Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) (9 page)

He pushed the door open. It led to the fenced part of the lot. I followed him out into his strange garden. The fenced area outside was just as cluttered as the shop had been. Lawn furniture, concrete fountains, statues, all of it scattered around in no obvious pattern. There were aisles between the merchandise out here, curving at seeming random through the kitsch.

Keith lit another clove cigarette and sat down on a green painted Adirondack chair. He waved me to the bench opposite him. It seemed solid enough, so I sat down. Beside us a fountain in the shape of a leaping fish dribbled water into a bowl held by a nymph.

“Okay,” he began, “the first thing you have to realize is that Macrobes don't deal in money—not directly. They deal in knowledge, knowledge is power, money is power, so the rewards are there. They just take a little work sometimes to monetize.”

I nodded.

“They have means of perception that are beyond human comprehension. They can . . . see things that we can't. They know things that we don't, and that's what they trade. Let me give you an example: suppose that one entity wants another entity's human operatives taken out. Killed. It can't just give you a briefcase full of hundred dollar bills. What it could do, however, is tell you the location of a rich vein of gold. They can sense things like that, isolate individual elements through the rock.

“But,” he continued, “we still have to do the work of buying the land, getting a mining company to do the tests to see the gold is there, get the permits to dig, all that. You see?”  

“I understand.”

He smiled and puffed on his cigarette. “So I'll tell you this up front—I take a big cut. I've got my fingers in a lot of different industries, I've got a lot of contacts. People—certain select people—trust me. It takes a lot of overhead to maintain these contacts.”

“How big a cut?” I was beginning to really dislike this man, but I wanted to keep him talking.

“Depends on the contract.” He shrugged, stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. The smell of cloves was something else I was really starting to dislike. “I mean, how do you figure the return on something like a new invention?  Long term, short term, points after development costs? But, the thing is, I take care of my people. If it's money you're after, trust me, you'll have more than you can ever spend.”

He leaned forward and looked me straight in the eye. “I can offer you a million in cash as a retainer. A signing bonus. I can have it in your hands by tomorrow morning.”  

I believed him. If he was profiting from alien technology, a million was nothing. I looked around the fenced lot, the scattered statues and fountains and lawn chairs.

He grinned. “I don't need to impress anybody. I could have a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan with my name on it, but who wants that kind of attention? Real power doesn't have to advertise.”

I thought about it. Did I want a million dollars?  I thought about being rich, having a big house, big cars, fancy clothes, expensive electronic toys.

My parents had been rich.

“And money is just the tip of the iceberg. The icing on the cake.” Once again he seemed to know what direction my thoughts were taking. “I won't say that you have no idea what the Macrobes can do—obviously you're familiar with the advantages that your tenant can bestow upon you—but there is so much more. The technology they can share with us. Medicine, computers, materials—centuries, who knows? in advance of anything we can do. The sky's the limit, and I mean that literally.”

A thought occurred to me. Has this human been altered?

yes. the threads of existence have been double-woven.

Which does what?

death will not come swift to this one.

“So what happens now?  Do I just leave you my number and you'll call me when something comes up?”

A smile, a nod, and another cigarette. “Basically, yes. There is the matter of reaching an accord with your tenant, of course.”

That was just a little too casual. “Accord?”

An airy wave of his hand. “It's customary when dealing with Macrobes to have a covenant to protect both parties.”

“no.”
Catskinner's voice surprised me.

“Hear me out. I'm not talking about a binding, simply a covenant. The terms will simply be—”

“i'll not write nor speak any oath upon you, conjure man.”

Catskinner had taken my body while he spoke. He stood and faced Keith.

Keith sighed. “Choose your words with care, child of the morning star.”

“the word i choose is no. no terms. no conditions. no covenant.”

What is he asking for that you won't do?

a slave collar.

Okay, let's go. I thought this deal sounded too good to be true.

“I urge you to reconsider,” Keith said softly. It sounded like a threat.

“these negotiations are concluded.”
Catskinner turned to head back to the store.

“I had really hoped that we could do business.”  Keith dropped his clove cigarette into the water of the fountain beside him.

And the water came alive.

Chapter Eight

“if it bleeds, it can die, but not everything bleeds.”

At first it looked like just a big splash, as if the cigarette butt had been a brick. Then the tendrils of water elongated impossibly and whipped towards my head. Catskinner was already moving, spinning and dropping out of their path. I remember thinking, what's the big deal, it's only water, when I saw one of the tendrils slice through a concrete statue of a satyr, decapitating it without slowing.

Dimly I was aware of Keith walking away, heading deeper into the maze of concrete and cheap painted wood, but my point of view was in violent motion as Catskinner dodged the animated water.

What is that?

airish beast by diverse numbers deceived.

It looked more waterish than airish to me, but I figured it wasn't a good time to insist on a complete explanation.

Can you kill it?

it is not alive.

Which probably meant no. I shut up—I didn't want to distract him.

He lashed out at the bench where Keith had been sitting and it was splinters and the splinters were in my hand and then—thoop!, thoop!, thoop!—they were severing a handful of the liquid tendrils. The water that was separated from the main body fell to splash on the asphalt, but more rose out of the nymphs bowl and scythed, glittering in the sunlight like fishing line coated with diamond dust towards me and I wasn't there. My perspective was spinning wildly out of control. If I'd had control of my stomach I would have been sick, but my body was cool and distant, something I had owned once but had no particular interest in now.

More water was in motion than that bowl could have held. I wondered where it came from. I wondered how it was moving, what force animated it against all the laws of physics I knew about. I wondered if it would kill me and how it would feel to die. I couldn't feel real fear—Catskinner had an iron grasp on my endocrine system as well as the rest of my flesh—but I very much did not want to die.

