his power had been too limited to do something about it.
'He.' That was an interesting riddle in itself. 'He' had pushed us out of Primary and into Secondary. Obviously 'he' had done so because 'he' wanted us either dead or out of the way for an extended period of time. But that seemed like overkill. If 'he' had access to that impressive technology, why not just fire a rocket-launcher at the restaurant or something? Why this elaborate, overly complicated attack? Especially since Diana very obviously could take care of herself. She had fled from Secondary before. It was very possible that she could do it again.
Would she be able to take me with her, though? That was something she hadn't proven herself capable of.
Theory: someone wanted me dead. That someone had threatened me through my computer, and finally sent some sort of killing-machine after me. But I had survived that. And from now on, I would be wary of that sort of tactic. So he had put some other piece of high-tech to use. This one transported all Empowered individuals within a certain area into Secondary. Never mind how or why. The Empowered were different – it was theoretically possible, therefore, that something that affected them would not affect an ordinary person.
He could have waited, though. He could have made sure I was the only Empowered one within the target area, and sent me here confused and defenceless. But he hadn't. Instead, he had attacked as soon as he could get his weapon into working order, relying on Diana's presumed inability to take care of me in this place.
So he was in a hurry.
Or he was too scared of me to think straight.
I almost laughed at that thought. Scared of me? I was blundering around without a clue – I wasn't a threat to anyone. Still, who knew how this guy's mind worked? If I had been a murderer, lurking in the shadows and armed with unbelievable super-technology, I wouldn't have been afraid of me – but then, I wouldn't have become a murderer in the first place. This guy was not sane in any orthodox term of the word. Maybe he thought I was the antichrist. How should I know?
I tried to unlock the car door. Then a hand lashed out from underneath the car and grabbed my ankle.
I neither screamed like a girl nor wet my pants. But that was due to, pardon me for blowing my own horn, very impressive self-control. I most certainly wanted to do both at that moment.
Instead, I gasped and tore at my foot. It came loose so easily that I fell flat on my back, the rest of the ankle-grabber being pulled from out of its hiding-place and into the lighted street. I looked at it, wide-eyed, as I tried to regain my bearing. It was about as big as a five-year-old child, human in general form and completely unhuman in detail. Its skin was yellow, not like an autumn leaf but like a yellow crayon – a flashy, striking, artificial kind of yellow. Orange veins swelled all over its skinny body. It slouched as it sat between my feet, its disproportionably large head bent down between its sharp shoulders. The mouth was filled with sharp teeth.
"Mortal, mortal, mortal," it sang. The voice didn't fit its appearance; it was the cute, innocent voice of a little girl. "Mortal for food, mortal for tool, mortal for me."
"Back off, Maurin."
Diana appeared in my field of vision, standing over the creature. From somewhere, she had taken a slender knife. She held it casually, but it lay comfortably in her hand. Maurin hissed like an angry cat, his long-fingered hands scratching nervously at the pavement.
"Mine!" he whined stubbornly. "My land. My prey. Go away. Don't like you."
"You'd like me even less if I spread your guts all over the street."
As I took the opportunity to crawl backwards out of Maurin's reach, I mused that I probably wouldn't have hired Diana in the first place, had I had known that she could say things like 'spread your guts all over the street' while keeping a straight face. She sounded vicious. And completely serious, one might add.
"My land," Maurin insisted.
"Perhaps. But we're not here by choice. And we'll be out of here before you know it if you just back off now."
I quietly got to my feet and circled around Maurin as discreetly as I could, ending up behind Diana. Hey, she was the one with the knife!
Maurin seemed uncertain, as far as I could determine from watching facial features that were almost completely unhuman. Diana's fearlessness disturbed him. Hell, it disturbed me too. But I also felt a bit of stunned awe. God, what a woman!
"Tribute!" he spat. "You give tribute! Or no leave!"
