Fathomless (24 page)

That settled, Eddy sat down and considered the problem of remote-accessing the seed world. Sean couldn't touch the crow portal from inside the library, and apparently the hall was too far from the windows or the doors too sturdy a barrier. What if Sean touched the window from
outside,
in the garden?

It was a great idea, except for Dad's security window. There were six inches of air space between it and the stained glass that held the portal. Eddy pointed out that six inches was a much shorter distance than twenty-five feet, and so they borrowed an extension ladder from the carriage house to experiment. After climbing to the level of the crow, Sean had to lean sideways to position his fingers on the Plexiglas above it. Eddy steadied the ladder. Daniel held his ankle from the ground. Scared of melting the Plexiglas or, worse, blowing out both it and the stained glass, Sean exposed only the top knob of his mind key. That gathered too little energy, so he exposed the top of the topmost brass curlicue micron by micron, until enough silk lightning had leaped into it for him to fashion an imaginary hand he could intend toward the crow.
Yes.
It passed through the Plexiglas and sparked on glass and lead, and he and Daniel were crows again for the few seconds before Sean flew them back out of the seed world.

Damn, this could work.

Details, though, Eddy said. She went inside the library while Sean extended his arm across the security window. The trees along the rear of the property kept streetlamps from backlighting the
Founding,
but when the fluorescents between the stained glass and Plexiglas were on, they faintly illuminated Sean's arm, and Eddy could make it out, no problem.

Well, yes, problem. Helen was sure to light up the
Founding
so the meeting could admire it.

Thanks to working for Joe-Jack, Sean had a solution. He flipped off the library circuit breaker and hunted up a screwdriver, with which he detached the light switch wiring. Helen wouldn't try to illuminate the
Founding
until after dark, so no way she could get an electrician to fix Sean's sabotage before the meeting.

After high fives all around, they went to bed. The house ghosts, ever polite, continued to avoid Sean's dreams, but other interlopers showed up: the kid with his scalp split; Mr. Haddock; the True Atlantis merpeople, who were really Deep Ones. Scariest was Daniel's mother, who had a bathrobe sash knotted around her neck, or else a towel, or else strips of pillowcase, you know, stuff you could get in a sanitarium. The noose made her gills bleed, and the blood dripped down her squamous arm onto Sean's sheets until he would have woken to a sodden red mess if she hadn't stayed a dream.

But she
had
stayed a dream, and when he jerked awake with a gasp, the only thing dampening his sheets was his own sweat.

*   *   *

Dr. Richard
Bremerton arrived Saturday around three o'clock. Weirdly, he looked like a younger, taller, skinnier, and more hyperactive version of Geldman. Sean, Eddy, and Daniel had gone biking after lunch. When they braked in front of the Arkwright House, Bremerton loped down the steps, introduced himself to Sean and Eddy, then examined Daniel's Jamis with bike-geek intensity. That done, he hustled Daniel up to Helen's office to examine him. Marvell showed up at five, and he and Helen joined Bremerton in interrogating all three of them about the accident at the harbor. Sean mentioned Curious Changer (their new name for Mr. Haddock because, come on, it wasn't cool to disrespect Daniel's people, even if he didn't want to become one of them). That slip earned them some extra grilling before Helen sent them out for burgers and a movie.

They got the burgers but skipped the movie. At dusk, they parked the Civic out of sight on High Street, snuck into the back garden, and put their ladder up. While Sean and Daniel crouched in the lilac bushes below the
Founding
, Eddy watched the library from a low branch of the side garden beech. It was full dark before she returned to whisper that yeah, Helen had tried to switch on the
Founding
lights and given up with a shrug. Bremerton and Marvell were looking over papers at the conference table. Geldman had just walked in. It was go time.

