Play Dead (23 page)
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“Maybe. Slowly.” The slithering grew louder, and Malcolm noticed. “Slowly’s not going to cut it, though, is it?”
No, it wasn’t. Of course, I could just leave him here. You don’t abandon a friend in times of danger; that goes without saying. But he wasn’t exactly a friend; he’d been using me, or at least trying to. Still, I could hardly leave him to be consumed by giant snakes.
Lou had no problem with the idea of leaving Malcolm to his fate, though. He ran over to the door and danced around in a flurry of impatience. Lou’s loyal to his friends, vicious toward his enemies, and neutral toward most others. Life’s pretty black and white for him, and he’s either selfish or practical, depending on how you look at such things. He’s not the type to risk his life for a stranger, and as far as he was concerned that’s exactly what Malcolm was. Unfortunately, I don’t have Lou’s clarity of purpose. Malcolm surprised me, though.
“You’d better get out of here,” he said. “Those things aren’t going to wait much longer.”
“Very noble,” I said. “But I don’t think those snakes are coming in. I’m not sure they can. The inside of the house was neat and clean when we got here. If they’d ever been in the house, we would have found the door off its hinges and smashed furniture. I think they’re programmed not to enter—just to prevent people from getting in.”
“Or eating them when they come out.”
“Yes, there is that.” The sounds outside lessened, then ceased altogether. Lou stopped jumping around and listened, head cocked. I listened for a while longer and relaxed, if only marginally. “I think we’ve got some time to figure out what to do.”
I had time, but I wasn’t sure that Malcolm did. A knife to the kidneys is not a minor wound. I could help some with a healing spell, but that’s not my forte. It would be first aid at best.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. “I might be able to help, though I’m not great with the healing arts.”
“I’ve been better. But I don’t think there’s much you can do for me—I don’t react to spells of any sort.”
“Really? Why not?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Make it shorter.” He sighed.
“Well, first of all, I’m not a practitioner like you and Jackie. I have no talent.”
“None at all?”
“Not a speck.” This wasn’t much of a surprise to me.
“So what are you?”
“By profession? A theoretical physicist.” That
was
a surprise. “Both my parents were practitioners—but I myself don’t have a trace of the talent. Not a whit. It was a sore disappointment to them.”
was
a surprise. “Both my parents were practitioners—but I myself don’t have a trace of the talent. Not a whit. It was a sore disappointment to them.”
“I can imagine,” I said. Just like Bill Gavagan.
“Eventually I became depressed. I felt I didn’t fit anywhere—I didn’t connect with normal people, but with no talent I wasn’t a practitioner, either. I withdrew, found a place of my own to live out by the zoo. I used to go there all the time—the sight of all those animals trapped in cages made me feel less alone—that my own situation was a universal of sorts. The animals weren’t happy where they were, but they couldn’t survive in the wild, either. Stupid, I know.” He stopped talking for a moment as a spasm of pain hit.
“Not really,” I said.
“So I finally decided to do something about it. I thought, maybe if I could understand how talent actually works, I could devise a way to acquire some for myself. So I studied theoretical physics, and believe me, once you’ve worked on string theory for a few years, understanding the workings of talent doesn’t seem quite so impossible.”
“But you didn’t succeed, did you?”
“No, not entirely. I still have no talent. But I did learn an awful lot about it.” He waved his hand weakly around at the room. “I got us here, didn’t I? Even if Jackie had to supply the actual push.”
“True,” I said. “How did you hook up with her, anyway?”
“I’d developed a way to find the thin places, the areas where dimensions overlap, or where singularities exist. I used science and math to do what Lou there does naturally, though it’s not nearly as effective. I started exploring, looking for answers about what they are and how they’re constructed, but then I got trapped in one. I couldn’t get back—everything I tried just took me farther away. I finally wandered into one that was brand-new—the one Jackie created. It was circular, with no way out I could find. I thought I’d be stuck in there forever—until you suddenly appeared.”
“Oh,” I said, catching on. “You’re what followed me out of there.”
“Yes, that was me. And once back, I was able to trace the maker of the singularity—Jackie. I figured if she was skilled enough to create that place, maybe she could help me as well. And maybe I could help her. When she told me about the Richter book, I was interested, and when she mentioned the second one, I was hooked. I saw my chance.”
“Chance for what?”
“Richter was a scientist as much as a practitioner. With the information in that book, I’d be able to finally have talent of my own. I’m already close. There’s no doubt I could do it, if I had that book.”
“But something else came out of that singularity, too,” I said. “Following you.” A spasm of pain crossed his face, whether from the wound or the memory.
“Yes, I’m afraid you’re right. One of the Shadow Men.”
I’d never heard that term. “Shadow Men?” I asked
“That’s what I call them. I’ve run across them before in my explorations. I don’t think they have a home, not exactly—they’re interdimensional beings of a sort. I don’t know exactly what they are, honestly, but they can be dangerous, especially at night. Sunlight robs them of their power; moonlight feeds into it.”
“Ah,” I said. “Like vampires.”
“You joke, but not a bad analogy, actually. They’re not entirely corporeal, and they feed off life force—one of them caught me once and if I hadn’t been ready for it, I’d have been dead—or at best, left to live out a short life as an eighty-year-old.”
“And it was following you?”
“It was, across dimensions. And now that it’s crossed paths with you as well, you might want to be careful. It can home in on specific living things once it encounters them, although it had a hard time with me. I think it’s drawn more to magical ability.” Another complication. How lovely.
“So Jackie hooked up with you, and decided to help you out, just because she’s a good-hearted woman?” I said, skeptically.