Diana bit her lip, glaring at Maurin. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was calculating how dangerous he would be if it came to a fight. Personally, I thought he looked pretty damn dangerous. He wasn't that big, but he had a large mouth filled with sharp teeth and long arms with – I knew from experience – very strong, long-fingered hands. His skinny limbs looked like they were full of sinewy musculature.
"Okay," Diana finally said. "What do you want?"
"A mortal heart, dripping with blood!"
"We've only got one each, and we're not finished with them yet."
While I hated to be rude enough to interrupt, I felt that this was the time for those two to impart some information on me. Considering that the discussion had come to involve my blood-dripping heart, I should be entitled to some enlightenment.
"Diana, would you care to introduce us?" I said dryly.
She didn't take her eyes of Maurin (sensibly enough, I suppose) but answered anyway.
"Sure. Maurin, this is Simon Stromberg. He's like me, so don't screw with him. Simon, this is Maurin. He lives here. We met last time I was here, and he wasn't any more polite then." She smirked. "Or any more refined. Hiding under cars! What are you, a boogieman? Why not just go completely cliché and hide under beds?"
Maurin opened his substantial mouth and hissed. There were two snake-like tongues in there, twisting around each other in a most distasteful way.
"You touched a very important point there," I noted. "What is he?"
"Ugly," Diana said with a shrug.
"Ferazoid!" Maurin yelled. "I'm a Ferazoid! Stronger than mortal! Smarter than mortal! Better than mortal!"
"Yeah, right," Diana said. "Anyway, I'm not really sure what a Ferazoid is, except that they're pretty angry and hungry. Secondary isn't exactly my area of expertise."
"Tribute!" Maurin screeched.
"All right, all right!" Diana said. "How about my firstborn child?"
"No!" Maurin said sulkily.
"Come no, why not? It's classical."
"Wouldn't have said it," Maurin said. "Wouldn't have said it, if you wanted any."
I had to agree with him there. The kind of woman who offers her firstborn to a Ferazoid is also the kind of woman who is not that eager to become a mother. And if she does become one, someone ought to call child services, because with that attitude she's not likely to be very good at raising her children. Diana had apparently no plans of having kids, and had meant to use that to get out of this without ever paying anything. You couldn't very well give up your firstborn if you never gave birth, could you?
But her trick might have worked, if she had delivered it differently. She shouldn't just have blurted the offer out, she should have allowed herself to be talked into accepting it, appearing to make a desperate bargain to save her life. But then, she wasn't that good at deception, was she? No matter how much her unwillingness to speak about all matters Empowered annoyed me, she had given away far more than she should have.
Diana cursed under her breath.
"All right," she said, "how about…"
"Wait," I said. "Would you mind terribly much if I took over here?"
She gave me a quick glance before she went back to watching Maurin. She looked doubtful.
"Much as I hate to offend your pride," she said slowly, "you're not exactly an authority at this."
"True." I nodded. "But you don't know much about Ferazoids anyway. I don't know anything about them, but I know a lot about negotiating."
Diana hesitated for a moment, then shrugged.
"Okay, you're on."
And so, I found myself in a position where I had to bargain with a multi-tongued, evil-minded, half-human creature for my and Diana's safe passage through a certain area of the parallel dimension known as Secondary.
Life was certainly more interesting these days.
"All right then, Mr. Maurin," I said, trying to make my tone into an exact copy of the one I used with my various business associates. "As you may have understood, we feel that we are forced to reject your offered price of one human heart."
I was sitting on the hood of the car, my hands resting on my tights. I have done this before, I told myself. This is a deal that needs to be made, and I am expected to make it as profitable as possible for myself and those – all right, all right, the one – who I represent. Never mind the environment or the exact conditions; the core of the matter never changes.
I hope.
"I'm sure that you can understand our reasons here," I went on. "In order to obtain the requested price, one of us would be forced to kill the other. So in practice, you would only be able to guarantee the safety of one of us, which makes the comparably high price all the more unfair."
