Advanced Mythology (17 page)

When Mr. Collier spoke again, his voice was hesitant.

“How old
is
he?”

“About fifty,” Keith said. “But don’t worry about the age gap. That’s considered a medium-young adult in their culture. And they’ve really got a lot of interests in common.”

“He’s … a good … man?”

“He’s great,” Keith said firmly. “He’s a very good friend of mine. I hang out with them all the time when I’m down there. Enoch’s brother-in-law, Holl, is my best friend. He and his wife are as close to me as any Big People in this world. Closer than most.”

“This Holl is one of them? And his wife, too?”

“Yep.” Keith had to give Mr. Collier credit; he was trying to grasp the ungraspable. He just started talking, trying to give the man a chance to absorb it. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you about them, so you wouldn’t get excited and judge Enoch by the fact he only comes up to the middle of your chest. That’s never made the slightest difference to me, or Marcy, or any of the other students—the lucky ones,” he amended, “who’ve gotten to know him and his people. They’re intelligent, kind, generous, and very patient, which is good in my case. They’ve helped me in a thousand ways. Enoch’s father tutors a special class of just a few Big Folk at a time. College level. Better than college. He’s a terrific teacher. I sure wouldn’t have done as well without them, and they’ve been my friends. I think maybe Marcy’s the only one of us ever to fall in love with one … I mean, the only one I know of who intends to marry and settle down with one of them. On this side of the water, that is. There’s a lot of relatives in Ireland. They’ve been keeping in touch by e-mail. The Internet’s terrific, but there’s never a good substitute for face-to-face contact. That’s just my opinion. I’m planning a big party to have all the Little Folk in the world come to get acquainted. You could come, too, if you wanted.” Mr. Collier continued to thumb through the pictures, stopping longer and longer on each one. He turned up a slightly dazed face to Keith.

“Do you mean my daughter is the
only 
…
human being down there?”

“Well, she does kind of stick out in family portraits,” Keith admitted, “but she fits into the society really well. Better than me, in some ways. They all like her. She’s accepted. She’s not alone, sir, and they never stop her from associating with other people. She just doesn’t want to, very often. Well, you know her. She’s kind of shy. They’re good at bringing out her best. She’s gotten a lot more assertive since she started dating Enoch.” His chatter was giving Mr. Collier a chance to recover his wits. When he spoke again, he was an ordinary parent.

“I don’t like the idea of her living in a commune.”

Keith almost smiled. “It’s not a commune, it’s a village. Everyone respects everyone else’s privacy. They’ve got 20 acres, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t trying to buy some more of the surrounding land. Holl and Maura live in a cottage outside the main farm house. I’m pretty sure that’s what Enoch has in mind for Marcy after they get married. Right now Marcy has a room of her own.”

“Really?” Mr. Collier focused on Keith’s face, his eyes boring intently into Keith’s own.

“Oh, sure. They want her to feel welcome. I owe her a lot, Mr. Collier. She introduced me to them. I want her to be happy. I know you do, too. I just wanted you to see that the truth isn’t so scary.”

Alan Collier nodded slowly several times. He squared the photos in a neat stack, but he didn’t give them back to Keith. He put them on his side of the desk. Standing up, he extended a hand.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Keith. Thanks for coming by.”

Keith retreated, not wanting to undo all his good work by overdoing. “Thank you, sir.”

* * *

As soon as he could get to his home computer, he brought up the e-mail program. He wanted to send the good news to Marcy before her father called her. He typed out as much of their conversation as he could remember, finishing up with a triumphant note of his own. “Your dad didn’t quick-shuffle me out like he did the last time. I think I got through,” he said. “Tell Enoch the photos made all the difference.”

