Stoneskin's Revenge (34 page)

Chapter XXV: Changing Times

(the jail—Whidden, Georgia—mid-morning)

Calvin had about decided he believed in luck after all. What
else
could explain the fact that Brock had actually managed to contact him, and even more remarkably, that Robyn had beyond all expectation succeeded in retrieving the uktena scale?

Trouble was, luck had two sides: good and bad; and no sooner had he managed to snare the talisman and secrete it in his pocket than he heard irate voices, and footsteps were once more clumping up the hall toward the stairs—which meant that he didn't dare
change
right then—not and risk losing the scale all over again, never mind the questions his peculiar concern for it might prompt his captors to ask. Indeed, too much of
that
could very well exchange one sort of captivity for another. No more jail (if they believed his explanation, or if he actually
changed
in front of them); but years, perhaps, of being poked and prodded by frustrated scientists would certainly be just as bad.

Which meant he had to hide the damned thing, and do it fast.

Someone was on the stairs now—which gave him about ten seconds. He scanned the bare room frantically.

Not on his person, that was for certain; they'd be sure to check there first, and ditto the bed. The corners? Still too obvious, and likewise the window.

No, wait: the window was open beyond its grillwork (it
was
summer, after all), and he didn't need the thong and wire loops, so he could dispose of them that way. And fortunately the cell, though clean, was not in perfect repair, so that occasionally globs of gum or cement or plaster dotted the walls, at least one of the former of which was relatively fresh and ready to hand. Moving as quickly as he ever had in his life, Calvin untangled the scale from the silver wires that bound it, smeared it with gum, and smacked it into the corner of the doorway directly above a hinge, then dashed back to the cot, leapt atop it, and tossed the thong and binding through the high window above—just as he heard the hall door being unlocked. (They'd rightly gotten paranoid about that, now that it was too late to do them any good).

He had barely gotten himself composed in the chair when Deputy Moncrief sauntered into view beyond the bars. He glared at Calvin, trying to look threatening, while Calvin simply tried to appear alert and expectant and guileless, and tried
not
to let his gaze drift toward the scale. One good thing, at least; if they were searching for something, they wouldn't know what it was, so he might have the upper hand there.

“You ain't had any more
visitors
lately, have you?” the man inquired in a tone that indicated he already knew the answer.

“No,” Calvin replied, choosing to interpret
visitor
in the narrowest possible definition, and ditto for
lately.

The deputy regarded him dubiously. “You
sure
'bout that?”

“No.”

An eyebrow shot up.

“You wanta explain that?”

“No.”

The other eyebrow joined its fellow, and the man's lip stuck out so far he looked like a Ubangi woman. “Well,” he drawled, glancing sideways, as if fearing observation, “I reckon I don't have no
choice
but to check you out myself, then, 'cause we sure did have an unexpected visitor just now—that makes two, if I can count. So,” he added, as he fumbled out keys with one hand and his revolver with the other, and somehow managed to get the door open between them, “why don't you just start by gettin' outta them clothes—just in case you might be, you know,
hidin'
something?”

Calvin rolled his eyes but complied, starting with his shoes and scooting each article toward the guard with a foot as he removed it. The man would pick them up, knead them carefully with one hand, and toss them to the floor behind him, but his eyes never left Calvin, and the revolver never wavered. Finally, for the second time in about an hour, Calvin was as bare as the day he was born, and stood staring at the man quizzically, hoping thereby to keep him as off base as he could.

“Raise 'em and spread 'em,” the man barked. Calvin did, and suffered the less obvious regions of his body to be inspected with the cold barrel of the .38.

“Open your mouth!”

Once again, Calvin acquiesced, thinking maybe this guy was sharper than he'd first thought—and
knowing
he was a lot more sadistic.

“Well, I reckon you
are
empty,” the man muttered finally, as if disappointed. “Now why don't you just get yourself over there in the corner while I check out the rest of this shit?”

Calvin could only watch helplessly while the guard stripped the cot of its single sheet and blanket, upended the mattress, examined all the seams, then shone his flashlight along every edge of the room, including the corners of the doorway. He almost caught himself holding his breath then, which would probably have been a dead giveaway, but the man's eyes passed right on over the glob.

Finally satisfied, though still suspicious-looking, the deputy turned and glared at Calvin. “I
ain't
convinced,” he spat. “But I reckon we'll just keep a real close eye on you for a while. Won't be here long anyway, so I've heard; seems they're transferrin' you up to Atlanta.”

“Can I get dressed now?” Calvin asked, not having to fake a chill, for the front that had brought the rain was still heaving the odd gust of wind through the window.

“Not till I get outta here,” the deputy grunted.

And that was not quickly enough for Calvin.

As soon as the door clanged behind the man's khakied back, Calvin picked up his skivvies and slipped them on, then reached for his jeans. So they were onto him, huh? Knew something was up? That meant he'd have to act fast, and never mind what Brock had told him about the ground trembling, or what he already knew about Spearfinger's intentions, which only added to the urgency.

But still, it was probably wise to hold off a little while, in the event his captors reappeared suddenly, hoping to catch him at whatever
it
it was they suspected him of.

So Calvin returned to the chair and began to count backward from three hundred, and prayed no one else would have business with him.