Diana was standing in front of me to the right, still with the knife drawn and ready. It felt rather warming to be protected. Conspiracies aside, she cared enough about me to want to keep Maurin's teeth away from my throat. I had to remember that. Someone's objective was to kill me, and at least part of Diana's objective was to keep me alive. I could trust her to do that much, if nothing else.
Maurin was sitting on his haunches right in front of me, maybe three strides away. His round little eyes looked at me with stubborn menace. He hated the fact that he didn't quite dare to attack Diana, and because I was with her, he hated me too. Anger and uncertainty; not a combination you liked to see in the party you were negotiating with. Maurin just needed a little push to do something rash – and that might get me or Diana hurt, or killed. That knife didn't look like a very impressive weapon when faced against Maurin's spindly, sinewy form. If he could only grab her wrist with one of those long-fingered hands, the battle would be over right there and then.
I realised with some distress that what was mainly keeping Maurin back was that he didn't know how dangerous I was. I'm tall and broad-shouldered and look like I can do well in a fight – Maurin wasn't to know that the very thought of violence terrifies me. And Diana had said that I was Empowered, which was true, but Maurin probably thought that I could pull a laser-gun or something out of a pocket and blast him to shreds. If he understood how helpless I was, he might take his chances against Diana – which could very possibly lead to both of us dying here and being eaten by a monster. I had better look as dangerous as I could.
"We're willing," I said, "to promise you a total of five hearts from larger mammals, to be delivered here with a week, plus one extra heart as interest for the delay, giving a totality of six. The exact nature of the mammals can be negotiated, so if you're for example particularly fond of the idea of black goats or similar…"
Maurin spat on the street. The pavement started bubbling and hissing as whatever he had in his mouth ate right through it.
"Noooooooo! Human! Human heart!" he howled. "Human, human, human!"
"I withdraw that offer, and I apologise if it offended you," I said stiffly. I had thought I was being rather reasonable. How did you go about finding raw hearts in this city, anyway? I had assumed that I could find that out once I got out of here. A butcher would know, presumably. And I had enough money that most butchers would be willing to accept a somewhat unorthodox taste in meat… "However, as I have already mentioned, that particular currency is not up for debate. Instead, let us investigate alternative modes of payment. What might you require that we have a reasonable chance at obtaining without harming ourselves or others?"
"Nothing!" Maurin snapped. "Want a heart! Want it now!"
I assumed the most patient expression in my repertoire.
"Mr. Maurin, may I bring to your attention that you are outnumbered two to one, and that we are both Empowered?" I said. "If you proceed in being unreasonable, you will leave us no alternative but to gamble everything on a display of brute force. That will serve neither of our purposes."
Maurin glanced at Diana. She smiled sweetly at him.
"You techies?" Maurin said gruffly.
I had no idea what he meant. Apparently, Diana did.
"I'm a technomancer, yes," she said.
A what?
"Your soul!" Maurin looked like he was gloating, if human emotions could even be applied to his bestial face. "Your soul on a disc!"
I leaned over to Diana's ear.
"What does he mean?" I whispered.
"He wants a transcription of the electromagnetic field around my body," she mumbled back. "A copy of my aura, as it were. A copy of my soul, engraved on a microchip."
I wasn't familiar with the technique she was referring to, or its implications, but I still didn't like the sound of that. There were probably lots of unpleasant things that could be done to someone you had that kind of information about.
"Is it risky to give that to him?" I said.
"Yeah. But he won't accept anything from us that's not risky for us to give. If you think that's the best offer you'll get, take it."
"Well, we're not giving him your soul on a microchip!" I said firmly. "That'll be my soul, in that case."
She snorted. Most of my attention was aimed at Maurin at the time, but I got the impression that she grimaced.
"Simon, this is not the time to go knight-in-shining-armour on me!"
"I'm not," I said. "It's just that I'm the one bargaining, so I'm the one paying. It's only fair."
She gave off a doubtful, grunting noise, but left it at that.