Keith punched SEND, and waited for the modem to connect. It worked, praise to Dunn. Keith read the news on his browser’s home page, scanned a few online computer-ware sites, partly out of personal interest and partly out of fear of seeing news about the Origami leaked, then clicked over to the e-mail portion. There was a message from Diane dated the evening before, after the two of them had gotten off the phone; a long one, judging by the amount of memory on display. He skipped it to save for last. The other messages were mostly spam, but he had a couple of real letters. His brother Jeff wrote from Seattle to say that he was doing well in his classes, and he’d met a really terrific girl majoring in computer design. He wanted to impress her with some of the image magic that he’d seen Keith using. That sounded like he was moving too fast for his elder brother, who felt exactly like his father when he wrote back with some strong advice to hold off before he blew the big secret. Too many people in the world freaked out when faced with the real thing. Magic was one of those things you saved for when you were sure the relationship was stable, like maybe his silver wedding anniversary. He hoped Jeff wouldn’t think he was nagging.

A message from Holl turned out not to be a letter but instead contained a forwarded message from the chief of all the Little Folk in Ireland.

“The Niall felt there were corrections that ought to be made to the text of your invitation,” Holl’s accompanying note said. “Catra’s translation was essentially accurate, but there ought to be a few more words of courtesy used.”

Keith groaned. He should have foreseen that something like that could happen. He scrambled to hit the reply button.

“I can’t change it,” he typed. “If you give me their address I’ll send him an apology. The graphic’s finished and the keyline has gone to the client for approval. I don’t want to draw attention to the text by making a big deal about it. If I try, they may pull it altogether.”

He worried as he sent the message that if he refused to alter the wording, the elves might withdraw their permission to use the farm for his party. What would he do? Unless he did pull it back in the next few days, it would go out all over the world, and there he’d be, having promised a gala celebration, but with nowhere to hold it.

The message from Diane was full of love, with a little scolding toward the end that he hadn’t been keeping up properly with the promise of a letter every day. Maybe he should just call her again. Keith glanced at the clock. She wouldn’t be back from work for hours yet. He had a while. He could use the time to browse the net for data he needed for the paper on franchising he had to turn in to Professor Larsen. Keith wrote Diane a long letter, telling her all his news and promising a phone call the next day between her classes and work, and hit SEND.

The screen froze. Not believing his eyes, Keith grabbed the sides of the monitor. The program had crashed. Not again!

“Dunn!”

* * *

The warbling of Everette’s cell telephone barely aroused anyone’s attention in the crowded observation deck. He flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Beach.”

“Are you near your computer?” The excitement in Ming’s voice came across clearly even over the tinny earpiece.

“No.” In fact, he was on a version of a snark-hunt. A couple of hours before, Maria and Stefan had pounded on his door, demanding that he come with them at once to the John Hancock building. A vision had led her, Maria had insisted. She had seen magical wonders, flying around the crown of this oh-so-astonishing building. Surely the place was blessed! Running around, trying to see what it was, what had called the spirits to guide her here. The place was soaked with deep emanations, recent ones. It was a shame Beach couldn’t see, but they were there for those who could perceive them. Surely they couldn’t be far from the goal of their journey!

“Tourists,” he explained to passersby who regarded the two excited foreigners with a mixture of amusement, pity, and scorn. “They don’t even have electricity where they come from.” He returned to the phone. “What do you have for me?”

“Another transmission!” His operative’s voice was triumphant. “It came through the same server sometime last night. Heading for a different destination than the last, not as detailed. Only a text of the language, with no other material surrounding it. But there was a change in the typography. An
alteration
.”
Ming savored the word. “We have a fluent speaker with access to a computer not far from where you are.”

“Fantastic,” Beach breathed, watching the antics of his pair of operatives as they ran from window to window. Maria seemed to be trying to get closer to something only she could see or feel. She was so convincing he wondered at his own doubts about her talent. “It came from the agency?”

“No way to tell until Omnivore dredges up the surrounding data,” Ming said ruefully. “We still haven’t got anything on the original message yet. It could be days. Weeks.”

“I don’t want to spend weeks at it,” Beach snapped. “Boris and Natasha here will drive me mad by then.” He snapped the phone shut on Ming’s chuckle. He needed more data. Omnivore was amazing, brilliant, but it moved too slowly. Nothing to be done about it, he’d have to get into the place and look for himself. He looked around for Maria and Stefan. They were plastered against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, gabbling to one another. “Come on, children!” he called. The scenery shifted alarmingly as he walked. Good God, but this building gave you vertigo. “If you’re very good and come with daddy now, he’ll buy you a nice ice cream before you go back to the asylum!”