Sean climbed into position. Eddy slipped underneath the ladder to hold both side rails, her back braced against the house. Daniel gripped his left ankle, fingers clammy with sweat. Sean tried not to think about their webbing, or about how Marvell would go ballistic if he caught them.
See, Professor, my dad wanted me to make sure the security window was holding up—

“Sean,” Daniel whispered. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Getting there.” Sean hooked his right arm around the ladder and closed his eyes. As anxiety yielded to concentration, the silk-lightning matrix formed in his mental black space. It wound around him. Through him. He envisioned his mind key, exposed exactly as much as the night before. The energy it absorbed he twisted into the wiry image of a hand that could breach the Plexiglas, and then he reached for the crow. Reached! Touched. Changed arms for wings that carried him through the dusk-coppered air of the seed world. He wheeled at once into the cover of the wood, where Daniel lay twitching at Nyarlathotep's feet. They were both where the people in the library couldn't see them, though sharp eyes might spot the absence of his crow. No help for that—they'd have to hope the dark windows wouldn't attract notice.

Recovered from his transition, crow-Daniel hopped inside the chestnut tree and went for the amber rondel. His pecks had no effect, and he sidestepped to let Sean tap it into a lens. Then, scrunched together, Sean's wing over Daniel's feathered back, they each managed to put a beady eye to it. Marvell was in his usual big-shot seat at the head of the table. The others stood at the sideboard, getting coffee. Geldman turned first and looked straight at the
Founding
, straight at the left window, straight at the signature rondel, and it was no accident, because he hoisted his cup as if to salute Sean and Daniel. “Why isn't your window lit, Helen?”

“The switch is broken. Every time I think we've fixed all the electrical quirks in this house, something else blows.”

“Give her some of your candles, Mr. Geldman,” Bremerton said, sitting to Marvell's right.

“Perhaps I will, for emergencies.” By selecting the chair next to Bremerton's, Geldman put his back to the
Founding
.

“Shit,” Daniel croaked. “I thought he saw us.”

“Dude, he did. I almost bailed.”

“But if he's not going to tell—”

“Shh. He can probably hear us, too.”

Geldman's chair tipped onto its back legs, returned to all four, like a curt nod.

Helen sat to Marvell's left. “We'd better start. Mr. Geldman, you examined Daniel right after the accident?”

“And found what I expected to. He'd immersed himself in seawater for ten to fifteen minutes, which counteracted my treatments. He's back to where we started four months ago. You would agree, Dr. Bremerton?”

“It's incredible. All that progress gone. Gills reopened, digital webbing regrown. His gums are tender, too—I'm afraid the Deep One dentition is pushing out over his implants.”

“My interventions, being magical, are subject to instantaneous reversion. However, I've restarted the treatments, and so Daniel's Change will begin to abate again.”

“Well, this immersion shouldn't have happened in the first place,” Marvell said.

Helen sighed. “That's Mr. Glass's take on the incident.”

Marvell patted her forearm. “I'm sorry you had to take the brunt of his wrath, Helen. But can we blame him for being upset?”

“No, but it's not like Daniel dived off that jetty on a whim. He knew his gills would reopen and so he'd be able to bring up the injured boy. Today's paper says the boy will recover.”

“That's good to hear.”

“It also asks the rescuer to come forward. The boy's parents want to thank him. And yet, the way Mr. Glass talked to Daniel, you'd think his action was a spoiled brat's, not a hero's.”

All Sean could see of Geldman was the hand he rested on the conference table. Its fingers rose slightly as he spoke: “Mr. Glass is more likely to set Daniel back than the immersion.”

“Yes, he can be a bit overzealous,” Bremerton said. “Still, you have to deal with the parents your patient's got, not the ones you might like.”

Marvell smiled. Helen didn't. Sean felt Daniel's rib cage bellow.

Geldman's fingertips described circles on the tabletop. “There's wisdom in accepting the unchangeable. However, more things can be changed than we commonly suppose. To return to Daniel's condition, Dr. Bremerton, you can assure Mr. Glass this reversion's done no lasting damage. The Change—the program of the xenogenes, as you put it—will yield to magic as before. Give me a year, and Daniel will look as human as even his father could ask.”

Like Sean, Bremerton must have caught Geldman's emphasis on the
look
. “He'll have a human phenotype, but his genotype will remain hybrid. In Mr. Glass's eyes, tainted.”

