Play Dead (31 page)
“This is Malcolm,” I said, pointing at the dirt. Lou looked at me calmly. He was used to humoring me when I started talking crazy. “Not the real Malcolm. Part of him. We need to find the rest.” I pushed the figure toward him and he backed off. “No, idiot,” I said. “I’m not crazy. Track him. Can you track him, using this?”
He sniffed delicately at it, then sat down and looked up at me.
I pantomimed looking for someone, putting my hand over my eyes and staring off in one direction, then another. Lou continued to gaze calmly in my direction. I started to feel that maybe he was just screwing with me; I’m never quite sure with him.
“Malcolm,” I repeated, inanely. “Use this to find Malcolm.”
Either he finally got it or he decided he’d had enough fun, because he grabbed a small bit of a leaf and ate it, lips pulled back as if it were some particularly nasty-tasting medicine. Then he stood up on his hind legs again and sniffed the air, ears back, questing. He doesn’t actually use his scenting abilities, of course; it’s just his own personal metaphor to make it easier to locate whoever it is he’s seeking through his own methods. That’s the way I read it, at least.
He stayed facing that direction for a while, then did a quarter turn. Then another and another until he’d made a complete circle. At the end of his ritual he sat back down and faced me.
“No-go, eh?” I said. “Not close enough, I guess.” Or maybe my bright idea just hadn’t worked.
I was about to climb back into the van when I felt another twinge, just like the one I’d felt the night before, only this one was stronger and hurt more. It passed quickly again, but this was getting more than worrisome. What if it was some sort of progressive thing? It would be ironic after surviving all manner of violent supernatural creatures to end up dying of a brain tumor.
Lou gave a short bark to alert me. At first I thought he’d caught a whiff of Malcolm, but he was focused on the entrance to the zoo, and I could hear a commotion in the distance. The ticket taker stepped out of her booth and stared down the path leading to the interior of the zoo, so it wasn’t anything normal. Lou barked again in a peremptory tone, so whatever it was warranted attention.
I put a small masking on both of us and strolled past the ticket taker, who wasn’t paying that much attention anyway. It wasn’t that I was too cheap to pay; I just didn’t want to waste a lot of time getting her back in the booth and buying a ticket.
People were running now, some toward the commotion and some away from it. I wondered if there had been another big cat escape. A few years ago, just at closing time, three teenagers had been throwing things into the tiger pit, young primates teasing the Siberian tiger from their perch of safety behind a moat and fence.
But the tiger got annoyed, and then enraged. No one is really sure how the tiger did it, but it managed to scale the thirteen-foot wall and killed one of the boys and injured the other two before being shot by police.
Opinion was divided between those who believed it to be a horrible tragedy and those who felt the boys got what they deserved—that it was more a tragedy for the tiger than for them. I thought it was both. But even as victims, the boys didn’t make very sympathetic figures. One scenario was that the two who apparently teased the tiger escaped with their lives, and ironically it was the other boy, the one who had done nothing, who died trying to help his friends. They say justice is blind, but karma seems a bit skewed as well sometimes.
But after a few moments I dismissed that idea. People were excited, but not scared. Whatever it was, there didn’t seem to be danger involved. I moved down the sloping path, past various enclosures of deer and antelope, until I came upon the scene I’d been looking for.
Several zookeepers were gathered around a bench, and underneath was a medium-sized brown animal about the size of a small golden retriever. The keepers all held long sticks, trying to keep it at bay until someone could get a net or a tranquilizer gun, or whatever they were going to use to recapture it. Another keeper was trying to push the people back who were trying to get a look at what was going on. He saw me, glanced down at Lou, and said, “You can’t have that dog in here, you know.” Talk about misplaced priorities.
“Not my dog,” I said, falling back on my default excuse to avoid confrontation.
Lou wandered away as if he’d never seen me before in his life. The keeper was distracted by a young Asian couple with a camera trying to get closer and forgot about me.
The animal under the bench snapped at one of the keepers that had gotten too close and I got a good look at it. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It was an otter, probably a sea otter from its size.
It poked its head out from under the bench and focused at something it saw across the path. When I followed its gaze, I saw it was looking at Lou. Then it snapped its attention back to me, staring up with a quiet intensity. I could see its eyes, and they didn’t look like the eyes of an animal, even as clever a one as an otter. Another thing odd about it—it had ears, floppy ears like Lou’s. I’m not an otter expert, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures and nature films. Otters have tiny ears, not ones that flop over like a beagle’s.
It stuck its head out farther and barked at me, sounding very much like Lou asking for help before ducking farther back to the relative safety under the bench. Which was fine—I was sure by now this was no ordinary otter, and I had no desire to leave it in the hands of zookeepers who were bound to notice before long that it wasn’t an otter at all. But how to go about abducting it out of there?
An aversion-type spell would help, but wasn’t sufficient. All it does is make the eye disinclined to rest on an object, to glide over it. That wouldn’t deter the keepers who already knew there was an otter under the bench and were focused on it.
But the two keepers on either side of the bench offered something I could use. The two of them quite resembled each other, much like brothers, and wore identical uniforms as well. I used that similarity to craft a spell. Their identical appearance provided a template where I could create an illusionary twin for the otter.
If I threw an aversion spell over the original creature and at the same time created an identical-looking illusion and sent it charging off, the real one might then slip off unnoticed in the ensuing chaos. The only problem was the timing; I’d have to set the two spells in motion simultaneously, like playing two separate lines on the guitar at the same time. I might not be able to pull it off on the guitar, but I thought I could do it here.