“But, Beach!” Maria complained. “We are in the presence of emanations!”

He took her arm and turned her toward the elevator. “If anyone was storing magical artifacts up here,
someone
, probably the janitor, would have noticed it by now.
We
are busy exploring other options. Come along.”

***

Chapter 15

Bracey jabbed Holl hard in the ribs. “I told you someone was bumbling around out here.”

The two elves lay on their bellies in a hollow just a few feet from the edge of the road. The men who busied themselves around the open hatch of their truck were so near that Holl could have reached out and tugged their pants legs. He read the logo on the vehicle’s white-painted side.

“It’s just the telephone repair men,” he whispered.

“And why, in the name of Mother Nature, would they be right here, miles from anywhere, unless they were spying upon us?” Bracey asked.

“I suspect because we have the only telephone for miles,” Holl said. “Keep your voice down. They may not be able to hear everything we say, but it would only take a word.”

“But why now?”

Holl sighed, burying his face in his forearms momentarily. “I would have expected them sooner. The telephone has not worked correctly since that fireball bounded around the kitchen. Someone farther along the same wire must have complained. There, you see?” he asked, as one of the men, wearing rubber gloves and pants and a helmet with a little light above his brows, clambered up the nearest telephone pole. The two elves watched as he poked at the wires and transformers.

“The circuit breaker’s shot,” said the shortest man. He seemed to be in charge. “Someone go ring the bell and see if anyone’s home.”

Holl began to back out of his hiding place, more silently than a mouse. “We’d best find Marcy and ask her to answer the door.”

“We cannot let them come through to the door,” Bracey whispered indignantly. “They are intruding.”

Holl glared at him. “They’re doing their job. Do you want to draw the attention it would bring for them to be stopped at an invisible wall? Let us hurry. We want this line fixed as much as they do. And we’d best put a protecting on these men.”

“On Big Folk? Whatever for?”

“Because if one of them gets hurt it will start questions being asked,” Holl said impatiently. “And our homeowner’s insurance is not large enough to handle multiple claims.
I
will do it. Go find Marcy.”

Grumbling under his breath, Bracey withdrew, leaving Holl to make his charm. He hoped that whatever had jumped out of the mead barrel at him the other night would leave the visitors alone, for an accident like that would bring not only claims adjusters and lawyers, but curiosity-seekers.

* * *

“… So I said, it’s great if you want us to come up with a killer ad campaign for them, but until they get a better phone service system I’m not the one you want to write copy for them,” said a young man in a royal blue dress shirt with a white collar to an older woman in lime-green pants and a baggy white cotton sweater. “I spent half an hour on hold trying to get one lousy part for a home entertainment system cabinet. They’ve got like one woman answering calls for the whole country.” The young man put a pretend phone to his ear. “‘Thank you for calling Starter Furniture Boutique. Our coffee breaks are very important to us, so please sit there listening to our Muzak until we get back from Sumatra.’”

His companion laughed. “What if you did one of those ‘good cop, bad cop’ campaigns, where that’s how Brand X treats their customers?”

“That’d be great, until someone called Starter Furniture and figured out where we got the idea.…”

The two of them walked down the stairs of the PDQ building and turned right, passing near enough to the darkened doorway where Beach and his minions stood hidden that he could have touched them. O’Dell, one of his operatives, swung a detector in an arc.

“Still two body-heat traces on the third floor,” O’Dell said.

“We can avoid two,” Beach said. “Go on.”

His men slipped past him, Stefan keeping a lookout while Miller undid the lock. Cat burglary was an art. No longer was it necessary to rappel down a wall wearing black spandex and a balaclava. Modern burglars made a civil approach through the front door, disabled the alarm system, then gave the security cameras something to look at besides themselves while they went about their business. Beach reminded them sharply that they were to leave everything as they found it.

“Cleaner, if possible,” he said. “We don’t want them having an idea that we were there. All we want is information.”

Vasques and Wyszinski were a team he had hired there in Chicago. They drove VWs as a compliment to their last initials, an affectation that Beach found irritating, but they were good at searching. They had been private detectives who had had their licenses yanked for impropriety, but the state board couldn’t remove their knowledge. They went right to the files on the second floor, handing off folders to Beach and the other three to read over, looking for signs of the calligraphic characters of the mystery language or any reference thereto.

