Mythworld: Invisible Moon (2 page)

Not to be outdone, Fujiko had spent the last several months of construction designing the layout of the main floor, and learning how to make coffee. Having arrived two decades after the whole thing got underway, Meredith could honestly attest to two things—there was a reason that Michelangelo’s whole opinion of art was “it’ll be done when it is done”—after four-hundred and eighty or so months of labor, June was only about one-quarter of the way through the scene; and if you can’t make good coffee after a year, you’re never likely to be able to. After three years, Fuji finally gave up and hired a pleasant, chatty local couple, Glen and Delna Beecroft, to run the coffee shop, and she turned her attentions to her real love—old books.

The collections on display and for public perusal which lined the main hall were meticulously kept, and covered a broad range of esoteric subjects and themes. In the back of The Pickle Factory, however, was a three-story addition constructed specifically for two reasons: to be used as the Kawaminami’s personal residence, and as a secure facility to house the private collection—Fuji’s closed stacks. It was rumored she had pieces that were coveted by no less prestigious and influential establishments than The Huntington Library and The Smithsonian Institution, and was just as reluctant to lend anything out, or even afford a look. Only three other people even had access to the closed stacks—their personal librarian; June; and the heir to the family legacy, Shingo.

O O O

June had covered the expenses of Meredith’s moving from Vienna to attend to her father’s funeral and affairs, as well as her rent and medical needs when she was unable to work after the accident; he also never let her pay a check at Soame’s (which she suspected was probably the main reason Harald preferred to have assignment meetings there, as he was always completely tapped). It seems that about two years after the coffee shop opened, June was up on the scaffolding working on Moses or someone of similar import, when a section of the supports twisted apart and began to collapse. This meant that June would in all likelihood fall to his death, but worse to him than that was the realization that the entire structure was toppling towards the counter where Fuji was working—one structural flaw was going to kill them both.

Almost instantly, a large burly fellow, who was dressed in rough, dark clothes and had been nursing a single cup of coffee all morning at a table near the counter leapt to his feet and forced himself under the collapsing scaffold. Muscles straining, he slowly straightened his back and forced it aright, allowing Fuji to move from harm’s way, and June to climb to a more solid section of bars and planks. Several other patrons and passers-by, drawn by Fuji’s shrill cries, rushed in and helped to support the structure until June could manage to repair the flaw and secure it with bracing. It was only then that they realized a two-inch wide steel pipe had been driven into the big man’s neck, and had forced its way straight through to the other side. A fraction of an inch to the left or right, and he would have bled to death, or had his spine severed. As it was, he did not flinch or cry out until the paramedics arrived and cut the bar from the frame, all the while marveling that he was still alive. They then loaded him gently onto a gurney and rushed him to the hospital, where after a short time, he recovered fully, and took his place in the community as an honored hero.

That man was Meredith’s father, Vasily Strugatski.

Little more than a year later, they had a son, and in gratitude offered to name him for their rescuer. He thought Vasily would be an awful thing to saddle a child with, particularly one whose ethnic heritage would already set him apart, and so suggested an alternative. When he first had come to America, Vasily was still a bit of a scoundrel, and passing through a suburb of Phoenix decided to climb a fence around an office complex and root around in the offices for something he could hock. The security guard nabbed him, but instead of turning him over to the police, he offered the large young man a job as the assistant-security guard of the complex (reasoning that if he got in, then security was not up to snuff); he also took him home for dinner, bought him some clothes, and loaned him some walking-around money.

Vasily didn’t actually stay long in Arizona, and he certainly didn’t abandon his scoundrel’s nature, but that incident changed his outlook on people and civilization in a very fundamental way, and he never forgot the lesson.

He suggested that June and Fuji name their child after his benefactor in the desert, as both a favor and a tribute—they thought the idea very apt and honorable, and so the child was named: Shingo Earl Kawaminami.

O O O

Pushing through the broad, etched-glass double doors at the entrance of Soame’s, Meredith saw Harald sitting at their usual table beneath the Tintorrettos, and headed over to sit down. As far as Meredith knew, she was the only one who knew him who actually just called him Harald. Except for their editor at The Ontario Daily Sun, Mr. Janes, who alternated between
Van Hassel
and
VanHasselyouidiot
, all one word—everyone else called him Weird Harold. He didn’t seem to mind; Meredith even suspected at times that he began the nickname himself, just for kicks.

