The Liminal People (21 page)

“I'm not like them. Alia and Rajesh. I'm not hard like them. But I'm no Prentis, either. I can handle myself.”

“Better than I could at your age.” She nods, realizing there isn't a hint of patronization in my voice. “Right then. Let's get suited up.”

“She'll find me,” I say, pointing to the video projectors. I stand out because I'm not wearing a kimono. A few others in the crowd aren't either, but they, too, are marked as different. Either they stumbled into this disorganized co-option of public space, or they've just never been to a Bender party. Apparently there's always a theme involving costuming. Guess it fits the personality of an illusionist. I look down at the girl I've held and talked to and worked with for three days. It seems like months. Even with face paint on, she reminds me of her mother. This may be the last time I see either one of them. “Get lost, before we're spotted together.”

I've trained her well. In a second she's under the group miasma of the party. Like the ninja she dressed as when we first met, she disappears into the crowd. What's more, no words. Just action. My turn to do the same.

I find one of the cameramen. He's bouncing his little digital camera on the breasts of a girl not much older than Tamara, and I take it from him. I shine it on my face, then the razor around my neck. Then my face again. I toss it back to him. For almost fifteen seconds my features and my master's calling card were writ large on the big screen. This Alia chick is all about control. I just interrupted the flow of her control for a few seconds. If she's worth her salt, I'll be getting a talking-to any second.

I pull three chicken buns from a local vendor before a big black bruiser taps me on my shoulder. He speaks less with his words than his body, which makes sense as I am in the middle of a roaring crowd bouncing up and down to an old Congo Natty tune. He tells me with his eyes that the lady of the evening wants to have a conversation. One scan and I know him for her Fou-Fou. He'll come for me with the .380 he has under his jacket if he needs to. But his task is only to bring me to his mistress.

I keep one of the buns and follow the bruiser as he pushes through crowds of barely post-teen drunkards and tourists with more money than common sense. He leads me to a flight of stairs between two flats, a stairway that shelters five people. All muscular, like my friend behind me. I could take them down in a second. Instead, I play the part and climb the stairs with an arrogance that causes men who outweigh me by a hundred pounds to rethink any moves they might make.

The steps lead to a huge old flat tarred roof, a rarity in the neighborhood. Thirty people drink, pop pills, and dance on this street-party version of the V.I.P. lounge. Across the street, another roof party. Down the block, another one. It's really the next level up. Right on the edge of this rooftop, an impossible woman reclines on a chaise lounge with a cigarette installed in an old-school two-foot-long filter. The woman is emaciatedly thin, like an anime character with cartoonish ovals for eyes and cheekbones that extend up to her earlobes. She sports a red dress patterned with dragons. Dragon Lady. I know her to be Alia without my big bodyguard offering a directional hand in her vicinity.

I allow myself to be guided but then I catch a familiar body in my sensory periphery. As I veer right, the bodyguard tries to stop me. I turn him into a diabetic in desperate need of insulin. Once I'm free of him, I return his pancreas to working order. His insulin will rebound. Or it won't. Prentis, dressed as a Japanese rice peasant, complete with rice-paddy shoes, torn pants, and blouse, tries to run from me. I give her a leg cramp and continue to walk slowly toward her. It's only when she stands, lip quivering, I realize I don't have much hate for her. She did attack me, she was part of all this, but I'm finding some kinship with her. I'm looking in her face, trying to find the opportunist that I saw in Rajesh, the power hunger I expect from Alia, even the misdirected anger of Tamara when we first met. Instead, all I see is her pure, abject terror. And while I know it's probably Alia's rage she's afraid of, the girl is looking at me. What's more, I know what I'm going to have to do to her later in order to keep Tamara safe. I feel the perversion of my power as I finger her brain. That sense, reinforced by her garb, disgusts me.

“Run away. Run now and never let me see you again.” When she obeys, I start screaming in my head, “What about Nordeen?” Another problem, another day.

The Dragon Lady rises briefly from her seat to investigate the commotion, but refocuses on her cigarette as soon as Prentis runs down the stairs. I walk calmly over to her but wait for her to speak.

“I have it on good authority that you killed my man Rajesh,” she tells me like she read it in the paper next to the sports column. It's disconcerting talking to a voice you're not sure has been spoken. Even that could be an illusion.

“I didn't come all this way to speak with an illusion,” I state with the same disdain. She turns from overlooking the party and finally meets my eyes.

“Well, my dear. If you hadn't have killed one of my soldiers, scared my favorite puppy dog away, and broken one of my norms before even saying hello, you might not have wasted your trip.” She says it in a long, drawn-out posh drawl that doesn't match her image.

“Is that the message you want me to convey to Nordeen Maximus?” She turns quickly at my words. I notice the ash she flicks disappears into thin air. It's all illusion. I'm not talking to the girl, but she's somewhere close by. Close enough to hear me and have her illusion respond.

“Anyone can buy a razor,” she says snidely.

“Yeah, but no one invokes Nordeen's name without knowing who he is. And you can't know who he is and try to claim him without intimate knowledge.”

