Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (13 page)

Before we got to the next corner, though, a woman in a motorized wheelchair came around it and stopped, facing us. We slowed as we got within ten feet or so of her. She was bald, marble-white skin gleaming in the weakening late summer sunlight. One of her huge, pale eyes was made to look even larger by a lens, like a giant jeweler’s loupe, held in place by leather straps. Her upper body, wrapped in several layers, looked powerful, but her lower body vanished beneath a blanket, showing no feet below. The way the blanket occasionally shifted, I was guessing there was something that was not quite legs under there. I was also guessing she was old. It’s hard to judge sometimes with mutants; in this case, she seemed to have no eyebrows, so her baldness probably had nothing to do with her age, but the wrinkles and age spots were pretty indicative.

She leaned to one side, looking around us to the figures behind, and called out, “Put your toys away, boys, and leave them in your pockets. These are Railwalkers. They could kill you twice before you got off your first shot, pledge and promise on it.” She looked at us. “Ain’t that so, gentlemen?”

“
Might be,” said Rok. “If they’re good.” He looked over his shoulder, then back at the chairbound mutant. Gave a little sideways nod. “Or might be we could kill ’em three times.”

The old woman chuckled. “So how’s that saying go? You come from the East?”

“
Wolf am I, walker of the rails between worlds, and he is Rok. Twenty-three blessings, grandmother. Say your need.”

She laughed again. “Say my need? You don’t got that long to listen, Normie. Tell you what I’d like, though. Like to know what you want here, Railwalkers. You didn’t come down sniffing for no mutant pussy.”

“
Looking for a man named Jemison Farris. Had his runabout stolen a couple of weeks back.”

“
Farris?” she laughed. “If that piece of shit Stroller of his got pinched, he’s better off without it. Why you care, anyway?”

I answered her question with another. “What’s it to you?”

“
Jemison had enough trouble with the guard already. Don’t need no more official crap coming his way.”

“
No crap involved, just some questions.”

The old mutant eyed us suspiciously. Then she nodded. “Ephram,” she said to one of the mutants behind us. “Go get Farris, tell him I said come on over to Deke’s.” Then she called over her shoulder, “Waldron! Go tell Deke to put on the coffee.” She turned back to us. “Won’t be but five percent, but it’s the thought that counts, ain’t it?”

“
That it is,” I said.

She spun her wheelchair and led the way. The fellows behind us came up closer as we began to move. We kept a weather eye open, but it seemed that the woman’s tentative approval of us was accepted, and their formation was protective—apparently we were now guests rather than potential enemies. Closer up I could see that these were indeed mutants, though more sound of body than many I’d met. Three of them appeared relatively normal if you didn’t count the lack of a nose on one, and a tail on another. The fourth was a lumbering behemoth, not above six foot, but weighing over three hundred pounds. He had rough, scaly-looking skin, and his fingers were wed, forming something like lobster claws. Except for the big one, they all carried weapons, though they followed the old mutant’s instruction and kept them in their pockets.

The boarded-up storefront she led us to had “Deke’s Place” written in spray paint on the window’s plywood. It had been some sort of convenience store or groceria at one time. You could still see the marks on the stained linoleum where display shelves had once stood, the empty space now taken up with a half-dozen mismatched sets of tables and chairs. The refrigerator cases along the back wall were dark and empty, no colder than the rest of the place. The room was vacant except for a thin mutant behind the counter, whose eyes were on the sides of his head like a horse. The old woman wheeled across the floor to take a place at the sturdiest-looking table. She gestured for us to sit.

“
Take a load off, Railwalkers. Fair to say you, Terrapin Jones am I. These folks call me Oculus.” She gestured at the others in turn and introduced them. The one with the tail was Jed, the noseless one Marlus, the huge one was called Lob, and the fourth man, who showed no malformation except for a wall eye, was known as Pinko. The four didn’t join us at the table, but took up positions around the room, Pinko at the window near a gap in the boards, Lob beside the front door, Marlus and Jeb at the back. The horse man, who Oculus introduced as Deke, brought a tray with heavy white chipped mugs, a pot of coffee, and a bowl of loose tobacco to the table. Oculus took the pot from him.