“No, of course not. She wants the book for her own reasons, naturally. But she needed my expertise in dimensional matters, just as I need her talent to actualize spells, so we formed a partnership.”
“Which she just dissolved.”
Malcolm started to laugh, but it quickly turned into a coughing fit. I thought I was going to lose him right there, but it subsided, and he was quiet for a moment, catching his breath.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “She was afraid I’d take the book and get someone else to help me instead of her. We never really hit it off anyway. Of course, she had all the power, and I didn’t trust her—I’m not a very trusting sort in the first place.” He pulled up his sleeve to show the intricate design of symbols on his arm. “So I designed these and made Jackie implement them with her talent in exchange for my help—they keep me immune from spells and magical attack.” He sighed painfully. “Never occurred to me to worry about a knife.”
“An understandable oversight.”
“But it has an unfortunate side effect as well.” I saw what he meant.
“Healing spells are also spells,” I said. “You’re now immune to magical healing.”
“Exactly. Ironic, is it not? Unfortunately, Jackie thinks she knows enough now to no longer need me.”
“Need you for what? What is she going to do with the book?”
“She told you. She believes she can create her own complete world with it, equal in complexity to the real thing, and move all the worthy people and practitioners there.”
“Oh. So she’s nuts, then?”
“Possibly. That doesn’t mean she can’t do it, though. Or something like that, at least.”
Another slithering sound outside made us stop and listen again. I still didn’t think the snakes could come inside, but that didn’t prevent my heart from skipping a beat every time I heard them move. The door shook with a sudden blow, then silence again.
“But how does she expect to get back home without Lou to guide her?” I asked. “I thought that was the whole point of bringing us along.”
“It was—in the event we didn’t find the book. But now that she has it, no problem at all. She’ll just follow the instructions.” He waved a weak hand toward the pile of books that had been dumped on the floor. “And speaking of which, maybe I can find something about those snakes in one of the other books.”
“Maybe. If we had a few days to sift through them. I’m not so sure those snakes will wait forever, no matter what their programming.” Another blow hit the door as punctuation.
“Why can’t you do the scent thing again?”
“It would be hard without a template, like those plants, and even harder without Jackie’s help. And they know we’re in here now—I think they hear well enough to crunch us the minute we walk out that door, even with their scenting messed up. Especially you—you’re not going to be very quick on your feet, are you, now?”
But that did give me an idea. Lou was quick enough to avoid the snakes, and he could draw them away from us. They’d still be having trouble with the masking scent, but if an odor was strong enough, they couldn’t miss it. What if I made him irresistible?
“If I let you out the door, do you think you could draw those snakes away?” I said to him.
Usually Lou’s not thrilled at being used as a decoy, but he was pretty sure of himself on this one, so he just wagged his tail.
I didn’t need help to prepare him, like I had with the leaves. I just intensified his own faint doggy odor until he was rank, like a wet dog who’d rolled in something nasty. Even my dull senses could smell him now from ten feet away. It didn’t bother him, though. He seemed rather taken with his enhanced odor, as if I’d put a glamour on an average-looking man or woman.
I helped Malcolm to his feet and over to the door. When he got up he left a rather large pool of blood on the floor. He’d been putting on a good face, but he wasn’t all right. Not by a long shot. He leaned heavily on me, but at least he was able to walk.
“Ready?” I said to Lou.
When I pushed open the door he flew out like an arrow. It was just as well he moved quickly, because something huge hit the ground right behind him, and another thump struck right as he dodged left.
Most of the sand had been rubbed off the snakes, but a few patches remained, enough to provide a bizarre quilt of floating patterns that were hard to make head or tail out of, though they did give a sense of where the snakes were.
Lou of course could see them, or at least sense them in a fashion. If not, he would have been toast. He lit out for the edge of the clearing, but just before he reached it, stumbled and fell. Malcolm drew in his breath with a hiss. It was an instinctive reaction, one of concern for Lou’s safety. I started to think a little better of him.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s his standard wounded-duck routine; he doesn’t want them to get discouraged and give up, so he pretends he’s injured himself. Right before they reach him, he’ll miraculously recover just in time.”
The bits of sand floated through the air and the grass flattened down as the snakes glided toward him like giant sidewinders. Lou was now hobbling desperately toward the cover of a thicket, and his pursuers were gaining rapidly.
“Time to go,” I said, pulling Malcolm along.
We headed in the opposite direction, Malcolm hobbling like Lou, except for real. The snakes, fixated on catching Lou, so tempting and close, didn’t even notice us as we slipped away.
As we reached the far side of the clearing I heard a hiss of triumph from the snakes as they closed in, then a series of mocking barks as Lou evaded their final lunge and disappeared into the safety of the dense underbrush.
Malcolm and I stumbled in the opposite direction, with me taking up most of his weight as he leaned heavily on me. We’d managed a fair distance when Lou appeared from out of the bushes, stinking worse than ever but looking very pleased with himself.
“Nice work,” I said. “Now get us home.”
He looked at me for a moment, making it clear that in his opinion it would be just fine if Malcolm collapsed and we left him to rot, but he gave the canine equivalent of a shrug and trotted purposely down the path. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped and cocked his head sideways. A moment later I heard it, too, a snapping of bushes in the distance, along with a scraping sound like a road grader run amok.
Of course. I’d enhanced Lou’s dog smell so the snakes would go after him. He’d lured them away from the house, as planned, but once they were free of the overpowering scent of the place, their senses were as sharp as ever. They could probably smell Lou from a mile away. No problem for him; he was quick as ever. But pretty soon they’d be close enough to scent me and Malcolm as well, and we weren’t quick at all. Malcolm heard the crashing in the distance about the same time I did.
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