Chapter Thirty
Staying inside was annoying, but working out burned calories and I did not lack occupation. Top of the list was practical security with Jill, who did not have my problem with changing when clothed, which was getting tangled up — removing a bra from a coyote middle when you're the coyote is not so easy — but did have another, which was destroying whatever she was wearing, Incredible Hulk style but faster. Her bear was a great deal more grizzly than black, as in Kodiak-sized, and Widepaw just a fact, but she was averse both to wearing things she didn't care about in public and destroying things she did. I'd been thinking about it since my conversation with Coyote, and with Jill's intrigued consent called in the woman who'd made clothing for the earth fae. Closures rather than seams, strong enough to hold up normally but parting under sufficient pressure solved one side of it, and though an outfit might be reassembled a spare was sensible and with engineered fabrics could be made so light, crumple-free, and compressible she could pack it in a pocket. It would work for Joel too.
With delivery promised for Friday, we headed to the basement and worked through scenarios, on two legs and four, with Brent and wolves from both packs, until everyone had a sense of her movement and speed, and she of theirs. Grizzlies were fast and strong, and avatars had abnormal speed, but it was bulk with speed that made them game-enders for humans, in paw- and body-slamming, and not much less of a challenge for wolves — but they could twist better, and had mouths that opened wider with purely predatory teeth, as well as the bear-like shoulder joints that allowed them to paw-slam themselves and shift where claws might dig in. I was always going to be better off on two legs using the Glock, with whatever loads, but when other wolves left, and it was down to me, Jill, and Brent, I introduced her to Skuffles, intrigued but sorry to have missed seeing the oak do its thing. We did updating all round, meaning Wednesday and St Louis, and I learned with mixed feelings many fae were passing through the Garden of Manannán's Death to see giant nude ice me, almost always in silence.
Admiring silence, mostly, Mercy. The fae don't care about nudity. And heroic statues are often pretty naked. Blame the Greeks.
"I do. How's the preternatural grapevine about the ultimatum and Borrowed Warchest?"
Ask the earth fae. Knowing I'm you, others get shy when I'm around.
I gave her a sceptical look. "Shy? Or cautious?"
Who knows? Either way it's respectful, Mercy. And all are agog with anticipation. It is a great deal more interesting than not.
I couldn't argue, but when Skuffles had shown off her dentitions again and vanished Jill gave me a very long look.
"What kind of magic is she?"
"A sending reinforced with glamour, helped out by a bunch of other borrowed and stolen magics. A coyote remix. And a serious hole-card."
"I'll say. Urgh. Momma did mention her, but I should have known that twinkle in her eye. And what naked statue?"
I reluctantly fired up the laptop and showed her, covering embarrassment by making hot chocolate, which fooled no-one but was welcome enough after burning calories.
"Well … coo." I had to grin. "That looks like a good fight to have won, coyote-girl."
"You could say."
"And even if you're more naked than you'd like, which I understand, other worlds putting up statues of you has to be called good for the CV."
"Yeah, maybe. I just have … issues."
"Who doesn't?" She considered me a moment. "In any case, it's more seriously not-boring, which is good. What's next?"
I was glad to shift topics. "Admin, alas, but these days that's also less boring than you'd think."
Saving an interlude when a CIA courier delivered the fat bundle of licenses, most of Tuesday's daylight was spent with volunteers, now augmented, and various Freed, briefing on what I'd be saying Wednesday, St Louis minus vamps but with Ol' Manitou River, which sat them up, plus Others 101, ditto. I made lots of grateful noises about all the work being done — billboards, social media, targeted mail shots, and door-to-door canvassing were normal, but having a database of tens of millions of newly pledged votes wasn't, and the website asked for email addresses, so we needed to get something out to all those nice voters. Some interesting geeky argument resulted in a two-shot — a shorter email of thanks, welcome aboard, and let's go for it, with the basic campaign poster in Anglo and She Doesn't Only Fix Cars versions, plus links to download HD in several sizes, and a longer email, for those interested, with solid policy discussion, including ecology, SAGE, Jenny's draft texts of constitutional amendments, and hints about surprises in store.
