communications have been screwed up the last couple of months. We haven’t even heard from National Command HQ in weeks, just Regional in Redding. But if the Council’s ended the plague, if they can do that… well, they’ve got my vote. Geneva can be capital of the world and good luck to them.”
He laughed, a rusty sound. “Though with a World Council running things now, I may be out of a job.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “The world cannot become that peaceful, truly. Not as long as human beings are human beings.”
The man snorted and nodded. “Damn right. I’ve seen… enough of that lately. People will be crazy for a while yet and then they’ll be, well, people.”
Adrienne gave a long slow smile. “I’m sure the Council will find a need for your services. There are always… recalcitrant elements. Keeping the peace will be your task. Keeping our peace. You’ll have… powerful new backup, too.”
The Seeing cut off. He drifted in darkness; shapes rushed by him, like subway trains roaring down through a darkened station. Adrian pushed, looking for purpose in a universe of chaos. Then he could see again.
See, he thought. I am Seeing.
The same street showed, and on the same day and hour. But here the buildings leaned crazily, scorch marks showing where flames had burst out of windows. One had fallen across the intersection, and lay in a tangle of girders and shattered concrete still held together by the rebar. Cars littered the street, many with their doors and hoods still open, stopped where they had been stricken all at once. A group of men and women waited in the rubble, guns and clubs and knives clutched in their hands; they were skeletally thin, and wore a patchwork of rags and hair and dirt. He could smell them, the scents of madness and bodies sick and starving.
Other men came down the street, dressed in tough nondescript uniforms and carrying assault rifles and grenade launchers. Their leader stopped, raised a hand in a gesture Adrian recognized, spoke a Word. The ragamuffins tensed; then one sprang up, screaming and slapping at himself, then gouging his own eyes into bloody holes in his face. Three more simply slumped over, dead before they hit the ground. Another leveled a pump-action shotgun at the newcomers and pulled the trigger.
Crang!
The shells in the magazine gang-fired, and he ran three steps waving the spouting stumps of his arms below a ruined face and then toppled to lie still. The rest broke in panic, scuttling like rats back into the tangle of ruins. The newcomers opened fire, short accurate bursts, the empty shells sparkling in the sunlight as they spun up and the flat elastic crackcrackcrack echoing off the dead buildings. The shoonk… boom! of grenade launchers sounded.
Their leader stopped and removed his helmet. Pale hair showed beneath, pale eyes, a sharp-nosed Slavic face, though his followers were of half a dozen races. His eyes were faded blue, with tiny golden flecks visible only when the light struck at an angle.
“Kakoy naverh trahaviy!” he said, with limitless disgust in his tones.
Adrian’s observing mind translated automatically: “What a fuckup! ”
“We return,” he continued in English. “There’s obviously nothing worthwhile here.”
The pointed nose wrinkled at the corpses, and his upper lip rose to reveal his teeth.
“Not even any clean blood, and I am hungry. We go!”
Adrian sat upright-or tried to. The restraints around the wounds in his forearm and thigh stopped him, and the tubes and holders rattled where lines dripped plasma and saline and carefully metered drugs into him. He sank back with a hiss at the sharp stabbing pain and looked around the room by rolling his head from side to side.
“Hospital,” he muttered.
The institutional smell, clean and dismal, was unmistakable; the tray of congealing food somewhere near made it even plainer with its scents of overdone green beans and reconstituted mashed potatoes. Green-beige walls, linoleum on the floors, tracks on the ceiling for privacy curtains to be drawn around the beds. This was a smallish room, set up for two patients.
Waking up in hospitals without being sure exactly how he’d gotten there was no new experience. But…
Wait. I’m retired. I haven’t done this shit for years and years.
Memory crashed in, the killers with the silvered knives in the Japanese bathhouse. Ellen. His sister.
Ellen woke me up. I could feel it. It’s been a while. I was deep in trance, and then the link with Ellen.
He shivered, and continued to flog his mind back into working order. There was a drained feeling to it, as if he’d been Wreaking at high level without blood, forcing the Power to feed on himself.
Harvey, he thought.
The other man was lying on the next bed with his boots off, limply asleep. Adrian blinked in shock at how old he looked, silver stubble showing on his cheeks and the eyes fallen in a little.
When did that happen?
In his mind’s eye Harvey Ledbetter was always a vibrant thirty-five, a tireless mass of gristle and bone and lean muscle and sharp penetrating blue eyes. Adrian was alert now, however weak his body. He let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes, because that weakness made them prickle with half-shed tears.
All human beings are mortal, he thought. Including those you love, Adrian. Prepare yourself for more of this grief, unless you plan on dying soon.
The other bed creaked. He opened his eyes again; Harvey was sitting up, stamping his feet into the boots and lacing them, rubbing at his face. The grin was back, and the sparkle in the eyes that made you forget the gray and the wrinkles and the way the hands were getting knobby.
“You look like shit, Harv,” he said-or croaked.
“Said Mr. Kettle to the honey-bucket. You look like shit that’s been through the baby twice. Hold one.”
He went out; a few minutes later he returned with a big mug. Then he put a hand behind Adrian’s head and put it to his lips. The scent of the blood hit him a second before that, revulsion and longing together. It was almost warm. He looked a question.
“Usual source, just a bit fresher. Pretty well straight from the donor. You need it, ol’ buddy. We got connections here, but it ain’t altogether a Brotherhood establishment. Drink before someone comes by and asks questions.”
He drank. For an instant it tasted only of salt and metal, a sign of how drained he really was. Then it was like tofu-stale tofu with an overtone of slightly spoiled milk. There was only the mildest quiver of nausea as it hit his stomach, empty though that felt.
“Ahhh,” he sighed. “My God, don’t give me this Grand Cru Burgundy too often, Harv.”
“It’s back to the rotgut as soon as you’re out of here. I was gettin’ worried. You were in a trance lockdown-I had to jimmy those with a Wreaking-”
He pointed at a bank of monitors, which were now showing his real heartbeat and respiration and blood pressure. It would have been hard for the older man; everything came from his own reserves.
No wonder he looked so exhausted! “-but it didn’t seem to be doing you all that much good, not like a real healin’ coma. Thought I might have to hold your nose and pour the blood down your gullet my own self.”
Adrian made a dismissive gesture. “Ellen woke me. Adrienne was… feeding on her.”
“You’ve got a pretty close link with that girl, don’t you?” A grin. “Don’t work with just blood, does it?”
“Dirty-minded salop,” he replied. Then: “Ellen is becoming acclimated to it, developing the addiction pattern. That was… not pleasant to observe. She was very frightened, and then… nearly ecstatic.”
Harvey sighed. “Look, ol’ buddy, you knew that was going to happen. It actually makes things easier for her and less likely to get on the receiving end of an overfeeding frenzy-which in case you hadn’t noticed, is fatal while blissing-out isn’t.”
“She has an addictive personality. She knows it and deals with it well. But in this situation she is more vulnerable.”
Harvey shrugged. “She can go through detox when we get her back. Concentrate on getting healed up so we can do something about it.”
Adrian crossed his arms and rested his hands on his shoulders. Breath in, out, in, out…
A few seconds later he opened his eyes again and hissed, “Damn those knives! I’m healing only a little faster than… ah…”