“Nordeen sent you?” There's a level of hope in her voice. I nod. Suddenly, the landscape changes. I'm still on a roof, but I'm a lot closer to the edge. The Dragon Lady I was talking to disappears, and where she was is only sky and the gentle updraft of Chinese food and body funk. Two more steps. If I tried to touch the Dragon Lady I would've fallen. This Alia girl is good. From behind me another voice, different from the Dragon Lady, continues the conversation. “Then I welcome you as the emissary from one power to another.”

I turn to face a woman of my height, with flowing black hair and a white Kimono. She walks on shoes with wooden slots at the soles. Her face is small, Middle Eastern, and intense.

“I didn't think he'd received my gifts,” she says, sipping on a glass of champagne.

“They were not to his liking,” I reply curtly. Time is running out. She's made me. Now I need to make her for Tamara.

“What else could I have offered his petulant highness that would have appeased him?” There's that put-upon air about her again.

“What you covet the most. I'm here to take the telekinetic back to my lord. He says any further involvement between you and her will result in war between our two camps.” She puts the glass down, and I've figured her out again.

“That girl is mine. I found her first, she's in my city—”

“Yes, your city where you ordered a public execution of a highly political norm because you couldn't use your sway to convince the girl to come to your side.”

“And you know this how?”

“Your muscle doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut when he's seizing in agony. And as I said earlier, I did not come all this way to speak with an illusion.” I turn and hit the stairs. The bodyguards know better than to interfere with my progress.

Some grime jam is making the crowd in this section of the street jerk around like headless chickens. I just keep walking. This is all part of the plan. Alia controls her environment, so I've got to get her out of control. Get her questioning and unsure. Get her to drop her own illusions. Just once. Can't risk using my power on her. If it's not her body, she'll know I tried to get her and she'll attack. If I can't tell what's real and what's not, then I'm no use.

“Wait!” The bark sounds more like a real voice, but it's way too loud over the music. It's indicators like this that are the only way I can tell if she's real or not. The champagne glass on the table didn't make a sound. Now her voice comes through, though I'm nowhere near a quiet zone. Means she's projecting into my mind. Still, like a fish on a line, I've got to draw her in. So I stop and turn.

“You take the girl and I get what in return?” Alia asks.

“The thanks of a power that can break you whenever he so desires.” Now she's a blonde, Caucasian, still gorgeous but totally different than the last two images she put up.

“That's strange.” She laughs, almost trying to circle me. “Because my understanding was that Nordeen hardly ever left his little hiding spot anymore. I hear he's afraid of London. I hear his power is waning, and if it weren't for his emissaries he'd have no power at all.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying let's sit, have a drink, discuss things.” I look to my right, and once again there's something I wasn't expecting. On the sidewalk, fifteen feet in front of me, in one of the more quiet sections of the Samurai Bender, is a small table with two chairs, sake, and a host waiting to seat us. I'm praying Tamara doesn't take her shot as I pour white milk on sheets. No doubt this Alia has some mind-reading skills of her own. I sit in my chair and notice when her chair rocks a little as she sits. Good. There's a body in it. Now the real question is, whose body?

“I think I know who you are,” she starts after pouring a cup of sake for herself, drinking, then offering it to me. “You're the old man's healer, no? I haven't met a lot of people like us. Seven, maybe eight. But a disproportionate number of them know about you. You are the cautionary tale for people like us, did you know that?”

“And this is your sales pitch?” I say, genuinely annoyed.

“As you implied earlier, what do I have to sell? Nordeen takes what he wants, just as the norms do as they please with no understanding that their betters walk amongst them every day.”

“So why am I drinking sake with you?”

“Because you and I both know it doesn't have to be like this. We are the rightful heirs of this planet. But we are kept in the shadows by manipulative little old men like Nordeen.”

“Watch your mouth, woman. You've got no idea of his power.”

“Neither do you.” She stops me cold. “Neither does anyone else who has had dealings with him. And there are others like him. Old people like us, who use others to get what they need. I've got no problem with that. Why do the heavy lifting when you can get someone else to do it for you? But you've got to be able to prove to the new blood, like myself, that you can still get your hands dirty if necessary.”

“And you chose to draw the line in the sand with this girl?” I sneeze. The illusionist doesn't catch it.

“Perhaps. You see, I think Nordeen and I are just about equally matched right now. He has you razor-necks, and a few other powers like yourself. But I've got resources as well. Now, if I were to get Tamara on my side, our battle would no doubt flame the world from here to whatever little hidey-hole in Morocco your man has. But if I were to have
you
on my side as well, I don't know if Nordeen would risk it.”

For the past five seconds I haven't been paying attention, but I've been trying to act like I have. It's her. I can feel a body, a circulatory system, respiration, the explosive brain, all of it. And it jumps when she says Nordeen. She knows who it is. The sneeze was the cue. Tamara's a witness, somewhere. I don't know where she is. But she's got to be seeing this. She needs to move now. There's a shift in Alia. She knows I haven't been paying attention. She's putting it together. Where the fuck are you, Tamara?

“Why does a healer sneeze?” It almost feels like an earnest question.

I hear Tamara's voice say “Get down” a second before four darts fly from directly behind my head directly into Alia's brain. At least, where it should be. The darts fly through the head without any effect. She's another illusion. But I know she's in the chair.

“Good effort.” Alia's way too congratulatory. She's got that Nordeen smile. I stand. “Uh-uh,” she chastises. “My turn.”