“Deep Ones probably talk about the human taint,” Helen said.

“No,” Geldman said. “They value the addition of complementary human traits to their genetic pool. Otherwise, there'd be no Deep One–human hybrids. There don't absolutely need to be, you know.”

Marvell scowled. “The Order does know, which is why its policy is to discourage new outbreaks of hybridization.”

“The Deep Ones don't look on mingling as a disease process, Professor. Or a social ill. They see it as an aesthetic, even a spiritual, choice.”

“I know that, too. And
they
supposedly know, per the terms of the 1930 treaty, that mingling's not a viable choice in the current state of human—”

“Ignorance?” Geldman suggested.

“Human understanding,” Marvell said. “Leave it at that.”

“Certainly, as we're here to discuss Daniel Glass, not the timetable for global enlightenment.”

Sean wasn't sure what Marvell and Geldman were arguing about, but he was already on Geldman's side. “Your boss kicks butt,” he muttered to Daniel.

Daniel didn't answer. He jostled Sean to get closer to the peephole.

After a few seconds, during which Marvell gulped coffee and Helen flicked anxious glances at him, Bremerton restarted the conversation. “Anyhow, I don't doubt your prognosis for Daniel's immediate future, Mr. Geldman. As for the long-term effects of your treatments, I'm still afraid we could see reduced efficacy over time. Maybe toxicity, neoplasms, metabolic disturbances.”

“Not impossible,” Geldman said. “Which is why I welcome your long-term involvement.”

“Right now, I'm more worried about Daniel's mental state. He doesn't need anyone making him feel like a dumb kid when he's been doing so well here, getting out, making friends. That can't have been easy, all the years his father isolated him.”

“Sean and Eddy are bright spots,” Helen said. “They've already accepted Daniel's differences, which many people might even regard as monstrous. But they're—” She nodded at Geldman. “Enlightened, you'd say?”

“Since last summer, they've begun to be, even in my broader sense of the word.”

Man, Sean needed fingers to stick into his ears before his head swelled too much.

“I take it Mr. Glass isn't entirely pleased with Daniel's new friends,” Marvell said.

“Why do you say that, Theo?”

“He suggested Daniel move back to his own apartment, didn't he?”

“More like demanded,” Helen admitted. “But Daniel refused. The situation with him and Eddy—”

“There really is a situation?”

“They've started dating.”

“You didn't tell me that, Helen.”

“I didn't think I had to. You must have seen they like each other.”

“I don't see them together as much as you do. But never mind. That must be over, now Eddy's found out about Daniel's problem.”

Helen blinked.

“You assume too much, Professor,” Geldman said. He went to the side table to refill his cup, then wandered across the library, sipping and perusing the shelves. Bremerton scraped his chair around to see what Geldman was up to. Marvell didn't draw delicate circles on the tabletop; he drummed on it, hard, until Geldman spoke again: “Whereas most people are open only to the reality they desire, Eddy is open to reality as it is. Her chief aversion is for falsehood of any kind. As soon as Daniel started telling her the truth, he started winning her back.”

“I believe it,” Helen said.

Geldman halted in front of the dais and gazed up at the
Founding
, not at anything in particular this time (like the rondel and Sean and Daniel behind it) but as if in thoughtful abstraction. Even so, Sean fought the urge to draw back from the peephole.

Daniel didn't stir a feather.

“And Daniel,” Geldman continued. “He's very much like Eddy. Since it's only a disguise, not a medical necessity, that neck brace chafes him more in spirit than in body. If we're sincerely concerned with his well-being, we'll tell him all the truth we know and give him the means to find out more.”

“No,” Marvell said. “I couldn't allow that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing,” Bremerton said, “Mr. Glass has insisted we not tell Daniel anything about his grandfather Marsh. Or discuss his mother's, ah, suicide.”

“Which wasn't a suicide,” Helen said, shaking her head.

Daniel's crow eyes had fixed on the peephole lens until they popped like his human ones, and his whole body shuddered under the race of his crow heart. He wing-elbowed Sean to the side. Sean yielded. He couldn't see the library anymore, but he could still hear.