Metal whistled through the air, thrown by a hand I recognized as mine, and the nymph statue disappeared in an explosion of shattered concrete. The bowl clattered onto the ground and then hell really and truly broke out.

Water surged upward into a tower, vaguely man-sized with tendrils spinning off in all directions. Catskinner dove past gnome-dryad-deer-windmill-love seat-mailbox and a rain of splintered lawn ornaments followed, blood from punctures visible on the parts of my skin I could see.

i can't calve off enough matter to break the sequence,
which might not have been directed at me, since I didn't understand it, and both of my hands were busy, hurling bits of metal and rock at the tendrils, cutting them loose to splash on the ground. The main mass withdrew the tendrils it had remaining and began oozing towards me, leaving a glistening trail behind it. It seemed to be gaining mass as it went. Maybe it was condensing water out of the air. Catskinner kept peppering it with whatever came within reach of my hands, but the splashes weren't making it lose enough water to make any difference.

Maybe if you kill Keith? I suggested.

that would not unravel the construct.

How about running away?

The mass of water started extruding tentacles, big ones this time. They flailed slower than the little tendrils had, but struck with enough force to smash through the furniture in its path. Catskinner seemed to agree with me about running away. He was heading towards the wrought iron fence.

The water thing was heading to cut us off, and it could smash through things that Catskinner had to move over or around. I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

See if you can lead it to the right, I suggested. Catskinner obligingly jumped that way, flipped over the top bar of a swing set and landed next to what I'd seen—a pallet load of bags.

Stand on that, I said, and he did. The water thing oozed towards us, trashing the swing set on the way. Now run for the fence—

The water thing struck the pallet moments after Catskinner left it. As I'd hoped, it hit the bags hard enough to burst them open, and clouds of sand flew everywhere. Dry sand.

I didn't see what the sand did to the water thing because Catskinner was sprinting for the fence. I hoped that it had killed it or deactivated it or whatever, but all it had to do was slow it down for a few seconds. The space next to the fence was empty, asphalt with meandering lines of weeds growing up through the cracks.

When he was about five feet from the fence my body sprung from a crouch to a leap, aiming for the top crossbar—

—and missed the fence. The leap was perfect, arms extended, my hands already curled to grab the bar and the fence refused to get any closer. Catskinner landed and rolled, still about five feet from it. The asphalt in front of the fence was clear, leaving a kind of walkway around the lot. He sprinted towards it. I could feel my legs moving in the right direction, but we were moving parallel to the fence, not towards it. Catskinner stopped. He seemed to be as confused as I was. We were doing the running part just fine, but the away part wasn't happening.

My head looked back. The pie of wet sand was squirming, the water struggling to dump the weight of the sand. It didn't look like it was down for the count or even for very long.

Catskinner dove, rolled, jumped, and my body must have covered a good forty feet. The fence stayed five feet away.

The water construct crashed through a collection of bird feeders and Catskinner kept running, along side the fence. It maintained its maddening distance. Space was somehow warped or twisted or tied up in knots, and it wasn't going to let us out that way. We'd have to get out of here the way we came in, through the shop.

Unfortunately the water thing was that way. Even more unfortunately, so was Keith, and I had a feeling he had more tricks up his sleeve.

I caught a glimpse of him in the distance, standing by the door to the shop, arms folded. Waiting for his construct to kill me. He looked very patient. Catskinner looked the other way. I could see through the fence to the convenience store next door. My van was parked outside it. I wondered if Godiva could see me, if she could tell what was happening. I hoped that she would take the van, take the money, and escape. She deserved the chance to make a better life, away from this craziness.

As I watched my van started moving, but then I lost sight of it as Catskinner ducked and leaped over the top of the construct and back the way we'd come. The edge of the fence circled back to the shop building and whatever space warp kept us from reaching the fence didn't stop the store from getting closer. I heard a motor revving up and—

—suddenly a section of the fence slammed down next to me and my van crashed through it. Evidently the space warp trick didn't work from the outside in. Catskinner reacted and I was rolling under the van and then standing on the other side. I yanked the passenger door open.

Godiva wasn't driving.

“best to leave quickly”
Catskinner said, and the driver threw the van in reverse, screeching over chunks of busted fence. Either the van hadn't gotten far enough in to get caught in the space warp, or breaking down the fence had messed up whatever was causing it. The driver was a woman, and vaguely familiar, but Catskinner wouldn't focus my eyes on her long enough for me to be sure.

The water thing was surging through the broken fence. I was kind of hoping that it couldn't cross the borders of Morgan's domain, but it had no problem coming through the gap.

Movement caught Catskinner's eye and he turned my head. The door to the store opened and Godiva came out at a run, grocery bags in her arms. She headed right for the water thing.

Stop her! I screamed in my head. Before I could even try to take my body back, Godiva threw something at the water monster, something small and green. A tendril of water sliced the object open and green stuff sprayed all around.

The construct collapsed, just like that. It sank down into a puddle of water. Whatever that stuff was, I wanted some.

The driver slowed my van and Godiva opened the sliding door and jumped into the back.

I reached to take my body back and Catskinner retreated.

careful.

I felt like hell. The hunger was bad this time and the cuts and abrasions all over my body stung. Still, I made myself sit up and look at the driver.

“I bet you're not really a leasing agent,” I told her.

She was driving, pulling fast on to Lindbergh, going north. Without taking her eyes off the road she said, “I'm not. And my name's not Debbie Sawyer. It's Alice Mason.”  

“So what are you?”

“I'm saving your life is what I am.”

I sighed. “And you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

“No. I was following you.” Well, at least she was honest.

Godiva leaned forward from the back and passed me one of the plastic bags from the convenience store. “I figured you might be hungry.”