It wasn’t as if the name weren’t applicable, considering the unique facets of his work were as likely to involve Alien bovine abduction as they were a story about Yeti in Cleveland—which he figured was the only place left to look for Yeti, since his Pulitzer-nominated report of the year before had proven the Himalayan Yeti to be large polar bears, much to the Nepalese’ dismay—not to mention changing the spelling of his name every couple of weeks or so. When he and Meredith first met, it was just plain Harold, but that was only because she met him in the middle of a cycle. Often, he was Harald, as he was the previous week (and probably was still); sometimes it was Jerald, heavy on the Latin accent. And sometimes, he even just goes by H—one letter, and that’s all—like some sort of James Bond villain (a weak comparison, actually, since it was Bond’s superior who was named Q; Meredith was glad she never mentioned the villain thing to Harald—she wouldn’t want him worried that she thought of him as a bad guy or anything).

As for himself, the only description he claimed even remotely accurate was also the title printed on the business cards he silver-tongued out of The Daily Sun:
Zen Journalist
. He claimed that by applying the Zen practice of attempting to view the world just as it is, which was achieved only with a mind that had no grasping thoughts or feelings, and a state of consciousness wherein thoughts move without leaving any trace, could those events and objects of real value be connected, viewed, and reported on. His connections were wrong often enough that Mr. Janes automatically popped one of his heart pills whenever Harald came to the office, but he was right often enough for Mr. Janes to secretly keep his home number on speed dial. Neither state of being earned him much more than the disdain of his colleagues, which for that matter could easily have been misplaced envy; Harald didn’t know which—but then, neither did anyone else, which delighted him more than he cared to admit. Zen Journalist: zero; disgruntled mass of humanity: zero. The blank page is the definition.

“Hi, Harald. What is it this week?” Meredith offered, swinging briskly through the doors of Soame’s.

“Greetings, Reedy,” Harald said, snorting a not-drunk swallow of coffee and half-standing in a clumsy, gentlemanly sort of way. He was the only one who called Meredith “Reedy”––her grandmother called her Nadia, which she’d hoped Meredith’s parents would name her. Everyone else stuck to Meredith. She figured that anyone who got saddled with a nickname like Weird Harold deserved to call people anything he wanted, especially since he was a genuinely nice fellow. Meredith pulled up a chair as he sat down and waved at Delna to bring a cup of her usual poison.

“What was it you were saying?” Harald asked, sitting.

“Your name. Aren’t you due for a change right about now?”

“Oh, it’s Hjerald, thanks for asking.”

Meredith blinked, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “That’s a new one.”

“Not really,” he replied, shrugging. “I just haven’t used it that often. This week, though, it seemed appropriate.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it’s kind of Euro—Y’know, like Bjorn Borg? And,” He leaned towards her, hunched over, voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve got a lead on a big one, this time, that happened two days ago—so we’ll have to bust our butts to get on top of it. I got the original source off the newswire from Europe, then followed up with some contacts of my own at the hospital.”

“Hospital? What, did somebody die?”

“Yeah, but he’s not important. The guy what killed him, though, he’s a real piece of work. It seems he’s actually the chief administrator for the University of Vienna …”

Meredith felt a slight twinge—her stepfather taught at the University; the stepfather she wasn’t on speaking terms with. Best not to mention it, else Hjerald will be pressing her to use him as a source.

“… And he went bonkers in this Bavarian town called, er … Um … Baywatch, or something.” He started swearing under his breath and digging into his overstuffed bag; not that it mattered—Meredith had stopped listening, still frozen on the last word he’d said.

“You mean ‘Bayreuth.’”

Hjerald stopped rooting. “Huh? Yeah, that’s it. I forgot you’re from over there, Prawn or somewhere.”

“You mean Prague. I’m from Vienna, actually. What is it about Bayreuth?”

“Well, this guy, see, he was watching this opera at the festival—you know, the one about Rings, and Nibelungs, and Valkyries and stuff? Like Elmer Fudd in that cartoon—‘I’m killing the waa-bit, I’m killing the waa-bit, I’m killing the WAA—’”

“Hjerald, if you don’t shut up and tell me what you’re talking about I swear to God I’m going to pull your lungs out through your nose.”