I sent the spells flying in, one on top of the other, and for just a moment there were two otters there, but with both of them huddled close it was hard to tell that. When the two spells kicked in, every eye avoided the real otter and focused on the illusion. I sent the illusion running out in a mad dash for freedom, ignoring the keepers’ sticks. One of the keepers poked his stick right through it, but since that obviously wasn’t possible his mind told him he’d simply missed.
It was across the path and heading away from us in seconds, heading for a large bush, keepers in hot pursuit, not noticing there was another figure still under the bench, protected by the aversion spell. As soon as the copy of the otter dived into the nearby bush, I’d release the illusion and for all intents and purposes it would vanish. The keepers would be sorely puzzled about where it had gone, but at least they wouldn’t have the physical evidence of a lop-eared otter to examine.
The otter cautiously stretched its head out again and I gestured to it urgently. If I’d read things right, it would come bounding out. If not, and it was nothing more than an unusual animal after all, it would ignore me and hunker down in place.
No worries there. It was out of its temporary lair and moving toward me in less than a second. I turned and ran toward the front gate, otter close behind and Lou on its heels ready to nip if it changed its mind.
I glanced back to make sure it was following me, noting that it wasn’t running with the normal otter gait, bouncing and somewhat goofy. Its long body stretched out and it moved with ease, almost like a large cat. People looked at me curiously as I ran by, and even the aversion spell couldn’t keep them from noticing a large furry creature bounding along right behind me. But they wouldn’t be able to describe it if anyone were to ask them later.
I didn’t have a plan, apart from getting the otter out of the immediate area. Maybe I could convince it to get into the van, though what I would do after that wasn’t so clear. I couldn’t very well take it home; my landlord was back in town. Victor wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of having a super intelligent otter as a permanent houseguest, though I’d bet Eli would be thrilled at the prospect.
The otter solved that problem as soon as we exited through the gate. It stopped, pulled itself erect like Lou searching for a scent, and faced Ocean Beach. Two seconds later, without a backward glance, it bounded down the sidewalk and across the Great Highway, the road that runs along the edge of the ocean. I could hear the screech of brakes as drivers tried to avoid it. Then it was gone. I looked at Lou.
“It could have at least said thank you, don’t you think?”
Lou ignored me. He was back on his hind legs, sniffing the air. I looked around to see if the otter had returned for some reason, but that wasn’t it. When he gave a short bark of triumph, I got it. Malcolm had returned to the area, and Lou hadn’t forgotten about him. When I opened the door of the van, instead of jumping in, he passed it by and set off across Sloat Boulevard, which meant Malcolm was close by, close enough so that tracking him down would be easier on foot.
We hadn’t gone more than a block when Lou stopped in front of a small, ratty-looking house painted a nauseating pink and sat down. I thought about what to do, and finally decided on simply knocking on the front door. Steps approached from inside, and after a slight hesitation the door swung open and Malcolm stood there in front of me. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“I figured you’d show up eventually,” he said in a tone of resignation. “You might as well come in.”
SEVENTEEN
“GOOD TO SEE YOU LOOKING SO WELL,” I SAID. “Having been dead seems to agree with you.”
“I wasn’t dead,” he said.
“Obviously. How did you pull that trick off?”
“It wasn’t a trick. It’s the tattoos. I included a healing provision in the template; I can survive most any injury unless it’s really severe. What I didn’t count on was that it didn’t work in the singularity—but it kicked in the moment we got back here, where it was originally implemented. It took a while for me to recover, since I was inches from death. A close call—I guess I’ve got you to thank for bringing me back. I freaked out when I woke up and there was dirt thrown over my head, though. I thought you’d buried me in a deep grave, and that’s just where I’d stay.”
“Maybe I should have,” I said. “Your convenient death gave you the opportunity to freelance, didn’t it? Like tracking down Jackie on your own? What were you doing down by Mission Street, anyway?”
“So you did see me there, then. I was afraid of that.”
“And?”
“I was there to meet Jackie, of course. Your untimely arrival prevented that, so I came home.”
“How did you know where she was?”
“No big mystery there. She called me. Since she’s the one who powered up the tattoos, she knew I wasn’t dead, despite what you told her. She’s been having trouble implementing any of the spells in the book on her own—every time she tries one, it goes wrong. She discovered she still needed my expertise, and I still need the book, of course, so we decided to re-form our alliance.”
“And when you help her, more little rips in our world’s fabric takes place, and things leak through.”
I told him about the otter I’d just seen at the zoo, and the pigeons as well.
“Exactly,” he said. “You’ve got it. And it’s not just a temporary glitch in the fabric. It’s all cumulative; every opening stays open and each opening reinforces the others.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
“Not in the slightest. It won’t affect me much, personally.”
“Maybe not, but it will hardly help you. Why are you so interested in helping Jackie?”
“Well, I’m not anxious to help you; that’s for sure. When Jackie’s done with the book it’ll be my turn, and I’ll have it. You certainly wouldn’t ever let me have the book, would you, now? What if I were successful in using it to gain talent? If I were, then anyone could be a practitioner—anyone with my scientific background, at least. You guys would never let that happen.”
“Probably not.” He laughed, bitterly.
“There’s no probably about it. Because then you guys wouldn’t be so special anymore, would you, now? No, if you ever get your hands on the book, that’s the last I’ll ever see of it.”
“I see,” I said. “Be that as it may, it’s too dangerous to let Jackie run around trying out things from that book. It’s already causing trouble, and it could get much worse.”
“You have no idea. But that doesn’t affect me at all—my head’s as clear as a bell.”
“What does that mean?” An expression of annoyance flitted across Malcolm’s face, as if he’d let something slip.
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