Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 63

He tapped his forehead. And went to fetch her food.

The doughnuts delivered, Chaz leaned a hip against the desk a few feet from where Hafidha sat and watched her eat the first two. "How did it go with Dad?"

She shrugged, and washed down jelly doughnut with a swallow of milk. "I think Il Dottore would like to put a tracking collar on me, and maybe a microchip in my b.u.t.t so they know where to ship me home to if I stray. But since I've spent the last three weeks jumping through every hoop he can devise, my veto held. Did we figure out the mechanism in the Omaha case?"

"It was catharsis," he said, when her mouth was full of doughnut again. "They thought he was teaching them to contact spirits. But he was just channeling his own trauma through them, over and over again. Slamming neurons to induce hallucinations. Retraining their brains to operate like the minds of schizophrenics. And one by one, they were going mad."

"We say 'experiencing a psychotic break,'" Hafidha said, swilling coffee.

Chaz took a deep breath. "How much of it do you think was the anomaly, and how much was Vietnam, and how much was just James Cauldwell?"

She stared, and he backtracked hastily.

"You did the right thing," he said. "I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. You doing better on the food front?"

She lifted her chin, still staring. He saw it from his peripheral vision, because he wasn't looking at her directly. "Starting to gain some weight back," she said. "There were a couple of bad days there. I honestly couldn't eat enough to keep up. You're worried. About you."

"Well, duh." He looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. "Breakthrough. It's scary."

She shrugged. She was still staring, so he figured he might as well stop faking inattention. When his eyes slid over to her, she said, "Well, except for the part where I did it without even noticing. Seriously. It's a great toy, Chaz. I have wireless. Everywhere. And hey, look at this!"

She turned to the computers. She wiggled her left hand as if on the mouse. Screens lit up, data scrolled.

Chaz felt his pupils dilate. "I am totally sick with envy, you know."

"I know," she said. "I would be too. That's why I'm buying you lunch today."

"What?"

"I just cancelled my broadband, smarty-boy. I've got thirty-nine bucks a month I've got to blow on something, and my closet's already full of shoes."

It was hard to stay jealous around somebody so d.a.m.ned pleased to be themselves.

"You really like this, don't you?"

"I really, really do." There was an edge on it, though. A kind of melancholy. Chaz was a good enough profiler to catch it when it hit him between the eyes.

And he was a good enough profiler to defuse it, too. "Man, why do you get all the good stuff? If I got a manifestation, it would probably be miraculous projectile vomiting." His voice wobbled. He hadn't realized it wasn't a phrase you could say with a straight face. "Bah. You have your uses."

He grinned, but she wasn't over being half-sad. Her fingers moved, a little twitch, as if she were keyboarding. They never left the arms of her chair. Screen savers blossomed everywhere. She turned and gave him a look. "I liked the field, too," she said. "I miss the heart-racing thing, sometimes."

"Even when you wind up shooting somebody?"

Okay, way to go, cowboy. Smooooth. He waited for her face to crumple, for the shakes in her hands. It's what he would have done.

But she just looked down at them and shook her head. "He was trying to put a knife in Reyes, honey. I feel okay about it, actually." And then she took a big deep breath and said, "Hey Chaz?"

"Hafs?"

"If... if anything bad happens?" She held up her pinky, crooked. "Promise me you won't let me do anything like that to anybody, man? You'll do what you have to? Pinky- swear?"

"You won't." He hooked his own pinky around hers, feeling the dry warmth of her skin. He hoped she wouldn't notice that he hadn't promised. "Pinky-swear."

She looked at him for a long time before she nodded and pulled back her hand. "People," Chaz said, shaking his head. "You think you know a girl, and she turns out to be a gunslinger." He was angling for a laugh, and didn't get it. Dammit, this had not been supposed to be an awkward conversation, all sharp angles and obliques. He swallowed. And then he stepped away from her chair. "Like this thing with the will, and my mom."

Oh, there it was. The track he'd needed to get around to the thing he had to say, and didn't know how: You're not what I thought you were, Hafidha. But it doesn't matter, because you are still and will always be my friend.

Still, and always. The only person in the world who got it, or ever would.

He could get there from here. He could tell, because she made a circle with one hand and asked, "You going to go to Texas?"

