A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (14 page)

She might not be a fully trained Mendaihu,
but she could certainly spiritsense well enough to know that this
was a real thing. He had definitely contacted her — in her lumisha
dea, no less — and had told her they would meet each other again.
Briefly she entertained the thought…had they met during their
college years, on campus somewhere or at a party? But she would
have remembered someone like Anando. He definitely would have left
an impression, given the one he left last night.

It should have been easy enough to find him
in the general census database. Even though Shalei was an extremely
common clan name, ‘Anando’ was a rarity. There were about a
thousand or so ‘A. Shalei’ entries in Central Bridgetown alone, and
possibly more in the outpost villages nearby. She had no time or
inclination to dig through each and every one of them, and it
wasn’t that important to find Anando right this second, but her
curiosity was just enough to continue just for a bit longer. He was
in the city, that much she knew from her sensing, so she narrowed
the search parameters and tried again. A second search by race —
looking up Meraladian only this time — cut the number of hits in
half, but it was still too much to search through. Maybe by
district? It was worth a shot. The highest concentration of
Mendaihu in the city was in and around the McCleever District. As
an afterthought she added her own neighborhood of Berndette Sector,
just in case he really was as close by as he’d said.

She watched the search run its course,
laughing to herself. Why was she doing this? Anando had no part in
the awakening ritual at all as far as she knew. But he’d shown up
in her most private and personal of places, and he had done so for
a reason. And she had recognized his spirit’s signature, connected
at a spiritual level with him. She’d never questioned or even
entertained the thought of her soul’s previous lifetime…she
understood and respected the Meraladian belief of spiritual
incarnation, maybe even wished she could believe it herself, but
had never seriously contemplated it for any length of time. But
now…

Who was this Anando, who had shaken her
spiritual foundation?

The answer to that question came a few
minutes later. After a few more parameter tweaks, she narrowed the
list down to three Anandos in the city: an extremely old man living
in a nursing home in westside McCleever, a middle-aged businessman
in Berndette with two children and a wife…and a graduate student
almost exactly seven years her junior, living on his own in
eastside McCleever, near the warehouses.

She shivered and giggled, feeling stupid and
giddy at the same time. That last one
had
to be him!

“Hey,
there
you are!”

Caren nearly jumped out of her seat at the
loud voice. Sheila stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame
with her arms crossed. She had a wide grin on her face and a
rolled-up vidmat in her hand. Without preamble she entered the
office and took a seat behind Poe’s desk. “I can see I might have
interrupted a few things,” she said flatly.

Caren laughed despite her face turning red.
“Impeccable timing as always, dear,” she said, saving her final
search and closing down the database. She’d look further into the
mystery of Anando at a later time, when everything calmed down.
Finally giving her full attention, she gestured at the vidmat. “I
see you’ve been busy. Got something for us?”

“That I do,” Sheila smiled. “A few things,
actually. I assume Poe is up at the Crest at the moment, yes?
Pity…he’d want to know about this as well.” She unfurled the vidmat
on the desk in front of her, tapped her security code in, and
started opening up a few files. She was acting like a kid itching
to spill a juicy secret, just like Matthew had, and she had to bite
her cheek to keep from laughing.

“First things first,” she said. “Remember
that bit Rieflin talked about the other day? About people gathering
somewhere in the Waterfront?” Caren nodded. She’d been surprised
and blindsided by that moment, just like everyone else had at the
ARU, but she hadn’t had time to follow up on it. “Yeah, I thought
that was kind of odd too. Pretty damn sure they mean one of the
empty warehouses down there, that’s the only place that’ll fit that
many people comfortably. That’s also something our department
would’ve had knowledge on right away. You don’t have a spiritual
gathering of any kind without someone here knowing about it. That
made me think: either he knows where the warehouse is and won’t
tell us, or he doesn’t know, and it’s possible it’s a rumor.”

“You requested more information, I take it?”
Caren asked.