After she said it Meredith instantly regretted doing so—Hjerald looked pretty abashed. “What I mean to say is, that sounds fascinating—tell me more.”

“All right, all right—shee. You don’t have to be patriotic, Reedy.”

“You mean patronizing.”

“Yeah. Thanks—I think.” Hjerald shuffled around in his rat’s nest of papers for a few seconds more before coming up with the newswire clipping. “Here it is. It says this University guy barged onstage and began making like he was playing a character called ‘Hagen’, and he gets to the part in the opera where he’s supposed to kill the hero, right?”

“Siegfried.”

“Yeah, him. Anyway, this ‘Hagen’ guy actually kills him. Freaked everyone out, got himself taken to the local asylum, and pretty much shut down the festival. But that’s not the good part.”

“Okay. When do we get to the part that’ll convince Mr. Janes to sign our vouchers?”

“I’m coming to that. You’re gonna love this, Reedy.”

Hjerald was really getting worked up, realized Meredith. Bless his heart—this was his element. The one saving grace in being assigned as his partner is that at the very least, the stuff he came up with was interesting—even if most of it was somewhere to the left of reality.

“Well, I found out which hospital they took Hagen to, and as it turns out, he escaped just this morning, and with the help of one of the doctors to boot.”

“Really? A Wagner groupie?”

“Something like that. A friend of mine out of a news bureau in Munich got me a transcript of the doctor’s notes. Apparently, this guy believed he really
was
Hagen—and more, that he could prove it by leading the doctor to the lost treasure of the Nibelungs, which was supposed to have been thrown into the Rhine. I guess he did a pretty good job of it, too—there’s been no trace of them.”

“No trace of the Nibelung?”

“No trace of Hagen or the doctor. The way I see it, he’s either legitimately crazy, or he really
is
Hagen—and if that’s true, then maybe the treasure is real, and that’s where we find a story.”

“Hjerald, Mr. Janes is never going to let us go to Germany …” Meredith began in protest, when just then, a cappuccino was placed in front of her—and its Heavenly aromas dispersed and banished any placebo-editorial vitriol she was about to conjure. “Thank you, Del. It smells wonderful.”

Delna Beecroft was a roundish woman with close-cropped red hair and a cheery smile. Her husband Glen was much the same—sort of what you might get if you pumped two hundred pounds of helium into an honest-to-God leprechaun and added a real estate license. They collectively ran everything at Soame’s having to do with customers, and they excelled at it. If not for them, June and Fuji would have been reduced to living off of the interest of whatever millions they had left; which is not to say the Beecrofts—particularly Glen—didn’t have their quirks.

“Sure, my duck. If you need anything else, just let Glen know.” She bobbed her head back and forth and winked at Glen at his post over near the counter. “I’ve got to pop out to Hatch’s—we seem to have misplaced the paper this morning.”

“You rancid wheelbarrow full of pus-filled armpit hair!” spouted Glen.

Delna smiled cheerfully. “He found a book of insults compiled by Harvard students while going through June’s refuse pile,” she said by way of explanation. “He’s never been happier.”

Hjerald and Meredith waved in greeting. “Hi, Glen.”

“Fart-collecting outhouse-sniffers! How are you kids? Get you anything? Got some new biscotti, baked fresh.”

“We’re fine, thanks.” Meredith nodded.

“Sure?” Glen replied. “Okay. Just holler. Snot-squirting lint-eaters!”

“It’s a phase,” said Delna. “He’ll be through it by tomorrow.”

“That’s probably good,” said Hjerald, casting a sympathetic eye at the hapless fellow buying a soda.

“You-who-are-the-name-of-the-moment-when-dogshit-turns-white, thanks for visiting Soame’s,” said Glen, handing the confused man a bag as Delna held the door open. “Come again.”

Meredith turned back to Hjerald. “You haven’t said what we’re going to do about this assignment …”

“I’ve got it all figured out. See, if they’re missing anyway, then no one else is going to get anything direct from the source, right? So there’s no point in our going to Bayreuth. Instead, we can just write the story from here, and flesh it out with research and stuff. And we can just use the photos from the wire service. I’m certain I can sell it to Mr. Janes.”