Angry Lead Skies

I told her, "Casey's here."

But Fasfir found Casey nearly as alien as she did me, and he was a lot less fun after dark. I could scramble her brains and push the fear away for a while.

"Huh? You worked hard enough but I never felt like you got much out of it."

She informed me that she was much more diverted when I was with Evas and she was in Evas' mind. Evas' flesh responded more readily, thoroughly, and willingly than did her own. Though her problem probably existed entirely within her own mind.

Odd. Though she believed she had mental hang-ups she admitted to being every bit as enthusiastic as Evas. Only she enjoyed it best at second hand.

Life gets stranger by the hour.

This is TunFaire. That would be the taproot iron law. Things get weirder.

Ask the Dead Man what it was like in the old days, when he was young and callow. He'll let you know that everything was normal and straightforward, way back then.

The written record, however, doesn't support him. There may be cycles of less and more but weird is with us always.

Company is coming. Another Visitor. He had concluded that our silver elves were identical to the strange people who had been called Visitors when he was a child. He'd found fragments in Casey's head to confirm his speculation. So from now on we were going to call them Visitors.

Fasfir whipped past me as I eased into the hallway. She hurried to the front door, then stood there baffled by all the mechanisms. I nudged her aside, looked through the peephole.

A very small, scruffy, nervous brunette was on the stoop. Homely enough to be related to Dean, she was poised to knock but wasn't sure she was ready to commit. She looked around to see who might be watching.

She flickered.

I lifted Fasfir up so she could look. "Is that your other friend?"

Fasfir nodded.

I opened the door, which startled the Visitor because she hadn't yet a

Fasfir revealed herself, slithering around me as lithely as a cat, before the ill-favored little woman could run away.

I shut the door and left the ladies to their reunion.

I went to the Dead Man's room. "You been eavesdropping?"

I got the equivalent of a mental grunt in response. I noted that Casey, who seldom strayed from the Dead Man's room, was lapsing into sleep. Again. By the time he left my place Casey was going to be years ahead on his sleep.

"Finding anything interesting? Like why this one is ru

Given fewer distractions I might exploit the present moment of emotional vulnerability to unearth those and further significant answers.

I pinched my lips closed.

We can call this woman Woderact. She seems to be what we would call a sorceress. She would be the most socially reserved of the female crew. She is not an adventuress. Yet there is about her that same intense suppressed hunger that characterized Evas. Some not so suppressed amusement. The Maskers kicked her out because she was of no use to them. She would not cooperate. Also, the Maskers may have thought she could lead them to Fasfir and Evas, either of whom might know something that would help them repair their ship.

These Maskers seem to be more hardened than are the other Visitors.

"Except for Casey."

Except for Casey. I do believe that it is just marginally possible that Casey could do direct, willful physical harm to another being. None of the other Visitors seem able to entertain the thought.

Ah! The excitement of the reunion has begun to ebb. Fasfir's thoughts are no longer accessible. And there goes the new mind. Ha!

A vast miasma of amusement wrapped itself around me. My metaphysical side seems to be asserting itself. I have suffered a psychic episode. You are going to have to teach night school at least one more time.

"I can lock my door."

But you will not.

No. Being an empathetic kind of guy, I probably wouldn't. Not for a night or two.

Please move the women out of the hallway, now. We are about to suffer another caller. It would be best that the Visitors are not seen.

73

I looked out the peephole as someone knocked. I saw a lean beanpole of a man all dressed in black. He had a black beard and wore a wide-brimmed black hat. I didn't recognize him.

Dean came into the hallway, started to go back when he saw that I'd reached the door first. I beckoned him forward, to answer while I eavesdropped and covered him from the small front room. The stillness and emptiness in there were sweet. With luck the parrot smell would fade away eventually.

Dean followed instructions but didn't fail to stomp and employ his full arsenal of disgusted expressions.

The man on the stoop asked, "Is this the home of the confidential operative known as Garrett?"

Sounded to me like he knew the answer already.

Dean thought so, too. "Yes. Why?"

"I have a message from Miss Contague." Sounded like he was talking about a living goddess, the way he said that. "For Mr. Garrett." Making sure.

He went away without saying anything more.

"That was strange," Dean told me, handing me a vellum document folded and sealed with a red wax seal as ornate as any used by the nobility. "That man had a voice like an embalmer."

"She chooses her henchmen to ornament her own epic. Which she rewrites as she goes along."

"It's a crying shame. Such a lovely young woman to be so twisted. I blame her father."

"So do I. But however cruel Chodo was, he never put a knife to her throat and forced her to do evil. She made the choices." When first we'd met Belinda had been trying to kill herself by slutting it up down in the Tenderloin. At the time that had been fashionable amongst unhappy young women from wealthy families.

Even now Belinda seemed determined to bring about her own destruction. Except that these days she wanted to go out in a flashy orgy of violence. So her pain could be seen and shared by everyone.

The Dead Man once told me that monsters aren't born, they're made. That they are memorials which take years of cruelty to sculpt. And that while we should weep for the tortured child who served as raw material, we should permit no sentiment to impede us while we rid the world of the terror strewn by the finished work. It took me a while to figure out what he meant but I do understand him now.

You just need one intimate look at what a fully mature monster can do to achieve enlightenment.

He may have been the most wonderful pup you've ever known but you don't hesitate to strike the dog if he goes rabid.

What is it?

"Belinda found the flying ship that got away out in the wine country."

Dean said, "It took that much paper just to tell you that?" No wondering on his part about why she'd even been looking.

"There's some cry-on-the-shoulder stuff, too." Almost like a confession. Which made me wonder if I shouldn't be more pessimistic about my personal longevity. I might be scheduled to share her funeral pyre. "And her people have found the stable where Casey keeps his donkey." That for the Dead Man's benefit, not Dean's. Dean didn't care. "Things he told the people there led Belinda's agents to another apartment. It doesn't sound as fancy as Casey's Bic Gonlit place but the stuff she says they found there makes me wonder if half of TunFaire's population isn't our pal Casey in disguise."

Excellent. Will you want to relay any of this to Colonel Block?