A click made them all raise their heads. It sounded to Beach like a footstep on a concrete floor. Could the infrared detector have missed a janitor in the cellar? Unlikely. O’Dell was thorough. But the men held as still as statues until they were sure the noise wouldn’t be repeated.

About half an hour into their illicit visit they heard the elevator. O’Dell held out his instrument and nodded. Both heat traces from the floor above were departing. They had the place to themselves. That was good, because the job was likely to take all night. The office was awash in paper. Apparently the place really did function as an advertising agency. Whatever was going on
sub rosa
was deeply buried.

It wasn’t until they accessed the mail room computer at three o’clock in the morning that Beach began to see signs of his quarry. He almost smiled over Vasques’s shoulder at the screen. PDQ was so careful about the security coding of what it sent out over the web, it never thought to protect the computer from which such transmissions originated.

On the user log they found four files of approximately the right size dating from the day Ming insisted the first graphic had been sent. The second one they opened, addressed to “Gadfly Electronics,” turned out to be the right one. There, on the screen, was the lingo, exactly like the copy he carried around in his pocket. The attached note was telling someone called Jen to look it over and give PDQ their approval as soon as possible. Beach made a note of Gadfly’s e-mail address for further investigation. Who were they and what were they using the magical language for?

“Who routed this to the mail room?” Beach asked. He was so excited he was gripping Vasques’s shoulder with iron fingers. The man paid no attention, rapt on the screen, his face glowing in the reflected light of the screen. He typed in commands, brushing aside firewall programs and password prompts like cobwebs.

“Dorothy Carver,” Vasques said, pointing at the name. A few more commands brought up a screen from Personnel. “Creative director.”

Beach nodded to the other men. They scattered, looking for the name. In a moment, Wyszinski reappeared, cocking his head toward the rear of the floor. The window of Carver’s small office faced another building where people were still working late on an autumn night. Beach lowered the blinds and hoped that no one across the way would think it odd to see lights in Carver’s room. Together the five of them turned over every sheet of paper, every computer file in the office, until they found a copy of the graphic. Carver’s initials were in a small box in the lower left hand corner.

“What’s this?” he asked, puzzled. The device on the page showed a blank screen. “The lingo didn’t come from Carver. It was added later. Keep looking until you find one with writing in this section.”

Miller was the one who found the prize. On a cluttered desk in a different department he came across the finished page. Another set of initials joined Carver’s: KD.

Back to Vasques and the Personnel files. KD had three matches in PDQ’s roster: Kirby Deane, an executive vice president; Kenneth Drabble, media services; and Keith Doyle, copywriter-trainee. From evidence unearthed during a search of his corner office Deane turned out to be on vacation in Tahiti and had been for three weeks. He couldn’t be the source. Kenneth Drabble was deceased. That left Keith Doyle, age 22. Beach frowned. How could Doyle, a trainee, be the source of a sample of a language that no one spoke, that was associated with magical artifacts and powers? Perhaps he was the government agent they were looking for.

“Where’s his employment record?” Beach demanded. On his commandeered computer Vasques clicked through the files until he came to a screen headed with the name “Keith Doyle.” Beach leaned in, unable to believe his eyes. The photo in the record was of the redheaded boy he had approached in the park.
He
was the key to all this? Beach was filled with respect. The youth had seemed naturally flustered when he was confronted with the graphic. He had
lied
to Beach. Tricky. They’d have to be certain not to underestimate him again. “I want a copy of that, and make sure there’s an address on it. We need to pay a visit.”

* * *

Keith spotted the revolving blue lights on the street as he got off the bus. Funny place for a traffic stop, he thought, hiking down the block. But the police car wasn’t there to write a ticket. Men and women in uniforms were coming and going from one of the apartment buildings. As soon as he realized that the building was his own he broke into a run.

The stern-faced black police officer at the door wouldn’t let him in.

“But I live here,” Keith protested.

“Then why doesn’t your driver’s license show this address?” the officer asked.