"On balance," I said loftily to Maurin, "I believe that we will be more inclined to offer you a tissue sample of some kind. The heart is of course out of the question, but I might be persuaded to give you, say, a finger or two. While this is of course…"
"Yes!" Maurin said immediately. "Flesh! Gimme flesh! Deal! Deal!"
I realised that I had made a fool out of myself, and now all that was left was to figure out how. Maurin had virtually jumped at the offer, and I didn't think it was because he was so desperate for a snack that he got delirious from the thought of gnawing the meat off of a few bony fingers. I had claimed expertise here, but the truth was that I was fumbling in the dark.
My confident businessman's expression died away, being replaced by confusion, uncertainty and growing fear. Had I just made the greatest mistake of my life?
"He'll extract the DNA from whatever you give him," Diana mumbled. "That's even worse than a copy of your soul. There are things around here that can do anything to you if they get their hands on your DNA code."
The resignation in her voice was worse than the words themselves. I had tried to prove myself, and I had failed. She might not hold it against me, but I held it against myself. I had been brought up to be a team player, and this was the same as letting the team down.
"Deal's made!" Maurin growled, shaking an impossibly long finger at me. "No backing! No backing out! Deal's made! Flesh for passage!"
If I tried to go back on my word now, he would probably attack. He was positively drooling at the thought of getting a part of my body, and if I deprived him of that, he would go for Diana's throat and try to get all of both of us. I might have screwed up, but I wouldn't let it go that far. Not even if it meant giving monsters from another dimension power over me.
I suddenly felt tired enough to drop. Bitter defeat washed over me. Diana would have handled it better than this, at least. But I had just had to play at being an Empowered one, a man of action. Empowered? Not bloody likely. I was just Patrick's puppet, capable only of giving him partial control of a company. Everything else was self-delusion. I had spent my life dreaming that I was being successful, and now I had woken up and realised that there was a whole miraculous, terrible world out there, and in it I counted for exactly nothing.
"Flesh!" Maurin snarled.
Nothing, I thought again.
And then I voice appeared in my mind, tearing through my self-pity. I recognised it. It was the one I sometimes had inner conversations with; the part of me that I had created to question everything I thought. And what it said now was: Like hell I'm nothing!
And somewhere, I found my relaxed smile again. It settled on my face as if it had never been gone.
"I'm glad we could come to an agreement, Mr. Maurin," I said. "Now tell me, is any part of me acceptable, or does it have to be a finger? The reason why I am asking is that if it is all the same to you, there are certain members and organs that are more valuable to me than others. For instance, I would rather give a toe than a finger, and rather than giving up a toe I would happily donate my appendix. So, am I free to choose, or will the currency necessarily be fingers?"
Maurin hesitated. Despite his inhuman features, his confusion was obvious. He had been winning a few moments ago. He had known it; he had seen it on my face, and on Diana's. Nothing had changed since then, so why wasn't I acting like I as defeated anymore?
Because I haven't lost until I say so, friend, I thought.
"Any!" he said impatiently. "Any part! Any flesh!"
"Well then." I nodded courteously. "It will then be my pleasure to pay, for my and my friend's safe passage through your territory, the both of my eyes."
There was a shocked silence. I felt rather proud of having surprised both Maurin and Diana. Both of them had seen things I could only imagine, but I had still done something neither of them had expected. That felt good. I wasn't nothing. I might be a fool, but I wasn't nothing.
I was gambling quite a lot here, betting on Maurin being just smart enough to proceed, and just dumb enough to proceed right into the trap I had placed in front of him. But I wasn't too worried about that. Businessmen, politicians, yellow-skinned creatures from other dimensions; I had made a living partly out of being able to tell how clever they were. And I was confident that Maurin would do just what I wanted him to.
And the risk in itself gave me a rush. I was gambling a lot, yes, but I had had enough of playing it safe anyway. At that moment, I actually felt rather Empowered.
"Simon, have you gone fucking nuts?" Diana gasped.
"As you may recall," I rebuked her gently, "you authorised me to both negotiate a price and pay it. Now please let me do so."