“
I’ll Mama that Java,” she said, and poured for the three of us. Deke took cups to each of the other four as well, but most set them down untouched. Oculus brought out a stone pipe and began to fill it from the bowl.

“
Seems like you’re ready for a war,” I said to the woman. “Trouble with the guard?”

“
Not the guard so much.” She shook her head. Fired up the pipe, handed it to me. I took a token puff, handed the pipe to Rok. “Bay City used to be a decent place for mutants,” she continued. “Got to register, you know, but the laws give us our rights, assuming we got the wherewithal to use ’em. Oh, like anyplace else, there’s plenty of normies don’t like us much, but mostly they let us be, until recent.”

“
Since the Beast appeared?” I asked. She nodded. Rok stood and offered the pipe to Pinko, who puffed quickly and passed it on.

“
Ain’t been a single mutie killed by the Beast so far. Lots of normies assume the Beast is a mutie his own self. Mebbe some think we might be helping him, or sympathetic, anyway. Things been a little tense, as you might say.”

“
I can imagine,” I said, and I could. When people become frightened they look for scapegoats, and become suspicious of anything that smacks of otherness. Next to the malformations of most mutants, differences of skin color and cultural heritage among the normals would become insignificant.

“
What about you, Walker of Rails?” she asked. “You think the beast is a mute?”

“
Not sure yet.”

“
But Roth called you here about the Beast, no? Why you down here lookin’ for Jemmy?”

“
Farris’s runabout was involved in a hit and run.”

“
The night Chief Adams died,” she nodded. “Guards sweated Jemmy good about that night. He was workin’. What’s that run down got to do with the Beast?”

At the door Pinko stirred and said, “Jemmy.” The front door opened and another mutant entered, dressed in a laborer’s denims. He had a Neanderthal look about him: an overhung brow ridge and lots of hair. His hairline reached halfway down his forehead, and his five o’clock shadow nearly reached his eyes. He didn’t have the appropriate physique, though—he was thin and weak, and with an incongruous-looking pair of glasses perched on his nose, he gave the absurd impression of a techno-nerd caveman. He nodded at the woman. “Oculus.”

“
Jemmy,” she said. “Pull up a chair. These are Railwalkers Wolf and Rok. They was about to tell me why the guard thought you and your runabout had something to do with the Beast.”

Farris nodded but said nothing else as he pulled a chair up to the table. I looked from Jemison to Oculus, considering how much I should tell them.

“
The man the runabout hit,” I said, “was a janitor at the guard station at City Center.” Oculus smiled slightly, but Farris’ eyes widened. The guard apparently hadn’t mentioned that while questioning him. “We think the Beast stole your runabout to put that janitor in hospital, and snuck into the station disguised as him.”

Oculus laughed out loud at this. “So that Beast, he’s a skinwalker,” she said, using the Namerican term for shapeshifters. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Railwalker man. You didn’t have to say it, Oculus was born at night, but not last night. Roth call you folks in, gotta be he thinks there some hoodoo in this Beast. Ain’t no guardo janitor got claws like the Beast supposed to have, ain’t no disguisin’ that kinda thing, unless you’re a shapeshifter.”

I turned to Farris. “I know the guards grilled you for hours about this. I don’t want to add to your troubles, just want to know if there’s anything about that night you can tell us, anything at all that seemed strange or off, maybe something you didn’t tell the guard, or didn’t think of at the time.”

Jemison looked from me to Rok to Oculus, and back again. He looked at the table.

“
Only one thing,” he said. “Didn’t know it until after. Tommy Chang.” He glanced at Oculus. “You know, Annie’s kid? He says he seen a big bald guy hanging around Chalmers Street, where the Roller was parked. Said he looked like a mutie, but Tommy didn’t know him.”