Once home, Jesse was also in on things, to bring in kiddos and ex-kiddos, and what she was up to had volunteers attending hard and making interested noises. Children all over, including First People, had been sitting parents down and grilling them on voting priorities, pushing green necessity, preternatural co-operation, and not being shot by nutcases while at school, which was hard to argue with. Others had been nagging or flat-out demanding parents register, and make a vote count, as well as pushing school pre-registration drives, juniors and seniors providing transport and guidance with bureaucracy. Ramona having given permission, Jesse had Freed involved, experience giving their voices palpable weight, and their arguments were pithy. Knowing exactly what it was to be helpless, and that things really could change radically if people pulled together, they were impatient with voting isn't worth it whines, and tore into some Silicon Valley mumblings about stoicism — a fine philosophy when locked in a cage and being tortured that sucked as a reason for not getting off your butt and fixing a problem you could.
Some posts were being cited in other reporting, and people were building on that. Plans for the schools' intranet had leaped forward, and if the line between reporting and supporting were getting blurry, it wasn't as if anyone would expect Jesse not to be in favour, and a lot of people wanted to know what she thought. She'd also defused some of the scaremongering in DC, with a tart observation that yeah, werewolves were moonbound, like that had stopped her dad running a major, very successful security company for more than thirty years, and anyway, he went hunting a lot less often than senators went golfing. It generated an avalanche of retweets and laughing approval, and made Adam laugh when I told him.
My electoral inexperience was harder to deny, but I had no intention of trying. The whole point was to do things differently, being green was not an argument against, and what others called raw also meant clean, or at least cleaner, what stains I had being equally different. A conversation when Washington and Oregon called in the evening settled my heart some more, for they agreed with me and one another that their parties had not done well, fright and bigotry unhappily on display. I bemused them by suggesting Basin State governors, having been singled out by both parties, launch a joint legal challenge to the imposition of a double standard unreasonably in their favour, inviting those it disadvantaged to join them.
"Keep changing the rules. It's our strength, their weakness. And take high ground with a smile. Didn't they all look so earnest yesterday?"
"They did." A half-smile made it onto Oregon's face. "That's … really sharp, Ms Hauptman. Certainly the best strategy anyone's suggested to me. How do you intend to respond?"
"Mostly with an offer they'd be wise to refuse, but probably won't." I told them about St Louis, minus vamps but plus manitou, adding assurances the Man was aware before asking how they thought those thirty-two governors would respond. "Timing's tight, because I won't be making Ol' Manitou River public until early next week, when Medicine Wolf's been able to pass on some more … let's say orientation. Maximally informed is good, and I wouldn't want to give rivals a heads-up too soon. But I figure any governor ought to be able to make a meeting with a new Great Manitou on a few days' notice. Even the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan."
"Yes." Washington sounded faint, and Oregon was staring. "I don't know all of them well, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't drop everything and come running. Flood control for pollution control?"
"Pollution stop, sir, as far as possible, plus serious clean up the bigger basin. That's straightforward, if humongous. Levees aren't, and I don't yet know what is and isn't possible. Serious hydro-engineering conference somewhere soon, and you're among very few governors with experience of a great-manitou interface. Joint statement by this Basin's governors, offering that experience to colleagues of any party?"
They liked that, while I liked cross-party co-operation when it came to manitous and the preternatural in general, so I added Others 101 and recruitment streams for Farouts and other federal agencies.
"You might want to think about that for state agencies, and bring in mayors, PD and FD chiefs. But going back to those not-so-simple levees, the racial charge they and the whole Mississippi carry, given its history, are a big reason its great manitou will manifest as a manitou of colour. Think hard about this one, please. Settlement of the Mississippi Basin by Second People saw the worst of the Indian Wars, slaughter of bison, and the major expansion of slavery that led to all the Blues mean, from the Delta to Chicago. Ol' Man River kept rolling along, but Ol' Manitou River is gonna stand up very tall indeed and say basta on pollution. I imagine smart Anglo responses will be in short supply, but you could each make one."
"Huh. Any definition of smart?"
"Humble, aware, pleased, a chance to insist Black and Amerindian Lives Matter. I am not looking for narrow politics, but a lot of my support is ethnic protest votes."
"Yeah. It's honest, and works for you." Oregon seemed to have got her head round it. "You're very good at making decisions on the fly, and if this one's blown me away, again, I'm starting to like it a lot. A second great manitou is almost a relief." She sat up. "And it drives a truck through the Columbia Basin exemption."
"I noticed that. File that suit no later than the weekend, hey?"
"Damn right we will." I got a shrewd look. "And that other thing — is that going to break sooner or later, if you know?"