“Yes, and of course they weren’t going to
give it. At least not right away. I’m figuring it’ll be leaked
within a few days, though. So…” She tapped on a file and opened it
up, and turned the vidmat in her direction. It was an impressively
long list of warehouse names in that district, color-coded and
subdivided into different columns. Many of the names had been
stricken. “I eliminated all the warehouses owned by the government,
businesses we’ve confirmed have no spiritual or religious ties, and
others that we know are condemned. That left only about a dozen or
so possible places. So I had Nick call in a favor from one of his
coworkers in PD. They didn’t give a name, of course, but they gave
us an idea where to look.”

Caren glanced down again, and frowned. One
name was circled: Moulding. It was an old building that hadn’t been
used for storage or shipping in quite some time, but given that it
was still in great structural shape, it was often rented out
short-term to various parties.

“You think they’re establishing camp here?”
she asked.

“Quite sure about that,” she said. “Nick
took a drive past there a few hours ago, and noticed a higher than
normal amount of foot traffic and plainclothes officers floating
around.”

Caren thought about this for a few moments.
Did they really need to know about followers of the One of All
Sacred gathering together to pray? If the BMPD were keeping the
peace, there was little the ARU could do other than back them up if
they needed help. And it sounded like it was a peaceful gathering.
On the other hand, there was the possibility this could be a
gathering of resources. She hated to entertain the thought…but this
could be a Mendaihu congregation, freshly awakened and awaiting
further instruction.

“We need someone down there,” Caren said. “I
need you and Nick —”

Sheila cut her off with a wide grin.
“Already on it. Right now we’re plugged into the traffic feed down
there. The warehouse takes up nearly the whole block, so we have
all four intersections available, and that should cover outside.
But we’ll make our way down there soon enough.”

Caren nodded. She’d have liked to have
someone there
now
, but she trusted Sheila enough to make up
for it in other ways. “And the second thing?”

“The second thing…” she said, twisted the
vidmat back in her direction, and tapped open a few more files. She
hummed quietly to herself, a kid with a secret she couldn’t contain
any longer. “It’s really a pity that Alec isn’t here, he’d want to
know as well. Guess who owns it.” She turned the vidmat back to
Caren and pushed it her way. On the screen was the picture and
statistics of a man in his late thirties. He looked fit and strong
for his age, not exactly handsome but definitely someone
charismatic. In this picture he held himself with conviction, sure
of whatever he aimed for. He wore a black trench coat over a black
bodysuit. On his shoulder was a patch of two intersecting
circles.

He was wearing the official gear of a
Mendaihu Elder.

“That’s our guy,” Sheila said, a proud smile
on her face. “Just confirmed it. Matches our witnesses’
descriptions, right down to the spirit signature.”

*

Poe returned from the Crest a little over an
hour later, and she filled him in with the details. “Nehalé
Usarai,” she said, reading off the man’s CV again. “He’s a
Meraladian Mendaihu, a high-level soulhealer, registered
sehndayen-ne
and has taught in nearly all the Sectors at one
point or another, you name it. He’s also a registered Elder, which
could make things slippery. Apparently he’s known around McCleever
and Waterfront as…well, as a savior. Goes out of his way to treat
the downtrodden. Healings, general assistance, the whole lot. Very
big on the community service. He owns a few of the old warehouses
down there, rents them out seasonally. Reports say he’s been there
within the past week as well.”

Poe frowned, leaning back in his chair and
taking it all in. “This is too easy,” he huffed. “He’s done
everything short of turning himself in.”

Caren shared in his skepticism. “That's what
I thought as well…that’s why it’s imperative that we actually
follow procedure, make sure we know it’s him. He has an apartment
on Jamison Avenue, overlooking Branden Hill Park. I’m expecting
he’s already off the grid, but Nick and Sheila are looking into it
right now. They also put a highlight on his direct employer,
Kindeiya Shalei at DuaLife. Nehalé works in the Re-Gen Therapy
department there. Guess he really is a genius at soulhealing, from
what info Sheila got out of Kindeiya. He’s supposed to be calling
us back.”