“
Tommy gets around,” Oculus explained. “Knows just about every mutie in Alphabet City.”

“
Only thing I can tell you I didn’t tell the guard,” Farris added with a shrug.

A big bald guy sounded like it could have been the Beast Auden saw, but it was iffy, a slim connection. This didn’t add very much to our knowledge, but talking to Farris had been a long shot anyway.

“
Thanks Jemmy,” Oculus said. “You go on back to work now.”

Jemison Farris got up, avoiding eye contact, nodded to us, and to Oculus, and made his way to the door.

Oculus looked at us. “Tell you what, Railwalker man,” she said. “I can see Jemmy didn’t tell you nothing you didn’t already guess. But I’ll give you a new toy to play with. That weren’t the first time someone seen a bald mutie nobody knows. He’s a ninjaman, walks the night like a shadow. But there’s eyes in Alphabet City see through the dark, and we watch out for our own. That bald ghost, he be seen one too many times ’round a squat over at Chalmers and A Street. Most of the squatters there, they found other places to habit, you get my meaning? Might be you want to check that place out.”

“
Might be,” I agreed.

We were rising to leave when Ephram burst in, out of breath.

“
Jemmy...” he gasped. “Guards... C and Montrose.”

We followed out the door and down the block to where a small crowd was developing. The dozen or so people—mutants all—backed up suddenly, and the air became tense. I could see at the center a burly guardsman holding Jemison Farris up against a wall.

The crowd had backed up because the guard’s partner had drawn his gun. Other guns and knives were appearing, most still held down, away from the guards’ line of sight, but exposed to us as we approached from behind.

I shouldered my way between the mutants, and ignoring the partner, who looked like a middle-aged lounge lizard with too much pomade in his hair, I walked to the one holding Farris.

“
What’s the problem here, guardsman?” I asked.

“
Guard business,” he growled. “Back off unless you want a...” At this point he turned and looked at me for the first time, and then trailed off.

“
It’s the Railwalker,” the gigolo said. The burly fellow, dark of hair and mustache as well as expression, shot a look at his partner, but didn’t bother to answer. Below his badge, a nametag read “C. Remming.”

“
Let him go,” I said quietly.

“
Drunk and disorderly,” said Remming loudly. “He was harassing people.” Then he lowered his voice, and said to me, “This is the mutie whose car hit Andy. We want to question him again about that.”

“
One of the investigators put you on that?” I asked.

“
Don’t need no authorization to question a fuckin’ mutie,” he growled.

There was a shuffling noise, and I looked around. One of the watching mutants had raised a gun, and Rok had taken it away from him, putting the guy on the ground in the process. The crowd stirred. I heard at least three guns cock, and the lounge lizard went on high alert, gun ranging back and forth over the crowd. As he turned, I could see his nametag read “N. Turrin.”

“
PEACE!” I shouted, putting a Force into it. The guns all pointed to the ground, and the tension in the air dropped perceptibly. Rok grinned at me. I turned to Remming again.

“
In the first place,” I said, “I was just talking with this man, and he was perfectly sober. He didn’t magically become drunk in the few steps he took from there to here. In the second place, this man is now a witness in a Railwalker inquiry. Do I have to quote you the title and section that give me jurisdiction and authority in this?”

He glowered at me a moment more, then grudgingly released Farris. The mutant nodded his thanks at me, then scurried off down the street.

“
What are you all looking at?” Remming demanded of the crowd. “Move along. Excitement’s all over. Be about your business.” As the people began to slowly disperse, he turned his glare on me again. “Good luck with your inquiry,” he said, with emphasis on the last word as if it were an insult. Then he nodded at his partner, and the two of them walked off.

Rok stood beside me, watching them go. “Bay City’s Finest. Gotta love ’em.”

“
No, I don’t,” I said.