Chapter #99Decompression by: Seuzz   Rick shows up at around three, to pick you up and drop Rosalie and Miko off. Rosalie seems very calm, and smiles warmly at Joe. He smiles back. But they don't look at each other much. It's weird, for you've never thought of Miko as a "buffer," but you're glad she will be staying with them overnight.
"You packed, squirt?" Rick asks.
And you finally remember, with a groan: "I left my stuff back in Cuthbert."
"Uh huh," he says, and doesn't sound surprised. "That'll be the first thing I'll yell at you about. Don't forget your stuff when you bug out. You also left a rental car, but I've reported it stolen."
"My phone, too."
"Yep. I already knew you'd left it all behind. I put in a call in to Witchiepoo, using your number. Told her that if she wanted to live to see next Christmas, she'd leave the girl alone."
"What did she say?"
"She got the message. Leave it at that."
But you don't. When you're in the car: "Seriously, Rick, is Rosalie going to be okay?"
"Of course she is. She'll stay with the old man in Olympia for a few weeks. Depending on how she does, she might go see Margaret, or jet off somewhere else. We have a couple of retreats. But she's got a good head on her shoulders."
"She had a horrible childhood, Rick."
"I could see that. So could Miko. Lotta Stellae have had it rough. But she's a Glundandran. They got big bottoms, even the skinny ones like her. It takes a lot to knock 'em over. I thought you said Fyodor told you some stories."
"He told me one. Something about Kursk."
"If you can survive the eastern front in the Second World War, you can survive Cuthbert. Don't worry about the girl."
"Is that what you're gonna call her, Rick? I'm the squirt, Joe's the kid, and she's the girl?"
"We'll wait till she's back on her feet before I give her a name."
At the airport, Rick hands you a bag and a stack of IDs. "We went shopping for you late this morning," he says. "Well, Miko did. I made you some stuff so you could get on the plane."
"Back to being Nick Martin," you smile. You unzip the shoulder bag and paw through it. "I hope Miko remembered my size." You pull out a t-shirt, and groan when you hold it up to look at the image on the front.
Godzilla.
"She'll kill you for sure if you ever lose that one," Rick says.
* * * * *
You don't talk on the plane, or on the drive back to Kali's. She welcomes you with a hug when you step into her apartment. "For heaven's sakes, child, I'm glad to see you," she says, and rubs your back and arms. "I was dreadfully worried. Rick didn't help by not keeping me informed."
"I wasn't exactly free to call you with color commentary," he says brusquely, and pushes his way into the kitchen, where takes a big bottle of brown liquid from the cabinet. "You wanna do some meditating before giving us your report, squirt?"
"I did that on the plane," you say. "I'm ready. I'll take some of what you're having, though."
"Will!" Kali exclaims.
But Rick smiles wryly. "About time." He pours you a glass. It burns and you shudder a little over the taste. But after it and a second belt, you feel more relaxed.
You describe everything, from the moment you arrived in Saratoga Falls. When you're done, you go back over it a second time, carefully, so Rick can comment. "Should I have confessed everything to Joe?" you ask. "After I saw what was going on with him and Rosalie?"
"Yes," Rick says bluntly. "You're in a tricky spot with us. You're good at winnowing out secrets, better even than the kid. You act like a spy and an informer, and people will treat you like one."
"I flunked my assignment by telling him."
"Some things are more important than my exercises."
"And I told you, I'm not doing that kind of exercise for you again, Rick, not against other Stellae."
"Good. I was wondering when you were going push back. I'm glad it was now and not later."
Your mouth falls open a little. "You wanted me to push back, to refuse to do that kind of copying?"
"No, not necessarily. But you're learning a lot more about yourself, and we're learning a lot more about you, than just whether you can sneak in and out of someone's bedroom."
That leaves you quiet for a bit. It's like learning about killing, back in London, you finally decide. You're not just learning things; you are learning what you need to learn.
You continue the analysis. Rick doesn't stop your second recital until you hit the point where you decided to disguise yourself as Sally. "You had to leave your phone behind when you did that," he says. "An operative who's out of contact is useless."