He nodded, pleased that the case was moving
again. “The meeting up at the Crest went well,” he said as a change
of conversation. “Kai and Ashan. Interesting team, those two. Nice
people. Take their job
very
seriously.” He let out a nervous
breath. “Let’s just say they gave me an interesting view of the
city,” he added quietly, and described to her what he’d gone
through and what he’d seen. “Suffice it to say I'm still a bit
unsettled by it.”

She stared at him, grinning. “Damn, Poe. You
get all the good jobs. I've never experienced that before. What did
they have to say?”

“They want a closer view,” he said. “They
agree, it’s hinting at another uprising, but they won’t commit to
it just yet.”

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “We have a
crime, a perpetrator, and the crime scene — but no solid motive.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and Kindeiya will spill everything.”

“Wishful thinking,” he laughed, but it was
hollow. He was still on edge from his abbreviated journey into that
spiritual otherworld, and it showed. He looked around, glancing at
the wall vidmat and at the other media screens in the room. “It
bothers me as well,” he said in a low tone. “The motive for the
awakening ritual. If the One of All Sacred is going to return, now
would be a good time to start praying.”

“Goddess, Poe.” Caren stared at him hard.
“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I’m not.”

After a pause, she looked away, frustrated.
“I don't like this.”

“Neither do I.” They both said nothing for a
long while. Poe glanced at their open office door, noticing that
the hallway chatter had died out, meaning the governor’s State of
the Province speech would start soon. Finally, he stood up,
stretched, and leaned over his chair. “What do we have on edha
Usarai?” he asked. “I mean, aside from what Nick and Sheila
uncovered?”

Caren looked down distractedly at the vidmat
in front of her. “I called Peter in Records, he's looking deeper
into Usarai’s history.” She paused, thinking. “Usarai, Poe…the
‘knowledge clan,’ right?”

“Well, Usara is,” he nodded. “But Usarai is
a sub-clan. I'd assume they're the same, by virtue of heredity.
He's definitely intelligent, and he’s definitely a community
leader.”

Caren pondered about that for a moment.
“That's what I thought,” she said. “I thought of calling Matt about
that, see if there's a link between this guy and the Shenaihu.
First, though, I need to call DuaLife, see what edha Kindeiya wants
to tell me. You want to visit Peter for me? He should have what we
want by now.”

Poe reached for his commlink. “I'll page
him.”

Peter Fancher ran the Records Department
like a library of sacred texts and was not much of a social person
at all. Records was housed in a cold, dimly lit seventh floor room,
dark except for the soft glow of vidscreens and study lights, and
he watched over the library like a hawk. He ran one of the most
complete, up to date census and data collections in the Sprawl,
barring the Data Research Library. He could get anything within a
half hour, and he was thorough. And time was something they did not
have. Poe confirmed the data was ready and pocketed his cell phone.
“We're good to go,” he said, already halfway out the office
door.

*

“Johnson?”

Caren looked up from reading the Nehalé
Usarai report, the voice unexpected. Chief Inspector Farraway stood
in the doorway, arms crossed and his right shoulder leaning against
the frame. He looked alive and rested, far from the overly stressed
version of the man she’d seen just days ago. He was smiling, a
tender, fatherly smile he’d shared with her since she was a young
cadet, introduced by her parents. She frowned…something was up.

“Hey, chief,” she waved. “Come on in. What
brings you out of your cage?”

“The first hour of peace I’ve had in the
last two days,” he said, shaking his head. “How are things?”

“Things are good, sir,” she nodded,
gesturing with her vidmat tablet. “Reading up on Nick and Sheila’s
report. Just want to familiarize myself with it.”

He hummed in response, and looked away.
“Listen…” he started. “I…uh…” He stopped, his smile fading. He
pushed heavily off the door frame and crossed the room, dropping
into Poe’s chair. “Listen,” he said again, his voice much quieter.
“Is everything all right with you?”

Caren frowned.
Odd question…
“As well
as can be, sir. Stressed out, but nothing out of the normal. Why do
you ask?”