"Eventually." He shrugged. "In my copious spare time. But yeah, I think I can face it. It's just a house she used to live in, right?"

"It's just the place where she grew up," Hafidha said. She picked up a third doughnut and took a bite, and handed him the fourth. "It worries you."

"I thought I knew who she was," he said. "I remember her really well. n.o.body in the foster system believed that, you know. They thought I was making things up. And I know-" He shook his head. It took a deep breath to get through the pain trying to lock his throat. "-I know she didn't leave me on purpose. But that's the way addiction works. The addiction is more important than anything else, in the end. It's like cancer. It eats everything it touches. Oh, d.a.m.n. "

The tension in the muscles of his face made his head ache, all the way around to the back. Hafidha reached out, softly, and touched his hand. "Can't do that with the wireless in my head," she said, to make him smile.

He blinked rapidly, and got the stinging in his eyes under control.

She pulled her hand back. "While we're on the topic, c'mere. Wanna show you something. I got nosy while I was out. One more f.u.c.king Minnesota Multimoronic Personality Inventory and I was going to bite somebody. Probably El Jefe. "

Chaz turned to see her screens. The screensaver zipped off and a page of text popped up front and center. It looked like a scanned magazine article, dated early 1978. "'One Thousand In Guyana.' Solomon Todd. Oh, my."

"You knew he was a reporter before he was FBI."

"I didn't know he was a reporter in f.u.c.king Jonestown."

"Well," she said. "I guess he got out before."

"Before," Chaz echoed. She meant: before nine hundred and nine people died in a ma.s.s-murder/suicide of Biblical proportions. Chaz shook his head. "You'd never guess it to look at him, would you?"

Hafidha looked at Chaz, and shook her head, smiling. "No. You'd never guess." And then she said, very carefully, "You think you understand people, you know? You know what they eat, you know how they take their coffee." She gestured with the pastry in her hand. "You know what kind of doughnuts they like. So you think you know them. You think you know yourself."

"Yeah," Chaz said, understanding. "You think so. And then you don't. You really don't."

He touched her shoulder. She laid her cheek against his knuckles briefly.

He said, "But that's okay."

Epilgoue He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

-Samuel Johnson The Living Word Baltimore, MD April, 2007.

The woman standing by the crosswalk shoved a flyer at Hafidha. "Have you found Jesus?"

Hafidha stopped. "No." She held eye contact until the woman-white, middle-aged, suburban upper middle cla.s.s, not the usual profile for a streetcorner proselytizer- shifted nervously. Then she smiled and took the flyer. "But if I see him, I'll tell him you're looking for him."

She was two blocks away before she looked at the flyer in her hand. Kinko's made professional-looking flyers possible for the rankest of amateurs, but whoever had made this one had a good eye for graphic design. THE TRUTH IS REVEALED UNTO US, it said. THE LIVING WORD OF G.o.d WILL SPEAK TO YOU. 7 P.M., EVERY WEDNESDAY. And then an address that was almost certainly a store-front.

Something about it tickled at her bulls.h.i.t detector. But-photocopy, no love there. She muttered under her breath: "Stupid-a.s.s old-skool ink-on-paper information delivery system." No seeing pretty colors here, even if this chatty Living Word of G.o.d was made of jam.

But then, the world was crammed full of non-anomaloid kooks. Odds were against it. And people didn't just hand you the start of a case file on a street corner. So, no.

It still tickled.

She'd bet they had an online presence. h.e.l.l, her dry cleaner had an online presence. Take maybe five minutes to find 'em. n.o.body would miss five minutes out of her otherwise-productive day...

Significant J. Edgar Hoover Building Washington, D.C.

June 2007 Brady returned from his second coffee pilgrimage of the morning and saw Daphne Worth putting a framed 5x7 prominently on her desk, with the air of one who wanted it to be commented on. "Pretty lady," Brady said. "Who is she?"

Worth grinned at him, and he knew bravado when he saw it. "Guess."

Chaz spun his chair around. She obligingly angled the picture so he could see it. "Sister."

"Chaz honey," said Hafidha, leaning hip-shot against the divider, "you are not even trying. Daph and that lady are sisters about the same way I'm the long lost twin of Josephine Baker."

"But Hafidha," Brady said, "you are the long lost twin of Josephine Baker."

"You gonna pay good money to see my fan dance?"