"She was invisible to people in town. I figured I wouldn't need--"
"Always keep a line open, especially on these early jobs. You will need back up. And she turned out to be wired. You couldn't have known that, but she was. As soon as they tumbled to you, put you in that bedroom, you should have shimmied out and split. Got into another house, got another disguise. Now go on."
You stop yourself when you get back to the killing of the man in the church basement. "I should have tried to stop that, shouldn't I?"
"Collateral damage, probably couldn't have been helped, once you decided to play passive. Sucks for that DEA agent, though."
"Was that what he was?"
"Probably. I eyeballed what was left of him. They all got that kind of look on them."
"What was that machine down there?"
"You don't want to know. I put a monkey wrench in it, though. I doubt they'll be using it again."
"What are we going to do about the rest of the town? About Grandmother?"
"That's for Charles to decide."
"We should burn it down," you mutter.
"Maybe," Rick says. "But it's a big hornets' nest. Sometimes its better to leave those be. Know where they are and what they're doing instead of scattering them to where you don't know."
He lets you continue until you finish. He mulls it over a bit. You speak first. "So, it all went wrong when I picked Sally as my disguise."
"No," he says. "It went wrong when you let those drug agents through. You should've used them to get into town."
"But there were two of them, Rick. And I'd have got caught just like they did."
"Doesn't matter if there were two. Dump one at the gas station, drive in alone. And Jape's head woulda got you through any troubles in town, at least until you coulda switched into one of the townsfolk. That's the big takeaway I'd point out to you. Look at everything as an opportunity, and weigh it."
Silence envelops the room. It takes more courage than you'd needed inside Cuthbert to ask the next question: "So, overall, how did I do, Rick?"
"This wasn't for a grade, squirt. But you did alright. Made some big mistakes, but kept your head and made some good plays to recover. Practice, so you'll be able to make the good plays all the way so you don't need to recover."
You nearly bust with happiness, but keep calm. "So what's my next assignment?"
"Dinner, meditation, and bed."
* * * * *
Rick doesn't show up the next morning, and when you get up you find that Kali has left you a ton of homework. You grimace over it, but after breakfast and a shower, you settle down to it. It's a terrible anticlimax after the last week of excitement. But it sets the pattern for the next few days: Intense schoolwork in the mornings and afternoons, and meditation and dream journals with Kali during the evening.
It leaves her as vexed as you it leaves you restless. "This second ousiarch of yours," she mutters after leafing through your most recent dream entry. "Nothing makes sense to me. "The bells you say you were trying to ring clearly point toward Lurga. But you have them hanging from the eaves of a forest, which points toward Perelandra."
"And I kept trying to hit them with a big club. That'd be Malacandra, wouldn't it?"
"No, the big stick is just your seventeen-year-old hormones kicking in."
You redden. "Maybe I should try going to bed in some other imago."
She pauses over the suggestion. "That's not a bad idea."
But the next evening, before you can report to her on what Nick Martin dreamed, Rick walks in. "Just heard from the old man," he says. "Frank, Miko and the girl got in. Nice Christmas present for him."
You rear back, for with all the excitement, and the return to balmy California weather, you'd missed it: the day after tomorrow is Christmas.
"You two going up there for the holiday," he asks as he drops onto the sofa beside you.
Kali must have read your expression. "This will be your first Christmas away from home, Will?" she softly asks.
"Yeah," you say. Whoa.
"The old man throws a nice shindig up in Olympia," Rick says. "I usually skip, but there'll be more than a few folks up there. He likes his parties."
But you're not listening. There is a fake version of you in Saratoga Falls. And because of the accident to your face, you won't be able to step in and take its place when you want.
Sweet baby Jesus, you'll probably never have Christmas with your family again. "Pretty good chance of that, yeah," Rick agrees when you say so aloud.
Kali glares at him in exasperation. "Is that all the sympathy you can extend?"
"I don't do sympathy. But I gotta job for the squirt he might like, take him back to town. A high school kid named Jonathan Straussler needs to reappear."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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