“It’s temporary,” Keith explained, starting to pull files and letters out of his briefcase. “I don’t know how long I’ll be working in the city.…”

He heard Dunn’s voice say, “Wait a minute. Doyle, is that you?”

His roommate appeared around the corner. He looked half worried to death, his mild face creased around the mouth and forehead. Pat Morgan was behind him, looking more bedraggled than usual.

“What happened?”

“We had a break-in,” Dunn said wearily. “I just went out to get some lunch. When I came back, the place had been tossed. I couldn’t have been out of here more than forty minutes.”

“What did they take?” Keith asked, alarmed. “Your program?”

Dunn’s face was grim. “They blew my monitor, but your computer is all over the place.”

“Oh, shit!” Keith hurried toward his bedroom. He was prevented from entering by a female cop, while a male technician, on gloved hands and knees, searched the carpet with a powerful flashlight. The tech rose, dusted his hands together, and sighed.

“Nothing,” he said. “A very professional job. No footprints or fingerprints. I think Mr. Jackson must have interrupted them when he returned from outside, so they didn’t have time to steal it after they took it apart. Was there anything on your computer that would be of interest to thieves, Mr. Doyle?”

Keith panicked for a moment, worrying whether anyone had opened his e-mail program and read the messages to and from the elves. Then he remembered that the program had been wiped. Nobody would get any information from it. “Nothing,” he said with relief. “Just the usual. Games. Word processing.” His eyes widened in alarm. “My essay!” He sat down heavily on the bed. The Master was going to kill him if it was gone. There went four late nights in a row doing research on the Internet.

The tech grinned. “Nothing serious, then. Good.”

Pat was helping the other officers as they went over the place trying to figure out if anything was missing. Whoever had come in had pulled every book off the bookshelf, tossed clothing out of drawers, and pushed over all the furniture. Keith wondered how many thieves there had been to trash the place so thoroughly.

“Can we take this now?” asked the detective who was helping Dunn. He pointed at Keith’s monitor. “Will it be compatible with your CPU?”

“I’ll make it work,” Dunn said determinedly. “Nothing had better be wrong with my drive. I’m writing software for my brother’s company. They’re depending on me.”

“Would it be easy to copy?”

“No way. People are in and out of here all the time. My machine is password-protected and encrypted. It works better than the alarm on this place.”

“Now, Mr. Jackson,” the detective said. “We got here about the same time you did.”

Keith trailed after them as they took the monitor into Dunn’s room, hooked it up, and booted the machine into life. Screen after screen demanded passwords, which Dunn typed in with uneasy looks at the police and his roommates.

“It’s okay,” Dunn said, his shoulders slumping. The tension in the room eased. He pointed to the latest entry on a usage history monitor in the bottom right corner of the screen. “They started it up but they couldn’t get through the chastity belt. We’d better check the other guys’ hard drives.”

Keith’s computer had been started, too. His usage history had been wiped, though neither he nor Dunn could say whether that was due to the problems he had been having with his email or not. Pat’s computer, much more basic than either of the others, had been started, too.

“No way to tell if anything had been copied,” the detective said, making a note. “Maybe you two should start using passwords from now on.”

“Yessir,” Keith said automatically, but his mind was elsewhere.

In a while the police and their analysts departed, closing the door behind them. Pat and Dunn waited until the crowd of footsteps went down the stairs and out onto the street. Then they both descended on Keith.

“All right,” Pat said, “which one of the little guys did you piss off?”

Keith raised his hands. “None of them! Honest to God. Everyone thinks I’m the newfangled cat’s meow. But …”

“But, what?” Dunn demanded.

Keith hesitated. He wasn’t completely certain, not with the way Holl had been acting; refusing to talk about what was troubling him. Maybe … No. After all this time they’d certainly be more direct with him. They’d been friends a long time. “Could this be from the guy who followed me that day?” he wondered. “That Carnivore program that made a copy of my ad?”

“Nope,” Dunn said automatically. “It’s supposed to pass unseen through protections, and if it’s messing with you, it’ll be messing with every computer attached to the modem line in this apartment, and it’s not. Besides, if they can rip your hard drive over the phone, why come in here and redecorate for us?”