She mutely shook her head. I had never seen Diana dumbstruck, but this was pretty close.
"Why eyes?" Maurin demanded. "You'll be blind! Can give me anything! Why eyes?"
"Surely that is my business and not yours?" I said, raising an eyebrow.
"You… don't need eyes?" Maurin hazarded. He sounded wary, as if he felt that he was stepping out of rhetoric thin ice. "Got some techie thing to see for you!"
"Well, really, Mr. Maurin, the information of just which devices and techniques I have access to was not part of our bargain," I said. "Now, if you would be so kind as to remove my eyeballs with a minimum of pain on my part…"
That only made him more eager. He didn't like being denied anything, which I had already had opportunity to notice. If there was something I was trying to keep away from him, then that was what he was interested in.
"Show me!" he demanded. "Wanna see techie thing!"
"I am not at liberty to reveal…"
"Show me!"
I took my cell-phone out of my coat pocket and showed it to him. He made a grab for it, but I held it up above his reach. Diana took a warning step towards him, and he retreated with a hiss.
"Want!" he said.
"Well, our bargain grants you the right to my eyes," I reminded him. "Equipment for whom I am responsible is quite another story. My colleagues will not be at all pleased if they find out that I can not be entrusted with experimental, classified devices."
Maurin grinned cunningly.
"Change deal!" he gloated. I did my best to look shocked.
"This is a direct violation of…"
"Change!" he yelled. "Gimme techie seeing-thing! Want that! Not eyes! Gimme! Gimmegimmegimme!"
"My associates will be most dissatisfied with me," I said darkly. Maurin paused.
"Might give you more?" he offered temptingly. "Might tell you about the werewolf."
The what? I thought, but managed to maintain my poker face. I remained silent for a moment like I was considering the offer, then nodded shortly.
"Tell me," I said.
"Hee." Maurin smirked. "Angry werewolf. Angry, angry, angry. Says no one else can come here. He can't find me, no, no, no, but he can find you if you stay. Tear you to pieces, he will. Soon." He reached out a hand and shook it angrily, palm up. "Now gimme!"
I threw him the cell-phone. He caught it skilfully and ran across the street, into a doorway, snickering all the way.
Silence reigned the street for a moment after he had gone.
"You," Diana said then, in a tone that suggested she could not believe what she was saying, "just tricked a Ferazoid into giving us safe passage and a titbit of information in return for a yuppie toy."
"I told you I was good at negotiation," I said, trying to sound as if I wasn't basking in her appreciation. I had done rather well, hadn't I? I felt that I had earned a bit of smugness.
"Yeah. I guess you did." She grinned and put her hand on my chest. I felt like it burned me straight through my shirt. And the heat was spreading all over my body. "I guess you did. There's more to you than it seems, Simon."
"Thank you," I said. I wasn't sure what else I could say. "I might same the same to you."
"Me? Nah." She laughed and walked around the car. I resisted the urge to touch the place on my chest where her warm, smooth hand had rested for a moment. "What you see is what you get. Now let's get the hell out of here before Maurin smartens up and realises that he didn't get some sort of ground-breaking technomantic device for his troubles."
I saw her point. I quickly unlocked the doors and sat down in the driver's seat. I felt a bit nervous about trying to engine, but it started up just like in the normal world. The fact that I could still rely on the laws of combustion gave me a bit of confidence. Some of the rules still applied, at least.
"Maurin said 'werewolf,'" I said as we left the parking space and drove towards whatever version of Diana's apartment existed in Secondary. "He meant a furball, didn't he? There's an angry furball loose around here."
"Seems that way," Diana said.
"How dangerous did you say they were, again?"
Diana grinned wryly.
"Let's put it this way; if a furball sees us, we're dead. If a furball smells us, we're dead. If a furball manages to get hold of Maurin and make him tell it about tonight, we're dead. If a furball…"
"Thank you," I said quickly. "I think I get the overall picture here…"