"Not my call, truly. But I now think sooner."
"OK. Bonus or trouble when it does?"
"Either or both, depending. But I can't say more. Lives are on the line."
"Of course. We should talk about moving I84 and the railroad."
I gathered engineers bemusedly agreed the plans were workable if tunnels and wider roadbed really did just appear, and I'd been right about their ability, suitably bribed, to acquire asphalting machines from all over. I checked with Medicine Wolf and Irpa, and a weekend early in June was agreed, giving a month for warnings I84 and the railroad would be closed for 48 hours but coming in ahead of re-emergence at the Solstice. I hadn't been worrying about what tunnels should be called, but it was fun to ponder, and when the governors rang off I passed the question on.
The mood changed when Adam's clever software told us half-a-dozen vamps were working around our perimeter, never close enough to alert patrolling wolves, and subsequently watched for a while from scrubland beyond the remaining rump of the media pack, waiting on tomorrow.
"Recon?"
"I'd think. Timing's right."
"Yeah. But they don't know we can see them."
"Let's keep it that way."
While we watched the cold blue outlines shimmering onscreen I called ap Lugh. Underhill had the GPS co-ordinates and images she needed, and could react at once, and he welcomed proper introduction to Jill, and had news. The virus had done very expensive damage to the vamp bank's mainframe, wiping ones and zeroes while alerting Italian and other authorities and media with emailed data, so any number of questions were being asked by rapidly increasing crowds of agitated reporters, police, and bureaucrats. Thanks to one chunk of leaked data multiple arrests had been made in connection with human trafficking, and victims in transit rescued from trucks, a happy bonus. So was the credit cards in di Ragusa's wallet all having been issued through the bank, so it was likely a lot of vamps would need new plastic — more hassle compounding massive loss of liquidity, and it would only get worse.
Ap Lugh was in the room in Walla Walla he often used, and as the wait stretched, vamps remaining motionless, he poured himself something pale in a beautifully chased silver goblet and sat back.
"Confining yourself, Mercedes, you will not have been listening to preternatural gossip, but your courage and style are widely admired. The Borrowed Warchest has almost everyone laughing, even those with little interest in money, and chimes with your pure scorn in speaking to Bonarata. That impressed even male trolls."
"So I can add She Impresses Boy Trolls to my list of names, then. Huh. What are male trolls good for, Gwyn ap Lugh?"
"If you wish, Mercy, though I would not bother, and for the most part not much that I or any female trolls have ever discovered, barring eating things and occasional impregnation. Thor never cared for them at all, and even speaking kindly they tend strongly to the dim and quarrelsome. A few brighter ones are Overhill — Anna Cornick met one in Seattle, over that business — but most are best kept away from humans."
"Right. Oh, and the tunnels at Celilo Falls have a date."
As Pirandella hadn't got back to me yet I took the chance to ask him about my translation problem. Both eyebrows went up, but we passed time with finer points of pronunciation, the merits of archaic Welsh, and the interesting question of names in translation. I got looks from Jill, but at last the vamps departed, vanishing from the screen, and Adam nodded.
"The chances of Mercy being right about tomorrow night are getting higher, Gwyn ap Lugh. They'll need to immobilise wolves on guard while trying to open a way in that isn't a threshold. We were thinking they would be more sophisticated, but if di Ragusa thought he could shoot through my windows — and why carry the rifle if he wasn't hoping? — Marsilia is staying shtum, or filtering what she says, as well as Wulfe and Stefan. So I wonder if they will also try for windows. Either way, it must start with taking out wolves, and silver sniping will kill so I need to pull them in. Are those fetches available?"
I'd known about the request, and was interested to learn that though fetches were usually made as changelings, they could look like whatever the fae making one wanted. There was discussion of vamp speed, the sort of distance they might rush from, and Underhill's ability to time things, ending with ap Lugh's promise that Edythe would come by during the day, discreetly, to make fetches, and come sunset she or another Gray Lord able to bespeak Underhill directly would be present. With that sorted, Adam went to speak to wolves, and though I disliked going to bed without him I needed to be sharp tomorrow, and increasingly wanted sleep. For about two minutes, lying alone in the dark, I really missed fixing clonky old German cars for not enough money, but I was asleep before Adam came up, waking only enough to snuggle in to his warmth and slide back into a dream of Celilo Falls thundering triumphantly again, so loudly I couldn't think of anything else.