It was the longest five minutes of his life.

When he had finished, he rose nonchalantly, sauntered to the door, and peered out, letting his hand slide absently up the doorjamb to the wad of gum, like he was just sort of casually leaning up against the stonework there. Good, he had it, and there was no one in sight. Now if his luck would hold one more minute…

Not bothering to undress again, for the shape he had already chosen would be small enough to slip out of the clothes with ease, Calvin sat back down on the bed, took three deep breaths to calm himself and clear his mind, then folded his hand around the scale.

Cat,
he thought, because he had to be small, and something domestic would attract the least attention. (The caveat about having to change into creatures one had eaten—presumably so you could absorb their genetic imprint—didn't apply because he'd at least tasted just about everything there was, including, on a dare when he was a kid, a bit of roadkill tabby.)

The only alternative had been some sort of bird—a partridge, say. But he'd have had to become a
very
small one to slip through the grillwork on the window (his customary falcon, for instance, was too large). Of course, he could also have
flown
through the building until he found an open window or door, but something about that likewise gave him pause. Too many ceiling fans for one thing, too many moving objects that could break fragile bones—too many unfamiliar reflexes to assimilate in too close a space. He was also—he forced himself to admit—extremely leery of becoming anything
that
small. Something cat-sized he
thought
he could manage.

Cat…cat…cat…

Small and sleek and soft-moving; pointed ears and slitted green eyes and exquisitely sharp teeth—and claws that were even sharper. Calvin tried to imagine himself on all fours with a fine furred plume sprouting from the base of his spine and his body twisting and arching.

Cat…cat…cat…

Calvin squeezed harder, until blood ran from his fist, but the pain of transformation did not come.

Cat…cat…cat…

More pain, and a tighter squeeze, and the roots of the scale grated against bone.

But no
change.

The scale wasn't working.

Finally Calvin gave up in disgust.

*

Fifteen minutes later Calvin was still staring skeptically at his hand. The scale was secreted in his shoe now, but he wondered why he'd bothered, since it obviously didn't function anymore, even after he'd removed every trace of gum from it, in case
that
was what had been preventing it from effecting the
change.

Which left him back where he had been half an hour ago, except that then he'd had hope and now he had none. He was stuck here, forced to sit helplessly while people he cared about were in serious danger. All because he had trusted too much to magic, and not enough to the law of the land. The police chief seemed to be a reasonable guy after all, and he suspected that Robert fellow might give him a fair hearing as well. Maybe he should have had faith enough in one or the other to tell them the truth and where to find evidence to back up his assertions.

Of course, he reflected, he would have looked pretty stupid explaining to them he was a skinchanger and then offering to prove it if they'd only give him the scale—whereupon he would have failed and looked either stupid or crazy, and have provided even more grist for any one of several unpleasant mills he could already hear grinding.

But that brought him back to the scale and to curiosity. Why
had
it failed? Was there a limit to how much it could do, or how many times it could be used for a certain purpose? Perhaps it was like a battery—and like any battery, it had only a certain amount of magical fizz and then would run no more. That it worked at all was something of a surprise, in fact, given that it had its origin in Galunlati—though now he thought of it, Uki had once made some reference to the uktena magic being born partly of this World.

But this World had magic, too; you just had to be receptive to it. After all, Calvin had been born in this World and yet had changed skin. Sure, he'd had magical aid, but it had been
his
flesh and blood,
his
iron/calcium/carbon oxides that had undergone that metamorphosis,
his
thoughts that had altered his bones,
his
genes that had reconstructed him more perfectly than before. He
knew
how to shapeshift, dammit. He just needed the proper stimulus.

He searched his memory frantically. What had he been doing differently those other times? Well, for one thing, he'd been under duress each time, and—No, he
hadn't,
he'd been perfectly relaxed that time by the river when he'd tried to change only in part, so that wasn't it.

So how was that different from what he had just attempted? How was it unlike wishing to be a cat?

Well, he
had
been wishing, for one thing, and perhaps
that
was important, because while he
thought
he had been wishing to be a cat, he was beginning to discover that your mind sometimes had its own hidden agenda, and if you thought you were desiring one thing, you might in fact be hoping for another (like simply to be out of a situation), which could probably screw you up real good if what you were attempting involved much concentration—as it did to become anything significantly smaller.

So where did that leave him? Either the scale really wasn't working; or it
was
working and he just wasn't going about it right.

But was there something else, something obvious he'd overlooked? Well, he'd never
been a
cat; that was one thing. But he'd never been a 'possum either, the first time he had
changed—or
a deer,
or
a falcon…

But he'd
hunted
those animals! In one form or another he'd pursued them all. And he'd never done that with a cat. Maybe
that
was it! He'd been thinking like a white man again, had forgotten what bound him to the land and the beasts that roamed it. He hunted them, and they gave him their blood willingly; and the scale took his blood in return. But the cat he had sampled had been a simple roadkill. No one had asked it for its life; no one had covered its blood…

It was a tenuous supposition at best, but time was short, and at least he had something to shoot for now.

So Calvin retrieved the scale and flopped back on his bed, then clenched his fist over the talisman and closed his eyes again. But this time he did not think
cat;
this time he prayed, very fervently, to become a 'possum.