"Try again," Worth said, eyes bright. She was almost bouncing in her chair, nervous but brazening it out. Brady'd given her an out, a distraction, and she'd refused it. Interesting.

"College roommate? Childhood friend?"

Hafidha rolled her eyes and said, drawling the syllables out for maximum effect, "Girlfriend? As in, significant other?"

"Bing bing bing bing bing!" Worth said. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!"

She was scared, but she wasn't backing down, as if she could make this go well through sheer force of personality, committed to telling the truth with her whole heart. Worth sought the truth like a grail knight. Brady supposed he shouldn't be surprised she would wear its favor on her sleeve in personal matters as much as in her work. He felt a little hollow. You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Hafidha must either have known already or have guessed almost at once. She didn't miss a beat. "What do I win?"

"What do you want?"

"As the long lost twin of Josephine Baker, I want a smooch."

"Is this s.e.xual harra.s.sment in the workplace?"

"Only if you feel harra.s.sed, Peaches," Hafidha said. Worth laughed a delighted overbubbling laugh, got up, and gave Hafidha a smacking kiss on the cheek.

"No PDA in the bullpen," Reyes said from his office door.

Chaz was still processing. "You're a lesbian?"

"Bis.e.xual." Worth's grin widened and she leaned over Chaz, curling her fingers into claws. "No one is safe from my predatory ways!"

Chaz, after a moment's puzzled and genuine alarm, shrank back in his chair, crying, "Aunty Em! Aunty Em!" in a remarkably good Judy Garland impression.

Hafidha said, "Your Aunty Em won't save you now, boy. Ain't you heard? We aren't in Kansas anymore."

Reyes made an I-give-up face and went back into his office, closing the door behind him.

And Brady, finally, began to laugh.

Standoff FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C., March, 2004 Hafidha could feel Stephen Reyes too d.a.m.ned close behind her chair. She pretended she didn't and started writing another set of search filters.

"Can I see you in my office, please?" His voice was neutral, which, she already knew, meant absolutely nothing.

Hafidha turned in her chair and draped her arm over the back. "You can."

It took him half a beat to figure it out, and his mouth lifted and compressed at one corner. Smart boy, Il Dottore. She almost wished she could have held off, just long enough to get more of a taste of this. No, better to do it now, before it hurt.

"Would you come with me to my office, please?"

"Sure thing." She hit three keys to throw up the pa.s.sword-locked screensavers on her monitors and spun her chair. He'd already started out the door.

Hafidha followed Reyes through the bullpen. Peretti looked up at Reyes before his eyes shifted to her. He blinked, opened his mouth, seemed to reconsider, and turned back to the file in front of him.

Solomon Todd came out of the kitchenette and spotted her. His eyebrows lifted a little, just enough to line his forehead. He stuck out his lower lip in thought. Then he nodded to her and went on to his desk.

It was stupid. It wasn't as if it mattered. But that nod gave her a little warm, soft ball in her chest. It's been nice working with you, Agent Todd. A week I'll treasure always.

In his office, Reyes waved at the visitor's chair. She sat in it, and he closed the door. As she'd expected, he settled behind his desk, hands side by side and flat on the surface, before he spoke. "This building is full of people who voted for Ronald Reagan."

Hafidha widened her eyes and made an O of her mouth. "Oh, no. Sir, just tell me what I can do to help."

He looked down and pressed his lips together. Point to her. "Unfamiliar things make them nervous. Things that don't fit their world picture make them very nervous."

He stopped and stared at her. So Hafidha stared back and nodded.

"Shadow Unit is so far out of their comfort zone that 'nervous' applies about as well as 'unfortunate' does to the Waco seige."

She didn't laugh, but she knew he could see her throat compress around it. Point to him.

"I'm trying to keep us as much off the radar as I can, under the circ.u.mstances," he continued. "The more successful I am at that, the better it is for the unit. We need a certain amount of hands-off att.i.tude to get results."

"Yes, sir," Hafidha said, since it seemed like a good time to say something.

He clasped his hands. "You're making that harder."

Battle is joined. She put a layer of sad-and-earnest on her face. "I know. I'm the wrong color. I'm a girl. But I thought, with all those federal anti-discrimination laws- "

"You know what I'm talking about."

She smiled. She couldn't help it.